The Fatal Gift

by Alec Waugh

  Three days later I was rung up by Raymond. ‘When can you lunch with me?’ he asked.

  ‘Almost any day.’

  ‘What about Thursday?’

  Thursday’s fine.’

  ‘At the Jardin, then, at one.’

  It was three years since I had seen him. He was out of uniform, in a blue pin stripe suit. It was faded, but its cut made him look well-dressed. His eye ran me up and down. ‘You’re looking elegant,’ he said.

  ‘I replenished my wardrobe in New York.’

  ‘Smart of you. But it’s not the done thing to be smart in London. People will think you’ve picked up coupons in the black market. Put women against you too. You ought to give your coupons to a female. It’s a mark against you to look like that.’ He looked very well, and he was in high spirits. ‘As a matter of fact,’ he said, ‘I’ve quite a number of new suits, ordered them during the phoney war, but I’m not wearing them yet awhile; one has to watch one’s step in this brave new world.’

  The waiter handed him the menu. He looked at the wine list first. ‘Let’s decide what we’d like to drink. Then we can decide on the right food to go with it.’

  ‘I feel like a rich red wine, a burgundy.’

  ‘Then let’s choose a good one. They’ve a Beaune ’37. It costs three pounds. That should warrant a steak. This isn’t black marketeering. They do have legitimately a certain amount of steak. The commodity’s not non-existent. It’s fair that their steaks should go to the clients who provide them with a profit on their wines. What use to them is a man who orders water? I’ve no complaints about the workings of this brave new world.’

  ‘And it is a good steak, isn’t it ?’ he was saying half an hour later.

  ‘A notably good steak.’

  ‘As good as you’d get at the Algonquin ?’

  ‘It would have to be very good for that.’

  He laughed. Through the beginning of the meal we talked of mutual friends. Who was doing what and where? Then he brought up the matter that was, I knew, the reason of his invitation.

  ‘You were at Waterloo when Whistler arrived. How did he strike you?’

  ‘As someone who wasn’t really here.’

  ‘And how did Eileen take it?’

  ‘A moment of utter shock. Then she put on an act.’

  ‘She would. That’s like her. And she’ll play her part through to the end. If he does recover, he won’t ever be able to think she’s made a martyr of herself.’

  ‘Have you had a medical report?’

  ‘Not a thorough one. You know what doctors are: “give it time”, they say. [There doesn’t seem to be anything definitely wrong. He’s been starved, but then so have several thousand others. He may have picked up a bug. But there’s no sign of anything. The doctors are right, I reckon. Give it time. And he has all the time there is. One thing about it, for me at least, it makes the next step easy. I was wondering what I ought to do. Now I know. To be honest, I was puzzled as to my next step. It’s simple now. I haven’t an alternative. Maintain the status quo; Whistler and Eileen can’t be turned out of Charminster. I can’t live under the same roof as Whistler. I must make myself scarce.’

  I had wondered how he would accept Whistler’s disablement. I should have known. He always had an eye for the immediate solution, the simplification of any issue. He trusted his own instinct; he had not hesitated on the terrace of the Welcome Hotel. He did not now.

  ‘Does that mean Dominica ?’

  ‘What else? I’ve been to the French Line offices. There’s a sailing in early March. I should be able to get on it. I’ve every priority, as a landowner. To find out how everything is I need to go there. I’ll bet it’s in a mess.’

  I asked him what news he had. ‘The usual news. Everyone in debt, an appeal to the government for a grant in aid. A temporary boom in vanilla. A scheme to construct an airport.’ He mentioned one or two mutual friends. ‘Most of them are still going strong. You remember Archer? He’s checked out.’

  His voice took on a deeper tone. He was clearly excited at the idea of getting back there. I wondered how Susan fitted into this new planning. He switched to Timothy Alexander.

