Friends and Lovers

by Helen Macinnes

  Overhead the high ceiling formed a deep vault, dark and withdrawn. The shaded table lamps lit up the rows of faces, intent on mulligatawny soup and light remarks. (The two could go together it seemed.) The enormous fireplace at one side of the hall had its outsized portion of tree-trunk as fuel, and the green baize screens were drawn to protect the spines of those undergraduates whose bench was too near the fire. Those who sat at the other side of the room wore thick pullovers under their tweed jackets to keep them warm. At the end of the hall, opposite the doorway, was a raised dais where the dons’ white shirts bulged stiffly out from their low-cut dinner jackets. The junior Fellow, who voted Labour and did not believe in all that conspicuous nonsense, was appearing unnoticeable in his checked tweed jacket, red tie, and determined nonchalance. The three Distinguished Guests of the evening sat with the dons and listened to the conversation which went evenly on, in spite of the rising spate of noise from the undergraduates’ tables: the voices always rose after the second course, when hunger was partly abated by soup and fish.

  David looked at the High Table, tried to distinguish the three guests, wondered what they thought about this zoo, listened to Halsey beside him. Once Halsey and McIllwain started arguing it was rather like watching two men sawing sawdust. Still, they enjoyed it, and they never allowed it to interfere with the decisions they had already agreed upon. It would be Bach. It would be the Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue. McIllwain and Halsey were just working up to that in their own way. David had no objections: this was an evening when he enjoyed being in a crowd of men and feeling completely alone. It was the only pleasant way of feeling alone. To be really alone and feel alone, that was the hour to be avoided. Now this separation of himself from the crowded hall was a luxury: he could step back into it when he wanted. He watched the three D.G.’s without appearing to notice them, and wondered about them. At this moment they were alone too. Really alone in an inexplicable madhouse? Or just feeling alone and comfortably amused as they watched it?

  Certainly the D.G.’s were less successful than the dons in ignoring the peculiarities of the young men. The most distinguished of them was a professor from Germany, a Jew who had been declared intolerable; who knew more than most people could understand about nebulae. The small thin one was the Middle East expert who combined exploring with his thirty years of study of the Turkic group of languages. The third D.G. was a Permanent Under-Secretary: rather heavy-going, this one, as the Senior Tutor afterwards remarked to his colleagues. But he, at least, had been an undergraduate at Oxford and had known what to expect. He might even be telling himself that undergraduates were not what they had been. He certainly did not approve of the way they dressed. Thirty years ago you could have told a man’s income by the cut of his coat. The War had made a lot of changes, a lot of changes. He looked at the junior don’s red tie, and then took comfort in the fact that the linen was still excellent on the table and that the Charles II silver was displayed. He took further consolation in the rows of Queen Anne candlesticks and the admirable Montrachet which he sipped from the crystal goblet standing beside the Doulton plate. The Senior Common Room still had its china specially made, he noted with satisfaction as he scraped up the last mouthful of fillet and mushrooms, and reached the College arms. He ignored the fact that the junior don was drinking beer like some undergraduate, and concentrated on the fact that the beer was held by a George II tankard. Perhaps George III. No, George II.

  The Turkic scholar was telling a very good story about a Rumanian countess at a dinner-party in Vienna. He would have been amused if he had known he was the only D.G. who had raised any comment. It had come from one undergraduate sitting at the Hearties’ table. (Those in training for rowing sat at this separate table, where they had their special beefsteaks and no starches.) “Doesn’t look as if he could have lasted eight days in the desert with only a handful of dates, does he?” The tone was derogatory, but the highest compliment was intended. No one said anything about his lasting thirty years in Turkic languages.

  The foreign nebulist merely looked slightly bewildered. Afterwards, in talking to his friends, he would probably be very amused. At the moment he was startled and shocked. All that waste of food, enough to feed a hundred men in a concentration camp for a day. And the science don beside him seemed to be determined to talk about some new experiments at Cambridge with heavy water. Do as the Romans do, the refugee scholar reminded himself, and tried to follow the almost inaudible English voice at his elbow. But he flinched when a roll, and then a pat of butter, was thrown through the air.

