Paul, who had a practical side to his nature, thought that he himself would easily be able to endure the kind of lucklessness that brought with it a marquisate, a superb Adam house and fifteen thousand pounds a year. He felt sure that Michael Lewes still believed that he was in love with Mrs Fortescue; he evidently considered himself to be an unhappy person, hardly used by Fate.
‘It is curious,’ went on Lord Lewes, ‘to consider the hold that Egyptology takes on people. Nearly everyone seems to be more or less interested in it, more so, I believe, than in any other ancient history, not excepting even that of Greece herself. The most unlikely people used to ask if they could come and see my little collection in Cairo; débutantes from London, for instance, and their mothers, people you would think had no feeling for such things.’
‘It is the human interest,’ said Paul. ‘(And I don’t mean only in the case of the débutantes.) I believe most people have felt it at one time or another. Of course, it is very romantic to think of those tombs, found exactly as they were left at the beginning of the world, full of art treasures and jewels, the pill of historical research is gilded with the primitive and universal excitement of a treasure hunt. Personally, I have always thought that as a rule it is people of more imagination than intellect who feel drawn towards Egypt. Whereas the Philhellene, for instance, is less concerned with how the Greek lived than with how he thought, the average Egyptologist always seems to be rather too much fascinated by the little objects of everyday life which he has found, and rather too busy reconstructing the exact uses to which they were put, to look below the surface for spiritual manifestations of the age in which they were made.’
‘Perhaps on the whole you may be right,’ said Lord Lewes. ‘One does not, however, have to look very far for such manifestations; they are all around one in that country. The Egyptian was a superb artist.’
‘Ah! But for such a short time when measured by the length of his civilization. While the art was strictly formalized, I admit that it was good, almost great. Under Aknahton – correct me if I am wrong – the representational school came into being. After that, to my way of thinking, there was no more art in Egypt.’
‘There, I am afraid, I cannot possibly agree with you,’ said Lord Lewes with his charming smile. ‘I must regard Aknahton and his artists as very wonderful reformers, and their art as some of the greatest that can be found anywhere in the world.’
‘Yes, you see we have a different point of view. I cannot possibly admire purely representational art,’ said Paul, thinking how few people there were so tolerant and easy to get on with. For the first time since his arrival at Compton Bobbin he found himself wishing that he had been there under slightly more creditable circumstances. It occurred to him that if Michael Lewes knew the truth he might easily regard him as quite an ordinary thief, since he was evidently a person rather lacking in humour. Lord Lewes broke in upon this train of thought by saying, after considering the matter for some moments, ‘I think, you know, that the Egyptians themselves were more human than the Greeks, who always appear to have been so coldly perfect, like their own statuary, that it is difficult to credit them with the flesh and blood of ordinary human beings. “Fair Greece, sad relic of departed worth,”’ he added mournfully, ‘“Immortal though no more, though fallen, great.”’
Paul looked at him in some amazement. He had never, since his Oxford days, met anybody so fond of quoting.
‘And presumably,’ said Lord Lewes, ‘that is how the Byzantinist must feel, otherwise I see no way to account for him. Attracted beyond words to the Archipelago itself, and repelled, I suppose, by the sheer perfection of the art which he finds there, he is obliged to search the islands for something which he thinks he can honestly admire. He ends, of course, by valuing the Byzantine quite absurdly high, far higher than its actual merit deserves.’
Paul, who was himself an ardent Byzantinist, and, like all such, extremely sensitive on the subject, was disgusted by this speech, which revealed in his opinion an intellectual dishonesty too dreadful to contemplate. He was just about to inform Lord Lewes that he was the author of a small and privately printed monograph entitled The Byzantine Breakaway when he remembered for the second time that evening that his position in the household was not of the most genuine, and that his name was now no longer Fotheringay but Fisher. Too angry to continue the discussion he walked quickly out of the room, saying over his shoulder to Philadelphia, ‘I’ll fetch that book I said I would lend you; I particularly want to know what you think about it.’
‘Nice, isn’t he?’ said Michael as soon as he was out of the room.
‘Awfully sweet,’ said Bobby.
‘He’s an angel, I think,’ said Philadelphia dreamily.
