by Martin Boyd
“Then you can come to my tea-party first,” said Arthur.
“Oh thank you. I’d love to,” I said again, eagerly.
My mother asked me if I were coming up to Westhill for the weekend.
“I can’t,” I replied. “I’ve been asked to the twins.”
“That will be amusing,” she said, but she looked a little disappointed. “Perhaps you would like to come?” she suggested to Mildy.
“If Guy is going to be out all day, I may as well go away,” said Mildy plaintively.
“You’d better come up on Friday,” said my father. “Which train will you catch?”
“Oh!” Mildy turned on him her reproachful blue eyes. She did not want to go away, and had only threatened to do so to “tease” me. No one knew this, and no one knew what she meant by these reproachful stares. He thought that she was being too sweet and feminine to cope with such manly things as time-tables, though the three daily trains had been the same since their childhood.
“We’ll meet the afternoon train,” he said firmly. Mildy looked very sad.
The party from Government House came in. The room was now fairly full and people turned to watch them. Arthur said:
“If you took a plaster cast of Lady Wendale’s face it would be very pretty. As it is, it isn’t sufficiently convex.”
“The concave countess in fact,” said Anthea.
Russell looked rather startled.
Cousin Sophie being English, and having mutual friends with the vice-regal staff, was on more intimate terms with them than most Melbourne people. Lady Wendale caught sight of her and with Miss Rockingham and the two aides-de-camp, John Wyckham looking diffidently amiable, and Freddie Thorpe like a resentful bull, also joined our group, of which the original central attraction was Arthur. Miss Rockingham’s proud and sagging eyes which showed that every year she was spiritually refreshed by the kiss of the Queen of Spain, glanced with gracious expectation round the room, lighting with satisfaction on Russell.
My parents who, from some obscure and involved psychological motives, always avoided the society of English people in Australia, moved away. Mildy for the simple reason that she thought they would despise her, and anxious to detach me from the twins, said: “Come on Guy, let us find a seat.” I pretended not to hear her, and torn between her desire for my company and her terror of the great, she went into the ballroom and sat by her repellent friend Miss Bath, whom Arthur called “the wrong end of the magnet”.
Freddie Thorpe gave an appraising glance at the twins, and immediately fixed his attention on Anthea.
“You like music?” he asked.
“Yes. Do you?” she replied.
“No. Hate it. Don’t mind a band.” Anthea, because of the blue lapels and gold buttons on his coat, and his direct, masculine and rather brutal blue eyes, thought this very amusing.
“Why have you come?” she asked.
“Had to. Don’t mind now I’ve met you.”
“You liven things up a bit yourself.”
“D’you mean that?” he asked, looking at her with a sharp and potent glance.
“I couldn’t possibly tell you,” said Anthea.
He did not know what she meant, and he hoped to God, a vain hope, that she was not going to be clever. But she was a good-looker, nice legs, and her voice was all right. With a decent allowance now, and £5,000 a year in the future, she would not be a bad investment for his manhood.
Miss Rockingham in her muted foghorn voice asked Russell how long he had been out.
“About two months,” he said, “but I was brought up in Australia.”
“I didn’t know,” said Miss Rockingham, being too well bred to give the usual exclamation of surprise and say: “I’d never have thought so.”
“Are you returning soon to England?” she asked.
“I don’t think so. I shall probably stay a year at least.”
“I have come for a year.”
“I’m glad,” he said. There was a comfortable feeling between them that they would meet fairly often. He liked people with her knowledge of the great world, and she thought that he looked intelligent.
Josie was staying with some school friends and had not come with her parents. She was almost the last to arrive, and was alone. Elsie’s butler, who had known her since she was a baby, and was proud to see her for the first time in a grown-up evening dress, and moved by the delightful smile she gave him, and also because she was Diana’s daughter, announced in a particularly loud and impressive voice:
“Miss Josephine von Flugel.”
