A Coat of Varnish (4 page)

In fact, as could be seen from his relation with Lady Ashbrook, Humphrey had been born not too far from her world. They were second cousins. His family was impoverished upper-class, and he was a younger son. He had had the education that they took for granted, and had, without distinction, done pretty well. Unlike Lady Ashbrook speaking of Paul no one had called him brilliant, but he was thought to be bright. It might have been a misfortune, as he fancied later, but he had had a trickle of private means, which, at twenty-one, when he came down from Cambridge brought him about £250 a year. In the thirties, he could travel on that. He made his way round Europe, picked up languages, for which he had some natural gift, was racked by love for a woman who didn’t love him, and by desperate persistence married her.

It had always been a singularly anonymous life, he was fond of saying, explaining how ordinary it had all been, more totally modest than Paul, but not so totally that he didn’t exaggerate any dim aspect of a life’s dimness. War had saved him from the frustrated marriage. He had soldiered in a good regiment, into which, as he predictably pointed out, he wouldn’t have entered except through his connections. He wasn’t a good officer – this was his own account – nor a specially bad one. Then he had been seconded to military intelligence, where his languages came in useful. He also thought, having his own subliminal vanity, that, though all men were fools who thought they knew much about people, he was a shade less of a fool than some.

That job led to another. When the war ended, he wanted to marry again. His vestigial income had been lost. He had to earn some money. He was sent for, in circumstances of farcical mystery, and asked if he would like to join the security service. Again he was fond of pointing out that this was entirely owing to his connections. More or less derelict, but entirely respectable upper-class. Nothing against him. No obvious sexual velleities (though Humphrey later liked to tell self-righteous persons that out of comparison the most valuable master of any kind of British intelligence, and one as trustworthy as Winston Churchill, had had a tragic obsession for small boys). Humphrey’s was the exact specification for someone likely to keep secrets and not betray his country. The curious thing was, Humphrey was also fond of pointing out, that on the whole it worked.

Not many people knew the history of the security service; not many possibly could. Humphrey still had access. There had been fewer defections than from any corresponding service he had knowledge of, and much less internal corruption.

Anyway, he hadn’t dithered long before taking the offer. For him it didn’t present ethical problems. So far as he was political at all, he was vaguely liberal. But that didn’t prevent him from thinking that society had a right to look after itself. Any spirited society did that; and if it didn’t it would not be spirited for long. Further, and not unimportant, both he and his future wife wanted a job for him. Here it was.

So, for nearly thirty years, that was what he had been doing. It meant that he had become more anonymous than ever. People wondered how he earned his living. Some guessed. Some, like Lady Ashbrook, with friends in government, actually knew. Lady Ashbrook had never asked him a direct question. She was utterly shameless about probing into love affairs, sex affairs, money affairs, but for his kind of occupation she had a mixture of patriotic and superstitious regard. Anything like military intelligence was sacred, and so was this. Even now, though he told her that he spent most of his time writing, she did not ask him what it was, expecting that that was a state secret. Actually it was nothing more sacrosanct than the study of a pre-1914 predecessor of his, who like Humphrey himself had not reached quite the top of the service but had been an unobtrusive presence. Probably the Cabinet Office would not allow Humphrey to publish the work, since procedures even as far back as the century before were still only mentioned in private, as though they were remarkably prurient anecdotes, which the public was not adult enough to hear. So Humphrey’s book was likely to exist only in manuscript, which, he said to intimates, would be a suitably anonymous finish to an anonymous career.

If he had had Paul’s temperament he wouldn’t have lived, with some approach to satisfaction, certainly to serenity, that anonymous career. It was over now, and perversely, like one repining for a prison or tormented love, he sometimes missed it. There wasn’t even the duty mode to look forward to next day. That night in the garden he would have liked to have something to look forward to tomorrow. But, though he might not have admitted them, hopes and imaginings were keeping him unresigned. If there had been anyone intimate enough to question him, he would have had to confess that he hadn’t handed in his ticket.

