Guy Renton (12 page)

That evening a play was being broadcast.
The White Chateau,
His parents sat with earphones clamped over their heads while he and Margery read. There was a lot to be said for the wireless, Guy thought. It saved one from the effort of making conversation. Each one could follow a personal preference. He had heard there was a new kind of wireless, a portable contrivance that didn't require an aerial or earphones; you just turned a knob; a kind of gramophone. He didn't like the idea of that. If one member of a family wanted to listen in, the rest had got to; or else the one person felt aggrieved. Everyone having to do the same tiling at the same time. No, he wouldn't care for that. As soon as the play was over, his father went up to bed. His mother followed a few minutes later.

As the door closed behind her, Margery laid down her book. “Have you read this?” she asked. ‘This' was
Lord Raingo,
the new Arnold Bennett. He shook his head. “The chief character's very nearly sixty. He seduces a girl in the early twenties, and takes a flat for her. She's quite in love with him. I may do something like that one day. Marry, I mean, someone old enough to be my father.”

“That's an odd thing to say.”

“Or else marry someone common.”

“That sounds even odder.”

“Does it? Think a little. Who else is there for me to marry? I'm twenty-one. I ought to be marrying someone of your age, or a little younger. Your generation was in the war. Do you remember telling me the other day that half of your contemporaries are dead?”

“Yes, I remember.”

“That happened in every school in England. Don't you see how that limits the choice for me. My best bet might be someone in the generation that was too old to fight; a widower or someone who's tired of his wife. A man of fifty need not be too old. Men stay younger nowadays.”

“Why someone common?”

“There are more of them. There's a bigger choice. The deficiency is more spread over. It's in our class, the upper-middle and middle-middle classes that you find shrivelled spinsters. Besides, the men I seem to meet, the unmarried ones—and
I don't want to get mixed up with a married man—and nearly all the attractive men are married—the unmarried ones I meet, perhaps because they are unmarried, are so self-conscious about sex. I couldn't feel natural, I couldn't let myself go with them.”

He laughed.

“That reminds me of something Mürren said the other day.” They still called Renée that. He had never told Margery who she was.

“Tell me what Mürren said.”

“That Englishmen and Englishwomen had lived on the same island so long, breathing the same air, that they'd lost their sense of strangeness for one another; that they'd become like brothers and sisters; that strangeness was an essential ingredient in love; she said that we're only half-alive with one another.”

“Isn't that rather what I was saying, that one needs strangeness, to move out of one's class or age group.”

“Or out of one's country.”

“It's still going well then between you and Mürren?”

“Every time we meet I seem to be seeing her all over again for the first time. It's going deeper and none of the excitement's gone.”

“Oh darling, I'm so happy for you.”

When he left that night, she flung her arms tight about his neck, pressing her cheek to his.

“I don't know what I'd do without you. You're the one person in the world to whom I can say anything. Please stay that way.”

It was close on midnight when he got back to Knightsbridge. As he turned the key in the lock, the telephone was ringing. He pounced upon it eagerly. Only one person would ring as late as this. As he lifted the receiver, he heard a happy laugh. “What a relief, I was just going to ring off.”

“I've only got in this minute.”

“You sound out of breath.”

“I've run upstairs. I heard the bell ringing from the hall.”

“That shouldn't make you out of breath. You'll have to watch yourself now you've stopped playing football.”

“I was telling my mother that to-night. I'll have to give up potatoes.”

“And bread.”

“And beer and butter. How's your party going?”

“So-so, they're playing bridge. There's a rubber that won't finish. That's how I managed to slip away. I'm dummy. I must rush back now.”

“I'm seeing you to-morrow, aren't I?”

“I hope you are.”

“Isn't it one of those dinners of Roger's that go on very late?”

“Till midnight. Then they'll go on to one or other of their clubs.”

“That means we could dine out?”

“I'd rather picnic.”

“Off what?”

“What's on the menu?”

“Anything you say.”

“Anything; you mean really anything?”

“In all ways anything.”

“Darling, that makes me feel so headstrong; but I'll be generous; just caviare, and something from Fortnum's you can put in an oven. No, that's a nuisance, we would have to watch it. Let's have grouse instead: cold grouse and caviare; now, precious, I must rush.”

A warm glow was about his heart as he undressed. To-morrow he'd be seeing her again; after a whole week's interval. He drew a long slow breath into his lungs. How lucky he was; how lovely she made life for him.

Six weeks later Pilcher was in Guy's room again, his features presenting the same guarded mixture of nervousness and aggression.

“I thought you'd like to see this, Mr. Guy.”

The letter was addressed from New College. ‘Gentlemen, I enclose on account a cheque for £25. Will you please fill the
following order for me, as soon as possible.' There followed on two separate sheets a list of wines and spirits. Franklin requested that each order should be addressed to him, at a different residence: the addresses of the two clubs, presumably. It would total roughly a hundred pounds. Guy looked from the letter to the lists, pulled a telegraph form across his desk, began to write a message, then changed his mind and tore it up.

“You can fill the order. I'll write to him about it.”

The moment the door closed, he was on his feet. A split order for a hundred pounds, one for each club; it meant that each club had more or less consumed its stocks; nearly £75 of wine had been drunk by the new club; and the old one had finished its first supply. Well over £100: and in spite of the old bills outstanding, only £25 had been paid in. Franklin had not learnt his lesson. This could not go on. Angrily he strode back and forth. He'd have to tell his father. He wouldn't see him now: he was in too bad a temper: he might say something he'd regret; he'd sleep on it, then see his father in the morning, when his blood was cool.

