The Balliols (64 page)

Very few, apparently, from the replies that he gave that evening to Francis's questions.

“What are you going to do when you come down from Oxford? I should say that that was one of the questions that can be best left till you actually have come down. The world, in terms of the quotation, will be all before you where to choose. And if you do not immediately, as I believe the military phrase it, reach your objective, I fancy that a little general co-operation will have no difficulty in discovering an acceptable solution.”

“You mean that if everything else fails there is always Peel & Hardy?”

“That is not precisely what I meant. But as you say, there is always Peel & Hardy.”

Which means nothing, thought Francis; that no one's really bothering about me: no one ever has: no one ever will. And that old feeling of being alone, neglected, unaided, “out of things,” that had made him reserved and secretive as a child, volubly rebellious during his first terms at Fernhurst, made him now ruthlessly resolved to decide his future for himself. Malcolm had said that a new training was needed for the new world; but was he not being trained in precisely the same way as his brother had and before that his father. The slogan “back to normal” assumed that the England of the 1920's was going to resemble the England of 1900. But was it? Was not
peace being boomed in just the same way that war had been and just as truthlessly?

During the long dark evenings of the Easter term he scrutinized
The Times
and
Express
and
Mail
as though he were a detective in search of evidence. Reading between the lines, avoiding the leaders, studying the news itself, what proof was there that the ample Edwardian days were to return? The war might be over as regards actual fighting; but belligerent instincts were on the prowl. Class hatred was a potent force; socialism was no longer a subject for abstract debate; capital and labour had resumed their temporarily suspended conflict. The trade boom was at an end. Income tax had not been lowered. The army of the dole-fed unemployed grew larger; strike followed strike. The spacious Edwardian age, indeed! Georgian England was going to be different.

There was a marked change in the atmosphere of Ilex on his return at Easter. For one thing Hugh was back. He had let his flat. It was proving rather more of an expense than he had anticipated.

“So I'm to let it for six months of the year and live rent free on the profit for the other half. You can always get a good rent for a furnished flat.”

He put a brave face on it. “But that's not the real reason,” Francis thought. “It's not that the flat cost more than he expected but that he's earning less.”

There was that change. There was also a servant less. The house was run by a house-parlourmaid and a cook-general. The quality of the meals had suffered. Shoes shone less brightly. He had to brush his own clothes if he wanted to look smart. His father spoke of the difficulties of getting decent servants. Women had been spoilt by war work. They thought it beneath their dignity to go into domestic service. “When you are fortunate enough to have two servants who can work in harmony, you daren't risk bringing in a third who may start the process which is I believe described as setting them by the ears.”

He, too, put a brave face on it. But his mother had told him that his father had been badly hit by the depreciation of the franc. He had bought French War Loan with the franc at twenty-seven. The franc was fluctuating between seventy and eighty. In the same way Lucy explained her return to Malaya six months before she had intended with the argument that a wife's place really was beside her husband. But Francis suspected that the slump in rubber had something to do with that. Just as he was doubtful whether Victor's
acceptance of a number of directorates was entirely because his experience with Peel & Hardy had made him feel that business was rather fun. From all accounts Ruth was being encouraged to entertain on a large scale in her London house; it was rumoured that her husband was one of the unfortunate but interested backers in the expensively staged revue at the Pagoda which had run ten nights.

On all sides there was a brave showing; but behind that façade the pinch was being felt. Peace was following the example of war. On the surface everyone was pretending that everything was grand, but below that surface everyone was worried and on his guard.

As usual no plans had been made for Francis's holiday. He was left to his own resources. Walking the London streets he noted the restaurants and shops that had opened a year earlier with such a flourish of peace and prosperity; and that now had “Change of Management” announcements in their windows. He counted the numbers of ex-officer-looking men who were wearing suits with the breast pocket on the right-hand side, who had had their suits turned to economize. Yes, there were signs enough for the observant, that all was not for the best for everyone in the best of all possible worlds.

For everyone; on that point he insisted: there must be others for whom the tide was running: who were at one with this new world, in step with it; not so much following its changes as directing them. Only who were they? Certainly not those for whom the Edwardian era had been spacious. It was others, for whom that era had been penurious and constrained, who were finding in Georgian England the climate that would mature their talents.

Who were they? Listening to his father's and Hugh's talk, remembering what Malcolm had said, he wondered whether the same class of person whom the war had given a chance to rise into the officer's class was not now being given by the peace a chance of self-establishment in that same world. He had heard it said that the “temporary gentleman” kind of officer would find it difficult when the war was over, going back to what he had been before. But in point of fact had they gone back, those that had genuine talent and ambition, men of the Smollett type?

As far as he could gather most of the work at Peel & Hardy's was done by Smollett; most of the responsibility was delegated to him. He had started at the foot of the ladder. He knew the business. That was the kind of man that was wanted in this new world; that was the kind of man he himself would have to be if he was going to succeed. The new world was going to be run by a different kind of man.
The day of the big land-owners was at an end. They had been taxed out of their power. The Church had lost prestige. If no soldier had managed to rise to a position of political importance during the war, it was certain that none would be able to in peace. It was big business that was going to run the country. Trade had become so international that every political and diplomatic issue had become a matter of finance. Everything turned on money. The industrialists would have the first word and the last. So Francis deliberated with himself, following a line of argument that brought him back inevitably to its starting point. His talk with Malcolm.

“I've got to meet that man again,” he thought.

“Dear Mr. Malcolm (he wrote), I don't suppose you will remember me by name, but I sat next you at tea when you came down to Fernhurst with Rosslyn Hill. And I had a talk with you last Christmas in your office. There is a matter about which I particularly wanted to ask your advice. May I call some time and see you?”

