The Third Hour

by Geoffrey Household

  The generous Catalan wine and the privacy of their table, half-hidden by the angle of Pepe’s office so that they could watch the guests but were themselves subjected only to the casual glances of passers whose true business was elsewhere, induced in them a rare sense of well-being and companionship. Whitehead, Ottery and Bendrihem tasted their food and wine more vividly, anticipating the pleasure that would be added to repletion; they were as guests at the table of a rich man who had promised to serve at the end of the meal a superb cognac or calvados. Toby was the most serious of the four, considering how he should best present to them his intention and his invitation.

  Mark Ottery lay back in his chair and belched loudly.

  “A noise of Eastern politeness!” he announced.

  “Louder,” said Bendrihem. “That would have been considered the merest thanks.”

  “I remember,” said Whitehead, “taking our Iraq agent out to lunch at Simpson’s. Mr Bendrihem is right. People seemed to be shocked. I can’t think why.”

  “Because the businessman,” Toby suggested, “among businessmen is more worried about what people think of him than a shopkeeper’s daughter in a duchess’s drawing room. Pepe, we want four coffees and four large Maria Guerreros.”

  His guests were obstinately silent. It was a more compelling demand for the story than any importunity of words. Toby assumed they would feel some interest in his plans, but did not realise how their curiosity had been intensified beyond bearing by the appearance of a casual hundred thousand pounds out of the blue. For him the gold had lost its romance; he had lived with it, packed it, repacked it and cursed its weight, and it had now been transubstantiated into the supreme unreality of a telephone call and a cheque in the post. For them it was an excitement that caused his every word to be scrutinised for its meaning and undermeaning.

  “I’ll give you a sketch of a man,” Toby began, “the most complete, untrammelled, noble man I have ever met—”

  He told them of the life of Manuel Vargas, of the origin of the gold and of his renunciation of it.

  “Why he trusted me to get it and how I did get it, I’ll tell you in a minute. You know the man now—that’s the chief thing. What do you think Manuel Vargas is likely to do with it? That isn’t just an idle question. He’ll consult you.”

  “Your letter has already told us that he means to found some sort of order,” said Bendrihem, “and I see it must be taken seriously. He is ambitious.”

  “Ambitious? Manuel? But he’s not!”

  “Not for any ordinary objects, I admit. But a man consumed with ambition, as you are.”

  “Yes,” Ottery agreed, “and dangerous. But whatever he was in the past, he’ll want to give peace now and enjoy it. A home for a lot of kindred spirits—that’s what he wants. But that rebel Toby will never be content to sit on his backside and enjoy life. I smell heretics and burnings. I see my lord abbot Manning thumping a tub. I see Brother Mark walled up in his privy for anti-social thought. What’s the catch, Toby?”

  He told them of the Alcázar, of Manuel’s own confession of his faith, of Paolo and as much of Irma as could discreetly be explained.

  “It’s a very simple creed, you see,” he went on. “Tolerance. Contempt for money. A love of Europe transcending the love of the nation.”

  “Why not of the world?” asked Bendrihem.

  “It’s too hard a condition, Simon. A man who says he loves the whole world is either a saint or insincere. We don’t know the thought of all those millions of dark-skinned men. How can we possibly say whether we love them or not? But the culture of Europe we do know, and a man can honestly say whether it matters to him.”

  “And America?”

  “You must ask Manuel. I am prejudiced and know it. Latin America I include in Europe. It’s a fine flower of our culture. North America I see as a danger to Europe. But I may be wrong. There may be Americans who think as I do, only I have never met any. Let me explain, Simon. I love Europe as one loves a passionate, wayward, splendid woman. She’s in a ferment to-day. New thoughts. New creative power. Lord! She’s like a pregnant woman, unreasonable, infuriating. But pregnant. I lose my temper when I read American newspapers or listen to American statesmen. One patronises her. One strokes her breasts and says they are not so bad. Another treads on her bare toes and runs away peeing himself with laughter. Another buys a picture-postcard and expects a kiss. And all of them think her great belly indecent. It’s upsetting and un-American to be so rich in life. They treat my love as a common whore who ought to be reformed.”