Later Lord Lewes said to his Aunt Gloria, ‘What a really charming, cultured young man, that Mr Fisher, it is a real pleasure to have made his acquaintance. I think you were so clever to find him. He is just the very person for Bobby, too; full of brains and yet most human.’
‘Yes, he seems all right,’ said Lady Bobbin. ‘He was very much recommended to me. I only hope he will get the boy out of doors and make himself useful with Brenda Chadlington’s brats. She announced today that she is bringing them again; most thoughtless and inconsiderate of her to my mind, but still – !’
Paul looked forward with no feelings of delight to his first ride to Compton Bobbin. He was, in fact, extremely terrified at the idea of it. Bobby, noticing his aversion to that form of exercise, tried to reassure him by pointing out that the distance to Mulberrie Farm was well under three miles, that it would be unnecessary for them to proceed at any pace more desperate than a walk, and that Boadicea, the mare which had been allotted to him to ride, was as quiet as any old cow; but in vain. Paul, most unfortunately for his own peace of mind, had happened to see the said mare out at exercise the day before, and had noticed in her a very different aspect from that of the ancient hireling on whose back he had spent so many painful hours jogging up and down the Rotten Row. To compare her to an old cow was simply silly. It was, in fact, only too apparent that here was a beast of pride and pedigree, who would almost certainly consider it a point of honour to cast the trembling tyro from her back. Paul knew, alas! how fatally easy, in his case, this would be; the smallest jerk, nay, even the transition between trot and canter, often proved sufficient to unseat him. He visualized with a shudder that horrid moment when everything would fly from his grip, the universe become black and roll several times round him, while the earth would suddenly rise up and bang him in the kidneys. It had happened in the soft and friendly Row and had been extraordinarily painful; what of the tarmac road, hard, black and shining like ebonite, which lay between Compton Bobbin and Mulberrie Farm? Poor Paul spent a wakeful night pondering these things, and by the morning had quite made up his mind that he would return to London sooner than court an end so sudden and unpleasing.
After breakfast, however, he felt more of a man again, and the sight of the precious red morocco volumes peeping from behind the schoolroom radiator put new courage into him. Besides, it would be a pity not to see a little more of Philadelphia. He was looking forward with some interest to hearing her verdict upon Crazy Capers, which he had lent her to read, saying that a friend of his had written it. Unsophisticated but intelligent, he thought, it was just possible that she might prove to be the one person who would put a proper construction on it. Possible, not likely. If she joined in the chorus of laughter he knew that he would be hurt, far more hurt than when Marcella had, who was always a hard, unimaginative little thing with a mind like a tennis ball. Meanwhile, fasting, for he felt too nervous to touch food at luncheon time, he prepared to face his ordeal.
By the most unlucky accident of fate Lady Bobbin happened to be talking to the stud groom in the stable yard when Paul and Bobby arrived there, and waited to see them mount. Paul, sadly conscious of the newness of his clothes, which had elicited roars of delight from the heartless Bobby as th
ey left the house, stood a quaking and, no doubt, he thought bitterly, a pathetically comic figure, as he waited for Boadicea to be brought from her dark and smelly lair inside the stables.
