Mr. American

by George MacDonald Fraser

  He had tried; during the first year at Wilton Crescent he had joined in everything - and been all too conscious of being out of it. For while he could make the effort to share her interests, he could not pretend to belong to her generation - the seemingly endless horde of young women, married and single, whom she had known at school, or in the nursery, or in Society (a word he was beginning to detest), and the young men who were their husbands or boy friends or Peggy's old playmates - Buster, who had been sick at the Lord Mayor's children's party when they were seven, or Jenny, who had fallen in the Round Pond, or Michael, who had given them all chicken pox over the Christmas hols - it was a well-laid basis for social acquaintance whose passwords were 'Do you remember?' and 'Oh, that time when. ..', and there was no true admittance for those who had not had the privilege of catching Michael's germs, or screaming with panic or delight when Jenny was immersed, or being present when Buster had vomited so memorably.

  Ironically, what made him feel more of an outsider was the fact that he got on with their parents very comfortably. Dinner parties which demanded a cross-section of the generations he could always tolerate and often enjoy, but for the rest he found himself accompanying Peggy less and less frequently, or absenting himself when her young friends and Arthur's invaded the premises; if they did not interest him, it was equally plain that he did not interest them - except for the three young ladies, bosom friends of his wife's, who had tried to seduce him. He had dissuaded them, with no great difficulty; what astonished him was that they continued thereafter in Peggy's lively social circle as though nothing had happened. He wondered increasingly, as men approaching forty are inclined to do, what the world was coming to.

  Unable to share in Peggy's activities, it was natural that, almost unconsciously, he should develop interests of his own. It was a casual conversation with Sir Charles, in which the baronet recalled his suggestion, at their first meeting, that Mr Franklin might eventually settle to an agricultural life in Norfolk, that opened up an opportunity in front of him. The Oxton estate, scraping along a little deeper into debt each year, was in urgent need of management; Sir Charles himself, though an intelligent and even gifted man (he had played an unobtrusive but important part in Lord Haldane's great military reorganisation a few years before), was no farmer, and Arthur, now commissioned from Sandhurst and serving with his regiment in Ireland, was in no position to help. Would Sir Charles's new son-in-law consider taking matters in hand?

  Mr Franklin had accepted, and was no way deterred by the discovery that the principal need of the Oxton estate was hard cash. He had enough and to spare, and Sir Charles was disarmingly candid about the situation, which was rather worse than the American had imagined. He had always known that the Claytons were not affluent; he had not realised that the estate was deeply mortgaged and that Sir Charles was desperately short of ready money even to keep it going. However, Mr Franklin could remedy that, and it was done without contract or signature, on the simple understanding that the hall and estate should pass to Peggy and her husband on the baronet's death. Sir Charles altered his will, Arthur agreed without hesitation, and that was that.

  Nor was there any dispute over how Mr Franklin's capital should be employed; he and his father-in-law might not be farmers, but they shared a common love for horses; the establishment of a stud was simply a matter of purchase, of hiring a competent steward and stud-groom and stable hands, of repair and equipment; within a year the Oxton estate, from going to seed, was beginning to revive, and Sir Charles and Mr Franklin could indulge in dreams of a racing stable, when they had the business on a solid footing.

  For the moment, if the enterprise was a powerful drain on Mr Franklin's funds, it kept him usefully if not strenuously employed, his time divided almost equally between London and Norfolk. At first he had half-hoped that he might wean Peggy away, at least a little, from her beloved social life, and indeed she did accompany him to begin with, but the country life bored her, and Mr Franklin concluded sadly that he probably bored her too. So their life fell into the half-together, half-apart pattern - which, Mr Franklin observed resignedly, seemed not unusual in Society - with himself spending ten days to a fortnight of every month at Oxton and Castle Lancing and Peggy pursuing her pleasures in Town or farther afield. He missed her unconscionably when they were apart, and concealed his hurt at the obvious fact that she did not particularly miss him.

