‘I’m afraid I haven’t any cocktails,’ he said.
‘Good gracious no. I should think not.’
‘Guy often has some gin, I believe.’
‘All gone,’ said Guy, ‘until Jumbo’s next visit.’
Uncle Peregrine was fascinated. He could not bring himself to leave. It was Virginia who made the move.
‘I must be off,’ she said, though in fact she had nowhere at all to go. ‘But I’ll come back now I know what you need. Cards and gin. You won’t mind having to pay for them, will you?’
Uncle Peregrine led her to the door; he followed her into the lift; he stood with her on the benighted steps and gazed with her into the rain.
‘Will you be all right?’ he asked. ‘You might find a cab at Victoria.’
‘I’m only going to Eaton Terrace. I’ll walk.’
‘It’s a long way. Shall I see you home?’
‘Don’t be an ass,’ said Virginia, stepping down into the rain. ‘See you tomorrow.’
It was, as Uncle Peregrine observed, a long way. Virginia strode out bravely, flickering her torch at the crossings. Even on that inclement evening every doorway held an embraced couple. The house, when she reached it, was quite empty. She hung up her coat to dry. She washed her underclothes. She went to the cupboard where she knew Ian kept a box of sleeping pills. Kerstie never needed such things. Virginia took two and lay unconscious while the sirens gave warning of a distant, inconsiderable ‘nuisance raid’.
At Carlisle Place Uncle Peregrine returned to Guy’s room.
‘I suppose it’s quite usual nowadays,’ he said, ‘divorced people meeting on friendly terms?’
‘It has been so for a long time, I believe, in the United States.’
‘Yes. And, of course, she has lived there a lot, hasn’t she? That would explain it. What’s her name?’
‘Troy, I think. It was when I last saw her.’
‘Mrs Troy?’
‘Yes.’
‘Funny name. Are you sure you don’t mean Troyte? There are people near us at home called Troyte.’
‘No. Like Helen of Troy.’
‘Ah,’ said Uncle Peregrine. ‘Yes. Exactly. Like Helen of Troy. A very striking woman. What did she mean about paying for the gin and the cards. Is she not well off?’
‘Not at all, at the moment.’
‘What a pity,’ said Uncle Peregrine. ‘You would never guess, would you?’
When Virginia came next evening she greeted Uncle Peregrine as ‘Peregrine’; he bridled and followed her into Guy’s room. He watched her unpack her basket, laying gin, angostura bitters, and playing-cards on the table by the bed. He insisted on paying for her purchases, seeming to derive particular pleasure from the transaction. He went to his pantry and brought glasses. He did not drink gin himself, nor did he play piquet, but he hung about the scene fascinated. When at length he left them alone, Virginia said: ‘What an old pet. Why did you never let me meet him before?’
She came daily, staying sometimes for half an hour, sometimes for two hours, insinuating herself easily into Guy’s uneventful routine so that her visits became something for him to anticipate with pleasure. She was like any busy wife visiting any bed-ridden husband. It was seldom that they saw one another alone. Uncle Peregrine played the part of duenna with an irksome assumption of archness. On Sunday Virginia came in the morning, and while Uncle Peregrine was at the cathedral, she asked Guy: ‘Have you thought what you’re going to do after the war?’
‘No. It’s hardly the time to make plans.’
‘People are saying the Germans will collapse before the spring.’
‘I don’t believe it. And even if they do, that’s only the beginning of other troubles.’
‘Oh, Guy, I wish you were more cheerful. There’s fun ahead, always. If I didn’t think that, I couldn’t keep going. How rich are you going to be?’
‘My father left something like two hundred thousand pounds.’
‘Goodness.’
‘Half goes to Angela and a third to the government. Then for the next few years we have to find a number of pensions. I get the rent for Broome, that’s another three hundred.’
‘What does all that mean in income?’
‘I suppose about two thousand eventually.’
‘Not beyond the dreams of avarice.’
‘No.’
‘But better than a slap with a wet fish. And you had a pittance before. How about Uncle Peregrine? He must have a bit. Is that left to you.’
‘I’ve no idea. I should have thought to Angela’s children.’
‘That could be changed,’ said Virginia.
That day there was a pheasant for luncheon. Mrs Corner, who had come to accept Virginia’s presence without comment, laid the dining-room table for two and Guy ate awkwardly on his tray while Virginia and Uncle Peregrine made a lengthy meal apart.
On the tenth day Uncle Peregrine did not return until after seven o’clock. Virginia was then on the point of leaving when he entered the room, a glint of roguish purpose in his eye.
‘I haven’t seen you,’ he said.
‘No. I’ve missed you.’
‘I wonder whether by any possible, happy chance you are free this evening. I feel I should like to go out somewhere.’
‘Free as the air,’ said Virginia. ‘How lovely.’
‘Where would you like to go? I’m not much up in restaurants, I am afraid. There is a fish place near here, opposite Victoria Station, where I sometimes go.’
‘There’s always Ruben’s,’ said Virginia.
‘I don’t think I know it.’
‘It will cost you a fortune,’ said Guy from his bed.
