by Alec Waugh
He hesitated. He wondered if he should tell Ned about Charles’ belief that Rachel was entitled to special treatment because of her Jewish blood. He decided not to. It might make Ned think Charles ridiculous. He did not want him to do that. Charles was not ridiculous. He wondered whether Charles’ venerable mother would altogether approve of a half-Jewish daughter-in-law. Possibly Charles own sense of personal nobility was flattered. Most motives were mixed. He did not want to present Charles in an unfavourable light. There would have to be contact between them eventually through the children.
‘You will be wondering, of course, as to what kind of a stepfather this man will make, [he wrote]. I don’t think that you need have any qualms on that account. He is very conscientious, and will make extra efforts on their behalf. He won’t try to move them to America unless he is convinced—and of course you will have a say in that—that it is to their advantage. He talked about Harvard when they leave Fernhurst. Two strings to their bow, he said. He is a thoroughly responsible person. His law firm has a branch in England and if it seemed expedient, he could take it over.
And now you will be asking, “how do I advise you?” You don’t need telling surely that I as a lawyer nearly always disapprove of a divorce. I am dedicated to the protection of property and the safeguarding of the family. Nine times in ten I should say to a man in your situation; “Let it ride. They will get over it. Let them have their affair.” Nine times in ten a love affair has run its course within eighteen months. Don’t they say that a married couple makes love more often during their first year of marriage than in all the rest of their married life? Nine times in ten, I keep saying, nine times in ten, but that’s merely to underline why I think this exceptional.
After all, I’ve been sitting at this desk in this office for quarter of a century; and that means every day for five days a week I have had clients coming into me with their problems; they’re usually money problems. I won’t say they’re squalid problems, but human beings are at their lowest when money is concerned. Money brings out the worst in them. For quarter of a century I have been consistently in touch with the lowest common denominator in human beings; why shouldn’t I be cynical? But now and again, once in many times I meet humans who are living on a higher level. That’s what I felt when I saw Rachel and her American today. There was a glow about them. I can’t explain it in any other way. There was a glow. You’ve got to give them what they want. It may work out badly. In five years you may all three of you be saying: “Why didn’t we play it slow? Why were we in such a hurry?” That may well happen. I pray it won’t; but even if it were to happen, you’d all of you be better off than you would be if you tried to thwart them. If you did, there would be rancour left that would poison everything, between you all, for ever. And that poison would percolate, would penetrate into your children’s lives. They’d sense it; they’d resent it. Shall I tell you what, as a lawyer, I’ve found to be the greatest mistake that any couple can make: To stay together for the children’s sake. The children aren’t going to thank them for it. They don’t want to have sacrifices made for them. They don’t want to carry their parents’ responsibilities.
Ned, I don’t know in what temper you’ll be reading this. You’re away on service, and you may feel that you’ve been let down behind your back; but don’t forget this, will you? Rachel doesn’t think you had to go abroad. And is she wrong in thinking that? You left her vulnerable. I am not saying that she has a grievance, now. But she would have a sense of grievance if you were not to fall in with her plans. If you play for time, probably what you expect to happen would happen. He’d be posted overseas; they might be parted for two years; he might be posted straight back to America. They’d barely see each other, if they saw each other at all, and by then you’d be home from the Middle East. By then it would be all too late. And for the rest of her life she would feel cheated. She is in love now; and though you and I both know that that kind of love doesn’t last for very long, no one in love is going to believe it doesn’t. They say, “this is different; this is the real thing.” Rachel will feel that she’s lost the real thing through you. She would always hold it against you. It would poison your whole life together.
It’s a bad business. I’m not pretending that it isn’t. It’s a question of making the best of a bad job. I know it must be miserable for you, out there, to have the roots of your life suddenly pulled up; to have to think, “What am I going back to?” But nobody knows what’s waiting for us when the war is over. We shan’t be living on the same salary, in the same houses; any way not on the same terms in the same houses. We’ll have to build up a whole new life. It won’t be easy. It may not be pleasant. It is possible that it may be easier for you, starting again from scratch. And after all, you will be still a relatively young man in your middle forties. Please, please don’t think I’m not sympathetic. I am. But one has got to be practical. I believe that I am giving you sound advice.’
