The Guardians (13 page)

Christmas came, a time of feasting, of the giving and receiving of presents. A tree was set up in the hall, carrying gifts for every one of the servants down to the newest assistant to the head gardener, a shy awkward boy younger than Rob and Mike. The weather turned mild. The carriage took them to the village church through a shower of rain but came back in sunshine. There was turkey and flaming plum pudding with brandy butter, mince pies, nuts and wine, crackers with funny hats and ridiculous tokens and slips of paper printed with jokes so bad that everyone laughed at them uproariously.

On the surface it was not so different from Christmas in the Conurb. There, too, there had been turkey and pudding and crackers, and good cheer of a kind, but it was all a pale copy of what there was here. In the evening the carol singers came up from the village, first standing outside with
their lanterns singing and then being summoned into the drawing room to sing again. Rob remembered the previous Christmas, and sitting watching the succession of Christmas parties on holovision. Even then they had seemed a little false; now the recollection made him shudder.

Later Cecily asked him, “Rob, what's Christmas like in Nepal?”

“Oh, pretty much the same.”

She was lying on her stomach in front of the fire. Her dark hair showed one spot of gleaming bronze, reflecting the blaze. She pushed up on her elbows and stared at him.

“But there must be
some
differences.”

“Well, little ones. Such as having roast dodo instead of turkey.”

“But the dodo's extinct. I know that.”

“Not in Nepal.” He spoke lazily. Her questions no longer worried him. He could even tease her. “They live in these little valleys up in the mountains, eating lemons and ginger. It gives them a wonderful flavor.”

“You're having me on,” she said suspiciously.

“Not a bit. And then there are the Abominable Snowmen.”

“I've heard about them. But why are they called abominable?”

“Because when they come to visit they take up all the fire just as you're doing. And then they melt and drip icy water all over the carpet. Wouldn't you call that pretty abominable?”

She got up and launched herself in an attack on him. Rob fended her off, laughing. Mrs. Gifford watched them for a few moments, smiling, and then said:

“Bedtime, darling.”

“Mummy! It's Christmas.”

“And that is why you have been allowed to stay up so late. Off now. I'll come and see you in ten minutes.”

She frowned but made her good-bys and went, picking up a small lamp to light her way upstairs. Rob lay back, relaxing. There was a tinkle of music from the next room where Mike was playing the piano. Mr. Gifford had gone to give his trees their final check for the day.

“So you and Mike are off on January the second?” Mrs. Gifford said.

An invitation had come from the Penfolds to both boys, asking them to spend a few days there. Rob had not been particularly keen but it was obvious that Mike was, so he had resigned himself to it. “Yes, Aunt Margaret,” he said and waited.

Mrs. Gifford was wearing her reading glasses, which made her look severe. But this, like the slight harshness of her voice, was misleading. She still made Rob feel uneasy at times but that was no longer because of any fear that she might abandon the experiment and have him sent away. He had learned that she was not a person who took things on lightly, or dropped them when they proved difficult. She had tremendous strength of mind and was formidably good at grasping and getting to the root of problems.

“It's Daniel Penfold who's at school with you, isn't it?” she asked.

“Was,” Rob said. “He's left. He's going up to Oxford in the autumn.”

The needle moved in the embroidery. “What's he like?”

“I don't know him very well.”

“Not as well as Mike does?”

He said warily: “Well, I've only been at the school for one term.”

“He's clever, I believe?”

To be described as clever was not, as Rob had discovered, a complimentary thing in the County. Most people who were clever did their best to disguise it. He said, “He got a Balliol scholarship.”

“Yes.” She nodded. “I'd heard he was clever.”

She went on with her embroidery in silence. Rob was hoping this meant the conversation was over. It made him uncomfortable talking about Penfold to Mike's mother. When she did speak again, he was relieved that it seemed to be on a different tack.

“Your report was good, Rob.”

“Thank you, Aunt Margaret.”

“You are making very fair progress and you should be over the most difficult part. I wish I could say the same for Mike.”

He made no reply to that. She held up a colored silk and bit it.

“His report was worrying. Too many phrases like ‘can do better' and ‘is not giving of his best.' In sport, too. As far as I remember, the games master said: ‘He is not living up to his earlier promise, chiefly through lack of interest.' ”

“He was ill last spring, wasn't he?” Rob said.

“That's nearly a year ago.”

Rob was silent again. It was better to say too little than too much. Mrs. Gifford went on:

“And then there's this visit to the Penfolds. We don't know them very well, but what I've heard about the older boy is not particularly good. I gather his army record was—well, not entirely satisfactory. He resigned his commission but I believe he was under some pressure to do so.”

Rob looked up and saw her eyes on him.

“I wouldn't normally talk to you in this strain, Rob.” That was true. Gossip was a common pastime in the County but not one that Mrs. Gifford indulged in. “The reason I do so is because I am sure you want to help Mike in any way you can.”

She did not say: remembering what he did for you. She did not have to. It was one of those
moments in which the strength of her personality seemed to swamp him. He had an impulse to tell her everything, about Mike and Penfold and the scheme for starting a revolution. But no gentleman betrayed the trust of another. He could remember her saying that during one of those summer sessions in which she had instructed and coached him in the nuances of the way of life he was going to have to adopt. More even than actual consideration for Mike, the thought of the contempt she would feel for such behavior held him back.

“We'll leave it at that,” she said. “I know you will help Mike if he ever needs it. And I hope you have a pleasant stay with the Penfolds. Remember what I've told you about attentions to your hostess, and don't forget to tip the servants. I must go up now and see that Cecily is settled. She always gets overexcited at times like this.”

