‘No, no. Of course that would be quite impossible.’
‘Your religion again.’
‘Well, yes.’
‘Then it will have to be Guy. Don’t you see now why I want to become a Catholic? He can’t very well say no, can he?’
‘Oh, yes, he can.’
‘But knowing Guy you don’t think he will, do you?’
‘I really know Guy very little,’ said Uncle Peregrine rather peevishly.
‘But you’ll help me? When the point comes up, you’ll tell him it’s his duty?’
‘He’s not at all likely to consult me.’
‘But if he does? And when it comes to squaring Angela?’
‘No, my dear,’ said Uncle Peregrine, ‘I’ll be damned if I do.’
The evening had not gone as either of them had planned. Uncle Peregrine saw Virginia to her door. She kissed him, for the first time, on their parting. He raised his hat in the darkness, paid off the taxi and walked despondently home, where he found Guy awake, reading.
‘Have a good time?’ he asked.
‘It is always good, so far as anything is nowadays, at that restaurant. It cost more than two pounds,’ he added, his memory still sore from the imputation of parsimony.
‘I mean, did you enjoy yourself?’
‘Yes and no. More no than yes perhaps.’
‘I thought Virginia seemed in cracking form.’
‘Yes and no. More yes than no. She laughed a lot.’
‘That sounds all right.’
‘Yes and no. Guy, I have to warn you. That girl has Designs.’
‘On you, Uncle Peregrine?’
‘On you.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘She told me.’
‘Do you think you should repeat it?’
‘In the circumstances, yes.’
‘Not yes and no?’
‘Just yes.’
Sir Ralph Brompton had been schooled in the old diplomatic service to evade irksome duties and to achieve power by insinuating himself into places where, strictly, he had no business. In the looser organization of total war he was able to trip from office to office and committee to committee. The chiefs of HOO considered they should be represented wherever the conduct of affairs was determined. Busy themselves in the highest circles, they willingly delegated to Sir Ralph the authority to listen and speak for them and to report to them, in the slightly lower but not much less mischievous world of their immediate inferiors.
Liberation was Sir Ralph’s special care. Wherever those lower than the Cabinet and the Chiefs of Staff adumbrated the dismemberment of Christendom, there Sir Ralph might be found.
On a morning shortly before Christmas in an office quite independent of HOO Sir Ralph dropped in for an informal chat on the subject of liaison with Balkan terrorists. The man whom he was visiting had been rather suddenly gazetted brigadier. His functions were as ill-defined as Sir Ralph’s; they were dubbed ‘co-ordination’. There had been times in Sir Ralph’s professional career when he had been aware that certain of his colleagues and, later, of his staff were engaged in secret work. Strange men not of the service had presented credentials and made use of the diplomatic bag and the cipher room. Sir Ralph had fastidiously averted his attention from their activities. Now, recalled from retirement, he found a naughty relish in what he had formerly shunned. These two had risen to their positions by very different routes; their paths had never crossed.
Sir Ralph sported light herring-bone tweed, such as in peacetime he would not have worn at that season in London; brilliant black brogue shoes shone on his narrow feet. His long legs were crossed and he smoked a Turkish cigarette. The brigadier had bought his uniform ready-made. The buttons were dull. He wore a cloth belt. No ribbons decorated his plump breast. His false teeth held a pipe insecurely. An impersonal association, but a close one, united them. Their political sympathies were identical.
‘It is a great thing getting control of Balkan Liberation shifted here from Cairo.’
‘Yes, almost the whole Middle East set-up was hopelessly compromised with royalist refugees. We shall be able to use the few reliable men. The others will be found more suitable employment.’
‘Iceland?’
‘Iceland will be perfectly suitable.’
Lists were produced of the proposed liaison missions.
‘De Souza got a very good report from the parachute school.’
‘Yes. You don’t think he’ll be wasted in the field? He could be very useful to us here.’
‘He can be very useful in the field. Gilpin failed. We can use him here until we open a headquarters in Italy.’
