Before the War (22 page)

any more than Sherwyn can help his inner Delgano. A writer inhabits his characters and vice versa. It’s been rather drastic for me inhabiting the skinny, slight Adela. I was more at home with Vivvie in her bulk, solidity and wayward thoughts. But Vivvie’s gone off now, unto the black unknown. So I say, but actually it’s not all that unknown. I see it as a great Hieronymus Bosch lake, misty, where characters go after the writer writes ‘THE END’ and they’re left writerless and rudderless.

Thousands and thousands of them, more and more over the years, fictional personae, heads bobbing about in the great lake, still talking, protesting, gesticulating, arguing. By God, they’re a noisy lot. There I see Madame Bovary in her midnight blue cloak with the paler blue lining, the one she wore to run away with her deceiving lover, forever lamenting. There’s that rather mean looking Nick Dunne, the husband in
Gone Girl
, with his shifty eyes and crumpled shirt, forever protesting. There’s Paddington Bear, spooning marmalade. A celebrity’s a celebrity, for a’ that. No class distinctions down here in the character pool. Come to think of it, it’s a bit like a horror film: all those shapeless, faceless bodies, characters yet unborn, floundering about in the depths, waiting to take form. Can there be no end to it?

Anyway, the funeral is over. The girls grow up in Dilberne Court, and later in Belgrave Square as the Misses Stella and Mallory Ripple: twin daughters (non-identical, as many take care to point out) of Sir Jeremy and Lady Adela Ripple.

Mungo had the beef – great thick reddish juicy slabs of it carved in front of him, deep brown gravy sweetened with port, turnip puree under a crackling golden canopy of Yorkshire pudding. He was lunching with Sir Jeremy, who was beginning to show his age: his hair now so thin it seemed better to go beardless. Mungo declined the roast potatoes, though the waiter, in black frock coat and white apron down to his ankles, assured him they were the house special, rolled in flour and seasoning before roasting to give them the famous Simpson’s crust.

‘I’m “banting”,’ Mungo explained to Sir Jeremy. ‘Dieting. Olive says I must.’

Olive Crest was Mungo Bolt’s new wife, aged twenty-two, lively and fashionable daughter of a department store tycoon from Baltimore, Cyril Crest. Mungo was doing well, had resigned from Ripple’s and started his own advertising agency, Bolt & Crest. So far Bolt’s, as it was called, handled only small accounts – diet pills, cough medicines, sewing machines and the new zip fasteners – but had smart offices in Grosvenor Square and high ambitions. Mungo wanted to take on the Ripple account – the Book division, at any rate, which, thanks to Sherwyn’s Delgano thrillers, was flourishing, if not the Vivien Political List, which was not. Vivien’s List, called after Sir Jeremy’s deceased daughter, was the magazine publishing side of the Ripple empire and limped along, ever virtuous, with the weekly
Breakthrough
, the monthly
Workers Unite
, and for some reason the quarterly
Health, Energy and Breath.
But Sir Jeremy was not convinced. If Mungo would take over Vivien’s List he might think about it, but the fiction list was doing perfectly well on its own. Vivien’s List just needed time, in any case. It was on the right side of history.

‘Time is money,’ said Mungo.

‘You’re just a born capitalist, my son,’ said Sir Jeremy. ‘Not your fault. It runs in your blood as socialism runs in mine.’ He chose the turbot with lobster sauce. His digestion wasn’t quite what it was. Adela was now a vegetarian. She was quite right. Meat was murder. No, he didn’t want a poached egg with the fish but he’d have some spinach.

‘What’s the matter with eggs?’ asked Mungo.

‘Theft,’ said Sir Jeremy, sadly. ‘But not as bad as murder – Adela says so.’

‘Well, I’m sorry you can’t be tempted, Sir Jeremy,’ said Mungo, and pointed out that while working as head of publicity at Ripple’s, it had been he who had put Delgano on the map.

‘Sherwyn’s novels don’t need advertising,’ said Sir Jeremy, ‘they sell themselves.’

‘Nothing sells itself,’ said Mungo. ‘Except possibly armaments. And careful that Delgano doesn’t turn out to be just a flash in the pan. He’s doing all right in the women’s market, but what about the men’s? A cook, for God’s sake!’

‘A gourmet,’ said Sir Jeremy. ‘Quite different. What exactly have you got against poor Sherwyn?’

