The Old Man and Me (20 page)

“I see what you mean,” I said to Dody, “this needs careful thought. Let’s review the situation.”

“He’s awfully impulsive. He means no harm,” Dody kicked off with.

“Nuts to that,” I said, catching the ball and running in the opposite direction. “And nuts to he’s really a child at heart. Children don’t leave their wives to go off to India with other women. You remember what you said the night we saw that Bardot film? About how the wife kept getting a raw deal because she kept forgiving her husband and that made him think he hadn’t done anything wrong so he could go right on doing it?”

“Oh, that was just a film.”

“And this is just a letter. I mean, looking at it realistically, I suppose you are facing the fact that if you take him back he’ll probably go ahead and do the same thing all over again.”

“That isn’t the way he sounds,” she protested weakly.

“Oh come on now. Going by all you’ve told me of him it doesn’t seem possible he could become a reformed character in two weeks. And going by what he himself said to me—”

“How do you mean?”

I paused. “Oh nothing—it was something he said to me that night before he left. Of course he was drunk. Forget it.”

“No. Tell me. You’ve got to.”

I steadied my qualms. After all it was going to be the truth. And, back to the wall, I had my own castle to defend. Thank God for my excellent memory, I thought, as with scrupulous accuracy I reproduced for her the bit of our conversation about his wife not liking his Indian kick. “She thinks there’s something sexual about it. She’s damn right there’s something sexual about it. There’s something sexual about you too,” up to his asking me to come along to India with him. “And he’d only known me for about three minutes,” I added.

Dody looked at me dazedly, poor little lost satellite skidding bewilderedly between orbits, her head drooping to one side. “Yes I know. He’s like that,” she murmured. “What shall I do? I can’t seem to think properly any more. What shall I do?”

I received this with more irritation than satisfaction. If only she’d become angry, resentful, suspicious, put up some decent resistance, I would have been spared the false but persistent fear that I was taking advantage of her. After all, the thing to remember was how crummily Scotty had been treating her all this time. I was merely doing the right thing for the wrong reason.

“There’s only one thing to do,” I said slowly with great weight from a great height, “nothing.” It’s always easier to make people do nothing than something. Also, I was not going to run the risk of having her sit down to write him one sort of letter and end up writing him the opposite.

“
Nothing?
”

“That’s right. Don’t answer his letter. Since you don’t know how you really feel it’s the only honest thing to do, isn’t it? And quite frankly as long as there’re women like you—blind, trusting and forgiving—there’re going to be men like Scotty. Right? So that’s the word. Nothing. Let him stew in his own juice a while.”

Dody was delighted. The idea struck her as brilliant. I should have known it would. She was a little lost satellite but she skidded from one orbit to the next with great passivity. And so she spun off to Art School leaving me to intercept every mail—in case.

The English postal service is one of the glories of its nation. You cannot go into a drugstore for some popular brand of toothpaste without being told they’re sorry it’s on order and will only take ten days. You have to face the fact that certain telephone exchanges are ungettable from certain other ones without begging the operator to intercede for you (KNIghtsbridge and MAYfair weren’t on speaking terms when I was there). Laundry or cleaning might take anywhere from three weeks to three years. But mail is delivered regularly, sometimes four times a day. Londoners think nothing of posting their letters in the morning for their friends to read at tea-time. And their families in Manchester can contact them by the same method in the evening.

So there I was, sprinting back for every post. My morning sleep shot to hell. And all in the name of justice.

One evening before dinner at C. D.’s, while I was riffling through his mail in his bedroom and he was having a bath, I came across a letter that made me freeze in my tracks. It was from Lady Mary, containing more than a suspicion that she was in the process of getting herself unstuck from the Sean-must-be-back-in-Dublin-in-time character we’d seen her with at the Antique Fair (and who, I gathered, was a jockey) and might soon be pointing Londonwards. I put down the letter, reached for my bag, and took out a couple of preludin and thyroid tablets from their bottles and hid them in my corsage. Nor was I reassured by C. D.’s mood during dinner. He was irritable and fault-finding, flatly refusing all wines and spirits, moaning about his health and threatening to go on a regime.

