“Well,” said Brenda's solicitor. “We have our case now, all quite regular and complete. I don't think it can come on until next term — there's a great rush at the moment, but there's no harm in you having your own evidence ready. I've got it typed out for you. You'd better keep it by you and get it clear in your mind.”
“ … My marriage was an ideally happy one,” she read, “until shortly before Christmas last year when I began to suspect that my husband's attitude had changed towards me. He always remained in the country when my studies took me to London. I realized that he no longer cared for me as he used to. He began to drink heavily and on one occasion made a disturbance at our flat in London, constantly ringing up when drunk and sending a drunken friend round to knock on the door. Is that necessary?”
“Not strictly, but it is advisable to put it in. A great deal depends on psychological impression. Judges in their more lucid moments sometimes wonder why perfectly respectable, happily married men go off for week-ends to the seaside with women they do not know. It is always helpful to offer evidence of general degeneracy.”
“I see,” said Brenda. “From then onwards I had him watched by private agents and as a result of what they told me, I left my husband's house on April 5th. Yes, that all seems quite clear.”
Three
Lady St. Cloud preserved an atavistic faith in the authority and preternatural good judgment of the Head of the Family; accordingly her first act, on learning from Marjorie of Brenda's wayward behaviour, was to cable for Reggie's return from Tunisia where he was occupied in desecrating some tombs. His departure, like all his movements, was leisurely. He did not take the first available boat or the second, but eventually he arrived in London on the Monday after Tony's visit to Brighton. He held a family conclave in his library consisting of his mother, Brenda, Marjorie, Allan and the solicitor; later he discussed the question fully with each of them severally; he took Beaver out to luncheon; he dined with Jock; he even called on Tony's Aunt Frances. Finally on Thursday evening he arranged to meet Tony for dinner at Brown's.
He was eight years older than Brenda; very occasionally a fugitive, indefinable likeness was detectable between him and Marjorie, but both in character and appearance he was as different from Brenda as it was possible to imagine. He was prematurely, unnaturally stout, and he carried his burden of flesh as though he were not yet used to it; as though it had been buckled on to him that morning for the first time and he were still experimenting for its better adjustment; there was an instability in his gait and in his eyes, a furtive look as though he were at any moment liable to ambush and realized that he was unfairly handicapped for flight. This impression, however, was made solely by his physical appearance; it was the deep bed of fat in which his eyes lay, which gave them this look of suspicion; the caution of his movements resulted from the exertion of keeping his balance and not from any embarrassment at his own clumsiness, for it had never occurred to him that he looked at all unusual.
Rather more than half Reggie St. Cloud's time and income was spent abroad in modest archaeological expeditions. His house in London was full of their fruit — fragmentary amphoras, corroded bronze axe-heads, little splinters of bone and charred stick, a Graeco-Roman head in marble, its features obliterated and ground smooth with time. He had written two little monographs about his work, privately printed and both dedicated to members of the royal family. When he came to London he was regular in attendance at the House of Lords; all his friends were well over forty and for some years now he had established himself as a member of their generation; few mothers still regarded him as a possible son-in-law.
“This whole business of Brenda is very unfortunate,” said Reggie St. Cloud.
Tony agreed.
“My mother is extremely upset about it, naturally. I'm upset myself. I don't mind admitting, perfectly frankly, that I think she has behaved very foolishly, foolishly and wrongly. I can quite understand your being upset about it too.”
“Yes,” said Tony.
“But all the same, making every allowance for your feelings, I do think that you are behaving rather vindictively in the matter.”
“I'm doing exactly what Brenda wanted.”
“My dear fellow, she doesn't know what she wants. I saw this chap Beaver yesterday. I didn't like him at all. Do you?”
“I hardly know him.”
“Well I can assure you I didn't like him. Now you're just throwing Brenda into his arms. That's what it amounts to, as I see it, and I call it vindictive. Of course at the moment Brenda's got the idea that she's in love with him. But it won't last. It couldn't with a chap like Beaver. She'll want to come back in a year, just you see. Allan says the same.”
“I've told Allan. I don't want her back.”
“Well, that's vindictive.”
“No, I just couldn't feel the same about her again.”
“Well, why feel the same? One has to change as one gets older. Why, ten years ago I couldn't be interested in anything later than the Sumerian age and I assure you that now I find even the Christian era full of significance.”
For some time he spoke about some tabulae execrationum that he had lately unearthed. “Almost every grave had them,” he said, “mostly referring to the circus factions, scratched on lead. They used to be dropped in through a funnel. We had found forty-three up to date, before this wretched business happened, and I had to come back. Naturally I'm upset.”
He sat for a little eating silently. This last observation had brought the conversation back to its point of departure. He clearly had more to say on the subject and was meditating the most convenient approach. He ate in a ruthless manner, champing his food (it was his habit, often, without noticing it, to consume things that others usually left on their plates, the heads and tails of whiting, whole mouthfuls of chicken bone, peach stones and apple cores, cheese rinds and the fibrous parts of the artichoke). “Besides, you know,” he said, “it isn't as though it was all Brenda's fault.”
“I haven't been thinking particularly whose fault it is.”
“Well that's all very well but you seem rather to be taking the line of the injured husband — saying you can't feel the same again, and all that. I mean to say, it takes two to make a quarrel and I gather things had been going wrong for some time. For instance you'd been drinking a lot — have some more burgundy by the way.”
“Did Brenda say that?”
“Yes. And then you'd been going round a bit with other girls yourself. There was some woman with a Moorish name you had to stay at Hetton while Brenda was there. Well that's a bit thick you know. I'm all for people going their own way but if they do, they can't blame others, if you see what I mean.”
“Did Brenda say that?”
“Yes. Don't think I'm trying to lecture you or anything, but all I feel is that you haven't any right to be vindictive to Brenda, as things are.”
“She said I drank and was having an affair with the woman with a Moorish name.”
“Well I don't know she actually said that, but she said you'd been getting tight lately and that you were certainly interested in that girl.”
The fat young man opposite Tony ordered prunes and cream. Tony said he had finished dinner.
He had imagined during the preceding week-end that nothing could now surprise him.