Three Sons (Timeless Classics Collection) Read online

  Venice would be different. There are no walls in Venice.

  They caught the night train from Paris. All night long the sound of the engine drummed in their ears with an insistent, inescapable sound, which made sleep impossible. When morning came they were at the Swiss frontier, with the mountains rising starkly on either side of the line, and green curls of fern actually growing on the track. Girls in national dress were pushing trolleys of steaming café-au-lait down the station platform, and somewhere in the valley a sheep bell rang.

  ‘James, isn’t this lovely?’ Carolyn, half-dressed, was sitting on the edge of her bunk, sipping hot chocolate out of a cardboard carton. ‘This is something I’ve always dreamt about, haven’t you?’

  ‘Well, I’ve been here before. Lost my connection in Bâle, and had the most horrible time. Lord, how cold it was!’

  ‘But it is the first time you’ve been to Venice?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  A brisk little girl appeared with brush and pan and got busy with a promptitude that was almost alarming. The trains are always properly cleaned through before they travel in one of the cleanest countries in Europe. She flitted round and disappeared again with a briskly polite ‘Bonjour, Madame. Bonjour, M’sieur.’ The moment she had gone to the next carriage, the pompous, strutting little customs official appeared with his waxed moustache, bibulous nose, and cap at a rakish angle.

  ‘Ecoutez,’ tapping the papers with an imperious finger. ‘Vous avez …?’

  ‘Riens,’ said James promptly.

  As everybody says that, it never suffices for a customs officer. He tapped James’s suit-case with a finger on which an enormous twist of gold ring glistened. ‘Ouvrez!’ he demanded.

  James opened it, and on top was a ham sandwich left over from last night in the ‘Lord Warden’, such very good ham sandwiches that he had brought the last one with him! Now it was a stark old sandwich, its edges curling, and both having completely forgotten its presence were amazed to see it! The customs officer giggled like a girl, heaving his silly little shoulders. ‘Mon Dieu,’ said he, and went off still laughing, having done nothing at all about examining the case.

  ‘Well, so long as he finds it amusing, I suppose that is all right,’ said James, ‘but really I can’t see why one ham sandwich is such a hell of a joke.’

  The day was long, travelling through exquisite country, the Alps gradually merging into Italy, the afternoon spent in Milan with a hurried visit to the pink cathedral, nearly missing the train in consequence. Late at night, Carolyn was unbelievably tired, and fell asleep with her head on James’s shoulder, so that she never knew when they passed across the long chain of lights which is the bridge from Mestre, and came into Venice station very late indeed.

  ‘Wake up, Carol, we’re here at last.’

  She stirred herself. There are no walls in Venice, she was thinking. ‘We can’t be? I thought it would go on for ever.’

  ‘It seems to me to have been going on almost for ever,’ he admitted, getting down the suit-cases. ‘But thank the Lord we are here at last.’

  Carolyn dragged herself up, still stiff from sleep. She could see beyond the window the very ordinary station, and was disappointed to find it like that, and so crowded. Here were the usual crowd, the excited porters, and the trolleys going to and fro. She followed James along the corridor and out. Passing into the station yard, which is so strange a contrast, her whole feelings changed. The sky was a maze of stars larger than in England, and all five points cut clear against the darkness. There was the sound of water lapping on a stone step, and she saw a street that was green with the dark gloom of water, a gleaming, lovely street, exquisite with reflections, and across it rose the sharp outline of the Rialto to her left.

  She was being handed down into a black gondola, James in beside her, and all in a moment they sped off into this fantastically unreal world which lay on the Grand Canal.

  ‘James, this can’t be true. It’s like a dream.’

  ‘Probably it is the honeymoon dream of all the lovers in the world?’

  ‘But everywhere is water?’

  ‘I know.’ And holding her hand he looked at the city of shadow and starshine, of music (even their own gondolier was singing) and of rhapsody. ‘We are going to be very happy here.’