After coffee was served in the drawing-room I turned to him and said very sweetly, “Darling would you be an angel and go back to the dining-room for my purse? I don’t seem to have left it there.” I had carefully arranged this so that while he was gone I could pop the preludin and thyroid tablets into his coffee.

“Blake will do it,” he said and rang for his man without stirring from his chair, the lazy bastard. Then after sipping his coffee he rose, stretched, announced “I am going to go pot myself”; picked up a book, and left.

Here at last was my chance. I dropped the pills into the dregs of his coffee cup, mashed them about and sent for some fresh hot coffee in about twenty minutes. No hurry. He was always a good half-hour on the can. What do men do in there so long?

When he came back I handed him his cup of coffee and sat on the arm of his chair. “Drink it,” I said.

“Don’t want it,” he pouted. “It’s probably cold.”

“No it isn’t. But drink it anyway,” I said sternly, “or you’ll fall asleep.”

“Ugh—” he drained the cup. “It’s disgusting. Why shouldn’t I fall asleep?” he grumped. “I want to sleep.”

“Because I’m bored,” I said, pacing restlessly up and down. “I’m so bored. Let’s
do
something. How about a fast game of Cat’s Cradle? I’ll get some string. Or a nice long chat about whose second cousin Billy Saxenborough’s third wife married?” I suggested, collapsing into a chair and throwing my legs over it. “Let’s do something. Don’t you English ever do
anything
?”

“We sit still. Sit still. Can’t you sit still?” I was pacing up and down again. “That’s a pretty dress,” he said in an attempt to pacify me.

“I’m tired of it,” I snapped. “And I’m tired of what’s in it.
And I’m tired of everything. I wish we could find something nice to do.”

“You are ungrateful. Will you look at that face. At the very idea of being grateful you put on your American-girl sneer. I take you everywhere. We’ve been out at least three times this week. What more do you want?”

“I want to go to a night-club. You never take me to nightclubs.”

“Nor do I,” admitted C. D., surprised at the idea. “They don’t seem to have been part of one’s life. I really wouldn’t know how to go about it. Let me think. I know, I’ll telephone Rupert, he’s staying in town tonight. He’s a great one for that sort of thing. But not too late. I’d like to get a good night’s sleep for a change.”

Eventually we went round to Sir Rupert’s, who gave us a batch of little pasteboard cards with his name on them, membership cards without which, he assured us, we would not be admitted to any of the really gay glamorous ones.

We went to three night-clubs in quick succession. They were sad and sleazy and awful in a way I’d never quite come across before. It was the sadness mainly. The what-went-wrong look on the waiters’ faces as they stood staring bewilderedly at an empty room most certainly on the brink of bankruptcy. One thing that went wrong was the night-club comic with his hair too long and combed all funny singing “There’s no business like Shoe Business” to “There’s no business like etc.,” and doing impersonations of King Kong falling for a butterfly. Another wrong thing was the young man with a guitar who sang dirty Scottish ballads about goats sleeping with women (Trad.). Another was the girl in tights with a stocking cap pulled down over her eyes and ears who did a totally inexplicable dance with the lights out, mostly writhing on the floor. And lastly, the audience—a sprinkling of debs and their escorts who jeered and hurled pennies on the stage as the acts progressed—they were awfully wrong. It was discouraging. How was I going to get C. D. hooked on this dissolute way of life—let alone how was I myself going to bear it? How was I going to keep him out till dawn every night, exhausted and spent and running downhill until the final—what?—how about a heart attack?—would carry him off? What I had in mind was some divine little boîte that had good jazz and a sensational entertainer; one that was dark, smoky, and unhealthy and served rot-gut strong enough to melt the mind, rip out the lining of the stomach, explode the liver, and curdle the kidneys. Or, if that was too much to ask, at least a place interesting enough to keep him up late. He went to bed much too early. They all did in London. I never saw such people for leaving each other’s houses at the stroke of midnight.

The fourth night-club was a strip-tease joint. I got us out of there even faster. I wasn’t going to have him going around with erotic images other than my own on his mind if I could help it. The fifth—an enormous one—had not only tumblers but ice-skaters and a ventriloquist. We left during the juggling act.

