Anglo-Saxon Attitudes (32 page)

Gerald's growing resentment made him bolder. 'I don't think that's the answer,' he said. 'You know as well as I do how vaguely warmhearted Inge is and the difficulties it gets her into. You have a perfect right to befriend anyone you choose. ...'

John's dark eyes narrowed in anger. 'Thank you, I have,' he cried. 'I know,' he went on, 'somebody's been getting at you. You came down here expressly to spy out the land. I think I know who it was too. Robin! Blast his eyes. He's got a bloody nerve to interfere, with his own little dreary double life.'

'I haven't seen Robin ...' Gerald began, but John was carried away. 'I don't believe you!' he cried. 'Well, you can tell Master Robin from me there's one little thing he's not getting away with, writing letters to
The Times
about "radio demagogues". His beloved protégé Mr Pelican is on the out...'

'This has nothing to do with it,' Gerald interrupted. 'I haven't seen Robin.'

John looked sulky. 'All right,' he said. 'It was someone else, then. His
chère amie,
perhaps, anxious to save me from myself. Hell hath no fury, you know. I suppose she "told" you about Larrie and me, and you're "deeply shocked".'

Gerald tried to curb the anger generated in him by the growing atmosphere of a 'scene', he set his features in a look of friendliness. 'I know about it, yes,' he said. 'I'm not saying how. I don't know
what
I feel about it really. In any case my feeling aren't relevant. If there's any blame going I must receive a large part of it as an inefficient father.' He smiled across at John. 'I should be very upset, you know, if you got into any trouble, but you must manage your own life. And I'm sure you do.' So much, he thought bitterly, for the part I've played in warning him that he's taking risks and he spurred himself to say more. 'You're a very well-known man now, John,' once again he smiled, 'and well-known people can't always afford the same life as others. However,' he hurried on,
'I'm
purely concerned to protect Inge.'

John rose to his feet. All the bitterness generated in childhood, all Inge's teaching coalesced in him for a moment. 'Your past success in that respect gives you every reason to be confident this time, I'm sure,' he said with heavy sarcasm. He jumped up from his chair. 'I'm afraid I must go,' he said, 'or should I ask your permission to get down?'  - Gerald looked away - 'I've no objection to your talking to Thingy if the curious workings of your conscience demand it,' John added patronizingly as he left the room. Gerald, trembling with anger, shouted after him, 'Thank you, I have every intention of doing so.'

Tea - one of Inge's most lavish teas to make up for Gerald's small lunch - was a gloomy meal for him. He sat silent while Inge and Larrie cooed away at one another. At about five, Larrie became restless. He walked up and down, opened newspapers at random, whistled, gazed at the clock, then suddenly he went up to Inge and putting his hand on her arm, he said wistfully, 'I know I promised you and Johnnie to stay home this evening, but let me take the car and go into Reading. It's only to go to the pictures. I won't be late. But it's Marilyn Monroe, the girl of my heart.'

Inge sighed, 'Oh Larrie! What will Johnnie say? You know what has happened all this week. Nobody wants you to stay at home, but you have done such naughty things.'

'I had a few too many beers in me,' Larrie said. 'Now that's being honest with you, isn't it?'

'They must have been very strong beers,' said Inge in coy reproof. 'Look what has been broken - all the furniture in the bedroom I furnished in the garage, one mudguard smashed, the maids frightened in their bedrooms. Bad boy!' She wagged her finger.

Larrie looked dramatic. 'Oh, when will I ever be rid of this beast in me? You'll help me, won't you? But it's not by staying in and getting restless that I can do it. That's no victory. It's by going out and coming back the same as I went that I'll win, isn't it?'

Inge smiled. 'You are determined to go, I can see. But you will not be too late, will you, Larrie?'

'Cross my heart,' Larrie said. His look was playfully shy. 'I'll just be going to the pictures and back again. With Marilyn Monroe in my mind, I won't be thinking of much else.'

'All right, I give way,' said Mrs Middleton. 'Have a lovely time.'

'Thank you,' said Larrie, and he gave her a big hug. 'It's been wonderful to meet
you,
Professor Middleton,' he said. 'I've heard talk of you so much from Johnnie. He's so proud of his father.' Gerald looked away.

