Nothing So Strange (7 page)

“Oh, she’s a darling.”

“I’d guess she’s a good bit younger.”

“Than my father?… Twenty years.”

“As much as that?”

“Your surprise doesn’t flatter her. Or perhaps it flatters him.”

He thought that out. I added: “I don’t think years matter much,
anyway— especially as you grow older.”

“That’s true. It’s when you’re younger that the difference counts.”

I wondered if he was thinking of the difference between his age and mine.
Then he went on: “Not that I
feel
she’s any older than I am.”

“She is, though. Nearly twice as old.”

“Oh no, that can’t be. I’m twenty-four.”

“And she’s thirty-eight.”

“Well, that’s not twice….”

“I said
nearly
twice.”

“You also said years don’t matter much.”

“And
you
said they
did
, when people are younger.”

“I think we’re getting tied up in this argument. Let’s have some
lunch.”

That was a novelty, and a further one when we didn’t go to an A.B.C., but
to an Italian place near the Tottenham Court Road. We had minestrone and
chicken
cacciatora
, meanwhile talking about Framm; or rather, he did
most of the talking—I could see him building up a vision and I hoped he
wouldn’t expect too much. After all, my father’s influence had its limits.
But apparently it was only an already existing vision in a new form—a
sort of frozen white-hot passion for whatever it was that couldn’t be
satisfactorily explained to a first-year history student. I let him
rhapsodize all the way back to the College.

There was grand opera at Covent Garden that evening and someone had lent
my parents a box. We went to dine at Boulestin’s first. I don’t care for
opera and all afternoon as I thought of it I grew more and more out of humor.
Then when I got home I found my mother still lingering over tea. “I asked
Brad to come,” she greeted me, “but I don’t suppose he will.” She overdid the
casualness and as soon as I looked at her she began to look at me in what I
think, she thought was the same way.

“I shouldn’t imagine so,” I answered. “He was here only last night and
it’s quite a trip for a cup of tea.”

“You like him, don’t you, Jane?”

“Yes. He’d be rather hard to dislike.”

“I shall miss the lectures when he goes to Vienna.”

“
If
he goes. Or is it settled yet?”

“I think your father’s written to somebody. I hope it works out all
right…. I can’t help wondering if he really wants to go there. He always
talked to me about the Cavendish.”

“To me too, but at present I think he’s quite set on Vienna—on
account of this man Framm.”

“I wish I’d had a chance to help him more—not as Framm can, of
course, but that’s not all the help he needs. I’d like to have made
him—well, a bit more at home with life. More … sophisticated …
easy- mannered….”

“Worldly?”

“Oh no, no, Jane, not that. He’s naive, but I love it and I hated the way
Julian talked the other night. I don’t know what possessed him—he
seemed to be trying to break down every ideal the boy had…. No, let him
keep his ideals— he doesn’t even have to be a worldly success if he
doesn’t want—but he ought to learn to get some fun out of life, that’s
my point. Worldly success has nothing to do with having fun.”

“It has just a bit, Mother.”

“Oh, just a
little
bit, perhaps—one must have
some
money. But not too much. I could be perfectly happy on a thousand a year.
Pounds, I mean.”

“So could a great many English people who have to live on a fraction of
that.”

“Well, say five hundred … provided of course I had other things to make
life worth living.”

“What other things?”

“Darling, don’t cross-examine me…. All I know is that Brad needs to
learn what happiness there
can
be in life, and he ought to stop being
such a hermit. But I’m all against him giving up his ideals, whatever Julian
says.”

“It seems to me I’m the only person who’s satisfied with him as he
is.”

“Are you, darling?
Entirely
satisfied?”

She gazed at me measuredly, as if the question needed a careful answer.
But there wasn’t time, for at that moment Brad arrived. He looked nervous,
and almost as shy as when I had first seen him. He said he hadn’t thought
he’d be able to come, but at the very last he’d managed it. He was sorry he
was so late and hoped he hadn’t kept her waiting.

