Unconditional surrender (16 page)

‘Didn’t you ever want to marry?’

‘Not really.’

Uncle Peregrine was not at all put out by these direct personal questions. He was essentially imperturbable. No one, so far as he could remember, had ever shown so much interest in him. He found the experience enjoyable, even when Virginia pressed further.

‘Lots of affairs?’

‘Good heavens, no.’

‘I’m sure you aren’t a pansy.’

‘Pansy?’

‘You’re not homosexual?’

Even this did not disconcert Uncle Peregrine. It was a subject he had rarely heard mentioned by a man; never by a woman. But there was something about Virginia’s frankness which struck him as childlike and endearing.

‘Good gracious, no. Besides the “o” is short. It comes from the Greek not the Latin.’

‘I knew you weren’t. I can always tell. I was just teasing.’

‘No one has ever teased me about
that
before. But I knew a fellow once in the diplomatic service who had that reputation. There can’t have been anything in it. He ended up as an ambassador. They would hardly have appointed a fellow like
that
. He was rather a vain, dressy fellow. I dare say that was what made people talk.’

‘Peregrine, have you never been to bed with a woman?’

‘Yes,’ said Uncle Peregrine smugly, ‘twice. It is not a thing I normally talk about.’

‘Do tell.’

‘Once when I was twenty and once when I was forty-five. I didn’t particularly enjoy it.’

‘Tell me about them.’

‘It was the same woman.’

Virginia’s spontaneous laughter had seldom been heard in recent years; it had once been one of her chief charms. She sat back in her chair and gave full, free tongue; clear, unrestrained, entirely joyous, with a shadow of ridicule, her mirth rang through the quiet little restaurant. Sympathetic and envious faces were turned towards her. She stretched across the table cloth and caught his hand, held it convulsively, unable to speak, laughed until she was breathless and mute, still gripping his bony fingers. And Uncle Peregrine smirked. He had never before struck success. He had in his time been at parties where others had laughed in this way. He had never had any share in it. He did not now know quite what it was that had won this prize, but he was highly gratified.

‘Oh Peregrine,’ said Virginia at last with radiant sincerity. ‘I love you.’

He was not afraid to spoil his triumph with expatiation. ‘I know most men go in for love affairs,’ he said. ‘Some of them can’t help it. They can’t get on at all without women, but there are plenty of others – I dare say you haven’t come across them much – who don’t really care about that sort of thing, but they don’t know any reason why they shouldn’t, so they spend half their lives going after women they don’t really want. I can tell you something you probably don’t know. There are men who have been great womanizers in their time and when they get to my age and don’t want it any more and in fact can’t do it, instead of being glad of a rest, what do they do but take all kinds of medicines to make them
want
to go on? I’ve heard fellows in my club talking about it.’

‘Bellamy’s?’

‘Yes. I don’t go there much except to read the papers. Awfully rowdy place it’s become. I was put up as a young man and go on paying the subscription, I don’t know why. I don’t know many fellows there. Well, the other day I heard two of them who must have been about my age, talking of which doctor was best to make them
want
women. All manner of expensive treatments. You can’t explain that, can you?’

‘I knew a man called Augustus who did just that.’

‘Did you? And he told you about it? Extraordinary.’

‘Why is it different from going for a walk to get up an appetite for luncheon?’

‘Because it’s Wrong,’ said Uncle Peregrine.

‘You mean “wrong” according to your religion?’

‘Why, how else could anything be wrong?’ asked Uncle Peregrine with perfect simplicity and continued his dissertation on the problems of sex: ‘There’s another thing. You only have to look at the ghastly fellows who are a success with women to realize that there isn’t much point in it.’

But Virginia was not attending. She began to make a little pagoda of the empty oyster-shells on her plate. Without raising her eyes, she said: ‘I’m rather thinking of becoming a Catholic.’

It has been said of Uncle Peregrine that he was never disconcerted. Exception must be made of the abrupt access of displeasure which now struck him. It is one of the established delights of celibacy to discourse frankly, even grossly, of the vagaries of lust to an attractive woman; it was one which Uncle Peregrine had never before experienced and he was enjoying it stupendously. Now she had rudely let drop the guillotine. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Why?’