Inge got up. 'I'll arrange for some sandwiches to be put in the flat,' she said, and went out of the room. To Gerald's surprise, Larrie came and stood by his side. His eyes blazed with hysterical rage. 'You'll not get me out of this house,' he said softly. 'You just try.' The next moment he was gone.

Inge was quite gay as they drank their sherry. 'You must stay and have dinner, Gerald,' she said. 'I have told them to make one of your English steak-and-kidney pies and I have a bottle of Châteauneuf du Pape - that you will like.' She moved round the room, banging cushions and rearranging chairs as she loved to do. 'Soon the snow will go away and there will be my snowdrops and then my little irises. You remember the
Iris reticulata
that I brought you last year to Montpelier Square. Does Mrs Larwood cook all right?'  In such a mood, she did not wait for answers. 'Isn't he a charming boy, that haughty wicked Larrie?'  she cried. 'Already he is responding to kindness.'

'I didn't find him very charming,' Gerald said, seizing the opening.

'No?'  Inge cried, wide-eyed. 'Oh, Gerald! you don't know him. He is so full of jokes and fun. He keeps me young. But also he can be very serious. He has Irish blood, you know; they are dreamers. I think perhaps he will die young, poor thing. All the more reason to make him happy now.'

'I wish,' said Gerald, 'that the mission hadn't fallen to you. I don't like his being here at all.'

'Oh! Gerald, how can you talk like that? I am glad of his company. I am very much alone, you know.'

'That's just it. You're isolated down here with only the maids. A long way from the nearest house. It's not the place to have an ex- Borstal boy as a companion.'

Inge stopped and stared at him. 'Johnnie told you that. It is very naughty of him. How can the boy change his life if everybody talks about this? Besides, he is not a Borstal boy, he was at an Approved School. It is quite different.'

Gerald picked up the decanter and poured out two more sherries. 'I only had to hear what was said to know that he's drunken and violent,' he said. 'And I watched him too. He's probably got good somewhere, but it's terribly laid over, my dear. He's dishonest and deceitful, and I'm inclined to think that he's a malicious hysteric.' He reflected that this was also Inge's character in her bad moods. All the more reason that they should be kept apart, he thought.

Inge stood over him and shook her head. 'That is very uncharitable, Gerald. It comes with living too much with old books and not enough with people.' She dismissed his views. Then, 'And what would Johnnie say if I would not let his friend live here?'  she asked.

'He's got on all right up to now without it,' Gerald said. He was determined not to use his knowledge of John's life to assist his arguments.

'He has got farther and farther away from me; that is why I like Larrie so. He is th
e first
friend of Johnnie's who has brought us together.'

Gerald looked at her with a new interest. 'Have you met many of Johnnie's friends?'  he asked.

'Oh, many, many, Gerald. But they are always trying to take him from me. They tell him I want to possess him and other cruel things. That man Derek Kershaw said dreadful things about me.'

Gerald smiled at her. 'And weren't they right?'

His disarming smile robbed the words of all seriousness for Inge. 'No, Gerald,' she said in mock anger, 'of course they weren't. You are a pig.'

He gave it up as hopeless. 'Will you promise,' he asked, 'that if I'm right about Larrie, you will get rid of him? And if I'm wrong, I'll give you ten pairs of nylon stockings.'

Inge laughed with pleasure. 'I promise,' she said.

They ate an enormous meal together with more real friendliness than they had felt for years. There was only one moment of annoyance, when Gerald asked if Inge had heard from Kay. 'Yes, Gerald,' she cried, 'and I am very angry with little Kay. I have written to tell her so. All that trouble to make that good arrangement for Donald to lecture in the firm and she now writes that he finds Robin rather superior. I don't know what he expects. Robin is the boss. Besides, I do not like to make arrangements for people and then they are not quite pleased.' It was so simple a statement of her attitude to life that Gerald could not dispute it.

Despite the unusual ease of the occasion, Gerald went away feeling that he had entirely failed in his purpose; it vexed him, too, that he had no idea of what Inge knew or guessed about John's life.

