A Question of Upbringing (7 page)

I
T
is not easy—perhaps not even desirable—to judge other people by a consistent standard. Conduct obnoxious, even unbearable, in one person may be readily tolerated in another; apparently indispensable principles of behaviour are in practice relaxed—not always with impunity—in the interests of those whose nature seems to demand an exceptional measure. That is one of the difficulties of committing human action to paper, a perplexity that really justifies the alternations of comedy with tragedy in Shakespearian drama: because some characters and some deeds (Uncle Giles’s, as I have mentioned) may be thought of only in terms appropriate to themselves, irrespective of their consequence. On the stage, however, masks are assumed with some regard to procedure: in everyday life, the participants act their parts without consideration either for suitability of scene or for the words spoken by the rest of the cast: the result is a general tendency for things to be brought to the level of farce even when the theme is serious enough. This disregard for the unities is something that cannot be circumvented in human life; though there are times when close observation reveals, one way or another, that matters may not have been so irreconcilable at the close of the performance as they may have appeared in the Second Act.

For example, in the course of having tea for nine months of the year with Stringham and Templer, the divergent nature of their respective points of view became increasingly clear to me, though compared with some remote figure like
Widmerpool (who, at that time, seemed scarcely to belong to the same species as the other two) they must have appeared, say to Parkinson, as identical in mould: simply on account of their common indifference to a side of life—notably football—in which Parkinson himself showed every sign of finding absorbing interest. As I came gradually to know them better, I saw that, in reality, Stringham and Templer provided, in their respective methods of approaching life, patterns of two very distinguishable forms of existence, each of which deserved consideration in the light of its own special peculiarities: both, at the same time, demanding adjustment of a scale of values that was slowly taking coherent shape so far as my own canons of behaviour were concerned. This contrast was in the main a matter of temperament. In due course I had opportunities to recognise how much their unlikeness to each other might also be attributed to dissimilar background.

The autumn of the year of Le Bas’s arrest turned to winter. Stringham was leaving at Christmas. Before going up to the university, he was to stay for some months with his father in Kenya, a trip for which he showed little enthusiasm, his periods of gloom becoming, if anything, of longer duration and more intense. As the time drew near, he used to give prolonged imitations of his father’s probable demeanour in handling the natives of his new African home, in the course of which the elder Stringham-reputed to drink too much, though noted for elaborately good manners—employed circumlocutions a little in the manner of Lord Chesterfield to faithful coloured retainers envisaged in terms of Man Friday or Uncle Tom. ‘I imagine everyone in Kenya will be terribly hearty and wear shorts and drink sun-downers and all that sort of thing,’ Stringham used to say. ‘However, it will be nice to leave school and be on one’s own at last, even though it is to be one’s own
in darkest Africa in those great open spaces where men are men.’ It was arranged that I should lunch at his mother’s house on my way through London on the first day of the holidays. The weather, from being wet and mild, had changed to frost and bright sun; and we travelled up together through white and sparkling fields.

‘You will probably meet Buster at lunch,’ Stringham said.

‘Who is Buster?’

‘My mother’s current husband.’

I knew nothing of this figure except that he was called Lieutenant-Commander Foxe, and that Stringham had once described him as ‘a polo-playing sailor’. When asked what Buster was like, Stringham had replied that he preferred naval officers who were ‘not so frightfully grand’. He had not elaborated this description, which did not at that time convey much to me, most of the naval officers I had come across being accustomed to speak of themselves as far from grand and chronically hard-up; though he added in amplification—as if the presence of a husband in his mother’s house was in itself odd enough in all conscience—that Buster was ‘always about the place’.

‘Doesn’t he ever go to sea?’

‘At present he is at the Admiralty; and, I believe, starting some leave at any moment. However, I suppose it is better to have him living in the house than arriving there at all hours of the day and night disturbing the servants.’

This sketch of Buster evoked an impression of behaviour decidedly unsatisfactory; and for the rest of the journey I was curious to meet someone of mature years and such apparently irregular habits. When we arrived in London, Stringham explained that he wanted to buy some tropical clothes; and, as this proved an amusing occupation, we did not reach the house again until late in the morning; having
delivered the luggage there on our arrival. It was a rather gloomy double-fronted façade in a small street near Berkeley Square: the pillars of the entrance flanked on either side with hollow cones for the linkmen to extinguish their torches.

