The Last Houseparty (10 page)

The Professor, aware by now that he stood in no danger of Vincent attempting to take control of the conversation, had altered his style sufficiently to invite occasional comments. He was not a rapid walker. Had he been going round the garden alone (and therefore presumably in silence) he would still surely have moved with shuffling irregular steps. He had the gait of a man who in his own home is seldom out of bedroom slippers. Conversation slowed him down still further. Every few paces he would pause, perhaps to devote all his energies to the choice of a word or the flow of a gesture, or else, as now, to turn and peer at Vincent for response.

“At least it's worked so far, sir.”

“It has
usually
worked so far thanks to factors other than military—economic and to a lesser extent cultural. But the economy of Britain is like an old house, impressive from a distance, but full of intimate rots and crumblings, affecting the lives of those who inhabit it—the culture, you follow me—in ways that they do not perceive or if perceived they do not understand. It will be too late when they perceive what is happening, has happened, to them, for such a building though its decay may be imperceptibly slow, collapses when its hour comes with awful suddenness, so that win or lose there will be no rebuilding this world when you have done your fighting. It will have passed away. Even the lessons that you have learnt, and learnt so late, by your mistakes, will be valueless. Meanwhile …”

They moved on, with many pauses, through the Lower Garden, a more gently sloping area set with a number of mature specimen trees and underplanted in Victorian times with rhododendrons, now mostly through their flowering and in any case often having reverted to the
ponticum
stock on which they had been grafted. There was some variation on this pattern, but on the whole one passed through a series of mown glades of varying size, aware of the increasing height of the wall on one's left, though it was often hidden, and rather less aware of the Thames beyond the meadows on one's right. Even on this bright June afternoon the hummocky splodges of dark green rhododendrons seemed to cast thunder-shadows beneath the trees.

This did not perceptibly oppress the Professor. He began to expound the discrepancies between the purely military theory of the Wehrmacht and the social, economic and cultural theories of National Socialism and his arguments against the widely held belief that when war came the military thinkers would automatically get the upper hand. Vincent paced beside him, responding when invited to at only just sufficient length to show that he had understood what was being said, but without giving any definite signs of impatience or boredom. Gradually they approached the Great Lawn. It was necessary to get at least this far because Lord Snailwood, hearing of the expedition, had insisted with unpredictable vehemence that the Professor should see and appreciate the Rose Wall. Just before reaching it—indeed the lawn could already be glimpsed beneath the gawky branches of a belt of ornamental cherries, its pale width shimmering in the sun—they came to a small glade, almost an enclosure, close beneath the wall, up which a steep flight of narrow steps ran slantwise to the terraces. The cherries surrounded the place, several varieties but none having any visual interest except during their brief frenzy of blossoming, which this was not. In the centre of the glade stood a low rectangular plinth of stone, possibly from its acanthus pattern at the corners a remnant of the eighteenth century, having then supported some statue—recumbent, to judge by its shape—but now no more than a slab. Somehow its emptiness gave an extra sense of vacancy to the space. If there had been no slab the glade would have seemed simply a glade with nothing in it. The empty stone signalled the void, gave it a mysterious meaningfulness, as if it had been something willed.

The Professor appeared not to notice the effect, but perhaps the habit of observation was stronger in him than he let show. As they passed the stone Vincent reached out his left hand and touched it with his fingertips in an apparently casual gesture. The Professor made one of his frequent halts but accompanied it by actually stopping the flow of discourse.

“What is the stone?” he said.

“'Fraid I don't know. It's always been there.”

“You touch it for luck?”

“Well … I suppose so … oh, not really. It was part of a g-game Harry and I used to play round the g-gardens.”

“Games have great importance to you?”

“I've been lucky. I was born with an eye for a ball, so I've had plenty of fun. But when people k-keep telling you they're first-rate training for life …”

“You mean you have not found it so?”

