Mrs Warlow, feeling this, wondered whether the feeling was culpably frivolous. She wondered too, and with a momentary alarm, whether it might become Ianthe’s feeling also. That, she told herself, might be decidedly tricky; tricky for the truth of the Felton situation as she saw it. Never venture, however, and you’ll never win.
Mrs Warlow was diverted from these speculations – and from further pursuing that curious theory of a wholesome shake-up in which Andrew Auld held so prominent a place – by the necessity of making conversation with Colonel Motley. Colonel Motley had, in fact, no place in any plan she could conceivably form, and she had to debate with herself whether this should in some way be intimated to him before she found herself listening to a proposal of marriage. On the whole she thought better not – judging that what her grandmother would have called ‘true delicacy’ would be better served by letting the colonel go ahead in his own good time and explaining herself to him then. But the problem a little vexed her, and it was her present feeling that she would be glad when this tea-party broke up and she could retire to her studio and abandon embroidery in favour of more taxing professional work.
In fact, the party, if it was to be called that, did end rather abruptly with Toby declaring (in an unusually loud voice) that the pull up to the village was a filthy sweat, and that he was going to chuck Elma’s bike in the back of his car and drive her home. As Elma had made no move to leave (nor Colonel Motley either) this might have been regarded as uncivilly premature. But Toby forced home his point by jumping down from the balustrade on which he had been sitting and propelling Elma forward with what was at once an ostentatious and a half-hearted smack on her backside.
Ianthe, although she had no notion that this was a premeditated symbolic gesture designed to declare to the world the entire respectability of Toby’s future plans for Elma, guessed enough to realise that – in a comic fashion, indeed – her brother had an unwelcome surprise ahead of him. In fact, Elma was at work on this instantly, allowing herself to register restrained maidenly distaste upon the receipt of the mild assault. Everybody had witnessed it – even Ianthe’s father, although he was still in a state of some abstraction. But at least Toby carried his proposal; there were farewells; the bicycle was loaded up; in no time the Aston Martin was diminishing down the drive.
You turned right for Felton Canonicorum; left, and then left again round the park, to gain the narrow bumpy road running up to the downs. Toby turned left – which was abundantly what Elma expected him to do. He swung the wheel, flicked the gear-lever as he double-declutched, accelerated, braked, all with an extra touch of precision, which told of his feeling in a masterful mood. Soon he might be playing the sexual role that went with this: experimenting in what he took to be an outrageous way, shoving her around according to some idiotic book he’d been reading, or following the salacious counsel of an undesirable chance acquaintance. That was how she imagined his more extravagant notions coming to him, for she doubted if he simply thought them up. And more probably he’d be making ordinary quick blundering love, which was what was natural to him; or he’d be doing that first, and then a little later putting conscientious artistry and timing into what he understood she liked best.
When he wasn’t showing off with his machismo stuff, Toby was really terribly nice. It was what made him rather boring. It was also, somehow, what was going to lend extra amusement to the end of things today.
They parked the car and got out. Toby took Elma in his arms and kissed her – with a certain gravity, and with his hands decorously behind her shoulders, rather in the manner of a young man venturing on such an action for the first time. It amused Elma to realise that Toby felt some occasion of unusual seriousness to be before them. If it was going to be what she now guessed she would be very amused indeed. They separated and walked on, innocently hand in hand.
It was Toby who had found what he called their lair. (Elma, with what was intended as a kind of mock-vulgarity, referred to it as the love-nest.) It was a hollow in the turf high up on the crest of the down, and not much bigger than a large hammock. Lying in it, you were quite invisible, but you had only to get on your knees to command every inch of ground for a quarter of a mile around. So apt was it for the purposes now on hand that Toby never approached it without fearing that other lovers might recently have discovered it to be so, and have left some displeasing testimony to the fact lying about. But this hadn’t happened yet. If there was ever a faint imprint still left on the grass it was their own.