  It was not, he knew, an ideal basis for marriage, and sometimes it saddened him to think of her married to an old stick-in-the-mud (which was how he increasingly saw himself) when she could have had a young husband to share and heighten her pleasures, some Buster or Jeremy whose notion of living was to frolic at the 400 all night and have haddock and eggs for breakfast before dashing off to a weekend at Brighton or a week at Biarritz, or spend the day racing and the evening dancing the Boston and the one-step, with a midnight fancy-dress party to follow. On the other hand, she seemed perfectly happy with the present arrangement, and that saddened him most of all. At first he had consoled himself with the hope that her social delights would pall in time; now, after four years, he could not delude himself. They were drifting wider apart, until he felt sometimes that he was looking across the table at a beautiful stranger who regarded him much as she regarded warm weather - something which arrived occasionally, and was pleasant enough to have around, but would not be unduly missed when it went away.

  Once or twice he had ventured, in a roundabout way, to talk about the estrangement which he knew was growing - even if it had led to a quarrel, he felt, it might have helped - but Peggy seemed to have no notion what he was talking about; the little curl would appear at the corner of her mouth, and she would turn the conversation with some light remark, or tease him playfully in a way that left him at a loss and feeling slightly stuffy. He found himself smiling ruefully at that, as he watched her now across the breakfast table, and she glanced up from her letters and saw him.

  'What are you laughing at? Have I got honey on my nose?'

  'No,' said Mr Franklin, 'I was just smiling contentedly at the thought that I have the most beautiful wife in London.' Peggy raised her brows and managed to convey a curtsey while sitting down. 'Well, thank you, kind sir,' she said gravely. 'You look extremely fine and proper yourself.' She went back to her letters.

  'And I was thinking how much I'm going to miss her these next few weeks,' he added. 'What time does your train leave?'

  'Two o'clock.'

  'And when do you get into Paris?'

  'Mm-m?' Peggy glanced up briefly. 'Oh, in the evening sometime.' She went on reading.

  'And then on to Switzerland. Where is it again - Murren? Or Les Avants? There must be something about snow and ice that has an irresistible attraction for the British - even Shackleton's going back to the Antarctic. Who's all going to be there? Didn't you say something about Arthur joining you?'

  'What? Oh, yes.' Peggy put down her letter. 'Yes, Arthur's coming over with his regimental team for the bob-sleigh at St Moritz. I expect we'll be there for a week or so. But it'll be Murren most of the time - the Stewarts are going to be there with a big party. I thought it might be a good thing if I had the car sent over, d'you mind? I could take the St Leger, and that would leave you the Landaulet in case you need it.' They maintained two cars, although Mr Franklin, a horse-and-foot man, as he called himself, seldom used either; there was the smart St Leger Cabriolet which Peggy drove, and the more imposing Grenville Landaulet 'for evening wear', as she put it, which required a chauffeur. There had been a Rover 12, too, but he rather thought Peggy had discarded it as not quite smart enough.

  'Sure, take whichever car you like. It'll make you independent, so long as you take care. I imagine the Swiss roads are pretty icy, aren't they?'

  'Oh, don't worry, I'll take chains. Perhaps you'd ask Samson to arrange the shipping. If it goes off tomorrow it should arrive at Murren a day or two after I do. And then hey for the snowbound slopes!' She smiled brightly and opened another letter, and Mr Frankli
n poured himself another cup of coffee. He had accompanied Peggy on her annual skiing holiday once, three years ago, and quite enjoyed it - the skiing part, anyway, but that, he knew from experience, was only the pretext. The real reason for going to Switzerland was simply to obtain a change of scene for the social round; the people would be exactly the same, and the topics and gossip and party-throwing and driving up to Sophie's place for a midnight supper and curling by artificial light in the small hours and dancing at the new cafe on some bloody snowbound peak which Buster had discovered, absolutely divine - no, if he was a stick-in-the-mud, so be it, he had no desire to repeat the experience of being a stick-in-the-snow. That was his own choice, and it was utterly unfair of him to feel a little twinge of pique as he recalled the sequence over the years. .. 1911: 'Oh, but Mark, darling, you must come! It'll be glorious fun, and we can go skating - well, I'll teach you, then - and ski-joring, which is when you have horses to pull you along on skis, it's marvellous, and we can spend nights up in these lovely wooden lodges on the mountains - just like your log-cabins, you know -and you can look out on the moonlight on the snow, and it's ever so cosy inside with blankets, and a log-fire, and just the two of us?' 1912: 'Wouldn't you like to come, darling? No, well, if you'd rather not . . .' 1913: '1 don't suppose you feel like coming, do you?' And now 1914, and it was taken for granted she'd go alone.

