Guy Renton (2 page)

“There's a good deal, isn't there, in what she says?” he asked.

“There's quite a lot.”

“What chance would a marriage like ours stand?”

“Four to one against.”

“Then you would recommend a companionate marriage?”

“Not necessarily. By making a companionate marriage, you might be ruining that four in one chance of making it succeed.”

“Then you'd advise me to try and break down those arguments?”

“Now why should an old bachelor like myself be advising that?”

The young man laughed. “You may be an old bachelor, but you can't tell me that you've not been in love. If you could, you wouldn't be the sympathetic person that you are; you've been in love; you've probably wanted to marry someone, and though you haven't married, you've led the kind of life you've wanted. If youhadn't, you'd be embittered and disappointed. What I'd like to know is this; what you, out of the experience of your own life, feel.”

A smile played over the lips of the older man. Out of the experience of his life; out of the lives he had observed; his sisters', his brother's and his friends'; out of all that this room had seen over the last twenty years.

He rose to his feet; he walked over to the window, remembering all the hours he had stood here, waiting for a grey-green Chevrolet to swing into Cheval Place.

“Can't you put yourself back?” the boy was saying. “Can't you remember how you felt? Why it has all turned out the way it has; whether you regret or don't? Whether you'd have it the same way if you had it to live again.”

‘Can't you put yourself back?' He closed his eyes and behind their darkening lids, he saw across twenty and one years, the ornate gilt drawing-room of the Imperiale, at Mürren, and against its wall in a straight high-backed chair, a young fair-haired woman reading a red-backed novel.

Mürren: the Imperiale. February 1925.

It was after five and the tables were crowded with exhausted ski-ers, lolling back over their tea, gossiping in undertones; a
somnolent and languid hour, a pause between the exertions of the day and the evening gaieties that lay ahead.

Himself he was a little late. He was to take his second-class Slalom test next morning and had been practising telemarks on the nursery slopes. He stood in the doorway looking round him. A group waved to him to join them. But at the same moment a couple rose from a table at his side. He had a stack of letters in his hand; pointing at the vacated table, he indicated in dumb show that he wanted to be alone to read them. But that was not why he, a gregarious person, had chosen a table by himself. He had suddenly noticed a strikingly good-looking woman seated by herself, and he wanted a vantage point from which he could take stock of her.

It was the first time that he had seen her, and since she was in ordinary day clothes, he presumed that she had arrived that afternoon. She was wearing a plain white silk blouse, loose-sleeved and buttoning at the wrist, fitting high at the throat and held under a small black bow by an old-fashioned medallion brooch. Her face was a rounded oval, with high fresh colouring; she scarcely seemed ‘made up'; her hair close shingled and parted at the side was brought across her forehead in a sleek corn-coloured wave to terminate over her left ear in a pointed curl. The simplicity of it made her look very young, yet there were two rings on her engagement finger. She was reading with complete absorption. He tried, but failed to recognize the title. She read on, without looking up for twenty minutes, then closed the book and rose. She was taller than he had expected: tall enough, he guessed, to embarrass a medium-sized man when she was dancing, but she was slightly built, with long slim legs. He watched her edge her way between the tables. She seemed to float rather than to walk.

He turned back to his mail. He was captaining the Harlequins this year, and one of the letters was from the first team secretary.

‘We're playing against Rosslyn Park on Saturday. The Old Deer Park. Kick off 2.15. Have a good time till then. I can't wait to hear about your adventures. I'll be shocked if you've not had any. But I'm sure you will. There's no place like winter sports. I told you, didn't I, about that Belgian Countess at St. Moritz? Super-dick, old boy. No other word for it.'

It was the kind of letter he had come to expect from Jimmy Grant. Three years ago, on the eve of an important trial, Jimmy, a brilliant if erratic footballer, had scratched to attend a board meeting in Madrid. One of the selectors had expostulated. Surely the meeting could be postponed. Jimmy had smiled, the knowing crooked smile that had earned him the nickname ‘Valentino'. “It isn't only business, dear old boy!”

