The Balliols (61 page)

It was a long report. Balliol enjoyed addressing a meeting of four persons as though it were a gathering of four hundred. No one reading the typewritten account of the proceedings would have imagined that he was not trying to convince an audience that contained innumerable different points of view. His sense of humour was tickled by the patent absurdity of the dramatic pause with which he would preface some such exordium as “Gentlemen, there must be, I am aware, those among you will hold …” to be followed a few sentences later by “I will give the same answer to those others who are dissenting on the grounds that…” His vindication of the firm's policy, his prophecy of the firm's future, his tribute to the loyal industry of the staff lasted twenty-seven minutes.

The proceedings after this oration proceeded with exemplary speed. The adoption of the report and balance sheets was moved, seconded, passed. The firm's action in co-opting three new directors and electing a new chairman was approved. A vote of sympathy to the late chairman's son was moved and seconded. With no opposition a vote of thanks to the chairman was proposed. The motions were proposed and seconded by the three shareholder members of the staff. Each in turn rose self-consciously. “I should like to move that,” “I should like to second that.” The nondescript stranger took no part in the proceedings. He sat silent and motionless. The moment the meeting was declared to be at an end, he picked up his hat and left the room.

“Now who on earth was that?” asked Balliol.

The leather-bound volume was examined. His name was Briggs. He lived at Maidstone. For fourteen years he had been the owner of four shares. It was the first time he had attended a meeting.

“And why now?” said Balliol. “And then to do nothing when he comes; neither to express gratitude nor to find fault? His purpose eludes me. There are times when the purpose of the whole human race eludes me.”

“That is neither here nor there,” said Prentice. “Let us be thankful for his solitary presence. The moment we cease declaring a dividend you will find our seating accommodation uncomfortably inadequate.”

The board meeting that followed the departure of the shareholder was of a perfunctory nature. Minutes were read and signed. There was no business to be transacted. The caretaker's wife presented herself with a tray of office tea and office bread and butter.

Prentice took one bite at his slice, then laid it down.

“Margarine. I really think that it is to the return of butter that I look forward more than anything when I consider how pleasant the world will be when the war is over.”

“I don't think you'll have long to wait,” said Victor.

Every issue of the evening papers brought the news of hastening victory. The allied armies were streaming across northern France. In the east the Turks and Bulgarians were near the breaking point. It was happening so fast that nobody could realize that it was happening. Only yesterday the Germans had been shelling Paris. Haig had written his “Back to the Wall” despatch. Peace was centuries distant. Complete victory was declared impossible.

But now, only a few weeks later, peace terms were a general topic of discussion.

“I'll be glad of a holiday,” said Hugh.

His brother-in-law looked at him searchingly.

“I can't say that you look too fit.”

“I don't feel too fit.”

“What's the matter? That gas still?”

“That and other things.”

“You'd better come down to Tavenham for a rest cure. We'd best have all the fun out of it we can while it's still there.”

Early in May the first announcements that Tavenham was for sale had been sent out. Every house agent in London had its particulars.
Once a month a small photograph appeared on the back page of
The Times
. But nobody was very confident that a purchaser would be found till the war was over. No one was going to commit himself at a time when the future was so uncertain. Putting it up for auction would be a waste of time and money. Early in October, however, Victor received a typewritten letter signed Johnstone Buckleigh, with the word “Sir” in typed brackets after the signature, stating that Messrs. Willett of Sloane Square had given him an order to view Tavenham, and that with Lord Huntercoombe's permission he would avail himself of that permit on the following Friday afternoon.

Victor looked him up in
Who's Who
. He had been knighted in 1917. He was not in the 1916 issue. He was a man of forty-three. He had been educated privately. He was married and had two children. He was the chairman of the Phitclose Shoe Company. His recreation was golf. He was a member of the National Liberal Club. “Government contracts and a gift to the party funds,” was Victor's verdict. “A vulgarian, I bet you.”

On the following Friday a long, low, very polished Rolls-Royce limousine swung soundlessly up the drive.

