The Fatal Gift

by Alec Waugh

  It was through Robin that I learned the news that was to re-dramatise Raymond’s life. Robin, although he was not occupying an official desk—perhaps for the very reason that he was not—always seemed to get a piece of hot gossip twenty-four hours before anybody else. Moreover he always seemed to have access to an official telephone. It was on the telephone that I learnt that Raymond’s nephew Michael had been killed in action.

  ‘I don’t know how long it will be before Raymond gets official information. Probably quite a time, and then he’ll learn unofficially, through a paragraph in a paper or someone coming up to him in the Gezira, probably the wrong person, in the wrong way. It would be better, wouldn’t it, if he learned from one of us ?’

  ‘I think it would.’

  ‘From which of us should he learn it, from you or me?’

  ‘From me, I’d say.’

  ‘And so should I. I’ll leave you to it.’

  I had answered, without hesitation. I had a special reason for not hesitating. I rang Raymond through at once.

  ‘Are you busy now?’ I asked.

  ‘Am I ever busy?’

  ‘Are you alone ?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘I’ve some rather serious news for you. Would you rather I gave it now on the telephone or would you rather we met in private?’

  ‘I’ll take it now.’

  ‘Your nephew Michael has been killed in Burma.’

  There was a dead silence at the other end. I waited a moment. This was not the only piece of news I had for him. I had a very cogent reason for not hesitating when Robin asked whether he or I should break the news to Raymond. My special piece of news, news which it was unlikely that anyone else in the Middle East possessed, was in its way even more dramatic than Robin’s. In a sense my novelist’s peeping torn instinct made me wish that I could see how he would react when he heard my news. I wished that I could have seen how his expression changed, but for once my sense of friendship was stronger than my writer’s curiosity—it is not so often that it has been, and the fact that it was now is a proof of how very deep my friendship for Raymond was. He was entitled to his privacy.

  ‘I’ve another piece of news for you,’ I said. ‘I heard from Eileen three days ago. Iris is pregnant.’

  Again there was a silence at the other end. How had he taken this double shock? The silence lasted for fully ninety seconds. When he broke the silence, his voice was firm. Whatever the nature of the shock, he had recovered from it.

  ‘Are you dining anywhere tonight?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then let’s meet at the Mohamet Aly at half past eight.’

  It was a warm but not an oppressive night. It was good to sit in the open on that wide terrace. ‘Let’s have half a bottle of non-vintage champagne as an apéritif, then let’s order a dish that’ll go with a white Burgundy—they’ve got a good Montrachet here.’

  ‘That’s fine by me.’

  It would be more than fine, it would be very fine. I was living on my captain’s pay and indulgences of which I had taken as a matter of course four years earlier were now no longer within my means. I wondered if Raymond realised this; I questioned it: the rich as a class do not enter imaginatively into the economies that their less affluent friends have to practice. He did not think he was giving me a treat. He thought he was treating the occasion appropriately—as a funeral wake. I had arrived, prepared to leave the strategy of it all to him. Would he talk first about his nephew and his father, or about his own involvement? I was glad that he chose to talk first about himself.

  ‘Do you remember what we were saying about history repeating itself?’ he said.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘That’s exactly what’s happened, isn’t it ? Twenty-six years ago I was bidden to the headmaster’s study to be told that my brother had been killed in action. He knew, of course, that Margaret was pregnant, but he did not know how much I knew about the facts of life. He said, “This doesn’t make any difference to you as far as the tide is concerned, your brother was married. That means that he will have an heir. This is an hour of great grief for you because you have lost a brother. You have my sympathy. You have the sympathy of every one of us.” Then, as I told you, that young master spilt the beans. “Until we know whether you you are going to have a nephew or a niece, we don’t know whether you are going to be a Lord or not. It will make a great difference to you if you do become the heir.”

