Guy Renton Page 19
“Won’t you miss Pamela?”
“Of course, but perhaps that’s a good thing too. We couldn’t have got married right away, and a long engagement, well, it might have been a strain, you know.”
He paused, but it was clear that he had more to say: something to get off his chest. It was the first time that Guy had seen him in this mood.
“I can understand why you should think I might be feeling in disgrace. It’s the difference between our generations,” he went on.
“How am I to interpret that?”
“You were brought up to believe in solid things; duty to the family, duty to the business, duty to the Empire. Things that you believed would last.”
“And so were you.”
“Perhaps, but by the time I was half-adult, I couldn’t believe that they would last. You were eighteen when the war began. You’d never questioned all those simple faiths. You went and fought for them. What was that phrase of Housman’s, you ‘saved the sum of things for pay’. But I was six when the war began. Eleven when it ended. By then the whole structure was about to topple. I can’t see those loyalties in the way that you did, as being ‘the sum of things’.”
‘The sum of things.’ Duty to family, duty to the business, duty to the Empire; the crown, the altar, and the hearth. Guy let his thoughts slip backwards into reverie. He remembered the daily ritual in their home in Kensington: morning prayers before breakfast in the drawing-room: ‘the family’ beside the fire; ‘the staff’ in their starched aprons and white caps beside the door; his father in a black frock coat reading the day’s psalm.
He remembered being taken as a boy to Soho Square where his grandfather and great-grandfather had lived above their shop. “Founded in 1773,” his father told him, “and in all those years the words ‘shipped by Renton’ has been a guarantee of merit.” He had been introduced to the members of the staff, the accountants, the packers, and the cellarmen; most of them had been with the firm all their lives. He went on their yearly picnic, kept their cricket score. He thought of them as members of his family. “They take the same pride in the firm’s good name as we,” his father said.
He remembered those Sunday lunches at Highgate after church; his grandfather at the table’s head, lifting his glass of port against the light, moving it below his nose, inhaling its aroma, slowly sipping at it, savouring its bouquet on his palate; a glow of appreciation coming into his eye as he wiped his long white moustache; a glow that was inspired no more by the excellence of the wine than by a pride in the knowledge that the cork that had bottled it bore the imprint ‘Duke and Renton.’
He remembered his preparatory school headmaster, a stern messianic figurehead whose history classes became under the slightest encouragement a lecture on the school’s development. “We study history,” he would begin, “so that by understanding the past, we may be competent to judge the present and foresee the future. In thirty years you fellows—or some of you—will be helping to run this country. And how do you expect to run it competently as men, if while you are boys, you behave in the way that you ...” and here he would pause and his eye would travel along the class to alight on the delinquent of the moment, “in the way that you, Wuffy, are behaving now.
“This morning during break I looked in your locker. Never have I seen such a disorder of books, letters, papers, compasses. It was a disgrace. Suppose I had been coming round the classrooms with a parent who was thinking of sending his son here. Suppose, as I might have done, I had opened one of the lockers so that the parent could get some idea as to the space a boy had to keep his things: suppose that locker had been yours. What impression would that parent have formed of our discipline? Would he have wanted to send his own son here? I doubt it. I doubt it very much. Because you, Wuffy, are a member of this school, that parent would decide that it was a bad school. In the same way that people would say your family had bad blood if you were to do something dishonourable in business. Is that, Wuffy, what you’d want to have people say about your family? Of course it isn’t. You’d do anything to prevent that wouldn’t you. Then why shouldn’t you feel in the same way about your school?
“You’re proud of your parents. You want your parents to be proud of you. You want people to think well of your parent because of you. You’re proud of your country. You want your country to be proud of you. You want people to think more highly of your country because of you. When you go abroad, as you will go sooner or later, you want people to say, ‘If that’s a typical Englishman, then England must be a fine country.’ Don’t you want them to feel in just that way about your school? Don’t you want your school to be proud of you? Don’t you want the outside world to think more highly of your school because of you? When you go home for your holidays don’t you want to have people say, ‘That’s a well-mannered boy. I wonder what school he comes from?’
“When you go to your public schools don’t you want to have your new masters say, ‘That’s a good scholar, that’s a good athlete. He must have been trained at a good prep.’ Isn’t that what you want? Of course it is. Your family, your school, your country. You’re proud of them. You want them to be proud of you. You want the world at large to think more highly of them because of you. That’s why you study history; so that you can learn how to make your country proud of you, so that you’ll learn how you can best serve your country. In this present case now of Walpole’s foreign policy ...”
Everything had seemed very clear-cut in that classroom. A map hung above the mantelpiece; a quarter of it was painted red. The path of duty was defined. The family first, the unit of the home; the preparatory school to fit you for the public school; Oxford or Cambridge next; you took your degree, then entered upon the post or calling for which birth and talent fitted you, confident that whatever work you undertook would make its own contribution to the nation and the Empire’s welfare. One thing led to the next thing on a mounting stair.
