Guy Renton

by Alec Waugh

  “Yes, I can see that, as regards this new account. But what about last summer? They couldn’t all have left their bills unpaid.”

  Franklin flushed. For the first time he was a little disconcerted. This was the crucial point and they both knew it. He hesitated, then he smiled; his most disarming smile.

  “I knew you’d ask me that. Well, I was rather stupid. I hadn’t had much experience in these things. I ought to have kept two separate accounts; as it was, the cheques came in in driblets, ones and twos. I told myself that at the end of the term I’d add it all up and settle the account with Duke and Renton; but you know how it is at Oxford; your expenses mount without your knowing it. It’s the first banking account I’ve had; when the end of the term came there wasn’t any money there.”

  “You mean you’d spent one hundred and fifty pounds over your allowance?”

  “Not quite all that. There were some outstanding bills and not all the wine was sold.”

  “Round about a hundred would you say?”

  “About that.”

  There was a pause. “Does that sound a great deal?” Franklin asked.

  Guy shook his head. A hundred pounds, when you were nineteen, in your first year at Oxford. He’d got in debt himself. And it had been easier for him; he was older, he’d been in the army, used for four years to signing cheques. A hundred could melt very quickly. He was thinking fast. Bis dat, qui cito dat. If he resisted the temptation to play the heavy brother, he might make a friend for life of Franklin; or at least might make himself for life the friend that Franklin needed. Franklin had been so much a mother’s son, had never had a father in the way that he himself had. Everything depended upon the next two minutes. It was high time anyhow that he took control.

  “I don’t think a hundred’s a great deal. I know what Oxford is. I’ll tell you what we’ll do. I’ll take care, as the Americans say, of last summer’s account. We’ll regard it as a loan. When you get a chance to pay me back, I won’t say ‘no’ but there’s no hurry. Then we can start this new term, and this new club on a clean sheet. We’ll fill that order right away, but we shall expect a substantial payment on account at Christmas. If you keep the accounts separate, that should not be difficult. And there’ll be, of course, a certain amount of back payments coming in. About sixty pounds’ worth. Now let’s enjoy this pâté. It’s quite good.”

  On the way back from lunch, he called in at his bankers and asked to see his ledger. When this new cheque had been met, he would be dangerously near the red. He’d have to lie low for a little; wait for invitations, instead of issuing them. It was lucky he had no commitments or responsibilities.

  That evening he dined at No. 17, calling for Margery at her office to drive her out. She was looking tired: burning the candle at both ends, he presumed. She worked an eight-hour day and dined out four nights a week. Add on to that the business of getting out and back from No. 17.

  She hardly spoke during the drive; and on her arrival hurried straight upstairs. “Have a good strong cocktail waiting,” she adjured him. “I’ll be fifteen minutes.”

  Her mother shook her head. “I hate seeing you young girls drink spirits.”

  “Do you think it’s any worse than all the chocolates, the muffins, and the cream buns that the Victorians consumed? And look at the Edwardian tight-lacing: that really was bad for girls.”

  “Was it, dear? I suppose it was.”

  Mrs. Renton answered without animation. Margery was the one in whom she took least interest. That morning she had received some photographs of Lucy’s children. She spread them out for Guy to see. “They’re the best I’ve had. Isn’t this a charming one of George. How he has grown. If you compare it with the one she took at Easter when they were at Swanage . . .”

  She had an album in which she had pasted all the photographs. She set the new ones side by side with the most recent ones. “Look at Digby. I’m not at all sure that for his age, he isn’t even sturdier than George.”

  “What about Rex, did Lucy say what he was doing?”

  “Not in particular. There’s nothing he could be doing, is there?” Once again she spoke without animation. She had been interested in Rex when he had appeared as a dashing courtier; but now that he was married and a civilian, had fulfilled his function and begotten children, he was not a person she could feel curious about. Personally Guy was more than a little curious about Rex. He had given up his bungalow at Wentworth, and gone back to Wessex, to try to make his estate pay a dividend. Guy thought this a dangerous move; Rex had been safer playing golf. Unlikely things tended to happen to men who had once been active and now had nothing to do but potter about a farm. They went religious or indulged strange vices: they became difficult and cranky. Rex was in his opinion the likeliest of them all to prove a problem child.

