The Children's Book - A. S. Byatt [335]
Margot Asquith was one of a social set called the Souls, who were clever with words and sporty with tennis and bicycles. Margot’s set liked to be daring and unusual, unconventional and “natural.” The children of the Souls, including Margot’s stepchildren, Raymond and Violet Asquith, formed what came to be known as the Corrupt Coterie. Raymond was the king of this group, who indulged in “chlorers” and opium, impiety and black humour. Lady Diana Manners said “Our pride was to be unafraid of words, unshocked by drink, and unashamed of decadence and gambling.” Diana was, Raymond Asquith said, “an orchid among cowslips, a black tulip in a garden of cucumbers, nightshade in a day nursery.” They parodied the charades and theatrical tableaux of their parent Souls (the nomenclature has an odd echo of the private grades of the Cambridge Apostles, or the Munich Cosmic Circle, with their embryos, godfathers and Angels, their Giants and Peripherals). They had a particular game called Breaking the News. It consisted of acting out as comedy the breaking of the news of a child’s death, to his mother.
In November 1912 the great “silver scandal” gripped the City and filled the newspapers. Messrs. Simon Montagu & Co. had been secretly purchasing silver for the Indian government as part of its currency reserve. There were accusations of corruption, and smears of anti-Semitism. John Maynard Keynes—who believed in the gradual elimination of the gold standard, and of a tangible currency reserve—published his book, Indian Currency and Finance, in June 1913. In November of that year there was a crisis. “The great silver speculation has failed and the Indian Specie Bank is bankrupt. What a tragedy!” wrote Sir Charles Addis, who was instrumental in forming a syndicate of bullion brokers who in December managed to avoid the disaster.
Geraint Fludd had become more and more involved in the currency and bullion work of Wildvogel & Quick. He bought Keynes’s book and read it carefully. Basil Wellwood invited the young man to dinner in Rules restaurant one evening and fed him on potted shrimps, venison, Stilton and syllabub, with a bottle of very good claret. It had never been clear to Basil exactly what had happened to Geraint’s “engagement” to Florence Cain, who was now Mrs. Goldwasser. He had noticed a difference in Geraint—a grimmer determination about his work, an unsmiling propriety. At the end of the dinner he said
“I wanted to tell you how much I admire the resolution with which you have worked over the past year or two. I think you have had setbacks to contend with, and have contended with them.”
Geraint said that that was so. He observed that if things could not be mended they should be set aside in the mind, but that that could be hard.
Basil said that he had come to feel that Geraint was in many ways another son to him. His own son made no pretence of being interested in the drama and life of the City. In that sense, Geraint was his spiritual heir—a spiritual heir of material things. He wanted to advance him as best he could, as fast as he could. He had been very impressed with his work on the Indian silver crisis. What would Geraint feel about being sent out there, next year, to take a good look at the Bank’s business in that country?
They raised their glasses. The room smelt of wine and bread and gravy, and the light was rich and dim. Geraint didn’t answer.
“I thought a change of scene …” said Basil. “A long voyage on an ocean liner. Full of hopeful beautiful women,” he added, daring.
Geraint read Kipling. He thought of the mystery of India, the jungle, the light, the colours, the creatures. The complexities of the silver dealings. The distance. He was, he saw, in need of distance. And his imagination touched on the beautiful young women sailing across dark starlit oceans in search of husbands. A journey like that made you free, made you a different man.
“I should