Gentlemen Formerly Dressed (24 page)

“I take it you don't particularly care for Mr. Waugh,” Edna whispered, as she folded back Rowland's cuff and secured the cufflink.

Rowland sighed. “He left Oxford about a year after I arrived, so I didn't know him all that well. He always seemed to be inebriated, which sadly was probably the most pleasant aspect of his character.” He dragged his hand through his hair, rendering useless the few moments he had spent with a comb. “But to be fair,” he admitted, “I abhorred Murcott once… Perhaps Waugh, too, has with the passing of time become more palatable.”

“Well, it's only one evening,” Edna said, fiddling with the sling so it didn't crush his collar unduly.

“Rowly have you seen…?” Clyde walked into the room with a tie in his hand. “Ed… there you are! Would you mind? I can't seem to get the wings even slightly even!”

Edna took the strip of cloth and within moments Clyde too was completely dressed. She surveyed her work. “You know,” she said with satisfaction, “there's nothing quite as pleasing as a man formally dressed. If I had my way, I wouldn't let you wear anything else.”

At that, Clyde responded quite bluntly and less than enthusiastically.

They walked down to take drinks in the drawing room while they waited for Ivy's eminent guest to arrive.

The writer came late and duly apologised, though gave no reason for his delay. He greeted Murcott exuberantly, throwing open his arms and calling him “Pixie”. Murcott introduced Rowland.

Physically, Waugh was as Rowland remembered him: intense, piercing eyes that seemed to glare at the world as a matter of course. His features were fine and the natural curve of his mouth could be mistaken for a sneer. Waugh was, as far as Rowland could tell, sober.

“Sinclair… Rowland Sinclair… Ivy tells me you are a Mertonian, but I cannot seem to recall your face.”

“Sinclair's the Australian chap who won my Mercedes at cards, Evelyn. After you'd left Oxford, but surely you heard about it.”

“Is that so? I believe someone may have mentioned it. Good show, Sinclair… your birthstain you have turned to good!”

Rowland's eyes flashed. “Indeed,” he said frostily.

Waugh smiled—a passing, perfunctory stretching of his lips. “I jest my good man! I suppose I should have learned from the inadvertent folly of Earl Beauchamp when he sought to praise your people, and met with the ire of a colony desperate to deny its dubious roots.”

The first of many awkward silences followed.

Ivy intervened hastily to introduce Rowland's companions.

Already Waugh looked a little bored. “How clever of you to surround yourself with like minds, Sinclair,” he said after the formalities had been seen to. “I can't imagine anything more pleasant than simple undemanding conversation at the end of the day.”

Rowland smiled tightly. “Really? And here I thought the imagination of a novelist would be extraordinary indeed.”

Waugh stopped and then laughed so softly that there was no actual sound.

In what may have been an attempt to diffuse the tension, Ivy suggested they go in to supper.

Waugh offered their hostess his arm and Murcott escorted Edna.

The dining hall had been readied for the most formal and elegant occasion. The seating arrangement was carefully drawn. The menu was extravagant, course after course of exquisitely constructed dishes, exotic salads, game meat and soufflés with generous garnishes of caviar and buttery sauces. There was a separate wine for each course, fruit and cognac to follow, and in a salute to their days at Oxford, cigars and snuff.

The conversation was mostly Waugh's. Recently converted to Catholicism, he delivered polemic after polemic on the failings of the world, the decadence of modern society and the bumblings of government. Murcott fought admirably to keep the evening from disintegrating.

Only Edna was unperturbed by the manner of the writer. She seemed to find Evelyn Waugh amusing, and for this he began to direct much of his conversation in her direction. Perhaps he believed that Edna alone amongst the colonial dullards understood and appreciated his wit. In truth, the sculptress simply found him ridiculous.

“Mr. Sinclair and his companions visited the recently bereaved Lady Pierrepont today.” Ivy opened a conversation. “You know, Evelyn… Euphemia Thistlewaite that was.”

“Oh yes, Euphemia. Homely and quite graceless, but not as dull-witted as those moronic brothers of hers. What were their names? Whole family was christened in line with some facile classical affectation, if I recall.”

“Theophrastus and Diogenes,” Ivy said with authority.

“Were you aware Euphemia married Alfred Dawe, the Viscount of Pierrepont?” Edna asked suddenly.

“A marriage of tedious convenience,” Waugh replied, nodding.

“I'm not sure I know what you mean, Mr. Waugh.”

“Pierrepont had a mildly worthwhile title, and yet he was, I am told, poor as a church mouse. He lost most of what capital he had financing Joss Hay on some scheme to grow tea in Kenya. Euphemia has no money in her own right, and very little charm, but her boorish brothers are wealthy enough. A sufficiency and deficiency that is both complementary and convenient, I would say.”

“These brothers of Lady Pierrepont's—Theophrastus and Diogenes,” Rowland asked, “are they in London?”

“Yes, I believe the younger one is a civil servant or something equally tawdry.” Waugh digressed then into a condemnation of the lack of any real intellect in Britain's civil service.

When he began on the scourge of Communism, Milton was the first to bite back.

Waugh was scathing in reply. “Communism, like homosexuality, is a phase tolerated in young men at university, as long as it goes no further. A harmless, perhaps necessary, passing experimentation on the way to adulthood. Even if you were a man of letters, Mr. Isaacs, which I doubt, you and I are too old to expect further forbearance in the face of such folly.”

For a moment it looked like Milton might ask the novelist to step outside.

