by D. J. Taylor
‘Peter’s just coming,’ he volunteered. ‘At least I think I saw him in the distance behind me.’
‘You’ve just missed Tambi,’ Anthea explained. ‘He said you’d offered to lend him a coat. Is that the one you’re wearing now?’
‘Oh, he’s been here, has he?’ Desmond said. He did not rise to the bait about the overcoat. ‘Do you know, I never really believe that story about his being a Sinhalese prince. A fellow I met the other night who’d been in Ceylon had never heard of him.’
It was a mark of the state Desmond was in that he could say this about one of his protégés. Sylvester Del Mar had been allowed to make almost any statement about his personal life and have it respectfully attended to. He hung the overcoat on a peg above Cynthia’s suitcase, gave a despairing look around the office, as if there was something he desperately wanted to say but feared the consequences of doing so, and disappeared into his office. Cynthia, deciding to visit the washroom, walked out onto the landing.
There were voices on the stairs, and as she stood there inspecting a ladder which had just appeared in one of her stockings, Peter Wildgoose came into view, together with a younger man—jaunty and debonair—whose features seemed vaguely familiar to her.
‘Hello, Cynthia,’ Peter Wildgoose said. He was unexpectedly jolly. ‘Do you know my friend Christopher? Chris, this is Miss Kirkpatrick, who works on the mag.’ She saw now that it was the young man from the fish restaurant in Wilton Street.
‘Now, you’ll have to excuse me, Chris,’ Peter Wildgoose said, clearly not expecting any response from her, ‘because I really cannot spend any more time in your all too delightful company.’
Thinking her presence superfluous, Cynthia smiled politely and went into the washroom, where the sound of them talking offered a ringing counterpoint to the rush of water and the noise of the roller towel. When she came out it was just in time to see Peter Wildgoose, poised at the summit of the staircase, with Christopher a step or two beneath, reach down and brush his cheek with the fingers of his right hand. There was no mistaking this gesture.
Like the final piece of a fretwork castle fitted into place, a last machicolated turret glued above the outer wall, it confirmed one or two pieces of gossip that had come her way in the past few months. The odd thing about these assumptions, she realised, as Peter Wildgoose straightened his head, turned round, and only then became aware of her presence, was that they had been perfectly capable of existing side by side with the vision of Peter Wildgoose in his Chelsea drawing room, and needed this kind of context to take coherent shape.
The vision now seemed to her the most foolish daydream she had ever indulged in, and she gave a furious little shake of her head, so that Peter Wildgoose, looking at her keenly, said, ‘Are you all right, Cynthia? You look dreadfully pale.’
‘I’m quite all right, Mr Wildgoose,’ she assured him, which was the truth. There were worse things to happen to one than the discovery that Peter Wildgoose was a pansy. One had to be tough about these revelations. It occurred to her that the events of the past six months might have been more tolerable had she brought less delicacy to them.
All the same, as they stepped through the office door, she was conscious of a shift in whatever social relationship existed between them: a change made all the more distressing by the fact that Peter Wildgoose could not possibly be aware that it had happened. And yet in some ways this was less disconcerting than the scene which greeted her on the other side of the door: not because it had changed in any spectacular way, but because its outlines seemed exactly the same—Lucy attacking her typewriter with curious downward strokes of her fingers, as if it was an old-fashioned shop till; Anthea staring into space; Mr Woodmansee silent behind his invoice tray. It was Anthea, once again, who broke the spell.
‘Hello, Peter,’ she said, producing the exclusive smile that Desmond had so often complained about. ‘We wondered if you were looking in at all today. Can I get you anything?’
‘I should like a cup of tea very much,’ Peter Wildgoose said. The spotless carapace of good manners that he presented to the world could never quite disguise the pleasure he got out of Anthea’s solicitude. ‘But not if it’s any trouble.’
‘It’s no trouble,’ Anthea said, ignoring the telephone that now began to ring beside her. ‘Did you have a good time at the Old Boys’ dinner?’
