The Fatal Gift

by Alec Waugh

  ‘You tell me what you believe.’

  ‘I believe that you pictured Overdale as your base. That we should spend nine months of the year there. We could either bring Timothy Alexander out with us, or leave him here at Charminster. I left Iris alone with her grandmother, so why shouldn’t we leave Timothy Alexander here? Iris has a ten-weeks holiday in the summer. Either she could come out to us or we could go back to England to see her. She could spend her Christmas and Easter holidays here.’

  ‘That would be wonderful,’ Iris interjected. Her face lit at the prospect of seeing Michael for at least two holidays of the year.

  ‘That’s what I thought you’d say, and that is precisely what I do not propose. I insist on seeing you every holidays. These next four years are your most important, the most decisive in your life. You’ll need a mother near you. I’m not at all sure that you don’t need me all the time. American and French mothers insist on being around. And they may be right. But the boarding school is the pattern now in England, for girls as well as men. I’m not fighting against the pattern. It’s as much an advantage for a girl as for a boy to do what her contemporaries do. But to leave a daughter alone for ten months on end, no, that’s too big a risk. You’ll agree about that, Raymond, won’t you, if you give it a moment’s thought.’

  Her voice sharpened. I remembered how she had said, ‘I’ll never forgive him, never, never, never.’ Her eyes were fixed on his. I knew and he knew to what she was referring. Margaret was in the dark, and so was Iris.

  ‘I see your point,’ said Raymond. ‘What are you suggesting?’

  This was the showdown. It was strange in a sense that she had chosen to bring it about this way, in public, instead of alone, in a frank husband-to-wife talk. I remembered how that afternoon at Villefranche she had insisted on my staying as a witness when she broke her news to Raymond. Was it a witness, though, she needed: someone who at a later day would testify on her behalf; would say ‘Yes, that is the way it was. I was there in the room when the scene took place.’ ? Was it a witness, or was it support she needed, an audience before whom she would be dared to show her strength; was she afraid that he would wheedle her into dropping her defences? Eileen was not the first to show a reluctance to face a scene with him. All those years ago Judy had begged me to break the news to him of her offer of a job abroad. Was it that women did not trust him? or that they did not trust themselves? The Greek tragedians had always insisted that the big scene should happen off stage; to be reported, not observed. Raymond appeared to have that effect on women.

  He was smiling now and his voice was gentle, almost caressing. ‘You tell me how you’d like it, and I’ll see if we can’t arrange it that way.’

  His manner could not have been more disarming. I watched Eileen closely. I noticed that the fingers of her right hand were clenched, though her left arm was stretched along the side of her armchair.

  ‘What I want,’ she said, ‘is something very simple. I want a base in England; I want a home for myself, for us, for Iris and for Timothy Alexander. Overdale can never be that for us. It served a purpose for us, once. But it can never be a home. It can never be a family base. If you’ll remember, I did wonder whether we were wise to buy it, but you said it was a good investment: you know better than I do about that; we can let it during the winter. The climate in the West Indies is at its best when the climate in Europe and North America is at its worst. We’d very likely want to go out ourselves every so often. As you said we shan’t have to rely on ships in a few years’ time. Aeroplanes will bring the Caribbean within a few hours of London. We’re likely to find Overdale more and more useful in the future. We may retire there in the end, but in the meantime what we have to do is to find ourselves a house in England.’

  It was said brightly, casually, as though it concerned a trivial project. There was nothing in her tone of voice, in the expression of her face, to indicate that she was delivering an ultimatum. I looked at Margaret. Had she any idea how much was at stake in this discussion ? The fire was smouldering warmly in the grate. We were in a small book-lined adjunct to the library, where the newspapers and periodicals were kept on a long table. It was used as an ante-room; where you read the papers at odd moments in the morning, before lunch or after tea: where you retired for a snooze when you felt in the mood. The fire would not be made up after dinner. It was an uncontentious room.

  ‘I see,’ said Raymond. ‘Yes, I see. Now where do you want to have this house?’

  ‘Within fifty miles of London.’