‘Don’t you think it would be a good thing?’

‘It depends on your reasons.’

‘Isn’t it always a good thing?’

The waiter reproachfully re-arranged the oyster-shells on Virginia’s plate before removing it.

‘Well, isn’t it?’ she pressed. ‘Come on. Tell. Why are you so shocked suddenly? I’ve heard an awful lot one way and another about the Catholic Church being the church of sinners.’

‘Not from me,’ said Uncle Peregrine. The waiter brought them their turbot. ‘Of course, if you’d sooner not discuss it…’

‘I’m not really competent to,’ said the Privy Chamberlain, the Knight of Devotion and Grace of the Sovereign Order of St John of Jerusalem. ‘Personally I find it very difficult to regard converts as Catholics.’

‘Oh, don’t be so stuck up and snubbing. What about Lady Plessington? She is a pillar, surely?’

‘I have never felt quite at ease with Eloise Plessington where religion is concerned. Anyway, she was received into the Church when she married.’

‘Exactly.’

‘And you, my dear, were not.’

‘Do you think it might have made a difference – with Guy and me, I mean – if I had been?’

Uncle Peregrine hesitated between his acceptance in theory of the operation of divine grace and his distant but quite detailed observation of the men and women he had known, and relapsed to his former ‘I’m really not competent to say.’

A silence fell on the pair; Uncle Peregrine deploring the turn the conversation had taken, Virginia considering how she could give further impetus in that direction. They ate their turbot and were brought coffee before their plates were removed. Diners were not encouraged to linger over their tables in those days. At length Virginia said: ‘You see I rather hoped for your support in a plan of mine. I’ve got a bit tired of knocking about. I thought of going back to my husband.’

‘To Troy?’

‘No, no. To Guy. After all he is my real husband, isn’t he? I thought becoming a Catholic might help. No amount of divorces count in your Church, do they? I suppose we shall have to go to some registry office to make it legal, but we’re already married in the eyes of God – he’s told me so.’

‘Lately?’

‘Not very lately.’

‘Do you think he wants you back?’

‘I bet I could soon make him.’

‘Well,’ said Uncle Peregrine, ‘that alters everything.’ He looked at her with eyes of woe. ‘It was
Guy
you’ve been coming to see all these last days?’

‘Of course. What did you think? … Oh, Peregrine, did you think I had designs on
you
.’

‘The thought had crossed my mind.’

‘You thought perhaps I might provide your third —.’ She used a word, then unprintable, which despite its timeless obscenity did not make Uncle Peregrine wince. He even found it attractive on her lips. She was full of good humour and mischief now, on the verge of another access of laughter.

‘That was rather the idea.’

‘But surely that would have been Wrong?’

‘Very Wrong indeed. I did not seriously entertain it. But it recurred often, even when I was sorting the books. You could have moved into the room Guy is now in. I don’t think Mrs Corner would have seen anything objectionable. After all, you are my niece.’

Virginia’s laughter came again, most endearing of her charms.

‘Darling Peregrine. And you wouldn’t have needed any of those expensive treatments your chums in Bellamy’s recommend?’

‘In your case,’ said Uncle Peregrine with his cavalier grace, ‘I am practically sure not.’

‘It’s perfectly sweet of you. You don’t think I’m laughing
at
you, do you?’

‘No, I don’t believe you are.’

‘Any time you want to try, dear Peregrine, you’re quite welcome.’

The pleasure died in Peregrine Crouchback’s sad old face.

‘That wouldn’t be quite the same thing. Put like that I find the suggestion embarrassing.’

‘Oh dear, have I made a floater?’

‘Yes. It was all a fancy really. You make it sound so practical. I found I looked forward to seeing you about the flat, don’t you know? It wasn’t much more than that.’

‘And I want a husband,’ said Virginia. ‘You wouldn’t consider that?’

‘No, no. Of course that would be quite impossible.’

‘Your religion again.’

‘Well, yes.’

‘Then it will have to be Guy. Don’t you see now why I want to become a Catholic? He can’t very well say no, can he?’

‘Oh, yes, he can.’

‘But knowing Guy you don’t think he will, do you?’

‘I really know Guy very little,’ said Uncle Peregrine rather peevishly.

