What’s Bred in the Bone tct-2

by Robertson Davies

  The door opened and his mother came in. She saw his tears.

  “Poor Francis,” she said, “were you very surprised, darling? No need to be. Doesn’t mean a thing, you know. It’s just the way people go on nowadays. You wouldn’t believe how things have changed, since I was your age. For the better, really. All that tiresome formality, and having to be old so soon. Nobody has to be old now, unless they want to. I met a man last year when we were in London who had had the Voronoff operation—monkey glands, you know—and he was simply amazing.”

  “Was he like a monkey?”

  “Of course not, silly! Now give me a kiss, darling, and don’t worry about anything. You’re almost done with school, and it’s time you grew up in some very important ways. Did you like the White Lady?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Well, they’re always rather strange at first. You’ll get to like them soon enough. Just don’t like them too much. Now you’d better wash your face and come down and talk to Daddy.”

  But Francis did not hurry to talk to Daddy. Poor Father, deceived like King Arthur! What did Shakespeare call it? A cuckold. A wittoly cuckold. Francis was not pleased with the part he had played in the talk with his mother; he should have carried on like Hamlet in his mother’s bedroom. What had Hamlet accused Gertrude of doing? “Mewling and puking over the nasty sty” was it? No, that was somewhere else. She had let her lover pinch wanton on her cheek, and had given him a pair of reechy kisses, and let him paddle in her neck with his damned fingers. God, Shakespeare had a nasty mind! He must look Hamlet up again. It was a year since Mr. Blunt had coursed his special Lit. class through it, and Mr. Blunt had gloated a good deal over Gertrude’s sin. For sin it was. Had she not made marriage vows as false as dicers’ oaths? Well—must wash up and talk to Father.

  Sir Francis was greatly pleased about the Classics Prize, and opened a bottle of champagne. Poor innocent, he did not know that his house was falling about his ears, and that the lovely woman who sat at the table with him was an adulteress. Francis had two glasses of champagne, and the White Lady was not altogether dead in his untried stomach. So it was that when Bubbler Graham phoned after dinner he was more ready to fall in with her suggestion that they should go to the movies than he would otherwise have been.

  He still had to say where he was going at night, and what he was going to do.

  “Bubbler Graham wants to go to the movies,” he mumbled.

  “And you don’t want to? Oh, Francis, come off it! You don’t have to pretend to Daddy and me. She’s charming.”

  “Mum—is it all right for Bubbler to call me? I thought the boy was supposed to do the calling.”

  “Darling, where do you get these archaic ideas? Bubbler is probably lonely. Frank, give the prize-winner five dollars. He’s going to have a night out.”

  “Ah? What? Oh, of course. Do you want the car?”

  “She said she’d bring her car.”

  “There, you see? A thoroughly nice girl. She doesn’t want you to carry all the expense. Have a marvellous time, darling.”

  Bubbler wanted to see a film with Clara Bow in it, called Dangerous Curves, and that was where they went. Bubbler had taken Clara Bow as her ideal, and in restless energy and lively curls she was a good deal like her idol. During the show she let her hand stray near enough to Francis’s for him to take it. Not that he greatly wanted to, but he was rather in the position of the man upon whom a conjuror forces a card. Afterward they went to an ice-cream parlour, and sat on stools at the counter and consumed very rich, unwholesome messes of ice cream, syrup, and whipped cream, topped with fudge and nuts. Then, as they drove home through one of Toronto’s beautiful ravines—which was certainly not on their direct route—Bubbler stopped the car.

  “Anything wrong?” said Francis.

  “Out of gas.”

  “Oh, come on! The tank registers more than half full.”

  Bubbler bubbled merrily. “Don’t you know what that means?”

  “Out of gas? Of course I do. No gas.”

  “Oh, you mutt!” said Bubbler, and rapidly and expertly threw her arms around Francis’s neck and kissed him, giving a very respectable version of the way Clara Bow did it. But Francis was startled and did not know how to respond.

  “Let me show you,” said the practical Bubbler. “Now ease up, Frank; it isn’t going to hurt. Easy, now.” And under her instruction Francis showed himself a quick study.