‘Come up to the library,’ Stringham said. ‘We shall probably find Buster there.’

I followed up the stairs into a room on the first floor, generally crimson in effect, containing a couple of large Regency bookcases. A female portrait, by appearance a Romney, hung over the fireplace, and there was a malachite urn of immense size on a marble-topped table by the window: presented, I learnt later, by the Tsar to one of the Warringtons who had headed some diplomatic mission to Russia at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Buster was standing beside this urn, cleaning a cigarette-holder with the end of a match-stick. He was tall, and at once struck me as surprisingly young; with the slightly drawn expression that one recognises in later life as the face of a man who does himself pretty well, while not ceasing to take plenty of exercise. His turn-out was emphatically excellent, and he diffused waves of personality, strong, chilling gusts of icy air, a protective element that threatened to freeze into rigidity all who came through the door, before they could approach him nearer.

‘Hullo, you fellows,’ he said, without looking up from his cigarette-holder, at which he appeared to be sneering, as if this object were not nearly valuable enough to presume to belong to him.

‘Hullo.’

Stringham took a step forward, and, without moving farther into the room, stood for a moment looking more than ever like Veronese’s Alexander. Then he introduced me. Buster slipped his cigarette-holder into his pocket, and
nodded. He had a way of making one feel remarkably ill at ease. He said: ‘It’s a blow, but I have to leave you.’

‘Aren’t you lunching here?’ said Stringham.

‘I am trying to buy a Bentley from a man awfully cheap. I’ve got to keep him sweet.’

‘Did you sell the Isotta?’

‘I had to.’

Buster smiled a little sadly, as if in half public acknowledgment that he himself had long since seen through any illusions once possessed regarding the extent of his wife’s fortune; but indicating by the same smile that he had learnt how to bear disappointment. Stringham said: ‘Where are you taking him?’

‘Claridge’s.’

‘Will you ply him with drink?’

‘Hock, I think. That is what I am feeling like myself. Are you coming to the Russian Ballet tonight?’

‘I didn’t know I was asked,’ Stringham said. ‘I’d like to.’

‘Do.’

‘Anyone for lunch?’

‘Only Tuffy. She will be glad to see you.’

‘Then we will wish you good luck with your deal.’

I was conscious that some sort of a duel had been taking place, and that Stringham had somehow gained an advantage by, as it were, ordering Buster from the room. Buster himself began to smile, perhaps recognising momentary defeat, to be disregarded from assurance of ultimate victory. Like a man effortlessly winning a walking-race, he crossed the carpet with long, easy strides: at the same time separating from himself some of the eddies of cold air that surrounded him, and bequeathing them to the atmosphere of the room after he had left it. I was relieved at his departure. Stringham moved across to the window.
He said: ‘He gets himself up rather like Peter Templer, doesn’t he?’

‘Have they ever met?’

To my surprise, Stringham laughed aloud.

‘Good Lord, no,’ he said.

‘Wouldn’t they like each other?’

‘It is an interesting question.’

‘Why not try it?’

‘I am devoted to Peter,’ Stringham said, ‘but really I’m not sure one could have him in the house, could one?’

‘Oh?’

‘Well, I don’t really mean that,’ said Stringham. ‘Not literally, of course. But you must admit that Peter doesn’t exactly fit in with home life.’

‘I suppose not.’

‘You agree?’

‘I see what you mean.’

I certainly saw what Stringham meant; even though the sort of home life that included Buster provided a picture rather different from that which the phrase ordinarily suggested to me from my own experience. At the moment, however, I was chiefly conscious of a new balance of relationship between Stringham and Templer. Although their association together possessed a curiously unrelenting quality, like the union of partners in a business rather than the intimacy of friends, I had always thought of Templer as a far closer and more established crony of Stringham’s than was I myself; and it had never crossed my mind that Stringham might share at all the want of confidence that, at least in the earlier stages of our acquaintance, I had sometimes felt towards Templer. Templer certainly did not appear to be designed for domestic life: though for that matter the same might be said of Stringham. Before I could ponder the question further, someone descending the stairs
passed in through the door left ajar by Buster. Catching sight of this person, Stringham called out: ‘Tuffy, how are you?’