Said Victor, “As I expected, he'll be fat, red-cheeked; veined nose, double chin. He'll be wearing violently checked plus fours, a club tie and gleaming brogues.”

To his surprise a tall, thin, quietly-mannered, quietly-dressed man opened the car's door for himself, and stood, looking up at the long low line of the house's frontage.

“That's nice,” he said. “It's how I hoped it would look, how I was afraid it wouldn't.”

He spoke as though he had already made up his mind. He had a manner that Victor liked. His voice was characterless in a way which suggested that at some time or another a brogue or accent had been ruthlessly rolled out. But it had a pleasantly unaggressive self-confidence. He was wearing a brown tweedy kind of suit. His shoes were thick-soled and had the rich brown that comes of use. His shirt was of a pale neutral-coloured cashmere flannel. His tie was a dark brown poplin. They were the kind of clothes that a countryman would have worn. But something in the way he wore his clothes, perhaps Victor thought, in the neatness with which the tie fitted in the angle of the collar, showed quite definitely he was a townsman.

As they walked round the house and grounds he talked of himself with an engaging candour.

“The war made me, of course. I was well-to-do before the war. I am a rich man now. You will say that nobody has a right to make money out of the war. That's nonsense. War gives a man a chance to show his talent. A lieutenant becomes a general, an industrialist becomes a millionaire. The country rewards those who are of service to her. And I have been of service. I've kept my factories running day and night. I've seen that the troops had boots when they were needed: good boots. I did something that was necessary better than the others could. One deserves to have a reward for that.

“And now I mean to have a say in the way the country's run. I'm going into Parliament. That's why I want a place in the country. If you're going to represent the people, you've got to know the people, move among them. That's one of the reasons I wanted to move away from the Midlands. I shouldn't carry the same weight down there. They remember my beginnings. I picked on this place because the village was called Buckley. In a generation or two my name and the village will get linked. There'll be a feeling we came from the same roots. It's nonsense in a way, but at the same time it stands for something. Yes, this is the kind of place I want. The only thing is that I want it quick. I believe the war'll be over before Christmas. I believe there'll be a general election before Easter. I want to run as an M.P. for this division with a real stake in the place. I want these people to know whom they're voting for. The man who's taken Tavenham; that'll mean something to them. Can I move in by the end of the month?”

The speed of his decision astonished Victor.

“Do you always make up your mind as fast as that?”

“Always. I never reason about things. I go by instinct. The heads of my departments bring me sheets of figures. I never look at them. I say to myself, ‘You've taken forty hours making out that balance sheet. I haven't spent forty seconds looking at it. That explains why you're where you are and I'm where I am.' Well, that's settled then, Lord Huntercoombe. I move in on November the first. Whatever minor details there are our lawyers and agents can arrange. I'm not a man to bother about pennyworths of tar.”

He shook hands heartily.

It was half-past four. For two and a quarter centuries the Tavenhams had owned this house. In seventy-five minutes its transfer had been arranged to a family of whom no record had existed anywhere when the last brick of Tavenham had been laid.

“Still, I'm glad it
is
going to a man like that,” thought Victor. “There are some people whom I'd have hated to think of here; whom I'd not have sold it to. But this man's real. He'll start a tradition here. It'll be a new tradition. But it'll be English. It'll be sound.”

The house would still stand for an ideal of service.

On a November morning with the long avenue of chestnuts gold and amber in the misted sunlight, with the dead leaves lying like crimson shadows below the beech trees; the tufted grasses of the paddock sparkling with dew-rimmed cobwebs, Ruth and Victor drove away from Tavenham to a London that was breathlessly awaiting the Armistice that meant Peace and Victory.

“I'm glad it's happening now,” said Victor. “I don't think I could have borne it afterwards, when everyone was coming back from the war and the place was settling back into its old life. Now it's just one more change, when everything is change.”

They had decided to stay at Ilex till they had found a suitable London house.