“Well … I don't know. Not directly. But what you've been talking about—theories and all that … it seems to me the only thing that makes sense is to treat it all as a sort of g-game. Nobody tells you the rules. You find them out by playing. And anyway they k-keep changing.”

“And what is the object of this game?”

“There isn't one, as far as I can make out—apart from becoming a reasonably c-competent player.”

“And when your regiment is posted to Palestine and you find yourself patrolling between the villages of armed Jews and the villages of armed Arabs, you will be the referee, I take it, of a rather dangerous game?”

“Something like that. The important thing is we've just got to do the best we can. Provided everyone realises that …”

Vincent stopped, because something seemed to be happening to the Professor. His nods and blinks increased in rapidity and violence, as if he was on the verge of a fit. If so, it was a fit of words. It would be hard to say why a man of his experience should choose to expend so much emotional and intellectual energy on a companion so unrewarding. Very likely his excitement was not concerned with Vincent, but was a response to earlier stimuli—the discovery that the political clout of the Snailwood Gang was less than their pretensions, or some marital contretemps between himself and the enigmatic Mrs Blech, or even, as is sometimes the case with such verbal self-asserters, a semi-automatic pressure release like that which in nature causes a geyser to spout its jet of mud and steam with exact regularity, in which case the Professor was due to let off a great gush of verbiage somewhere around two-thirty p.m. that Saturday, and merely happened when he did so to be talking to Vincent in the glade that contained the empty stone.

“The best you can, the best you can,” he said, varying the note of distaste and scorn. “What is this
best
? An irrelevance because what you will be refereeing will not be a game, because even in the mind of the most illiterate villager the conflict is a conflict of ideas, while your
best
has nothing to do with ideas, but is the best of the games player, the graceful shot, the daring tactic, the sporting gesture, all purposeless apart from the game, the true definition of a game,
pace
Herr Wittgenstein, being the negative one of an activity unconcerned with the function of ideation. Ideation is as natural to man as breathing. Ideas are what he lives and dies by and for. In Palestine you are attempting to interpose yourselves in a conflict between two fanaticisms, but you are acting and speaking and writing as though these fanaticisms were the aberration and your impartiality were the civilised norm. But fanaticism, my young and peculiarly unknowable friend, is the norm whereas the so-called virtues of civilisation, the virtues of the games player, calm, phlegm, tolerance, fairness, respect for the customs and prejudices of other players, et cetera et cetera—these are the aberration. Civilisation, intellectual progress and so on and so forth lead not as you suppose towards your ideals but away from them, towards that fanaticism which feeds on the idea. I am myself a fanatic, because I am a Zionist, and Zionism is an idea. It is not part of the rules of any game, nor is the Arabism which opposes it. But you, you referees, ignore both Zionism and Arabism and propose to go and see fair play in a game you call the Palestine Question, promising yourselves that all will be well provided the players remember that you are doing the best you can. Again I cry, what
best
? How is this measured? Doing I understand. Doing is action. Action on the throne of ideation, the rationale of anarchy, because each action creates fresh circumstances in which action must again take place, action for this best, but never with any scale of theory against which to measure better or worse, and again you must act and again fresh circumstances surround you and again you act, always for what you tell yourself is the best, and never perceiving that in your trampling round and round you have worn a hollow in the ground and the hollow has become a pit and the pit has become a darkness, a darkness of your own making but one in which even you cannot perceive that what you are now doing for the sake of this best has become monstrous. At last, too late, a light shines into the pit, and you see. And then you hide your face and run away. This is how your whole Empire will end, in Palestine, in India, in Africa, even in Ireland—first you will breed your monsters, your Minotaurs of the labyrinth whose windings are the track of your attempts to follow the illusory thread of the best. Then you will run away.”

The geyser had spent its force. The Professor stood, staring at Vincent from beneath his fluttering eyelids, as if to see whether the jet of words had managed to dislodge one grain or pebble from his stony façade. Vincent smiled.

“'Fraid you're right, sir,” he said.

“Ah.”

“I mean I shall have to run away …”

He indicated his wristwatch.