This sudden bellow brought an immediate silence, and everyone turned to see what had caused it. They were amused at the contrast between the pompous circumstance of her entry, and this young girl standing in a clear space near the door, looking faintly surprised and smiling to find herself there. It was as if a thunderclap had passed and a crocus had sprouted from the ground. Though it may have been said too often, it is true that young girls do look like flowers, if they have any looks at all. Their petal skins and the delicate tendrils of their hair have an affinity with the beautiful growths of the natural world, so that whoever embraces a young girl seems to hold the whole realm of nature in his arms. Everybody smiled, but John Wyckham gaped at her almost in astonishment. His lips were parted and his eyes smiling in a sort of wonder, and I thought he must have met her before and for some reason be surprised at finding her here this evening.
She stood a moment in the open space, and then seeing Uncle Arthur, she came over to him and the babel broke out again. Miss Rockingham shed on her one of those smiles of pure benevolence and love which the young receive in this first bloom, while there is still something childlike remaining in physical maturity, and which are scattered on them like blessings as they enter a room, or walk along a city street; until that bloom fades and they are aware that something has gone from their lives, a brightness has left the air, but they do not know what it is.
When Josie had greeted Uncle Arthur, and rather diffidently Cousin Sophie and the twins, as she had a vague feeling that they were the Enemy and had been unkind to Wolfie, Miss Rockingham spoke to her.
“You are the daughter of the composer,” she said.
“Yes, I am,” said Josie, a little surprised, as she had never before heard Wolfie called “the composer”.
“We are looking forward very much to hearing your father’s music.”
“Thank you,” said Josie, and Miss Rockingham laughed, which brought an extraordinary transformation to her face. Her sagging eyes crinkled up into a rich and twinkling mirth, which gave the impression of a capacity for immense enjoyment. She saw John looking at Josie with impatient admiration, and having like Diana a noble nature, which found some compensation in bringing to others the pleasures she could not have herself, she said: “May I introduce Captain Wyckham? Miss von Flugel,” and she left them together.
By now all the guests had arrived, and the Radcliffes with Diana and Wolfie moved from the door and came over to join us. They talked for a few minutes and then Elsie Radcliffe said to Wolfie: “I suppose it’s time to begin.”
We straggled towards the ballroom, where most of the guests were already seated on rows of hired chairs. Miss Rockingham was beside Dolly Wendale and she said with a note of approval and the slightest hint of surprise: “That woman’s a lady.”
“Oh yes,” said Dolly, thinking she meant Cousin Sophie. “She knows a lot of our people at home.”
“Yes, but I mean the other one, Mrs von Flugel.”
Russell happened to be close behind them and he overheard this endorsement of his own opinion, as he felt that Miss Rockingham by the word “lady” meant something beyond mere upper-class savoir faire. He loved the highest when he saw it, and in her own métier Miss Rockingham was the highest, and he expected the highest to have all the graces, and to be possessed of some degree of creative imagination. Miss Rockingham had this gift, though she applied it solely to her own personality. Diana obviously h
ad it, and when the former said that she was a lady she meant that she had a wide instinctive knowledge of what social life should be. He was disgusted with himself that he had not trusted his own initial judgment, but had allowed himself to be influenced by the airy gossip of the twins. There was no one whose endorsement of his appreciation of Diana he would value more than Miss Rockingham’s.
“Let us cling to the noble and wealthy,” said Anthea, as we followed in their wake.
We were unable to cling for long, as Mrs Radcliffe took the Government House party to some seats she had reserved for them in the front row, although as Lady Eileen had pointed out, except when in attendance on herself and Sir Roland, they had no vice-regal status. But this was the kind of mistake Australians were apt to make.
Although we were separated from the noble and wealthy, I was determined not to be separated from the twins. Mildy had kept a seat for me between herself and Miss Bath, and she was patting it and trying to catch my eye, but feeling guilty and unkind, I pretended not to see her. Nobody knew why Miss Bath was invited to parties. She was neither entertaining nor ornamental. Her face was expressionless, except for a touch of impassive greed. Her skin was mud-coloured, her eyes darker mud-coloured and her dress of very good quality mud-coloured silk. Her necklace was of polished New Zealand greenstone. She also had been one of the neighbours in Alma Road, and people like Elsie had become used to her.
