Unclouded Summer

by Alec Waugh

  One cartoon showed a tub-thumping orator in Hyde Park gesticulating before the placards: Moscow expects – Up the Reds – Hands off China. The caption read:

  ANTI-BRITISH Leader on a platform, singing:

  “But despite my aspirations

  To belong to other nations

  I remain an Englishman” (howls of humiliation)

  Francis had no idea what it was all about.

  “What is this trouble of yours in China?” he asked Judy.

  “Trouble? China? I didn’t know there was any.”

  “Punch seems to think there is.”

  “Oh, Punch -they have to have a cartoon about something everywhere.”

  As she turned over the page of The Times, he read a headline : “Crisis in China More Acute.”

  “Your Times seems to have a lot about it.”

  “They have to fill their columns too.”

  It was the last kind of reply that he would have expected to hear from Judy. In the South of France it had been by, more than anything, the broadness of its interests that he had been attracted to her world. Its members had been concerned with, and informed about, nearly everything that was happening. But here at Charlton nobody seemed to talk about anything that happened farther than two villages away. What was Judy studying so carefully: racing results or the court circular?

  And this he thought is the moment to which I’ve been counting hours, the moment to which we’ve both been counting hours.

  Their first morning alone together.

  Abruptly as though guessing his thoughts, with a sudden rustle, she put down the paper.

  “I know what you’re thinking. I know what you’re waiting for,” she said. “For me to discuss your letter. I’m sorry. It’s no good. I can’t. It’ll have to wait. I’ve too much on my mind. There’s too much at stake. You’ll see that after you’ve been here a little. It would be madness to discuss it now. We must wait till later, till we are calmer. This is too soon. We’d say things that we’d both regret. I’ve got a lot to do. I’ll be seeing you at lunch.”

  She rose to her feet and walked straight from the room. There was a finality, a decisiveness in her voice that was not to be argued with.

  At lunch there were just the three of them, Judy, Marion, and himself.

  “I’m afraid you two children will have to amuse yourselves this afternoon,” she said. “I’m going to be very busy.”

  She remained in her room till tea. Directly after tea, she drove down to the station to meet Sir Henry. On their return, she closeted herself with him in his study. Francis did not see her again till cocktail time. “You see what my life is here,” she said. “I don’t have one moment to myself. I’m the slave of my many duties.”

  Directly after dinner Sir Henry retired to his study. He had papers to go through. “During the week when I go up to London I retire early.”

  At a quarter to ten Judy joined him, leaving Marion and Francis to play Mah Jong.

  It was the same next day.

  “What on earth does she find to do?” he said to Marion.

  Marion shrugged. “You know what it is in the country and you know what Judy is. Running a house this size involves a good deal of supervision. And Judy’s a J.P. She sits on innumerable committees. She has a large correspondence. She looks after a good many of Daddy’s papers, files them, and types out extracts. She’s got a full-time job. She isn’t the playgirl that you saw in the South of France, you know.”

  He supposed she wasn’t. Certainly every time he saw her she looked busy. Yet if ever they passed in the passage she had a friendly smile and a remark. Whenever he found himself alone with her, in the drawing room before lunch or over tea, she would abandon whatever she might be doing, drop the book or paper she was reading, and start a conversation. At all times she was the “perfect hostess”. Just as she had been during those last two days in the South of France, after that night at Villefranche, before that long talk in the small dark café in the Rue de Poilu. Now as then, she was putting on an act.

  And now as then, he felt his temper rising. It was not good enough; he was damned if it was good enough. If she was going to play that game, well so could he. He could be casual, friendly, the perfect guest. If she was not going to refer to that letter of his, no more was he. If she was going to pretend that there had been no steady exchange of letters and of cables, if she was going to pretend that they had framed no plans, had shared no dreams, well, he could pretend that too. Whenever he found himself alone with her, he could be as quick as she to make light conversation.

  He did not find the role of the perfect guest as easy here however as he would have done in the South of France. He was on a strange pitch in a foreign country. Every week end from lunch time Friday the house was filled with guests, was given over to week-end parties which involved visits to neighbors’ houses, to lunches and to dinners in which Francis was as unable as he had been at the first lunch party to take his part in the conversation. Subjects with which he was unfamiliar, people whom he did not know, were constantly under discussion. Sitting silent at party after party, he could understand how Americans subjected to similar experiences, growing more and more conscious of their inadequacy to cope with them, spoke spitefully in self-defense about the narrowness, the exclusiveness, the standoffishness of the English gentry. All these friends of Judy’s were no doubt dismissing him as “the American who never talks.” It did not make him feel self-conscious; it did not embarrass him. But it did make him angry, very angry: he hated to look inadequate in front of Judy. He hated to think that behind his back, she was explaining him away. He longed for a chance to vindicate, to assert himself.

  He was trapped, and he resented it. There was no point in his staying on here, he knew it. He ought to leave, make plans for getting on to Europe, for summering in Spain; he ought to go. Yet to go would be an admission of defeat. Judy had tricked him into coming here. She could not get rid of him now simply by being hostile. Sooner or later there would have to be a showdown. Sooner or later she would have to come into the open. He was not going to make it easier for her by forcing the issue. He could play a waiting game.

