Wine of Honour

by Barbara Beauchamp

  “Let’s go and have a drink at the bar.”

  It was on the other side of the dance floor from the table they had. He asked:

  “Gin or whisky?”

  “Gin, please.”

  He ordered and they stayed silent until the drinks were served. She thought Brian looked thinner and he had lost the deep tan which she remembered most about him. The band was playing a selection of tunes that had been popular in the nineteen-twenties. She found that she knew the words to all of them. Funny the way lyrics of that time stuck in one’s memory. It wasn’t anything to do with the words or the music, it was just a case of having been at the age when one learned the lyrics of all new tunes. It certainly dated one.

  Serena and Peter were dancing again. Brian followed Angela’s glance. She said:

  “She is a pretty child.”

  “She’s a good kid.”

  “And very devoted.”

  His face softened for an instant and then she saw that he had dismissed Serena and the dancing from his thoughts. He asked:

  “Are you going to marry Peter?”

  “I shouldn’t think so. Why?” She did not mind his question because it was put with no unpleasant curiosity.

  “I’d hoped you would. It would be the best thing that could happen to him. But perhaps it’s unfair on you. After all why should you? You might mess up the rest of your life for nothing. In fact, I think you probably would. There’s no great catch in being sacrificed for something worthless.”

  “Brian, Peter is not worthless.”

  “Isn’t he? I hope you’re right.”

  “It’s people like you always thinking that he is, and looking at him as if he were, who will end by making him so if you’re not careful.” She felt she owed that to Peter.

  “Oh, no, Angela; not me. You’ve got it wrong. I happen to be very fond of Peter.”

  “But you wouldn’t think of doing anything to help him.”

  “No, I don’t think I would. I believe that he’s got to help himself. That’s why I was stupid when I said I hoped you’d marry him. That isn’t the solution at all.”

  “Thank you,” she said dryly, but he only ordered more drinks and then went on:

  “We used to be terrific friends, you know. At school, I pretty well worshipped him. It was strange because he was so much better than me at everything—games, lessons, popularity. I should have loathed him. Instead I basked in his achievements and muscled in on his fame. I tried to imitate him in all things. He was brilliant, you know, and he did everything without effort. He never listened in class, and always came out top; he never went into training for any game, and was always in the first elevens and fifteens. The parents doted on him: nothing was too good for him. I don’t believe they even knew they’d got a second son. I came to regard it as a privilege to be related to the great P. L. F. Gurney. And I enjoyed it. County cricket, ski-ing at Murren—it was always the same story, P. L. F. G. was the man. And he was doing pretty well in the City too; ran a flat in Mayfair and a non-stop cocktail party in it. That’s what it seemed like anyhow. Am I boring you?”

  “No. Go on.”

  “It was like that until about nineteen-thirty-seven and then, God knows why, the tables turned. He gambled a lot—you probably know that—cards and horses—and it seems that was where most of the money was coming from. Anyhow when his luck broke it broke thoroughly. Away with the flat and the friends who had sponged. Friends! Fancy followers, I’d call them, and when there were no more parties to follow they fancied themselves off.

  “Father helped, as he has done since. It struck him almost as hard as it struck Peter. Only Mother was pleased: it was nice to have Peter at home more. Bless her. He’d sold up his Stock Exchange membership to pay some of the debts. I rallied round but wasn’t much good. In any case I couldn’t afford to keep him besides he was bitter as vinegar. I couldn’t cope with that. After all, apart from money and gambling and all the rest, there’s bound to be a moment when a chap can’t run so fast or bowl so well or win every race on skis. It’s only natural, but he didn’t see things that way. He was for ever blaming his pals or the government or something.

  “Then he took up with a queer set—he’s always had a strong homosexual streak, you know—and I went my way. We hardly saw one another for a year or more. We met over Munich—he still worked in the City but I believe there were times when he didn’t turn up for days on end. The firm allowed him to stay—he was no asset to them, but on the other hand he wasn’t harming anyone, except himself. Then the war came and he joined up as an ordinary seaman. Put his age down five years to do so. It’s a funny thing, you know—oh, have another drink, you look thirsty.”

