‘You two go about your game. When Lockhart and I have got to know each other we’ll come and join you before lunch.’ With this, Lord Auldearn gave a slight nod and walked away – so regardlessly that Mungo had to be thumbed by Ian into following him. Mungo wondered, indeed, whether he ought literally to follow his host or whether to draw abreast of him. He decided on the second course, but this didn’t result in conversation. They walked silently side by side through Bamberton for what Mungo began to reckon must be a quarter of a mile or thereabout. Only when they were passing through something that ought probably to be called a state apartment Lord Auldearn halted, touched Mungo’s arm, and silently faced him to a wall. He saw that what was before him was a Titian – an out-size Titian. Actaeon was having his dekko at Artemis, and was already sprouting horns – a phenomenon which was adding to the consternation of quite a number of naked nymphs. It was a tremendous Titian. Mungo gave it time, but uttered no enthusiastic or other comment. Lord Auldearn grunted and walked on. They passed through an enormous library, clothed to the ceiling with imposing and no doubt informative books, and suddenly ended up in quite a small room. Here there were a lot of books too – many of them rather shabby ones. It was an untidy but comfortable place. Mungo guessed that servants weren’t often tolerated in it. Lord Auldearn wagged a finger at a chair, went over to a shelf, and rummaged. He turned round and handed Mungo an open book.
‘Read me that,’ Lord Auldearn said, and sat down himself.
This was really startling. Not even Mungo’s tutor would issue so abrupt and arbitrary a command. Mungo looked at the page, and saw that what was before him was Tennyson’s ‘Frater Ave atque Vale’. He opened his mouth to say something, checked himself, and began to read the poem.
‘Row us out from Desenzano, to your Sirmione row!’ Mungo began. He didn’t dare to raise his eyes from the print, but was aware that Lord Auldearn was as immobile as something carved out of old ivory. At least it wasn’t a long poem, and Mungo got to the end of it. ‘Sweet Catullus’s all-but-island, olive-silvery Sirmio,’ he concluded – and closed the book, stood up, and handed it back to Lord Auldearn. He had the good sense to do so without saying anything at all.
‘Do you know who I last heard read that poem?’ the old man asked in his weary voice.
‘No, sir.’
‘Tennyson,’ Lord Auldearn said without emphasis.
This time, Mungo didn’t have to tell himself to keep his mouth shut. He had enough imagination to find the information overwhelming.
‘My parents were fond of that set: Tennyson himself, Gladstone, Allingham, Jowett, the Duke of Argyll. George Argyll, that would be.’ Lord Auldearn had paused to make sure of this point. ‘When one was on a day’s visit to Aldworth, it was the thing to take one’s children, so that they might remember having had a glimpse of the Laureate. I was quite old enough for that. I even remember being told that the poet had recently lost a son. That, of course, was Lionel, a very promising fellow. I thought it shocking and unnatural – a son’s dying before his father. I rather imagine I supposed it wasn’t permitted.’
Lord Auldearn paused again, and this time his chin sank a little on his chest, so that Mungo wondered what he should do if the old man fell asleep. But he had merely lapsed into a brooding abstraction, which Mungo now instantly understood. Lord Auldearn, too, had lost a son – and a son who had become a kind of peasant legend as the bad Lord Douglas.
‘Except in his grumpy moods’—Lord Auldearn was speaking quite unemotionally again—’Tennyson was fond of reading his poems aloud. And this is the one he read that afternoon. It had been written at Sirmione shortly after an earlier death in the family: that of one of his brothers, whose name escapes me.’
‘Charles,’ Mungo said. And having, as it were, broken his duck, he added: ‘It doesn’t seem a particularly suitable poem to read to a small boy.’
‘It was to my parents that he was reading it. He entertained me after what he judged to be a more appropriate fashion. The bard got down on his hands and knees and barked like a dog. I was much too well brought up not to demonstrate satisfaction. So he put on his famous black cloak, and waved it around, and croaked like a raven. It was all extremely nice of him – but it was the poem I remembered, all the same. You are the first person I have let read it to me since that notable day.’ Lord Auldearn paused yet again, and the momentary smile passed over his face. ‘Mungo Lockhart of the Lea,’ he added softly.
