Guy Renton (6 page)

The following spring he let his house. An industrialist who had made a fortune during the war wanted a country house where he could entertain his friends over the week-end. He did not mind its running at a loss. He could charge his entertainment against sur-tax. Rex rented a bungalow on the Wentworth Estate and took up golf seriously. “There's nothing else that people like myself can be serious about,” he said. “That's what's wrong with the country. It doesn't find proper employment for those who have, or should have—shall we say—a real stake in its prosperity.”

The effect of all this on Lucy was depressing. She had been lively company in her teens, slim and pretty and vivacious; but she had lost and never recovered her figure after the birth of her first child. Her face wore a perpetual worried frown. One did not think of her as being under thirty. One associated her with cooks and cushions, nursery complaints and a husband's rheumatism.

Rex discussed politics through dinner. It was not a cosy meal and there was an uncomfortable pause when the table had been cleared, the port and dessert set upon the table and the parlourmaid left them to their privacy. It was now up to himself, Guy felt, to put up a defence for Franklin; the best defence surely was a practical discussion of the immediate future.

“The only problem for us, so it seems to me, is to decide what's to happen to him during the next year or so. He's only seventeen and a half. Isn't that young to go up to Oxford?”

He had his solution ready, but Rex interrupted.

“I know what my father'd have done in a case like this. Given me fifty pounds and packed me off to the Colonies. That's what I'd do with Franklin. Do him all the good in the world. Live in a hard school. Discipline. That's what these youngsters need. Conscription. Salvation of the country. What I always say

Before Rex could pursue his argument along the course that was obviously set out, an interruption came. A telephone call, for Mr. Guy.

It was from Jimmy Grant. He wanted to make sure that
Guy was back. He'd got a reserve waiting in case of a delay. He was also in a mood to gossip. “Any adventures?”

“Not what you'd call adventures.”

“Oh, come now, surely.”

“No, honestly.”

“Not one little Belgian Countess?”

“Not one very little one.”

“Old boy, I'm ashamed of you.”

“You know what I am.”

“I'm afraid I do. Now I, on the other hand . . .” It was a long and scabrous anecdote. As he listened Guy remembered how at the end of that first evening he had self-gloriously dramatized this very conversation. Only four days ago. Ninety-six hours. How much had happened in it. He had not dared to dream that so much could happen. Yet now that it had happened, nothing could be more impossible than the recital of it to Jimmy Grant. When he had pictured such an experience in his imagination, he had seen it in terms of a general heightening of a Rugger night at Brett's. It hadn't been like that at all: an altogether different level of experience. It was something you couldn't talk about to Jimmy Grant.

The conversation lasted for some while. As he hung the receiver back a light under the drawing-room door told him that Rex and his father had been left over their port. He could hear Rex's voice booming in steady, uninterrupted expostulation. He turned towards the drawing-room. Silence; that meant the wireless; Lucy and Margery with earphones clamped over their heads, his mother with her knitting. He was tired, physically and mentally. Better the drawing-room. He did not feel up to Rex. He took up a footstool, set it at his mother's feet and took her hand.

“Darling, you've scarcely said a word about it all.”

“Rex had so much to say.”

“That's a kind way of putting it.”

“Is it? I don't think it is. He means so well, he had such a fine war record, he makes Lucy happy. I'm sure he'll be a good father to his two sons; provided of course they grow up the way he wants, but I'm afraid he doesn't understand a boy like Franklin.”

“Why did you bring him into it?”

“Well, darling, he'd been a colonel: he was used to dealing with young officers; but no, it wasn't a good idea, I see that now.”

“How do you feel yourself?”

“I'm worrying about how Franklin's feeling.”

“How do you think he is?”

“It's hard to tell. He's always so cheerful about everything. But I think he's felt himself neglected. The life here so centred around you; his father never took the same interest in him. There was so much talk about you; first during the war, and then your football; he wasn't jealous, don't think that: you were quite a hero to him. But he must have wondered where he came in. Then there was Rex, that regular-soldier point-of-view. I'm afraid after this trouble, you know what these psychoanalysts are saying, he might develop a feeling of inferiority.”