Mungo grunted and did not say that he greatly resented Adela’s switch of interest from himself to Sherwyn. God alone knew what had happened when they were all there up that mountain. He feared the worst. Adela would not let a mere matter of being pregnant get in the way of her carnal appetites. Rumours about Adela and Sherwyn abounded in the literary world, but never reached Sir Jeremy’s ears, nor would he have believed them if they had. Sherwyn was his son-in-law, and Sir Jeremy loved his wife.

Mungo was not sure if he loved his wife. Olive was turning out to be very bossy. He had wanted to call the agency just Bolt, but it had ended up called Bolt & Crest, and Olive had insisted on his taking on the zipper account –
A Zip in Time Saves Nine Buttons!
– which was nothing but an embarrassment. Zips might go down well in the US but never in England. And he was a married man, and there was no longer Adela to turn to: she was absurdly taken up with her little daughters and also apparently Sexton. Mungo smiled brightly at Sir Jeremy.

‘Nothing at all,’ he said. ‘I daresay I’m jealous. I always wanted to be a famous writer and here I am, an ad man, trying to sell zippers. “
He who unzips and runs away, lives to unzip another day.
”’ But Sir Jeremy didn’t see that as funny. Mungo gave up on the Ripple account. Let the old man go to hell in his own way.

The wine waiter came at last. Mungo ordered a 1920 St Estèphe. He was paying. Sir Jeremy ordered a glass of Riesling. The German wine industry had picked itself up: the mark was stable again.

‘One way of paying off reparations,’ said Mungo and Sir Jeremy frowned at such cynicism. He liked to see the best in humanity. Fortunately the wine came, the red in a glass so large it caught the tip of one’s nose.

‘A bit new,’ he said, ‘but it should be all right. Nothing much came out of France during the war.’

‘Except death and destruction,’ said Sir Jeremy cheerfully. ‘But that’s all behind us now. One world, one communism, and there’ll be an end to war.’

‘There’s basic human nature to contend with,’ said Mungo. ‘Hate, fear and greed. The death wish. Thanatos.’

‘You and your Freud,’ said Sir Jeremy. ‘Nihilists all.’ He deplored the state of the nation, the antics of Trotsky in Russia, the fact that Baldwin’s government and Labour weren’t behind the imminent general strike. But at least if it happened the population would be politicised at last.

‘And sales of
Workers Arise
will creep up,’ said Mungo. ‘What about a slogan like
The working class can kiss my arse, I’ve got the foreman’s job at last
?’ He sang it to the tune of the
Internationale
: Sir Jeremy didn’t think that was funny either.

Mungo enquired as casually as he could after Lady Adela and the twins.

‘All flourishing,’ said Sir Jeremy. ‘My wife gets younger as I get older. Everyone remarks on it. As for the twins, one is so pretty and sweet, as one would expect of her mother’s daughter, and Mallory takes after me and is very clever. A little definite in her opinions, perhaps, and only three. They’re not identical, you know. Her mother says she will grow up to be a union organiser. I hope so. The workers of this country could do with a better class of leader. Watery socialism will never work.’

The country was in uproar, divided. A general strike threatened – transport, dockers, printers, miners. Churchill wanted to arm the soldiers. Baldwin said it was ‘more difficult to feed a nation than to break it’. The King said ‘try living on their wages before you judge them’. But mine owners had to cut wages. The Germans were suddenly back in business, flooding the market with cheap coal, not to mention Riesling. Mungo held his tongue.

And who but Sherwyn walked into the restaurant, with his redheaded artist floozy on his arm. She was wearing a pale mink coat very much like the one Adela sometimes wore. Mungo choked on his treacle sponge. Sir Jeremy was irritated and pushed away his crème caramel.

‘Three years since I lost my daughter,’ said Sir Jeremy, ‘but even so! Why can’t he just get remarried, like anyone else? She’s so, well, obvious.’

Sherwyn came over as Rita took her seat in a far corner of the restaurant. Sherwyn nodded to Mungo cheerily enough and wished him luck with his new project: he hailed Sir Jeremy with enthusiasm.

‘Father-in-law! Publisher! Those about to die salute thee!’

‘What an idiot,’ was what Mungo thought. Sherwyn was wearing one of those film director’s long brown leather coats with a high collar. Mungo looked down, and yes! – built-up heels on the brown and white co-respondent shoes. What on earth did Adela see in this upstart author? He, Mungo, had been good enough to father Adela’s twins – he doubted the old man had it in him – then suddenly she was crawling all over Sherwyn. Everyone went along with the pretence that the twins were Sir Jeremy’s seed. At least Sir Jeremy had the wherewithal to rear and educate them decently. And Mungo could hardly say a word. He had Olive to think about.

