Brett pulled one of his clownish faces. He was drunk, and extremely serious.
“All right. This year justice is a matter of economy. Next year it may be politics or a fashion in dictators. You’re an anarchist, my boy. A crazy anarchist. One thing or the other. Justice is either something you’ve agreed to as outside human will — in fact, absolute. Or it means damn all, and we’re living in a nauseating chaos. Have it your own way. But for God’s sake know what you’re doing.”
Lowerby felt irritated. It had always irritated him when, at school, at Sandhurst, the friend he looked on as inferior to him in everything except physical strength suddenly criticised him. He felt that it was ridiculous and a little impudent. He forced himself to smile.
“Ah — we know you’re without fear and without reproach. A Quixote with flesh on his bones — ”
“Never mind my stomach. As I told Bill Gary, really noble looters, like his friend Rechberg, get away with anything — but a poor bloody commoner has the honour of being made an example. Eh?”
“You told him what?”
He saw that his stupefaction amused Brett. Pulling himself together, he said,
“Are you in the habit of talking nonsense in that quarter?”
Brett’s eyes widened below his raised eyebrows — an image of mockery and cynical understanding.
“Why call it nonsense? Lying on this bloody sofa is boring, he said. And he took the trouble to get hold of some fine claret especially for me — so what can I do but go there every day and drink it? I’m not a fool.”
Lowerby had the sense that he had reached in daylight a conclusion to which his commonsense had been pointing him a long time — months. Now it was beyond doubt. His friend was after something from Gary, a job when he retired, a directorship, something. It was natural — and his own chances had become that much worse. No reason why they should — no reason, no reason. And he was convinced of it. Coldly logically convinced, with a logic better than reason. He caught sight of his face in a mirror, pinched with anxiety. He steadied himself at once, and motioned West to pour out more brandy. Looking smilingly at Brett, with a friendly simplicity,
“Produce some evidence for the innocence of your Boche friend, and I —”
“And you’ll thank me for ruining your economy,” Brett said, grinning.
The curious feeling seized the general that he was not sitting here, not talking, except in some irresponsible sense, which engaged neither his acts nor his words. West had drawn the Pole into a feverish and noisy argument: they were both sunk.
“So you don’t trust Rechberg?” he said in a low voice.
“Less than any other rascal.”
“Maybe. He’s put himself in a bad position by leaving the sector — if he has left it — in any case by vanishing the instant he’s wanted. When he turns up. . .”
Why did I say that? he asked himself. Brett was listening with an ironic fixity. Is he sober enough to take it in? Leaning back, he made the effort to dismiss the whole business from his thoughts until he could examine it quietly. He glanced openly at his watch. A quarter to eleven. In a quarter of an hour exactly, they must go. He refused to sit up later, for anyone.
He turned his chair slightly. Outside the open windows, the darkness had been stretched and vaporised by the stars. Barely audible, the snoring noise of planes: and below it, in the night of a ruined continent, a silence enclosing with the same gentleness the common anonymous graves and the sleep of uneasy lives. Warm, with the last warmth of an autumn night, soft, heavy, the air received and scattered as if they were only a few grains, all griefs, all hopes. Even mine, Lowerby thought. At once, he saw his youngest boy lying asleep, his head on his bent arm — and his thought of humanity as a few grains revolted him. A terrible anxiety and love filled him.
He filled up Brett’s glass again, and the Polish officer’s. Gierymski laughed suddenly, for no reason, and said quietly,
“Tomorrow I’m going home.”
“Really?” West said. “How are you going?”
Smiling, Gierymski repeated,
“Home. During the war, when I was dropped into Poland. . . I remember one time especially: I was caught — that is, in a few hours I would be caught, there was no way out; then, at the last minute, I was saved, and when I thanked your brave men who saved me at the risk of their lives, they said: Don’t thank us too much; if we could not rescue you we had orders to shoot you. . . All the same, I was grateful to them. . . Tomorrow. . .”
He stretched his arms.