  Half an hour later he was decidedly wiser than he had been. At one point Bubbler unbuttoned his shirt and put her hand over his heart. Tit for tat. Francis opened her blouse, and after some troublesome rucking up of her brassiere, and accidentally breaking a strap on her slip, he put his hand on her heart, and his scrotum (if schoolboy biology were true) sent a message to his brain that was the most thrilling thing that he had ever known, because her heart lay beneath her breast, and although she was a girl of the twenties. Bubbler had a substantial breast, crushed and bamboozled though it was by a tight binder. His kisses were now, he felt, as good as anything in the movies.

  “Don’t snort so much,” said the practical Bubbler.

  When she dropped him at his house Francis said slowly and intently, “I suppose this means we’re in love?”

  Bubbler bubbled more than she had done at any time during a bubbling evening. “Of course not, you poor boob,” she said. “It’s just nice. Isn’t it? Wasn’t it nice, Frank?”—and she gave him another of her Clara Bow kisses.

  Just nice? Frank prepared for bed, very much aware that he was “all stewed up” as Victoria Cameron would have put it. Bubbler had stewed him up, and to Bubbler it was just nice. Did girls really do all that—fumbling under the blouse and hot kissing—just because it was nice?

  He was, after all, a Classics prize-winner. A line or Virgil rose in his mind—a line that Mr. Mills read with sad insistence:

  Varium et mutabile semper Femina

  Even in his mind he was careful to get the arrangement of lines correct. Fickle and changeable always is woman.

  Stewing, regretting, yearning for more but angry to have been used for somebody else’s pleasure, Francis went to bed, but for a long time he could not sleep.

  “Frank, I’d like you to have lunch with me at my club,” said Sir Francis, when he met his son at breakfast.

  His club was large, gloomy, untouched by any sort of modern taste, and extraordinarily comfortable. Ladies were not allowed, except on special occasions and under heavy restraints. His father ordered two glasses of sherry—not too dry—and Francis reflected that in his experience this was a weekend of heavy boozing.

  “Now, about luncheon—what do you say to a bowl of oxtail, with grilled chops to follow and—Oh, I say, they’ve got tapioca pudding down for today. I always say, it’s the best tapioca pudding I get anywhere. So we’ll have that, and—waiter—a couple of glasses of club claret.

  “This is a celebration, Frank. A celebration of your Classics prize.”

  “Oh—thanks, Father.”

  “A good sort of prize to get—what?”

  “Well, lots of the fellows don’t think much of Classics. Even some of the masters wonder what use it is.”

  “Pay no attention. Classics is good stuff. Anything that gives you a foot in the past is good stuff. Can’t understand the present if you don’t know the past, what? I suppose you’ll do Classics at Spook? Or will you leave that till Oxford?”

  “Oxford?”

  “Well, I’ve always assumed you’d go to Oxford after you’d been to Varsity here. Of course, you must go here, and I suppose Spook’s the best college for you. I mean, as I’m head of a big Canadian business, it wouldn’t do to send you out of the country for your ‘varsity work altogether. Spook, then Oxford. Give you lots of time.”

  “Yes, but oughtn’t I to be getting on?”

  “With what?”

  “I don’t know, yet. But everybody at school thinks he ought to get on with whatever he’s going to do as fast as possible.”
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  “I don’t think what you’re going to do needs to be hurried.”

  “Oh? What am I going to do?”

  “What do you want to do?”

  “I’d really like to be a painter.”

  “Excellent. Nothing wrong with that. That fellow who painted your mother—de Laszlo, was it?—he seems to do extremely well at it. Mind you, he has talent. Have you got talent?”

  “I don’t really know. I’d have to find out.”

  “Excellent.”

  “I thought perhaps you might want me to go into the business.”

  “Your grandfather doesn’t think you’re cut out for it. Neither do I, really. Perhaps Arthur will lean that way. He’s more the type than you are. I’d thought that you might skip the business and have a look at the profession.”

