by John Pearson
“Ripping!” said Hugo, clapping raucously and nodding towards Richard. “Absolutely ripping, eh, old boy? You must be very proud of him.”
Hugo was being heartier than usual, mainly from nervousness. It was only recently that the feud between him and Richard had been healed. (Not that anything could ever make Hugo like the man again—too much had been said and done for that: all that ridiculous jealousy about his son, and then the underhanded way he had grabbed back the Southwold seat in Parliament. It hadn’t done the wretched man much good. Wise old Salisbury had still excluded him from any office in the government—and quite right too! Ingratitude, ambition, lack of breeding. Marjorie should never in a thousand years have married him. But since she had, one made the best of things. One could at any rate pretend and be quite amiable.)
“I wish he’d show as much promise with his studies,” Richard replied.
“What does the boy intend to do?” Lord Southwold asked. “Oxford? Same college as his father?”
Richard shook his head. “Not even Oxford would take him, I’m afraid. Unless he pulls his socks up pretty fast, there’ll only be one thing for him.”
“What do you mean, Richard?” Marjorie asked a little briskly. She disliked the way he criticised their son in public. Brains, as she kept on telling him, weren’t everything.
“I’ve told you, dearest one, the army.”
“That’s ridiculous,” said Marjorie.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Hugo. “Dashed fine fellows in the Brigade these days. He’d fit in very well. Make a man of him. He’d show those Boers a thing or two.”
“Think how that uniform would suit him,” added Lilianne. “Darling James, so very handsome. Look at him now. Quite the young Greek god!”
At that moment the young god had just hooked the ball, which sailed right up against the bluest of blue skies and then descended, as if looped to some invisible string, straight into the welcoming cupped hands of an anonymous fielder on the boundary.
Somebody cried, “Owzat!” There was a moment’s pause, as if the catch might still miraculously prove in doubt. Then James’s inning, like a life cut short, was over and he was walking off the field to the leisurely applause of those elegant spectators.
“Poor James,” said Marjorie. “Two short of his fifty.”
“Mummy,” Elizabeth said in a loud whisper. “There’s something wrong with Grandpapa!”
Lord Southwold’s heart attack put something of a damper on the game and on the celebrations. Both continued in the best English manner, which abhors any sort of fuss because of human frailty. But for the family there was inevitably a panic—a doctor summoned, his recumbent lordship carried on a stretcher to a nearby house, everybody waiting for the doctor’s verdict. It was the sort of moment when Richard always appeared at his best. Unlike Hugo, who was suddenly quite useless, Richard was very calm—consoling Marjorie, sending Elizabeth off to fetch some brandy, then talking discreetly with the doctor to decide what should be done.
“Difficult to tell at this stage,” said the doctor, a small, bouncy man more used to curing schoolboys than ancient members of the House of Lords. “I can’t pretend it’s not extremely serious. He’s still unconscious at the moment, but provided there’s not another attack, he could still be all right. One will have to see the damage this one’s caused. After that, all will depend upon his constitution.”
The family stayed on at Windsor for the night (Elizabeth was secretly and guiltily delighted, since it meant she could see the fireworks), and all that night Lord Southwold remained in a coma. Marjorie insisted on seeing him. He was still lying in the little downstairs schoolhouse room where they had brought him. The doctor had insisted he must not be moved, and he lay like an effigy upon his own tomb, hands by his sides and scarcely breathing. His face was quite calm and deathly white.
Marjorie whispered, “Father! Father!” very softly, but there was no response, no sign of life at all, save for that shallow breathing.
Suddenly she was overcome with weeping. It was strange. Unlike Richard, who was easily and often moved to tears, Marjorie rarely wept at anything, but something about this proud, eccentric man she had never really known moved her uncannily. He who had always claimed so much from life was now so near to death. He who was so unlike mere ordinary mortals was now assailed by ordinary mortality. Never until that moment had she realised how much he meant to her or what a loss his death would be.