February brought untimely fogs that year, but to Gerald it brought a clarity of mind that he had not known for years. He corresponded and lunched with possible contributors each day. He met young historians from the provinces for the first time and picked up old friendships that he had almost forgotten. He astonished himself with his energy and the lucidity of his expositions. He began a scheme for the editorial preface; he even organized some of his notes for
The Confessor.
There were, it was true, occasional mentions of Pforzheim's work in Heligoland and some consequent remarks about Melpham which he had to meet. In general, however, the topic awaited a full statement at the forthcoming historical congress at Verona. May seemed in yellow February a long way off. The family, too, had receded from his life after the unwonted intimacy bred of Christmas. At times Gerald had to admit to himself a carefree, even happy temper.

It was in the first week of March, when endless rain had driven off the fogs, that Elvira telephoned him, reminding him of his promise to let her bring Robin round. 'He'll be horribly shy,' she said. 'He's always kept his private life from his family. Not that that matters, but it's bad because he's so conscious of it.'

Gerald reflected that his son Robin's life was getting all too like a parody of his own. 'I shall be shy too,' he said. 'But don't drop in. Come and have a proper dinner.' Somehow an informal visit from his eldest son seemed more unthinkable than a formal invitation to a meal.

Robin, it was true, was shy with his father, but his happy absorption in Elvira's presence overcame it. Gerald was surprised to find how delighted he was to see Robin so happy. His feelings for his children, though equally unsuccessfully expressed, differed greatly. For John he felt a guilty and jealous dislike; for Kay a deep love which made him always criticize her, for he knew that inevitably she would reject his advances; but for Robin he had great respect that was only held from becoming strong affection by a certain awe.

It was soon apparent that Elvira had no such awe. She treated Robin with a little-controlled impatience for his ignorance of the cosmopolitan values reigning in her circle of London intelligentsia. Her awareness that there were other criteria only made her more assertive of those she was accustomed to. Robin, it was clear, did not help himself by trying too hard to please her. It had taken him some years to acquire the brand of cultural talk demanded by Marie Hélène for her parties, it was too late to learn quite another for Elvira.

'This is a lovely room of yours, Father,' he said, looking at Gerald's long dining-room, very plain, formal, and grey, intended primarily to show off the John drawings that were hung there. 'Not quite enough colour for my taste, especially as it's so beautifully proportioned. I like a dining-room to be rather splendid, you know. I should have thought a Regency couch and one of those mirrors with eagles - Empire, aren't they? - would give it a sort of grandeur....'

Elvira said, 'Oh, Robin, please do stop!'

Robin looked surprised. 'Well, don't you think a touch of gold or yellow here and there ..he began.

'No, I don't,' said Elvira. 'I can't think of anything more ghastly than all that fake Regency.'

'I like the Regency style,' said Robin doggedly.

'Yes, darling, you don't know anything about it, but you know what you like. I've told you again and again that's no reason for saying it.' She turned to Gerald. 'It's the awful effect of Freud on the middle classes, you know; they think they've a moral duty to say whatever dirty thing comes into their minds.'

Robin laughed quite happily; nevertheless he persisted. 'Well, what would
you
have, darling?'

'Oh God!' cried Elvira. 'This awful idea that one has to
"have"
this or that in a room. The influence of the women's magazines on the business classes!' Then, softening, she said to Gerald, 'I wouldn't bully him like this, only it's the only way to learn. As a matter of fact, he knows it all quite naturally if he didn't get hold of all these awful middle-class ideas. I'm right, aren't I, darling?'  she appealed to Robin, who merely smiled. Gerald noted that she did not openly attack Marie Hélène. 'Surely, darling, you see,' Elvira went on, gesturing with wild abandon, but speaking like a headmistress. 'When anyone's got these wonderful drawings,' and she waved her arm round the room, 'they don't want Regency tat.'

Gerald thought, she knows nothing about it. He said, 'I suppose it may be said that I
"have"
the John drawings. In any case, I'm not sure that I don't fancy a bit of gold to brighten the room up here and there.'

'Oh, don't give way to him,' Elvira cried.

The same pattern of tentative cultural feelers from Robin and snubs from Elvira went on all through dinner. Yet Gerald noticed that she never took her eyes off her lover. She's physically obsessed with him, he thought, and then - a lot of this snubbing is an attempt to get her own back on him for possessing her so. His own feelings rather alarmed him. I should like to beat her for her treatment of Robin, he decided, and yet I'm not jealous of Robin for having her. He's welcome to so much pretension if he wants it.