Chapter Five

 

In the drawing-room, when dinner was over, Jim and Susan settled down to chess, while the others grouped themselves around the fire.  Fascinated, Sebastian looked on, while his Uncle Eustace lighted the massive Romeo and Juliet which, knowing Alice's principles and Fred's economical habits, he had prudently brought with him.  First the ritual of piercing; then, as he raised the cigar to his mouth, the smile of happy anticipation.  Damply, lovingly, the lips closed over the butt; the match was ignited; he pulled at the flame.  And suddenly Sebastian was reminded of his cousin Marjorie's baby, nuzzling with blind concupiscence for the nipple, seizing it at last between the soft prehensile flaps of its little mouth and working away, working away in a noiseless frenzy of enjoyment.  True, Uncle Eustace had rather better manners; and in this case the nipple was coffee-coloured and six inches long.  Images floated up before his mind's eye; words, grotesque and mock-heroic, started to arrange themselves:

 

                                             Old but an infant, mouthing with lustful lip

                                             The wet brown teat, incarnate where he sucks,

                                             Of some imaginary, largest Queen

                                             Of all the Hottentots ...

 

He was interrupted by the sudden opening and then the slam of the door.  John Barnack entered the room, and strode over to where Mrs Poulshot was sitting on the sofa.

      'Sorry I couldn't be with you for dinner,' he said, laying his hand on her shoulder.  'But it was my only chance of seeing Cacciaguida.  Who tells me, by the way,' he added, turning to his brother, 'that Mussolini has definitely got cancer of the throat.'

      Eustace took the tobacco-teat from between his lips and smiled indulgently.

      'It's the throat this time, is it?  My anti-fascists seem to prefer the liver.'

      John Barnack was offended, but made an effort not to show it.

      Cacciaguida has very reliable sources of information,' he said a little stiffly.

      'Don't I remember somebody saying something about wishes being fathers to thoughts?' Eustace asked with exasperating mildness.

      'Of course you do,' said John.  'You remember it because you need an excuse for disparaging a great political cause and belittling its heroes.'  He spoke in his usual measured and perfectly articulated style, but in a tone that betrayed his inner feelings by being a trifle louder and more vibrant than usual.  'Cynical realism - it's the intelligent man's best excuse for doing nothing in an intolerable situation.'

      Alice Poulshot glanced from one to the other and wished to goodness that her two brothers didn't have to quarrel every time they met.  Why couldn't John just accept the fact that Eustace was a bit of an old pig, and have done with it?  But, no; he always lost his temper in that awful suppressed way of his, and then pretended it was moral indignation.  And on his side Eustace deliberately provoked the explosions by waving political red rags and throwing poisoned darts.  They were really incorrigible.

      'King Log or King Stork?' Eustace was saying blandly.  'I'm for dear old Log every time.  Just keeping out of mischief - it's the greatest of all the virtues.'

      Standing there by the fireplace, his arms hanging by his sides, his feet apart, his body very straight and tense, in the posture of an athlete poised on the brink of action, John Barnack looked down at his brother with the calm unwavering regard which, in the law courts, he reserved for hostile witnesses and prevaricating defendants.  It was a look which, even when directed on someone else, filled Sebastian with a shrinking terror.  But Eustace merely let himself sink more deeply into the upholstery of the sofa.  Closing his eyes, he tenderly kissed the end of his cigar and sucked.

      'And you imagine, I suppose,' said John Barnack after a long silence, 'that you're one of the great exponents of that virtue?'

      Eustace blew out of a cloud of aromatic smoke, and answered that he did his best.

      'You do your best,' John repeated.  'But I believe you've got a comfortable holding in the Yangtze and South China Bank?'

      Eustace nodded.

      'And along with the right to fatten on exploitation in China and Japan, a lot of jute shares - isn't that so?'

      'Very nice shares too,' said Eustace.

      'Very nice indeed.  Thirty per cent even in a bad year.  Earned for you by Indians who are getting paid a daily wage that wouldn't buy more than a third of one of your cigars.'

      Mr Poulshot, who had sat in gloomy silence, disregarded by all, startlingly broke into the conversation.

      'They were all right until the agitators got to work on them,' he said.  'Organizing unions, stirring up trouble against the owners.  They ought to be shot.  Yes, they ought to be shot!' he repeated with ferocious emphasis.

      John Barnack smiled ironically.

      'Don't you worry, Fred.  The City of London will see to it.'

      'What are you talking about?' said Alice irritably.  'The City of London isn't in India.'

      'No; but its agents are.  And they're the fellows with the machine-guns.  Fred's agitators will duly get shot, and Eustace here will go on keeping out of mischief - keeping out of it with all the inimitable grace we've learnt to admire in him.'