It was the same for everyone who knew him. For years now Southwold had been living out his life on his estates and had become accepted as an institution, taken for granted, frequently ignored. But now that the institution was at risk, everyone seemed desperate to preserve it. News of the illness must have travelled swiftly, for the sickroom gradually became the focus of this wide concern. The Provost of Eton called in person, then the college chaplain, a thin fussy man with High Church tendencies who upset Marjorie by hinting that “some form of last rite might be acceptable.” Richard told him firmly it would not. Soon afterwards a reporter cycled over from his newspaper in Windsor. Again it was Richard who dealt with him, telling him the little there was to know. And Richard was still there, fortunately, when around nine o’clock Geoffrey Dillon arrived.
For that most lawyer-like of lawyers was clearly determined to take over everything, and his uncomfortably mournful presence magnified the gloom. He took it for granted, from the start, that Lord Southwold was dying, and spent some time talking deferentially to Hugo. Then Marjorie heard him calling Lilianne “Lady Southwold.”
“Dillon!” she cried. “My father isn’t dead.”
“Indeed not, Lady Marjorie,” he replied. “Forgive me. My emotions got the better of me.”
“Take care that mine don’t do the same,” she said.
Another doctor called a specialist from Windsor, who confirmed that there was nothing to be done except wait. And wait they did. James returned to his house. Elizabeth, Lilianne and Marjorie were found beds for the night. But Richard, Hugo and the lawyer kept a vigil all that night by the recumbent body of the eleventh Earl of Southwold.
As he sat there Richard could not help wondering what effect Lord Southwold’s death would have. An era would be over. One of the very last of the old grandees would vanish. And his successor? As Richard looked across at Hugo, nodding in his chair, he was struck more than ever by the contrast with his father. It was as if the incipient decay of Southwold power had started to affect the Southwold stock. Lord Southwold had maintained the power and the position of the family by what? Faith in himself and strength of character. And now poor Hugo (Marjorie was right, he was “poor” Hugo) would be unable to perform those miracles which had preserved the Southwold lands so long. Richard knew all about his debts—and Lilianne’s. Friends in the City had warned him of what his brother-in-law was doing—borrowing on expectation, mortgaging his whole inheritance. Hugo knew nothing, only how to spend and to indulge that scatterbrained wife of his. (And to think that he and Marjorie had actually encouraged their romance!)
Once the life ebbed from the silent body lying there, and Hugo became Lord Southwold, the Southwolds would be finished. True, the title would continue, and the name, but names and titles scarcely mattered any more. There were enough of those. The house would go, the land would go, the power would go. The Southwolds would become a name in history and nothing more.
Did it really matter? Richard pondered deeply but found it hard to answer honestly. He was too involved. A few years back and he would still have answered bitterly that they deserved to vanish, that their usefulness was over, that their arrogance and privilege unfitted them for any role in the new society that was emerging. He still believed this in his heart of hearts, but now with age he also realised it was not so simple. He and his wife and son—especially his son—all had a stake in Southwold. His house, his income, all depended on the Southwold fortunes. But more than this would be at risk if Southwold House were sold. A cold wind would blow down Eaton Place.
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There was a faint groan. It was still dark outside; the oil lamp cast deep shadows on the room and nothing moved. Richard could see the lamplight twinkling on Dillon’s spectacles. He was asleep as well. The noise must have come from him. It came again then, stronger this time, and Richard realised the truth. It was not Geoffrey Dillon but Lord Southwold. He was still alive—and conscious!
Richard tiptoed across the room. The sick man lay so still and looked so deathly pale that Richard thought he must be mistaken.
“Are you awake?” he whispered. “Can you hear me?”
There was no reply, no movement from that fine, waxlike mask of a face; but then with a shock he realised that the eyes were open and were staring at him.
“How do you feel?” he whispered urgently.
Still no reply, no sign of life. But then, suddenly and unmistakeably, Lord Southwold winked at him.
