Random Harvest

by James Hilton

  "I know. You want to look for a book." She suddenly took his hand and pressed it over the switch. "Good night, Uncle Charles."

  As he went back to the shelves he heard her footsteps fading through the house—no longer a child, that was true, but she still scampered like one. He searched for a while without finding anything he wanted to read.

  Nineteen twenty-five was another improving year, the year of Locarno, the false dawn. It was a year perhaps typical of the twenties in its wishful optimism backed by no growth of overtaking realism; another sixpence off the income tax, another attempt to harness a vague shape of things to come with the even vaguer shapes of things that had been. For the public would not yet look squarely into that evil face (publishers were still refusing "war books") and few also were those who feared the spectre might return. The England hoped for by the majority of Englishmen was a harking back to certain frugalities of the past (lower and lower income tax, smaller and smaller government expenditure) in order to enjoy more and more the pleasures of the present; the Europe they dreamed of was a continent in which everybody placidly "saw reason," while cultivating summer schools, youth hostels, and peasant-costume festivals in the best tradition of Hampstead Garden Suburb; in exchange for which the City would make loans, trade would thus be encouraged, and taxes fall still further. Mixed up with this almost mystic materialism was the eager, frightened idealism of the Labour Party (both the eagerness and the fright came to a head a year later, in the General Strike); the spread of the belief that the League of Nations never would be much good but was probably better than nothing, a belief that effectively converted Geneva into a bore and anyone who talked too much about it into a nuisance. Meanwhile a vast and paralysing absence of hostility gripped Englishmen from top to bottom of the social scale, not a toleration on principle but a muteness through indifference; they were not AGAINST the League of Nations, they were not AGAINST Russia, they were not AGAINST disarmament, or the Treaty of Versailles, or the revision of the Treaty of Versailles, or the working classes, or Mussolini—who had, after all, made the Italian trains run on time. Their favourite gesture was to give credit to an opponent ("You'll find a good many of those Labour chaps are quite decent fellows"); their favourite conclusion to an argument the opinion that, "Ah, well, these things'll probably right themselves in time."

  And amidst such gestures and opinions the post-war England took physical shape and permitted itself limited expression. By 1925 the main features were apparent: arterial roads along which the speculative builder was permitted to put up his Ł6oo houses and re- create the problem the roads themselves had been designed to solve; the week-end trek to the coasts and country through the bottle- necks of Croydon and Maidenhead; the blossoming of the huge motor coach, and the mushrooming of outer suburbs until London almost began where the sprawling coast towns left off—while in bookshops and theatres the rage was for Michael Arlen and Noel Coward, two men whose deft orchestrations of nerves without emotions, cynicism without satire, achieved a success that must have increased even their own disillusionment.

  In this same year 1925 Rainier's made a profit that could have paid a small dividend on the ordinary shares; but Charles chose not to do so, despite appeals and protests from the family. And in that same year Lydia died of pneumonia, and Bridget had another baby, and Kitty got herself engaged to a young man named Walter Haversham, who preached Communism at London street corners and had been to Russia. For six months she was swept by an enthusiasm which considerably shocked the family, but somehow did not especially disturb Charles. He saw her once carrying a pictorial banner with Wal (they called him Wal) in a May Day procession; when he met her some weeks later he chaffed her gently about it, saying that workmen on banners always had enormous fists, whether for fraternization or for assault and battery he could never be quite certain—maybe both. He smiled as he said it, but she suddenly flew into a rage, accusing him of being a coward who took refuge in cynicism from the serious issues of the world. "And don't tell me I've lost my sense of humour. I have—I KNOW I have. There isn't any room for humour in the world as it is today. And it's that English sense of humour, which everybody boasts about, that really prevents things from being done."

  "You're probably right. But think of all the things that are better left undone."

  "The day will come when men may be KILLED for laughing."

  "And that will also be the day when men laugh at killing."

