Paul looked at him in some amazement. He had never, since his Oxford days, met anybody so fond of quoting.
‘And presumably,’ said Lord Lewes, ‘that is how the Byzantinist must feel, otherwise I see no way to account for him. Attracted beyond words to the Archipelago itself, and repelled, I suppose, by the sheer perfection of the art which he finds there, he is obliged to search the islands for something which he thinks he can honestly admire. He ends, of course, by valuing the Byzantine quite absurdly high, far higher than its actual merit deserves.’
Paul, who was himself an ardent Byzantinist, and, like all such, extremely sensitive on the subject, was disgusted by this speech, which revealed in his opinion an intellectual dishonesty too dreadful to contemplate. He was just about to inform Lord Lewes that he was the author of a small and privately printed monograph entitled The Byzantine Breakaway when he remembered for the second time that evening that his position in the household was not of the most genuine, and that his name was now no longer Fotheringay but Fisher. Too angry to continue the discussion he walked quickly out of the room, saying over his shoulder to Philadelphia, ‘I’l fetch that book I said I would lend you; I particularly want to know what you think about it.’
‘Nice, isn’t he?’ said Michael as soon as he was out of the room.
‘Awfully sweet,’ said Bobby.
‘He’s an angel, I think,’ said Philadelphia dreamily.
Later Lord Lewes said to his Aunt Gloria, ‘What a really charming, cultured young man, that Mr. Fisher, it is a real pleasure to have made his acquaintance. I think you were so clever to find him. He is just the very person for Bobby, too; full of brains and yet most human.’
‘Yes, he seems all right,’ said Lady Bobbin. ‘He was very much recommended to me. I only hope he will get the boy out of doors and make himself useful with Brenda Chadlington’s brats. She announced today that she is bringing them again; most thoughtless and inconsiderate of her to my mind, but still –!’
Paul looked forward with no feelings of delight to his first ride to Compton Bobbin. He was, in fact, extremely terrified at the idea of it. Bobby, noticing his aversion to that form of exercise, tried to reassure him by pointing out that the distance to Mulberrie Farm was well under three miles, that it would be unnecessary for them to proceed at any pace more desperate than a walk, and that Boadicea, the mare which had been allotted to him to ride, was as quiet as any old cow; but in vain. Paul, most unfortunately for his own peace of mind, had happened to see the said mare out at exercise the day before, and had noticed in her a very different aspect from that of the ancient hireling on whose back he had spent so many painful hours jogging up and down the Rotten Row. To compare her to an old cow was simply silly. It was, in fact, only too apparent that here was a beast of pride and pedigree, who would almost certainly consider it a point of honour to cast the trembling tyro from her back. Paul knew, alas! how fatally easy, in his case, this would be; the smallest jerk, nay, even the transition between trot and canter, often proved sufficient to unseat him. He visualized with a shudder that horrid moment when everything would fly from his grip, the universe become black and roll several times round him, while the earth would suddenly rise up and bang him in the kidneys. It had happened in the soft and friendly Row and had been extraordinarily painful; what of the tarmac road, hard, black and shining like ebonite, which lay between Compton Bobbin and Mulberrie Farm? Poor Paul spent a wakeful night pondering these things, and by the morning had quite made up his mind that he would return to London sooner than court an end so sudden and unpleasing.
After breakfast, however, he felt more of a man again, and the sight of the precious red morocco volumes peeping from behind the schoolroom radiator put new courage into him. Besides, it would be a pity not to see a little more of Philadelphia. He was looking forward with some interest to hearing her verdict upon Crazy Capers, which he had lent her to read, saying that a friend of his had written it. Unsophisticated but intelligent, he thought, it was just possible that she might prove to be the one person who would put a proper construction on it. Possible, not likely. If she joined in the chorus of laughter he knew that he would be hurt, far more hurt than when Marcella had, who was always a hard, unimaginative little thing with a mind like a tennis ball. Meanwhile, fasting, for he felt too nervous to touch food at luncheon time, he prepared to face his ordeal.