Southwold’s survival through the night seemed to produce a certain sense of anticlimax from all who were set to mourn him, Hugo and Lilianne in particular. However much they loved him—and who could say they did not?—the fact was that his continued presence on this planet must have come as a keen disappointment. The Southwold lands, the Southwold title and the Southwold fortune (what was left of it) last night had all seemed finally and irrevocably theirs. And now this morning there was nothing but uncertainty, that maddening uncertainty when everything depends upon the heartbeat of an ailing man.
“How typical of Father,” Hugo thought. “Even in dying he must cause the greatest inconvenience to the greatest number.”
In fact, Lord Southwold had not the faintest intention of dying if he could help it. Old pagan that he was, he had no faith in anything beyond life’s pleasures; and since Providence had given him so much more than ordinary mortals, he felt he had more reason to hold on to what he had. As he lay, so feeble and so wan, the thoughts of this sick, grand old gentleman would have appalled those loved ones who, with bland solicitude, came to his bedside. Whatever drowning men may really see of their past life, Southwold was being lulled by hazy recollections of plump bosoms, splendid fetlocks, fabled vintages—and it was these, far more than the prayers of his children and the care of his doctors, that kept his life flickering on that morning. What Southwold had had, his lordship intended still to hold.
After two days—two days in which the bedside vigil of those with the most to gain and the most to lose from Southwold’s death went on—it became clear that he would not die, not yet at any rate. The doctors started to congratulate themselves and calculate their bills. Dillon talked loyally about “his lordship’s courage, an example to us all.” Marjorie did her best to stop her mother coming to Windsor. “If anything would bring on a relapse, it would be dear Mama,” she said to Richard. And Lilianne, quite stony-faced with anger, had a perpetual migraine and gave Hugo hell.
But, without being over-cynical, the truth was that Lord Southwold still alive was much more of a problem than he would have been stone-dead.
Who could look after him? He needed London specialists, and there was no question of his going back to Southwold with Lady Southwold in her present state. Nor could he possibly be nursed in his half-furnished house in Grosvenor Square (his man Matthews was now old and ill himself). Hugo half suggested that maybe he and Lilianne should take him in. “Quite impossible,” that lady said decisively. “You must be mad. Anyhow, it’s Marjorie’s duty, and it’s the least that she can do.”
So Lord Southwold, still extremely ill but perceptibly improving with every day that passed, came and stayed at 165.
Richard was wary of the whole idea. He knew how difficult his father-in-law could be. He had never been particularly close to him (Richard’s “betrayal” back in 1885, when Southwold might have been Prime Minister, still rankled) and he hated anything that might disturb the orderly routine of Eaton Place. More than ever Richard cherished the calm and order of his home; more than ever it appeared the one sure guarantee of happiness; and he knew Lord Southwold well enough to understand how much the demanding old man could stand his household on its head.
In fact the reverse occurred. Lord Southwold always reminded (Richard’s “betrayal” back in 1885, when Southwold might have been rude unintentionally,” and whatever faults he had, his manners were impeccable. He was given the large back bedroom on the second floor, and in no time at all had charmed everyone from Richard to the boot boy. He had to stay in bed—and Marjorie was very fierce making sure he did—but before long his room became a sort of club-room. He would sit regally propped up on a pile of pillows, wearing a stylish dressing gown and frilled silk nightshirt, and discoursing, chatting, telling stories through the day. Mrs. Bridges managed to excel herself cooking the old gourmet dishes that he liked (often to his own direction) and Richard would complain that he never saw anything so delicious on his table. Hudson would visit him—in theory to “make sure everything is to your lordship’s satisfaction” but in fact to discuss horses, discreetly cadge any tips Lord Southwold cared to give for the day’s races, and place his lordship’s bets with a bookmaker he knew. (Hudson never quite worked out why Lord Southwold always seemed to win.) As for the housemaids, it was never too much trouble to take Lord Southwold up his tray or shaving water in the morning. In short, his lordship rapidly became universally admired and loved.