  His three listeners were silenced by such a burst of emotion. Ottery sent for another jug of wine and filled Toby’s glass.

  “You can’t expect us all to feel like that, old friend,” he said gently.

  “I don’t. I don’t. There’s Whitehead’s internationalism for example. Purer than mine and less aggressive.”

  “Mine?” asked Whitehead surprised. “I haven’t any. I don’t know anything about foreigners, except that they’re just like the rest of us.”

  Bendrihem watched the dark face that hovered over the farther end of the table. He did not meet Toby’s eyes. They disturbed too greatly the current of his thoughts. The man had hit on a superb conception. His Manuel Vargas might—one could not tell—be the founder of the monastic movement of the twentieth century. One such abbey would certainly be founded, and would perhaps die as obscurely as a colony of nudists. But if it lived and gave birth to others? Ten such abbeys holding within their wall tolerant, honourable, soldierly men, philosopher kings—or even queens—neither seeking power nor rejecting it, might change the history of the world. He had a vision of great monasteries, like walled cities upon a plain teeming with horsemen, preserving peace and civilisation against the hordes of the money-makers and the raids of politicians lusting for power. The abbey had guarded some memory of learning through the Dark Ages; it might preserve the ideals of honour and clear thinking through the Dark Age of material progress. An order wealthy, sure of itself, fearlessly self-sacrificing, would wield an influence far beyond that of the vanished aristocracy.

  “You are a nationalist, Toby,” he said. “You have all the reactions and intolerance of a nationalist. But by accident your nation is Europe, and you include and exclude in it whatever suits you. You are like Hitler claiming the Japanese to be Aryans. Forgive me. That had to be said before we went any further.”

  Toby glared across the table at this impassive Caesar and then laughed.

  “You may be right, Simon,” he said. “But what does it matter? The reason for my Europeanism—if you won’t allow me internationalism—is that I was thrown into Vienna at a very impressionable period of my life. You could make out a very good case for my being anti-English because I don’t like the climate and anti-American because I lost the girl I happened to be in love with at the time. Why we are what we are doesn’t matter. The internationalism of the abbey is a fact. It simply exists—like that of the Church or of seamen on a ship. We offer a refuge to the noble of all nations.

  “The abbey is for the independent, honourable man caught up, as the vast majority of us are, in the production and marketing of goods; the man who loathes the morality that is forced on him, who doesn’t want the success he could have, but can’t accept a religion, and is aristocrat enough to see that neither the nation nor a political party are big enough.

  “It isn’t for men who already have an ideal to serve. I doubt if we have much to offer to the doctor, for example, or the colonial administrator, or the scientist, the writer, the artist. We can merely tell them they are right to put the work before its remuneration. We can perhaps offer them rest and hospitality when they are beaten. But we can’t offer them work which they will love more than that which they already have.

  “In a way you’re responsible for all this, Bert,” he said, suddenly turning to Whitehead. “There’s not one damned thing in front of y
ou but money success. You’re twice as efficient as anyone else in Hanson & Crane, but you won’t sink to all the impudence and intrigue that are necessary to put yourself over. Sooner or later you will—just as I should—and then there’s one more aristocrat lost and one more trader born.”

  “But I have nothing to give,” said Albert.

  “You have everything to give.”

  “Money, I mean. I don’t see why we should all come and live on you and this chap Vargas.”

  “I haven’t any money either. And far less to give than you. You’re trusting us with your future, the security of your wife and the education of young Thomas. That’s enough.”

  “They’ll be well looked after,” said Bendrihem in a matter-of-fact tone. “Up to date there’s about £138,000 for the lot of us. I am worth thirty thousand at to-day’s prices.”

  “Simon!” Toby exclaimed.

  “Oh, it’s worth trying. And there’s no doubt that a brother’s private possessions must go into the pot.”

