The Balliols (69 page)

He didn't tell his parents what he had done: not in so many words. A friend had lent him his place for a month, he said, which was in its way true. No, it wasn't really a flat, he explained. A bed-sitting-room. Oh yes, there'd be someone to look after him. An old woman who'd do his breakfast. He'd probably be back at Ilex most nights for dinner. Yes, there was quite nice furniture there, but the pictures were pretty awful. He thought he'd take one or two just to cheer it up a little. But he must rush now, really. He'd got to pack.

He took a well-stocked trunk. Half a dozen pictures, a cushion or two, a rug out of a room that nobody bothered to use now. The curtains would be up when he arrived. He was trembling with nervous excitement. He did hope it looked all right. He'd never furnished anything before: only a school study, and that was different. “Wait here,” he told the cab driver. “I'll be back in a moment to help you with that trunk.” He could not wait to see what his room looked like. He did not want to share that first sight of it with anyone. He shut his eyes as he flung wide the door, kept them shut till he had closed the door, then opened them.

He gave a gasp of pleasure. It was better than he had dreamed: the curtains falling in heavy gold-shot folds, the cushions green and black and primrose against the dark shadow of the divan; the standard lamp with its bright brass stem, and the coloured parasol effect of its silk shade. And it'll look even better when the pictures are up, when the rug's down. It'll look better still to-night when it's lighted up.

He had not told Marjorie that he had taken the flat. He had made no plans for the evening. He had arranged to meet her at the junction of Edgware Road and Oxford Street. It was a half-way house for both of them.

He took care always to arrive there first. “Well, and what's it to be this evening?” That was her first question. It was put rather petulantly. It was a typical May evening; cold and windswept, with a suspicion of rain. The prospect of a long slow twilight. She was shivering, her coat drawn tightly round her, huddling; her face half buried below its collar. A forlorn expression. Francis was glad that it was such an evening, that sunlight and blue skies were not luring them to the Heath, to Richmond, to the river. He chuckled to himself, placing his hand guidingly on her arm.

“I've got a surprise for you. You wait.”

She looked up quickly, questioningly.

“A surprise? What? Tell me!”

“You wait.”

The house was barely five minutes' walk away. He talked with an intangible fluency all the way; not really knowing what he was saying; very conscious of the quick, puzzled glances that she kept casting up at him; her bewilderment increased with every step they took. She could not understand why she was being led away from the bright lights, the crowded thoroughfares where restaurants and cinemas abounded.

When he turned from the pavement, towards the steps of an imposingly-porticoed mansion, she stopped dead.

“Now what is all this about? Am I being kidnapped, or what?”

“It's all right. I live here.”

“You … what?”

But he did not give her time to dispute the point. He had taken her by the arm, he had led her down the passage, had guided her through the matchboard partition of the sub-tenancy, had flung open the door of his own flat.

“This is my flat. I've just taken it.”

It was her turn to gasp. As she stood in the doorway, looking round her.

“Your flat … but … oh, darling … it
is
lovely … really!”

And it was. In a cosy, intimate, friendly way. Though the month was May and the light had not faded in the sky, the curtains were drawn, the fire lit, the lamp turned on. It was a room of warmth and light and kindly shadows. The kind of room where you could relax, where you could be yourself, where you could leave your troubles behind you in the passage, where you could feel that nothing existed outside this circle of warmth and friendliness.

“I must see everything,” she was saying. “You must show me all of it.” She had taken off her coat, tossed her hat on to a chair, was busy opening cupboards, peering behind curtains, examining the material of the cushions, the curtains, the divan spread; looking at the pictures; opening the bathroom door; asking to have everything explained to her: how he managed about meals, insisted on seeing the kitchen. “What fun one could have with a place like this.” Returning to the room, resuming her examination, finding a bowl of eggs and rows of tins behind a curtain: New Zealand whitebait, a tongue, peaches.

“You've got food here?”

“I thought we might have a picnic.”

“Do let's.”

