The Complete Short Stories of Evelyn Waugh - Evelyn Waugh [82]
Gervase had a smart pony and was often taken hunting. Tom was alone most of the day and the motor-car occupied a great part of his thoughts. Finally he confided his ambition to an uncle. This uncle was not addicted to expensive present giving, least of all to children (for he was a man of limited means and self-indulgent habits) but something in his nephew’s intensity of feeling impressed him.
“Poor little beggar,” he reflected, “his brother seems to get all the fun,” and when he returned to London he ordered the motor-car for Tom. It arrived some days before Christmas and was put away upstairs with other presents. On Christmas Eve Mrs. Kent-Cumberland came to inspect them. “How very kind,” she said, looking at each label in turn, “how very kind.”
The motor-car was by far the largest exhibit. It was pillar-box red, complete with electric lights, a hooter and a spare wheel.
“Really,” she said. “How very kind of Ted.”
Then she looked at the label more closely. “But how foolish of him. He’s put Tom’s name on it.”
“There was this book for Master Gervase,” said the nurse, producing a volume labelled “Gervase with best wishes from Uncle Ted.”
“Of course the parcels have been confused at the shop,” said Mrs. Kent-Cumberland. “This can’t have been meant for Tom. Why, it must have cost six or seven pounds.”
She changed the labels and went downstairs to supervise the decoration of the Christmas tree, glad to have rectified an obvious error of justice.
Next morning the presents were revealed.
“Oh, Ger. You are lucky,” said Tom, inspecting the motor-car. “May I ride in it?”
“Yes, only be careful. Nanny says it was awfully expensive.”
Tom rode it twice round the room. “May I take it in the garden sometimes?”
“Yes. You can have it when I’m hunting.”
Later in the week they wrote to thank their uncle for his presents.
Gervase wrote: “Dear Uncle Ted, Thank you for the lovely present. It’s lovely. The pony is very well. I am going to hunt again before I go back to school. Love from Gervase.”
“Dear Uncle Ted,” wrote Tom, “Thank you ever so much for the lovely present. It is just what I wanted. Again thanking you very much. With love from Tom.”
“So that’s all the thanks I get. Ungrateful little beggar,” said Uncle Ted, resolving to be more economical in future.
But when Gervase went back to school, he said, “You can have the motor-car, Tom, to keep.”
“What, for my own?”
“Yes. It’s a kid’s toy, anyway.”
And by this act of generosity he increased Tom’s respect and love for him a hundredfold.
IV
The War came and profoundly changed the lives of the two boys. It engendered none of the neuroses threatened by pacifists. Air raids remained among Tom’s happiest memories, when the school used to be awakened in the middle of the night and hustled downstairs to the basements where, wrapped in eiderdowns, they were regaled with cocoa and cake by the matron, who looked supremely ridiculous in a flannel nightgown. Once a Zeppelin was hit in sight of the school; they all crowded to the dormitory windows to see it sinking slowly in a globe of pink flame. A very young master whose health rendered him unfit for military service danced on the headmaster’s tennis court crying, “There go the baby killers.” Tom made a collection of “War Relics,” including a captured German helmet, shell-splinters, The Times for August 4th, 1914, buttons, cartridge cases, and cap badges, that was voted the best in the school.
The event which radically changed the relationship of the brothers was the death, early in 1915, of their father. Neither knew him well nor particularly liked him. He had represented the division in the House of Commons and spent much of his time in London while the children were at Tomb. They only saw him on three occasions after he joined the army. Gervase and Tom were called out of the classroom and told of his death by the headmaster’s wife. They cried, since it was expected of them, and for some days were treated with marked deference by the masters and the