  ‘In a way it’s a pity about him. But I don’t know. It’ll maintain the continuity. It’s not a good idea to have a boy dividing his holidays between separated parents. It makes him take sides. It’s better to have him thinking of me as someone in a different world. I’ll bring him out to Dominica one summer holiday. There’ll soon be a regular air service to Antigua. There’s an American base there and of course he’ll know that later on I’ll be coming home: though heaven knows when that’ll be. The old man looks in fine form. He may last ten more years. When the time comes, I’ll make the decisions that are needed. Live in the day. When you’re writing a novel, you’re not thinking about the next one, are you?’

  ‘I’ve a pretty clear idea what the next one will be about.’

  ‘And I’ve a pretty clear idea about what I shall have to do when the time comes. In the meantime, I have to deal with each separate situation as it comes up. I won’t pretend that I wasn’t worrying about this last year when I knew that I should be coming back soon, and didn’t know what 1 was coming back to. One’s stupid to worry; fate nearly always takes the decision out of one’s own hands.’

  He spoke with assurance. It is not so very often that one meets someone who is at peace completely, self-confident and assured—particularly at a time like that. A period that was not yet post-war.

  His temper was contagious. I began to feel reassured about myself, which was something that I was very far from feeling. The burgundy helped. Raymond poured the last half-inch into a separate glass. He raised it to the light. It was unclouded. ‘What luck,’ he said. ‘But quite often burgundy doesn’t throw any sediment.’ He divided the small measure between us. ‘I’m afraid I can’t offer you vintage port,’ he said, ‘but tawny when it’s good can be endured. Let’s have a large glass each with a slice of fruit cake.’ Ten minutes later he was saying, ‘If in twenty years’ time our doctors tell us to eschew vintage port, I don’t think that a good tawny constitutes a fate worse than death.’

  ‘You won’t get this in Dominica.’

  ‘Very likely by the time . . .’

  The headwaiter interrupted him. ‘A lady on the telephone, sir. Miss Susan Irving.’

  He raised his eyebrows. He rose and slipped past the table. ‘I won’t be a minute. At least I hope I won’t.’

  He was back in less. ‘As I was about to say,’ he said. ‘By the time I’m ordered off vintage port, I’ll be glad to have an excuse for not regretting it. Another reason for feeling grateful to Dominica.’

  He paused. He frowned. ‘She said that she had to see me right away, urgent and important. I’d told her that I was lunching with you here. She said “OK by that.” I wonder what’s on her mind? Well, we’ll know soon enough.’

  She was with us within ten minutes. She was looking harassed. She was carrying a briefcase.

  ‘I’m sorry to interrupt you but you’ll soon see why. Yes, I’d like a coffee, and a cognac. My nerves need steadying.’ She opened her briefcase and took out two copies of a new shilling weekly. The Clarion: she opened the copies, handing one to each of us. ‘Read that,’ she said, ‘and you’ll see why I’m fussed.’

  She had opened the paper at the column headed ‘Charivaria’. This particular column was at the moment inspiring constant comment. It was a gossip column: and frankly a malicious one; it was also well informed. There was a good deal of conjecture as to who supplied the news. ‘It’s the third paragraph,’ she said. It was headed ‘Peers putative and proper’.

  ‘Putative prose, I suspect,’ said Raymond.

  We read the paragraph. ‘Now that the social scene is being restored to focus, it is not uninstructive to speculate on the roles that will be played by personalities who on March 14, 1939, the day before Hitler marched in on Prague, no one had expected to achieve high prominence. No one, for e
xample suspected that Lord Gerald Wellesley would soon be the Duke of Wellington. No one could have presumed that within four years his nephew would have fallen in action and without an heir. Nor could anyone have foreseen that the end of the war would find the enchanting and enchanted Raymond Peronne similarly placed, through a nephew’s untimely fate, though still, in his case, waiting in the wings. What difference will the imminent prospect of nobility make to him? He has a son, so in his case there is no problem about an heir, but the mother of that heir changed her matrimonial obligations shordy before the outbreak of war. So that when the heir apparent enters the ranks of the nobility, Charminster will be without a chatelaine. Who will she be? Surely it is certain that there will be one. Raymond Peronne’s susceptibility to feminine attractions is well known. During the last half of the war when he was on the staff in Cairo, he was frequently seen in the company of an exceptionally attractive member of our profession. After eighteen months’ separation while she was covering the Second Front, they have met again in London. They appear to be inseparable. But so she tells us, there is no likelihood there of wedding bells. Who then will it be? We are all eyes and cars.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m terribly sorry,’ Susan said.

