Christmas Holiday

by W. Somerset Maugham

  Acclaim for W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

  “[Christmas Holiday] is an unsettling tale.… Brilliant.”

  —The New York Times

  “Maugham remains the consummate craftsman.… [His writing is] so compact, so economical, so closely motivated, so skillfully written, that it rivets attention from the first page to last.”

  —Saturday Review of Literature

  “[Maugham’s] excessively rare gift of story-telling … is almost the equal of imagination itself.”

  —The Sunday Times (London)

  “It is very difficult for a writer of my generation, if he is honest, to pretend indifference to the work of Somerset Maugham.… He was always so entirely there.”

  —Gore Vidal

  FIRST VINTAGE INTERNATIONAL EDITION, DECEMBER 2000

  Copyright 1939 by W. Somerset Maugham

  Copyright renewed 1967 by Elizabeth Lady Glendevon

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American copyright conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc., New York, in 1939.

  Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage International and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Maugham, W. Somerset (William Somerset), 1874-1965. Christmas holiday / W. Somerset Maugham.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-78711-8

  1. British-France-Fiction. 2. British-French Guiana-Fiction. 3. Devil’s Island (French Guiana)-Fiction. 4. Paris (France)-Fiction. 5. Young men-Fiction. 6. Criminals-Fiction.

  I. Title.

  PR6025.A86 C4 2000

  823’.912-dc21

  00-033413

  www.vintagebooks.com

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter i

  Chapter ii

  Chapter iii

  Chapter iv

  Chapter v

  Chapter vi

  Chapter vii

  Chapter viii

  Chapter ix

  Chapter x

  i

  WITH A JOURNEY BEFORE HIM, Charley Mason’s mother was anxious that he should make a good breakfast, but he was too excited to eat. It was Christmas Eve and he was going to Paris. They had got through the mass of work that quarter-day brought with it, and his father, having no need to go to the office, drove him to Victoria. When they were stopped for several minutes by a traffic block in Grosvenor Gardens Charley, afraid that he would miss the train, went white with anxiety. His father chuckled.

  “You’ve got the best part of half an hour.”

  But it was a relief to arrive.

  “Well, good-bye, old boy,” his father said, “have a good time and don’t get into more mischief than you can help.”

  The steamer backed into the harbour and the sight of the gray, tall, dingy houses of Calais filled him with elation. It was a raw day and the wind blew bitter. He strode along the platform as though he walked on air. The Golden Arrow, powerful, rich and impressive, which stood there waiting for him, was no ordinary train, but a symbol of romance. While the light lasted he looked out of the window and he laughed in his heart as he recognized the pictures he had seen in galleries; sand dunes, with patches of grass gray under the leaden sky, cramped villages of poor persons’ houses with slate roofs, and then a broad, sad landscape of ploughed fields and sparse bare trees; but the day seemed in a hurry to be gone from the cheerless scene and in a short while, when he looked out, he could see only his own reflection and behind it the polished mahogany of the Pullman. He wished he had come by air. That was what he’d wanted to do, but his mother had put her foot down; she’d persuaded his father that in the middle of winter it was a silly risk to take, and his father, usually so reasonable, had made it a condition of his going on the jaunt that he should take the train.