Brett held his glass up. As always when he had been drinking a great deal, he had come back to a sobriety and lucidity from which any grace of discretion had been removed.
“Wonderful to be young,” he said. “If I thought it was any use, I’d tell you to be careful. I’ll save my breath. But you might borrow a little wisdom from this man —” he nodded at West — “a clever chap, let me tell you, a snob, but intelligent.”
He emptied the glass.
“Very good brandy, Smiler. I don’t know why you take so much trouble to give other people the best when you don’t drink anything yourself. Some piece of jesuitry. I’ll say this for you: for a man who doesn’t drink, has no vices, and no weakness, you’re a decent chap. I told Gary that yesterday. . . Gary. Now there’s a fantastic fellow for you. He has an idea of himself as a lay Pope. It’s a fact! I’m every sort of vile sinner, I know it, but I sin humanly, not out of saintliness or plain lunacy.”
When they saw the general preparing to move, the two young officers stood up. Brett remained seated, smiling to himself. His eyes very bright, the lines smoothed from his cheeks, he was so nearly a young man the general had known when he was young that he felt only affection, and the anxiety and instinct to protect that his friend’s reckless tongue used to rouse in him in those days. He put an arm on Brett’s shoulder, patted it.
“You must go, old boy. I must do some work before I can turn in.”
He saw Brett out. When he came back, his P. A., waiting to know whether he were needed, said with a casual seriousness,
“Mr Gary would be amused to know that Colonel Brett considers him either a fascist or mad.”
“Don’t wait, I don’t need you,” Lowerby said curtly. “Good-night.”
“Good-night, sir.”
Chapter Twenty-two
The room had that air of denial and resentment a room in an hotel puts on for the departing lodger. It may for a few days have yielded or condescended: on the last day it takes it all back. Lise, pretending to read, felt its unfriendliness. Her mother had lived in so many hotel rooms, and had aged past noticing that things have an existence or a malice of their own. She was dressed, for their return journey in an uncomfortable plane, as if for walking in Paris, and she held her fur hood under the hand laid — the artist or a clever producer would have placed it just there — on the arm of her chair.
There was a knock on the door. Jumping up, Lise ran towards it. The chambermaid came in, holding the coat she had been brushing, and Lise took it from her with a polite smile, slipped quickly over the frankly joyous one she had started up with.
Her mother watched her.
“Thank you, put it down.”
When the woman had gone, she went on coldly,
“Why are you fidgeting, Lise?”
“There’s nothing to do,” Lise said, smiling. “I hate waiting for a journey to begin. Are you sure the car will come for us? Perhaps I could wait for it outside — I mean just outside, in the street?”
“Are you expecting someone?”
“Yes. Captain West said he would come to say goodbye and bring a book he talked about yesterday.”
The fingers resting on the fur hood contracted a little, the ends curling inwards. A very slight movement.
“And you thought you would meet him in the street — like a servant?”
“Mamma!”
“Don’t be silly. I’ve noticed that you really don’t know how to behave with people even
a little older than yourself . . . Captain West, for that matter, is some years older. I’m sorry. Lise, but your manner would be unpleasant if it weren’t awkward and silly. It’s quite time we went away.”
The girl had listened to her with an uncomprehending guilt. She stood still, as if not knowing what to do with her hands except hold them stiffly. At last she murmured,
“I didn’t know I was being — foolish.”
“No, I’m sure you didn’t,” her mother said quietly. “I blame myself more than you. I should have known what would happen, and taken steps.”
In her bewilderment, Lise moved closer to her mother, and halted, afraid to touch her. The older woman’s immobility warded her off more coldly than a hand.
“What do you mean. . . steps. . .?”
“At your age — that is, you’re too young to know how to disguise your emotions; and not young enough to make them innocent. In fact, you’re at the most awkward stage. Perhaps — yes, I’m sure you didn’t know what you were doing. . . My dear child, please understand — I’m not angry with you. I only want you to be frank with me, and to tell me everything, everything — as if I were your own age. Try.”