‘Oh, what fun!’ Elma exclaimed (as she commonly did) when they had both tumbled into the lair. ‘Darling!’ she whispered, and sank to her knees. ‘Darling!’ She stretched out her legs and in a moment was lying on her back. Toby knelt beside her, and felt that he had never known Elma so swiftly roused. She was flushed and her eyes were bright. Her lips were moist and would be hot. It came into his head (and it would be a wonderful thing to say to her later) that her breasts were moving as if somebody was at work on them with a bicycle pump. He put a hand under her skimpy shirt-like upper garment, flicked expertly at a button on her bra, and let his fingers work. ‘Darling!’ Elma said.
At this point – and it was no doubt greatly to his credit – Toby remembered that things were not going at all according to plan. He had brought Elma up here not for fornication – or at least not immediately for that – but for the purpose of telling her they were going to be married. He felt full of delicacy about this fulfilling of his recent resolve. He even felt magnanimous about thus presenting himself as it were with a wedding-ring in his hand. His feelings about a proposal of marriage were probably not very remote from Colonel Motley’s; he judged it to be a solemn thing, and in at least momentary disjunction from carnal desire. It ought at any rate to be the prelude rather than the sequel to an act of love.
‘Elma,’ he said, sitting up, ‘I’ve been thinking we ought to have rather a talk.’
‘A talk, darling? How funny you are!’
‘A serious talk. About what we mean to each other, and ought to do.’
‘Yes, of course. But afterwards, darling.’ Elma had arched her back, the more readily to wriggle herself out of her tights. Watching her, Toby was suddenly conscious of being himself more urgently excited than he had been for a long time. Disastrous waste was imminent. His hands went to a button of his own, and then to a zip. Within what seemed a single gasping-time they were making love.
‘I think we ought to get married at once,’ Toby said half an hour later. As he spoke he became aware that, although back in his trousers, he hadn’t done up that zip again, and this he now did in some confusion. He was aware that his hair was wet, and that he was still faintly panting, and that it would really be quite pleasant to drop off to sleep. Elma, on the other hand, could have stepped straight into a drawing-room. This made him feel, rather absurdly, at a disadvantage as a suitor. He was also conscious of having begun wrong. He had meant to say, ‘Elma, darling, will you marry me?’ which would have been more gracious than implying that the thing had to happen sooner or later, anyway. He didn’t suppose that Elma would be particular. For some reason he had never uttered the words ‘marry’ or ‘married’ or ‘marriage’ to her before – or for that matter ‘wife’ or ‘husband’ or anything of the sort – and it must obviously make quite pleasant hearing now.
‘Married, darling?’ Elma, who was sitting on the flailed and flattened grass close to Toby’s head, glanced down at him with every appearance of utter astonishment. ‘Why, you funny boy!’ Very gently, she lifted a lock of Toby’s sweaty hair and twisted it round a finger before letting it go again. ‘I think that was the last time,’ she said. ‘So it’s nice that it was rather nice.’
‘What do you mean – the last time?’ Toby had sat bolt upright and was staring at Elma in stupefaction.
‘It has been a boy and girl affair, Toby – nothing more.’ Elma had contrived to assume a kind of aunt-like tone, wholly inappropriate from a girl to a boy. ‘And now we must both be more s
erious. I’m sure you will marry, and perhaps I shall. But we must both marry suitably, you know.’
‘Suitably? For Christ’s sake—’
‘Now, don’t, Toby, get all excited. You must marry somebody with property, for a start. It’s quite likely, you know, that Felton may go to that horrid Oxford don – your Uncle Hugh.’
‘You’re mad.’ Toby was now looking at Elma with horror. ‘I’m going to be absolutely independent, whatever happens to Felton.’
‘And as for me, darling, I can only marry a man I love.’
‘Go on,’ Toby said. He had turned very white.
‘Some women are like that – and I’ve discovered myself to be one of them. I must have a husband I love, and who loves me.’ Elma delivered herself of this with downcast eyes and a charming simplicity. ‘And it hasn’t been like that with us – has it, darling? It has been oh, such fun! It’s wonderful that one is allowed such fun nowadays. Just think of our stuffy parents and grandparents, Toby. But fun is one thing and marriage is another. Love is another thing, my poor darling. So we must stop, and just be ever such friends.’
