James Hilton: Collected Novels

by James Hilton

  After that she continued to work on the geraniums for a long interval—so long that George began to wonder whether she had forgotten he was there.

  But presently, with the air of a duchess at a reception, she turned to him brimming over with graciousness. “It was so nice of you to come. And you’ll come again, won’t you?”

  “Do you—do you really want me to—Livia?”

  “Of course. Any time. That is, before we go to Ireland…”

  “You’re…going to take Charles …to Ireland?”

  “Yes, for the vacation. And if I can I shall persuade him not to go back next term—he only likes Cambridge because he’s got himself entangled with a girl there.”

  “What?”

  “Of course he doesn’t know I know, but it was plain as soon as I saw them together. Poor boy…rather pathetic to watch him pretending she was just a hospital nurse that came to give him massage treatment. Of course I don’t blame him. In his state he’d be an easy victim.”

  “You mean…you…you think she’s…that sort of a girl?”

  “I don’t care what sort she is, I’m going to put a stop to it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I have other plans for my own son. It’s about time we got to know each other—what with all the separations of school, and then the war…and the peace isn’t going to be much better, for most people. Or are you optimistic about it? You probably are—you always were about most things…I won’t shake hands—mine are too dirty. But do come again—before we go…Good-bye…”

  “Good-bye, Livia.”

  “And you will come again?”

  “Aye.” He walked to the door, then hesitated and said: “My advice would be to let that boy live his own life.”

  “And marry the first girl he meets? That would be optimism.”

  He wasn’t sure whether she meant that such a marriage would be optimism, or whether it would be optimistic of him to suppose that she would ever let Charles do such a thing; and whichever she meant, he wasn’t sure whether she were serious or merely ironic. Anyhow, he knew there was little use in continuing the argument, the more so as she had again resumed the potting of the plants. He said from the door, watching her: “I wish you were as good with grownups as you are with kids, Livia. You’re doing a fine job with these. Their parents’ll bless you for it.”

  “Their parents are dead, George. Dead—dead.” Her eyes looked up, but her hands worked on. “Fancy you not knowing that.”

  George also felt he ought to have known it—though after all, why? But Livia had always been like that, possessed of some curious power to impose guilt, or at least embarrassment; and so he stood there in the doorway, staring at her till he knew there was nothing else to say. Then he walked off.

  The woman who looked like a farmer’s wife accosted him as he was leaving the house. “They telephoned from the Hall, sir,” she said, with new respect in her voice. “His Lordship wished to apologize about the car—it had a puncture on the way to the station. But he’s sent another car to take you back, and he also asked if you’d call and see him on the way.”

  “Where would I find him?”

  “The chauffeur will take you, sir.”

  The Rolls-Royce swung into the last curve of the mile-long drive and pulled up outside the portico of Winslow Hall. It was an imposing structure, in Palladian style; and George’s reflection at any normal time would have been concerned with its possible use as state or municipal property; but this was not a normal time, and to be frank, he did not give Winslow Hall a thought as he entered it. He was thinking of Livia.

  Even the library, when he was shown in, did not stir in him more than a glance of casual admiration, though this was the kind of room he had all his life dreamed of—immense, monastic, and book-lined.

  “Nice of you to drop in, Boswell,” began Lord Winslow, getting up from an armchair.

  The two men shook hands. The present Lord Winslow was a revised edition of the former one, but with all qualities a shade nearer the ordinary—thus a little plumper, rather less erudite, more of a dilettante, worldlier, colder beneath the surface.

  George declined a drink, but began to take in his surroundings—the ornately carved mantelpiece, a smell of old leather bindings, the huge mullioned window through which a view of rolling parkland was superb.

  “First time you’ve been in this part of the country perhaps?” And Winslow began to chatter about local beauty spots, while the butler brought sherry. “Good of you to take such an interest in Charles. He sends me glowing accounts of you.”

  “It’s a pleasure to help the boy.”

  “That’s how we all feel…” And then a rather awkward pause. “Cigar?”

  “No thanks—I don’t smoke.”

  Lord Winslow got up and closed a door that had swung open after the butler had not properly closed it. Coming back across the room he said: “So you’ve seen Livia?”

  “Aye, I’ve just come from seeing her.”

  “She’s a little off her head, as I daresay you must have noticed.”

  George, despite his own liking for downright statements, was somewhat shocked by the coolness of the remark.

  Winslow went on: “I suppose it’s what she went through in Hong Kong.”

  “It might have been.”

  “Though to tell you the truth, she was rather—er—unpredictable, even before that. …Of course it’s a problem to know quite what to do. Especially in regard to Charles.”

  “Aye, that’s what matters.”

  “I’m glad you think so. She’s dead set on taking him to live with her in Ireland, but in my opinion that would be a mistake, even if it were feasible, which it probably isn’t. I doubt if the Government would issue permits.”

  “Permits?”

  “You see it’s Southern Ireland. Neutral country. They wouldn’t be quite sure what she was up to in a place like that…I heard this in confidence from a chap in the Passport Office. They have everybody tabbed, you know.”

