Chapter 1
The tall young man in the coffee-room at Blazon’s Club was almost a caricature of tall young men in London clubs. The coffee-room was almost a caricature too. The perfection of each seemed quite conscious.
The man started at the top with smooth fair hair, beautifully brushed, smelling faintly of Miss Trumper’s Coronis. The face below was beaky and sun-browned, in spite of the iron January in the streets outside; he had intelligent blue eyes and a nice smile. All his clothes were quietly perfect. They had cost a lot of money; he had given them a lot of thought; his intention was evident and fully realised. His shoes looked as though an elderly manservant had laboured faithfully over them for two hours a day over many years.
The room was an epitome of late 18th century masculine elegance. It could have been Adam; it could only have been English. No boiseries, no medallions with cupids or shepherdesses, no trailing swags; no trace of the effeminate Venetian influence or the prettiness of the Chinese taste. It was not only perfect but perfectly preserved. You could picture an architect, the curator of a museum, and a man from the Ministry of Works consulting 18th century prints of the room before making minor changes to the colour scheme.
The tall young man was finishing lunch. He was eating a glutinous piece of Camembert cheese and drinking the heel of a bottle of Gewurtztraminer.
He said to the plump young man sitting opposite: ‘But of course I must go, Charles. My great-uncle only sends for me every other year. He’s getting old. He’s been ill. Of course I must go.’
‘You’re insufferable, Hugo,’ said the plump man. ‘Eight just fit into that chalet and we had a nice tidy party. Two lecherous girls for you. It costs the earth. If you drop out we all pay more. As a matter of fact I think you ought to pay your whack even if you don’t come.’
‘You do, do you?’ Hugo finished his wine and smiled. He was not going to pay but he was not going to be unpleasant about not paying.
‘What are we going to do with those girls?’
‘Find them a ski-instructor. Two ski-instructors.’
‘More expense,’ said Charles grumpily. ‘While you batten on a millionaire in Los Angeles.’
‘You do understand, Charles, don’t you? This is not my choice. I have absolutely no alternative.’
‘Oh, I understand all right,’ said Charles.
‘Four days before we go,’ said Charles to a friend, an hour later, in the card-room. ‘No time to get anybody else. More to pay for the rest of us. And a damned spare girl. Two damned spare girls.’
The card-room was lusher than the coffee-room. A Victorian opulence had invaded furniture and decoration. The console tables had chubby legs, and the curtains were plum-coloured velvet.
‘I can see it’s a bore,’ said the other man, who had the look of an elderly basset-hound. ‘But you know it’s rather good of Hugo really. Lonely old uncle seven thousand miles away. SOS comes over the semaphore, off he shoots, missing his skiing. Rather good of him really.’
‘Good? What on earth do you mean? Hugo’s going to inherit thirty-five million dollars from that uncle.’
‘I need some kind of work, Nora.’
‘I know, Hugo ducky. Be patient. People are beginning to recover from Christmas. Something will pop up.’
They sat in a flossy office with chintz curtains, with posters and pop-art on the walls and a desk like a little dressing-table.
In the chair behind the desk sat a middle-aged woman in figure-hugging oatmeal tweed. She was hung about with chains which clinked and jangled when she moved. She fiddled with an antique inkpot on the desk and said: ‘It’s unfortunate you couldn’t get on with that man you couldn’t get on with.’
‘I can get on with anybody,’ said Hugo, pained.
‘As a matter of fact I think that’s true. Though surprising. At least I did think so. But the little man you had your row with—’
‘He’s not the only little man in the world. Just the most odious. ‘
‘Yes, ducky. The world crawls and seethes with little men, any of whom you could safely have had a row with. It’s just sad that the one you picked happens to be in charge of casting all the television commercials of the biggest advertising agency in London.’
‘But I didn’t have a row with him. He suddenly threw this awful tantrum. I was willing, polite, tolerant, eager, co-operative, most anxious to please—’
‘I suppose you towered over him.’
‘Well, yes. I towered over him. Yes.’
‘And looked down at him.’
‘In a literal sense. Inevitably. Not through design. Purely a matter of cubits. Genetics gave me a certain stature, him another. For Christ’s sake, it’s what they chose me for.’
‘It’s unfortunate. Little men like that form a gang. He knows most of the other casting directors and all the production companies. Word flies about.’ She sighed and fiddled with the inkpot. She said: ‘I thought you were going to Switzerland?’
‘I was. I can’t afford it. So I said I’d been sent for by uncle.’
