The Kindly Ones

  ‘Stuck.’

  ‘It’s impossible to write with Hitler about.’

  ‘Utterly.’

  He was in low spirits. His tangled, uncut hair emphasised the look his face sometimes assumed of belonging to a fractious, disappointed child. Matilda, on the other hand, so far from being depressed, as Isobel had represented her, now seemed lively and restless. She was wearing trousers that revealed each bone of her angular figure. Her greenish eyes, rather too large mouth, for some reason always made one think she would make a more powerful, more talented actress than her stage capabilities in fact justified. These immediately noticeable features, arresting rather than beautiful, also suggested, in some indirect manner, her practical abilities, her gift for organisation. Matilda’s present exhilaration might be explained, I thought, by the fact that these abilities were put to more use now than when the Morelands had lived in London. There, except late at night, or when they lay in bed late in the morning, they were rarely to be found in their flat. Here, they must be alone together most of the day, although no doubt much of the time Moreland was shut away in the studio at work. Matilda, when not acting, had sometimes complained in London that time hung on her hands, even though she was – or had formerly been to some extent – a kind of agent for Moreland, arranging much of his professional life, advising as to what jobs he accepted, what interviews he gave, when he must be left in peace. All the same, as I have said, it was chiefly matters outside the musical world that caused him pain and grief. In the business sphere, Matilda no doubt took a burden from him; in his musical life as such, he may sometimes even have resented too much interference. Since the baby had died, they had had no other child.

  ‘You are eating sausages tonight,’ said Matilda, ‘and half-a-crown Barbera. As you know, I’m not a great cook. However, you’ll have a square meal tomorrow, as we’re going over to Stourwater for dinner.’

  ‘Can you bear it?’ said Moreland. ‘I’m not sure I can.’

  ‘Do cheer up, darling,’ said Matilda. ‘You know you’ll like it when we get there.’

  ‘Not so sure.’

  ‘Anyway, it’s got to be faced.’

  Things had certainly changed. Formerly, Moreland had been the one who liked going to parties, staying up late, drinking a lot; Matilda, bored by people, especially some of Moreland’s musical friends, wanted as a rule to go home. Now the situation seemed reversed: Matilda anxious for company, Moreland immersed in work. Matilda’s tone, her immediate manner of bringing up the subject of Stourwater, was no doubt intended to show in the plainest terms that she herself felt completely at ease so far as visiting Sir Magnus was concerned. Although she had never attempted to conceal her former association with him – which would certainly not have been easy – she seemed to feel that present circumstances required her specially to emphasise her complete freedom from embarrassment. This demeanour was obviously intended to cover Moreland in that respect, as well as herself. She was announcing their policy as a married couple. Possibly she did not altogether carry Moreland with her. He was rebellious about something, even if not about the visit to Stourwater.

  ‘Have you seen the place before?’ he asked. ‘You realise we are going to conduct you to a Wagnerian castle, a palace where Ludwig of Bavaria wouldn’t have been ashamed to disport himself.’

  ‘I was there about ten years ago. Some people called Walpole-Wilson took me over. They live twenty or thirty miles away.’

  ‘I’ve heard Donners speak of them,’ said Matilda.

  She always referred to Sir Magnus by his surname. Isobel and I used to discuss whether Matilda had so addressed him in their moments of closest intimacy.

  ‘After all,’ Isobel had said, ‘she can only have liked him for his money. To call him “Donners” suggests capital appreciation much more than a pet-name. Besides, “Magnus” – if one could bring oneself to call him that – is almost more formal than “Donners”, without the advantage of conjuring up visions of dividends and allotment letters.’

  ‘Do you think Matilda only liked him for his money? She never attempted to get any out of him.’

  ‘It’s not a question of getting the money. It’s the money itself. Money is a charm like any other charm.’

  ‘As a symbol of power?’

  ‘Partly, perhaps. After all, men and women both like power in the opposite sex. Why not take it in the form of money?’

  ‘Do you really think Matilda liked nothing else about poor Sir Magnus?’

  ‘I didn’t think him very attractive myself the only time I saw him.’

