The Balliols (28 page)

Balliol had suggested that such an opinion was likely to be revised by the evidence of the terminal report.

“Not a bit of it,” the master answered. “All our reports are strictly censored. We write them out on a piece of foolscap and the Head gets them typed. When we write ‘lazy and unintelligent'
the parents read ‘moderate.' You can take it from me that the boy who gets ‘moderate' in his report more than once is one of earth's best dunces.”

Balliol had not repeated this conversation to his wife. He was able consequently to take a pleasantly ironic pleasure in the delight that Francis's reports invariably caused her. “It is nice how well he's doing,” she would say. And again, “I'm glad there's such a good tone in the school. I should hate Francis to be somewhere where they're always having rows.”

As he sat back in the uncomfortable school chair, he watched the effect on Jane of the headmaster's oratory. She was leaning forward, her eyes on the headmaster's face, her lips a little parted: eager, animated, expectant. Yes, the old Head knew how to get round mothers; there was no mistaking that. The expectant look on her face grew keener when they reached Francis's class: the third. He began reading the names out from the bottom. Twelfth, eleventh, tenth, ninth. He's doing rather well, thought Balliol. Himself he was not a believer in forcing a young boy; he would rather back the man who won a scholarship to a University than to a prep, school. That fact and his own opinion of the standard of teaching in the school had prevented him from taking much interest in Francis's scholastic achievements. There was plenty of time for that. All the same, it was exciting to hear the names being read out one after another. It was like a race. Sixth, fifth, fourth, anyhow, he was in the running. Third. Still not Francis. A second: another name. Jane gave a little gasp. “Oh!” “First, Balliol.” With hands clapping on all sides of him, a sturdy, Eton-collared urchin was walking up to the stage.

Francis's reward for a term's industry was Mallory's
Morte d' Arthur
. He turned a page or two while the two senior forms were read. “Looks pretty mingy,” the boy next him whispered. “Don't care about that. My father gives me half-a-crown every time I get a prize. That's what I work for.”

It was to his father that he brought the book the moment the last echoing three cheers had died away. But his mother's arm that he took.

“I thought we might go and have tea at Stewart's,” she was saying. “You'd like that, darling, wouldn't you?”

“Rather!”

Balliol watched them as he turned the pages of the Mallory. There was no doubt that Francis was his mother's favourite. There was a deeper note in her voice, a different look on her face when she
was with him. Just as there had been on his, he supposed, when he was with Lucy. However parents might try, they couldn't help having a favourite. And they couldn't conceal that preference from their children. It wasn't the injustice that people supposed it was. Lucy and Francis were the difficult ones. They needed more careful attention than Hugh and Ruth. Those two were self-reliant in a way the others weren't. They could stand alone; on their own feet. Helen… But it was a long time before
she
would begin to be a problem.

In spite of Balliol's devotion to Lucy, it was his wife who took the more real interest in her letters; who looked up sailing dates, figured out how soon the letter from Port Said might be expected; the letter from Aden; the next, Colombo; who read and re-read the letters when they arrived; who kept bringing reference to Lucy's doings into her talk. She took the detached interest in Lucy which it is only possible to feel towards someone of whom you are very fond; but with whose interests your own interests are not involved. She was genuinely anxious to know what Lucy was doing, thinking, seeing. Balliol, on the other hand, when the train had drawn out of Victoria Station, had thought, “That's that.” He had seen her departure, as the end of a relationship. Something had died. It would never be the same again. The Lucy round whom he had built dreams was taken from him. It was some other person who was writing amusing descriptions of fellow-passengers and ports of call.

They were good letters: lightly written. The people and the places that she described were real. He did not discourage Jane from reading extracts from them to her friends. They were letters of which any parent might be proud. But he did not re-read them when he was alone. The letter in which he took the chief interest was one in which she described her meeting with Roy Rickman.

