Evelyn Waugh - Decline and Fall

Then they returned to the Castle. The honeymoon had been postponed until the end of term, ten days later, and the arrangements for the first days of their married life were a little meagre. 'You must do the best you can, the Doctor had said. 'I suppose you will wish to share the same bedroom. I think there would be no objection to your both moving into the large room in theWest Tower. It is a little damp, but I daresay Diana will arrange for a fire to be lighted there. You may use the morning‑room in the evenings, and Captain Grimes will of course, have his meals at my table in the dining‑room, not with the boys. I do not wish to find him sitting about in the drawing‑room, nor, of course, in my library. He had better keep his books and gown in the Common Room, as before. Next term I will consider some other arrangement. Perhaps I could hand over one of the lodges to you or fit up some sort of sitting‑room in the tower. I was not prepared for a domestic upheaval.

Diana, who was really coming out of the business rather creditably, put a bowl of flowers in their bedroom, and lit a fire of reckless proportions, in which she consumed the remains of a desk and two of the boys' playboxes.

That evening, while Mr Prendergast was taking Prep. at the end of the passage, Grimes visited Paul in the Common Room. He looked rather uncomfortable in his evening clothes.

'Well, dinner's over, he said. 'The old man does himself pretty well.

'How are you feeling?

'Not too well, old boy. The first days are always a strain, they say, even in the most romantic marriages. My father‑in‑law is not what you might call easy. Needs thawing gently, you know. I suppose as a married man I oughtn't to go down to Mrs Roberts's?

'I think it might seem odd on the first evening, don't you?

'Flossie's playing the piano; Dingy's making up the accounts; the old man's gone off to the library. Don't you think we've time for a quick one?

Arm in arm they went down the familiar road.

'Drinks are on me to‑night, said Grimes.

The silver band were still sitting with their heads together discussing the division of their earnings.

'They tell me that married this afternoon you were? said the stationmaster.

'That's right, said Grimes.

'And my sister‑in‑law never at all you would meet whatever, he continued reproachfully.

'Look here, old boy, said Grimes, 'just you shut up. You're not being tactful. See? Just you keep quiet, and I'll give you all some nice beer.

When Mrs Roberts shut her doors for the night, Paul and Grimes turned back up the hill. A light was burning in the West Tower.

'There she is, waiting for me, said Grimes. 'Now it might be a very romantic sight to some chaps, a light burning in a tower window. I knew a poem about a thing like that once. Forget it now, though. I was no end of a one for poetry when I was a kid ‑ love and all that. Castle towers came in quite a lot. Funny how one grows out of that sort of thing.

Inside the Castle he turned off down the main corridor.

'Well, so long, old boy! This is the way I go now. See you in the morning. The baize door swung to behind him, and Paul went up to bed.

Paul saw little of Grimes during the next few days. They met at prayers and on the way to and from their classrooms, but the baize door that separated the school from the Doctor's wing was also separating them. Mr Prendergast, now in unchallenged possession of the other easy‑chair, was smoking away one evening when he suddenly said:

'You know, I miss Grimes. I didn't think I should, but I do. With all his faults, he was a very cheery person. I think I was beginning to get on better with him.

'He doesn't look as cheery as he did, said Paul. 'I don't believe that life "above stairs" is suiting him very well.

As it happened, Grimes chose that evening to visit them.

'D'you chaps mind if I come in for a bit? he asked with unwonted diffidence. They rose to welcome him. 'Sure you don't mind? I won't stay long.

'My dear man, we were just saying how much we missed you. Come and sit down.

'Won't you have some of my tobacco? said Prendergast.

'Thanks, Prendy! I just had to come in and have a chat. I've been feeling pretty fed up lately. Married life is not all beer and skittles, I don't mind telling you. It's not Flossie, mind; she's been hardly any trouble at all. In a way I've got quite to like her. She likes me, anyway, and that's the great thing. The Doctor's my trouble. He never lets me alone, that man. It gets on my nerves. Always laughing at me in a nasty kind of way and making me feel small. You know the way Lady Circumference talks to the Clutterbucks ‑ like that. I tell you I simply dread going into meals in that dining‑room. He's got a sort of air as though he always knew exactly what I was going to say before I said it, and as if it was always a little worse than he'd expected. Flossie says he treats her that way sometimes. He does it to me the whole time, damn him.

'I don't expect he means it, said Paul, 'and anyway I shouldn't bother about it.

'That's the point. I'm beginning to feel he's quite right. I suppose I am a pretty coarse sort of chap. I don't know anything about art, and I haven't met any grand people, and I don't go to a good tailor, and all that. I'm not what he calls "out of the top drawer". I never pretended I was, but the thing is that up till now it hasn't worried me. I don't think I was a conceited sort of chap, but I felt as good as anyone else, and I didn't care what people thought as long as I had my fun. And I did have fun, too, and, what's more, I enjoyed it. But now I've lived with that man for a week, I feel quite different. I feel half ashamed of myself all the time. And I've come to recognize that supercilious look he gives me in other people's eyes as well.

'Ah, how well I know that feeling! sighed Mr Prendergast.

'I used to think I was popular among the boys, but you know I'm not, and at Mrs Roberts's they only pretend to like me in the hope I'd stand 'em drinks. I did, too, but they never gave me one back. I thought it was just because they were Welsh, but I see now it was because they despised me. I don't blame them. God knows I despise myself. You know, I used to use French phrases a certain amount ‑ things like savoir faire and Je ne sais quoi. I never thought about it, but I suppose I haven't got much of an accent. How could I? I've never been in France except for that war. Well, every time I say one of them now the Doctor gives a sort of wince as if he's bitten on a bad tooth. I have to think the whole time now before I say anything, to see if there's any French in it or any of the expressions he doesn't think refined. Then when I do say anything my voice sounds so funny that I get in a muddle and he winces again. Old boy, it's been hell this last week, and it's worrying me. I'm getting an inferiority complex. Dingy's like that. She just never speaks now. He's always making little jokes about Flossie's clothes, too, but I don't think the old girl sees what he's driving at. That man'll have me crazy before the term's over.

'Well, there's only a week more, was all that Paul could say to comfort him.

Next morning at prayers Grimes handed Paul a letter. 'Irony, he said.

Paul opened it and read:

John Clutterbuck & Sons,

Wholesale Brewers and Wine Merchants.

My Dear Grimes,

The other day at the sports you asked whether there was by any chance a job open for you at the brewery. I don't know if you were serious in this, but if you were a post has just fallen vacant which I feel might suit you. I should be glad to offer it to any friend who has been so kind to Percy. We employ a certain number of travellers to go round to various inns and hotels to sample the beer and see that it has not been diluted or in any way adulterated. Our junoir traveller, who was a friend of mine from Cambridge, had just developed D.T.'s and has had to be suspended. The salary is two hundred a year with car and travelling expenses. Would this attract you at all? If so, will you let me know during the next few days.