He re-read the letter. Would it seem very cold and matter-of-fact to Ned? He tried to picture Ned, far from home, cut off from his friends and family, in his country’s service. He checked. That was the way one had talked in the first war. It wasn’t true in this. This was total war; total conscription of man power. Everyone was serving his country in one way or another. Ned did not need to be coddled, because he was in khaki.
He lifted himself gingerly out of his chair, straightened himself slowly, with his hands in the middle of his back, remembering a twenty-year-old advertisement for Kruschen salts: ‘Every picture tells a story.’ Damn this rheumatism, damn this climate, damn this diet. No wonder he had too much uric acid in his veins. Ned was well fed and in the sun. Ned wasn’t plagued with rheumatism.
He walked down the passage to his secretary’s room. ‘Could you type this, please, as a draft, and could you give it precedence?’
His secretary looked up crossly. ‘That’s what you said about that letter to Mr. Crossley.’
‘I know I did. Now I say give this letter precedence over Mr. Crossley.’
‘O.K., as long as you hadn’t forgotten Mr. Crossley.’
‘I hadn’t forgotten Mr. Crossley.’
She was barely civil. Nobody was more than barely civil nowadays. They lived under too tense pressure. He had not been affable himself. He ought to make allowances for Miss Scudder. She was a dreary, soured little woman who looked after a widowed mother. For her mother’s sake she had not undertaken war work. War work might have been the saving of her. It would have taken her out of a groove. She might have been presentable in uniform. She would have met men. She might have been posted where there was a dearth of women. Some sex-starved officer might have fancied her. She had always been a dreary little thing. Ned and he had made an adjective out of her name to describe anything that was colourless and toneless—“a Scudderish day’, ‘a Scudderish suit’, ‘a Scudderish cricket match.’ The war was her last chance and she had missed it. No doubt she resented having to work in wartime for a drab solicitor on the edge of sixty, typing out title deeds, wearing shabby, threadbare clothes when her contemporaries in air force blue were carrying ‘top secret’ files to heavily moustached squadron leaders with wings and medals on their chests. Poor, poor Miss Scudder.
He settled himself carefully into his chair. A twinge cut across his back. Why had he bothered to go down the passage? Before the war he would have rung a bell. But now there was a wartime idea of sharing out the work. Why? Did it save any time? Did it improve anybody’s temper? His bell rang; a shrill, peevish summons. Surely his bell had been more mellow in ‘38; or had he welcomed it, then, as the harbinger of variety. ‘Sir Francis Faversham to see you, sir.’
‘Right, send him in.’
The presence of Sir Francis rarely cheered him. Sir Francis was a baronet with a large estate in Worcestershire which he was selling off piecemeal, field by field, avoiding income tax and slowly disinheriting his son. He was a man of forty who had got himself a staff appointment that entitled him not only to w
ear red flannel on his tunic but to make frequent trips overseas. He was having a thoroughly good war, and Jenkins found his cheerfulness as exasperating as Miss Scudder’s listlessness.
‘I suppose you’re planning another sale of property,’ he said.
‘In one sense yes, but in another, no. I’m doing a King Lear, or rather thinking of doing a King Lear. I want to make over a certain amount of property to my son. It’ll save me income tax; and eventually save him death duties. I’d like you to work out how much I can afford to give him.’
‘Providing you continue in the way you’re doing, cutting into capital every year?’
‘Precisely.’
‘And giving yourself another forty years of life?’
‘I don’t suppose I shall have such expensive tastes when I get to seventy.’
‘Don’t be so sure of that. Certain tastes can become very expensive in the sixties.’