Toby was now on his feet, with Elma still sitting composedly on the grass. He blundered around looking for his shoes, which he’d had to take off in order to take off his trousers. The image of himself scrambling out of his clothes in order to fall naked upon Elma Loftus rose up and revolted him. He knew this was extravagant and silly. But his vanity was outraged. His pride was deeply wounded. He thought of having to tell Andy about this debacle and of what a fool he’d feel. But at the same time he was conscious of an almost more shocking sense of relief like a small spark deep inside him. Elma had been tumbling out stuff that he knew to be quite insincere, but at the heart of that too there had been an answering spark of truth. He had been infatuated with Elma: the very smell of her, and all that. But love was something different – and something he didn’t know about. He wondered whether he had ever loved anybody. He rather thought that, in an odd sexless way, he was beginning to love Andy. He couldn’t think of anybody else.
‘And now there are just one or two things to make sure of,’ Elma was saying. She paused, as if for a moment’s intense calculation. ‘For one thing, we must neither of us ever tell. Don’t you think?’
‘What do you mean – tell?’ As Toby asked this question, he judged it a very stupid one.
‘We must never tell anybody that we have been lovers. Or play-fellows, really.’ Here came the charming simplicity again. ‘Do you agree? Will you promise?’
‘I don’t know. I can’t say.’ Toby was still white, and now grim as well. ‘If I did get married, I might have to tell my wife in order to feel honest with her. So I can’t promise.’
‘But apart from that you can? I can.’
‘Yes, of course – apart from that. What the hell do you take me for?’
‘It’s a binding promise – on your honour as a gentleman?’
‘Jesus Christ, Elma, don’t talk such muck.’ Toby was suddenly furious. ‘Ask your question another way. Say “Will you keep your bloody mouth shut?”’
‘I think that’s horrid, Toby.’ Elma was now pale too. ‘But very well. Will you keep your bloody mouth shut?’
‘Yes – and I repeat I can’t imagine what you think of me. I suppose it’s that I’ll boast about you in a club or a pub. It’s likely, isn’t it?’ Toby pulled himself up short, for the contempt in these last words had horrified him. ‘I beg your pardon,’ he said. ‘That was filthy, and I apologise. But I ought to tell you there is one other exception already. Andy knows about us.’
‘Andy knows?’ This clearly came as a shock to Elma. But in a moment she rallied. ‘Oh, Andy,’ she said strangely, ‘I can manage him.’
Toby got home in good time to change into decent clothes for dinner. Nevertheless he had been absent for much longer than his professed mission required. To anybody curious about this he could, of course, say that he’d got talking to Elma’s parents and stayed to drinks. But he didn’t like lying at any time, and he certainly wasn’t going to like any more lying about Elma. Fortunately there was nobody around as he put his car away. Or rather – he suddenly saw – there was nobody in the stable yard except Andy. Andy, cross-legged as before, was sitting on top of a platform of baled hay, and looked rather like an inquisitorial heathen divinity. He had obviously been waiting for Toby’s arrival.
‘Was that a’ richt?’ Andy called down from his perch. ‘Did it go fine?’ Andy had clearly taken a good guess at what had been the occasion of his brother’s absence. His tone was cheerful, but to Toby’s irritated sense it held also a distinctly satirical note.
‘Shut up,’ Toby said.
‘Dear sake! Was the wee mannie no’ in form? Ye canna’ aye be having sex, ye ken, without ups an’ doons as weel as ins and outs.’
‘Get to hell!’ With this exclamation Toby turned away, being in no disposition for coarse pleasantries. ‘I’ve had enough of your stite, Andrew Auld.’ In their occasional altercations – which did happen – Toby had been finding it useful to exhibit a command of his brother’s own barbaric vocabulary. But this time Andy didn’t respond except with swift action. He took a good seven-foot jump from his perch and planted himself in Toby’s path.
‘Tell me what,’ he said soberly.
‘All right.’ Toby realised that he wanted to confide in Andy – and also that there was something upon which he must treat with him. ‘But I’m going to have a bath. Come inside.’