‘Once our fellows get to Italy they’ll be harder to keep under our own hand. They’ll come under command of the army for a good many things. We’ve been accepted on the top level but we still have to establish confidence lower down. What we need is a good backing of conventional regimental soldiers in the subordinate posts. I see Captain Crouchback’s name here, crossed off. I know him. I should have thought he was just what we need – middle-aged, Catholic, no political activities, a Halberdier, good record, excellent report from the parachute school.’
‘Bad security risk, apparently.’
‘Why?’
‘They never give reasons. He is simply noted as unsuitable for employment in North Italy.’
‘Entanglements with women?’ suggested the brigadier.
‘I should doubt it.’
There was a pause while Sir Ralph considered the fatuity of the security forces. Then he said: ‘Only in North Italy?’
That is what the report says.’
‘In fact there would be no objection to his going to the Balkans?’
‘Not according to this report.’
‘I think he and de Souza might make a satisfactory team.’
For very many years Peregrine Crouchback’s Christmases had been dismal occasions for himself and others. Bachelors, unless dedicated to some religious function or deluded by vice, are said to be unknown among the lower races and classes. Peregrine Crouchback was a bachelor by nature and the feast of the Nativity was to him the least congenial in the calendar. As a child, as the mere recipient of gifts and the consumer of rich, rather tasteless foods, he had conformed and rejoiced. But he had matured, so far as his peculiar condition could be called maturity, young. In his early manhood, as his niece and nephews became the centre of celebration at Broome, he sought refuge abroad. After the First World War, Arthur Box-Bender was added to the bereaved family; Ivo died but Box-Bender’s children filled the nurseries at mid-winter. Finally Broome was emptied and Christmas ceased to be a family gathering. Uncle Peregrine did not repine. But between the wars, in a year whose quite recent date could have been established from the visitors’ book but now seemed of immemorial antiquity, it had become habitual, almost traditional, for Uncle Peregrine to spend Christmas with some distant cousins of his mother, older than himself, named Scrope-Weld, who inhabited an agricultural island among the industrial areas of Staffordshire. The house was large, the hospitality, when he first went there, lavish, and one unloved, middle-aged bachelor less or more – ‘Old Crouchers’ even then to them, his seniors – did not depress the spirits of the 1920s. A forlorn relation was part of the furniture of Christmas in most English homes.
Mr and Mrs Scrope-Weld died, their son and his wife took their places; there were fewer servants, fewer guests, but always Uncle Peregrine at Christmas. In 1939 the greater part of the house was taken for a children’s home; Scrope-Weld went abroad with his regiment; his wife remained with three children, four rooms, and a nanny. Still Peregrine Crouchback was invited and he accepted. ‘It is just the sort of thing one must not give up,’ said Mrs Scrope-Weld. ‘One must not make the war an excuse for unkindness.’
So it was in 1940, 1941, and 1942. The children grew sharper.
‘Mummy do we have to have Uncle Perry here to spoil Christmas every year until he dies.’
‘Yes, dear. He was a grea
t friend and a sort of relation of your grandmother’s. He’d be very hurt if he was not asked.’
‘He seemed awfully hurt all the time he was here.’
‘Christmas is often a sad time for old people. He’s very fond of you all.’
‘I bet he isn’t fond of me.’
‘Or me.’
‘Or me.’
‘Will he leave us any money?’
‘Francis, that’s an absolutely disgusting question. Of course he won’t.’
‘Well, I wish he’d hurry up and die anyway.’
And as Peregrine Crouchback left on the day after Boxing Day he reflected: ‘Well, that’s over for another year. They’d be awfully hurt if I didn’t come.’
So it was in 1943. Loth to leave London he took the crowded train on Christmas Eve. Once he used to bring a Strasburg pie with him. Now the shops were empty. His only gift was a large, highly coloured Victorian album which he had extracted from ‘salvage’.