By the most unlucky accident of fate Lady Bobbin happened to be talking to the stud groom in the stable yard when Paul and Bobby arrived there, and waited to see them mount. Paul, sadly conscious of the newness of his clothes, which had elicited roars of delight from the heartless Bobby as they left the house, stood a quaking and, no doubt, he thought bitterly, a pathetically comic figure, as he waited for Boadicea to be brought from her dark and smelly lair inside the stables.
‘Cold, isn’t it?’ he said between chattering teeth to Lady Bobbin, who took no notice whatever of this remark. At that moment the snorting animal was led out, tossing her head from side to side in what seemed to be an ecstasy of rage and contempt, and showering little bits of froth in all directions. Paul, his unreasonable terror of horses now quite overcome by his unreasonable terror of Lady Bobbin, whose cold gimlet eye seemed to be reading his every emotion, decided that here was one of the few occasions in a man’s life on which death would be preferable to dishonour, and advanced towards the mounting block with a slight swagger which he hoped was reminiscent of a French marquis approaching the scaffold. Grasping the reins and the pommel of the saddle firmly as he had been taught, he placed his left foot in the stirrup, when the animal, as indeed he had feared it probably would, began to wriggle its hind quarters away from him. When this had happened in the Row it had been his invariable custom to remove his foot from the stirrup and begin all over again. Now, however, feeling (he dared not look) that Lady Bobbin’s eyes, not to mention the eyes of the stud groom, two under grooms, the stable boy, Bobby and two men who were carting away manure, were upon him, he rather lost his head and with the courage of despair gave a tremendous leap in pursuit of Boadicea’s retreating back. To his immense astonishment, this piece of bravura was rewarded with complete success, and he found himself sitting fair and square in the saddle, with the stable boy placing his other foot in its appointed stirrup. Alas, he had not time to enjoy the fruits of triumph, as no sooner did the under groom, who was holding her, release Boadicea’s head from his grasp than, despite Paul’s frenzied tugs at the reins, she departed at a brisk trot out of the stable yard, and with a series of sickening slithers on to the tarmac road outside. Making a desperate effort, and by dint of counting out loud, one-two, one-two, Paul did manage to ‘rise’ in the approved Row style until he felt himself to be well out of Lady Bobbin’s sight, when, abandoning all pride and self-respect, he clung with one hand to the saddle, jerked at the reins with the other and sobbed out in pitiful gasps: ‘Stop, stop, dear Boadicea, whoa, whoa, Boadicea whoa, oh, please, please, stop!’ The insensitive Boadicea, however, paid no attention to his pathetic cries, but continued to trot on, very nearly pulling him over from time to time by suddenly throwing her head right forward with loud and terrifying snorts. At last, when Paul felt himself to be at the end of his tether and, having long since abandoned both reins and stirrups, was looking out for a soft piece of grass on which he could hurl his aching bones, he heard another horse come up behind him. Bobby’s outstretched hand seized the reins and, with a painful and alarming bump, Boadicea came to a standstill. She immediately began to eat grass at the side of the road, leaving, in the place where her head and neck had formerly been, a hideous gaping chasm. This was, for poor Paul, the last straw.
‘I can’t bear it, I can’t bear it. I knew I should hate it. Lousy horse! Please, please let me get off and walk. Oh, what Gehenna!’
‘It’s all right,’ said Bobby, who was laughing so much he could hardly speak. ‘Oh, you did look too entrancing. I hope you’ll do it again for me. No, no, don’t get off, she’ll walk quite quietly
now as far as Amabelle’s. Besides, you’ve got to get used to it, haven’t you? But, you know, I can’t think why she didn’t come down, spanking along the tarmac like that. You should have taken her up on to the grass.’
‘It’s all very well for you to talk,’ said Paul, who was still on the verge of tears; ‘but I can’t guide the beastly thing at all, it’s as much as I can do to stay on its back.’
‘My God, you looked funny,’ said Bobby, rocking and guffawing. ‘I’d give anything to see that again.’
Paul felt that, considering he had just been rescued from the jaws of death, he was not receiving that sympathy which was his due, and for some time he maintained a dignified silence. Presently, however, his sense of humour asserted itself, and he began to giggle too.
‘I say, what will your mother have thought?’ he asked rather nervously when he had recovered his breath.