  ‘I’m in exactly the same position now. Is Iris going to produce an heir ? And do you remember asking me whether I was hoping that Margaret would produce a niece or nephew, and my saying that I didn’t care either way, that I was too young to appreciate what was involved, that I had never thought of myself as likely to inherit Charminster, that I was perfecdy content to stay as I was? I’m in precisely the same situation now, but today I know what is involved. I’ve never thought of inheriting a title. I’ve never said to myself “If Michael were to be killed . . Well, if one were the kind of person who could think that, there wouldn’t be much hope for one, in this world or the next, but now that the thing has happened, now that if it’s a niece this time and not a nephew, well, I do know what it can mean to me—what it can mean to anyone to be a peer and what it could mean to me in particular … it could mean a lot, It’s nonsense to say that titles don’t mean anything in England where they have a long tradition and a respected one, and where there is a House of Lords—the House of Lords isn’t what it was, but it is something, and if I had the right to sit in it and to air my views—well, I’d have a different potential, wouldn’t I ?’

  He looked at me as though he were setting a question which he did not expect me to answer. He was setting the question to himself rather than to me. I waited to hear what he had to say.

  There was a pause, a lengthy pause. ‘I know what people have said about me. I had promise. A lot was expected of me. I expected a lot of myself. I knew I had special opportunities, special chances. I wanted to make the most of those chances. That’s why I didn’t hurry. Others might have to hurry but I hadn’t. If I waited, the right opportunity was bound to come. But it didn’t come. I was getting nowhere. And then there was that curious affinity for Dominica. It seemed to solve my problems. But it couldn’t, how could it, an oubliette like that, and time went by and I was getting nowhere; it looked as though I never would get anywhere, that I’d missed the bus, as that ass Chamberlain said Hitler had. But perhaps all the time there was at work some hidden providence, that “divinity that shapes our ends”, which knew that one day I was going to inherit that title and wouldn’t let me get involved in a career that would have been hindered by a title. Suppose, for instance, I’d gone in for politics, as I might well have done. A title would have been the end of that career; it would have precluded me from the House of Commons—maybe that’s why I’ve been disappointing everyone all these years because I have been, I know that … it broke my marriage, didn’t it, that not settling down to anything; that escape route to Dominica … the daemon, the inner voice that guided Socrates, without recognising it as such. I’ve been aware of it, I’ve listened to it. I’ve never gone against it; I’ve heard it at all the points of crisis. I didn’t understand it, but something has always said “Don’t do that, do this.” Perhaps that was because fate knew that one day I should inherit.’

  ‘So this time you’re hoping that it’ll be a niece.’

  ‘This time I know it’ll be a niece. If it weren’t to be, then everything that has happened, up to now, would make no sense.’

  He spoke with a certainty that astonished me. He spoke as though he had suddenly and at last found himself. My silence took him off his guard. ‘Do you think I shouldn’t be saying that?’

  ‘I’m surprised at your saying that.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it be better for everyone if I did inherit ?’

  That startled me. For whom would it be better? For himself, yes, no doubt for Timothy Alexander possibly, but what about Iris, Margaret and E
ileen? He sensed my reaction. ‘Try and picture how it will be if Iris’ child is a boy,’ he said. ‘Iris is twenty-three. She’ll feel that she has to stay on at Charminster, because it’s going to be her son’s. If he’s going to inherit the place, he must get accustomed to it. It’s exactly the same position that Margaret was in, in 1916. But there’s a generation’s difference, and that means a lot, in his case. My father was in his late forties then. Now he’ll soon be eighty. That can’t give him so very many years; picture the place when he goes. A very young boy, surrounded by heaven knows how many women; his mother, two grandmothers; will they both stay on ? Margaret will, almost certainly, where else is she to go? She’s still in her forties, but even so her whole life’s been lived there. And Eileen, in what condition will Whistler be when the Japs have finished with him? Will he be able to re-start his London business ? It was a chancy business at the best by all accounts, an income based on commissions. And who can tell what the market for that kind of operation is going to be when the war is over ? He might find it easier to live on Eileen’s money. Three women under the same roof with an infant schoolboy. Three women and none of them in a position to decide anything. I suppose I’ll be one of the trustees of the will, but can you picture me interfering in that hornets’ nest ? As I say, those three women, and none of them with any authority. For the first few years there’ll be my father in control nominally, but will he be in a state to bother? Poor old man, this must have broken him, and then in a few years’ time there’ll be a schoolboy. It’ll be twenty years before he can assert himself. Think of those twenty years. It would be chaos. What a wretched start in life for the poor boy. No, I’m not being selfish. It’ll be better for everyone—not only me, if the child’s a girl. Did Eileen tell you when the infant is expected?’

