Cucumber Sandwiches

by J. I. M. Stewart

  ‘Whatever it is, I assure you that the poor man is ceasing to have scope for it.’

  ‘But he entertains a great deal, doesn’t he? Sometimes groups of undergraduates, and sometimes just one man for a long talk? He’s told me so scores of times – and precisely by way of justifying his continuing with us. Why, he makes a joke about his bill for muffins or crumpets or something.’

  ‘It scarcely happens any more. The men feel they’ve had the Jarvie. He’s had his day with previous generations, no doubt. But now they’re fading him out.’

  ‘I didn’t know.’ Finch found himself not caring for this image of his wife’s. ‘Do you mean,’ he demanded, ‘that there’s a kind of boycott?’

  ‘Oh, no – nothing like that. I’m sure everybody continues to be very nice to him. But they just don’t much go along.’

  ‘He sits there over his uneaten teas?’ Finch was honestly and decently upset. ‘That’s rather awful, I must say.’

  ‘It’s inevitable.’ Mrs Finch, who was now in bed, had the air of one closing a book. ‘And perhaps it’s just as well.’

  5

  It was again 5 p.m., and again the dons were packing up to go home. A very young don was hurrying across the quad carrying a shopping-basket stuffed with packets of breakfast cereal and bottles of detergent. Charles Purchase was going through the bicycle ritual in the lodge; the books had to be stowed in a basket on the handlebars because the area over the rear wheel was occupied by a contraption for ferrying an infant. A third man, obviously in a state of impatience, was talking to Purchase in a perfunctory way; his wife must be late in picking him up (the Jarvie told himself) because she was queuing for some other infant’s orange juice in a clinic.

  The Jarvie barked sharply at this spectacle, and turned away from the window.

  ‘Miles,’ he said, ‘ring the bell and we’ll ask Crumble for more crumpets. Alastair, be a good chap and take over that teapot. If you’re wondering whose portrait that is, Roderick, I’ll give you a hint. He’s a kinsman of mine and a kinsman of Alastair’s as well. And he wrote better verse in English than I ever did in Greek.’

  ‘Is he Robert Burns, sir?’ someone asked with feigned innocence.

  ‘He’s the Ettrick Shepherd,’ Miles Honeybeare said. ‘Or perhaps he’s the good Lord Clifford. Love had he found in huts where poor men lie. How much more edifying if the poor men had been truthful.’

  The room seemed full of youths. But this was because they were so long-limbed and sprawled so happily about. Actually there were only half a dozen of them. It was merely a matter of things being as they had always been, and yet the Jarvie experienced, as he glanced around him, a fleeting sense of contrast with a state of affairs in the immediate past. The first weeks of term had been quieter: that was it. Perhaps it had so happened that most of the men with whom he had formed some acquaintance lately had been reading hard for examinations. There were examinations at odd times of the year nowadays. But now – and there were still four weeks of the term to go – life had turned lively again. Through the Jarvie’s mind flitted a recollection of an idea he’d had for giving breakfasts. He wondered what could have put such an old-world notion in his head.

  The door opened, and Crumble brought in more food. The Jarvie noted cheerfully that it wasn’t crumpets. Things were going so well that the crumpets had run out, but the resourceful Crumble was producing what looked like Gentleman’s Relish spread on hot-buttered toast. Mrs Crumble appeared to have been withdrawn from all attendance upon her husband’s employer. Perhaps Crumble (although the Jarvie couldn’t actually recall this of him) took positive pleasure in waiting upon a company of animated young men, or even in the contemplation of the Jarvie tête à tête with a single young man further on in the evening. He often seemed to be around quite late, and for no more substantial purpose than making up the fire or emptying ash-trays. He was particularly assiduous in emptying ash-trays. He had once or twice respectfully asked a question or two about one or another of the men, and seemed gratified to know that Mr Davoch was a son of Lord Claverhouse and that Mr Honeybeare’s mother was a woman of great wealth. The fellow was a snob, the Jarvie told himself – and certainly a rascal into the bargain. But it was quite proper that he should take an interest in his master’s friends.

