A Difficult Young Man (2 page)

CHARACTERS IN THIS STORY

AUSTIN LANGTON.

ALICE LANGTON
, his wife.

Their children –

STEVEN
, married to
LAURA BYNGHAM
.

GEORGE
, married to
BABA STANGER
.

MAYSIE
, married to
ALBERT CRAIG
.

MILDRED
, unmarried.

DIANA
, married to
WOLFIE VON FLUGEL
.

ARTHUR LANGTON
, brother of Austin, formerly married to Damaris Tunstall.

WALTER LANGTON
, brother of Austin.

HETTY MAYHEW
, married to Owen Dell, and the former mistress of Austin.

DELL
boys, grandchildren of Hetty and Austin.

SARAH
, sister of Hetty.

DOMINIC, BRIAN
and
GUY LANGTON
, sons of Steven and Laura.

HELENA CRAIG
, daughter of Albert and Maysie.

Other
GRANDCHILDREN
of Austin and Alice.

COLONEL RODGERS.

LORD
and
LADY DILTON
.

SYLVIA
and
DICK TUNSTALL
, children of the Diltons.

ARIADNE DANE
, sister of Damaris, aunt of Lord Dilton, and cousin of Laura.

DOLLY
POTTS
, formerly engaged to George.

Various
BYNGHAMS
, relations of Laura.

CHAPTER I

WHEN
I told Julian that I would write this book, the first intention was that it should be about my grandparents, but we agreed that it should also be an exploration of Dominic's immediate forbears to discover what influences had made him what he was, and above all to discover what in fact he was. We realized that to do this it might be necessary to empty all the cupboards to see which of the skeletons were worth reclothing, if possible, with flesh. This may bring an accusation of ancestor-worship, or at least of family obsession, but if one has been brought up in the thick of a large clan of slightly eccentric habits, it is difficult not to be obsessed with it, if only in the effort to disentangle oneself and to reach some normal viewpoint, if such a thing exists. It would be as reasonable to accuse the passengers in a
lumbering Spanish galleon, with the gorgeous sails in tatters, the guns rusty, and the gilt falling off the poop, of being self-conscious of their means of transport when they arce surrounded by submarines and speedboats. Their situation is even worse when the Spanish galleon is only a frame of mind. Also nearly everyone between the ages of eighteen and thirty turns against his family and wants to escape from it. When he is sixty he wants to creep back to the nursery fireside, but it is no longer there.

In my grandmother, Alice Langton's diaries, which are my chief source of information about what happened before I was born, there was not much reference to Dominic. He was then overshadowed by Bobby, our eldest brother, who was all sparkling sunlight and mercurial wit, and this may have further darkened the gloomy recesses of his nature. When Bobby was killed at the age of nine, Dominic may have thought that he was not only going to step into his position as the eldest son, but would also bestow, as Bobby had done, laughter, hope and joy about the family, and then he found that he had not the equipment for this, and so was filled with resentment. However, the first recorded reference to him shows that he had not an easy temperament. It is in Alice's diary for a day in 1892, when the family were still living at Waterpark:

‘Drove with Laura and Dominic into Frome to buy him some gaiters. On the way back he threw his gaiters out of the window and lay on the floor of the landau
and screamed. Steven thrown out hunting, but not seriously hurt. A cold, unpleasant day. Very old pheasants for dinner.'

After this brief glimpse of his English childhood we have to follow Dominic to Australia. It may be worth recalling that on the way out he spent nearly eighteen months in France and Italy, where he was taken regularly to Mass in great cathedrals and historic churches by Annie, our redheaded nurse, and often by Alice, who an unquestioning Protestant, was unable to resist anything which evoked the splendours of European culture. He was then five or six years of age, and it is hard to know how much, if at all, this experience coloured his imagination.

In Australia we lived at Westhill, the one-storied family house in the hills, about thirty miles from Melbourne, but we were very often at Beaumanoir, our grandparents' house at Brighton, one of the suburbs on Port Philip Bay. It is this house which may have suggested the Spanish galleon. It was bogus Elizabethan, and when on summer evenings the hot sun, slanting across the bay and over the parterres of red geranium, flashed in the oriel windows, and flooded with rosy light the red brick façade and the little green copper cupolas with their gilded tin flags, it did resemble some great ship on fire, about to sink in sunset splendour. Inside the elaborate plaster ceilings and the baronial staircase were given, by the old portraits and furniture
brought out from Water-park, a more authentic appearance than they deserved. The occasional remarks of our parents made us feel that we lived only in a kind of demi-monde of civilization, but this house corrected the impression, as it was for us the very hub of culture and rich living. As Dominic imagined that he was the heir to all this, the partly imitation but partly genuine dynastic atmosphere of the house may have affected his character.