  ‘That gives us a variety of choice. We’ll get a stack of orders to view from Frank, Knight and Rutley. We’ll have a great deal of amusement going round them. You’ll enjoy that, won’t you, Iris?’

  ‘I’ll say I will.’

  ‘We must get a house that she approves of for her coming-out dance.’

  ‘You’re looking a long way ahead.’

  ‘Not so very. You’re fifteen now; this is 1934. 1939: that’ll be the year I’d say; or even 1938, or perhaps 1940 when you’re through with Oxford.’

  ‘Are you planning for me to go to Oxford ?’

  ‘Of course, if you are bright enough to pass your exams, and I’m sure you will be. Anyhow this house will be as important for you as it will be for us. For the first few years, anyhow. So we must get, Eileen, the kind of house that Iris likes. It will be a background for her, so that young men will think “That’s the kind of wife I want; someone who comes from a home like that.”’

  We all laughed.

  ‘You’re looking a long way ahead,’ said Margaret.

  ‘Not so very far. Not in Iris’ case. I’m pretty sure that within a year, young men will be assuring me that their intentions are strictiy honourable.’

  Again we all laughed together; he did not laugh himself. But there was a broad, benevolent grin upon his face.

  ‘We’ve got to get the right house for Iris as well as for ourselves. That’s why we mustn’t hurry this. We mustn’t take the first house that comes along. And that’s why I suggest that we should rent a furnished house to start with. I couldn’t agree with you more, Eileen. We must get ourselves a base as soon as possible. Then when we’ve once moved into it, when we’ve got ourselves settled, Timothy Alexander into his nursery, and Iris into her study bedroom, we’ll start our quest of houses. We’ll take it quietly. There’s no hurry.’

  This was his ultimatum. He would go a certain way with Eileen, but not all the way. As he had accepted the necessity for marriage, he now accepted her new arrangement of their lives, with Overdale no longer as their primary base. But he was not going to be dragooned into putting down permanent roots in England. He looked very straight at Eileen. She pressed her lips together. Yes, she had got his meaning. She had trumped his knave, but he held the other court cards in his hand. She accepted the inevitable. ‘That’s fine,’ she said. ‘We are going to enjoy looking for our real home.’

  Raymond moved quickly when he had to move. Five days later I ran into him in Bond Street.

  ‘That was a fine christening,’ I said.

  ‘I enjoyed it. I’m glad you did.’

  ‘And now you’re busy looking for a house, I take it.’

  ‘Indeed no, I’ve already found one.’

  ‘That’s quick work.’

  ‘Not if you know the ropes. I went into the bar at White’s and announced that I wanted to rent a furnished house within fifty miles of London. I’d had three offers before I’d finished lunch, saw all three that afternoon.’

  ‘Which is the one you picked?’

  ‘Bolton’s. Perhaps you know it? It was the Ramages’. Near Dorking.’

  ‘What kind of a house ?’

  ‘Modern; early Edwardian; imitation Georgian. Good imitation. Red brick: rectangular, three storeys. Youicnow the kind of thing. Easy to run. Eileen will love it.’

  ‘So she’s not seen it yet?’

  ‘No need. It would be a nuisance for her. She doesn’t want to go traipsing around t
he country while she’s nursing. It isn’t as though it was a permanency, after all.’

  ‘When are you moving in ?’

  ‘Monday week.’

  ‘That is quick work.’

  ‘No reason for delay. It’ll be a relief to the old man to have us out. There are bound to be some snags, of course. There always are. We’ll find them out soon enough. Then we’ll know what we have to be on our guard against next time.’

  ‘For how long have you taken it ?’

  ‘A year, with options to renew.’

  ‘And now you’ll start looking .. . ?’

  ‘For the house that is to be a home. Oh yes, I’ll get down to that.’ He paused. ‘But not until the spring. No good splashing about in mud. The English countryside in February is something to be avoided.’ There was a twinkle in his eye as he said that. I suspected that he had put that new house rather low on the list of his priorities.

