Lambert said, ‘Why not?’ And felt both sorry for him and contemptuous. The poor chap is quite cracked, he thought.
They had the vacations together. And they had, also together, Mrs. Benham-Smith, known to them, by name, for years, through the half-jeering, half-scandalised gossip of their elders. The wife of a well-to-do coalowner, retired and drinking himself comfortably to death, who besottedly left her to her devices, she was the local muse. Essays and poems in the Danesacre Gazette, published afterwards at her charges, by the Gazette, in thin calf-bound volumes that no one bought. (Spend good money on Marjorie Benham-Smith? Heavens!) Expensive clothes, outrageously unsuited to a big raw-boned woman of forty-odd, sent from London. Musical evenings at her house, attended for the sake of the lavish supper that followed, the muse in pale satin handing plates of pâté and lobster and glasses of claret. And behind the nonsense, behind the atrocious verses, the grotesque tulle hats and chiffon scarves and strings of pearls, a good-hearted decent woman who ought to have had a family and a sober husband to engage her hungry mind.
As young men at the university, the two were her meat. She invited them four or five times a week. What Gregory felt for her his friend was not sure: he smiled with Lambert over the affectations but did not make jokes. Queerly, he was far more at his ease in her large richly-furnished house than Lambert was. Lambert went there — in spite of jeering comments — because he had nothing else to do in Danesacre, but he was never free of a sense of awkwardness and derision. He was flattered by the invitations, not extended to his parents. Gregory gave every sign of taking them as his due. He even listened to the muse when she read her verses aloud and, without praising them, he made sensible remarks — a politeness which, to save his life, Lambert could not have imitated.
Lambert’s ambitions changed, but he did not. Even when he began trying to write, he kept a hard grip on the safest possible line. It was inconceivable to him to do anything else. He could no more have taken seriously the idea of making his living as a writer than he could have faced his parents with it. The mere thought of such a risk turned him giddy. A civil servant has, as well as security, a margin of leisure. He had his future mapped out; he had only to follow the map to be climbing in two ways at once — as a writer and as a civil servant. He discovered early that he had a fine talent as an administrator, and that to get himself on to committees was not merely, as he knew it was, a way of getting to know people, of being noticed, but a way of amusing himself cheaply. He thoroughly enjoyed committees, those in his own line as an official, and those others, of a cultural sort, on which, after a few years in London, he began to be elected. There is a hierarchy of committees, beginning at the lowest level, with parochial interests, rising to regional ones (societies to preserve Wales, waterways, what have you), and above these to the really powerful ones, under the patronage of royal dukes and such, for preserving Culture itself, in all its nationally sacred forms. There are philological, archaeological, musical, artistic, literary, etcetera committees at every stage of the hierarchy. He set himself a few goals, and stepped nimbly from one to the next. He began to know a few well-placed writers. In his shrinking spare time he wrote — and had published — three short novels, spread over eight years. At no moment did he admit in words that they were all three still-born. It needs a certain philosophy — or a morbidity he had not got — to say such a thing aloud. He kept under the strictest guard the knowledge, as it stealthily became knowledge, not merely suspicion, that his literary friends did not take him seriously as a writer. They liked his blunt plain positive way of speaking — but not when he spoke about literature. That, their silences hinted, was not his field, and no critic felt that it would do him good to drop the name of Lambert Corry in an article. For all of them he was the shrewd civil servant, able to advise on all sorts of problems that were not problems of style. Without rancour — he hoped fervently, without rancour — he told himself that for a man with his lack of background, his start, his sort of family, he had not done too badly.
