Ianthe had scarcely got out of bed before she realised that nothing of all this would be swimming around in her conscious mind if her unconscious mind hadn’t been behaving in a dangerous way. Novels were full – or used to be full – of maidenly females suddenly confronted by the fact that they had for long been madly in love with a gentleman without a glimmer of this exciting state of affairs having crossed their waking mind. It was useful story-telling stuff – but could it actually be in some correspondence with things as they are? The discovery was commonly represented as pleasurable, but if she was herself now up against anything of the kind there was certainly no pleasure involved with it. Was she perhaps in love with Andrew Auld? The mere question was inexplicably frightening. Surely one didn’t nowadays behave like a girl brought up in some unspeakably morbid Victorian home in which the mere thought of a sexual relationship was held sinful and a just cause of dread? Ianthe had quite often imagined herself in the most scandalous situations with young men – even with butcher’s boys, if it came to that. So something uncommonly unwholesome was assailing her now. What was to be done about it? Ianthe answered this question in what might be described, if grandiloquently, as the spirit of her generation. She was in a muddle about Andy. She’d get hold of Andy and have it out with him.
‘Maidenly’ was of course a term of fun with Ianthe Felton. Yet maidenly she was, and so perhaps better able to initiate her project than to press it very faithfully home.
‘I’m going to walk over to Mr Tarling’s with you,’ she said to Andy at breakfast. ‘If that’s all right by you, I mean.’
There was perhaps something slightly menacing in this form of words. But Andy, who was at a sideboard helping himself to bacon and kidneys with the air of one long habituated to the usages of country-house life, seemed unperturbed.
‘Of course it is,’ he said, turning round at leisure. ‘It’s on the misty side still. But there’s no harm in that.’ Andy, although still careful not to make what might be described as English noises, was now liable – perhaps through absence of mind – to saying things rather as those around him might have said them. ‘I canna’ think why you havna’ got a dug,’ he added, recollecting himself. ‘A young gentlewoman roaming the countryside should aye be walking a dug. But I dinna’ mind standing in for yin. Woof, woof, Ianthe!’
‘Oh, shut up, Andy, and get yourself coffee.’ Ianthe realised that every now and then something quite ordinary in Andy – a piece of mere nonsense, say, like this – afforded her a sudden sharp delight. Perhaps it was because he was never more like Toby than in these moments of fun, and that he had just Toby’s unassuming standards in the field of wit. But Andy wasn’t her brother as Toby virtually was. With Andy the relationship was, after all, only a pleasant fiction – a pleasant fiction that had recently bobbed up, it might be said, over a prunus hedge. Ianthe wasn’t very sure that her feelings really went with this. Her feelings, indeed, were much too troubled and confused to afford much certainty about anything. But she could at least see one objective fact about Andy, and it could be roughly expressed by simply saying that he wasn’t Toby. He was by many years and many miles not Toby. With Andy she had no past associations worth speaking of. Only a few weeks ago she had been unaware of his existence. But perhaps all this meant that when she found Andy fun she was glimpsing an unknown road conceivably ahead of her: a road not conceivable in Toby’s case. These, she knew, were quite sensible thoughts. It was annoying, it was absurd, that they should suggest themselves as owning a hinterland of fear.
Her father had already breakfasted, and was out on his customary morning tramp. Mrs Warlow made herself coffee and toast in her own quarters. It was one of her small rituals designed to suggest that she was very much an independent person, helping out in her brother’s household for a while. So Ianthe and Andy were alone in a domestic fashion. An elderly parlour-maid (all the surviving indoor servants at Felton House were elderly) came and went. She treated Andy – that inexplicable innovation on the Felton scene – precisely as she treated Toby: with the affection and respectful authority of one who has attended upon a child at table from his earliest promoted years. Andy had come to like this attitude. When it manifested itself in some small concrete fashion (the removal, perhaps, of the spoon that he had scandalously left in his coffee-cup) he would offer Ianthe a quick conspiratorial glance not at all of the kind she could still rather crossly remember his directing on Elma. One of the nice things about Andy was that he had a sense of the comedy of his situation. It went, somehow, along with his self-respect and his self-confidence. Of the latter quality at least, Ianthe saw, he commanded a good deal more than Toby now did.
