by Alec Waugh
They could not say that in so many words, but the implication of it was inherent in every sentence they exchanged. They had never felt so close—not even in their days of courtship.
‘What do you plan to do?’ she asked. ‘Of course you’ll want Derrick and myself to leave.’
‘I can’t turn you out.’
‘But we can’t go on living here now that the house is yours. We were a nuisance to you before.’
‘Oh no you weren’t.’
‘Of course we were. It was one of those situations you drift into. It was so easy to drift into it in 1940 when London was being bombed, with you and Derrick away; Timothy Alexander had to have a home. No one could foresee it would all turn out the way it has, with Derrick getting ill, then Iris becoming a widow with a baby, then her going to America; and the old man liked to have us here. I kept saying to myself “this can’t go on”. But weeks became months, months became years. While the old man was still alive, there was no alternative. You had the same feeling, hadn’t you ?’
‘I had.’
‘Living from day to day, feeling that nothing could be decided while he was alive. We had to give him a sense of continuity. We couldn’t start pulling up roots when he was liable to check out at any moment. And that’s how it did happen, didn’t it, suddenly, without warning. On the Monday he catches a chill, on the Wednesday night he’s dying. Our hands have been forced all these years. But now we’ve got to make decisions. It’s your house now.’
‘It’s also Timothy Alexander’s home.’
‘I know, I know. But it is your house. Derrick and I can’t go on living here.’
Derrick—that was the problem. He took no part in the discussions. He would sit at a table, or over drinks, for half hours on end, not exacdy like a zombie, because he was completely aware of what was going on, but silent and abstracted, only joining in the conversation when some subject in which he was interested was discussed—and those subjects were few and at such a time in no one else’s mind—a television serial that he followed, a sale at Sotheby’s, his weekly football pool, the results on Saturday evenings. Most of the time they were not aware that he was there. Why had he to be there? How had it come about that he was there? The active role that he had played in their lives had been so brief. A year-long affair, a few months of marriage; a marriage that had never been cemented into a home, a nursery, the bonds of shared possessions. And then the years as a prisoner in Japan when there had been no exchange of letters; after six and a half years’ separation the return of an invalid, who had long since ceased to be the brisk, purposeful City man who had bullied her into marriage. Now there was this amiable animated cabbage. Why had it had to happen? It could so easily not have happened. If there had been a war over the anschluss, it would not have. If there had been no Munich, it might not have. October 1938. The case was not heard until December. It would have been awkward then, with Derrick posted to his regiment and Raymond in Dominica. Eileen on her own, at a loose end might well have cabled, ‘Why not postpone it for a little.’
They never actually said that, but each was thinking that. Each, later, was to tell me that. It was obliquely that they talked about their past.
‘I never wanted to break it up,’ he said.
‘I know you didn’t.’
‘I was quite happy with the way things were.’
‘I know. Perhaps that’s what worried me: the fact that you were.’
‘I was still in love with you.’
‘In your way, you were.’
‘It’s the only way I know. Everyone’s supposed to have at least one grand passion, but I never have. ‘I’ve never felt the world well lost for love. I’ve never felt “if I don’t get this woman I shall die”.’
‘That was our trouble, maybe.’
Never had they been so close. They felt an imperative need to explain themselves to one another.
‘The moment I saw you, I wanted to make love to you,’ he said. ‘I never stopped wanting to make love to you. You were the tops, that way.’
‘It’s nice to be told that.’
They looked at one another. They were, after all, only in their middle fifties. They could so easily have picked up the threads where they had dropped them.
‘But you can understand, can’t you,’ she said, ‘how differently a woman feels when a man tells her that he can’t exist without her, that he refuses to share her, that it must be everything or nothing.’
‘Yes, I can understand.’
‘That’s how a woman wants to be loved, crazily, exclusively; in the last analysis she goes, or is tempted to go to the one who loves her most. And when she’s left alone …’
‘I know, I know.’