When he had been in London for less than two years, a frightful thing happened to him. Mrs. Benham-Smith came up for a visit, her first (and as it turned out, her last). She wrote to him to tell him she was coming for a month, and added, ‘I know you will want me to meet all your friends, and I am looking forward with the keenest joy to long evenings of talk with all those writers I have so far met only in the pages of their books. It will be too wonderful….’ As he read the letter, his heart dropped. If he could, he would have fled the country that day. He cursed himself for the vanity — innocent enough, he said to himself, and didn’t deserve so brutal a punishment — that had made him write to her about men he had only met once (and without impressing them), as though they were his intimate friends. He felt a double anguish. Not only would she find out that he had boasted in his letters to her, but — he broke into a sweat — the thought of appearing at a party with Marjorie Benham-Smith on his arm, in one of her grotesquely rich dresses, perhaps with a volume of her verses in her hand, her lips dropping all the inanities of a smalltown muse, was horrible.
He met her, as she expected him to, at the station and took her to her hotel. For once, she was perfectly presentable, in a fur coat that covered her from neck to ankle, but he felt agonisedly certain that the five enormous suitcases she had brought with her held enough horrors to sink him without trace, besides those she would buy. She was all smiles, excited, trembling like a virgin at the altar. As soon as they were in the cab she seized both his hands.
‘Lambert, where are you taking me this evening? Whom am I going to meet first? I can’t wait.’
‘I thought you would prefer to rest this evening,’ he said. ‘We can have dinner quietly in a restaurant, just you and I, and tomorrow…’
Her happiness clouded over, but she said bravely, ‘Of course. How thoughtful of you.’
He had in fact arranged for tomorrow. A man he knew slightly, Cecil Cowley, a critic, notorious for his rather precious learning, his gourmandise and his rudeness, had invited him to a cocktail party. Desperate, he had asked if he might bring ‘my rich eccentric aunt’, hoping Cowley would take it that a legacy hung on his pleasing her, trusting, too, that she would not discover the lie. Cowley smiled and agreed.
She was delighted. True, he had to explain to her Cowley’s peculiar authority in literary society in London, but she took his word for the fellow’s eminence, and when he promised her that everyone who counted would be there, she clapped her large bony hands and kissed him on both cheeks.
‘My dear boy, how wonderful, how thankful I am that I came. How I envy you and your life in London. Perhaps I can stay longer — six months, a year. Why not?’
He closed his eyes.
If only he could have kept them closed…. When he called for her at the hotel he found her in purple silk and garnets, not strange enough to be splendid, merely ridiculous, her heavy shoulders bare, her yellowed grey hair viciously curled, her face flushed. Even then she might have passed little noticed — Cowley’s two rooms were so jammed that his manservant had to fight his way through with drinks — if Cowley had not amused himself by drawing her out. Soon, in her strong voice with its Yorkshire vowels, she was chattering to a circle of his nearest friends.
‘Tell us about yourself, Mrs. Benham-Smith. What do you do?’
‘I am a poetess.’
‘How madly right. What sort of poetry? Do tell us.’
‘Is there more than one sort?’ she answered superbly. ‘Poetry of passion, of the bruised heart. Of my heart.’
Lambert could not listen. He hurried away into the next room, and tried to shut his ears to her voice. Again and again it rose above the machine-gun clatter of the party and when after an hour shame forced him to go back to her she was still the centre of a maliciously alert group. No one was laughing at her, Cowley was too astute to allow that, but he led her on, question by question, to become more exquisitely silly every moment, until he had squeezed the last drop of amusement
out of the game. Then, turning to Lambert, he said in an insolent voice, ‘Your aunt is incredible. I’m going to arrange a recital for her to read us her poems. Such a chance. We mustn’t miss it.’
‘What?’ said Mrs. Benham-Smith. ‘What did you say? Whose aunt?’
‘We must go,’ Lambert said.
Reluctant and a little puzzled, she let him take her away. They went back to her hotel; he could not bring himself to take her out to dinner, and after a few meaningless sentences he made the excuse that he had work. She rallied from her disappointment enough to say, ‘Oh, of course, I should have realised how busy you are. It was good of you to stay so long. Perhaps — another evening…. By the way, my dear, what are we doing tomorrow, where are we going?’
Exasperated by her calm certainty that he had nothing to do with his evenings but run after her, he said, ‘I’ll ring you up in the morning.’
‘Yes, yes, do that.’