  It was strange that for one startling moment she was thinking of the wall at Dedbury which separated the full sweetness of his garden from the little lane with the Anchor Inn in it, and the green cloisters of elms. Such a high wall of old red brick, one could never possibly hope to surmount it.

  The next morning the sun was streaming into their rooms, and the canal was lapping the gondola posts beyond the window, and against the pale blue sky the single breast of Santa Maria della Salute rose. They were like a couple of eager children, eating their breakfast on a balcony, gay with scarlet geraniums and poinsettias, and James throwing a croisette at a passing gondolier, so that they both had to bob down behind a carved stone colonnade to pretend they were not there at all.

  Much later they walked out into the square where the brilliant mosaic of San Marco dazzled behind the four bronze horses, and the clock struck the hours. Nothing hurried here, there was time for everything, even for getting to know one another! They sat at a little tin table in front of Florian’s, drinking coffee and listening to the wistful stringed music.

  James said, ‘I’m such a queer sort of a fellow, Carol, I’ve been afraid of all this. It spoils things that people who are in love should be so afraid.’

  ‘I’m afraid too. I don’t know why I’m afraid, I just am, and that’s all there is about it.’

  He had got to tell her. ‘It’s I who am afraid of myself. I’m such a coward when it comes to an emotional crisis. It’s stupid to let them distress me so but they always have done. However, I’m making up my mind, it isn’t going to be like that after today.’

  She looked at him and smiled. ‘There are no walls in Venice,’ she said.

  ‘No, of course not, and you’re very, very lovely.’

  ‘I knew something was wrong. We’ve had a hard time. Mother isn’t easy, then that awful accident … everything …’

  ‘I know. But all that’s behind us.’

  ‘Right behind us, James.’

  A woman in black, a graciously well-dressed woman with quietly silvered hair, came towards them offering them white gardenias from a basket, and recognising them as being honeymooners, for, after all, what Venetian doesn’t?

  James said, ‘I’ll have the lot,’ and took the basket from her, setting it beside Carolyn on the tin table.

  ‘The signora is lovely,’ said the woman in good but hesitant English, and she smiled at them. ‘And so young! God will bless you both, you will be very happy.’

  ‘We were only married this week.’ Carolyn had become impulsively communicative, believing that she was confiding a secret in the woman.

  ‘So?’ said the woman and smiled back. ‘You will be very happy and you will have children. All sons.’

  ‘Here! Steady!’ said James.

  ‘But they will be so different,’ said the woman, ‘all so different.’ And she walked away, threading her path between the tin tables and the people, and the little strutting pigeons that march about all the cities of Europe in the same braggart way. Carolyn looked at James and could see that he felt embarrassed, though she was not.

  ‘I don’t think I want them all to be sons,’ she said slowly. ‘Some sons, yes, but not all! It would be so dull, don’t you think?’

  ‘Perhaps.’ Haltingly and slowly, for the confusion that the words had brought to him refused to be quenched.

  ‘All sons,’ she said, contemplating the coffee in the tall glass, and turning the thought over in her own mind. Across the square San Marco sparkled in the midday sunlight, and the clock made ready to start on the noon hour. She saw the people coming and going along the arcaded streets, or across the square itself. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I don’t think I should like th
em all to be sons …’

  BOOK TWO

  ADAM

  V

  FIRST-BORN

  They were all boys.

  Three of them; Adam born in nineteen hundred and ten, Martin the following year, and Luke with the birth of the first great world war which shattered Europe. Carolyn never had a living daughter.

  In 1930 Adam was going on twenty.

  The three boys were all like their mother to look at; fair, with her blue-grey eyes and a far-away look which she had always had. But their hearts were very different, their personalities were three entirely separate entities with nothing of each other in them. The neighbourhood said you would never have known them for brothers save for that appearance, that same look in the eyes which each of them had.

  Adam was the good baby; he never cried very much but did what he was told. He did not fly into tempers like Marty, and hammer with his clenched fists, and kick the nurses who came too close to him. If he got angry, he sulked.

