“Doesn’t he ever go to sea?”
“At present he is at the Admiralty; and, I believe, starting some leave at any moment. However, I suppose it is better to have him living in the house than arriving there at all hours of the day and night disturbing the servants.”
This sketch of Buster evoked an impression of behaviour decidedly unsatisfactory; and for the rest of the journey I was curious to meet someone of mature years and such apparently irregular habits. When we arrived in London, Stringham explained that he wanted to buy some tropical clothes; and, as this proved an amusing occupation, we did not reach the house again until late in the morning; having delivered the luggage there on our arrival. It was a rather gloomy double-fronted façade in a small street near Berkeley Square: the pillars of the entrance flanked on either side with hollow cones for the linkmen to extinguish their torches,
“Come up to the library,” Stringham said. “We shall probably find Buster there.”
I followed up the stairs into a room on the first floor, generally crimson in effect, containing a couple of large Regency bookcases. A female portrait, by appearance a Romney, hung over the fireplace, and there was a malachite urn of immense size on a marble-topped table by the window: presented, I learnt later, by the Tsar to one of the Warringtons who had headed some diplomatic mission to Russia at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Buster was standing beside this urn, cleaning a cigarette-holder with the end of a match-stick. He was tall, and at once struck me as surprisingly young; with the slightly drawn expression that one recognises in later life as the face of a man who does himself pretty well, while not ceasing to take plenty of exercise. His turn-out was emphatically excellent, and he diffused waves of personality, strong, chilling gusts of icy air, a protective element that threatened to freeze into rigidity all who came through the door, before they could approach him nearer.
“Hallo, you fellows,” he said, without looking up from his cigarette-holder, at which he appeared to be sneering, as if this object were not nearly valuable enough to presume to belong to him.
“Hallo.”
Stringham took a step forward, and, without moving farther into the room, stood for a moment looking more than ever like Veronese’s Alexander. Then he introduced me. Buster slipped his cigarette-holder into his pocket, and nodded. He had a way of making one feel remarkably ill at ease. He said: “It’s a blow, but I have to leave you.”
“Aren’t you lunching here?” said Stringham.
“I am trying to buy a Bentley from a man awfully cheap. I’ve got to keep him sweet.”
“Did you sell the Isotta?”
“I had to.”
Buster smiled a little sadly, as if in half public acknowledgment that he himself had long since seen through any illusions once possessed regarding the extent of his wife’s fortune; but indicating by the same smile that he had learnt how to bear his disappointment. Stringham said: “Where are you taking him?”
“Claridge’s.”
“Will you ply him with drink?”
“Hock, I think. That is what I am feeling like myself. Are you coming to the Russian Ballet to-night?”
“I didn’t know I was asked,” Stringham said. “I’d like to.”
“Do.”
“Anyone for lunch?”
“Only Tuffy. She will be glad to see you.”
“Then we will wish you good luck with your deal.”
I was conscious that some sort of a duel had been taking place, and that Stringham had somehow gained an advantage by, as it were, ordering Buster from the room. Buster himself began to smile, perhaps recognising momentary defeat, to be disregarded from assurance of ultimate victory. Like a man effortlessly winning a walking-race, he crossed the carpet with long, easy strides: at the same time separating from himself some of the eddies of cold air that surrounded him, and bequeathing them to the atmosphere of the room after he had left it. I was relieved at his departure. Stringham moved across to the window. He said: “He gets himself up rather like Peter Templer, doesn’t he?”
“Have they ever met?”
To my surprise, Stringham laughed aloud.
“Good Lord, no,” he said.
“Wouldn’t they like each other?”
“It is an interesting question.”
“Why not try it?”
“I am devoted to Peter,” Stringham said, “but really I’m not sure one could have him in the house, could one?”
“Oh?”
“Well, I don’t really mean that,” said Stringham. “Not literally, of course. But you must admit that Peter doesn’t exactly fit in with home life.”
“I suppose not.”
“You agree?”
