The Fatal Gift

by Alec Waugh

  As far as I could judge she was fitting extremely well. Margaret clearly liked her.

  ‘Not unnaturally,’ she said, ‘I wasn’t predisposed to like her. Perhaps it was jealousy. We were in the same boat, after all, in 1919: both of us war widows: one of some two million women, whom the press called “surplus”. She had the good luck to find a second husband, of the right age for her what’s more. Yet that wasn’t enough for her. She had to have a third. Now that’s what I call being greedy. Getting more than her fair share. Yes, I suppose it was jealousy; and it was just because I suspected that that is what it was, I persuaded the old boy to ask her here. I made a martyr of myself. My virtue has been rewarded. She adds a lot to our life here: a new young face; and such a pretty one. And Iris is a dear. She isn’t spoilt. Eileen’s a good mother; that stands out a mile. I’m all for Eileen.’

  So was ‘the old boy’.

  ‘Must say I felt a bit put out at first,’ he said. ‘Natural, wasn’t it? Divorce, after all. I know things are different now, that it doesn’t carry any stigma unless there’s a scandal, which in this case there wasn’t—all the same, one doesn’t want a divorce in one’s own family; something that happens to someone else, you know, not to oneself. Made me feel shy in White’s: felt I was being whispered about when I left the bar. Fancy on my part, no doubt. Silly of me. Haven’t kept up with the times. Still, now that I see Eileen, I feel quite differently about it all. Thoroughly sound girl, you can tell that from her daughter: delightful child: thoroughly well brought up. She’ll be a good mother to Raymond’s child, I’m sure of that. Glad to be able to make things comfortable for her, at a time like this. Very wise not to have stayed on in Dominica.

  ‘Myself, I’ve never been to the West Indies. Never heard of Dominica till Raymond went there. Read all I could find about it since. What old Froude had to say: that’s all dated now of course. Then I read the chapter about it in your travel book. Very vivid piece of writing, I must say. The place has a character of its own. But how do you think of it in terms of Raymond? He can’t surely be planning to settle there for good?’

  ‘Not exactly for good. But to be there, for the winters, say. After all,’ I said, ‘though it’s two weeks from London today, within five years aeroplanes will have brought it within the range of a few hours’ flight. He won’t feel cut off there any more.’

  ‘I suppose he won’t. It’s difficult for me to think in terms of air travel. But it’ll come: of course it’ll come. Far-seeing of him to take aeroplanes into his planning; all the same, to make his base in Dominica—is that what he’s really planning ?’

  ‘It looks as though it were.’

  ‘It’s not what I expected for him.’

  ‘It’s not what any of us expected for him.’

  ‘What did you expect for him?’

  ‘That’s hard to answer. None of us really knew. But we all felt that he would do something unusual and important.’

  ‘That’s what I thought. That’s why I didn’t press him. I wanted him to find out for himself. There are a great many advantages in being a second son; in being the kind of second son that he is. He has a handle to his name; a minor one, but it sets him just that little bit apart. Then he has money, which a great many second sons don’t have. And he has ability; there’s no doubt of that: in college, not an oppidan like his brother; he has charm too. Most people like him. There was nothing he couldn’t do, I felt. And as I say, that’s why I didn’t press him. For Michael it’s altogether different. His path is cut for him. As an hereditary member of the House of Lords, he has a ready-made political career to take up, if he chooses. Then he has the responsibilities of an estate; he has tenants; he has a position in the county: his time is fully occupied. Myself, I must admit I haven’t taken advantage of my opportunities. But they were there for me if I had wanted them. That’s what I told Adrian. That’s what I’m telling Michael now. If he wants to go into public life, there’s every opportunity. At the same time he has to operate within strict limits. There are a great many things that he can do; but equally there are a great many things he can’t, because he is inheriting a title.

  ‘Raymond, on the other hand, has no such limits. There’s nothing he can’t do. He can be Prime Minister if he wants to, which his nephew can’t be. That’s why a second son can be so lucky. No strings attached. Perhaps I should have explained that to him; perhaps I should have stressed it. Does he feel, I sometimes ask myself, that I neglected him ?’

  He put it to me as a question that required an answer. I wondered how Raymond would have preferred to have me answer. Would I be serving his interests in any way by making an issue of it ? I did not see how I could.

  ‘He’s never said anything to me suggesting that he bears any grudge on any score. He realises that there is a difference between his nephew and himself. That row at Oxford provides a good example. If it had happened to the heir to a title, you would have been upset.’

  ‘So he sees that, then ?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘I’m glad of that, I’m very glad of that. It’s sad when a son feels his father has neglected him. I haven’t; I’ve cherished the proudest hopes for him. But I’ve wanted it to be his career, not mine. Perhaps an estate in Dominica is the answer. All the same there is one thing that puzzles me. How’s this wife of his going to take to a life like that? She’s not the pioneering type; more urban than rural I’d have said: relies on her English friends. I’m wondering about her.’

  So was I, and I was anxious to have a real talk with her. At the end of the day we gossiped together over a final drink. I asked her about St James’. Was Iris liking it? ‘Yes and from what Miss Baird writes, they are liking her, which is more important.’

