The Balliols (33 page)

“It isn't the same thing. We'll consider it if you can find someone to go across with you and bring you back.”

“How am I to find that?” he grumbled.

Ruth scarcely listened. Cricket matches at the Oval; first trips to France; a niece in Penang; trouble in Ireland; ultimatums to the Serbs. What did they matter on a day like this? She felt hungry, yet she was too excited to eat. She wanted to talk, but there was nothing she wanted to say. She sat on her chair, crumbling a piece of toast, looking round the room with quick bright glances. Helen, recently promoted to a downstairs meal, stared at her with a puzzled curiosity.

“How strange Ruth looks this morning.”

“Finish up your porridge,” her mother told her.

“Her eyes are so bright,” said Helen.

Said Francis: “At Helen's age I wasn't allowed down to breakfast.”

Said her father: “Keep moving. We've got to be starting in five minutes.”

Hugh handed her across the paper. She glanced at the headlines. Divorces, murders, boxing matches. Political actions, international situations, the King at Windsor. Social tittle-tattle. To think that all those other things had happened yesterday.

She had nothing to do that morning. She had left the day free on purpose. After two late nights she had fancied that she would want to sleep late into the morning. She had never felt less sleepy. As often, when she had nothing in particular to do, she went in by ‘bus to London, riding on the top deck, not because she had anything to do in London, anyone to see, anything to buy; it was just that she wanted to watch London's streets, to look down on London from a ‘bus; to draw a sense of life from London's rich vitality. Never had
she been more conscious of her youth, her power, her capacity to enjoy than on this sunlit July morning. She wanted to shout her secret boastfully from the housetops. She surveyed with a sense of proud superiority the girls who loitered before shop windows; at the side of elderly chaperons. What they dreamed about, thought about, whispered over,
she
knew.

On her return to Ilex she was surprised by the maid's announcement that a box from Gerard's had just arrived for her. No one was in the habit of sending her flowers. It was a short carton. She tore it open. It was a spray of purple orchids mingled with lilies of the valley. There was a note enclosed. It was pencilled on the back of a calling card. “Please ring me up at once to tell me that you'll wear these when you dine with me to-night.” There was no need to turn the card to read the sender's name. She looked at the flowers, then at the card, colour flooding her cheeks to crimson.

But she could not dine with him that night. Her parents had people dining, and for the night after she had a promise to make up a four at which she would fulfil the rôle of gooseberry from which she could not honourably extricate herself. But the day after tomorrow was far too long to wait. “It'll have to be lunch tomorrow,” he decided. “Let's make it Claridge's at one-fifteen?”

Pensively, she laid down the receiver. Could Helen have seen her then, she would have noticed that the strange brightness of her eyes was misted.

It was nervously, however, that she waited for Tavenham in the lounge at Claridge's. She had had half a mind that morning to send a telegram, to say that she could not come. It might be better if she were never to see him again. She could not bear to have the memory of that one night spoilt. It might be spoilt so easily. Good things ought not to be repeated. Love what you won't see twice. Victor might not be so charming as he had been; he might be casual, arrogant, possessive. She had always heard that men “were different afterwards.” She had a good mind not to go. Only if I don't, I'll regret it always. There'll be something I may have missed. I've got to know. But it was nervously that she sat there waiting, her toes curling backwards towards her soles. And it was with a relief greater than she cared to measure that she realized in the first instant of Victor's greeting that he was not any different; that he was just the same. He was not treating her any differently because she had
draped herself in a Chinese dressing-gown. On the contrary, the memory of that moment brought them closer to one another, in a friendlier intimacy, so that she could drop her defences in a way that she had been unable to before, so that she could be herself, knowing that he would understand.

The talk flowed easily and lightly. They were laughing half the time, every minute or so their eyes would meet across the table; their glances would hold each other, would become a slow look. Their laughter a smile that said, “It's fun, isn't it, that we should be amused by the same things this way?”