  ‘Why should you be?’

  ‘Because I’m responsible. I gave him the information.’

  ‘Who is he, by the way?’

  ‘I’m sorry. I can’t tell you … a professional secret. It’s not important. That isn’t important. I mean to say, the professional secret isn’t. It’s about you—this personal publicity and I know how you hate personal publicity. It isn’t my fault. Yet it is my fault. He came round to see me. I thought I could trust him. We’re both journalists, after all, dog doesn’t eat dog, but then you’re not a journalist. That’s what I hadn’t realised—I could trust him as regards myself, and after all he didn’t mention me by name. He had a gossip with me and I told him about us. I never dreamed he would use it in that way; when I saw the new issue an hour ago—it won’t be out till tomorrow: you do realise that? If you feel too strongly, I could stop it; even at this late hour. It isn’t impossible. It could be done. You do see … you must

  Raymond checked her. ‘It doesn’t matter, nothing could matter less. Calm down, calm down … Here’s your cognac sip it and compose yourself. Alec and I were talking about old times. Relax, enjoy yourself.’

  His eyes were twinkling. He was completely self-composed. He was not putting on an act.

  ‘Do you realise,’ he said, ‘that this is the first time the three of us have ever been together? Let’s make the most of it. Relax, have fun.’

  We did. He had a contagious composure. He was obviously undisturbed. He and I were in the afterglow of a dry martini, a bottle of Beaune and a double port. Cognac was creating for her a common multiple with us. We were soon chattering and gossiping about the Middle East; having the best of times. There was no strain. ‘They are a team,’ I thought. Time passed. The restaurant emptied. The waiters were starting to look restive. Raymond signalled for his bill. ‘This has been fun,’ he said. ‘We must have another party soon.’

  He looked at the bill carefully. ‘Always as well to check these things,’ he said. ‘If you don’t, you’re putting temptation in their way, encouraging them to put on that extra brandy that you haven’t had. It isn’t fair to them, and in the long run it harms oneself. They harbour a grievance against one because they’ve swindled one. It seems all right this time.’

  I had watched Susan as he talked. I was puzzled by the expression on her face. I could not diagnose it.

  ‘You’re really not angry about that paragraph?’ she said.

  ‘Heavens no, why should I be?’

  ‘I wondered . . . oh, I don’t know. You seem to set so much store by privacy.’

  ‘I do, but I don’t call a paragraph like that an invasion of it. It’s so badly written and so silly. So silly that one’s tempted to ring those wedding bells, just to prove the man’s an ass, but I was never one for cutting off my nose to spite my face.’

  ‘So you see,’ she was saying to me two days later in my White House flat, ‘it’s quite impossible.’

  She had rung me up that same evening. ‘I’ve got to talk to you. I’ve got to explain.’

  Here was the explanation. ‘You see how impossible he is,’ she said.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t see it at all. In what way impossible?’

  ‘It’s obvious, I’d have thought.’

  ‘It’s not to me.’

  ‘Oh surely … his … well, what’s the word—imperturbability … that’s as good as any. He can’t be shaken out of it. You must see that.’

  ‘I might; if I wasn’t in the dark.’

  ‘Oh you, you’re as impossible as he is. Even that paragraph didn’t work the trick. You realise that I wrote it, don’t you?’

  ‘Of course I don’t.’

  ‘You don’t? Then you’re as obtuse as he is. It was my last attempt to bring things to a head.’

  ‘What things to what head ?’

  ‘Him and me, of course; we’re headed nowhere. We’re back to where we were three years ago in Cairo.’ ‘What’s wrong with that?’