  Of course Charley had been to Paris before, half a dozen times at least, but this was the first time that he had ever gone alone. It was a special treat that his father was giving him for a special reason: he had completed a year’s work in his father’s office and had passed the necessary examinations to enable him to follow usefully his chosen calling. For as long as Charley could remember, his father and mother, his sister Patsy and he had spent Christmas at Godalming with their cousins the Terry-Masons; and to explain why Leslie Mason, after talking over the matter with his wife, had one evening, a smile on his kindly face, asked his son whether instead of coming with them as usual he would like to spend a few days in Paris by himself, it is necessary to go back a little. It is necessary indeed to go back to the middle of the nineteenth century, when an industrious and intelligent man called Sibert Mason, who had been head gardener at a grand place in Sussex and had married the cook, bought with his savings and hers a few acres north of London and set up as a market gardener. Though he was then forty and his wife not far from it they had eight children. He prospered, and with the money he made, bought little bits of land in what was still open country. The city expanded and his market garden acquired value as a building site; with money borrowed from the bank he put up a row of villas and in a short while let them all on lease. It would be tedious to go into the details of his progress, and it is enough to say that when he died, at the age of eighty-four, the few acres he had bought to grow vegetables for Covent Garden, and the properties he had continued to acquire whenever opportunity presented, were covered with bricks and mortar. Sibert Mason took care that his children should receive the education that had been denied him. They moved up in the social scale. He made the Mason Estate, as he had somewhat grandly named it, into a private company and at his death each child received a certain number of shares as an inheritance. The Mason Estate was well managed and though it could not compare in importance with the Westminster or the Portman Estate, for its situation was modest and it had long ceased to have any value as a residential quarter, shops, warehouses, factories, slums, long rows of dingy houses in two storeys, made it sufficiently profitable to enable its proprietors, through no merit and little exertion of their own, to live like the gentlemen and ladies they were now become. Indeed, the head of the family, the only surviving child of old Sibert’s eldest son, a brother having been killed in the war and a sister by a fall in the hunting-field, was a very rich man. He was a member of parliament and at the time of King George the Fifth’s Jubilee had been created a baronet. He had tacked his wife’s name on to his own and was now known as Sir Wilfred Terry-Mason. The family had hopes that his staunch allegiance to the Tory party and the fact that he had a safe seat would result in his being raised to the peerage.

  Leslie Mason, youngest of Sibert’s many grandchildren, had been sent to a public school and to Cambridge. His share in the Estate brought him in two thousand pounds a year, but to this was added another thousand which he received as secretary of the company. Once a year there was a meeting attended by such members of the family as were in England, for of the third generation some were serving their country in distant parts of the Empire, and some were gentlemen of leisure who were often abroad, and with Sir Wilfred in the chair, he presented the highly satisfactory statement which the chartered accountants had prepared.

  Leslie Mason was a man of varied interests. At this time he was in the early fifties, tall, with a good figure, and with his blue eyes, fine gray hair worn rather long, and high colour, of an agreeable aspect. He looked more like a soldier or a colonial governor home on leave than a house agent and you would never have guessed that his grandfather was a gardener and his grandmother a cook. He was a good golfer, for which pastime he ha
d ample leisure, and a good shot. But Leslie Mason was more than a sportsman; he was keenly interested in the arts. The rest of the family had no such foibles and they looked upon Leslie’s predilections with an amused tolerance, but when, for some reason or other, one of them wanted to buy a piece of furniture or a picture, his advice was sought and taken. It was natural enough that he should know what he was talking about, for he had married a painter’s daughter. John Peron, his wife’s father, was a member of the Royal Academy and for a long time, between the eighties and the end of the century, had made a good income by painting pictures of young women in eighteenth-century costume dallying with young men similarly dight. He painted them in gardens of old world flowers, in leafy bowers and in parlours furnished correctly with the chairs and tables of the period. But now when his pictures turned up at Christie’s they were sold for thirty shillings or two pounds. Venetia Mason had inherited quite a number when her father died, but they had long stood in a box-room, covered with dust, their faces to the wall; for at this time of day even filial affection could not persuade her that they were anything but dreadful. The Leslie Masons were not in the least ashamed of the fact that his grandmother had been a cook, indeed with their friends they were apt to make a facetious point of it, but it embarrassed them to speak of John Peron. Some of the Mason relations still had on their walls examples of his work; they were a mortification to Venetia.

  “I see you’ve still got father’s picture there,” she said. “Don’t you think it dates rather? Why don’t you put it in one of the spare rooms?”

  “My father-in-law was a very charming old man,” said Leslie, “with beautiful manners, but I’m afraid he wasn’t a very good painter.”

