In the restaurant, Stringham and I talked to Peter, rather fragmentarily: mainly on the subject of Stringham’s stay in Kenya. Duport and Brent grunted to each other from time to time, or, occasionally, to Peter: no sense of fusion quickening the party. Peter told us about his car, recently bought second-hand, and considered a bargain.
“I must take you for a proper run in her,” he said, “before we go back.”
“Don’t forget I want to look in at the Cabaret Club before we hit the hay,” said Brent.
Duport said: “He’s got a girl there who owes him some money.”
“I wish she did,” said Brent: but without elucidating further that cryptic aspiration.
The Vauxhall was, in fact, clearly the foundation of this unpremeditated visit. Peter wanted to try the vehicle out. He continued to assure us how cheap the price had been, inviting admiration of its many good points. This car was adapted for speed, having had the windscreen removed; but it had all the appearance of having passed through a good many hands since the days of its first owner. It certainly put Stringham’s two-seater in the shade, and perhaps slightly irritated Stringham on this account. Peter was immensely pleased with the Vauxhall, the purchase of which seemed in some way to have involved Brent. As the evening wore on, Brent’s personality became in other respects more determinable. For example, he talked incessantly of women. Peter and Duport treated this preoccupation as something not to be taken at all seriously, making no attempt to hide their concurrent opinion that Brent’s attempts to make himself agreeable to girls were entirely unsuccessful: all of which Brent took in fairly good part. His voice managed to be at once deep and squeaky; and he spoke repeatedly of a woman called Flora, who appeared in some manner to have behaved badly to him. On the whole he was undoubtedly preferable to Duport, whose demeanour was aggressive and contradictious. I was not surprised when Duport announced: “Couldn’t stand my place at all. Got sent down my first term. Still it looks worse here.”
I enquired about Jean.
“She’s all right,” Peter said. “In love with a married man twice her age.”
“Is that the sister I’m after?” asked Duport. “That’s the one.”
Towards the end of the meal, things improved a little; though Stringham and I seemed now to know Templer on an entirely different footing from that of the past. Finally, I felt even glad that Duport and Brent had increased the numbers of the party, because their presence alleviated, if it did not conceal, the change that had taken place. Peter was still anxious that we should see how fast the car would travel on a piece of open road, and he promised to deliver us back by midnight; so, after dinner was finished, we agreed to go with him. Stringham and I climbed into the back of the Vauxhall with Duport, not through choice, but because there was more room for everyone if Brent occupied the seat beside the driver. We moved off sharply in the direction of unfrequented roads. I lay back, wishing the seat had been roomy enough to allow sleep. Duport smoked sullenly: Stringham, on the other side of me, was silent: Brent had returned to the subject of Flora, though without receiving much outward sympathy from Peter. We had reached the outskirts of the town, and the car was gathering speed, when – without clearly taking in the meaning of the words – I heard Brent say: “Let’s pick up those two pieces.”
I was scarcely aware that Peter had slowed down, when we stopped with a jerk by the kerb, where, beside a pillar-box at the corner of a side road, two girls were standing. They were wearing flowered dresses, blue and pink respectively, with hats of the same material. Their faces were those of a couple of Dutch dolls. Brent, from the front seat, twisted himself round towards them.
“Would you like to come for half an hour’s drive?” he asked, in his unattractive voice, high and oily. The girls raised no difficulty whatever about falling in with this suggestion. There was not even any giggling to speak of. They jumped in immediately, one of them sitting in front, on Brent’s knee; the other joining the three of us at the back, where there was already little enough room to spare. They answered to the names of Pauline and Ena. Ena sat sideways, mainly on Duport, but with her legs stretched across my own knees: her feet, in tight high-heeled shoes, on Stringham’s lap. This was a situation similar to many I had heard described, though never previously experienced. In spite of its comparative discomfort, I could not help feeling interest – and some slight excitement – to see how matters would develop. Stringham was obviously not very pleased by the additional company, which left him without the doubtful advantage of any substantial share in either of the girls; but he made the best of things, even attempting some show of pinching Ena’s ankles. Neither of the girls had much conversation. However, they began to squeal a little when the car arrived on a more open piece of road, and the engine gathered speed.
“You must admit it was a good buy,” shouted Peter, as we did about seventy-five or eighty.
“All the same we might be returning soon,” said Stringham. “My physician is insistent that I should not stay up late after my riding accident – especially with anyone, or part of anyone, on my knee.”
“We ought to be getting back, too,” said Duport, freeing himself, apparently dissatisfied, from Ena’s long embrace. “Otherwise it will be tomorrow before we get to London.”
“All right,” said Peter,” we will turn at the next crossroads.”
It was on the homeward journey, after making this turn, that the mishap occurred. Peter was not driving specially fast, but the road, which was slippery from rain fallen earlier in the evening, took two hairpin bends; and, as we reached the second of these, some kind of upheaval took place within the car. No one afterwards could explain exactly what happened, though the accepted supposition was that Brent, engaged in kissing Pauline, had disturbed her susceptibilities in some manner, so that she had drawn herself unexpectedly away from him; and, in his effort to maintain their equilibrium, Brent had thrust her against Peter’s elbow, in such a way that her head obscured the view. That, at least, was one of the main theories afterwards propounded. Whatever the root of the trouble, the memorable consequence was that Peter – in order to avoid a large elm tree – drove into the ditch: where the car stopped abruptly, making a really horrible sound like a dying monster; remaining stuck at an angle of forty-five degrees to the road.
