by Simon Raven
'. . . But she should never have gone to that house,' Mrs Fairweather was saying. 'Eddie Chynnon thought he'd get in well with the Brummels by lending his house for the wedding breakfast, but she was under no compulsion to attend it, even if the bridegroom was her godson. For one tiling, Eddie's extremely vulgar, and for another, he made a lot of money out of his wife which he's now busy spending on m— on other people,' she concluded lamely. McTavish had his line in social chit-chat, it appeared.
'It's said,' he contributed, 'that she was specifically warned of all the circumstances, but merely said, "There has yet to be a scene at a wedding breakfast." '
'She must have forgotten a good deal,' said Mrs Fairweather. 'Well, there you are. I know she said that, because the lady's maid is sent to me for treatment — she picks the spots on her face in order to draw attention to herself. Unfortunately she developed piles and started — '
'But I do agree, Sandra,' said Mrs Valley quickly, 'you've known her so long — before she was married too — and you understand her so well. Couldn't you have...?'
'We all did our best,' said Mrs Fairweather, 'but I've always said there are three races of mankind — Blacks, Whites and them — once they get an idea, they've got it — the Bourbon thing,' she added vaguely.
By this time the second course was on the table. Esme was discovering, too late, that Mrs Fairweather's gin was nothing if not diuretic. He must stick to his post, to leave the room would be fatal....
'How do you like the claret, Mr Sa Foy?' his hostess asked. 'Excellent,' said Esme, pulling himself together, 'but am I right in saying that another two years will see it past its best?'
'Yes,' she said with a look of appraisal, 'it's a Conton '26 and we've no time to lose with it. I'm working it off on all my friends — I shall hope to work some of it off on you.' Better and better.
'I should be delighted,' said Esme modestly. One thing about claret, he thought gloomily, it was less insistent than gin.
Mr Valley took the opportunity for vicarious ingratiation. 'Must be awfully interesting,' he said to McTavish, 'meeting important people and finding out what's underneath it all.'
'Piles?' said the Colonel, helping himself to claret. Mrs Fairweather, off on an excursion to the kitchen, tripped over the bell-wire. McTavish simpered.
The silence was abysmal. Now, if ever, was the time lo exhibit social deftness.
'Pm told the celebrations for the Fourth of June went very well,' said Esme. After all, one of Mrs Fairweather's sons was still safely installed at Eton.
'Who told you that?' said Mrs Valley fiercely.
'A friend of mine who was there — Reresby Lyewell,' said Esme. 'Oh, those Lyewells,' said Mrs Fairweather, prancing back into the room, 'and how do you come to know Reresby?'
'He was up at Cambridge for a year with me.'
'Ah,' she said voraciously, 'at last I've found someone who knew him there. Will you please, please tell me, why did he go down so suddenly? His uncle talks such nonsense....'
The story was long and amusing, and Esme did it justice. With a sigh of relief and a sense of having saved the situation he went into the well-rehearsed routine of Reresby's outrageous waistcoats and still more outrageous parties, his well-known collection of rare snuffs and his equally well-known collection of feted but faithless mistresses, the dust gathering on his books and the bills gathering on his desk, and the inevitable culmination in failure, disaster and debt. It was the kind of story people are never tired of hearing about the sons and nephew's of their acquaintances. It was told with vigour and received with rapture — and sent Mrs Fairweather off on a seemingly interminable series of reminiscences about the meanness of Reresby's uncle and the shifts to which this quality had reduced his aunt.
'And at the big Lyewell parties before the war,' she rattled on, 'there was only one subject of conversation, when would the orangeade run out? So that when the buffet started there was a cataclysmic rush and...'
On she went and on. Esme was getting desperate. He had by now extracted a severe wince of pain from McTavish and had conic near to kicking Mrs Fairweather herself. He was hanging on (quite literally) like grim death.
