The Last Houseparty, page 12
“Mucky little hints. Something about a house in Paris. Children.”
“Oh, that. I wonder whether Dibs has got anything which actually proves Charles … You know about l’affaire Panquelin, Vince?”
“By the sound of it I’d rather not.”
“It affects you, distantly. You remember that rumpus a couple of years back when Uncle Snaily tried to tell Zena he wouldn’t have Charles in the house any more? That was because some busybody in Boodles had explained to Snaily about the affaire …”
“Johnson says everybody believes Zena and Charles are lovers.”
“So I’ve heard. I suppose it’s possible, but I very much doubt it. Zena’s far too much of a narcissist to want to be anyone’s lover, unless it suits her in other ways. I’m not saying she’s frigid. In fact my impression is that she gave Uncle Snaily a very good time for quite a while—a real change from Aunt Clara—but I think Purser’s right and she’s now decided that she’s paid off her debt for having him make her a countess. Have you noticed what a tricky temper he’s in?”
“I was there when he made up his mind to sack McGrigor. D’you think some fellow in Boodles has told him about Charles and Zena?”
“Possibly. Purser says that yesterday morning he came down early to breakfast and tore up all the toast. He swore that if Purser had been his fag he’d have beaten him till he blubbed, making him toast like that. Purser blamed it on Zena for ordering a new kind of bread. You know, I can’t help feeling sorry for Uncle Snaily after all those years with Aunt Clara, but I must say I hope he doesn’t make Joan’s life impossible here.”
“Yesterday afternoon you said …”
“I wasn’t far off, either. I don’t mean he’s come padding along to her room yet, but she tells me there’ve been Snailyish gallantries which hint at that possibility.”
“What’s her reaction?”
“Not very enthusiastic—though one must make allowances for what she would tell another admirer.”
“That’s you, I take it. You certainly seem to have hit it off with her.”
“To put it mildly. That’s why I’m in such a benevolent mood about the sexual affinities of everyone else in the neighbourhood. I positively glowed with pleasure when Zena told me about Dolly F-J making huge blue eyes at your dusky friend all round the croquet lawn.”
“He’s going to ask her to advise him on his collection of British artists he’s decided to start. I said you’d find out what sort of commission he should pay her.”
“Dolly will leave him in no doubt. How is F-J taking this romance?”
“He hasn’t had much time to be aware of it.”
“Dolly will tell him, first thing. And, you know, my guess is he’ll rather relish it. He’s a very curious bird. Will you do something for me, Vince?”
“Depends what.”
“Squire Nan Blaise around a bit this evening. Do you mind?”
“Nancy’s all right. Wouldn’t have thought she’d have much trouble finding partners.”
“No … it’s just a bit awkward, you see. Short of being positively embarrassing, but … well, I asked Zena to have her along.”
“I see.”
“No, it’s not like that. I’ve only met her a couple of times. Zena started it by telling me she wanted a bit of younger talent round the place this week-end, and I put Nan’s name up. Just inquisitive about her, much as anything … but now that my main aim is to spend every minute I can wangle, night and day, with Joan, I don’t want Nan to feel left out.”
“Night and day?”
“It may come to that. My impression is Joan’s fairly easy-going.”
Vincent, who had been sitting on the edge of his bed smoking his cigarette, got up sharply and stubbed it out on the wash-stand.
“I’ll take Nan off your hands,” he said. “She’s all right.”
Harry seemed to pay no attention to his cousin’s mild agitation. In any case he was presumably used to behaving as though it didn’t exist, a phenomenon it was friendlier to ignore, similar to the stammer.
“You know,” he said dreamily, “nothing is ever as straightforward as it seems. It is the superficially complicated desires such as old Dibs’s with his ballet girls, or Charles’s supposed inclinations, which are really easiest to grasp. Whereas meeting a nice girl and wanting to go to bed with her always seems to become an immensely complex experience, almost at once—more complicated if you bring it off than if you don’t. I appear to myself at the moment to be in love with Joan; but what I want from her is honestly much the same old Dibs wants from one of his dancers, without the fancy frills he goes in for. And when old Dibs has got it he probably doesn’t give it another thought, beyond looking back on it with a good deal of relish, I suppose, rather the way you or I might look back on a reasonably cooked meal or a passable night at the theatre. But if Joan and I … it’s possible I’m mistaken, of course, and it will turn out to have been no more than a night at the theatre, and not necessarily a very successful one. The whole notion of being in love may be only a way of appeasing one’s residual conscience, but one can’t say it feels like that. No amount of introspection will analyse the notion of love away, or so it seems to me, and I must have been in and out getting on for a dozen times, with varying degrees of satisfaction …”
“Why do they do it?” said Vincent, angrily.
“Girls go to bed with one? That indeed is an intractable mystery. They’ll tell you so themselves—without being asked.”
