by Martin Boyd
While Diana went in to put on a hat, Elsie stood looking at the garden, and seeing the clipped hedge and the pruned banksia and evidence of even harder work in the flower beds, she knew that Diana had done all of it and she simmered with indignation, and wished she could do something to help her to lead a life more like her own. She said to herself: “Wolfie isn’t a man. He’s a sucking-pig.”
When she came out Diana again admired the car.
“It’s so pretty,” she said. “All sparkling. Does it go very fast?”
“It can do sixty miles an hour, madam,” said the chauffeur proudly.
“Goodness, I hope it won’t.”
“You wouldn’t know it’s doing sixty. She’s so smooth.”
They set out along the coast road. The air was bright and the little waves danced on the sea. Diana was enjoying the air and the smooth speed, when she was startled by a question from Elsie: “Do you remember Russell Lockwood, the shy lanky boy who lived near us in Alma Road?”
“Yes, I do. He’s back from Europe. I’ve seen him,” she said.
“Oh. He didn’t tell me.”
“When did you see him?”
“I’ve seen him twice. He dined with us last night. He’s very much in evidence. He’s quite changed—very much a man of the world.”
“I didn’t think him like that. He was very friendly.”
“Yes, he is, but Jack doesn’t like him. At least he doesn’t dislike him, but he says he can’t live up to him.”
“Good gracious!” exclaimed Diana. “If Jack can’t live up to him, who on earth can?”
“I don’t know,” said Elsie. “I suppose we’ll just have to admire him from a distance.”
After this Diana did not enjoy the drive so much, and when they came back to her house for tea, she had a slightly less cheerful air than when they set out, partly due to Elsie’s comments on Russell, but also to her preoccupations when Wolfie and Josie had gone their separate ways, leaving her, as she had thought, alone for the afternoon.
“Something’s worrying you. What is it?” asked Elsie.
“Nothing, really. Wolfie has just finished some preludes and I think they’re very good. His best thing since the symphony.”
“Why does that worry you?”
“It’s so hard for him to get recognition.” She told Elsie of their discussion at luncheon, and of the idea of having a private concert at home, and of the disadvantages.
In the evening Elsie rang her up.
“I’ve been talking it over with Jack,” she said. “Why not hold the concert here? The house is big enough, and the ballroom will hold quite a crowd.”
“That would be very nice,” said Diana, though realizing that it was not likely to help Wolfie’s ultimate success. Then she thought that at least it would be unusual, and would be talked about. “In fact it would be lovely, but it’s too much for you to do.”
“No it isn’t,” said Elsie. “The house is asking for a party.”
They talked it over for ten minutes on the telephone, and then Elsie said that she would come down again the next afternoon to discuss the arrangements.
Elsie’s house had been built only a year earlier, designed by a young man who had a genius for the circumstances of entertainment. It had escaped from the Italianate influence of the boom mansions, and from the terra-cotta gargoyles and sham half-timber of the “Queen Anne” which followed them. It was cool and white and simple, with a cloister and panelling in Australian woods. A little arcaded gallery led to a flight of steps into the drawing-room, and beyond that was a ballroom with a domed ceiling.
Elsie came down several times to talk over the details. They fixed a date in the week after Cup Week, as then the big functions would be over, but people would not yet have gone away. A Lady Pringle, the wife of a professor at the University, who admired Wolfie’s music, agreed to make a brief introductory speech before each of the preludes. They decided to make it a party as well as a concert, and Elsie arranged to have a sit-down supper in a marquee. “We want it talked about,” she said. It became known that this party was to be something special, and invitations to it were more welcomed than those to dine at Government House. A woman who had avoided Diana for five years crossed the street to speak to her and to ask after the children. “They’ve grown up,” said Diana.
When they were going through the tentative list of names Elsie had drawn up, she said: “We must have Russell Lockwood.” Diana had an impulse to say: “No, don’t ask him,” but restrained it, not wishing to show any interest as to whether he came or not.
He had not called at Brighton, and when Elsie came down to talk about the party, she still half expected that the motor car might be his. She was annoyed with herself for being hurt, or for giving any thought to him. Since he was the cat about the place twenty years ago, she had only seen him for three-quarters of an hour. Yet she could not help wondering why he did not call. She heard from Elsie how much he was sought after, and from Arthur that he was often at the Edward Langtons’, the house where the Flugels were not received since Wolfie had kissed Anthea in the garden. The twins had been taken to Europe for a year for Anthea to recover from her terrible experience, and they had only returned a month before Russell. Abroad they had acquired even richer layers of culture, and she imagined that their house would provide a very congenial atmosphere for him. She thought it likely that there he would have heard disparaging references to Wolfie, and perhaps slighting ones to herself, or worse, a damning silence if their names were mentioned.
