The Complete Short Stories of Evelyn Waugh - Evelyn Waugh [226]
“That photograph has given me an idea.”
“Basil, you’ve got that old villainous look. What are you up to?”
“Just an idea.”
“You’re not going to throw Barbara into the Serpentine.”
“Something not unlike it,” he said.
“Let us go and sit by the Serpentine,” said Basil to his daughter that afternoon.
“Won’t it be rather cold?”
“It will be quiet. Wrap up well. I have to talk to you seriously.”
“Good temper?”
“Never better.”
“Why not talk here?”
“Your mother may come in. What I have to say doesn’t concern her.”
“It’s about me and Charles, I bet.”
“Certainly.”
“Not a scolding?”
“Far from it. Warm fatherly sympathy.”
“It’s worth being frozen for that.”
They did not speak in the car. Basil sent it away, saying they would find their own way back. At that chilly tea time, with the leaves dry and falling, there was no difficulty in finding an empty seat. The light was soft; it was one of the days when London seems like Dublin.
“Charles said he’d talked to you. He wasn’t sure you loved him.”
“I love him.”
“Oh, Pobble.”
“He did not play the guitar but I recognized his genius.”
“Oh, Pobble, what are you up to?”
“Just what Sonia asked.” Basil leaned his chin on the knob of his cane. “You know, Babs, that all I want is your happiness.”
“This doesn’t sound at all like you. You’ve got some sly scheme.”
“Far from it. You must never tell him or your mother what I am about to say. Charles’s parents are dead so they are not affected. I knew his mother very well; perhaps he doesn’t know how well. People often wondered why she married Albright. It was a blitz marriage, you know, while he was on leave and there were air raids every night. It was when I was first out of hospital, before I married your mother.”
“Darling Pobble, it’s very cold here and I don’t quite see what all this past history has to do with me and Charles.”
“It began,” said Basil inexorably, “when—what was her name?—Betty was younger than you are now. I threw her into the lake at King’s Thursday.”
“What began?”
“Betty’s passion for me. Funny what excites a young girl—with you a guitar, with Betty a ducking.”
“Well, I think that’s rather romantic. It sort of brings you and Charles closer.”
“Very close indeed. It was more than romantic. She was too young at the beginning—just a girlish crush. I thought she would get over it. Then, when I was wounded, she took to visiting me every day in hospital and the first day I came out—you won’t be able to understand the sort of exhilaration a man feels at a time like that, or the appeal lameness has for some women, or the sense of general irresponsibility we all had during the blitz—I’m not trying to excuse myself. I was not the first man. She had grown up since the splash in the lake. It only lasted a week. Strictly perhaps I should have married her, but I was less strict in those days. I married your mother instead. You can’t complain about that. If I hadn’t, you wouldn’t exist. Betty had to look elsewhere and fortunately that ass Albright turned up in the nick. Yes, Charles is your brother, so how could I help loving him?”
Soundlessly Barbara rose from the seat and sped through the twilight, stumbled on her stiletto heels across the sand of the Row, disappeared behind the statuary through Edinburgh Gate. Basil at his own pace followed. He stopped a taxi, kept it waiting at the kerb while he searched Bellamy’s vainly for a friendly face, drank another eggnog at the bar, went on towards Claridges.
“What on earth’s happened to Barbara?” Angela asked. “She came in with a face of tragedy, didn’t speak and now she’s locked herself in your bedroom.”
“I think she’s had a row with that fellow she was keen on. What was his name? Albright. A good thing really, a likeable fellow but not at all suitable. I daresay Babs needs a change of scene. Angie, if it suits you, I think we might all three of us go to Bermuda tomorrow.”
“Can we get tickets?”
“I have them already. I stopped at the travel office on my way from Sonia’s. I don’t imagine Babs will want much dinner