“I see what you mean.”
I certainly saw what Stringham meant; even though the sort of home life that included Buster provided a picture rather different from that which the phrase ordinarily suggested to me from my own experience. At the moment however, I was chiefly conscious of a new balance of relationship between Stringham and Templer. Although their association together possessed a curiously unrelenting quality, like the union of partners in a business rather than the intimacy of friends, I had always thought of Templer as a far closer and more established crony of Stringham’s than was I myself; and it had never crossed my mind that Stringham might share at all the want of confidence that, at least in the earlier stages of our acquaintance, I had sometimes felt towards Templer. Templer certainly did not appear to be designed for domestic life: though for that matter the same might be said of Stringham. Before I could ponder the question further, someone descending the stairs passed in through the door left ajar by Buster. Catching sight of this person, Stringham called out: “Tuffy, how are you?”
The woman who came into the room was about thirty or thirty-five, I suppose, though at the time she impressed me as older. Dressed in black, she was dark and not bad-looking, with a beaky nose. “Charles,” she said; and, as she smiled at him, she seemed so positively delighted that her face took on a sudden look of intensity, almost of anxiety, the look that women’s faces sometimes show at a moment of supreme pleasure.
That quick avid glance disappeared immediately, though she continued to smile towards him.
“This is Miss Weedon,” said Stringham, laughing in a friendly way, as he took her left hand in his right. “How have you been, Tuffy?”
Though less glacial than Buster, Miss Weedon was not overwhelmingly affable when she gave me a palm that felt cool and brittle. She said in an aside: “You know they nearly forgot to take a ticket for you for the Russian Ballet to-night.”
“Good gracious,” said Stringham. “What next?”
However, he did not show any sign of being specially put out by this lapse on the part of his family.
“I saw to it that they got an extra one.”
“Thank you, Tuffy.”
She had perhaps hoped for something more exuberant in the way of gratitude, because her face hardened a little, while she continued to fix him with her smile.
“We have just been talking to Buster,” Stringham said, plainly dismissing the subject of the tickets.
She put her head a little on one side and remarked: “I am sure that he was as charming as ever.”
“If possible, even more so.”
“Buster has been behaving very well,” she said.
“I am glad to hear it.”
“Now I must rush off and do some things for your mother before luncheon.”
She was gone in a flash. Stringham yawned. I asked about Miss Weedon. Stringham said: “Tuffy. Oh, she used to be my sister’s governess. She stays here a lot of the time. She does all my mother’s odd jobs – especially the Hospital.”
He laughed, as if at the thought of the preposterous amount of work that Miss Weedon had to undertake. I was not very clear as to what “the Hospital” might be; but accepted it as an activity natural enough for Mrs. Foxe.
“Tuffy is a great supporter of mine,” Stringham add
ed: as if in explanation of something that needed explaining.
He did not extend this statement. A moment or two later his mother appeared. I thought her tremendously beautiful: though smaller than the photograph in Stringham’s room had suggested. Still wearing a hat, she had just come into the house. She kissed him, and said: “Everything is in a terrible muddle. I really can’t decide whether or not I want to go to Glimber for Christmas. I feel one ought to; but it is so frightfully cold.”
“Come to Kenya with me, instead,” said Stringham. “Glimber is much too draughty in the winter. Anyway, it would probably kill Buster, who is used to snug cabins.”
“It would be rather fun to spend Christmas on the boat.”
“Too jolly for words,” said Stringham. “Buster had to lunch out. Did you see him?”
“I hear he is buying a new car.”
“He really did need one,” she said. This could hardly have been meant for an apology, but her voice sounded a little apprehensive. Changing the subject, she turned to me and said: “I think poor Mr. Le Bas must be so glad that Charles has left at last. He used to write the most pathetic letters about him. Still, you weren’t expelled, darling. That was clever of you.”
