‘How loathsome!’ said Lydia, her eyes shining with interest. ‘Make it eat.’
Hacker took the chameleon out of its cage and put it on the table. He then partly unscrewed the jar and let a fly come out. The chameleon licked it off as it emerged and looked as if nothing had happened.
‘What’s its name?’ asked Lydia, as the chameleon finished the flies.
Hacker went scarlet.
‘Gibbon,’ said Morland, adding, ‘Can’t you talk, you ass?’ in a loud aside to Hacker.
‘Did you call him after Gibbon?’ said Lydia.
Hacker looked piteously at his friends.
‘You must excuse him,’ said Swan kindly. ‘The Classical Sixth are all like that. He had to read Gibbon for his scholarship, and got quite romantic about him, so he called the chameleon Gibbon. It used to be Greta Garbo, but he took that one off.’
‘That beast Pettinger said Gibbon was beyond me,’ said Lydia, ‘but he wasn’t. In fact I think he’s jolly good. He seems to have a very comprehensive grasp of things, if you know what I mean. I say, Colin, can we begin?’
Colin said they ought to wait a little for Rose, and just then Philip came in, asking if anyone had seen Rose. He had been at the table with the sports secretary all afternoon and unable to look for her.
Kate, who had seen Rose surrounded by admiring old boys and gallant fathers, felt sorry for Philip and said nothing, but Lydia, in whom the memory of her encounter with Philip was still rankling, had no such inhibitions.
‘I shouldn’t think she’d be here for ages,’ she said. ‘There are about twenty people asking her to have tea with them in the tent. Look.’
She haled the unwilling Philip to the window and pointed out a large, noisy group. Among white flannels, grey flannels, and even a few frock coats and top hats, he could see the billowing cloud of yellow organdie that enveloped his love.
‘Yes, I see her,’ he said. ‘Well, Colin, sorry I’m late. I hope you haven’t been waiting tea for me.’
Swan came up to Lydia.
‘Look at the Dean of Barchester down there,’ he said, pointing to a group on the grass. ‘He’s telling everyone what a good school it is, because he’s a Governor. Gas and gaiters we call him on Speech Day. I say, Lydia, be decent. It isn’t fair to rag Mr Winter about Rose. He may be a bit short in the temper, but he’s a decent master, and Rose is just one large yellow mistake. Tony and I are thinking of taking serious steps about it. We can’t have the house upset by a brainless vanilla ice,’ he said, looking vengefully at Rose’s yellow dress, which was floating in their direction.
‘You mean she isn’t playing fair?’ said Lydia.
‘Fair, my good girl! Blonde is what she is playing. You’ll be decent to Mr Winter, won’t you? Come on, tea’s ready.’
Lydia nodded gravely and took her place at the tea table. A violent revulsion was taking place in her downright mind. When she had first seen Philip at the picnic she had taken a strong dislike to him on what she considered extremely adequate grounds. He had dared to speak in an uppish way to Kate, for whom Lydia, in her young arrogance, had a very protective, if slightly condescending, affection. Lydia had flown to Kate’s rescue and administered to Philip what she considered an awfully good snub, or, as it was called in school circles, a blip. After this, everything he did was wrong. A man who got water down his sleeves when he punted she could not endure. If he had fallen in like a man, as she so often did herself, she could have forgiven and sympathised, but for so mean an action as not handling a punt pole correctly, she had nothing but scorn. The fact of his being engaged to Rose Birkett further lowered him in her estimation. With no envy of Rose’s looks and power of attraction, she felt that a man who could fall in love with someone who was so obviously not a good fellow, was below the normal standard of intellect. And worst of all, she had gathered that Rose was persecuting Colin. If Rose tried that on, Lydia would defend him tooth and nail. If you were engaged, even to so low a worm as Philip, you were engaged, in Lydia’s simple code, and you jolly well stuck to him and didn’t go about making eyes at people’s brothers. Therefore her feelings towards Philip underwent her usual rapid revision, and she decided to treat him kindly and reserve her heavy artillery for Rose, regardless of the fact that Philip cared for her. That he could for a moment care for such a washout as Rose went against him, but Lydia had gathered from Shakespeare and other authorities that love was very peculiar and often made people quite potty. If Desdemona could fall in love with Othello, Philip might be excused for falling in love with Rose, whose worst enemy could not call her black. Having thus arranged her so-called thoughts, in much less time than it takes to write about them, she dismissed them to the back of her mind and settled down to enjoy Colin’s very good tea.