  ‘Perhaps Matilda was won by his unconventional ways.’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘You don’t think so?’

  ‘I don’t express an opinion.’

  ‘Still I must agree, she left him in the end.’

  ‘I think Matilda is quite ambitious,’ said Isobel.

  ‘Then why did she leave Sir Magnus? She might have made him marry her.’

  ‘Because she took a fancy to Hugh.’

  That was no doubt the answer. I had been struck, at the time she said this, by Isobel’s opinion that Matilda was ambitious.

  ‘Who are the Walpole-Wilsons?’ asked Moreland.

  ‘Sir Gavin Walpole-Wilson is a retired diplomat. His daughter, Eleanor, has shared a flat for years with Isobel’s sister, Norah. But, of course, you know Norah and Eleanor of old.’

  Moreland reddened at the mention of Isobel’s sisters. Thought of them must still have called Priscilla uneasily to his mind. The subject of sisters-in-law was obviously one to be avoided. However, Matilda showed some inclination to continue to talk of them. She had rescued her husband from Priscilla, whom she could consider to have suffered a defeat. She may have wanted to emphasise that.

  ‘How are Norah and Eleanor?’ she asked.

  ‘Eleanor is trying to make up her mind again whether she will become a Catholic convert,’ said Isobel. ‘Heather Hopkins became an RC the other day. Hugo says that puts Eleanor in a dilemma. She wants to annoy Norah, but doesn’t want to please Hopkins.’

  ‘I practically never go to Stourwater,’ Moreland said, determined to change the subject from one that could possibly lead back to Priscilla. ‘Matty pops over there once in a way to see some high life. I recognise that Donners has his points – has in the past even been very obliging to me personally. The fact remains that when I did the incidental music for that film of his, I saw enough of him to last a lifetime.’

  If Matilda had wanted to make clear her sentiments about Stourwater, Moreland had now been equally explicit about his own. The question of the proximity of Sir Magnus perhaps irked him more than he would admit to himself, certainly more than I expected. On inquiry, it appeared that even Matilda’s visits to Stourwater were rare. I thought Moreland was just in a bad mood, exaggerating his own dislike for ‘going out’. He was not by any means without a taste for occasional forays into rich life. This taste could hardly have been removed entirely by transferring himself to the country. Even in London, he had suffered periods of acute boredom. As the week-end took shape, it became clear that these fits of ennui were by no means a thing of the past. He would sit for hours without speaking, nursing a large tabby cat called Farinelli.

  ‘Do you think this sell-out is going to prevent a war?’ he said, when we were reading the papers on Sunday morning.

  ‘No.’

  ‘You think we ought to have fought this time?’

  ‘I don’t know. The one thing everybody agrees about is that we aren’t ready for it. There’s no point in going to war if we are not going to win it. Losing’s not going to help anybody.’

  ‘What are you going to do when it comes?’

  ‘My name is on one of those various army reserves.’

  ‘How did you manage that?’

  ‘Offered myself, and was accepted, before all this last business started.’

  ‘I can only do ladylike things such as playing the piano,’ said Moreland gloomily. ‘I suppose I sha
ll go on doing that if there’s a show-down. One wonders what the hell will happen. How are we getting to this place tonight?’

  ‘Donners rang up and said one of his guests is picking us up in a car,’ said Matilda.

  ‘When did he ring up?’

  ‘When you were all at the pub this morning.’

  ‘Why not tell us?’

  ‘I forgot,’ said Matilda. ‘I told Donners when we were asked he must arrange something. Finding transport is the least the rich can do, if they hope to enjoy one’s company. You must shave, sweetie, before we start.’

  ‘All right, all right,’ said Moreland, ‘I won’t let you all down by my tramp-like appearance. Do we know the name of our chauffeur?’

  ‘Somebody called Peter Templer,’ said Matilda. ‘Anybody ever heard of him?’

  ‘Certainly I’ve heard of Peter Templer,’ I said. ‘He’s one of my oldest friends. I haven’t seen him for years.’

  ‘Who is he? What’s he like?’

  ‘A stockbroker. Fast sports car, loud checks, blondes, golf, all that sort of thing. We were at school together.’

