*
The candle burned low.
*
“Funny thing that…”
Mr. Salter awoke with a start. He was sitting in Priscilla’s chintz-covered armchair; Uncle Theodore was still on the bed, reclining now like a surfeited knight of the age of Heliogabalus…
“Of course you couldn’t print it. But I’ve quite a number of stories you could print. Hundreds of ’em. I was wondering if it was the kind of thing your newspaper…”
“Quite outside my province, I’m afraid. You see, I’m the Foreign Editor.”
“Half of them deal with Paris; more than half. For instance…”
“I should love to hear them, all of them, sometime, later, not now…”
“You pay very handsomely, I believe, on the Beast.”
“Yes.”
“Now suppose I was to write a series of articles…”
“Mr. Boot,” said Mr. Salter desperately. “Let us discuss it in the morning.”
“I’m never in my best form in the morning,” said Uncle Theodore doubtfully. “Now after dinner I can talk quite happily until any time.”
“Come to London. See the Features Editor.”
“Yes,” said Uncle Theodore. “I will. But I don’t want to shock him; I should like your opinion first.”
The mists rose in Mr. Salter’s brain; a word or two loomed up and was lost again…”Willis’s rooms… @Pussy@ Gresham… Romano’s… believe it or not fifteen thousand pounds…” Then all was silence.
When Mr. Salter awoke he was cold and stiff and fully dressed except for his shoes; the candle was burned out. Autumn dawn glimmered in the window and Priscilla Boot, in riding habit, was ransacking the wardrobe for a lost tie.
*
The Managing Editor of the Beast was not easily moved to pity. “I say, Salter,” he said, almost reverently, “you look terrible.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Salter lowering himself awkwardly into a chair, “that’s the only word for it.”
“These heavy drinking country squires, eh?”
“No. It wasn’t that.”
“Have you got Boot?”
“Yes and no. Have you?”
“Yes and no. He signed all right.”
“So did mine. But he won’t come to the banquet.”
“I’ve sent my Boot off to the Antarctic. He said he had to go abroad at once. Apparently some woman is pursuing him.”
“My Boot,” said Mr. Salter, “is afraid of losing the esteem of his old nurse.”
“Women,” said the Managing Editor.
One thought was in both men’s mind. “What are we going to say to Lord Copper?”
The social secretary, whom they went to consult, was far from helpful.
“Lord Copper is looking forward very much to his speech,” she said. “He has been rehearsing it all the afternoon.”
“You could rewrite it a little,” said the Managing Editor.
“@Even in the moment of triumph, duty called. Here today, gone tomorrow… honoring the empty chair… the high adventure of modern journalism… @ ” But even as he spoke, his voice faltered.
“No,” said the social secretary. “That is not the kind of speech Lord Copper intends to make. You can hear him, in there, now.” A dull booming sound, like breakers on shingle, rose and fell beyond the veneered walnut doors. “He’s getting it by heart,” she added.
The two editors went sadly back to their own quarters.
“I’ve worked with the Megalopolitan, one way and another, for fifteen years,” said Mr. Salter. “I’ve got a wife to consider.”
“You at least might get other employment,” said the Managing Editor. “You’ve been educated. There’s nothing in the world I’m fit to do except edit the Beast.”
“It was your fault in the first place for engaging Boot at all. He wasn’t a foreign page man.”
“You sent him to Ishmaelia.”
“I wanted to sack him. You made him a hero. You made an ass of him. It was you who thought of that article which upset him.”
“You encouraged Lord Copper to give him a knighthood.”
“You encouraged the banquet.”
“We were both at fault,” said the Managing Editor. “But there’s no point in our both suffering. Let’s toss for who takes the blame.”
The coin spun in the air, fell and rolled away out of sight.
“A Boot, a Boot, my kingdom for a Boot.”
Mr. Salter was on his knees, searching, when the Features Editor looked in.
“Do either of you know anything about an old chap called Boot?” he asked. “I can’t get him out of my room. He’s been sitting there telling me dirty stories since I got back from lunch. Says Salter sent for him.”
“Saved.”
“Bring him in.”
“And bring a contract form with him.”
And Uncle Theodore was led in, shedding Edwardian light and warmth in that dingy room.
Three
Lord Copper quite often gave banquets; it would be an understatement to say that no one enjoyed them more than the host for no one else enjoyed them at all, while Lord Copper positively exulted in every minute. For him they satisfied every requirement of a happy evening’s entertainment; like everything that was to Lord Copper’s taste, they were unduly large and unduly long; they took place in restaurants which existed solely for such purposes, amid decorations which reminded Lord Copper of his execrable country seat at East Finchley; the provisions were copious, very bad and very expensive; the guests were assembled for no other reason than that Lord Copper had ordered it; they did not want to see one another; they had no reason to rejoice in the occasions which Lord Copper celebrated; they were there either because it was part of their job or because they were glad of a free dinner. Many were already on Lord Copper’s pay roll and they thus found their working day prolonged by some three hours without recompense—with the forfeit, indeed, of the considerable expenses of dressing up, coming out at night, and missing the last train home; those who were normally the slaves of other masters were, Lord Copper felt, his for the evening. He had bought them and bound them, hand and foot, with consommé and cream of chicken, turbot and saddle, duck and pêche melba, and afterwards when the cigars had been furtively pocketed and the brandy glasses filled with the horrible brown compound for which Lord Copper was paying two pounds a bottle, there came the golden hour when he rose to speak at whatever length he liked and on whatever subject, without fear of rivalry or interruption.
