Guy Renton Read online

  “I wonder if she skates or skis. I must get in touch with her.”

  Ordinarily after dinner, Guy went into the bar with Hansom and a group of hearties, making his single brandy last their three rounds of whiskies, then going upstairs to read. It was winter; he was in training, due to play football the day after his return; he had come out to ski, to pass his tests. He didn’t want late nights. That was how it had been now for two weeks, but not to-night. “No,” he told Hansom as they left the table, “I’ll join you later.” Dancing began at nine. He’d see the start of it.

  The minute hand of the hall clock was pointing to eleven. The band were taking up their places. He looked into the main lounge and his heart bounded. She was sitting in the same high-backed chair, reading the same red-backed novel, as absorbed as she had been that afternoon; composed and separate and apart.

  ‘Now,’ he thought, ‘before anyone can ask her.’

  He crossed the room.

  “The music’s just beginning, I wonder if you’d care to dance.”

  She did not start, but the sound of his voice clearly broke into a continuity of thought. Her eyes were a grey green blue. “Thank you,” she said. “I’d like to.” Her voice was contralto deep. Its depth surprised him, yet was in tune with, was appropriate to her height and carriage. Its accent, however, puzzled him. It was definitely transatlantic, yet it had a foreign burr. Was she Canadian-French?

  He hesitated in the doorway.

  “We’ll be the first couple on the floor.”

  “Need that bother us?”

  Their steps fitted from the start. He danced well when he was in the mood. “I’m all right,” he’d say, “after I’ve had a couple, or at some place like Brett’s after a rugger binge.” Which was another way of saying that he danced not for the sake of dancing but the person he was with. He danced well now, acutely conscious of her shoulder against his, of her body’s sway, its strength and harmony and firmness; of the scent, faint but distinct, of tuberose.

  “That was a dance,” he said.

  “I liked it too.”

  As they moved back into the lounge, Hansom hurried over.

  “May I introduce myself? I’m Hansom. Geoffrey Hansom. Unofficial M.C. you know. As regards the sports, not the hotel, of course. Perhaps Mr. Renton’s told you. No? I thought he might. I noticed that you’d just arrived. I wondered if there was anything I could do to help you.”

  “That’s very kind of you.”

  “Have you ski-ed before?”

  “A little.”

  “Then probably you’d like to join our novice class. We could take you on the nursery slopes, try a simple run to get the feel of it, then after a day or two decide whether you are ready for your tests.”

  She shook her head.

  “I don’t think I’ll need to bother you with that; my husband will be joining me on Friday, I’ll potter about till then. He’s a keen skater. We’ll probably spend most of our time on the ice.”

  “Just as you like. But if you change your mind, I’ll be only too glad to help. It’s worth while taking these tests you know. You nave so much more fun. We’ve a lot of good runs that you can’t go on till you have. We try and get everyone through at least the second class; trying to push old Guy through now. Having a tough job, too, but I think we’ll manage it. Just manage it. Well, I must be off and if you do change your mind, remember . . .”

  There was a puzzled but amused twinkle in her eye as she watched him bustle off.

  “Now please will you tell me what all that meant,” she said.

  He drew up a chair beside her. Mürren, he explained, wasn’t like St. Moritz. People took ski-ing seriously. There were all manner of tests and competitions: runs were arranged for different standards: runs that you couldn’t join till you had passed their standard.

  “And you’re taking your second class tests now?”

  He nodded, he was a third of the way through. He had done a short run to-day; he’d be taking his turns to-morrow. On the following day, the Wednesday—his last day but one at Mürren—he’d be taking his final test, an endurance run.

  “And is that good, to pass your second class?”

  “So–so. I’ve not been at it long. I’m meaning to take it up seriously when I give up football.”

  “I saw some people wearing ‘K’s. Gold and silver ‘K’s. Does that mean anything?”

  “Yes, that’s the Kandahar Club, very grand.”

  “I see”.