  “No thanks. Go on, what was funny?”

  “The way Peter pulled himself together when the war started. All the time he was on the lower deck, he was grand. He looked well and he was cheerful and seemed on top of the world again. Then some fool of a commanding officer recommended him for a commission. That did it. He started to slip badly once he’d got rings up. Back to the old days. I never saw him sober when he was on leave. Odd the way he couldn’t take it. He went right back to the bitterness and recriminations of before the war. Funny, wasn’t it?”

  “No, it wasn’t funny. Why are you telling me all this?”

  “I don’t know.” He was silent, fingering his cigarette case, opening and shutting it by sliding it and letting the spring force back his relaxed fingers before he snapped it shut again. Memory stirred in her mind. Where had she seen this before? Of course—in the Cock and Pheasant, and she saw again Helen’s pale face and her expression of desperation—almost irritation—at this mechanical snapping.

  “You don’t know,” she repeated, “but I do. It’s because you feel responsible for him. Perhaps not you, personally, but your parents, your family, the way he was brought up. Isn’t it?”

  “I wouldn’t say that. Maybe he was spoiled too much.”

  “It isn’t a case of being spoiled. At least I don’t think so. It’s deeper than that. It’s being born and bred in an atmosphere that’s either stagnant or progressive, of being reactionary or pressing forward with the times. I don’t mean just politically, but in every way: art, science, even sport if you like. A lot of things died before 1939 and the war buried them, quietly, without fuss or headlines—almost decently. Which is much better and less painful than having a lot of skeletons lying around. You, Brian, have progressed fairly logically out of one war and through another. It’s no particular credit to you that you have, because people ought to be able to adapt themselves to the rhythm of their times. It isn’t as if we had to live for hundreds of years. But you get people like your parents who for one reason or another dug their toes in about the beginning of this century and have never looked forward since.” She paused to light a cigarette.

  “How does that account for Peter?”

  “It doesn’t really, except that you’ll always find human hangovers from one generation to another. They want the best of both worlds, but usually their sense of values isn’t too bright and they can’t discern which are the good things. But they’re not hopeless or worthless. It’s just that they need from other people that much more of human intelligence and understanding to bring them up to normality. You know that, and with your tidy mind, you want to shelve Peter on to someone else for a change. You either can’t or won’t make the extra effort that’s needed. You’ve picked on me as a suitable mentor. God knows why.”

  “He’s in love with you.”

  “Oh, what’s the use. . . . Come on, we must go back and join them.”

  “No,” he put a hand on her arm, “Angela, tell me . . . how’s Helen?”

  So that was it, she thought. All this long talk away from Peter and Serena so that he could ask about Helen. Why the hell couldn’t he have come to the point sooner? She could see Peter leaning on the table at the other end of the room and she knew, even from this distance, that he’d had enough to drink.

  �
�Helen’s all right,” she replied. “I haven’t seen a great deal of her.”

  “Does she seem happy?” He was so pathetically eager for news that she hadn’t the heart to leave him then.

  “It’s difficult to tell that about anyone,” she answered. “But she seems perfectly cheerful.”

  “And Gyp?”

  “Looking much better than when he first got back.” What else could she say? It was all quite true.

  “All right,” he rose from the bar and they began to make their way round the room. He sounded dejected. “I know you know how I feel,” he spoke from close behind her. “You didn’t mind my asking, did you? I’ll have to see her soon; I must.”

  But Angela felt uncomfortable. Why couldn’t he ask his brother about Helen? Peter knew her much better than she did.

  They arrived at the table and Brian’s voice was confident and teasing again.

  “Hello children. Been good? Sorry we were away so long, but Angela and I had a lot to talk about. Has Serena been entertaining you properly, Peter?”

