Guy Renton (25 page)

Was Franklin claiming now that he had never known that spirit? Was this the moment where he read his young brother a solemn lecture?

No, he thought. His role wasn't the heavy brother's. Besides he was curious to know what was at the back of Franklin's mind. “What do you mean, the structure had begun to topple?”

“I can use my eyes. Duty to country for example. That means very largely duty to the crown. Think of how many kings there were in Europe in 1914. How many are there left to-day, and of those that are left how many are upon stable thrones?”

“I'd say that ours was, wouldn't you?”

“Yes, because he's a figurehead. What'll happen when we get a king who's not a figurehead; do you think the Prince of Wales will be content to be one? And what about the Empire? ‘Dominion over palm and pine.' Half our colonies have become self-governing dominions; and India, how long do you think a King of England's going to be able to put R.I. after his name?”

“Have you heard the Empire compared to a banyan tree whose branches put down their own roots and take on separate existence?”

“And haven't you heard of the great trees whose strength are sapped by creepers? My lot can't believe in the Empire, in the way that yours did. And as for all those minor faiths, family and business: what do we see everywhere but big estates sold to meet death duties, families broken by divorce; fortunes cut into shreds by devalued currencies?”

“That's quite a speech, but things are still holding together here.”

“We've managed to survive one war. Shall we survive the next?”

“What makes you so certain that there'll be another?”

“The logic of history. That spiral of alternating slumps and booms that Rex keeps jabbering about. There's a slump starting now: that means unemployment, a restless proletariat; and governments that are uncertain of themselves start wars to keep themselves in power. Look at the revenge clauses in the Versailles Treaty. What was it they called it at the time—‘the Peace
that will end Peace'. What do you think will have happened to private property and our investments—even Duke and Renton—by the time the next war's finished?”

“I think that whatever happens on the Stock Exchange, Englishmen will want to drink vintage port and that if anything in the world is a gilt-edged security, the contents of our cellars are.”

They laughed at that: a laugh that broke an atmosphere that had looked likely to grow tense.

“Don't think I'm worrying over all this,” said Franklin. “I'm looking forward to the collapse. It'll be amusing to see how all those smug people behave when their investments slide. That pompous brother-in-law of ours for instance, who seems to think that he's performing a duty to the nation by indulging a personal taste for blood sports. How is he by the way? Thank heavens he wasn't dragged into the family consultations.”

“We had that amount of sense.”

The conversation moved on to a family plane. It was cosy talk. Afterwards when he looked back over the evening, Guy reflected that this was the first time that Franklin had displayed the least need to justify himself, to argue in his own defence. Perhaps he did feel that this time he had gone too far. Perhaps he would try to make a success of his work in Portugal. Surely he'd enjoy the satisfaction of having the last laugh.

That was in 1930, a year that meant in retrospect to many thousand Englishmen—and certainly to Guy Renton—not so much the gradual economic depression that was descending upon the country but the spate of runs that were lashed against the white pavilion railings of Lord's and Leeds by a young Australian called Don Bradman.

Guy was taking his two nephews to the Oval Test, but on the evening before Lucy rang through to tell him that George had
German measles. It was late to find a substitute. Most of his friends were members and would be sitting in the pavilion. Moreover if he went with an adult, Digby would be left out of the conversation. He had planned it as a schoolboy expedition. He would prefer to keep it that way. He rehearsed the names of his married friends who had sons of about Digby's age. One after another their names passed in review. He put through two calls, each without success. It was only as an afterthought that he remembered Renée's Eric. How silly of him; it should have been his first thought: Renée was delighted at the invitation. “That's wonderful. He'll adore it. He's longing to see Bradman.”

Eric did not see Don Bradman, at least not batting, England winning the toss on a plumb Oval wicket; but even so it was a halcyon day for a nine-year-old schoolboy watching his first Test match. The sun shone: the ground was packed; it was Hobbs' last match. He had announced earlier in the season his retirement from Test Match cricket.

