The Last Houseparty (13 page)

“He did it. He earned his gongs twice over. He could have got himself invalided out after …”

“You'd have taken the same line, wouldn't you, Vince?”

“Hope so. You can never be sure till it happens.”

“True, Vince, true. I withdraw the word ‘stuff' and all imputations implied therein. But doesn't it strike you as odd that Charles has never held office?”

“Better off out of it. He can say what he likes.”

“I don't believe it's been his choice. He would like power. In certain ways he's not enormously different from Dibs. But he's never been offered power because everyone recognises he won't be any use in a team. In political terms, he's unable to accept the responsibilities of the adult world. The vision of oneself as the solitary hero is something most of us grow out of before we're twenty, but Charles never has. Remember who Peter Pan loves?”

“That sickening girl. Forgotten her name.”

“Wendy. I do think it's possible Charles …”

“If it is it's no excuse. You keep saying people can't help it because they're like that. You said it about Zena yesterday. You said it about Dibs. Now you're saying it about Charles. D'you mean it, Hal? I want to know. Or are you just talking?”

“I mean it, I think. But it doesn't really make a lot of difference, Vince.”

“It seems to me it makes all the difference in the world.”

“Not really. Let's suppose, just for the sake of argument, Charles is physically attracted to little girls. Let's suppose, further, that the reason for this is either (a) that he had a perfectly frightful mother or (b) that instead of getting a packet in his spine in 'eighteen he got a bit of shrapnel through his skull, which affected his personality. Now in case (b) we would feel a good deal of sympathy for him, especially if he managed his problems the way he seems to, with a certain discretion, though ultimately it would depend of course on the effect of his activities on the other partner. Small girls aren't necessarily innocent little wax dolls—young Sally, for instance, when she clings to one like that, has at least half an idea what she's up to.”

“Rot.”

“Oh, I don't know. It isn't only for the fun of holding the steering wheel that she wants to sit on one's lap and drive. But to get back to Charles. What I'm trying to say is that I don't see any moral difference between case (b) and case (a). After all, you've got as good an idea as anybody what it's like to have a tricky relationship with one's mother. You aren't going to tell me that's your fault, Vince …”

“Let's talk about something else.”

“Right you are. Remember you began it by asking. May I go back to Joan?”

“If you like.”

“Her husband was a soldier too, you know?”

“Was? I'd gathered …”

“Yes. Still with us, unfortunately. Resigned his commission.” “Want me to find out why?”

“Drink, apparently.”

“What's he up to now?”

“Farming in Kenya.”

“Not much help with the drink problem, I'd have thought.”

“He wants Joan to send Sally out to live with him.”

“Oh. I suppose she …”

“No, she's rather tempted. She's not a very dedicated mamma. It must be a bit of a shock, Vince, to have a child, to bear it out of your own body, and then find out you don't love it, aren't even specially interested in it. I say, I wonder whether that was what happened to Charles.”

“What happened to Charles was that he enlisted in 1914. He got blown up in 1915. He spent eight months in hospital. He then wangled his way back to France and got blown up again in 1918. He is in pain a lot of the time and discomfort all the time because of that corset contraption he has to wear. His politics are tosh, but he's a very brave man. You might at least give him the benefit of the doubt.”

“Henceforth. Promise. After all in a year or two we'll be going through all that ourselves. Looking forward to it, Vince?”

“Not a lot. We're nothing like ready for it, for a start. And there's bound to be conscription, which means getting swamped by hordes of civilians. You sound almost keen.”

“Almost is right. In fact there are moments when I find myself thinking Rupert Brooke wasn't quite as awful as I have to pretend he is. He did actually feel like that, though it didn't turn out anything like he'd imagined, and it won't in our case, either. Still, I know in my bones the world is due for a bloody great shake-up, and it'll be hell while it happens, but interesting all the same to be there—something one shouldn't miss. A ghastly, harrowing play you've still got to see because otherwise you'll never be in the swim any more. You shake your head?”

“Simply no comprenny.”

“Does it ever strike you, Vince, what different people we are?”

“They've never stopped telling me. Aunts and people.”