“It took some doing,” Stringham said. In view of their relationship, this manner of talking was quite unlike anything I had been used to; though, in a general way, fitting the rough outline pieced together from scraps of information regarding his home, or stories about his mother, that Stringham had from time to time let fall. He had, for example, once remarked that she liked interfering in political matters, and I wondered whether some startling intrigue with a member, or members of the Cabinet would be revealed during luncheon, which was announced a minute or two later. Miss Weedon came down the stairs after us, and, before following into the dining-room, had some sort of a consultation with the footman, to whom she handed a sheaf of papers. As we sat down, Stringham said: “I hear we are going to the Russian Ballet to-night.”
“It was Buster’s idea. He thought you would like it.”
“That was kind of him.”
“I expect you boys – can I still call you boys – are going to a matinee this afternoon.”
I told her that I had, unfortunately, to catch a train to the country.
“Oh, but that is too sad,” she said, seeming quite cast down. “Where are you making for?” I explained that the journey was to the west of England, where my father was on the staff of a Corps Headquarters. Thinking that the exigencies of army life might in all likelihood be unfamiliar to her, I added something about often finding myself in a place different from that in which I had spent previous holidays.
“I know all about the army,” she said. “My first husband was a soldier. That was ages ago, of course. Even apart from that we had a house on the Curragh, because he used to train his horses there – so that nothing about soldiering is a mystery to me.”
There was something curiously overpowering about her. Now she seemed to have attached the army to herself, like a piece of property rediscovered after lying for long years forgotten. Lord Warrington had, it appeared, commanded a cavalry brigade before he retired. She told stories of the Duke of Cambridge, and talked of Kitchener and his collection of china.
“Are you going to be a soldier too?” she asked.
“No.”
“I think Charles ought. Anyway for a time. But he doesn’t seem awfully keen.”
“No,” said Stringham, “he doesn’t.”
“But your father liked his time in the Grenadiers,” she insisted. “He always said it did him a lot of good.”
She looked so beseeching when she said this that Stringham burst out laughing; and I laughed too. Even Miss Weedon smiled at the notion that anything so transitory as service with the Grenadiers could ever have done Stringham’s father good. Stringham himself had seemed to be on the edge of one of his fits of depression; but now he cheered up for a time: though his mother seemed to exhaust his energies and subdue him. This was not surprising, considering the force of her personality, which perhaps explained some of Buster’s need for an elaborate mechanism of self-defence. Except this force, which had something unrestrained, almost alien, about it, she showed no sign whatever of her South African origin. It is true that I did not know what to expect as outward marks of such antecedents; though I had perhaps supposed that in some manner she would be less assimilated into the world in which she now lived. She said: “This is the last time you will see Charles until he comes back from Kenya.”
“We meet in the autumn.”
“I wish I wasn’t going,” Stringham said. “It really is the most desperate bore. Can’t I get out of it?”
“But, darling, you are sailing in two days’ time. I thought you wanted to go. And your father would be so disappointed.”
“Would he?”
His mother sighed. Stringham’s despondency, briefly postponed, was now once more in the ascendant. Miss Weedon said with emphasis: “But you will be back soon.”
Stringham did not answer; but he shot her a look almost of hatred. She was evidently used to rough treatment from him, because she appeared not at all put out by this, and rattled on about the letters she had been writing that morning. The look of disappointment she had shown earlier was to be attributed, perhaps, to her being still unaccustomed to having him at home again, with the kindness and cruelties his presence entailed for her. The meal proceeded. Miss Weedon and Mrs. Foxe became involved in a discussion as to whether or not the head-gardener at Glimber was selling the fruit for his own profit. Stringham and I talked of school affairs. The luncheon party – the whole house – was in an obscure way depressing. I had looked forward to coming there, but was quite glad when it was time to go.
“Write and tell me anything that may happen,” said Stringham, at the door. “Especially anything funny that Peter may do.”
I promised to report any of Templer’s outstanding adventures, and we arranged to meet in nine or ten months’ time.