But in the morning it wasn't any cooler. He woke half an hour earlier than usual with a presentiment that there was something wrong. Then he remembered. Franklin again. His mind was racing. He'd never be able to go off to sleep again. He switched on the light; picked up a book, but failed to concentrate. Damn Franklin. He might as well get up; breakfast in his sitting-room; answer his letters there, instead of at the office.

It was a cold, chill morning. He shivered as he began his exercises. The telephone bell rang. Renée, he supposed. That was one of their chief problems, his never being able to call her; her having to call him whenever she had a chance.

Yes, it was Renée. “Something very tiresome,” she said. “It cropped up very late last night: too late for me to have a chance to call you. Roger has to go to Paris for three days. He wants to take me with him. I'm afraid that interferes with all our pleasant plans.”

It was not the first time this kind of thing had happened, it was bound to in a relationship like theirs. It could not have come at a worse moment. Shivering beside the telephone with Franklin's problem fretting him, he felt he could survive the day only by seeing Renée.

“Isn't there any chance of your being able to lunch with me?” he asked.

“It wouldn't be very easy.”

“If you could possibly manage it, there's something I particularly want to talk to you about.”

There was a pause. “It would have to be a very hurried lunch.”

“Anytime you say, and anywhere.”

There was another pause. “Quarter to two, at your place. Just a sandwich.”

He was back at the flat by half-past one. A fire had been burning now since noon and the room was warm. Beside a plate of chicken sandwiches a bottle of moselle was cooling. But he was no more composed than he had been six hours earlier when the telephone had rung. A call at his bank had convinced him that he was in no position to defray his brother's extravagances without considerable inconvenience. Then Rex had rung. When could Guy lunch with him? The last thing he wanted was to have lunch with Rex. He never felt at ease with him these days. At one time Rex had been his hero. As a fag at Fernhurst, he remembered Rex coming down for commem. and making a century for the Old Fernhurstians. How proud he had been to serve under him in France. Rex had been the ideal colonel, brave, efficient in the field, human in the mess, but without loss of dignity. But now their roles in relation to each other were reversed. It was his turn to be in the strong position, active, in the swim of things, while Rex was a nonentity. England was well-stocked with medalled and retired colonels who took golf seriously. Yet because he had once been Rex's subaltern, Guy found it impossible to adjust himself to this new relationship. Rex wouldn't have called unless he had wanted something. And he would find it difficult to refuse. But there was no avoiding the invitation; he chose the following Monday.

Then his father had wanted to discuss a point that had arisen in connection with the increased duties upon spirits. A ticklish point: it could scarcely have been a more exacting morning. He'd been a fool to insist on Renée's seeing him: he'd be in no mood for her. She'd be worrying about her packing, about last minute purchases for Paris. Why should he bother her at such a time
with problems of an undergraduate she'd never met? Everything would work out wrong. How often had they not agreed that it took time for two people to find their ways back to one another. How often had they not met, after only a few hours absence, to find themselves on different wave lengths. Each had a separate aura that had to be dissolved before they could get in touch. They would sit together, sipping a cocktail, playing a new record, waiting for the aura to dissolve. It was only a question of time. But you had to have that time. Which was what they would not have to-day. They'd be awkward with one another. Franklin's story would seem pointless. She'd be thinking about getting away to Paris. He'd been a fool to insist upon her coming.

She stood in the centre of the room, pulled off her hat, tossed it on to the table, shook out her hair; she lifted the cover from the sandwiches, took one up, bit a mouthful: “This is very good,” then turned and looked at him.

“Paris is horribly far away,” she said.

“Three days can be a long, long time,” he answered.

There were times when it took two hours, sometimes half an evening, before they could find their ways back to one another, before they felt close enough for him even to take her hand. There were others when they picked up the threads of their last meeting as though they had not been apart five minutes.

He stepped beside her, placing his hands on her sides, above her waist: drawing her towards him. With the sandwich still between her fingers she coiled her arms about his neck, lifting herself upon her toes. Never had he felt more utterly at one with her.

Twenty minutes later, wrapped in a Liberty silk dressing-gown, she sat curled up among his cushions munching her abandoned sandwich.

“Well, what's this problem that you had for me?”

“It's solved itself.”

“Oh, was it to do with us?”

He shook his head. “Nothing at all, but for this last ten minutes I've been feeling that anyone with the fabulous good fortune to have in his life anything as miraculous as yourself owes it to the world, to life in general, to be that much more generous.”

“That's about the nicest thing you've ever said to me,” she said. She paused. “All the same,” she added, “I think you'd better tell me what it was.”

She listened, thoughtfully. The issue seemed very simple now: it was told in a few words. She nodded as he finished. “What do you plan to do?”

“Set that twenty-five pounds deposit against his existing debt; settle the balance myself; then write an official letter to the clubs as from the firm, explaining that we must deal with them as a club, not as an individual. That'll save Franklin's face.”

“That sounds very sensible. I'd rather like to see your brother one day.”

“Why shouldn't you?”

“Couldn't you have a small party here and ask me? It's something I've been thinking about for quite a while. I'd like to see all your family, Lucy and Rex and Margery and Barbara. I'd know so much more about you if I could; I could share more with you, if you could talk about them openly to me. There's so much we can't share; we ought to try and share all we can. You must ask Roger too: that's the good thing about all this, we haven't got to be secretive.”

“He's never suspected anything?”

“Why should he? The kind of woman that he thinks I am could never do anything to arouse suspicion. He's never seen the woman that I am with you.”

“Might he become jealous?”

“By nature he's extremely jealous, but I don't think he'd be like that with me: not anyhow in that respect.” She paused, reverting to her plan. “The more I know about what you're doing when I'm not with you... that's the difference between us after all: you know what I'm doing every minute of the day, I don't know what you are.”

“You can't surely imagine that anyone who's got you would be bothering about other women?”