‘Cold, isn’t it?’ he said between chattering teeth to Lady Bobbin, who took no notice whatever of this remark. At that moment the snorting animal was led out, tossing her head from side to side in what seemed to be an ecstasy of rage and contempt, and showering little bits of froth in all directions. Paul, his unreasonable terror of horses now quite overcome by his unreasonable terror of Lady Bobbin, whose cold gimlet eye seemed to be reading his every emotion, decided that here was one of the few occasions in a man’s life on which death would be preferable to dishonour, and advanced towards the mounting block with a slight swagger which he hoped was reminiscent of a French marquis approaching the scaffold. Grasping the reins and the pommel of the saddle firmly as he had been taught, he placed his left foot in the stirrup, when the animal, as indeed he had feared it probably would, began to wriggle its hind quarters away from him. When this had happened in the Row it had been his invariable custom to remove his foot from the stirrup and begin all over again. Now, however, feeling (he dared not look) that Lady Bobbin’s eyes, not to mention the eyes of the stud groom, two under grooms, the stable boy, Bobby and two men who were carting away manure, were upon him, he rather lost his head and with the courage of despair gave a tremendous leap in pursuit of Boadicea’s retreating back. To his immense astonishment, this piece of bravura was rewarded with complete success, and he found himself sitting fair and square in the saddle, with the stable boy placing his other foot in its appointed stirrup. Alas, he had not time to enjoy the fruits of triumph, as no sooner did the under groom, who was holding her, release Boadicea’s head from his grasp than, despite Paul’s frenzied tugs at the reins, she departed at a brisk trot out of the stable yard, and with a series of sickening slithers on to the tarmac road outside. Making a desperate effort, and by dint of counting out loud, one-two, one-two, Paul did manage to ‘rise’ in the approved Row style until he felt himself to be well out of Lady Bobbin’s sight, when, abandoning all pride and self-respect, he clung with one hand to the saddle, jerked at the reins with the other and sobbed out in pitiful gasps: ‘Stop, stop, dear Boadicea, whoa, whoa, Boadicea whoa, oh, please, please, stop!’ The insensitive Boadicea, however, paid no attention to his pathetic cries, but continued to trot on, very nearly pulling him over from time to time by suddenly throwing her head right forward with loud and terrifying snorts. At last, when Paul felt himself to be at the end of his tether and, having long since abandoned both reins and stirrups, was looking out for a soft piece of grass on which he could hurl his aching bones, he heard another horse come up behind him, Bobby’s outstretched hand seized the reins and, with a painful and alarming bump, Boadicea came to a standstill. She immediately began to eat grass at the side of the road, leaving, in the place where her head and neck had formerly been, a hideous gaping chasm. This was, for poor Paul, the last straw.
‘I can’t bear it, I can’t bear it. I knew I should hate it. Lousy horse! Please, please let me get off and walk. Oh, what Gehenna!’
‘It’s all right,’ said Bobby, who was laughing so much he could hardly speak. ‘Oh, you did look too entrancing. I hope you’ll do it again for me. No, no, don’t get off, she’ll walk quite quietly now as far as Amabelle’s. Besides, you’ve got to get used to it, haven’t you? But, you know, I can’t think why she didn’t come down, spanking along the tarmac like that. You should have taken her up on to the grass.’
‘It’s all very well for you to talk,’ said Paul, who was still on the verge of tears; ‘but I can’t guide the beastly thing at all, it’s as much as I can do to stay on its back.’
‘My God, you looked funny,’ said Bobby, rocking and guffawing. ‘I’d give anything to see that again.’
Paul felt that, considering he had just been rescued from the jaws of death, he was not receiving that sympathy which was his due, and for some time he maintained a dignified silence. Presently, however, his sense of humour asserted itself, and he began to giggle too.
‘I say, what will your mother have thought?’ he asked rather nervously when he had recovered his breath.
‘Well, by the mercy of Providence she was having a look at his horse’s fetlocks when you got up, so I don’t believe she noticed much. She did mutter something about “Why can’t the blasted idiot wait a minute; what’s all the damned hurry for?” But that doesn’t mean a lot from her. No, you had a lucky escape this time, old boy. If you had let Boadicea down on the tarmac it would have been the end of Compton Bobbin and the journals for you, believe me.’
10
‘One heart.’
‘I double a heart.’
‘Really, Sally, my sweet, don’t you ride that convention to death just a little? It seems to be your one and only idea of a bid.’
‘Well, I don’t want to have to play the hand any more; I’d much rather you did, then there’s no grumbling afterwards, you see.’
‘I should have thought it would be more useful,’ said Walter, ostentatiously looking at the score, ‘at this stage in the proceedings, if you would show a suit.’
‘Well, I’ve said before and I’ll say again that I can’t play bridge, and I don’t like playing bridge. I only do it, as you know quite well, to make up a four. I think it’s a horrible game, it makes everyone too bad-tempered and beastly for words – specially you, Walter darling, and you’re apt to be quite nice at other times,’ she added, for even when goaded to madness by Walter she always found it impossible to be unkind to him. ‘Thank goodness Jerome comes tomorrow, and I shall be able to go back to my kiddies for Christmas like Mrs Culbertson.’
