* * *
That evening Peter Hobhouse talked to me again about enlisting (Peter was a genuine bore of the first water — a good-natured one, granted, but a bore for all that, with, astonishingly for a nineteen-year-old, all the cataleptic powers of a whiskered clubman). I must confess my enthusiasm for the idea was now firmly on the wane. I was instead formulating vague notions about returning to Edinburgh. What with my embarrassment vis-à-vis Faye, the revelations about Donald Verulam and his impending arrival, Charlbury suddenly seemed a less welcome haven. I had an unfamiliar desire to get back home — home to Oonagh. But I half-listened to what Peter had to say. He seemed to have a dogged urge to get out to France — it was not so much fervent as dutiful; and besides, all his friends were going too and it would be a shame to miss out. He said that, really, one had to have a commission, but that meant going to the Officer Training Corps if you were chosen. What he and his companions had done was to volunteer as private soldiers in one of the public school battalions. Basic training was shorter; you reached France more quickly and were almost guaranteed promotion to subaltern within months. The casualty rates being what they were, the public school battalions were constantly being drawn on to provide new officers for other regiments. His own case was typical. He had been promoted after two weeks and was now off to join the Loyal North Lancashire Regiment as a second lieutenant.
I asked some polite questions. Where should one go to enlist? Marlborough, he said, or Windsor. Ask for the 13th (PS) Service Battalion of the South Oxfordshire Light Infantry, and mention Colonel O’Dell. He had been Peter’s headmaster. Fine, I said, perhaps next year. In truth I had little desire to go to war. In 1914 it had seemed much more attractive; I thought it might be “fun” or “exciting,” but I was no zealot. Several senior boys I had known vaguely at the Academy had been killed; Minto’s melancholy skepticism too had got through to me and moreover nothing or no one in my upbringing had fostered an active sense of patriotism or selfless duty. To be honest, I wanted to live for myself, not die for my country. If I could go to war and subject myself to powerful new experiences and survive, unmaimed, then I was all for it. But I had no desire to risk my neck or any other part of my anatomy.
After dinner Faye left Peter and me with the port. Peter offered me a cigar, which I accepted. We puffed away, Peter’s weak eyes watering rather, and talked in a rather self-consciously manly fashion. Peter told a bad joke about an English curate who went to Paris and tried to shit standing up in a pissoir.
“I’m thinking about growing a moustache,” Peter said. “What do you think?”
“Sounds like rather a good idea.”
“Makes you look years older, you know. You should grow one, for the recruiting officer. How old are you, anyway?”
“Seventeen.… I was thinking of waiting till next year.”
“Wouldn’t wait too long. Might miss out.”
“Good point.”
“Say you’re nineteen. With a moustache you should have no trouble.”
He wittered on. Suddenly I wished I had grown a moustache at school. Imagine if I had arrived at Faye’s door mustachioed! What an impression of maturity that would have conveyed … I resolved to start growing one the next day.
Donald Verulam arrived before luncheon. He wore a tweed suit. Somehow, I had expected to see him in uniform. When I asked what he did at the War Office, he said he was just a “glorified civil servant.” He seemed glad to see me, and gently reprimanded me for running away from school. He advised me to go back home and promised to intercede with my father on my behalf. Instinctively, I was pleased to see him, but my own edginess, and the new information that my mother’s letters seemed to contain, made me rather cool at first. I think he sensed this and was puzzled. Several times he asked me if I was all right. I reassured him.
I was in turmoil. Mettlesome theories and hypotheses kept thrusting themselves on me. I looked closely at his behavior with Faye, but I saw no evidence for anything more passionate than a friendship. He spent most of Saturday afternoon in town with the Hobhouse family solicitor, sorting out Vincent Hobhouse’s affairs. That evening there was a small dinner party with two dull couples, one of which brought a tall myopic daughter — Nellie or Flossie — who, one sensed, was rather keen on Peter. To my relief, Faye was as good as her word. All aftereffects of the picnic incident seemed to have disappeared. Perhaps she believed it really had been a mistake. She reverted to being nice Aunt Faye. So I turned my attention to the next relationship that concerned me. What was I to do about Donald Verulam?
Sunday. Church. At one point during an incomprehensible sermon (the vicar had a speech defect: his mouth sounded as if it were full of water — all I could hear was lapping and slurping, as of a subterranean stream) I turned my head and found Donald looking at me. He rolled his eyes, and I grinned back. It was like the old days at Barnton or Drumlarish. After luncheon (soup, fish, game, joint, sweet, savory — war or no war, one ate well chez Hobhouse) he asked me if I felt like going for a walk. I agreed.
We each took a stick from the umbrella stand in the hall and set out briskly along the Oxford road. We cut off it, climbed over a stile and walked along the edge of a field of green corn that led up to a small beech wood that crowned a hill. There we could see the modest valleys and ridges of Oxfordshire unfolding sedately to the horizon. It was a sullen coldish afternoon, the cloudy sky mouse-gray with only hints of yellow. We walked on briskly for a couple of miles. Normally on a jaunt like this we would each have had a camera; today, being without them, we amused ourselves by pointing out scenes we would have taken. I felt all my reservations and suspicions of Donald slip away, and as we walked on, talking occasionally, I sensed a growing in me a sort of love that I could only describe as filial. A mixture of strong affection, respect and a happy subordination. The love that exists between a father and son is peculiar, possessing a clear hierarchical structure, the son always, as it were, looking up. And the father, for his part, then voluntarily elevating his son to a position of equality. I never felt this with Innes Todd. But that day as we strode the hills above the Windrush Valley, I sensed unspoken in the air around us that fine, reciprocal interplay of feeling. Donald felt it too, I know, felt the intimacy between us that made him want to talk to me about Faye. We stopped at a gate and looked at the view.
“I’m very fond of your aunt, you know, Johnny.”
“Yes. Well … I could sort of see that.”
“She’s a lovely person. Very like your mother.”
“Yes.” Now I could hardly speak.
He looked round at me and smiled.
“I’m going to ask her to marry me. What d’you think?”
I felt my tear ducts sting. I felt drowned in gratitude.
“I couldn’t be happier.” I paused. “Father.”
“What’s that?”
“Father.”
“Sorry?”
“Father.… You’re my father.”
Edgy laugh. “What do you mean?”
My eyes fogged with tears.
“I know about you and my mother,” I said slowly. “I know. All about the love affair.”