and the tranquil splendour of Malfrey had wrought changes in her; it was very rarely, now, that the wild little animal in her came above ground; but it was there, in its earth, and from time to time he was aware of it, peeping out, after long absences; a pair of glowing eyes at the twist in the tunnel watching him as an enemy.
Barbara herself pretended to no illusions about Basil. Years of disappointment and betrayal had convinced her, in the reasoning part of her, that he was no good. They had played pirates together in the nursery and the game was over. Basil played pirates alone. She apostatized from her faith in him almost with formality, and yet, as a cult will survive centuries after its myths have been exposed and its sources of faith tainted, there was still deep in her that early piety, scarcely discernible now in a little residue of superstition, so that this morning when her world seemed rocking about her, she turned back to Basil. Thus, when earthquake strikes a modern city and the pavements gape, the sewers buckle up and the great buildings tremble and topple, men in bowler hats and natty, ready-made suitings, born of generations of literates and rationalists, will suddenly revert to the magic of the forest and cross their fingers to avert the avalanche of concrete.
Three times during luncheon Barbara had spoken of Basil and now, as she and Freddy walked arm-in-arm on the terrace, she said: “I believe it’s what he’s been waiting for all these years.”
“Who, waiting for what?”
“Basil, for the war.”
“Oh…Well, I suppose in a way we all have really…the gardens are going to be a problem. I suppose we could get some of the men exemption on the grounds that they’re engaged in agriculture, but it hardly seems playing the game.”
It was Freddy’s last day at Malfrey and he did not want to spoil it by talking of Basil. It was true that the yeomanry were not ten miles away; it was true, also, that they were unlikely to move for a very long time; they had recently been mechanized, in the sense that they had had their horses removed; few of them had ever seen a tank; he would be back and forwards continually during the coming months; he meant to shoot the pheasants; but although this was no final leave-taking he felt entitled to more sentiment than Barbara was showing.
“Freddy, don’t be bloody.” She kicked him sharply on the ankle for she had found, early in married life, that Freddy liked her to swear and kick in private. “You know exactly what I mean. Basil’s needed a war. He’s not meant for peace.”
“That’s true enough. The wonder is he’s kept out of prison. If he’d been born in a different class he wouldn’t have.”
Barbara suddenly chuckled. “D’you remember how he took Mother’s emeralds, the time he went to Azania? But then you see that would never have happened if there’d been a war of our own for him to go to. He’s always been mixed up in fighting.”
“If you call living in a gin palace in La Paz and seeing generals shoot one another…”
“And Spain.”
“Journalist and gun runner.”
“He’s always been a soldier manque.”
“Well, he hasn’t done much about it. While he’s been gadding about the rest of us have been training as territorials and yeomanry.”
“Darling, a fat lot of training you’ve done.”
“If there’d been more like us and fewer like Basil there’d never have been a war. You can’t blame Ribbentrop for thinking us decadent when he saw people like Basil about. I don’t suppose they’ll have much use for him in the Army. He’s thirty-six. He might get some sort of job connected with censorship. He seems to know a lot of languages.”
“You’ll see,” said Barbara. “Basil will be covered with medals while your silly old yeomanry are still messing in a Trust House and waiting for your tanks.”
There were duck on the lake and she let Freddy talk about them. She led him down his favourite paths. There was a Gothic pavilion where by long habit Freddy often became amorous; he did become amorous. And all the time she thought of Basil. She thought of him in terms of the war books she had read. She saw him as Siegfried Sassoon, an infantry subaltern in a mud-bogged trench, standing-to at dawn, his eyes on his wrist watch, waiting for zero hour; she saw him as Compton Mackenzie, spider in a web of Balkan intrigue, undermining a monarchy among olive trees and sculptured marble; she saw him as T. E. Lawrence and Rupert Brooke.
Freddy, assuaged, reverted to sport. “I won’t ask any of the regiment over for the early shoots,” he said. “But I don’t see why we shouldn’t let some of them have a bang at the cocks round about Christmas.”
Lady Seal was at her home in London. She had taken fewer precautions against air raids than most of her friends. Her most valuable possession, her small Carpaccio, had been sent to safe-keeping at Malfrey; the miniatures and Limoges enamels were at the bank; the Sevres was packed in crates and put below-stairs. Otherwise there was no change in her drawing-room. The ponderous old curtains needed no unsightly strips of black paper to help them keep in the light
The windows were open now on the balcony. Lady Seal sat in an elegant rosewood chair gazing out across the square. She had just heard the Prime Minister’s speech. Her butler approached from the end of the room.
“Shall I remove the radio, my lady?”
“Yes, by all means. He spoke very well, very well indeed.”
“It’s all very sad, my lady.”
“Very sad for the Germans, Anderson.”
It was quite true, thought Lady Seal; Neville Chamberlain had spoken surprisingly well. She had never liked him very much, neither him nor his brother ? if anything she had preferred the brother ? but they were uncomfortable, drab fellows both of them. However, he had spoken very creditably that morning, as though at last he were fully alive to his responsibilities. She would ask him to luncheon. But perhaps he would be busy; the most improbable people were busy in wartime, she remembered.
Her mind went back to the other war, which until that morning had been The War. No one very near to her had fought. Christopher had been too old, Tony just too young; her brother Edward had begun by commanding a brigade ? they thought the world of him at the Staff College ? but, inexplicably, his career had come to very little; he was still brigadier in 1918, at Dar-as-Salaam. But the war had been a sad time; so many friends in mourning and Christopher
