by Alec Waugh
The other one was personal, from the minister. “War Office most anxious you accept appointment Commandant Sandhurst hate to let you go after your fine work for us but feel must not stand in way your obvious interest also national interest.”
Templeton smiled wryly. Did they think he was a half-wit. He did not fall for that type of banana oil. He sent for Euan and handed him the cables. His son looked at him questioningly.
“What are you going to do?” he asked.
“Accept. It amounts to an order.”
“Are you glad about it?”
“If I had had this offer made a year ago, I should have been delighted, but coming now, I hate leaving a job before I’ve finished it.”
“Couldn’t you refuse?”
“A soldier has to go where he is sent.”
He would have liked to have said more, to have taken his son into his confidence; to have spoken of the knowledge of failure that was implicit in this recall. But a lifetime’s training had taught him to conceal his feelings.
“When do you expect to return?” Euan asked him.
“Almost at once. I’ll be needed for conferences at the Colonial Office. There’ll be a good deal to tidy up before I can take over at Camberley.”
“I see.”
Euan frowned, pensively.
“In that case, Father—” he paused. “Is there any reason why Jocelyn and I shouldn’t get married here before you leave? Then we could all go back together.”
“We discussed that, didn’t we, when you got engaged?”
“Yes, but it was different then. You’d have still been here.”
“Does that make any difference?”
“In a way it does, or at least to me it does. There was a close link between us then, but with you gone … It’s completely unreasonable, but I can’t help feeling that if we don’t get married now, we never shall get married.”
“And you are very anxious to be married.”
“Of course. Why not?”
“In that case then … if you can persuade Jocelyn. I’m sure I can persuade her parents.”
“I’ll see her right away.”
Templeton watched his son hurry from the room, then began to draft his cables of acceptance. He wrote them sadly. He had not lied to Euan. A year ago there was no post that he could have welcomed more than that of Commandant of Sandhurst. It was like being headmaster of one’s own public school. He had been very happy there as a cadet. He would have enjoyed looking out over the lake; watching exercises on Barossa, taking the salute at the steps. He would have regarded it as a high privilege to have been allowed to implant his ideas on a new generation of cadets, particularly at a time such as this when a new and democratic army was being trained.
In five months’ time, once again in the saddle, he would be a happy man. He was well aware of that. But at the moment he was oppressed by failure. He had come out here so hopefully ten months ago. He had meant to do so much for Santa Marta. He had seen his three years here as the coping stone of his career. He was being recalled after ten months. There was a saving of face, but he had failed. There was no denying that.
He remembered too in what spirit he had awaited, seven months ago, his son’s arrival for a summer holiday. He had thought that as a result of this visit he would come to understand his son, that they would become close friends. They hadn’t. He had failed as a father too. He and Euan were strangers to one another. He had no idea what was passing in Euan’s mind. Was Euan hastening on this marriage out of a sense of duty; because he had drifted into a situation and saw no way out. Was he in love with Jocelyn? Had he gone to her on the rebound from Mavis? He did not know, and there was no way of knowing. He was not in his son’s confidence and never would be. He shrugged. He had learnt to take reverses in his stride. You attacked a position: only in part captured it, you reformed your ranks, brought up reinforcements: then attacked again with a different scheme. He wondered whom he’d have under him at Sandhurst, as “assistant commie.”
4
On the following morning after breakfast, Jocelyn Fleury followed her mother into the small drawing room.
“I’ve some things to say to you,” she said.
Her face was serious: it wore an expression that her mother had not seen before: an expression that seemed to be as much as anything one of triumphant enmity; as though she were about to deliver to an enemy a coup de grace.
“I’m going to be a nuisance I’m afraid.” She employed a tone of voice which implied that she was delighted to be a nuisance. Her mother had never seen her in this mood before. Jocelyn was usually so docile, so irritatingly docile.
“What’s all this about?” she asked.
“In about three months, I want to go to Canada,” she said. “I shall need to be away four months. You had better start making arrangements now. I want it to look above board: a reasonable kind of thing to do.”
“Canada. Why on earth should you want to go to Canada?”
“To have a baby.”
“Jocelyn!”
They had been standing up but Mrs. Fleury now sat down. Jocelyn sat opposite on a high-backed chair and crossed her legs: she let her arms rest along its arms, her hands hanging loose over the ends. She leant back her head. She had an exasperatingly regal look, as though she were on a throne.
“Whose baby is it?”
“Euan’s naturally.”
“But I don’t see when …”
“He joined me when I was in Barbados. But it had been going on a long time before.”
“I’ve never been more surprised by anything in my life.”
“Really. But then you don’t know me very well.”
“How long, I mean to say—Mayn’t you be mistaken?”
“No chance of that. I’ve missed the second time, three weeks ago. There isn’t any doubt.”
To Mrs. Fleury, her daughter’s calmness was the most astonishing aspect of the whole outrageous incident. Jocelyn showed no shame, no guilt, no penitence. She could not have been more matter-of-fact.
