‘That is perfectly true.’ The vicar was astonished by the cogency of this remark. It was as if he had gone through life hitherto supposing that toe-curling was a discomfort peculiar to himself alone.
‘Have you ever reckoned how many country houses – “country houses” in the old sense – within visiting distance of Mallows are owned by the same families as a hundred years ago? For that matter, do you know how many, throughout England, were simply demolished last year? Five every week.’
‘Gracious lady, spare me!’ Mr Rich had taken refuge in a whimsical dismay. ‘Tempus ferox, tempus edax rerum.’
‘Time has certainly gobbled up the squirarchy, and it will be the turn of their betters next.’
‘Their betters?’ The vicar was amazed.
‘The great houses are tumbling after the big ones, are they not? Or they’re at least what’s called “opening up” as show places at half-a-crown a head. I expect your neighbours the Ferneydales may be doing it soon. Although perhaps the Hall is not quite grand enough.’
‘No Ferneydales by Reynolds or Gainsborough, eh? An odd name, isn’t it? Never heard of it, until those folk arrived in the neighbourhood.’
‘It holds at least a pleasingly rural suggestion. And I believe some such name to have been borne by a well-reputed musician.’
‘Is that so?’ The vicar’s tone conveyed both a proper respect for the arts and an underlying sense that a fiddler or the like might be called anything. ‘But what we are talking about does constitute a most disturbing trend, of course. Knocking down decent houses, and so forth.’ Mr Rich glanced rather misdoubtfully at Mrs Martin, whose tone struck him as lacking the elegiac quality proper to the topic on which they had embarked. He supposed that he was again being made fun of in a fashion. ‘As for James Ferneydale, he’s a fellow in some big commercial way, and can’t stand in need of taking pennies at the door. But it certainly couldn’t be said that his family’s connection with Mallows is lost in the mists of antiquity.’ Mr Rich laughed his secure and good-humoured laugh. ‘Any more than mine is—eh, Mrs Martin? Not that one can be sure that money of that sort – the stock market and so on – will still be found tomorrow where it is today. I was thinking about the younger Ferneydales earlier this morning, as a matter of fact, when I was taking my usual turn in the park. Penelope is something of an admirer of the young men. But of course they are too old for her. For dances, and so on. As “escorts”, as people say nowadays. I doubt whether they are much aware of her existence – any more, I’m sorry to say, than they are of mine.’
‘But if they continue much at home, they may improve their acquaintance, if not with you, yet with Penelope in all sorts of ways.’ Mrs Martin’s amusement at the direction in which the vicar’s mind was moving was not completely masked. ‘And what is ten years, after all? You might return from an afternoon’s pastoral care – or even an afternoon’s fishing – and find that either Fulke or Caspar had carried your daughter off to Gretna Green.’
‘Now you want to make my flesh creep.’ Mr Rich said this indulgently, but in a tone which at the same time hinted that here was enough of levity. And Mrs Martin, if with a mild irony, at once became more circumspect.
‘But I don’t know that they will continue much at home,’ she said. ‘They don’t often turn up at people’s parties, but I run into them from time to time, and I’m always pleased when it happens. There’s a certain liveliness in their talk, which I imagine is already standing them in good stead at Oxford. It’s something we are a little short of in these parts.’
‘It is, indeed, Mrs Martin – and one of the reasons why I so much enjoy running into you.’ This sort of compliment was something that the vicar knew how to carry off very well. ‘Do the young Ferneydales complain about us as a dull crowd at Mallows?’
‘It may be what they say to one another, but they don’t to me, any more than they would to you. There’s nothing boorish about them. All they do is to express themselves as a little baffled by those who find steady satisfaction in country pursuits.’
‘They certainly don’t hunt.’
‘No, indeed. Fulke says he doesn’t like horses, and Caspar declares that he finds Jeremy Bentham’s condemnation of killing foxes for sport to be unanswerable, and that he can’t understand how a man who would feel insulted by an invitation to go cock-fighting or bull-baiting is content to make a far greater nuisance of himself hallooing over the countryside, pursuing one quadruped while bestriding a second and urging on a whole rabble of howling and snuffling others.’
‘One has to acknowledge that very generous feelings may be enlisted in the case against fox-hunting.’ Mr Rich said this stoutly and honestly at once – while at the same time telling himself how right was his instinct a little to distrust the young men at the Hall. ‘But I wish I knew them rather better,’ he went on conscientiously. ‘They do at least sound stimulating. Do you know much about their more positive interests?’
‘Caspar, I think, is inclined to be studious.’
‘Ah, yes! I believe I’d have guessed that. Walks about with a book under his arm.’ Mr Rich, being by profession a clerk and man of learning, naturally didn’t say this in a disparaging way. But he didn’t sound exactly approbatory, either.
‘So he does. And he much wants to be up to date. So the book is probably by Kierkegaard.’
‘Kierkegaard?’ The vicar was puzzled. ‘Kierkegaard was some sort of gloomy Dane. Like Hamlet, you might say, seeing everything out of joint at Elsinore. But he must have died more than a hundred years ago. He can’t even be as up to date as the old bore Ibsen.’