For hours, for days it was a long, renewed, interrupted, re-renewed going over of their times together: their first dates in his London flat; the excitement, the lure of the forbidden. Then that day in Villefranche. ‘I didn’t hesitate that morning, did I?’ he insisted. ‘I was delighted, wasn’t I?’
‘If you hadn’t, I’d have been lunching in Monte Carlo.’ They talked of their elopement; of the thrill of discovering Overdale. Of Iris at the carnival.
‘She’s survived that all right,’ he said.
‘She wouldn’t have, if I hadn’t rushed her right back to England.’ They talked of Bolton’s, of their weekend guests, of their London parties: ‘Did that Dominican party with the films have the effect you’d hoped for it?’ she asked.
‘I’ve an idea it did.’
‘You still love the place as much.’
‘It’s laid its hold on me.’
‘You said that you don’t know what a grand passion is. What else was Dominica ?’
‘Maybe, maybe.’
‘Will you be able to give it up?’
‘Why should I?’
‘If you’re going to make Charminster your base … can you run the two ?’
‘There’ll be a real air service soon.’
‘Even so …’ She paused. ’It all depends on you, you know: the decisions that we’ll have to make, we others. When do you plan to move in here?’
‘Not right away.’
‘I didn’t mean tomorrow afternoon.’ They laughed at that. They were on very easy terms with one another.
‘You may re-marry if you make Charminster your base.’
‘I don’t think that’s very likely.’
‘Why not? You’re only fifty-three. You haven’t given all that up, I hope.’
‘Hardly.’
‘How are you managing in that way nowadays?’
‘You know me.’
‘Tourists and local houris ?’
‘More or less.’
‘You may not find your quarry over here quite so accommodating: they’ll see you as matrimonial timber, particularly now that you’ve a title.’
‘That’s one of the very reasons I don’t want to marry.’
‘Why do you say that? Most women would like to be Her Ladyship. Why shouldn’t they?’
‘I daresay. At the beginning; but she’d sooner or later resent the fact that her son would have to play second fiddle to my son by a first marriage.’
* * *
Later Eileen was to discuss with me at some length this aspect of the situation. ‘Don’t you think that’s ridiculous?’ she said. ‘Nobody bothers about titles nowadays.’
‘Oh yes, they do: particularly those that have them.’
I reminded her of how Hemingway had made fun of Scott Fitzgerald for saying that rich people were different from themselves. ‘Of course they are,’ he had said, ‘they’ve got more money.’
‘But I’m not sure,’ I said, ‘that. Scott Fitzgerald wasn’t right in thinking that there is a basic, inherited difference about a family that has been protected by wealth for several generations, that has been spared the strains and compromises that are forced on those for whom the demands for livelihood are an actual and persistent contest. In the same way there may be a basic difference
even today in those who are born into the aristocracy.’
I remembered how Raymond had believed that it was the fact of Eileen being an ‘Hon.’, though only through marriage, that had made Derrick insist on her divorce. She must give up her handle for him. I did not mention this to Eileen: though Derrick was nothing to her but an encumbrance now, she needed to remember him as the man who had loved her so much that he could not share her. Had Raymond been mistaken in imagining that that ‘handle’ had been an influence on Derrick? Impossible to tell now; but the fact that Raymond had considered it a probability did show how acutely aware Raymond was of that basic difference. It was not fancied if it was real to him. And it was influencing his action now. There was also Timothy Alexander. He had another year to run at Harvard.
He returned two days after the funeral.
‘How do you feel about it all?’ he had been asked by both his parents.
He had shrugged. ‘It’s something that’s up to you, to both of you. My job is to get back to my courses, do as well as I can, then when I’ve got my degree see what there is for me to do with it.’
‘You do mean to come back here?’
‘Of course: that’s why I’m there. So that I can make a more effective prospect of myself.’
‘You couldn’t imagine settling there ?’
