Outbreak of Love (9 page)

Elsie Radcliffe's guests, unaware that they had just been presented with a full-length nude of Mrs Montaubyn, but enjoying its vigour and lyrical overtones, and feeling rather excited, applauded vigorously, and even Freddie said: “That's the stuff to give the troops, what?” The only unappreciative people were Mildy and Miss Bath, who was unable to distinguish music from the noise of a train. Mildy gave a few half-hearted claps, and then pursing her lips, said: “It made me think of horrible things.”

I had been in a sensuous dream. There had just been a Wagner opera season in Melbourne, and I had been so impregnated with the motifs of the
Niebelungenlied,
forest murmurs and golden apples, that I was conditioned to absorb Wolfie's music. In fact Wagner coloured my whole life at this period. I knew that the family would laugh at Lady Pringle's high faluting imagery and was prepared to join in, but I thought it exactly right. Mildy's squalid comment angered me, and in the crush at the door I managed to be squeezed away from her, and to rejoin the twins.

“Did you enjoy your afternoon in the orchard?” asked Anthea.

“Yes, I did,” I said, blushing.

“I saw you close your eyes.”

“So did other people. Miss Rockingham did.”

“Are you modelling yourself on Miss Rockingham?”

They found this idea very amusing, and from then on they chaffed me about my supposed admiration for her.

As we went through the dining-room to the marquee beyond, where supper tables were laid, each one for four, Freddie Thorpe joined us and we sat together. John Wyckham came up with Josie.

“May we sit with you?” he asked.

“There isn't room for six,” said Cynthia. She turned to me. “You give your chair to Captain Wyckham and take your cousin to another table.” Josie and I were exactly the same relation to her, but Cynthia could repudiate her as she had a different surname. I was bewildered, as I had not yet realized that these intermittent slaps in the face were an unavoidable ingredient of the twins' friendship. I rose to go but John with a gesture I did not expect from an aide-de-camp, put his hand on my shoulder and pressed me back on to my chair. I did not know that the almost caress he gave me was because he had just learnt that I was Josie's cousin, and was a transference of his impulse to protect her from Cynthia's insolence. He led her away to another table.

Cynthia looked disdainful. “Mr von Flugel has talent,” she said, “but not genius.” This was clever, but quite untrue, as Wolfie had genius but not talent. Everything he did was inspired. He drew his music out of the air, or from the ecstasy of his love, and so like that of all geniuses, his work was uneven, as he had not the steady intellectual ability of talent, which can produce competent work at any moment. “That kind of music,” she said, “plays on emotions we already have.”

Freddie made what was probably the only intellectual criticism of his life. “How can music play on emotions we haven't got?” he asked.

“Anyhow, isn't music meant to play on emotions?” I said. “Otherwise it would just be a sort of mathematics.”

“Perhaps mathematics are higher than art,” said Cynthia with sterile wistfulness, betrayed by her innate puritanism into repudiating any pleasurable stimulus, though she had long denied the God for whom this sacrifice was intended.

The voice of a jolly girl called Clara Bumpus rang out in a lull in the babel: “Orchard? It sounded to me like a house on fire.”

Freddie Thorpe turned to look at her. Anthea might have the accent, but Clara had more the attitude of the girls whom he met at hunt balls in Yorkshire.

Three things of some importance had happened in the last few minutes. Anthea had been misled as to the quality of Freddie's mind, Freddie's attention had been drawn to Clara, and John was simmering with passionate chivalry as a result of Cynthia's attitude to Josie. He found a small table for two in a narrow space behind the dining-room door.

“Is that young man your cousin?” he asked.

“Yes. He's my mother's nephew. That's his father over there, sitting by Lady Wendale.”

“But I thought he was the twins' cousin.”

“So he is. We're all cousins.”

“But they said to him ‘your cousin' meaning you.”

“Well, you see, they only like people who are very clever.”

“But your father's very clever, and your mother looks very clever too—at least she looks much more than just clever. She's lovely. She knocks spots off anyone here.”