  Now the circus has really begun, David was thinking. There had been a pause in the running service of roast beef. The first piece of roll had been thrown from one table to another, and a reply was given in kind. Next, the pats of butter were catapulted from the blades of table-knives. The first one sailed over his head, aimed at the table behind him. Its near-victim retaliated, aimed too well, and was given a sconce for his success. The quart of heavy ale, to be drunk without pause for breath, was placed in front of him. He did not manage to drink it all, and he had to pass it round the table—and pay for it, too—as his forfeit. David smiled as he watched the Fresher’s obvious chagrin at his failure. And probably he had been practising for weeks in private. David glanced again at High Table. The nebulae chap looked as if he were indeed in a fog, and the science don was no doubt trying to explain the rules of sconcing to him, judging by his increasing bewilderment. The Permanent Under-Secretary looked pleased for the first time this evening. (“At least they haven’t changed in some things,” he was saying to himself.) The Middle East man was the least noticing of the three, being too interested in his story of the Italian baroness in Constantinople. (His explorations were of a diversified nature.)

  The tide of Oxford reality slipped over David’s table. Halsey— who had carried on a continuous stream of conversation from Delius to Ravel, from Ravel to ravishing Garbo, somehow from there (unless under the bam under the boo under the bamboo-tree was as good a place to be alone as anywhere) to T.S. Eliot, and then in one easy bound to Kant and the Categorical Imperative, which brought him right into the problem of his tailor’s bill (the man had actually forgotten half a dozen ties which had been bought six months ago)—suddenly halted. He stared with distrust and then dislike at the sweet set before him. It was a strawberry jelly frozen to almost glacial hardness. “Anaemic liver,” he said, picked it up in his hand, weighed it as if it were a cricket ball, and then lobbed it down the table. It was well caught, and thrown onward, and managed to pass three tables before its final disintegration. The German nebulist leaned forward with increasing interest. It was all becoming clear: the medieval tradition of the lords seated on the dais, with the tumblers and clowns amusing the henchmen down in the Hall. The unconscious tradition...it was all becoming perfectly clear. He began speaking at incredible speed in German to the science don, who had been unfortunate enough to admit that he spoke that language, and who smiled and nodded when he felt the meaning was beyond his vocabulary—just to keep the old boy happy. He certainly did: there was a nice little footnote of five and a half pages to be added to the dissertation on The Medieval Mind and its Attack on the Possibilities of Space, now in preparation.

  An unreal world, David thought. It had become so natural to all of them that, when they left it, they might find the world outside quite unreal in its reality. He thought of the small flat which he and Penny would have, forming their own world of two rooms and kitchen in some place like Notting Hill. He compared it with all this—the high, vaulted hall, carved and shadowed; the stone fireplace, which would be bigger than their kitchen; the rows of gleaming silver, the hurrying servants; the distinguished guests feeling their prominence at High Table, while the undergraduates ignored them completely and the dons wished the Permanent Under-Secretary would finish his savoury and let them retire into the Senior Common Room for dessert and port and—at last—a cigarette, or a cigar, with a snifter of brandy. (The junior Fellow, who must serve
round the fruit in the Senior Common Room, was looking at his wrist watch covertly, wondering if he would get away in time to take his wife to that picture which he had promised her. She would be sitting over in his study in College now, after dining at home on scrambled eggs and a baked apple. If only she would eat a decent meal by herself on the four nights a week he had to put in an appearance at High Table, but women were strange. She said a decent dinner was made to be shared: made her feel more alone. If this old blow-hard didn’t finish up that savoury they would never get to that flicker in time. Said to be good, too... The Blue Light. Damn and blast. And this was its last night.)