But he was saved by the gong. Just as Sir George Lyewell had developed his third pair of horns, rounds of frantic abuse were heard outside, which turned out to be the chauffeur and the cook quarrelling about the last bottle of beer in the pantry. Mrs Fairweather and her niece went to umpire, and the men retired. Esme felt he had given a very good account of himself.
So, on the whole, did Mrs Fairweather. His looks and his manners had started him off with a substantial credit. Added to this, he had listened with attention and apparent intelligence when she was telling him about Terence — he had even behaved respectfully to McTavish, which was unusual among her acquaintance. Then he had been excellent with the Colonel and rather amusing at dinner — though she was inclined to wonder whether his story about Reresby Lyewell hadn't rather a dubious moral tone. In fact now she thought of it, Esme looked as if he had rather a dubious moral tone all round. Still, the reference from his college was excellent, it seemed he had done well in his examinations, and in any case it would be a change to have someone around — not that she'd see that much of him — whose general pleasantness was beyond dispute. On the whole it was a promising outlook, she felt — as indeed she had felt about a number of men, in various capacities and with the same ultimately disastrous result, during the past twenty-five years.
By the time she had seen to the cook, the chauffeur, and her face, Esme was radiant with relief and brandy. She swept him off into the library to discuss terms; and as usual started off with a topic as far as possible removed from the one with which she was really concerned. (This explained why it took her five times as long as anyone else to transact the most elementary piece of business: she always got bogged down over introductory trivialities.)
'How do you think the Colonel looks?' she asked.
'A little pale,' said Esme, 'but most distinguished.'
'He's been given three weeks, I'm afraid — they felt he might just as well enjoy himself down here as cat his heart out in hospital. He might die in the night, and really, though it would be so upsetting for me, it might be a blessed relief. He's been so used to a life of activity and pleasure. We took him to Epsom the other day, and some dreadful creature said, "There's poor Ronnie Heffer — he'll soon be butcher's meat," in a voice like a fog-horn, so now he knows, but he's wonderfully brave.'
'I thought him enchanting.'
'He is — and he thinks you're so nice. So do I too, the moment I saw you I said, "He's just the one" — but now we must talk dates — and terms.' Her face hardened perceptibly. 'Well, I shall want you to join me on the afternoon of the fifth — Terence flies back that day, little American maniac — can you manage that?
It's 6, St Ambrose Gate, the London address, 'phone Victoria 7888—my private number, it's a deadly secret.
'Now terms,' she said.
Esme giggled. 'I'm afraid I'm very bad at this side of it all.'
'So am I' — she giggled too.
'Liar,' they both thought.
'Well as a rule seven pounds a week — with all found, is the thing.'
'But in this case,' said Esme, with drunken courage of the sort which wins V.C.S, 'the circumstances, I think you'll agree, warrant a slight increase — three pounds a week, let us say, which will give us a round figure. I mean, there is this question of never leaving him, the additional trouble a boy of his type, though artistic and interesting, is liable to cause, even perhaps a slight personal risk. ... Then there is the danger of public ... you see what I mean?'
She did. 'Very well,' she said, with an effort at charm and the look of a gorgon: 'but of course you'll have no other calls on your time? Work for exams or anything?'
'I shall be entirely at your disposal,' replied Esme.
Going home, after a drink or two with the chauffeur while waiting for the train, Esme thought to himself that this was
what came of extravagance. A room with a bathroom, she had said, ten quid a week, all found, and the Conton '26. She had also talked of the Continent. The boy, they said, must be guided, and his taste improved to fit his position. If only, thought Esme, he could be guided into congenial channels, his tastes could be brought into a scope that would suit his position as much as they would befit his mother's income.