We almost didn’t get into the sixth. The man you had to pass before they let you in recognized C.D. as not being Sir Rupert and it took a telephone call and the intercession of the original card-owner and a year’s membership dues in advance before we gained access. It was called “Maretta’s.” And it was more like it, I could tell immediately. It was dark and smoky and unhealthy and crowded. The decor was tufted plum satin on the walls that looked like the inside of an old coffin but it had glamour—or almost. And it had atmosphere—for a London night-club.

There was a good dance band and C. D. surprised me by asking me to dance and then surprised me even more by being an excellent dancer moving lightly to the music with obvious enjoyment. Only to make sure that no one mistook him for my uncle
—or my father—I kissed him on the mouth as we danced. Were we not playing at Nymphs and Satyrs?

“Gosh, that was fun. I had no idea you danced so well.”

“It’s ill-bred not to know how to dance,” he said rather old-fashionedly. “Women like it. Is dancing a class thing in America too?”

“Here we go again. No.”

“No. I don’t suppose it is here any more either. My mother taught me how to dance and countless other airs and graces.”

“How sweet, how quaint, how too too gracious!”

C. D. was silent for the moment, staring at me with the sightless eyes of an old man who had forgotten who he was or what he was doing. “My mother was a lady’s maid. She was the personal maid to her Ladyship at the Castle. I was allowed in the schoolroom with the other children because I was clever. That’s the true story. Aren’t you even surprised?” He was no longer looking at me but rather at the goods he’d delivered plop upon the table.

“Lady Daggoner mentioned something of the sort when she was being so surly to me amongst the roses. Not a lady’s maid exactly but some dark mystery.”

C. D.’s face went ashen and his hand shook as he lit my cigarette. “You’re not playing the game,” he said grimly. “English gossip isn’t supposed to get back to the person it’s about. Half a century of trying to cover one’s tracks,” he sagged back into his seat. “Stupid of me to imagine I was getting away with it because they didn’t actually come right out and call me a liar to my face. I expect what’s known as my denial factor must have been operating very strongly.” He smiled giddily. “I feel so odd. What is it? My heart’s pounding. Or is it the lack of drink? I feel drugged. I feel quite light-headed. As if I should enjoy confessing all manner of things.”

And he did. His father the footman and his mother the lady’s maid. The new life beginning with the scholarship to Oxford, far, far away from the castle. The family emigrating to Canada taking with them the two trusted servants. His hatred and fear of women at first—his mother always correcting him, always catching him up. His bumbling attempts to become homosexual. His failure—not only because it was not his natural bent but because of his gradual realization that the Queer Set was the most snobbish and prying of them all. And so, aiming for solid accomplishment; studying hard: achievement. The double first. Fellow of Christ Church. The Professorship. The painful past receded. The present became almost comfortable. The surer he became the surer became his touch with women. Mistress succeeded mistress. Then the war. And precisely as he was trying to figure out how to bluff his way into a smart regiment without any credentials—irony of ironies, he was saved by his hobby—cryptography—the hobby stemming as did everything about him from his snobbishness and fear of discovery. His interest in cryptography dated back to all the notebooks he kept as a child and young man into which he meticulously wrote down the Done Thing—words, phrases, gestures, manners, reflexes (how his mother used to upbraid him for any slip)—all the minutiae that distinguished the Gentleman from the Not-quite—he wrote them all down in his own code in case the other children discovered them. And then, no longer trusting one code, he would invent another and another, until he became passionately interested in the subject—was finally considered an expert. Yes, wasn’t it ironic that this expertise so ignobly born and shamefully motivated should stand him in such good stead in the emergency of war, hurtling him into high places, carrying him right up to the rank of Brigadier General?

All this he told me as if in a dream, speaking of himself objectively as a third person. “Portrait of an Englishman,” he finished, “crippled by snobbery.”

“But if your friends knew all along and accepted you anyway, surely it means they didn’t care.”

“They may not have cared, but
I
cared. Can’t you understand that? You talk as if snobbery was a matter of logic. It’s not. It’s a matter of temperament. The pretence was necessary; I would not have wished to be accepted without it. The trouble is I don’t care any more. All of a sudden after some fifty years, I don’t care any more,” he said placidly, his face mellow, his hair shining silver in the phosphorescent light. “It leaves a void.”