Guy nodded. He could see her point.

“It might be a good idea if I went down and saw him?”

“Oh darling, if you only could.” Her eyes lit at the suggestion. “He could talk so much more openly to you than to his father. He's thought of you as an uncle rather than a brother, your being so much older, and then the war, and your being an international.”

From the passage outside came the sound of voices, or rather of Rex's voice. “I should be firm, very firm. If he thinks he can get away with this, there's no knowing what he may do next time.”

It was high time, Guy decided, to change the subject.

“I thought, Father, if you've no objection that I'd run down to Fernhurst one day in the middle of next week, and have a chat with Franklin. Till we know how he feels himself we're in the dark. And now I insist on telling you about myself at Mürren.”

The talk broke up into a series of isolated duologues that soon began to lose their animation; perhaps because of the argument that had preceded them. Soon after ten Lucy began to talk of what a long way back it was to Wentworth and to remind Rex that Guy had to play football the next day.

It was a cold night, and the self-starter would not work. From the warmth of the drawing-room, the others listened in silence to the rattle of the cranking handle, and Rex's voice raised in audible
expostulation, probably about the inefficiency of the British workman. At last the engine began to purr. His father sighed. “My mother used to say that a woman's better off unhappily married than not married at all. I wonder if that's true to-day.” He rose. “I'm tired. I must go to bed. No, don't get up.” As he walked to the door, he paused beside Guy's chair and laid a hand upon his shoulder. “You're a great, great comfort to me, my boy. He's going to be a lucky young man who has you for a father. Good night, Margery.”

By half-past ten Margery and Guy were left alone. For the last quarter of an hour he had been conscious of her eyeing him inquisitively.

“You're looking different. Something's happened to you,” she said. “It has now, hasn't it?”

He hesitated. He had not been able to talk about Renée to Jimmy Grant with whom for the last five years he had shared such confidences, yet he felt he could talk to this kid-sister of his with whom until only recently he had never done anything but joke.

“Come on, tell me all about her, please! How old is she?”

Margery was insistent and he yielded.

“In the early twenties.”

“What's she like? Is she pretty? But of course you'd think she was. Is she tall, is she blonde?” Eagerly the questions followed, one upon the next. “How does she feel? In the same way you do?”

“I think she does, I hope she does.”

“Oh, darling, but how lovely for you. Have you proposed?”

“No.”

“Why not? Don't tell me that she's somebody—well, not ‘convenable'.”

He smiled at her use of the French word.

“You needn't worry about that. She's what even our mother would call a ‘lady'.”

“Then why didn't you clinch matters before you left? Wouldn't it have been wiser?”

“She's already married.”

“Oh!”

“Don't say you're shocked.”

“Of course not. It's just that. . . Oh, I don't know. But one hopes for the people that one loves that when they fall in love it'll be with somebody that's free to marry. Is she English?”

“American married to an Englishman.”

“What do you plan to do?”

“I haven't begun to think about that yet.”

“Oh, but you must. If you let yourself drift, you may drift anywhere. You must plan things now.” It was said sharply; as though she were speaking out of her own experience.

He looked at her, thoughtfully. One imagined that nothing ever happened to one's own sister. One forgot in the case of one's own sister that this was 1925, the heyday of the Bright Young People. Margery was on the brink of twenty, dark eyed, dark haired, of medium height, with a neat trim figure: a girl whom men found attractive. Two or three nights a week she was dining out. She went away quite often for week-ends. He knew the houses that she was visiting, but not the other guests. He could no longer think of her as his kid sister. More and more during this last year had he become conscious of her as an equal, as an ally. To-night he felt closer to her than he had ever done. Yet oddly enough he did not feel that she had grown up to him, but that he had grown up to her, that it was through what had happened to him during this last week that he was meeting her on equal terms.

