For Love or Money Read online

  She sighed deeply and looked at George sitting opposite in his usual chair. He was working on a small tapestry made up of intricate if uninspired floral patterns. He had learned about needlework while he was at the Yorkshire nursing-home. Ruth smiled at him; his concentration was so endearing, he looked like he used to in the old days, slightly ridiculous in his seriousness, but that was part of his charm.

  ‘You’ve got awfully big hands for those tiny stitches,’ she said softly, half to herself.

  Just having George opposite was a kind of security. This evening she was particularly aware of his presence; his physical solidity, those large brown shoes, his woolly socks and broad rough flannel trousers.

  ‘I suppose he’ll have to go back to school, but really George I’m not happy. He doesn’t seem like other little boys now, does he?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that, in a couple of years he’ll be out of all this. I read in some book recently that the early years of puberty are always the hardest.’

  He was so reassuring, she looked at him tenderly.

  ‘George, darling, do put that stuff away, I feel awfully like bed.’

  He looked up. She’d put on a new shade of lipstick and was wearing a dress he hadn’t seen for several years. They say things like that make all the difference. Perhaps Lifton hadn’t been a bad chooser really.

  He got up, putting his work on the sofa. Arm in arm they went upstairs. ‘Of course he’ll be all right,’ he said again.

  ‘Sometimes, darling, I wonder why we ever quarrel,’ she said, opening the bedroom door.

  *

  Two days later George was driving David between the high hedges towards Truro and his train.

  David sat looking out of the window at the rain as it slanted across the glass, gathering speed as drop joined drop.

  ‘It always seems to rain going back to school‚’ said David, breaking a long silence and pulling his macintosh around him more tightly.

  ‘Yes, it does, doesn’t it. Do you remember that awful day when Mummy and I came down to see you and that fool of a waiter gave us treacle tart instead of crème caramel? It was raining then,’ George ended weakly.

  The rain drummed down, almost making an unbroken sound on the roof. The windscreen wipers flicked back and forth indifferently.

  ‘Mine works better than yours,’ David said gloomily as they drove into the outskirts of Truro. The clouds were getting lower.

  *

  On the platfrom George said, ‘Do you want anything to read?’

  ‘No thank you.’

  ‘You’re sure.’

  ‘Yes.’

  David appeared lost in thought. This is hopeless, thought George. The train hadn’t arrived. The station smelt of disinfectant and bad milk; further up the platform, exposed to the weather, a couple of baskets of homing pigeons were getting soaked. George thought it better not to mention them.

  ‘Nothing bothering you, is there?’ George said breezily in a voice that produced the inevitable rejection.

  Funny really, he might be mine and I know nothing about him. George watched the train coming in; David didn’t lean out of the window in the train to wave good-bye, but found a seat and sat down.

  ‘Good luck,’ George yelled, but he couldn’t have heard, wedged in his steaming compartment, between a large cherry-faced woman in Salvation Army uniform and a bony young man with watery eyes.

  *

  Driving back, George turned on the radio … the music sounded familiar: Schumann, he couldn’t think which number … wasn’t it the one they’d heard the year she was pregnant just after the war? She had the record at home. Ruth hadn’t taken him to many concerts; he hadn’t been much of a music-lover, still wasn’t. He left the music on though.

  Strange to think of Ruth with David inside her; he’d felt quite protective, almost like a father. They’d gone for walks in the park arm in arm and he’d known what people were thinking: that’s his baby in there … another married couple.

  Could have been his too, but he never felt married. He wondered why. Rather like dressing up and pretending to be a parson when you’re not. Among several other parents on that platform ten minutes ago he hadn’t felt even the vestiges of parenthood; nor did he feel like Ruth’s husband. By putting salt on pepper you can’t make everything salt. He’d joined half-way and couldn’t get rid of the feeling that she’d got on to the same train five stations back. Given my circumstances nobody else would feel any different, he thought pressing his back against the driving-seat and cornering carefully. As in the parable, you can’t expect much from the seed on barren ground.

  He tried humming to the radio but couldn’t get the tune.

  It wasn’t a matter of easy come easy go, it was the barren ground; that was it. Plant a grape pip and don’t expect an apple-tree. Of course the arrangement hadn’t been unsatisfactory; money, no strings attached, no legal ones anyway, and a comfortable life too. But it hadn’t been all take either, he’d given too. Could’ve done something else, might be a company director by now, the best years had gone and they’d got them. If you make the game you make the rules and he thought he’d played more or less fair. There was the flat in London. But only once in a while … the odd week-end. He always told Ruth he’d been seeing his mother on these occasions. Just like a great big guilty schoolboy. After all he usually did see her as well. It was clearly ridiculous to feel guilty. Any man of his age stuck to an older woman would have done the same. Really it was better for Ruth that he saw Sally every now and then. He felt better afterwards and was better to Ruth as a result. If anybody ought to complain it was Sally: she was his servicing station. Drive in for a complete wash, mental and physical. And then back home for more reliable testing and use. If Ruth paid for it, it was still for the best; she benefited indirectly.

  The rain hadn’t stopped. George drove on with methodical care. A signpost told him he had twelve miles to go.

