Anglo-Saxon Attitudes (45 page)

'I don't know how she was then,' Elvira said, 'but she's dead now.'

Gerald said, 'I see. I'm very sorry. I was afraid it might happen.'

'Oh God! what a silly thing to say.' Elvira's voice became deafening. 'Why the hell didn't you send me a telegram?'

Gerald found it difficult to explain why he had not. In truth, he had feared getting a rasgreatlyrry from Elvira after the way she had always spoken of her grandmother. 'I didn't want to give you a shock,' he said.

'Oh!' Elvira answered. Her voice was exaggeratedly flat now. 'Well, I got one. Three telegrams from the Houdets waiting for me and a letter telling me the news in full.' Gerald did not like to point out that there would apparently have been no point in any telegram he might have sent. 'Naturally
they
think I've behaved like a bitch,' Elvira said. There was a pause, then she added, 'And so I have.'

'I shouldn't take too much notice of their views,' Gerald said.

'Oh! Why?'  Elvira asked snappishly.

'The impressions I got..."

'You seems to get a lot
too many
impressions,' Elvira interrupted.
'They've
had to put up with all the trouble. If you're going to tell me that they're ghastly, I'm sure they are. But that isn't the point, is it? It's a matter of decent manners.' Gerald could think of no reply, but Elvira spoke again. 'The most ghastly thing is that she's left her money to me and nothing to those frightful Houdets. It's a completely bloody situation. In fact the poor old cow has bitched everything up after her death just as she did when she was alive.'

Gerald said, 'Don't be too bitter about it all, Elvira; she'd had her life. I don't think she was sorry to die.'

'Thank you for your views,' Elvira said.
'You
don't seem to have helped to keep her alive. The Houdets as much as say that your fussing her about that Melpham business brought the stroke on.'

'Good God!' Gerald cried. 'What absolute nonsense!'

'It sounds like quite good sense to me. Oh! I've only myself to blame. I urged you to go and bully her over all that ridiculous Melpham business. As if it mattered about that damned bishop. I
would
fall for all that scholarship guff. Oh God! the boredom of it all.'

Gerald controlled his anger. 'I'm sorry,' he said.

'It's a habit your family have,' Elvira replied. There was a big pause. Gerald thought she was about to ring off, but suddenly she said, 'I've broken with Robin. So pat yourself on the back. You were quite right. I couldn't stand all this "sensible" business any longer and, of course,
I
was quite right. And Robin's got into a mess and can't get out of it. And anyhow I accepted it and he can't put everything on to Timothy because our love-life's gone wrong. In fact, Robin's got to stand by his family, so
he's
quite right. Hooray for him! You see I know the right bitter note to take. And it's all absolutely bloody!'

Gerald said, 'So that's why Robin's so elusive since I came back. Look, Elvira, I'll go and see him.'

'Would you mind,' Elvira cried, 'not doing that? I know it's asking an awful lot when you have all that perfectly wonderful worldly experience ready to give away for nothing, but if you could just leave my affairs alone for a bit I would be grateful.' Gerald suddenly felt that he might cry, but he accused himself of self-pity and prevented the tears. 'I think,' he said, 'it might help if you tried to keep your temper.' As usual, however, he had found courage to dash cold water a little too late. This time Elvira
had
rung off.

He decided that the strain of talking to people at luncheon would be less than the strain of having no one to talk to. He set out to walk to his club. June had brought one of the rare sunny days of that summer; after the heavy rains, the Park gleamed with fresh colour. He saw neither trees nor flowers. Only as he was crossing to the gates of Hyde Park Corner did he notice a bed of his favourite ragged, pink and green parrot tulips. He wondered with disgust how many more revolting flowers these horticulturists were going to cultivate; those damned things looked like that marbled linoleum second-rate people had in their bathrooms. He decided that he would send Elvira some flowers - not these sort of things: decent, conventional dark-red roses. She could throw them down the lavatory if she liked, but he would have done the conventional thing. He would go to Fortnum's for them. He was sick of meeting the sort of people he didn't usually meet in his life and hearing about the sex lives of people who had nothing to do with the sort of life he led. He hailed a taxi. All this walking about and thinking was quite unsuitable at his age.