  “But this is mad monkery!” said Ottery. “I dream or I am drunken. St Toby of London converting the heathen!”

  “Forget the word ‘abbey’ and consider it a club, your reverence. A residential club of independent, well-mannered outlaws from all classes and all nations, with an initial endowment of £138,000. Now do you see that it’s practical?”

  “Yes. And I’d join it if it were a club. But you can’t expect me to put all my money into such a thing. For one thing, I can’t get it out of Plug, Plug & Ottery.”

  “A very good investment,” said Toby calmly. “Leave it there and make over the interest to the order.”

  “To whom?”

  “Manuel Vargas, Bendrihem and yourself. That ought to satisfy you as a Board of Directors.”

  “Not you?”

  “No. Foreign representation is my line.”

  “Who else will join us?”

  “Irma von Reichensund, Paolo Salvini, Gregory Vassilieff I hope—he’s the wild man with the hypodermic syringe and the feudal wife whom I told you about when I got back from the first trip—and anyone else they can bring in.”

  “Gosh, you’ve laid your hands on a cockatrice den! But I refuse to mortify my flesh, Toby. I like my flesh. It’s good flesh.” He looked at his watch. “And it’s eleven o’clock.”

  “Who’s asking you to mortify your flesh? If a job demands asceticism, we’ll give it to someone who is used to living on biscuits and water. Look after the abbey cellar for us and see that it’s a good one. We shall never refuse hospitality, and given the right wines and the perfect menu, I’d seat a communist next to a cardinal and a Nazi by the local pawnbroker.”

  “I like it, Toby. I like it. Lord High Cellarer and Host—it tempts me. A week ago I’d have put in my order for the hair shirt or the club tie, whichever it is. But I’m a chartered accountant and I won’t renounce the flesh and the devil.”

  “But since I tell you that you haven’t got to!”

  “A beastly continental construction, Toby! Talk English.”

  “What’s the matter? Is old Bartlemy Plug retiring? Or have they asked you to audit the Bank of England? If you’ve set your heart on finishing a job of work, finish it of course.”

  Mark Ottery stood up, and stuck his hyacinth in Toby’s hair.

  “God be with you, chaps! See you to-morrow and we’ll bank the swag!”

  “What’s the hurry?” Toby protested—but Mark was already halfway across the restaurant.

  “Cheery bloke, isn’t he?” said Whitehead. “I hope the girl isn’t leading him up the garden.”

  “He hasn’t a girl, old boy. He’s going to play billiards with a client or check the petty cash at the Ritz.”

  “He has a girl,” Bendrihem said.

  “What! Who is she?”

  “Penelope Mason.”

  “Who’s Penelope Mason?”

  “My secretary.”

  “That girl with the big mouth and the long legs?”

  “Don’t you like her?”

  “I? I’m afraid I haven’t thought of her, Simon. I just remember noticing last summer that the thinner her frock the nicer she looked. But I don’t understand. Has Mark come down to raiding his friends’ offices?”

  “Very unwillingly. He gave me a lot of trouble.”

  “Simon, you’re an immoral old devil.”

  “Why? He’ll make my little Penelope very happy.”

  “Blast your little Penelope! How can I get him to join us just when he has a new interest?”

  “How could you hope to keep him when the whole sexual side of his life is unsettled? You tell us that a companion must give all his possessions to the order. Is that fair on a man when he’s still longing for women like a boy of eighteen?”

  Toby was silent for a moment.

  “You’re right, Simon,” he said at last. “But you’re very fond of playing the God in the Car.”

  “Have you any complaint of it?”

  “No!”

  The shadow of disappointment cleared away from Toby’s face. He put the hyacinth, till then ignored, back into the vase, and laughed.

  “Tell us about it.”

  “On condition that you both pretend absolute ignorance.”

  “Of course.”