It was not till the very end of lunch that he made any reference to the Chinese dressing-gown, then indirectly.

“It's a pity about that latch-key of yours. And all its Cinderella business.”

She smiled. “I know. It's a nuisance. It's the kind of agreement one drifts into and then finds it hard to break.”

“That makes me think you ought to introduce me to your parents.”

“Oh, but why.…”

“Then you wouldn't have to worry about getting back, or when or how often.”

“Yes, but.…” She hesitated, a puzzled frown on her face. It would be easier, admittedly. But at the same time.… She shook her head.

“No, I know it's a nuisance, and it might be easier, but I don't know. It would be a bore for you and.… Oh, I don't know.… I think we're better as we are.”

She had no means of guessing how much that moment of puzzled deliberation and her ultimate decision counted with him; of knowing how it forced on his memory a comparison between her and all those girls who had tried to turn his interest in them to their own advantage; who had wanted to show him off to their friends and relatives; who had angled for invitations to week-end parties at his father's house; whose interest in him was measured by the glamour they derived from it. Ruth was the very first who had been unaffected by such considerations; who was happy to be with him irrespective of what it brought to her. The quick eager light came back into his blue eyes. He had been right about her, then. She was different, fundamentally. He had thought that the difference would make her difficult; in an obvious way. It hadn't. But in a subtler way it had. There was more to her, more to encompass; sides that were not easily revealed; that were slow to show themselves. To be with her was to
be launched on a voyage of discovery; the excitement of new landscape. I'm not letting her out of my life at once.

“Then if you won't do that, don't you think it would be possible for us to be in the same place for a time, when no one knows we are there, and there aren't chaperons?”

“How do you mean?”

“Couldn't you say you were going away to stay with friends, and then not go to them?”

“Well.…”

“Somewhere a long way off.”

“What do you mean by a long way off?”

“Paris can be a long way off. Haven't you friends in Paris you could visit, and not visit?”

“When?”

“This afternoon.”

They laughed at that. But, seriously, it might be possible. Suppose she were to offer to take Francis to Wimereux. Her parents would never let him go alone, nor would they let her go alone. But in that killing of two birds with a single stone, she would be able to conceal the fact that her own invitation to stay with a friend in Dieppe was a flimsy one. She could say “It's such luck. The Martins have asked me to stay with them. That means there would be someone to take Francis across to Wimereux.” And in Francis's excitement and the general discussion of his plans, her own movements would be overlooked. It was the kind of chance that would not come again.

“If you meet the midday train from London next Tuesday at the Gare du Nord, you'll find me on it.”

“And then?”

“I'll put myself entirely in your hands. For a week, if you want me for that long,” she added.

He did not ask her to go back with him to his flat. She half-thought he would. She would have gone if he had asked her. But she was glad he hadn't. For a moment, as they stood side by side on the pavement of Davies Street, he put his hand upon her arm above the elbow, pressing it.

“I'll be counting the seconds until Tuesday. It'll be heaven having you to myself.”

Then the taxi had drawn up and he was gone. Her eyes followed the small shaking cab. Only five days off. Yes: it would be heaven. She had never thought she would feel about him in this way. It
wouldn't last, she knew that. In the nature of things it couldn't. I must be careful not to fall too much in love with him. I mustn't let myself be hurt too much, when it's all over.

But she didn't care how much she was going to be hurt. She only knew that she was falling, headlong, into love. She didn't care. She was so happy. She would enjoy this loving to the full. It would never come again; not in the same way. First honeymoon. She wondered if he had guessed he was the first. I'd like to tell him. But I never shall. Many years hence, perhaps; not now. It might spoil things for him; give him a sense of responsibility. It might worry him. That mustn't happen. I want it to be perfect for him as it is for me. I want him to have all the happiness he knows how to take.