Rob stood up as she left the room. It was a customary thing. He stood afterward looking into the fire and listening to Mike's piano. What was customary and what was right. There was so much to get hold of, and then hang on to. It would never be
easy and automatic for him as it was for those, like Mike, who had been born and reared to it. But he would get it right. He was determined about that.

•  •  •

Approaching it, the Penfolds' home looked more orderly and formal than Gifford House. It was smaller and more compact, built in the Georgian style and symmetrical in its features. Inside, though, there was a different contrast. There was a scarcely definable flavor of disorganization, of things being slightly out of place and wrong. The servants were slipshod and inefficient. On the first morning of their stay tea was brought late to the bedroom and was cold when it arrived. And Rob found that while an attempt had been made on his shoes he had to clean them properly himself.

Mr. Penfold, although physically quite unlike Mr. Gifford, being small and fat, also took a back seat in household affairs and also had a hobby which was something of an obsession. In his case it was clock-making. The house was filled with the products of his devotion—Rob found two in the room which he was given—and while they were
there yet another was brought with pride from his workshop and prominently installed in the drawing room. It was an odd construction. The clock face surmounted the mast of a galleon which rocked steadily in a painted wooden sea. It made Rob a little queasy to look at it.

There was nothing at all in Mrs. Penfold that resembled Mrs. Gifford. Like her husband she was short and dumpy. She was also very plainly ineffectual. Her contribution to the domestic routine appeared to be one of going into mild panics whenever anything went wrong. Rob was sorry on her account the first time this happened, but he observed that the panic was of brief duration and soon forgotten. The rest of the time she talked almost incessantly in a fluttering voice without ever saying anything worth listening to.

Insofar as the house was organized at all, the Penfolds' daughter Lilian saw to it. She was in her thirties, unmarried, a woman with a long sallow face and deep close-set eyes under fierce brows. She had a sharp way of speaking and was usually either complaining or scolding—generally complaining about
things the servants were doing wrong and scolding them for their mistakes. As far as could be seen this did not affect the situation in the slightest. Meals arrived late, lukewarm, and badly cooked. It was a far cry from the warmth and easy efficiency of Gifford House.

Daniel Penfold, by comparison with the others, seemed more pleasant on closer acquaintance. He had an unsureness, a modesty almost, which was disarming. It was possible, Rob thought, that his brother's presence had something to do with it. This was Roger, the ex-officer, who was in his late twenties. He seemed to share his sister's anger at life and the world, but in a sharper, more concentrated form. Daniel was obviously very much under his influence. Roger was the only member of the family who could have been called handsome. His features were clean cut but sharp, the gray eyes cold. When he was excited his mouth twitched a little at one corner.

This happened when Mike asked him some questions about China and the war. They were at dinner and he launched, disregarding his food, into a tirade on the subject. Tackling stringy boiled beef
and lumpy potatoes with overdone cabbage, Rob felt he could sympathize with his lack of appetite but he did not make much of the argument. According to Roger Penfold the war could have been ended years, decades ago.

“It's a big country, isn't it?” Mike said. “I thought that as fast as one province gets quietened guerrilla fighters crop up in another.”

“That's the story, but it won't wash. Nobody's trying to finish things. It's a useful place to pack people who might cause trouble if they stayed at home.”

“You volunteered, though, didn't you?”

“Officers do. Some men. But most are drafted from the Conurb. They get the choice of China or long prison sentences. After seven years of military discipline, providing they've not been killed, they're glad enough to settle for an easy life.”

He broke off to take a mouthful of food, but then laid knife and fork down again.

“The whole system is a conditioning and a conspiracy. Take money. We don't talk about it, do we? It's not the done thing. We have investments which we live on, but no one asks where they come from.
Well, they come from the Conurbs. The Conurbans work in factories producing the goods and the gentry live on the profits. In the old days capitalists did at least have some contact with the source of their wealth, but that's all been eliminated. The money is washed and cleaned and passed across the Barrier with gloved hands.”

For a moment Rob thought he was talking literally, and had a startling vision of coins being washed in some huge vat, carefully dried and then handed over the fence by a chain of gloved hands. He realized, though, that the remark was merely metaphorical. In any case money was different here—gold and silver instead of the flimsy paper and plastic tokens used in the Conurbs. Roger went on talking angrily about the wrongs of society. Mike was listening intently. Rob himself concentrated on trying to finish what was on his plate and hoped that the pudding would be a little better.

•  •  •

There was no opportunity for Rob and Mike to talk in private during the four days they spent with the Penfolds. But at last, to Rob's relief, the visit was
over and they jogged together, on Captain and Sonnet, over open country in the direction of home. There had been a heavy frost and the air was still sharply cold, but the sun had risen in a blue and white sky.

“That butler . . .” Rob said. “I gave him half a sovereign as Aunt Margaret told me to, and he looked at it as though it were a sixpence. Do you think he's used to getting more than that?”

“I doubt it,” Mike said. “He's just a naturally disgruntled type.”

Rob could not resist saying, “I thought the atmosphere was a bit like that altogether.”

“Dan's sister, you mean?”

“His brother too.”

“There's a big difference. She's just on her way to becoming a sour old maid. He wants to do something, to change things and make them better.”

“By that revolution you were talking about?”

“If necessary.”

“Look, even supposing he
could
do it—could bust things up—what do you imagine he's going to be able to put in its place?”

“Something better.”

“But
what?”

“A society that could be free, could grow. Where people aren't conditioned into idleness or mass stupidity. Where someone like my father has more to exercise his mind than looking after comic little trees.”

“Or Mr. Penfold with his clocks?”

“Exactly!”

“But that's being silly,” Rob said. “There have always been people who had hobbies other people thought were ridiculous. And what would you expect them to do at their age, anyway?”

“It's not just them, though I think they're typical of what's wrong. Everything's fallen back. What about space travel, for instance?”