James Hilton: Collected Novels (60 page)

It was a cold bright day when he waited on the Interlaken platform. There was still a fitter of shoveled snow in the gutters and against the railings, and the train came in white-roofed from fresh falls in the Simplon-Lötschberg. She was dressed in a long mackintosh with a little fur hat, like a fez, and as she jumped from the train before it quite stopped, it was as if something in his heart jumped also before it quite stopped.

“Oh, Uncle Charles, I’m so happy—I was afraid you’d take fright and leave before I got here! It seems ages since I saw you. How
are
you?”

“I’m fine.” (Breaking Miss Ponsonby’s old rule.) “And it
is
ages since you saw me—nearly a year. Where’s Roland?”

“Not with me. I’ve left him. Take me somewhere for a drink—there was no diner on the train.”

In a deserted restaurant-café opposite the station she told him more about it. “I found myself getting
silly—
saying silly things to all his silly crowd—there’s a regular colony of them wherever he goes. But more than that—after all, I don’t mind so much saying silly things myself, but it got to the point where I didn’t notice when things
they
said were silly. Softening of the brain
—
” she tapped her head. “I simply
had
to take it in time. And I felt sorry for the poor old rajah. He was pretty awful to look at, but at least he knew what’s what with women—which is more than most of Roland’s friends do.”

“So I rather imagined.”

“Of course
you
really fixed it—that night at Kettner’s.”

“I
fixed it?”

“I could see you didn’t like him.”

“On the contrary, I think I began to like him then—just slightly—and for the first time. He has his wits about him.”

“He’d better have—they’re what he lives by. But it’s no good denying it—you
don’t
like him. I could feel that.”

“Well, I’m not as keen on him as you are.”

“Were.”

“Oh, is it
were?
Well, in that case there couldn’t be a better reason for breaking off the engagement.”

“But it never pleased you to think of me marrying him. Did it now?”

“Why should that matter to you?”

“Because it
does
matter! I can’t bear to do things you don’t want, except when you don’t want them to my face—like forcing myself on you here, I don’t mind
that
—” She suddenly lowered her head into her hands and looked up a few seconds later with eyes streaming. “Can’t you see you’ve spoilt me for other men?”

“But, my dear—that’s ridiculous!”

She went on: “I’m not asking for anything. I can go back by the next train if you’d prefer it. I’ll probably marry someone eventually and be quite happy, but it’ll have to be a man whom you like fairly well and who doesn’t sneer because you do an honest job of work instead of battening on rich people.”

“Battening on poor people is more in my line—according to your former fiancé.”

“Poor Wal—I often wonder what’s happened to him—I really liked him more than Roland. … By the way, I saw the papers—you’ve been having strikes at Cowderton, haven’t you? Was it very serious?”

“While it lasted. That’s really why I came out here—for a rest.”

“Oh God, why don’t you give the whole thing up? You’ve got enough money, haven’t you?”

“For what?”

“To live on, for the rest of your life, at about a thousand a year.”

“Depends on several things—how long I live, how much a thousand a year will continue to be worth, and how long people will pay me anything at all for not working. … But that’s not the whole point, in any case.”

“You mean you
want
to stay with the firm? It’s still a game, as you said in one of those letters—a game you want to win even if it isn’t worth playing? Haven’t you won enough? … Or maybe it’s more than a game now—it’s become the life-work?”

He smiled. “Perhaps it’s somewhere between the two—more than a game, but not quite a lifework yet. You know, when I first took over the job it was with all kinds of reluctance—because I’d been more or less jockeyed into it by the family crying out to be saved. Well, that was the idea, originally—to save ’em and then be off quick, before they needed more saving. Rainier’s was just something that kept the family going, and I didn’t respect it enormously for that. But then, when I began to look into things personally, I found it kept a good many other families going. Over three thousand, to be precise.”

“I see. Responsibility. Uncle Atlas.”