‘Poor duck. Be patient. We’ll find something. Would you be prepared to model underwear?’
‘Well, er,’ said Hugo, ‘yes.’
‘It may not come to that. I’ll get in touch as soon as there’s anything.’
She sat back. The conference was finished. But Hugo still sat quietly opposite her. His expression was friendly and confident, his blue eyes placid. Nora avoided his eyes. He did not look like a man who was pleading. He looked like a man to whom further remarks must nonetheless be addressed.
Nora said: ‘I suppose you’re racing at Newbury tomorrow.’
‘I said I’d go.’
‘I’d rather you than me in this weather.’
‘I like Newbury. And it’s a free weekend.’
Like many people on the fringes of show-business Nora knew all about racing. They discussed the races at Newbury. Hugo was wasting her time. The time was moderately well wasted because he was decorative and friendly and polite, and because, outside her special, hard, professional world of agenting he knew more about every subject than she did.
She told him at last that she had six million telephone calls to make. He rose immediately and apologetically. He left behind him, as he closed the door, a smell of fright, self-contempt, and despair.
‘Three fivers Corncrake, Mr Cornish,’ said the bookie to his clerk. ‘Thank you, sir.’
Hugo nodded and pushed through the crowd by the rails.
‘Hullo, Hugo. Bloody, isn’t it?’
‘Hullo, Bill.’
‘Hullo, Hugo. Have you ever known such a bitter wind?’
‘Hullo, Molly.’
‘Hullo, Hugo. Isn’t it lousy? Doing any good?’
‘Hullo, Puggy.’
Hugo’s raceglasses bumped against his hip. Other people’s raceglasses thudded into his elbows and behind. One pair, swung by a horrible old woman in a hurry, knocked him sharply on the wrist. She stopped, turned, and looked at Hugo coldly. She was waiting for an apology.
‘I beg your pardon,’ said Hugo, raising his hat and slightly smiling.
She stared at him, frowning. ‘Don’t I know you?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘I know your face.’
Hugo smiled again.
She nodded dismissively and turned to the rails to be rude to her bookie.
Hugo climbed to the roof of the grandstand and shivered. There were not many people there. The wind blew from the north-east out of an iron-grey sky. There were occasional gusts of sleet. It was difficult to hold binoculars in numbed and shivering fingers.
Hugo thought of the long, overheated evening ahead in the house near Lambourn where he was staying. As he freeloaded he would sing for his supper. On Sunday he would sing for his breakfast and for his lunch. And at some point, in his hearing or out of it, one of the older men staying in the house would say to their host or hostess: ‘Why doesn’t the feller do a job of work?’
Hugo’s horse fell at the water-jump in front of the grandstand. The horse galloped on with the others, jumping his way cheerfully to the front. The jockey lay in an awkward little heap by the jump; the ambulance chugged up over the rough winter grass.
Hugo now owed his bookmaker £28. It was too much. In one afternoon it was much too much. The roof of the grandstand emptied. Hugo stood by himself in the bitter wind. He hoped very much that Nora found him some work soon. He did not want to be a waiter or a barman again, or enrol with the Adonis Escort Agency. He looked down at the bleak racecourse. A flurry of sleet stung his face. He said to the sky: ‘There is a clear distinction between sponge and gigolo.’ The sky answered with a cruel stab of wind from a new direction. Hugo grabbed his hat in time to save it. It was an expensive hat from Herbert Johnson and he had not yet paid for it.
He thudded down the steep wooden back-stairs of the grandstand, and edged politely through the crowd towards the paddock. He looked about for someone with reliable information, a trainer or journalist, who would give him a tip and get him out of trouble.
A burly man trod on his toe. The man was running. He shouted: ‘Sammy!’ He stopped and said softly to himself: ‘Blast the boy.’ His shoulders sagged. He looked defeated. Then he suddenly straightened. He squared his shoulders. He began to walk away through the crowd.
Hugo’s life accustomed him to rebuff. He had not become insensitive but he had become realistic. But this was intolerable. In the summer he might have overlooked it. But not in this wind, and not when he was broke. He thought that no-one should be allowed to get away with such inconsiderate boorishness.
He called: ‘Hey, you! ‘
The burly man stopped and turned. Hugo saw his face for the first time. He was unmistakably military. Thin, sandy hair brushed very close to the skull. Sandy eyebrows. Pale eyes, a little watery. A nose short and slightly upturned, red in the wind. His whole face was reddish, the veins close under the skin. A long upper lip, with a sandy moustache large in area but clipped like a lawn. A square jaw, a thick neck, a big but short-legged body.
