A Difficult Young Man (15 page)

In spite of my rift with Dick I still went to Dilton, generally with Dominic or Brian when we were invited over to play tennis and sometimes Dick and his brother came to Waterpark. The events of our years there are rather telescoped in my mind, and I have nothing like Alice's diaries from which to fix the dates. I only know that one particular afternoon when I went with Dominic over to Dilton was in the Easter holidays, as it was the spring, and Dick and his brother were home.

I did not like Sylvia, as she always looked as if she were turning her head away from an unpleasant sight, though it may have been only myself who saw her so. She was very pretty with fair frizzy hair, and there was a lot of talk about her ‘rose-leaf' skin, but it was probably no better than my own which was why she did not like looking at me. She spoiled her appearance by her peevish manner, and her exquisite fragility had little correspondence with her inner nature, which was as hard as the enamel on a snuff box. Life would be much simpler if the Almighty had arranged that our physical exteriors should match our spiritual natures. Golden aureoles and rose-leaf skins should be given to
those with angelic natures, but the ‘soul-mixtures' seem to have been badly distributed. In the same way riches should only be given to people with perfect taste, of high character and culture, not as so often happened, to those whose reading did not extend beyond
The Field
.
If Dominic had been able clearly to read Sylvia's character, much that I record would not have happened.

Dilton House had been built in the reign of King William IV. The rooms were very large, with huge windows and ornate white plaster ceilings, but the mouldings had already become heavy and lost the Adams' grace. There were Egyptian motifs in some of the marble chimneypieces, and in straining for spaciousness the proportions had been distorted. Even so its classical formality was rather above the Tunstall's intellectual if not their social status. The white wedding-cake coldness of its interior made it easy to understand why the sensuous children of Caroline O'Hara had fled to the glowing splendour of Roman and Florentine palaces, as their grandfather had fled from the Midlands.

On this day in the Easter holidays we had begun to play tennis, but it had rained just before tea, and we had come indoors. Afterwards they said the courts were too wet to play, and we loafed about in one of the vast white plaster drawing-rooms. I became aware that Dominic was looking at Sylvia with a steady smouldering gaze, and that Sylvia was sitting very still, presenting her half-profile to him, as if she did not mind it. I was
horrified at this as I had an extraordinary idea, perhaps acquired from reading the lives of virgin saints, that it was grossly insulting to a girl to fall in love with her, though at the same time, in my muddled way I was all for universal love. I expect that I thought this could only lead to trouble, and I began to fidget to go home, before the damage became worse. I caught Dominic's eye and nodded towards a large buhl bracket clock, a gesture intercepted by Lady Dilton.

‘If you want to go home, don't let us detain you,' she said with sardonic blandness.

‘I don't want to go. Sit still, Guy,' said Dominic. It might be thought from what I have written so far that he was diffident and nervous in his contacts with the world. On the contrary, away from his family he did absolutely as he pleased, with perfect aplomb. Even Lady Dilton's massive social will was unable to move him. She said:

‘If you are going to stay, you had better play a game. I don't like to see young people doing nothing.'

We sat at a round table, playing rather noisy card games, ‘Racing Demon' and ‘Animal Grab.' Dominic pushed Dick Tunstall aside to take the chair beside Sylvia, and Dick looked offended. Dominic was now more than ever reluctant to move, and we stayed till the dressing-gong, when Lady Dilton sent her family to change. She turned to us, and this time said firmly:

‘Goodbye. I hope you won't be late home for dinner.'

I was bitterly ashamed as we rode away on our bicycles in the dark, that we had been turned out of the house by the Diltons. When they were nice to us I was gratified by their friendship, but when they were not I said to myself, ‘Anyhow, they're not a
real
family, just a nineteenth-century reproduction.' But this was not a retort that I could make with any conciseness and wit to Lady Dilton.