  He hadn’t gone out to find Sally, he’d met her three years ago on the Cornish Riviera Express. He’d been on his way home and she’d been going to stay with an aunt near Falmouth; they’d had the compartment to themselves most of the way. They’d heard each other’s life stories, and she had been moved by the vision of a young army officer seduced by the lustre of an aristocratic affluent older woman. She saw chandeliers and sparkling wine in cut-glass goblets, dim rooms and full-length portraits on velvet walls. He looked at her opposite him: lively, fresh and elegant, untainted by easy luxury, and above all, young and firm, small breasts, small buttocks. The pathos of George’s tale had grown as he saw what might have been.

  Sally was ten years his junior and had broken off her engagement, having found she didn’t like the man at the last moment. George asked for her address and promised that he would call when next in town. He called and that was that. Ruth seemed so much older now. Sally sympathised … how he must have suffered in the past. He was so well dressed and so well spoken and probably had money of his own. He told her about Ruth but not the money. Honesty was not always necessary. She was old enough to look after herself he felt. Somebody who backs out of an engagement with days to spare must have some initiative. That was partly what he’d taken to, but initiative or not, he couldn’t help feeling with pride that she still hoped he’d leave Ruth. Perhaps he would have done if things had been different, he thought with some bitterness. Money, the dumb god. Where did that come from? He tried to place it but couldn’t … probably Shakespeare. He had his fun every now and then but the dumb god saw that he didn’t have too much.

  Once, years back, he had tried to leave, but at the crucial moment the car hadn’t worked. He’d made a triumphant exit, sweeping out of the house like an abdicating king, leaving Ruth and David crying. Then the damned car … he’d thought of walking to the nearest hotel to spend the night but it was four miles away and the nearest telephone outside Trelawn was not much closer, so there was no hope of a taxi. like most of George’s unthinking actions it was doomed to failure. His cloth
es, everything he had was in that house. One can’t take back the moves one’s already played.

  No, things just happened and have to be accepted. He’d gone to Yorkshire, he’d met Ruth, he’d been poor, everything had been inevitable. George felt the mantle of resignation securely on his shoulders as he turned into the drive of Trelawn.

  But there was a gleam of hope. How long was it now? In three weeks he’d be seeing Sally, he imagined the flat door, the key in his hand, then telephoning her … but now the battlemented house was clearly visible on the rise to his right. He changed down and turned off the radio. As he got nearer he couldn’t help remembering that Steven had known about the flat for several months now. Luckily Sally had never decided to move in on a permanent basis. George’s dislike for Steven mounted as he thought of the way he’d found out; he’d discovered several envelopes addressed to George at the same place in London and had deduced the rest. Lying to Steven was impossible. If he’d guessed about Sally he hadn’t asked as yet.

  George pushed open the door and entered the hall … David would be in Devonshire by now.

  FIVE

  ‘AND if you want results you have to treat it good … like a woman … gently, or you won’t get results.’

  Sergeant Peters smiled knowledgeably as he pulled out the wireless aerial to its fullest extent with experienced fingers. Then, bending over the machine as though about to administer a kiss, he started crooning into the microphone, ‘Alpha bravo, alpha bravo, alpha bravo … tuning call …’

  Round him a group of boys in battle-dress watched in-attentively—one of them was David Lifton.

  C.C.F. at Edgecombe School took place every Wednesday afternoon and was not a popular activity. The term was only a week old, yet David found himself listlessly slipping into the old routine as though he’d never left it.

  Behind Sergeant Peters’ bald head the phonetic alphabet was written on the board. It might have been the work of a lunatic: echo, charlie, golf, hotel, oscar. Fit subject for the toughest psychiatrist. David idly fiddled with a morse buzzer … di-dah-di-da-dit-da-dit. God knows what that meant.

  Outside the classroom window in the main court ten boys of assorted sizes were marching back and forth. ‘About turn.’ Through the closed windows the orders were sharply distinct. David thought of their hands holding the rifles … he almost felt the cold metal … in early February too. He shivered.

  ‘The point of transmittin’ stations is this. The world is round … like this‚’ Sergeant Peters drew a wobbly circle. The chalk grated on the board. ‘Now, sound waves do not go in curves, but like this.’ He drew a series of unsteady tangents shooting off into outer space.

  David stopped listening; in another quarter of an hour he would be able to go back to his house, which was a good deal wanner than the classroom. The boys outside had stopped marching. Although only half past four it was already getting dark. Lights from the other side of the court showed more distinctly against the contrastingly dark brickwork.

  *

  In the housemaster’s drawing-room in Greville, David’s house, Mr. Alfred Crofts was stubbing out a cigarette nervously.

  ‘Really we’re most terribly lucky to have got the man. A bit young perhaps, but a Cambridge Double First …’ he paused to strike home the importance of this find, ‘really an incredible stroke of good fortune.’

  His wife continued arranging some flowers on a table in the window.

  ‘Looks as though we’re in for bit of fog tonight‚’ she said gloomily.