The change in her mother’s voice, from severity to a smooth, an almost inquisitive kindness, confused the girl further. She did not know what was expected of her. In some way she had behaved badly, or at least in a way her mother and her mother’s friends thought graceless. She would have begged her mother to forgive her, if something, some instinct, had not warned her that there was more to come.
“I’ll do anything you tell me,” she murmured. “But I don’t know what you mean.”
Mrs Brett was silent. After a moment, she looked the girl in the face and said, in a dry voice,
“I wonder. You’re very deceitful —”
As she said it, she excused herself: it was for the child’s good.
“I — mamma — it’s not true. There’s nothing to tell you.”
“Perhaps you really don’t know,” Mrs Brett said. “But to other people — even to Captain West — you’ve seemed to be — what shall we say? — a little over-excited.”
Tears of shame sprang into the girl’s eyes; she made an effort to get rid of them.
“I’m sorry. I — please let me go and wait in my bedroom — they’re cleaning it, I know, but they’ll let me stand there, I —”
Her mother interrupted her to say with great kindness,
“No, stay here, you mustn’t run away. And there’s nothing to cry about, my child — my poor child. Come, we’re friends, aren’t we? I want to help you, my darling.”
Lise did not move. Her mother repeated gently,
“Come here.” She touched the girl’s hand. “Why, you’re trembling. Little silly.”
Lise shook her head. She was not able to think — except that she must, at all costs, keep quiet. She was thankful that her mother had become friendly, and gentle, but — she was puzzled and terribly confused. Even the friendliness stung, as if, hiding in it, were an impulse she could not seize. She no longer felt safe. Like a child’s, her despair and unhappiness crushed her. An unchildlike mistrust kept her silent. Her mother was going to speak. The telephone rang, and she went into the next room to answer it. Lise heard her say, “Edward. One moment,” and close the door.
There was a knock on the door leading into the passage. Lise did not speak. It was repeated. Controlling herself, she said,
“Come in.”
It was Arnold Coster. Before she could check herself she had cried,
“Oh, it’s only you!”
He raised his eyebrows.
“Were you expecting someone else?”
“No, no.”
“Then what’s the matter?” he asked gently, very gently.
“Nothing. You said goodbye yesterday evening — and you appear again, like —”
“Like a person you don’t want to see.”
He spoke coolly, and without a sign of emotion, except that a muscle twitched in one cheek, noticeable because he was so thin. He had taken a book from his pocket, and he held it out to her.
“What’s this?”
“The book you wanted. Edward can’t come — and since it was my copy...”
“Oh — I thought —” she stopped abruptly. Her feeling of humiliation was so unbearable that she could think of nothing except punishing him. “Did I want it? I’d forgotten. I don’t really want it, thanks. Keep it, I’m sure you haven’t read it.”
“Why? I have read it.”
“Oh,” she said, with indifference.
“I thought it ridiculously pretentious, like Mr Cowley himself. Perhaps you admire him, though.”
“Ah, I’m humbler than you are,” she said lightly. “I don’t dislike a man for being very intelligent and well-read. I’m not terribly intelligent — I haven’t any of your excuses for laughing at him.”
“Yes, he reads,” Arnold said calmly: “the quotations are excellent.”
“Poor Mr Cowley! I won’t take your copy. You’ll have the trouble of carrying it back again. I’m sorry.”
“Not at all.”
Unsmiling, he threw the book out of the open window:
“I hope you’ll have a pleasant trip. Goodbye.”
He had gone before she could speak.
Late in the evening, he went to see Edward. He had just dined, with his general and a visiting politician.
“What a blackguard! Very good-looking, with that smoothness and assurance you only get from having your carnal needs regularly provided for, a quite pleasant air of brutality, and no breeding at all — in spite of his name. The old man was pulling his leg and he didn’t feel a twitch. We send an animal like that abroad, and then wonder why Americans and other people can’t stand us. . .”
