Appleby at Allington (11 page)

‘A man isn’t well-bred just because he’s descended from some jumped-up fellow in the reign of Henry the Eighth.’

‘Oh, isn’t he? I didn’t know.’ Appleby, who had also got hold of a glass of champagne, made rather a rapid business of drinking it. ‘Then don’t you think,’ he said hopefully, ‘that Wilfred might like to be taken away now? Perhaps he doesn’t like any of these people very much. I’m pretty sure I don’t.’

‘I like Enzo. He’s extremely handsome.’

‘Judith, I do not propose to remain here simply in order that you may initiate an amour with a menial. It’s worse than that fellow Travis and his Miss Junkin.’

‘I’d like to do some studies of Enzo. I believe he’d make a lovely bronze. Do you think Mr Allington would lend him to me?’

‘He’d put the worst construction possible on anything of the sort. So would Enzo. Let’s clear out.’

‘We can’t possibly. Not for a quarter of an hour.’ Judith was firm. ‘You’ve been introduced to these people. You must get round at least half of them.’

‘Oh, very well.’ Appleby resigned himself to his fate. ‘You go clockwise and I’ll go anti-clockwise. When we meet, that’s it.’

‘That’s it.’

Appleby’s first attempt at communication was with Rasselas. The creature, after all, now bore a familiar face. But Rasselas appeared to disapprove of the party – unreasonably, since all the guests were persons of some consideration in the neighbourhood. And even towards Appleby, whom he had so recently met upon a more intimate occasion, he now maintained an air of marked reserve. Appleby passed on.

‘Sir John Appleby, I think?’

The question – which had been delivered into his left ear – made an extremely agreeable impression at once. This was because the voice uttering it had carried a quite mysteriously attractive quality. He turned, and saw that the voice’s owner was a dazzlingly pretty girl.

‘I’m Hope Allington, a niece of Owain’s. I arrived rather late. I think you’ve met my sisters and their husbands.’

‘How do you do. Yes, indeed. And their sons and daughters as well.’ Appleby realized as he spoke that Hope Allington was a great surprise to him. He must have formed a picture of her at the moment when her uncle had made his silly joke about Hope still hoping. She was at least fifteen years younger than either of her sisters. And all the hoping in her neighbourhood must surely be on the part of blindly adoring young men.

‘I approve of hospitality,’ Hope Allington was saying. ‘But I do find myself doing sums in my head. Here are all my uncle’s nicest friends – including now, I’m so glad to think, Lady Appleby and yourself. And you have all, ever so gallantly, rallied round the dear old Vicar and his jumble sale–’

‘I don’t think it has been
exactly
a jumble sale. As a technical term–’

‘I’m sure you’re right.’ Miss Allington raised her voice, and her glass at the same time. ‘So we all have champagne.’ Abruptly, she lowered it again. ‘What some of these people call champers. Don’t you think that’s awful?’

‘It seems to me scarcely outside the boundaries of permissible jocularity.’ Appleby marked, with inward gloom, the manner in which, nowadays, he turned out this elderly sort of wit. ‘But what are the sums?’

‘The cost of the champagne, as compared with the takings on the jellies and jams out there in the park.’

‘You forget Mr Scrape’s Bingo. That must bump up the takings. And I imagine that a great deal of pleasure is given by such an affair, even if not all that money is received. Mrs Junkin goes home all aglow from praise of her meringues. Mr Goodcoal feels that the very latest in electronic science has been lavished on us. Such imponderables, Miss Allington, must not be missed out of the account.’ Appleby smiled urbanely at the young person before him. She deserved to be called absolutely beautiful. Which didn’t mean that what he was himself thinking of wasn’t what Judith would have provided for dinner. No more, alas, he told himself, the heyday in the blood.

‘Can you tell me who the young man is, standing rather awkwardly in the corner?’ Hope gestured almost imperceptibly with her champagne glass. ‘I mean the one who doesn’t know what to do with his large feet.’

‘His name is Tristram Travis. He helped your uncle with the
son et lumière
.’

‘Yes, of course. How stupid of me. I have met him. But don’t you think he looks as if he had barged in?’

‘He has.’

‘Then I suppose I ought to go and talk to him kindly.’ Miss Allington seemed in no hurry to do this. ‘I think he comes from Oxford. They’re usually a bit awful, don’t you think?’

‘Perhaps you prefer the less sophisticated classes.’ Appleby gestured away the offer of a further glass of champagne. ‘Your uncle’s young man-servant, for instance. What do you think of him?’

