What’s Bred in the Bone tct-2

by Robertson Davies

  These family deliberations took place in the evenings, after Aunt Prudence and in a lesser degree Uncle Roderick had spent a toilsome day planning the wedding. So much to do! And all to be done on a shoestring—for the Glassons insisted that it would be indefensible, and even perhaps unchancy, to let Francis pay for any part of that. They greatly enjoyed the excitement, protesting that they did not know how they could get through another day like the one just completed.

  Two nights before the wedding day Francis and Ismay escaped from the general hubbub, and were walking in a lane at dusk. Overhead the sky was deepening from a colour which reminded Francis of the cloak that Time and Truth deploy so effectively in the Bronzino Allegory.

  “You feel trapped, don’t you?” said Ismay.

  “Do you?”

  “Yes, but my trap is a physical one. The kid. That has to be dealt with before I can do anything else. But you’re not trapped in that way.”

  “No, but I have an obligation. Surely you see that? Apart from loving you, and wanting to marry you, of course.”

  “Oh Frank, don’t be so stuffy! I hate to think what your upbringing must have been. You’ve still got a chance.”

  “How?”

  “Scarper, of course.”

  “Desert you? Now?”

  “It’s been done.”

  “Not by me. I’d feel the most terrible shit.”

  “I wouldn’t think so.”

  “Maybe not. But I’d think so.”

  “All right, my dear-O-dear. It’s your neck.”

  “I’m really surprised you think I might.”

  “Don’t ever say I didn’t give you a chance.”

  “You’re a tough little nut, Ismay.”

  “Not the Celtic princess of your dreams? Maybe I’m more like a Celtic princess of reality than you suppose. From all I’ve heard they could be very tough nuts, too.”

  When the wedding day came neighbours arrived from far and wide: county families, the professional bourgeoisie, tenants of St. Columb’s (who had been badgered by the agent into presenting the couple with a mantel clock, engraved in suitably modified feudal terms), such old women as attended all weddings and funerals without distinction of class, and the Bishop of Truro, who did not read the Marriage Service, but gave the blessing afterward. Ismay, tidy for once, and robed in virgin white, looked so lovely that Francis’s heart ached toward her. The Service was read by the local parson, who was from the very lowest shelf of the Low Church cupboard. He stressed the admonition that marriage was not to be taken in hand wantonly, to satisfy men’s carnal lusts and appetites, like brute beasts that have no understanding, but for the propagation of children. All of this he spat out with such distaste that he alarmed Ismay’s two sisters, Isabel and Amabel, present in white dresses to signify virginity in its rawest and meatiest guise, and caused the Glassons and Francis to wonder if the good man smelt a rat. But it was soon over; “The Voice That Breathed o’er Eden” was sung, the Bishop said his say, and Francis and Ismay had been licensed to go to bed in future without shame.

  The wedding had not bothered Francis unduly, but the wedding breakfast was a different matter. At this affair, which was held on the lawn at St. Columb’s because it was a fineish day, Roderick Glasson the Younger took charge, and conducted the affair in the manner of a Best Man who was aimed at Whitehall, and wanted everything to be done with precision, and with only such enthusiasm as was compatible with his ideal of elegance—which kept enthusiasm well in check.