“Down with aunts.”

“
Gott strafe Tanten
.”

“
Les tantes à la lanterne
.”

“Et cetera. You think they're right this time?”

“Mm … but I sometimes wonder what we'd have been like if we hadn't had each other to be different from.”

“Much the same, I'd have thought.”

“I can remember at Summerfields, when you made First XI from Middle School, I came to a quite conscious decision in my own mind that I wasn't going to compete. It seemed easy at the time, but all sorts of other things flowed from it. I suppose we would have been about ten—you don't think ahead much at that age. For instance, Mummy kept all my school reports. I was looking through them last winter. The first couple of years they were so-so. Then the ushers who actually taught me started getting enthusiastic, but at the same time G. B. began adding little notes saying I was in danger of becoming a bad influence. So I must, even then, have worked out that if I wasn't going to bother about games I'd better be good at my books—I mean, that would have been reasonably obvious. But as for becoming a professional Bolshie, I don't believe a ten-year-old would have sorted out that by rejecting part of the
mores
of his society he would find himself cast in that role. Then at Eton, there I was, still a Bolshie, and a tug to boot, and making another conscious decision that it was necessary to get elected to Pop. Therefore another layer of personality had to be invented—relaxed urbanity, intellectual sparkle and so on—all because when you were still in shorts you could bowl leg breaks and had a natural cover drive.”

“I think you'd have turned out much the same if I'd been a rabbit.”

“I don't know. There are times when I seem very conscious of my own personality as being largely my invention. I'm not saying I'm unique, mind you. Look at Purser. If he hadn't decided to be a butler he would have been a very different kettle of fish, don't you think?”

“Same goes for all of us, only we don't spend our time brooding on it. If you don't start dressing you'll be late for the gong.”

Harry didn't stir.

“By and large I agree with you,” he said. “Personalities are our own invention, but with a lot of people the process is unconscious. Even Uncle Snaily has decided somehow or other that he is going to be what he is. In a sense he is not responsible, because he hasn't been aware of deciding, let alone of the consequences. But in another sense they are his decisions, and the moral responsibility is his.”

“He's changed.”

“You think so? I've seen him more recently than you, so I suppose I don't find the difference so marked. If you're right, it might mean something new has happened, such as Zena booting him out of her bed. You know, by most people's standards he's led a peculiarly sheltered life. You'd think he could have grown to almost any shape he wanted, and yet he chose to finish up like this. The only things that have happened to him are Aunt Clara, and then Zena, coming and going so to speak. All three events could be considered trauma inducers in their very different ways. Of course that's the really interesting thing about anybody, how they adapt their personalities to events beyond their control. Do you remember the caddis flies in the tank in the nursery—dropping chips of broken bottle into the water and seeing how the little wrigglers built them into their tunnels, and if you gave them a wrong-sized chip they'd produce a bent tunnel? Especially at the start. Suppose God goes and drops a wrong-sized chip on you. You'd have to build it in somehow.”

Vincent was adjusting his braces so that the trousers of his mess uniform hung as he wanted them, pulled tight by the elastic tapes beneath the heels. The process was carried out without apparent thought, a merely physical concentration in the movement of the fingers.

“Three minutes to the gong,” he said.

“You could say God dropped awkward chips on both Charles and Dibs,” said Harry. “Dibs has produced a horrible twisted tunnel out of his, but Charles hasn't done too badly.”

“Two and a half minutes.”

“I am utterly content in my present posture. The world is the exact shape I would wish it. No mere moving of a clock face can force me to change it. You can be on time for both of us, Vince. Tell Zena McGrigor has taken my sock suspenders to balance the ball-cock in Uncle Snaily's bog.”

“McGrigor's been sacked,” said Vincent, slipping easily into his scarlet jacket, which until he put it on had looked strangely too small for him.

“So he has. How peculiar. A great event, almost unnoticed.”

“How long will you be?”

“I haven't the faintest idea. I am lying in a great daze of love like a perfect hot bath. I shall get out when it becomes too cold to be fun. Till then time has no meaning for me. The metronome has swung too far over, and stuck. McGrigor's been sacked. There's no one to wind the clock.”

