‘That’s no protection, surely?’
‘With me it is. I don’t happen to be attracted by children – not yet – no doubt that will come, one of the horrors of senility. And I dislike the sensation of doing wrong.’
‘I thought it added to the amusement?’
‘Greatly, if one is cocufying some old prig one was at school with. But to seduce Northey would do her harm and also lead to trouble. I love Mees and I hate trouble. No, we must marry her to Philip – I’m working for that. If he thinks I am courting her and if she seems to cool off him, that, human nature being what it is, may do the trick. He has sighed after Grace quite long enough, it’s a bore. Like this I hope to kill two birds with one stone.’
I was not completely reassured but there was nothing more I could say. It was another beautiful day. (When I look back on our first months in France we seem to have enjoyed an uninterrupted Indian summer.) Valhubert and I were now crossing the Seine-et-Marne country where everything is on an enormous scale. Avenues of poplar trees rush over vast horizons and encircle the globe; down the roads bordered by them the largest, whitest of horses draw ancient wagons loaded with beetroots the size of footballs; each farm with its basse-cour, kennels, cow-byres, stables, barns and sheds occupies enough space for a whole village. The land breathes of prosperity; the predominating colour at that time of year is gold.
‘This is the battlefield of the Marne,’ he told me, ‘where thousands of young men were killed in 1914, on days like this, almost before they could have realized they were at war. The Uhlans, mounted, with their lances, the Cuirassiers glittering in polished armour, went into action on horseback. Those battles were more like a military tournament than modern warfare – to read of them now is reminiscent of Agincourt or Crécy. One can’t believe they happened in living memory and that there are still many people we know who took part in them.’
We came to a village of whitewashed houses with red and navy-blue roofs clustered round a twelfth-century church. ‘I have an uncle who was wounded here at St Soupplets. When he came to, in hospital, they said “You were in the Battle of the Marne.” He was perfectly amazed. He remembered seeing a few Germans round that inn across the road there – and then he was knocked down by a bullet, but he had no idea he had been in anything as important as a battle.’
‘Stendhal’s description of Waterloo is rather like that – casual and unfrightening.’
‘I love this country so much but now it makes me feel sad to come here. We must look at it with all our eyes because in ten years’ time it will be utterly different. No more stooks of corn or heaps of manure to dot the stubble with light and shade, no more peasants in blue overalls, no more horses and carts, nothing but mechanicians driving tractors and lorries. The trees are going at a fearful rate. Last time I came along this road it was bordered by apple trees – look, you can see the stumps. Some admirer of Bernard Buffet has put up these telegraph poles instead.’
‘It is still very beautiful,’ I said, ‘I never saw the apples trees so I don’t grieve for them as you do. When I go to the country I always wonder how any of us can bear to live in towns – it seems perfect madness.’
‘I’m sure you didn’t feel like that when you were Northey’s age.’
‘Now I come to think of it, when I was Northey’s age I did live in the country and my only idea was how to get to London.’
‘Of course it was. Young people need urban life, to exchange thoughts and see what goes on in the world – it’s quite right and natural. By degrees the tempo slows down and we take to peaceful pleasures like gardening or just sitting in the sun. Very few young people are sensitive to beauty, that’s why there are so few poets.’
‘Yes. But now it seems almost unbearable to think what one is missing by being in a town as the days and months go by. So dreadful only to know the seasons by the flower and vegetable shops.’
‘I call that rather ungrateful. Your embassy is in a forest.’
‘I know. Our Oxford house is not, however.’
‘When were you born?’
‘In 1911.’
‘And I the year after. So we remember the old world as it had been for a thousand years, so beautiful and diverse, and which, in only thirty years, has crumbled away. When we were young every country still had its own architecture and customs and food. Can you ever forget the first sight of Italy? Those ochre houses, all different, each with such character, with their trompe-l’œil paintings on the stucco? Queer and fascinating and strange even to a Provençal like me. Now, the dreariness! The suburbs of every town uniform all over the world, while perhaps in the very centre a few old monuments sadly survive as though in a glass case. Venice is still wonderful, though the approach to it makes me shudder, but most of the other Italian towns are engulfed in sky-scrapers and tangles of wire. Even Rome has this American rind! “Roma senza speranza”, I saw in an Italian paper; all is said.’ He sighed deeply. ‘But like you with the apple trees, our children never saw that world so they cannot share our sadness. One more of the many things that divide us. There is an immense gap between us and them, caused by unshared experience. Never in history have the past and the present been so different; never have the generations been divided as they are now.’
‘If they
