The convent school was prosperous and the grounds well kept even in that year when everywhere in the country box and yew were growing untrimmed and lawns were ploughed and planted with food-stuffs.
A gate tower guards the forecourt at Broome. Behind it lie two quadrangles, medieval in plan, Caroline in decoration, like a university college; as in most colleges there is a massive Gothic wing. Gervase and Hermione had added this, employing the same architect as had designed their church. At the main door stood the Reverend Mother and a circle of nuns. In the upper windows and in the turret where the Blessed Gervase Crouchback had been taken prisoner appeared the heads of girls, some angelic, some grotesque, like the corbels in the old church, all illicitly peeping down on the mourners.
The Great Hall had been given a plaster ceiling in the eighteenth century. Gervase and Hermione had removed it revealing the high timbers. In Guy’s childhood the walls above the oak wainscot had been hung with weapons collected in many quarters and symmetrically arranged in great steely radiations of blades and barrels. These had been sold with the rest of the furniture. In their place hung a few large and shabby religious pictures of the kind which are bequeathed to convents, smooth German paintings of the nineteenth century portraying scenes of gentle piety alternating with lugubrious and extravagant martyrdoms derived at some distance from the southern baroque. Above the dais, where the panelling ran the full height of the room, a cinema screen held the place where family portraits had hung and in a corner were piles of tubular metal chairs and the posts of a badminton set. This hall was the school’s place of recreation. Here the girls danced together in the winter evenings to the music of a gramophone and tender possessive friendships were contracted and repudiated; here in the summer was held the annual concert, and a costume play, chosen for its innocence of subject and for the multiplicity of its cast, was tediously enacted.
The nuns had spread a trestle table with as lavish a repast as the stringency of the times allowed. What was lacking in nourishment was compensated for by ingenuity of arrangement. Cakes compounded of dried egg and adulterated flour had been ornamented with nuts and preserved fruit that were part of the monthly bounty of their sister-house in America; the ‘unsolicited gift’ parcels which enriched so many bare tables at that time. Slices of spam had been cut into trefoils. The school prefects in their blue uniform dresses carried jugs of coffee already sweetened with saccharine. Box-Bender wondered if he might smoke and decided not.
With Uncle Peregrine beside him to identify them, Guy made a round of the guests. Most asked what he was doing and he answered: ‘pending posting’. Many reminded him of occurrences in his childhood he had long forgotten. Some expressed surprise that he was no longer in Kenya. One asked after his wife, then realized she had made a gaffe and entangled herself further by saying: ‘How idiotic of me. I was thinking for the moment you were Angela’s husband.’
‘She’s over there. He’s over there.’
‘Yes, of course, how utterly foolish of me. Of course I remember now. You’re Ivo, aren’t you?’
‘A very natural confusion,’ said Guy.
Presently he found himself with the solicitor.
‘Perhaps we could have a few words in private?’
‘Let us go outside.’
They stood together in the forecourt. The heads had disappeared from the windows now; the girls had been rounded up and corralled in their class-rooms.
‘It always takes a little time to prove a will and settle up but I think your father left his affairs in good order. He chose to live very quietly but he was by no means badly off, you know. When he inherited, the estate was very large. He sold up at a bad time but he invested wisely and he never touched capital. He gave away most of the income. That is what I wanted to talk to you about. He made a large number of covenants, some to institutions, some to individuals. These of course terminate with his death. The invested money is left half to you and half to your sister for your lives and afterwards to her children and, of course, to your children if you have any. Death duties will have to be paid, but there will be a considerable residue. The total income which you will share has been in the last few years in the neighbourhood of seven thousand.’
‘I had no idea it was so large.’
‘No, he didn’t spend seven hundred on himself. Now there is the question of the payments by covenant. Will you and your sister wish to continue them? There might be cases of real hardship if they were stopped. He was paying allowances to a number of individuals who, I believe, are entirely dependent on him.’
