Roy did not, however, make the slightest progress towards melting Despard-Smith. He began by making a genuine attempt, for Ralph Udal’s sake: Despard-Smith was the most influential member of the livings committee, and, if Udal were to have a chance of a college living, the old man had to be placated. But Roy met with a signal failure. He suppressed the glint in his eye that usually visited him in the presence of the self-satisfied and self-important, those who seemed to him invulnerable and whom he called “the stuffed”. Deferentially he discussed the Church of England, college finance, and early heresies. Despard-Smith replied bleakly and with certainty, looking at Roy with uncompromising suspicion. Roy led up to the question of a living for Udal. “I can’t speak for my colleagues, Calvert,” said Despard-Smith, meaning that he could. “But I should personally regard it as nothing short of scandalous to let a man of Udal’s age eat the bread of idleness. It certainly would not be in the man’s own best interests. When he has got down to the c-collar for twenty or thirty years, then perhaps he might come up for consideration.”
“He wants peace to think,” said Roy.
“The time to get peace, as some of us know,” said Despard-Smith, “is when one has borne the heat and burden of the day.”
Roy knew it was no good. But his next question was innocent enough. He asked who would get the vacant living, which was the second best in the college’s gift.
“I’ve told you, I can’t speak for my colleagues,” said Despard-Smith reprovingly. “But I should personally regard Anderson as a very suitable choice. He was slightly junior to me here, so he is no longer in his first youth. But he is a very worthy man.”
“Should you say he was witty?” said Roy, no longer able to repress himself or deciding it was not worth while.
“I don’t know what you mean, Calvert.”
“Worthy people are not witty,” said Roy. “That’s how we can tell they’re worthy.”
He looked at Despard-Smith with steady, serious eyes.
“Isn’t that so, Despard?”
Despard-Smith looked back with mystification, anger and disapproval.
From that time on, Roy selected Despard-Smith for his most demure and preposterous questions — partly because the old man incited him, and partly because, knowing of Despard-Smith’s speeches over the election, Roy had a frail and unsaintly desire for revenge. Whenever he could catch Despard-Smith in the Court or the combination room, Roy advanced on him with a shimmering net of solemn requests for information. Despard-Smith became badgered, increasingly hostile, and yet mystified. He was never sure whether Roy might not be in earnest, at least part of the time. “What an extraordinary young man Calvert is,” he used to grumble in a creaking, angry voice. “He’s just made a most extraordinary remark to me—”
The Boscastles had gone down to the villa at Roquebrune late in November, and the Master and his family followed them a few days before Christmas. Roy spent Christmas with his family, and I with my wife in Chelsea. She asked me to stay a little longer, and so I arrived at Monte Carlo the day after Roy.
I had lain awake all night in the train, and went to bed in the afternoon. When I woke it was early evening, and from my window I could see lights springing out along the coast. Roy was not in his room, was not in the hotel. He had already told me that we were dining that night out at the Boscastles’. It was not time to dress, and I took a walk away from the sea, through the hilly streets at the back of the town.
I was thinking of nothing, it was pleasant to smell the wood smoke and garlic in the narrow streets: then I heard two voices taking an amorous farewell. A woman’s said something in Italian, was saying goodbye: then another, light, reedy, very clear in the crisp, cold air. “Ciao,” he called back to her, and I saw in the light from a window a girl disappearing into the house. “Ciao,” she called, when I could no longer see her: her voice was rough but young. “Ciao,” Roy replied again, softly, and then he saw me.
He was disconcerted, and I extremely amused. I knew as well as he about his minor escapades: some woman would catch his fancy, in a shop, in a theatre, behind the desk in an hotel, and he would pursue her with infinite concentration for a day. He sometimes told me of his rebuffs, but never of his conquests; and he did not like being caught at the end of one.
“Remarkable Italian they speak here,” he said with a somewhat precarious dignity, as we descended into the clean, bright, shop-lined streets. He gave me a pedantic lecture on the Italian of Liguria contrasted with Provençal; it was no doubt correct, his linguistic skill was beyond question, but I was grinning.
We came to the square; the flowers stood out brilliantly under the lights; as though unwillingly, Roy grinned too.
“It’s just my luck,” he said. “Why need you come that way?”
A motor-car drove in to take us to the Villa Prabaous.
“The Boscastles have hired three cars for all the time they’re here,” said Roy. “Plus two which they need occasionally for visitors. There’s nothing like economy. They sweep in and out all day.”
On our way, along the edge of the calm sea, he was speculating with interest, with amusement, over the Boscastle fortune. “Poor as church mice”, “they haven’t two sixpences to rub together”, “it’s really heroic of them to keep up the house” — we had both heard those descriptions from Lady Muriel and her friends. Yet, with occasional economies, such as taking a villa at Roquebrune, the Boscastles lived more grandly than any of the rich people we knew. The problem was complicated by the fact that the estate had, as a device through which they paid less taxes, been made into a company. The long necklace of lights twinkled through the pines on Cap Martin: Roy had just satisfied himself that, if Lord Boscastle died next day, his will would not be proved at less than £200,000.
The Villa Prabaous was rambling, large, very ugly, and, like many houses on the north side of the Mediterranean, seemed designed for a climate much hotter than where it found itself. That night an enormous log fire sputtered and smoked in the big dining-room, and we were all cold, except Lady Muriel. For Lady Muriel it provided an excellent opportunity to compare the degree of discomfort with that of several mansions she had visited in her childhood, and to advise her sister-in-law how, if one’s experience were great enough, these privations could be overcome. Lady Muriel was not a passive guest.
It was exactly the same party as when Roy was first presented to the Boscastles. Mrs Seymour was staying at the villa; I had escaped her for some time past, but now found myself sitting next to her at dinner.
“It must be wonderful to see heaps and heaps of counters being pushed towards you,” she said.
“It must,’’ I said.
“Yes, Doris?” said Lady Muriel loudly. “Have you been playing today?”
Mrs Seymour giggled, and was coy. I was surprised and irritated (uncharitably, but she annoyed me more than was reasonable) to meet her there. One reason, I thought, was that Lord Boscastle should never miss his evening bridge; Mrs Seymour, like Lady Muriel and Joan, was a player of good class.
Sure of his game that night, out of which I had managed to disentangle myself, Lord Boscastle wished to spend dinner talking of Saint-Simon’s memoirs, which he had just been reading. I would willingly have listened, but Roy distracted him by asking his opinion of various fashionable persons staying in Monte Carlo and the villas near. Lord Boscastle, as I now knew for certain, took a perverse pleasure in acting in character. He was always ready, in fact, to caricature himself. And so, as Roy produced name after name with a flicker in his eye, Lord Boscastle was prompt with his comment. “I don’t know him, of course, but I shouldn’t have thought he was anything out of the ordinary, should you have thought so?” “I don’t know whether any of you have met her, but I shouldn’t have expected her to be specially distinguished.”