Poor Caroline (6 page)

Weekly
on which she had been testing her tongs, scattering
brown flakes of charred paper like faded rose petals on to the bedroom carpet. 'This paper's called the
Churchman's Weekly,
and it's got the largest circulation among the real uplift
Press - or so it claims. Now it's been running a series of
articles by bishops and schoolmasters and M.P.'s and all that sort of thing on ''Our Scandalous Cinema" -all about
the harm done by immoral pictures to the young, and call
ing up the churches to make a great effort, before the talkies
come right in, to get 'em pure.'

'I believe you.'

'Well. This week there's a woman called Caroline Den
ton-Smyth writing a letter to the editor saying that some
months ago she had an idea of a Christian Cinema Company
which should combine profit with pioneering and produce
only absolutely one hundred per cent, guaranteed pure films
- talkies and all - made in Britain. You know. The sort the
curate could take his mother to.'

'Loathsome idea. Well?'

'Well?'

'Well? What has this to do with me, my dear?'

'Rector's son. Second cousin of Lord Herringdale, a great
Evangelical peer - or his father was, anyway. Eton. Ox
ford. Ex-service.
Noblesse oblige.
Secretary or - no - chair
man of the Christian Cinema Company - modern but
moral. Happily married. Artistic. Wants to help the
youngsters. Make a happy England, and beat the Yanks at their own game.
Can't
you see it?'

Basil lay speechless. Gloria gathered a tumbled but
vivid silk kimono about her and proceeded to sketch her
scheme.

'Enormous appeal to fathers of families, Conservatives, patriots, Nonconformists, chapels, school teachers, town
councillors - can't you see it? Get the Press to take it up.
"See British films. The Christian Cinema Company earns dividends (at least, it may one day) while doing its duty."
This Caroline Denton-Smyth. There must be thousands
like her. Spinsters and widows in stuffy boarding-houses in
Bayswater and Bournemouth. Longing to do good to some
body before they die. Aching for a little flutter with their

money. I bet you Caroline's got thousands and thousands
put away in Brazilian railway stock or something, and keeps
a depressing companion, and quarrels with the Rector about
candles on the altar. But she's hit on a great idea. There's
nothing on earth people like better than to feel that they're
doing good and making money. What's more, when it's a question of charity and causes and all that, they never ask
for the same security as in a purely commercial speculation. I remember all those collections for clubs and missions and
all that at Peterborough. Dad had shares in some sort of a
holiday home. Never paid a
sou
in dividends, but he always
hoped it would, and he felt that he was doing good. We
don't want to offer a steady three-and-a-half per cent. We want to offer a chance of twenty per cent, and a sure sense
of virtue."

'We?'

'We - the Christian Cinema Company Limited. Properly registered and all that. Semi-charity. You know old Guerdon, that Quaker stick we met at Aix-les-Bains. He knows
all about Company law and so on. We'll have him on the
Board as a director. Nothing like the Quakers, my dad
always used to say, for money and
uplift. Righteous Recrea
tion for the People - issue £
1
shares - up to £500,000 say —
to produce
wholesome
British entertainment. We'll get them
on the "British" - catch all this and-American feeling that's
floating round. Even if it never comes to anything much
there should be directors' fees and a few commissions, and
so on. There's that fellow Johnson - the Canadian who
knows all about films and runs that correspondence school
business."

She was absurd, of course. But so was life absurd. Basil
lit a cigarette and lay blowing exquisite smoke-rings toward the ceiling, and listened. The sight of Gloria in her crepe-
de-Chine chemise and scarlet kimono, so engagingly incon
gruous to her subject, tickled his sense of humour. He en
joyed the thought of Caroline Denton-Smyth and all her
type of moralizing churchwomen finding a protagonist in his wife. He appreciated the comedy of vengeance which
he could exact upon all the hours of boredom spent during
his boyhood while sitting in the Rectory drawing-room,

hearing his mother's conversation with the ladies of the
Mothers' Union. He sat up and laughed at Gloria.
'Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian.' 'And then, just think how excited poor old Caroline what's-her-name would be to see an idea of hers come true.
I don't suppose she's ever had many of her ideas catch on,
do you? Oh, Basil, we must do it. Think of her, fluttering
about her Bayswater Boarding House, collecting subscribers,
or shareholders or whatever we decide to call them. The
more we can make it sound commercial, the more of a novelty it'll be to them. Oh, we'll give her a run for her
money before we've done with her, poor Caroline!"