  ‘My dear and only love, I pray

  This noble world of thee,

  Be govern’d by no other sway

  But purest monarchy . . . ‘

  The urgent declamatory voice thus suddenly sounding startled the Jarvie, and for a moment he was outraged that anybody should begin shouting in his own room the poem sacred to his own boyhood. Then he realised that it was not by just anybody that the words were flung at whoever would listen. It was by Alastair Davoch, who had a better right to them, after all, than almost any other man in Britain. The Jarvie’s indignation turned to an intense and mysterious pleasure.

  Like Alexander I will reign,

  And I will reign alone,

  My thought shall evermore disdain

  A rival on my throne.

  He either fears his fate too much,

  Or his deserts are small,

  That puts it not unto the touch,

  To win or lose it all . . .

  At this point a couple of the men, to whom it didn’t occur to connect the verses with the portrait on the wall, robustly shouted Alastair down. For some moments nobody was paying attention to the Jarvie, so that he had leisure to wonder whether it could possibly be true that he was inclined to have favourites among them. He supposed not, since anything of the kind would be opposed to certain principles of conduct which he had found it necessary to work out for himself long ago. Moreover, it was in a manner true that the men were too fluid, too protean indeed, to be laid hold upon with any sort of possessiveness. Adult though they were in one sense, in another (although he would not have admitted this to Wog) they were still hard at work growing up, so that you could almost say it was impossible to know the same man two terms running. Alastair Davoch himself had surely changed. Had he become more like his father? No, it wasn’t that. On the contrary, he had become more like some fanatic ancestor; he was craggier, paler, with a new glitter in his eye – and surely he was moodier as well.

  But something of the sort seemed true of several. Perhaps the restlessness one heard of, the obscure malaise about which the Finch woman talked such nonsense, had its effect even on nice people like these. Certainly they were inclined to present themselves already somewhat pronouncedly in one frame of mind or another. And then, as they sat perhaps through a long evening in the Jarvie’s big shadowy smoke-filled room, this would intensify itself further, so that they would end up either deeply dreamy or splendidly vehement much according as to how they had arrived. Moreover, they owned a curious power of absorption in a drastically restricted environment. People listening to the Jarvie’s music, for example, would be quite untroubled by others arguing fiercely within a yard of them.

  Miles Honeybeare was listening to music now. He had put the overture to Coriolan on the record-player and was hunched over it, as if unaware of the hubbub occasioned by Alastair’s declaiming certain verses by a Marquess of Montrose. Not, the Jarvie reflected, that much really escaped Miles. There was something of what they called an organisation man in Miles, as if what was happening in his neighbourhood was happening because he had himself arranged it that way.

  Judging thus of Miles, the Jarvie experienced one of those sudden questionings, those elusive beckoning lucidities, by which he was visited from time to time. Why was this particular man quite frequently in his mind? Honeybeare wasn’t, like Alastair Davoch, straight out of the Jarvie’s own stable. It was possible to say that he needed a hair-cut, or even to suppose that he wore his hair as he did because of the manner in which its darkness so strikingly shadowed the already sufficiently dusky softness of his skin. And his mouth – one’s glance gravitated to his mouth – was too full, too much in perpetual minutest movement, to be the mouth of a man
one would choose for that open boat.

  Considering these facts, the Jarvie concluded that he had been mistaken in supposing that Miles Honeybeare enjoyed any disproportionate share of his attention. Miles was of course a clean-run lad, and well-bred in spite of all that money – even in spite of his unfortunate theatrical manner with his outlandish cigarettes. But they all had an odd taste in cigarettes, things damnably bad for their health. When he knew this lot even better, the Jarvie told himself, he would venture to do something about that. He was known to be a man of means. With Christmas approaching, there would be nothing against his taking them into Friburg and Treyer’s and buying them each a straight-grain pipe. The expense would be enormous, he told himself happily. And the innocent vanity of youth was enormous too.

  The Jarvie’s sudden sharp bark – it could never be said of him that he chuckled – surprised those of his guests who were any longer disposed to pay attention to him.

  ‘A rescue operation,’ Arthur Wimbush said. Wimbush was the very junior don who bought detergents and cornflakes. ‘There’s no accounting for young men. Charles tells us that we live surrounded by thousands of bloody-minded and ingrate louts, solely concerned with asserting their divine and youthful right to order everything precisely as they please. And look at what we suddenly find. A bunch of them behaving in a thoroughly nice way.’