“Did you come up by tube?” I asked.

“No. I took a taxi.”

“I’ll send for some fresh tea,” my mother said, and rang the bell, but
nobody came; the servants were preparing for their evening out and hadn’t
expected to serve any more. I said I’d go to the kitchen and see about it,
which I did, and then went upstairs to change.

Looking back now, I can see so much more than then. Even
when you are
supposed to be adult for your age, it’s hard to think of grownups as in the
same world; you only want to feel you can be in theirs, and you just hope any
mistake won’t be noticed. And yet you are aware of things often more acutely
than ever afterwards, your mind has antennae roaming into the unknown; you
can even walk into it with eyes peering, but the step that isn’t there always
brings you up with a shock and a jolt.

I had that shock about Brad, though I couldn’t put any sufficient reason
for it into words. When a man, after working three times harder than he
should, slows down to twice as hard, there doesn’t seem much for any of his
friends to worry about. Nor when the same man spends a wet Sunday afternoon
listening to a charming woman play Chopin, instead of drenching himself to
the skin on Box Hill.

Brad gave notice to the College authorities and they were very reasonable
about it. They waived the full term they could have held him for, and said he
could leave whenever he wanted. And my parents postponed again their return
to New York—still presumably on my account.

Meanwhile my mother kept on attending his lectures, at which he never (she
said) gave her a look or a smile; but he did break a few of his other rules,
whether it was she who tempted him or not. He began going to piano recitals,
theaters, movies, and private views—sometimes alone with her, sometimes
with my father or me also. There was nothing to stir gossip, much less
scandal, in our fairly sophisticated circle; Julian Spee had escorted her
similarly when he was less busy. She had often been in the throes of some fad
or other, and perhaps my father figured that Brad was just an unusually
masculine successor to Dalcroze Eurhythmics, Japanese flower arrangement, or
the English Speaking Union. And it was sometimes my father himself who would
make the date; he would say—“Oh, by the way, Christine, I’ve got a card
for Marincourt’s new exhibition—it’s next Tuesday at the Wigmore
Galleries. I shan’t have time to go myself, but you might take Brad and show
him what passes for art nowadays….” But when he had issued these
invitations he had an odd look of only half pleasure whether they were
accepted or not.

That diary of mine jots down all the times Brad came to the house to dine.
On Wednesdays it was, most often, and as the weeks passed it came to be every
Wednesday, and always quite informally, without special invitation, with few
or no other guests, and with plenty of music afterwards. He learned to sing
“Schlafe Mein Prinzchen, Schlaf Ein,” which suited his voice very well.

Then all at once he let go his work. With anyone else I wouldn’t have been
surprised, since he was leaving the College so soon and there couldn’t have
been much to finish up before the end of term. But he did it with such
abandon, and idleness didn’t fit in with his personality. I used to see him
wandering up and down Gower Street as if he had nowhere else to go; even
Mathews made a comment. Probably the waitress at the A.B.C. did also, for he
took to dropping in for coffee at unexpected times, and often lunched at
better places. All of which adds up to nothing at all except an idea that
grew in my mind and was never put into words.

One morning towards the end of November my father announced that the great
Hugo Framm was on his way to London to receive some degree or deliver some
lecture, I forget which. “We’d better give a dinner for him. Good idea for
Brad to meet him first at our house.”

My mother agreed it would be a good idea, but she lacked her usual
enthusiasm for party planning. “Give me a list of people to ask,” was all she
said.

“Brad can help you. He’ll know a few professors and you can mix them up
with anyone else you like.” And he added, thoughtfully: “I don’t think it has
to be champagne.”

“Oh God,” exclaimed my mother, “let’s have champagne even if it
is
only professors.”

They tiffed about it in front of me in a way which was not only new in my
experience, but out of character for both of them—my father being the
last man to act the parsimonious host, and my mother not normally caring what
wines were drunk.

