A Difficult Young Man

by Martin Boyd

  Steven said: ‘Thank Heaven someone can keep Dominic harmlessly occupied.’

  I, in my innocence, thought it was very nice for both of them, though neither was to my own taste, for was not the Christian religion simply the doctrine of brotherly love?

  This idyll lasted in its perfection only for a short time, while Dominic was completely absorbed in the colonel’s military interests. Then the pattern, not of heredity but of Dominic’s individual life-style, repeated itself. He failed in his army entrance examination.

  He returned to Waterpark, the cause and embodiment of dismay, with the stunned look he had when Mr Porson had told him he was expelled from his school. He felt himself unable to escape from the pursuing Fates, which since he had been in England, had left him alone. I had a twinge of my old anguish on his behalf, perhaps more than a twinge, as my religious life made me very sensitive to other people’s distress. He imagined that the contempt and resentment of the family would be turned against him. But Steven had half expected this, and did not blame him for failing in examinations, which were obviously not his métier. He believed that a man must act according to his nature, though he did not see how Dominic was going to do this in the modern world, even as modern as it then was. When Steven heard the news, he felt like the labourer in the field, who, when he swings the heavy sack on to his shoulders, feels that the familiarity of the burden is almost comfortable. He was kinder to Dominic after this failure than any other, as he knew that it was not due to lack of keenness, and that it was a crushing disappointment to him. Also this time he had not to endure the criticisms of the clan.

  I do not know why Dominic could not have sat a second time for his examination. It may have been something to do with age, or he may have been turned down irrevocably in a viva voce or some personal interview in which he made a bad impression, being either slow in his replies or emitting dumb insolence. People like Baba, and Baba was in many ways like the less gentlemanly type of army officer, could take an immediate dislike to him.

  Brian was contemptuous of him but did not intentionally show it. He said to me: ‘He can’t do anything.’ I did not mind what people did, if only they would be cheerful and pleasant about it, but neither was this Dominic’s métier. We had to endure him looking deathly at every meal. He did not go to the Dower House as he thought the colonel must be disappointed in him, which perhaps he was, but he had grappled him too closely with hooks of steel to give him up because of that. The result of this was that we had the colonel, also morose and irascible, more about the house than usual.

  At last he managed to awaken Dominic’s half-hearted interest in his insects, and put him to drawing them. We all had latent artistic capacities and ability to draw, and now, by bringing this out in Dominic, the colonel did him a great service. Dominic began to draw people as well, with a kind of twisted gloom but unmistakable power. Dominic had to be occupied in some way, and Steven seeing these drawings, suggested he should go to an art school, like Brian, but not to the same one. Dominic was proud and pleased at this suggestion. He felt that it brought him at last into the true circle of family interest, and he accepted eagerly.

  The process of growth is a continuous dying and rebirth, so after a fortnight of misery Dominic, the young soldier, died. But as Dominic himself was never lacking in vitality, as soon as the young soldier in him was dead, he was all alert for a new interest. At first his drawing provided this, but soon he found a greater one in Lord Dilton’s only daughter, Sylvia Tunstall.

  We had some connection with the Tunstalls. Arthur, our great uncle, had been married to Damaris Tunstall, Lord Dilton’s half-aunt, and was in fact at this time still living on her money. Damaris, her brother Aubrey, whom Alice had known in Rome, and Ariadne Tunstall, Mrs Dane who lived in Florence, were our grandmother Byngham’s second cousins, their Irish mother being descended from the monstrous duque de Teba. Needless to say, there was none of the strain that flowered into art and vice in those three Tunstalls in the present family, who had round red faces and manners so confident that one hardly realized how bad they were. So although we were connected with them by two links they were both slightly discreditable, and our honour, rooted as it so often was in dishonour, may have given a touch of misgiving to their friendliness.