  There was still an amused twinkle in her eye, as though she found the whole thing slightly childish; a twinkle that made him feel that he was three years younger instead of being three or four years older than she was; a twinkle that somehow he did not resent.

  “And your name’s Renton?” she was going on.

  “Yes. Guy Renton.” He said it on the pitch of voice, a proud yet selfconscious diffidence that is almost invariably adopted by people in the public eye, who have come to expect that the announcement of their identity will be received with a surprised inquisitive display of interest; a display for which they have ready whatever defensively modest reply experience has taught them to find the most effective.

  No such display of interest came into her face. He was rather pleased. He had come recently to resent the fuss that strangers made of him, telling him how often they had watched him from the touchline. This was all very well now, he told himself, but his name wouldn’t mean a thing to the equivalent of these people in ten years’ time. Now, in his last year of football, he preferred to meet people on the basis of what in himself he was: of the self that he was going to be, from now on, for the remainder of his life. He was glad that his name rang no bell: that whatever effect he might be making on her, was independent of his reputation.

  “And you?” he asked. “I don’t know your name either.”

  “Burton. Mrs. Roger Burton.”

  “I seem to have heard that somewhere.”

  “You might have done. Roger’s quite well known, in his own way.”

  She did not explain in what way that was. She spoke as though his reputation were something too well grounded, too accepted to be of concern to her. The music began. “It’s a waltz,” she said.

  “I don’t waltz well.”

  “Anyone who foxtrots as well as you, could be made to waltz.” The word ‘made’ was underlined. Its undertone of domination pleased him, in the same way that her twinkle had. To a man like himself who was used to giving orders in his office and on the football field, there was something satisfying in being ‘managed’ by this tall young woman.

  “Let’s try,” he said.

  He put his hand high on her left shoulder, between her shoulder blades, as for a foxtrot. She shook her head. “No, round my waist.” He took a first step forward; planning to dance with short steps: but her feet did not follow his: she leant backwards from her waist, her arm stretched sideways; the sway of her body drawing his into a slow and gliding curve; a curve that lengthened and grew faster, that ebbed and swung and changed direction; now fast, now slow, a swaying undulating curve that made him feel that no one else on the floor was dancing the same dance. They did not speak. Her lips were parted and her eyes were gay. Strenuously though they danced, she was not even breathing quickly when the music stopped. She must be in good training, he told himself.

  “I never knew a waltz could be like that,” he said.

  “Perhaps you’ve never danced it with a Viennese.”

  Later, in the writing-room, he looked up Roger Burton in Who’s Who.

  ‘Roger Burton,’ he read, ‘C.B. 1919; b. 10 May, 1881; e.s. of Sir Francis Burton, K.C. (q.v.). Educ: Eton and King’s College, Cambridge. 1st Class History Tripos. Fellow of King’s College. m. 1921, Renée, e.d. of Mr. and Mrs. Reginald van Rintaller of East Haddam, Connecticut, U.S.A.; one s. Board of Trade. Member of Coal Commission 1912; Member of Economic Delegation to Washington 1917; Financial Adviser at the Peace Conference 1919. Publications: Adam Smith: his place in H
istory, 1904; The Economic Implications of Lloyd George’s Budget, 1912; France and the Gold Standard, 1921; Recreations: Skating, Court Tennis. Address: 59 Albion Street, W.i. Clubs: Reform, Beef-steak, Prince’s, Ye Sette of Odde Volumes.’

  He remembered now where he had seen the name: under-neath a neat ambassadorial head-and-shoulders photograph in the left-hand top corner of articles on International Finance.

  Born 1881. More than twice her age. He remembered the way she danced. How could an economist of forty-four match that quality? Thoughtfully he closed the book. Her husband was not arriving until the Friday: the day he was flying back to London. An imaginary scene, an imaginary conversation rose before his eyes, about his ears. Saturday afternoon, the changing-room at the Old Deer Park. Jimmy, with inquiry in his eyes. “Any luck, old boy?” Himself nodding his head knowingly, “I’ll tell you afterwards.”