It seemed very much like old times to have Ruth back in her old room again, to hear from the hall the sound of children's voices, to find a pram set in the shelter of the balcony. It was to seem even more like old times a few days later, when the morning of the thirteenth brought an excited cable from Malaya. “Darling, I am so happy. We are coming back all of us by the first boat—Lucy.”

It seemed as inconceivable that Lucy should be coming back as that the Armistice had been signed. “We shall have the whole family here for Christmas,” Balliol prophesied. It did not seem possible. Two years ago the family had been scattered. Lucy in Malaya, Ruth at Tavenham, Hugh in France, Francis at Fernhurst, only Helen left. And now they were all coming home. It wasn't possible. Something was bound to happen to prevent it.

But nothing did. First Francis came back from Fernhurst for his Christmas holidays. Then Hugh arrived from Grantham with a fortnight's leave pending demobilization. Then on Christmas Eve itself a taxi, laden with luggage drew up at the front door, Lucy was rushing up the path, behind her two little girls were pulling each other by the hand, while a large, florid, heavily-built man argued with the taxi-driver. Lucy was in her father's arms, he was holding her away from him at arm's length, examining her, saying, “But you haven't altered in the least.” Her mother was agreeing. “She's exactly the same, isn't she, Ruth?” “Of course she is. And I
thought she'd be shrivelled with tropic heat—and Lucy darling, this is heaven. Oh, the toddlers, and Stephen.”

And really she didn't seem any different, because her face was flushed, and she was happy: because she was home again; because she felt a girl again in the house that she had lived in as a girl. And there was her old room, just as it had always been: the Liberty curtains, the Morris wallpaper. Nothing seemed any different. Even Francis, though he was a public school boy. She hoped he wasn't too angry at having his workshop turned back into a nursery. Why, of course he wasn't. Besides, he was getting rather too big for a workshop now. Helen was certain that she'd have known Lucy anywhere, though she had only been three when Lucy left.

Then there was the first dinner with Stephen taking his place for the first time with his in-laws. With Lucy asking, “Well, now, is he what you'd thought he'd be?” With Ruth answering obliquely, “Are we what he'd thought we'd be?“ And though neither question was answered, there was the general feeling that there wasn't any need for them to be; that Stephen was friendly and impressive-looking, sound, serious; the kind of person to keep a firm hand on Lucy; stop her jumping in front of circuses; a man's man more than a woman's; the best kind of husband. They all felt that they were liking him, that he was liking them. And that since that was so, it didn't matter whether they were like or unlike what he'd expected, or he was like or unlike their pictures of him.

It was many years since the dining-room at Ilex had witnessed such a noisy gathering. Everyone was busy asking questions. No one bothered to hear or answer the questions he was set. Each was waiting for his own next sentence. Champagne corks popped briskly. They were too excited, too talkative, to eat. The pace and noise of the conversation was so sustained that it was a relief when the time came for Jane to signal to her daughters and the four men were left alone with their cigars and brandy and Stephen's explanation of the extreme difficulties with which a colonial lawyer had been faced in war-time.

“You fellows over here can't realize what we had to do. You had troubles of your own, of course. But they weren't like ours. We were so cut off. Suppose anything had happened—a rising; something of that kind—where should we have been? No chance of getting any help from England. We had to rely upon ourselves. It was the job of the lawyers to see that no rising did take place; the native had to be kept in his place, but not irritated. Every situation
had to be handled with kid gloves. I served on the bench for eighteen months. I
know
. And the work in my office… When I tell you that both my partners joined up and left me in the lurch to carry on their work for them! No light job, I can tell you. And all the thanks fellows like myself got was a suggestion from Whitehall that we should make a contribution to the war in the shape of income tax. Our contribution, indeed! As though our work and the money we invested in War Loan weren't a sufficient contribution. I am glad to say that I was largely instrumental in putting a stop to that. I pointed out that most of the money in Malaya was owned by the Chinese and that you couldn't tax the Chinese because you couldn't read their figures. I pointed out that if the English were taxed and the Chinese weren't, we should be just made ridiculous, and that we couldn't afford that. Have to keep the prestige of the British flag.”