“This is an occasion to remember,” Guy told the boys. “In fifty years' time you'll be able to say that you saw Hobbs come out of the pavilion at the Oval to open his last Test Match.”

Everyone on the ground—probably even the Australians—were hoping he would get a century. The two schoolboys were in a tremor of excitement. “Bet you if he gets ten he'll get it. Don't you think he will, Uncle Guy?”

“It's very likely.”

Their excitement mounted as the score went up. “Ten, twenty, thirty—he's bound to get it, surely he's bound to get it now.”

“How often, Uncle Guy, would you think he's got as many as this and not made his hundred?”

“Quite often, I'm afraid.”

“But not when the wicket was as good as this. Not when he really wants to. Look there goes his forty. Oh, he must get it now.”

Guy found his own excitement mounting to match theirs and when the great man with his score three runs short of the half-century turned a ball tamely into the shortleg's hands, his own gasp of dismay and disappointment was as profound as theirs. “Never mind,” he said, trying to console himself as much as them, “there's plenty more to come.”

There was: Sutcliffe passed his century, Duleepsingh made a fifty as only he could make it, in as many minutes. England batted right through the day. The sun shone steadily: nothing was left in the lunch basket which had been filled with enough cakes, fruit, sandwiches, pork pies to satisfy half a dozen adults. It was a highly garrulous small boy that Guy returned at the end of the day to Albion Street.

Eric described the whole day, stand by stand. “And do you know who we saw as we were leaving? A. P. F. Chapman; and do you know what, Uncle Guy introduced me! I shook his hand. Won't that make the chaps at school sit up. Look, I've got his autograph.”

He displayed the grubby match card with the name scrawled across it. Roger looked at it cursorily.

“The worst of having been a wetbob is that even now I can't tell one cricketer from another nor what the difference is between square leg and cover point.”

“But surely, Daddy, you've heard of A. P. F. Chapman.”

“Now I do fancy that I've heard of him.”

“And, Daddy, do you know what else, Uncle Guy's promised that as soon as I'm twelve-and-a-half he'll take me to Lord's at Easter for the cricket classes. Won't that be whacko.”

Renée listened, with a fond, slightly amused smile, as though it were highly ridiculous, but rather endearing of her menfolk to become so worked up over such a boring game.

“You've given him a marvellous day,” she said, as she stood on the doorstep, wishing him good-bye.

“On the contrary, he's given me one. He was so enthusiastic, I couldn't help getting excited about it all myself.”

“That's one of the things about going out with children: they make one enjoy everything so much more.”

She looked at him steadily, as though she were asking herself a question. He thought she had something on her mind, but she did not say it.

“I hope you'll let me take Eric out again. He and Digby got on very well together. We might do a pantomime at Christmas.”

“I think that would be very nice. Yes, I'm sure Eric would love that.”

She said it thoughtfully. Once again he had the impression
that she had something in the back of her mind that she was hesitating whether to say or not; and finally deciding not to.

That day at the Oval was for Guy the chief landmark in the long and sunny summer of 1930. It was a placid period. A Labour government was in Westminster, but no creak of the approaching tumbrils could be heard through the quiet streets of Mayfair. The Flamingo went into bankruptcy, the indebtedness of Frisby and Dunkin was written off as a bad debt, with the Rentons' offer to settle it out of their own pockets being declined by the board with gratitude as an unnecessary gesture in view of the fifteen per cent interim dividend with which the shareholders' confidence was shortly to be confirmed.

As far as could be gathered the police had shown no further interest in the activities of Frisby and Dunkin. Certainly no inquiries reached Soho Square. Guy wondered whether they need have been so precipitate in having Franklin moved; he might just as well have stayed on in London, and married Pamela in the autumn. But if they had not been cautious, probably the worst would have happened.