Mungo felt that he had been paid a fantastic compliment, and that its extravagance had been deftly redeemed by the hint of mockery in this last address. But he was startled as well.
‘That’s Ian’s joke,’ he said.
‘Of course it is. I make Ian write me a monthly letter. It’s an attention which the head of the family may properly exact. Do you agree?’
‘Yes, of course.’ Mungo was amused to have come upon the origin of one of Lord Robert Cardower’s conversational mannerisms. ‘And Ian has made quite a thing of me?’
‘Not that, at all.’ Lord Auldearn, who hadn’t got the wavelength here, looked almost startled. ‘Ian wouldn’t dine out on you, my dear lad, or exhibit you as a scalp or trophy or witness to some egalitarian spirit he may be affecting for a time. The Cardowers – and you are sufficiently perceptive to have grasped this – have been too high up for too long to have any notion of snobbery. The concept just doesn’t enter their heads.’
‘If that’s so, it’s because of their disposition, and not their station.’ Mungo was uncertain whether he was resenting the odd turn this talk had taken – but what he next said made it look as if he did. ‘Proust’s duchesses are as snobbish as anybody in his book.’
‘They’re not duchesses, you young donkey.’ Lord Auldearn’s smile came swiftly to the rescue of this outrageous apostrophe. ‘In French they’re duchesses, and six a penny. In any case, Proust was a Jew, and couldn’t know what he was talking about.’ The old man had produced this with a sudden snarl that didn’t witness too well to the Cardowers’ elevation above social prejudice. ‘You might as well cite a Hottentot or an American.’
Mungo ought perhaps to have found this freshly revealed side of Lord Auldearn horrifying, or at least alienating. But in fact he thought it rather comical – with the result that he unleashed, whether inappropriately or not, that large grin against which Ian had warned him upon a previous occasion. Surprisingly, this went down well.
‘I’m an addle-pated old man,’ Lord Auldearn said, ‘and express myself awkwardly. I only wanted to say that my grandson, if he makes a friend, will be wholly loyal to him. And he doesn’t make friends easily.’
‘I know about Ian and myself.’ Mungo said this with a confidence that caught his own ear. ‘But as for other friends – why, he has heaps of them. Pons, for instance.’
‘Friendliness isn’t friendship. It’s a mere social acquirement. But I don’t want to talk about Ian. I want to hear about yourself, and from the start. Your father, for instance – what can you tell me about him? I believe he interests me.’
‘I don’t quite see why he should.’ Mungo had stiffened before this hint of inquisition. ‘My father died when I was very young.’
‘Not before he had you christened.’ Lord Auldearn’s smile came and went again. ‘Out of a favourite poem of mine – and of his, Ian tells me. You remember what “Sir Mungo Lockhart of the Lea” rhymes with?’
‘Of course. With the refrain: Timor mortis conturbat me.’
‘It’s my case.’
‘Sir?’ Mungo hadn’t understood this.
‘Otherwise I shouldn’t be talking to you now, my dear lad. I’d be in my grave, if death – or being dead – didn’t terrify me. Does it seem strange to you that a very old man should feel like that?’
‘I don’t think it terribly strange. But perhaps it’s unfortunate.’ This was as good a reply as Mungo could manage. There was something about Ian’s grandfather that made his sudden dive into the confessional not as embarrassing as it might ha
ve been. Mungo didn’t want more of it, all the same, and it was perhaps because of this that he presently found himself obeying the injunction to give some account of his life and circumstances. It wasn’t a subject in which his interest was negligible, and in the drawer at home there reposed, after all, a good many starts on autobiographical fiction upon the memory of which he could now draw. Lord Auldearn, of course, didn’t want fiction; he wanted what might be called raw Moray fact. In this interest Mungo faithfully attempted to strip down, so to speak, the variously embellished Mungo Lockharts wandering around inside his own head. It was at least a stiff exercise, and at the end of half an hour he had learnt something that was new about the difficult enterprise of walking naked. Lord Auldearn was a good listener; attending upon the confessional didn’t embarrass him. But he knew perfectly what was going on – as appeared in what he eventually said.