“… They're just due off for Bullington and I'm driving one of the c-cars. Sorry to leave you, sir. It's been very interesting to hear your point of view. Look, the Rose Wall is just through there, sir, and you'll be able to tell my uncle you've seen it. It really is worth a visit, this time of year.”

“Remember, action is meaningless without the substratum of the idea.”

“I didn't have to think to g-get Sally out of the tree.”

“But she still has her terror of heights.”

2

The process of loading the cars disturbed the white pigeons. They circled the courtyard, waiting to have their kingdom to themselves. There was a wood pigeon among them.

“Stranger in your midst,” said Prince Yasif.

“Smollett will get him with an air rifle next week if he doesn't push off,” said Vincent. “He goes through the nest-boxes after they've fledged, too, and knocks off any which don't come up to scratch.”

“So that's how you keep them so jolly white.”

Vincent answered by gunning the motor of the AC, quite mildly, but the raucous little silencer made the whole courtyard echo. As if taking advantage of the noise the Prince leant closer and said in a low voice, “I'm afraid your aunt is offended with me.”

“Zena? Why should she be?”

“Because I refuse to play her game. I refuse to stay here and talk with men who are my enemies as though our quarrel could be settled as if it were a business deal. You know, Masham, quite suddenly, without telling you, a lot of people are going to stop playing your game. What will you do then?”

“You've more in c-common with old Blech than you think. He was saying almost the same thing to me only ten minutes ago.”

“Yes, of course. Enemies have their enmity in common. How fast will this bus go?”

The Prince's changes of role were extremely abrupt. Evidently he was still uncertain what part he was expected to play in the Snailwood comedy, and whether he wanted to oblige. Vincent made the engine snarl again.

“Wind her up to eighty,” he said. “That's not really her strong suit. She c-corners like an angel, and she's an absolute dream of a g-gear-box. Like to see? Tell you what, we'll let the Sunbeam g-go and then we'll g-give them the fright of their lives, passing them on the drive. Right?”

The Sunbeam was already moving sedately towards the arch. Vincent followed at the same pace and drove gently round the level sweep of drive behind the house. Then, at the first steep bend, just as the Sunbeam was disappearing into the trees, he double-declutched, roared the AC up the short straight, whipped round the next bend and accelerated out with rear wheels slithering wide and the gravel of the drive battering into the banked rhododendrons. Immediately ahead of them, like a wall across the road, loomed the back of the Sunbeam. Vincent blared his horn. Still in low gear and now almost at peak revs the AC rushed at the inadequate gap. Smollett (younger than McGrigor and always more tolerant of “the young gentlemen”, in fact often something of an ally in their boyhood campaigns) swung the bigger car tight against the inadequate verge. The AC slipped through. Vincent raised a hand in thanks, took the next bend just slowly enough not to pepper the Sunbeam with spurted pebbles, but then whirled away up the hill. Prince Yasif laughed. Vincent nodded, unsmiling.

“Wish I'd had old Blech with me,” he said.

“Why? Oh, I see … You know, I might have fun with one of these in the desert. I could hunt oryx from it.”

“You'd need a special air filter. I don't think she'd like the sand.”

“You shall come and talk to the makers for me.”

“Right-o.”

As Vincent slowed at the lodge gates a car showed up in the mirror McGrigor had put there to allow one to turn into the road with something like safety. He stopped and waited as the Jowett swung into the splay of the drive and halted beside him. Mrs Dubigny was in the passenger seat, laughing as she held a wide hat, quite unsuitable for an open car, down on to her head. Sally was in the dicky, laughing too, her eyes weeping with the rush of wind and her knuckles white where she clutched at the rib of the folded canvas roof.

“Better?” said Vincent.

“You're a magician, Vince. Hey presto—new car! Zena gone yet?”

“Just coming up the drive.”

“That's all right. I promised to get Joan back before she left. Now come on, miss—you're going to steer us down the drive, aren't you?”