The weeks went by; Margery went for a fortnight to St. Jean de Luz. She left in such high spirits and returned looking so well that he presumed that she had not gone unaccompanied. Cheerful letters arrived from Franklin. His immediate chiefs reported that he was making himself popular and throwing himself into his new duties with enthusiasm. Rex was taking the political situation seriously but hopefully. A crisis was imminent in his opinion. “The best thing for the country too: call people to their senses. Shouldn't be surprised if we didn't have a National government. Close the ranks: everyone pulling together, as we did during the war. Don't think I'm a militarist, my dear Guy: far from it, I hate war: any real soldier must, but my word there's no substitute for helping a nation find its health and spirit. Wish there was but I'm afraid there isn't. That's what fellows like myself are waiting for, a chance to prove ourselves, to serve again.”

Guy asked if his Intelligence training cadre was progressing well.

“Yes and no. We're getting some of the right fellows in, but some who are not quite so right. It'll need weeding out. Too
many people are joining us for the wrong reasons; not because they want to dedicate themselves to their country's service, but because they've a grudge against the régime. Too many malcontents; men who feel the country owes them something; not that they owe something to their country; men who think that in a differently constituted society they'd stand a better chance. That isn't the type of man we want.”

“What type of man do you want?”

“I've told you. Men like you; men with a real stake in the country: practical, efficient men, who would make a success of their lives whatever government was in power, who have what the Americans call ‘know-how'. There are a great many men of that type in the country. It's they who've made it great. Trouble is that that type of person only feels that it's up to him to do anything for the country at a time of crisis.”

To Guy's way of thinking that was the very thing that was so right about Britain in general, and London in particular; that it was full of practical, informed men of affairs who were content to mind their own business and leave the running of the country to the professional administrators, the politicians, and the civil servants; but perhaps in thinking that he was only finding an excuse for his own laziness. So much of what Rex said made sense: yet when he did make sense, it was always, Guy suspected, for the wrong reasons. There was something basically out of focus in his whole point of view. He had more than a little kinship with the malcontents who had a grudge against society. Wasn't Rex's trouble that he was a person who had been trained to command, and now found himself without anything or anyone to organize?

With his nephews at boarding school, Guy found himself seeing rather more of Rex than he had in recent years. At the beginning and the end of term he was requisitioned to meet the boys at one station, and guide them across London to another. Usually this involved the provision of some meal and some -excursion: a matinée, a cinema, an hour or so at Lord's. In return Rex felt himself obliged to make some return whenever he and Lucy were in London. Children were their main common interest and Rex would read out the last report, display the latest
letters. Guy found himself occupying a new position in the family, not so much as its head but as its uncle. He gave, he supposed, an air of stability to the others. His flat wasn't a perch: it was a base. He had moreover a settled feeling about himself: he wasn't restless, he wasn't on the look-out for change: he suggested composure to other people.

“I like coming to your flat,” Margery once said. “It's warm and cosy and the way one left it.”

For her the flat was now more than a port of call on her way back from work; it was a harbour where she could put in to replenish and restore; both when she was elated and when she was depressed. She never confided in him what her problems were; she talked impersonally; with a frequent use of the word ‘one'. “One finds nowadays. . . .” It was a period when the modern girl was news; articles about her, usually by women novelists, were constantly splashed across double columns in the evening papers; these articles served as a framework on which Margery would hang her views and observations and Guy could guess from them as to how she was feeling about this and that, what was worrying and what was pleasing her. One factor remained constant. The Advertising Agency was flourishing.

“You're not the modern girl any longer,” he informed her. “You're the career woman, exhibit A, model nineteen-thirty.”

“I might be something worse.”

“You might be a whole lot worse.”

Barbara too had fallen into the habit of dropping in upon him in the evenings, before or after dinner. She was now at London University, reading history, with an established right to an un-chaperoned existence. She had her cheque book and her latchkey, kept her own hours and chose her friends.