Kate was pouring out, and with her usual instinct for the defenceless had got Philip and Hacker one on each side of her. Hacker’s chameleon, who had previously been put on the iced cakes, obstinately refused to turn pink, and was put back in his cage, and the serious business of eating was just getting under way, when Rose came in, leading by the hand, for such was her usual engaging and artless way, no less a person than Noel Merton.
‘Oh, Colin,’ she said, ignoring everyone else, ‘I’ve brought Noel. He is staying with the Dean, and tea in the tent looked so sickening that I knew you’d be an angel and not mind.’
Noel, feeling that his fair guide’s explanation, though obscurely phrased, would probably be understood by the party, merely apologised for gate-crashing.
‘When Mrs Crawley asked me for the weekend,’ he said, ‘I didn’t know I was to have the treat of coming to the sports. May I come to tea?’
Colin, as host, welcomed him, and there was a little clamour of greeting. Noel looked towards Kate, but the places by her were occupied and Rose, who had already put herself next to Colin, pulled Noel into the chair on her other side with a firm hand, and cast her lovely eyes round the table.
‘How do you do, everyone,’ she said vaguely. Her eyes then fell upon the face of her affianced, to whom she remarked, ‘Oh Philip, darling, are you there, I thought you were doing the sports,’ and took no further notice of him. Lydia, bristling with her new opinions, looked at Philip, saw him wince, and prepared for his defence. For a time no chance offered itself. Rose was using her charms to her right and left, while Philip sat and wondered why he cared for her so much.
Swan and Morland were engaged in sorting out the alphabet letters and talking in low voices. Kate, having done her unsuccessful best by Hacker, turned to Philip and made soothing conversation to which no reply was needed. Geraldine, who had hitherto remained perfectly silent, pointed to the chameleon, sitting in his cage with his eyes shut, and said confidentially to his master, who was next to her, ‘I like him.’
Hacker looked at her with the first dawnings of humanity in his expression, but could not articulate. Geraldine, enchanted to find a companion even more tongue-tied than herself, said again, ‘I like him. What’s his name?’
‘Greta Garbo,’ said Hacker in a hoarse voice, and then remembering the change of name said hastily, ‘Gibbon, I mean.’
Geraldine looked gratified, and was about to make another remark, when Swan said:
‘OK, Tony. I’ll explain and then we’ll start.’
‘What is it?’ asked Kate, who had been looking at the letters that lay before them.
‘It’s called Alphabet Race, Miss Keith,’ said Morland. ‘You get all the letters of the alphabet, or if you can’t get the exact letters you get twenty-six, we had to have three Ms, because there wasn’t a J or an L, and then you see how many you can get into your mouth. My record is twenty-three, and we’re out to break it. Only one at a time are the rules. Will you start us, sir?’ he said to Philip.
Philip jumped nervously. Morland repeated the request, and Philip gave the word, upon which both boys began to cram their alphabets, a letter at a time, into their mouths. Everyone watched, fascinated, while the letters disappeared, and Rose
found herself for once without an audience. At twenty-four Swan gave up, while Morland managed to cram a twenty-fifth into his mouth. They then sat, proud but disgusting sights, for a triumphant moment.
‘That’s very good,’ said Colin. ‘And now you had better both go and do your chewing in the passage before you burst and choke, and then come back for strawberries.’