Can anyone behave more brutally than a young man asked to make himself ridiculous for a woman more than twice his age, neither fashionable, nor well turned-out, nor well-bred? But really, he thought, groaning, as if I weren’t finding it tricky enough to get myself accepted by the right people, without the handicap of a monster like Marjorie Benham-Smith round my neck…. She had talked warmly about Gregory and his kind sweet nature — he spent all his week-ends with her, brought her books, worked over her poems. Why the devil shouldn’t he? thought Lambert cynically. Living in Danesacre, teaching in a night-school, she and her rich ugly house and her dinners must be a godsend to him. And if he pays for them with that charm of his he gets them dirt cheap. But what in God’s name do I get out of this abominable imposition?… In the morning he left a letter at her hotel saying that he was being sent away on a mission, he would be gone for weeks, he had no idea how many; he gave her no address, made no suggestions for the rest of her visit. She couldn’t, he knew, reach him anywhere; he had always written to her from the office; unless Gregory had told her, she did not even know he was married. For a week he went in dread, trembling every time his telephone rang — but he never heard a squeak from her. He had shaken her off — with surprising ease. Her memory gave him more trouble. As long as she was alive, her grotesque image kept returning to stick a pin through him. How long, after he abandoned her, had she stayed? How many days did she wait in her hotel bedroom, staring at her five suitcases, for an invitation, from him or Cowley, which never came…. But damn it, he thought furiously, it was more her fault than mine: she should have known better than to come….
That same year, after she went back to Danesacre and her complacent befuddled husband, she died suddenly. She had her own money, and in a will made only a week or two before she died she left Gregory a thousand pounds. When Lambert heard about it, he grinned. The first time the famous charm has really paid off, he thought. Or should old Gate count as the first?… His smile curdled a little. I’ll swear to God, he thought, he didn’t even like the horrible old image.
As he walked, a younger London began mistily, unseizably, like a forgotten scent suddenly met again in a foreign street, to rise round him. London of the late twenties. Fewer, many fewer vast concrete blocks, less traffic, no ugly bomb scars. Young Lambert Corry and his wife lived in another part of the town, a street of decent little houses with gardens, caught in a network of like streets. They lived very simply. On Gregory’s first evening in London — he came up as soon as the lawyers paid his legacy — he dined with them: Lambert’s wife, Penelope, nervous, and excited by her responsibility and the strain of meeting and being judged by his closest friend, cooked her most ambitious dinner, and Lambert — they never had any wine in the house — bought a bottle of claret.
He watched Gregory’s face when he came in. No one, he knew, could fail to see how pretty Penny was, with her small pointed face, untouched-up in those days, her delicate body, but he wanted to be certain that his friend liked her. Gregory’s smile when he looked at her satisfied him. She might have been his young favourite sister.
‘You’re very small,’ he said. ‘Lambert can carry you in his pocket.’
‘I do,’ Lambert said, ’when I’m punishing her.’
Gregory laughed. ‘You don’t punish her often.’
‘Never,’ Penny said, blushing.
It was an evening of such happiness that if it had been tapped with a finger-nail it would have rung. Gregory enjoyed it with a gaiety that warmed his friend, and repaid Penny for the pains she had taken with the meal and her thin dress of striped silk. Towards the end of it Lambert asked him where he was staying. When he heard, he said,
‘You can’t go on pigging it in a hotel like that, you must come here. We have room.’
‘That’s very kind of you, but——’
‘Please do,’ Penny said.
Gregory looked from her face to her husband’s. ‘If I were quite without conscience,’ he said gravely, ‘I would come. I won’t — but if you’ll let me keep up a pretence that this is my home I shall be very happy.’
‘We’d do our best to make you comfortable,’ said Penny.
He gave her one of his quick charming smiles. ‘I know. And I can’t afford to be comfortable. If I’m uncomfortable enough I shall work. I must work.’