Also Beaumanoir was the Mecca of our whole huge clan, who thronged the place not only because of the good food and the simmering atmosphere of amusement and pleasure, but because of their family gregariousness and attraction to their own kind, even if it led to frequent quarrels. Dominic was the eldest and certainly in his own eyes, the most important of the cousins. He soon acquired an added importance to that of primogeniture, but it was only what was called by the politicians of the 1930's ‘nuisance value.'

This sounds as if he was an unsympathetic character, but many people found him quite the opposite. Only a few disliked him, and when they did they repudiated and detested him absolutely. Women found him extremely attractive, especially nice women. The other sort, though they may have at first been excited by his sombre handsome face, soon found something in his nature which bothered them, a requirement which made them feel inadequate and therefore angry.

Of these was Aunt Baba, who appeared on the scene shortly after our grandparents, having returned from Europe, had settled at Beaumanoir. Uncle George had heard from Dolly Potts, the object of his lifelong devotion, that she could never leave her father in Ireland, and that it was useless for him to hope that she would change her mind. He may not have wanted to remain a bachelor, but it is hard to see why he married Baba. Perhaps he was too dispirited to take the initiative, and she did it for him.

There was a good deal of talk about Baba before she arrived in our circle. Our elders were very careless of what they said before us, as we over-ran Beaumanoir like mice. Occasionally they might say, ‘Attention aux enfants' and speak a few sentences in French, but as, except for Alice, their knowledge of this language was limited, they soon gave it up, and we all knew that Uncle George was paying attention to a Miss Barbara Stanger of Moonee Ponds, which, like so many things, appeared to strike them as slightly comic. The name Moonee Ponds amused them. It was on the wrong side of Melbourne, as there, unlike most large cities, the better end was not in the west. They thought it ridiculous of her to call herself Baba, and made jokes about black sheep, and mutton dressed as lamb.

At last she was invited to Sunday luncheon, but, it was said, they would have to leave early, as George was taking her to the Zoo, and Austin, who was then still
alive, growled: ‘I hope they'll accept her.'

Dominic was said by someone to have unusual ‘spiritual perception,' but every child has this, and animals have it very strongly on their level. The more articulate we become the quicker we lose it and as Dominic was never very articulate he retained it longer than most people. On the day that Baba came to luncheon he focused his spiritual perception on her. He already had the most chivalrous notions about women and love, and he was dumbly indignant at the way his relatives spoke about an object of such delicate reverence as a bride-to-be, before they had even seen her. He also had compassionate feelings for anyone who was outside the herd, feeling himself to be so different from the bright, kind and frivolous group in which he moved.

From the obscurities of Moonee Ponds the Langtons must have appeared dazzling, and Baba imagined that she was seizing the opportunity to marry into one of the grandest and richest families within her horizons. It is said to be an ordeal for any girl to meet her future in-laws for the first time, and Baba, for all her protective armour, must have been nervous on this visit to Beaumanoir.

One of our English cousins was left a lunatic asylum, patronized exclusively by the aristocracy. He gave a garden party to which he invited a snobbish aunt who was delighted to meet so many peers, but when she found they were all mad she was very angry.
Baba must have had something of the same feelings on this occasion. She had imagined that it would be very formal, and that the correct social usages would be followed as a religious duty, and she had made many inquiries beforehand about wine glasses and forks. When she arrived the place was swarming with grandchildren. Those who had spoken of her with facetious contempt welcomed her with the greatest display of friendliness. This increased Dominic's indignation, though it sprang from the same motive as their former conduct, the wish to create a cheerful atmosphere.

Just before she arrived Austin had said that it was hot and he wanted to go to Tasmania. At once there were cries of, ‘Oh, I want to go too.' ‘Papa, please take me?' ‘May we come, grannie?' As Austin growled: ‘I hate these confounded extensions,' George and Baba came into the room, and she felt, though she was not certain, that his inexplicable remark applied to herself. However, with an amiability as irrational as the malice they had shown before they met her, they said to Baba:

‘Why don't you come too? It's lovely in Tasmania now. Mama will chaperone you.'