That finished his chances of being ‘capped'. But he was likely to be remembered for quite a while as the best wing ‘three' who never had been. His name figured constantly in gossip columns. Tall, dark-haired, willowy, sallow-skinned, with the look of a South American though his background was Wessex on both sides, he had the glamour of good looks, smart clothes, success, and real ability. One Saturday at Twickenham he would be making rings round a defence; the next ‘hopping a plane' to Paris, to return with an extravagant Charvet tie and the recital of a vivid exploit. Jimmy, within two minutes of seeing an attractive girl by herself, would have discovered from the hall porter who she was, how long she was staying and in what company. Whom was she with, Guy wondered?

She was not with anyone. At dinner she was still alone four tables off, in front of him, but at an angle. She had changed into a gold lamé jumper suit, with a pleated skirt. She had ordered a half bottle of red wine. She held the glass between her palms, leaning forward on her elbows across the table. She seemed apart from her surroundings yet wholly unaware of her apartness.

Guy was not the only one to notice her. He had been placed at the same table as Geoffrey Hansom, a one-time treble Blue at Oxford who now made his living out of games; as a golfer never playing at a spring meeting without interviewing the club secretary on behalf of a wine merchant or the pro's shop on behalf of a sports outfitter; as a cricketer touring the smaller public schools and recommending after the game the type of bat with which he had made a century against indifferent bowling, never paying a railway fare or hotel bill out of his own pocket. Commissions flowed to him from innumerable untaxed sources. At Mürren during the winter, he organized the patrons of the
Imperiale, entering them for tests and competitions. He, too, kept glancing at the new arrival.

“I wonder if she skates or skis. I must get in touch with her.”

Ordinarily after dinner, Guy went into the bar with Hansom and a group of hearties, making his single brandy last their three rounds of whiskies, then going upstairs to read. It was winter; he was in training, due to play football the day after his return; he had come out to ski, to pass his tests. He didn't want late nights. That was how it had been now for two weeks, but not to-night. “No,” he told Hansom as they left the table, “I'll join you later.” Dancing began at nine. He'd see the start of it.

The minute hand of the hall clock was pointing to eleven. The band were taking up their places. He looked into the main lounge and his heart bounded. She was sitting in the same high-backed chair, reading the same red-backed novel, as absorbed as she had been that afternoon; composed and separate and apart.

‘Now,' he thought, ‘before anyone can ask her.'

He crossed the room.

“The music's just beginning, I wonder if you'd care to dance.”

She did not start, but the sound of his voice clearly broke into a continuity of thought. Her eyes were a grey green blue. “Thank you,” she said. “I'd like to.” Her voice was contralto deep. Its depth surprised him, yet was in tune with, was appropriate to her height and carriage. Its accent, however, puzzled him. It was definitely transatlantic, yet it had a foreign burr. Was she Canadian-French?

He hesitated in the doorway.

“We'll be the first couple on the floor.”

“Need that bother us?”

Their steps fitted from the start. He danced well when he was in the mood. “I'm all right,” he'd say, “after I've had a couple, or at some place like Brett's after a rugger binge.” Which was another way of saying that he danced not for the sake of dancing but the person he was with. He danced well now, acutely conscious of her shoulder against his, of her body's sway, its strength and harmony and firmness; of the scent, faint but distinct, of tuberose.

“That was a dance,” he said.

“I liked it too.”

As they moved back into the lounge, Hansom hurried over.

“May I introduce myself? I'm Hansom. Geoffrey Hansom. Unofficial M.C. you know. As regards the sports, not the hotel, of course. Perhaps Mr. Renton's told you. No? I thought he might. I noticed that you'd just arrived. I wondered if there was anything I could do to help you.”

“That's very kind of you.”

“Have you ski-ed before?”

“A little.”