‘Heavens, no. I’m English. My life is here. More now than ever. By the time I’m back, you’ll have settled on your plans, and I can decide how I fit into them.’
Myself, I was back in London for two months. Within a week I had had long talks with both Eileen and Raymond. Raymond was in a puzzled mood. ‘For twelve years,’ he said, ‘I’ve been waiting for this moment, and now that it’s come I don’t know what to do. It seems ridiculous, it is ridiculous, at the same time …’ He paused. ‘All my life I seem to have been waiting for the moment. At Oxford I said there wasn’t any hurry. I was relieved when I was rusticated. ‘Now,’ I said, ‘I haven’t to go into one of the conventional professions. I luckily haven’t to worry about money. I’ll look around. I’ll see what I’m likely to be best at.’ You’ll say I took it all too casually. Perhaps I did. But I thought I was taking a long view. The depression—and what I saw of the results of the depression in places like Chicago—convinced me that the system was wrong at root. Two alternatives were offered or seemed to be offered, Marxism as interpreted by the Russians, a police state as interpreted by Mussolini; I preferred Rome to Moscow. It seemed for England in 1931, that Mosley had the answer. Then Eileen intervened. There was no choice for me at that point, and, as you know, after eighteen months in Dominica I had become enchanted with the place. I saw it as an interlude, but then … well you know what happened. Divorce, then when the war came, I had no doubt that my first duty was to get myself into uniform. By the time the war was over, I found myself the heir to a title and a country seat. As a divorced man in the Army I had resolved to get down to something solid the moment the war ended, but as it was, there was no point in getting launched on a career I’d have to abandon in mid-stream. I had to sit and wait till the time came: and where could I wait better than in Dominica? I fulfilled a function there. So I sat and waited. I sometimes wonder whether I haven’t been providing myself with alibis all my life.’
‘It wasn’t easy for you.’
‘Most people would say it was too easy.’
‘Oh no it wasn’t. It’s much easier for people like myself, who have to develop and exploit whatever talents we are born with.’
‘In other words the camel and the needle’s eye.’ He said that with a smile; the particularly winning smile that I had noticed the first time that I had met him, all those years ago at Oxford; the smile that accepted and dismissed the changes and chances of this world. Then he said the one thing he had not said to Eileen, though she had known that he was thinking it, just as she herself was, ‘Damn that man Whistler.’
It would all have been so easy but for him.
‘I can’t bear to turn them out,’ he said. ‘Yet they can’t stay on. And think of me living there all by myself. I don’t want to marry again. I can’t start all that over again. And it’s Timothy Alexander’s home. What kind of a home would it be for him, just me there, me whom he scarcely knows?’ He paused, he shrugged. ‘I’m going back to Dominica before Christmas. Have Christmas at sea. Christmas in Charminster; that would be impossible. I’d spoil it for everyone, myself included. I’ll have to issue some kind of an ultimatum before I go. I’ll stay away for six months. They should be able to arrange their lives in that time. Money isn’t any problem, thank the Lord. And you can get houses now, but there’s one thing I have to do before I go, make my debut in the House of Lords; I’ve taken my oath of allegiance, been sworn in. I’ve got to make my maiden speech, introduce myself; most of my fellow peers have never seen me; for those that have it’s a question of twenty, thirty years. They don’t know what I’m like today. I’ve got to show them. If I’m going into public life, they’ve got to realise who it is that’s going there.’
‘Which party are you joining?’
‘Neither. I’m going to be an independent. I can do more that way.’
‘Such as?’
‘I don’t know yet, but if I make a mark, I’ll be invited to join committees. I’ll sit on commissions. One thing will lead to another. The great thing is to make a start. The moment I see the right opportunity I’ll take it.’
The opportunity was to come sooner than he expected. A few days later Britain embarked on what history would come to know as The Suez Fiasco’. Raymond was on the telephone within a few hours of the news making the headlines. This is my chance. A subject that I feel strongly about, that I’ve got the facts about. I’ll wait till the fog lifts, then I’ll put a question.’
