Guy Renton by Alec Waugh Read Free Book Online Page B

all this on Lucy was depressing. She had been lively company in her teens, slim and pretty and vivacious; but she had lost and never recovered her figure after the birth of her first child. Her face wore a perpetual worried frown. One did not think of her as being under thirty. One associated her with cooks and cushions, nursery complaints and a husband’s rheumatism.
    Rex discussed politics through dinner. It was not a cosy meal and there was an uncomfortable pause when the table had been cleared, the port and dessert set upon the table and the parlourmaid left them to their privacy. It was now up to himself, Guy felt, to put up a defence for Franklin; the best defence surely was a practical discussion of the immediate future.
    â€œThe only problem for us, so it seems to me, is to decide what’s to happen to him during the next year or so. He’s only seventeen and a half. Isn’t that young to go up to Oxford?”
    He had his solution ready, but Rex interrupted.
    â€œI know what my father’d have done in a case like this. Given me fifty pounds and packed me off to the Colonies. That’s what I’d do with Franklin. Do him all the good in the world. Live in a hard school. Discipline. That’s what these youngsters need. Conscription. Salvation of the country. What I always say
    Before Rex could pursue his argument along the course that was obviously set out, an interruption came. A telephone call, for Mr. Guy.
    It was from Jimmy Grant. He wanted to make sure thatGuy was back. He’d got a reserve waiting in case of a delay. He was also in a mood to gossip. “Any adventures?”
    â€œNot what you’d call adventures.”
    â€œOh, come now, surely.”
    â€œNo, honestly.”
    â€œNot one little Belgian Countess?”
    â€œNot one very little one.”
    â€œOld boy, I’m ashamed of you.”
    â€œYou know what I am.”
    â€œI’m afraid I do. Now I, on the other hand . . .” It was a long and scabrous anecdote. As he listened Guy remembered how at the end of that first evening he had self-gloriously dramatized this very conversation. Only four days ago. Ninety-six hours. How much had happened in it. He had not dared to dream that so much could happen. Yet now that it had happened, nothing could be more impossible than the recital of it to Jimmy Grant. When he had pictured such an experience in his imagination, he had seen it in terms of a general heightening of a Rugger night at Brett’s. It hadn’t been like that at all: an altogether different level of experience. It was something you couldn’t talk about to Jimmy Grant.
    The conversation lasted for some while. As he hung the receiver back a light under the drawing-room door told him that Rex and his father had been left over their port. He could hear Rex’s voice booming in steady, uninterrupted expostulation. He turned towards the drawing-room. Silence; that meant the wireless; Lucy and Margery with earphones clamped over their heads, his mother with her knitting. He was tired, physically and mentally. Better the drawing-room. He did not feel up to Rex. He took up a footstool, set it at his mother’s feet and took her hand.
    â€œDarling, you’ve scarcely said a word about it all.”
    â€œRex had so much to say.”
    â€œThat’s a kind way of putting it.”
    â€œIs it? I don’t think it is. He means so well, he had such a fine war record, he makes Lucy happy. I’m sure he’ll be a good father to his two sons; provided of course they grow up the way he wants, but I’m afraid he doesn’t understand a boy like Franklin.”
    â€œWhy did you bring him into it?”
    â€œWell, darling, he’d been a colonel: he was used to dealing with young officers; but no, it wasn’t a good idea, I see that now.”
    â€œHow do you feel yourself?”
    â€œI’m worrying about how Franklin’s feeling.”
    â€œHow do