Guy Renton Page 6

  At the head of the stairs was a lectern, with a volume of parchment sheets each one containing the photograph of a boy who had been killed, with his school and war records inscribed below. A fresh page was turned each day. He looked at that day’s page. A. T. Gresling. School House 1914-1916. He half remembered him: an inky-collared fag in his last term. He did not suppose he had ever spoken to him; he certainly had not thought of him since he left. And Gresling had been killed at Monday on 28 March, 1918: only two miles from where, at Neuville-Vitasse on that long nerve-charged day, he had held a section of machine-gun posts. A. T. Gresling.

  The cracked bell from the Almshouses began to ring. Only five minutes now. He stood in the entrance to the cloisters, by the School House studies, waiting for the hour to strike, with the consequent spilling from every doorway of boys, books under their arms, tearing across the courts to their separate houses. He wondered when he would stand here next. Now that Franklin was leaving and that he was giving up football he did not suppose that he would come down often. He would have no link. Maybe he would not come again till he had a son here. Would Renée and he ever stand here, waiting for that son? His mind ran forward: a year for a divorce; marriage in autumn ’26. October 1940. No, it was not impossible.

  The Abbey chimed the hour. The empty courts were flooded with raised voices and scurrying feet. He stood aside, letting the stream pour past. Within two minutes the courts were empty, except for the few senior boys too grand to hurry, who sauntered, their hands driven deep into their pockets, scarves flung round their necks.

  Franklin was among the last. He was with two other boys. He did not hurry at the sight of Guy. That would have been below his dignity, but he waved, and a broad smile lit up his face. A friendly, good-natured smile. He was really exceedingly good-looking: with the kind of figure that can make clothes bought off a peg look as though they had been tailored in Savile Row. His tie fitted neatly into the apex of his collar; his hair though a little long was neatly brushed. He had an air of elegance. Yes, he was too old for Fernhurst.

  He could not have been more adult than he was that night.

  “Now that I’m practically an old boy, there’s no reason is there, why I shouldn’t have wine with dinner?”

  “I don’t suppose that there is.”

  “I thought not and it’s time I began my education. You choose what you’d have if you were with Jimmy Grant, then tell me why you’ve chosen it. Is there any reason, by the way, why I shouldn’t have an aperitif as well?”

  “There’s every reason why you shouldn’t have a cocktail. Gin spoils your palate.”

  “What about sherry then?”

  “I’ve nothing against that.”

  “Fine: order me the best.”

  He behaved as though he had earned some high distinction instead of having been presented with the embroidered bag. He was curious to know how the news had been received at No. 17.

  “Tell me everything that everybody said; I bet Rex was pompous.”

  “As a matter of fact, he was.”

  “How that man bores me. How did Father take it?”

  “Puzzled. Rather disturbed at having something that he’d thought was settled interfered with.”

  “He would. He’d like to treat me like a pipe of port, that you buy, lay down, and leave to mature until it’s fit to drink. You provide your son with a nurse, enter him for your school and college, and twenty years later there’s the finished product, a credit to the family. A pity it didn’t work out that way.”

  The analogy was disconcertingly apposite: it was said moreover with a complete absence of any criticism of their father.

  “What about Barbara? I suppose she hasn’t heard. What reason are you going to give her for my leaving school at Easter?”

  “We haven’t got around to that one yet.”

  “Think a good one out. I’ve an idea that I’m a kind of hero to her.”

  There was a slight anxiety in his voice. Guy remembered what his mother had said about Franklin feeling himself neglected. Barbara was the one before whom he could cut a dash. He was indifferent about Margery. “I suppose she’s more or less neutral isn’t she?”

  “Entirely.”

  Franklin’s expression clouded; Guy had an impression that he had not particularly relished, though he had invited, the use of the ‘entirely’. Franklin liked people to be either violently for or violently against him. Guy suspected that he was rather enjoying the whole business; the being in the centre of the stage.

  His mother he had left till last. “Is she very disturbed?” he asked.

  Guy nodded. “Naturally; but on your account. She’s wondering what you yourself feel about it all. What do you, by the way?

  It was the first direct question Guy had put to him. For the moment Franklin seemed surprised. He hedged. “What is there for me to feel? I was getting rather bored with school.”

  “You mean that you’re quite glad to leave.”

  “Wouldn’t you be in my position?”

  “I’m damned if I should.”

  He remembered his own disappointment in August 1914, at being robbed of his last year at school; the year that would have seen him captain of the House, the year for which his four previous years had been the prelude. He would have hated it if he’d been unable to join the army, if he’d had to stay at school with all his friends in khaki, but he’d have hated to have had to lose that year for any reason but a war; if his father for example had no longer been able to afford the fees.

  “You’d have had a pretty good time you know. You’d have got into the Eleven next term; you might have been captain the year after.”

  Franklin shrugged. “That kind of thing never cut much ice with me. What does it matter in five years’ time whether you were captain of the school or not. Though I suppose it is a bit of a black mark against you if you are actually expelled.”