‘Enzo? Isn’t he glorious? I adore him. And it’s not just his being handsome. I think he’s almost perfectly made.’

‘I see. May I ask, Miss Allington, whether you are a sculptor?’

‘Oh, no! I’m an actress – or trying to be.’

‘I ask because my wife is a sculptor, and appears to have formed the same impression as yourself.’

‘I see that Lady Appleby is quite surrounded, but I very much hope to meet her later.’ Hope Allington, although she talked absurdly and elicited deplorably absurd talk in reply, said this with rapid social competence. ‘And now – do you know? – I think I really will go and take compassion on that awkward youth. Bevis, did you say?’

‘Travis. Don’t be surprised, by the way, if he gets your name wrong too.’

‘My name?’

‘Mr Travis may call you Mavis, or even Muriel.’

‘I should regard that as entirely strange, Sir John.’

Miss Hope Allington turned away. She was very young, but she was well practised in holding her champagne glass close to her right shoulder while employing her left to make a way through the crush. For a moment Appleby looked after her thoughtfully. He wondered why on earth she and young Mr Travis should conduct a love affair – for that was surely it – amid such elaborate subterfuge. That Travis was already married was one prosaic and rather squalid possibility. But if he was, it certainly wasn’t to the granddaughter of Mrs Junkin.

Appleby continued on his anti-clockwise course.

And presently it struck him that he was looking for someone. He was looking for the nephew whose arrival the Reverend Mr Scrape had spoken of as almost a solemn event. Martin Allington, the heir of Allington – whom Appleby had last seen struggling for his life against a self-inflicted wound, and before a background of goodness-knew-what: espionage, treachery, blackmail, murder. Rather strangely, he wanted to see Martin Allington again.

This was in his mind when he ran into the Barfords, the parents of Sandra and Stephanie. George Barford was some sort of business man, and played golf. His wife Faith – so far as Appleby had been able to determine in a first conversational sally – just played golf. And just playing golf seemed to be the destiny of their daughters, whose schooling they now began to discuss strictly from this point of view. Did Appleby know of any suitably superior girls’ boarding-school at which golf was made the chief thing? Appleby didn’t. He had some vague information about comparative ratings in point of hockey, lacrosse, tennis. But he didn’t happen to know of a school where the girls played golf all day. The eyes of George and Faith Barford began to stray away from Appleby in search of potentially more interesting company. And Appleby had produced a final meaningless murmur preparatory to moving on when it occurred to him that the Barfords might have information about their kinsman.

‘Do you happen to know,’ he asked, ‘whether Martin Allington has arrived yet?’

Mr Barford’s response to this was surprising; it consisted of a kind of short, savage bark which for a moment caused Appleby to look round for Rasselas. But Rasselas, of course, could be relied upon not to make such noises in company. The topic of golf does not particularly lend itself to savage ejaculation, and so far Appleby had failed to remark that George Barford was a man of vehement nature. But this now clearly appeared. The mention of his wife’s brother (which was presumably what Martin Allington was) had produced what could only be called a ferocious response.

‘Martin isn’t here yet,’ Faith Barford said. She was looking at her husband rather apprehensively, much as if he were a golf-ball in a definitely difficult lie.

‘Broken his rotten neck, perhaps,’ Barford said. ‘And a damned good–’

‘George, dear, there are Colonel and Mrs Pride. I believe they have a daughter of just Sandra’s age. We positively must speak to them.’ And Mrs Barford led her explosive husband away. She didn’t appear by nature to be a woman apt for prompt action – unless, perhaps, in the way of choosing between one approach shot and another. But necessity had constrained her, presumably, to cope with moments like this.

Appleby moved on once more. If he had to talk to people, he would balance up on the Barfords by seeking out the Lethbridges, to whom he had already made a fleeting bow. He thought of it as balancing up presumably because there was a kind of equipollence between these two families. Faith Allington had married George Barford and presented him – during brief absences from the links – with the two daughters, Sandra and Stephanie, who had passed so instructive an afternoon at the bathing-place. Charity Allington had married Ivon Lethbridge, and for long they had been prominent names in the world of lawn tennis – so prominent in mixed doubles, indeed, that it would have been a natural expectation that their marital partnership should produce a girl and a boy. The result, in fact had been Eugene and Digby, identical twins now seemingly about fourteen years old, and at present refreshing themselves in a corner from a number of not quite empty champagne bottles. Sandra and Stephanie were observing this raffishness with awe. They had been shoved into clean frocks. They were certainly having a wonderful afternoon.