‘I don’t know about the institutions,’ said Guy. ‘I am sure my sister will agree with me in continuing the payments to individuals.’
‘Just so. I shall have to see her about it.’
‘How much is involved?’
‘To individuals not more than two thousand; and, of course, many of the recipients are very old and unlikely to be a charge for many years more.
‘There’s another small point. He had some furniture at Matchet; nothing, I think, of any value. I don’t know what you’ll want to do with that. Some is at the hotel, some in store at the school. I should suggest selling it locally. There’s quite a shortage of everything like that now. It was all well made, you will remember. It might get a fair price.’
The brass bedstead, the triangular wash-hand stand, the prie-dieu, the leather sofa, the object known to the trade as a ‘club fender’ of heavy brass upholstered on the top with turkey carpet, the mahogany desk, the book-case full of old favourites, a few chairs, the tobacco jar bearing the arms of New College, bought by Mr Crouchback when he was a freshman, the fine ivory crucifix, the framed photographs – all well made, as the lawyer said, and well kept – these were what Mr Crouchback had chosen from his dressing-room and from the smoking-room at Broome to furnish the narrow quarters of his retreat. Angela had taken the family portraits and a few small, valuable pieces to Box-Bender’s house in the Cotswolds. And then in the six days’ sale silver and porcelain and tapestries, canopied beds, sets of chairs of all periods, cabinets, consoles; illuminated manuscripts, suits of armour, stuffed animals; no illustrious treasures, not the collection of an astute connoisseur; merely the accumulations and chance survivals of centuries of prosperous, unadventurous taste; all had come down into the front court where Guy now stood, and had been borne away and dispersed, leaving the whole house quite bare, except for the chapel; there the change of ownership passed unrecorded and the lamp still burned; not, as it happened, a thing of great antiquity; something Hermione had picked up in the Via Babuino. The phrase, often used of Broome, that its sanctuary lamp had never been put out, was figurative.
All Guy’s early memories of his father were in these spacious halls, as the central and controlling force of an elaborate regime which, for him, was typified by the sound of hooves on the cobbled forecourt and of the rake in the gravelled quadrangle; but in Guy’s mind the house was primarily his mother’s milieu; he remembered the carpet covered with newspaper and the flower petals drying for pot-pourri, his mother walking beside him by the lake under a sunshade, sitting beside him on winter afternoons helping him with his scrapbook. It was here that she had died leaving the busy house desolate to him and to his father. He had lost the solid image of his father as a man of possessions and authority (for even in his declining fortunes, up to the day of leaving Broome, Mr Crouchback had faithfully borne all his responsibilities, sitting on the bench and the county council, visiting prisons and hospitals and lunatic asylums, acting as president to numerous societies, as a governor of schools and charitable trusts, opening shows and bazaars and returning home after a full day to a home that usually abounded with guests) and saw him now only as the recluse of his later years in the smell of dog and tobacco in the small seaside hotel. It was to that image he had prayed that morning.
‘No,’ said Guy, ‘I should like to keep everything at Matchet.’
Uncle Peregrine came down the steps.
‘You should
go and say goodbye to the Reverend Mother. Time to be moving off. The train leaves in twenty minutes. I wasn’t able to reserve a coach for the return journey.’
On the way to the station Miss Vavasour came to Guy’s side. ‘I wonder,’ she said, ‘will you think it very impertinent to ask, but I should so much like to have a keepsake of your father; any little thing; do you think you could spare something?’
‘Of course, Miss Vavasour. I ought to have thought of it myself. What sort of thing? My father had so few personal possessions, you know.’
‘I was wondering, if no one else wants it, and I don’t know who would, do you think I could have his old tobacco-jar?’
‘Of course. But isn’t there anything more personal? One of his books? A walking stick?’
‘The tobacco-jar is what I should like, if it’s not asking too much. It seems somehow specially personal. You must think me very foolish.’
‘Certainly. Please take it by all means if that is what you would really like.’