  He recalled ruefully a poem of Burns’ that he had memorized at college. Something about life without love being night without morning. It had described love as the cloudless summer sun. Yes, that’s what it had been in Villefranche – unclouded summer. Well it was winter now.

  In the meantime Sir Henry had taken three of his canvases to London. One evening he brought back the news that the director of the Wessex Galleries would be glad to include them in his summer exhibition, as a testing out, as he had put it, for a one-man show a little later.

  Judy clapped her hands. “What did I say? I knew he only had to see your work. I don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t build yourself up as good a market here as in New York.”

  “I see every reason why he should,” Sir Henry said.

  “I don’t see why he shouldn’t make a second home in London. Living is much cheaper here. I don’t see why he shouldn’t take a studio in Chelsea.”

  She looked at him very directly as she said that. There was a triumphant challenging expression in her eyes, as though she was saying, “There, isn’t that the solution? Didn’t I tell you that I’d find one?”

  With a feeling of helpless incredulity he met that glance. Surely she must recognize the impossibility of what it seemed to him that she was suggesting. Perhaps she did not though. Hadn’t he realized that last day at Villefranche how much of a child she was, a child who wanted all its toys at once, and did not realize that the possession of some things precluded her possession of certain others. There was one side of her that was not adult.

  And the days went by. Early April became mid-April and then late April. Mornings became earlier and evenings later. Blossoms in White and pink and red began to break out on pear and apple boughs. The coppice beyond the paddock was brilliant with bluebells. The skies were gray and the rain fell steadily, a
nd everyone agreed that this was the worst April they had known but that May was certain to be marvelous to make up for it.

  And morning after morning, he and Marion would set out on some expedition, and morning after morning Judy would ask at lunch, “What are you children going to do afterwards?” using the same technique that her husband had in the South of France. And sometimes they played golf and sometimes they went sketching, and sometimes Marion took him on a conducted tour showing him Winchester, the college and the Cathedral Close, showing him the ruins of Basing, showing him Bramshill and the Vyne and the black-and-white raftered manor house in Bramley, showing him clusters of thatched cottages, smothered in hawthorne and laburnum, villages that had looked little different when his own ancestors had been alive in England; men whose blood had been shed perhaps in foreign fields for the sake and memory of these very villages; men who had gossiped at these crossroads, waiting for news of the Armada; men who had heard on their way to church of the revolt of the thirteen Colonies, who had knelt at these very pews to pray damnation on the rebels.

  And then they would come back to tea, to crumpets and sandwiches and buttered toast, and Judy would put aside her paper … “Now where have you been, now tell me everything ..”

  And all the time the strain on his nerves grew tighter.

  It was on their return from one of these expeditions that Judy tossed him across a telegram.

  “That should be good news for you,” she said.

  It was signed “Barbara.” “Ambroses week-ending here. May I bring them dine?”

  “Is that Nina Ambrose?”

  “Certainly it is.”

  “And are they coming?”

  “Certainly they are.”

  “That’s fine.”

  “I thought that you’d be pleased about it.”

  There was an intonation to her voice that made him look up quickly. But the expression of her face had not altered. He must have fancied it.

  He told Parker the news that night. Parker had become, next to Marion, his chief ally in the house. Since the second day Francis had treated him as a friend and equal. Shocked at first, embarrassed and surprised, Parker had gradually come to salve his conscience with the reflection that Americans were different. He now not only indulged in long personal discussions as he laid out Francis’ clothes, but sat beside the fire at night, while Francis shaved, taking, what Francis called a snifter, from the hip flask that he kept replenished.

  Parker was invaluable to Francis. He told him about the other guests. He warned him as to which ones were deaf, as to what subjects to avoid, guiding him to their flash points of vanity. Thanks to Parker, Francis had latterly been increasingly able to take a more active part in the conversation. He was so well primed with information that he could take his place in the drawing room with a plan of campaign worked out.

  Parker nodded his head sagely at the news of the Ambroses’ visit.

  “It should be a very gay evening then. It always is when Mr. Richard’s down.”

  Mr. Richard was Sir Henry’s son, who was to be a house guest for the next week end.

  “What do you mean by a ‘gay Saturday’?” Francis asked.

  “Oh you know, games and charades and dressing up. Mr. Richard always likes nursery things.”

  Francis whistled.

  Charades, so that was the form, then, was it? Charades and Nina down. An idea had come to him. Charades. This was the best tip he had ever had from Parker.

  The Richard Marriotts came down on the Saturday by the morning train.

  “What’s he like?” Francis had asked Marion.

  “Richard, oh, he’s rather fun.”

  “In what way fun?”

  “It’s hard to say. He’s … Well, he takes nothing seriously. He’s quite a little older than I am. He’s over thirty. Thirty-six. He’d just come down from Oxford when the war began. He’d got a first in greats. He was going into the diplomatic. Everyone prophesied great things for him, but when the war was over – he had a very good war, a majority and the M.C. and he was wounded twice – he said he couldn’t be bothered with that kind of thing. He was sick of nations squabbling, he was going to enjoy himself, he said. By the way, you weren’t in the war, were you, Francis?”