“No. People like Dibbin. Or Charles, supposing …”
“Rather a drearier mystery. I believe that according to Freud it’s the inability to cope with one’s mother at the emotional level that sets it off. Not very useful, even if true. In Dibs’s case I’d guess it was just another aspect of his general power mania. He is stimulated by making his fellow human beings do things which would normally repel them. He needs that sort of stimulus to get going with a woman, that’s all. I suppose Charles might be nearer the Freudian pattern—always, as you say, supposing. I’ve never heard anything about his parents, but, well, wouldn’t you say there’s still something of the terribly clever schoolboy about him? And that war hero stuff?”
“It wasn’t stuff, Hal.”
“I wasn’t …”
“He did it. He earned his gongs twice over. He could have got himself invalided out after …”
“You’d have taken the same line, wouldn’t you, Vince?”
“Hope so. You can never be sure till it happens.”
“True, Vince, true. I withdraw the word ‘stuff’ and all imputations implied therein. But doesn’t it strike you as odd that Charles has never held office?”
“Better off out of it. He can say what he likes.”
“I don’t believe it’s been his choice. He would like power. In certain ways he’s not enormously different from Dibs. But he’s never been offered power because everyone recognises he won’t be any use in a team. In political terms, he’s unable to accept the responsibilities of the adult world. The vision of oneself as the solitary hero is something most of us grow out of before we’re twenty, but Charles never has. Remember who Peter Pan loves?”
“That sickening girl. Forgotten her name.”
“Wendy. I do think it’s possible Charles …”
“If it is it’s no excuse. You keep saying people can’t help it because they’re like that. You said it about Zena yesterday. You said it about Dibs. Now you’re saying it about Charles. D’you mean it, Hal? I want to know. Or are you just talking?”
“I mean it, I think. But it doesn’t really make a lot of difference, Vince.”
“It seems to me it makes all the difference in the world.”
“Not really. Let’s suppose, just for the sake of argument, Charles is physically attracted to little girls. Let’s suppose, further, that the reason for this is either (a) that he had a perfectly frightful mother or (b) that instead of getting a packet in his spine in ’eighteen he got a bit of shrapnel through his skull, which affected his personality. Now in case (b) we would feel a good deal of sympathy for him, especially if he managed his problems the way he seems to, with a certain discretion, though ultimately it would depend of course on the effect of his activities on the other partner. Small girls aren’t necessarily innocent little wax dolls—young Sally, for instance, when she clings to one like that, has at least half an idea what she’s up to.”
“Rot.”
“Oh, I don’t know. It isn’t only for the fun of holding the steering wheel that she wants to sit on one’s lap and drive. But to get back to Charles. What I’m trying to say is that I don’t see any moral difference between case (b) and case (a). After all, you’ve got as good an idea as anybody what it’s like to have a tricky relationship with one’s mother. You aren’t going to tell me that’s your fault, Vince …”
“Let’s talk about something else.”
“Right you are. Remember you began it by asking. May I go back to Joan?”
“If you like.”
“Her husband was a soldier too, you know?”
“Was? I’d gathered …”
“Yes. Still with us, unfortunately. Resigned his commission.” “Want me to find out why?”
“Drink, apparently.”
“What’s he up to now?”
“Farming in Kenya.”
“Not much help with the drink problem, I’d have thought.”
“He wants Joan to send Sally out to live with him.”
“Oh. I suppose she …”
“No, she’s rather tempted. She’s not a very dedicated mamma. It must be a bit of a shock, Vince, to have a child, to bear it out of your own body, and then find out you don’t love it, aren’t even specially interested in it. I say, I wonder whether that was what happened to Charles.”
“What happened to Charles was that he enlisted in 1914. He got blown up in 1915. He spent eight months in hospital. He then wangled his way back to France and got blown up again in 1918. He is in pain a lot of the time and discomfort all the time because of that corset contraption he has to wear. His politics are tosh, but he’s a very brave man. You might at least give him the benefit of the doubt.”
“Henceforth. Promise. After all in a year or two we’ll be going through all that ourselves. Looking forward to it, Vince?”
“Not a lot. We’re nothing like ready for it, for a start. And there’s bound to be conscription, which means getting swamped by hordes of civilians. You sound almost keen.”
“Almost is right. In fact there are moments when I find myself thinking Rupert Brooke wasn’t quite as awful as I have to pretend he is. He did actually feel like that, though it didn’t turn out anything like he’d imagined, and it won’t in our case, either. Still, I know in my bones the world is due for a bloody great shake-up, and it’ll be hell while it happens, but interesting all the same to be there—something one shouldn’t miss. A ghastly, harrowing play you’ve still got to see because otherwise you’ll never be in the swim any more. You shake your head?”
“Simply no comprenny.”
“Does it ever strike you, Vince, what different people we are?”
“They’ve never stopped telling me. Aunts and people.”
“Down with aunts.”
“Gott strafe Tanten.”
“Les tantes à la lanterne.”
“Et cetera. You think they’re right this time?”
“Mm … but I sometimes wonder what we’d have been like if we hadn’t had each other to be different from.”
“Much the same, I’d have thought.”