  Always after the match, the team would collect in Dehem’s Oyster Bar: Jimmy and he would corner themselves away from the group of footballers who would be hailing their victory or explaining away their defeat in pints of lukewarm beer. He would lean sideways confidentially, “Perfect setting. She’d come there four days ahead of her husband. He was arriving the afternoon of the day I was to leave. I’d never have to meet him that’s to say. Of course I can’t tell you who he was, but he’s quite a big snot in his own line. Rich? I’d imagine so, judging from her jewellery. Older than she, oh yes, a good deal older: more than twice her age. She’d been married four years, but she couldn’t have been more than twenty-three, if that: half Austrian, half American. You know what Austrians are. Yes, of course you do! I remember your story about that Viennese widow in Rapallo: being half American explains her independence. I imagine she was beginning to be rather bored with being married to a man twice her age, and finding herself four days alone in that playground atmosphere, well, I suppose she thought she’d enjoy herself while she had the chance. I had the good luck, or the good sense, to be the fellow who got there first. Super-dick? I should say it was.”

  He smiled wryly to himself as he imagined the conversation. It wasn’t like that. She wasn’t like that. With a quarter of himself he wished she was: with three-quarters of himself he was glad she wasn’t.

  He was nervous on the following morning as he stood at the top of the slope which had been-selected for the second class test candidates. It was not a very long slope nor a very steep one. Half a dozen flags had been placed along its length, between which candidates had to zig-zag their way to the hill’s foot. Marks were awarded for both speed and accuracy. There were six candidates; he was fourth upon the list.

  With growing nervousness he watched his predecessors slither their way between the flags. It was ridiculous to be nervous. He was never nervous before a football match. And before a match there was cause for nervousness. A personal error of one’s own might discount the value of fourteen players’ effort. Nothing was at stake now. It wouldn’t matter if he passed or didn’t pass. He could try again another day. It wasn’t like a football match, where a mistake was irremediable. “Don’t be a fool,” he told himself. But all the same his nervousness mounted as he watched the others one by one glide off.

  He watched them enviously. They seemed so good, so accurate, so swift. He’d never do it as well as that. He’d fall or shoot past the post. He would not gauge his speed; he was not used to gauging speed; he was used to crashing straight ahead till he was brought up hard; he was not used to guiding himself, edging in between things. I’ll shoot past the post: or crash right into it, then I’ll have to go back; climb up the hill and start again. What a fool I’ll look.

  He hated looking a fool, hated being conspicuous, particularly at a game. He felt impatient with the whole performance. Skiing was a fiddling kind of show. It wasn’t his line. Why had he taken it up? Why hadn’t he gone to St. Moritz, had a real holiday, enjoying the sun and the keen air, the excitement and the dangers of the Cresta run? Why was he bothering to pass these tests; to qualify for the Kandahar? He was an ex-international, wasn’t he? Why on earth should an ex-international be bothering with the Kandahar? Why on earth. . .

  “Next please. G. S. Renton ...”

  The starter’s voice cut across his reverie, interrupted and dispersed it. At the sound of it his self-questioning was put aside. He crouched, his knees bent forward. “Now,” he told himself. He had forgotten that ten seconds before he had been wondering why on earth he should be doing this. He was taut and concentrated; resolved as he always was at any game to succeed at the thing that he had set himself.

  “One . . . two . . . three. . . . Go!”

  He drove himself off with a dig and drive of his sticks. He struck out once, twice, then began to travel. He was going fast—too fast—he told himself. The first flag was a hundred yards away, was fifty, twenty. I must slow down now. It was a right-hand turn. He used a stop cristie, checking with his right foot, driving his right stick into the snow, leaning outwards away from the slope, so as to keep upright. A cloud of snow blew outwards, in his eyes, half blinding him; he was almost stationary; but he was on his skis, with the flag behind him, the slope below him, the stretch of the five flags in front; a mounting exhilaration in his head. This was a grand sport; it had everything; employed every muscle; it had speed, and the need for controlling speed: it had risk, and even danger; and the sun was warm and the air was keen. Slowly now, he warned himself, as he drove his sticks into the snow; there are five flags still. Don’t lose your head because you’ve got round one. Steady now, steady, steady . . .