For years past Lady Ashbrook had walked in the Square gardens in the afternoon. She was not willing to break this habit, and on the Wednesday, the day after she had talked to Humphrey, she was to be seen, upright, stalking slowly on the path between the trees. Over her head she held a parasol, but soon lowered it, not sustaining the effort. The sky was cloudless, the sun burned down, the heat did not waver.

There was no one else in the garden. It was usually empty, for it was private and only the householders had keys. The Square was as quiet as a deserted village. Cars were parked in front of some of the houses, but they, too, were still, and cars were quieter than horses or children, once part of the population. No children now. Families were not brought up here, and nearly all the women in the Square went to work. This meant that no one would call on Lady Ashbrook between breakfast-time and evening, though Paul and Celia had already done so that morning, and so had Kate Lefroy, who had heard the news from Humphrey.

Humphrey, one of the few people there at leisure in the afternoon, from his drawing-room window watched Lady Ashbrook promenade and, reluctantly, felt obliged to join her. She did not keep him long. She was polite in a stately fashion, discussing the weather and the flowers in the garden-beds. He wasn’t welcome, because he had listened to a confidence she had not wished to make. She was distant from him because, just for that short while, she had given herself away.

Pretty stark, Humphrey thought as he went away. Courage came with different faces. He had known soldiers, as brave as she was, who insisted on embarrassing one in precisely the opposite fashion, by confessions of exaggerated timidity.

Lady Ashbrook had been sitting down when he spoke to her. She had done enough to maintain her afternoon ritual, and soon returned home. It was about an hour afterwards that Humphrey noticed her doctor walking down the Square, away from the direction of Lady Ashbrook’s house. Humphrey went downstairs and intercepted him.

This was Ralph Perryman, Lady Ashbrook’s ‘little doctor’. As Humphrey had reflected the previous evening, he wasn’t little in any but a Lady Ashbrook sense. He was appreciably taller and larger than Humphrey himself. He was a good-looking man, or at least a striking-looking one, with very light blue eyes, transparent, such as one saw in Scandinavia. They were quite unshadowed, as though unprotected, in deep orbits. Humphrey had heard the doctor well spoken of professionally, and he had something of a private practice in the district. Humphrey hadn’t often met him, but had sometimes wanted to know him better.

‘Can you spare a minute?’ Humphrey asked.

Perryman seemed simultaneously over-willing and over-elusive. No, he hadn’t any patients to see just then. No, but he had a long night’s work ahead. Yes, he had been visiting the old lady, as he referred to Lady Ashbrook, using the phrase as a kind of nickname.

‘Tell me what you can.’

‘You know, there isn’t much to tell, Colonel.’

Humphrey had not been a regular soldier, but Colonel was a rank that had stuck to him. To use it or let others do so was not in his style. He stopped it at once, but affably, since he wanted Perryman at ease. He suggested sitting in the Square gardens and led the way.

‘What do you think of her?’ Humphrey asked, and as he was speaking realised that he had been too direct. As with others used to concealment, he got rid of it when he could. Then he sometimes sounded obtuse and blunt, which he was far from being. This man didn’t like it, and had shied away.

‘Oh, I’ve treated her for quite a long time, you know.’

‘Yes, I did know. She’s often talked about you.’ Humphrey had become emollient. ‘I’m by way of being a connection. But I don’t suppose she’s mentioned me.’

The doctor gave a superior smile. ‘Oh, I’ve had to ask for names to get in touch with. In case of emergencies. I always take these precautions with elderly patients. Just professional precautions, of course.’

‘Of course. Look, Doctor, I’d be the last man to want you to do anything unprofessional. If you can’t answer, just let it go. But it would ease my mind a little. Can you give me an idea of what her chances are?’

The transparent eyes were gazing into the middle distance, not focused on Humphrey.

‘I can’t give you much of an idea. No one knows. No one can possibly know until they have seen the plates.’

‘It really is as unpredictable as that…?’

‘Sometimes one has an intuition. But you could have an intuition yourself.’

‘Would it be the same as yours?’ Humphrey wasn’t getting far with this fencing.