  “Well, my governor gave a tidy sum for it. It would be absurd to put a picture that cost three hundred pounds in a spare bedroom, but if you feel like that about it, I’ll tell you what I’ll do, I’ll sell it you for a hundred and fifty.”

  For though in the course of three generations they had become ladies and gentlemen, the Masons had not lost their business acumen.

  The Leslie Masons had gone a long way in artistic appreciation since their marriage and on the walls of the handsome new house they now inhabited in Porchester Close were pictures by Wilson Steer and Augustus John, Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell. There was an Utrillo and a Vuillard, both bought while these masters were of moderate price, and there was a Derain, a Marquet and a Chirico. You could not enter their house, somewhat sparsely furnished, without knowing at once that they were in the movement. They seldom missed a private view and when they went to Paris made a point of going to Rosenberg’s and the dealers in the Rue de Seine to have a look at what there was to be seen; they really liked pictures and if they did not buy any before the cultured opinion of the day had agreed on their merits this was due partly to a modest lack of confidence in their own judgement and partly to a fear that they might be making a bad bargain. After all, John Peron’s pictures had been praised by the best critics and he had sold them for several hundred pounds apiece, and now what did they fetch? Two or three. It made you careful. But it was not only in painting that they were interested. They loved music; they went to Symphony Concerts throughout the winter; they had their favourite conductors and allowed no social engagements to prevent them from attending their performances. They went to hear the Ring once a year. To listen to music was a genuine delight to both of them. They had good taste and discrimination. They were regular first-nighters and they belonged to the societies that produce plays which are supposed to be above the comprehension of plain people. They read promptly the books that were talked about. They did this not only because they liked it, but because they felt it right to keep abreast of the times. They were honestly interested in art and it would be unjust even to hint a sneer because their taste lacked boldness and their appreciation originality. It may be that they were conventional in their judgements, but their conventionality was that of the highest culture of their day. They were incapable of making a discovery, but were quick to appreciate the discoveries of others. Though left to themselves they might never have seen anything very much to admire in Cézanne, no sooner was it borne in upon them that he was a great artist than in all sincerity they recognized the fact for themselves. They took no pride in their taste and there was no trace of snobbishness in their attitude.

  “We’re just very ordinary members of the public,” said Venetia.

  “Those objects of contempt to the artist, the people who know what they like,” added Leslie.

  It was a happy accident that they liked Debussy better than Arthur Sullivan and Virginia Woolf better than John Galsworthy.

  This preoccupation with art left them little time for social life; they sought neither the great nor the distinguished, and their friends were very nice people who were well-to-do without being rich, and who took a judicious interest in the things of the mind. They did not much care for dinner parties and neither gave them often nor went to them more than civility required; but they were fond of entertaining their friends to supper on Sunday evenings when they could drop in dressed any way they liked and eat kedgeree and sausages and mash. There was good music and tolerable bridge. The conversation was intelligent. These parties were as pleasantly unpretentious as the Leslie Masons themselves, and though all the guests had their own cars and few of them less than five thousand a year, they flattered themselves that the atmosphere was quite bohemian.

  But Leslie Mason was never happier than when, with no concert or first night to go to, he could spend the evening in the bosom of his family. He was fortunate in it. His wife had been pretty and now, a middle-aged woman, was still comely. She was nearly as tall as he, with blue eyes and soft brown hair only just streaked with gray. She was inclined to be stout, but her height enabled her to carry with dignity a corpulence which a strict attention to diet prevented from becoming uncomfortable. She had a broad brow, an open countenance and a diffident smile. Though she got her clothes in Paris, not from one of the fashionable dressmakers, but from a little woman ‘round the corner’, she never succeeded in looking anything but thoroughly English. She naturalized whatever she wore, and though she occasionally went to the extravagance of getting a hat at Reboux she had no sooner put it on her head than it looked as if it had come from the Army and Navy Stores. She always looked exactly what she was, an honest woman of the middle class in easy circumstances. She had loved her husband when she married him and she loved him still. With the community of interests that existed between them it was no wonder that they should live in harmony. They had agreed at the beginning of their married life that she knew more about painting than he and that he knew more about music than she, so that in these matters each bowed to the superior judgement of the other. When it came to Picasso’s later work, for instance, Leslie said:

  “Well, I don’t mind confessing it took me some time before I learnt to like it, but Venetia never had a moment’s doubt; with her flair she cottoned on to it like a flash of lightning.”