“He's a nice fellow,” she wrote, “handsome, very jovial. Usually the centre of a group. Generous, he gives a lot of parties. I think people like him; at any rate, he's always with people. I sat next to him at a
pahit
party the other day. He's much more interesting than I had expected. He writes poetry. He showed me some of it. I thought it rather good, though of course I don't know anything about those things. Still, I think it's rather remarkable that he should want to write poetry at all, don't you?

“He's going about a great deal with the daughter of one of the planters. I don't know if there's anything in it. You know what
things are like in a small place. If a man's seen dancing with the same girl twice, he's asked what his intentions are. But there may be something here. Everyone says there is. As far as I can see it would be very suitable. She's an only daughter. Her father's very rich. She's perhaps a little older than the story books tell one is the ideal. I shouldn't say she was much younger than Mr. Rickman. If at all. But she's really rather lovely. Dark, pale skin; a rather languid manner. She looked as though she might be managing. But haven't you always said that the man who marries money, earns it.…”

Balliol commented on that letter as he returned it to Jane: “You prophesied a worldly marriage for the young man.”

Regularly every five or six days through the autumn a letter came from Lucy. She was due to return to England in the spring. In November, however, one morning after Balliol had left for his office, two cables arrived from Singapore. One was from the woman whose guest Lucy was. It said: “Thoroughly approve Lucy's choice. Writing.” The other was explanatory. “Want to become engaged to Stephen Chambers. Important lawyer. Writing full particulars. Love, Lucy.”

Ruth and Hugh were in the house when the cables arrived.

Said Ruth: “I had a feeling that something like this might happen.”

Said Hugh: “I bet our father will make difficulties.”

Hugh was wrong, however. Balliol was delighted. “It sounds what I believe is called ‘a very suitable alliance.' I have made enquiries about Chambers. He is highly esteemed by the profession. I expect that Lucy will finish as her ladyship. He isn't particularly young. He's thirty-seven. But Lucy is one of those serious-minded women who wouldn't take a young man seriously. She needs guiding. I don't think she would be happy with anyone who wasn't several years older than herself. No, I must say, I'm very pleased about it. Though I'll be grateful, naturally, to have some particulars.”

Jane asked if that would mean her living out of England.

“There's an old adage about a wife's place being beside her husband.”

Jane looked at him, with a puzzled expression, half opened her mouth as though she were going to say something, then seemed to think better of it.

Said Francis: “Bags I Lucy's room.”

It was his first contribution to the discussion; everyone turned round to him as though some inanimate object had given tongue.

“What do you mean?” asked Hugh.

“She won't be coming back. She won't want her room any more, will she?”

There was a silence as though they were all realizing for the first time the significance of Lucy's marriage.

“No, I suppose she won't be needing her room any more,” said Balliol slowly. “Yes, I suppose you might as well have it, if you want it.”

“Then may I have the cupboard moved and…”

His father cut him short.

“You may arrange it exactly as you like.”

It was a month before they could hope to receive particulars from Malaya. During that month Lucy's letters had the curious effect of old newspapers, in which you read prophetic leaders on issues whose outcome has been long settled. Everything she had to tell of her parties, her plans, of the people she had met, the people she was about to meet, were as dated by that cable as a last year's frock. The letters, however, were read by the family with a far greater interest than those that had contained news. They had been written during the days before she had been proposed to; before at any rate, she had accepted the proposal; the days when she was falling in love; when she was making up her mind, having it made up for her. Had she been happy then: confident, uncertain, worried? The family read the letters eagerly, searching for clues to her state of mind when she had written them; studying them for clues as a detective will sift evidence.

There were no obvious clues, however. These letters, as her earlier ones, were bright bulletins of fact and comment.

“Have you noticed that she hasn't referred to Stephen Chambers once?” Jane remarked.

Said Balliol: “That's the best proof there could be that she's in love with him. She never did speak about the things that really mattered to her.”

At last the awaited mail arrived. But the letters so long expected proved so conventional in content and expression that they told very little. There was an excitable, girlish letter from Lucy.

“Darling Mum and Dad. It
was
sweet of you to cable out in that way. I'm so happy about it all. And I know you'll love
Stephen. He's the finest person I've ever met. I'm so proud of him.…” There was a great deal more in the same key.