“I've got frying-pans and things.”

She helped him collect plates and knives and glasses. They got in each other's way and laughed. He opened a bottle of white wine that he had borrowed from his father's cellar.

“I don't know what it is, but it's better than what my father's friends give me when they take me to the Ritz,” she said.

And the omelet tasted better than anything he had eaten there

“Now let's open one of those tins,” she said.

“One ought to dance between courses,” he reminded her. “I've got a gramophone.”

They pulled back the rug: the narrow square of boarding did not make them envious for the ivory-smooth floors of Brook Street.

They laughed and danced, opened more tins than they could need possibly, finished the wine, vowed they had never enjoyed themselves as much at any restaurant.

“Let's move these plates away into the kitchen,” he said. “There'll be more room to dance.”

But when they were back again she said that no, she'd like to rest a little.

“I'll pull the divan round, then we can throw cushions on the floor and lean against it.”

He pulled it round. “That's it. No, that light's shining in your face. I'll cover it.” He draped a thick school scarf above the globe; so that its light was as dimmed as the moon's is when a cloud conceals it. The glow from the fire shone ruddily warm upon them. He opened his arms to her.

Close, close against his heart he held her. His kisses soft at first and gentle, barely a touching of the lips, grew longer, more lingering, tenser. “Ah, my sweet. If you only knew how much I loved you.” It was such a moment as he had used at other times as the prelude to what she had described as his “forever speeches”; protestations of how he would love her always; of how he would work for her; how he would arrange their life for them; of the happiness of being with her at last for always. He made no such speeches now. The memory of his brother's tirade fired his enterprise. His kisses grew fiercer, deeper; his words wilder, tenser. “You're so lovely,” he whispered, “the loveliest thing beneath the sun. I want to kiss you, all of you, here and here and here.” His fingers fluttered along her body. She sighed; shuddered; drugged by his words and kisses. He was fired, in part by her nearness, by the touch and the response of her; half by the dizzy, heady excitement of an approaching conquest. He had not believed it possible, he could not now believe it possible.
And yet it
was
possible. If he kept his head, if he kept his courage. In his arms she grew weaker, limper, as he grew bolder; her very weakness a response. Her closed eyes, a challenge; her quick breathing, her arms limp-hanging by her sides, a call to courage. Even now he could scarcely believe that it was really happening, that it was his lips that were pleading. “Darling, you are so lovely now; as you really are you would be so much lovelier. Please, my darling, please!“ Was it his lips that whispered that, was it his ears that heard her low, scarcely articulated murmur: “Look away then, darling, for a moment, please.”? Was it his ears that a moment later heard her whisper, half-shy, half-proud, “Am I really as lovely as you thought?” Was it to his eyes, his lips, his hands that loveliness was yielded?

Even next morning he could hardly believe that it had happened. So Hugh was right, then. He could never have believed it was so easy; that the fortress would fall at the first really resolute assault. It was so much easier than he had ever thought. At the same time it was so much lovelier than he had ever dreamed. It was the sudden discovery of an enchanted garden.

As he sauntered slowly that morning during his luncheon hour from the Marble Arch eastwards towards Orchard Street, it was with new, awakened eyes that he watched the eddying flow of shoppers that thronged that crowded pavement; the exquisite and languid ladies with their chauffeured cars drawn up waiting by the kerb; the shop-girls, secretaries, typists, in their trim office clothes, spending their hour of liberty before shop windows. Girls in light summer frocks and floppy hats hurrying, a smile upon their lips, as though happiness were on its way to meet them. It was a familiar enough scene. Yet these girls with their set or smiling faces; with their slow or hurrying steps, their Paquin or cheap muslin frocks; on this morning of revelation seemed new to him; were the creatures of another world: a world that he had just discovered. An enchanted garden was bright with colour; rich and many-scented; its fruit and flowers waiting to be picked.

A few days later the agony column of
The Times
contained the following advertisement:

Opportunity for ex-officer to improve position. Qualifications: bachelor between thirty and fifty employed continuously during last two years at salary of not less than £400 not more than £
600
. Write Box 773.