‘Mungo’—there was a kind of deft timing, Mungo thought, in this first simple address by his name—’life is a formless and sprawling affair. And the artist – unless he throws up the sponge, as some seem to be doing now – has the cheek to shove it around until it makes a pattern. He is like a child before a tumble of building bricks. And that’s you, the Lord help you. You are doomed to imagine about yourself all sorts of things that are not – and to see the whole world, for that matter, as what it isn’t either. The result will be another couple of feet or so of novels and plays on the shelf. And now we’ll go and find those two innocent young men at their tennis.’
‘I don’t see how they can be playing tennis in weather like this.’
‘There’s something called real tennis, Mungo. Just as there is, perhaps unfortunately, something that has to be called real life.’
‘I know that. It’s what I’m after, even if I am some sort of day-dreaming type.’
‘In that case, good luck to you.’ For a moment Lord Auldearn’s exploratory scrutiny again played over Mungo’s features, rather as his son Robert’s had taken to doing from time to time. Then he got to his feet – his bones actually creaking as he did so, Mungo usefully noted – and led the way out of the room.
Chapter Eight
The tennis court was a surprising place, having rather the appearance of a shanty-town, or even a chicken-farm, disposed round an enormous hall. The true, the monstrous, scale of Bamberton was given away by the fact that it could tuck away such a structure in some unnoticed corner. As for the game, Mungo didn’t see much of it, since Lord Auldearn was not disposed to wait for his luncheon – the less so because he seemed to disapprove of Ian’s and Pons’s style of play. Probably they were making up their rules as they went along, or at least ignoring any they couldn’t be bothered with. They were in T-shirts and shorts – and, even so, sweating hard – Pons in particular, Mungo thought, pretty well larding the lean earth as he pranced around. Racquets and squash racquets and ordinary tennis were compounded in the performance; and by constantly lamming, or trying to lam, the ball through apertures variously disposed round about – and beyond which one might imagine the wretched shanty-dwellers or chickens to be cowering – they emphasised the further influence of a kind of maniacal billiards. It was a perfectly idiotic game, Mungo told himself. But he would have liked to have a go at it, all the same.
‘You two can’t sit down in that state,’ Lord Auldearn said grimly. ‘You’ll have a shower while Mungo and I have sherry.’
Mungo hadn’t reckoned on a further conversation téte- à-téte with his host, and its opening was far from promising. Lord Auldearn appeared to have been put in a bad temper by watching bad tennis.
‘I gather,’ he said, ‘that, until you met Ian, my family name was unknown to you?’
‘Yes. If I’d heard it, it hadn’t much registered.’
‘And Auldearn was simply the name of a little town, and not of a marquisate?’
‘That’s so – and I don’t think I’d have known what a marquisate is, either.’
‘You’d never heard of my son David – Lord Brightmony?’
‘No.’
‘Then you certainly won’t have heard of his brother Douglas either.’
‘As a matter of fact, sir—’ Mungo had hesitated over this awkward point – but it was to find that Lord Auldearn had turned away and walked across the room. He returned with a silver-framed photograph in his hand, and now held it out before him.
‘That was Douglas,’ he said casually. ‘At about eighteen, would you say? He was a well-grown lad – the tallest of the lot.’ And then, before Mungo could do more than glance at the thing, he turned away and restored it to its place. ‘I can’t understand it,’ he said as he came back. ‘You must have been a very alert and intelligent boy. It’s inconceivable that we shouldn’t at least be gossiped about.’
‘Not to me.’ Mungo’s displeasure before this patrician badgering was mounting. ‘And not to my aunt either, I’d suppose.’
‘Your aunt? A Miss Guthrie? With whom you live at Fintry?’
‘Yes, sir.’ Mungo was a little startled by these staccato questions. ‘My aunt doesn’t—’
‘It’s bad – very bad.’ The old man was now glaring at Mungo as if he couldn’t believe anything he said. But behind this, Mungo suddenly perceived, was less bad temper than distress. ‘We are declined indeed, Mungo, when nobody so much as mentions our name. We don’t own what we did, and what we do own we leave it to others to look after. A man’s lands are no more than his stocks and shares when he ceases to ride over them.’