      There was a silence.  Sebastian, who had dearly hoped to see his father discomfited, glanced miserably in the direction of his uncle.  But instead of sitting there crushed and dejected, Eustace was heaving with noiseless laughter.

      'Admirable!' he cried, when he had recovered breath enough to speak.  'Quite admirable!  And now, John, you should drop the sarcasm and give them five minutes of simple pathos and indignation; five heart-warming minutes of straightforward manly sentiment.  After which the jury finds me guilty without even leaving the box, and adds a rider recommending that counsel for the plaintiffs be appointed Tribune of the People.  Tribune of the People,' he repeated sonorously.  'All in classical fancy dress.  And, by the way, what's the technical name for that noble Roman toga that political gentlemen drape over the will-to-power when they want to make it look respectable?  You know that, don't you, Sebastian?'  And when Sebastian shook his head, 'Goodness,' he exclaimed, 'what do they teach you nowadays?  Why, its technical name is Idealism.  Yes, my dear,' he went on, addressing himself to Susan, who had looked up, startled, from her game of chess, 'that was what I said: Idealism.'

      John Barnack yawned ostentatiously behind his hand.

      'One gets a bit bored with this kind of cheap seventeenth-century psychology,' he said.

      'And now tell us,' said Eustace. 'What do you expect to get when the right people come into power?  The Attorney-Generalship, I suppose.'

      'Now, Eustace,' said Mrs Poulshot firmly, 'that's enough.'

      'Enough?' Eustace repeated in a tone of mock-outrage.  'You think it's enough - a piddling little Attorney-Generalship?  My dear, you underrate your brother.   But now, John,' he added, in another tone, 'let's get down to more serious matters.  I don't know what your plans are; but whatever happens, I've got to leave for Florence tomorrow.  I'm expecting my mother-in-law on Tuesday.'

      'Old Mrs Gamble?'  Alice looked up from her knitting in surprise.  'Do you mean to say she still travels about Europe?  At her age?'

      'Eighty-six,' said Eustace, 'and, except for being pretty well blind with cataract, as fit as a fiddle.'

      'Goodness!' exclaimed Mrs Poulshot.  'I do hope I don't have to hang on as long as that!'  She shook her head emphatically, appalled by the thought of thirty-one more years of housekeeping, and Fred's black moods, and the utter pointlessness of everything.

      Eustace turned back to his brother.

      'And when do you two intend to start?'

      'Next Thursday.  But we spend a night in Turin.  I have to get in touch with some of Cacciaguida's people,' John explained.

      'Then you'll deliver Sebastian to me on Saturday?'

      'Or rather he'll deliver himself.  I'm getting off the train at Genoa.'

      'Oh, you don't deign to come yourself?'

      John Barnack shook his head.  The boat was leaving Genoa that same evening.  He'd be in Egypt for three or four weeks.  Then his paper wanted him to report on the condition of the natives in Kenya and Tanganyika.

      'And while you're about it,' said Eustace, 'do find out why my East African coffee shares aren't doing better?'

      'I can tell you here and now,' his brother answered.  'A few years ago there was a lot of money in coffee.  Result: millions of acres of new plantations, with all the Gadarene swine of London and Paris and Amsterdam and New York rushing down a steep place into coffee investments.  Now there's such a surplus of beans, and the price is so low, that even sweated black labour can't give you a dividend.'

      'Too bad!'

      'You think so?  Wait till your keeping out of mischief has brought on rebellion among the subject peoples and revolution at home!'

      'Luckily,' said Eustace, 'we shall all be dead by that time.'

      'Don't you be too sure.'

      'We may all hang on like poor old Mrs Gamble,' said Alice, who had been trying to imagine what Fred and she would be like in 1950.

      'No need for that,' said John Barnack with manifest satisfaction.  'It's coming a great deal sooner than any of you imagine.'  He looked at his watch.  'Well, I've got some work to do,' he announced.  'And tomorrow I must be up at cockcrow.  So I'll say goodnight, Alice.'

      Sebastian's heart started to beat violently, he felt all at once rather sick.  The moment had come at last, the absolutely final opportunity.  He drew a deep breath, got up and walked over to where his father was standing.

      'Goodnight, father,' he said; and then, 'Oh, by the way,' he brought out in the most casual tone he could command, 'don't you think I might ... I mean, don't you think I really ought to have some evening clothes now?'

      'Ought?' his father repeated.  'Ought?  It's a case of the Categorical Imperative, eh?'  And suddenly, alarmingly, he uttered a short explosive bray of laughter.

      Overwhelmed, Sebastian mumbled something to the effect that it hadn't been necessary when he asked last time; but now ... now it was really urgent: he had been asked to a party.