Sunlight was in the streets and sunlight was in her heart as she walked southwards to Piccadilly. She wanted to sing, she was so happy. Five days. Then Paris. To be alone with him; to be in love in love's own city. Five days. Five days. Five days. Her heart beat to the rhythm of the refrain. Five days. Five days.

But it was in the last hours of July that the rhythm beat through her heart. And the year was 1914.

There have been written innumerable descriptions of those last July days and that first week in August. On the memory of those old enough to be aware of what was happening every detail is clearly cut. It happened so quickly, so unexpectedly. I was then sixteen. At prize-giving on the last Monday in July the headmaster spoke of the “serious news that we have read in our morning's papers.” I thought he referred to Ireland. On the next day I returned home for the summer holidays. I was chiefly concerned with Middlesex's chance of winning the county championship. On the following Saturday I went to Blackheath to watch the last day of the Kent and Surrey match. So much had happened during those four days that as I watched Colin Blythe run up to the wicket with that slow tripping run and the left arm curled behind his back, I thought, “Shall I ever watch another first-class cricket match?” I was sitting next Philip Trevor. He was reporting the match for the
Daily Telegraph
. “My account of this match will never be printed. There'll be no sports page in Monday's paper.” On the Sunday I travelled down into the country. Outside the station stood a group of villagers. “Have you any news?” they asked. They had waited for the London train, believing that Londoners would know more than they did.

Everyone has memories of that kind. And everyone has memories, similar to mine, of the stages by which during that long, slow-passing, sun-soaked August he came to realize that this war was not like every preceding war, to be the concern solely of the professional soldier; that the civilian population had to make larger and costlier contributions than an increase in income tax.

I spent that August with my aunts in Somerset. I had planned it to be a cricket-playing, cricket-watching holiday. But in the matches that I had meant to watch no one took any interest. No one cared whether Surrey, Kent or Middlesex were champions. The games in which I had meant to play were cancelled. It was no longer possible to find eleven players. Every day brought the message of some new person “joining up.”

Everyone has memories of such a kind. In detail they are different; but in essentials they are the same. They provide snapshots of a world, unprepared for war, leading a personal life, happily or unhappily, as the case might be; realizing first that war was imminent, then more surely that the problems of war were personal. During the war, for purposes of propaganda, addressed in the main to neutral countries, Britain's unpreparedness for war was over-stressed. There was so much talk of “the unprovoked assault” that since the war the tendency has been to argue that Britain was no less ready for war than Germany, France, Russia; that twentieth-century diplomacy had created a situation which could have had no other outcome; that “in tragic life God wot, no villain need be.”

That is the modern tendency; and it may be that a few politicians, industrialists, diplomatists were awake to the closeness and reality of the danger. But for the majority of thinking English, the outbreak of the war came without any warning.

The same tendency to contradict our earlier attitude of exaggeration has since led many to mistake the spirit in which during that first autumn Kitchener's first army was recruited. The pulpit and the press delivered so much intolerable highfalutin about the sacred cause of a crusade that the soldier is informed to-day by those who were too young, or physically unfit to serve, that he joined up either because he thought it would be fun, or because he was coerced by public opinion. I doubt if a single soldier enlisted in the recruiting-poster spirit of crusade with which the press endowed him. Many, no doubt, were excited by the spirit of adventure; nobody knew then that three-quarters of active service consisted of wading through mud-filled trenches. Nobody cares to be “out of things.” But Kitchener's army, even so, was for the most part recruited from men who believed that an honourable obligation had been laid upon them not to desert their friends.

Edward Balliol spent the month of August in London. He preferred to take his holiday in October. The golf links of East Kent were by then pleasantly free of “green-fee” visitors. He was a member both of Royal St. George's and the Cinque Ports Club at Deal. He took a golfing holiday at a time when golf could be enjoyed in its proper setting: at the seaside, in a leisured atmosphere, when the wind is fresh, but not a gale; when it is more likely to be dry than wet; when sunshine is intermittent; when the fairways are fresh and green; when the light is still good at tea-time.