The Complete Stories (60 page)

  "Turn that damn thing off."

  In the silence Barbara regarded her father more intently. "Darling, what have they been doing to you? You aren't yourself at all. You're tottering. Not my fine stout Pobble at all. Sit down at once. Poor Pobble, all shrunk like a mummy. Beasts!"

  Basil sat and Barbara wriggled round until her chin rested on his knees. "Famine baby," she said. Star-sapphire eyes in the child-like face under black tousled hair gazed deep into star-sapphire eyes sunk in empty pouches. "Belsen atrocity," she added fondly. "Wraith. Skeleton-man. Dear dug-up corpse."

  "Enough of this flattery. Explain yourself."

  "I told you I was bored. You know what Malfrey's like as well as I do. Oh the hell of the National Trust. It's not so bad in the summer with the charabancs. Now it's only French art experts—half a dozen a week, and all the rooms still full of oilcloth promenades and rope barriers and Aunt Barbara in the flat over the stables and those ridiculous Sothills in the bachelors' wing and the height of excitement a pheasant shoot with lunch in the hut and then nothing to eat except pheasant and ... Well, I registered a formal complaint, didn't I?, but you were too busy starving to pay any attention, and if your only, adored daughter's happiness doesn't count for more than senile vanity....." She paused, exhausted.

  "There's more to it than that."

  "There is something else."

  "What?"

  "Now, Pobble, you have to take this calmly. For your own good, not for mine. I'm used to violence, God knows. If you had been poor the police would have been after you for the way you've knocked me about all these years. I can take it; but you, Pobble, you are at an age when it might be dangerous. So keep quite calm and I'll tell you. I'm engaged to be married."

  It was not a shock; it was not a surprise. It was what Basil had expected. "Rot," he said.

  "I happen to be in love. You must know what that means. You must have been in love once—with mummy or someone."

  "Rot. And dammit, Babs, don't blub. If you think you're old enough to be in love, you're old enough not to blub."

  "That's a silly thing to say. It's being in love makes me blub. You don't realize. Apart from being perfect and frightfully funny he's an artistic genius and everyone's after him and I'm jolly lucky to have got him and you'll love him too once you know him if only you won't be stuck-up and we got engaged on the telephone so I came up and he was out for all I know someone else has got him and I almost died of cold and now you come in looking more like a vampire than a papa and start saying ‘rot.'"

  She pressed her face on his thigh and wept.

  After a time Basil said: "What makes you think Robin paints?"

  "Robin? Robin Trumpington? You don't imagine I'm engaged to Robin, do you? He's got a girl of his own he's mad about. You don't know much about what goes on, do you, Pobble? If it's only Robin you object to, everything's all right."

  "Well, who the hell do you think you are engaged to?"

  "Charles of course."

  "Charles à Court. Never heard of him."

  "Don't pretend to be deaf. You know perfectly well who I mean. You met him here the other evening only I don't think you really took him in."

  "Albright," said Basil. It was evidence of the beneficial effect of the sanatorium that he did not turn purple in the face, did not gobble. He merely asked quietly: "Have you been to bed with this man?"

  "Not to bed."

  "Have you slept with him?"

  "Oh, no sleep."

  "You know what I mean. Have you had sexual intercourse with him?"

  "Well, perhaps; not in bed; on the floor and wide awake you might call it intercourse, I suppose."

  "Come clean, Babs. Are you a virgin?"

  "It's not a thing any girl likes having said about her, but I think I am."

  "Think?"

  "Well, I suppose so. Yes, really. But we can soon change all that. Charles is set on marriage, bless him. He says it's easier to get married to girls if they're virgins. I can't think why. I don't mean a big wedding. Charles is very unsocial and he's an orphan, no father, no mother, and his relations don't like him, so we'll just be married quietly in a day or two and then I thought if you and mummy don't want it we might go to the house in Bermuda. We shan't be any trouble to you at all, really. If you want to go to Bermuda, we'll settle for Venice, but Charles says that's a bit square and getting cold in November, so Bermuda will really be better."

  "Has it occurred to either of you that you need my permission to marry?"

  "Now don't get legal, Pobble. You know I love you far too much ever to do anything you wouldn't like."