      'Oh, you've been asked to a party,' said Mr Barnack; and he recalled the ecstatic tone in which Rosie used to pronounce that hated word; he remembered the brightening of her eyes as she heard the music and the confused roaring of the crowd, the all but frenzy of her wild gaiety as the evening progressed.

      'More and more categorical,' he added sarcastically.

      'Your father's had a lot of expense recently,' Mrs Poulshot interposed in a well-meant effort to cushion poor Sebastian against the impact of her brother's intransigence.  After all, it hadn't been Rosie's fault entirely.  John had always been hard and exacting, even as a boy.  And now, to make things worse, he had to poison people's lives with these ridiculous political principles of his.  But meanwhile the hardness and the principles were facts; and so was Sebastian's sensitiveness.  Her policy was to try to keep the two sets of facts from colliding.  But the attempt, on this occasion, was worse than fruitless.

      'My dear Alice,' said John Barnack in the tone of a courteous but absolutely determined debater, 'it isn't a question of whether I can afford to buy the boy his fancy dress.'  (The words evoked an image of the red velvet breeches of Lady Caroline Lamb as Byron's - as young Tom Hilliard's - page.)  'The point at issue is whether it's right to do so.'

      Eustace took the teat out of his mouth to protest that this was worse than Savonarola.

      John Barnack emphatically shook his head.

      'It has nothing in common with Christian asceticism, it's just a question of decency - of not exploiting one's accidental advantages.  Noblesse oblige.'

      'Very nice,' said Eustace.  'But meanwhile, you begin by oblige-ing the noblesse.  It's just plain coercion.'

      'Sebastian has absolutely no sense of social responsibility.  He's got to learn it.'

      'Isn't that exactly what Mussolini says about the Italian people?'

      'And anyhow,' Mrs Poulshot put in, glad of this opportunity of fighting Sebastian's battle with the support of an ally, 'why make all this fuss about a miserable dinner jacket?'

      'A paltry smoking,' Eustace elaborated in a tone that was meant to shift the whole argument on to the level of mere farce, 'a twopenny-halfpenny Tuxedo.  Oh, and that reminds me of my young man of Peoria - you didn't know I was a poet, did you, Sebastian?'

     

                                             Who to keep up his sense of euphoria

                                             Would don his Tuxedo

                                             And murmur the Credo

                                             Along with the Sanctus and Gloria.

 

And here you go, John, depriving you poor child of the benefit of the sacraments.'

      More loudly than usual, because of his nervousness, Sebastian started to laugh; then, at the sight of his father's grave, unsmiling face and resolutely closed lips, he checked himself abruptly.

      Eustace twinkled at him between his puffy eyelids.

      'Thank you for the applause,' he said.  'But I'm afraid we are not amused.'

      Mrs Poulshot intervened once more, in an attempt to undo the effects of Eustace's false step.

      'After all,' she said, trying to bring the discussion back to seriousness, 'what is evening dress?  Nothing but a silly little convention.'

      'Silly, I grant you,' said John in his measured, judicious way.  'But when it involves a class symbol, no convention can be called little.'

      'But, father,' Sebastian broke in, 'all the boys of my age have got evening clothes.'  His voice was shrill and unsteady with emotion.

      Bent over the chessboard, Susan heard it, recognized the danger signal, and at once raised her eyes.  Sebastian's face was darkly flushed, and his lips had started to tremble.  More than ever he looked like a little boy.  A little boy in distress, a helpless little boy to whom a grown-up is being cruel.  Susan was overwhelmed by loving pity.  But what a mess he was making of the whole business! she thought, feeling suddenly furious with him, not in despite of her love and pity, but precisely because she cared so much.  And why on earth couldn't he use a little self-control, or it that was impossible, just keep his mouth shut?

      For a few seconds John Barnack looked in silence at his son - looked intently at the image of the childish wife who had betrayed him, and was now dead.  Then he smiled sarcastically.

      'All the other boys,' he repeated, 'every single one.'  And, in the tone he employed in court to discredit the other side's star witness, he added, contemptuously ironic: 'In South Wales the sons of the unemployed miners make a point of wearing tails and white ties.  Not to mention gardenias in their buttonholes.  And now,' he commanded peremptorily, 'go to bed, and don't ever talk to me about this foolery again.'

      Sebastian turned and, speechless, hurried out of the room.

      'Your play,' said Jim impatiently.

      Susan looked down again, saw the black knight standing immediately in front of her queen and took it.

      'Got him!' she said ferociously.  The black knight was Uncle John.

      Triumphantly, Jim moved a castle across the board and, as he dropped her queen into the box, shouted, 'Check!'