  On the other hand our attitude towards the Tunstalls was not one of unqualified admiration. Although they were very rich, their nobility was very recent, and the first Tunstall had only appeared in the county from somewhere in the Midlands, at the beginning of the nineteenth century. He had made a fortune in the Napoleonic wars, and it was said had come to Somerset to escape the humble associations of his origins. He had been created a baronet and his son a peer. Excepting the first lord’s marriage to Caroline O’Hara, none of them had married into any family of note, so that in spite of their wealth and rank, they had little distinguished connection. Even so they were impressive, and Lord Dilton, whose brains were not so undernourished as our other neighbour’s, was a very nice man indeed.

  Any unattractive qualities the Tunstalls of our generation may have had, most likely came from their mother, Mrs Rodgers’ sister. I had a brief friendship with Dick the younger brother, which only lasted while he was unhappy for two or three terms at Harrow. Then when I had been counting the days till his return, and hurried over to Dilton, I found that he had brought another boy home for the holidays, and there was a slightly offensive surprise in his greeting, and our particular friendship died. This was another of those deaths which we continually meet in life, when a road we are not to travel is closed to us.

  Perhaps I should state here that this does not pretend to be a faithful picture of life on the borders of Somerset and Wiltshire forty-five years ago. Steven and Laura knew the families about, and sometimes went to shoot or to dine with them, but I had little contact with anyone other than those whom I mention. We saw the Tunstalls most, partly because of our slight connection with them, but also because they were our nearest neighbours, and Waterpark being practically a dead end, we could not leave it without passing through Dilton. I have not been to Waterpark for many years, and each time I have been there my visit has been followed by a slight misfortune, so I have come to regard the place as unlucky, as Laura said it was, but we were inclined to regard all our houses as having a jinx on them. I am now in England, so could go down to Frome to verify my impressions of the neighbourhood, but I feel that this might be rather like patching a painting with an accurate photograph, or at any rate removing the adult glaze, so that the book would be like a painting only restored in parts. I could for example confirm or correct the impression I have of Frome church to which I used on some Sundays to ride on my bicycle. It was an ‘advanced’ Anglo-Catholic church even in Alice’s day, and I remember a rich, rather dark chancel with figures on the rood screen, and outside the Stations of the Cross carved in stone along the wall of a flight of steps. If this memory is inaccurate it will qualify the truth of other things I recall, but I feel it is better to trust to it and to keep the picture in tone, even if here and there it may result in slight misrepresentation of the background.

  In spite of my rift with Dick I still went to Dilton, generally with Dominic or Brian when we were invited over to play tennis and sometimes Dick and his brother came to Waterpark. The events of our years there are rather telescoped in my mind, and I have nothing like Alice’s diaries from which to fix the dates. I only know that one particular afternoon when I went with Dominic over to Dilton was in the Easter holidays, as it was the spring, and Dick and his brother were home.

  I did not like Sylvia, as she always looked as if she were turning her head away from an unpleasant sight, though it may have been only myself who saw her so. She was very pretty with fair frizzy hair, and there was a lot of talk about her ‘rose-leaf’ skin, but it was probably no better than my own which was why she did not like looking at me. She spoiled her appearance by her peevish manner, and her exquisite fragility h
ad little correspondence with her inner nature, which was as hard as the enamel on a snuff box. Life would be much simpler if the Almighty had arranged that our physical exteriors should match our spiritual natures. Golden aureoles and rose-leaf skins should be given to those with angelic natures, but the ‘soul-mixtures’ seem to have been badly distributed. In the same way riches should only be given to people with perfect taste, of high character and culture, not as so often happened, to those whose reading did not extend beyond The Field. If Dominic had been able clearly to read Sylvia’s character, much that I record would not have happened.

  Dilton House had been built in the reign of King William IV. The rooms were very large, with huge windows and ornate white plaster ceilings, but the mouldings had already become heavy and lost the Adams’ grace. There were Egyptian motifs in some of the marble chimneypieces, and in straining for spaciousness the proportions had been distorted. Even so its classical formality was rather above the Tunstall’s intellectual if not their social status. The white wedding-cake coldness of its interior made it easy to understand why the sensuous children of Caroline O’Hara had fled to the glowing splendour of Roman and Florentine palaces, as their grandfather had fled from the Midlands.