I didn’t see Brad again till the party. If my mother saw
him she didn’t
tell me, not that it would have been a secret, but somehow we didn’t talk
about Brad much, and perhaps for that reason we talked a great deal about
Hugo Framm. My mother was no respecter of celebrities, and we shared the same
sense of humor, ribald and vagrant and often rather rude. Between us we built
up a huge joke about Professor Framm that made us both afraid we might laugh
indecently when the man actually took shape before our eyes. We first said he
would be fat and pompous, with a thick German accent and a mustache that
would get in the way of the soup; then we changed the picture because it
seemed too much the conventional
Punch
-cartoon-type of German
professor; we finally decided on a tall thin man more like Sherlock Holmes,
with the most exquisite manner and an Oxford accent. He would kiss my
mother’s hand and look up at her at the same time, which made her say she
wouldn’t shoot till she saw the whites of his eyes. I said he’d probably
engage in some scientific argument and shoot somebody else, or at least
demand a duel on Hampstead Heath. “Now that’s enough,” she laughed. “We’ll
never dare to meet him if we keep on….” We didn’t bother to ask my father
what the man was really like, and I suppose I could have found a photograph
of him somewhere if I’d wanted.

It snowed a little the day of the party, just a white film over roofs and
lawns; the traffic soon scoured it from the streets. There were about twenty
people, and I wondered how Brad would like that, or if he cared any more. He
had suggested only a very few of the names. But my mother, or else
experience, had certainly done something to him socially; he was still shy,
but not awkwardly so, rather now as if he didn’t care whether he were shy or
not. On the whole it was a dull crowd, far too many people who were only
distinguished enough to be unsure whether others knew they were distinguished
at all. The man next to me had explored some buried cities in Honduras, and
my other neighbor was shortsighted and thought I was Lady Muriel Spencer,
whom he had been talking to over cocktails. Brad was between my mother and
the real Muriel; Framm was opposite him between my mother and Baroness
Regensburg, who threw a little German at him occasionally. But there was no
need; he spoke good English, though with an accent; while as for his
appearance, it was nowhere near either my mother’s foolery or mine; and that,
perhaps, introduces him best, for he was the kind of man it would have been
hard to imagine in advance. I had certainly never met anyone who so obviously
looked important; you would have stared at him anywhere, if only on account
of his large frame and massive, wide-browed head. In age he might have been
anything between forty and sixty; the bushy hair was iron-gray, the eyes were
blue and keen, the lips sensitive and also sensual. He gave an impression of
physical and mental vigor that dominated without effort, and therefore
without offense; and his voice had a matching quality that lured the listener
from whomever else he was listening to, yet it wasn’t loud—there were
times when you wondered how you had managed to hear it. I think I was not the
only person at that dinner party who was fascinated, but I wished there had
been something in him to catch my mother’s eye about and smile.

Looking back on that first and only time I ever met Hugo Framm it is
tempting to overload the diagnosis; but I do recollect, during dinner,
wondering what faults a man like that would have, and deciding they must
include vanity (since he had clearly so much to be vain about), and a kind of
arrogance, since the continual experience of other people’s admiration would
give him either that or shyness, and he certainly wasn’t shy. Yet these were
deductions, not observations; and I cannot say that at any time he was either
boastful or overbearing. Whether he was talking to my mother, or to the
Baroness, or to Brad, or to the whole table, there was a constant radiation
of what, for want of any other word, must be called charm; and in the end it
was the constancy of this that seemed to me its only possible drawback. If
only one could have caught a glimpse of something beneath the charm; one knew
it was there, so there was no taint of superficiality, but one was teased,
after a time, by the withholding.

After dinner we sat in the drawing room in changing groups. It was not the
sort of party for music, but there was a billiard room across the hall where
card tables were set up. A bridge four detached themselves from the main
party; they weren’t missed and I wasn’t aware of it when they returned. It
must have been an unsatisfactory game. My father kept moving from group to
group, the considerate host, and during one of these movements he found a
chance to whisper in my ear that Brad had decided to accept Framm’s
offer.