  “As a matter of fact I wasn’t playing the God in the Car, because I didn’t know exactly what your proposal would be. But I admit I forced the pace. Whatever you wanted Ottery and myself for, it couldn’t be so important, for him you understand, as this. And for Penelope. He’s been round at my office every day since we got your letters. There was a good deal to be done, you see. Obviously he was fascinated and shy—he’s always noisy when he’s shy—so I left them alone together as much as possible on the excuse of urgent business elsewhere. I used to walk to Cannon Street Station and back,” he added sadly. “I had nothing else to do.”

  “But doesn’t he know you were helping?” Toby asked.

  “Hasn’t the faintest idea of it! And he mustn’t have yet. Even if it pricks his conscience a bit, he must think he’s done it all alone. I get the news from Penelope. She lunched with him yesterday and he asked her to dine to-night. Then you came along with your invitation, and he couldn’t disappoint you.”

  “I’m awfully sorry. He should have told me.”

  “My dear man, he’s sensitive. Your attitude would have been far too—robust.”

  “I’m afraid it would,” Toby admitted.

  “So he rushed up to the office, asked me a lot of fat-headed questions about printing accounts—as if he didn’t know a hundred times more about them than I!—and on the way out he saw Penelope and switched the dinner invitation to a supper dance.”

  “I do hope she wasn’t annoyed.”

  “I don’t think so. I gather she thought that any sort of a dance was better fun than a dinner—even if ordered by Ottery.”

  “Youth! Youth!” exclaimed Toby with mock solemnity.

  “Yes. It’s time they both enjoyed it.”

  “You aren’t her father by any chance?”

  “Good heavens, no!” exclaimed Bendrihem, rather shocked. “Her father was a Gibraltarian and her mother a Greek.”

  “That’s the right kind of girl for him,” said Albert.

  “Do you know her, Bert?” Toby asked.

  “No. She has a nice voice on the telephone—that’s all I know about her. What I meant was—well, he’s a funny chap and all that, but a bit stuck in a groove, don’t you think? No more than me, I suppose. Still, it seems more of a pity for him.”

  “No! Neither more nor less! Are you proposing that your vassal should marry him, my good Lord Simon?”

  “I hadn’t given it much thought,” Bendrihem answered, smiling. “Whatever happens, it will be much better for Penelope than dreaming dreams and occ
asionally kissing a comparative stranger in a taxi. They’re two lovely children from different worlds. Let them have their romance, and feel that there is no hurry to make up their minds.”

  “A lovely child—that pot-bellied, belching bin of old club port! But you’re right—he is. By God, Simon, what a trick you have of getting to the essence of people!”

  Pepe hovered about their table, a benevolent and apologetic shadow. He caught Albert Whitehead’s eye, and since it was not the eye that he had intended to catch, instantly effaced himself.

  “I think,” said Albert, answering the appeal, “that they want to shut up shop.”

  Toby looked up. His party was, as usual, the last.

  They separated outside the restaurant, Bendrihem taking a bus to the house which he unaccountably retained in the heart of the East End, Toby strolling westwards to Curzon Street, Albert Whitehead at a brisk pace to Charing Cross, where he hoped to catch the theatre train to Croydon.

  His platform, a train on each side of it, was full of girls in evening frocks and cheap coats returning to the outer suburbs after a brief and presumably happy interval in the daily routine of train, office, train, bed. Albert automatically noted that there were quite a dozen with whom, assuming their personalities to be as attractive as their faces, he would gladly spend the rest of the night; at the same time he was aware that he would never go to the trouble and expense of doing so. Edie was no beauty, but—

  He caught himself up. Edie was, after all, a pretty woman when she was taken out to a party, and these homing girls, flushed with excitement, would look no better than his wife in the morning. Edie might or might not be a beauty; but she was his and the boy was his, and they were all he had that mattered. He had no real desire for strange lips, nor any—though it pricked his conscience a bit—for greater comfort than he had. What he did want was exactly what Toby Manning had offered; to be allowed to be of some service to his kind without betraying his duty to his family. He was uneasy at his own readiness to risk their future; but, after all, he thought, he was really taking no more chances than in joining a new firm.