  ‘Wasn’t he the brother of that girl you used to know?’ said Isobel.

  She spoke as if finally confirming a fact of which she had always been a little uncertain, at the same time smiling as if she hardly thought the pretence worth keeping up.

  ‘He was.’

  ‘Which girl?’ asked Moreland, without interest.

  ‘A woman called Jean Duport, whom I haven’t seen for years.’

  ‘Never heard of her,’ said Moreland.

  I thought what a long time it seemed since I had visited Stourwater on that earlier occasion, when the luncheon party had been given for Prince Theodoric. Prince Theodoric’s name, as a pro-British element in a country ominously threatened from without by German political pressure, had been in the papers recently. Stringham, just engaged to Peggy Stepney, had still been one of Sir Magnus’s secretaries. Jean Duport, Peter Templer’s sister, had been there and I had wondered whether I was not perhaps in love with her. Now I did not know where she was, was ignorant of the very hemisphere she inhabited. When last seen – parting infinitely painful – she had been on her way to South America, reunited with her awful husband. Baby Wentworth was still – though not long to remain – Sir Magnus’s ‘girl’. Matilda must have taken on the job soon after that visit of mine. If mere arrival in the neighbourhood had imparted, of itself, a strong sense of having slipped back into the past, that sensation was certainly intensified by the prospect of meeting Peter Templer again. He had passed from my life as completely as his sister. There was nothing at all surprising about his staying at Stourwater, when I came to examine the question, except his own dislike for houses of that sort. Business affairs might perfectly well have brought him within the orbit of Sir Magnus. One of the odd things about Templer was that, although pretty well equipped for social life of any kind, he found places like Stourwater in general too pretentious for his taste. He preferred circles where there was less competition, where he could safely be tipped as the man most likely to appeal to all the women present, most popular with the men. It was not that Templer was in any way ill-adapted to a larger sort of life, so much as the fact that he himself was unwilling to tolerate that larger life’s social disciplines, of which the chief was the ever-present danger of finding himself regarded as less important than someone else. That makes him sound intolerable. Templer was, on the contrary, one of the most easygoing, good-natured of men, but he liked being first in the field. He liked, especially, to be first in the field with women. After Mona left him, I imagined he had returned to this former pursuit.

  ‘I have rather suburban taste in ladies, like everything else, Templer used to say. ‘Golf, bridge, an occasional spot of crumpet, they are all I require to savour my seasonal financial flutter.’

  The fact that he could analyse his tastes in this way made Templer a little unusual, considering what those tastes were. I felt pleasure in the thought that I was going to see him again, tempered by that faint uneasiness about meeting a friend who may have changed too much during the interval of absence to make practicable any renewal of former ties.

  ‘We haven’t brought any evening clothes,’ I said.

  ‘Good God,’ said Moreland, ‘we’re not changing for Donners.’

  It was a warm autumnal evening, so that we were all in the garden when Templer’s car drew up at the gate. The vehicle was of just the kind I had predicted. Templer, too, as he jumped out, seemed scarcely to have changed at all. The car was shaped like a torpedo; Templer’s clothes gave the familiar impression – as Stringham used to say – that he was ‘about to dance backwards and forwards in front of a chorus of naked ladies’. That outward appearance was the old Templer, just as he had looked at Dicky Umfraville’s nightclub four or five years before. Now, as he strode up the path with the same swagger, I saw there was a change in him. This was more than the fact that he was distinctly fatter. A coarseness of texture had always coloured his elegance. Now, that coarseness had become more than ever marked. He looked hard, even rather savage, as if he had made up his mind to endure life rather than, as formerly, to enjoy it. From the first impression that he had changed hardly at all, I reversed judgment, deciding he had changed a great deal. When he saw me he stepped back melodramatically.

  ‘Is it really you, Nick?’

  ‘What’s left.’

  I introduced him to the Morelands and to Isobel.

  I believe you invited me to your wedding, Nick,’ said Templer. ‘Somehow I never manage to get to weddings – it’s an effort even to reach my own.’

  ‘Have you been having many weddings lately, Peter?’