  “But I don’t see—”

  “Oh, nothing significant—nothing at all, I’m quite certain. She probably mixed with some of the wrong people somewhere—she’s really rather eccentric in her choice of friends. Personally I don’t think it ever meant a thing, though it certainly can’t have helped Jeff…any more than it would help Charles.” Suddenly Winslow rang the bell, and when the butler appeared turned to George with the remark: “I hope you’ll stay to dinner.” George was surprised by this on top of other surprises, and had hardly begun to stammer his regrets when Winslow interpreted them to the butler as an acceptance.

  “It’s kind of you,” George said when the man had gone, “but I was thinking of my train. It leaves at six-fifteen.”

  “Oh, there’s another one after that.”

  “Are you sure? Because I looked it up and—”

  “Positive…I’m so glad you’ll stay. I’d like to talk things over with you…I’m sure we both have the boy’s best interests at heart.”

  So George found himself dining at Winslow Hall—just himself and Lord Winslow in the enormous paneled room that could have seated fifty with ease. The sunset slanted through the windows as they began the meal, but later, when the butler approached to draw the blackout curtains, Winslow left his seat and beckoned George to share with him a last look at the view. “You see how it is,” he said quietly. “I have no children. All that—and this—may belong to Charles eventually.” They went back to their places at the table. Winslow went on: “Oh yes, I know what you’re going to say—one can’t keep up these great estates any more—all this sort of thing’s done for, outmoded, a feudal anachronism, and so on. That’s the fashionable attitude, I’m aware. But fashionable things are usually wrong—or half wrong. All kinds of Englishmen are busy nowadays explaining to other countries how England has changed, is changing, and will change after the war. No doubt it goes down very well—especially with Americans. But between you and me England may not change as much as some
people expect. And the kind of people who talk most about change don’t seem to have changed much themselves—at least not to my somewhat jaundiced scrutiny.”

  “Aye,” answered George. “You might be right about that. And there’s certainly one thing about England that won’t change—and hasn’t changed.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Ninety-five per cent of us are working folks and have been for a thousand years.”

  A slight flush came into Winslow’s face. He poured himself an extra brandy. “True, of course—as well as a useful demagogue statistic…It only remains now for you to assure me that it’s the rich what gets the pleasure, it’s the poor what gets the—”

  “Nay, I don’t say that. There hasn’t been much pleasure for your brother or your nephew these past few years—rich or not. And there isn’t going to be much for them—or for any of us, maybe—in the years ahead…That’s why I’d like you to think twice about what you want Charles to do when he grows up.” And George, now in a proper stride, became talkative for the first time since his arrival. “I’m very fond of the boy. He’s taught me a bit since I knew him and maybe I’ve taught him a bit too. Don’t saddle him with all this stuff.

  When I was a lad the rich had all of what were called advantages, but there’s been a difference lately. It isn’t that there’s going to be a bloody revolution to take all this away, but are these things going to go on being such advantages? That’s what folks are beginning to wonder, and once they start wondering, the bottom’s out of the market. Take the Right School and the Right Accent, for instance. You’ve got the right ones, I’ve got the wrong ones, but suppose someday we all wake up and find the whole thing doesn’t matter?”

  “Of course. I’d be all for it. But what if some of your extremist fellows merely reverse the positions and call your accent right and mine wrong—what then?”

  George gave a faint grin. “Aye, that would be a pity. But I daresay some of the chaps on your side are pretty good mimics. Our side always produced a few.”

  Winslow’s flush deepened. “Maybe it will come to that. Lip-service to Demos could hardly be more literal.”

  George had to think that one out. Then he answered: “I don’t know what you mean by Demos. I don’t care for words like that. I don’t like to hear people called ‘the masses’ or ‘the proletariat’ or even ‘the average man.’ Take my own town of Browdley. There’s not an average man in the place—they’re all individuals—different, separate, with their own personal problems same as we all have. And we don’t know any Demos either. We’ve never seen the animal.”

  Winslow smiled coolly. “I think we’re straying rather far from the point—if there ever was a point…You obviously think there’s no future in inheriting a title, a place like this, a seat in the House of Lords—and all the responsibilities as well as privileges it entails?”

  George answered: “I never like to say what there’s a future in. Sounds too much like a tip on the stock market…It’s what’s in the future that matters more. I can’t forecast that, nor can anybody. But I’ve often thought it’s as if we’re all in a train going somewhere. Some people don’t like traveling, and just grumble about having to. And others think that trains go backwards or that you can push a train by leaning on a door handle. And quite a lot of folks seem to think that miracles can happen to a train. But it really doesn’t matter what you think unless it’s based on what you can see out of the window. The train’s going to get you somewhere, wherever that is—and the one place it certainly won’t be is the place you started from.”

  “Sounds very wise, Boswell. But whenever I hear a man enunciating a philosophy, I always ask him how has he handled his own life by its aid? Has he been a success or a failure? Has he been right when other men have been wrong? Has he made many mistakes?…Or is all that too personal?”

  “Aye, it’s personal, but I don’t mind answering it. I’ve made plenty of mistakes, and I’ve often been wrong. And I’ve been a failure if you measure by what I once had ambitions about.”