Arnold was amused and, secretly, unwillingly, impressed — as always by his friend’s refusal to take seriously the monsters he met. But he had come to find something out, and was too desperately and simply concerned about it to care whether Edward choked on the mockery he still had on his tongue. Taking noticeable pains to settle himself easily on the couch,
“Sorry — I couldn’t give your message to Mrs Brett. I didn’t see her.”
“It doesn’t matter in the least, I managed to telephone. But you saw my devoted Lise, I hope?”
“What do you mean?” Arnold asked carelessly.
“She reminds me — that summer your mother made us both take dancing lessons from an appalling female refugee she was helping; one afternoon — you weren’t there — I was told off to take round a little girl, I suppose she was half our age — and how old were we — thirteen? She was half my height, too, and a leg of her drawers was longer than the other. My God, I was angry, but — and it shows you that even boys of that filthy age are visited by grace — I was sorry for her, either because her drawers were coming down or because she looked up at me like a puppy. To console her in case they did come off, I went on dancing with her — and grinning over her head at the others.”
“Have you been consoling Lise in the same way?”
“Will you have whisky or pink gin?. . . No, not very much. I — oh, damn it, there is no gin. Sorry.”
Arnold frowned. Edward’s indifference annoyed him. It made his anxiety about Lise seem futile, and the question he wanted to ask childish and stupid. He disliked seeming unworldly. Hesitating between two sentences he had imagined, he dropped both. Since the moment, queerly vexing and unsatisfactory when he thought about it, at Mrs Brett’s party, neither of them had touched the thing again. He felt intimidated and in an obscure way angry. It has nothing to do with me, he thought impatiently: why bore me with it?
He decided, and said roughly,
“You can hardly marry Lise Brett, can you?”
Edward glanced at him with an ironical curiosity. Hesitated, with a very slight air of diffidence, and said,
“The last time I was in London I met the woman I’d marry. A few years older than us — I should
think about thirty-two. I shouldn’t anyhow want to marry a girl. . . insipid or with all her crises in front of her. . . certainly not a girl like Lise, dragged up as she’s been, no background and no status.”
Without reflecting at all, Arnold said,
“Always anxious about your career, aren’t you?”
Edward laughed without resentment.
“There are other things I care about — a decent and pleasantly conventional life, for instance.”
At this moment Arnold had forgotten Lise: a bitterness he felt without even trying to understand it, filled him: for once, the phrase was just, he had the sense that his veins were swelling. It was disappointment, anger — he couldn’t tell what.
He threw his head back and laughed — brayed almost.
“It’s odd that everything you do, if it’s only dining with somebody’s swine of a son, helps you to climb. You never lay off, do you? A neat steady climb — even, I gather, when you get married, at night.”
Stung, Edward said,
“Sorry — I didn’t know you were in a state. As for climbing, you’re not doing too badly. Why did you take to an air taxi? Because Gary is a nice fellow and you like him?”
“What the hell do you mean?”
They rarely quarrelled: when they did, it was invariably Edward who gave way, and adroitly or comically turned the edge of his friend’s rage: too lazy to lose his temper often, when he lost it Arnold was childishly uncontrollable until he had been made to laugh.
Edward looked at him with a half embarrassed smile.
“Nothing,” he said gently. “Don’t you remember Toch, at Oxford, saying: Gentlemen, I can teach you a few facts, but I can’t scratch your invincible ignorance: only and just possibly, time will do that. . . I’m invincibly single-minded about getting on. You don’t really mind, do you?”
Arnold was ashamed and relieved.
“Sorry — I’m a fool,” he said, with a wretched little laugh.
The danger of a quarrel past, Edward allowed himself a teasing malice.
“I’ll tell you something about your Gary. He’s as bloody-minded as the stupidest of bad generals. Last night he was dining with the old man, someone talked the usual flap about atomic war, and Gary said calmly that it was too risky, the only practical use for the atom bomb was to keep civil order — if workers or natives got out of hand. Why, he might be a politician.”
The Black Laurel Page 24