She was right about this. The twins, although their mother had taken the greatest pains to imbue them with the notions of English gentlewomen, combined with the rapier wit of le grand siècle, the wit sometimes, especially Anthea’s, rudely erupted from the polished surface of their minds. When Russell mentioned that he had met Diana, she said: “Oh, you’ve stepped off on the wrong foot.” She went on to give a lively, wildly exaggerated and mostly untrue account of the Flugels’ ménage, describing them as living in domestic chaos and on the brink of ruin. Having met Diana he found this hard to believe, but when he made other inquiries he was not reassured, generally being told something to Wolfie’s discredit. Melbourne had changed in twenty years and he felt himself a little at sea. He did not want to become involved with a disreputable group. The Edward Langtons’ was the most amusing and cultivated house he had been to so far. He did not feel very sure of himself in the unknown territory of his native land, and he did not like to ignore their opinion.
All the same he was uneasy that he had not called, and he excused himself by Diana’s hesitation when he had suggested it. He was not very clear about the situation. He felt that there was a situation.
He was astonished when he received a card from Mrs Radcliffe for an evening party at which Wolfie was to play. Even the twins thought the Radcliffes’ the most impressive house in Melbourne, and its doors the most desirable to enter. Then he heard the twins themselves were going, and he thought how stupid he had been with all his experience not to realize that people in society will tear every shred off a relative’s back, and greet him affectionately next morning. He wished that he had called on Diana, but if he did so now, it would look as if he went as a result of the invitation, and he thought he had better wait to see her until this party, towards which we are proceeding, and at which, it seems, there was an illumination of the tracts of different minds.
CHAPTER FOUR
At the risk of making this party as tiresomely elusive as Kafka’s castle, we might glance at some of the guests shortly before they set out. The twins came in to dinner in their newest evening dresses and Cousin Sophie, their mother, in what for her was a ball dress. Edward Langton, their father, the son of a High Court judge, was himself a K.C. He belonged to a part of the family which was regarded and actually called by our branch the Enemy, largely because of their success and their censorious respectability. The hostility was more the concern of the older generation, but my elder brother Dominic having
snatched his first cousin, the bride of another man, from the altar steps, had again split the family in two, while Wolfie’s having kissed Anthea in the garden made the breach complete. Because of this I had hardly seen the twins until their recent return from Europe, which apparently had broadened their minds so that they decided to know us again.
Edward’s marriage to Sophie had greatly strengthened the enemy forces. She was an Englishwoman with a background, by Australian standards, of immense moral, intellectual and social power. She belonged to one of those high-minded Victorian Liberal families who voiced the best part of the conscience of England, and who kept Tory brigandage in check by the classic nobility of their protests, which today, when they are most needed, are no longer heard. At home she had moved in the highest circles, and had attended meetings in the drawing-rooms of those great Whig peeresses who found themselves in strange alliance with middle-class Radicals, Baptists and ironmongers and who, when their meetings were over, exclaimed: “I hope to goodness the things we’re working for don’t happen in our lifetime.” Cousin Sophie had met Edward when she was out on a visit to the Governor-General, and had made in her own eyes a morganatic marriage. Although she was not prepared to admit any diminution of her social position, she was more concerned with culture than society, and her greatest pleasure was to give small dinner-parties to people from the University at which she capped quotations with Mr Hemstock, a lecturer in English.
Cousin Edward, seeing that his wife and daughters were exposing more of their arms and bosoms than when they spent the evening at home, asked with that politeness but little interest which he took in women’s affairs—an interest so slight that Cousin Sophie had hoped he would not question them:
“Are you going to a dance?”
“No,” she replied. “We’re going to a party at the Radcliffes’.”
“Am I supposed to be going?” He sounded depressed at the idea.
“No. It’s music, so I refused for you.”
“What music?” asked Edward, not that he cared, but to fill in the time until he was given his soup. The twins made faces at Cousin Sophie not to be detailed in her explanation, but she would not contemplate the slightest deception of her husband, with whom she lived in mutual trust.
The twins had bullied her into accepting the invitation. She had imparted to them her own strong-minded assurance of manner, and she found that they were beginning to use it against her, further armed with Langton wit. Sophie liked wit, preferably recalled from the past, to give a delicate academic savour to conversation, not as a sudden jab in the ribs. She was almost in tears at the vigour of the twins’ attack, when she said that it would be out of the question to accept the invitation.
“If we go on not knowing people, we’ll end up by no one knowing us,” said Anthea. “Mr Lockwood’s tired of us already because we know more poetry than people.”
“Nonsense,” said Sophie, but rather than provoke the twins to repudiate the standards by which she had brought them up, she accepted, and hoped that Edward would be dining at his club on that evening. But he was not, and now with the relief of no longer being able to conceal her weakness from her husband, she said:
“Mr von Flugel is playing some of his preludes.”
Anthea made a gesture of despair. Edward marshalled the considerations in his mind, and when the servants were out of the room he said:
“D’you think it wise to take the girls to this party, Sophie?”
“Lady Pringle is going to give talks.”
“And who could be immoral with Lady Pringle in the room?” asked Anthea. The twins had not been sent to school, as in Sophie’s youth, girls of her class were educated at home. The result of this was that instead of having more refinement Anthea blurted out things of which she did not understand the implication, while Cynthia, more thoughtful and aloof, was apt to question the foundations of society.
