A Difficult Young Man (23 page)

‘I shouldn't do that.'

‘Why not?' asked Baba, with a hint of defiance.

‘She'll be busy,' said Lady Dilton. Having delivered herself of this sensible statement, she rose from her chair and said goodbye. Sylvia shook hands with Laura, gave an undirected nod to the rest of us, and followed her mother out of the room. Dominic went with them to open the gate in the wall, and to see them into their car. Baba, annoyed by Lady Dilton's advice and Sylvia's failure to say goodbye to her, said: ‘I have letters to write,' and left us.

‘What an unfortunate afternoon!' said Laura, and she gave a little laugh.

‘It was ghastly,' I cried, ‘the dead flowers and the cake and Aunt Baba. That's about the end of everything.'

I spoke more truly than I knew. Dominic returned
with a curious smile, and with something in his hand.

‘Look, Mum,' he said, and held it out to Laura. It was the engagement ring he had given Sylvia. Laura did not speak for a moment.

‘Well,' she said, ‘I'm afraid it was inevitable. Do you mind, darling?'

‘I don't know,' said Dominic. ‘I don't feel as if I do.' But he had a twinge of conscience, as this time he had done it with neither a kiss, nor the sword, but more or less with the sulks. The next day he was very cheerful. He went down and slashed at Colonel Rodgers, not with anger but with joy.

Three days later Laura had a letter from Aunt Maysie in which she said that Helena had become engaged to Wentworth McLeish, the only son of one of the richest squatters, with whom they had travelled out on the ship.

CHAPTER XI

THE DAMP
patch was cured in the staircase wall, but this did not remove the prevailing sense of dissolution. Dominic went back to London where he was supposed to be attending the art school, and he seldom came down to Waterpark, partly because it would be awkward if he met Sylvia. When he did come he spent his time at the Dower House, but this no longer gave any satisfaction to Colonel Rodgers, as he was in such a heavy mood. The colonel was even known to come up to the house to escape, only to return to find that Dominic had taken one of his most valued guns to pieces and had gone away without reassembling it. Steven also heard from Cousin Emma that Dominic was doing no work and leading a rackety life in London, as far as his means allowed, and she asked that he should find other lodgings.

George, about the time of Lady Dilton's call at Waterpark when Sylvia had broken off the engagement, had gone back to Ireland and had made a second attempt to persuade Dolly to go away with him. Mr Stuart had discovered the purpose of his visit and had indignantly ordered him out of the Rectory, and still Dolly would not go with him.

If I appear to suggest here that any wife should give up her husband when he asks her, that is not my intention. The reason why Baba's refusal appears selfish, is because she was not herself prepared to make any
contribution to the marriage or any sacrifice to make it work. She thought that when once she had married George it was his business to do everything possible to satisfy her whims. After this he took her back to Australia, leaving our life at Waterpark somewhat dislocated by their invasion.

Steven was no longer contented. He could not visualize Dominic ever settling down to the life of a country squire at Waterpark, if he should succeed him, and this impaired his own interest in the place. Also he was distressed by the poverty of the villagers which he had insufficient means to remedy as he wished. Our relations with the Tunstalls were not as cordial as they had been. Steven had a great respect and liking for Lord Dilton, and although the latter showed no change in his friendliness, Steven was ashamed of the way Dominic had rewarded his kindness and generosity. He began to show his restlessness, and spoke of going to Italy for the winter, and even back to Westhill, switching to the other banking account, now that Waterpark was, as it were, overdrawn.

Perhaps he would never have done this, if I had not tipped the scales. The real fault lay with Jeremy Taylor. Mr Woodhall gave me the book
Holy Living and Holy Dying
in which I read that God had placed the nose, ‘the foulest sink of the human body,' in the middle of our faces to humiliate us. My stay in the Vicarage during Lent had cooled my religious enthusiasm, and this horrible reference to the human nose made me
feel that it was impossible that I should spend my life in the Church, as I loved human noses, pointed witty noses, turned-up friendly noses, bold arched noses, and even the inquisitive noses of dogs and the soft noses of horses, with which they try to speak to us. Jeremy Taylor had affronted my humanism. I should of course have realized that he was heretical, that man is made in God's image, and that Christian truth is more faithfully expressed in Blake's words: ‘Love, the human form divine.'