“I’d meant to go to Trinidad and get rid of it,” she said. “I suppose I should have, but after Maxwell’s death, it’s quite illogical, but I felt I couldn’t take a life. It seemed a murder. Canada’s the best idea, don’t you think? No one need know. I could have it adopted. There’s a great demand for them up there. It should be easy. There’s only one thing that really matters. Daddy mustn’t know. It would upset him dreadfully. That’s why I need your help.”
There was an undertone of contempt in her voice, as though she were saying It won’t hurt you at all although you are my mother. You’re only interested in appearances, the look of the thing, what people will say.
Mrs. Fleury’s temper rose. She was not going to be browbeaten in this way.
“This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. You’ve been very foolish. You’ve behaved like a peasant girl in the cane fields. But that’s neither here nor there. That’s the past. It’s the future that matters. You’re engaged to Euan. You can get married in a hurry. You won’t be the first by a long chalk. You haven’t quarreled with him, have you?”
“By no means, he wants to marry me at once. He wants to marry me right away before he goes back to England.”
“Right away? But he’s not going to England till October.”
“He is, there’s been a change of plan. His father has a new appointment, a military one. I only learnt it last night. That’s why I’ve brought this up now. A certain amount of pressure will be brought to bear on me. You’d better know what the situation is, since you’ve got to work with me in this. We can even make this Canadian visit an excuse. You can say that you’d like me to have an autumn there, while Euan gets settled into Oxford. It’s what his father really wanted. Then in the new year I can write from Canada that I’ve changed my mind. It’s all quite logical, as long as you and I play ball.”
“It isn’t logical. And I won’t play ball. You can’t ruin your whole life for
this. Are you still in love with Euan?”
“Yes.”
“Then what on earth’s to stop your marrying?”
“The danger of seeing a colored man in the House of Lords.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I’m not being ridiculous. We say that there’s no difference nowadays between a peer and a commoner. The age of the Common Man. But there is: otherwise there wouldn’t be a House of Lords. A peer is different. It wouldn’t matter for a soldier, or a lawyer or a politician. A slightly darker skin would make no difference. But a peer: think of all the jokes there’d be about it. Think of how the boy himself would feel. He’d grow up twisted. I wouldn’t inflict that on my worst enemy, let alone my son.”
“But there’s not the slightest danger of his looking more than mildly dark. Think of how light-skinned you are. Nobody in England suspected about your father. It’s only a very slight strain. And you know what the anthropologists say nowadays, that the strain gets lighter all the time, that there’s no truth in that old story of the throwback from ten generations.”
“That’s what they say now. That’s the modern theory. But how do we know they’re right. There’s a new theory of some kind every year.”
“You might have thought of all this several months ago.”
“I did. When I was first engaged to Euan I didn’t know about that Jamaican ancestor. As soon as I learnt, I knew that marriage was out: but I didn’t see why I should deny myself the kind of good time that Mavis and all the rest have had. They got off scot free. Why shouldn’t I. But nature fools you. We haven’t solved the world’s problems with those little books. That’s why I don’t trust those theories of the anthropologists. Nature fools you, once in so many times. There’s one risk that I’m not running.”
“Is that the only reason why you’re refusing to marry Euan Templeton?”
“It is.”
“And if you had a chance, if things were different—”
“But they’re not different.”
“I know, I know: but suppose they were. Let’s put it another way. When Euan was trying yesterday to persuade you to marry him right away, would you have given anything to have been able to say ‘Yes’?”
“I would.”
“Then in that case I’ve got to tell you. I owe it you. You need have no qualms about marrying Euan Templeton. You have not one drop of African blood in your veins. My husband is not your father.”
“Daddy not my father?”
“No.”
“Then who—”
“That’s immaterial. It’s better for you not to know. He is completely English. You can rest assured on that point. I will tell Lord Templeton who he is. He has a right to know who is the other grandfather of his grandchildren. Telling him that will be the most difficult thing I have done in my life. It will be the price I have to pay for something I’ve regretted all my life. He has to be told. He may have the same old-fashioned qualms that you have. But I don’t see why my husband need know. It would break his heart.”
Jocelyn stared at her mother. She found it hard to believe what she was hearing. Her parents had seemed so devoted. She had never conceived the possibility of another man in her mother’s life. So that was why her mother had seemed to be holding something back when Bradshaw’s article appeared. Astonishment was mingled with a relief so intense that she could not face as yet the consequence for her of this revelation. Her whole life was to be transformed. She wanted to brood on it alone. But with that astonishment and relief was mingled something of the satisfaction she had felt in plays when a sanctimonious character had been exposed. Her mother had always seemed so correct, so aloof, so “county.” That her mother should be capable of a thing like this.
“It’s the last thing I could have expected of you,” she said.
Her mother laughed; a short, bitter little laugh.