This was an unpleasant surprise for everyone. The girls could not have made more noise if they had been having their throats cut. Brent, too, swore loudly, in his almost falsetto voice, natural or assumed to meet the conditions of the moment; though, as it happened, he and Pauline, perhaps owing to their extreme proximity to each other, were the only two members of the party who, when we had at last all succeeded in making our way out of the Vauxhall, turned out to be quite unhurt. Stringham was kicked in the face by Ena, who also managed to give Duport a black-eye by concussion between the back of her head and his forehead. Peter bruised his knuckles against the handle of the door. Ena complained of a broken arm from the violence with which Duport had seized her as the car went over the edge. My own injuries were no worse than a sharp blow on the nose from Ena’s knee. However, we were all shaken up more than a little; and, as one of the wheels had buckled, the car clearly could not be driven back that night. There had been some difficulty in getting out of the ditch, and, as I stepped up on to the road, I felt the first drop of rain. Now it began to pour. This was an exceedingly inconvenient occurrence from everyone’s point of view. Probably Stringham and I were in the most awkward position, as there seemed no prospect of either of us reaching college by the required hour; and it would not be easy to convince the authorities that nothing of which they might disapprove had taken place to make us late: or even to keep us out all night, if things should turn out so badly. The girls were, presumably, accustomed to late hours if they were in the habit of accepting lifts at that time of night; but for them, too, this was an uncomfortable situation. Such recrimination that took place was about equally divided between Peter’s two friends and Ena and Pauline: although I kne
w that, in fact, Stringham was far the angriest person present. Rain now began to fall in sheets. We moved in a body towards the elm tree.
“Of all the bloody silly things to do,” said Brent. “You might have killed the lot of us.”
“I might easily,” said Peter, who was always well equipped for dealing with friends of Brent’s kind. “I wonder I didn’t with a lout like you in the boat. Haven’t you ever had a girl sitting on your knee before, that you have to heave her right across the car, just because there is a slight bump in the road?”
“What did you want to get a lot of girls in the car for, anyway?” asked Duport, who was holding a rolled-up handkerchief to his eye. “If you weren’t capable of steering?”
“I didn’t ask for them.”
“You ought to have some driving lessons.”
Peter replied with a reference to the time when Duport was alleged to have collided with a lamp-post at Henley; and they both went on like this for some minutes. Pauline and Ena, the former of whom was crying, also made a good deal of noise, while they lamented the difficulty of getting home, certainly an insoluble problem as matters stood.
“How far out are we?” Stringham asked, “and what is the time?”
The hour was a quarter-past eleven; the general view, that we had come about a dozen miles. There was a chance that a car might pass, but we were a large party to be accommodated. In any case, there was no sign of a car. Stringham said: “We had better make plans for camping out. Brent, you look good at manual labour – will you set to work and construct a palisade?”
“You didn’t ought to have brought us here,” said Pauline.
Ena, still complaining of a torn stocking, and bruises on her arm, cried into her handbag. Peter and Duport moved round the car, pulling and pushing its outer surface, or opening the bonnet to inspect the engine. Brent sat panting to himself on the bank.
Peter said: “The rain seems to be stopping. We may as well walk in the right direction. There is no point in staying here.”
There was not much enthusiasm for this suggestion; and, when attempted, the heel came off one of Ena’s shoes, in any case not adapted to a twelve-mile march.
“Can’t we change the wheel?” said Duport. We struggled with the problem of the wheel from different angles of approach. It was impossible to wind the jack into position under the axle. We only managed to embed the car more firmly than ever in the side of the ditch. While we were engaged in these labours, rain began to fall again, a steady, soaking downpour. Once more we retired to the tree, and waited for the shower to clear.
“What a bloody silly thing to do,” said Duport.
“Almost as brilliant as the time you fell into the orchestra on Boat-Race Night.”
Stringham said: “For my part, I am now in a perfect condition to be received into one of those oriental religions whose only tenet is complete submission to Fate.”
He joined Brent on the bank, and sat with his head in his hands. A minute or two after this, the miracle happened.
There was a grinding noise farther up the road, and the glare of powerful headlights appeared. It was a bus. Brent, with surprising agility for so fat a man, jumped up from where he was sitting, and ran out into the centre of the road, holding his arms wide apart as if in supplication. He was followed by Duport, apparently shaking his fist. I felt little interest in possible danger of their being run over: only a great relief that the bus must in any case come to a standstill, whether they were killed or not.
Stringham said: “What did I foretell? Kismet. It is the Wheel.”