They finished breakfast and at once set out through the mist – which was quite thick enough to be called a fog. Sometimes they could hardly see the beech leaves their feet scuffed up as they walked. Their pace had to be brisk, since Andy was far from feeling that his position of privilege in the big house discharged him from the duty of strict punctuality at work. Ianthe didn’t feel out of breath, but the sense of business affairs directly ahead of Andy had the effect of making it seem difficult to communicate with him as she wished. She had certainly proposed this walk as if it were for something definite of the kind. But now she didn’t know how to begin. She had imagined herself saying something like, ‘Why do you turn awkward and cagey with me at times, Andy, seeing that we’ve become such good friends?’ But now it was clear to her that this would be impossible. A girl who talked in that way was pretty well advancing a proposal of marriage! As frequently happened, Ianthe was appalled by the vastness of her own inexperience.
‘Would it be about the house and the estate and all that that you’d be thinking of, Ianthe lass?’ Fortunately as it seemed, Andy had formed his own notion of what this walk was in aid of.
‘I do think of that.’
‘If it’s not to be your ain it should all be Toby’s. Nothing’s clearer than that.’
‘I don’t know what are the rights of an adopted child at law, Andy. But it’s not really in question.’ Ianthe was relieved that it was this subject that had turned up. ‘They certainly don’t extend to an estate and a house that aren’t entailed in any way.’
‘I think you’re right about that. But he promised me. I’ve been meaning to tell you lang syne. And Toby too.’
‘Tell me what? Who promised?’ Ianthe was so startled that she came to a halt. But Andy disapproved of this, and she had to pick up her pace again. ‘Do you mean my father?’
‘Aye. It was when he first talked about my going with Mr Tarling. I kent nothing about this Mr Tarling, and I said I wanted to know it would be for your father I’d be working still. And he said yes. And then I said so that one day it would be Toby’s man I’d be. And he said yes it would be that. It was a load frae my mind, Ianthe.’
‘Oh, Andy!’ Fleetingly, Ianthe felt that she loved Andy precisely as she loved Toby. ‘And you think it was a firm promise?’
‘It was the thocht I had then. But I’m not so sure, Ianthe. I didn’t ken your father that well then that I do now. He’s a good man and kind – but not one of those whose own mind is long clear to them. So I’m wondering.’
‘Wondering just what, Andy?’
‘It’s me that’s not a’ that clear there.’ Andy said this humorously – which was somehow not to Ianthe’s satisfaction. She felt that he was holding something back from her.
‘Have you thought of something I haven’t?’ she asked. ‘If so, please tell me.’
‘All in good time, lass.’
‘What do you mean – in good time?’
‘Mebby there will be what needs a wee bit o’ taking in haund later on. But I’d be a richt gomeril if I didna hae what’s needed. So dinna’ fash yoursel’.’
‘Don’t treat me like a child, Andrew Auld.’ The dismissive character of Andy’s last speech had annoyed Ianthe, and its return to the Doric seemed to convey a shift of attitude in him which she disliked very much. It was as if he had slippe
d back into some earlier milieu of his own, in which men were superior beings and their own judges of what it was fit their womenfolk should hear. In fact, here was a very sharp instance of the trickiness of the whole Andy situation. And what on earth could he have in his mind – could he have in his mind about her family situation – that he thought it proper to reserve as for the counsels of princes? Ianthe, thus compounding the class thing with the related theme of the subjugation of women, was about to add something very tart indeed when she glanced at Andy and saw that he was looking at her with intense anxiety. The dominant male – if indeed he had really been briefly there – had vanished. The result was that Ianthe now spoke not at all as she had intended to. ‘Andy,’ she said, ‘you know how both Toby and I feel about you. We mustn’t get across each other about anything at all. Isn’t that right?’