  Well, it was entirely his own fault, but he couldn't stand the thought of the frantic gaiety and Poppy going off with this French count to Chamonix, well she says he's a count, and old Boodle getting stuck in a snowdrift, such fun, and this amazing Negro banjo-player at the Restaurant aux Fines Herbes who does the most terrific ragtime, and the Stewarts arranging sledge picnics, and Peggy swirling through it with endless energy while he contemplated the Alps over a cup of coffee and wondered what he was doing there. No, a few weeks at Castle Lancing, riding the lanes, seeing how the horses were doing at Oxton, listening to Sir Charles and his friends discussing the ruination of the country, perhaps dropping in for a drink at the Apple Tree, hearing the steward's views on field drainage - it might not be everyone's idea of a good time, but it would suit him.

  He went back to his paper, and another instalment of those interminable stories which, if they could have been lifted into isolation in another time, would have been sensational, but which repetition had turned into the commonplace daily fare of the British public: a suffragette attempt to blow up a pillar-box at Westminster ending in a scuffle with police and four arrests; rumours of a great shipment of rifles and Mills bombs being successfully run from the Clyde into Ulster, where the Protestants were arming to fight against their incorporation in an independent Ireland; the possibility of a third Balkan war, and the likelihood of a rapprochment between Britain and Germany; rumblings of a plan among the unions to back any future demands by a general strike of all railwaymen, miners, and transport workers - it might have been last week's paper, or last month's, or even last year's; all these impending crises were part of the scenery, to be glanced at idly or impatiently before one turned to more interesting topics, such as Mr Orville Wright's invention of a stabiliser which would enable an aeroplane to fly itself while the pilot rested, or the reviews of the new spectacular musical Hullo, Tango! at the Hippodrome, or the forthcoming baseball tour of the American All-Star White Sox and the National League Giants. Then he became aware that Peggy was sitting staring at the wall, with a letter in her hand; he waited a moment, and then asked her if anything was the matter.

  'It's from father - Arthur's talking about resigning his commission.'

  'What? Quit the Army?' Mr Franklin lowered his paper. 'I thought he liked it.'

  'So did I. Well, he did, I mean - simply loved it. Until recently.'

  'You mean he's talked about resigning before? You never said anything about it.'

  'Maybe you weren't here. Oh, it didn't seem worth mentioning, anyway. Arthur just grumbled once or twice, and said that if certain things happened he might have to send in his papers - it was all vague, though, and I didn't pay much attention at first. But now he seems to be quite serious.' Peggy pushed the letter away impatiently. 'It's all this idiotic Irish business.'

  Mr Franklin frowned. 'Why should he want to resign over that? I wouldn't have thought he cared all that much.'

  'Oh, yes.' Peggy glanced at him sharply. 'Mummy was Irish, you know.'

  'No, I didn't know.' Mr Franklin was mildly surprised - not that there was any reason why the late Lady Clayton, whom he had hardly ever heard mentioned, shouldn't have been Irish, when you came right down to it. 'But how does that affect Arthur's Army career?'

  'Well, of course, Mummy's family were Protestant - Randalls, from County Clare, and terribly Loyalist, like most of the EnglishIrish. Her family took it awfully seriously - some ancestor Randall fought as the Boyne or helped to close the gates at Londonderry, I can't remember which, but he got knighted by King William, or something like that. You've seen his sword - over the fireplace as Oxton. Arthur used to play wish it, and he's always been terribly romantic, the ass, and been dead set against Home Rule, although I don't suppose he knows what it's all about. Lot of bally rot! Well, I suppose it isn't rot, really, but I don't see why he should get into a stew over it.'

