“This is a celebration, Frank. A celebration of your Classics prize.”
“Oh—thanks, Father.”
“A good sort of prize to get—what?”
“Well, lots of the fellows don’t think much of Classics. Even some of the masters wonder what use it is.”
“Pay no attention. Classics is good stuff. Anything that gives you a foot in the past is good stuff. Can’t understand the present if you don’t know the past, what? I suppose you’ll do Classics at Spook? Or will you leave that till Oxford?”
“Oxford?”
“Well, I’ve always assumed you’d go to Oxford after you’d been to Varsity here. Of course, you must go here, and I suppose Spook’s the best college for you. I mean, as I’m head of a big Canadian business, it wouldn’t do to send you out of the country for your ‘varsity work altogether. Spook, then Oxford. Give you lots of time.”
“Yes, but oughtn’t I to be getting on?”
“With what?”
“I don’t know, yet. But everybody at school thinks he ought to get on with whatever he’s going to do as fast as possible.”
“I don’t think what you’re going to do needs to be hurried.”
“Oh? What am I going to do?”
“What do you want to do?”
“I’d really like to be a painter.”
“Excellent. Nothing wrong with that. That fellow who painted your mother—de Laszlo, was it?—he seems to do extremely well at it. Mind you, he has talent. Have you got talent?”
“I don’t really know. I’d have to find out.”
“Excellent.”
“I thought perhaps you might want me to go into the business.”
“Your grandfather doesn’t think you’re cut out for it. Neither do I, really. Perhaps Arthur will lean that way. He’s more the type than you are. I’d thought that you might skip the business and have a look at the profession.”
“I don’t follow—”
“My profession. Let’s not be coy about this. You know, or you probably guess, that I’ve been pretty close to Intelligence for the past while. Fascinating world. You don’t know what I’ve done, and you shan’t. I don’t have to tell you that it’s a matter of honour never to hint that I’ve even been near such work. The real work, I mean. People get wrong ideas. But I think you might have what’s wanted, and this Classics prize is nearer to what’s wanted than it would be in the financial game. But some of the best Intelligence men must be seen by the world to be doing something else—something that looks as if it took all their time. Being a painter would be very good cover. Able to mix widely, and people wouldn’t be surprised if you travelled and were a bit odd.”
“I’ve never thought about it.”
“Just as well. People who dream about it and hanker for it are just bloody hell at it. Too much zeal. At best they’re just gumshoe men—and women. You know you’ve got a heart?”
A heart? Did Father mean Bubbler Graham?
“I see McOdrum didn’t tell you. Yes, you’ve got a dicky heart, it appears. Not bad, but you mustn’t push yourself too hard. Now, that’s just the thing for the profession. Anybody wants to know why you’re loafing around, you must tell ‘em you’ve got a heart, and most of ‘em will assume you’re a bit of an invalid. Loaf and paint. Couldn’t be better. They thought I was just a soldier. Still do. Nobody expects a soldier to have any brains. Rather like being an artist.”
“You mean—I’d be a spy?”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Frank, don’t use that word! That’s Phillips Oppenheim stuff. No, no; just a noticing sort of chap who goes anywhere and does what he pleases, and meets all sorts of people. Not false whiskers and covering your face with walnut juice and letting on to be Abdul the Water-Carrier. Just be yourself, and keep your eye peeled. Meanwhile, go to Spook and then Oxford and pack your head with everything that looks interesting, and don’t listen to fools who want you to do something that looks important to them. You’ve got a heart, you see.”
“But what would I have to do?”
“I can’t say. Perhaps just write letters. You know—friendly letters to chaps you know, about this and that. Mind you, I’m talking rather freely. There’d be nothing doing for a while. But you ought to meet some people, as soon as possible. I can arrange for you to meet them when you’re in England this summer.”
“Am I going to England?”
“Don’t you want to?”
“Oh yes; it’s just that I hadn’t thought about it.”
“It’s time you met some of my people. I haven’t said anything about it, Frank, because after all they’re your mother’s people, but there’s more to you than just that lot at St.Kilda. I mean old Mary-Ben with her priests and her fusspot ways, and your grandmother—nice woman, of course, but she’s going to end up like old Madame Thibodeau. There are other people in your life. You ought to meet my lot. We’re half of you, you know. Maybe the half that will appeal to you more than the Blairlogie crowd.”
“Did you hate Blairlogie, Father?”
“Not hate, exactly; I don’t let myself hate any place where I have to be. But a little of Blairlogie was enough. Why do you ask?”
“I remember at the farewell party you gave at the hotel at Blairlogie, and you and Grandfather were the only men who wore evening dress, and Alphonse Legare came up to you half-slewed and laughed in your face and struck a match on the front of your dress shirt.”
“I remember.”
“You didn’t move an inch or bat an eye. But it was worse than if you had hit him, because you didn’t think he was in the same world as you were. He couldn’t touch you. I admired that. That was real class.”
“Awful word.”
“It’s the word we use for the real goods. You had the real goods.”
“Well—thanks, my boy. That’s the profession, you understand. No losing your temper. No doing stupid things.”
“Not even if your honour is affected? Not if somebody you trusted with everything turned out to be not worthy of it?”
“You don’t trust people till you’ve learned a lot about them. Obviously you are thinking of someone. Who is it?”
“Father, what do you really think of Fred Markham?”
The Wooden Soldier rarely laughed, but he laughed now.
“He’s good enough for what he is, but that isn’t much. I think I know what’s on your mind, Frank; don’t let Fred Markham worry you. He’s a trivial person, a kind of recreation for a lot of women. But he hasn’t got what you call the real goods.”
“But Father, I saw him—”
“I know you did. Your mother told me. She thought you were taking it quite the wrong way. People must have recreations, you know. Change. But a day on the golf-course isn’t running off across the world. So don’t worry. Your mother can take care of herself. And take care of me, too.”
“But I thought—vows—”
“Loyalties, you mean? You find out that loyalties vary and change outwardly, but that doesn’t mean they are growing weaker inwardly. Don’t worry about your mother and me.”
“Does that mean that Mother is just another form of what you call cover?”
“True, and not true. Frank—I don’t suppose you know much about women?”
Who likes to admit he doesn’t know much about women? Every man likes to think he knows more about women than his father. Frank would have bet that he had seen more naked women than his father had ever dreamed of, though he was not boastful about the quality of what he had seen. Those pallid figures at Devinney’s. No beauty chorus. But Francis had long outgrown the ignorance of Blairlogie days; he knew what people did. Like animals, but love made it splendid. He thought patronizingly of poor Woodford at school, who had revealed during a bull-session that he thought children were begotten through the woman’s navel! At seventeen! How they had kidded Woodford and pictured what it would be like on his wedding night! Francis knew all about the Particular that the encyclopaedia and a lot of Colborne school-biology could tell him. And he knew anatomy, and could draw a woman without her skin on—out of a book. Father obviously meant intimacy with women, and Francis was aware that though he could draw quite a decent flayed woman he had never touched a warm one until Bubbler Graham had made it easy for him. The Wooden Soldier was going on.