“Then probably you'd like to join our novice class. We could take you on the nursery slopes, try a simple run to get the feel of it, then after a day or two decide whether you are ready for your tests.”

She shook her head.

“I don't think I'll need to bother you with that; my husband will be joining me on Friday, I'll potter about till then. He's a keen skater. We'll probably spend most of our time on the ice.”

“Just as you like. But if you change your mind, I'll be only too glad to help. It's worth while taking these tests you know. You nave so much more fun. We've a lot of good runs that you can't go on till you have. We try and get everyone through at least the second class; trying to push old Guy through now. Having a tough job, too, but I think we'll manage it. Just manage it. Well, I must be off and if you do change your mind, remember . . .”

There was a puzzled but amused twinkle in her eye as she watched him bustle off.

“Now please will you tell me what all that meant,” she said.

He drew up a chair beside her. Mürren, he explained, wasn't like St. Moritz. People took ski-ing seriously. There were all manner of tests and competitions: runs were arranged for different standards: runs that you couldn't join till you had passed their standard.

“And you're taking your second class tests now?”

He nodded, he was a third of the way through. He had done a short run to-day; he'd be taking his turns to-morrow. On the following day, the Wednesday—his last day but one at Mürren—he'd be taking his final test, an endurance run.

“And is that good, to pass your second class?”

“So–so. I've not been at it long. I'm meaning to take it up seriously when I give up football.”

“I saw some people wearing ‘K's. Gold and silver ‘K's. Does that mean anything?”

“Yes, that's the Kandahar Club, very grand.”

“I see”.

There was still an amused twinkle in her eye, as though she found the whole thing slightly childish; a twinkle that made him feel that he was three years younger instead of being three or four years older than she was; a twinkle that somehow he did not resent.

“And your name's Renton?” she was going on.

“Yes. Guy Renton.” He said it on the pitch of voice, a proud yet selfconscious diffidence that is almost invariably adopted by people in the public eye, who have come to expect that the announcement of their identity will be received with a surprised inquisitive display of interest; a display for which they have ready whatever defensively modest reply experience has taught them to find the most effective.

No such display of interest came into her face. He was rather pleased. He had come recently to resent the fuss that strangers made of him, telling him how often they had watched him from the touchline. This was all very well now, he told himself, but his name wouldn't mean a thing to the equivalent of these people in ten years' time. Now, in his last year of football, he preferred to meet people on the basis of what in himself he was: of the self that he was going to be, from now on, for the remainder of his life. He was glad that his name rang no bell: that whatever effect he might be making on her, was independent of his reputation.

“And you?” he asked. “I don't know your name either.”

“Burton. Mrs. Roger Burton.”

“I seem to have heard that somewhere.”

“You might have done. Roger's quite well known, in his own way.”

She did not explain in what way that was. She spoke as though his reputation were something too well grounded, too accepted to be of concern to her. The music began. “It's a waltz,” she said.

“I don't waltz well.”

“Anyone who foxtrots as well as you, could be made to waltz.” The word ‘made' was underlined. Its undertone of domination pleased him, in the same way that her twinkle had. To a man like himself who was used to giving orders in his office and on the football field, there was something satisfying in being ‘managed' by this tall young woman.

“Let's try,” he said.

He put his hand high on her left shoulder, between her shoulder blades, as for a foxtrot. She shook her head. “No, round my waist.” He took a first step forward; planning to dance with short steps: but her feet did not follow his: she leant backwards from her waist, her arm stretched sideways; the sway of her body drawing his into a slow and gliding curve; a curve that lengthened and grew faster, that ebbed and swung and changed direction; now fast, now slow, a swaying undulating curve that made him feel that no one else on the floor was dancing the same dance. They did not speak. Her lips were parted and her eyes were gay. Strenuously though they danced, she was not even breathing quickly when the music stopped. She must be in good training, he told himself.

“I never knew a waltz could be like that,” he said.