  ‘January.’

  ‘Six months. I’m glad I’m spending them here, not there. I don’t envy them. The suspense, not knowing how it will turn out, and the general atmosphere of gloom. Poor Iris. This should be the happiest time of her life and it’ll be the worst. And my poor father. First his son. Then his grandson. He had transferred all the hopes that he had built round Adrian onto Michael. He’s nothing left to live for. He can’t start again with a great-grandson. My poor, poor father.’

  ‘He won’t let you take Michael’s place?’

  Raymond shook his head. ‘He always saw me the rôle of the second son. He was a good father, by his own standards. He was fond of me. He did his best for a second son. He couldn’t be expected at his age to rearrange his view of me. It’ll be easier for him to concentrate on Timothy Alexander. That’ll be what I’ll do when I go back. I’ll make him interested in my boy; arrange cricket classes at Lord’s. That kind of thing. I’ll try to make his last years as good for him as possible. Try to make him see Timothy Alexander as taking on from Adrian and Michael. That’ll be my role.’

  He had no doubt at all that Iris’ child would be a girl. Would he, I wondered, be very disappointed if history were to repeat itself again and for a second time the title were to elude him ? This time, however, his prophecy was to prove correct.

  12

  I was no longer in Cairo when the news came through. As I had foreseen in August, I could not afford to live in Cairo on a captain’s pay without exercising economies that would have proved, in the long run, humiliating. I should not have been able to feel myself, and I leapt at the opportunity that was offered by the formation of the new Persia and Iraq force, with its headquarters in Baghdad.

  The former city of the caliphs no longer offered the attractions and temptations that it had in the days of Haroun al Rashid. It was a hot and dusty city, with a climate that was considered too exacting for the feminine personnel of the armed forces. There was no indigenous international population. It was a Moslem city. I was assured that a captain on the staff could live comfortably on his pay. And indeed I was never to experience the slightest difficulty in doing so. Moreover I was to find there in a specialised branch of counter-espionage, work for which I felt myself to be fitted by taste and training, and in which for the remainder of the war I was fully and, I felt, usefully employed. My thirty-two months in Baghdad were for me the happiest and most satisfactory period of my military service.

  I did, however, feel cut off from what I had considered my real life. In Beirut and Cairo old friends and acquaintances were constantly passing though with news of London and New York. But Baghdad was off the beaten track. It had few personal attractions for the VIP. Robin Maugham was one of the very few friends who did pay us visits. He was still on paper ‘a gentleman of leisure’ but he was extremely busy organising the school of Middle East languages. Such a school was badly needed; and there had been already many tentative proposals about forming one. Such proposals had proved unfruitful, partially because those who were trying to sponsor them would have personally profited from the scheme; they were colonels who hoped to be brigadiers, and brigadiers who hoped to be major-generals. Robin Maugham obviously had no personal axe to grind. He would not be on the staff of such a college, and through his family connections he had access to high ranking brass. His low rank was no hindrance to him; in fact it was an advantage. It was easier for a field marshal to meet a captain than for him to meet a brigadier on equal terms. For many years the school of Middle East studies above Beirut has been doing very valuable work; without Robin Maugham it might never have got started—certainly not under such favourable auspices.

  Robin’s activities in connection with the school brought him to Baghdad more than once. On his first visit, he called at my office on the river, bringing as what he called ‘a belated Christmas present’, a leather-bound manuscript book. It looked very pretty and its empty pages challenged me. I began to fill them with day-to-day notes about my military peradventures, which were eventually published in a book called His Second War. The manuscript book is now included in the Alec Waugh collection in the Boston Universities Library.