‘Darling, now don’t be sour, please, my angel. I only meant that when you are playing you might try to concentrate a tiny bit more?’
‘Concentrate! My head’s aching with trying to concentrate, and all the thanks I get from you are these everlasting lectures, or else you sit there looking so reproachful and swallowing every time I play a card, as though I were doing it on purpose to annoy.’
‘I said a heart,’ murmured Bobby, who, having a superb hand, was anxious to get on with the business and had become rather restive during this family argument.
‘Well, now I’ve got to show a suit, have I?’ said Sally.
‘No, no! Of course not now,’ cried Walter in that agony of impatience only known to the good bridge player obliged to suffer the vagaries of an absolutely incompetent partner. ‘Not now, you can’t. You’ve doubled a heart, haven’t you? And you must stick at that. Paul says?’
‘Two hearts,’ said Paul.
‘Two spades,’ said Walter. ‘Now, if Sally would only sometimes show a suit instead of sitting there saying double –’
‘Oh, I’ll show you the whole of my hand, if you go on like this,’ said Sally, ‘and much good may it do you!’
‘Four hearts,’ said Bobby with an air of finality.
‘Tee-hee,’ he said as Paul put down a hand with six hearts to the ace, queen and an outside ace; ‘now wasn’t that just too psychic of me for words. Thanks ever so much, Paul, old boy – of course, you should have given me a double rise really, shouldn’t you? But still –’
‘What an extraordinary lead, Sally darling. Are you in your right senses?’
‘Well, in that ghastly little book you made me read it said, “never lead from an ace, queen, never lead from a king, and never lead from a doubleton, it is a rotten lead”. So that’s the only thing for me to do, as far as I can see.’
‘That’s right,’ said Bobby good-naturedly, ‘tell him exactly what you’ve got in your hand; don’t mind me, will you?’
Paul wandered over to the old world inglenook where Amabelle was sitting with Elspeth Paula on her knee.
‘That’s right, darling, have a good gurk,’ she was saying, ‘makes us all feel better, that does. Isn’t sh
e a treasure? Look at those huge goggling eyes. She’s going to be a one with the chaps, she is. Aren’t you, sweetikin. Boo!’
A confused murmur came from the bridge table.
‘Now, Sally, out with it. There’s only one lead you can possibly make.’
‘I don’t see that. I’ve got six cards in my hand and I can lead any of them, can’t I? Oh dear, I wish I knew.’
‘Now, think. There’s only one possible lead. Oh, my God, you are a vile player, Sally. Well, now, that makes it all very O.K. for you, Bobby, game and rub –’
The butler opened the door and announced:
‘Lord Lewes, madam.’
A perfectly stunned silence fell on Amabelle’s drawing-room as Michael Lewes walked into it. Amabelle herself, who hardly ever showed emotion of any sort, turned crimson and nearly dropped the baby; Paul, feeling as he had not felt since, when at Eton, he was caught by the ‘beaks’ in the Slough cinema, made half a movement to escape through the garden door, but decided that this would only make matters far worse and that it would be better to stay and brazen it out; and the Monteaths gave each other long glances, fraught with meaning, over their cards. Bobby alone remained unshaken and went on playing the hand in his usual brisk and businesslike style. Such was the emotion of his adversaries that he made as a result not only four hearts giving him game and rubber, but little slam as well, a fact which he was heard afterwards loudly to lament. (‘You know, Paul, it was monstrous only putting me up one. After all, you had the hearts; you knew I was calling on outside cards, didn’t you? I naturally imagined you had a bare rise and wanted me to go to game. It is too maddening.’)
The silence was broken by a shattering gurk from Elspeth Paula.
‘What savoir faire!’ said Bobby under his breath. ‘Anybody would think I was the father. No more diamonds, Sally? Yes, I thought you had – no, no, that’s O.K. The rest are good on the table, aren’t they? That’s one hundred and twenty below, one hundred overtricks and five hundred for the rubber. Thirteen I make it.’
The Penguin Complete Novels of Nancy Mitford Page 27