  She went out of his office, banging the door. He did not see her again for several months—till after the General Strike in 1926. One day she rang him up on the telephone. "Uncle Charles, may I come and talk to you?"

  "Of course." He was about to add an invitation to lunch when the receiver was banged down at the other end. Two minutes later she came bounding into his office.

  "I rang up from just outside. I thought you might not want to see me after our last meeting."

  "I don't think I should ever not want to see you. What's been happening to you all this while?"

  "Not much. But I've got my sense of humour back."

  "Where's Wal?"

  "He's gone to Russia—for good. You know, I really ADMIRE him. He has the courage of what he believes, he's going to become a Russian citizen if they let him. He wanted me to go with him—as his wife, but I just couldn't. I'm weak—I couldn't live in a little cubicle and learn a new language and wear rough clothes—I'd die of misery, even if I really loved him—which I'm beginning to doubt, now that he's gone. I saw him off at Tilbury and felt awful, and then I went into a little pub near the docks and a fellow was standing in the doorway, playing a mandolin and singing with his mouth all crooked,—you know the way they do,—and inside the bar there was a workman sitting over a glass of beer and looking up at the other man with a funny sort of adoring expression, same as you see people looking up at the Madonna in Catholic pictures, and presently he said to me, quite casual, as if he'd known me for years—'Gawd, I wish I could do that'. . . and I wanted to laugh and cry together. I know I'll never leave England as long as I live, so here I am— and Wal's in Moscow."

  Nineteen twenty-six went by, the year of the General Strike, and Germany's admission to the League of Nations; of an Imperial Conference and trouble in Shanghai; of large Socialist gains in municipal polls throughout England, and of Hitler's climb towards power in Germany. Trade remained good; the stock market pushed up Rainier's to twenty-five shillings in anticipation of a dividend which Charles again declined to pay. Nineteen twenty-seven brought riots in Vienna and executions in Russia; while for once Englishmen found themselves suddenly and astonishingly AGAINST something—they were against the Revised Prayer Book, proposed by the Church Assembly and sent to the House of Commons to be voted on, according to the curious English custom by which a political majority decides the dogmatic beliefs of a religious minority. And during the next year, 1928, the House of Commons again turned down the Revised Prayer Book, as if it tremendously mattered. But this flurry of against-ness was soon exhausted, and Englishmen, including Members of Parliament, resumed their benevolence towards most things that continued to happen throughout the world.

  And in that same year 1928 Bridget had another baby, her fourth, and Kitty got herself engaged again, to a young man named Roland Turner, who had advanced ideas about the "cinema," and was understood to be working on a scenario or something or other that he hoped to sell for a fabulous price to somebody or other, but was otherwise romantically out of a job—romantically, because he wasn't eligible for the dole yet managed to run a car.

  "And I suppose if he DID draw the dole and COULDN'T run a car, that would be prosaic?" Charles queried, when she told him.

  "You still think I'm a snob, don't you? But I'm not—it isn't that at all—I'm just lost in amazement, because he always dresses well and goes to the best restaurants, and has a sweet little studio off Ebury Street—I don't know WHERE he gets the money from, but I do wish you could find him something to do."

  "But I don't want any
scenarios today, thank you."

  "Not THAT, of course, but he can do all kinds of other things— write and paint, for instance—he does marvellous frescoes, at least they say the one he did was marvellous, but most of it came off during the damp weather. . . . He can paint machinery, too."

  "Unfortunately we don't paint our machinery."

  "Pictures of machinery, I mean—he did one for an exhibition, symbolizing something—but I'm sure he could do a serious one, if you wanted it. Don't you ever have illustrated catalogues?"

  Charles smiled. "Suppose you bring him to lunch?"

  They met at the Savoy Grill; Roland Turner proved to be rather tall and thin ("lissom" was almost the word); his clothes were impeccable, with just a faintly artistic note in his silk bow tie; his manners were perfect and his choices of food delicate; even his talk was sufficiently intelligent and modulated to what Charles felt to be an exactly determined mean between independence and obsequiousness in the presence of Big Business. Immediately after coffee the youth mentioned an afternoon appointment and decorously bowed himself out, leaving Kitty and Charles together.