  ‘Everything. That’s what I tried to explain to you in Baghdad. What’s all right in Cairo in wartime, isn’t all right in London in peacetime. Then you couldn’t look ahead. Now you have to look ahead. You must be able to answer the question “where shall I be in two years’ time?” ’

  ‘But you cabled me that everything was wonderful.’

  ‘So it was, to start with. We picked up the threads exactly where we’d dropped them. I was so afraid we wouldn’t; that so much had happened to us both that we’d be different people. But we weren’t. We arranged to dine. He asked me to have a drink first. Before we were half-way through our drinks we were in bed. We never did get out to dinner. It was exactly the way it was. First thing next morning I fired you that cable. I was so happy, so fulfilled, so thrilled. The whole world was changed: the war was over; a new life was starting, a rich, rare future was beginning and then . . .’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘There was no then. It was just the same; exactly as it was in Cairo. And the days went by and nothing happened.’

  ‘What did you expect to happen ?’

  ‘I don’t know; but I expected us to talk about it; to plan a future, discuss a pattern for ourselves, assume that we meant something special to each other; I don’t mean marriage necessarily, but we’d say something some time about” why we didn’t marry.’

  ‘You’ve been seeing each other pretty often?’

  ‘Two or three times a week and on days when we don’t see each other, we telephone. We always know what we are doing. That’s how I know that you were lunching together, and at the Jardin. That’s when the idea of that paragraph occurred to me.’

  ‘I had no idea you wrote that column.’

  ‘Not more than half a dozen people do. And I don’t do all of it. Not by any means. There are five of us, and we’ve worked out that distinctive style. It’s ghastly, isn’t it? Raymond was quite right. Every Monday we have a lunch together; and plan our column. How we laugh over it. They were delighted with that paragraph.’

  ‘What effect did you expect from it ?’

  ‘I didn’t know. But it would have some effect, I was sure of that, and I wanted to have you as a witness.’

  ‘What was the idea of that?’

  ‘I can’t be sure; but I wanted someone who’d been in at the start to be in at the finish.’

  I remembered how Judy had wanted me to break the news about her assignment and how Eileen had insisted on my remaining on the terrace at Villefranche when she broke the news of her divorce. There was something about Raymond that made women reluctant to have a direct showdown with him. They wanted someone else to break the news, or they wanted a witness. Judy, Eileen and now Susan. What was it in Raymond that produced this effect in women? Susan had used the word ‘imperturbability’
. Not a definitive word, in this case; and one with which she was not satisfied herself. I repeated my question. ‘Did your bombshell have the effect you wanted?’

  ‘It showed me where I stood.’

  ‘And where do you stand ?’

  ‘Not here; not any longer. I’m getting out.’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘South Africa. I’ve got an assignment from the paper.’

  ‘Have you warned Raymond?’

  ‘Not yet, and I don’t suppose I shall. If that paragraph didn’t galvanise him into action, nothing will. One day he’ll telephone and there’ll be no answer. Then a week later he’ll get an air letter card with a South African stamp on it.’

  ‘It’ll probably catch up with him in Dominica, three months later.’

  She laughed at that, a little ruefully. ‘I wish it hadn’t to be this way,’ she said. ‘It’s all been fun, and glamorous. He’s such good company. He makes everything more enjoyable. I really love him, but when I think how much I could have loved him if he’d let me. It wasn’t that he held me off, but that so much of him wasn’t there. I wish I knew what makes him tick, in what’s called “that way”.’

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t help you there. I am as much in the dark as you are. As I’ve told you, he doesn’t talk about himself.’ It was indeed five years before I got a clue as to what it was that ‘in that way’ made him tick.

  13

  Though Raymond was to come little to England during those five years, I was to see him regularly. The development of the Pan American and the BOAG air networks created a tourist boom in the Caribbean which I exploited professionally with articles and short stories. I was one of the first in the field and my pre-war experience of the area gave me a start over my competitors. I concentrated upon the smaller islands, and because of Raymond’s presence there I specialised in Dominica. He was there half the year.