  ‘What about Michael?’

  ‘That’s all right, too. He seems glad to have her here.’

  ‘I look forward to seeing them together.’

  ‘You can do that in September. You are coming down, aren’t you, for the match against the village?’

  ‘I’m planning to.’

  ‘Raymond should be back by then.’

  ‘How are things with him?’

  ‘Fine as far as I can gather: too fine, I’d be inclined to say.’

  ‘What am I to take that to mean?’

  ‘That without me there, he’s getting more and more bound up with Overdale. It’s a grapefruit factory now.’

  ‘What’s wrong with that?’

  ‘Another chain on him. Does he write to you at all ?’

  ‘I don’t encourage correspondence. I spend enough time at my desk as it is.’

  ‘You wrote to me quite often.’

  ‘I enjoyed your letters.’

  ‘I see.’

  She paused. ‘It isn’t any good, you know. It isn’t any use my trying to pretend it is. I’m not cut out for that kind of life: are you surprised?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It isn’t only Iris. She wasn’t an excuse. It’s as impossible for me as it is for her. It isn’t only the climate; it isn’t only the people. The climate is no worse than England’s, and the people, they’re all right, really. They aren’t bores or boors: it’s the being cut off from everything that was my life. You can understand that can’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then you’ll back me up, won’t you, in September, when we thrash it out.’

  I laughed. ‘I’ll sit in as a neutral, or as a neutral chairman.’

  ‘I’ll settle for that.’

  But when September came, there was to be no need for my unwilling services. At the last moment Raymond delayed his sailing. There was a crisis on the estate. ‘If I’m not on the spot, something will go wrong.’ he wrote. ‘You may think me fussy. But these people are so used to things going wrong that they’re more than accident prone; they induce accidents by willing them. I have to be on the spot. But I’ll still be back in October for the big occasion. You know that.’

  ‘You see how it is,’ wrote Eileen. ‘Overdale alway
s first. But you won’t, will you, let this stop you coming?’

  It was, as far as the weather went, as perfect a September weekend as you could ask for. 1934 was as superb a summer as its predecessor, and the clarets of those two great years linger in our memories and on our palates as symbols of perfection. The ^sky was blue, with flimsy dove-coloured clouds drifting over it. The faded red brick of Charminster glowed in the amber sunlight. Ivy coloured the space between the bedrooms on the western front with red and purple. Chrysanthemums were in opulent bloom. The scent of hay was in the. air. There was scarcely any breeze. Eileen now moved very slowly with the assistance of a stick, ‘like a ship in full sail’ was her own description of herself; her face wore that look of radiance, when the flesh seems transparent, that women often wear in the last weeks of pregnancy.

  ‘I’ve never seen you lovelier,’ I said.

  ‘Isn’t Raymond a fool to miss it ?’ was her reply.

  Michael was the hero of the match. He went in first. He played carefully for the first few overs, then opened his shoulders. He was tall and straight: he had an easy, masterful manner. I remembered Neville Cardus’ phrase of Maclaren ‘dismissing the ball from his presence’. He looked as though he could have batted all the afternoon, but after reaching his fifty, he took risks that could only end in his dismissal. His grandfather was delighted. ‘That’s the way that the son of the House should play in a village game. Give the team a good start, show them how to treat the bowling, then leave them to finish the job: not steal the show himself.’ He sighed. ‘His father would be very proud of him. Damn the Kaiser,’ he added.

  Iris, too watched him with absorption. ‘Isn’t he wonderful? Isn’t he good-looking? But I mustn’t let him know that I think that, must I ? I must play hard to get.’

  There was dancing that night after dinner. There were a dozen or so to dinner. Those were the days of ‘dancing cheek to cheek’, but a proper young girl, though she might rest her cheek against her partner’s, was careful to hold her body well away from his. As I watched Iris and Michael foxtrotting together with an elaborate variation of trick steps, I remembered how six months back, in a shadowed passage, with the pulse of the carnival drums beating through her limbs and feet, she had swayed close clasped against a masked cavalier, with her head flung back, his widespread fingers straining her hips to his. Did the memory of those dozen minutes inflame her dreams? Did she recall them as something that had happened to someone else? They must be alive somewhere in her subconscious.

  Next morning she appeared in the hall, gloved and hatted, in a light grey and blue cotton frock, properly demure, her prayer book in her hand, ready to walk across the paddock to the village church.

  The old man was in a black and white pin-stripe suit. He wore a stiff white collar and a grey satin tie held in place by a pearl pin. He had said the evening before, ‘There is no need of course for any of you to come to church tomorrow. I have to go myself, naturally, because I read the lessons.’

  It was clear that he expected us to go, yet his features expressed appropriate surprise when he saw us gathered in the hall. ‘Eight, nine, ten, now this will be most encouraging for the vicar. He’ll be as flattered as he’ll be surprised. He has a difficult time nowadays, keeping his flock together. It was very different in my father’s day. If the grooms and gardeners ceased to attend church, they ceased to be his grooms and gardeners; and on Sunday evening a cold supper was served so that the cook and the maids could go to church—autres temps, autres mœurs.’

