Bland Beginning (2 page)

When Anthony Shelton proposed to Victoria Rawlings, and was accepted, both his friends and hers were surprised; and although they differed in much else they were agreed that the marriage was in all respects unsuitable. It was not merely, Anthony’s friends observed, that Victoria was the daughter of a fairly unsuccessful general practitioner (whose unsuccess had been sealed, a couple of years before the engagement, by his death from a lingering liver complaint) in the suburb of Barnsfield, while Anthony’s father was known to be something, and something important – though nobody quite knew what – in the City. That might, in these regrettably democratic post-war days, be ignored. Nor was it simply, as Victoria’s friends remarked, that Victoria was really awfully interested in books and writers and art and artists and all that sort of thing, whereas Anthony’s capacity for intellectual conversation was known to be strictly limited. No; the serious difference between them – the yawning gap which made their suggested marriage certain, in a mixture of metaphor, to land on the rocks – touched the question of sport in general, and in particular cricket. Victoria, her friends explained, was opposed on principle (although they might have been hard put to it to say what principle) to all games, and particularly to those played with bat and ball; and if there was one game that she regarded with more distaste than another, it was cricket. Cricket, on the other hand, had always appeared to Tony Shelton, although he was not of a religious disposition, as the prime reason for the creation of man. The thing that he remembered most clearly about his years at one of England’s most famous public schools was his bowling analysis: and although he spent three years at Oxford, at the end of which the University conferred no distinction upon him, he felt rather strongly that he had conferred a distinction on the University by taking nine wickets against Cambridge in his last year. He had come down prepared to settle to the serious business of life by playing regularly for Southshire. It was, Victoria’s and Tony’s friends agreed, obviously not a suitable marriage: and it was a mystery, besides, what Tony could possibly see in Victoria, or Victoria in Tony.

This mystery may be solved at once. What Victoria saw in Tony was abundant curling fair hair, set above a pair of disarmingly innocent china-blue eyes, remarkably wide shoulders tapering down to a slim waist and long, narrow legs. Victoria had for years proclaimed her devotion to an ideal of physical male beauty which she believed, a little vaguely, to be Grecian. This physical ideal seemed to be fulfilled by Tony’s appearance; and in intellectual matters she regarded him as clay to be shaped by the potter’s hand. It was not, of course, disagreeable to her that Tony’s father was something in the City and it is probable that she experienced a small satisfaction from the sight of Tony’s yellow Bentley drawn up outside the door of the modest home in which she lived with her mother and her brother Edward, who had assumed her father’s mantle of medical failure: but still, these were not the prime factors in her acceptance of his proposal. In the diary which she kept faithfully in violet ink and a sprawling hand, she put down a vision of herself as queen of an artistic salon, always witty and charming, always making the right remark, smoothing the rough moment with a smile or wave of the hand; and Tony Shelton was an essential element in this vision. Her
mots,
in this salon, were famous, and rumour whispered that many great men were madly in love with her: yet none was known to be her lover. She was faithful always to her husband, not because of his genius (not even in her diary could she transform Tony into a genius), but because of his wonderful Grecian beauty. Could it be, she wondered sometimes, that she loved Tony because he was so gratifyingly impressed by
her
intellect? But she put this thought firmly away from her, and decided that it was her fatal susceptibility to a beauty that was sufficiently near to that of a Grecian statue for all reasonable requirements that had joined their fates.