‘These things are always a trial. One tries to think well of the companions of one’s youth, and they all turn out to have developed such disagreeable habits.’
‘Did Des turn up in the end?’
‘Not all the companions of one’s youth were able to make it, alas. But I should have enjoyed seeing Des there. He would have been so utterly unlike anyone else at the table that it would have been a pleasure to behold.’ Taking the cup of tea from her and contriving to suggest, with his wonderful manners, that nothing less than the freedom of a city had fallen into his hands, he went and sat in a chair next to the window.
Anthea scooped up the telephone, which had continued to ring through her conversation with Peter Wildgoose, listened briefly to whatever the person at the other end had to say, and then slammed it down without comment. There was a commotion from the inner office and Desmond came out of it holding Tambi’s wad of poems in his outstretched hand.
‘I must say Tambi’s done us proud this time. Listen to this:
Like a leaf a-tremble, life twists on its precipice. And Bodhisattva
His grim face astir, sheds bitter tears for a world tossed out of kilter
While pale yellow butter-coloured Buddha lazily reclines
Next to the darkling snow of yesteryear …’
Peter Wildgoose glanced up from the February number. He was looking over the list of contributor biographies on the inside front page, Cynthia saw. Soon he would get to the editorial. ‘Is he one of your discoveries, Des?’
‘I wouldn’t put it quite like that,’ Desmond said. ‘Tom Eliot sent me a note about him.’
‘Tom Eliot is a very polite man,’ Peter Wildgoose said. He gave a quick, grim little laugh that might have been prompted by Tambi’s poems, T. S. Eliot’s sponsorship of them, or some other subject quite unknown to them all. ‘I expect he thinks you’re just the man to give Tambi the rope to hang himself.’
He was not really concentrating on Desmond, Cynthia thought, but reading the first paragraph of the editorial. Then the fat would be in the fire, and no mistake. Desmond, seeing what he was doing, looked uncomfortable.
‘They’re not bad poems,’ he said. ‘You might even say that kind of souped-up romanticism was an inevitable part of the times we live in.’
‘The times we live in,’ Peter Wildgoose echoed. There was definitely something going on in the room now, a series of incremental adjustments to its temperature of which only Cynthia, and to a certain extent Desmond, seemed aware. Peter Wildgoose had turned over a leaf and was on the second page of Desmond’s editorial. ‘How many times have I heard that? Do you know, I think it’s extraordinary that at a time like this we should be debating the merits of a poem about pale yellow butter-coloured Buddhas. Don’t you think so too?’
‘But that’s the point, isn’t it?’ Desmond said eagerly. ‘It’s really because things are in such a state that people are taking up romanticism again. Do you know, Esmé came down to breakfast yesterday saying that she felt like writing a sonnet?’
‘I’m sure you were happy to help,’ Peter Wildgoose said. He had turned back to the first page of the editorial again. His face betrayed no emotion. ‘Do you realise they’re debating the conduct of the war in Parliament this afternoon? All kinds of curious people are making speeches about what a mistake it’s been. And here we are with our pale yellow butter-coloured Buddhas.’
The tension in the room had communicated itself to Anthea and Lucy now, both of whom, reasoning that he could only be the source of it, decided to stare at Desmond
.
Only Mr Woodmansee seemed oblivious to what was going on. Supposing that Peter Wildgoose had said all he wanted, he shifted the angle of his body in its chair and addressed himself to Desmond with an absolutely awful gravity. ‘I wonder, Mr Rafferty, if I might have your opinion on this bill?’
‘Which bill?’ Desmond said nervously.
‘This bill for a cigar humidor. Mr Wildgoose said that I was to make a point of asking you about it.’
‘Oh, that,’ Desmond said. ‘I really think …’
‘Desmond,’ Peter Wildgoose said. ‘What happened to the editorial?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Desmond said.
‘The letter to an officer from a non-combatant, in which, among other things, you mention the complacent look you detect upon the faces of young men in uniform. I don’t seem to see it here.’
‘That’s because I decided to put something else in,’ Desmond said. He was breathing heavily and making agitated little movements with his hands.