  Roderick gave a good impression of what he would be like at forty-five. He read, like one communicating a knotty minute to a Civil Service superior, some telegrams of congratulation, most of which were from Canada and one or two from Oxford friends which had to be read with restraint. The Bride was toasted by Uncle Arthur Cornish, who described her in terms that made Ismay giggle unsuitably and chilled Francis, who detected in it allusions to his money, and satisfaction that it was not going out of the family. Francis replied, briefly, and made insincere protestations of humility and gratitude toward the Bride’s parents, who liked that part of his speech very much, but thought it could have been even more forcibly put. As he spoke, Francis had to overcome whispering among the guests who had not met him, and hissed, “An American? Nobody told me he was an American.” “Not American—Canadian.” “Well, what’s the difference?” “They’re touchier, that’s what.” “They say he’s very wealthy.” “Oh, so that’s it,” Then the Best Man toasted the bridesmaids, and was arch about the fact that, as they were his little sisters, he could not say too much in their favour, but he had hopes that they would improve. The bridesmaids took this with scarlet faces and occasional murmurs of Oh, I say, Roddy, pack it in, can’t you? Roderick told about the time he and his sisters had put a dead adder in the groom’s bed, and an indecency had to be frowned down when Old George Trethewey, a cousin but not a favourite, shouted drunkenly that they’d put something a damned sight better in his bed now. And finally the tenant who farmed the biggest of St. Columb’s farms toasted The Happy Couple, and was somewhat indiscreet in hinting that the coming of new blood (he did not say new money) into the family promised well for the future of agriculture at St. Columb’s. But at last it was over, the wedding cake had been deflowered and distributed, every hand had been shaken; the Bride had flung her bouquet from the front door with such force that it took her sister Amabel full in the face, and the couple sped away in a hired car toward Truro, where they were to catch a train.

  In Lausanne there was no difficulty about having Ismay entered as a student, with credit for the year she had already completed at Oxford. In Montreux it was not hard to find a pension with a living room and a bedroom, the latter containing a couch on which she or Aunt Prudence could sleep when they occupied the place together. But it all meant laying out money in sums small and large, and Francis, who had never had experience of this sort of slow bleeding, undertaken in a cause which was not nearest his heart, suffered an early bout of the outraged parsimony which was to visit him so often in later life. Stinginess does nothing to improve the looks, and Ismay commented that he was becoming hatchet-faced.

  His life with Ismay was agreeable, but it had none of the old lustre. She was more beautiful than ever, and the carelessness with which she had always dressed now seemed a fine disdain for trivialities. Only a very sharp eye would have discerned that she was pregnant, but when she was naked she had a new opulence, and Francis drew her as often as was possible. A really beautiful woman should have a figure like a ‘cello, he said, running his hand appreciatively over her swelling belly. But though he loved her, he had ceased to worship her, and sometimes they snapped at one another, because Ismay’s broad speech, which he had once thought so delightful, grated on his nerves now.

  “Well, if you didn’t like the way I talk, you shouldn’t have knocked me up.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t use vulgar expressions like that, as if we were that sort of person. If you want to talk dirty, talk dirty, but for God’s sake don’t talk common.”

  Irritatingly, Ismay would respond to this sort of thing by singing Ophelia’s song, quietly and reflectively, in a Cockney accent:

  B’Jeez and by Saint Charity,

  Alack and fie for shame!

  Young men will do’t, if they come to’t;

  By cock, they are to blame.

  Quoth she, before you tumbled me,

  You promised me to wed,

  So would I ha’ done, by yonder sun,

  An thou hadst not come to my bed.

  “That should be all right,” she murmured, apparently to the walls. “Shakespeare. Good old Shakers, the darling of the OUDS. Nothing common about him. You can’t get classier than Shakers.”

  Francis could not linger in Montreux. He had to return to Oxford, and he did so with no time to spare before the beginning of the Michaelmas Term. He had made a mess of things with Ismay, he told himself. Not that he was sorry to have married her, but that should have come later. Now he had
to leave her when surely she needed him with her—though she had been calm enough when he went. After all, Aunt Prudence was going to her in a few weeks. He knew nothing about the matter, but he had a vague impression that a pregnant woman needed her husband close by, to run out and get her pickles and ice cream if she should have a sick fancy for them in the middle of the night, and to gloat romantically over the new life that was gathering within her. The doctor in Montreux had taken it philosophically when he explained that he must return to England, and assured him that everything would be quite all right. Well—it had to be all right. He was determined to get his degree, and get the best class he could manage. This sudden bump in the road should not rob him of that. So he settled to work, and worked very hard, almost entirely giving up drawing and painting, and refusing a tempting offer to assist a distinguished designer in preparing a garden performance of The Tempest for the OUDS.