‘Well, by the mercy of Providence she was having a look at this horse’s fetlocks when you got up, so I don’t believe she noticed much. She did mutter something about “Why can’t the blasted idiot wait a minute; what’s all the damned hurry for?” But that doesn’t mean a lot from her. No, you had a lucky escape this time, old boy. If you had let Boadicea down on the tarmac it would have been the end of Compton Bobbin and the journals for you, believe me.’
10
‘One heart.’
‘I double a heart.’
‘Really, Sally, my sweet, don’t you ride that convention to death just a little? It seems to be your one and only idea of a bid.’
‘Well, I don’t want to have to play the hand any more; I’d much rather you did, then there’s no grumbling afterwards, you see.’
‘I should have thought it would be more useful,’ said Walter, ostentatiously looking at the score, ‘at this stage in the proceedings, if you would show a suit.’
‘Well, I’ve said before and I’ll say again that I can’t play bridge, and I don’t like playing bridge. I only do it, as you know quite well, to make up a four. I think it’s a horrible game, it makes everyone too bad-tempered and beastly for words – especially you, Walter darling, and you’re apt to be quite nice at other times,’ she added, for even when goaded to madness by Walter she always found it impossible to be unkind to him. ‘Thank goodness Jerome comes tomorrow, and I shall be able to go back to my kiddies for Christmas like Mrs. Culbertson.’
‘Darling, now don’t be sour, please, my angel. I only meant that when you’re playing you might try to concentrate a tiny bit more?’
‘Concentrate! My head’s aching with trying to concentrate, and all the thanks I get from you are these everlasting lectures, or else you sit there looking so reproachful and swallowing every time I play a card, as though I were doing it on purpose to annoy.’
‘I said a heart,’ murmured Bobby, who, having a superb hand, was anxious to get on with the business and had become rather restive during this family argument.
‘Well, now, I’ve got to show a suit, have I?’ said Sally.
‘No, no! Of course not now,’ cried Walter in that agony of impatience only known to the good bridge player obliged to suffer the vagaries of an absolutely incompetent partner. ‘Not now, you can’t. You’ve doubled a heart, haven’t you? And you must stick at that. Paul says?’
‘Two hearts,’ said Paul.
‘Two spades,’ said Walter. ‘Now, if Sally would only sometimes show a suit instead of sitting there saying double – ’
‘Oh, I’ll show you the whole of my hand if you go on like this,’ said Sally, ‘and much good may it do you!’
‘Four hearts,’ said Bobby with an air of finality.
‘Tee-hee,’ he said as Paul put down a hand with six hearts to the ace, queen and an outside ace; ‘now wasn’t that just too psychic of me for words. Thanks ever so much, Paul, old boy – of course, you should have given me a double rise really, shouldn’t you? But still – ’
‘What an extraordinary lead, Sally darling. Are you in your right senses?’
‘Well, in that ghastly little book you made me read it said, “never lead from an ace, queen, never lead from a king, and never lead from a doubleton, it is a rotten lead”. So that’s the only thing for me to do, as far as I can see.’
‘That’s right,’ said Bobby good-naturedly, ‘tell him exactly what you’ve got in your hand; don’t mind me, will you?’
Paul wandered over to the old world inglenook where Amabelle was sitting with Elspeth Paula on her knee.
‘That’s right, darling, have a good gurk,’ she was saying, ‘makes us all feel better, that does. Isn’t she a treasure? Look at those huge goggling eyes. She’s going to be a one with the chaps, she is. Aren’t you, sweetikin. Boo!’
A confused murmur came from the bridge table.
‘Now, Sally, out with it. There’s only one lead you can possibly make.’
‘I don’t see that. I’ve got six cards in my hand and I can lead any of them, can’t I? Oh, dear, I wish I knew.’
‘Now, think. There’s only one possible lead. Oh, my God, you are a vile player, Sally. Well, now, that makes it all very O.K. for you, Bobby, game and rub – ’
The butler opened the door and announced:
‘Lord Lewes, madam.’