Baba was not gratified by this invitation. It was not in conformity with her ideas of correct usage to say to someone you have just met: ‘How d'you do. Will you come to Tasmania?' She had a suspicion that they might be mocking her. Again, when a bell rang in one
of the little green cupolas and a parlourmaid tried to announce luncheon above the din, she was shocked by the lack of solemnity which she felt should attend the meals of ‘important' people, especially as our great-grandmother, Lady Langton, was present. She sat upright and shrivelled like a mummy with just a little life left in its eyes, and Austin yelled at her occasionally: ‘We're going to Tasmania, mama.' When we straggled across to the dining-room, she was taken away somewhere else to a mysterious ritual, like the feeding of a goddess.

In the dining-room the children were seated, except Dominic, at a separate table in the oriel window. Aunt Diana stood disconsolately in the doorway impeding the servants who were bringing in the food. She lived in a cottage nearby, to which she was returning to Sunday dinner with her husband and children.

‘Oh, I would like to go to Tasmania,' she said. ‘I have the hottest house of anyone, and I'm the only one who can't get away.'

‘If you're staying to luncheon,' said Alice, ‘do come in and sit down and they'll lay a place for you. But if you're not, please don't stand in the doorway.'

‘I must get back to Wolfie and the children,' said Diana, but she still stood in the doorway, and stopped the servants bringing in the vegetables. When she noticed this, she stood aside with a martyred air, as if all domestic activity was tiresome. Alice then told her that she might come to Tasmania if she wished, and
she said: ‘Oh, thank you, mama,' but still with a slight note of injury, as she was never unduly grateful. With a regretful glance at the long sparkling table, where she knew that the food and the fun would be so much better than in her little wooden cottage, she shut the door and went home. Yet even Diana, so terribly poor, had a servant to cook her meals, and a woman to clean on three days a week. It is hard to think what poverty meant in those days, except, perhaps, the poverty of her charwoman.

Dominic, the only one of us allowed at the grown-up table, was seated opposite Baba. He turned on her the compassionate scrutiny of his deep brown eyes, perceiving her spiritual nature throughout the entire length of the meal, which maddened her. Also he could only perceive that part of it which resembled his own, a mere fragment. He saw that she was ill at ease, and thought it was due to the vivacity of the conversation, which so often bewildered himself. When the family had had a little champagne, they flung out anything that came into their heads, and as their minds were very quick but often shallow, a great deal that they said was nonsense, though it might contain a percentage of sparks of genuine wit higher than would be found in the conversation of more serious people. He also knew that Baba's origins were rather humbler than our own, and as he had the illusion that the lower one went in the social scale, the greater the simplicity and kindness of heart one found, he thought that in Baba, devoid of
wit and humble, he might find a soulmate.

The virtue which Baba most detested was pity, and it was an intolerable thought that anyone should ever feel sorry for her. To have Dominic's steady gaze fixed on her with Christian understanding of her afflictions at the very time when she was trying, if not to shine, at least to keep her end up in this new milieu, made her hate him. But her dislike was not only due to this and to an incident which happened about an hour later. It was instinctive and arose from those things in which educated people are not supposed to believe nowadays, astrological influences or the colours of their auras. Oddly enough Dominic, usually so passionate in his feelings, did not return her dislike, though unwittingly he affected her life, but not as much as she affected his. He felt in her the resistance he could not find in his relatives, who met his provocations only with kindness and reason, and he wanted to win her approval.

About half an hour after luncheon the hansom came to take George and Baba to the Zoo. Most of the party with their gregarious amiability went out to see them off. Dominic knew that the moment they had driven away Baba's character would be subjected to a disintegrating analysis, and he imagined that she would be feeling as he would in the same circumstances, the insulted and injured, rejected by a flippant and heartless world. He always wanted to compensate
those he thought unfortunate. He also had a sense of occasion, and when a bride-to-be came for the first time to the house, he thought it should be marked by some gesture, and where others failed he never hesitated to take responsibility on himself. Nearby was a bed of madonna lilies and he picked some of these and handed them to Baba, just as she was about to step into the cab. Everyone stood still with surprise, and the only sound was a giggle of appreciation from Aunt Mildy, who loved anything that suggested courtship and marriage. Baba was furious and again thought that Dominic was making fun of her. George said:

‘I'm afraid we can't take all this vegetation to the Zoo with us, but it's a kind thought. Perhaps you'd like them, Laura?'