“I can remember at Summerfields, when you made First XI from Middle School, I came to a quite conscious decision in my own mind that I wasn’t going to compete. It seemed easy at the time, but all sorts of other things flowed from it. I suppose we would have been about ten—you don’t think ahead much at that age. For instance, Mummy kept all my school reports. I was looking through them last winter. The first couple of years they were so-so. Then the ushers who actually taught me started getting enthusiastic, but at the same time G. B. began adding little notes saying I was in danger of becoming a bad influence. So I must, even then, have worked out that if I wasn’t going to bother about games I’d better be good at my books—I mean, that would have been reasonably obvious. But as for becoming a professional Bolshie, I don’t believe a ten-year-old would have sorted out that by rejecting part of the mores of his society he would find himself cast in that role. Then at Eton, there I was, still a Bolshie, and a tug to boot, and making another conscious decision that it was necessary to get elected to Pop. Therefore another layer of personality had to be invented—relaxed urbanity, intellectual sparkle and so on—all because when you were still in shorts you could bowl leg breaks and had a natural cover drive.”
“I think you’d have turned out much the same if I’d been a rabbit.”
“I don’t know. There are times when I seem very conscious of my own personality as being largely my invention. I’m not saying I’m unique, mind you. Look at Purser. If he hadn’t decided to be a butler he would have been a very different kettle of fish, don’t you think?”
“Same goes for all of us, only we don’t spend our time brooding on it. If you don’t start dressing you’ll be late for the gong.”
Harry didn’t stir.
“By and large I agree with you,” he said. “Personalities are our own invention, but with a lot of people the process is unconscious. Even Uncle Snaily has decided somehow or other that he is going to be what he is. In a sense he is not responsible, because he hasn’t been aware of deciding, let alone of the consequences. But in another sense they are his decisions, and the moral responsibility is his.”
“He’s changed.”
“You think so? I’ve seen him more recently than you, so I suppose I don’t find the difference so marked. If you’re right, it might mean something new has happened, such as Zena booting him out of her bed. You know, by most people’s standards he’s led a peculiarly sheltered life. You’d think he could have grown to almost any shape he wanted, and yet he chose to finish up like this. The only things that have happened to him are Aunt Clara, and then Zena, coming and going so to speak. All three events could be considered trauma inducers in their very different ways. Of course that’s the really interesting thing about anybody, how they adapt their personalities to events beyond their control. Do you remember the caddis flies in the tank in the nursery—dropping chips of broken bottle into the water and seeing how the little wrigglers built them into their tunnels, and if you gave them a wrong-sized chip they’d produce a bent tunnel? Especially at the start. Suppose God goes and drops a wrong-sized chip on you. You’d have to build it in somehow.”
Vincent was adjusting his braces so that the trousers of his mess uniform hung as he wanted them, pulled tight by the elastic tapes beneath the heels. The process was carried out without apparent thought, a merely physical concentration in the movement of the fingers.
“Three minutes to the gong,” he said.
“You could say God dropped awkward chips on both Charles and Dibs,” said Harry. “Dibs has produced a horrible twisted tunnel out of his, but Charles hasn’t done too badly.”
“Two and a half minutes.”
“I am utterly content in my present posture. The world is the exact shape I would wish it. No mere moving of a clock face can force me to change it. You can be on time for both of us, Vince. Tell Zena McGrigor has taken my sock suspenders to balance the ball-cock in Uncle Snaily’s bog.”
“McGrigor’s been sacked,” said Vincent, slipping easily into his scarlet jacket, which until he put it on had looked strangely too small for him.
“So he has. How peculiar. A great event, almost unnoticed.”
“How long will you be?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea. I am lying in a great daze of love like a perfect hot bath. I shall get out when it becomes too cold to be fun. Till then time has no meaning for me. The metronome has swung too far over, and stuck. McGrigor’s been sacked. There’s no one to wind the clock.”
“Mrs Dubigny won’t be happy about that.”
“Perfectly right,” said Harry, swivelling himself round to sit on the edge of the bed and stretch, dark against gold sunlight. “The figures must continue to dance, for Joan’s sake. I shall dance among them, and so will you. I’ll be down by the second gong. Don’t worry.”
VII
At the workbench in the Coach House Mr Mason was cutting a wheel. His shape was a hunched darkness against the yellow cone from his lamp. The electric motor sang, its note dropping as it took the load, descanted by the whine of the cutting-wheel. A few sparks, invisible in the lamplight, shot slantwise into being across the shadow cast by the bench. Mr Mason’s attitude implied total concentration, without any tension. When he had cut a notch he did not rest, but undid the clamps, raised the marker, turned the wheel to the next point, fixed marker and clamps, checked briefly and then moved the cutter firmly against the metal to begin the next notch.
Miss Quintain, approaching him from behind the Rover, waited during this process, perhaps assuming that he would reach a point when it was natural to interrupt him. She continued to wait during the five minutes it took him to complete the next notch, and then as he withdrew the cutter stepped forward and touched him on the elbow.
He stayed quite still for several seconds. It was as though she had offered a stimulus to a creature of such slow reactions that it took that time for the nerve impulses to reach the brain. And when he moved to switch the motor off it was still with an almost dreamy stolidity.