‘Why didn't you leave earlier?' I demanded as soon as we were away from the house. ‘They wanted us to go.' Dominic did not reply and when I repeated my question he only said: ‘Shut up,' but not with annoyance at my question, merely because he did not want to be disturbed, and as I knew better than to interrupt his moods, we pedalled in silence between the hedgerows and the fields. This bicycle ride is one of the things I remember most clearly of my life at Waterpark. The countryside was beautiful but I was full of foreboding. The rain which had interfered with our tennis had passed, and the sky was clear. It was at the time of the year when the spring growth is not yet full, and there is no sign of fading or blemish anywhere. No petal has fallen and the fronds of the cowparsley are unbruised and stand erect in the perfection of their design. There was no breeze, and the still air was scented, not with any one flower, but with the mingled scents of the countryside, of earth and of grass. This beauty of the evening and the spring was in harmony
with Dominic's mood, which, although he had told me to shut up, had the gentleness he had shown when he had touched the divided spoils of Alice's treasures in her dismantled house, but I found it hostile, like the beauty of a woman who has refused one's advances. My feeling was due to the Diltons. The land through which we rode had once belonged to Waterpark, but had been sold, field by field, to the second Lord Dilton by Cousin Thomas, when he found himself living to a much greater age than he had provided for. I felt the Tunstalls to be overpowering and hostile to us, eating up our patrimony, and the thought that Dominic's gentleness was evoked by Sylvia Tunstall awoke my dormant pity for him, as I did not see how it could fail to cause him further humiliation and suffering. My mind always leapt to extremes, which I suppose was why I thought it insulting to a girl to fall in love with her, and I imagined that Dominic would want to marry Sylvia, only to be repulsed with ridicule. I had heard Sylvia say of one of the neighbouring families: ‘They're quite poor. I shouldn't think they have a penny over £4,000 a year.' When I told Steven this he said: ‘There's no greater vulgarity than to call that kind of income poverty, when half the people haven't enough to eat. If ever there's a revolution in this country it will be fools like Sylvia who'll bring it.' He himself had less than £4,000 a year, and Dominic would only have what he could allow him, so I thought it impossible that she would look at him, and knowing his temperament I dreaded the moment when she would
laugh in his face.

The Tunstalls upset our scale of living. When we came to Waterpark I thought it very grand to have a butler and a footman after Maggie and Elsie at Westhill who called ‘Goodnight all' as they walked along the verandah to bed, but when we went to luncheon at Dilton there was a footman behind every chair. And yet because of our antiquity I thought we were really much grander than the Tunstalls, as their family had not existed before the Reformation, when the pattern of European society was unbroken. Their arms had never been borne on a shield in battle. This was all part of my medieval obsession. When I was not quite so fantastic in my genealogical standards I would admit the ‘reality' of families with eighteenth-century origins, as at least they had lived in an aristocratic and classical society, but that one of a family from the industrial century, the most ignoble in history, except perhaps our own, however many footmen they had, and even if they were all ‘honourables,' should refuse the heir of Waterpark, appeared to me an unspeakable humiliation. On the other hand I would be delighted if Dominic married an ‘honourable.'

In this confused state of mind I arrived back just in time for dinner. I hurriedly changed my top half so that I should appear respectable above the dinner table, but Dominic came down still in white flannel trousers with a scarf round his neck, which annoyed Steven, espe
cially as Miss Vio Chambers was staying with us.

Vio Chambers was a girlhood friend of Laura's. She was one of those middle-aged ladies who surprise us by never having married, as she appeared everything that is desirable, good-looking, sensible, kind, reasonably cultivated, well-dressed, well-bred, travelled and well-off. Perhaps women of this kind, and I have known many, have been engaged to someone killed in a war, or tied to invalid parents, or they may have been too naturally friendly to attract men in other ways, and perhaps too large and dignified for those who like to patronize their wives. Miss Chambers once had a fraction of a romance with one of the Dells at Westhill, but that could hardly have prevented her marrying. She was an invaluable friend to a family like ours, as if anyone said that the Langtons were eccentric, idle, silly, vain, or any of the other things which were partially true about us, she retorted with a vigorous loyalty which, coming from someone of her character, made the speaker appear a malicious gossip: ‘They are my greatest friends, and the most intelligent and amusing people I know.' Which also was partially true.