  “I saw Franklin to-day,” he said. His mother’s face lit up.

  “How was he looking? Why was he in London? Why didn’t he come out here?”

  “He was looking fine; very well and handsome. He had to see his dentist; and there was something he wanted to ask me about.”

  “No trouble, I hope?”

  “Heavens, no. He was wondering what club to join. I advised the Oxford and Cambridge. I think it’s better for brothers to belong to different clubs.”

  “So do I, dear, and to go to different schools, if they are likely to be contemporaries. That’s what I was telling Lucy. George as the elder must of course go to Fernhurst, since Rex was there, but I don’t think Digby need.”

  “Digby might feel aggrieved if he was sent somewhere else.”

  “Might he? I suppose he might. Anyhow it’s a long time off. Franklin looked well you say. I get a little worried about him sometimes. I hear such wild stories about Oxford. All this drinking, and no discipline. They’ve only once won the Boat Race since the war. That doesn’t sound right, does it?” Guy laughed.

  “If you’d seen him to-day, you’d have been spared that worry. He leads a much healthier life than I do, now that I’ve stopped playing football. Golf over week-ends isn’t a fair equivalent. I’m putting on weight. I’ll have to diet.”

  “Will you, dear? Perhaps you should. I remember when your father ...”

  “What about that cocktail?”

  Margery was back again. She had changed out of her dark tailor-made coat and skirt into a tubular sheath of mauve-grey marocain. Her tiredness had vanished with her city clothes; her lips were vividly red against the soft creamed whiteness of her cneeks. She looked like a reminted coin.

  “Is it really cold?”

  “Even the glass is iced.”

  She sipped, pouted. “A Bronx. Well anyhow it’s cold.” She gulped it. “My, I needed that. Yes, I’ll have another.”

  She sat down, stretched out her legs towards the fire, resting her feet upon a stool, her ankles crossed. The short low-waisted skirt barely reached her knees. Her legs were long and lithe. A lot of men must like her. What was she making of it all? The doorhandle turned again; his father, very venerable in a velvet smoking coat, and a high stiff collar. How white hair suited him.

  “Darling,” his mother said, “Franklin’s been up to-day. Guy lunched with him. He said he was looking very well.”

  It was a cosy family evening: of a kind that they had not had for quite a while. Most Sundays Guy came out to lunch. Very often he dined there on the Saturday and stayed the night. Barbara was invariably there, but as often as not she had friends with her, while Margery was rarely in on Saturdays. Most weeks Guy came out at least one evening, but there were often guests. Though his father had given up formal entertaining, he kept open house, inviting out a special customer to taste one wine against another. It was rare for them to be just the four together.

  That evening a play was being broadcast. The White Chateau, His parents sat with earphones clamped over their heads while he and Margery read. There was a lot to be said for the wireless, Guy thought. It saved one from the effort of making conversation. Each one could
follow a personal preference. He had heard there was a new kind of wireless, a portable contrivance that didn’t require an aerial or earphones; you just turned a knob; a kind of gramophone. He didn’t like the idea of that. If one member of a family wanted to listen in, the rest had got to; or else the one person felt aggrieved. Everyone having to do the same tiling at the same time. No, he wouldn’t care for that. As soon as the play was over, his father went up to bed. His mother followed a few minutes later.

  As the door closed behind her, Margery laid down her book. “Have you read this?” she asked. ‘This’ was Lord Raingo, the new Arnold Bennett. He shook his head. “The chief character’s very nearly sixty. He seduces a girl in the early twenties, and takes a flat for her. She’s quite in love with him. I may do something like that one day. Marry, I mean, someone old enough to be my father.”

  “That’s an odd thing to say.”

  “Or else marry someone common.”

  “That sounds even odder.”

