Read Chance Developments Online
Authors: Alexander McCall Smith
Chance Developments (10 page)
On the last day of July in 1998, the
Kingston Whig-Standard
carried this short obituary:
The death at 98 last Saturday of Edward Beaulieu robs the Canadian circus world of one of its most distinguished sons. Edward Beaulieu was the son of a fur trapper turned tax accountant, Aristide Beaulieu, and his wife, Hope Beaulieu (née Patterson). As a young man he joined the Great All-Canada Circus in BC and soon established a reputation for mounting one of the best sleight of hand acts in North America.
Beaulieu married Miss Gwen Torrent of Saskatoon, a niece of another well-known circus performer, Jack Torrent, known as the human cannonball. It was a long and happy marriage and the couple saw their Golden Anniversary together.
Beaulieu was a generous man, given to telling fortunes. He tried to tailor fortunes to the needs of those who consulted him, and few were sent away disappointed. His life was not without incident, including one occasion when he unwisely attempted to read the lines on the paw of a circus lion named King. The injuries he sustained as a result of this required a three-week enforced recuperation period at Lake Louise, during which Beaulieu began the writing of his one and only book,
The Future Lies in the Past
,
eventually
published in Toronto by Douglas Gibson five years ago.His wife having predeceased him, and there being no children, Beaulieu left his entire estate to the Pelmanism Institute of Southern Ontario.
He was a good man.
On a chilly spring morning in 1913 in the west of Ireland, a young man assisted in the changing of a car's wheel. The car was being driven by Roger Kelly, by night a consummate poacher, by day employed by the father of the young woman in the white double-breasted coat. Her name was Anthea, and she was the daughter of a successful speculative builder, Thomas Farrell, who, having made a fortune in Dublin, had retired to an estate in the country. Thomas was aware that Roger took most of the fish from his trout stream, but turned a blind eye to this, as Roger had proved himself indispensable in so many ways. These included being the only man able to humour their car out of its habit of stalling at awkward moments.
The car was a 1907 Standard Tourer, made in a factory in Coventry, and briefly owned by an exiled Irishman in Manchester who used it for a trip to Galway. Unfortunately, he had died on the journeyâ“expired while travelling,” as his newspaper obituary put it. The car was stolen by the proprietor of the hotel in which its owner had died, and subsequently repainted and sold to Thomas Farrell. He had no idea that he was purchasing a stolen vehicle, and would have been appalled at the thought: he had always prided himself on the honestyâand general integrityâof his business dealings in Dublin. “They may say that I built slums,” he said. “But I built
decent
slums, so I did!”
Thomas was proud of his Standard Tourer. “It's a real beauty of a car,” he said to his daughter. “Look at the seats, darling. Buttoned leather, with velvet trimmings. Just like one of those grand sofas, thoseâ¦those⦔
“Chesterfields.”
“Yes, Chesterfields. Look at them. And you see the high window at the front? See it? That's called the windscreen, and the wood it's made of is ash. The very best ash from some forest over in England. They make fine cars, the Englishâfine cars.”
She had not been particularly interested in these details, but enjoyed riding in the car, perched on the high passenger seat with the hood down and the sun on her face, although more frequently it was rainâthat thin, drifting rain that fell in veils over their slice of Irish countryside.
Thomas Farrell had little use for the car, as he rarely went anywhere. There were occasions, though, when he was invited to other country houses, and since he was trying to establish himself with the gentry of the area, it was important that he should arrive in style. His acceptance in the county, though, would always be half-hearted, as he failed every test that such circles applied, from religion to his table manners. In his undoubted favour, though, was the fact that he owned two thousand acres, and some of those acres were good shooting country, with pheasants and woodcock in abundance.
“A touch of the
gombeen
,” said one neighbour to another. “But such are the times we live in.”
“Not a bad fellow,” replied the other. “Close your eyes and block your ears and he passes with flying colours.”
Thomas was a widower, and Anthea was his only close family, apart from his two brothers in Cork, from whom he was largely estranged. He had waved olive branch after olive branch in their direction, to very little avail. One had borrowed money from him and never paid it back; the other had some vague, ancient complaint against him, dating back even into their childhoodâsomething to do with a bicycleâthe details of which now evaded even the bearer of the grudge.
Anthea had been educated at a small school for girls in Dublin. She had then been sent to England for a year, to a finishing school in Cheltenham, where young women were given instruction in deportment, French, and a few other subjects thought to be helpful in making a good marriage. As if to confirm this, she had received a proposal from the brother of one of her friends at this school, but had been put off him by the friend herself.
“William is quite useless,” the friend had warned. “I should know, as I've known him all my life. He would not make a good husband. In fact, the only place for him is the army.”