“Yes, but we don't know about Molière and that sort of thing.”

“The twins like Freddie, and I'll bet he's never heard there was such a person.”

“But he's an aide-de-camp.”

“What's that got to do with it?”

“Oh, they love aides-de-camp.”

“And do you love aides-de-camp?”

“I only know you.” She immediately looked confused and they both laughed. They went on eating asparagus and snipe behind the door and enjoyed themselves very much.

Diana was sitting at a table with Jack Radcliffe, Miss Rockingham and Russell Lockwood. Miss Rockingham said that it was remarkable how completely European civilization had been transplanted to Australia. They all assumed that this was desirable, except Jack Radcliffe, who said that Australia should create its own civilization and that it was impossible to reproduce English village life, with its close cottages, its church, its inn and manor house, round a sheep station.

“But we aren't aborigines,” said Russell. “We're European, and we have to import the culture of our race.”

Jack appeared to think that by culture Russell meant the aestheticism of a small clique.

“I mean something much wider than that,” Russell explained, “I mean the spirit that moves a whole people at a given period—Gothic in the Middle Ages, Classical in the eighteenth century, so that the entrances to the palaces or the cottages all had some form of pilaster and pediment.”

“We haven't the time for that here,” said Jack. “I can't put pediments on the shearing sheds.” He affected the manner of the bluff farmer, but he had been to an English university, and he went on: “We haven't the same responsibilities as English landowners. Our social pattern won't produce culture. It has to spring from the soil.”

“That's exactly what I mean,” said Russell. “All great literature has the imagery of agriculture—like those verses Lady Pringle read.”

“Then Australian literature will have to have the imagery of the sheep station,” said Jack, trying to dismiss the subject, as he thought it must be boring to Diana and Miss Rockingham, who, however, were very interested.

“Why have you no responsibilities?” asked Miss Rockingham. “You are the aristocracy of your country.”

“Yes, but without responsibility. That's why we spend all our time at parties and the races. Our social pattern won't produce a functioning aristocracy any more than a culture—and you can't have one without the other.”

He did not entirely believe all that he said, but he did not like Russell, or did not approve of him, because he spent money made in Australia amusing himself in Europe, and because he assumed that European life was so obviously superior.

The conversation at their table and that of Cynthia suggests that everybody at this party was concerned with improving the intellectual outlook of Australians, but the steady hum of voices which filled the marquee and the dining-room was composed of discussions of the dance last night, the winners at Caulfield that afternoon, the ball on Friday, what Sophie had said to Baba, the possible winners at Flemington on Saturday,
sotto voce
declarations of love and requests for more wine.

Towards the end of supper John and Josie came up to Elsie at the next table, and Josie said: “Please could we dance?”

“There's no music, darling,” said Elsie.

“Daddy will play for us, won't you?” she asked Wolfie, who was at Elsie's table.

Diana heard. She turned round and said: “You mustn't ask Aunt Elsie”—as her children called Mrs Radcliffe— “to stay up all night.”

But Miss Rockingham, whose graceful movements were only perfectly revealed when she danced, said with the deep and gracious intonation of a royal command: “I'm sure Mrs Radcliffe will put up with us for a little longer. She has given us such a delightful party that she can't blame us if we don't want it to end.”

Elsie, Miss Rockingham and the Wendales went back to the ballroom. John and Josie followed them, stopping at our table to say we were going to dance. There was an exodus from the supper rooms, and as it was thought that the Government House party had left, the older people began to say good-bye. Mildy caught me in the hall.

“We're going now,” she said. “Have you said good-bye to the Radcliffes?”

“He can't go yet,” said Anthea, “we want him to dance.”

“The car is waiting,” said Mildy in a weakly resentful voice. “I told him half-past eleven.”

“Let him wait,” said Anthea. “He's not a horse.” This was a reference to the fact that all through the childhood of our generation we were hurried away from parties because “the horses must not be kept waiting”. Anthea also thought it an amusing display of indifference to the convenience of “the lower orders”, implying that they were of less consequence than animals. “If you like,” she added as she turned away, “we'll bring the curate home.”