‘Yes?’ he barked. ‘How can I be of service to you?’
‘You’ve broken most of my toes.’
Hugo indicated his shoe. On its beautifully-polished toecap was to be seen the muddy semi-circle of the man’s heel.
The military man faced the evidence. It was incontrovertible. His demeanour changed. He said in a new tone: ‘My dear sir, I do most humbly beg your pardon. How exceedingly clumsy of me. Did I hurt you very badly? Can you walk? Shall I find you a doctor?’
‘Perhaps not actually broken,’ said Hugo, mollified. ‘No doctor, thank you.’
‘You see I was in a hurry. Forgot my manners. I daresay it happens to everybody. But of course I don’t put that forward as an excuse. You see I very badly wanted a word with a chappie I glimpsed.’
‘He can’t have got far.’
‘I’ve changed my mind now. I won’t look for him after all. It’s his loss. But if a feller hasn’t the guts or the manners to face you—’
He blinked. His eyes were a little weak, like those of many men who have spent a long time under harsh and distant suns. They watered in the cold wind.
‘So my toes,’ said Hugo, ‘suffered for nothing.’
The military man stiffened and glared. He said: ‘I have apologised. I have offered you the services of a doctor. I don’t know what the devil more you expect.’
His manner conveyed that his full duty had been performed. His clumsiness had been expiated. The matter was closed. For a much younger man to pursue it would be impertinent. If no bones were broken no harm was done and the episode was not to be made the excuse for familiarity.
Hugo sighed. These rigid soldiers caricatured themselves, like stage Irishmen. Literature and films had turned men like this into comic stereotypes. They should have been ridiculed into some self-awareness, some notion of how they struck other people, some attempt at normal human relationships. But a lifetime of the creaking protocol of officers’ messes had turned them into pachydermous robots. Everyone had a rank and was to be treated accordingly. Hugo was a newly-joined subaltern. To apologise to him was almost more than enough. To condescend further was to weaken the whole structure of the system.
There was just such a man in the Lambourn house-party, a retired cavalryman who was never at a loss for the predictable remark. It was doubtless he who would ask, and doubtless in Hugo’s hearing, why the feller couldn’t get down to a job of work. He and this preposterous red-faced bully were brothers.
And yet. The cavalryman had a D.S.O. and bar. His men had allegedly worshipped him. He had a bone-simple creed, anchored on the immutable tripod of honour, loyalty, and courage. He had got down to whatever job of work he was ordered to do. If the enemy got in the way, too bad for somebody. A part of Hugo yearned, like Tolstoy, for these unfashionable certainties. His own life was soft and equivocal by comparison. His standards were ambiguous, his honour relative, his courage untested. He was not evil, he thought, or cruel, or a criminal: but he could not look back at the end of any day with any sense of achievement. He would leave the world exactly the same place as when he entered it. These absurd, thick-skinned, middle-aged schoolboys could look back on their lives with pride. They didn’t, but they could.
Hugo said to the burly man: ‘I’m sorry, sir. Of course my toes are at your disposal.’
This was not really the remark he meant. He had not intended flippancy, but something gracefully deferential which would end the conversation on a note of détente. As it came out, the remark would have grated on the cavalryman. It sounded as though it was meant to be clever; he would have suspected impertinence. Such a remark would have done a subaltern no good.
But the burly man reacted unexpectedly. His mood changed again. He laughed. He laughed with abandon, loudly. His laughter was infectious. Hugo smiled and then laughed too.
‘Sporting of you,’ said the burly soldier at length. ‘Grand way to take it.’
‘Not at all,’ said Hugo, still laughing.
‘I’ll buy you a drink.’
‘Very kind of you, but I’ve got to drive—’
‘I insist that I make it up to you.’
All right,’ said Hugo. ‘Thank you.’
‘Capital! Good fellow! Quick march! Oh I say, how thoughtless of me, can you walk?’
‘I’ll manage,’ Hugo assured him.
They set off towards the big bar under the grandstand. Hugo walked slowly, very slightly limping. His bruised toes were painful because they were cold. The military man was held back by invisible ropes of politeness, but he showed signs of wanting to march at light-infantry pace, or even run. It seemed that once the decision to drink had been taken, his nature required instant implementation of the plan.
He was in his middle fifties, twenty years older than Hugo. Hugo thought he was not in the Brigade of Guards, but in one of the better county regiments.