The first person he met at Fortnum's was Marie Hélène. When Marie Hélène went out shopping, she dressed as though she was going to lunch at Fortnum's, and did, in fact, lunch there. She was wearing a bottle-green watered-silk coat and a monstrous little hat of bottle-green feathers. Against it her face looked peculiarly yellow. If I was Robin, Gerald thought, I'd see to it that she had a dose of salts every day. It always annoyed him that she insisted on shaking hands. Good God! he thought, the woman's been in England long enough to learn not to do that.

'How pleasing to meet one's father-in-law in the morning,' she said. 'Pleasing' was one of the English words that she believed to be elegant. Gerald supposed that he should answer, 'Pleasant to meet my charming daughter-in-law at any time of the day,' but he thought I'm damned if I will. Faced with Marie Hélène, he began almost to enjoy his mood of ill-temper. He asked, 'How's Timothy?'

'Beginning to fall in love at last,' she said. 'Thank heaven! He's already asked me to give two theatre parties for him next holidays. Imagine, Timothy asking for a party.' She curved her thin mouth and dilated her camel's nostrils in amusement. 'I was really beginning to despair. Nothing but books. Not, of course, that I want him to grow up a barbarian, but there are limits even to culture.' She paused for a moment and gave her father-in-law a searching look, for she suddenly remembered that someone had suggested to her that 'culture' was not an elegant word. However, Gerald did not appear disturbed, so she went on, 'In any case, I longed for his first love affair. It's so amusing to see them in love at that age.'

It was a view that Gerald could not share, so he asked, 'Do I know the girl in question?'

'The Jevingtons' eldest girl?'  she queried, and, when he shook his head, she told him, 'Quite charming people. He's a barrister. She sculpts. Rather lovely things. Thank heaven, it's nothing disagreeable,' and when he did not seem to appreciate the good fortune enough, she added, 'Oh, but it can be, Father. Sometimes boys of Timothy's age fall in love with the most unsuitable girls.'

As she was talking, Gerald decided not to send Elvira flowers after all. It's none of my business, he thought.

Marie Hélène meanwhile had decided how pleasing it was to have so elegant, so distinguished-looking a father-in-law. I shall cultivate him, she thought, I shall take him up. As a start she decided to ask him to lunch with her on the spot. She had an idea that to give one's father-in-law lunch would be somehow amusing and she sought constantly to do things that could be classed under the heading of that elegant word 'amusing'. 'Come and lunch with me. It's delightful here at luncheon-time.'

Gerald was appalled. First Robin, now Marie Hélène. What did they think he was, a pauper? He pleaded an urgent engagement. She looked so put out that he felt he had been rude.

'Then you promise to come to my evening party on the twentieth,' she said. He saw no escape from acceptance. 'Good,' she said. 'Now write it down,' and she craned her long, dingy neck over him until he had entered it in his engagement book. 'Black tie,' she said. Black fiddlesticks, he thought. 'That will be quite perfect,' she remarked, 'because I have Armand Sarthe coming. You know him, of course.'

Gerald remembered the name as something unpleasant. 'By name,' he said.

'But he's a most distinguished historian,' she cried, 'and a medievalist too. He's written about Héloïse and Agnes Sorel. I'm amazed you don't know him.' Gerald recollected what he knew of Sarthe. He was one of those ghastly French writers of
biographies
romancées.
He had seen copies of his books in Paris shops -
Onze grandes maîtresses
and
Les
causes
célèbres du moyen âge.
He was horrified.

'Oh!' said Marie Hélène, 'I quite forgot my aunt Stéphanie and my cousin Yves will be here by then. They wrote so charmingly of your visit to Merano. You quite won my poor aunt's heart -
"un homme bien distingué",
she wrote. And Yves, too, said you had so much in common with him. How unfortunate that you had that disagreeable business while you were there. I really can't feel sorry that that old woman has died. You know that she left nothing at all to my poor aunt after all these years.'

Gerald made no reply.

Marie Hélène gave him a sharp, mischievous look. 'At last Robin has stopped seeing Elvira Portway. I am so glad, because it was making him so unhappy.' When once again Gerald made no comment, she said, 'You were quite naughty, Father, to encourage it. But I forgive you.' She gave him a little
mondain
smile, shook hands once more, and went upstairs to the restaurant.

Gerald took a taxi back to Montpelier Square and demanded luncheon from a surprised and rather annoyed Mrs Larwood.