Arthur was put in the front row between Lady Wendale and Miss Rockingham, which he did not enjoy. Although in the family he posed as the authority on everything European, with recent arrivals from Europe, which he had not seen since his twenties, he was shy and oddly deferential, feeling that the world had grown beyond the knowledge which he affected. Though he was fifty years older than myself he had just as ardent a longing to be with the twins, who to their disgust found there was no room for them in the front row, though Josie was there beside John Wyckham, to them a reversal of natural order. I sat with them on three hard chairs against the wall.
“Now that Captain Wyckham’s gone off with a milkmaid, we’ll have to fall back on you,” said Anthea.
“You can fall as hard as you like,” I replied enthusiastically.
“The intention is good but the expression unfortunate,” said Cynthia, with whom one felt that one was the subject of a perpetual book review.
“Hush!” said Anthea.
Wolfie had seated himself at the piano and, with a quaint affectation of being unselfconscious, was rolling his eyes at the ceiling. Elsie Radcliffe was standing, facing the audience, and had begun to speak.
“Lady Pringle has very kindly offered to give a little talk before each of the preludes,” she said, “to explain to those of us who are not very musical what we should listen for. Mr von Flugel is too modest to do this himself.” This was quite untrue, but Diana was afraid that Wolfie’s peculiar idiom might turn his explanation into a comic entertainment. There was a little polite laughter and applause and Lady Pringle crossed to the piano.
She was the wife of a professor at the University, but had come to Australia as governess to the children of a former governor. She had a flute-like and extremely cultivated voice in which she explained the meaning of Wolfie’s music, but inadequately, as she had no idea of its source of inspiration.
“I want you to forget,” she said, “that you are in Mrs Radcliffe’s delightful ballroom, and to imagine that you are in some woodland on a spring morning, perhaps in a forest in my beloved Bavaria, or even in one of those strange sad glades of saplings above the river at Warrandyte.”
The twins looked at each other and raised their eyebrows. This was their first intimation that Bavaria was Lady Pringle’s beloved and that the saplings were sad.
Wolfie was only to play three of his sequence of preludes, as Elsie Radcliffe did not want to give her guests too much of what might be above their heads. Her great social success was due not only to her husband’s wealth and that she instinctively chose her friends amongst pleasant people, but to the fact that the main purpose of all her entertainment was enjoyment, whereas the entertainment given by women like Aunt Baba was to increase their own importance. People came away from parties at Elsie’s house, not merely with the satisfaction of having been somewhere very “smart”, but exclaiming: “Wasn’t it fun?”
Wolfie’s first prelude did seem to evoke woodlands in spring-time, with young lovers and mysterious clouds of blossom. Even the non-musical thought it pretty and there was adequate clapping.
“It’s derivative, of course,” said Cynthia. “It has all been done before, but I should say that it is quite competent —Debussy and water.”
“Debussy engloutie,” said Anthea.
I had heard Arthur say that Debussy was influenced by Wagner. I trotted this out. “So you see,” I said, “if Uncle Wolfie is influenced by Debussy he is on the right lines.”
This intelligent view coming from myself irritated Cynthia, who said: “How is Mr von Flugel your uncle?”
Lady Pringle stood up and said that the next prelude suggested evening in the woods, with the saplings drooping under a gentle shower of rain. Wolfie played this melancholy little nocturne and the most exacting part of the entertainment was over.
There were light refreshments, champagne and coffee, at this stage. The real supper was not to be until later in the evening, after Wolfie had played his third prelude. Everyone stood up and began to move towards the buffet in the billiard room. In the doorway the twins became jammed close to Arthur.
“Well, my dear,” he said to Anthea, “did you enjoy yourself amongst the saplings?” He was again posing as the virile man above susceptibility to aesthetic impressions.
“I was drenched to the skin,” said Anthea.
In the hall we ran into Aunt Baba, our socially ambitious relative, who, to appear smart, had deliberately chosen to go first to the theatre.