  “I don’t follow—”

  “My profession. Let’s not be coy about this. You know, or you probably guess, that I’ve been pretty close to Intelligence for the past while. Fascinating world. You don’t know what I’ve done, and you shan’t. I don’t have to tell you that it’s a matter of honour never to hint that I’ve even been near such work. The real work, I mean. People get wrong ideas. But I think you might have what’s wanted, and this Classics prize is nearer to what’s wanted than it would be in the financial game. But some of the best Intelligence men must be seen by the world to be doing something else—something that looks as if it took all their time. Being a painter would be very good cover. Able to mix widely, and people wouldn’t be surprised if you travelled and were a bit odd.”

  “I’ve never thought about it.”

  “Just as well. People who dream about it and hanker for it are just bloody hell at it. Too much zeal. At best they’re just gumshoe men—and women. You know you’ve got a heart?”

  A heart? Did Father mean Bubbler Graham?

  “I see McOdrum didn’t tell you. Yes, you’ve got a dicky heart, it appears. Not bad, but you mustn’t push yourself too hard. Now, that’s just the thing for the profession. Anybody wants to know why you’re loafing around, you must tell ‘em you’ve got a heart, and most of ‘em will assume you’re a bit of an invalid. Loaf and paint. Couldn’t be better. They thought I was just a soldier. Still do. Nobody expects a soldier to have any brains. Rather like being an artist.”

  “You mean—I’d be a spy?”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Frank, don’t use that word! That’s Phillips Oppenheim stuff. No, no; just a noticing sort of chap who goes anywhere and does what he pleases, and meets all sorts of people. Not false whiskers and covering your face with walnut juice and letting on to be Abdul the Water-Carrier. Just be yourself, and keep your eye peeled. Meanwhile, go to Spook and then Oxford and pack your head with everything that looks interesting, and don’t listen to fools who want you to do something that looks important to them. You’ve got a heart, you see.”

  “But what would I have to do?”

  “I can’t say. Perhaps just write letters. You know—friendly letters to chaps you know, about this and that. Mind you, I’m talking rather freely. There’d be nothing doing for a while. But you ought to meet some people, as soon as possible. I can arrange for you to meet them when you’re in England this summer.”

  “Am I going to England?”

  “Don’t you want to?”

  “Oh yes; it’s just that I hadn’t thought about it.”

  “It’s time you met some of my people. I haven’t said anything about it, Frank, because after all they’re your mother’s people, but there’s more to you than just that lot at St.Kilda. I mean old Mary-Ben with her priests and her fusspot ways, and your grandmother—nice woman, of course, but she’s going to end up like old Madame Thibodeau. There are other people in your life. You ought to meet my lot. We’re half of you, you know. Maybe the half that will appeal to you more than the Blairlogie crowd.”

  “Did you hate Blairlogie, Father?”

  “Not hate, exactly; I don’t let myself hate any place where I have to be. But a little of Blairlogie was enough. Why do you ask?”

  “I remember at the farewell party you gave at the hotel at Blairlogie, and you and Grandfather were the only men who wore evening dress, and Alphonse Legare came up to you half-slewed and laughed in your face and struck a match on the front of your dress shirt.”

  “I remember.”

  “You didn’t move an inch or bat an eye. But it was worse than if you had hit him, because you didn’t think he was in the same world as you were. He couldn’t touch you. I admired that. That was real class.”

  “Awful word.”

  “It’s the word we use for the real goods. You had the real goods.”

  “Well—thanks, my boy. That’s the profession, you understand. No losing your temper. No doing stupid things.”

  “Not even if your honour is affected? Not if somebody you trusted with everything turned out to be not worthy of it?”

  “You don’t trust people till you’ve learned a lot about them. Obviously you are thinking of someone. Who is it?”

  “Father, what do you really think of Fred Markham?”

  The Wooden Soldier rarely laughed, but he laughed now.

  “He’s good enough for what he is, but that isn’t much. I think I know what’s on your mind, Frank; don’t let Fred Markham worry you. He’s a trivial person, a kind of recreation for a lot of women. But he hasn’t got what you call the real goods.”