‘I expect your boys are keen on tennis?’ Appleby asked Ivon Lethbridge. He felt that he was beginning to pick up the right conversational tone with Owain Allington’s kinsfolk. It wouldn’t have been at all the right tone with Owain Allington himself. Perhaps this explained why it was Martin Allington who was to inherit the Park.

‘Keen as mustard, the idle little beggars. Can’t get them to stop. Can’t get them to open a book. School reports positively shocking. Get themselves tanned for negligent work about once a week. They don’t give a damn. Tough as they come, the graceless little brutes.’

‘Do you coach them yourself?’ It didn’t seem to Appleby that Lethbridge was exactly dispraising his children.

‘Good Lord, no. Have a fellow in for that. Caesar and the geography of South America just now. But they pay no attention to him. Laugh at him. I ought to tan them myself.’

‘I didn’t mean that. Do you coach them at their tennis?’

‘Heavens, yes, Carrie takes the one, and I take the other. Turn about. Six hours a day. It’s the only method, you know. And one thing at a time. These hols, it’s top-spin. Digby’s coming on. But Eugene’s going off.’

‘That must be very disturbing. Perhaps he should be tanned.’

‘No, no.’ Ivon Lethbridge rebutted this suggestion seriously. ‘It’s like dogs, you know. Tap ‘em on the nose with a rolled newspaper, but don’t lam into them.’

‘I see. But Eugene doesn’t seem to have much nose to be tapped. Nor Digby, for that matter, since they’re alike as two peas. But I’m glad it’s all done by kindness.’

‘Of course it is.’ Appleby was aware of a glance of something like dim suspicion from Lethbridge. ‘Latin and geography are one thing. You can whack ’em in with a stick, if you think it worth the effort. But tennis is an altogether more delicate affair. Here’s Carrie. Carrie, Sir John is keen to know how to teach kids tennis.’

‘Uphill work in our family.’ Charity Lethbridge was a large and ruddy woman with a loud and jolly laugh. She was producing this laugh now. To Appleby there came a distinct remembrance that her game had been based on an annihilating first serve, backed at need by ferocious forehand drives. And she certainly didn’t seem a woman who made any very subtle approach to things now. ‘Ghastly little bookworms,’ she said amid further laughter. ‘You can hardly drag them on the court.’

‘I’m very sorry to hear it.’ Lethbridge
père et mère
, it seemed to Appleby, held markedly divergent views on what constituted an excessive addiction to intellectual pursuits. But no dispute now ensued. As with many happy married couples, neither probably paid much attention to what the other said. ‘Eugene and Digby,’ Appleby went on, ‘must be very good companions for their cousins. Sandra and Stephanie also strike me as thoughtful children.’

‘That’s the egg-head strain in the Allingtons.’ Mrs Lethbridge made this announcement amid gusts of laughter, but nevertheless managed to convey that she was now touching upon a sort of hereditary family taint, like epilepsy, or haemophilia, or one of the larger lunacies. ‘They used to say that my uncle Owain was a scientific genius – although, of course, he did retire from it. And Martin was always brainy. Do you know my brother Martin? It was what made him so nasty, we always thought.’

‘Martin?’ It seemed that Ivon Lethbridge had just caught the name. ‘Hasn’t turned up. Inside, probably.’

‘But we
are
inside.’ Appleby produced this misunderstanding with the largest innocence. It seemed to be the Allington habit to speak disagreeably about other Allingtons to virtual strangers. Perhaps it was another inherited frailty, like the sporadic outcropping of brains. ‘You mean that Martin may be in another room?’

‘Quod. Jug. Clink.’ This time it was Ivon Lethbridge who laughed – as if there was something wonderfully funny in offering these colloquial terms for a place of incarceration. ‘These breath tests. They’re going to get chaps like Martin every time.’

‘Uncle Owain would have heard by now. Because of going to bail him out.’ Mrs Lethbridge positively roared with laughter this time. She seemed to have resented her husband’s emulating her in merriment. ‘Unless he’s calling himself John Smith or William Brown.’

‘You can’t get away with that nowadays.’ Ivon Lethbridge shook his head, and for a moment appeared to meditate a reminiscent and nostalgic note. ‘Not if there’s a car in the case.’ Lethbridge suddenly lowered his voice – or at least produced a token effect of this. And at the same time he winked at Appleby. ‘Better a fast woman than a fast car – eh, old boy? It’s the old-fashioned pleasures that never let you down.’