‘Oh, thank you. I can’t tell you how grateful. I don’t suppose I shall stay on much longer at Matchet. The Cuthberts have not been considerate. It won’t be the same place without your father and the tobacco-jar will remind me – the smell you know.’
Box-Bender did not return to London. He had an allowance of parliamentary petrol. Angela had used it to come to Broome. He and she and the dog, Felix, drove back to their house in the Cotswolds.
Later that evening he said: ‘Everyone had a great respect for your father.’
‘Yes, that was rather the theme of the day, wasn’t it?’
‘Did you talk to the solicitor?’
‘Yes.’
‘So did I. Had you any idea your father was so well off? Of course it’s your money, Angie, but it will come in very handy. There was something said about some pensions. You’re not obliged to continue them you know.’
‘So I gathered. But Guy and I will do so.’
‘Mind you, one can’t be sure they’re all deserving cases. Worth looking into. After all your father was very credulous. Our expenses get heavier every year. When the girls come back from America, we shall have to meet all kinds of bills. It’s a different matter with Guy. He hasn’t anyone to support except himself. And he had his whack when he went to Kenya you know. He had no right to expect any more.’
‘Guy and I will continue the pensions.’
‘Just as you like, Angie. No business of mine. Just thought I’d mention it. Anyway, they’ll all fall in one day.’
4
WHEN Virginia Troy went to visit Dr Puttock for the second time, he received her cordially.
‘Yes, Mrs Troy, I am happy to say that the report is positive.’
‘You mean I am going to have a baby?’
‘Without any doubt. These new tests are infallible.’
‘But this is awful.’
‘My dear Mrs Troy, I assure you that there is nothing whatever to worry about. You are thirty-three. Of course, it is generally advisable for a woman to enter her child-bearing period a little younger, but your general condition is excellent. I see no reason to anticipate any kind of trouble. Just carry on with your normal activities and come back to see me in three weeks so that I can see that everything is going along all right.’
‘But it’s all wrong. It’s quite impossible for me to have a baby.’
‘Impossible in what sense? I presume you had marital intercourse at the appropriate time.’
‘“Marital?”’ said Virginia. ‘Isn’t that something to do with marriage?’
‘Yes, yes, of course.’
‘Well, I haven’t seen my husband for four years.’
‘Ah, I see; well. That’s a legal rather than a medical problem, is it not? Or should I say social? One finds a certain amount of this kind of thing nowadays in all classes. Husbands abroad in the army or prisoners of war; that sort of thing. Conventions are not as strict as they used to be – there is not the same stigma attached to bastardy. I presume you know the child’s father.’
‘Oh, I know him all right. He’s just gone to America.’
‘Yes, I see that that is rather inconvenient, but I am sure you will find things turn out well. In spite of everything the maternity services run very smoothly. Some people even think that a disproportionate attention is given to the next generation.’
‘Dr Puttock, you must do something about this.’
‘I? I don’t think I understand you,’ said Dr Puttock icily, ‘Now I am afraid I must ask you to make way for my other patients. We civilian doctors are run off our feet, you know. Give my kind regards to Lady Kilbannock.’
Virginia was remarkable for the composure with which she bad hitherto accepted the vicissitudes of domesticity. Whatever the disturbances she had caused to others, her own place in her small but richly diverse world had been one of coolness, light, and peace. She had found that place for herself, calmly recoiling from a disorderly childhood and dismissing it from her thoughts. From the day of her marriage to Guy to the day of her desertion of Mr Troy and for a year after, she had achieved a douceur de vivre that was alien to her epoch; seeking nothing, accepting what came and enjoying it without compunction. Then, ever since her meeting with Trimmer in fogbound Glasgow, chill shadows had fallen, deepening daily. ‘It’s all the fault of this damned war,’ she reflected, as she went down the steps into Sloane Street. ‘What good do they think they’re doing?’ she asked herself as she surveyed the passing uniforms and gasmasks. ‘What’s it all for?’