Elizabeth became a particular favourite of his. She was intelligent (a little too intelligent for her own good, according to her mother), but it was precisely this that endeared her to Lord Southwold. “There’s no virtue in stupidity,” he’d say to Marjorie. “No virtue at all, although it seems to be the fashion with young women now. When I was young, great ladies still spoke French and knew their classics. Nowadays they’re just as empty-headed as their maids.”
Marjorie would reply that all a well-brought-up young lady needed was “good looks, good manners, and finally a good husband.” Her father strongly disagreed, and he would talk to Elizabeth for hours about the classics and philosophy, which he still read for relaxation. She was a natural bluestocking (here she really had inherited Richard’s early academic cleverness) and all her adolescent battles with her mother seemed to revolve round her refusal to be “ladylike” in one way or another. She was untidy, absent-minded, unconventional. She refused to believe that she was pretty. So-called polite society—what she saw of it—bored her intensely, and whatever interest she may secretly have had in boys she dismissed as “silly.” The older servants disapproved of her at heart, especially Mrs. Bridges, who thought her a “ragamuffin” and objected to her “finicky manners” with her food. “I can’t think what her ladyship will do with her—although I know what I would do if she was my daughter,” she would say darkly to Hudson.
“Oh, she’ll turn out all right,” he would loyally reply. “She’s at an awkward age. A trifle headstrong. But she has character. Give it a year or two and she’ll be as lovely a young lady as ever her mother was.”
But none of this seemed to concern Lord Southwold. That extraordinary old gentleman had found a fellow spirit in his granddaughter. He taught her whist and gin rummy and they would play when she came home from school. (Somehow she usually seemed to beat him, and as they played for halfpennies, this was a source of useful income.)
But in a way by far the most unlikely friendship that developed during this time of Southwold’s convalescence was between him and Richard. In the past there had been so many disagreements and misunderstandings that there had been no possibility of closeness between the two of them. Richard had looked upon his father-in-law as an outrageous old reactionary and naturally had blamed him for the indignities he had endured from his connection with the Southwolds. (True to human nature, he had not offset his resentment by much gratitude for the benefits he’d also had.)
And Southwold, similarly, had always considered Richard fundamentally “disloyal” and “undependable,” although for Marjorie’s sake he’d always kept these particular opinions to himself.
Now
for the first time they discovered how much they had in common. Richard’s famous novel had finally appeared. Partridge the publisher had been optimistic up to the point of publication (as publishers invariably are) and particularly enthusiastic at the changes he believed Richard had made at his suggestion. (In fact, all that Richard had done had been to shorten one offending chapter, then have the manuscript expensively recopied by a “lady typewriter” from the Pitman Institute.) Since then the splash which Partridge had predicted had proved the gentlest of ripples. There was a lukewarm notice in the Pall Mall Gazette, and Richard drew a certain fearful pleasure from the appearance of his book, along with twenty others, in Messrs. Hatchards’ window. But that was almost all. Instead of the fortune he had dreamed of, Richard’s novel made him barely thirty pounds, then sank without a trace in the broad seas of literary oblivion.
But Lord Southwold read it during these days in bed—and liked it. Richard was flattered; more than flattered, he was secretly delighted. No one since Zola had paid his literary efforts serious attention, but Lord Southwold questioned him on this and that, frequently discussed his hero’s character, and showed in various ways just how much he had appreciated Richard’s theme.
Elizabeth quite naturally proved another link. Both men agreed upon the need to educate the girl. Both men adored her, and before long the three of them began to form a sort of intellectual trio from which Marjorie began to feel excluded.
But, strangely, it was politics which finally cemented this belated friendship between Richard and Lord Southwold. Success in politics invariably comes early or comes not at all, and Richard, after nearly eighteen years of loyal back-benching, was more or less resigned to staying there. Others evidently felt (and if they felt it, who was he to disagree?) that he was no longer ministerial material. Earlier in life this would have upset him terribly; now he was philosophical. He enjoyed politics quite simply as a way of life. He loved the drama and the gossip and the strange addictive sense of being at the centre of affairs. He valued his membership in “the finest club in London,” and with middle age he was becoming quietly popular among the other members.