  Laughing, she said: "He's got no appointment, he's just being tactful—giving me a chance to do the Don't-you-think-he's- wonderful stuff." She paused for a few seconds, then added: "Well, DON'T you?"

  "He's a very personable young man, and if you like him, that's the main thing."

  "PERSONABLE? What exactly do you mean by that?"

  "Attractive."

  "Are you sure it's not something nice to say about someone you don't care for?"

  "Not at all. I like him all right, and if there's anything he could do that I wanted done, I'd be glad to give him the job."

  "He was wondering about Stourton—do you think I could take him down there to see Uncle Chet?"

  "With what in mind?"

  "You're so suspicious, aren't you? Well, he has ideas about landscape gardening. . . . Of course he knows Chet and you aren't my real uncles."

  "I don't see how he knows that, unless you told him, and I don't see that it matters, anyway."

  "I had to tell him—indirectly. You see, Mother discovered him first of all—in Mentone. He was staying with somebody there and they danced a lot—Mother and him, I mean. I think she rather fell for him, because when he came on to London she had him to stay at the house, with me as a sort of chaperon. We weren't attracted at all in the beginning, but I began to be awfully sorry for him when I saw how bored he was with Mother. He has nice feelings, you know— I don't think he'd have found it easy to switch over if she'd REALLY been my mother."

  "I'm afraid the point is too subtle for me to grasp."

  "Well—like The Vortex, you know. . . . Of course Mother was furious."

  "The whole situation must have amused you a good deal."

  "Well, it had its funny side. . . . Of course his friends don't like me—they never thought he'd pick up a girl."

  "Are you in love with him?"

  "Yes, I think I am. . . . By the way, he's having an exhibition of paintings at the Coventry Galleries—you WILL come, won't you, and buy something?"

  He promised he would, and went to the private view the following week. He didn't think much of the pictures, but his private view of Roland Turner was worth the journey—that suave young man, again impeccably dressed, saying the impeccably correct things about his own paintings to patrons who greeted him as they walked around, striking another exactly determined mean, Charles felt—this time between modesty and self-esteem. To please Kitty he bought a picture for five guineas—a view of an English country house as Botticelli might have painted it if he had painted English country houses rather badly.

  "It's really very odd, Mr. Rainier," said the young man, as Kitty proudly stuck the red star on the corner of the canvas, "but you've chosen the best thing I've ever done!"

  "Very odd indeed," Charles answered, "because I know almost nothing about painting."

  Afterwards he took them both to dinner at Kettner's, encouraging them in a rather vulgar way to choose all the expensive items— caviare and quail and plenty of champagne. Of course the young man was a poseur, but half-way through the meal he became aware that he himself was posing just as artificially as the Philistine industrialist and champagne uncle. When Turner talked about Stourton (Kitty had evidently taken him there) and how wonderful it was to own such a place, Charles answered: "Oh, it's an awfully white elephant, really. The house is uneconomical and the farms don't pay. If it were nearer London my brother could carve it up into building plots, but as it's only England's green and pleasant land nobody wants it and nobody can afford it and nobody will pay a decent price for anything that grows on it."

  "But it's a privilege, all the same, to keep up these old family possessions."

  "It isn't an old family possession—at least not of OUR family. My father bought it cheap because the other family couldn't afford it."

  "Well, he must have admired the place or he wouldn't have wanted to buy it at any price."

  "Oh, I don't know. He liked buying things cheap. He once bought a shipload of diseased sharkskins because they were cheap and he thought he could make a profit."

  "And did he?"

  "You bet he did."

  "A business man, then?"

  "Yes—like myself. But rather more successful because he had a better eye for a bargain and also because he lived most of his life during a rising market."

  Turner gave a somewhat puzzled sigh. "Well, well, I suppose that's the system."