  He could usually clinch matters successfully. He had a trick of putting his finger on a weak spot, then wriggling it. Mrs. Spinx for instance!

  ‘Darling, you must call her Grandma …’

  ‘Now why?’

  ‘Because she is your grandma. She is my mummy.’

  ‘Mummy’s mummy!’ triumphantly from Adam, who did not like the way Mrs. Spinx fussed round him, and insisted on his doing everything he did not want to do, and nothing that he did.

  ‘That’s it, my mummy.’

  ‘You’re my mum, and she’s your mum,’ said he slowly. ‘You’re Mum. She’s Mum-Fussy.’

  ‘Now you’re not to call her that, Adam,’ said Carolyn, shocked at the aptness of the name.

  But Mrs. Spinx was Mum-Fussy from that day on, until the December when Carol followed her coffin into the little church where she herself had been married.

  ‘Why do people marry?’ from Adam, aged five.

  ‘They marry to have children,’ said Carolyn, cornered and not seeing any means of escape.

  ‘Are you married?’ from Adam enquiringly.

  ‘Of course I’m married. I’d have to be to have you and Marty, and Luke.’

  Then from Marty playing beside them, ‘Cook’s sister isn’t married, and she has a little boy. Cook says it’s a bustard.’

  ‘Marty, will you be quiet? You’re not to say that. Cook’s nephew is a ‒ well, what you did say! It’s very rude.’

  Marty staring at her with wide eyes, ‘But it’s a bird, isn’t it, Mummy?’

  Carolyn getting flustered, ‘Yes, yes of course. Naturally it’s a bird.’

  Then Martin saving the situation, ‘I wish you weren’t married, Mummy. I would have liked to marry you and keep you in the family.’

  She loved these times with the boys, all darlings, and she was glad that they were different. They needed different training, she was always telling James that, but James had put up the walls again, the walls that had not been in Venice, but which were irrefutably there now.

  He ordered his son’s education, and followed a formula. James was routine-ridden. Adam went to the right prep, and followed it with Eton, whether he was the right temperament for Eton or not. Adam felt that Eton was the proper place and abided by it.

  Here the boy developed. He was heartily disliked by his fellows, at first in trouble with his fag master, later with his fags, because they saw their opportunity and took liberties with him which he resented.

  Adam was the good young man, he got religion badly, and was proud of his many virtues, and masters did not care for him, though he worked hard and was never into any trouble; but they considered it to be so much healthier if young gentlemen did get into trouble, like Marty Hinde, who was seldom out of it.

  During his last term, Adam grew himself a glorious silky moustache, with which to shake the family when he returned to Dedbury. However, when he got back his father took one look at him, and sent him up to shave it off immediately.

  Adam was affronted by this exhibition of bad taste on his father’s part. He obeyed, but he had never liked James (all of the boys preferred their mother) and he much resented that anything which had been such a labour to grow should have to be confiscated so precipitously.

  ‘Now what did I tell you?’ asked Luke perkily from his perch on Adam’s bed. ‘I said Dad wouldn’t stand for it. It looks silly, naughty ninety-ish and all that sort of stuff. Not a bit your style.’

  ‘It’s nothing to do with you. You can’t grow a moustache, anyway.’

  ‘No, thank God, and I don’t have to waste time shaving yet, though I may be a bit fluffy.’ Luke stroked his chin apprehensively.

  ‘Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain,’ said Adam piously.

  ‘Something-or-other,’ said Luke sharply, and his eyes danced. ‘Yes, you didn’t know I knew that one, but I do. Lots more too. The chaps in my form are stunners.’

  ‘Dirty-minded little beasts,’ said Adam savagely, and left off hacking at the moustache which was breaking his heart, to chase Luke out of the room. Luke shot down the banisters into the hall, cannoned into a maid carrying a large hod of coals, and there was a crash.