He worked, yes. And he never put a foot wrong. Lambert introduced him to Cecil Cowley: in less than a month he knew all Cowley’s friends and — more numerous and useful — his enemies. He behaved very much as he had done at school, never flattering, never unkind, making friends without an effort. The same people who had never taken Lambert seriously accepted him at once, and when, after three years, his first novel came out, it was at loud length praised. It sold well, too. The second, appearing in another three years, was given even louder, even longer praise. He had not yet reached the point where the Cecil Cowleys, shrivelling under the blast of general admiration, would temper their praise with irony and a sub-acid respect for his hand on the Rutley millions….
From his seedy hotel he very soon moved to rooms in Chelsea. Lambert helped him to arrange his things. Idly, he said, ‘You must have left a lot of your books in Danesacre.’
‘Yes. I gave them away.’
‘Why did you?’
Gregory looked at him with a young clear mischief. ‘They were shabby. And I have enough learning. Only charm is any use to me now.’
Did he mean it seriously? No, not seriously — but he means it, his friend thought.
Hard work and charm. Charm and hard work. Before his thousand pounds ran out, he had begun to write for one of the more literate Sunday newspapers. During his time on it, Lady Emily Grosmont published her memoirs, in which she described a world, undermined now but in her childhood and youth still living its vigorous graceful slave-supported life of great houses owned by men and women through whose fingers, careless or adroit, passed nearly invisible threads of power; a world that might have been invented to delight Gregory, as if medieval China had been invented for Marco Polo. He accepted it less at its face value than at its highest value in the years when the Emily Grosmonts had no doubt at all of the usefulness to their country of themselves and their creed. A world in which morality and good manners were almost identical. Gregory’s essay on her and her book pleased Lady Emily: she invited him to dinner; they became friends at once and her friends became his — Marco Polo had reached and found himself at home in a world he could and did enjoy and admire with his whole mind and heart. This, he must have said to himself, is the best. This is a society I can approve, live in, serve. The instinct to serve was active in him from the start: he was not there simply to loot.
In 1939, when war broke out, one of his new friends pushed him into the War Office, in what capacity, even what sort of capacity, Lambert never understood. He understood even less when Gregory began to be given missions that took him to Washington; he never knew clearly what Gregory was up to, whose eloquent speeches he helped to write, what messages he carried, whose aerial errands he ran. He was meeting eminent pe
ople during these missions; about most of them he held his tongue, but called one or two by their Christian names. (‘ When we were in the plane Bob told me that —’ — ‘Who is Bob, for pete’s sake?’ — ‘Robert Sherwood….’) He had met Beatrice by this time, and in 1941 he married her, marrying at the same time a deal of money — her father had coal on his land — and some very influential cousins. Through a cousin he met Richard Rutley, an old man looking for his monument, and suggested to him — one of those sudden brilliant strokes which as much as anything else were part of his genius — the creation of the Rutley Institute. The preparations for it went on during the war. In 1946 there was an imposing Inauguration, with Gregory sitting modestly at the side of and a little behind the ravaged figure — he looked like Abraham Lincoln and a horse — of old Rutley, already dying of his cancer. Only a month later he was dead. At the Memorial Service Gregory made a superb funeral oration. Not only was it eloquent, just, noble, not only did it move its many hearers, but it moved Gregory: at one moment, those nearest him saw that he had tears in his eyes. He was not acting. Or, at the very least, it was the finest acting and it was sincere. Absolutely sincere.
Lambert remembered that Memorial Service for other reasons. He sat at the back of the church, and except for a few minutes when Gregory forced him to listen, he was thinking only about himself. He was in the depths that day, exasperated, discouraged, angry, at the lowest point he had ever reached. Ever allowed himself to reach. He had suffered one of the sharpest humiliations of his life in London. It was not important, nothing that damaged him officially, but it was like a leech in his flesh; he could not shake it off.
Except for occasional articles, he had given up writing. But he had kept a foot in one or two societies that had to do with the arts. One of these was a writers’ society, the president of which had just resigned, and he expected — confidently — that he was going to be elected to the empty place. He discovered that no one had even considered electing him; when his name was dropped in talk, it had been dismissed instantly as a quite ludicrous idea.
The Road from the Monument Page 7
