Джеймс Хилтон - Time And Time Again

One quality he had to which both friends and enemies gave the same name, but with differing inflections—CHARM. His friends had in mind the urbane host and the delightful talker, but his enemies said that this charm was something he could turn on and off at will, and always on when he wanted anything—an old courtroom trick put to non-professional use.

Before Charles left for the station to catch the London train en route for Cambridge he had a talk with his father in which the charm, turned on or not, was as antique as the snuff-boxes. Havelock began by discussing the Anderson name and his own pride in it—one of those great families of commoners, he said, that in a sort of way constituted an English aristocracy of their own. In such company a mere knighthood was not so much a painting of the lily as a defacement. ‘Who can wish to rub the eager shoulders of provincial mayors and successful shopkeepers? Of course if I’d stayed at the Bar I should have climbed much higher—but today, as things are, I’m probably stuck where I am, and you must reconcile yourself to having Sir Havelock Anderson for a father instead of plain Mister or Esquire.’

All of which seemed to Charles either obtuse or a snobbery of extra- special vintage. He said: ‘Oh, it doesn’t make much difference at Cambridge. I don’t think many of my friends even know about the title.’

‘You have my full authority to conceal it from them. Anyhow, your own affairs and what you intend to do in life are more important. Have you thought of a profession?’

Charles hadn’t, especially. So they ran through the possibilities, some of which were impossibilities, such as the armed services and medicine, for which Charles had neither desire nor aptitude. Havelock himself ruled out the law; he did not think Charles was suited, which was a politer way of saying he did not think he had the brains. Charles knew, though his father didn’t mention it, that Lindsay was then on his mind; Lindsay was to have entered the law, for which a brilliant Cambridge career had already prepared him before he went into the army. It was as if Havelock did not want Charles’s career to trespass, even had it been possible, on the hallowed might-have-been territory that Lindsay would always occupy in his mind.

What about the Church? Charles shook his own head at that, and Havelock smiled in part concurrence. The City? Selling stocks wasn’t much of a job, but undeniably there were youths of decent family who nowadays went into brokers’ offices and made money there. Charles said innocently that he didn’t think he would ever know what stocks to buy, which made Havelock smile again and remark that his own broker didn’t seem to, either.

Thus, having arrived at a fairly cordial impasse, father and son could only concede that the matter was in no way urgent and that the first step was for Charles to do well at Cambridge, taking an Honours degree. Charles said this would be expected of him, since he was an Exhibitioner. To which Havelock replied: ‘Oh yes, of course. I really didn’t congratulate you enough about that. But at the time, you see…’

Charles knew what he meant; Lindsay had been alive at the time, and Charles’s achievements and future hadn’t then mattered. Now they did matter, but only in a pale shadow of the way Lindsay’s had mattered.

Havelock continued: ‘Well, you’ve made a beginning. You must have studied quite hard. Somehow I never thought you did much in your spare time except paint little pictures. Or have you given that up?’

‘No, I still like to do it. A pleasant hobby that gets one into the open air.’

‘So long as you don’t take it too seriously. No man should take his hobbies seriously till he has succeeded—or failed, for that matter —in his profession.’ (He might well have been speaking of himself.) ‘And by the way, there’s one profession we forgot. Diplomacy. Not bad if you have manners and like travel. Dressy fellows—useful, too, so they’d have us believe. They didn’t prevent the last war and they won’t prevent the next, but at least it’s work that doesn’t soil the hands.’

Charles then responded to his father’s irony with a remark that he recalled, long afterwards, with a certain irony of his own. ‘Oh, I really don’t think we need worry about another war in your lifetime or mine, Father.’

‘No? I wonder. There’s France. There’s Japan. There’s Russia. There’s America. Even Germany again if we’re fools enough—and we shall be.’

Evidently nothing less than the total destruction of the entire rest of the world would give Havelock any confidence in a lasting peace; and there were times in later life when Charles was almost driven to think his father might have had a point, though surely not an acceptable one.

Charles worked steadily at Cambridge. Except for a little beer-drinking that sometimes ended up as a private spree among friends, he lived and studied quietly in rooms that overlooked the College Backs and the river; to his gyp he was ‘a reading gentleman’, and among the dons he earned the kind of modest reputation that tempted nobody to prophesy anything remarkable. In his father’s letters the suggestion of a diplomatic career was renewed, and with this in mind Charles mentioned the matter to his tutors. It seemed to be looking rather high and far for a first-year undergraduate, but they steered his studies slightly in the required direction, emphasizing modern languages and political science. He found he had a knack for languages, and during that first year something happened that was specially fortunate— André Brunon, who had been the arts master at Brookfield, took a post at a school in Cambridge, so that Charles and he were able to continue their earlier friendship. Not only did Brunon reawaken and stimulate Charles’s interest in painting, but by their agreement to talk always in French Charles was given an opportunity which he used to the full. He and Brunon would spend many an afternoon together in and around the town, finding old buildings or street scenes that offered material for sketches; sometimes they went further afield to Grantchester and Madingley and Ely, cycling with painting gear strapped to their machines. Charles had always thought he would stick to water-colours, but Brunon introduced him to the art of oil painting, and thus a new world was opened. The extra satisfaction of it all was that he need never regard time with Brunon as a self-indulgence, since they chattered all the while; and Charles knew he was acquiring not only conversational ease but the beginnings of an ability to THINK in French. ‘And you have also an ear for accent,’ Brunon told him. ‘This is important in French as it is in English. Either you must speak French like an Englishman, which is bad but permissible, or you must speak it like the right kind of Frenchman. I myself am not the right kind of Frenchman, so it will be advisable for us soon, Charles, to stop talking French and revert to English.’

Charles asked what Brunon had meant by saying he was not the right kind of Frenchman.

‘I am from the Midi. Any Parisian hearing me speak would know that.’

‘Does it matter?’

‘A little. Nothing to hinder you from passing examinations here, but still, the accent is not socially correct, and you will soon be copying it so well that you would cause raised eyebrows at the Quai d’Orsay. It would be like a French Ambassador arriving in London and paying his respects to your Foreign Minister in perfect grammatical English but with a set of Cockney vowel-sounds.’

‘Rather amusing to think of.’

‘Yes, but you would wonder where on earth he could have picked them up —and then in your mind there would just be the faintest beginnings of doubt about him. Whereas if he spoke with a slight Scottish burr or a slight Irish lilt, all you would think would be, how charming, he must have had a Scottish or an Irish governess as a child… There is no logic about these matters, but it IS rather odd that the native accent of your capital city is so out of favour… Personally, I LIKE Cockney, it has a real music of its own, but then I also like a made-up bow tie, which saves me trouble, though I was once told that no English gentleman would ever wear one.’