  He shook his head. “I was two years too young. It seems silly to say it now, but on Armistice Day, I went away all by myself and cried because I’d missed it.”

  “I was only seven when it began. I’d had no life before it. I don’t know what people were like before it. It seems to have done funny things to people, turned them into socialists or cranks: made them serious-minded about boring things, but it’s had rather a good effect on Richard. Daddy bought him a partnership in a wine firm. He’s got a house at-Wentworth. He seems to do most of his business playing golf with his clients for two-pound corners. He’s a whole lot of fun, you’ll see.”

  From Parker’s and Marion’s descriptions, and from the fact that Marion and Sir Henry were both tall, Francis imagined that Richard Marriott would be large and boisterous, red-faced and in heavily checked clothes. On the contrary he was short and slim, and his neutral tinted gray-green tweeds, though actually loose enough, gave the impression of fitting tightly. Small though he was, however, in almost any company he would be the first person that you would be aware of when you came into a room. He was always on the move, he was usually talking, yet his restlessness did not make you nervous.

  He arrived shortly before noon. He was in the middle of an anecdote as he came into the drawing room, but he abandoned it instantly at the sight of Judy. He opened his arms wide and ran towards her.

  “Darling, how well you look. You make me feel ashamed. I feel so ill. It’s the life I lead. The party that was inflicted on me last night. Business of course. Nothing but business would have lured me to such a ghastly revel. But I must have a drink before I tell you. Yes, something strong. Anything but sherry. I get so tired of telling my customers that sherry is better for their palates than dry Martinis.”

  He passed the back of his hand histrionically across his forehead.

  “Oh darling, but it was such a party. All the Blackbirds were there. That’s the craze now you know in London, colored singers. No party is a party unless there are a dozen there. No debutante’s smart these days unless she’s got a colored beau. The way I see it London for the next few years is going to be so much faster than Paris as to make no sense. You know what happened in Russia after 1906.”

  “You tell me what happened, Richard.”

  “St. Petersburg was the wildest city in the world. The revolt had failed. The young people thought the game was up, that nothing mattered, that they might as well have fun. Read a book like Sanine. See the kind of fun they had. Take a parallel between our general strike and the 1906 revolt then you can see what we may expect over here. A pink gin, Father, bless you, I feel better now.”

  Lightly he chattered on. Yes, it should be a gay evening, Francis thought. Tonight’s my chance, he thought.

  His mind was racing as he changed for dinner. Charades, he knew what that involved.

  He had acted in them often enough to know what happened when the team that was sent out to act collected to prepare its play. There was first an embarrassed silence, with everyone looking at everybody else, waiting for the first idea. Then someone out of nervousness would suggest something; invariably something silly, that was recognized as being silly the moment it had been said. “No, that’s no good,” they’d say. Then two others would blurt out, simultaneously, suggestions that were not much better. The minutes would go by, then someone would say, “We must decide on something,” and desperately they would pick on the first word that came into the first person’s head. They would agree roughly on a scene. Someone would say, “I’ll bring the word in.” Everyone would hurry to start dressing up. Everyone would feel that the success of a completely unprepared charade would depend on their own individual effort. They would all put all they knew into it. In the end, it would
be quite well done and rather fun. That was how it was, ninety-nine times in a hundred.

  But why shouldn’t this time be the hundredth?

  He came down early to find Judy in the drawing room alone. She was standing beside the fire facing it, one hand on the mantelpiece, one foot rested on the low brass fireguard. She had dressed simply as she always did at her own parties, in plain underrated black. She turned as he came into the room, and smiled. It was a very friendly smile. No onlooker could have guessed from it that there was animosity between them.

  “There are cocktails over there,” she said. “You might bring me one too.”

  They were champagne cocktails, a long row of them, the lemon peel floating on the top, the pink lump of sugar dissolving as the bubbles mounted. He remembered how he had ordered champagne cocktails at that party of his at Villefranche. He handed one to Judy. Himself he did not feel like one. He needed something stronger. There was a decanter of whiskey behind the cocktails. He poured himself out a measure three fingers high.

  “Is it a big party tonight?” he asked.

  “Fairly.”

  She ran through the list of names. They were nearly all familiar. They were people whom he had met here or at other houses over the last three weeks; people who had all of them in their different ways thought lightly of him. I’ll show them tonight, he thought.

  “I’m putting you next to Nina,” she said, “naturally.”

  Was there, or was it only that he fancied it, a slight sneer in her voice as she added “naturally”? Was there? He did not know. They could no longer talk in shorthand, he and she. There was a barrier, a mist between them. What was it he had said only five weeks ago to Julia, that only one thing mattered to him in the world, the putting of himself right with Judy, yet here he was now excitedly plotting to “get even with her”? How had it happened, what had he done wrong? Whose was the mistake, where had the fault lain? How could they win back to that easy comradeship? How was this mist to be dissolved?