III
The Honourable Mrs Sandra Fairweather, as her friends used to say, had been born a Fox and had remained, despite marriage, a vixen. Now the Foxes were a very reputable family with a country house and a penchant for Royalty of all sorts and sizes. They were also extremely well-to-do (Mrs Fairweather's grandfather had been an extensive slum-landlord), and although Sandra was the only girl and had four elder brothers, it was early made clear to her that she could expect a considerable fortune, conditional only on reasonable behaviour. It was perhaps the constant repetition throughout her childhood of this condition which explained why her whole life was a battleground in which sexiness was always, apparently, just worsted in the struggle with propriety. Others again explained this phenomenon by pointing to the shock she must have received when her youngest brother was the victim of an incident in the conservatory which involved a Cabinet Minister—an affair which caused old Mrs Fox to create such a hue and cry that the Minister finally shot himself. It was silly of Mrs Fox: for the boy, as a result, was never the same again (his mother, with a typical mixture of moral indignation and vanity, never let him forget he had helped to cause the suicide of a Minister of the Crown), and spent the rest of his life writing indifferent novels about Cabinet Ministers, presumably in the hope that twenty fictitious creatures of his pen would be taken, on the Day of Judgment, to atone for one creation of God. Sandra also, the rumour went, was rather shaken by this occurrence; but whether this was due merely to consanguinity, or to the possible fact that she too liked romping in the conservatory with Cabinet Ministers, was never explained.
At school (a convent) she did rather well, for in a slapdash way she was an intelligent child, and always retained a genuine love of literature, which was to yield harvest, later on, in the form of delicate, tenuous, and privately-printed books of not intolerable poetry. But what caused considerably more satisfaction was that she was growing up to be remarkably beautiful. When she was twenty it was whispered that she could have any hand in the realm; for apart from her beauty, the neurotic instability that was already becoming apparent, far from proving an impediment, was socially manifested by fearlessness in the hunting field, a swift and inconsequent humour at the dinner-table, and the ability to cause excitement, even on a Sunday afternoon, either by losing her jewels or baiting her chaperon.
For three years, however, she hung fire. People began to say (nor were they wrong) that neurosis, when combined with youth, could be a social asset for a few years but would become a matrimonial liability in a few days. Then, without warning, a young man called Faunus de Wett, who belonged to a well-known racing family and was as rich and pampered as herself, became engaged and married to her within two short months. The marriage took place at St Peter's, Eaton Square: much champagne was drunk, and while many tongues were temporarily silenced, as many heads were vigorously shaken.
Old Mrs Fox lived just long enough to tell everyone how radiantly happy they were (they never came near her, since she was by now as boring as she was blind): and then passed serenely away, in time to be spared the next instalment. For once she was out of the way, trouble set in with a vengeance. Faunus was a pleasant enough young man, and was even making sincere efforts, since he understood his wife was a woman of culture, to speak, once in a fortnight, of something other than racehorses. (His wedding gift to his bride had been a noble string of two-year-olds.) Sandra, on the other hand (as had been confidently predicted), was making no effort whatever to adapt herself to Faunus. She was swiftly developing a taste for trans-Continental travel; and had a happy knack of devising trips that started on the day of the Two Thousand and finished a week later than the St Leger. On the second of these Faunus refused to accompany her. It was too much, he said. Indeed it was, she replied; and he was to remember she had money of her own and was quite prepared to show a little independence. Well then, good riddance.
But there was still hope for the marriage. A month later she returned with the news that Faunus might expect an heir. He was a generous youth and sincerely touched. For the next few months he abandoned everything and devoted himself solely to keeping her happy and in good health. Then the child was born — lamentably but unambiguously dead.
It was this which turned Sandra finally sour. She was to have her days of happiness in the future — there were even to be days when she gave a little: but she had conceived a grudge against the male sex which never lay long beneath the surface and which, combined with an aggravation of her already dangerous tendency to live off her nerves and not her daily bread, made life for her immediate entourage an affair that would have crushed a Titan. Faunus was blamed for everything, from the loss of the child to the loss of the Sunday Times. Faunus was selfish, indifferent and wicked. Faunus was a wretch and Faunus must go — divorced, as became a gentleman, by her. Gladly, he cried in response; he would give any amount of money, he would confess publicly to any shame she might decree; he would change his life, his principles, his name, and, were it possible, his sex — if only he might be free. And free, after a year of lawyer's letters and the payment to Sandra (Anything! Anything!) of half his considerable fortune — free, at last, he became — only to be granted, six months later, the broader freedom of death.