That was the tradition to which he had been brought up. The Left Wing Press invariably pictured the life of ‘the propertied and privileged classes’ in terms of the pleasures and immunities which that property and those privileges provided. No reference was made to the obligations which the enjoyment of them entailed, yet actually it was on those obligations that his whole training, his whole education had been focused.
He remembered those final July days of 1914. He was eighteen, back from school, with another year presumably to run; a year that would see him a prefect, and captain of the XV; a year that should be the crown and climax of his schooldays.
On the Saturday he went down to Blackheath with his father to watch Kent play Surrey. It was a sunny day and a big holiday crowd was there to watch the cricket. A week earlier when he had worked out the percentages of the County championship, he had decided that on the outcome of this match the fate of the championship might well depend. It was hard to realize sitting here on the familiar ground, in the familiar stand watching the familiar figures, Hay ward and Hobbs and Hitch in their chocolate coloured caps, and Blythe with his short tripping run and his left arm tucked behind his back, it was hard to believe, here where everything seemed the same, that within a week’s time no one would care whether a cricket match was lost or won.
They were joined shortly before lunch by an old friend of his father’s, Philip Trevor, the cricket correspondent of the Daily Telegraph.
“I suppose I shall have to write a report about this match,” he said, “but it won’t be printed. By Monday morning there’ll be nothing but war news in the papers. I imagine that it’s the last game I’ll watch. I’ve got my orders. I’m still on the reserve. I know exactly what I have to do, the moment the word is given.”
In the course of the morning’s play a number of telegrams were brought out to players. Each time a murmur went round the field. The same question was being asked by everyone, “Were they calling-up orders?” As the day wore on, and the news in the papers worsened, the sky clouded over. Guy and his father drove back in silence, in one of t
he decrepit ‘bob a nob’ fourseater horse-drawn carriages that only appeared on match days to convey spectators from the station to the rectory field.
As they paced the platform waiting for the London train, Guy set the question that all day had been in both their minds.
“I’m wondering, Father, what exactly I ought to do about getting in the army.”
The use of the word ‘exactly’ was a precise definition of the spirit in which many thousands of similar Englishmen were setting themselves that question at that moment. There was no question of whether to go or not. It was a question of ‘how’. There was no question of the justice or injustice of the quarrel. To get yourself into uniform the moment your country was at war and then to get yourself as near as possible to the enemy was an integral part of the whole system of privilege and obligation to which people like himself had been brought up.
Was Franklin claiming now that he had never known that spirit? Was this the moment where he read his young brother a solemn lecture?
No, he thought. His role wasn’t the heavy brother’s. Besides he was curious to know what was at the back of Franklin’s mind. “What do you mean, the structure had begun to topple?”
“I can use my eyes. Duty to country for example. That means very largely duty to the crown. Think of how many kings there were in Europe in 1914. How many are there left to-day, and of those that are left how many are upon stable thrones?”
“I’d say that ours was, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes, because he’s a figurehead. What’ll happen when we get a king who’s not a figurehead; do you think the Prince of Wales will be content to be one? And what about the Empire? ‘Dominion over palm and pine.’ Half our colonies have become self-governing dominions; and India, how long do you think a King of England’s going to be able to put R.I. after his name?”
“Have you heard the Empire compared to a banyan tree whose branches put down their own roots and take on separate existence?”
“And haven’t you heard of the great trees whose strength are sapped by creepers? My lot can’t believe in the Empire, in the way that yours did. And as for all those minor faiths, family and business: what do we see everywhere but big estates sold to meet death duties, families broken by divorce; fortunes cut into shreds by devalued currencies?”
“That’s quite a speech, but things are still holding together here.”
“We’ve managed to survive one war. Shall we survive the next?”
“What makes you so certain that there’ll be another?”
“The logic of history. That spiral of alternating slumps and booms that Rex keeps jabbering about. There’s a slump starting now: that means unemployment, a restless proletariat; and governments that are uncertain of themselves start wars to keep themselves in power. Look at the revenge clauses in the Versailles Treaty. What was it they called it at the time—‘the Peace that will end Peace’. What do you think will have happened to private property and our investments—even Duke and Renton—by the time the next war’s finished?”
“I think that whatever happens on the Stock Exchange, Englishmen will want to drink vintage port and that if anything in the world is a gilt-edged security, the contents of our cellars are.”
They laughed at that: a laugh that broke an atmosphere that had looked likely to grow tense.
“Don’t think I’m worrying over all this,” said Franklin. “I’m looking forward to the collapse. It’ll be amusing to see how all those smug people behave when their investments slide. That pompous brother-in-law of ours for instance, who seems to think that he’s performing a duty to the nation by indulging a personal taste for blood sports. How is he by the way? Thank heavens he wasn’t dragged into the family consultations.”
“We had that amount of sense.”
The conversation moved on to a family plane. It was cosy talk. Afterwards when he looked back over the evening, Guy reflected that this was the first time that Franklin had displayed the least need to justify himself, to argue in his own defence. Perhaps he did feel that this time he had gone too far. Perhaps he would try to make a success of his work in Portugal. Surely he’d enjoy the satisfaction of having the last laugh.