However, one day I went to Steven and said that I did not want to be a clergyman. I said I wanted to be an architect. He then made the astonishing statement:

‘You won't be a gentleman, you know.'

He said it with a certain irony, as if he was aware of the absurdity of stating that a man who might add the most glorious cathedrals or palaces to the human inheritance was less worthy of respect than a curate or an infantry captain, yet at the same time he was warning me, aware as he was of my medieval outlook, that I would not have the same social status, according to the ideas prevailing in his youth. But I had moved enough with the times to believe that I would receive more recognition in the world as a good architect than as Vicar of Waterpark, and I would certainly have more amusement. So although I was a little perturbed by his remark I continued in my resolution.

I do not know whether Steven minded my change. He may have been pleased, as he did not much like the
clergy, and it relieved him from any further obligation to stay in England.

Our great-grandmother Langton had noticed that in her life were clearly defined periods of ill fortune. In these she said, it is useless to make any attempt at progress or to embark on anything which we think will be to our advantage. The only wise course is to turn one's back to the storm and hope it will soon pass. It appeared as if this repeating pattern had been imposed on her descendants, and that the adverse periods were brought on by a few years' residence at Waterpark. Laura, although she loved the place, believed that it was unlucky, and she attributed this to Cousin Thomas's father having died of drink in the cellar, but that was a hundred years or more ago. Also was Westhill any luckier?

Steven did not at first say that he intended to return to Westhill. At Christmas, when Dominic and Brian were down, he said that he and Laura were going to Italy until Easter and offered to take them. He knew that it would be useful to Brian, who was a serious painter, and he could pretend the same for Dominic, though really he did not want to leave him alone in London, but to keep him under his eye for a while.

I protested vigorously against being dumped at the Vicarage for another Lent. As I was no longer to be educated for the Church, and might not go to Cambridge, but to some architectural school, it no longer appeared so important that I should continue
with Mr Woodhall. After some discussion it was agreed that I, as an embryo architect, might also benefit by an Italian tour. Steven had inherited Alice's peculiar pleasure in travelling about with the whole family, and in the middle of January we set out on a trek similar to that which they had made seventeen years earlier, though Steven and Laura were not encumbered with a crowd of grandchildren, nurses and perambulators, nor had they the means to support such a matriarchal caravan.

Here we may take leave of Colonel Rodgers, in case we do not meet him again, as people say goodbye to a friend who is going on a voyage, though they may see
him the next morning in the chemist's buying a sea-sick remedy. To take this farewell we must leap ahead some years to near the end of the 1914–18 war, when as a subaltern in an English regiment, I went down to Waterpark to view the setting of my juvenile dreams. I knocked at the door of the Dower House, which was opened by Colonel Rodgers himself. His hair had gone quite white, he stooped slightly, and his eyes had retreated further behind his thick-lensed glasses. At first he did not recognize me, and I said my name. I do not think that my appearance has ever caused as much delight to any human being.

‘Guy, my dear boy!' he cried, though he had never before called me anything but ‘young feller.' He took me by the arm and led me into the house, turning me towards the window, so that he could peer with closer
recognition into my face. On the mantelpiece between the two skulls, was a large photograph of Dominic in the sultry flower of his adolescence.

‘Those were happy times,' said the colonel. ‘Great days!' and his eyes shone with the purest affection of the spirit. It was the time of rationing and he insisted on his housekeeper giving me all his cake and his butter for my tea.

When I left I was moved with compassion for him, as I realized that the most valuable thing he had left was the memory of this attachment, which, in spite of its absurdities, was the truest and deepest of his life, to Dominic, the son whom he had never had. It was a curious farewell to a man who had viewed me at first sight, as I him, with so much repugnance.