A perfectly stunned silence fell on Amabelle’s drawing-room as Michael Lewes walked into it. Amabelle herself, who hardly ever showed emotion of any sort, turned crimson and nearly dropped the baby; Paul, feeling as he had not felt since, when at Eton, he was caught by the ‘beaks’ in the Slough cinema, made half a movement to escape through the garden door, but decided that this would only make matters far worse and that it would be better to stay and brazen it out; and the Monteaths gave each other long glances, fraught with meaning, over their cards. Bobby alone remained unshaken and went on playing the hand in his usual brisk and businesslike style. Such was the emotion of his adversaries that he made as a result not only four hearts giving him game and rubber, but little slam as well, a fact which he was heard afterwards loudly to lament. (‘You know, Paul, it was monstrous only putting me up one. After all, you had the hearts; you knew I was calling on outside cards, didn’t you? I naturally imagined you had a bare rise and wanted me to go to game. It is too maddening.’)
The silence was broken by a shattering gurk from Elspeth Paula.
‘What savoir faire!’ said Bobby under his breath. ‘Anybody would think I was the father. No more diamonds, Sally? Yes, I thought you had – no, no, that’s O.K. The rest are good on the table, aren’t they? That’s one hundred and twenty below, one hundred overtricks and five hundred for the rubber. Thirteen I make it.’
‘How are you, Michael?’ Amabelle was saying. ‘Ring the bell, will you, Paul? How lovely to see you, my dear. I can’t think why, but I imagined you were still abroad. You know Mr. Fotheringay, do you?’
‘Mr. Fisher?’ said Lord Lewes.
‘What am I thinking of – Mr. Fisher I mean, of course. And Walter and Sally you know, don’t you? And this is the Monteath heiress, Miss Elspeth Paula, who was born at one of my cocktail parties.’
‘Indeed she wasn’t,’ cried Sally indignantly.
‘Well, more nearly than I care to think about; if that taxi hadn’t come when it did – ’
‘My dear, she wasn’t born till four in the morning.’
‘What a cheesey time,’ said Bobby. ‘Well, darling, we’ve finished our tiny rubber and I think we’d better be going. See you all tomorrow and thanks so much for having us. Come on, Paul, to horse, to horse!’
‘Where are you off to, Sally?’
‘I think I’d better take baby up to her beddie-bye. Come along then, you sweet precious.’
‘I’m going to see Paul on his horse,’ said Walter, chuckling, ‘It sounds too good to be missed.’
Amabelle sighed. There was evidently a conspiracy to leave her alone with Lord Lewes.
‘You look very well, my dear,’ she said briskly, as the door shut on Walter and Sally. ‘Did you enjoy yoursel
f in Cairo?’
‘No.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry. I thought it all sounded so nice and interesting. I saw photos, in The Sphere, wasn’t it, of a camp stool four thousand years old (or was it four hundred? I’m so bad at figures). Anyway, a very interesting old camp stool that you had found, and I thought how pleased you would be to find a lovely old camp stool like that,’ said Amabelle desperately, making up the fire until it was a sort of burning fiery furnace.
‘I shall never enjoy anything, and I shall never have a single moment’s happiness in life until I can persuade you to marry me, Amabelle.’
‘Oh dear. I hoped so much – I mean, surely Cairo must be full of lovely girls, isn’t it? One’s always reading about them, anyway. Haven’t you changed your mind at all?’
‘How could you imagine such a thing? No, indeed, I thought of you every moment of the day. I dreamt of you every moment of the night. I saw no beautiful girls, or if I did they looked to me like dolls stuffed with sawdust. Occasionally I came across people who knew you, they would mention your name in passing and it would go through me like a red-hot sword; if I saw in some illustrated paper a photograph of you it would make me even more wretched than I was already, and for days. Anything of beauty or of interest became intolerable because you were not there to share it with me. I tell you, you have made life very sad for me, Amabelle.’
‘Dear Michael,’ said Amabelle, stifling a yawn.
Curious, she thought, how some people have this devastating effect of boredom upon one. She had forgotten in three years just how much he did bore her, but the moment he had opened his mouth it had all come back to her in a wave and she was hopelessly, crushingly bored again.
‘I’m so sorry, my dear,’ she said.
‘But I haven’t come here to reproach you with that. I am here because I know, I feel quite certain that in your heart, only you won’t admit it, you love me too.’