‘I don’t see that you could reasonably be expected to do that, sir. Not at your … your advanced age.’ If Mungo said this awkwardly, it was out of a sudden feeling of sympathy for Lord Auldearn’s feudal view of the matter. ‘Doesn’t Lord Robert ever go to Scotland?’
‘Robert has his career, Douglas is dead, poor David is as he is. The duty remained mine, and I have failed in it.’
‘But Ian goes to Scotland sometimes. He goes shooting on what I suppose are your family estates.’ Mungo, who didn’t like this suddenly lugubrious Lord Auldearn, was reaching about for cheer. ‘And I’m going to take him to Moray myself – to see, well, other aspects of the place.’
‘That is strange – very strange.’ Lord Auldearn seemed quite to mean this. ‘And I am glad to hear of it. Only I could have wished that, when Ian first became known to you, it had been as a member of a family already a little existing’—Lord Auldearn’s rare smile came—’in that imagination of yours. There have been Cardowers not undeserving of a place there. But, of course, long ago.’
Mungo told himself that this was a perfectly honest piece of rather senile sentimentality; that from so very old a man it was reasonable and proper enough. Nevertheless he felt uncomfortable. He was quite a new friend of Ian’s, even if a close one, and he happened to come from a part of Scotland where Ian’s family were great lairds – and had once, perhaps, been lairds greater still. These facts didn’t seem to qualify him very adequately as a recipient of the kind of talk he was now listening to.
And against it, moreover, something that might be called his political sense rebelled. Bamberton Court was doubtless, as Ian had said, one of the top things of its kind in England. It was a good guess that it had been what guidebooks call the principal seat of the Marquises of Auldearn for several generations. Whatever the origins of the family, and wherever the mysterious Lord Brightmony now lived, they had beaten it from a small, poor country – so small and poor that it had never recovered from Flodden Field – and done themselves pretty well elsewhere. So Lord Auldearn’s tears – and he had seemed at least ready to weep from those permanently red-rimmed eyes – were crocodile’s tears, and that was that.
But hadn’t Mungo Lockhart – the simple Moray loon – lately opted for the same racket? It was perhaps this thought – or perhaps it was some simpler response to challenge – that elicited from Mungo what he heard himself saying now.
‘Come with us, sir.’
‘What’s that?’
‘I expect you’v
e got a decent car?’
‘A decent car?’ The formidable Lord Auldearn appeared, for the moment, floored by this attack. ‘I have a car made by Rolls and Royce, and am told it is thoroughly reliable.’
‘We’ll all go in that – and Ian can flog his mini and buy peanuts. Easy stages. We can put up in your sort of hotel—’
‘My sort of hotel? I haven’t been inside a hotel for fifty years.’
‘Then you’ll find them more comfortable now. We’ll do Moray and Nairnshire. There will be plenty of old people who remember enough to doff their bonnets to you.’ Haranguing Ian’s grandfather in this way was rather going to Mungo’s head. ‘I’ll introduce you to my aunt. And generally show you what Scotland’s like today.’
‘You’ll show me—’ Lord Auldearn controlled himself. ‘Mungo, you make a handsome offer – but I shall never visit Scotland again. I have my reasons. But do you know? If anybody were to persuade me to go, it would be such a lad as yourself. You remind me of . . . of my own children, when after a month or two in the north they had taken something of its colour on themselves.’ Lord Auldearn set down his glass, took a step forward, and for a moment touched Mungo on the arm. ‘You may be a credit to your country one day. Don’t go wrong.’ Then suddenly he was furious. ‘Half past one,’ he said. ‘Where the devil are those boys?’
Lunch was a constrained occasion. The young footmen were again in evidence, and Mungo was unreconciled to them. At dinner in hall he had got used to being waited on by the college scouts, but they were hardened characters who behaved more like kennel-men than domestic servants, banging and snatching the dishes, and strongly disapproving of a feeding-time in any degree prolonged by conversation. The Bamberton automata in striped waistcoats were another matter. Mungo would have liked to know what they really thought of their job.
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