The bus stopped some yards short of Brent. We all clambered up the steps. Inside, the seats were almost empty, and no one seemed to realise from what untold trouble we had all been rescued. The girls now recovered quickly, and were even anxious to make an assignation for another night. They were, however, both set down (with no more than a promise from Brent that he would look them up if again in that neighbourhood) at a point not far from the pillar-box from which they had embarked on that unlucky drive. We reached the centre of the town: Templer, Brent, and Duport still quarrelling among themselves about which hotel they should patronise, and arguing as to whether or not it was worth ringing up a garage that night to arrange for the repair of the Vauxhall. This discussion was still in progress when we left the bus. Stringham and I said good night to them.
“I’m sorry to have landed you in all this,” Peter said.
“You must come for a drive with us sometime,” said Stringham. “Anyway, we’ll meet soon.”
But I knew that they would not meet soon; and that this was a final parting. Peter, I think, knew this too. A crescent moon came from behind clouds. The others disappeared from sight. Stringham said: “What a jolly evening, and what nice friends Peter makes.” The clocks were striking midnight at different places all over the town as I stepped through the door of my college. The rain had cleared. Moonlight gave the grass and towers an air of unreality, as if all would be removed in the morning to make way for another scene. My coat hung on me, shapeless and soggy, the damp working down through the cloth to my shoulders.
*
This incident with Templer’s car had two results, so far as Stringham was concerned: it brought an end to his friendship with Peter, and it immensely strengthened his desire to go down as soon as possible from the university. In fact, he was now unwilling even to consider the possibility of staying in residence long enough to take a degree. It was one of those partings of the ways that happen throughout life: in this case, foretold by Peter himself. No doubt Peter, too, had guessed that something had ended, and that his prophecy had come true, while the rain dripped down on all of us, through the branches of that big elm, while we stood in the shadows of the ditch regarding the stranded Vauxhall.
When I say that their friendship came to an end, I do not mean that Stringham no longer spoke of Templer; nor that, when he talked of him, it was with dislike: nor even, in a sense, with disapproval. On the contrary, he used to refer to Peter as frequently as he had done in the past; and the story of the drive, the crash, Ena and Pauline, Brent and Duport, was embroidered by him until it became a kind of epic of discomfort and embarrassment: at the same time, something immensely funny in the light of Peter’s chosen manner of life. Nevertheless, there could be no doubt whatever that metamorphosis had taken place; and, sometimes, it was almost as if Stringham were speaking of a friend who had died, or gone beyond the sea to a place from which he would never return. Once he said: “How appalling Peter will be in fifteen years’ time;” and he never spoke, as formerly he had done, of arranging a meeting between the three of us in London.
I was even aware that, in an infinitely lesser degree, I could not avoid being unfavourably included by Stringham in this reorientation which, almost necessarily, affected anyone who was at once a friend of Peter’s and a fellow undergraduate, fated to remain up for at least three years: both characteristics reminding Stringham of sides of life from which he was determined to cut away. Besides, for my own part I shared none of this sense of having seen the last of Peter; though even I had to admit that I did not care for the idea of spending much of my time with his present acquaintances, if Brent and Duport were typical representatives of his London circle. The extent to which Stringham had resolved to settle his own career was brought home to me one morning, through the unexpected agency of Quiggin, next to whom I found myself sitting, when attending one of Brightman’s lectures, at which I had not been appearing so regularly as perhaps I should.
On this occasion Quiggin walked back with me towards my college, though without relaxing the harsh exterior he had displayed when we had first met at Sillery’s. He seemed chiefly concerned to find out more about Mark Members.
“Where does his stuff appear?” he asked.
“What stuff?”
“His poems have been published, haven’t they? Why ‘Public’?” said Quiggin. “Why ‘Public’ School Verse? Why not just ‘School Verse’?”
I
was unable to answer that one; and suggested that such a title must for some reason have have appealed to the editors, or publisher, of the volume.
“It is not as if they were ‘public’ schools,” said Quiggin. “They could not be less ‘public’.”
I had heard this objection voiced before, and could only reply that such schools had to have a name of some sort. Quiggin stopped, stuck his hands into his pockets (he was still wearing his black suit) and poked his head forward. He looked thin and unhealthy: undernourished, perhaps. “Have you got a copy?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Can I borrow it?”
“All right.”
“Now?”
“If you like to come with me.”
We undertook the rest of the journey to my rooms in silence. Arrived there, Quiggin glanced around at the furnishings, as if he did not rate very highly the value of the objects provided by the college to sit, or lie, upon. They were, indeed, shabby enough. Standing by the bookcase, he took out the copy of Public School Verse, which he had lighted upon immediately, and began to run rapidly through the rest of the books.
“Do you know Members well?” he asked.
“I’ve met him once, since we were at Sillery’s.”
This encounter with Members had been at a luncheon party given by Short, where Members had much annoyed and mortified his host by eating nearly all the strawberries before the meal began. In addition, he had not spoken at all during luncheon, leaving before the coffee was served, on the grounds that he had to play the gramophone to himself for half an hour every afternoon; and that, unless he withdrew at once, he would not have time for his music owing to a later engagement. Short, for a mild man, had been quite cross. “I understand that Members is a coming poet,” said Quiggin.
I agreed that Iron Aspidistra showed considerable promise. Quiggin gloomily turned the pages of the collection. He said: “I’d be glad to meet Members again.”
A Question of Upbringing Page 19