  “What was the trouble by the way?”

  “There wasn’t any. They felt that I was more than they could cope with. What’s being planned for me, by the way? Father’s not going to refuse to send me up to Oxford is he, as a punishment?”

  “I heard no talk of that.”

  “Then why don’t I go up to Oxford a year earlier. I’ve taken my School Cert.”

  “I don’t see why not.”

  “In that case the only point to be discussed is what I’m to do with myself this summer. I’d like to spend four months in Europe brushing up my French and Spanish. They’ll be useful to me when I join the firm.”

  It was the obvious solution, the one that had occurred to Guy.

  “Why not try and argue it that way when you get back?”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “Grand. And now won’t you give me a lecture on this wine we’re drinking. It seems quite good.”

  “You’re wrong, it’s very good.”

  It was a burgundy, a Richebourg 1915. As he delivered a brief homily on burgundy in general, and the year 1915 in particular, Guy could not help feeling that the management of the occasion had been taken entirely into his young brother’s hands; that Franklin had treated him rather as royalty might receive the emissary of a republic.

  That evening Guy called on the headmaster; a new man since his day, and a very different one. His chief had been a canon, white-haired and scholarly, illustrating his points in conversation with a Latin or Greek quotation; the kind of man whom you could never have imagined playing football. The present incumbent was a layman, tall, spare, muscular, with a short dark moustache, looking like the colonel of a regiment, and talking like one. He quoted sparingly and when he did, he employed a cliché.

  “No, I’ve nothing specific against the boy. But I don’t see him as a prefect. He’s never identified himself either with the house or school. It’s not as though he were unintelligent or poor at games. He might have got a scholarship, he’d certainly have got his cricket colours. He could have been as successful here as you were; and of course there’s n
o reason why he shouldn’t in the end prove a great credit to the school. We all hope he will. He leaves, of course, under no kind of cloud. I’d put it this way. Some boys grow up quicker than the rest, and your brother at seventeen is ready for a university.”

  He spoke in the confident assured manner of a chairman addressing the members of his board. Then he changed the subject. “I watched the last international at Twickenham. I hope I’m not a mere laudator temporis acti, but in my opinion these new spoiling tactics of the winging forward are ruining the game.”

  It was, Guy felt, reasonably cheerful news that he was bringing home.

  To his relief he found there was no dinner guest; Margery was out, he had his parents to himself.

  “There’s nothing to worry about,” he assured his mother.

  “I never thought there was; how’s Franklin taking it?”

  “He seems quite glad to leave.”

  “Glad?” his father echoed.

  “He’s had enough of school; he feels that he’s outgrown it.”

  “Glad—when he was on the brink of the Eleven!”

  “I know, Father, but I think they grow up quicker now than we did.”

  In actual fact he found his brother’s attitude as incomprehensible as his father did, but he did not want his mother to suspect that he and his father were in league. He wanted her to feel that he as well as she was on Franklin’s side.

  “Glad to be leaving before he’s got into the Eleven. Are you sure he wasn’t saying that out of bravado, to keep his own spirits up? He’s a great sense of pride, you know.”

  Guy shook his head. “I don’t think it’s that. He was genuinely looking forward to spending the summer in France and Spain.”

  “In France and Spain?” his mother echoed.

  “He thought it would be a good chance of brushing up his languages. He’ll need them when he comes into the firm.”

  “Very sensible of him too,” his father said. “In the long run we may come to look on this as a blessing in disguise.”

  His mother’s face had set however in an obstinate resolute expression that Guy knew well: she was about to dig her toes in.

  “Was this your idea?”

  Guy hesitated. Was it, or was it Franklin’s? They had been in such complete agreement, the solution had been so obvious, that he could not remember which had first brought it up. It was better probably not to let his mother think that the course had been forced on Franklin.

  “I think the idea was his.”

  She nodded her head, quickly.

  “As I thought. The kind of idea that would appeal to him. He’s always trying to run away from his responsibilities, always trying to do things the easiest way. It would be fatal for him to go away at a time like this. Anything might happen to him.”

  “My dear Mary, he’s seventeen. At that age a great many young men were commanding platoons in Flanders.”

  “I daresay they were. And if Franklin had been of military age, I’m sure he would have done very well. He does not lack courage. But he is unstable. It’s all very well for the headmaster to say that there’s nothing specific against him, but he doesn’t ask a parent to take a son away for no good reason.”

  It was the very argument that Rex had used, and how his mother had flared up when he had done so! His mother was not blind to Franklin’s weaknesses. But no one else must call attention to them.

  “No,” she was saying, “it would be quite fatal to have him go abroad on his own at a time like this. He may pretend to be pleased that he’s leaving; but it’s been a shock to him; there may be a delayed reaction: he may feel he has to do something to justify his own opinion of himself. He might do something very silly. No, he must stay here through the summer: he can take Berlitz courses in modern languages, and he can take a series of lectures at London University. We can give a party or two for him, find him some suitable new friends; we must keep him under our eyes. What’s even more important we must not let him feel he’s in disgrace. He’s very sensitive, very ready to take offence. We’ve got to be watchful, without letting him suspect he’s being watched.”