‘Really,’ said Uncle Peregrine appalled at this breach of good manners. ‘I should hardly have thought that a matter to discuss in front of my guest.’
‘Of course it is,’ said Virginia. ‘Guy’s quite right. I was only trying to think of somewhere cosy.’
‘The place I speak of is certainly quiet. It has always struck me as discreet.’
‘Discreet? Gracious. I don’t think I’ve ever in my life been anywhere “discreet”. How heavenly.’
‘And since the sordid subject has been raised,’ added Uncle Peregrine, looking reproachfully at his nephew, ‘let me assure you it is not particularly cheap.’
‘Come on. I can’t wait,’ said Virginia.
Guy watched the departure of this oddly-matched couple with amusement in which there was an element of annoyance. If Virginia was doing nothing that evening, he felt, her proper place was by his side.
They walked to the restaurant through the damp dark. Virginia took his arm. When, as happened at crossings and turnings, he tried with old-fashioned etiquette to change sides and put himself in danger of passing vehicles, she firmly retained her hold. At no great distance they found the fish shop and climbed the stairs at its side to the restaurant overhead. New to Virginia, well-known to the unostentatious and discriminating, the long room with its few tables receded in a glow of Edwardian, rose-shaded lights. Peregrine Crouchback shed his old coat and hat and handed his umbrella to an ancient porter and then said with an effort: ‘I expect you want, that’s to say, I mean, wash your hands, tidy up, ladies’ cloakroom, somewhere I believe up those stairs.’
‘No thanks,’ said Virginia, and then added, as they were being shown to a table: ‘Peregrine, have you ever taken a girl out to dinner before?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Who? When?’
‘It was some time ago,’ said Uncle Peregrine vaguely.
They ordered oysters and turbot. Virginia said she would like to drink stout. Then she began: ‘Why have you never married.’
‘I was a younger son. Younger sons didn’t marry in my day.’
‘Oh, rot. I know hundreds who have.’
‘It was thought rather outré among landed people, unless of course they found heiresses. There was no establishment for them. They had a small settlement which they were expec
ted to leave back to the family – to their nephews, other younger sons. There had to be younger sons of course in case the head of the family died young. They came in quite useful in the last war. Perhaps we are rather an old-fashioned family in some ways.’
‘Didn’t you ever want to marry?’
‘Not really.’
Uncle Peregrine was not at all put out by these direct personal questions. He was essentially imperturbable. No one, so far as he could remember, had ever shown so much interest in him. He found the experience enjoyable, even when Virginia pressed further.
‘Lots of affairs?’
‘Good heavens, no.’
‘I’m sure you aren’t a pansy.’
‘Pansy?’
‘You’re not homosexual?’
Even this did not disconcert Uncle Peregrine. It was a subject he had rarely heard mentioned by a man; never by a woman. But there was something about Virginia’s frankness which struck him as childlike and endearing.
‘Good gracious, no. Besides the “o” is short. It comes from the Greek not the Latin.’
‘I knew you weren’t. I can always tell. I was just teasing.’
‘No one has ever teased me about that before. But I knew a fellow once in the diplomatic service who had that reputation. There can’t have been anything in it. He ended up as an ambassador. They would hardly have appointed a fellow like that. He was rather a vain, dressy fellow. I dare say that was what made people talk.’
‘Peregrine, have you never been to bed with a woman?’
‘Yes,’ said Uncle Peregrine smugly, ‘twice. It is not a thing I normally talk about.’
‘Do tell.’
‘Once when I was twenty and once when I was forty-five. I didn’t particularly enjoy it.’
‘Tell me about them.’
‘It was the same woman.’
Virginia’s spontaneous laughter had seldom been heard in recent years; it had once been one of her chief charms. She sat back in her chair and gave full, free tongue; clear, unrestrained, entirely joyous, with a shadow of ridicule, her mirth rang through the quiet little restaurant. Sympathetic and envious faces were turned towards her. She stretched across the table cloth and caught his hand, held it convulsively, unable to speak, laughed until she was breathless and mute, still gripping his bony fingers. And Uncle Peregrine smirked. He had never before struck success. He had in his time been at parties where others had laughed in this way. He had never had any share in it. He did not now know quite what it was that had won this prize, but he was highly gratified.
‘Oh Peregrine,’ said Virginia at last with radiant sincerity. ‘I love you.’
He was not afraid to spoil his triumph with expatiation. ‘I know most men go in for love affairs,’ he said. ‘Some of them can’t help it. They can’t get on at all without women, but there are plenty of others – I dare say you haven’t come across them much – who don’t really care about that sort of thing, but they don’t know any reason why they shouldn’t, so they spend half their lives going after women they don’t really want. I can tell you something you probably don’t know. There are men who have been great womanizers in their time and when they get to my age and don’t want it any more and in fact can’t do it, instead of being glad of a rest, what do they do but take all kinds of medicines to make them want to go on? I’ve heard fellows in my club talking about it.’
‘Bellamy’s?’