‘About to die?’ Sir Jeremy looked confused.

‘Oh, nothing in particular,’ said Sherwyn airily. ‘Just I’m off to learn engine driving. My nation calls me! Three hours’ instruction – all a fellow needs, apparently – I hope to God they’re right. But
adversa virtute repello
!’

That’s not going to please the old man, thought Mungo, smiling steadily on. Is it possible Sherwyn is thinking of switching publishers? Possibly to someone who understands the value of advertising? And isn’t it, Mungo thought, just a little tasteless to be talking about death so casually? And then Sherwyn asked after the twins – my twins, thought Mungo – as he’d bought gifts for them from Morocco – in such a way that Sir Jeremy couldn’t help but ask the bounder round.

He just wants an excuse to get to see Adela, thought Mungo. It was difficult carrying on an affair under the boss’s nose – as he knew only too well. There was no denying that the redheaded Rita – over there already sipping champagne – was a real looker. What on earth did all these women see in Sherwyn? He’d inherited a lot through his poor dead wife, of course; that always helped. But even Vivvie – the elephant, as Mungo always thought of her – had been after Sherwyn from the beginning. He felt an unexpected pang of sorrow for poor Vivien, struck down on her (understandably very much extended) honeymoon, far away in foreign parts. And the baby too. He’d seen the poor little thing churning away inside its mother’s belly, magic in a way, and under a wedding dress, all promise, no fulfilment. Sherwyn hadn’t seemed all that upset when Vivvie had died. Well, it was hardly surprising. At least he was free to philander at will. Rita the redhead was certainly a dish – in a bouncy, bosomy kind of way. His own Olive was a nice looking girl, if a little pale and thin. One day when he had time he would write his own novel, which would knock anything Sherwyn could write into a cocked hat.

Sherwyn went back to his table. Mungo paid the bill. Sir Jeremy walked back to Fleet Street and Mungo took a cab to Grosvenor Square.

The twins were eight. They stood hand in hand upon the kelim rug in the nursery. They had no clothes on. They were staring into the cheval mirror examining their reflection. It was the same mirror Sir Jeremy had stared into and decided he was a fine figure of a man back in 1922. Much of the Art Deco furniture from Fleet Street had ended up in Belgrave Square, to Sir Jeremy’s and everyone else’s relief. (Cousin Rosina had died in 1927 of what was spoken of, if at all, as a growth, but was actually cancer, and left her property to Adela.)

‘Why do they say we’re twins when we don’t look at all alike?’ asked Stella, who was a fairly normal eight year old, apart from being so exceptionally pretty.

‘Because we’re non-identical,’ explained Mallory, who like her mother Vivvie had an intelligence quotient too high to be considered normal, and an unfortunately squashed-up face in which her chin seemed to be forever trying to reach her brow. ‘We come from two eggs not one. And please don’t ask me who laid the egg.’

Stella didn’t, though she wanted to. No matter how often Mallory tried to explain the facts of life to her, Stella stayed confused. Men and women sticking bits of each other into where they pooed and widdled? Why would they want to? Mallory was to be believed in most things, just perhaps not this. And it was not the kind of thing you asked your mother about.

‘You mean we have two fathers?’ she asked her sister.

‘No,’ said Mallory, ‘that can happen, but it’s not likely. No, we’re no different from ordinary sisters, just born at the same time and we shared a womb. That’s the bit where women grow babies.’

‘I’m glad I shared with you,’ said Stella, graciously.

‘Thank you,’ said Mallory. The twins got on extraordinarily well, considering how different they were. ‘Of course if we did have different fathers because our mother had two different gentleman friends in the same month then that would be why we’re so different. I might be royalty.’

‘Ooh, do you think so?’ asked Stella hopefully.

‘Me, not you. You’re mother and father mixed. I’m perfectly possibly mother and the Prince of Wales mixed.’

Mallory took measurements and wrote them down in a notebook she kept at the bottom of the toy box.

‘I’m two inches taller than you,’ she said, ‘and half an inch more round the ankle and wrist. Your legs are the same length, but one of mine is half an inch shorter than its pair. We have no busts, and we’re fairly straight up and down, not in and out, as we will be when we start really growing. That’s called adolescence.’ Their second cousin Rosina’s library had come to Belgrave Square, and there were many books in it on physiology, particularly as it related to the maturing of Aboriginal women as compared to their European sisters. Mallory would pore over them while Stella sat entranced by books like
The Wind in the Willows
.