  At the end of March I took him to the Odde Volumes—a small dining club which Evelyn described in Brideshead Revisited as ‘a surprising association of men quite eminent in their professions who met once a month for an evening of ceremonious buffoonery’. The members chose fanciful cognomina for themselves—Scholemaster, Paginator, Chymicophant. I was Brother Gorinthian. Guests were introduced by their hosts in facetious speeches that attempted to ridicule their personalities and achievements.

  Raymond was asked to reply for the guests, and he caught the atmosphere of the club at once. T have gathered in the course of the evening that the purpose of your odd fraternity is to provide yourselves with an opportunity of repaying hospitality to persons whom you would hesitate to invite to your homes. I am not surprised that my old friend, Brother Corinthian, should have chosen this way of acknowledging the simple little supper that I gave him many years ago now at the 43.’

  ‘Admirable, admirable,’ I said as he sat down. ‘I wish you were a member here.’

  ‘So do I.’

  ‘Why not become one, then ?’

  ‘I’m not in London enough.’

  ‘You’re here as much as I am.’

  ‘Am I ? Maybe I am. All the same ...’ He hesitated. ‘I’m going back to Dominica very soon.’

  It was the first that I had heard of it. ‘When?’

  ‘The end of next week.’

  It is the OV custom after the Introduction of guests to have a paper read. This time the speaker was my cousin, Philip Gosse. Specialising in the study of piracy, and having compiled a Pirates’ Who’s Who, he had as an Odd Volume chosen for himself the soubriquet of Brother Buccaneer, and the subject for his paper was ‘The Brethren of the Coast’, the original Buccaneers of Tortuga. He spoke for some twenty minutes, then discussion was invited. My own contribution was appropriately frivolous. I also had specialised in the subject, and had a few years earlier published a chronicle novel showing how a pirate strain had run through three centuries from the French émigrés of the seventeenth century to the contemporary gangsters of Chicago. I recounted how on a cricket tour organised by J. C. Squire, I had been correcting the galley proofs of that novel. I had intended to call it Buccaneer, but my publishers had complained that readers would be put off, because with that title it would sound too unlike my other books. Squire had interpolated, ‘Why not call it The Jolly Roger. Any of your novels could be launched under that flag.’ It was the kind of speech that was expected of an Odd Volume, and it was greeted with applause.

  A couple of other Odde Volumes spoke. Then Raymond rose. ‘In my island of Dominica, are to be found the last traces of the Caribs, a cannibal race from South America who were eating their way up the islands—the Arawaks were an idle race, and their unmuscled thighs were succulent—when they were interrupted by Columbus. The Spaniards liquidated the original Indians, the Arawaks, faster than the Caribs, though with less personal enjoyment. I do not know how the buccaneers discovered the boucan, the open fire over which they cooked their meat and from which they took their name, but I have sampled meals prepared by the progeny of the ancient cannibals and I have found …’ His speech did not last two minutes, but it was light, witty and informed. He told us something about cooking by the boucan that neither Philip Gosse nor I knew. It was a speech as much in the OV tradition as mine had been. The Odde Volumes had started as and in part still was, and is, a learned society. Speeches could be serious as long as they were scholarly and brief. Raymond in both his speeches had hit the right note, from a different angle.

  ‘That was really excellent,’ I told him. ‘I can’t tell you how completely you are the right person here. Do reconsider your decision.’

  ‘You’re very flattering.’

  This time he did not refuse right away. I pressed my point.

  ‘Why don’t you think it over while you’re away. How long do you expect to be away?’

  ‘Three months, four months, I can’t tell. It depends on how I find things there.’

  ‘Is anything going wrong?’

  ‘Not as far as I know. Not as far as I’m told, but the Dominicans aren’t very literate. And they don’t want to worry me: they want to run their show themselves and I don’t blame them. But I had a letter from Elma Napier that disturbed me.’

  I did not ask him what it was. I probably should not have understood it. It would have been full of technicalities about crops and soil conservation.

  ‘If things aren’t satisfactory, are you considering a cutting of your losses and a selling out ?’

  ‘Not unless I have to. I’ve come to have a very personal feeling about that place.’

  ‘Have you found a house in England yet?’

  He shook his head. ‘There’s always something wrong with every house we see; either the locality or the house itself. We’ll find what we want some day. There’s no hurry. We’re doing quite nicely as we are.’