  She spoke with a firmness, a resolution that could not be denied. And indeed she was making thorough sense. Her mother’s intuition might well be right. It might be better for Franklin to stay in London. There was something always a little, if not suspect, at least questionable about the Englishman who ‘went abroad’; the suspicion that he’d gone away to get over something or to wait till a thing ‘blew over’. They’d do their best to see that Franklin had a happy summer; he’d put him up for the Hampstead Cricket Club. “Don’t worry, Mother, we’ll give him a prodigal’s homecoming,” Guy assured her.

  The evening broke up early as it tended to do when there were no guests. His father began to feel drowsy by ten o’clock; his mother followed him upstairs. Guy sat before the fire, not reading; brooding. Friday again. The eve of another match. Two more Fridays would have to pass before he could ring up Renée. From outside came the sound of a car drawing up before the house. He looked at his watch. Not eleven yet. Early for Margery to be coming back.

  He half rose, on the point of going out into the hall to open the door for her; then changed his mind. Perhaps she wanted to be alone to say good night to whoever had brought her back. He waited, but there came no sound of a key turning in the lock. Perhaps he had been mistaken. Perhaps the car had been stopping at the house next door. He picked up the evening paper and began a second attempt upon the crossword. He had filled in a missing light, a second and then a third, before he heard simultaneously the click of a key and the buzz of a self-starter. He had been right. He looked up at the clock. Five-past eleven. The good night had taken eleven minutes.

  She came into the room swinging her hat, but with her short hair smoothly plastered back into her shingle. She looked tired and depressed and very young. She started at the sight of him. “What, you up still?”

  “It’s very early.”

  “Is it? Yes, I suppose it is.”

  Her voice was as tired as her appearance. She walked over to the sideboard where a siphon of soda stood beside a decanter of whisky. She put her hand on the decanter, then changed her mind and squirted herself out a tumblerful of soda. She drank it at a gulp.

  “I want your help,” he said.

  “In what?”

  “I’ve taken a flat. I want you to help me furnish it.”

  “So you’ve followed my advice and are taking Mürren seriously.” They laughed together. It was good to have a sister with whom you could talk in shorthand.

  5

  In three weeks’ time, she said: before eleven, after ten. His fingers felt weak as they lifted the receiver. Suppose she had changed her mind. He longed for the sound of her voice, yet dreaded it. Suppose it were casual and offhand.

  It wasn’t: it was slow and sleepy, a “Yes, who is it?” drawled like that morning whisper of three weeks ago: a tone that in a second lost its drowsiness. “Why, darling, and on my first morning too.” She might have been in the room beside him.

  “You’ve only just got back,” he said, “you can’t have got your diary filled yet. I can’t think of one good reason why you shouldn’t lunch with me.” She could not either. “Very well then, the Ritz Grill at one. But I may be late. I may be very late.” He could not believe that it was three weeks since he had heard that voice. An interrupted conversation had been resumed.

  His nerves were taut all the same, as he waited two and a half hours later in the green and white painted lounge. On the course of the next ninety minutes would depend quite possibly the outcome of his entire life. Was Renée happy in her marriage, or at least resigned to it? Would she be, if he was insistent, ready to break it up: had she scruples about divorce? Question after perplexing question. Though even as he rehearsed those questions there was, he knew, as far as he was himself concerned, only one valid answer. He wanted Renée: wanted her on any terms. He had to convince her of the truth of that: make her believe
that he was sincere, that those four days had not been just an episode’: convince her of that and then let Fate decide.

  So he argued with himself, as he sat there waiting. Then she came into the room, and he wondered what all the argument had been about.

  She was wearing a small tight-fitting hat with the brim lifted off her forehead.

  “I like that, I can see your eyes,” he said.

  “That’s why I put it on.”

  In her answer was the inference that she had taken his tastes and person under her special guardianship; that there was no need for him to worry; that she would plan things in accordance with his preferences. He had once again that feeling of being managed. How could he have ever let himself be fussed?

  It was cold in the street outside and she had come down the stairs huddled into a chinchilla coat. She slipped it from her shoulders. Beneath it a grey silk blouse was fastened at the collar by a flat aquamarine brooch; a loose bracelet dangled at her wrist, a bright gay thing.

  “I like that too,” he said.

  “Caledonian market. Half a crown. I like things to be very expensive or very cheap, just as I like food to be very simple or very rich. I can see,” she added, as she picked up the menu, “that this is going to be one of my rich days.”

  She ran her eye down the list of dishes with the thoughtful and unhurried care of one who knew exactly what she wanted.

  “I’ve exciting news: I’ve taken a flat,” he said.

  He had intended to keep that news until the end, but he had to lay all his cards upon the table. He described its furnishing; a black pile carpet with modernistic rugs, a sky-blue wall, white bookshelves elbow high, a divan making a study of the bedroom, the connecting doors removed and curtains in their place.