  It was a small Norman church, with a fine rood screen, and hatchments over a couple of sixteenth-century tombs. There was a family pew on the right of the aisle, with a wooden frame that allowed the family to see the vicar in his pulpit, the reader of the lessons on his dais, and the choir in their raised stalls. But they themselves could not be overlooked by the congregation when they were seated, though the tops of their heads were visible when they stood up. In the corner of the pew was a fireplace that had not been used since Raymond’s grandfather died. The old man read the lessons in a firm, unctuous voice that was quite unlike the tone he used in conversation. The service lasted for an hour, and was followed by communion. The old man whispered in a voice that could be heard throughout the building, ‘Don’t you bother to stay for this. I shall, as it’s the last Sunday of the month.’

  Raymond had told me of this vagary of his. There were too many communicants on the first Sunday of the month: on the last Sunday the service was five minutes shorter.

  The sun was high and the morning mists had lifted when we recrossed the paddock. The world could not have seemed more at peace. But on the silver salver on the table in the hall was a sheet of paper, folded over and directed to Eileen Peronne. She picked it up. As she read it, her expression changed. Her lips tightened and her cheeks flushed. She handed it across to me. A cable from Dominica had been telephoned. It was signed Raymond. ‘Forgive forgive forgive Plantation crisis Forced postpone return until November Deep deep deepest love.’ Her frown was eloquent.

  ‘He treats it like a joke. All those deeps; all those forgives. I’ll never forgive him, as long as I live. Never, never, never.’

  I remembered how her eyes had hardened on the ship when she said ‘He better had’.

  8

  Early in October Eileen wrote to me that Iris had a brother. ‘You remember, don’t you, your promise on the ship. I hold you to it. We’ll have the christening in mid-November; the third Sunday, if that’s convenient for you. I don’t know if it will be for the proud father, but I’m not bothering about him. He promises to be back in time. Who can tell? You know that old rhyme about hurricanes in the Caribbean:

  June too soon

  July stand by

  August you must

  Remember September

  October all over

  So I’m not unhopeful. Still, you can’t rely on rules with Dominica. At the very last moment... who knows, who knows ? at any rate you’ll be there. His name, by the way, is to be Timothy Alexander, in case you want anything engraved.’

  I did not have anything engraved. I did not want to give something that he would discard. I wanted him to have something that he could use all his life, something moreover that would remind him of me. So I went to my habitual silversmith’s, Tessier’s of Bond Street, and bought a couple of Georgian wine coasters. They were a wise choice; only a couple of years ago I saw them on my godson’s table.

  The fine weather of the summer survived the first assault of winter. The boughs were leafless by the third Sunday of November, but the sky was blue and though there was litde heat in the sun, the worn red brick of the house glowed in its gracious radiance. Raymond shivered, however, though he was wearing a heavy overcoat.

  ‘I suppose my blood has thinned out there,’ he said. ‘I wonder if I could stand a winter here.’

  ‘You don’t call this winter, do you ?’ his father said.

  ‘It’s arctic to me.’

  It was a small party for the christening. But it was six before the last guest drove away, leaving those of us who remained in a mood of lassitude. The exhilaration of unseasonable champagne had subsided. Sunday supper was two hours away. It was dark outside: there was a moon. It was not the time of year for an exhilarating walk. It was too early for an aperitif. None of us felt that we would ever want to eat again. We were faced with a ninety-minute vacuum. There was nothing to be done until we went upstairs to change into some kind of evening wear. The sensible thing would have been to take a serious novel to a deep armchair and doze over it. The least sensible thing was to start a serious discussion; yet that is precisely what Eileen did.

  ‘Peace at last. We can relax, and now, Raymond, we can discuss where we are going to make our home.’

  ‘Our home?’

  ‘We’ve got to live somewhere: not only have we got a son, but I’ve a daughter at a boarding school in England. She must have somewhere to spend her holidays.’

  There were four of us in the r
oom besides herself. Myself, Raymond, Margaret and Iris. We were more or less grouped round the fire.

  ‘You’ve had a lot of time by yourself, Raymond, since Mardi Gras. You must have thought this out. What have you decided?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘You mean, you’ve simply pottered round the estate.’

  ‘Pottered isn’t the word I’d use.’

  ‘It’s as good as any other.’

  ‘I was extremely busy.’

  ‘I know you were; and you’ve installed a machine for tinning grapefruit; but in the evenings, when you were alone, surely you must have wondered where we’d all be in a year’s time?’

  ‘I don’t believe I did.’

  She laughed. ‘And I’m ready to believe you. You were busy and you were happy. You had a succession of day-today problems to be decided. You never took a long view about anything. That is true, isn’t it?’

  ‘Well…’

  She laughed. She looked round at us. ‘That’s true. I thought it was. For eight months he’s gone on living in the minute, never looking a year ahead.’

  She could not have chosen a less suitable time for a serious discussion. Yet just because it was the worst it might have been the best. We were safe from interruptions, the atmosphere could not be changed by an emptying and filling up of glasses. We were suspended in a vacuum. We had a straight stretch of ninety minutes.

  ‘Shall I tell you what I believe?’ she said.