The Valley of Bones (19 page)

‘Didn’t the Lovells talk about someone
called Pennistone when they came back from Venice? I remember Chips explaining
that he was no relation to the Huntercombes, because the name was spelt with a
double-n. I have an idea Pennistone lives in Venice – some story of a
contessa,
beautiful but not very young. That’s how I’m beginning
to feel myself.’

‘Anyway, it’s nice to meet again,
darling.’

‘It’s been a long time.’

‘A bloody long time.’

‘It certainly has.’

Later that weekend, when I found him
pacing the lawn, Umfraville himself
supplied some of the background wanting in his own story.

‘Look here, old boy,’ he said, when I
joined him, ‘how do you think you and the others are going to stand up to
having me as a brother-in-law?’

‘A splendid prospect.’

‘Not everyone would think so,’ he
said. ‘You know I must be insane to embrace matrimony again. Stark, staring
mad. But not half as mad as Frederica to take me on. Do you realize she’ll be my
fifth? Something wrong with a man who keeps marrying like that. Must be. But I
really couldn’t resist Frederica. That prim look of hers. All the same, fancy
her accepting me. You’d never expect it, would you. All that business of her
emptying the royal slops. She’ll have to give up that occupation of course. No
good trying to be an Extra Woman of the Bedchamber with me in the offing. Not a
bloody bit of use. You can just picture H.M. saying: “Why’s that fellow turned
up again? I remember him. He used to be a captain in my Brigade of Guards. I
had to get rid of him. He’s a no-gooder. What does he mean by showing his ugly
face again at Buck House? I won’t stand it. Off with his head.” You agree, don’t
you?’

‘I see what you mean.’

Umfraville stared at me with bloodshot
eyes. When we had first met at Foppa’s, I had wondered whether he was not a
little mad. The way he spoke now, even though it made me laugh, created the
same disquieting impression. He nodded his head, smiling to himself, still
contemplating his own characteristics with absolute absorption. I suddenly saw
that Umfraville had been quite right when he said he was like Odo Stevens. Here
again was an almost perfect narcissism, joined in much the same manner to a
great acuteness of observation and relish for life.

‘You’re going to have a professional
cad for a brother-in-law, old boy,’ he said, ‘make no mistake about that. Just
to show you I know what I’m talking about when I apply that label to myself, I’ll
confide a secret. I was the one who took our little friend Flavia’s virginity
in Kenya years ago. Still, if that were the worst thing that ever happened to
poor Flavia, she wouldn’t have had much to complain about. Fancy being married
to Cosmo Flitton and Harrison F. Wisebite in one lifetime.’

‘Isobel and I had already discussed
whether you and Mrs Wisebite had ever been in bed together.’

‘You had? That shows you’re a
discerning couple. She’s a bright girl, your wife. Well, the answer is in the
affirmative. You knew Flavia’s brother Charles, didn’t you?’

‘I used to know him well. I haven’t
seen him for years.’

‘Met Charles Stringham in Kenya too.
Came out for a month or two when he was quite a boy. I liked him very much.
Then he took to drink, like so many other good chaps. Flavia says he has
recovered now, and is in the army. Charles used to talk a lot about that
bastard, Buster Foxe, whom their mother married when she and Boffles Stringham
parted company. Charles hated Buster’s guts.’

‘I haven’t seen Commander Foxe for
ages.’

‘Neither have I, thank God, but I hear
he’s in the neighbourhood. At your brother-in-law, Lord Warminster’s home, in
fact. He’ll soon be my brother-in-law, too. Then there’ll be hell to pay.’

‘But what on earth is Buster, a
sailor, doing at Thrubworth? I thought it was a Corps Headquarters.’

‘Thrubworth isn’t an army set-up any
longer. It’s still requisitioned, but they turned the place into one of those
frightfully secret inter-service organisations. Buster has dug himself in
there.’

‘Are they still letting Erry and
Blanche inhabit their end of the house.’

‘Don’t object, so far as I hear.’

No very considerable adjustment had
been necessary when Thrubworth had been taken over by the Government at the
beginning of the war. Erridge, in any case, had been living in only a small
part of the mansion (seventeenth-century brick, fronted in the eighteenth
century with stone), his sister, Blanche, housekeeping for him. Although the
place was only twenty or thirty miles from Frederica’s village, there was little
or no communication between Erridge and the rest of his family. Since the
outbreak of war he had become, so Isobel told me, less occupied than formerly
with the practical side of politics, increasingly devoting himself to books
about the Anabaptists and revolutionary movements of the Middle Ages.