“Oh⦔
“Indian Army,” continued the friend. “And here's another thing: my father feels exactly the same way. William is a great disappointment to him.”
It was unambiguous advice, and Anthea followed it.
“You're so kind,” she said to William. “But I must go back to Ireland, as my father needs me there. I'm sure you will find a nice girl soon, and you will be very happy.”
“I would have been very happy with you, you know. More than happy.”
“That's as may be, but I have made up my mind. I'm so sorry.”
He went into the army, as Anthea's friend had predicted, although he did not go to India. In August, 1914, two days after he reached France as a young lieutenant, and within the first hour of his arrival at the front, he was shot dead at the battle of Le Cateau.
The young man helping to change the wheel was called Ronald O'Carroll. He was twenty-five at the time, and he was the teacher in the small National School in the nearby village. This school had only eighteen pupils, and Ronald ran it single-handed, although the Board of Education occasionally gave him a temporary assistant to help with the younger children. He had succeeded his father in the post: George O'Carroll had taught there for thirty years before he and his wife retired to a house left to him by an uncle in Sligo. Ronald, who had just finished at university, stepped right into his father's shoes, not only taking up the job he had vacated, but moving back to the teacher's house in which he had spent his childhood. This house adjoined the school, its vegetable plot being separated from the children's playground by no more than a flimsy fence.
“Some men don't go very far,” said a woman in the village. “Will you look at that Ronald O'Carroll: raised in that school, sent off to Dublin for an education, so he was, and then right back where he started.”
“True,” said her friend. “But then he's a nice young fellowâvery good-looking, he isâand he'll meet somebody soon enough. That'll get him out of that school. I don't think we need to worry too much about Ronald O'Carroll.”
There had been an overlap of two weeks between his return from Dublin and his parents' departure for Sligo. It had been a strange spell for him, as they were living in the same house, with him occupying the same room that he had occupied as a boy, with his mother still cooking his meals exactly as she had done for as long as he could remember, and his father sitting in the same chair, smoking the same pipe that he had always smokedâone bowl a day, after dinner, filling the room with acrid tobacco fumes. It seemed to him that the same things were said tooâthings he had heard ever since he had begun to take notice of such mattersâcomments on the latest instructions from the Board and on the iniquities of the British government. His father made no secret of his sympathies, although as the teacher he was expected to be discreet. “There'll never be peace until we see the back of them,” he said. “Home Rule will just be the start. Then we can show them the door.”
Ronald shrugged. “And Ulster?”
“Hot air,” said his father. “Huffing and puffing. Carson and those fellows need to be taken by the scruff of the neck. If London thinks it's the boss, then bring it home to them. But do they do that? No, because too many of them are in cahoots with them. They put them up to it. They egg them on, you know. They're all over the shop.”
Ronald did not engage. Political discussion did not interest him. He liked poetry.
“This man, Yeats,” George said to Ronald when he returned from Dublin. “Did you ever see him in Dublin?”
“Twice. Once in a hall. He read some of his works and I bought a ticket. Then I saw him in the street near St. Stephen's Green.”
“Well, would you believe that? Walking along like any ordinary fellow?”
“Yes.”
His father stared out of the window. “He has the right idea, so he does. Him and that brother of hisâthe one who paints. They have the right idea.”
It was an expression he used frequentlyâa general term of approbationâapplied to those whose views accorded with his. Such people had the right idea, whereas those with whom he disagreed were “all over the shop.”
Ronald looked at his father. In a few days he would be away to Sligo and Ronald would be here in this house by himself, the teacher, and his life would stretch out before him; a life of educating the children of the people his father had taught, sighing over the same families with whom little progress could be madeâthose Severins, for instance, with their thick necks and their dirty fingernails and their bovine acceptance of their lot. What was the point of teaching them? They went back to their unwashed ways the moment they left the school, never looking at the printed word, never thinking about anything except their fields and their ill-tempered pigs, and the wives they recruited down in West Cork and brought back to perpetuate the dynasty.
He saw that his father was looking at him, and he felt a flush of embarrassment. They had never talked very much about things that matteredâabout what he wanted out of life, and how he felt about that place and the people he lived with, and about roads not taken.
“One of these days,” his father said hesitantly, “you might even get yourself married. I'm not saying tomorrow, of courseâjust one of these days.”
“Oh, Da⦔
“No, don't just say
Oh, Da
, because you'll need to, you know. You can't live here by yourself for ever. Who's going to cook for you? Who's going to launder your shirts?”
“I can cook for myself. I know how to fry an egg. And as for my shirtsâ¦what's wrong with washing your own shirts?”
This brought a shaking of the head. “Mrs. Mason won't like that. You'll be doing her out of a job.”