That night, as always, they attended Mass. On Christmas Day they all made a formal visit to the library, now the common-room of the paid ‘helpers’, commended the sprigs of holly that they had disposed along the book-shelves and picture-frames and drank sherry with them before retiring to eat a middle-day dinner of turkey, an almost nefarious bird at that date, long cosseted with rationed food-stuffs. ‘I feel so guilty eating it alone,’ said Mrs Scrope-Weld, ‘but it would go nowhere with the helpers and we couldn’t possibly have reared another.’ The children gorged. Peregrine and nanny nibbled. That evening there was a Christmas tree for the ‘evacuees’ in the staircase hall. On Boxing Day, as always, he went to Mass, walking alone through the chill morning, under the dripping avenue to the chapel on the edge of the park. Mrs Scrope-Weld had to milk and then do most of the work in cooking breakfast. One of the ‘helpers’ was there before him. They walked back together and she said: ‘Perhaps this will be the last Christmas here.’
‘Do you hope for that?’
‘Well, of course, everyone hopes for peace. But I don’t know where I shall be or what I shall be doing when it comes. I’ve got sort of used to the war.’
Later he went for a long, damp walk with his hostess. She said: ‘You’re really the only link with Christmas as it used to be. It is sweet of you coming so faithfully. I know it isn’t a bit comfortable. Do you think things will ever be normal again?’
‘Oh, no,’ said Peregrine Crouchback. ‘Never again.’
Meanwhile Guy and Virginia were together in London. Virginia said: ‘Thank God HOO doesn’t make a thing about Christmas.’
‘In the Halberdiers we had to go to the sergeants’ mess and they tried to make us drunk. In some regiments, I believe, the officers wait on the men at dinner.’
‘I’ve seen photographs of it. Peregrine’s away?’
‘He always goes to the same people. Did he give you a present?’
‘No. I wondered whether he would. I don’t think he knew what would be suitable. He seemed less loving after our fish dinner.’
‘He told me you had Designs.’
‘On him?’
‘On me.’
‘Yes,’ said Virginia. ‘I have. Peregrine had designs on me.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Not really. The thing about you Crouchbacks is that you’re effete.’
‘Do you know what that means? It means you’ve just given birth.’
‘Well, it’s the wrong word then. You’re just like Peregrine correcting my pronunciation of homosexual.’
‘Why on earth were you talking to him about homosexuals? You don’t think he’s one, do you?’
‘No, but I think all you Crouchbacks are over-bred and under-sexed.’
‘Not at all the same thing. Think of Toulouse-Lautrec.’
‘Oh, damn, Guy. You’re evading my Designs.’
It was all as light as the heaviest drawing-room comedy and each had a dread at heart.
‘You’re dying out as a family,’ she continued. ‘Even Angela’s boy, they tell me, wants to be a monk. Why do you Crouchbacks do so little —ing?’ – and again she used without offence that then unprintable word.
‘I don’t know about the others. With me I think, perhaps, it’s because I associate it with love. And I don’t love any more.’
‘Not me?’
‘Oh, no, Virginia, not you. You must have realized that.’
‘It is not so easy to realize when lots of people have been so keen, not so long ago. What about you, Guy, that evening in Claridges?’
‘That wasn’t love,’ said Guy. ‘Believe it or not it was the Halberdiers.’
‘Yes. I think I know what you mean.’
She was sitting beside his bed, facing him. Between them lay the wicker table-tray on which they had been playing piquet. Now she ran a hand, light, caressing, exploring, up under the bed-clothes. Guy turned away and the pain of the sudden, instinctive movement made him grimace.
‘No,’ said Virginia. ‘Not keen.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘It’s not a nice thing for a girl to have a face made at her like that.’
‘It was only my knee. I’ve said I’m sorry,’ and indeed he was, that he should so humiliate one whom he had loved.
