“I said nearly twice.”
“You also said years don’t matter much.”
“And you said they did, when people are younger.”
“I think we’re getting tied up in this argument. Let’s have some lunch.”
That was a novelty, and a further one when we didn’t go to an A.B.C., but to an Italian place near the Tottenham Court Road. We had minestrone and chicken cacciatora, meanwhile talking about Framm; or rather, he did most of the talking—I could see him building up a vision and I hoped he wouldn’t expect too much. After all, my father’s influence had its limits. But apparently it was only an already existing vision in a new form—a sort of frozen white-hot passion for whatever it was that couldn’t be satisfactorily explained to a first-year history student. I let him rhapsodize all the way back to the College.
There was grand opera at Covent Garden that evening and someone had lent my parents a box. We went to dine at Boulestin’s first. I don’t care for opera and all afternoon as I thought of it I grew more and more out of humor. Then when I got home I found my mother still lingering over tea. “I asked Brad to come,” she greeted me, “but I don’t suppose he will.” She overdid the casualness and as soon as I looked at her she began to look at me in what I think she thought was the same way.
“I shouldn’t imagine so,” I answered. “He was here only last night and it’s quite a trip for a cup of tea.”
“You like him, don’t you, Jane?”
“Yes. He’d be rather hard to dislike.”
“I shall miss the lectures when he goes to Vienna.”
“If he goes. Or is it settled yet?”
“I think your father’s written to somebody. I hope it works out all right…. I can’t help wondering if he really wants to go there. He always talked to me about the Cavendish.”
“To me too, but at present I think he’s quite set on Vienna—on account of this man Framm.”
“I wish I’d had a chance to help him more—not as Framm can, of course, but that’s not all the help he needs. I’d like to have made him—well, a bit more at home with life. More…sophisticated…easy-mannered…”
“Worldly?”
“Oh no, no, Jane, not that. He’s naïve, but I love it and I hated the way Julian talked the other night. I don’t know what possessed him—he seemed to be trying to break down every ideal the boy had…. No, let him keep his ideals—he doesn’t even have to be a worldly success if he doesn’t want—but he ought to learn to get some fun out of life, that’s my point. Worldly success has nothing to do with having fun.”
“It has just a bit, Mother.”
“Oh, just a little bit, perhaps—one must have some money. But not too much. I could be perfectly happy on a thousand a year. Pounds, I mean.”
“So could a great many English people who have to live on a fraction of that.”
“Well, say five hundred…provided of course I had other things to make life worth living.”
“What other things?”
“Darling, don’t cross-examine me…. All I know is that Brad needs to learn what happiness there can be in life, and he ought to stop being such a hermit. But I’m all against him giving up his ideals, whatever Julian says.”
“It seems to me I’m the only person who’s satisfied with him as he is.”
“Are you, darling? Entirely satisfied?”
She gazed at me measuredly, as if the question needed a careful answer. But there wasn’t time, for at that moment Brad arrived. He looked nervous, and almost as shy as when I had first seen him. He said he hadn’t thought he’d be able to come, but at the very last he’d managed it. He was sorry he was so late and hoped he hadn’t kept her waiting.
“Did you come up by tube?” I asked.
“No. I took a taxi.”
“I’ll send for some fresh tea,” my mother said, and rang the bell, but nobody came; the servants were preparing for their evening out and hadn’t expected to serve any more. I said I’d go to the kitchen and see about it, which I did, and then went upstairs to change.
* * * *
Looking back now, I can see so much more than then. Even when you are supposed to be adult for your age, it’s hard to think of grownups as in the same world; you only want to feel you can be in theirs, and you just hope any mistake won’t be noticed. And yet you are aware of things often more acutely than ever afterwards, your mind has antennae roaming into the unknown; you can even walk into it with eyes peering, but the step that isn’t there always brings you up with a shock and a jolt.
I had that shock about Brad, though I couldn’t put any sufficient reason for it into words. When a man, after working three times harder than he should, slows down to twice as hard, there doesn’t seem much for any of his friends to worry about. Nor when the same man spends a wet Sunday afternoon listening to a charming woman play Chopin, instead of drenching himself to the skin on Box Hill.
Brad gave notice to the College authorities and they were very reasonable about it. They waived the full term they could have held him for, and said he could leave whenever he wanted. And my parents postponed again their return to New York—still presumably on my account.
Meanwhile my mother kept on attending his lectures, at which he never (she said) gave her a look or a smile; but he did break a few of his other rules, whether it was she who tempted him or not. He began going to piano recitals, theaters, movies, and private views—sometimes alone with her, sometimes with my father or me also. There was nothing to stir gossip, much less scandal, in our fairly sophisticated circle; Julian Spee had escorted her similarly when he was less busy. She had often been in the throes of some fad or other, and perhaps my father figured that Brad was just an unusually masculine successor to Dalcroze Eurhythmics, Japanese flower arrangement, or the English Speaking Union. And it was sometimes my father himself who would make the date; he would say—“Oh, by the way, Christine, I’ve got a card for Marincourt’s new exhibition—it’s next Tuesday at the Wigmore Galleries. I shan’t have time to go myself, but you might take Brad and show him what passes for art nowadays….” But when he had issued these invitations he had an odd look of only half pleasure whether they were accepted or not.
That diary of mine jots down all the times Brad came to the house to dine. On Wednesdays it was, most often, and as the weeks passed it came to be every Wednesday, and always quite informally, without special invitation, with few or no other guests, and with plenty of music afterwards. He learned to sing “Schlafe Mein Prinzchen, Schlaf Ein,” which suited his voice very well.
Then all at once he let go his work. With anyone else I wouldn’t have been surprised, since he was leaving the College so soon and there couldn’t have been much to finish up before the end of term. But he did it with such abandon, and idleness didn’t fit in with his personality. I used to see him wandering up and down Gower Street as if he had nowhere else to go; even Mathews made a comment. Probably the waitress at the A.B.C. did also, for he took to dropping in for coffee at unexpected times, and often lunched at better places. All of which adds up to nothing at all except an idea that grew in my mind and was never put into words.
One morning towards the end of November my father announced that the great Hugo Framm was on his way to London to receive some degree or deliver some lecture, I forget which. “We’d better give a dinner for him. Good idea for Brad to meet him first at our house.”
My mother agreed it would be a good idea, but she lacked her usual enthusiasm for party planning. “Give me a list of people to ask,” was all she said.
“Brad can help you. He’ll know