  Mrs. Crofts had been in Greville some five years more than her husband. She had graduated from assistant matron to matron and had finally married the housemaster, whose wife had died of a brain tumour three years ago. The marriage had been a convenient arrangement for both of them. The housemaster gained a permanent helper to look after his two children and the matron rose to a position which she had coveted even during the late Mrs. Crofts’ lifetime.

  She stepped back and admired her creation from a distance. Still examining it, she started speaking.

  ‘I shouldn’t be so optimistic, I can remember any number of highly qualified house tutors who haven’t worked out.’

  ‘But Mary, he’s young. The purpose of a house tutor is to get to know the boys. Who could be more suitable than a young man for that? Besides as house tutor at twenty-two if he stays at Edgecombe he’ll be in an excellent position to take a house at thirty, and it’s new ideas we’re needing.’

  ‘Since when have you been thinking of redundancy?’

  Such a realist was Mary; he looked at her large figure framed by the dosed curtains. After years of vitamin pills and radio malt, throat-swabbing and injections, what could one expect but a practical woman? She’d always known the fakes at exam time.

  ‘Don’t be stupid dear, it’s just that the house hasn’t been doing so well in the Varsity awards and I thought perhaps …’

  ‘Well look at Fowler’s house, he’s almost sixty and the tutor forty and they had four awards last year.’

  ‘Ah, but in classics and history, our last tutor was a languages man. There are always more going in classics and history, and with the right man on the premises … well we’ll soon see.’

  It didn’t really wash and he knew it. House tutors were only responsible for a small amount of extra-curricular tuition, as well as delegating for the housemaster.

  She seemed to have got, if anything, larger recently, in spite of her diet. Crofts looked at the folds of flesh that had started to appear under her chin and the downward sag of her cheeks. He also noticed that her lipstick wasn’t on straight. Her mouth looked weak and formless, but her eyes behind those pink-rimmed spectacles were as hard and clear as amethysts. Still he hadn’t married her for beauty. At fifty he’d been lucky to find a wife at all—he picked up a book and opened it. His wife got up.

  ‘I’m just going to say good night to Jane.’ He nodded and then started reading.

  *

  The last three years had not been kind to the house in a good many ways. Two house tutors had left and the last one had not only been thoroughly unsatisfactory but drank too. The final ugly scene had been during house prayers when he had collapsed. No, this new man was going to be a success, and if he wasn’t … nothing would be allowed to leak out.

  News had also reached the headmaster of boys in his house photographing junior boys and selling the pictures in the school to seniors. Crofts’ inquiries had led to nothing, although the practice on the surface appeared to have stopped. Another scandal might call his position in question. An early retirement could after all seem natural enough.

  *

  Upstairs his wife was with his daughter Jane.

  ‘Is Jane going to be a good girl this evening? … Of course she is. No crying tonight. Daddy’s very tired this evening.’

  She kissed her stepdaughter briskly on both cheeks and switched off the light.

  Impressions can be pretty firmly imprinted on a child by the time it’s four, she thought. She’d never approved of the way Fleda Crofts had brought up her daughter; now if she’d had the chance earlier, there’d be none of this whining at night. She shut the door and went downstairs to the kitchen. Once seated at the table she began to grate some cheese, turning the handle with brusque sharp movements. This new man was going to work out if she had anything to do with it. Poor Alfred, he did look so strained. The lines that ran from the side of his nose to the corners of his mouth seemed definitely more pronounced and he had developed a twitch under his right eye. But she would protect him. She had always felt sorry for him. What he had always needed was a strong personality at his side and Fleda had been such an ephemeral little person.

  The lumps of cheese in the grater had already almost gone. If there was trouble this time, she at least would not shirk dealing with it thoroughly.

  *

  At the back of the same building, in another wing, David Lifton was impatiently climbing out of his rough khaki trousers. In spite of the cold he
felt sticky after wearing these thick and rarely-washed clothes. There were six other beds in the dormitory but for the moment David was the only person there. When he had changed into his school suit he took a letter out of his breast pocket. It was from his mother. She told him that she was worried about him and hoped that there was nothing on his mind. Did he feel a gap of communication with her? Why hadn’t he written? There really was nothing wrong? He would tell her if there was? Why hadn’t he spoken to her as he used? David slowly folded the letter and replaced it in his pocket. There wasn’t very much to say. He would answer each question as well as he could to reassure her.

  Yet something had changed. He still loved her but recently somehow he had started to see her as though for the first time. That vague and all-enveloping rosiness contained in the word ‘Mummy’ had sometimes fallen away. The veil of the world of the taken-for-granted had occasionally parted and the result had been profoundly depressing. He had started to learn new things about her. It had been so easy to believe that what one saw of her was all there was to know. Anyway were these changes in him and not in her? Perhaps that was why everything seemed different. David frowned. Yet his mother’s piety, her spasmodic periods of interest in him, and her violent fits of remorse for her neglect all seemed new. If she had previously concealed these flaws it was a deceitful betrayal.

  David hadn’t thought about George’s position much. The idea of his sleeping with his mother had rarely worried him. It had all begun when he was too young to question. It became part of the taken-for-granted about Mummy, part of the impression. George became right because Mummy liked George, and because Mummy liked George, David liked George; and home was home with George and Mummy and Steven and David.