“You can laugh at me if you like, provided you believe me sincere. I’m not a sentimentalist. I don’t call the firm the House of Rainier, or myself a Captain of Industry, or any of that nonsense. But there
is
a responsibility, no use denying it, in owning a three-thousand-family business. If I can contrive a little security for those people—”

“But there
isn’t
any security—as you said yourself when I asked you about your thousand a year. It’s an illusion put up by banks and insurance companies and lawyers and building societies and everybody who goes without what he wants today because he thinks he’ll enjoy it more later on. Supposing some day we all find out there isn’t any ‘later on’?”

“Then, my dear, will come Wal’s revolution.”

“And we shall all make a grab for what we can get?”

“Provided there
is
anything to get by then. If the whole thing’s an illusion, then the rewards may fade equally.”

“Then you try to comfort those three thousand families by encouraging them to believe in a future that doesn’t exist?”

“They don’t believe in it. Every street-corner speaker warns them not to at the top of his voice. What I
do
comfort them with, since you put it that way, is enough of a regular wage to buy food and pay their rent and smoke cigarettes and go to the local cinema. That keeps them satisfied to go on waiting.”

“For the big grab?”

“Or for the discovery that there isn’t anything left to grab.”

“Which makes you one degree more cynical than they are. They don’t believe in the security they accept because they’re looking to the revolution, but
you
don’t believe in either the security of the present or the revolution of the future!”

“Your other ex-fiancé put it even more simply, my dear, when he said I didn’t believe in a damn thing.”

“Well, don’t you?”

“That’s what I’ve been asking myself very carefully and for a long time, and I still can’t find an answer.”

“Probably because you’ve been asking it
too
long and
too
carefully. The answer to that sort of question ought to
fly
out—like a child when he’s asked what he wants for his birthday—he always knows instantly without having to think—either a bicycle or a toy train or something. … Oh, I’m quite happy again now. I don’t miss Roland a bit. Just talking to you freely like this makes the difference, though you don’t talk to
me
freely—there always seems a brake on—I can hardly believe you once sent me those letters.”

“Curious—I don’t remember much about them. If you kept any, I’d like to—”

“Oh, no,
never!
That would be a really awful thing to do! And of course I know why you were so free in
them
—because you thought I was too young to understand. I was only the vehicle—the letter box, so to speak—where you posted them to another address.”

A gleam came into his eyes. “What on earth are you talking about?”

“Well, what more could I have been in those days? Letters to a schoolgirl. … Of course I was crazy about you—always have been ever since that time at Stourton when I came up to your room and smoked a cigarette. Remember? … It might be fun if you loved me now—we’d have a good deal in common. I sometimes wonder why you don’t.”

“In my slow and careful way I’ve been wondering that too—ever since you stepped off the train.”

“Well, why don’t you—just to be curious?”

“I haven’t said I don’t.”

“Oh
no!”

“Would it be so very incredible?”

“It would be
fantastic!”

“Then it
is
fantastic.”

“Darling, you don’t mean—” She seized his hand across the table. “You’re not saying it just to be kind?”

“I don’t feel a bit kind. I feel—well, let’s stick to fantastic.”

“But I—I—I don’t know what else to say for the moment.”

“You don’t have to say anything.”

They sat in silence, his hand changing places over hers. A train entered the station opposite; the tick of its electric engine was like a clock measuring the seconds. Presently she said: “There’s the oddest thing in my mind for us to do—if it’s all real and not a dream. Let’s go down the Danube in a canoe, as you always wanted.”

“Yes, we’ll do that. And up the Amazon too, if you like.” His face was very pale. “I’ll take a year off—from the firm and the City and the three thousand families and everything else. Let someone else have his turn. …”

Back at his hotel that night he could hardly believe in the changed future; it was almost as if he had been another person during the day and was now perusing with amazement a report of what had happened to someone else. He was not regretful—far from it—but a little bemused at so many decisions made all at once, somewhat startled that they must all have been his own, yet ready to accept them with a loyalty that might well become more enthusiastic when he had had a chance to think them over.