      Three-quarters of an hour later, in her pyjamas, Susan was squatting on the floor in front of her gas fire in her bedroom, writing her diary.  'B+ for History, B for Algebra.  Which might be worse.  Miss C gave me a bad mark for untidiness, but of course didn't say a word to her beloved Gladys.  Really!!!  Scarlatti went better, but Pfeiffy tried to be funny with S. about cigars, and then Tom B. must us and asked him to come to his party, and S. was miserable about his wretched dinner jacket.  Otherwise I should have hated him because he was with Mrs E. again today and she was wearing black lace next her skin.  But I only felt dreadfully sorry for him.  And this evening Uncle J. was horrible about the dinner jacket; I really hate him sometimes.  Uncle E. tried to stick up for S., but it wasn't any good.'  It wasn't any good, and what made it worse was that she had to sit there, waiting till first Uncle John and then Uncle Eustace took leave; and even when she had been free to go to bed, she hadn't dared to go and comfort him, for fear her mother or Jim might hear her and come up and find her in his room, and, if it were Jim, guffaw as though he had seen her in the lavatory, or if her mother, make some little jocular remark that would be worse than death.  But now - she looked at the clock on the mantelpiece - now it ought to be safe.  She got up, locked the diary into the drawer of her writing-desk and hid the key in its usual place behind the looking-glass.  Then she turned out the light, cautiously opened the door, and looked out.  The lights on the lower landings had been extinguished; the house was so still that she could hear the heavy beating of her own heart.  Three steps brought her to the door on the other side of the landing; the room was not entirely dark; for the blinds had not been drawn, and the lamp across the street threw an oblong of greenish twilight across the ceiling.  Susan closed the door behind her and stood, listening - listening at first only to her own heart.  Then the springs of the bed creaked faintly, and there was the sound of a long sobbing inhalation of breath.  He was crying.  Impulsively, she moved forward; her outstretched hand touched a brass rail, moved to the blanket beyond, and, from wool, slid over to the smoothness of the turned-back sheet.  The white linen was ghostly in the darkness, and against the dimly seen pillow Sebastian's head was a black silhouette.  Her fingers touched the nape of his neck.

      'It's me, Sebastian.'

      'Get away,' he muttered angrily.  'Get away!'

      Susan said nothing, but sat down on the edge of the bed.  The little bristles left by the barber's clippers were electrical against her fingertips.

      'You mustn't mind, Sebastian darling,' she whispered.  'You mustn't let yourself be hurt.'

      She was patronizing him, of course; she was treating him like a child.  But he was utterly miserable; and besides, humiliation had gone so far that he no longer had the energy of pride to keep up his resentment.  He lay still, permitting himself to enjoy the comforting reassurance of her proximity.

      Susan lifted her hand from his neck and held it poised in mid-air, breathlessly hesitant.  Did she dare?  Would he be furious if she did?  Her heart thumped yet more violently against her ribs.  Then, swallowing hard, she made up her mind to risk it.  Slowly the lifted hand moved forwards and downwards through the darkness, until the fingers were touching his hair - that pale bright hair, curly and wind-ruffled, but now invisible, no more now than a scarcely perceptible unravelling of living silk against her skin.  She waited tremulously, expecting every moment to hear his angry command to let him alone.  But no sound came, and, emboldened by his silence, she lowered her hand a little further.

      Inert, Sebastian abandoned himself to the tenderness which at ordinary times he would never allow her to express, and in the very act of self-abandonment found a certain consolation.  Suddenly and irrelevantly, it came into his mind that this was one of the situations he had always looked forward to in his dream of a love-affair with Mary Esdaile - or whatever other name one chose to give the dark-haired mistress of his imagination.  He would lie there inert in the darkness and she would kneel beside the bed, stroking his hair; and sometimes she would bend down and kiss him - or perhaps it wouldn't be her lips on his, but the touch of her naked breast.  But, of course, this was only Susan, not Mary Esdaile.

      She was running her hand through his hair now, openly, undisguisedly, just as she had always longed to do - the fingertips passing from the smooth taut skin behind the ears, pushing their way among the roots of his hair, while the thick resilient curls slid along between the fingers as she moved her hand up to the crown of his head.  Again, again, indefatigably.

      'Sebastian,' she whispered at last; but he did not answer, and his breathing was almost imperceptibly soft.

      With eyes that had grown accustomed to the darkness, she looked down at the sleeping face, and the happiness she experienced, the unutterable bliss, was like what she had sometimes felt while she was holding Marjorie's baby, but with all these other things added - this desire and apprehension, this breathless sense of forbiddenness, as she felt the electrical contact of his hair against her fingertips, this aching pleasure in her breasts.  Bending down, she touched his cheek with her lips.  Sebastian stirred a little, but did not wake.

      'Darling,' she repeated and, sure that he could not hear her, 'my love, my precious love.'