Guy Renton Page 25

  The martini that was handed to him on his return was so dry that it made him start. “If all our clients drank them as dry as this we’d make our fortune.”

  “Are they so dry? They’re five to one: that’s the way I used to like them,” Daphne said.

  “Still on the wagon then?”

  “And look like staying on.”

  “Don’t you miss it?”

  “At first, but I feel so much better.”

  “Aren’t the rest of us rather boring when we get noisy and gay and flushed and silly?”

  She smiled. “You exaggerate that, you know. When you’ve been drinking your eyes get out of focus, so that you don’t only feel differently, but look differently to one another. Actually you don’t change much. Let’s ask Julia. Darling, if you come into a cocktail party, would you know how many cocktails they’d all had?”

  “Heavens, no.”

  “And you’re quite happy sitting there with your cordial. You don’t feel out of things?”

  “Why, no.”

  “Neither do I. Are you ready for a second, Franklin?”

  “In just a minute.”

  One was as much as Guy himself could manage, but his brother not only had a second but three-quarters of a glass of what he called ‘the dividend’.

  “We drink far too much here,” he said. “You know what we call it, the septic belt. But we sweat it out in the sun, or at any rate the tan conceals it.”

  There were two carafes of wine upon the lunch table. White and rosé: Guy chose the rosé, Julia took a half glass that she filled up with Vichy: Daphne as before took nothing; but the carafe of white wine that stood beside Franklin was taken out to be refilled.

  As before Daphne ate very little, a salad and a jellied egg; with a pill before and two pills afterwards; Franklin on the other hand took a second helping of a langouste salad. It was not surprising he had put on weight; he ate too much rich food, drove everywhere, and imagined that sunbathing was exercise. Guy wondered whether Daphne was not unconsciously encouraging him to overeat and overdrink so as to reduce the difference in age between them. He had noticed more than one middle-aged wife who had lost her looks and figure encouraging her husband to relative excess so that he should not be attractive to younger women.

  Liqueurs were served with coffee. Guy declined, but Franklin took a brandy.

  “Where’d you like to siesta?” Franklin asked. “I usually take mine upstairs.”

  “I’ll stay down here. I probably shan’t sleep.”

  He was left with Julia. The moment they were alone she turned to him with an intent quick look. “How do you think Mummy’s looking?”

  “As elegant as ever.”

  “I don’t mean that. Is she looking well?”

  “As far as I can tell.”

  “She does? I’m glad you think so. I’ve been worrying. She tires so quickly. But then I see her every day. I thought you coming fresh, might see a change.”

  “No change to me.”

  “That’s a relief.”

  “Has she complained at all?”

  “She wouldn’t. She keeps things bottled up. But she seems so lifeless.”

  “She was lively enough at lunch.”

  “That’s a different thing. She’s always talkative. But she takes no exercise; never plays golf or tennis.”

  “Used she to?”

  “Oh yes. Always rushing her guests everywhere: no lazy mornings, no siestas.”

  “Did she drink quite a bit at one time?”

  “I thought so, but I don’t suppose she did; not in terms of the way they drink down here.”

  It was said in the most matter of fact way, without any undertone of disapproval. He looked at her thoughtfully. She was a quiet, serious-minded girl, older than her years; which was not surprising in view of the amount of time that she had spent with grown-up people. She had had a strange upbringing, always being moved from one place to another, never taking root. What effect had it had on her? Had she any sense of allegiance to a country, of belonging to any place, in the way that he belonged to London? Would she ever throw out roots, would her marriage be the complete reversal of her mother’s life? Would she, when she married, settle in the country and concentrate upon her house, her husband and her children?

  “Why aren’t you at school?” he asked.

  “Mummy didn’t like the Mother Superior at the convent; as I’m going to Geneva in October she thought I might as well have a summer here. She says that everyone ought to have one period in their lives of solid reading: and that somewhere between fourteen and sixteen is the best time for it. She chooses what I read, then we discuss it.”

  “What have you been reading lately?”

  “The Russian and the French novelists and Gibbon’s Decline and Fall.”

  “What poetry?”

  “Shakespeare mainly: the tragedies and histories, not the comedies, and the Victorian poets.”

  “Which of them is your favourite?”

  “You’ll laugh when I tell you. Mummy says it’s very juvenile, but Ernest Dowson.”

  “‘I could have understood you had you waited’?”

  “Yes, that’s the one, how did you guess?”

  Her face flushed, her eyes brightened, her voice grew eager. She looked three years younger. They began to cap quotations. The afternoon passed very quickly.

  Franklin joined them on the terrace soon after four. They were going over to Eze for cocktails. “What about a plunge in the tank, then we can get smartened up. The boys in first.”

  The tank, a hundred or so yards up the hill, was round and circular: built of concrete, and ten feet across. The water was very cold. “What a tonic that is,” said Franklin as he dried afterwards.

  It certainly was. But at the same time it was not exercise. They had taken their plunge naked and Guy had noticed how flabby his brother had become.

  He looked very smart, though, forty minutes later when he came down freshly shaved in a cool tussore suit and a primrose-yellow linen tie. “Who’s driving with me? I think my brother. Daphne, you take Julia.”