They went through the swing-doors. They had to breast an emerging tide of people. In spite of these departures the bar was crammed. There was a lot of noise and smoke and the windows were steamed up. It was hot in the bar after the January wind.
‘Well! What’s your poison?’ asked the burly man.
‘Brandy and ginger, please.’
‘Cracking good idea.’
He advanced to the bar, going crabwise among dense-packed women. He was swallowed up. Hugo waited. It was nice to be out of the wind.
The burly man reappeared after a long time with their drinks. They struggled to a part of the bar where there was room to raise a glass without hitting someone. They drank.
It seemed to Hugo that he was being inspected. This was not unusual. It was part of his humiliating part-time job as a male model. It was part of being tall and good-looking and naturally fastidious and taking trouble. Hugo was used to being looked at appraisingly by casting-directors and photographers and girls at parties and girls in the street. He had been aware of appraising glances, between races, during the afternoon. Newbury was notable among racecourses for the pretty girls who came there, the daughters of the solid landed or professional families of Berkshire and Hampshire and Oxfordshire. Many were present this afternoon, and in spite of chapped noses and numbed fingers they saw Hugo and looked at him appraisingly. It was just as appraisingly, though presumably from a different standpoint, that he was being looked at by the burly soldier. The pale eyes blinked over the rim of the brandy-glass. They inspected Hugo’s covert-coat, his Old Etonian tie, the tweed trousers which showed below the coat, and the deep glossy chestnut of his shoes.
It was not an unfriendly inspection. There was no hostility in the man’s watery eye. There had been in the cavalryman’s when he met Hugo the previous evening. This was a more affable soldier than that other. As gallant, no doubt; morally as simple; possibly more perceptive; possibly more tolerant; possibly more successful; a half-brother rather than a brother. It was not an inimical inspection, nor one of pure friendliness. Hugo thought it was professional. Perhaps it was force of habit. Perhaps this man had been Chairman of an Officer’s Selection Board, or picked young officers for hazardous missions. ‘How would this feller do in a scrap? Would the men follow him blindly? Any risk of hankey-pankey with the mess funds? Getting drunk on guest- nights? Going sick before action?’
Conversation was almost impossible in the din of the bar. Instead of talking Hugo looked at his new friend. He inspected him back. His clothes were much like Hugo’s. His shoes were equally well polished. The tweed trousers visible below his coat were well creased. His overcoat was a stiff tent of greenish tweed with a startling red overcheck: an arresting garment but not at all outré. His race glasses had a yellow leather case. His shirt was white and very clean. His tie was striped, like Hugo’s, but in more assertive colours; it belonged to some school, club or regiment unknown to Hugo.
The time for the next race approached. The bar began to empty. Conversation became possible.
The soldier said: ‘I’ll tell you an extraordinary thing.’
‘Yes?’
‘You were in the army, of course?’
‘Yes,’ said Hugo. He had embarked on a military career in response to his great-uncle’s whim. It had been terminated in response to another whim. ‘Short-service commission. Not for very long.’
‘You know East Africa, of course? Served there? In Aldershot much?’
‘No.’
‘Well, we’ve met somewhere. I know the cut of your jib. I wouldn’t be likely to forget.’
Hugo smiled and said nothing. Here it was again.
‘India? South-East Asia? Catterick? Wellington Barracks?’
‘I don’t think we’ve met,’ said Hugo.
‘I wouldn’t be likely to forget.’ The military man frowned. His shoulders stiffened. ‘Not likely at all. But you’re telling me we haven’t met. Very well. I shall not embarrass you by pursuing the matter.’
Hugo could think of no good answer. He smiled and sipped his drink. He finished it. The other man had finished his. With slight reluctance Hugo suggested another. The other agreed, in a manner which suggested that he was prepared to forgive.
Hugo went for the drinks. The next race was now running and the bar was almost empty. The lady behind the bar invited him to pay for all four drinks.
‘But the first round was his,’ said Hugo. ‘That gentleman in the tweed overcoat. Don’t you remember?’
‘I remember serving the gentleman. Two large brandies, two dry gingers. What I’m saying is, he didn’t pay.’
‘I’ll pay for these two and remind him about the others.’
‘I can’t give credit sir, really. I mean, you’ll appreciate. I mean, there he is, right over there. If he disappears then it’s me in trouble.’
Hugo paid for the four drinks. He had not budgeted for such an outlay. He took the new drinks across to the other, who was now sitting down at a table laden with dirty glasses. The other beamed. He was cheerful again. He had forgiven.
