Charles Snow - The Light and the Dark

“Too stupid,” said Roy.

“He’s not too stupid.”

“Of course he’s not. I am.”

“You’re impossible.” She had begun to laugh, as she could not help doing whenever the demure and solemn expression came over him. Then she turned fierce again, stayed by him, and went on quarrelling as Lord Boscastle led off Lady Muriel, Mrs Seymour and the Master for their bridge. Meanwhile Lady Boscastle was commanding: “Lewis, bring your chair here, please. I am going to scold you a little.”

She glanced at me sarcastically, affectionately, charmingly, through her lorgnette.

“Yes,” she said, as I came beside her, arranged her table, filled her glass, “I think I must scold you a little.”

“What have I done now?” I said.

“I notice that you are wearing a soft shirt tonight. It looks quite a nice shirt, my dear Lewis, but this is not quite the right time. What have you to say for yourself?”

“I loathe stiff shirts,” I said. “This is very much more comfortable.”

“My dear boy, I should call that excuse rather — untravelled.” It was her final word of blame. “The chief aim of civilised society is not comfort, as you know very well. Otherwise you would not be sitting in a draughty room listening to an old woman—”

She was an invalid, her temples were sunk in, her skin minutely wrinkled; yet she could make me feel that she was twenty years younger, she could still draw out the protests of admiration. And, when I made them, she could still hear them with pleasure.

“Quite nicely said.” She smiled as she spoke. “Perhaps you would always have found some compensations in civilised society. Though we did our best to make you obey the rules.”

She flicked her lorgnette, and then went on: “But it’s not only soft shirts, my dear Lewis. Will you listen to your old friend?”

“To anything you like to tell me.”

“I want you to be a success. You have qualities that can take you anywhere you choose to go.”

“What are they?”

“Come! I’ve heard you called the least vain of men.”

“Not if you’re going to praise me,” I said.

She smiled again.

“I needn’t tell you that you’re intelligent,” she said. “You’re also very obstinate. And for a man of — what is it, my dear?”

“Thirty.”

“For a man of thirty, you know something of the human heart.”

She went on quickly: “Believe me about those things. I have spent my life among successful men. You can compete with them. But they conformed more than you do, Lewis. I want you to conform a little more.”

“I don’t parade my opinions—”

“We shouldn’t mind if you did. I have seen that you are a radical. No one minds what a man of distinction thinks. But there are other things. Sometimes I wish you would take some lessons from your friend Roy. He couldn’t do anything untravelled if he tried. I wish you would go to his tailor. I think you should certainly go to his barber. Your English accent will pass. Your French is deplorable. You need some different hats.”

I laughed.

“But these things are important,” said Lady Boscastle. “You can’t imagine your friend Roy not attending to them.”

“He’s a good-looking and elegant man,” I said.

“That’s no reason for your being too humble. You can do many things that he can’t. Believe me, Lewis. If you took care, you could look quite impressive.”

Then she focused her lorgnette on me. Her porcelain eyes were glittering with indulgence and satire. “Perhaps Roy is really much more humble than you are. I think you are very arrogant at heart. You just don’t care. You have the sort of carelessness, my dear boy, that I have heard people call ‘aristocratic’. I do not remember knowing any aristocrats who possessed it.”

Just as the car drew up outside to take Roy and me back to Monte Carlo, the Boscastles’ son returned from a dinner party. He was only eighteen and still at school; he had been born to them when Lady Boscastle was nearly forty and they had given up hope of a child. I had not met him before, and caught just a glimpse before we left. He was slender, asthenic, with a wild, feminine face.

It was after midnight when our car dropped us at the hotel, and, like other pairs of friends in sight of the casino, we had a disagreement. One of us was addicted to gambling, and the other hated it. Some might have expected Roy to play lavishly the night through: but the facts were otherwise. It was I who spent the next two hours at baccarat; it was Roy who stood behind me, smoking cigarette after cigarette, who walked irritably round the square, who entered again hoping that I should have finished.

“Excellent,” he said, when at last I had had enough.

“Why didn’t you come in?” I said, as we took a walk in the casino gardens.

“I’ve something better to do with my money,” said Roy, as though he were the guardian of all the prudent virtues.

I had won forty pounds, but that did not placate him.

“It’ll only lead you on,” he said. “I wish you’d lost.”

“It will pay for my holiday,” I said.

“You’ll lose it all tomorrow. And a lot more.”

It was a brilliant frosty night, utterly calm on the sea. The two lights of the harbour shone, one green, one red, and their reflection lay still upon the water. The stars were bright in the moonless sky, and below the lights of the coast road blazed out.

“Extremely serene,” said Roy. “Now I shall go and sleep.”

We were tired and contented. A few moments later, the porter at the hotel said that there was a telegram for Mr Calvert. As he read it, Roy made a grimace.

“Not quite so serene,” he said, and gave it to me. It was from Rosalind, the English words curiously distorted on the way. It must have been written as something like:

ARRIVE IN CANNES TOMORROW TWENTY-NINTH PROPOSE STAY MONTE CARLO UNLESS INCONVENIENT FOR YOU SHALL APPEAR THIRTY-FIRST UNLESS YOU SEND MESSAGE TO AMBASSADEURS SAYING NO.

We discovered that, several days before, Rosalind had reserved a room, not at the Hermitage but at the Hotel de Paris. Whether this was to save Roy’s face or simply to show off, no one could be sure. Rosalind’s origins were similar to mine, though less poverty-stricken: she still lived in our native town, where she earned a large income for a young woman: she had a flair for bold dramatic design and, applying her usual blend of childish plaintiveness and businesslike determination, took £600 a year from an advertising company. She lived simply at home and spent her money on extravagant presents and holidays at the most expensive hotels, which she examined with shrewd businesslike eyes and basked in with a hearty provincial gusto.

When he realised that she was coming not on a sudden caprice but by plan, Roy was amused, irritated, pleased, hunted, and somewhat at a loss. He knew he could not keep her unobserved while the Boscastle party spent its days in Monte Carlo; he knew that Rosalind would see that did not happen. But he was too fond of her, too clearsightedly, intimately, physically fond of her, to forbid her to come.

He decided that he must brazen it out. Lady Muriel and Joan lunched with us at the hotel, and half-way through Roy said, less unselfconsciously than usual: “By the way, Lady Mu, a friend of mine is coming down on Thursday.”

“Who may that be, Roy?”

“A girl called Rosalind Wykes. I brought her in for tea one day, do you remember? I only knew she was coming this morning.”

“Indeed.” Lady Muriel looked at him. “Roy, is this young woman staying here alone ?”

“I should think so.”

“Indeed.”

Lady Muriel said no more. But when I arrived at the Café de Paris for tea, I found the four women of the Boscastle party engrossed in a meeting of disapproval and indignation. There were shades of difference about their disapproval, but even Lady Boscastle, the fastidious and detached, agreed on the two main issues: Roy was to be pitied, and Rosalind was not fit for human company.