  They drove along the shore, past Juan, Antibes and across the Var.

  Guy had not been to the South of France now for five years. He had forgotten how exquisite it was; the indented coast, the succession of harbours and of beaches; the simplicity of its fishing ports, the sophistication of its villas and casinos, the medieval fortresses upon the hills; the present mingled with the past; the best of two worlds joined. And then the climate, this constant sunlight: with the breezes from the sea and from the mountains cooling the heavy heat. Franklin had chosen wisely.

  At Nice they swung north to the Moyenne Corniche road. Villefranche and Beaulieu lay below them. In front, majestic on its lonely peak, was the bastion of Eze, grey, menacing and weatherworn, with its row of cypresses below the ramparts. It could not have looked very different to the invading Saracens. There was nothing to suggest that an outpost of international society had set its standard here.

  It was a small party, only a dozen guests. “Life’s much pleasanter here before the season starts,” said Franklin. “People get so busy and so grand in August; they’ve got time for you at this time of year. And the residents really see each other. Much more intimate.”

  The hostess was American, so were the majority of her guests. None of their names conveyed anything to Guy. Their talk was easy, friendly, concerned with day-to-day trivialities. Champagne was served; a buffet table was set with elaborate canapés. There was a good deal of laughter.

  The party broke up early. “We thought we’d dine in Cannes, at Robert’s,” Franklin said. “We’ve given Marie the evening off.”

  They were not hungry after the cocktail canapés. They had a simple meal—soupe de Poissons, tomates provençal, cheese and a salad: at least he and Julia and Franklin did. Daphne ordered a cold wing of chicken, of which she ate only three mouthfuls. Abstemious though she might be, she was vivid, vital, talkative, full of inter
est and inquiries about mutual friends in London.

  “We ought to go back oftener,” she said. “We lose touch here.”

  Franklin shook his head. “I don’t agree. We see more of our real friends than we would in London. They are in such a hurry there; so busy being important; they’re much more fun down here. And think of all the new friends we’ve made, all the people we’ve met during the last two summers whom we’d never have come across in London. You get to know people better too. There you meet them for odd half-hours; here when people come to lunch they come in time to bathe, then stay on afterwards for a siesta.”

  While Franklin settled the account Guy strolled over to the station where the cars were parked. He overheard an English and familiar voice: “Isn’t that funny: two identical cars, parked next each other. Such smart cars too. How furious the owners must be feeling. Like a woman when she sees another wearing the same hat.” Where had he heard that voice? Guy asked himself. He hastened his step. Why, of course, Mrs. Urquhart-Smythe, the woman he had met with Franklin in Oporto, who had fallen for that Portuguese. He walked across. “As a matter of fact they’re both in the same family. My brother’s and his wife’s.”

  “Really! And to think I know the owner.”

  At that point Franklin joined them. Mrs. Urquhart-Smythe gushed over him. “This is too amusing. There was I making a very feminine remark, about those two very remarkable machines, and then your brother tells me that both are yours.”

  Franklin laughed. “Aren’t they quaint. The chicest thing along this too chic coast.” He paused, a puzzled expression came into his face. “I can’t help feeling that we’ve met before.”

  “Of course we have. I’m Mrs. Urquhart-Smythe.”

  Franklin shook his head. “No, I’m afraid not. I can’t remember having heard that name, but I’m certain that I’ve seen you somewhere?”

  “You certainly have. At a very charming lunch you gave for us.”

  He smiled: his most disarming smile. “Did I? You must forgive me. It’s this septic belt. Riviera memory. Haven’t you read jokes about it? One party after another. I can just keep track of my hosts and hostesses, but as for all the people my friends bring to my house, I must admit I get confused about my guests.”

  There was a slight touch of the grand seigneur in his voice, but only a very slight one. It was said with such surface graciousness that only Mrs. Urquhart-Smythe could know that she had been insulted. Franklin chuckled as they drove away. “I enjoyed doing that,” he said. “Urquhart-Smythe indeed. I bet the name was Smith.”

  The next day Barbara and Norman came to lunch. They were perched in Villefranche and Daphne met their train in Cannes. Barbara was looking radiant; her figure was still trim. “I’m not even having morning-sickness. I’m getting off so lightly that I expect I shall have a terrible time when the young rascal takes the stage.”

  She chattered happily and gaily. Norman rarely spoke, he looked more than ever, with his suntan and bare muscled arms, like some shaggy sheepdog. His face wore a perpetual beam. Barbara never left his side; when she wasn’t holding his hand, she was squeezing his arm. She needed to be touching him all the time. She talked at him and about him, round and through him, keeping him in the centre of the stage.

  “We’re so looking forward to your visit,” Barbara said. “There’s no room in our studio, at least not for anyone so used to creature comforts. We’ve booked you in at the hotel, at demipension, you can take half your meals with us and we’ll have the other half with you. I’ll murder you if you don’t take a glowing account back to Mother.”

  He repeated that afterwards to Daphne.

  “That shouldn’t be very difficult for me, do you think?”

  Daphne smiled. “If it isn’t like that now at the start of everything, when can it be?”