‘Yes. I don’t go there much except to read the papers. Awfully rowdy place it’s become. I was put up as a young man and go on paying the subscription, I don’t know why. I don’t know many fellows there. Well, the other day I heard two of them who must have been about my age, talking of which doctor was best to make them want women. All manner of expensive treatments. You can’t explain that, can you?’
‘I knew a man called Augustus who did just that.’
‘Did you? And he told you about it? Extraordinary.’
‘Why is it different from going for a walk to get up an appetite for luncheon?’
‘Because it’s Wrong,’ said Uncle Peregrine.
‘You mean “wrong” according to your religion?’
‘Why, how else could anything be wrong?’ asked Uncle Peregrine with perfect simplicity and continued his dissertation on the problems of sex: ‘There’s another thing. You only have to look at the ghastly fellows who are a success with women to realize that there isn’t much point in it.’
But Virginia was not attending. She began to make a little pagoda of the empty oyster-shells on her plate. Without raising her eyes, she said: ‘I’m rather thinking of becoming a Catholic.’
It has been said of Uncle Peregrine that he was never disconcerted. Exception must be made of the abrupt access of displeasure which now struck him. It is one of the established delights of celibacy to discourse frankly, even grossly, of the vagaries of lust to an attractive woman; it was one which Uncle Peregrine had never before experienced and he was enjoying it stupendously. Now she had rudely let drop the guillotine. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Why?’
‘Don’t you think it would be a good thing?’
‘It depends on your reasons.’
‘Isn’t it always a good thing?’
The waiter reproachfully re-arranged the oyster-shells on Virginia’s plate before removing it.
‘Well, isn’t it?’ she pressed. ‘Come on. Tell. Why are you so shocked suddenly? I’ve heard an awful lot one way and another about the Catholic Church being the church of sinners.’
‘Not from me,’ said Uncle Peregrine. The waiter brought them their turbot. ‘Of course, if you’d sooner not discuss it…’
‘I’m not really competent to,’ said the Privy Chamberlain, the Knight of Devotion and Grace of the Sovereign Order of St John of Jerusalem. ‘Personally I find it very difficult to regard converts as Catholics.’
‘Oh, don’t be so stuck up and snubbing. What about Lady Plessington? She is a pillar, surely?’
‘I have never felt quite at ease with Eloise Plessington where religion is concerned. Anyway, she was received into the Church when she married.’
‘Exactly.’
‘And you, my dear, were not.’
‘Do you think it might have made a difference – with Guy and me, I mean – if I had been?’
Uncle Peregrine hesitated between his acceptance in theory of the operation of divine grace and his distant but quite detailed observation of the men and women he had known, and relapsed to his former ‘I’m really not competent to say.’
A silence fell on the pair; Uncle Peregrine deploring the turn the conversation had taken, Virginia considering how she could give further impetus in that direction. They ate their turbot and were brought coffee before their plates were removed. Diners were not encouraged to linger over their tables in those days. At length Virginia said: ‘You see I rather hoped for your support in a plan of mine. I’ve got a bit tired of knocking about. I thought of going back to my husband.’
‘To Troy?’
‘No, no. To Guy. After all he is my real husband, isn’t he? I thought becoming a Catholic might help. No amount of divorces count in your Church, do they? I suppose we shall have to go to some registry office to make it legal, but we’re already married in the eyes of God – he’s told me so.’
‘Lately?’
‘Not very lately.’
‘Do you think he wants you back?’
‘I bet I could soon make him.’
‘Well,’ said Uncle Peregrine, ‘that alters everything.’ He looked at her with eyes of woe. ‘It was Guy you’ve been coming to see all these last days?’
‘Of course. What did you think? … Oh, Peregrine, did you think I had designs on you.’
‘The thought had crossed my mind.’
‘You thought perhaps I might provide your third —.’ She used a word, then unprintable, which despite its timeless obscenity did not make Uncle Peregrine wince. He even found it attractive on her lips. She was full of good humour and mischief n
ow, on the verge of another access of laughter.
‘That was rather the idea.’
‘But surely that would have been Wrong?’
‘Very Wrong indeed. I did not seriously entertain it. But it recurred often, even when I was sorting the books. You could have moved into the room Guy is now in. I don’t think Mrs Corner would have seen anything objectionable. After all, you are my niece.’
Virginia’s laughter came again, most endearing of her charms.
‘Darling Peregrine. And you wouldn’t have needed any of those expensive treatments your chums in Bellamy’s recommend?’
‘In your case,’ said Uncle Peregrine with his cavalier grace, ‘I am practically sure not.’
‘It’s perfectly sweet of you. You don’t think I’m laughing at you, do you?’
‘No, I don’t believe you are.’
‘Any time you want to try, dear Peregrine, you’re quite welcome.’
The pleasure died in Peregrine Crouchback’s sad old face.
‘That wouldn’t be quite the same thing. Put like that I find the suggestion embarrassing.’
‘Oh dear, have I made a floater?’
‘Yes. It was all a fancy really. You make it sound so practical. I found I looked forward to seeing you about the flat, don’t you know? It wasn’t much more than that.’
‘And I want a husband,’ said Virginia. ‘You wouldn’t consider that?’