The woman who came into the room was about thirty or thirty-five, I suppose, though at the time she impressed me as older. Dressed in black, she was dark and not bad-looking, with a beaky nose. ‘Charles,’ she said; and, as she smiled at him, she seemed so positively delighted that her face took on a sudden look of intensity, almost of anxiety, the look that women’s faces sometimes show at a moment of supreme pleasure.

That quick, avid glance disappeared immediately, though she continued to smile towards him.

‘This is Miss Weedon,’ said Stringham, laughing in a friendly way, as he took her left hand in his right. ‘How have you been, Tuffy?’

Though less glacial than Buster, Miss Weedon was not overwhelmingly affable when she gave me a palm that felt cool and brittle. She said in an aside: ‘You know they nearly forgot to take a ticket for you for the Russian Ballet tonight.’

‘Good gracious,’ said Stringham. ‘What next?’

However, he did not show any sign of being specially put out by this lapse on the part of his family.

‘I saw to it that they got an extra one.’

‘Thank you, Tuffy.’

She had perhaps hoped for something more exuberant in the way of gratitude, because her face hardened a little, while she continued to fix him with her smile.

‘We have just been talking to Buster,’ Stringham said, plainly dismissing the subject of the tickets.

She put her head a little on one side and remarked: ‘I am sure that he was as charming as ever.’

‘If possible, even more so.’

‘Buster has been behaving
very
well,’ she said.

‘I am glad to hear it.’

‘Now I must rush off and do some things for your mother before luncheon.’

She was gone in a flash. Stringham yawned. I asked about Miss Weedon. Stringham said: ‘Tuffy? Oh, she used to be my sister’s governess. She stays here a lot of the time. She does all my mother’s odd jobs—especially the Hospital.’

He laughed, as if at the thought of the preposterous amount of work that Miss Weedon had to undertake. I was not very clear as to what ‘the Hospital’ might be; but accepted it as an activity natural enough for Mrs. Foxe.

‘Tuffy is a great supporter of mine,’ Stringham added: as if in explanation of something that needed explaining.

He did not extend this statement. A moment or two later his mother appeared. I thought her tremendously beautiful: though smaller than the photograph in Stringham’s room had suggested. Still wearing a hat, she had just come into the house. She kissed him, and said: ‘Everything is in a terrible muddle. I really can’t decide whether or not I want to go to Glimber for Christmas. I feel one ought to; but it is so frightfully cold.’

‘Come to Kenya with me, instead,’ said Stringham. ‘Glimber is much too draughty in the winter. Anyway, it would probably kill Buster, who is used to snug cabins.’

‘It would be rather fun to spend Christmas on the boat.’

‘Too jolly for words,’ said Stringham.

‘Buster had to lunch out. Did you see him?’

‘I hear he is buying a new car.’

‘He really did need one,’ she said.

This could hardly have been meant for an apology, but her voice sounded a little apprehensive. Changing the subject, she turned to me and said: ‘I think poor Mr. Le
Bas must be so glad that Charles has left at last. He used to write the most pathetic letters about him. Still, you weren’t expelled, darling. That was clever of you.’

‘It took some doing,’ Stringham said.

In view of their relationship, this manner of talking was quite unlike anything I had been used to; though, in a general way, fitting the rough outline pieced together from scraps of information regarding his home, or stories about his mother, that Stringham had from time to time let fall. He had, for example, once remarked that she liked interfering in political matters, and I wondered whether some startling intrigue with a member, or members, of the Cabinet would be revealed during luncheon, which was announced a minute or two later. Miss Weedon came down the stairs after us, and, before following into the dining-room, had some sort of a consultation with the footman, to whom she handed a sheaf of papers. As we sat down, Stringham said: ‘I hear we are going to the Russian Ballet tonight.’