The answer came by return of post. It was typewritten.

“Such matters can be discussed more easily and very much more pleasantly over a lunch table. Will you lunch with me at the Granville Club; any day next week but Tuesday, at 1.25?”

Malcolm was one of those who remain the same person against a series of different backgrounds. The same precise, stately figure who had fixed a luncheon for 1.25, had conducted the strategy of a football side from a distance of thirty yards, had convinced a prelate that his home would be incomplete till it possessed a cigarette box that played a tune, extended to Francis an ample welcome in the ante-room of the Granville Club.

“I am uncertain as to what manner of beverage I should offer you,” he said. “In my day a prefect at a public school would have considered beer a pleasant but inessential adjunct to his digestion. Perhaps now a less robust generation prefers barley water. Or it may be that you are one of these bright young people who I am informed drink champagne for breakfast? I offer you the freedom of your choice.”

He ordered the lunch in the same expansively avuncular manner.

“In my day a young man would think nothing of putting away a dozen oysters and a steak and making a substantial cavity in a gorgonzola. But there are no real trenchermen to-day. I suppose that what you'd prefer is a grilled sole and some oatmeal biscuits?”

At any ordinary time Francis would have been entertained by this kind of badinage, but he was nervous lest it would be continued right through the meal; lest Malcolm should follow the business etiquette of discussing nothing of importance till the coffee stage was reached, by which time he would, he suspected, be incapable of making the nature of his predicament plain to Malcolm. It was clear in his mind now, but by the end of lunch it very likely would have ceased to be. Malcolm had the sensitiveness, however, to perceive that his guest was incompletely at his ease.

“Well, and what's on your mind?” he said.

All that Francis had been logically and systematically deliberating; all the carefully phrased and co-ordinated argument's were blurted out in a pell-mell of “What I really think's” and “Don't you agree with me that's” from which Malcolm gradually disentangled Francis's main concern: that the industrialists were the power of the future and that he wanted to come in on the ground floor.

“So you have come to ask little Malcolm's advice. I'm afraid I can't promise you a rise to fame in the world of commerce quite so spectacular as his has been. At the same time …” He paused interrogatively.

“I was wondering whether you couldn't get me into Selfridge's as one of these public school salesmen. I want to start at the bottom and work up.”

“I see.”

“I thought that if I were going to start at the bottom, I ought to start at once: that going up to Oxford would be a waste of time.”

“If you are going into Selfridge's, in that way, it would be best for you to go in at once.”

“But could you get me in?”

“I imagine so. At the same time …” He paused. He had dropped his facetious manner. His face had taken on a serious expression, since a serious matter was to be discussed.

“It isn't quite such an easy thing as you might imagine.”

“You mean that I've been brought up soft.” On his face was a defensive, on-guard look, such as that with which ten years back his eldest sister had met the suggestion that she was not strong enough to be a militant. “You mean that I shouldn't be able to stand being ordered about by people of another class; that I should lose my temper when customers made complaints; that it would go against the grain to call them ‘Sir.'”

Malcolm shook his head.

“No, it isn't that; not altogether; though that is difficult. But not any more difficult than getting a commission through the ranks, which a great many from our class did. It's the atmosphere of commerce. Things justified by results; not by intentions, as in certain other worlds they are. You'd be in competition with ruthlessly ambitious people. Don't misunderstand me. There's not a cut-throat feeling; not at all. There's very much the same feeling of
esprit de corps
inside a big store that there is inside a school. They want to get on themselves. They know they can get on best if the firm's doing well. There's a team spirit. And because there's that team spirit, nobody's got any use for the man who isn't trying, who isn't working all out. Any more than a football side has. There's no helping of lame dogs over stiles. They take work seriously there. The simile of the football team is a pretty sound one. The pace is set by the fastest, not the slowest. At a school the form has to wait till the dunce has understood. In a store like this one, if you can't stay the pace, nobody's going to stay behind to help you. You just drop out.”

To Francis the existence of difficulties only made the adventure more exciting.

“I could stand that.”

“It's a burning of your boats, you know,” Malcolm warned him. “It's a bad job to fail at. It's a road you can't retrace. It's not like reading for a law degree at Oxford and then finding after a year or two in chambers that the law isn't your line of country. You can change on to another line. You've still got Oxford at the back of you. It'll be very different to find yourself at twenty-one with nothing at the back of you except a failure at Oxford Street.”

The word “failure” did not exist in the lexicon of Francis's future.

“You will arrange it for me, then?”

“If your father approves.”

“What's it got to do with him?”

“It's got a good deal to do with him. A student, and that's what you'll be for at least six months, only gets a pound a week. We've got to be assured that while you are a student, you are being properly looked after. Either in your father's home, or in lodgings paid for by your father. If you bring me a signed statement from your father, then I'll see what I can do.”

Francis had little doubt that he could obtain eventually the certificate from his father. But he was certain that he would meet with opposition.
The prospect of conflict on the whole pleased him. At the end he would have a feeling of achievement. His conscience was completely clear. He would not, as the Victorian novelists described it, be causing his parents pain. They would disapprove because they would consider it their duty as parents to disapprove; but presumably they would not care. They never had cared about him much. They had liked him. They had been generous. But they had never identified themselves with him in any way. They had never lived in him. Up to a point his mother had, until he had gone to Fernhurst. She had been quite different when he returned at the end of his first term. Possibly because he was different. He had been told that a mother often lost interest in a son when he ceased to be dependent on her. She had taken so little real interest in him that when he had converted his War Savings Certificates into calf-bound editions of the Oxford Classics, she was astonished at his demand for a special bookshelf.