She went to her place of business in Ian Kilbannock’s office and telephoned to Kerstie in ‘Ciphers’.
‘I’ve got to see you. How about luncheon?’
‘I was going out with a chap.’
‘You must chuck him, Kerstie. I’m in trouble.’
‘Oh, Virginia, not again.’
‘The first time. Surely you know what people mean when they say “in trouble”?’
‘Not that, Virginia?’
‘Just that.’
‘Well, that is something, isn’t it. All right, I’ll chuck. Meet me in the club at one.’
The officer’s club at HOO HQ was gloomier in aspect than the canteens at No. 6 Transit Camp. It had been designed for other purposes. The walls were covered with ceramic portraits of Victorian rationalists, whiskered, hooded and gowned. The wives and daughters of the staff served there under the wife of General Whale, who arranged the duties so that the young and pretty were out of sight in the kitchen and pantry. Mrs Whale controlled, among much else, the tap of a coffee urn. Whenever one of these secluded beauties appeared by the bar, Mrs Whale was able to raise a cloud of steam which completely concealed her. Mrs Whale had resisted the entry of the female staff but had been overborne. She made things as disagreeable for them as she could, often reprimanding them: ‘Now you can’t sit here coffee-housing. You’re keeping the men from the tables and they have work to do.’
She said precisely this when Virginia set about expounding her situation to Kerstie.
‘Oh Mrs Whale, we’ve only just arrived.’
‘You’ve had plenty of time to eat. Here’s your bill.’
The nondescript colonel who was liberating Italy was in fact looking for a place. He took Virginia’s warm chair gratefully.
‘I should like to boil that bitch in her own stew,’ said Virginia as they left.
They found a dark corner outside and there she described her visit to Dr Puttock. Eventually Kerstie said: ‘Don’t worry, darling, I’ll go and talk to him myself. He dotes on me.’
‘Go soon.’
‘This evening on the way home. I’ll tell you what he says.’
Virginia was already at Eaton Terrace when Kerstie returned. She was wearing the clothes she wore all day and was sitting as she had first sat down, doing nothing, waiting.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘how did it go?’
‘We’d better both have a drink.’
‘Bad news?’
‘It was all r
ather disturbing. Gin?’
‘What did he say, Kerstie? Will he do it?’
‘He won’t. He was frightfully pompous. I’ve never known him like it before. Most welcoming at first until I told him what I’d come about. Talked about professional ethics; said I was asking him to commit a grave crime; asked me, would I go to my bank manager and suggest he embezzled money for me. I said, yes, if I thought there was any chance of his doing it. That softened him a little bit. I explained about you and how you were broke. Then he said: “She won’t find it a cheap operation.” That rather gave him away. I said: “Come off it. You know there are doctors who do this kind of thing,” and he said: “One has heard of such cases – in the police courts usually.” And I said: “I bet you know one or two who haven’t been caught. It goes on all the time. It just happens Virginia and I have never had to inquire before.” Then I sucked up to him a lot and reminded him how he had always looked after me when I had babies. I suppose it wasn’t strictly à propos but it seemed to soften him; so at last he said he did know the name of someone who might help, and as a family friend, not as a doctor, he might give me the name. Well, I mean to say, he’s always been a doctor to me not a family friend. He’s never been in the house except to charge a guinea a time; but I didn’t bring that up. I said: “Well, come on. Write it down,” and then, Virginia, he rather shook me. He said: “No. You write it down,” and I put out a hand to take a piece of paper off his desk and he said: “Just a minute,” and he took out a pair of scissors and cut the address off the top. “Now,” he said, “you can write this name and address. I haven’t heard of the man for some time. I don’t know if he’s still practising. If your friend wants an appointment, she had better take a hundred pounds with her in notes. That’s the best I can do. And remember I’m not doing it. I have no knowledge of this matter. I have never seen your friend.” Do you know, he had me so nervous I could hardly write.’