“Mrs Dubigny won't be happy about that.”

“Perfectly right,” said Harry, swivelling himself round to sit on the edge of the bed and stretch, dark against gold sunlight. “The figures must continue to dance, for Joan's sake. I shall dance among them, and so will you. I'll be down by the second gong. Don't worry.”

VII

A
t the workbench in the Coach House Mr Mason was cutting a wheel. His shape was a hunched darkness against the yellow cone from his lamp. The electric motor sang, its note dropping as it took the load, descanted by the whine of the cutting-wheel. A few sparks, invisible in the lamplight, shot slantwise into being across the shadow cast by the bench. Mr Mason's attitude implied total concentration, without any tension. When he had cut a notch he did not rest, but undid the clamps, raised the marker, turned the wheel to the next point, fixed marker and clamps, checked briefly and then moved the cutter firmly against the metal to begin the next notch.

Miss Quintain, approaching him from behind the Rover, waited during this process, perhaps assuming that he would reach a point when it was natural to interrupt him. She continued to wait during the five minutes it took him to complete the next notch, and then as he withdrew the cutter stepped forward and touched him on the elbow.

He stayed quite still for several seconds. It was as though she had offered a stimulus to a creature of such slow reactions that it took that time for the nerve impulses to reach the brain. And when he moved to switch the motor off it was still with an almost dreamy stolidity.

“Good morning, Mr Mason. How are you getting on?”

“Slow but sure. How long have I been at it now? Getting on five weeks. Jack Robson's coming this afternoon, help me hang a cradle from the roof so I can get at the clock face. That's what usually stops one of these clocks, you know, running dry where the leading-off rod—that's the shaft to drive the hands—comes through into the open. Suppose I don't find much wrong there, all it'll need is a good grease up. I've one more wheel to cut like this—that's another morning—and the weights to hang and that'll be the going train done. I could have the hands turning for you next week.”

“That's marvellous. What about the figures?”

“Ah, now. First there's the striking train—two striking trains, really. The one for the hours is not so bad, but by the bells for the quarters is where the water came in worst when the roof was leaking. Some of the bell-cranks are rusted pretty near solid. There's several weeks' work there. After that you come to your figures. Them at the top—the noon strike—are not so bad, but down below you've had your carousel standing out always in the same place, all weathers, how many years is it? Getting on forty. If it hadn't been oak it would have been all crumbled to powder years ago. When the clock's going, you see, the carousel turns and there's time to dry off before it gets out in the rain again. Now I've that whole section to replace the timbers of. Then there's another part burnt in the fire, and the rods for all the figures, half of them's buckled, and there's gearing under the ones as have stood out in the open—I've not had a chance to look at them so far, so there's no knowing how bad that's rusted.

“It sounds a great deal of work.”

“We knew that all along, didn't we? Oh yes. Put wrong in a night, take a life to set right, as the saying goes.”

“Not really a life, I hope.”

“Well, getting on a year. If all goes well—remember that, Miss Quintain, I'm saying if all goes well—I'll have her running for you about March.”

“Oh dear. I'd been …”

“One thing you're going to have to ask yourself is do you want to have a man going up the tower day in day out to wind her up. The alternative is I fit you auto-winders.”

“How much would that cost?”

“I've got the catalogues at home. I could get you some figures out, but not far short of seven hundred each, I'd reckon. Call it four thousand quid.”

“Oh, dear. Would I be strong enough to do the winding?”

“Needs a man, really.”

“That means Jack Robson again, and … oh dear. I think you'll have to let me know about the auto-winders. Don't let's worry about it now. What I really came to say is that the weather forecast's tolerable for once, and it's Monday so I don't have to think about visitors. I was going to suggest we took our lunch out into the garden and you can tell me what you remember about meeting Harry.”

“It's not that much, Miss Quintain. I could tell you now, really.”

“I'd like to hear it down in the garden. Don't worry about it not being much. The smallest scrap is worth while. I'll get Jo-jo to take a basket down to the Rose Wall—she'll like that—then you and I can go round the long way. If I meet you out on the terrace in front of the morning room at half-past twelve …”

“Half-past twelve it is.”