So they went up to Toby’s quarters – much as they had done on the occasion of their first meeting – and Toby had his bath. Andy, who seemed to accept these ablutions as being in some degree of a solemn ritual character, leant against the bathroom wall and for a time watched him in silence but with a fleeting grin.
‘Was it a row?’ he then asked.
‘It was a bust-up. Schluss!’
‘What’s that? Can ye no’ talk English?’
‘Finish.’ Toby had smiled dimly through the steam at this echoing of a frequent demand of his own. ‘She talked about . . . well, she talked about love.’
‘Love? Guid sakes! What should she haver aboot that for?’
‘She said one oughtn’t to get married without it.’
‘You mean you’ve been getting atween that lassie’s legs and then proposing to her?’
‘I don’t like your language.’ Toby got to his feet and grabbed his towel. Andy’s gross conjecture had been so near the literal truth that it infuriated him. But he at once thought better of this attitude. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I do like your language. It fits the whole beastly thing. But I did tell you that Elma and I were likely to get married. I told you after that stupid business in the pub.’
‘An’ it’s that she now says it’s no’ on?’
‘Yes, it’s that.’
‘Then you’re a lucky bugger, Tobias Felton.’
Toby’s reply to this was inarticulate, and he strode back into his bedroom with his feet still making wet patches as he walked. When Andy followed him his head was already emerging from a clean shirt.
‘It would be shabby,’ he said, ‘if I were to feel that.’
‘Och, Toby, dinna’ talk your fine folk’s ba’s. You’re a lucky wean, I say. An’ do you think she’s been on wi’ anither afore she’s been off wi’ the auld?’
‘I don’t care a damn.’
‘Or at least she may hae cast an e’e somewhere?’
‘She may have cast it at you, perhaps.’ Toby, pulling on a sock, became rigid on one foot, staring at his brother. ‘I meant that as a silly crack. But perhaps it’s true.’
‘Mebby. I wadna’ ken.’ Andy said this very coolly. ‘Wha’s to tell how a lass is thinking o’ him?’ Andy paused, and appeared to take note of the consternation on his brother’s face. ‘Don’t be daft, Toby. It’s no’ a likely thing ava. Yon lass is for the main chance. An’ I’m no’ that, God save us.’
‘It might be just for kicks. The very fact that we’re as like a
s—’
‘Twa peas in a pod? Stop blethering, Toby. It’s a’ nonsense, that. But if it were true, you’d be best being grateful to me for playing yeldrick to you.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. You might sometimes be a bloody Hottentot.’
‘The yeldrick’s what you ca’ the yellowhammer. An’ it limps awa’ as a decoy to save its wee nest. I might think o’ you as my wee nest, Toby.’
‘I think you’re talking nonsense.’
‘It’s no’ unlikely. I’m just for saying I’d no’ be frichted o’ Elma mysel. I’d no’ be talking kirk-bells tae her. I could manage her fine.’
This last phrase startled Toby. He had heard something like it not very long before. It also reminded him of something it was now important to say.
‘Listen, Andy. I’ve told you about this balls-up today because you knew about Elma and me already. Nobody else knows.’
‘Perhaps there are some that think it.’
‘Oh, I’m sure not. We’ve been frightfully careful. But the point is that nobody else is to know now. I promised Elma that. So you will keep the secret, won’t you?’
‘I’m no’ likely, Toby, to gang aboot telling it to the corbies and the winds. Or even to lang-lost brithers after a bit o’ fliting and fighting in a public.’
‘Then that’s all right.’ Toby slipped on a jacket and was ready for dinner. But then he saw that it wasn’t entirely all right, after all. ‘You do promise, don’t you, Andy? Never to tell anybody about Elma and me?’
‘No.’
‘But you’ve just—’
‘No, I do not. I don’t make promises of that kind.’ There were occasions upon which, without conjuration, Andrew Auld ‘talked English’ in a rather devastating way. ‘I might have good reason to tell somebody about Elma and you – bloody daft and trivial as it all seems to be. You have to trust me, Toby; not tie me up or give me orders.’
‘Yes, of course. I’m sorry.’ Toby found himself much abashed. ‘As a matter of fact, there’s nobody except Ianthe I’d trust as much as I trust you.’
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