A few weeks later, as Robin was leaving the Works after a flying visit from the London office, he met Donald, neatly dressed in a blue pinstriped flannel suit and carrying a brief-case. 'You'll never forgive me this time, Donald,' he said. 'Here I am, actually down at the Works on the day of your lecture and I'm not staying for it. I really had intended to, but something's turned up at the last moment which means that I must go back to town.'

A fish seemed to flash momentarily behind Donald's glasses; it was the nearest he ever got to a smile. 'Perhaps we may hope that you will put in an appearance at the last lecture,' he said. It might have been a reference to the gracious presence of royalty or a don addressing an absentee undergraduate. In either case, Robin suspected sarcasm, but Donald's face showed no trace of hostility.

'I hope I shall see you and Kay at Marie Hélène's "do" tomorrow night,' Robin said. 'She's insisted on inviting brother John, but I hope
to have a bit of news to take the wind out of his sails over the Pelican business.'

Donald's thin lips expressed satisfaction. 'I doubly look forward to the occasion now,' he remarked, and hurried fussily into the Works entrance.

Robin, as usual, took the wheel, his chauffeur beside him. Time enough to be driven about when he ceased to be the youngest director. He wished that Donald wasn't quite so prim. Of course, it was his background. No one respected these lower middle-class chaps who won all the scholarships more than Robin did, but inevitably it took them a long time to shake off their background. Donald was bound to be a bit genteel, for all his cleverness. All the same, Robin reflected, he'd taken that bit of advice he'd given him very well; he seemed to bear no resentment. He dismissed Donald from his mind with the comforting thought that there was another human being who had responded to the right sort of treatment.

He turned his thoughts to Pelican. It looked pretty certain now that the poor fellow was going to take the rap, but he'd pretty near brought his fellow directors round to accepting the idea of offering that executive post, with a few shares to give the chap a bit of incentive. John would be sure to crow over his disgraceful victory at the party; and then, Robin thought, he'd be able to announce Pelican's new appointment. Not that John would care so much, but it would be a moral triumph. With this sense of moral glow upon him, Robin turned and asked the chauffeur after his wife, but he did not hear the answer because he suddenly remembered Elvira. Robin was always suddenly remembering the fact that he had lost her, suffering a sense of void and defeat; nevertheless, though he hardly cared to admit it to himself, he felt a strange, new sense of ease in no longer having a divided life. The last few weeks of the
affaire,
with their accompaniment of scenes and tears, had proved very disagreeable. He had no talent for
Sturm
und
Drang.
Not, he reflected, that his passion had been less than other men's; he had suffered and was suffering deeply, but he supposed he was a bit of a fatalist, or, without boasting, a little more adult in his adaptation to life. Timothy would never know how much he owed in stability to his father's basically integrated character. Once again he glowed and asked the somewhat surprised chauffeur after his wife.

The Middleton Hall in which Donald gave his lecture was a large Lutyens Georgian building presented to the firm by the family in memory of Gerald's father. It served for all forms of communal entertainment. A bust of Gerald's mother stood on the platform by the side of an old grand piano. On the walls hung photographs of works dances and works football and cricket teams. At the far end of the room there was a large portrait of Gerald's father in rather bad modern Academy style.

Donald's audience was not so large as it had been for the first lectures, but even now there was a fair number - those who, in the manner of Cressett, thirsted for knowledge of any kind whatsoever; those who thought that their presence at the lectures of Robin's brother-in-law would be noticed and earn them promotion; and those who had hoped that they might trap Donald into some mistake and earn a reputation for standing no nonsense from the powers that be. There were still a few of the managerial staff and of the trade union officials who attended from a mixture of all three motives.

Donald's theme this evening was Industry and Ethics. He spoke first in praise of the medieval world in which industry and commerce, like all other human activities, found their place in an ordered scheme. He mentioned the ban on usury, and the fair wage. With gathering sarcasm he described the greater freedom, the more individual ethic that had come with the Reformation. He mentioned the blessings of exploitation, child labour, slum dwellings, and so on that had accompanied the free expansion first of commerce and then of industry - the substitution of man as an economic unit for man as an immortal soul. It was clear, competently told, and unashamedly partisan. His irony, however, grew deeper as he went on to speak of the liberal and socialistic ethics by which competitive man had attempted to palliate the results of his destruction of the Christian order. His greatest scorn was reserved for the sentimentalism of welfare ethics.