  "Except in Russia," Kitty interposed. Then brightly: "Roland's been to Russia too." She must have been remembering Wal.

  With a slight awakening of interest as he also remembered Wal, Charles said: "Oh, indeed? And what made YOU go there, Mr. Turner?"

  "I wanted to see what it was like."

  "And what WAS it like?"

  The young man smiled defensively. "I don't think I could answer that in a single sentence."

  "Many people do. They say it's all marvellous or else it's all horrible."

  "I didn't see all of it, Mr. Rainier, and I didn't think what I did see was either."

  "So you don't believe in the coming Revolution?"

  "I daresay it's coming, but I don't particularly believe in it." And he added, with a gulp of champagne: "Just as you, Mr. Rainier, don't particularly believe in capitalism, though you go on trying to make it work."

  "I wonder if that's true."

  "The fact is, Mr. Rainier—perhaps we can both admit it after a few drinks—we neither of us believe in a damn thing."

  Afterwards Charles regretted the conversation and his own pose throughout it, but he remained vaguely troubled whenever he thought of Roland Turner and Kitty; he slightly disapproved of that young man, and felt avuncular in so doing. He did not see them again that year, for they were abroad most of the time, and he himself had many other things to worry about. By April of 1929 he was so exhausted from overwork that, after settling an especially troublesome labour dispute at the Cowderton works, he went to Switzerland for a holiday, despite the fact that it was not a good time of the year—past the snow season, and before the end of the thaw. He stayed at Interlaken, in an almost empty hotel, and while he was there a letter came from Kitty, forwarded from an address in Provence through London. He wondered what she was doing in Provence until he read that she was with Roland Turner, who was engaged in painting a portrait of an Indian rajah. "He's a very fat rajah," she reported, "and he's given Roland five hundred pounds to go on with, which I expect will be all he'll get out of it, because the picture gets less and less like the rajah every sitting." Charles replied from Interlaken, expressing pleasure that her fiancé had found such profitable employment—to which he could not help adding that the fee was much higher than the Rainier firm could ever have paid for catalogue illustrations. Two days later came a wire from Avignon: COMING TO INTERLAKEN DON'T GO AWAY EXPECT ME TEN TOMORROW MORNING.

  During the intervening day he wondered at the possible
cause of her visit, though capricious changes of plan were really nothing to wonder at where Kitty was concerned; the theory he considered likeliest was that the portrait commission had fallen through, and that she and Roland had decided to touch him, as it were, for a Swiss holiday. (He had already discovered, from other sources, that Turner's never-failing affluence was bound up with his never- failing debts and geared by his skill and charm in cadging.) He did not mind, particularly; after all, he could always go back to London if the situation became tiresome.

  It was a cold bright day when he waited on the Interlaken platform. There was still a litter of shovelled snow in the gutters and against the railings, and the train came in white-roofed from fresh falls in the Simplon-Lötschberg. She was dressed in a long mackintosh with a little fur hat, like a fez, and as she jumped from the train before it quite stopped, it was as if something in his heart jumped also before it quite stopped.

  "Oh, Uncle Charles, I'm so happy—I was afraid you'd take fright and leave before I got here! It seems ages since I saw you. How ARE you?"

  "I'm fine." (Breaking Miss Ponsonby's old rule.) "And it IS ages since you saw me—nearly a year. Where's Roland?"

  "Not with me. I've left him. Take me somewhere for a drink—there was no diner on the train."

  In a deserted restaurant-café opposite the station she told him more about it. "I found myself getting SILLY—saying silly things to all his silly crowd—there's a regular colony of them wherever he goes. But more than that—after all, I don't mind so much saying silly things myself, but it got to the point where I didn't notice when things THEY said were silly. Softening of the brain—" She tapped her head. "I simply HAD to take it in time. And I felt sorry for the poor old rajah. He was pretty awful to look at, but at least he knew what's what with women—which is more than most of Roland's friends do."

  "So I rather imagined."

  "Of course YOU really fixed it—that night at Kettner's."