  He did not seem at all disturbed.

  ‘Does Iris like your rented house ?’

  ‘Why shouldn’t she ? There’s nothing wrong with it, and it’s not a permanency for her. She’ll marry and go where her husband is. I’ve an idea she’ll marry pretty young. I hope she does.’

  I thought and I was sure that he was thinking of that last carnival.

  ‘How are you going out, via New York ?’

  ‘No, by the French Line via Martinique.’

  Next morning I made enquiries at the French Line offices. The Pellerin de Latouche, the ship on which I had made my first trip to the West Indies, was sailing from Plymouth in ten days’ time. The boat train left Paddington at half past twelve. I decided to see him off.

  He had not many fellow passengers. The French Line had only reserved two first and five third class carriages on a regular West of England express. Eileen had come alone to see Raymond off. He laughed at the sight of me. ‘So you’ve changed your mind ? You’re coming after all.’

  Eileen looked puzzled, also a little vexed. ‘You never told me about this.’

  ‘I’m only pulling your leg. Unless he’s suddenly made his mind up on his own.’

  ‘I haven’t, don’t worry,’ I assured him.

  I never like station leave-takings. In the old days ‘pourings on to boats’ in New York were an ideal curtain to a visit: particularly in prohibition days, when you knew that in a very litde while you would be on a bar stool, ordering a legitimate and unbaleful glass of morning beer. But standing on platforms is a strain not only on one’s nerves but on one’s ankles. The minutes dragged. Yet I was glad that I had come. I might well see it in retrospect as a significant stage in the Raymond saga.

  The big clock above the war memorial statue of the soldier with his gas mask at the alert, seemed motionless.

  At last the guard’s green flag was waved. We both of us gave a sigh as the train pulled out.

  ‘Are you lunching with anyone ?’ I asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then why don’t we go to the Savoy ?’

  ‘Why not?’

  It was a bright spring morning. The sky abo
ut the chimney stacks was blue. The air was cool but the sun had drained out the damp. The pavements were dry and the faces of the men and women who strode them briskly had shed the taut lines of worry that afflict Londoners in winter. Everyone seemed bound on a congenial mission. Eileen sighed as she looked out through the taxi window. ‘There’s no place like London. Why should any one want to live anywhere else?’

  ‘I’d expected you to bring Iris along,’ I said.

  She shook her head. ‘No point in her missing two days at school. Besides it’s better for her not to take a going away like this too seriously.’

  ‘Will she miss Raymond ?’

  ‘She’ll miss him less, the less we make of his departures.’

  ‘You put it in the plural.’

  ‘It won’t be his last.’

  ‘What makes you so sure of that?’

  ‘He’s got this thing about Dominica. I can’t see it. Can you ?’

  ‘In the abstract, yes.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘If a man falls in love with a woman whom you yourself don’t find physically attractive, you can say, “I can understand him falling for her, though I can’t imagine doing so myself.”’

  ‘Is that a fair parallel?’

  ‘I can’t think of another.’

  ‘Can’t you? No, I see what you mean. It is a fair parallel. And I’m in the position of the wife whose husband has fallen in love with someone quite impossible; there’s nothing she can do but wait it out.’

  ‘And take no action ?’ I put it as a question.

  ‘Exactly, take no action. If she says to him “We’ve got to do something about this” she’ll be putting the idea of a divorce into his head.’

  We reached the Savoy shortly after one. ‘The Grill, don’t you think?’ I said.

  ‘Either’s fine for me. Anywhere in London’s fine for me.’

  The Grill Room was half full: three or four men were standing round the head waiter’s dais. But I was a reasonably frequent client. I was found a table against the wall, near the window.

  I handed her the menu.

  ‘What do you not get at home? You’d better choose,’ I said. I remembered my lunch with Margaret at the Jardin. She had known exactly what she wanted. So did Eileen. Even though she had not known an hour ago she would be lunching here. ‘Whitebait,’ she said, ‘then omelette Arnold Bennett, a water ice to finish. I’ll leave the wine to you.’