Thought Hugh: “That seems to meet my case.”

He scarcely expected to receive an answer to his application. An advertisement such as that would fill a mail bag. He was considerably surprised to open in the following week a typewritten letter, signed “P. Burke” and bearing the heading of the St. Charles's Club.

“Dear Captain Balliol,” (it ran) “I thank you for replying to my advertisement. If you will call on me here to-morrow afternoon (Tuesday) at 3.45, I will discuss my proposal with you.”

Hugh believed that a slight unpunctuality makes a good impression. He arrived at the St. Charles's Club at seven minutes to four.

“Yes, sir, Mr. Burke is expecting you,” the porter told him. “Page, show this gentleman where to leave his hat and gloves.”

He was received by a tall, ample man with a bald head, a paunch, a white imperial, a waxed Shakespearian moustache and an ambassadorial manner.

“The kind of man who doesn't ask you anywhere unless he's meaning business” was Hugh's mental verdict.

The tone of his reception was encouraging.

“Ah, yes, Captain Balliol. It is charming of you to come. It was charming of you to answer my advertisement. I have made some inquiries about you, naturally. I will recapitulate what I have discovered. You will interrupt me if I make a mistake. You are
thirty-three years old. You are of a Wessex family. You are an old Fernhurstian. You served in the Machine Gun Corps. You were wounded and awarded the M.C. You are now a director of Peel & Hardy's. You receive a commission on the wine that your friends purchase. Times are not good. The last balance sheets of Peel & Hardy's were not encouraging. You probably, all things considered, account yourself lucky to be able to earn as much as five hundred pounds a year.”

Mr. Burke paused. His speech was fluent, his manner smooth, his smile urbane.

“Summing me up,” thought Hugh; “talking, so as to gain time; talking, so as to create a congenial atmosphere. I don't like him. I quite definitely don't like him. But I'm prepared to put up with a good deal from anyone who'll make it possible for me to run my flat again.”

“You're right so far,” he said.

Mr. Burke inclined his head.

“I have received, naturally, a number of answers to my advertisement. There are, alas, a great many ex-officers anxious to better their positions. But simple though my requirements were, a great many of the applicants did not satisfy them, particularly as regards marriage. Several seemed to imagine that a man living apart from his wife could claim to be a bachelor. In many cases he can claim to be, no doubt. But not in this. Now, there is one point on which I want to make quite sure before I go any further. You are, I know, a bachelor. But have you complications of any other sort?”

The small lines round Hugh's eyes wrinkled into a smile.

“It is many moons since romance tarried upon my pillow,” he replied.

Mr. Burke's smile was a wintry sally. “Not much sense of fun, this fellow,” was Hugh's thought.

“Admirable,” said Mr. Burke. “In that case …” He paused again, then looking Hugh very directly between the eyes, began to speak more slowly. “As you will probably have guessed from my advertisement, I am looking for a man of breeding and education, old enough to have common sense, young enough to have as much of life before him as at his back. The stipulation that he should have held a post of over four hundred pounds for a couple of years is a proof of capacity and reliability. A man with a salary of over six hundred pounds would scarcely be interested in my proposition.”

He paused.

Hugh made no comment, but the pulse of his heart was beating hurriedly. “Don't be a fool,” he warned himself. “Don't excite yourself. Nothing's going to come of this. Don't build castles in the air. Don't be a fool; don't get yourself worked up.” But all the same he was absurdly, desperately excited.

Mr. Burke continued: “Have you ever considered what is your most valuable possession?”

“He's coming to the point now,” Hugh thought. “Whatever answer I give will be the wrong one. I'd best be flippant.”

“My wardrobe, I suppose.”

Mr. Burke smiled.

“In a sense, yes; but your wardrobe is scarcely a marketable asset. It is not in the same category as your passport.”

Hugh stared at him.

“A passport? That's something that anyone can get.”