  He was able to spend Christmas with Ismay, and found her, now obviously pregnant, and even more obviously a European student, accustomed to speak French more often than English, and deep in Spanish studies. She had enjoyed herself, once she had persuaded her mother to return to England and stop fussing over her. This sort of student life suited her as the formality of Oxford had never done. They spent, on the whole, a very amicable Christmas holiday, much of it in Ismay’s living-room, smoking countless stinking French cigarettes and pursuing their university work. They conversed entirely in French and Ismay liked his lingering French-Canadian accent. It was “of the people” she said and she approved of anything that was of the people.

  He was with her in February, when the child was born. Pensions are not accommodated to childbirth, and Ismay was in a small private hospital, which cost a lot of money. Aunt Prudence was there, too, and she and Francis had an uneasy time of it in the pension rooms. Francis hauled the couch out of the bedroom into the sitting-room for himself, and Aunt Prudence, though well aware that the bed was due to her sex and seniority, nevertheless accused herself daily of being a nuisance.

  The child was born without incident, but surrounded by the usual grandmotherly and fatherly anxiety. Indeed, Francis was nervously wretched until he had seen the little girl and been assured by the doctor that she was perfect in every way. Had he expected anything else? Francis did not say what he had feared.

  “She’s the absolute image of her father,” said Aunt Prudence, smiling at Francis.

  “Yes, she’s the image of her father,” Ismay agreed, smiling at no one.

  To Francis the child looked like every baby he had ever seen, but he did not say so.

  The question of a name for the child arose almost at once. Francis had no ideas, but Ismay was perhaps more maternal than she liked to admit. The child was sucking at her breast when she made a suggestion.

  “Let’s call her Charlotte.”

  “All right. But why?”

  “After her father.”

  Francis looked blank.

  “Frank, I’ve been trying to get around to this for quite a while, but the time never seemed just right. But this is it. You know, of course, that this is Charlie’s child?”

  Francis still looked blank.

  “Well, it is. I know for a certainty. We were very close before he scarpered.”

  “And you sucked me in to give cover for Charlie’s child?”

  “I suppose I did. But don’t think I liked doing it. You’re a dear, and you’ve behaved beautifully. But there’s a basic difference between you and Charlie: he’s the kind that makes things happen, and you’re the kind things happen to, and for me there’s no question of choice. Don’t forget that before the wedding I gave you a chance to get away, and you decided not to take it. This is Charlie’s child.”

  “Does Charlie know?”

  “I don’t suppose he knows or cares. I’ve had some indirect news of him, and you know how things are hotting up in Spain, so I suppose that if he did know he couldn’t do anything about it. He’s got bigger fish to fry.”

  “Ismay, this puts the lid on it.”

  “I didn’t expect you to be pleased, and I honestly meant to say something earlier, but you see how it is. I wanted to be square with you, and now I have.”

  “Oh, so that’s what you’ve been, is it? Square? Ismay, I’d hate to be near when you were being crooked.”

  Back to Oxford, miserable and beaten so far as his marriage was concerned, but with a compensating fierce ambition to distinguish himself in his Final Schools, which he faced in June. It is impossible to prepare for Final Schools by extreme exertions during the last ten weeks; preparation should have been well begun two years before. That was when Francis had started to work, and thus his last ten weeks was free for finishing touches, rather than the acquirement of basic knowledge. His tutor was pleased with him—or as pleased as a tutor ever admits to being—and polished him up to a fine gloss. The consequence was that when he had written his papers and waited out the obligatory period during which they were read and marked, he had the satisfaction of seeing his name posted in the First Class. He telegraphed to Canada, and the next day received an answer: “Congratulations. Love to Ismay and Charlotte.” Did his parents, then, see them as a happy trio, a Holy Family, with Baby Bunting prettily innocent of Daddy’s distinction?