Miss Quintain had already half turned to leave when she spoke again.

“You see,” she said. “About the auto-winders. I suppose I could afford them, but … I don't want to be rude, Mr Mason, but it all depends on whether the clock is really going to work. I can't have it going for a bit and stopping and being mended and going for a bit and stopping again, like it used to. The whole house used to be full of things like that—just working, but not really. I can't afford that any more.”

Mr Mason had his hand on the lever to raise the marker. He moved it slowly up before he spoke.

“When I've finished,” he said, “she'll go. Provided you keep the rain out and the pigeons, she'll go without anyone touching her for as long as she's been stopped. But give her a minor overhaul every ten years—I'll leave you a list of what needs looking at—and she'll go as long as this house has stood, and longer.”

“That's what I'd like,” said Miss Quintain. “I might afford the auto-winders if you'll promise me that.”

The spring of 1980 had been late and chill, and the summer started little better, so that any fine day seemed a festival. Miss Quintain came out on to the terrace already smiling. She was wearing a brown apron sewn with large pockets, and carrying an object like a walking stick but with a miniature hoe instead of a ferrule. She raised this to Mr Mason, half in greeting, half in explanation.

“It's one of the last Lord Snailwood's gadgets,” she said. “He adored gadgets, though they tell me he could hardly wind his own watch without breaking it. All the outhouses are stacked with the ones that didn't actually do what he wanted them for. This is one of the exceptions.”

Miss Quintain spoke of her predecessor in an odd tone, amusement predominating, but also an impatience that came near contempt. She hooked the handle of the implement into a special loop at the side of her apron and took out of one of the pockets a note-pad and pencil, then looked slowly round the terrace and made two or three notes. Out of doors her personality did not really alter, but showed itself in a new aspect. Her reserve, her slight over-precision of speech and gesture, became an expression of her relationship with her plants; she not only knew their names and needs but had chosen their individual sitings so that by flourishing there they should express the laxity, freedom and forthcomingness that might have seemed lacking in her. The stone lion at the eastern end of the terrace had its haunches swathed in trails of some spring clematis, now over, which made its air of total indifference and haughtiness decidedly comic, as though it still believed it owned the garden, when the garden now owned it. The plants in the cracks between the flagstones were some of them in theory weeds, some not; the distinction here seemed unreal.

“I do a tour of inspection once a week,” said Miss Quintain. “Otherwise things get out of hand without my noticing. I want you to see it with me because a lot of what I've done was really Harry's idea. This way.”

She walked to the top of the flight of steps at the western end of the terrace and stopped there. Though the lie of the land precluded any major alterations to the architecture of the garden at this upper level, it was still immensely changed since Lord Snailwood's day. Then, at this time of year, the visitor standing on the steps would have looked out over a sea of regimented rose bushes, echoed on the northern wall by close-pruned climbing roses. Beyond the end of the first terrace he would have seen the further half of the third, also massed with roses, reaching to the wall of holm oaks almost two hundred yards away, and as he walked in that direction and so brought into view the areas hidden by the fall of the ground he would have discovered nothing but yet more roses. Miss Quintain had retained only the perspective of distance down the centre, framing it between columnar cypresses beside the further steps, but blocking out the rest of the vista with an irregular planting of shrubs. A herbaceous border, deliberately old-fashioned and now at the peak of lushness, ran along the northern side of the terrace, the bulging brick retaining wall behind it swathed in intertwining climbers. The southern side was very plain, a brick balustrade, punctuated with urns, trailing a few silvery tendrils.

“We're very late this year,” said Miss Quintain. “Lady Northcliffe's beginning to make a good show at last.”

She pointed to a clematis displaying large blue plates of bloom. Mr Mason grunted. As he followed her round, gazing noncommittally at the green upthrusting hummocks in the border, his reserve, different in kind from Miss Quintain's, seemed accentuated. The garden might have been a foreign country and he a first-time visitor, fastidious not to offend local custom.