  “Serena’s quite the most enchanting girl you know, Brian.” Peter replied, but his glance was on Angela’s face. Brian said:

  “Well, I suppose we ought to think about moving. I’ve got to walk Serena back to Sloane Square.”

  “Walk? Not on your life.” She slipped a hand unself-consciously into his. “Taxi, please Brian. Or at least the underground. I’ve danced my feet through my Utilities.”

  She seemed quite unperturbed at Brian’s lack of attention. Angela thought, cynically, ‘Maybe he’s thinking of marrying her; he’s certainly trained her well.’

  Outside they parted in the half-lit street. Angela and Peter needed only a few minutes to walk to her flat. He put his arm through hers and she felt his weight, warm and a little unsteady against her side as they walked. She found his hand and twined cool, reassuring fingers in his.

  “What the hell did Brian want to jaw about?” he asked.

  “Oh, nothing in particular. Come on, darling, we’ll never get there if you drag like this.”

  “Yes, let’s hurry.” He made an effort to walk more quickly and lurched against a lamp post. “Oh God, I’m stinking. But I shan’t be in a minute. Damned hot in that club.”

  “Did you drink all that beer?”

  “Lord no. I got the waiter to get me some whisky. Here, where do we go now?” They were on the edge of the pavement.

  “Left. Cornering badly, I’m afraid.” She pulled him round and wondered, idly, what Brian had thought when he got his bill. He’d been so careful to leave only beer on the table, but he hadn’t said anything about Peter’s whisky afterwards.

  In the flat, she drew the curtains quickly and then folded the counterpane back from the bed in Peter’s room. He stood watching her, smiling sleepily.

  “Don’t go. You promised we could talk.” He ruffled his hair with a hand and leaned back on the dressing-table.

  “Don’t you think you’d better get to bed?” He looked like a rather guilty schoolboy with his hair disarranged like that.

  “Sure. But you come back then. You promised, you know.”

  She stood, silently. He continued, ruffling his hair again and smiling at her.

  “No funny business, you know. Nothing you don’t want. Just quiet. Please. . . . Angela?”

  “All right. But don’t just stand there. You know where the bath room is?”

  “Yes. But you will come back? Promise?”

  She went up to him and kissed him casually on the mouth.

  “Yes, I promise.”

  In her room she undressed slowly. She could hear him go to the bathroom and then return uncertainly to his room. She went to wash and noticed his belongings about the place, shaving things, a squeezed out tube of toothpaste, a rumpled towel thrust untidily back on the rail. She suddenly felt light-hearted, tingling with vitality, glad to be alive.

  Back in her room, she brushed her hair until it stood out like a dark halo from her head and fell shinily to her shoulders. She thought: ‘Thank goodness that even at my great age I’ve still got the sort of face that looks all right without make-up,’ and the feeling of well-being that had begun in the bathroom grew until it seemed to envelop her whole body with sharp pleasure.

  She uncovered her bed and lit the reading lamp near it. Then she turned the light off in her room and went across the passage to Peter’s.

  He had taken off his coat and collar and tie, but had forgotten to remove his shoes before lying down. He sprawled across the bed, fast asleep, his trousers rucked up showing sock suspenders and the fine hairs on his legs. He would not wake for many hours.

  Angela removed his shoes and drew an eiderdown across him. Then she opened the windows, turned off the light and went back to her own room. Sitting on the edge of her bed she laughed until the tears filled her eyes.

  Quite suddenly, it wasn’t a bit funny.

  * * * *

  I am re-discovering that life with Gyp can be fun. It is, of course, a new life. New, that is, in our reactions to each other. The routine has not changed beyond the revolution—or evolution—which a war and a peace inevitably bring to the community life of a nation.

  Outwardly, little is altered. The country is there and the village with its houses and cottages; the measles and ’flu and the familiar rhythm of telephone calls in the middle of the night; Gyp in his old clothes on Sunday, prodding at the garden. His old clothes are khaki shirts now, but even they are beginning to look as shapeless and grey as his old shirts always did.