“You have a lot to learn,” she said. “I was surprised myself. It was the last thing I would have expected of myself, two months before it happened. I had been married ten years. I was happy. I loved my husband. I was still in love with him. I hadn’t a worry in the world: most people feel that they have been cheated by life, or that they have had to give up certain things to get certain others. I didn’t. I felt I had had the amazing luck to pick up a hand that held all the court cards. And then this thing happened. It wasn’t anyone that I respected: there was nothing glamorous about it: it was squalid, furtive, a hole-in-the-corner business. I despised myself for it. Yet I made no resistance. It was something that I had to have. There was a part of me, a very small part of me, not two per cent perhaps, of whose existence I had been unaware. It suddenly came alive. He brought it to life. It was a brief fierce lunacy. When it was through, heavens but how through it was. But I had to have it. I hated myself for having it. But if I hadn’t, I’d be thinking now that I’d half lived my life.”
She spoke with a fierce, masochistic concentration, as though she were relishing the pain that the opening of old wounds caused; at the same time it contained a vindictive sadistic undertone as though she were settling a score, were saying to her daughter, There’s no need for you to be so smug. You’re not the only one. You’ve got a lot to learn.
Jocelyn stared at her mother: she was seeing her for the first time as a human being.
“No wonder you’ve never liked me much,” she said.
Her mother had resented her very existence, had looked for and been repelled by signs of the father in her. No wonder it had been the way it had.
“When do they expect to leave?” her mother was inquiring.
“They don’t know yet for certain. Within a fortnight.”
“And Euan wants you to marry him right away.”
“Yes.”
“Then the sooner this is settled the better. I’ll see Lord Templeton this afternoon.”
For a moment, with a minute malicious fraction of her mind Jocelyn pictured her mother’s interview with the Governor. What a role for that stern woman to have to play. Malvolio crossgartered. But it was only for a moment that she allowed herself to gloat over the exposure. There was no need for it. She could spare her mother that. She shook her head.
“There’s no need,” she said. “I don’t think he ever worried about that. And if he did, it doesn’t matter since it can’t happen now.”
“But what about Euan? Won’t he worry? He may look in his son or daughter for color. He may be unfair to them on that account: as perhaps I was unfair to you.”
“I don’t think he will. It’s really only people with color themselves who worry about color. White people never worry about that kind of thing. Did you worry about Daddy when you learnt?”
“I can’t say I did.”
“No more will Euan about me.”
“But what about your children? They may learn about it; they almost certainly will. It may give them an inferiority complex.”
Mrs. Fleury’s voice was anxious and insistent. How determined she is, Jocelyn thought, to drain the cup of sacrifice.
She shook her head again.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” she said. “It’s a long time off. I may have to tell them some day. But we’ve got quite enough on our hands at the moment decking me out in orange blossoms.”
Chapter Thirty-One
1
Ten days later the bookstalls of the world carried Bradshaw’s face on the cover of Time magazine. Artzibasheff had done one of his happiest cartoon portraits. The large cherubic fat cheeked face was bland and childlike but there was a look of sinister design in the network of wrinkles round his eyes and in the puckering of his lower lip. He looked astute and devious, like a worldly prelate. The caption below it ran “Cricket or Wasn’t it. Baltimore’s Bradshaw scoops the Ashes.”
The portrait had a composite Caribbean background; it had the white colonnaded portico of a Governor’s House: Negroes working in the cane fields; a liner swinging into port; a group of shingle huts and palm trees
, with the whole pattern so designed that each separate activity was focussed upon a cricket match in which whites were playing against blacks.
In London, in the library of the Reform Club, the Honorable Esmond Price studied its wit and satire with disapproval. He was a tall, obese, cleanshaven man in the middle seventies. He wore a dark suit of heavy material; it was loose fitting, it looked as though it had been seldom worn, it had an unfashionable air, suggesting that its wearer was a countryman who rarely had occasion to wear city clothes. That however was not the case. Esmond Price had a service flat in St. James to which he came up every Tuesday, returning to Somerset on the Thursday night or Friday morning.
He had had a curious career. The younger son of a West country peer he had been elected to the House of Commons as a liberal in the Peers vs. People election of 1910. It was a period of intense ill feeling between the parties, but his speeches though effective and partisan won the respect of the Opposition. He was regarded not only as one of Asquith’s most brilliant young men but a future statesman. In August 1914 he sailed for France as an ensign in the Grenadiers. In the same action in which he won an M.C. for gallantry in the field, his brother received wounds in the back that crippled him for life, and a wound in the head that made him a borderline case, in danger of complete collapse. Edmund Price resigned his seat at the end of the war, and made himself responsible for the care of his brother and the running of the estate that one day his own son would inherit.
No retirement from public life could have been more complete. Yet as a London clubman with vested interests in the country, he kept in touch with his old friends and his old interests. As the Liberal Party dissolved, and its brighter members allied themselves under other banners, he found himself with close and trusted friends in every camp. Men of consequence and position were glad to discuss their problems with him for the very reason that he stood “above the battle.” He had no ax to grind, he was impartial, he was wise and he was well informed. Gradually he became a person of power and importance. The careers of many ministers had been advanced or retarded by his influence. He was unknown to the general public, but he was a power behind the scenes. He enjoyed the position that had come to him unsought, and was careful not to compromise it. He had early learnt that the best way to possess influence is by a sparing use of it.