‘Aye, it is.’ Andy seemed surprised and perhaps a little alarmed. ‘And you mean you’re putting up with me, the twa of you? I can go round saying you like me fine?’
‘Yes, yes! You know that perfectly well.’ This time Ianthe wanted to stop for the purpose of stamping her foot in a childish way on the sodden leaves. Challenged on this behaviour, she would have had to say that she was still cross but now didn’t know why. She had been quite mysteriously vehement, and she was no doubt looking at Toby’s brother in a fashion more bright-eyed than she knew. A detached observer might have concluded that the young man ought to be gratified, but, in fact, the young man was looking a little more alarmed even than before.
‘I’ve been havering,’ he said quickly. ‘And I’d never keep from you – or from Toby either – anything that’s certain-sure with me. But a man monna always speak out what’s no more than notions flitting through his head.’
And with this Ianthe had to be content. They had reached the estate office, and Andy disappeared into it without ceremony for what he no doubt very properly considered to be the serious labour of the day. She herself walked slowly home. The fog, although still dense, was now being shoved about by a rising breeze, so that confusing little vapour trails seemed to be eddying around her. It occurred to her that they matched her inner mind. She repeated to herself the thought that had come to her on waking up. Andy didn’t want to fall in love with her. She tried a kind of inside-out operation on this. Andy didn’t want her to fall in love with him. For no reason at all that wasn’t intuitive she felt this version to be nearer the mark – if indeed there was a mark at all and she wasn’t making things up like a green girl. But she didn’t like it a bit. It suggested an Andrew Auld a good deal pestered by silly girls, whether green or not, and who had grown bored with all that and quick to squash it. The whole thing was extremely tiresome, and it was undeniable that she had fallen into the bad habit of thinking about Andy a great deal. She had better get back to thinking about the Minoans. They had the advantage, so far as she could see, of being unattractive every way on.
XIII
It was true that during these weeks Toby was taking an increasingly poor view of Lombard Street. He blamed this on Elma. He blamed it, just as crudely as he could, on his not having Elma to hop into bed with when he felt disposed. At the same time he knew himself to be enormously relieved that he wasn’t going to find himself married to Elma. That idea had been an awful muddle. And it belonged inside a whole area of muddle. He had dreams in which he found himself mysteriously in the wrong street (although it didn’t seem to be Lombard Street), and got himself in such a panic over his inability to find the right one that he woke up in the middle of a singularly useless sexual exercise. He was ashamed of this regressive condition, and he was also ashamed of his new feelings about his job. He disliked the people he worked beside – particularly the middling-senior ones, with their satisfied air of knowing how to ‘handle’ clients in brisk, confident, spuriously cordial telephone conversations. It was quite shocking (he told himself in a weirdly archaic way) that chaps with the air of gentlemen should have taken to scooping a living out of this money-grubbing jungle. He wished he’d gone into the army, even if it meant rubbing shoulders with brainless ticks like Elma’s brother. It was something that lots of Feltons had done for generations; that his own true ancestors – quite conceivably and whoever they were – had done too. There wouldn’t have been much of a living in it, but he knew very well that Howard – although he was revealing himself as of so inconstant a mind – wouldn’t dream of leaving him without a good many useful pennies in his pocket. For that matter, Howard had tipped a hefty dollop of them into Lombard Street. And it was this that now made his own regrets too late and in vain. He hadn’t a clue as to whether all or any of that money would be recoverable if he feebly chickened out of the dreary hole. In fact, he was bloody well trapped.
Things sometimes weren’t much better when he went home. What he was liable to collide with now was not Andy on top of a ladder but Andy in a Land Rover going about some sensible task. He believed himself to have come to hate the Aston Martin; to feel himself a proper Charley in it. Quite often in the City nowadays he found himself having a drink with a contemporary to whom an aunt had given something like a Rolls as a twenty-firster. All that sort of affluence was quite disgusting, Toby thought.
