‘Sold most of the stuff when Bertha died,’ he said. ‘No good to Charlotte, married to a sailor, never has a home. Thought I’d keep the Troost, though. Troost? Van Troost? Can’t remember which he is. Not sure that I was wise to have had it cleaned on the advice of that fellow Smethyck.’
The scene was a guard-room in the Low Countries.
‘Undisciplined looking lot,’ General Conyers went on. ‘No joke soldiering in those days. Must have been most difficult to get your orders out to large bodies of men. Still, that’s true today. Immense intricacies even about calling them up in the categories you want them.’
I told him that was the very subject about which I came to speak; in short, how best to convert registration with the Reserve into a commission in the armed forces. Before the war, this metamorphosis had been everywhere regarded as a process to be put automatically in motion by the march of events; now, for those in their thirties, the key seemed inoperative for entry into that charmed circle. The General shook his head at once.
‘If Richard Cœur de Lion came back to earth tomorrow,’ he said, ‘he would be able to tell you more, my dear Nick, than I can about the British Army of today. I am not much further advanced in military knowledge than those fellows Troost painted in the guard-room. Can’t your father help?’
‘He’s trying to solve his own problem of getting back.’
‘They’ll never have him.’
‘You think not?’
‘Certainly not. Never heard such a thing.’
‘Why not?’
‘Health isn’t good enough. Too old.’
‘He doesn’t believe that.’
‘Of course he’s too old. Much too old. Aren’t you getting a shade old yourself to embark on a military career? Wars have to be fought by young men nowadays, you know, my dear Nick, not old buffers like us.’
‘Still, I thought I might try.’
‘Does you credit. Can’t one of your own contemporaries give you a tip? Some of them must be soldiers.’
He stood for a moment to straighten out his rheumatic leg, carefully smoothing the thick dark check of the trouser as far down as the cloth top of his buttoned boot. I felt a little dashed to find suddenly that I was so old, by now good for little, my life virtually over. The General returned to his chair.
‘Didn’t you once tell me years ago that you knew Hugh Moreland, the composer?’ he asked. ‘Splendid thing of his I heard on the wireless not long ago. Now, what was it called? Tone Poem Vieux Port … something of the sort … wondered if I could get a record …’
He had evidently dismissed the army — the war itself — from his mind for a moment. Quite other thoughts were in his head.
‘How are all Isobel’s brothers and sisters?’ he asked.
I gave some account of them.
‘Erridge is a psychosomatic case, of course,’ said the General. ‘Not a doubt of it. Contradictory exterior demands of contending interior emotions. Great pity he doesn’t get married.’
He looked at his watch. I made a movement to leave. As a man of action, General Conyers had failed me. He put out his hand at once.
‘No, don’t go yet,’ he said. ‘Stay just a moment more, if you can. There is someone coming I would like you to meet. That was why I asked you at this time. Got a bit of news to tell you, as a matter of fact. You can pass it on to your parents during the next day or two.’
He paused, nodding his head knowingly. He was evidently very pleased about something. I wondered what could have happened. Perhaps he had been given at long last some decoration he specially coveted. It would be late in the day to award him decorations, but such official afterthoughts are not unknown. All the same, it would be unlike General Conyers to care greatly about such things, certainly to speak of them with this enthusiasm, though one can never tell what specialised goals people will set their hearts on attaining.
‘I am getting married again,’ he said crisply.
I had just enough control not to laugh aloud.
‘Some people might think it a mistake,’ said the General, speaking now very sternly, as if he well knew how to deal in the most crushing fashion with such persons. ‘I perfectly realise that. I have not the smallest doubt that a good many of my friends will say that I am making a mistake. My answer is that I do not care a damn. Not a damn. Don’t you agree, Nicholas?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘After all, it is I who am getting married, not they.’
‘Of course.’
‘They can mind their own business, what?’
‘Certainly.’
‘That’s a thing no one likes to do.’
General Conyers laughed very heartily at this thought of the horrible destiny pursuing his critics, that they would have to mind their own business, most dreaded of predicaments.
‘So I should like you to stay and meet my future wife,’ he said.
I wondered what my parents were going to say to this. From their point of view it would be the final nail in the coffin of Aylmer Conyers. There was nothing of which they would more disapprove. At that moment the front-door bell rang.
‘Forgive me,’ said the General, ‘as I explained before, I have no longer any domestic staff.’
He went off to open the door. I heard a woman’s voice in the hall; soft laughter, as if at a too violent embrace. I thought how furious Uncle Giles would have been had he lived to hear that General Conyers was contemplating remarriage. Certainly the news was unexpected enough. I wondered who on earth was going to appear. A succession of possibilities, both ludicrous and conventional, presented themselves to the mind: ash-blondes of seventeen; red-wigged, middle-aged procuresses, on the lines of Mrs Erdleigh; silver-haired, still palely-beautiful widows of defunct soldiers, courtiers, noblemen. I even toyed for a moment with the fantasy that the slight asperity that had always existed between the General and my sister-in-law, Frederica, might really have concealed love, dismissing such a possibility almost as soon as it took shape. Even that last expectation scarcely came up to the reality. I could not have guessed it in a million years. A tall, dark, beaky-nosed lady of about fifty came into the room. I rose. She was distinctly well dressed, with a businesslike, rather than frivolous, air.
‘We have often met before,’ she said, holding out her hand.
It was Miss Weedon.
‘At Lady Molly’s,’ she said, ‘and long before that too.’
The General took my arm between his forefinger and thumb, as if about to break it neatly just above the elbow with one sharp movement of his wrist.
‘So you know each other already?’ he said, not absolutely sure he was pleased by that fact. ‘I might have guessed you would have met with Molly Jeavons. I’d forgotten she was an aunt of Isobel’s.’
‘But we knew each other in much more distant days as well,’ said Miss Weedon, speaking in a gayer tone than I had ever heard her use before.
She looked enormously delighted at what was happening to her.
‘I ran into Jeavons the other day in Sloane Street,’ said General Conyers. ‘Have you seen him lately, Nick?’