  Perhaps, David was deciding, I am just a two-room-and-kitchen chap. Yet, that was not quite accurate, he reminded himself, as the scout removed his untouched jelly: he had expensive tastes he would like to be able to afford. Perhaps it was just Penny. Even one room and Penny would be the answer to everything. He felt that his happiness was so transparent at this moment that he looked sharply at the two men beside him.

  “Any objection, David?” Halsey asked, noticing the look.

  “None at all.” He looked at the other men with a sudden feeling of pity, for not being so madly happy as he was at this moment. With a feeling, too, of relief that they couldn’t guess his emotions. And then he wondered how many of these unrevealing faces hid feelings that would have startled the whole room. They talked about everything except what they really felt.

  “Of course,” he said to McIllwain. “Let’s have the Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue, by all means.” He looked round the long monks’ table once more, listening to the interweaving voices, the pattern of laughter, the flow of words adding to a theme or branching from it to give it a new statement or a twist of variation. “Rather appropriate actually,” David said.

  McIllwain and Halsey showed a mild surprise, but they did not ask for an explanation. That was one of the best things about Oxford: no one ever need bother to explain.

  23

  DAVID AND HIS FATHER

  On Sunday David travelled to London. It was the beginning of March. The whole countryside had been washed by February rains, brushed by brisk winds as if nature had determined to have a thorough spring-cleaning. He ignored the newspaper beside him: it would be filled with further attempts to interpret and cover up the bad news which had trickled out of Germany all last week. News became twice as depressing when everyone was making such a determined effort to hope for the best. That underlined the danger: one did not have to explain away good news. Hell, David thought, I refuse to be depressed today. Today’s my holiday from work and worry and what should be done and what shouldn’t be done and what does this mean and what doesn’t it mean? Today’s the day I enjoy myself. In three hours’ time I’ll be seeing Penny.

  He slipped the small volume of Religio Medici back into his pocket. He had thought the rich flow of Brown’s elaborate eloquence would be an antidote to the lists of facts and figures, the coldly presented ideas, which he had been concentrating on all last week. A diet of unimaginative prose always depressed him. He had brought the book with him as a matter of habit. Probably he had never meant to read it, anyway. How strange we are, he thought: we buy newspapers, out of habit, which we don’t even open, and we cart along a book with us and then ignore it; as if it took a little time for us to persuade ourselves to be completely lazy.

  It was pleasant to see the green fields go wheeling past, to watch the white clouds scattering over the cold blue sky in the March wind, to see some occasional patch of wild daffodils at the edge of a sheltered wood, to catch the colour of primroses under the hawthorn hedges with their sprinkling of pale green. There were small lambs, too, frisking unsteadily, to bring a smile to one’s face. The telephone wires, strung above the railway banks, moved as the train moved, dipped, straightened, rose, dipped, to mark each mile nearer to London.

  He went over the calculations he had made last night. Finals were in June, and the thought of them was not unpleasant: a strange realisation. Last year one had thought of Finals and felt a mixture of worry and dislike for June of 1933. Now he wished that June came in April. For after the Finals came the job with Fairbairn. If he got a cracking First, of course. Three hundred a year minimum—say, three hundred and fifty a year with pot-boiling articles. Four hundred a year with luck and some work. Four hundred, then. Thirty-three pounds, roughly, each month. He could live on almost a third of that. He could save about twenty pounds a month. He’d have to. June, July, August. Sixty pounds. Could you furnish two rooms with that? He damned well would. He did not want a rented flat furnished. A place of our own, he thought. No more lodgings, or college rooms, or a Cory’s Walk where his sister Margaret appropriated his room for her awful female friends.

  A place of their own...that had the right sound. Sixty pounds was not exactly a fortune, but at least they could make a beginning with the essentials. Four walls to enclose your own corner of happiness. Four walls with a bed inside them, a table, for meals and for work, something to cook with, something to eat with, a bookcase for their books, a place to keep their clothes, a couple of chairs, a place of their own where a door shut meant a door shut. No more regulations cutting short the time that Penny and he could spend together. No more damned interference from anyone.