  “But Father, I saw him—”

  “I know you did. Your mother told me. She thought you were taking it quite the wrong way. People must have recreations, you know. Change. But a day on the golf-course isn’t running off across the world. So don’t worry. Your mother can take care of herself. And take care of me, too.”

  “But I thought—vows—”

  “Loyalties, you mean? You find out that loyalties vary and change outwardly, but that doesn’t mean they are growing weaker inwardly. Don’t worry about your mother and me.”

  “Does that mean that Mother is just another form of what you call cover?”

  “True, and not true. Frank—I don’t suppose you know much about women?”

  Who likes to admit he doesn’t know much about women? Every man likes to think he knows more about women than his father. Frank would have bet that he had seen more naked women than his father had ever dreamed of, though he was not boastful about the quality of what he had seen. Those pallid figures at Devinney’s. No beauty chorus. But Francis had long outgrown the ignorance of Blairlogie days; he knew what people did. Like animals, but love made it splendid. He thought patronizingly of poor Woodford at school, who had revealed during a bull-session that he thought children were begotten through the woman’s navel! At seventeen! How they had kidded Woodford and pictured what it would be like on his wedding night! Francis knew all about the Particular that the encyclopaedia and a lot of Colborne school-biology could tell him. And he knew anatomy, and could draw a woman without her skin on—out of a book. Father obviously meant intimacy with women, and Francis was aware that though he could draw quite a decent flayed woman he had never touched a warm one until Bubbler Graham had made it easy for him. The Wooden Soldier was going on.

  “I’ve had quite a bit to do with women. Professionally, as well as personally. They can be useful in Intelligence work. D’you know, I even met the famous Mata Hari a few times. A stunner. Fine eyes, but chunkier built than they like ‘em today. When they shot her at last she was forty-one—just about the age your mother is now and every bit as beautiful as your mother. In the profession, you know, their usefulness is limited, because it’s all business with them, and they’re always looking for a better deal. Now the men—lots of them are mercenary, of course, but some of the best will work for a cause, or love of country. I sometimes think a woman has no country; only a family. And of course there are the men who can’t resist adventure. Not women, though they’re often called adventuresses. They work with their bodies, you see, and of course their outlook is different. Mind you, I’
ve met some astonishing women in the profession. Marvellous at code and cypher, but they’re an entirely different sort—the puzzle-solving mentality. Those are the bluestockings; not usually very interesting as women. The adventuresses are bitches. Always on the take.

  “Still—I didn’t ask you here to talk about that. Just about women in general. My advice is: never have anything to do with a woman, high or low, who expects to be paid. They’re all crooks, and unless you pay very high you’re likely to end up with something you never wanted to buy. No pay: that’s a good rule. I’d say—stick to widows. There are lots of them, especially since the War, and you don’t have to go outside your own class, which is important if you have any real respect for women. Be generous, of course, and play decent and straight, and you’ll be all right. That’s that, I think. Now, what do you intend to do?”

  “I don’t think I know any widows.”

  “Oh, you will. But that’s not what I meant. Will you go to England this summer? Spook in the autumn?”

  “Yes, Father. It sounds great.”

  “Good. And when you’re in England you’d better meet one or two of the chaps. I’ll arrange it.”

  Frank missed his chance to ask his father about the Looner, said the Lesser Zadkiel.

  –Did you think he had a chance? The Major was a very accomplished talker—which took the form of not seeming to be accomplished at all, but never losing his grip on the way things were going. He overwhelmed Francis with new ideas—the profession, going to England to meet the Cornishes, how to cope with women. With a glass of sherry and a glass of club wine in his unhabituated gizzard, Francis never had a chance to initiate any new subject, or challenge a long-held secret. You know about secrets: they grow more and more mysterious, then suddenly they crumple away and everybody wonders why they were ever secret. The secret of the Looner was some years behind him in Blairlogie, and Francis couldn’t keep up with the extraordinary things his father was telling him—that he didn’t much mind his mother kissing Fred Markham, that he had really been in the Secret Service, that widows were the thing. The Major was an old hand at important conversations.