Then, on an impulse, he had said, “Nigel, shall we go to London and see Mummy?”
“We might see ‘The Lion Has Wings’ too. The fellows say it’s awfully decent.”
“All right, Nigel, we’ll see both.”
So the two of them went to London by the early morning train. “Let’s surprise her,” said Nigel, but Cedric telephoned first, wryly remembering the story of the pedantic adulterer “My dear, it is I who am surprised; you are astounded.”
“I am coming round to see Mrs. Lyne.”
“She isn’t very well this morning.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. Is she able to see people?”
“Yes, I think so, sir. I’ll ask…yes, madam will be very pleased to see you and Master Nigel.”
They had not met for three years, since they had discussed the question of divorce. Cedric understood exactly what Angela had felt about that; it was curious, he reflected, how some people were shy of divorce because of their love of society; they did not want there to be any occasion when their presence might be an embarrassment, they wanted to keep their tickets for the Ascot enclosure. With Angela reluctance came from precisely the opposite motives; she could not brook any intrusion of her privacy; she did not want to answer questions in court or allow the daily paper a single item of information about herself. “It’s not as though you wanted to marry anyone else, Cedric.”
“You don’t think the present arrangement makes me look rather foolish?”
“Cedric, what’s come over you? You used not to talk like that.”
So he had given way and that year had spanned the stream with a bridge in the Chinese Taste, taken direct from Batty Langley.
In the five minutes of waiting before Grainger took him into Angela’s bedroom, he studied David Lennox’s grisailles with distaste.
“Are they old, Daddy?”
“No, Nigel, they’re not old.”
“They’re awfully feeble.”
“They are.” (Regency…This was the age of Waterloo and highwaymen and duelling and slavery and revivalist preaching and Nelson having his arm off with no anesthetic but rum, and Botany Bay and this is what they make of it.)
“Well, I prefer the pictures at home, even if they are old. Is that Mummy?”
“Yes.”
“Is that old?”
“Older than you, Nigel.”
Cedric turned from the portrait of Angela. What a nuisance John had been about the sittings! It was her father who had insisted on their going to him.
“Is it finished?”
“Yes. It was very hard to make the man finish it, though.”
“It hardly looks finished now, does it, Daddy? It’s all sploshy.”
Then Grainger opened the door. “Come in, Cedric,” Angela called from her bed.
Angela was wearing dark glasses. Her make-up things lay on the quilt before her, with which she had been hastily doing her face. Nigel might have asked if it was finished; it was sploshy, like the John portrait.
“I had no idea you were ill,” said Cedric stiffly.
“I’m not really. Nigel, haven’t you got a kiss for Mummy?”
“Why are you wearing those glasses?”
“My eyes are tired, darling.”
“Tired of what?”
“Cedric,” said Angela petulantly, “for God’s sake don’t let him be a bore. Go with Miss Grainger into the next room, darling.”
“Oh, all right,” said Nigel. “Don’t be long, Daddy.”
“You and he seem to be buddies these days.”
“Yes, it’s the uniform.”
“Funny your being in the Army again.”
“I’m off tonight, abroad.”
“France?”
“I don’t think so. I mustn’t tell about it. That’s why I came to see you.”
“About not talking about not going to France?” said Angela in something of her old teasing way.
Cedric began to talk about the house; he hoped Angela would keep on to it, even if anything happened to him; he thought he saw some glimmerings of taste in the boy; he might grow to appreciate it later. Angela was inattentive and answered absently.
“I’m afraid I’m tiring you.”
“Well, I’m not feeling terribly well to-day. Did you want to see me about anything special?”
“No I don’t think so. Just to say good-bye.”
“Daddy,” came a voice from the next room. “Aren’t you coming?”
“Oh dear, I wish I could do something about it. I feel there’s something I ought to do. It’s quite an occasion really, isn’t it? I’m not being beastly, Cedric, I really mean it. I think it’s sweet of you to come. I only wish I felt up to doing something about it.”
“Daddy, come on. We want to get to Bassett and Lowkes before lunch.”
“Take care of yourself,” said Angela.
“Why?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Why will you all ask questions?”
And that had been the end of the visit. At Bassett and Lowkes, Nigel had chosen a model of a Blenheim bomber. “The fellows will be jealous,” he said.
After luncheon they went to see “The Lion Has Wings,” and then it was time to put Nigel into the train back to school. “It’s been absolutely ripping, Daddy,” he said.
“Has it really?”
“The rippingest two days I ever spent.”
So after these ripping days Cedric sat in the half-dark, with the pool of light falling on the unread book on his knees, returning to duty.
Basil went to the Café Royal to keep his watch on “the woman Green.” He found her sitting among her cronies and was greeted with tepid affection.
“So you’re in the Army, now,” she said.
“No, the great uniformed bureaucracy. How are all the Reds?”
“Very well thank you, watching your imperialists making a mess of your war.” p>
“Been to many Communist meetings lately?”
“Why?”
“Just wondering.”
“You sound like a police spy.”
“That’s the very last impression I want to make,” and, changing the subject hastily, added, “Seen Ambrose lately?”
“He’s over there now, the lousy fascist.”
Basil looked where she indicated and saw Ambrose at a table by the rail of the opposing gallery, sitting with a little, middle-aged man of nondescript appearance.
“Did you say ‘fascist’?”
“Didn’t you know? He’s gone to the Ministry of Information and he’s bringing out a fascist paper next month.”
“This is very interesting,” said Basil. “Tell me some more.”
Ambrose sat, upright and poised, with one hand on the stem of his glass and one resting stylishly on the balustrade. There was no particular feature of his clothes which could be mentioned as conspicuous; he wore a dark, smooth suit that fitted perhaps a little closely at waist and wrists, a shirt of plain, cream-coloured silk; a dark, white spotted bow tie; his sleek black hair was not unduly long (he went to the same barber as Alastair and Peter); his pale Semitic face gave no hint of special care, and yet it always embarrassed Mr. Bentley somewhat to be seen with him in public. Sitting there, gesticulating very slightly as he talked, wagging his head very slightly, raising his voice occasionally in a suddenly stressed uncommon epithet or in a fragment of slang absurdly embedded in his precise and literary diction, giggling between words now and then as something which he had intended to say changed shape and became unexpectedly comic in the telling Ambrose, like this, caused time to slip back to an earlier age than his own youth or Mr. Bentley’s, when amid a more splendid decor of red plush and gilt caryatides fin-de-sičcle young worshippers crowded to the tables of Oscar and Aubrey.
Mr. Bentley smoothed his sparse grey hairs and fidgeted with his tie and looked about anxiously for fear he was observed.
The Café Royal, perhaps because of its distant associations with Oscar and Aubrey, was one of the places where Ambrose preened himself, spread his feathers and felt free to take wing. He had left his persecution mania downstairs with his hat and umbrella. He defied the universe.