When I came into the drawing-room and saw her, in a beautiful dark red evening dress, but simple enough for a country dinner, standing by the fire talking to Laura, I had a feeling of great pleasure and reassurance, and the menace of the Tunstalls evaporated in the satisfaction of being with people who were entirely
of one's own kind, the Australian gentlepeople of the early days, whose manners were so good, and whose friendliness was so unreserved. I had this feeling not long ago in Melbourne, when again I was with Miss Vio Chambers, now very old. In the room as well was a Byngham aunt and the daughter of an old friend who had lived near Kilawly and grown up with the family. There was the same atmosphere of quiet friendliness and I thought: I might be in the Waterpark drawing-room before the 1914 war. Then a ‘smart' woman came in, and the illusion was dispelled.

Since Dominic had failed for the army, he had become less interested in Colonel Rodgers' guns and daggers. He rather disliked them as a reminder of his failure. He still went to see the colonel as he would never withdraw his friendship where he had given it, but not so often, and he drew ants and stag beetles with less enthusiasm than he had swished the broadswords. This made the colonel more persistent in his attentions, and as he never changed an idea once it had entered his head, he imagined that Dominic could be enticed to the Dower House with curious weapons, and he scoured the antique shops of Bath and Wells for quaint pistols and murderous knives. He became irritable when these did not bring the response he had hoped for.

This was Miss Chambers's first visit to Waterpark, and so part of her entertainment was to take her round the sights of the neighbourhood. A day or two after the abortive tennis party at Dilton, we were going on
an excursion to show her the churches at Westbury and Warminster, and to have luncheon on the banks of Shearwater, where we had been given permission to picnic.

While we were still dawdling over the breakfast table, and Laura was saying: ‘Hurry up, I want to see the cook,' who came in at this hour to discuss the day's meals, Colonel Rodgers was announced. Brian and I went out into the hall.

‘Hasn't Dominic finished his breakfast yet?' asked the colonel.

‘Yes, sir. Ages ago,' I said, being more ready of speech than Brian, who thought it cheek of him to come in and catechise us about our habits at this time of day. He had even been known to come into the dining-room and ask us at what hour we had our baths. He had his at 6.30 a.m., after sleeping on a camp bed. ‘He's gone out riding,' I said.

‘That's impossible,' said the colonel. ‘He promised to come down early to see my new gun. That's bad. That's a bad show. I've never known him break his word before.'

‘Oh, he often does,' said Brian. ‘In fact, generally.' We were both feeling cheerful and flippant at the prospect of our excursion, and we thought the colonel rather comic.

‘No, he doesn't,' I said. ‘Not intentionally. He only forgets. If he remembered, even if it was two o'clock in the morning he'd get out of bed and do whatever
it was he said he would. So perhaps he'll visit you at midnight, sir,' I added encouragingly.

It certainly was very annoying for the colonel that Dominic had gone out, as he had just overdrawn his account to buy a new sporting gun as a bait for him. Apart from the fact that weapons no longer excited Dominic, he need not have spent all this money, as the latter always preferred to give than to receive, and was far more likely to go to the Dower House if Colonel Rodgers had told him that he was in urgent need of a drawing of a praying mantis.

Leaving him, more irascible than ever at our ill-concealed levity, to bully Jonas with question about the hour Dominic had left, we went to prepare for our outing. Steven had gone round to the stables to do something to the motor-car, as we had not a proper chauffeur, only a gardener who wore a peaked cap. When he came back and found Colonel Rodgers in the hall he cursed inwardly, but politely invited him into the library saying: ‘We're just off to show Miss Chambers the local beauties. The churches I mean, not the milkmaids.' The colonel was not amused, and only muttered something about his new gun. Laura came into the library and Steven said: ‘You will excuse me. I have to pack my sketching things.'

Although we were not supposed to go back to our rooms after breakfast, to leave them free for the housemaids, Brian and I also had gone up to fetch some
equipment for the picnic. Steven met us coming down and said:

‘Go into the library and entertain Colonel Rodgers, and give Mummy a chance to get ready.'