Often the occasion was purely contingent on Lord Copper’s activities—some reshuffling of directorships, an amalgamation of subsidiary companies, or an issue of new stocks; sometimes some exhausted and resentful celebrity whom the Beast had adopted, sat on Lord Copper’s right hand as the guest of honor, and there, on this particular evening, at half-past eight, sat Mr. Theodore Boot; he had tucked up his coat tails behind him, spread his napkin across his knees and unlike any of Lord Copper’s guests of honor before or since, was settling down to enjoy himself.
“Don’t think I’ve ever been to this place before,” he began.
“No,” said Lord Copper. “No, I suppose not. It is, I believe, the best place of its kind.”
“Since my time,” said Uncle Theodore tolerantly. “New places always springing up. Other places closing down. The old order changeth, eh?”
“Yes,” said Lord Copper coldly.
It was not thus that he was accustomed to converse with junior reporters, however promising. There was a type, Lord Copper had learned, who became presumptuous under encouragement. Uncle Theodore, it was true, did not seem to belong to this type; it was hard to know exactly what type Uncle Theodore did belong to.
Lord Copper turned away rather petulantly and engaged his other neighbor—a forgotten and impoverished ex-Viceroy who for want of other invitations spent three or four evenings a week at dinners of this kind—but his mind was not in the conversation; it was disturbed. It had been disturbed all the evening, ever since,
sharp on time, he had made his entrance to the inner reception room where the distinguished guests were segregated. Uncle Theodore had been standing there between Mr. Salter and the managing editor. He wore a tail coat of obsolete cut, a black waistcoat and a very tall collar; his purplish patrician face had beamed on Lord Copper, but there had been no answering cordiality in Lord Copper’s greeting. Boot was a surprise. Images were not easily formed or retained in Lord Copper’s mind but he had had quite a clear image of Boot and Uncle Theodore did not conform to it. Was this Mrs. Stitch’s protégé? Was this the youngest K.C.B.? Had Lady Cockpurse commended this man’s style? And—it gradually came back to him—was this the man he had himself met not two months back, and speeded on his trip to Ishmaelia? Lord Copper took another look and encountered a smile so urbane, so patronizing, so intolerably knowing, that he hastily turned away.
Someone had blundered.
Lord Copper turned to the secretary, who stood with the toast master behind his chair.
“Wagstaff.”
“Yes, Lord Copper.”
“Take a memo for tomorrow. @See Salter@.”
“Very good, Lord Copper.”
The banquet must go on, thought Lord Copper.
*
The banquet went on.
The general hum of conversation was becoming louder. It was a note dearer to Lord Copper than the tongue of hounds in covert. He tried to close his mind to the enigmatic and, he was inclined to suspect, obnoxious presence on his right. He heard the unctuous voice rising and falling, breaking now and then into a throaty chuckle. Uncle Theodore, after touching infelicitously on a variety of topics, had found common ground with the distinguished guest on his right; they had both, in another age, known a man named Bertie Wodehouse-Bonner.
Uncle Theodore enjoyed his recollection and he enjoyed his champagne but politeness at last compelled him reluctantly to address Lord Copper—a dull dog, but his host.
He leant nearer to him and spoke in a confidential manner.
“Tell me,” he asked, “where does one go on to nowadays?”
“I beg your pardon.”
Uncle Theodore leered. “You know. To round off the evening?”
“Personally,” said Lord Copper, “I intend to go to bed without any delay.”
“Exactly. Where’s the place, nowadays?”
Lord Copper turned to his secretary.
“Wagstaff.”
“Yes, Lord Copper.”
“Memo for tomorrow. @Sack Salter@.”
“Very good, Lord Copper.”
*
Only once did Uncle Theodore again tackle his host. He advised him to eat mustard with duck for the good of his liver. Lord Copper seemed not to hear. He sat back in his chair, surveying the room—for the evening, his room. The banquet must go on. At the four long tables which ran at right angles to his own the faces above the white shirt fronts were growing redder; the chorus of male conversation swelled in volume. Lord Copper began to see himself in a new light, as the deserted leader, shouldering alone the great burden of Duty. The thought comforted him. He had made a study of the lives of other great men; loneliness was the price they had all paid. None, he reflected, had enjoyed the devotion they deserved; there was Caesar and Brutus, Napoleon and Josephine, Shakespeare and—someone, he believed, had been disloyal to Shakespeare.
The time of his speech was drawing near. Lord Copper felt the familiar, infinitely agreeable sense of well-being which always preceded his after-dinner speeches; his was none of the nervous inspiration, the despair and exaltation of more ambitious orators; his was the profound, incommunicable contentment of the monologue. He felt himself suffused with a gentle warmth; he felt magnanimous.
“Wagstaff.”
“Lord Copper?”