  "You'd better get dressed and go round to your mother at Claridges."

  "Can't get dressed. No hot water."

  "Have a bath there. I had better see this young man."

  "He's coming here at twelve."

  "I'll wait for him."

  "You'll freeze."

  "Get up and get out."

  There followed one of those scuffles that persisted between father and daughter even in her eighteenth year which ended in her propulsion, yelping.

  Basil sat and waited. The bell could not be heard in the anteroom. He sat in the window and watched the doorstep, saw a taxi draw up and Barbara enter it, still in pajamas and fur coat, carrying a small case. Later he saw his enemy strolling confidently from Berkeley Square. Basil opened the door.

  "You did not expect to see me?"

  "No, but I'm very glad to. We've a lot to discuss."

  They went together to the ante-room. The young man was less bizarre in costume than on their previous meeting but his hair was as copious and his beard proclaimed his chosen, deleterious status. They surveyed one another in silence. Then Basil said: "Lord Pastmaster's shirts are too big for you."

  It was a weak opening.

  "It's not a thing I should have brought up if you hadn't," said Albright, "but all your clothes look too big for you."

  Basil covered his defeat by lighting a cigar.

  "Barbara tells me you've been to that sanatorium in Kent," continued the young man easily; "there's a new place, you know, much better, in Sussex."

  Basil was conscious of quickening recognition. Some faint, odious inkling of kinship; had he not once, in years far gone by, known someone who had spoken in this way to his elders? He drew deeply on his cigar and studied Albright. The eyes, the whole face seemed remotely familiar; the reflection of a reflection seen long ago in shaving mirrors.

  "Barbara tells me you have proposed marriage to her."

  "Well, she actually popped the question. I was glad to accept."

  "You are Clarence Albright's son?"

  "Yes, did you know him? I barely did. I hear he was rather awful. If you want to be genealogical, I have an uncle who is a duke. But I barely know him either."

  "And you are a painter?"

  "Did Barbara tell you that?"

  "She said you were an artistic genius."

  "She's a loyal little thing. She must mean my music."

  "You compose?"

  "I improvise sometimes. I play the guitar."

  "Professionally?"

  "Sometimes—in coffee bars, you know."

  "I do not know, I'm afraid. And you make a living by it?"

  "Not what you would call a living."

  "May I ask, then, how you propose to support my daughter?"

  "Oh that doesn't come into it. It's the other way round. I'm doing what you did, marrying money. Now I know what's in your mind. ‘Buy him off,' you think. I assure you that won't work. Barbara is infatuated with me and, if it's not egotistical to mention it, I am with her. I'm sure you won't want one of those ‘Gretna Green Romances' and press photographers following you about. Besides, Barbara doesn't want to be a nuisance to you. She's a loyal girl, as we've already remarked. The whole thing can be settled calmly. Think of the taxes your wife will save by a good solid marriage settlement. It will make no appreciable difference to your own allowance."

  And still Basil sat steady, unmoved by any tremor of that volcanic senility which a fortnight ago would have exploded in scalding, blinding showers. He was doing badly in this first encounter which he had too lightly provoked. He must take thought and plan. He was not at the height of his powers. He had been prostrate yesterday. Today he was finding his strength. Tomorrow experience would conquer. This was a worthy antagonist and he felt something of the exultation which a brave of the sixteenth century might have felt when in a brawl he suddenly recognized in the clash of blades a worthy swordsman.

  "Barbara's mother has the best financial advice," he said.

  "By the way, where is Barbara? She arranged to meet me here."

  "She's having a bath in Claridges."

  "I ought to go over and see her. I'm taking her out to lunch. You couldn't lend me a fiver, could you?"

  "Yes," said Basil. "Certainly."

  If Albright had known him better he would have taken alarm at this urbanity. All he thought was: "Old crusty's a much softer job than anyone told me." And Basil thought: "I hope he spends it all on luncheon. That banknote is all he will ever get. He deserved better."