‘He may have returned into vogue. Indeed, I have gathered so much from Caspar himself. Caspar tells me that he has clarified his speculative position and finds himself to be an Existentialist.’
‘Finds himself a fiddlestick! He’s a schoolboy – or was, the day before yesterday. And we’re all for existing, I suppose: foxes and fox-hunters and natterers about cruel blood-sports.’ Mr Rich, who had begun this speech in his most tolerant tone, seemed to regret its having gone astray. ‘But Fulke,’ he went on quickly, ‘—what about him?’
‘Fulke is a very observing young man. I have even teased him as being just like a private eye.’
‘Like a what?’ The vicar was at a loss before this strange expression.
‘A kind of up-dated Sherlock Holmes, with a very pale-blue and penetrating gaze. I am rather inclined to respect it in Fulke Ferneydale. He seems to me to possess real intellectual curiosity. Of course he expresses it in a half-baked way. I asked him once what he intended to do when he left Oxford, and he told me that he was going to be an experimental psychologist.’
‘And just what is that, Mrs Martin?’
‘I asked him that too. He said it is one who subjects a human guinea-pig to excessive bewilderments and notes the precise length of time that these take to drive the unfortunate individual mad.’
‘I don’t think I like the sound of Fulke.’
‘He may be better than he sounds. Remember that he is only a nineteen-year-old boy, conscious of ability and bored with his home surroundings – and that he was being badgered by an elderly female who goes about teaching children their ABC.’
‘I can’t see you badgering anybody, Mrs Martin. But you do appear to be quite interested in this young man.’ Mr Rich made his remark sound ever so slightly comical. Stopping just short of facetiousness was part of the technique of what Mrs Martin called his pastoral care.
‘It would be very tiresome to him if it were apparently so. Perhaps I am just a little bored myself. But I hope that at least I don’t seem vulgarly inquisitive when I have the chance of casual talk with Fulke Ferneydale. For I do feel that he is a young man with a secret.’
‘Dear me!’ The vicar disapproved, if not of a young man having a secret, at least of his revealing the fact to a lady. ‘Does Fulke go out of his way to suggest himself as intriguingly mysterious?’
‘Nothing of the sort. It is a wholly invol
untary betrayal. Or you may say I simply divine that he knows something about himself – perhaps something about a bent or capacity – which Mallows would find perplexing. But I don’t think it’s anything sinister. He certainly doesn’t give the impression of being without a good deal of confidence about himself. He is an ambitious youth.’
‘You make me feel remiss, Mrs Martin, in not knowing more about him. Only this morning I was speaking confidently, indeed, to Penelope about how the brothers play tennis. But that is a matter of quite superficial observation, and beyond it I have only a general notion of their differing temperaments. The truth is I feel a little diffident about the young Ferneydales, since I can scarcely claim them as belonging to my flock. Neither of them has so much as come to matins of a Sunday for many months. It may be sloth – in itself not a trivial weakness. But I sadly fear they see themselves positively as highly enlightened infidels.’
‘I don’t know about Fulke. Caspar has recently been received into the Roman Catholic Church.’
‘Good heavens!’ The vicar had sprung to his feet in great agitation. ‘The boy might at least have let me know. My predecessor christened him, and he was confirmed at his school in the normal and proper way. It’s a most uncivil thing.’
‘That is one aspect of it, no doubt.’
‘I have always thought of Caspar Ferneydale as at least decently brought up. How can he have decided to flout me in so grave a case?’
Mrs Martin might have said, ‘He disapproves of your hunting’, or even, ‘He laughs at your going about in les jupes.’ But she had been needlessly upsetting, and regretted it. So she held her peace.
‘You don’t think that Fulke’s precious secret may simply be that he has become a Hindu?’ The vicar achieved this sarcasm only with an effort. ‘And the boy’s father!’ he burst out again. ‘He ought surely to have alerted me. It’s a serious matter – perversion to papistry in a household of some standing in the neighbourhood. I’d never have supposed James Ferneydale capable of being so neglectful of a duty. It will be my own duty to make my displeasure known to him.’
‘If you feel you must tackle somebody, ought it not to be Caspar in person?’ Mrs Martin, who liked Mr Rich and didn’t care to think of him doing something foolish, was unconcerned at any failure to comport herself as a governess should. ‘And in a spirit of friendly enquiry, really. I gather there are Catholic Existentialists, but it nevertheless sounds a little heterodox. You might ask Caspar to explain that particular position. Positions are rather his thing. He is still very young in all his ways, of course, but he has a restless intelligence which promises I don’t know what. He might enjoy informed conversation with you. I doubt whether either his brother or his father is much interested in theological questions. And although I’m inclined to think that Fulke has the most interesting character in the family I’m fairly confident that Caspar has the most interesting mind.’
During these composing remarks the vicar had taken a turn up and down his daughter’s schoolroom. And when he came to a halt before his daughter’s governess it was to an unexpected effect.