  As he came to the foot of the slope there was a little spatter of clapping from the dozen or so spectators. He had navigated the six flags without mishap. He had not fallen. He had not overshot his mark. “Quite good time,” the starter told him. “Two minutes seven seconds.”

  “Very impressive,” said a contralto voice, deep-toned and transatlantic with a foreign pitch.

  It surprised as much as it delighted him. “I didn’t expect you here.”

  “I’ve been skating. I heard someone say the second-class tests were on. I thought I’d come across and see.”

  She was wearing a short black skirt and a high-necked, long-sleeved Fair Isle jumper: ochre brown with a dark threaded pattern in the front. She had no hat, but was wearing hornrimmed sunglasses. She looked sixteen. They stood together watching his successor: a girl who had missed her first flag, but had returned, had made good her error and had just turned the third successfully.

  “You’re all very good. I couldn’t do that trick work. We never went in for that kind of thing.”

  “You have ski-ed quite a little then?”

  “Oh yes, at home, but it’s different there. We have more snow, great stretches of it. We go on long expeditions.”

  “We might go on one ourselves.”

  “That would be fun.”

  “To-morrow I’ve another test. A run. What about Thursday?”

  “Thursday would be fine.”

  “Then that’s a date.”

  He hesitated. He looked at his watch. It was ten to twelve. Ordinarily he did not go back to the hotel till lunch-time. But it was too late now for the ‘Alibubble’ and with his test taken and passed presumably, there was no point in practising Christianas on the nursery slopes.

  “What about our going back to the hotel and having a cocktail before lunch?” he asked.

  “Why not?”

  The next day broke grey and rainswept; for a few hours at any rate ski-ing would be impossible. “We’ll have to put off your test until this afternoon,” said Hansom.

  It was nine o’clock and there was a listless aimless atmosphere about the lounge with its scattered, disconsolate groups brooding behind their newspapers. Mürren existed for the winter sports. There was nothing else to do. Guy walked into the hall. It was chill and damp, outside not a single pair of skis was stuck into the snow. The path leading up to the village was a quagmire. He turned away. Four hours till lunch. He wished he was back in
London. As he recrossed the hall, a contralto voice hailed him from the stairs. “Don’t look so like a funeral.”

  She was wearing a long black heavy mackintosh and a sou’wester hat.

  “I’m going shopping,” she informed him.

  “I’d like to join you.”

  “Why don’t you? I’m going to buy my son a cuckoo clock.”

  Seeing her huddled up into her mackintosh, it was more than ever difficult to think of her as a mother. She looked a schoolgirl.

  “How old’s your boy?”

  “Three. The right age for a cuckoo clock.”

  Half the shops that were not patisseries, were devoted to the sale of clocks. They spent a little time deciding which one to patronise.

  “I don’t like turning a shop inside out and then not buying anything,” she explained.

  She certainly turned the shop inside out. It was a full half-hour before she made her choice. As the shopkeeper did up the parcel, he turned aside to examine a cabinet of watches. A second saleswoman came across to him. “We have a new model that might interest you,” she said.

  It was an elaborate wrist–watch. It told the day of the month it chimed the hours and had a stop-watch hand; it was gold and it cost thirty pounds. He had an impulse to buy it, not because he needed a wrist-watch—he had bought a very adequate one during the war—but because the purchase of this particular watch might impress Renée Burton. It would show her that he was someone capable of buying a thirty-pound watch for ‘the hell of it’. He suppressed the impulse. He did not want to impress her that way. He shook his head. He moved along the counter, glancing at a tray of pocket watches. One caught his attention. “Can I look at that?” he said. It was gold, and very thin with an old-fashioned face. It was wound with a key. It had initials on the back. “It belongs to a tourist who wants a wrist-watch that he can’t afford,” the saleswoman told him. “I’m trying to sell it for him.”