Whether Francis’s parents had neglected him is a matter about which there could be many opinions. They had left him for long periods in the care of his grandparents and Aunt Mary-Ben, but surely that was not neglect? They had not noticed that his schooling in Blairlogie had been at odds with his life at St. Kilda. They had sent him to Colborne College because it was the kind of school Sir Francis understood, without any consideration of what kind of school Francis might need. They had done everything for him that money could provide, and that they could imagine, but they had not seen much of him or given much thought to him. Their reason was, of course, the War, and the part Sir Francis had played in it as what would be called in a later, different war “a back-room boy”, and the necessity for Mary-Jacobine to do what complemented her husband’s career and augmented his position. Long after the War was officially over, these necessities seemed to prevail over any serious attention to Francis.
Did this make him feel neglected, rejected, bitter? Far from it. It made it possible for him to idealize his parents and love them as distant, glorious figures, quite apart from the everyday world. At school, and at the expensive camps where he spent his summers, he had always with him a folder in which were pictures of his father, looking distinguished, and his mother, looking beautiful, and these were holy ikons that comforted and reassured him when he doubted himself. And as the Grail took command of his inner life, they were associated with it, not directly and foolishly, but as the kind of people who made such splendour possible and perpetuated it in the modern world.
When the business of the Cornish Trust required Sir Francis to be in Canada for much of each year, his son saw him at weekends, talked with him, was sometimes taken for splendid meals at his club, and was often shown his medals. But, as the Major explained, medals were not the measure of a man’s service; it was what the chaps at the War Office and the Foreign Office thought of you that established your true measure. It was the degree of access you had to the People Who Really Knew. These people were not named, but that was not because they had no reality, for there was nothing of the phoney about the Major when it came to his profession; these significant people were not named because they were not in the limelight, although in a very real sense they controlled the limelight and chose the people on whom it should shine. These people were by no means all soldiers; some of them were scientists, some were officially explorers, some were dons. It was never said, but it was clear enough that the Major was associated in some way with what was still called the Secret Service. Secrecy was bred in Francis’s bones.
As for his mother, she was a beauty, in a time before beauties had become entirely professional beauties. It would have been vulgar and un-Grail-like to say it, but she was a Society Beauty. Being a beauty always means constellating some ideal related to the historical period where it appears, and Mary-Jacobine, now known as Jacko Cornish, was a Beauty of the Twenties. She did not languish; she danced vigorously and joyously. She was not swathed in embroideries; she wore tight sheaths that came barely to her beautiful knees. Her figure was boyish but not flat or muscular. She smoked a great deal, and had a variety of long holders for her Turkish cigarettes. She drank cocktails to the extent that made her laugh delightfully, but never until she hiccuped. Her hair was cut short in styles that had various names from year to year, but were basically the Eton Crop. She used make-up, but her own high complexion made make-up an ornament rather than a disguise. Her underclothes were few, and although they were splendidly embroidered they were never so much so as to spoil the set of her wonderful frocks. Her scent was bought in Paris, and only somebody like the President of the Cornish Trust could have afforded it. She flirted with everybody, even her elder son.
For there was now a second son, old enough to be sent to the Lower School at Colborne, and he was Francis’s brother Arthur. There was more than ten years between them, and Arthur did not figure largely in Francis’s life, but he was a nice kid, and Francis was civil to him. Arthur was everything Francis was not, a noisy, exuberant, strong little boy, and a great success at school. If Francis had not sat on Arthur from time to time, for his soul’s good, Arthur would have patronized Francis, whom he recognized with the instinct of his kind as the sort of fellow who would never be Captain of Games in the Upper School, which was the goal Arthur had set for himself, and which after the required number of years he attained. Francis never knew it—it was not proper that he should know it—but the Major thought more highly of Francis than he did of Arthur. The younger boy was the type who would some day be a good soldier, if he were so unlucky as to be involved in a war, but he was not a Secret Service type, and the Major rather suspected that Francis was precisely that.
It was in May 1929, when Francis was nineteen, going on twenty, that several matters which had been hanging fire resolved themselves.
The first came when he was training for Track, on the oval path that surrounded the school’s main cricket pitch. Francis was a fair runner, but not a star. On this day he ran a few yards, felt short of breath, pressed on in the best School tradition, lost consciousness, and fell to the ground. Sensation! Boys collected; the drill-sergeant rushed up shouting, “Back, back all of you; give him air!”, and when Francis came round, which he did in a few seconds, detailed four boys to take him up to the Infirmary, where Miss Grieve, the school nurse, packed him into bed at once. It was a Thursday, which was one of the days when the doctor visited the School; he listened to Francis’s heart, looked grave to hide his want of opinion, and said that he would arrange a visit to a specialist, immediately.
The following morning Francis felt perfectly well, went to Prayers as usual, and was astonished when the Headmaster announced a list of awards, in which his name appeared as winner of the School Prize in Classics. He was also named as one of those who should report to the Head’s secretary immediately Prayers were over.
“Oh, Cornish,” said Miss Semple; “you’re to be excused classes this morning. You’re to go to the General Hospital to see Dr. McOdrum at ten. So you’d better hurry.”
Dr. McOdrum was very important, but he worked in a mercilessly overheated, windowless little kennel in the basement of the big hospital, and was himself so pale and stooped and overburdened in appearance that he was a poor advertisement for his profession. He made Francis strip, hop up and down, pretend to run, step on the seat of a chair and then step down again, and finally lie on a cold, medical-smelling trolley while he went over him very carefully with a stethoscope.
“Aha,” said Dr. McOdrum, and having delivered himself of this opinion, allowed Francis to go back to school, greatly puzzled.
As it was a Friday, and Francis was a prize-winner, he was given special leave to go home for the weekend. Ordinarily he would have had to wait until Saturday morning. So it was about five o’clock when he went into the new house in Rosedale, and made for the drawing-room, hoping there might still be some tea left. There he found his mother, kissing Fred Markham.
They did not start like guilty creatures. The smiling Markham offered Francis a cigarette, which he took, and his mother said, “Hello darling, what brings you home tonight?”
“Special leave. I won the Classics Prize.”