‘Dear lady,’ he said, ‘you may well be right. I give weight to your words, as I should always wish to do, and it may be that I would indeed be wrong were I to make a personal matter of this. We live, after all, in an ecumenical age. We must remember that an eirenic spirit is abroad, and that in its light the Christian Church is to be seen as essentially one and indivisible. Caspar Ferneydale may cure himself of his vagary, and if he is as intellectual as you appear to believe he will arrive all the more quickly at a perception of the errors of Rome.’
Mr Rich (who believed strongly in comfortable states of mind) had arrived at this more accommodating view of things with surprising speed, and certainly without any sense of involving his argument in contradiction. Mrs Martin might have congratulated herself on handling the situation with considerable address. But in fact as she walked home at the end of the day’s lessons it was in a self-critical mood.
On the question of Penelope’s future education, indeed, she had managed well enough. No more would be heard of the child’s continuing to be taught at home. From Mrs Martin’s own point of view this was to be regretted, since she was fond both of Penelope and of the vicar’s monthly cheque. If Henry Rich was something of a goose (and she did so regard him in a perfectly friendly way) he might be said – although sexually the metaphor was slightly confused – to lay agreeable little golden eggs. But Mrs Martin, being a woman of spirit, had no difficulty in disregarding this. She judged that a girl brought up entirely in the Mallows vicarage under its present incumbent, although she might know about tempus ferox and the doggy letter, would eventually have to step ill-prepared into the contemporary world from a dwelling as remote, it might be said, as Noah’s Ark. Penelope Rich was a child for whom the right boarding-school would be very much the right thing.
But about the Ferneydale boys Mrs Martin hadn’t done so well. She had enhanced in the vicar a distrust of them which she knew to be already there, and this on the strength of mere coffee-time conversation thoughtlessly carried on. She didn’t share Mr Rich’s view that Fulke and Caspar were ‘too old’ for Penelope. All that could confidently be said was that at present she was too young for them. The situation – as, indeed, she had pointed out to the vicar – might be quite different ten years on. So it had been injudicious to prejudice a conceivable state of affairs in which Penelope was of marriageable age and still possessed as close neighbours at Mallows Hall two able and attractive young bachelors whom she had vastly admired as a child.
Mrs Martin held no view on the general desirability or undesirability of matrimony succeeding upon long contiguity of that sort. It was a species of conduct popularly regarded as a resource which young men held in reserve while hoping for some more glamorous fortune, and she didn’t like to imagine Penelope as being thus fallen back upon by a Ferneydale. It was, of course, a far-fetched apprehension. Not quite so far-fetched was the fear that Penelope mightn’t marry at all. Nothing of the kind was at present her father’s wish; he had spoken only of anxiety that his child should make a right choice in the end. But Henry Rich was both a widower and a self-regarding if well-meaning man. Mrs Martin could think of more than one daughter of a widowed clergyman permanently entombed in the paternal vicarage or rectory in a strikingly grisly way – having been progressively pressurised into the belief that neither her parent nor his parish could do without her. The risk of this fate befalling Penelope Rich might be lessened at some critical time if she had behind her a girlhood spent largely away from home.
Having arrived at this perception, Mrs Martin felt that her firmness about her pupil’s future schooling had been doubly wise.
II
‘Oh, sex!’ Fulke Ferneydale said. ‘I can tell you about sex, Cass. Sex is all balls.’
Fulke and his brother were at this time in their second term at Christ Church and New College respectively. When a choice fell to be made (for they were both academically promising enough to have a say in the matter) they had agreed that they didn’t want to be in the same dump at Oxford, having had enough of that at school. So they picked out two colleges they both thought they could tolerate, tossed up between them, and filled in statements of preference accordingly. But it had turned out that they were now seeing more of one another than before. Both were quite sociable in a general way, and each was in process of forming a circle of acquaintance largely unknown to the other. But the university was still full of men coming back from the war, many of them married, and the first generation of boys arriving again directly from school was rather shy of these mature persons, so that the customary undergraduate process of rapidly acquiring intimate friends was constricted as a result. It was only to a small extent because of this, however, that the Ferneydales had formed the habit of meeting once or twice a week and talking much as young men do when thrown together amid assumptions of adulthood for the first time. Both felt – though without precisely articulating the
idea – that they had hitherto taken one another for granted in a childish and unenterprising way, and that they were now developing, as their interests broadened, a kind of reciprocal intellectual curiosity which had been largely foreign to their habit at home. Caspar (whom we have heard of as liking to clarify positions) had put part of the situation into forthright words. ‘We’re really trying,’ he had said, ‘to decide whether we particularly like one another. Siblings often don’t.’
At the moment, at least, the siblings were getting on quite well. Caspar was drinking Fulke’s Madeira and Fulke was smoking Caspar’s Gauloise cigarettes. They were sitting comfortably on either side of a window embrasure in the rather grand rooms that Fulke had somehow wangled for himself in Peckwater quad. And they had fallen upon a topic that was naturally of interest to them both.
‘All balls?’ Caspar echoed. ‘Nonsense, you mean?’
‘Well, in that sense, too. But literally, in the first place. I was offering you an ambiguity, as a matter of fact, and I think it’s rather neat. Sexual orientation and behaviour have their variations, as Havelock Ellis so tediously demonstrates. But sex always comes down to balls in the end.’
A Villa in France Page 3