Swan and Morland, obviously on the verge of apoplexy with suppressed giggles, made a plunge for the door and banged it behind them. Matron, who was passing, thought they had whooping cough, and what with crumbs in the windpipe and tears in the eyes, they had great difficulty in explaining what had happened. There was such a noise in the passage that Colin came out to see, and invited matron to come and have tea. Matron said, a little boastfully, that she had a senior boy with a sprained ankle, and a junior boy who was bilious with excitement, and a visiting father in holy orders who had fainted from the heat, but she would love to have a tiny peep at Mr Keith’s party.
‘Do you mean a monk?’ said Swan hopefully.
‘Not that kind of father. Matron means a parent, you ass,’ said Morland. ‘It’s young Holinshed’s father. He went all religious and turned into a clergyman. It was all right, because he is rather well off, but Holly says they have family prayers and grace, and it’s ghastly.’
Matron was introduced. Hacker rose and offered her a chair, which she accepted gracefully, saying you always knew the boys in Mr Carter’s house because they were such gentlemen, so that Hacker, knowing what his friends would say to him later, wished he hadn’t been polite. Kate gave matron some tea and asked her if she had much trouble with the laundry. This was an inspiration on Kate’s part, for matron waged a ceaseless warfare against the school laundry, who, in her opinion, had installed special machinery, with spikes and scythe blades, to destroy the sheets, towels, table napkins and personal wear of the house. Kate sympathised so heartily that matron told her the number of pillow-cases that had to be renewed every year because the boys would put stuff on their hair whatever she did, and how difficult it was to make the upper dormitory boys wear their pyjamas in bed in the Summer term. Emboldened by this confidence Kate mentioned that she had darned a black sock for one of the boys in the Whitsun holidays and found that it had been mended with blue wool.
‘I’m not surprised,’ said matron, ‘and I’m very glad you mentioned it, Miss Keith. That will be Jessie. She’s a good girl, but she’s vain, and she won’t wear her spectacles. I’ve told her again and again you can’t tell navy blue from black without your glasses, Jessie, especially I said by artificial light, but it’s no good speaking. I can’t keep an eye on everything, and I shall tell Jessie it has been noticed by outsiders. There was a really dreadful affair, Miss Keith, last term, when Mr Carter’s black silk socks had a little place in them, and she simply pulled the edges together, and never tried to darn it properly. Mr Carter never complains as a rule, but this time he did, and I was really ashamed. It is nice to have a talk with someone who takes an interest.’
So absorbing was this delightful technical talk that Kate’s sisterly ear did not at first hear the noise her sister Lydia was making. Rose was a little put out at the transference of interest from herself to the biscuit eaters. For her father’s pupils she had little use. None of them had cars, and most of them were too young to be interesting. Of the senior boys, the athletic ones were working far too hard to have any time to look at Rose, while most of the studious ones were such as she was not going to waste her time on. There were a few older boys, Swan and Morland being of the number, who seemed to Rose worthy of a little attention, but perversely they considered her worth none at all. As Swan truly remarked to Morland, the peak period for headmaster’s daughters was over. ‘And, mind you,’ he added, ‘the same applies to wives. No one but a born poop would cast an eye on anything that came out of a headmaster’s or a housemaster’s house.’
‘What about Mr Winter?’ Morland had asked.
‘Oh, he’s simply a throw-back. Most of those young Communists are. They are so jolly earnest that they don’t know where they are. I mean, it simply isn’t done now to fall in love with anything inside the school. Mr Winter thinks he is all up to date because he takes in a nasty little weekly all very well informed and printed in typewriting so that you can’t read it, all about What is being Kept From the Public, but as for knowing anything about life —’
‘I say,’ said Morland, losing interest in the puerilities of his superiors, ‘your young cousins down by the bathing pool are coming on nicely. Let’s go and take them some biscuits.’
‘My half uncles and aunts, you mean,’ said Swan. ‘Do get the relationship right.’
So Rose, fortifying herself with some more powder and lipstick, turned to Noel and asked if he had seen any shows lately. Noel replied that he had seen John Potter’s new Shakespeare production.
‘Oh, I love Potter, he’s too marvellous,’ said Rose. ‘I saw him fourteen times in Shakespeare.’