Anthony’s reasons for admiring Victoria were not to be found altogether in her rather unfashionably long face, her dark hair and eyebrows, her full and often-parted lips and her slightly vacant expression. Anthony
did,
in fact, admire Victoria’s intellect. This admiration may seem strange in one who was viewed by his friends as essentially a cricketer, and by his enemies as essentially a moron: but behind the young man’s fair, uncorrugated brow there lay, unanalysed and undetermined but still exceedingly potent, that deep sense of guilt with which many modern films, novels and treatises have familiarised us. Anthony was a victim of what, in fashionable terms, is known as a father-fixation. His mother had died at Anthony’s birth, and his first memories were of the small man with nut-brown face who was his father: who talked to him so incomprehensibly and gave him elaborate presents of fishing rods and bicycles and unreadable books; who reproved boyish tricks and jokes with a calm kindness more terrifying than any anger could have been. In the brief intervals from sporting triumphs which Anthony spent at home he came slowly to the realisation that his father adhered to a scale of values in which an ability to turn the new ball both ways or to sell the dummy played an inconsiderable part. Not by any word or gesture did Mr Shelton show a lack of interest in his son’s sporting achievements; yet Anthony was painfully conscious that he must be a disappointment to the old man who added to his immense knowledge of the world, and his ability to conduct business deals with the hard-faced men who sometimes came to their home, intellectual interests which were expressed for his son in the frequent study of booksellers’ lists and his excitement over the purchases which he sometimes made from them. When he came down from Oxford Anthony was subject to a severe emotional stress in feeling that he was not worthy of his father, and to a schizophrenic desire and distaste for his projected career as a cricketer.

Then he met Victoria – and met her, as it happened, through his father, when Mr Shelton, who was known in the district to possess a considerable library, was asked to address the Barnsfield Literary Society on “How to Collect Books”. Anthony conscientiously attended this lecture, and his attention wavered sometimes from his father’s humorous description of the circumstances which induced him to break a youthful vow that he would never buy a book which cost more than half a crown. It wavered because of the uncomfortable knowledge that a young woman at the other side of the room was gazing at him with peculiar fixity. The young woman (whose gaze had been fixed by his Greek beauty) was Victoria Rawlings; and when she talked to him over the cups of weak tea and date sandwiches, which accompanied the lecture, he was delighted to discover that she was a really well-read girl. She had written a novel – or part of a novel; she painted – or attended a School of Art; and she mentioned airily names, which impressed him, even though he heard them for the first time. He was still more impressed, and even alarmed, when she said that art was in her blood, and that her grandfather was Martin Rawlings (a name which, like the other names she mentioned, was strange to him). The effect of her conversation was enhanced by the thick dark hair which she wore cut square in a fringe, by her rich, yearning eyes and slightly-parted lips; and his enchantment was complete when Victoria expressed emphatically her disinterest in all sporting activities – a full life, she said, could be lived only in the mind.

She invited him to tea, and he met her brother Edward, who seemed rather disagreeable, and her mother, Muriel, who was certainly scatterbrained. Neither her mother nor brother seemed to Anthony to value Victoria at her true intellectual worth, and he said as much to her. She murmured the word “Philistines”, and in a heaven of self-abasement Anthony said: “But I’m a Philistine too – I’m an awful fool, you know.” Beneath the fringe, Victoria’s long face looked pensive as he gasped suddenly: “Will you marry me?” Slowly and solemnly she nodded, and then said: “Not if you continue to play cricket.” Gleefully, without the semblance of a sigh, Anthony made the sacrifice; and as he kissed her, he thought with pleasure of his father’s delight.

When he announced the engagement, however, with the nervousness that always oppressed him in dealing with his father, Mr Shelton showed no particular pleasure. He looked at his son for a moment or two without speaking, and then said: “You are very young.”

“I’m twenty-two.”

“Precisely.” Mr Shelton brought the tips of his slender fingers together. “And Miss Rawlings is a little older, I believe.”

“She’s twenty-four. But what does that matter?” Then, as his father was silent again, Anthony said, “You like her, sir, don’t you?”

“I have always found her a pleasant girl. She is perhaps a little feather-witted, but I do not regard that as a serious fault in a woman.”

“Really, sir, I don’t think you quite understand her.” Anthony was always uncomfortable when he contradicted his father. “She’s really awfully clever.”

“I have seen some of the paintings which she hangs around the house. They are execrable. I can understand the production of such work – there is an inferior artist in the humblest heart – but it shows a grave failure of taste to display it with apparent pride. That is a mark against her. Another mark, I should have thought, from your point of view, is her lack of interest in games. I doubt if she will enjoy watching you play for Southshire every summer.”

“She won’t have to,” Anthony said. “I’m giving up cricket.”

“My dear boy, you can’t be serious.” Mr Shelton looked at his son with more sign of emotion upon his nut-brown face than he had yet shown.