  The change is in ourselves. We have come to a strange adjustment of ourselves. It has not happened easily. We always seem to be leaping, like mountain goats, from one emotional pinnacle to another. At least, Gyp leaps; I follow and, having a poor head for heights, I sometimes miss my footing. But for Gyp, God knows what precipices I mightn’t have fallen into by now. The fact that he has always been there, firm-footed, has meant that I have survived.

  And yet Gyp keeps saying I’m the sanest person he knows. He says that if I hadn’t been such a fuss-pot about re-registering in good time for the new rationing period, such a stickler for the nine o’clock news and such an ogre about Jenny being late on her evenings off, he would probably have had to go and get himself rehabilitated by the army before tackling civilian life again.

  I don’t regard this as a compliment. When you have imagined yourself as something rather feminine and appealing for a husband to come back to, it isn’t flattering to be told that your other qualities are the ones he admires. How can I help being practical after nearly six years of war—five of them spent in the A.T.S.?

  We are, to all intents and purposes, man and wife. Among the villagers I believe we are cited as paragons of married life. Jenny tells me about this. She says that Mr. and Mrs. Cobb say it does their hearts good to see the way the doctor’s come home and settled down. She says that Dick Cobb and his wife aren’t hitting it off any more. She says that Daphne Gurney, that was, fights with her mother and that Sir James tells his wife that if their daughter had married a decent Englishman like Dr. Townsend, instead of a foreigner, she would be in a much better position today. Jenny also tells me, with innocent glee, that it’s well known Daphne Gurney was four months gone when she went to the altar.

  Sometimes I am almost tempted to tell Jenny exactly what sort of a life I led during the last years. I want to shout it aloud to the world and to those pathetic fools who look upon me and Gyp as models of family existence. Sometimes I feel so ashamed that I would like to paint my face up and let my hair down and slink round the pubs in Dimstone like the girls who used to be in the munition works there.

  I want to tear down the smug mask the village has made for me. I want to exhibit myself and let them understand that no one is alone in the problems—the intimate and sometimes debasing problems—which war has bequeathed to those who come back.

  They would be horrified, no doubt, to know that when Gyp returned I lay in his arms and thought about a m
an who wasn’t my husband. They would be shocked that I had compared two men and found one wanting—and that it was my husband. Five years separation can do that to a woman.

  Gyp and I have been through a lot these last few months. Like actors in a repertory company, we seem to have played a great many parts whilst always rehearsing for more. I look back on it all now and find it rather embarrassing: the over-rehearsed scene of our reunion and the domestic comedy of the first month—with neither of us word perfect. Then the melodrama of my being too kind to Gyp which ended with him moving into the spare bedroom. An acute spell of cold weather coupled with a lack of coal brought him back to our room and it seemed that we had reached the climax of bedroom farce.

  I think we both got tired of play-acting. In any case, things changed. For no apparent reason we are ourselves again. Not our pre-war selves, but nevertheless adult individuals. We are able to talk and discuss things together again, and every moment of the day seems to bring a new topic which must be argued about. Not that we argue in the sense of fighting. It is rather that we have so many ideas in common that we race each other to say them first. We might be strangers meeting for the first time, getting together and experiencing the pleasures of mutual attraction. Except that this time, it is our minds that are courting.

  But I am not happy about us. I do not believe in personalities subdivided into emotional, physical and mental facets—at least, not if the personalities concerned are husband and wife. There should be an effortless blending of all three aspects if one is to avoid the disconcerting sensation of suddenly smacking a sensitive limb against an invisible boulder.

  Gyp and I are not blending naturally. Perhaps we never did. Maybe, in the first years of our marriage, I mistook the freshness of our pleasure in one another as something more profound than it was. It is impossible to know now what our present relationship would have been without the interruption of war. Perhaps we shall never develop in the way I feel is necessary for lasting companionship. It may be stupid to want that sort of perfection. But I do and, as things are, I seem to be running round the brink of a void.