  And Mrs. Mason admitted that she’d had to listen to Sibelius’ Second three or four times before she really understood what Leslie meant when he said that in its way it was as good as Beethoven.

  “But of course he’s got a real understanding of music. Compared with him I’m almost a low-brow.”

  Leslie and Venetia Mason were not only fortunate in one another, but also in their children. They had two, which they thought the perfect number, since an only child might be spoiled, and three or four meant a great expense, so that they couldn’t have lived as comfortably as they liked to, nor provided for them in such a way as to assure their future. They had taken their parental duties seriously. Instead of putting silly, childish pictures on the nursery walls they had decorated them with reproductions of pictures by Van Gogh, Gauguin and Marie Laurencin, so that from their earliest years their children’s taste should be formed, and they had chosen the records for the nursery gramophone with equal care, with the result that before either of t
hem could ride a bicycle they were familiar with Mozart and Haydn, Beethoven and Wagner. As soon as they were old enough they began to learn to play the piano, with very good teachers, and Charley especially showed great aptitude. Both children were ardent concert-goers. They would scramble in to a Sunday concert, where they followed the music with a score, or wait for hours to get a seat in the gallery at Covent Garden; for their parents, thinking that it proved a real enthusiasm if they had to listen to music in some discomfort, considered it unnecessary to buy expensive seats for them. The Leslie Masons did not very much care for Old Masters and seldom went to the National Gallery except when a new purchase was making a stir in the papers, but it had seemed to them only right to make their children acquainted with the great paintings of the past, and as soon as they were old enough took them regularly to the National Gallery, but they soon realized that if they wanted to give them a treat they must take them to the Tate, and it was with gratification that they found that what really excited them was the most modern.

  “It makes one think a bit,” said Leslie to his wife, a smile of pride shining in his kindly eyes, “to see two young things like that taking to Matisse like a duck takes to water.”

  She gave him a look that was partly amused and partly rueful.

  “They think I’m dreadfully old-fashioned because I still like Monet. They say it’s pure chocolate-box.”

  “Well, we trained their taste. We mustn’t grouse if they go ahead and leave us behind.”

  Venetia Mason gave a sweet and affectionate laugh.

  “Bless their hearts, I don’t grudge it them if they think me hopelessly out of date. I shall go on liking Monet and Manet and Degas whatever they say.”

  But it was not only to the artistic education of their offspring that the Leslie Masons had given thought. They were anxious that there should be nothing namby-pamby about them and they saw to it that they should acquire proficiency in games. They both rode well and Charley was not half a bad shot. Patsy, who was just eighteen, was studying at the Royal Academy of Music. She was to come out in May and they were giving a ball for her at Claridge’s. Lady Terry-Mason was to present her at Court. Patsy was so pretty, with her blue eyes and fair hair, with her slim figure, her attractive smile and her gaiety, she would be snapped up all too soon. Leslie wanted her to marry a rising young barrister with political ambitions. For such a one, with the money she’d eventually inherit from the Mason Estate, with her culture, she’d make an admirable wife. But that would be the end of the united, cosy and happy family life which was so enjoyable. There would be no more of those pleasant, domestic evenings when they dined, the four of them, in the well-appointed dining-room with its Steer over the Chippendale sideboard, the table shining with Waterford glass and Georgian silver, waited on by well-trained maids in neat uniforms; simple English food perfectly cooked; and after dinner with its lively talk about art, literature and the drama, a glass of port, and then a little music in the drawing-room and a game of bridge. Venetia was afraid it was very selfish of her, but she couldn’t help feeling glad that it would be some years at least before Charley could afford to marry too.