“What was the last memo I gave you?”
“@Sack Salter@, Lord Copper.”
“Nonsense. You must be more accurate. I said, @Shift Salter.@’
*
At last the great moment came. The toast master thundered on the floor with his staff and his tremendous message rang through the room.
“My Lords, Right Reverend Gentlemen, Gentlemen. Pray silence for the Right Honorable the Viscount Copper.”
Lord Copper rose and breasted the applause. Even the waiters, he noticed with approval, were diligently clapping. He leant forwards on his fists, as it was his habit to stand on these happy occasions, and waited for silence. His secretary made a small, quite unnecessary adjustment to the microphone. His speech lay before him in a sheaf of typewritten papers. Uncle Theodore murmured a few words of encouragement. “Cheer up,” he said. “It won’t last long.”
“Gentlemen,” he began, “many duties fall to the lot of a man of my position, some onerous, some pleasant. It is a very pleasant duty to welcome tonight a colleague who though”—and Lord Copper saw the words “young in years” looming up at him; he swerved—“young in his service to Megalopolitan Newspapers, has already added luster to the great enterprise we have at heart—Boot of the Beast.”
Uncle Theodore, who had joined the staff of the Beast less than six hours ago, smirked dissent and began to revise his opinion of Lord Copper; he was really an uncommonly civil fellow, thought Uncle Theodore.
At the name of Boot applause broke out thunderously, and Lord Copper, waiting for it to subside, glanced grimly through the pages ahead of him. For some time now his newspapers had been advocating a new form of driving test, by which the applicant for a license sat in a stationary car while a cinema film unfolded before his eyes a nightmare-drive down a road full of obstacles. Lord Copper had personally inspected a device of the kind and it was thus that his speech now appeared to him. The opportunities and achievements of youth had been the theme. Lord Copper looked from the glowing sentences to the guest of honor beside him (who at the moment had buried his nose in his brandy glass and was inhaling stertorously but with a suggestion of disapproval) and he rose above it. The banquet must go on.
The applause ended and Lord Copper resumed his speech. His hearers sank low in their chairs and beguiled the time in a variety of ways; by drawing little pictures on the menu, by playing noughts and crosses on the tablecloth, by having modest bets as to who could keep the ash longest on his cigar; and over them the tropic tide of oratory rose and broke in foaming surf over the bowed, bald head of Uncle Theodore. It lasted thirty-eight minutes by Mr. Salter’s watch.
“Gentlemen,” said Lord Copper at last, “in giving you the toast of Boot, I give you the toast of the Future…”
The Future… A calm and vinous optimism possessed the banquet…
A future for Lord Copper that was full to surfeit of things which no sane man seriously coveted—of long years of uninterrupted oratory at other banquets in other causes; of yearly, prodigious payments of super-tax crowned at their final end by death duties of unprecedented size; of a deferential opening and closing of doors, of muffled telephone bells and almost soundless typewriters.
A future for Uncle Theodore such as he had always at heart believed to be attainable. Two thousand a year, shady little gentlemen’s chambers, the opportunity for endless reminiscence; sunlit morning saunterings down St James’s Street between hatter and boot-maker and club; feline prowlings after dark; a buttonhole, a bowler hat with a curly brim, a clouded malacca cane, a kindly word to commissionaires and cab drivers.
A future for Mr. Salter as Art Editor of Home Knitting; punctual domestic dinners; Sunday at home among the crazy pavements.
A future for Sir John Boot with the cropped amazons of the Antarctic.
A future for Mrs. Stitch heaped with the spoils of every continent and every century, gadgets from New York and bronzes from the Ægean, new entrées and old friends.
A future for Corker and Pigge; they had travelled six hundred miles by now and were nearing the Sudanese frontier. Soon they would be kindly received by a District Commissioner, washed and revictualed and sent on their way home.
A future for Kätchen.
She was sitting, at the moment, in the second class saloon of a ship bound for Madagascar, writing a letter:
Darling William,
We are going to Madagascar. My husband used to have a friend there and he says it is more comfortable than to come to Europe so will you please send us the money there. Not care of the consul because that would not be comfortable but poste restante. My husband says I should not have sold the specimens but I explained that you would pay what they are worth so now he does not mind. They are worth £50. It will be better if you will buy francs because he says you will get more than we should. We look forward very much to getting the money, so please send it by the quickest way. The boat was not worth very much money when we got to French territory. I am very well.
Ever your loving,
Kätchen.
A future for William…
… the waggons lumber in the lane under their golden glory of harvested sheaves; he wrote, maternal rodents pilot their furry brood through the stubble;…
He laid down his pen. Lush Places need not be finished until tomorrow evening.
The rest of the family had already gone up. William took the last candle from the table and put out the lamps in the hall. Under the threadbare carpet the stair-boards creaked as he mounted to his room.
Before getting into bed he drew the curtain and threw open the window. Moonlight streamed into the room.
Outside the owls hunted maternal rodents and their furry brood.
THE END
Stinchcombe, 1937
About the Author
[TK]
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Contents
Welcome
Foreword
BOOK ONE: The Stitch Service
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
BOOK TWO: Stones £20
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four