  “Was that how it was with you?”

  “Of course. Wasn’t it with you, the first time?”

  He shook his head. There had been no first time: not at least, this kind of a first time. This was something that he had never known; something that he would never know; the shared delight of two young people, coming fresh to one another, discovering themselves, revealing each to other; the delight deepening and growing; exploring and explored.

  He changed the subject. “My mother wants Barbara to come back to have her baby. That’s one of the chores she’s given me: to try and persuade her to. I hope you’ll take my side.”

  Guy spent a week with Franklin, a friendly, happy week. Every night there was a party somewhere, either at their villa or at some friend’s along the coast. By day they bathed and picnicked and played golf on the mountainous scenic course above Monte Carlo with its freak one-shot holes, or at Cagnes, on the level course between the shore and railway line, with its narrow fairways between pines and olive trees and its twelve-year-old girl caddies who cried ‘Hoopla’ every time a shot went out of bounds.

  “This is the healthiest week I’ve had in months,” said Franklin.

  “Don’t you normally play much golf?”

  Franklin shook his head. “Daphne doesn’t care for it now. She prefers sunbathing at the Roc. I like to do the same things she does.”

  He said it without any sense of martyrdom. He was, as Margery had prophesied, a kind husband. He always planned his day round Daphne, played their golf near to where she wished to bathe, so that they could lunch with her. He made the plans moreover in a way that did not give the impression that she was being selfish. If for instance they had one day played at Cagnes and picnicked at the Garoupe beach, next day he would say, “We’d rather like to play at Mont Agel, wouldn’t it be a good idea for you to get your hair fixed in Monte Carlo, then we could lunch at the Sporting?”

  He would make that suggestion on the eve of a particular party where she would be anxious to look her best, and he would have planned to play at Cagnes the day before so that she could have her hair fixed for it.

  “Daphne used to play games, didn’t she?” Guy asked.

  “Certainly. She was quite good too. Shefinds it tires her now.”

  She ought to eat more, Guy thought. This endless dieting must be a strain on her vitality. Yet her talk was as bright as ever. She was excellent company. It was nice to see her with Franklin. They were good together.

  It was not only the first time that Guy had seen anything of Franklin since his marriage, but it was the first time they had met on any equality of terms. Up to now Guy had always been the elder brother; arbitrating, negotiating, remonstrating; the exponent of the adult attitude. Now the positions were to some extent reversed. Guy was the guest: Franklin was the host: Franklin with the background of an establishment and responsibilities had a stake in stability that Guy as a bachelor lacked. Franklin had always been composed, always self-assured, but whereas his confidence as an undergraduate had been aggressive, a gesture of defiance, it was now quiet and settled, the outcrop of an interior calm of mind.

  They got on very easily together. They were able to remain silent in each other’s company, the surest proof that they were in tune. For the most part they talked about the family, largely about earlier days: about their father; about Lucy before her marriage; about Barbara in the nursery. It was in a detached way, however, that he asked about them; as though he were a part of their life no longer, as though his English life had closed with* marriage.

  When he and Daphne were together, the conversation turned on the day to day events of Riviera life: a life that was completely cut off from the current of main events. They had no radio; they took in no newspaper; only buying the Continental Daily Mail when it occurred to them, and the Eclaireur de Nice to see what films were showing. They showed no curiosity as to what was happening, politically, in England. But on the few occasions when Franklin did refer to ‘the world situation’ there came into his voice the slight undertone of a sneer that expatriates invariably use in reference to the country of their birth.

  “I saw a copy of the Tatler the other day,” he said
. “All those pictures of hunt balls and house parties and ducal mansions, as though there were no such people as Hitler or Mussolini or Stalin for that matter.” A sneer as though he were gloating over the fate in store for his compatriots: a sneer too of superiority, as though he, living in France, had a broader outlook than the insular inhabitants of Britain. Yet it was self-defensive too: there was envy at the back of it: everyone in the last analysis wants the approval of the village, the town, the country where he has been brought up.

  It was only on rare occasions that Franklin struck that note. For the most part he was gay, unworried, and relaxed. Once, however, he did throw a different light upon his state of mind. It was on the last day: they had played their round of golf in the afternoon instead of in the morning, and they were sitting in the club house over a glass of beer in the cool of approaching sundown.

  “You’ve given me a marvellous time,” Guy said. “I shall take the most glowing reports back to our mother.”

  “She’s happy about me, isn’t she?”

  “Extremely.”

  “I don’t think she minds the family name not being carried on: Father might have done. But she changed her own name after all. Someone like yourself would think this a fairly futile life, but it suits me.”

  His last sentence though not delivered as a question seemed to necessitate an answer.

  “I don’t think it a futile life at all. Why shouldn’t you live the way you want?”

  “Even if it’s living on a woman?”

  “You aren’t. You’ve an income of your own under our father’s will.”

  “That doesn’t run to a supercharged Mercedes.”

  “I daresay it doesn’t, but it makes you independent: you could walk out of it any day you chose.”

  “Walk into what?”

  “A very reasonable life. You’ve enough to feed and clothe and house yourself.”