‘I’d like to be there when you do.’
‘You shall. I’ll give you warning.’
He called me a week later. ‘It’s to be next week on Wednesday.’
‘What’s your question?’
To ask if Her Majesty’s government appreciates the damage that its military operations in Egypt are doing to our national image in the Arab world.’
That should put you in the public eye.’
‘The purpose of the exercise. My question’s number five. Kick off two-thirty. I should be on soon after three. I wish I could ask you to lunch, but I don’t want to have a real meal first: coffee and a slice of cake’ll suit me best. But let’s dine later. Then you can tell me how it went. Shall we say Pratt’s at eight?’
‘Fine.’
‘You’ve been to a Debate before ?’
‘Once or twice.’
Then you know the ropes. The peers’ entrance: the man at the door will have your card of entry.’
I arrived just after prayers, with proceedings already started; the Lord Chancellor was on the woolsack with the gold mace behind him, and a noble peer was on his feet. I had been placed in the gallery, halfway down the hall: a good place from which to watch and hear a speech from the cross-benches. Raymond was wearing a black pin-stripe suit, a white shirt with a stiff collar and a polka-dot black tie, with a white handkerchief at his breast pocket. Though he was dressed so formally he had a casual air. He had not lost his tan from the West Indies. He looked fit and well.
A noble Lord was discussing some problem about civil aviation. He had his back to me, and he was not very audible. My attention wandered. I tried to absorb the atmosphere of the chamber, which with its red and gold decorations, its classical murals and its high lamps, might so easily have been garish, yet managed to achieve dignity and splendour. The chamber was fairly full. There was a certain air of casualness about it all. It did not seem that anything of very high importance was under consideration, but that perhaps is the British way of conducting matters of big moment; to appear casual about what is of high significance and to become worked up about a cricket match or a referee’s decision.
At last it was Raymond’s turn. As he rose to speak, I felt the same nervous
ness that a father has on the cricket field when his son goes out to bat. I was desperately anxious for his sake that it should go off well. For over thirty years I and so many of his friends had been assuring ourselves that one day he would fulfill his promise. The moment had come at last.
As he stood up, there was, or did I fancy it? a stir of interest. Without having become a legendary figure, Raymond was someone about whom a great many had felt curiosity. An exile who had unexpectedly become an heir, who had a property in an obscure West Indian Island, who had been one of the best-looking young men of his generation, who had figured twice in the divorce courts, who had been talked about in the days of the bright young people and then had vanished. Here he was at last, there was a stir of curiosity, but also of well-wishing, of welcoming. He was one of them; a member of the same club, no matter what his politics.
‘My lords,’ he began, ‘this is a very proud moment for me; to stand here for the first time among you, and to be privileged to address you on a subject that lies close, very close to my heart, and I would ask the indulgence of the House towards my inexperience as an orator. I am most anxious that my speech should make the impression that the occasion needs, that the occasion demands, but I am only too well aware that my achievement may fall far short of my intentions. I repeat, my Lords, that I crave your indulgence.
‘The question that I wish to ask is “Does Her Majesty’s government appreciate the damage that its military operations in Egypt are doing to our national image in the Arab world ?” I want to explain first why I ask that question.
‘It was my privilege to serve for four years in the war in the Middle East, and I returned with a very deep, a very real affection and respect for the Arab peoples. I am not the first Englishman to have had that feeling, many of us have, and that feeling of trust and affection has been reciprocated. The history of the last fifty years tells us that.’ His voice was clear and resonant. It was almost affable. He was uncontentious. He talked as he would have done to a group of friends round his own table. He was so affable that it was almost as though he were inviting them to interrupt him, to make a dialogue of it. ‘This is going to be all right,’ I thought. ‘He’s found himself at last. This is where he belongs.’