  On this day in the Easter holidays we had begun to play tennis, but it had rained just before tea, and we had come indoors. Afterwards they said the courts were too wet to play, and we loafed about in one of the vast white plaster drawing-rooms. I became aware that Dominic was looking at Sylvia with a steady smouldering gaze, and that Sylvia was sitting very still, presenting her half-profile to him, as if she did not mind it. I was horrified at this as I had an extraordinary idea, perhaps acquired from reading the lives of virgin saints, that it was grossly insulting to a girl to fall in love with her, though at the same time, in my muddled way I was all for universal love. I expect that I thought this could only lead to trouble, and I began to fidget to go home, before the damage became worse. I caught Dominic’s eye and nodded towards a large buhl bracket clock, a gesture intercepted by Lady Dilton.

  ‘If you want to go home, don’t let us detain you,’ she said with sardonic blandness.

  ‘I don’t want to go. Sit still, Guy,’ said Dominic. It might be thought from what I have written so far that he was diffident and nervous in his contacts with the world. On the contrary, away from his family he did absolutely as he pleased, with perfect aplomb. Even Lady Dilton’s massive social will was unable to move him. She said:

  ‘If you are going to stay, you had better play a game. I don’t like to see young people doing nothing.’

  We sat at a round table, playing rather noisy card games, ‘Racing Demon’ and ‘Animal Grab.’ Dominic pushed Dick Tunstall aside to take the chair beside Sylvia, and Dick looked offended. Dominic was now more than ever reluctant to move, and we stayed till the dressing-gong, when Lady Dilton sent her family to change. She turned to us, and this time said firmly:

  ‘Goodbye. I hope you won’t be late home for dinner.’

  I was bitterly ashamed as we rode away on our bicycles in the dark, that we had been turned out of the house by the Diltons. When they were nice to us I was gratified by their friendship, but when they were not I said to myself, ‘Anyhow, they’re not a real family, just a nineteenth-century reproduction.’ But this was not a retort that I could make with any conciseness and wit to Lady Dilton.

  ‘Why didn’t you leave earlier?’ I demanded as soon as we were away from the house. ‘They wanted us to go.’ Dominic did not reply and when I repeated my question he only said: ‘Shut up,’ but not with annoyance at my question, merely because he did not want to be disturbed, and as I knew better than to interrupt his moods, we pedalled in silence between the hedgerows and the fields. This bicycle ride is one of the things I remember most clearly of my life at Waterpark. The countryside was beautiful but I was full of foreboding. The rain which had interfered with our tennis had passed, and the sky was clear. It was at the time of the year when the spring growth is not yet full, and there is no sign of fading or blemish anywhere. No petal has fallen and the fronds of the cowparsley are unbruised and stand erect in the perfection of their design. There was no breeze, and the still air was scented, not with any one flower, but with the mingled scents of the countryside, of earth and of grass. This beauty of the evening and the spring was in harmony with Dominic’s mood, which, although he had told me to shut up, had the gentleness he had shown when he had touched the divided spoils of Alice’s treasures in her dismantled house, but I found it hostile, like the beauty of a woman who has refused one’s advances. My feeling was due to the Diltons. The land through which we rode had once belonged to Waterpark, but had been sold, field by field, to the second Lord Dilton by Cousin Thomas, when he found himself living to a much greater age than he had provided for. I felt the Tunstalls to be overpowering and hostile to us, eating up our patrimony, and the thought that Dominic’s gentleness was evoked by Sylvia Tunstall awoke my dormant pity for him, as I did not see how it could fail to cause him further humiliation and suffering. My mind always leapt to extremes, which I suppose was why I thought it insulting to a girl to fall in love with her, and I imagined that Dominic would want to marry Sylvia, only to be repulsed with ridicule. I had heard Sylvia say of one of the neighbouring families: ‘They’re quite poor. I shouldn’t think they have a penny over £4,000 a year.’ When I told Steven this he said: ‘There’s no greater vulgarity than to call that kind of income poverty, when half the people haven’t enough to eat. If ever there’s a revolution in this country it will be fools like Sylvia who’ll bring it.’ He himself had less than £4,000 a year, and Dominic would only have what he could allow him, so I thought it impossible that she would look at him, and knowing his temperament I dreaded the moment when she would laugh in his face.