“Come now, Evelyn,” Murcott said a little nervously, “You're quarrelling with the only man here who has read your books.” He kept talking, desperate to get through the moment without fisticuffs, enquiring after the other Hypocrites from whom it seemed he had not heard since the loss of his title.

After a heavy pause, Waugh recounted at length what he knew: who had married and become respectable, who had published and
who were living dissolute lives abroad in a flagrant disregard of the teachings of the Roman Church or any other.

“Hypocrite is bloody right,” Milton muttered for Rowland's hearing. Despite being a Catholic, Clyde did not seem inclined to disagree.

“Now, Sinclair,” Waugh began as the final course was served. “You must not suppose that I am one of those fools who assumes that simply because you hail from New South Wales that you would be acquainted with the Earl of Beauchamp. It's just that I remember that you boxed.”

“I thought you didn't recall my face,” Rowland said curtly.

“That's so. I don't recall your face… just that you boxed.”

“Yes, I did,” Rowland replied, wondering what this had to do with Earl Beauchamp who had been governor of New South Wales years before he was born.

“Perhaps in your amateur boxing career you were fortunate to come across another devotee of that brutish pastime by the name of Lygon… Hugh Lygon?”

“I remember Lygon,” Rowland said carefully. Hugh Lygon too had been a Hypocrite and had insisted on carrying a teddy bear about with him—some bizarre fad among the aesthetes. Rowland recalled having, not unreasonably, underestimated Lygon because of the stuffed toy which sat in his corner. Hugh Lygon had, however, turned out to be quite a formidable boxer, when he was sober.

“Well, as it happens, Hugh's the son of Earl Beauchamp, and has travelled to the Antipodes to be with his father in his exile.”

It was not necessary for Waugh to elaborate as to why Lygon's father was in exile. Beauchamp had been in Australia when the scandal broke and the revelations about the sodomite earl and his merry footmen were made public in a spectacular international fall from grace.

Waugh continued. “Earl Beauchamp has, it seems, become the Australian President of your national boxing association or some such endeavour, but I'd hoped you'd know that and have some friendly news of Hugh.”

“I haven't boxed since well before I left Oxford, I'm afraid, and we have all of us been abroad since April.”

Waugh sighed. “Pity. My thoughts turn to Hugh now that I'm no longer abroad.” He gazed in his intense, wide-eyed way at Rowland. “We're losing men like him, you know. Bit by bit the grubby ambition of the aspirant bourgeoisie is dismantling the great and worthy traditions that built the Empire.”

“Evelyn Waugh may be a renowned novelist, mate,” Milton said as he watched Edna help Rowland remove his cufflinks, “but he's also a pompous git.”

Rowland made no move to defend his old acquaintance. It would have been disingenuous to do so. Waugh practised a kind of intellectual thuggery that Rowland had always found more tiresome than amusing.

Edna placed the cufflinks into Rowland's hand and patted it fondly. Her brow arched mischievously. “So… you lived in the midst of all that for four years?”

“I wasn't in the midst of all that.” Rowland frowned. “As much as the Hypocrites like to believe that theirs was the only Oxford, that wasn't the case. While they were carrying on like insane delinquent children, the rest of us just got on with it!”

Edna giggled. “Oh, Rowly, you sound like Wilfred.”

Rowland stopped. He grimaced. “Good Lord, you're right.” He hadn't realised how much Waugh had gotten under his skin.

Milton laughed. “A week ago you might have hit him, mate.”

“That much is true,” Rowland conceded. Sleep had had a containing effect on his temper. Still, as much as it had disrupted the economic conference and brought him the enmity of the B.U.F., he wasn't sorry he'd hit Joyce.

“So… Waugh knocked about with old Beauchamp's son… it's a small world,” Milton mused.

“You know Beauchamp?” Rowland asked, surprised.

“Friend of a mate. He's not a bad bloke when you get used to him. Completely queer, of course, and obsessed with embroidery, but otherwise…”

“You didn't mention it at dinner.”

“Waugh asked you if you were acquainted with Beauchamp not me…” Milton grinned. “It would probably disturb Mr. Waugh to know that we of the proletariat have the odd connection… and in the case of Beauchamp, quite odd.”

“Where's Clyde?” Edna asked. “Is he still cross?”

Rowland winced. “Possibly.”

They had somewhat abandoned Clyde to a theological conversation with Waugh… or rather a theological lecture by Waugh. It was Milton who had carelessly revealed their friend's Catholicism. Waugh, having declared that he was most comfortable talking to adherents of the Roman Church, had decided to demonstrate the preference by engaging Clyde in a rather one-sided discussion about the nature of grace. Rowland and the others had tried to rescue Clyde at first to no avail. Rowland at least felt bad about it.

“Did you notice Mr. Waugh say that Joss Hay was involved in Lord Pierrepont's financial woes?” Edna asked.

Milton nodded. “It makes you wonder if the Earl of Erroll might also have had reason to do away with his old chum, Bunky. Running a man through with a sword does seem like a rather aristocratic way of despatching a problem.”

“We need a little more than dinner table conversation to make an accusation.” Rowland removed the sling and rubbed the back of his neck. It was surprising how heavy the cast seemed by the end of the day.

“Pierrepont must have an accountant or a solicitor… someone who manages his affairs,” Milton suggested.

“Wouldn't Allie know?” Edna asked. “Wasn't she his private secretary?”

“Yes she was,” Rowland said, realising the sculptress was right. “I'm not sure what exactly her duties were, but Allie could well hold the key to all this.”