  ‘You interest and encourage us,’ the Provost said. ‘But what are you talking about, Arthur? Explain.’

  ‘Sorry. I’m talking about a subject of perennial interest – the Jarvie. And about the rather decent behaviour some of the undergraduates can produce. The puzzle is where it comes from. It isn’t Christianity, since that’s something they know nothing about. It’s not that our young savages are noble savages, since the nobility of savages is a fiction. Is it the famous Decent Thing, as inculcated in our public schools? I just wouldn’t know.’

  ‘What you know or don’t know is chiefly interesting to yourself.’ Charles Purchase spoke robustly, and tapped out his pipe. ‘Unless you have facts to communicate, we’d better go home to bed.’

  It was late, and only a handful of dons were left in the smoking-room. Occasionally, when this is so and nobody unreliable is present, colleagues get talked about with some freedom. It’s not quite proper, but it happens from time to time.

  ‘Who are these nice young men?’ Finch asked. ‘Ought they to receive a college prize? It might be reasonable, if niceness among undergraduates is as uncommon as you seem to think.’

  ‘I deprecate light-hearted talk about Strathalan-Jerviswoode.’ It was Gifford who said this. He could seldom bring himself to refer to his elderly colleague as the Jarvie. ‘It’s a savage life in a place like this – growing old alone. There’s a sense of being at bay about it.’

  There was an uncomfortable silence, as often happened when Wog made gloomy remarks.

  ‘But we don’t grow old in the place,’ Purchase said. ‘Or not really old. The college turns us out in our mid-sixties. And no doubt we’re all going to be at bay somewhere in the end, unless we have the good fortune to be hit by a bus. But it won’t be here.’

  ‘An exception has been made in the case of Strathalan-Jerviswoode. I doubt whether it has been wise.’

  ‘I must be getting back to the Lodging.’ The Provost had stood up sufficiently abruptly to make it clear he had heard Wog on this theme once too often. ‘But first, Arthur, I want to know about the rescue operation.’

  ‘It’s quite simple. You know, Provost, about the Jarvie’s tea-parties, and musical evenings, and conferences tête à tête on the dangers young manhood has to face? It all belongs with Noah’s Ark, and the little brutes have simply been ceasing to play. One can’t terribly blame them, for the matter of that. But there the Jarvie has been. He dines, of course – although you might call it in a ritual rather than a social way. But over there he leads an almost insulated life. None of us goes near him—’

  ‘He resents anything of the kind,’ Gifford said.

  ‘That’s true. But the result is that his rooms might be a hundred miles away. That villainous manservant of his could cut the old boy’s throat at any time, and it might be days before any of us knew about it. The boys have been his lifeline. But increasingly over the last year or so, the boys have been ditching him.’

  ‘So you’ve said, and it isn’t exactly news to me. Anthea’s been aware of it.’ Finch spoke impatiently – and with a careful avoidance of pride in the firmness of his wife’s grip upon the life of the college. ‘She manages to coax him out from time to time.’

  ‘Mrs Finch is absolutely splendid, of course.’ Arthur Wimbush was pouring himself a final glass of Marc as he produced this decent tribute. ‘But all his days, I gather, the Jarvie has been playing this role. Let me be your father and so forth. And since it can’t be played as monologue, the poor old chap has become rather stuck. But now some of the young men have got together and mounted this rescue service. They go to tea, and all the rest of it.’

  ‘In shifts?’ the Provost asked.

  ‘I don’t know as to that. I hardly think it’s organised quite to that extent. There aren’t all that many of them involved.’

  ‘Do you happen to know who has got it going?’

  ‘A lad called Honeybeare, I think. And perhaps a crony of his called Davoch.’

  ‘Most interesting.’ If the Provost was surprised, he didn’t show it. Nor did he judge it expedient to divulge that this same young Davoch had, in a sense, sneaked on the Jarvie to his tiresome father Lord Claverhouse during the course of the previous vacation. ‘And one is delighted to hear of some civilised feelings being around.’