He said: ‘Look here, it occurs to me, I don’t believe I’ve introduced myself. Willis-Jevington. Colonel. Late Monkey-Puzzlers. ‘
‘Monkey-Puzzlers?’
‘Not heard of us? I daresay not. Interesting unit. Very strange history. They’ve asked me to do a book, but I don’t know. Official Secrets Act. One’s hands would still be tied. The Security Johnnies would check every word, believe you me.’
‘A regimental history must be very difficult.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Well, the, er, complexity. All the strands. Conflicting accounts. I should think even a professional academic historian—’
Colonel Willis-Jevington frowned. ‘Soldiers are not necessarily illiterate, you know.’
‘No, of course not—’
‘Look at Wolfe. Look at Wavell. You, I suppose, would dismiss them.’
‘Not at all, Colonel, I—’
‘I imagine you took a degree before you were honoured with your Short Service Commission.’ He made the phrase bottomlessly insulting. The cavalryman could hardly have exhibited more prejudice.
‘I did,’ said Hugo, ‘just, er, scraped through, yes.’
‘Oxford and Cambridge, I suppose.’
‘I was at Oxford, actually, yes.’
‘A graduate of Oxford could not, of course, credit a simple soldier with the intelligence to write a book. Marshal the facts, examine the evidence, make an appreciation. You university men, you long-haired academics in your ivory towers, you imagine that because a man’s knocked about the world and heard shots fired in anger he can’t put pen to paper.’
‘No, really,’ said Hugo. ‘I don’t at all—’
‘A very mistaken and superficial view, if you’ll forgive my saying so. However I am sure I am not sufficiently erudite to convince you. If I were an M.A. it would be different, no doubt. I could join the charmed circle. But the only initials after my name are ones I have been awarded by the Sovereign for services in the field. I hope you will allow me to say that I am proud of them. To you, I know, they count as nothing beside the degrees handed out to every snotty-nosed scribbling student.’
The colonel drained his glass and stood up.
The race had finished. An objection had been made and sustained. Shuddering people began to flood into the bar. The level of noise rose quickly to a barely tolerable level.
The colonel turned and strode out of the bar, straight as a ramrod, his heels thunking on the floor like a Drill Sergeant.
Hugo remembered that he had paid for all four drinks. Whatever the colonel’s unnerving changes of mood, this had clearly not been his intention. Hugo called: ‘Colonel!’
The colonel spun round. ‘What is it now?’
‘I don’t want to seem greedy, but didn’t you very kindly offer me a drink?’
‘How the devil many drinks do you want? You told me you were driving. Take my advice and go easy. I don’t give a damn about your licence, but you might kill an innocent person. I don’t pretend to know if that would weigh with a graduate of the University of Oxford.’
‘Are you proposing,’ said Hugo mildly, ‘to send me a cheque?’
‘I can’t understand one single word you’re saying. I am sorry. I expect it’s very clever. But if you don’t mind my mentioning it I find your tone damned offensive.’
‘All right. Forget it. I love buying drinks for strangers.’
The colonel stared at him with fury. Then he turned and marched away.
Hugo knew that he should laugh and dismiss the episode from his mind. He tried to laugh. It was not a success. The episode stayed in his mind. He was angry. The cold wind exacerbated his anger. He lost more money on the last race. This increased the gravity of the money he had spent on Colonel Willis-Jevington’s two large brandies. The old buffoon should not be allowed out.
And yet. He had a certainty which was in a strange way admirable. He had none of the whining self-doubts of the half-baked, of the intellectual, of the seer of all sides of questions. He was self-consistent to a point which approached magnificence. He was ludicrous, but he had a heroic, an epic quality. He crashed through life like a bulldozer, obeying all the rules he had learnt.
The dirty evening closed in rapidly. Hugo drove to Lambourn overcrowded, icy roads. As he drove, he found it easy to envy a man like Colonel Willis-Jevington.
Dinner went on a long time. Several people had been asked as well as the house-party. The food and drink were excellent but the conversation sticky. The only pretty girl had such a bad cold that her mood was sour and small-talk muffled. Hugo talked equally to both his neighbours at dinner. They were grim women, keen gardeners. They were charmed with him.
The men sat for far too long over the port. It was good port and there was plenty of it. Hugo enjoyed the port but he knew the women in the drawing-room would be getting bored and irritable. He got on well with the men round the dining-room table because although he could not afford field-sports he could talk about them and, more particularly, listen about them.
When at last they left the dining-room Hugo heard the cavalryman murmur a question to their host: ‘Doesn’t that feller do anything at all?’