‘But you’ll help me? When the point comes up, you’ll tell him it’s his duty?’

‘He’s not at all likely to consult me.’

‘But if he does? And when it comes to squaring Angela?’

‘No, my dear,’ said Uncle Peregrine, ‘I’ll be damned if I do.’

The evening had not gone as either of them had planned. Uncle Peregrine saw Virginia to her door. She kissed him, for the first time, on their parting. He raised his hat in the darkness, paid off the taxi and walked despondently home, where he found Guy awake, reading.

‘Have a good time?’ he asked.

‘It is always good, so far as anything is nowadays, at that restaurant. It cost more than two pounds,’ he added, his memory still sore from the imputation of parsimony.

‘I mean, did you enjoy yourself?’

‘Yes and no. More no than yes perhaps.’

‘I thought Virginia seemed in cracking form.’

‘Yes and no. More yes than no. She laughed a lot.’

‘That sounds all right.’

‘Yes and no. Guy, I have to warn you. That girl has
Designs
.’

‘On you, Uncle Peregrine?’

‘On you.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘She told me.’

‘Do you think you should repeat it?’

‘In the circumstances, yes.’

‘Not yes and no?’

‘Just yes.’

Sir Ralph Brompton had been schooled in the old diplomatic service to evade irksome duties and to achieve power by insinuating himself into places where, strictly, he had no business. In the looser organization of total war he was able to trip from office to office and committee to committee. The chiefs of HOO considered they should be represented wherever the conduct of affairs was determined. Busy themselves in the highest circles, they willingly delegated to Sir Ralph the authority to listen and speak for them and to report to them, in the slightly lower but not much less mischievous world of their immediate inferiors.

Liberation was Sir Ralph’s special care. Wherever those lower than the Cabinet and the Chiefs of Staff adumbrated the dismemberment of Christendom, there Sir Ralph might be found.

On a morning shortly before Christmas in an office quite independent of HOO Sir Ralph dropped in for an informal chat on the subject of liaison with Balkan terrorists. The man whom he was visiting had been rather suddenly gazetted brigadier. His functions were as ill-defined as Sir Ralph’s; they were dubbed ‘co-ordination’. There had been times in Sir Ralph’s professional career when he had been aware that certain of his colleagues and, later, of his staff were engaged in secret work. Strange men not of the service had presented credentials and made use of the diplomatic bag and the cipher room. Sir Ralph had fastidiously averted his attention from their activities. Now, recalled from retirement, he found a naughty relish in what he had formerly shunned. These two had risen to their positions by very different routes; their paths had never crossed.

Sir Ralph sported light herring-bone tweed, such as in peacetime he would not have worn at that season in London; brilliant black brogue shoes shone on his narrow feet. His long legs were crossed and he smoked a Turkish cigarette. The brigadier had bought his uniform ready-made. The buttons were dull. He wore a cloth belt. No ribbons decorated his plump breast. His false teeth held a pipe insecurely. An impersonal association, but a close one, united them. Their political sympathies were identical.

‘It is a great thing getting control of Balkan Liberation shifted here from Cairo.’

‘Yes, almost the whole Middle East set-up was hopelessly compromised with royalist refugees. We shall be able to use the few reliable men. The others will be found more suitable employment.’

‘Iceland?’

‘Iceland will be perfectly suitable.’

Lists were produced of the proposed liaison missions.

‘De Souza got a very good report from the parachute school.’

‘Yes. You don’t think he’ll be wasted in the field? He could be very useful to us here.’

‘He can be very useful in the field. Gilpin failed. We can use him here until we open a headquarters in Italy.’

‘Once our fellows get to Italy they’ll be harder to keep under our own hand. They’ll come under command of the army for a good many things. We’ve been accepted on the top level but we still have to establish confidence lower down. What we need is a good backing of conventional regimental soldiers in the subordinate posts. I see Captain Crouchback’s name here, crossed off. I know him. I should have thought he was just what we need – middle-aged, Catholic, no political activities, a Halberdier, good record, excellent report from the parachute school.’

‘Bad security risk, apparently.’

‘Why?’

‘They never give reasons. He is simply noted as unsuitable for employment in North Italy.’

‘Entanglements with women?’ suggested the brigadier.