  ‘Honeybeare and Davoch?’ From near the door, where he had been picking up his gown preparatory to departure, Charles Purchase repeated the names on an interrogative note. ‘They were friends of that lad Thimble – Larry Thimble – who got sent down. Mary made rather a pet of Thimble. She cultivates theatre boys at present, and this Larry was an uncommonly personable specimen. He brought in those other two to drinks more than once.’

  ‘And why,’ Gifford asked, ‘was Thimble sent down?’

  ‘Drugs, of course. Fornication won’t do it for you now, you know – any more than being contumacious to the Proctors or offending the religious sensibilities of the citizens by hanging chamber-pots on the Martyrs’ Memorial.’

  ‘Changed days, Wog.’ Wimbush broke in with this over his drained glass. ‘Not like your stirring life and times, eh?’

  This badinage, if kindly meant, was not kindly received. Gifford walked from the room without a word. And the Provost, with an expressive glance at his younger colleagues, departed by another door.

  ‘Always crying woe, that chap Gifford.’ Wimbush was wandering round the smoking-room, switching off lights and radiators. ‘Tongue hanging out for disaster.’

  ‘He’s had some filthy luck.’

  ‘Yes, I know. But a sado-masochistic type, if you ask me. Do you think he really believes that the Jarvie—’

  ‘To hell with what he believes,’ Purchase said irritably. Good night.’

  ‘All right – good night. But I say! About that rescue service—’

  ‘Your term for it.’

  ‘Yes, I know. And I suppose one oughtn’t to give things names. They get about. Still, it is a rescue service. So do you think they’re clever enough to conceal the fact?’

  ‘The Davoch-Honeybeare lot have decent manners and so forth. I shouldn’t think they’ll suddenly betray a patronising attitude to the Jarvie. Do you suppose he’d be unbearably humiliated if he realised they were doing a kind of boy-scouting good deed?’

  ‘I don’t know. I hardly ever run across the old man, except for a bit of table-talk. But, in any case, there doesn’t seem much future for him over there. This lot of young philanthropists will depart, and no further lot will succeed. And as you and I are not nineteen, slim, fair-complexioned, and eager to be warned against the snares of a carnal world, it’s not much use our taking
on the job ourselves.’

  ‘No it isn’t. And so to bed.’

  6

  ‘I say, Jarvie, shall I open another window? They’ve been making a bit of a fug in here. Pretty warm, too.’

  ‘Yes, Miles – please do. It’s this odd kind of tobacco which seems so fashionable at the moment. Shockingly expensive, I don’t doubt. In my time it was Russian cigarettes that were all the go. Café au lait in colour, and with rather a nice smell. But there were also some affairs in dead black, with gold tips. Vulgar enough for the stage. I’m sorry Crumble has taken away the tea.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not paying a call, sir. Not properly dressed for that.’

  This seemed true. Miles Honeybeare was wearing an enormous sweater, quite a lot of mud, and not much else. He was carrying a lacrosse stick. As with the black cigarettes – the Jarvie found himself rather strangely reflecting – a certain effect of theatre was involved. But then many of the men had a great sense of style. They wore their obtrusively patched and stained and frayed jeans with a casual and positively aristocratic elegance. And it was satisfactory that Miles played lacrosse. He hadn’t known that Miles played any game at all. He must turn out and watch Miles one afternoon. It would be nice to see Miles running.

  ‘I just wondered, sir, if I might come in this evening and hear Idomeneo – if you’re thinking of turning it on, that is.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ The Jarvie was delighted. ‘But wait a minute!’ He moved carefully over to the mantelpiece, upon which he kept his engagements somewhat uncertainly recorded on cards and scraps of paper. ‘Yes, Miles, here’s a great bore. I’ve got my dining club. It’s meeting in Magdalen. Happens just once a term. One of the few things that take me out of college, nowadays. I’ve been a member for over forty years, so I like to keep it up.’

  ‘How very jolly, Jarvie. Have all the other members belonged for more than forty years too?’ Apparently forgetting that he hadn’t come to stop, Miles Honeybeare tumbled on to a sofa, mud and all. Firelight flickered on the fine gold hair running up his shins.