  Winslow helped himself to more brandy. “Very honest of you to admit it…and if I might be personal again and suggest a reason—not perhaps the only reason, but a reason…might it not be the same one as in the case of my unfortunate brother?”

  George was silent and Winslow went on, after waiting for some answer: “To put it bluntly…Livia.”

  George pushed his chair back from the table. “I think we’ve discussed her enough,” he said gruffly. “Perhaps I ought to be thinking of my train.”

  “Yes, of course.” Winslow rang the bell again and told the butler: “Mr. Boswell will be catching the nine-forty. Will you telephone the station master?”

  “Very good, Your Lordship.”

  “Why do you have to worry the stationmaster about me?” George asked. “I can find a seat, or if I can’t, it doesn’t matter.”

  Winslow smiled. “My dear chap, if I didn’t telephone, you wouldn’t even find a train. The nine-forty’s fast from Bristol to London unless I have it stopped for you.”

  “You mean you can stop an express at that little local station just to pick up one passenger? And in wartime?”

  “Certainly—but it isn’t done by favor. It’s a legal right dating back to the time the railway was built a hundred years ago. My great-great-grandfather wouldn’t sell land to the company except on that condition—in perpetuity. Damned thoughtful of him, I must say.”

  Soon afterwards Lord Winslow shook hands most cordially with George, and the latter was driven to Castle Winslow station in the Rolls-Royce. The station was normally closed at that time of night, but the stationmaster had opened it for the occasion and personally escorted him along the deserted platform.

  “First-class, sir?”

  “No, third,” George answered grimly.

  After that they conversed till the train came in. The station-master agreed that England was changing, but he also thought he never remembered farmers so prosperous or farmland selling at so high a price.

  “How about taxes?” George asked. “I suppose the big estates are pretty hard hit?”

  “Oh, they’re all right if they did what Lord Winslow did. He made himself into a company years ago. He’s a smart chap.”

  “Aye…Knows how to keep up with the old and play around with the new, is that it?”

  But the stationmaster was cautious. “He’s smart,” he repeated. “Travels third like yourself, as often as not…Because the firsts are just as crowded and he don’t see why he should pay extra for nothing. You can’t blame him, can you?”

  George agreed that you could not.

  But on the way to London the stopping of the express became a symbol—and a very handy one—of the kind of thing he found himself rather passionately against. And it was equally handy as a symbol of the kind of thing he felt Charles would be unlucky to inherit.

  The university term was nearly over, and soon Charles would have to decide where to go for the vacation. His mother, he told George, wanted him to spend it with her in Ireland (she had been pulling wires, as only she knew how, to get the necessary permits); but Uncle Howard had asked him to Winslow Hall; and Julie, of course, though she would never suggest it, naturally hoped he would stay in Cambridge, like many other undergraduates in wartime. As for Charles himself, he didn’t exactly know what he wanted to do. He was so damned sorry for his mother and anxious to give her a good time—especially after the nice letter she had written him about George’s visit. So had Uncle Howard. In fact Charles showed George the two letters, and George, reading between the lines, deduced in both writers a desire to enlist him as an ally against the other. He did not, however, worry the boy with this interpretation, but kept it filed, as it were, in that department of his mind where the shrewder things took place.

  Of course what Charles would really like best, he admitted, was to stay where he could see Julie, at least for part of the vacation. The only objection was that this, he felt sure, would either bring
his mother to Cambridge forthwith (in which case he couldn’t see Julie at all), or else she would guess there was some girl in the case, and make a scene about it.

  “What makes you think she’d do that?” George asked.

  “Oh, just a few odd hints in letters and so on. And once in an air-raid shelter just after she landed. Some girl was a bit scared, and as I was too, we talked together till the raid was over. Mother of course couldn’t understand it.”

  “That you talked—or that you were scared?”

  “Both…Anyhow I can’t stand scenes, and I know if she were to learn about Julie she’d make another one.”

  “But you can’t keep it a secret indefinitely.”

  “I’ll let her know when I know for certain I’m going to get all right. Because, as I told you, I wouldn’t marry at all other-wise.”

  “You’ll get all right.”

  “That’s what everybody says, but of course saying so is part of the treatment. You can’t really believe them—least of all doctors—in a matter like that.”

  “Well, what do you think? Don’t you believe you’re going to get all right?”

  “Sometimes I do, sometimes not. So many things change my mind about it. Trivial—ridiculous things…Sometimes I stop in front of a lamppost as if the future of the world depended on which side I walk round. Of course you may say it does depend on that. I mean, if you believe in predestination, every little thing must be charted out in advance, so that if it were possible for even a caterpillar to walk just once on the wrong side of a lamppost, then the whole cosmic blueprint goes to pot. On the other hand, you can say that my hesitation in front of the lamppost was itself predestined, so that—”

  “That’s enough,” George interrupted. “You’re much too clever for me. And if that’s what you get from studying philosophy at a university—”

  “No, George. That’s what I got from piloting a bomber over Germany. You have to think of something then. Something fearful and logical, like predestination, or else mystic and mathematical, like the square root of minus one.” The boy’s eyes were streaked now with flashes of wildness. “Anyway, how did we get on to all this?”