  It was from Robin that I learnt that Raymond was the uncle of a niece.

  ‘Is he pleased about that?’ I asked.

  ‘Apparently. But he didn’t seem surprised.’

  ‘Is it making any difference to his immediate plans?’

  ‘Not as far as I can see. He’s got interested in Middle East affairs.’

  ‘That’s due to you, I guess.’

  ‘It may be. He’s certainly excited about the school. He foresees a lot of trouble after the war, in Palestine.’

  ‘I wouldn’t contradict him.’

  ‘Nor I. He feels that it’s important that the right people should learn all they can about the Arabs, which is what I feel too. The more we understand each other, the less confusion there will be. At any rate we shall know what the issues are.’

  ‘I thought he might feel a need to go back to England.’

  ‘He did, but only for a moment; Charminster is still his father’s. He hasn’t inherited anything from his nephew. What there was went into trust for Iris, with Eileen as trustee.’

  ‘Eileen should have control of quite a lot of money.’

  ‘As far as anyone has at the moment.’

  I thought of the peculiar atmosphere in that house; the old man nursing his grief, the schoolboy who would one day become the Lord and Master, the infant who might well live to wish that she had been born a male, and the three women, all in their different ways dependent upon an officer in Censorship who at the moment could not be bothered to come back to see them.

  A few days later I heard from Eileen. ‘It’s all very strange here now. The uncertainty is over. And on the surface everything seems the same. My son instead of my grandson is going to be a peer. That’s how it affects me. Though my grandson would have been a peer in a few years’ time, whereas most likely I shall never see my son sitting in the House of Lords. Margaret is probably the one whom this has touched the most. It makes her whole life seem futile. She had given up everything for Michael. She had done everything to make Michael worthy of the posit
ion that he would hold; which would have been her husband’s position, after all. And now that Michael is dead, her husband has no real part in the life of Charminster. I feel for Margaret; and I don’t feel any the less for her because I fancy that au fond she resents me—me with my four husbands, she with her one.

  ‘She feels I’ve had more than my share; and now she has nothing. We’re in a strange position in our relation to each other, both being the grandmother of the child. She said one rather pathetic thing to Iris—not in my presence, Iris repeated it to me. She said it before the child was born. “If you have a son you may feel an obligation to stay on here, because even in these days inheriting a title is something. A peer has a different life from a commoner. That’ll be for you to decide for yourself, but if you have a daughter, get out of here as soon as possible; your mother and I can look after her. You’re too young to be a slave. You must make a life for yourself; a life of your own.” That was very sound advice; and I’ll do my best to see that Iris follows it, but don’t you think it’s pathetic that Margaret should have said just that. She does realise now that she’s been sacrificed. What is she going to do with herself.. . I haven’t asked her. In one way there’s nothing to keep her here and, after all, she’s not so old; she’s under fifty and she’s still attractive, men like her still. . . She might well marry again; it’s hard to tell. Myself I’m lucky, I suppose. I’ve got my path clearly marked; to look after Timothy Alexander until the war is over and Derrick’s back again … that’s enough of a problem —we were only together for less than a year after our marriage, less than that really; and most of our marriage was weekend leaves, hardly a marriage at all. Much less of a marriage than mine to Raymond or to Mark. Mark, by the way, is very grand right now. He’s a major-general, in the Ministry of Supply. He’s modest about it; or rather I should say, he’s rather smug about it. “I had the good luck to be in a lift that was going up,” is his phrase for it. He has three children now; just got the third; he was clearly well shot of me; how less real my life with him seems than my life with Raymond. And it’s the same with Derrick; none of that seems very real; because I suppose he wasn’t as real as Raymond. If the war had come a little earlier, I wouldn’t have broken with Raymond. That’s funny to think of after all; I should now be about to be a peeress. Titles and all that don’t cut much ice with me; but it would have been fun to go to the Abbey for the coronation in those gorgeous robes. I made a fool of myself, I guess, but it’s over now. I can’t get any more on this air letter card so I’ll have to close. Take care of your nice self. I’ll keep you posted.’