But Virginia was not easily humiliated. Behind her last, locust years lay deep reserves of success. Almost all women in England at that time believed that peace would restore normality. Mrs Scrope-Weld in Staffordshire meant by ‘normality’ having her husband at home and the house to themselves; also certain, to her, rudimentary comforts to which she had always been used; nothing sumptuous; a full larder and cellar; a lady’s maid (but one who did her bedroom and darned and sewed for the whole family), a butler, a footman (but one who chopped and carried fire-logs), a reliable, mediocre cook training a kitchen-maid to succeed her in simple skills, self-effacing house-maids to dust and tidy; one man in the stable, two in the garden; things she would never know again. So to Virginia normality meant power and pleasure; pleasure chiefly and not only her own. Her power of attraction, her power of pleasing was to her still part of the natural order which had been capriciously interrupted. War, the massing and moving of millions of men, some of whom were sometimes endangered, most of whom were idle and lonely, the devastation, hunger, and waste, crumbling buildings, foundering ships, the torture and murder of prisoners; all these were a malevolent suspension of ‘normality’; the condition in which Virginia’s power of pleasing enabled her to cash cheques, wear new clothes, lave her face with its accustomed unguent, travel with speed and privacy and attention wherever she liked, when she liked, and choose her man and enjoy him at her leisure. The interruption had been prolonged beyond all reason. The balance would soon come right, meanwhile—
‘What did Peregrine say about my Designs?’
‘He didn’t specify.’
‘What do you think he meant? What do you think of me?’
‘I think you are unhappy and uncomfortable and you’ve no one you’re specially interested in at the moment and that for the first time in your life you are frightened of the future.’
‘And none of that applies to you?’
‘The difference between us is that I only think of the past.’
Virginia seized on the, to her, essential point. ‘But there’s no one you’re specially interested in at the moment, is there?’
‘No.’
‘And you’ve absolutely loved having me round the place the last few weeks, haven’t you? Admit. We get along like an old Darby and Joan, don’t we?’
‘Yes, I’ve enjoyed your visits.’
‘And I’m still your wife. Nothing can alter that?’
‘Nothing.’
‘I don’t exactly say you’ve a duty to me,’ Virginia conceded with her high, fine candour.
‘No, Virginia, you hardly could, could you?’
‘You thought I had duties to you once – that evening in Claridge’s. Remember?’
‘I’ve explained that. It was being on leave
from camp, wearing a new uniform, starting a new life. It was the war.’
‘Well, isn’t it the war that’s brought me here today, bringing you, as I thought, a lovely Christmas present?’
‘You didn’t think anything of the kind.’
Virginia began to sing a song of their youth about ‘a little broken doll’. Suddenly both of them laughed. Guy said: ‘It’s no good, Ginny. I am sorry you are hard up. As you know, I’m a little better off than I was. I am willing to help you until you find someone more convenient.’
‘Guy, what a beastly, bitter way to talk. Not like you at all. You would never have spoken like that in the old days.’
‘Not bitter – limited. That’s all I’ve got for you.’
Then Virginia said: ‘I need more. There’s something I’ve got to tell you and please believe that I was going to tell you even if this conversation had gone quite differently. You must remember me well enough to know I was never one for dirty tricks, was I?’
Then she informed him, without any extenuation or plea for compassion, curtly almost, that she was with child by Trimmer.
Ian and Kerstie Kilbannock returned to London from Scotland on the night of Childermas. He went straight to his office, she home, where Mrs Bristow was smoking a cigarette and listening to the wireless.
‘Everything all right?’
‘Mrs Troy’s gone.’
‘Where?’
‘She didn’t say. Gone for good, I wouldn’t be surprised. She packed up everything yesterday morning and gave me a pound. You’d have thought either it would be something more or just friendly thanks after all this time. I nearly told her tipping’s gone out these days. What I mean we all help one another as the wireless says. A fiver would have been more like if she wanted to show appreciation. I helped her down with the bags too. Well, she’s lived a lot abroad, hasn’t she? Oh, and she left you this.’
This was a letter:
Darling
I am sorry not to be here to say good-bye but I am sure you will be quite pleased to have me out of the house at last. What an angel you have been. I can never thank you or Ian enough. Let’s meet very soon and I’ll tell you all about everything. I’ve left a little token for Ian – a silly sort of present but you know how impossible it is to find anything nowadays.