‘Buster’s a contemporary of mine,’
said Umfraville, ‘a son-of-a-bitch in the top class. I’ve never told you my
life story, have I?’

‘Not yet.’

‘You’ll hear it often enough when we
become brothers-in-law,’ he said, ‘so I’ll start by revealing only a little
now.’

Once more I thought of Odo Stevens.

‘My father bred horses for a living,’
said Umfraville. ‘It was a precarious vocation and his ways were improvident.
However, he had the presence of mind to marry the daughter of a fairly
well-to-do manufacturer of machinery for the production of elastic webbing.
That allowed for a margin of unprofitable deals in bloodstock. If I hadn’t
learnt to ride as a boy, I don’t know where I should have been. There was some
crazy idea of turning me into a land-agent. Then the war came in 1914 and I got
off on my own. Found my way into one of the newly formed Guards battalions.
There had been terrific expansion and they didn’t turn up their noses at me and
many another like me. In fact some of my brother officers were heels such as
you’ve never set eyes on. I never looked back after that. Not until I fell foul
of Buster Foxe. If it hadn’t been for Buster, I
might have
been major-general now, commanding London District, instead of counting myself
lucky to be a humble member of its Movement Control staff.’

‘You remained on after the war with a
regular commission?’

‘That was it,’ said Umfraville. ‘I
expect you’ve heard of a French marshal called Lyautey. Pacified North Africa
and all that. Do you know what Lyautey said was the first essential of an
officer? Gaiety. That was what Lyautey thought, and he knew his business. His
own ideas of gaiety may not have included the charms of the fair sex, but that’s
another matter. Well, how much gaiety do you find among most of the palsied
crackpots you serve under? Precious little, you can take it from me. It was my
intention to master a military career by taking a leaf out of Lyautey’s book – not
as regards neglecting the ladies, but in other respects. First of all it worked
pretty well.’

‘But what has Buster Foxe to do with
Marshal Lyautey?’

‘I’m coming to that,’ said Umfraville.
‘Ever heard of a girl called Dolly Braybrook?’

‘No.’

‘Dolly was my first wife. Absolute
stunner. Daughter of a fellow who’d formerly commanded the Regiment. Bloody
Braybrook, her father was universally termed throughout the army, and with
reason. She wouldn’t have me at first, and who should blame her. Asked her
again and again. The answer was always no. Then one day she changed her mind,
the way women do. That pertinacity of mine has gone now. All the same, its loss
has confirmed my opinion that the older I get, the more attractive I am to
women.’

‘It certainly
looks like it.’

‘Formerly, there was all
that business of “Not tonight, darling, because I don’t
love you enough”, then “Not tonight, darling,
because I love you too much” – Christ, I’ve been through the
whole range of it. The nearest some women get to being faithful to their
husband is making it unpleasant for their
lover. However, that’s by the way. The point is
that
Dolly married me in the end.’

‘How long did it last?’

‘A year or two. Happy as the day’s
long, at least I was. I’d been appointed adjutant too. Then Buster Foxe
appeared on the horizon. He was stationed at Greenwich at the time – the Naval
College. I used to play an occasional game of cards with him and other
convivial souls when he came up west. What should happen but under my very nose
Dolly fell in love with Buster.’

The exaggerated dramatic force
employed by Umfraville in presenting his narrative made it hard to know what
demeanour best to adopt in listening to the story. Tragedy might at any moment
give way to farce, so that the listener had always to keep his wits about him.
When I first met Umfraville I had noticed some resemblance to Buster Foxe, now
revealed as that similarity companionship in early life confers on people.

‘It was just the moment when the
Battalion was moving from Buckingham Gate to Windsor,’ Umfraville said. ‘I had
to go with them, of course, while Dolly stayed in London, until we could find
somewhere to live. I went up to see her one day. Arrived home. The atmosphere
was a shade chilly. The next thing was Dolly told me she wanted a divorce.’

‘A complete surprise?’