  “Does it? Think a little. Who else is there for me to marry? I’m twenty-one. I ought to be marrying someone of your age, or a little younger. Your generation was in the war. Do you remember telling me the other day that half of your contemporaries are dead?”

  “Yes, I remember.”

  “That happened in every school in England. Don’t you see how that limits the choice for me. My best bet might be someone in the generation that was too old to fight; a widower or someone who’s tired of his wife. A man of fifty need not be too old. Men stay younger nowadays.”

  “Why someone common?”

  “There are more of them. There’s a bigger choice. The deficiency is more spread over. It’s in our class, the upper-middle and middle-middle classes that you find shrivelled spinsters. Besides, the men I seem to meet, the unmarried ones—and I don’t want to get mixed up with a married man—and nearly all the attractive men are married—the unmarried ones I meet, perhaps because they are unmarried, are so self-conscious about sex. I couldn’t feel natural, I couldn’t let myself go with them.”

  He laughed.

  “That reminds me of something Mürren said the other day.” They still called Renée that. He had never told Margery who she was.

  “Tell me what Mürren said.”

  “That Englishmen and Englishwomen had lived on the same island so long, breathing the same air, that they’d lost their sense of strangeness for one another; that they’d become like brothers and sisters; that strangeness was an essential ingredient in love; she said that we’re only half-alive with one another.”

  “Isn’t that rather what I was saying, that one needs strangeness, to move out of one’s class or age group.”

  “Or out of one’s country.”

  “It’s still going well then between you and Mürren?”

  “Every time we meet I seem to be seeing her all over again for the first time. It’s going deeper and none of the excitement’s gone.”

  “Oh darling, I’m so happy for you.”

  When he left that night, she flung her arms tight about his neck, pressing her cheek to his.

  “I don’t know what I’d do without you. You’re the one person in the world to whom I can say anything. Please stay that way.”

  It was close on midnight when he got back to Knightsbridge. As he turned the key in the lock, the telephone was ringing. He pounced upon it eagerly. Only one person would ring as late as this. As he lifted the receiver, he heard a happy laugh. “What a relief, I was just going to ring off.”

  “I’ve only got in this minute.”

  “You sound out of breath.”

  “I’ve run upstairs. I heard the bell ringing from the hall.”

  “That shouldn’t make you out of breath. You’ll have to watch yourself now you’ve stopped playing football.”

  “I was telling my mother that to-night. I’ll have to give up potatoes.”

  “And bread.”

  “And beer and butter. How’s your party going?”

  “So-so, they’re playing bridge. There’s a rubber that won’t finish. That’s how I managed to slip away. I’m dummy. I must rush back now.”

  “I’m seeing you to-morrow, aren’t I?”

  “I hope you are.”

  “Isn’t it one of those dinners of Roger’s that go on very late?”

  “Till midnight. Then they’ll go on to one or other of their clubs.”

  “That means we could dine out?”

  “I’d rather picnic.”

  “Off what?”

  “What’s on the menu?”

  “Anything you say.”

  “Anything; you mean really anything?”

  “In all ways anything.”

  “Darling, that makes me feel so headstrong; but I’ll be generous; just caviare, and something from Fortnum’s you can put in an oven. No, that’s a nuisance, we would have to watch it. Let’s have grouse instead: cold grouse and caviare; now, precious, I must rush.”

  A warm glow was about his heart as he undressed. To-morrow he’d be seeing her again; after a whole week’s interval. He drew a long slow breath into his lungs. How lucky he was; how lovely she made life for him.

  7

  Six weeks later Pilcher was in Guy’s room again, his features presenting the same guarded mixture of nervousness and aggression.

  “I thought you’d like to see this, Mr. Guy.”

  The letter was addressed from New College. ‘Gentlemen, I enclose on account a cheque for £25. Will you please fill the following order for me, as soon as possible.’ There followed on two separate sheets a list of wines and spirits. Franklin requested that each order should be addressed to him, at a different residence: the addresses of the two clubs, presumably. It would total roughly a hundred pounds. Guy looked from the letter to the lists, pulled a telegraph form across his desk, began to write a message, then changed his mind and tore it up.