  He laughed suddenly. Marriage, as he was picturing it, sounded like freedom. Perhaps that was the way you should think of it: if it weren’t freedom to be with each other, if being with each other wasn’t the most important thing in your lives, then you shouldn’t even think of marriage. For a moment he imagined what witticism Marain or some of the other men he knew would think up if they heard him talk like this. He smiled. He wasn’t thinking of amusing remarks, either. He was thinking that he had found a very simple truth, and that many a very clever man had never found it; for you couldn’t track down truth with words, or analyse it, or explain it. It was there, you felt it, and you accepted it. It was as simple as that.

  * * *

  At Paddington he jumped off the train before it came to a halt at the long platform. A porter shook his head resignedly. “That’s wot we’re ’ere for,” he said to his mate, “to pick up the blooming pieces.”

  But David was already half-way down the platform, heading towards the nearest telephone booth.

  “Darling,” he said.

  Penny laughed as she always did. She sounded surprised and yet not so surprised, happy, excited, gay. As soon as he heard her voice he relaxed. He never could get rid of that fear that some day he would ’phone and then he would stand and listen to the maid at Baker House, her voice growing fainter as she called, “Telephone for Miss Lorrimer. Telephone...” And then, after a long pause, the voice at the end of the ’phone would say, “Hello,” but it wouldn’t be Penny’s. And instead of saying “Darling” he would listen to the explanation that Miss Lorrimer was out and had left no message. That was the fear that always struck him as he waited. He couldn’t know that she had been lounging beside the telephone in Baker House for the last ten minutes, pretending to be most interested in the notice-board, wondering if the train was going to be late today, hoping it would be early. (It had been exactly on time, as it always was.)

  “I’ll meet you in another hour and a half,” David said. “I’m on my way now to see Father. Lunch at the usual place?”

  “At the Brasserie? But that means you will have to come all the way into town again... David, why don’t I meet you at Hammersmith? At the main entrance to the Piccadilly line? That would save a lot of time, wouldn’t it? And you won’t have to rush away from your father. Really, David, I shan’t get lost. I’ll wear a red carnation so you will know me.” And my new spring suit: how will he like it?

  There was a short pause as David considered this only sensible suggestion. Then he said, “I love you, darling.” And he meant it.

  “David!”

  “It’s all right, darling. The girl at the Exchange wouldn’t dream of listening in. Would you, Exchange?”

  A man’s de
ep voice said, “I’m being completely ladylike.”

  There was a moment’s silence, and then Penny’s laughter.

  “In that case,” David went on, “I repeat I love you, and send a hundred kisses, planted generously. I’ll add another hundred when I see you. What about Hampton Court for that? That’s a good place for talking, too. I’ve been deciding a lot of things. I hope you’ll like them. Keep thinking of September.”

  “September?”

  “Yes, a wonderful month. Best month in the year. Goodbye, darling. See you in one hour and twenty-eight minutes. At Hammersmith, Piccadilly side. Take care of yourself. Goodbye, darling.”

  He came out of the bright red booth, and stood for a moment watching the crowd, a mass of hurrying people in Sunday clothes struggling towards the trains and a day in the country. He felt the movement and stir around him, but he saw and heard nothing. It was ridiculous, he thought, that anyone could be as happy as this at this moment. But he was.

  * * *

  David’s father was alone in the house. He was sitting in his wheel-chair at the window, but he had been reading the Observer’s editorial so attentively that he had not seen David coming along Cory’s Walk.

  David’s quick glance noticed the untidied room, the sandwiches wrapped in a napkin on a plate, and the Thermos of tea placed beside them on the small table. He greeted his father affectionately.

  “Where’s Meg?” he asked.

  “At Communion. Then she is lunching with Miss Rawson, and they are going to some choral society’s concert. The Messiah, I believe. She will be home by five o’clock.”

  “I see,” David said quietly, but he looked worriedly at his father. “Well, how have you been?” He had to admit that his father seemed stronger today than he had appeared for several months now. There was an alert, almost vigorous, look on his face.