At breakfast he compared notes and found that her emotions had been similar only as far as a doubt as to whether he could really have meant what he said enough to go on meaning it; he assured her laughingly that he had and did, and immediately happiness blazed across the rolls and honey between them as they planned the trivial details of the day. The future was still fantastic to talk about, even to think about, and they agreed for the time being not to give themselves the even heavier task of explaining it to others. No one expected him in London before the end of the month (the Rainier board meeting was on the thirtieth), and no one knew she was not still in Provence, except Roland and his crowd, who did not count. Jill was in the Aegean, cruising among the antiquities but taking (one suspected) very little notice of them. He and Kitty could have at least two weeks in Switzerland before returning to announce the astonishing news to the family and to the world. Of course they could send the news by letter, but somehow to pull the lever that would release all the commotion even at a distance required a certain fortitude; they decided to enjoy those two weeks first of all.

And so began an interlude that might have been in another world, and almost was. They stayed for the first week in Interlaken, making it a center for mountain trips into the high Oberland. The weather improved after the last big snowfall of the year; the sun dried the drenched meadows, so that they were able to walk by the lakeside to Giessbach, and up the Lauterbrunnen Valley as far as the lower slopes of the Roththal. It was pleasant to see the industrious Swiss polishing up their ballrooms and cocktail bars and funicular railways in readiness for what was to come; but pleasanter still to tramp along the cleared roadways in face of the sun and snow. During the second week they discovered the hotel on the two-mile-high Jungfraujoch, where there was nothing to do but talk and absorb the physical atmosphere of being above and beyond the earth. They liked it enough to stay there till the last day before the necessary return to England.

That last day came, and with it the descent to natural levels—a curious deflation of mood that was easy to interpret as sadness at leaving a place where they had been so happy. Throughout the long rail journey through Berne and Basle to Boulogne the mood persisted—seemed impossible to shake off, being perhaps a physical effect of the changed altitude, they both agreed. They reached London amidst driving rain and had dinner in a restaurant near Victoria Station, saying all the time and over and over again how wonderful it had been in Switzerland and how sorry they were to have returned. The Rainier board meeting was four days away, and it was understood that no announcement of future plans should be hinted at to anyone until then.

The board meeting came, and with it all the commotion. He had not guessed how considerable it would be. He had suspected that the family would not be altogether pleased, but he hadn’t realized they would have so many reasons for being displeased. He soon found that they regarded his year’s absence from Rainier’s as a form of abdication amounting almost to desertion—in spite of the fact that they had long been jealous of what they called his “domineering” over the firm’s affairs. Then also, those who had hoped their children would inherit his personal fortune strongly resented his marriage to anybody at all; he hadn’t anticipated that, even remotely. And finally, all except Jill (and in one sense even including Jill) were manifestly and desperately jealous of his choice. Only Chet seemed to have any genuine tolerance of the idea—a tolerance not quite reaching the point of enthusiasm. He had so long joked about the need for Charles to “hurry up” that now Charles
was
hurrying up he could not withhold somewhat rueful good wishes.

The party at Stourton to celebrate the engagement was not a successful affair.

Then, in June, quite suddenly, Chet died after a heart attack, and plans for the marriage in July were postponed till autumn; it would have been impossible, in any event, to leave England during all the legal complications that ensued.

The marriage was finally fixed for October. Charles took Kitty to dine at Kettner’s again one night in late September, and for some reason the same mood came upon them as during the journey back from Switzerland five months before. She suggested that on his side, it was due to news in the evening paper—a big stock-market crash in New York, with inevitable repercussions in London.

He was too honest with her to accept that as a reason. “I’m not a speculator. Rainier’s dropped five shillings today, I notice, but it doesn’t affect me or the firm—they can go down ten times as much before it’ll begin to worry me. Matter of fact, everything’s been pushed too high lately, especially in America. I could make a lot of money now if I backed my opinion.”