“Harry left me a lot of notes, you see,” said Miss Quintain. “Start with something formal—most people's idea of a garden—flowers, and a view. Then, suddenly, clutter.”

They had reached the flight of steps to the central terrace. She pointed down, a gesture dramatic by her subdued standards. There was no lawn, now. The whole space around the little belvedere was planted, except where narrow stone paths crisscrossed it in a diamond lattice. The eye's first impression—that something of practically everything was crammed into the area, from monstrous silvery thistles to almost lichen-like blotches of rock-huggers growing in the pavement cracks—was soon modified by the discovery that despite the uproarious growth the commonest colour of growth itself, the ordinary green of grass and leaf, was almost entirely missing. Even on a dull day the terrace would have declared itself appropriate to hot sun. On this fine morning it reeked of southern aromatic hills. Down among its density, with the view across the river deliberately hidden, isolation combined with the immense nostalgias of smell to produce in almost any visitor a sense of being an invader into privacies, privacies somehow connected with time, and with lost remembrance. One would not have been surprised to discover on the steps of the belvedere a brown-skinned child playing her invented game with a pattern of pebbles on the stones; but then, not finding her there, to experience a vague feeling that this was just as well because the child's existence precluded one's own. That world was lost to one.

“It's my favourite bit,” said Miss Quintain. “I do it all myself, because I don't like the idea of anyone else forking around in it.”

“The smell reminds me … I can't say what.”

“It's meant to.”

Mr Mason looked at her with a glance of definite suspicion.

“We needn't take any time over it now,” she said. “I'm going to have a go at it this afternoon. Now this is Mr Floyd's stamp collection.”

The final terrace allowed the view in again. The steepening contour narrowed the site and heightened the retaining wall to the north. This, with the flanking holm oaks, provided as much shelter as one could ever hope for on an English hillside. Various half-tender climbers, abutilons and such, mounted the wall, in front of which on irregular raised beds the so-called stamp collection grew, plantsman's stuff, mostly unremarkable at a distance though often immensely attractive seen close to. Mr Floyd and his fatter assistant were hand-weeding one of the beds, and when she reached them Miss Quintain stopped to talk. Mr Mason at once moved away and stood by the balustrade (much more entangled with creepers and climbers than that on the upper terrace had been allowed to become) where he gazed at the view, making no discernible movement until Miss Quintain came over to him.

“Now, just quickly through the Lower Garden,” she said. “We mustn't keep Jo-jo waiting.”

Despite her words, Miss Quintain stopped near the end of the terrace and gazed at the cliff of glittery leaves presented by the holm oaks.

“One of my gardening friends keeps telling me to grow some rampant great roses up through them,” she said. “It might look stunning, but … I feel they've a right to go on as they are, be what they've always been. They haven't changed, whatever else has. What do you think, Mr Mason?”

“I'm with you,” said Mr Mason firmly. “My experience, things are best left let be, 'less you can see they're going adrift. I don't imagine there's much can go wrong with a tree.”

“You know, the real reason why I don't want them full of roses is that there's rather a good climbing tree in there. It wouldn't be any use if it were full of rose stems. At one time I thought I might label the climbing trees for visiting children, grading them for difficulty, but the insurance people wouldn't let me unless I got all the parents to sign an indemnity. Too much fuss.”

Miss Quintain nodded, confirming the rightness of her decision, and strode briskly forward and down the flight of steps by the oaks. Mr Mason followed more slowly, moving not exactly cautiously but with a definite attention to the process natural to a man both heavy and elderly, and aware of what a fall down such a flight might do to him.

No longer constrained by the terracing the Lower Garden spread irregularly towards the river. The boundaries that divided section from section had been devised to appear accidental—a snaking line of trees by a stream, or a seemingly immemorial ha-ha—and though each section had what Miss Quintain explained as an “idea” of its own, the result gave the impression of having been arrived at as much by the quiet vote of the plants as by the dictatorship of the gardener. Conversation for a while diminished to a few horticultural mutters addressed by Miss Quintain to herself as, now making a definite effort to hurry, she inspected and took notes.