After the excitement, Sandra decided on a holiday in America. She took a large house on Long Island and entertained female columnists. She had a swimming-pool put in and entertained male film stars. One day someone handed a female columnist a cheque, and Sandra found herself entertaining Earl Marshal Acre, Junior, a prematurely bald young man without any eyebrows, who was third in line to a Dublin innkeeper and immediate heir to a rolling-stock fortune. He had heard that the Duke of Panton had looked favourably on Sandra and was prepared, having seen her in the distance, to do the same himself.
Oddly enough, though both character and masculinity were barely perceptible in him, Sandra was prepared to look favourably back. After they had met he came often to Long Island, where he spent days of delirious happiness in fetching and carrying for a woman of whom the Duke of Panton had approved. He listened with sympathy and a hundred times to the talc of the iniquitous Faunus. He wept when a favourite dachshund died. He approved each new and promising footman as he appeared and heaped indignation on the ungrateful wretch when he gave notice. He swam in the swimming-pool, revealing spindly legs and an atrocious figure. But Sandra barely noticed either. She wanted a man on a string whose admiration was unqualified and whose sympathy was bottomless. She now had one. And odd though it may seem, Earl Marshal Acre, Junior, was by this time, Duke or no Duke, genuinely and passionately in love. His passion was really the only proof of his existence: apart from an affection for money—which to do him justice was weaker than in many of his kind — it was the only positive emotion he had ever felt, the first — and the last.
For they decided to spend the honeymoon in California, by themselves and at an unfashionable time of the year. Three weeks after it began Earl Marshal Acre was found dead in a downstairs cloakroom, having shot himself through the head. He left no explanation, only an apology for the venue he had chosen, which, he said, was unavoidable, as he did not wish to alarm his wife by being found dead in their bedroom. That California is prolific in open spaces had not, apparently, occurred to him.
Although the rolling-stock fortune was still in the hands of his father, he had been given, on attaining his majority, a considerable sum of his own. So Sandra departed to Europe, bewildered and rather hurt, and richer by the equivalent of half a million sterling. The matter of Acre's suicide remained obscure. Even Sandra, it was said, had not had time to madden him. He was rich, he was
newly and, in supposition at least, very happily married. He had no debts, and he was due to become richer. The thinness of his blood and the timidity of his nature precluded the possibility of the sort of scandal that brings blackmail. Motive there was none; and had it not been for his own note of confession, foul play would have been suspected. As it was, the papers were bribed into maintaining comparative silence, while even his nearest friends remained, from that day forth, in complete mystification. Or so it was always said.
For two years no one heard much of Sandra. Then she bought herself a large house in a fashionable district of London and appeared with a baby boy of about one year old, whom she had adopted, she said, and given her maiden name. Six months later she announced her intention of adopting another child, did so, and purchased for their upbringing another large house in a most unhealthy fen district. But both boys had been begotten by young parents who had enjoyed the process. They were strong and beautiful, and flourished, despite the fen air and an almost weekly change of nurses, like the two young princes of a fairy tale.
But having once got them, Sandra, apart from unsuccessfully soliciting Royal godparents, then forgot them. Gradually the nurses changed less often, until, finally, save for the unexpected and catastrophic fenland weekends that Sandra periodically undertook (the boredom of which compelled her to sack somebody) they remained almost constant. She rushed hectically from Paris to New York and then back again to Cannes and even, on occasion, to London: and when she thought of her adopted sons at all, it was only to assure herself that the affection they owed her, in return for such self-sacrifice, was immense if not infinite. They, meanwhile, played happily enough at Badlock, occasionally went to London to be bought new clothes, and remained entirely indifferent to the beautiful and excitable woman to whom they wrote once in a week and saw twice in a twelvemonth. Then in 1939 came the war, the fenland house was shut up, and they were hastily dispatched to America where they remained for the next six years.