‘So I see. Did it occur to you that I might like to be consulted about this change of plan?’
‘I’m editor of this magazine,’ Desmond said, with what might just have passed for dignity. ‘I think I have a right to decide what goes into it.’
There had been a moment, Cynthia thought, when the situation might have been resolved, calmed, brought to an end in some kind of compromise. But that moment had passed. Despite her sympathy for Peter Wildgoose, she felt sorry for Desmond, who was clearly having trouble keeping this level of self-justification going.
‘And so,’ Peter Wildgoose said, ‘—stay here, Lucy, I absolutely forbid you to leave the room—you decide to substitute these pages of defeatist nonsense. I shouldn’t mind if it were something new, but it’s exactly like the rubbish being spouted in the House this morning. Did Esmé Gurvitz put you up to it?’
‘She certainly did not,’ Desmond said, all caution gone. ‘I never spoke to her about it. I suppose you think people like me can’t take a stand on issues they feel strongly about without being told to do it.’
Englishmen were bad at losing their tempers, Cynthia thought. They preferred writing letters to each other, dropping coded intimations of their displeasure. Cutting someone adrift was a kind of social sleight of hand, so subtly performed that sometimes neither side grasped the implications of what had happened. Tyler Kent would have wrapped the business up in a couple of sentences. Neither, by extension, were Englishmen any good at taking a stand. Stands were for the people in Europe, people in torch-lit squares and on crowded railway platforms, not for the likes of Desmond and Peter Wildgoose.
‘Des,’ Peter Wildgoose said, with a sort of infinite weariness. ‘I expect that somewhere in an old drawer, probably covered up by a couple of Charvet ties, you have that old Communist Party membership card you got in—when was it?—1934. I’m sure it must be some consolation to you. But let me tell you that you have the least amount of political awareness of anyone I have ever met. What did you think you were doing?’
‘I’ve told you,’ Desmond said. He had stopped looking furtive and now seemed thoroughly pleased with himself. ‘I was taking a stand. Somebody has to.’
‘I’m not interested,’ Peter Wildgoose said, in his high, polite voice. ‘I really am not. If I thought I could redeem you from all this, then it might be worth taking the trouble. It’s simply a betrayal of trust. Like several others I could mention but won’t. You’re sacked, Des, and that’s all there is to it.’
‘You can’t sack me,’ Desmond said. He looked utterly astonished, like a conjuror who, feigning to saw his sequinned assistant in half, hears a genuine scream. ‘You absolutely cannot.’
‘But I just did,’ Peter Wildgoose said. ‘And when I pay your salary to the end of the quarter, as your contract obliges me to, you’ll find that I’ve deducted the cost of that cigar humidor. Now go away.’
Even then there was a feeling in the room that the situation could somehow have been saved, that a snap of Peter Wildgoose’s fingers might reveal the whole thing to have been an imposture, a bizarre, half-sinister routine got up to raise everyone’s spirits on a dull winter day.
But it turned out that both actors had meant what they said. Peter Wildgoose continued to sit in his chair reading a copy of The Times that someone had left there. Desmond retired into his office, shut the door, and could be heard moving things about. Mr Woodmansee reapplied himself to his invoice tray as if what he had just heard was the most natural thing in the world. Not long after this the clock in the far corner of the square chimed the hour and Cynthia tidied her desk, repossessed herself of her suitcase, and left for Waterloo.
Sussex in February was not Sussex in October: that much was clear. The train rattled south through clumps of frail-looking larch trees, pale and ghastly beneath the red disc of the sun. All signs of mist and mellow fruitfulness had vanished. There was still snow on the ground, and the hedgerows ran off over the slowly ascending fields like piping on a dress. The sheep were gathered together in the field bottoms, silent and resentful. They had not bargained for this.