“That is a rude girl,” said Miss Bath, in her thick deliberate voice.

“I'm awfully sorry, Aunt Mildy,” I said, “but I
can't
miss the dance.”

Mildy, who had been disappointed of her every hope of the evening, that she and I would be laughing together, rather apart from everyone else, with a slight air of conspiracy about us, as if it all had an amusing side which no one else could see, was speechless. I took advantage of the dumbness of her grief to escape, with a hurried good night to Miss Bath, who doubtless said: “That is a rude young man.” I escaped but I felt guilty, with a brief twinge of sadness when I heard from outside Mrs Radcliffe's chauffeur shouting into the gloom, where horses stamped and cars glistened behind their dim lights: “Miss Mildred Langton's car.”

Diana and Russell lingered on at the supper table, to condemn Jack's attitude in language more forcible than they could use to his face.

“He's just being perverse,” said Diana. “He talked like that because he didn't want to appear pretentious before Miss Rockingham.”

“We
are
Europeans,” said Russell.

“Of course we are. According to Jack we can't produce any culture, and we mustn't import it. Australia's just to be squatters going to the races.” Although at that time the squatters were respected for their wealth, they were regarded by many people much as Oscar Wilde regarded the fox-hunting squires, though their sheep were at least not uneatable.

“Do you think that the life here must appear provincial to people like, say, Miss Rockingham?” asked Russell.

“You ought to know that better than I do.”

“It's odd, but since I've returned here, I've already begun to accept Australian standards, and I can't really judge it objectively. Probably what we think important in our childhood must always remain so. But I don't see why Australians should be too modest. I mean Australians of our sort—the others aren't at all modest. I suppose that we're rather like Russia at the time of Peter the Great. At a court ball you'd find people in the most exquisite French clothes mixed up with barbaric nobles in their native dress.”

“I wouldn't mind if the squatters were barbaric nobles,” said Diana. “They wouldn't be dull. D'you think this party's like a Peter-the-Great ball? Are there many barbarians?”

“Not at all, except that young aide-de-camp, and he's English.”

“What, the one who was with Josie?”

“Oh no. He looks delightful. I mean the other one. I think he's called Thorpe.”

“You're not disappointed in Australia, then?”

“Not at all. It would be absurd to say so here. This party's beautifully done, interesting and amusing and with a kind of friendly feeling.”

“Elsie's parties are always fun. You think you'll stay in Australia? I hope you do.”

When she said this he gave her a grateful glance from his sensitive eyes. His perfect manners were a gilded cage in which he kept the fluttering bird of his emotions. They were not a cold-blooded Chesterfieldian cult, not the animal training which had produced Freddie Thorpe. This feeling of emotion restrained within perfect manners made him attractive to women. The trouble was that when he opened the door of the cage, the bird, confined for so long, was unable to spread its wings.

“If you want me to, I expect I will,” he said. “Wherever one lives outside Rome, one is in a province, and this is as nice a province as any.”

“How d'you mean?” asked Diana.

They were the last people in the room, and the waiters began rattling plates at other tables as a hint for them to go.

“If I begin to tell you now, these men will probably go on strike,” he said.

“Yes, I suppose we ought to join the others,” said Diana.

In the little gallery she stopped him, and said with a hint of accusation which their advance in intimacy justified:

“You didn't call.”

For a moment he was taken aback. “I'm the new arrival,” he said. “I thought that your husband would call on me first.”

Diana smiled. “You've seen Wolfie. Can you imagine him paying formal calls?”

“Perhaps I was optimistic.”

“Well, will you call? It's not like this you know.” She waved her hand at the arcaded corridor, with its niches and marble urns filled with spring flowers.

“I should like to, very much.”

“No, wait,” she said. “Perhaps it would be better if we met somewhere else. I'm sure that you are full of ideas that I want to hear, and I want to talk about the places we both knew in Europe. If Wolfie's there we talk of nothing but music. Couldn't we have tea again in that place? Or is that an awful suggestion?”