From Stephen Chambers, there was a stiff, formal letter, expressing, appropriately, his devotion to Lucy, his fortune in securing her affection, his appreciation of her parents' sacrifice in allowing their daughter to join her lot with a man whose life work lay far from home; his resolve to make her a good husband. He gave some facts about his income, position, future. The figures were impressive.

“He is clearly able,” was Balliol's comment, “to maintain her in what I believe is called ‘that standard of comfort to which she had been accustomed'.”

There was a rather flurried letter from Lucy's hostess. “The kind of letter,” said Balliol, “that a house-master sends when your boy gets measles: excusing himself, saying he's not to blame, that all care will be taken, that anyhow it's something that has to be got over some time.”

“I know, of course, that this must be a great surprise and shock to you; that you must be very anxious about it all; particularly as Mr. Chambers is so much older than Lucy. But I can assure you that he is really a sound man. Otherwise of course we wouldn't have let her meet him. Though actually it was rather a surprise to us. But I do think he'll make her a good husband; and they do seem devoted to one another; and though Lucy's not the demonstrative type, it makes me quite sentimental seeing them together. I know you must be anxious, and I don't suppose it's the way you'd have preferred it to happen—Lucy having to live abroad and all that—but I really think that it's something you'll be very happy about in the end.”

In this last letter a snapshot was included. “I know you'll be curious to know what your future son-in-law looks like.” The snapshot was of a group, taken presumably at some tennis party. The men were coatless and in flannels. The women, in spite of their wide hats, suggested some assay at exercise. In the background was a long bungalow set about with palms. A circle of ink islanded the broad shoulders, the heavy jowl, the clean-shaven face, the close-cropped head of Lucy's chosen.

The photograph was passed in silence round the table, till it finally reached Francis. “Gosh!” he said.

The following morning an announcement of the engagement appeared in
The Times, Morning Post
, and
Telegraphy
under which encouragement a cable signed Lucy and Stephen craved permission to
be married in Penang in January. Jane looked interrogatively at her husband. She anticipated opposition. None came, however.

“I don't see why they shouldn't. Chambers is the kind of man who knows his mind. He's got his work out there. It would be senseless to bring him back here for a wedding. There would be nothing for Lucy to do. A year's engagement can be a very amusing thing for a girl living in London if she's got her young man over here. But there's no point in separating them now. The sooner Lucy starts a life of her own the better.”

Said Ruth: “And I'd been so looking forward to being a bridesmaid.”

Said Hugh: “I feel as though I were being done out of a binge.”

Said their father: “We'll have festivities of some kind of our own.”

Said Francis: “It won't be the same thing.”

It wasn't. Certainly not for Helen, who instead of carrying a bouquet of flowers as a bridesmaid, was presented with a china doll that opened and shut its eyes, but which she broke within an hour of its arrival, and mourned tearfully for the remainder of the day; nor for Francis who, adjudged too young for dinner at the Savoy and a box at Wyndham's, was instead taken by his mother to a matinée performance of
Puss in Boots:
nor, indeed, for the others was it a particularly successful evening. They did their best to pretend that they were enjoying themselves immensely. But over each in their separate way hung the knowledge that the corporate family life that they had shared for twenty years was over. One of them had gone; the rest would go.

In the dark shadow of the theatre Ruth's attention wandered from the play. A quarter to nine now. Eastwards in Malaya midnight would be long since passed. She remembered that last evening, and her pact with Lucy. But, of course, Lucy would never tell her anything. She had realized that when she had seen the photograph of Stephen Chambers: that tall, stern stranger who had been an undergraduate when Lucy was in her cradle. What could Lucy have to tell to a younger sister of her life with such a one? It would be something secret to herself. There was a freemasonry among married women from which girls were permanently excluded. However intimate you might be with a friend or a sister, that intimacy ended with marriage. Marriage was a club, in which guests could only be taken into certain rooms. Lucy was a member now.