There was a copy of a London evening paper on one of the seats which said that the Government would probably win a no-confidence motion by a good 80 votes, and she put it across her knees and sat looking out of the window at the gorse thickets. By the time she reached Arundel the light had almost gone and the train was full of schoolgirls in elaborate winter bonnets practising French conversation. Blundering out into the semi-darkness of the station forecourt, where there were packing cases stacked up in towering ziggurats and what looked like half an armoured car concealed under a tarpaulin, she found not the Bannisters’ Daimler with its less than respectful chauffeur, but a decrepit Ford with Hermione’s big moon face staring keenly out of the facing window.
‘I wasn’t doing anything this afternoon,’ she explained as Cynthia got in beside her, ‘and Mummy needed some more bran for the pullets in case they start laying again. So I said I’d come and fetch you.’
‘What happened to your chauffeur?’ Cynthia asked.
‘Ricketts?’ Hermione gave a high-pitched laugh, so artificial that it would have done credit to a drawing-room comedy. In the confines of the car her head seemed bigger than ever. ‘Oh, he had a falling-out with Father. And then Father said what was the point of the Daimler anyhow, and if he wanted to go to London he might as well bicycle to the station.’ Her plump, roly-poly hands quivered on the steering wheel. ‘Father’s started saying a lot of things like that. Isn’t it a scream?’
The car barrelled on through the Sussex back-lanes, a cyclist or two skidding in its wake. The owls were already out in the fields, off-white bundles crossing at tree-height, with occasional darts below. Thinking that she ought to make an ally of Hermione, and that her mission required as much sisterly solidarity as possible, Cynthia said: ‘What was the exciting news you were talking about?’
‘What exciting news was that?’
‘You sent me a postcard saying you had something wildly exciting to tell me.’
‘Did I? Well, if you really must know, I’m engaged to Walter Partridge.’
This was a new name. ‘Who’s he?’
‘Oh, you must have heard of Walter. He’s getting the nomination at Haslemere, now old Mr Symes is retiring. He’s with RAF Coastal Command at Greenock. I shall probably go and live up there.’
It was hard to define the dramatic new landscape into which Hermione’s oddity had now moved, but it had something to do with long pent-up emotions, narrowly held in check. For a moment she had a dreadful feeling that Hermione might be about to purposely drive the car off the road and into a ditch, and that if Hermione did this she would simply pick herself up and run back to Arundel Station. Then the expression on Hermione’s face relaxed a little. The rest of the journey passed without incident.
‘Walter’s a sweet boy,’ Hermio
ne volunteered, ‘but he says he finds the language the NCOs use rather a strain.’
Ashburton Grange was sunk in gloom. The only vehicle on the forecourt was a butcher’s van making a delivery, whose rear wheel Hermione managed to clip as she came to rest alongside it. As she got out of the car, and the light from the flung-open front door illumined the gravel, she said:
‘Do you like my shoes? Walter simply adores them.’
They were black-and-white co-respondent’s shoes, of the kind that people had worn to go to parties or play golf a dozen years ago, and as out of place on this winter night in Sussex as a hula skirt or a pair of Lido trousers. But Cynthia saw that they had captivated Hermione, suborned her imagination, meant everything to her, and that whole parts of her life would now be projected through them.
Moving on towards the house, they found Mrs Bannister regarding them rather doubtfully from the doorstep. She had a fur coat draped over her shoulders, hopped nervously from one leg to the other, and was clearly feeling the cold.
‘It feels terribly odd to be opening one’s front door,’ she explained, ‘but Gladys is visiting her mother in the village, and I think Eunice is feeding the chickens.’ If Hermione was odder, then Mrs Bannister was more subdued. She contrived to suggest that there was something shameful about a gentlewoman being found on a doorstep deputising for an absent parlourmaid.
‘Where’s Father?’ Hermione demanded. She had put on her mother’s old fox-terrier look and was rooting through a pile of parcels that lay just inside the door. ‘Only I had something I particularly wanted to tell him.’
‘I think the House is sitting until five,’ Mrs Bannister said. But Hermione was already off into the main body of the house, the heels of the wonderful shoes clacking like castanets. As Cynthia went to follow her, Mrs Bannister laid a restraining arm on her elbow. ‘My dear, you mustn’t mind Hermione. She isn’t quite herself.’