“I shall long to come back to England,” Stringham said. “Not that I specially favour the idea of universities. Undergraduates all look so wizened, and suede shoes appear to be compulsory.”
Berkeley Square, as I drove through it, was cold and bright and remote: like Buster’s manner. I wondered how it would be to return to school with only the company of Templer for the following year; because there was no one else with any claim to take Stringham’s place, so that Templer and I would be left alone together. Stringham’s removal was going to alter the orientation of everyday life. I found a place in a crowded compartment, next to the engine, beside an elderly man wearing a check suit, who, for the whole journey, quarrelled quietly with a clergyman on the subject of opening the window, kept on taking down a dispatch-case from the rack, and rummaging through it for papers that never seemed to be there, and in a general manner reminded me of the goings-on of Uncle Giles.
*
Uncle Giles’s affairs had, in fact, moved recently towards something like a climax. After nearly two years of silence – since the moment when he had disappeared into the fog, supposedly on his way to Reading – nothing had been heard of him; until one day a letter had arrived, headed with the address of an hotel in the Isle of Man, the contents of which implied, though did not state, that he intended to get married. In anticipation of this contingency, my uncle advocated a thorough overhaul of the conditions of the Trust; and expressed, not for the first time, the difficulties that lay in the path of a man without influence.
This news caused my parents some anxiety; for, although Uncle Giles’s doings during the passage of time that had taken place were unknown in detail, his connection with Reading had been established, with fair certainty, to be the result of an association with a lady who lived there: some said a manicurist: others the widow of a garage-proprietor. There was, indeed, no reason why she should not have sustained both roles. The topic was approached in the family circle with even more gloom, and horrified curiosity, than
Uncle Giles’s activities usually aroused: misgiving being not entirely groundless, since Uncle Giles was known to be almost as indiscriminate in dealings with the opposite sex as he was unreliable in business negotiation. His first serious misadventure, when stationed in Egypt as a young man, had, indeed, centred upon a love affair.
It was one of Uncle’Giles’s chief complaints that he had been “put” into the army – for which he possessed neither Mrs. Foxe’s romantic admiration nor her hard-headed grasp of military realities – instead of entering some unspecified profession in which his gifts would have been properly valued. He had begun his soldiering in a line regiment: later, with a view to being slightly better paid, exchanging into the Army Service Corps. I used to imagine him wearing a pill-box cap on the side of his head, making assignations under a sub-tropical sun with a beautiful lady dressed in a bustle and sitting in an open carriage driven by a coloured coachman; though such attire, as a matter of fact, belonged to a somewhat earlier period; and, even if circumstances resembled this picture in other respects, the chances were, on the whole, that assignations would be made, and kept, “in mufti.”
There had been, in fact, two separate rows, which somehow became entangled together: somebody’s wife, and somebody else’s money: to say nothing of debts. At one stage, so some of his relations alleged, there had even been question of court-martial: not so much to incriminate my unfortunate uncle as to clear his name of some of the rumours in circulation. The court-martial, perhaps fortunately, was never convened, but the necessity for Uncle Giles to send in his papers was unquestioned. He travelled home by South Africa, arriving in Cape Town a short time before the outbreak of hostilities with the Boers. In that town he made undesirable friends – no doubt also encountering at this period Mrs. Foxe’s father – and engaged in unwise transactions regarding the marketing of diamonds; happily not involving on his part any handling of the stones themselves. This venture ended almost disastrously; and, owing to the attitude taken up by the local authorities, he was unable to settle in Port Elizabeth, where he had once thought of earning a living. However, like most untrustworthy persons, Uncle Giles had the gift of inspiring confidence in a great many people with whom he came in contact. Even those who, to their cost, had known him for years, sometimes found difficulty in estimating the lengths to which he could carry his lack of reliability – and indeed sheer incapacity – in matters of business. When he returned to England he was therefore seldom out of a job, though usually, in his own words, “starting at the bottom” on an ascent from which great things were to be expected.
A Question of Upbringing Page 6