“I am.” Anthony shuffled his feet with shy determination. “Vicky’s shown me that it’s all a lot of rot. All those grown men hitting a ball about – why, it’s ridiculous.” He laughed unconvincingly. “Poetry and painting and music and all that – they’re the important things. And whatever you say about her paintings, I think Vicky’s an artist. It’s – it’s in the blood. Her grandfather was a poet.”

“I know. Old Martin Rawlings.” Mr Shelton said unexpectedly:

“I dreamed a gull whose lucent lovely wing

Knew not the savage colours of desire,

But waking found your body like a fire

And never knew nor recked a reckoning.”

“What’s that?”

Mr Shelton shook his head with a half-humorous pity.
“
You should know the works of old Martin if you want to find the way to his granddaughter’s heart. Or perhaps you shouldn’t – you seem to have done very well without the knowledge. Perhaps she favours these moderns who cut up their lines into all sorts of odd lengths. What do you know about them?”

“Nothing, sir.”

“You are fortunate.”

“But I can learn,” Anthony said eagerly.

“I’m sure you can.” Twice, like a neat cat, Mr Shelton walked up and down the library in which they were talking. Then he slapped his son on the back. “Very well, my boy. There is one thing I want to ask you, while I say good luck and God bless you.” An immense, beaming smile moved over Anthony’s handsome face, a smile that vanished with his father’s next words. “I want you to promise not to get married for a year. I know you won’t like that, but I think you owe it to me.” He spoke rather rapidly, as he saw that his son was about to interrupt. “Since your mother died, a deep responsibility has been placed upon me. I say nothing against this marriage, except that it is not the kind of alliance that I had expected or hoped for you. I am saying nothing against Miss Rawlings –”

“Vicky.”

“Vicky,” said Mr Shelton with obvious effort. “I am saying nothing against Vicky. I only ask you to wait for a year so that you are both sure of your own minds.”

Anthony’s handsome face reddened, and his fair curls shook with his effort to concentrate. “But it’s – it’s –” He drew on a not very extensive vocabulary. “It’s Victorian.”

His father stood smiling at him, a small brown man with a thin brown face creased in a smile. “What can you expect of a Victorian figure like me – almost an antique? After all, it’s
not
what I wanted. I don’t think I’m being unreasonable. Is it a deal?”

His son smiled sheepishly. “If Vicky says so.”

“And you’re really going to give up cricket?”

“Oh yes. Poetry and painting – they’re the really important things.”

“Yes, indeed,” said Mr Shelton enthusiastically, and the interview was over.

Vicky thought the old man very ridiculous, but rather sweet. “As though things could ever change for us, darling, when we’re both interested in the same things.” She looked thoughtful. “I’d quite like to get married this week.”

Anthony’s gasp was a mixture of admiration and horror. “But what about father?”

“What about him? We don’t want to be tied to anybody’s purse strings, do we?”

“Of course not,” he said uncertainly. “But – if he cut off my allowance – I don’t know what we should do. I suppose I could get a job,” he said despairingly.

“We’d manage,” said Vicky, and then: “But of course we don’t want to hurt his feelings.”

Anthony’s face brightened. “No; I shouldn’t like to hurt his feelings.”

So the two young people were engaged, although Vicky showed her emancipation from convention by saying that she did not want Anthony to buy her a ring. An intellectual gift, Anthony understood, would be acceptable – or no gift at all, for such things were irrelevant to the marriage of true minds. He visited museums and art galleries, and expressed his appreciation of what he saw there; and if he did not familiarise himself with modern poetry, he took his father’s advice as far as reading the article about Martin Rawlings in the
Biographical Dictionary.
Opinion was divided about this move of old Mr Shelton’s. Some people said that the best way of killing a cat was by choking it with cream, and that the old man was a very deep one, while others saw in it a reluctant acceptance of the changes that had come over the world in this post-war February of 1924, when the Prince of Wales was signalising his recognition of the existence of a Labour Government by giving its Prime Minister lunch; and Mr Howard Carter was distressing the Egyptian authorities by opening the sarcophagus in the innermost shrine of Tutankhamen’s tomb; and a Hammersmith woman and her two young children were killed by falling from the campanile of Westminster Cathedral; and the Oxford Union, at its centenary, was debating “That Civilisation has advanced since the Society first met”.