‘Old boy, you could have knocked me
down with a swizzle-stick. Always the way, of course. Nothing I could say was
any good. Dolly was set on marriage to Buster. In the end I agreed. There was
no way out. I suppose I might have shot Buster through the head, if I’d got
close enough to him, even though it is only the size of a nut. What the hell
good would that have done? Besides, I’d have run quite a chance of swinging in
this country. It’s not like France, where they expect you to react strongly. So
I settled down to do the gentlemanly thing, and provide evidence for Dolly to
divorce me. I was quite well ahead with that when Buster found Amy Stringham,
Flavia’s mama, was just as anxious to marry him as Dolly was. Now it didn’t
take Buster long to work out that marriage to a lady with some very warm South
African gold holdings, not to mention a life interest in her first husband Lord
Warrington’s estate, stud and country mansion, would be more profitable than a
wife like Dolly, one of a large family without a halfpenny to bless herself
with. Mrs Stringham was a few years older than Buster, it’s true, but she was
none the less a beauty. We all had to admit that.’

Umfraville paused.

‘Next thing I heard,’ he said, ‘was
that Dolly had taken an overdose of sleeping pills.’

‘Divorce proceedings had started?’

‘Not so far as that they couldn’t have
been put in reverse gear. I suppose Dolly thought it too late in the day to
suggest return, though there’s nothing I’d have liked better.’

‘But why did that prevent you from
Commanding London District?’

‘That’s a sensible question, old boy.
The reason was this. I had to leave the service – abandon my gallant and
glorious Regiment. I’ll explain. You see I wasn’t feeling too good after my
poor wife Dolly decided to join the angels, and naturally I looked about for
someone to console me. Found several, as a
matter of fact. The one I liked best was a girl I met one night at the
Cavendish called Joy Grant – at least that was her
professional name, and a very suitable one too – so I thought I might as well
marry her. Of course, there couldn’t be any
question of staying in the Regiment, if I married Joy. To begin
with, I should have been hard put to it to name a brother officer who hadn’t
shared the same idyllic experiences as myself in that respect. I sent in my papers and made up
my mind to up stumps and emigrate with my blushing bride. Thought I’d try
Kenya, the great open spaces where men are men, as Charles Stringham used to
say. Well, Joy and I had scarcely arrived in the hotel at Nairobi when it
became abundantly clear we had made a mistake in becoming man and wife. We were
already living what’s called a cat-and-dog life. In short, it wasn’t long
before she went off with a fellow called Castlemallock, twice her age, who
looked like an ostler suffering from a dose of clap.’

‘The Corps School of Chemical Warfare
is at a house called Castlemallock.’

‘That’s the family. They used to live
there until they lost all their money a generation or two ago. Castlemallock
himself, marquess or not, was a common little fellow, but what was much worse,
so far as he himself was concerned, was the fact that he found he couldn’t
perform with Joy in Kenya. He thought it might have something to do with the
climate, the altitude, so he took her back to England to see if he could make
better going there, or at least consult a competent medical man about getting a
shot of something to liven him up occasionally. However, he took too long to
find the right specialist, and meanwhile Joy went off with Jo Breen, the
jockey, the chap who was suspended one year at Cheltenham for pulling
Middlemarch. They keep a pub together now in one of those little places in the
Thames Valley, and overcharge you most infamously if you ever drop in for a
talk about old times.’

Umfraville paused again. He took out a
cigarette case and offered it to
me.

‘Now this business of wives departing
was beginning to get me down,’ he said. ‘It seemed to be becoming a positive
habit. This time, I thought, I’ll be the one to do the cattle rustling, so I
removed from him the wife of a District Commissioner.
There was no end of trouble about that. When I previously found myself in that
undignified position, I’d behaved like a gent. This fellow, the husband, didn’t
see things in that light at all. I found myself in a perfect rough-house.’

He lit a cigarette and sighed.

‘How did it end?’

‘We got married,’ he said, ‘but she
died of enteric six months later. You see I don’t have much luck with wives.
Then you were present yourself when I met little Anne Stepney at Foppa’s. You
know the end of the story. That was a crazy thing to do, to marry Anne, if ever
there was. Anyway, it didn’t last long. Least said, soonest mended. But now I’ve
turned over a new leaf. Frederica is going to be my salvation. The model
married couple. I’m going to find my way out of Movement Control, and once more
set about becoming a general, just as I was before being framed by Buster.
Frederica is going to make a first-class general’s wife. Don’t you agree? My
God, I never dreamed I’d marry one of Hugo Warminster’s daughters, and I don’t
expect he did either.’