“Good evening, Mr Langton,” she said to Arthur, addressing him in this way as she thought it was not smart to have relatives. “I hope the music’s over. I couldn’t listen for an hour to von Flugel playing. I prefer the jam without the pill.”
Cousin Sophie, standing near, overheard this. Whatever her personal opinion of Wolfie, she could not endure that culture should be openly disparaged by the vulgar. She turned and said:
“That is a pity, as your mind is in greater need of nourishment than your body.”
There was a gasp from those who heard, and only Baba gave a dismayed titter. She had lived for twenty years in dread that Sophie might one day turn and crush her with the whole weight of her social power, and now it had happened. It was true that she had asked for it, but life would be intolerable if we were given all we asked for. And Cousin Sophie, for all her culture, had done the most uncivilized thing possible, she had used the full extent of her force against Baba, whose armour was a pitiful and contrived affair. This perhaps was where she showed that Teutonism of which Lady Eileen had complained, and which later was exhibited in different forms, not only by Freddie, but by Wolfie, by Baba herself, and supremely by Mrs Montaubyn. Arthur, who admired Sophie, looked grieved and noble, and Diana who also heard the snub was indignant, and gave Baba a glance of sympathy, which brought Baba’s Teutonism at once into play. She only respected power, and mostly when it was indicated by wealth. She recognized that Sophie had the power, and therefore she believed the right, to snub her. She was dismayed, but thought that her misfortune was due to a proper natural order. She was infuriated by Diana’s glance of sympathy. Diana was poor. Diana had no power. Her sympathy was an affront and Baba determined at the first opportunity to “get even with her”.
In the billiard room Baba stood at one end of the buffet talking loudly and brightly, like someone showing courage after they have been run over in the street. At the other end Sophie was quietly discussing the preludes with Lady Pringle, and was quite indifferent to the moral havoc she had just created.
I was caught by Mildy and had to bring her a tiny glass of cha
mpagne, and Miss Bath a whisky and soda. When we returned to the ballroom for the last prelude I could not escape, and had to sit between them.
By now the party had livened up. This was partly due to the refreshments, and a little to the fact that the news of Sophie’s snub had spread and had caused a slight atmosphere of malicious excitement. Lady Pringle again stood by the piano and now everyone musical or otherwise, was prepared to be amused by her references to saplings and showers.
“Mr von Flugel’s last prelude,” she said, “is the longest, and I think the most important. I must explain that I have not consulted him about my little talks. They are just my personal interpretation. I hope that I am not taking too great a liberty.” She bowed to Wolfie, who rolled his eyes at her, delighted that anyone should be talking about his music, whatever they said.
“This prelude reminds me,” she went on, “with its glowing colour, its rich and yet idyllic interpretation of the natural world, of the Thalysia or Harvest Home of Theocritus, and I feel that I cannot do better than to read you some lines from this poem.”
She took her pince-nez and pulled out the cord from a round, rose-enamelled case, fixed to her bosom, which contained a spring like a miniature tape-measure. When she placed them on her nose, she looked more like someone about to administer a rebuke, than to read erotic poetry.
“The translation is Calverley’s,” she explained and began:
“… But O ye loves
whose cheeks are like pink apples, quit your homes
By Hyetis …”
She described the dalliance of the shepherds, and ended:
“And o’er the fountain hung the gilded bee.
Pears at our feet and apples at our side
Rolled in luxuriance. Branches on the ground
Sprawled overweighed with damsons; while we brushed
From the cask’s head the crust of four long years.”
Lady Pringle took off her pince-nez and the cord whizzed back into the rose-enamelled disc. She looked at us less severely and said: “Perhaps some of you have passed in a steamer between where, on one side, the afternoon sun bathed the tiles of Reggio in a russet glow, and on the other the dome of Messina rose from the mists into its slanting rays, and you may have wished, as I did, being borne by the relentless churning of the propellor, far from those wine-dark seas into a new country, that the sun would turn back on its course, and dispel the mists which obscured the only glimpse we might ever have of the land of Theocritus and Bion. Perhaps Mr von Flugel’s prelude may do that for us.”