Sir Francis laughed, the full rich laugh of a man who gave full rein to his capacities for self-indulgence. ‘That’s why I’m doing this now,’ he said. ‘Most fellows leave it too late. They die within two years and their children have to pay death duties all the same.’
‘On the other hand, they can be very sure that their children will take good care of them for those statutory five years. They ensure that you survive.’
‘And that’s exactly what I want to avoid; they’d put me on a diet. I’d sooner die.’
He stretched out his legs luxuriously. ‘Just back from ten days in Moscow,’ he informed Jenkins. ‘They know how to do well. I bet Stalin does his visitors much better than the Czar did his in the last war. Didn’t the Czar prohibit Vodka? No lack of Vodka with Uncle Joe. And their wines aren’t bad; from Georgia, very tolerable; table wines of course; to be quaffed rather than sipped, but there’s nothing wrong with that, as long as there is enough of them; and there was. We had three full staged banquets. Just let me tell you what we had.’
Sir Francis stayed for half-an-hour. As soon as he had gone, Miss Scudder bustled in with the draft of the letter. She wrinkled her nose distastefully. ‘That man makes the place stink like a barber’s shop,’ she said.
It was quarter past twelve. His club—the Isthmian—was twenty minutes away. The bell went for lunch at one, and there was an immediate rush upstairs. Late comers tended to find anything palatable was ‘off.’ He might as well leave now. It would give him time for a pink gin. The Isthmian was in St. James’s Square. It had been bombed in October 1940. One wing was out of action. The front windows were covered over with brown papered cellophane. The library and the coffee room had been filled with dust and rubble; no restoration had been possible. The rooms were very shabby, but they were so dark with the covered windows and the restricted lighting that one scarcely noticed it. Before the war, Jenkins had rarely gone there; he had preferred an oyster shop in Chancery Lane where he was allowed to keep his own store of wine; but he was no longer able to maintain the supply and since the autumn of 1940 he had lunched regularly at his club. It was the one part of the day that he enjoyed. He sat at the long table. He met the same men every day. They were perfectly familiar to him by sight. He knew their habits and their tastes, their particular branch of war work. But he knew very few of them by name. Some of them were, he supposed, men of considerable distinction. But he was not inquisitive. He enjoyed the atmosphere of friendly anonymity.
He ordered a pink gin. The club had an ample store of gin and it had a stock of vintage port, but there was no vermouth so that the only possible cocktails were those made with rum. And Jenkins did not like rum. Whisky was not available till six o’clock. Wine was in short supply. It could be only ordered three days a week; this was not a wine day.
The gong sounded: and everyone gulped down his drink and hurried to the staircase. A long buffet table was set with a succession of hors d’æuvre dishes. The members helped themselves on plates so small that no one could give himself very much. The display would have looked appetizing in a colour photograph; there were sardines, marinated herrings, Russian salad, onions, beans, tomatoes, spaghetti, slices of salami, but there was no variety from one day to the next; nothing seemed to taste of anything, except the mayonnaise which had a rancid flavour. Jenkins thought of Ned in Baghdad, drinking Vodka in the sunlight; then repairing to a long refectory table that would be set like a banquet in the Old Testament with spiced meats and venison. There would probably be carafes of cool wine. The sweet wine of Shiraz. He carried his plate of hors d’æuvre to the long table and took an empty seat. He had known for twenty years the man who was sitting on his left. He fancied he had known his name in the days when as a new member he had tried to find out who everybody was, but the name had meant nothing to him and he had long since forgotten it. His fellow member greeted him with a friendly smile. ‘This is a nice surprise; it’s a long time since we sat together.’ Jenkins wondered if the man knew who he was. He did not suppose he did. He wasn’t any one.