  The Tunstalls upset our scale of living. When we came to Waterpark I thought it very grand to have a butler and a footman after Maggie and Elsie at Westhill who called ‘Goodnight all’ as they walked along the verandah to bed, but when we went to luncheon at Dilton there was a footman behind every chair. And yet because of our antiquity I thought we were really much grander than the Tunstalls, as their family had not existed before the Reformation, when the pattern of European society was unbroken. Their arms had never been borne on a shield in battle. This was all part of my medieval obsession. When I was not quite so fantastic in my genealogical standards I would admit the ‘reality’ of families with eighteenth-century origins, as at least they had lived in an aristocratic and classical society, but that one of a family from the industrial century, the most ignoble in history, except perhaps our own, however many footmen they had, and even if they were all ‘honourables,’ should refuse the heir of Waterpark, appeared to me an unspeakable humiliation. On the other hand I would be delighted if Dominic married an ‘honourable.’

  In this confused state of mind I arrived back just in time for dinner. I hurriedly changed my top half so that I should appear respectable above the dinner table, but Dominic came down still in white flannel trousers with a scarf round his neck, which annoyed Steven, especially as Miss Vio Chambers was staying with us.

  Vio Chambers was a girlhood friend of Laura’s. She was one of those middle-aged ladies who surprise us by never having married, as she appeared everything that is desirable, good-looking, sensible, kind, reasonably cultivated, well-dressed, well-bred, travelled and well-off. Perhaps women of this kind, and I have known many, have been engaged to someone killed in a war, or tied to invalid parents, or they may have been too naturally friendly to attract men in other ways, and perhaps too large and dignified for those who like to patronize their wives. Miss Chambers once had a fraction of a romance with one of the Dells at Westhill, but that could hardly have prevented her marrying. She was an invaluable friend to a family like ours, as if anyone said that the Langtons were eccentric, idle, silly, vain, or any of the other things which were partially true about us, she retorted with
a vigorous loyalty which, coming from someone of her character, made the speaker appear a malicious gossip: ‘They are my greatest friends, and the most intelligent and amusing people I know.’ Which also was partially true.

  When I came into the drawing-room and saw her, in a beautiful dark red evening dress, but simple enough for a country dinner, standing by the fire talking to Laura, I had a feeling of great pleasure and reassurance, and the menace of the Tunstalls evaporated in the satisfaction of being with people who were entirely of one’s own kind, the Australian gentlepeople of the early days, whose manners were so good, and whose friendliness was so unreserved. I had this feeling not long ago in Melbourne, when again I was with Miss Vio Chambers, now very old. In the room as well was a Byngham aunt and the daughter of an old friend who had lived near Kilawly and grown up with the family. There was the same atmosphere of quiet friendliness and I thought: I might be in the Waterpark drawing-room before the 1914 war. Then a ‘smart’ woman came in, and the illusion was dispelled.

  Since Dominic had failed for the army, he had become less interested in Colonel Rodgers’ guns and daggers. He rather disliked them as a reminder of his failure. He still went to see the colonel as he would never withdraw his friendship where he had given it, but not so often, and he drew ants and stag beetles with less enthusiasm than he had swished the broadswords. This made the colonel more persistent in his attentions, and as he never changed an idea once it had entered his head, he imagined that Dominic could be enticed to the Dower House with curious weapons, and he scoured the antique shops of Bath and Wells for quaint pistols and murderous knives. He became irritable when these did not bring the response he had hoped for.

  This was Miss Chambers’s first visit to Waterpark, and so part of her entertainment was to take her round the sights of the neighbourhood. A day or two after the abortive tennis party at Dilton, we were going on an excursion to show her the churches at Westbury and Warminster, and to have luncheon on the banks of Shearwater, where we had been given permission to picnic.