‘That would depend on whether either of us looked on the bright side, wouldn’t it? I don’t know whether you’re an optimist or not.’

Humphrey said, casting round for another lead: ‘She has come through a good deal in her time. I don’t know whether that’s here or there.’

‘I agree with you entirely, Mr Leigh. She has a very strong will, of course she has.’ Dr Perryman was now speaking with animation; he could escape the topic of Lady Ashbrook now. ‘The trouble is we know very little of how the mind affects the body. We know shamefully little; I’ve often wished I could do some work on it. But it’s difficult. We really don’t know where to draw the line between the mind and the body – that is, if there is a line at all.’ Eager, fluent, enthusiastic, Perryman expanded on the mind–body relation. He was intelligent, he had read and thought. In another place and time Humphrey would have been interested; but just then it was a distraction. It was not what he had come for.

At the end Humphrey said: ‘Well, if the worst comes to the worst…’

‘Yes.’

Humphrey found himself half-echoing what Celia had said the night before: ‘If it does happen, then it would be an unpleasant way to die.’

‘There are a great many unpleasant ways to die, Mr Leigh,’ said Dr Perryman.

‘I’ve seen some, but I hope I don’t finish up this way. I must say, I should expect my doctor to ease me out.’

‘Should you now?’ Perryman gazed straight at him. After a pause Perryman went on: ‘You’re not the first patient who has said that, you know.’

‘And I take it you’re not the first doctor who’s listened.’

Perryman didn’t reply.

It had been a curious interview and, back in his drawing-room, Humphrey was sure that he had handled it badly. The man was sensitive, not to say prickly: it should have been easier to soothe him. He must have his own foresight – or had he heard the first words from the hospital?

Humphrey was restless. There was a telephone call from a friend of Lady Ashbrook, and another from Kate Lefroy. News about Lady Ashbrook, and impatience at the absence of news, was going round among her acquaintances. In spite of her pride, she seemed to have been quite unreserved in telling about her tests, and the verdict she was waiting for.

In some of those who knew about her, there was concern. But there was also excitement. Calamities to others raised the emotional temperature, and people, including kind and honest people like Kate and young Paul, found that fact of life difficult to accept with candour. Candour was somewhat lacking those blazing summer days among Lady Ashbrook’s circle, though excitement wasn’t. Humphrey was a man of fair detachment. He was capable of saying that the disasters of others, unless they belonged to one with animal ties, bedmates or children, were singularly easy to endure; but even Humphrey didn’t like thinking that to himself.

Kate Lefroy had asked Humphrey if he would go across to her house. He was glad to be asked. He was fond of Kate. There it was easy to be candid. If she had been free, he would have wanted her; as it was, he hoped that with patience he could get her free.

When, on the other side of the Square, he arrived in her front room (here the original division had been preserved, and there were two smallish sitting-rooms, with sliding doors between), he was confronted by another disaster which was arousing excitement among their friends, with a similar absence of candour. This was not a disaster to Kate, who looked well, but relieved to receive some support. She had, it was obvious, been trying to comfort a girl sitting beside her on the sofa. This was the girl whom Lady Ashbrook had described so scornfully as totally unsuitable for her grandson, perhaps adequate for a bit of slap and tickle. This evening she did not look adequate for that. Lady Ashbrook had conceded that she possessed some elements of prettiness, but her face was dense and dark with crying, and Humphrey, who scarcely knew her, that evening would have thought her plain. She was the daughter of Tom Thirkill, the MP and entrepreneur. So far as Humphrey could make out, this was part of the misery. For that week
Private Eye
, the modish journal of the day, had produced another of its half-muted attacks. That had been followed by a respectable daily, saying there was a rumour that Opposition members were calling for an enquiry into one of Thirkill’s enterprises. There hadn’t, as it had happened, been much in the way of other news, except for the slide on the Stock Exchange in the value of the pound. Tom Thirkill’s affairs thus became the object of some journalists’ attention, along with the heatwave.

The girl, whose name was Susan, was expressing loyalty to her father. Still half-crying, underlids puffed out as though they had been injected, she swore that her father was honest.