At each plate there was a slip of paper on which a member could write out his order. Jenkins and his fellow member looked over the menu. There was not much choice. A mushroom omelette, it would be made of dehydrated eggs. Jenkins remembered the cook’s farm eggs that had come in packets after the last war; they had been infinitely superior. There was cold meat; that would be spam and salami. There were sausages and mashed potatoes; the suasages would be stuffed with sisal. There was a risotto. That would be mainly rice. There was a joint of beef; the beef would be overcooked so that the meat could be sliced thin. There was macaroni au gratin. There were potatoes, cabbage and brussels sprouts. Well enough on paper but it was not surprising that members looked either thin and drawn or pallidly overweight. Nobody looked well. They did not get enough fresh air; they did not get enough daylight in their darkened offices; they did not get enough exercise; they did not get enough wholesome food. They were all overworked. It was not surprising that they were short tempered sometimes. He chose the cold meat. There was no shortage of Worcester sauce; and he ordered a pint of draught beer. The Isthmian, through a link with the directorate of a brewers’ company, still managed to obtain quite reasonable beer.
‘What kind of beer are you getting at your local?’ his fellow member asked him. ‘I never risk it. I get bottled beer. How much wine does your man give you every month?’
‘A miscellaneous dozen.’
‘The same with me. But I’m in luck. I’ve several men. I scattered my credit before the war.’
‘You are in luck.’
They discussed for a few minutes the universal problem of ‘how they managed.’ Then they talked of the war. They wondered when the second front would be opened. ‘Don’t you call Italy a second front?’ asked Jenkins.
‘I don’t. Do you?’
‘No, I suppose I don’t.’
‘I shan’t feel happy until those channel ports are in our hands. They’re far too close to us. Have you heard any more about Hitler’s secret weapon?’
‘I haven’t heard anything at all.’
‘You haven’t?’
‘How could I in my line of business?’
‘No, of course, how could you?’
Jenkins wondered whether his fellow member had any idea what his line of business was. He did not see any reason to enlighten him. If he were to, his fellow member might pounce with a ‘A lawyer; how very interesting; there’s a little legal point that has been worrying me,’ thereby getting free advice. Doctors and lawyers were constantly exposed to that kind of treatment.
‘I must say I hear worrying accounts about it,‘ his fellow member was continuing. ‘I suppose I shouldn’t talk about it, but it doesn’t matter here, and you’re discreet, but the highups are worried. They don’t know how long it will be before the new weapon is ready. It can’t be long now, they say, and it’s going to make that 1940 blitz seem like pantomime.’
Jenkins wondered whether this man really had access to secret information. If he had, he shouldn’t be so voluble. Everyone claim
ed to be ‘in the know.’ One thing was certain, of that there was no doubt, there were rumours in plenty in circulation about this secret weapon. But then in the First War there had been rumours of Russians with snow on their boots, and in November ‘40 there had been rumours of the invasion that had been driven off by a flame barrage, on the sea; stories about scorched Germans’ bodies being washed up in Normandy. There might be nothing to these rumours; but they made for anxiety all the same. London’s morale had been high in 1940. Would it be so high now, after three years of rationing and frustration?
By the time he was back in his office, he had returned to the mood of misanthropical discontent in which he had awaited Rachel. The draft of the letter to Reid lay on his desk. He read it slowly, modified a couple of phrases. He seemed to have touched every aspect. He re-read it, trying to picture its effect on Reid. Would it seem unsympathetic? Would Reid feel that he was being deserted by his friends? If he did feel that, was he justified in feeling that? He had chosen to leave them after all. Rachel had been right there. He had not had to go. He was not in the position of a twenty-two-year-old subaltern. For the third time he read the letter. It still seemed to him all right.
He walked down the passage and handed the draft of the letter to Miss Scudder. ‘Do three copies of this on airgraphs. Post them at intervals of ten days.’ One of them should be certain to get through. He went back to his office. It was chilly, but he did not care to light a fire. Coal was a munition of war. Don’t waste it. He moved his shoulders inside his coat. Three more hours of interviews, of drafting letters, of concentrating upon other people’s problems. It was a Scudderish world all right.