At first we went to the Mediterranean coast, but by the spring we were in Florence. It was after Easter but there was no talk of returning to Waterpark. In Florence we went to see Ariadne, Mrs Dane, one of the three corrupt and cultivated Tunstalls, tainted with Teba blood, the only living link between ourselves and the Diltons. She was very old, but her eyes were as powerful as those of a tigress as they flashed in her strong and haggard face, ravaged by many emotions, lofty and base, by sublime music and poetry, and by physical passion of every variety. I was enchanted by the magnificent villa in which she lived, the colonnades and gorgeous but slightly indelicate ceilings,
the superb paintings and damask walls, but terrified by her appearance. I felt ravished, though I could not identify the feeling, by the devouring glance she cast on my youthful complexion, though it was nothing to that which she turned on Dominic. I did not know of the indirect influence she had had on Alice's life, but she said to me with great feeling, clutching her long sinewy hands on the arms of her gilded chair:

‘I knew your grandmother, and
loved
her.'

Brian said she was horrible, but Dominic accepted her invitation to come again. We were in Florence for three weeks and nearly every day he went up to see Mrs Dane, with something of the intensity of interest he had shown in his first friendship with Colonel Rodgers. He always showed interest in anyone whom he thought different from the majority of mankind, for that alone, and he instinctively gave them his sympathy. Mrs Dane did not give the impression of needing sympathy, though she may well have done so. He went to her because he knew that here was someone who had experienced the passions which were latent in himself. Mrs Dane's attraction for him was extraordinary, seeing that he was just 21, having celebrated his coming-of-age, not with fireworks at Waterpark, but in an Italian hotel, and that Mrs Dane must have been over eighty. If we went on an excursion which prevented his going to call on her in the afternoon, he would become moody, and take little interest in what
we had gone to see, the heights of Monte Scenario, or the brooks of Vallambrosa. Laura was as bothered by this attachment as she had been at one stage of his friendship with Colonel Rodgers, though in neither case did she imagine it was immoral, or that Dominic was likely to make love to his grandmother's contemporary. She was worried because she thought it unbalanced and eccentric. Steven was not worried because he had long ago, ever since Dominic had thrown his gaiters out of the window and screamed on the floor of the carriage, accepted that he was unbalanced and eccentric. Also he did not see why people should not make friendships outside their age, sex and social position. He thought such friendships an enrichment of experience and that they increased one's understanding of life, whereas nowadays they are considered an almost certain indication of vice.

Although we were basking in the Florentine spring, we read in the newspapers that it was bitterly cold in England. It was then that Steven said definitely that he wanted to return to Australia. There was open discussion about it in the family and we were all allowed our say. I wanted to go as I always liked to see something new, and we heard there had been many changes in Melbourne in the last few years. Also we all loved Westhill and wanted to see it again. The main doubt was as to how it would affect our careers. There were both good artists and good architects in Melbourne. I could learn my new profession there as well as anywhere
else, and the place was growing. For years ahead there would be plenty of building. Brian was more likely to sell his pictures there than in England. But it was Dominic who really turned the scale. Throughout the discussions he kept saying: ‘Let's go.'

Steven had not been very well, so it was decided that he should stay in Italy with Brian, who was the only one gaining any practical advantage from our tour, and that Laura, Dominic and I should return to England, to pack up at Waterpark, and to attend to such business matters as were necessary before leaving the place for a year or two.

I did not feel any pangs as I assisted in this work. Of course we did not know that we would never return, and that the secure civilization, at least secure to our kind, which we had known all our lives, was due to end in three years. Because of this ignorance, when Laura handed the key to Watts, and we entered the car to drive for the last time to Frome station, all three of us were more full of anticipation than of regret that we were ending a bond of over seven centuries between our blood and this house and soil.

Our stay in England had aggravated our inherited homelessness. It had Anglicized me, but I had not become English. I was more like a piece of old lace that has been washed in weak coffee to retain its antique colouring.