  Ismay and the child were at St. Columb’s; Aunt Prudence had insisted that a summer in the country, with country food and air, was just what Ismay and Baby needed. It was to St. Columb’s, therefore, that Francis sent his second telegram about his academic success. He was surprised to receive a telephone call on the following day. The telephone was not a favourite agent of the Glassons, nor was Oxford, with its great population of students and its paucity of telephones, an easy place with which to communicate. But Uncle Roderick called, and Francis was found by the Porter of Corpus, and there, in the Porter’s lodge, while one undergraduate bought a stamp and another inquired about the whereabouts of his bicycle, he heard his uncle, distant and mouse-like of voice, saying that Ismay was not at St. Columb’s but had said she was going up to Oxford for a couple of days to see Francis. That had been a week ago. Was she not with him?

  It was on the following day that he received a letter from Lausanne:

  Dear Frank:

  It’s no good pretending something will work when it obviously won’t. By the time this reaches you I shall be in Spain. I know where Charlie is, and I’m joining him. Don’t try to find me, because you won’t. But don’t worry. I shall be all right, or if I’m not I shall be all wrong in a cause I think is more important than any personal considerations. You are the best of chaps, I know, and won’t let Little Charlie down, and of course when I get back (and if I do) I’ll take on again. Sorry about the money. But really you love that stuff too much for your own good. Love,

  Ismay

  The money, he discovered, was what he had deposited in an account for her use. She had cleared it out. Scarpered!

  “I want to beat up a woman with my fists. Are you interested, and if so what would your price be?”

  Francis had put his question to at least eight prostitutes on Piccadilly, and had had eight refusals, ranging from amusement to affront. Obviously he was in the wrong district. These girls, most of them fragile and pretty, were high-priced tarts, not hungry enough to consider his proposal. He found his way into Soho, and on the fourth try had better luck.

  She was fortyish, with badly dyed hair and a gown trimmed with imitation fur. On the stout side, and underneath a heavy paint job her face was stupid but kindly.

  “Well—I don’t know what to say. I’ve had gentlemen who had special tastes, of course. But usually it’s them that wants to be beaten up. A few slaps, you know, and some rough talk. But I don’t know. With your fists, was it you said?”

  “Yes. Fists.”

  “I’d have to think it over. Talk it over with my friend, really. Have you got a moment?”

  From the depths of her bosom she pulled out a crucifix which, when she put it in her lips, proved to
be a little whistle, on a chain. She gave a discreet double tweet. Very soon a small, dark man, quietly dressed and wearing a statesman’s black Homburg, appeared, and the woman whispered to him. “How rough would this be?” asked the man.

  “Hard to say, till I got into it.”

  “Well—it could come very dear. Broken teeth, now. Bruising. That could put her out of business for a fortnight. No; I don’t think we could look at it, not at any price that would make sense.”

  “Would one good punch be any help?” said the woman, who seemed to have a pitying heart. “One good punch at, say, ten quid?”

  “Twenty,” said the man, hastily.

  They went to the woman’s flat, which was near by.

  “You understand I’ve got to stick around,” said the man. “This isn’t your ordinary call. You might get carried away, and not in control of yourself. I’ve got to stick around, for both yoursakes.”

  The woman was undressing, with rapid professional skill.

  “No need for that,” said Francis.

  “Oh, I think she’d better,” said the man. “In fact, I’d say she’d rather, seeing as you’re paying. Professional, you understand. Her birthday suit is her working clothes, isn’t it?”

  “Okay. Ready when you are,” said the woman, now naked and bracing herself on stout legs. She had, Francis saw with an embalmer’s eye, an appendicitis scar of the old-fashioned kind that looks rather like a beetle with outspread legs. Francis raised his fist, and to summon anger he thought hard of Ismay at her most defiant, her most derisive, her most sluttish. But it would not come. It was the Looner who dominated his feeling, not as an image, but as an influence, and he could not strike. He sat down suddenly on the bed, and to his deep shame burst into sobs.