  ‘Oh, well, not for a year or two,’ said Templer, suddenly becoming more serious. ‘You knew I married again after Mona?’

  ‘I didn’t, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Yes, indeed.’

  ‘How shameful that we should have missed the announcement.’

  ‘I’m not sure that we made one,’ Templer said. ‘It was all very quiet. Hardly asked a soul. Since then – I don’t know – we’ve been living in the country. Just see a few neighbours. Betty doesn’t like going out much. She has come to Stourwater this week-end, as a matter of fact, but that’s rather exceptional. She felt jumpy for some reason about staying at home. She gets these jumpy fits from time to time. Thinks war’s going to break out all the time.’

  He smiled rather uncomfortably. I felt suddenly certain that Templer’s new wife must be responsible for the change that had come over him. At the same time, I tried, quite unsuccessfully, to rationalise in my own mind what exactly this change was. Now that we were face to face and I was talking to him, it was more than ever apparent, almost horrifying. He had slowed up, become more ‘serious’, at the same time lost that understanding, sympathetic manner formerly characteristic of him, so unexpected in a person of his sort. That was my first thought. Then I wondered whether, in fact, he was even less ‘serious’ – if that were possible – determined to get as much fun out of living as he could, whatever the obstacles, whatever the cost. These dissections on my own part were rather absurd; yet there was something not far away from Templer that generated a sense of horror.

  ‘What a nice colour your car is,’ said Moreland.

  I could see he had at once placed Templer in the category of persons he found unsympathetic. That was to be expected. Just as most of the world find it on the whole unusual that anyone should be professionally occupied with the arts, Moreland could never get used to the fact that most people – in this particular case, Templer – lead lives in which the arts play no part whatsoever. That is perhaps an exaggeration of Moreland’s attitude. All the same, he always found difficulty in accustoming himself to complete aesthetic indifference. This narrowness of vision sometimes led Moreland, with all his subtlety in some matters, to complete misunderstanding of others, especially to underestimate some of the people who came his way. On Templer’s side, the
meeting had been equally lacking in fellow feeling. He had no doubt been prepared for the Morelands to look – from his point of view – a pretty extraordinary couple. From Templer’s point of view, it had to be admitted, the Morelands did look pretty extraordinary. Matilda was still wearing trousers, bright emerald green in colour, her feet in immensely thick cork-soled sandals, her hair done up on the top of her head, in the fashion of the moment, like a bird’s nest. Moreland had shaved, otherwise made no effort to tidy himself, a carelessly knotted tie slipping away from the buttonless collar of his blue shirt. Templer began to laugh, partly, I supposed, at the thought of our having met again after so long, partly, too, I felt sure, at the strange picture the Morelands presented to one unaccustomed to people like them. Templer must also have known of Matilda’s former relationship with Sir Magnus. Perhaps that was what made him laugh.

  ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘all aboard for Stourwater and the picturesque ruins.’

  We climbed into the car. The Morelands were rather silent, because there is always something a shade embarrassing about an old friend suddenly encountering another old friend, quite unknown to you. They were perhaps meditating on their own differences of opinion regarding the desirability of accepting the hospitality of Sir Magnus. Templer himself kept up a running fire of questions, as if anxious to delay the moment when he had to speak of his own life.

  ‘It is really too extraordinary our meeting again in this way, Nick,’ he said. ‘Though it’s just like a millionaire to make one of the persons staying with him fetch the guests for dinner, instead of using his own chauffeur, but now I’m glad Magnus was running true to form. Do you live in London?’

  ‘Yes – and you?’

  ‘We’re at Sunningdale.’

  ‘Isn’t that where Stringham’s mother, Mrs Foxe, has a house?’

  ‘Charles Stringham – I haven’t thought of him for years.’

  ‘Does she still live there?’

  ‘She does, as a matter of fact. We don’t know them. Rather too grand for us. Odd you should mention Stringham. It wasn’t quite true when I said I hadn’t thought of him for years, because, as it happened, I ran across Mrs Foxe’s naval-officer husband at a golf tournament handicap not so long ago who said something about him.’