In 1914 he had tried to get back into the army, but his services were declined for medical reasons by the War Office. Not long after the sinking of the Lusitania he obtained a post in the Ministry of Munitions; later transferring himself to the Ministry of Food, from which he eventually resigned without scandal. When the United States entered the war he contrived to find some sort of job in the provinces at a depot formed for supplying “comforts” to American troops. He had let it be known that he had made business connections on the other side of the Atlantic, as a result of this employment. That was why there had been a suggestion — in which wish may have been father to thought in the minds of his relations — that he might take up a commercial post in Philadelphia. The letter from the Isle of Man, with its hint of impending marriage, seemed to indicate that any idea of emigration, if ever in existence, had been abandoned; whilst references throughout its several pages to “lack of influence” brought matters back to an earlier and more fundamental, stage in my uncle’s presentation of his affairs.
This business of “influence” was one that played a great part in Uncle Giles’s philosophy of life. It was an article of faith with him that all material advancement in the world was the result of influence, a mysterious attribute with which he invested, to a greater or lesser degree, every human being on earth except himself. That the rich and nobly born automatically enjoyed an easy time of it through influence was, of course, axiomatic; and — as society moved from an older order — anybody who might have claims to be considered, at least outwardly, of the poor and lowly was also included by him among those dowered with this almost magic appanage. In cases such as that of the window-cleaner, or the man who came to read the gas-meter, the advantage enjoyed was accounted to less obvious — but, in fact, superior — opportunity for bettering position in an increasingly egalitarian world. “That door was banged-to for me at birth,” Uncle Giles used to say (in a phrase that I found, much later, he had lifted from a novel by John Galsworthy) when some plum was mentioned, conceived by him available only to those above, or below, him in, the social scale.
It might be imagined that people of the middle sort — people, in other words, like Uncle Giles himself — though he would have been unwilling to admit his attachment to any recognisable social group, could be regarded by him as substantially in the same boat. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Such persons belonged to the class, above all others, surveyed with misgiving by him, because members of it possessed, almost without exception, either powerful relations who helped them on in an underhand way, or business associations, often formed through less affluent relations, which enabled them — or so he suspected — to buy things cheap. Any mention of the City, or, worse still, the Stock Exchange, drove him to hard words. Moreover, the circumstances of people of this kind were often declared by him to be such that they did not have to “keep up the same standards” in the community,as those that tradition imposed upon Uncle Giles himself; and, having thus secured an unfair advantage, they were one and all abhorrent to him.
As a result of this creed he was unconquerably opposed to all established institutions on the grounds that they were entirely — and therefore incapably — administered by persons whose sole claim to consideration was that they could command influence. His own phrase for describing briefly this approach to all social, political and economic questions was “being a bit of a radicaclass="underline" ” a standpoint he was at pains to make abundantly clear to all with whom he came in contact. As it happened, he always seemed to find people who would put up with him; and, usually, people who would employ him. In fact, at his own level, he must have had more “influence” than most persons. He did not, however, answer the enquiries, and counter-proposals, put forward in a reply to his letter sent to the address in the Isle of Man; and, for the time being, no more was heard of his marriage, or any other of his activities.
*
Settling down with Templer at school was easier than I had expected. Without Stringham, he was more expansive, and I began to hear something of his life at home. His father and uncle (the latter of whom — for public services somewhat vaguely specified — had accepted a baronetcy at the hands of Lloyd George, one of the few subjects upon which Templer showed himself at all sensitive) had made their money in cement. Mr. Templer had retired from business fairly recently, after what his son called “an appalling bloomer over steel.” There were two sisters: Babs, the eldest of the family, who towards the end of the war had left a husband in one of the dragoon regiments in favour of a racing motorist; and Jean, slightly younger than her brother. Their mother had died some years before I came across Templer, who displayed no photographs of his family, so that I knew nothing of their appearance. Although not colossally rich, they were certainly not poor; and whatever lack of appreciation Peter’s father may at one moment have shown regarding predictable fluctuations of his own holdings in the steel industry, he still took a friendly interest in the market; and, by Peter’s account, seemed quite often to guess right. I also knew that they lived in a house by the sea.
“Personally I wouldn’t mind having a look at Kenya,” said Templer, when I described the luncheon with Stringham and his mother.
“Stringham didn’t seem to care for the idea.”
“My elder sister had a beau who lived in the Happy Valley. He shot himself after having a lot of drinks at the club.”
“Perhaps it won’t be so bad then.”
“Did you lunch with them in London or the country?”
“London.”
“Stringham says Glimber is pretty, but too big,”
“Will he come into it?”
“Good Lord, no,” said Templer. “It is only his mother’s for life. He will come into precious little if she goes on spending money at her present rate.”
I was not sure how much of this was to be believed; but, thinking the subject of interest, enquired further. Templer sketched in a somewhat lurid picture of Mrs. Foxe and her set. I was rather surprised to find that he himself had no ambition to become a member of that world, the pleasures of which sounded of a kind particularly to appeal to him.
“Too much of a good thing,” he said. “I have simpler tastes.”