  Mr Franklin, however, could see quite clearly. He knew, like every thinking person in Britain - which effectively excluded Peggy's circle - that she chance of civil war in Ireland was better than fifty-fifty. Mr Asquith's government, committed to Irish Home Rule, were in the process of putting a Bill through its final stages in Parliament, in the teeth of strenuous opposition from those Unionists who were determined that Protestant Ulster would remain part of Britain; Sir Edward Carson and his Loyalists were ready to fight so keep Ulster out of an independent Ireland, and for months she two sides, Protestant North and Catholic South, had been secretly arming and drilling for the day when negotiation finally failed. In the South she Citizen Army had been formed in response so she setting up of Carson's Ulster's volunteers; if Peggy had ever looked beyond the fashion and society pages she would have seen the pictures of stern-faced men in bowler hats and bandoliers, and the iron profiles of Carson and Craig against the Union Jacks and 'No Surrender' banners, or she news stories which estimated shat 100,000 Southern Catholics were ready to sake up she rifles trickling in from Germany and America. For any man in Britain who had Irish blood it was an issue not so be shirked; for a descendant of the Englishry, who had grown up playing with a word used at Boyne Water, neutrality would be impossible.

  'Well, with any luck Arthur's in she one place where he can keep out of it,' said Mr Franklin, 'and that's she British Army itself. Unless he has to fight the Home Rulers, and from what you say he won't mind that.'

  'Daddy says he thinks he might have so fight against she Unionists - she Protestants,' said Peggy. 'There have been stories about ... oh, what a lot of rubbish it is! Anyway, he's talking about resigning, and - '

  'That's haywire,' said Mr Franklin decisively. 'What - Asquith use the British Army against Ulster? Against the very people who want so keep is part of Britain? Don't you believe is.'

  Peggy looked as him doubtfully. 'Well, I don't know. It's all boloney as far as I'm concerned, bus Arthur's an absolute jughead on the subject; he really is - you think he's just a cheery great ox, bus you've never seen him all worked up. If he says he's going to resign, he will. And that'll be that.'

  'Well, if he does, he does. It'll be a pity, though. What would he do? - I mean, I thought the Army was his whole life.'

  'I don't know, quite.' Peggy chewed gently at her lower lip, hesitated, and then faced him across she table. 'Look, Mark, I'd better say it, because if I'm in Switzerland I may not get a chance until ... well, it might be too late. It's not too easy, though.' She smiled ruefully at him and pulled a slight face. 'I don't quite know how to put it, bus nobody else can.'

  Mr Franklin was intrigued. If he knew Peggy at all, she was slightly embarrassed, and that, if not unprecedented, was at least unus
ual. 'Go on,' he said.

  'Well,' said Peggy, 'in she first place, you've been terribly decent about Arthur.'

  Instinctively, he knew what was coming, and it was a relief. 'Being decent about Arthur' meant only one thing in their vocabulary, and they seldom referred to it. When Arthur had been in his later terms at Sandhurst, she question of his regiment had come up, and Mr Franklin had received yes another intimation of she Clayton family's straitened circumstances - is had come at the time when he was already investing heavily in the rehabilitation of Oxton estate, and in financial terms the shock had been a slight one, out of all proportion so the importance which the Claytons themselves attached to the matter.

  It had been a light remark of Peggy's about Arthur's graduation that led to she revelation. 'The poor old thing had set his hears on the Lancers, but Daddy simply can't run to is. It's a shame, I suppose, because the 16th was Daddy's regiment, and his father's, and goodness knows how far back - they've all been cavalrymen. And poor old Bonzo's going so have so make do with some Line regiment -whatever that is - and hates the idea.'

  Naturally, Mr Franklin had shown proper concern, and had learned so his astonishment that even in these egalitarian days there were social and financial differences between British Army regiments which must stagger an ignorant colonial like himself. He could understand that cavalry were considered superior to infantry or artillery, but it came as news that she income necessary to support a young officer was infinitely greater for the mounted units than for the common-or-garden foot-sloggers. Pay, of course, went nowhere, and Sir Charles had long since known that his meagre assistance would not keep Arthur decently in anything beyond a foot regiment (and an unfashionable one at that); even so, he would find it necessary to sell land in order to raise the necessary capital -'it sounds like something out of Jack and the Beanstalk,' said Peggy. 'Selling Daisy the cow to equip young Arthur for the wars - in fact, to equip him for hunting and hacking about the polo fields.'