The Complete Short Stories of Evelyn Waugh - Evelyn Waugh [83]
It was in the subsequent holidays that the importance of the change became apparent. Mrs. Kent-Cumberland had suddenly become more emotional and more parsimonious. She was liable to unprecedented outbursts of tears, when she would crush Gervase to her and say, “My poor fatherless boy.” At other times she spoke gloomily of death duties.
V
For some years in fact “Death Duties” became the refrain of the household.
When Mrs. Kent-Cumberland let the house in London and closed down a wing at Tomb, when she reduced the servants to four and the gardeners to two, when she “let the flower gardens go,” when she stopped asking her brother Ted to stay, when she emptied the stables, and became almost fanatical in her reluctance to use the car, when the bathwater was cold and there were no new tennis balls, when the chimneys were dirty and the lawns covered with sheep, when Gervase’s cast-off clothes ceased to fit Tom, when she refused him the “extra” expense at school of carpentry lessons and mid-morning milk—“Death Duties” were responsible.
“It is all for Gervase,” Mrs. Kent-Cumberland used to explain. “When he inherits, he must take over free of debt, as his father did.”
VI
Gervase went to Eton in the year of his father’s death. Tom would normally have followed him two years later, but in her new mood of economy, Mrs. Kent-Cumberland cancelled his entry and began canvassing her friends’ opinions about the less famous, cheaper public schools. “The education is just as good,” she said, “and far more suitable for a boy who has his own way to make in the world.”
Tom was happy enough at the school to which he was sent. It was very bleak and very new, salubrious, progressive, prosperous in the boom that secondary education enjoyed in the years immediately following the war, and, when all was said and done, “thoroughly suitable for a boy with his own way to make in the world.” He had several friends whom he was not allowed to invite to his home during the holidays. He got his House colours for swimming and fives, played once or twice in the second eleven for cricket, and was a platoon-commander in the O.T.C.; he was in the sixth form and passed the Higher Certificate in his last year, became a prefect and enjoyed the confidence of his house master, who spoke of him as “a very decent stamp of boy.” He left school at the age of eighteen without the smallest desire to revisit it or see any of its members again.
Gervase was then at Christ Church. Tom went up to visit him, but the magnificent Etonians who romped in and out of his brother’s rooms scared and depressed him. Gervase was in the Bullingdon, spending money freely and enjoying himself. He gave a dinner party in his rooms, but Tom sat in silence, drinking heavily to hide his embarrassment, and was later sombrely sick in a corner of Peckwater quad. He returned to Tomb next day in the lowest spirits.
“It is not as though Tom were a scholarly boy,” said Mrs. Kent-Cumberland to her friends. “I am glad he is not, of course. But if he had been, it might have been right to make the sacrifice and send him to the University. As it is, the sooner he Gets Started the better.”
VII
Getting Tom started, however, proved a matter of some difficulty. During the Death Duty Period, Mrs. Kent-Cumberland had cut herself off from many of her friends. Now she cast round vainly to find someone who would “put Tom into something.” Chartered Accountancy, Chinese Customs, estate agencies, “the City,” were suggested and abandoned. “The trouble is, that he has no particular abilities,” she explained. “He is the sort of boy who would be useful in anything—an all-round man—but, of course, he has no capital.”
August, September, October passed; Gervase was back at Oxford, in fashionable lodgings in the High Street, but Tom remained at home without employment. Day by day he and his mother sat down together to luncheon and dinner, and his constant presence was a severe strain on Mrs. Kent-Cumberland’s equability. She herself was always busy and, as she bustled about her duties, it shocked