‘So you told me when we were under the tree, the day of the thunderstorm,’ said Noel.
‘You were marvellous, giving me your coat like that,’ said Rose, casting a sheep’s eye at her preserver.
‘I could do no less,’ said Noel, half amused, half remorseful as he saw Philip looking in his direction, but quite unable to resist the pleasure of drawing Rose.
‘Isn’t it a marvellous bit where he sees the Ghost?’ said Rose.
‘Who? Oh yes, Potter.’
‘He looks so divine in black,’ said Rose.
‘Black? But he is in armour in that scene.’
‘Oh no, Noel. He is all in black, with battlements.’
‘Well, all I can say is that last night he was in armour in his tent, quarrelling with Cassius,’ said Noel.
Lydia now came to his aid.
‘Antony and Cleopatra is one of Shakespeare’s very best plays,’ she announced. ‘I’ve read them all, and there’s nothing to touch Antony and Cleopatra except King Lear, and Hamlet, and Othello. Romeo and Juliet is wonderful, and so is The Tempest, and of course Twelfth Night and Much Ado are stupendous. I always think Troilus and Cressida isn’t properly appreciated. All that backchat of Cressida and Pandarus is absolutely like people today. It really is extraordinary how Shakespeare makes you feel you are the people. I felt I was Cressida all the time I was reading it. I wish I had a name out of Shakespeare. Of course Lydia comes in Horace, and I think Horace is perfectly splendid, but a Shakespeare name would be better. I’d like to be Lavinia – out of Titus Andronicus,’ she added reflectively and in case no one knew.
‘And very nice too,’ said Noel.
‘But Cassius isn’t in Shakespeare,’ said Rose, taking no notice of Lydia.
‘He is in Antony and Cleopatra,’ said Colin.
‘But Noel said Shakespeare,’ said Rose, perplexed.
‘Which Shakespeare?’ said Colin.
‘Shakespeare of course. John Potter in Hamlet. I’ve seen Shakespeare fourteen times, so I ought to know,’ said Rose, her lovely cheeks flushing with annoyance at other people’s stupidity.
It had gradually become obvious to everyone that Rose thought there was a play called alternatively Shakespeare and Hamlet. No one felt equal to explaining this.
‘I know what’s wrong with you,’ said Lydia, gathering herself for the attack, ‘you don’t read enough. Shakespeare wrote more than thirty plays, besides the sonnets and some odds and ends, and even if Beaumont and Fletcher did write some of them, it all comes to the same thing. Seeing Hamlet fourteen times isn’t Shakespeare, it’s simply being potty about John Potter – shut up, Eric, it wasn’t meant to be funny. I was a bit potty about him myself, but after all Shakespeare was not for an age but for all time, and being potty on one actor isn’t Shakespeare, else when he was dead, where would you be? What you ought to do, Rose, is to read him all through. Miss Pettinger makes us paraphrase bits, but that’s nonsense, because very often Shakespeare didn’t exactly know what he meant himself, an
d anyway it spoils the verse to put it into prose and alter the language. If Shakespeare had wanted it paraphrased he’d have done it himself.’
‘I wish you had thought of that, sir,’ said Morland to Philip, who looked so out of the conversation, ‘when you made us put him into elegiacs in the Classical Fourth.’
‘There’s another thing about Shakespeare,’ said Lydia, now well into her stride, ‘the amount of Latin words he uses. It’s not nearly as bad as Milton, but anyway Milton was only swank, but with Shakespeare it just shows you how much he knew. Some of his romantic plays are even more classical than his classical ones, if you know what I mean.’
‘I think I do,’ said Noel, ‘and it’s not a bad point.’
‘Mr Lorimer has put The Phoenix and the Turtle into hendecasyllabics,’ said Hacker, zealous for his teacher.
‘Good old Mr Lorimer,’ said Swan, ‘sooner he than I.’
‘I think Latin is sickening,’ said Rose. ‘I want Philip to stop teaching Latin and take a job.’
Summer Half: A Virago Modern Classic (VMC) Page 14