• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 2513 0

they were entirely – and therefore incapably – administered by persons whose sole claim to consideration was that they could command influence. His own phrase for describing briefly this approach to all social, political and economic questions was “being a bit of a radical:” a standpoint he was at pains to make abundantly clear to all with whom he came in contact. As it happened, he always seemed to find people who would put up with him; and, usually, people who would employ him. In fact, at his own level, he must have had more “influence” than most persons. He did not, however, answer the enquiries, and counter-proposals, put forward in a reply to his letter sent to the address in the Isle of Man; and, for the time being, no more was heard of his marriage, or any other of his activities.

*

Settling down with Templer at school was easier than I had expected. Without Stringham, he was more expansive, and I began to hear something of his life at home. His father and uncle (the latter of whom – for public services somewhat vaguely specified – had accepted a baronetcy at the hands of Lloyd George, one of the few subjects upon which Templer showed himself at all sensitive) had made their money in cement. Mr. Templer had retired from business fairly recently, after what his son called “an appalling bloomer over steel.” There were two sisters: Babs, the eldest of the family, who towards the end of the war had left a husband in one of the dragoon regiments in favour of a racing motorist; and Jean, slightly younger than her brother. Their mother had died some years before I came across Templer, who displayed no photographs of his family, so that I knew nothing of their appearance. Although not colossally rich, they were certainly not poor; and whatever lack of appreciation Peter’s father may at one moment have shown regarding predictable fluctuations of his own holdings in the steel industry, he still took a friendly interest in the market; and, by Peter’s account, seemed quite often to guess right. I also knew that they lived in a house by the sea.

“Personally I wouldn’t mind having a look at Kenya,” said Templer, when I described the luncheon with Stringham and his mother.

“Stringham didn’t seem to care for the idea.”

“My elder sister had a beau who lived in the Happy Valley. He shot himself after having a lot of drinks at the club.”

“Perhaps it won’t be so bad then.”

“Did you lunch with them in London or the country?”

“London.”

“Stringham says Glimber is pretty, but too big,”

“Will he come into it?”

“Good Lord, no,” said Templer. “It is only his mother’s for life. He will come into precious little if she goes on spending money at her present rate.”

I was not sure how much of this was to be believed; but, thinking the subject of interest, enquired further. Templer sketched in a somewhat lurid picture of Mrs. Foxe and her set. I was rather surprised to find that he himself had no ambition to become a member of that world, the pleasures of which sounded of a kind particularly to appeal to him.

“Too much of a good thing,” he said. “I have simpler tastes.”

I was reminded of Stringham’s disparagement of Buster on the ground that he was “too grand;” and also of the reservations he had expressed regarding Templer himself. Clearly some complicated process of sorting-out was in progress among those who surrounded me: though only years later did I become aware how early such voluntary segregations begin to develop; and of how they continue throughout life. I asked more questions about Templer’s objection to house-parties at Glimber. He said: “Well, I imagine it was all rather pompous even at lunch, wasn’t it?”

“Buster seemed rather an ass. His mother was awfully nice.”

Even at the time I felt that the phrase was not a very adequate way of describing Mrs Foxe’s forceful, even dazzling, characteristics.

“Oh, she is all right, I have no doubt,” said Templer. “And damned good-looking still. She gave Stringham’s sister absolute hell, though, until she married the first chap that came along.”

“Who was he?”

“I can’t remember