  ‘Can’t anyone keep those boys quiet?’ demanded James in his study. ‘Who’d have three sons?’

  Adam did not forgive his father for confiscating his handsome moustache, and made a vow that the moment he got to Cambridge he’d grow the thing again. There he made his mistake. It wasn’t the year for moustaches amongst freshmen.

  At nineteen Adam considered himself to be a man, never realising that in truth he was very young for his age. He venerated his position as big brother, though he had never got on with Marty who had delighted in breaking his toys and screaming at him, so that in their tender years they had had to occupy separate nurseries. Adam preferred Luke, who, four years his junior, should have been a girl.

  Adam had comforted his mother when Luke was born, sitting on the end of the bed with the baby in his arms. ‘Never mind, Mummy, he’s very nice. He’s my baby,’ Adam had said.

  ‘Dear Adam. You’ll see after him?’

  ‘Yes, of course, Mummy.’

  After all, Adam was her first-born, Carolyn told herself. Lying in bed after Luke’s birth, she realised that she was lucky in her sons. James was different. She cared for James tremendously, he was part of her life, as much part of her life as the big old beech tree at the corner of the lawn, and she could not visualise the lawn without it. But her husband would never be the main love of her life; time had taught her this.

  She didn’t regret it; she had her sons. But sometimes she wished that the wall at the bottom of the garden would blow down, so that she could get a full view of the friendly little Anchor Inn, the bowling green, the door of the public bar, clustered with pleasant people, and the warmth of it, a warmth which did not penetrate past into Dedbury House.

  One abides by mistakes. She was now not sure if Arthur Hardy had been a mistake; he was a famous architect in London, she knew. James had not been a mistake because she was very fond of him, and she had the boys.

  The dear boys. She loved them all.

  Adam wasn’t sorry to leave Eton, even though it did mean parting with his handsome moustache, which he considered was an insult. The last part of the time at Eton had been harrowing because he was bothered about a career. Adam could not make up his mind.

  His first idea had been to be a schoolmaster, but this had not been received with any show of enthusiasm by his father. Carolyn felt that a boy should be what he wanted to be, but James was a creature of the rut. He could not see beyond the high sides of the rut which regulated his life.

  ‘I’m not having any schoolmaster son,’ he said.

  Then Adam got religion badly. The adolescent usually passes through that stage at some time or another, but Adam got it for a longer duration than most. He wished to take Holy Orders. It was unfortunate that during this period he fell under the influence of a young clergyman master who believed that Adam would do r
ight in choosing this career.

  So serious was the boy, that James had to go down to Eton and talk to his house master about it. The house master thought that Master Adam was the last boy to take Orders, and said so forcibly. For a little while Adam sulked, losing ground with his studies, which he never recaptured, because although a swotter, he was not brilliant. Ultimately his house master, his father and general influences wafted him towards the law, in his father’s footsteps. James had never done anything very great on the criminal side, but held his ground; Adam was too self-conscious and nervous to tackle pleading in court, he decided that he would go in for work in chambers. This satisfied everybody, except of course Adam, who nursed a sense of personal injury about it which grew alarmingly larger.

  ‘You’re not happy?’ said his mother that summer vacation before he went to Cambridge. ‘Are you hating the idea of the law?’

  ‘If I can’t be a clergyman, I don’t care what I am.’

  ‘Oh but, Adam, it’s so silly. Nobody thinks you are really fitted for the church …’

  He was the most difficult boy.

  ‘I want to take Orders, but I suppose what I want does not matter.’

  Matters had been complicated by the fact that quite early in his life Marty had shown remarkable talent for acting. He was a tremendous success in any role that he tackled, and the great white hope of all the amateur theatricals around them. Marty had one of those personalities that was in itself limp, but could take on any role, and be anybody else. He was so good that all his masters had urged that he should take up a theatrical career, and Adam, who would have thought that his father would have overboiled on this point, was galled to discover how acquiescent he was.