13
That was in 1930, a year that meant in retrospect to many thousand Englishmen—and certainly to Guy Renton—not so much the gradual economic depression that was descending upon the country but the spate of runs that were lashed against the white pavilion railings of Lord’s and Leeds by a young Australian called Don Bradman.
Guy was taking his two nephews to the Oval Test, but on the evening before Lucy rang through to tell him that George had German measles. It was late to find a substitute. Most of his friends were members and would be sitting in the pavilion. Moreover if he went with an adult, Digby would be left out of the conversation. He had planned it as a schoolboy expedition. He would prefer to keep it that way. He rehearsed the names of his married friends who had sons of about Digby’s age. One after another their names passed in review. He put through two calls, each without success. It was only as an afterthought that he remembered Renée’s Eric. How silly of him; it should have been his first thought: Renée was delighted at the invitation. “That’s wonderful. He’ll adore it. He’s longing to see Bradman.”
Eric did not see Don Bradman, at least not batting, England winning the toss on a plumb Oval wicket; but even so it was a halcyon day for a nine-year-old schoolboy watching his first Test match. The sun shone: the ground was packed; it was Hobbs’ last match. He had announced earlier in the season his retirement from Test Match cricket.
“This is an occasion to remember,” Guy told the boys. “In fifty years’ time you’ll be able to say that you saw Hobbs come out of the pavilion at the Oval to open his last Test Match.”
Everyone on the ground—probably even the Australians—were hoping he would get a century. The two schoolboys were in a tremor of excitement. “Bet you if he gets ten he’ll get it. Don’t you think he will, Uncle Guy?”
“It’s very likely.”
Their excitement mounted as the score went up. “Ten, twenty, thirty—he’s bound to get it, surely he’s bound to get it now.”
“How often, Uncle Guy, would you think he’s got as many as this and not made his hundred?”
“Quite often, I’m afraid.”
“But not when the wicket was as good as this. Not when he really wants to. Look there goes his forty. Oh, he must get it now.”
Guy found his own excitement mounting to match theirs and when the great man with his score three runs short of the half-century turned a ball tamely into the shortleg’s hands, his own gasp of dismay and disappointment was as profound as theirs. “Never mind,” he said, trying to console himself as much as them, “there’s plenty more to come.”
There was: Sutcliffe passed his century, Duleepsingh made a fifty as only he could make it, in as many minutes. England batted right through the day. The sun shone steadily: nothing was left in the lunch basket which had been filled with enough cakes, fruit, sandwiches, pork pies to satisfy half a dozen adults. It was a highly garrulous small boy that Guy returned at the end of the day to Albion Street.
Eric described the whole day, stand by stand. “And do you know who we saw as we were leaving? A. P. F. Chapman; and do you know what, Uncle Guy introduced me! I shook his hand. Won’t that make the chaps at school sit up. Look, I’ve got his autograph.”
He displayed the grubby match card with the name scrawled across it. Roger looked at it cursorily.
“The worst of having been a wetbob is that even now I can’t tell one cricketer from another nor what the difference is between square leg and cover point.”
“But surely, Daddy, you’ve heard of A. P. F. Chapman.”
“Now I do fancy that I’ve heard of him.”
“And, Daddy, do you know what else, Uncle Guy’s promised that as soon as I’m twelve-and-a-half he’ll take me to Lord’s at Easter for the cricket classes. Won’t that be whacko.”
“You’ve given him a marvellous day,” she said, as she stood on the doorstep, wishing him good-bye.
“On the contrary, he’s given me one. He was so enthusiastic, I couldn’t help getting excited about it all myself.”
“That’s one of the things about going out with children: they make one enjoy everything so much more.”
She looked at him steadily, as though she were asking herself a question. He thought she had something on her mind, but she did not say it.
“I hope you’ll let me take Eric out again. He and Digby got on very well together. We might do a pantomime at Christmas.”
“I think that would be very nice. Yes, I’m sure Eric would love that.”
She said it thoughtfully. Once again he had the impression that she had something in the back of her mind that she was hesitating whether to say or not; and finally deciding not to.
That day at the Oval was for Guy the chief landmark in the long and sunny summer of 1930. It was a placid period. A Labour government was in Westminster, but no creak of the approaching tumbrils could be heard through the quiet streets of Mayfair. The Flamingo went into bankruptcy, the indebtedness of Frisby and Dunkin was written off as a bad debt, with the Rentons’ offer to settle it out of their own pockets being declined by the board with gratitude as an unnecessary gesture in view of the fifteen per cent interim dividend with which the shareholders’ confidence was shortly to be confirmed.
As far as could be gathered the police had shown no further interest in the activities of Frisby and Dunkin. Certainly no inquiries reached Soho Square. Guy wondered whether they need have been so precipitate in having Franklin moved; he might just as well have stayed on in London, and married Pamela in the autumn. But if they had not been cautious, probably the worst would have happened.