Chapter 2 :
Joseph Isenbaum

§1

number
987 Sackville Street, London, W.1, though regis
tered in the Street Directory as the Gentleman's Tailoring
Establishment of one Augustus Mitchell, was less of a shop
than a club, and less of a club than a sartorial chapel. Mr.
Augustus Mitchell's clients did not enter his heavy swing-doors idly, carelessly or wantonly. They came reverently,
soberly and discreetly to consult the High Priest of their temple upon matters of religious solemnity, the cut of a
trouser, the width of a stripe, or a change in the shape of
a collar so subtle that it would have been invisible to the
untutored eye. None knew better than Mr. Mitchell the
profound and mystic significance of that distance between
two buttons on a waistcoat which makes all the differ
ence between the well-groomed gentleman and the out
sider.

Mr. Joseph Isenbaum was aware of that significance, and
he respected Mr. Mitchell's mastery of it. There were several
things about Mr. Mitchell which he did not respect, but this
knowledge of detail was impressive. Mr. Isenbaum was a
ritualist by racial tradition. He knew what it meant to tithe
anise and cummin, and to broaden or narrow the phylac
teries. A Jew by birth, name and temperament, an exporter
of agricultural implements by profession, a free-thinker by
religion, a family man by accident, and a connoisseur by inclination, he regarded his visits to Mr. Mitchell's shop as
unpleasant but sacred obligations.

For Mr. Isenbaum cherished a wistful and often misplaced
devotion to the Best. He maintained that a man's posses
sions should be Few but Good, that his habits should be
Restrained but Splendid, and that his associations should be
Eclectic but Intimate. Unhappily his worship was ham
pered by his limitations of taste and judgment. In pursuit
of the Rare and Beautiful, he had filled his house at Rich
mond with a catholic collection of monstrosities, picked up
at auction sales all over London and the Home Counties. Though he went to Mitchell's for his clothes, the eccen
tricity of his figure prevented even that master from fulfilling
his highest possibilities. Though he belonged to two tolerable clubs, the dissonance of his name, and a certain hesita
tion and obsequiousness of manner, prevented him from
forming those few but choice friendships which he desired.
His desire for a son involved him in a disastrous sequence of five daughters, at the end of which had come at long last his
beloved, his Benjamin.

Benjamin Isenbaum. Benjamin Isenbaum. As Mr. Isen
baum sat on one September afternoon in Augustus Mitchell's
shop, he repeated the name over and over to himself as though it were a painful yet exciting charm. Whenever
Joseph had nothing else of special moment to think about,
his thoughts turned to his son. Yet always the contempla
tion hurt as well as comforted. For Joseph had inflicted
upon this splendid son, this lamb without spot or blemish,
this glorious boy, an intolerable burden. Benjamin Isen
baum. Benjamin Isenbaum. What could a man do in the
world with a name like that?

Joseph had originally intended, if ever he had a son, to change his own name to Bauminster and to call the boy William or Richard. He had discussed the matter with his
wife, who was content to acquiesce in all his decisions. As a
free-thinker and modernist, he was bound by no tie of piety
or interest to Judaism.

But when it came to the point of taking out letters patent, the delicacy of spirit which was with him a motive stronger
even than his paternal love, frustrated him. Three weeks
before the birth of the boy, he heard an ex-Jew, Ferguson, whose father had been called Abrams, talking to a group of
men about his recently acquired membership of a coveted club. 'Thank God,' cried Abrams-Ferguson. 'You can eat
without meeting any Jews there!'

Joseph saw the polite acquiescence of the Gentile listeners.
His pride and his hunger for perfection
combined in revolt
against both the meanness which inspired Ferguson and the
scorn which greeted him. He made a vow to the God in
whom he professed enlightened disbelief that if he had a son
he would call him Benjamin, and that he would remain an
Isenbaum till death.

The decision was made. The son was born. The name
was given. But Joseph lived to repent daily and hourly his
magnanimous gesture. The boy was everything that a boy
could be. Nothing could be too good for him. Eton or Harrow, Oxford or Cambridge, the best clubs, the best companionship, the best profession. The Bar and then Parlia
ment? Harley Street? A Professorial Chair? The presidency of the Royal Academy? All these pinnacles of achievement appeared accessible to Dicky Bauminster. But to Ben Isenbaum?

Torn between obstinacy and compunction, his father
laboured to undo the harm of his rash oath.

He endeavoured to enter Benjamin for one of the big
public schools. But he learned by bitter experience
that the
son of Joseph Isenbaum, exporter of agricultural imple
ments, might knock in vain at the gates of Eton or Harrow
unless he could go sponsored by some more welcome visi
tant. House-masters wrote politely to say that they had no
vacancies. Non-committal replies left Joseph sick with ap
prehension. Fear lest he should have ruined his son's chances
lay like a weight of indigestion across his chest.

But if he could secure a letter of introduction from an Etonian, a Bishop or a Peer, or even a plain gentleman of
good standing, then the situation would be changed.

Among his acquaintances were men who had been to public schools, but not one of them, Joseph felt, was the
right man for his purpose.

He was thinking of his need when he sat in Augustus
Mitchell's show-room, handling patterns of gent's autumn
suitings.