  IV

  Sonia Trumpington had never remarried. She shared a flat with her son Robin but saw little of him. Mostly she spent her day alone with her needlework and in correspondence connected with one or two charitable organizations with which, in age, she had become involved. She was sewing when Basil sought her out after luncheon (oysters again, two dozen this time with a pint of champagne—his strength waxed hourly) and she continued to stitch at the framed grospoint while he confided his problem to her.

  "Yes, I've met Charles Albright. He's rather a friend of Robin's."

  "Then perhaps you can tell me what Barbara sees in him."

  "Why, you, of course," said Sonia. "Haven't you noticed? He's the dead spit—looks, character, manner, everything."

  "Looks? Character? Manner? Sonia, you're raving."

  "Oh, not as you are now, not even after your cure. Don't you remember at all what you were like at his age?"

  "But he's a monster."

  "So were you, darling. Have you quite forgotten? It's all as clear as clear to me. You Seals are so incestuous. Why do you suppose you got keen on Barbara? Because she's just like Barbara Sothill. Why is Barbara keen on Charles? Because he's you."

  Basil considered this proposition with his newly resharpened wits.

  "That beard."

  "I've seen you with a beard."

  "That was after I came back from the Arctic and I never played the guitar in my life," he said.

  "Does Charles play the guitar? First I've heard of it. He does all sorts of things—just as you did."

  "I wish you wouldn't keep bringing me into it."

  "Have you quite forgotten what you were like? Have a look at some of my old albums."

  Like most of her generation Sonia had in youth filled large volumes with press-cuttings and photographs of herself and her friends. They lay now in a shabby heap in a corner of the room.

  "That's Peter's twenty-firster at King's Thursday. First time I met you, I think. Certainly the first time I met Alastair. He was Margot's boyfriend then, remember? She was jolly glad to be rid of him..... That's my marriage. I bet you were there." She turned the pages from the posed groups of bride, bridegroom and bridesmaids to the snapshots taken at the gates of St. Margaret's. "Yes, here you are."

  "No beard. Perfectly properly dressed."

  "Yes, there are more incriminating ones later. Look at that ... and that."

  They opened successive volumes. Basil appeared often.

  "I don't think any of them very good likenesses," said Basil stiffly. "I'd just come back from the Spanish front there—of course I look a bit untidy."

  "It's not clothes we're talking about. Look at your expression."

  "Light in my eyes," said Basil.

  "1937. That's another party at King's Thursday."

  "What a ghastly thing facetious photographs are. What on earth am I doing with that girl?"

  "Throwing her in the lake. I remember the incident now. I took the photograph."

  "Who?"

  "I've no idea. Perhaps it says on the back. Just ‘Basil and Betty.' She must have been much younger than us, not our kind at all. I've got an idea she was the daughter of some duke or other. The Stayles—that's who she was."

  Basil studied the picture and shuddered. "What can have induced me to behave like that?"

  "Youthful high spirits."

  "I was thirty-four, God help me. She's very plain."

  "I'll tell you who she is—was. Charles Albright's mother. That's an odd coincidence if you like. Let's look her up and make sure."

  She found a Peerage and read: "Here we are. Fifth daughter of the late duke. Elizabeth Ermyntrude Alexandra, for whom H.R.H. The Duke of Connaught stood sponsor. Born 1920. Married 1940 Clarence Albright, killed in action 1943. Leaving issue. Died 1956. I remember hearing about it—cancer, very young. That's Charles, that issue."

  Basil gazed long at the photograph. The girl was plump and, it seemed, wriggling; annoyed rather than amused by the horseplay. "How one forgets. I suppose she was quite a friend of mine once."

  "No, no. She was just someone Margot produced for Peter."

  Basil's imagination, once so fertile of mischief, lately so dormant, began now, in his hour of need, to quicken and stir.

  "That photograph has given me an idea."

  "Basil, you've got that old villainous look. What are you up to?"

  "Just an idea."

  "You're not going to throw Barbara into the Serpentine."

  "Something not unlike it," he said.

  "Let us go and sit by the Serpentine," said Basil to his daughter that afternoon.

  "Won't it be rather cold?"

  "It will be quiet. Wrap up well. I have to talk to you seriously."

  "Good temper?"

  "Never better."

  "Why not talk here?"

  "Your mother may come in. What I have to say doesn't concern her."