  “You can fill the order. I’ll write to him about it.”

  The moment the door closed, he was on his feet. A split order for a hundred pounds, one for each club; it meant that each club had more or less consumed its stocks; nearly £75 of wine had been drunk by the new club; and the old one had finished its first supply. Well over £100: and in spite of the old bills outstanding, only £25 had been paid in. Franklin had not learnt his lesson. This could not go on. Angrily he strode back and forth. He’d have to tell his father. He wouldn’t see him now: he was in too bad a temper: he might say something he’d regret; he’d sleep on it, then see his father in the morning, when his blood was cool.

  But in the morning it wasn’t any cooler. He woke half an hour earlier than usual with a presentiment that there was something wrong. Then he remembered. Franklin again. His mind was racing. He’d never be able to go off to sleep again. He switched on the light; picked up a book, but failed to concentrate. Damn Franklin. He might as well get up; breakfast in his sitting-room; answer his letters there, instead of at the office.

  It was a cold, chill morning. He shivered as he began his exercises. The telephone bell rang. Renée, he supposed. That was one of their chief problems, his never being able to call her; her having to call him whenever she had a chance.

  Yes, it was Renée. “Something very tiresome,” she said. “It cropped up very late last night: too late for me to have a chance to call you. Roger has to go to Paris for three days. He wants to take me with him. I’m afraid that interferes with all our pleasant plans.”

  It was not the first time this kind of thing had happened, it was bound to in a relationship like theirs. It could not have come at a worse moment. Shivering beside the telephone with Franklin’s problem fretting him, he felt he could survive the day only by seeing Renée.

  “Isn’t there any chance of your being able to lunch with me?” he asked.

  “It wouldn’t be very easy.”

  “If you could possibly manage it, there’s something I particularly want to talk to you about.”

  There was a pause. “It would have
to be a very hurried lunch.”

  “Anytime you say, and anywhere.”

  There was another pause. “Quarter to two, at your place. Just a sandwich.”

  He was back at the flat by half-past one. A fire had been burning now since noon and the room was warm. Beside a plate of chicken sandwiches a bottle of moselle was cooling. But he was no more composed than he had been six hours earlier when the telephone had rung. A call at his bank had convinced him that he was in no position to defray his brother’s extravagances without considerable inconvenience. Then Rex had rung. When could Guy lunch with him? The last thing he wanted was to have lunch with Rex. He never felt at ease with him these days. At one time Rex had been his hero. As a fag at Fernhurst, he remembered Rex coming down for commem. and making a century for the Old Fernhurstians. How proud he had been to serve under him in France. Rex had been the ideal colonel, brave, efficient in the field, human in the mess, but without loss of dignity. But now their roles in relation to each other were reversed. It was his turn to be in the strong position, active, in the swim of things, while Rex was a nonentity. England was well-stocked with medalled and retired colonels who took golf seriously. Yet because he had once been Rex’s subaltern, Guy found it impossible to adjust himself to this new relationship. Rex wouldn’t have called unless he had wanted something. And he would find it difficult to refuse. But there was no avoiding the invitation; he chose the following Monday.

  Then his father had wanted to discuss a point that had arisen in connection with the increased duties upon spirits. A ticklish point: it could scarcely have been a more exacting morning. He’d been a fool to insist on Renée’s seeing him: he’d be in no mood for her. She’d be worrying about her packing, about last minute purchases for Paris. Why should he bother her at such a time with problems of an undergraduate she’d never met? Everything would work out wrong. How often had they not agreed that it took time for two people to find their ways back to one another. How often had they not met, after only a few hours absence, to find themselves on different wave lengths. Each had a separate aura that had to be dissolved before they could get in touch. They would sit together, sipping a cocktail, playing a new record, waiting for the aura to dissolve. It was only a question of time. But you had to have that time. Which was what they would not have to-day. They’d be awkward with one another. Franklin’s story would seem pointless. She’d be thinking about getting away to Paris. He’d been a fool to insist upon her coming.