“Anthea!” said Sophie sternly. “The Wendales and some of the Government House people are going,” she went on to explain.
“H’m,” said Edward doubtfully. “All the same I can’t understand Jack Radcliffe having Flugel in his house.”
“Elsie is a great friend of Diana von Flugel’s,” said Sophie. She could not very well call her husband’s first cousin Mrs von Flugel, so whenever she had to refer to her she minimized the relationship by adding her surname. The Enemy were always afraid, not without reason, that we might do something to disgrace them, as both our respectability and our fortunes had an Alpine pattern, like the temperature chart of a man with Mediterranean fever, from which intellectually we suffered. Diana had to endure attacks from her own side, as Maysie her sister, though not one of the Enemy, always spoke of her as if she had not enough to eat and from time to time she sent her any particularly ugly pieces of furniture which she no longer required in her own house, and which actually were rather useful in some of the large empty rooms at Brighton.
The discussion between Sophie and Edward went on through the whole of dinner, and at last she said plaintively: “I really think I can go anywhere.” She was unwilling to modify her belief, held for the last twenty years, that any house she entered, by that fact alone became respectable. “We can’t possibly back out now without appearing rude and ridiculous.” She added with an unusual touch of modesty, “People are already too inclined to think us rude.”
This was the first disagreement on a matter of this kind that Sophie and Edward had ever had, and it upset both of them. They would have been more perturbed if they had known that it was, indirectly, one of the disruptive results of Wolfie’s visit to Mrs Montaubyn.
Highly respected as Sophie and Edward were, others more exalted were also arguing about who should go to the party, but not from the same angle. There is a popular misconception that the aristocracy are not class-conscious. Anyone who finds himself labelled “lord” or “honourable” at birth, who lives in a house full of treasures with possibly three or four lodges, each at the end of a two-mile drive, while the vast mass of the population are called “Mr” and live in villas or cottages, and who is not conscious of these differences, must have singularly weak powers of observation. The occupants of Government House at this time had normal observation, and they were very class-conscious. This was aggravated by their having become a kind of synthetic royalty. As they were all related, and as, except Lady Eileen Cave, the Governor-General’s wife, they spent their time in physical rather than intellectual activity, they often bickered about their respective importance. But their class-consciousness, far from making them insolent to others, made them extremely gracious and amiable, as they thought they must do everything in their power to bridge over the appalling chasm between themselves and those in less favoured circumstances.
Sir Roland Cave, the Governor-General, was a rich Dorset landowner who had gone into Parliament. When he realized that he had little hope of obtaining Cabinet rank, he accepted his present appointment. He had chosen his staff entirely from his relatives, partly from a natural instinct of nepotism, and partly so that he would feel at home. He had also brought out from his enormous Palladian “seat”, magnificent paintings by English and Italian masters, Vandyke and Gainsborough, Bronzino and Titian, Gobelin tapestries, gold plate, state carriages and footmen, so that Government House was quite homelike. On the evening of Elsie Radcliffe’s party, this gemütlich feeling was heightened by the friendly bickering going on in Lady Eileen’s sitting-room, where the members of the household were having coffee after dinner.
Lord Wendale, the Military Secretary, was Lady Eileen’s brother. Freddie Thorpe, one of the aides-de-camp, was Sir Roland’s nephew. John Wyckham, the other aide-de-camp, was Lady Wendale’s nephew. Miss Rockingham, who was staying with them for some months as a kind of unofficial lady-in-waiting, was Lady Eileen’s oldest friend. Even Lord Francis Derham, the Chamberlain, a permanent official not chosen by Sir Roland, was a second cousin of Miss Rockingham’s. They were now discussing whether Freddie Thorpe should or should not be
forced to go to the party.
“I don’t like classical music,” he protested.
“It won’t be all music, and there’s sure to be a good supper at the Radcliffes’,” said Dolly Wendale.
“Why can’t John go?”
“He hasn’t been asked.”
“That doesn’t matter. They’re keen to get any of us.”
“I shouldn’t think that Mrs Radcliffe was terribly keen on you, Freddie,” said Lady Eileen, looking up from her petit-point, and breaking a thread in her teeth.
“All the rich girls will be there,” said Patrick Wendale. Everyone knew that Freddie had come out in search of an heiress, and that he was badly in need of one. John Wyckham, although he had no such intention, also came in for a good deal of chaff about fortune-hunting, which he did not mind much, as he thought the idea of marrying for money so horrible that the chaff had no meaning. He was the only son of another Dorset landowner but with a more modest property than Sir Roland’s. He had gone into the army at his father’s suggestion to occupy himself until he inherited, though he would have preferred something more congenial to his alert and curious mind. He had the ordinary fair, good-looking “guardee” type of face, but more sensitive, with a shy and attractive smile. When Sir Roland offered him the appointment as aide-de-camp, he accepted eagerly, as he wanted to see different people and places, though his fellow subalterns called it “poodle-faking”.