“I didn't say anything about that. She can stay. I've told her that. I'll pay her exactly what you and Ma paid her.”
“For less work? There'll only be one of you.”
“It doesn't matter.”
His father was thinking. “That girl, the postmaster's daughterâthe one who went to Galway for a few years and then came back. She's a nice girl.”
“I dare say she is.”
“Dark hair and that skinâ¦how would you describe it? Translucent.”
“If it was translucent you'd see her veins. You'd see the blood vessels underneath. It wouldn't be very pleasant. You'd have to say,
What lovely blood vessels you've got
.”
His father smiled, in spite of himself. “You may laugh,” he said. “But I'm telling you, Ronald: I've seen many a man living by himself go mad. It's what happens. Slowly, sure enoughâbut it happens.”
“Name one. Go onâname one.”
His father closed his eyes. “You may think you know better than me. I didn't go to Dublin, but I know a thing or two.”
“Of course you do, Da. I'd never say you didn't.”
“Then listen to me. That's all I ask: listen to my advice.”
He lay awake at night and thought of his life. At university he had mixed with people with a strong sense of where they were going, who were in no doubt about what they wanted to achieve and had already identified the milestones on that journey. He stood in awe of themâof the would-be bankers and lawyers, the aspiring civil servants, the company men who knew that in ten years' time or even earlier they would be earning enough to own their own houses, belong to golf clubs, and support wives and children. By contrast, he would be living in a house that went with the job, not much better off than he was now. He would be able to afford to marry, but there would be precious little money left over once the household bills were paid. That was how his parents had lived, and it seemed that was how he would too.
A couple of days before his parents were due to depart for Sligo, he awoke at three in the morning. He had heard that time of day being called the
hour of the wolf
âa time of utter loneliness when every man is a stranger in the world, unhappy with the present and dreading the future. He lay in the darkness, shifting slightly to find the most comfortable contours in the mattress that had seen him through boyhood; when his parents left, he would move into the bed they had occupied for much of their married livesâthe bed in which he had, in fact, been born. That thought, more than any other, depressed him.
He made his decision, and lit the candle by his bedside because he wanted to see whether the idea would survive light, even the flickering illumination of a single candle. It did. He would tell his parents tomorrow. He would offer to stay, of course, until the Board found a new teacher, so it would not delay his father's retirement, but once that was done he would pack up and return to Dublin. One of the friends he had made at university had said that his father had a business that was expanding and could offer him a job if he ever needed one. He would contact himâeven send him a telegram to tell him that he was coming back.
“I don't want to stand in your way,” said his father. “I've never done that, and I won't do that now.”
“I know that, Da. Thank you.”
His father looked at him, moving his glasses on the bridge of his nose; things were cloudier now than they used to be, and he would have to submit at some point to the operation that he so dreaded. “But I can't understand why you want to give everything up. You'll be all over the shop.”
“It's not giving things up. It's making a change. There are all sorts of opportunities in Dublin.”
It was as if he had not been heard. “Why do you want to go off to London? A fellow can't have much of a life there.”
“I said nothing about London. I said Dublin.”
His father looked away. “The trouble with living in those places is that there are too many people with the same idea. Out here, you have the sky above you, the place to yourself, and a decent meal waiting for you at night.” He paused. “You can put a bit of money aside each month. You can be comfortable enough.”
“I'd like a bit of a challenge. All you say may be true, but I'd still like a bit of a challenge.”
This brought a wounded look. “So you think there's no challenge? You think it isn't a challenge to provide an education for these children? To make something of theseâ¦these little souls? To give them a chanceâthe only chance they're going to get in this life, as likely as not? That's not a challenge?”
He reached out to put a hand on his father's shoulder. “I appreciate what you've done, and I'm sure they do.” He thought of the Severins. One of the boys had been sent off to Letterfrack Industrial School for reasons that had not been made clear; they would sort him out there, his father had said, but he doubted it because he had not seen anybody improved by the cruelty meted out in such places. Shortly he would have three Severins under his care, trying to keep them from falling asleep in the classroom or stealing from the other children. Would anybody appreciate that? Would anybody even know about it?
His father took out his pipe and filled it with a plug of tobacco. “Couldn't you give it a year? Just a year, so that people don't think that I've just walked away from this place?”
Ronald tried to reassure him. “Nobody will think that. How could they?”
“Oh, they will, you know. Father Morrissey for one. The people on the Board. Everybody, really.”
He looked at his father's hands, tanned brown from the work that he did in the garden. He often looked at people's hands and wondered about the work they had done.
“Do you really want me to?”
His father hesitated. “Yes. Just a year. Then you can leave honourably. We will have done our duty by the school.”