He took to envying Andy, to asking himself why the hell he hadn’t himself got into that Land Rover first. But equally he took to largely admiring Andy. There was something almost comical about it. Whether he was older or younger than Andy nobody would ever know. Twins were not, as he’d once dimly imagined, born simultaneously; at school he’d known a boy who was going to be an earl because he’d come into the world a few minutes before somebody else out of the same womb. But what he found himself occasionally feeling now was that he was Andy’s younger brother in a quite definite way. He didn’t resent this. In fact, it was perfectly clear to him that he was more bound to Andy than he’d ever been or would ever be to any other male person.
But this in turn didn’t prevent his being jealous of Andy as well. This was a very obscure feeling, but he did know that Ianthe was near the centre of it – and even that it would abate when Ianthe was back at Cambridge with her Mycenaeans or whoever they were. Toby, who was not devoid of a seriously inquiring mind, tried to think this out. He supposed that such jealousies generate themselves among siblings too frequently to be regarded as morbid or censurable. And Ianthe was unique. She was, that was to say, the one woman in the world who could occasion that sort of jealousy and no other between Andy and himself, since she was Andy’s sister precisely in the sense and degree that he was. Of course, he had himself been longer in the role. But this didn’t alter the basic fact.
Toby’s thought tended to break off here in what was not perhaps a particularly impressive fashion intellectually regarded. Nor did it clarify itself further when he was actually at home. Although there was now this indefinable awkwardness at Felton, its weekends held various agreeable distractions as well. Andy, far from hogging Ianthe, appeared a good deal disposed to masculine society and masculine rural pursuits. Surprisingly, it turned out that he could sit a horse, and he and Toby went riding on the downs. Then it proved that he could sit a horse rather better than Toby, and when cubbing started they pursued this mystery together on three successive Saturdays. To have a brother to go fox-hunting with seemed to Toby a very great happiness indeed, and at dinner he was inclined to make boring conversation about drawing this covert and that. Howard had never hunted, neither had Ianthe, and Mrs Warlow held absurd views about kindness to animals. Andy, who was coming to find amusement in polite behaviour, had to take on the job of introducing topics of more interest to the ladies. Howard Felton was rather silent during these weeks, whether at table or elsewhere; he went for his long tramps as usual, but seldom had anything much to report on returning from them. He had never said another word to anybody about the Mill House. But Andy reported Mr Tarling as having received instructions to effect various repairs there. It seemed that something called ‘Africanisation’ was bringing a brother of Colonel Motley’s home
from an outpost of empire, and that there was a possibility he might like to rent the place.
Toby knew that Colonel Motley did have a brother in the Colonial Service, which during these years was certainly in process of packing up. But he found himself quite unable to believe that the chap was booking into Felton as suggested. His own scepticism here hurt Toby very much, and he became convinced that his first bizarre suspicion had been well in the target area. Things really had come unstuck at Felton as a result of Andy’s arrival. Despite the fact that Howard liked Andy – and there could be no doubt about that – he had been bumped into feeling that Felton ought not to be a Foundling Hospital. It was Feltons who ought to be at Felton; and that, in present circumstances, meant just his sister Grace and nobody else. Andy would be treated handsomely. Toby himself would be treated handsomely. But that was it.
This thought took Toby Felton so far down a devastating path that it was perhaps uncommonly odd it didn’t take him further. He was in a state of considerable gloom about it all when his uncle’s invitation arrived. It was an annual invitation, although it varied a little in date and character from year to year. The first occasion had been the worst. It had come during Toby’s earliest days in the sixth form of his public school, and before he had ever been inside an Oxford or Cambridge college even for an entrance examination. But the Warden’s summons had to be obeyed. Toby had been obliged to get into his dinner-jacket, take a bus to Oxford, and dine at a high table among about twenty dons, nearly all of whom felt they must have a word with Hugh’s nephew in the course of the evening. It had been the occasion upon which Toby had taken his dislike to port.
Andrew and Tobias Page 18