“Life's a mess,” she said reflectively, as though again she were reflecting on her experience rather than on his. “You heard what Father said just now about his mother having said that it was better for a woman to be unhappily married than not married at all, but that he wasn't sure if that was true to-day. He realizes that things are different. People say things are easier. I don't think they are. It's always easier to play a game when the rules are strict, when you know what you may do and what you mayn't. Our mothers, or anyhow our grandmothers did. We don't. In our grandmother's day, if you weren't married you couldn't fall in love with anyone who was. It would be social suicide. To-day it isn't. There's the loophole of divorce. There aren't the same consequences. There are those little books. You remind yourself of all the people who've got away with it. You think of the second marriages that seem to be working out all
right with no one thinking the worse of anyone. You hesitate, and drift and then ...” She paused: then laughed. “Oh, well, it doesn't do to get dramatic. Life may be a mess, but it's a lot of fun. Darling, I do wish you all the luck that's going.” To his surprise, with a sudden impulsive gesture, she threw her arms around his neck.

Her kiss upon his cheek was warm and very fond. He felt that it was a wishing of good luck to herself as much as him.

Next day the Harlequins beat the Park by their usual cricket score, thirty-five to three. After the game Guy went back to Jimmy's flat. It was the first time that he had been there. Ordinarily after a game, the team stayed together, but Jimmy was leaving on the Monday, “On one of my business trips, old boy.” He wanted to have a quiet talk with Guy about the various committee decisions that had been taken in his absence.

It was a minute two-room service flat on the third floor of a house in Buckingham Street, Adelphi. It was agreeably furnished, with a comfortable Chesterfield and a deep armchair and an elegant cocktail cabinet with glass doors. But Guy could not help being surprised to find it quite so small. He had always pictured Jimmy as being a rather affluent young man. Jimmy, guessing what he was thinking, chuckled.

“I know what you're thinking. You're wondering why I don't go out to Kensington or St. John's Wood where for the same rent I could have got a flat with big rooms and a view. I'll tell you. There's only one thing that's important about a flat to my kind of person; it must be accessible. You're lunching a girl at the Savoy. There's something in her eye that tells you you're not wasting time. ‘Look here,' you say, ‘the coffee's not too good. Why don't we go back to my place and have it there? I've got a bottle of real Chartreuse.' As likely as not she'll come. If she does, well then it's up to you. Or else you're dining in Soho. It's ten o'clock and you're feeling good. ‘They'll be wanting to close down soon,' you say. ‘But it's too early for a night club yet, why don't we go back to my flat for an hour or so. It's just round the corner, and we could play the gramophone.' As likely as not you'll never make that night club.

“The great thing,” he insisted, “is to give a girl a reasonable
excuse for going back to your flat with you. You've got to be able to say to her afterwards, ‘Well, I never expected that to happen when we came up these stairs.' That saves her self-respect. It's got to seem unpremeditated. If you start trying to take a girl out to Kensington or St. John's Wood, she's bound to shy. You could only have one possible reason for trying that one on.”

Guy listened with a smile. To Jimmy gallantry was a game, visualised in terms of'scalps'; the chase was everything: it bore no relation to this new-born thing between himself and Renée. At the same time there was one point which he could learn from his friend's lecture on technique: a very essential point that he had overlooked. If he was going to conduct a private relationship in London, it was essential that he should have a flat.

A flat must be accessible. Since his office was in Soho Square and Renée lived in Albion Street, Chelsea was out of range.

On Monday morning he visited an estate agent's. He wanted a small bachelor flat, he told them: a service flat, quiet, unfurnished, in a residential district: not further north than Baker Street, nor further south or west than Knightsbridge. He left their office laden with ‘orders to view'. One was a little further than he had wanted: in Rutland Street, within two minutes' walk of the Brompton Road Tube Station, but it was strongly recommended. Four houses were being put under a single management with the housekeeper living in the basement. It would have the efficiency of a new régime.