Читать книгу Royal Regiment - Gilbert Frankau - Страница 39

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As he finished dressing for dinner in a small room, gay with pink paint and new chintz, Rusty Rockingham grew conscious of perplexity. “An amazing marriage”, he mused. “Is she in love with him?”

But thought stopped there.

Slowly, he made his way downstairs. The foxhunters had gone to their baths, Camilla to write letters, at six o’clock. Dinner was still three quarters of an hour away. A footman directed him to the drawing room—formal and rather comfortless. On a marble-topped table lay a book of photographs. He picked this up and opened it.

The snapshots had all been taken in India. Here, the Hawk rode at the head of his brigade. There, he posed, rifle in hand, by a shot leopard. Under each picture ran a short line of his handwriting: “Massed Batteries. Poona, March 1933”; “A Big ’un. Srinagar. April 1934”. Automatically Rockingham found himself searching for a picture of Camilla. But in vain.

Just as he turned the last cardboard leaf, Bryce-Atkinson entered—and Merivale with the sherry decanter and six glasses.

“Clarkford and his wife are coming for dinner”, explained Hawk Wethered’s brigade major. “Know them?”

“Slightly.”

“He’s a damned old bore, and she’s worse.”

They filled their glasses, and drank.

“What do you think of the brigadier’s lady?” went on Bryce-Atkinson. “Bit of a peach, eh? Dunno why she fell for him.”

The words grated.

“She seems a very charming woman”, said Rockingham.

“You bet she is. And did the old man fall for her! I was in Bombay when it happened.” Bryce-Atkinson looked at the clock. “Tell you all about it if you Like. Plenty of time.”

He sat down, carefully pulling up his trousers over his fat legs. Rockingham’s curiosity conquered his good taste.

“So they met in Bombay”, he said; and listened, one arm on the ornate mantelpiece, while the other continued:

“And nobody introduced them either. All frightfully romantic. She was on a sort of a world trip—staying at the Taj Mahal for a few days. Walked out all alone one evening—right into a bit of a demonstration. Not exactly a riot. Still—it mightn’t have been any too comfortable for her if the Hawk hadn’t come pouncing out of the Yacht Club just at the right moment.

“Give the old man his due. He’s got an eye for a situation—and he does know how to handle natives. I believe he had to handle one or two of them rather roughly. Anyway he got her into the clubhouse all right ... And after that he just went clean off the deep end.

“Witnessed almost the entire process myself”, beamed Bryce-Atkinson, fondling the one pearl in his shirtfront with podgy fingers. “Grand spectacle. Took her back to the hotel, he did. Called to inquire how she was before he’d had his after-dinner cheroot, he did. Next day—a gharri-load of flowers. That night, dinner for four—my lady wife and I making up the four—at the club.

“Dancing afterwards. Did I get a dance with the lovely? Not one. Day after that, tête-à-tête lunch and out to the races at Mahalaxmi. Believe he proposed to her on the way home—and was turned down. Believe he proposed to her twice daily, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, until, on the seventh day, she accepted him. Resistance worn down by persistence, I suppose.

“Or it may have been the climate”, suggested the brigade major—and again the words grated on Rockingham’s ear. “‘The Hawk and his mysterious dove’, my lady wife called ’em. Nobody knew anything about her, you see. But a chap I ran into last week—he’s just back from California—when he heard her maiden name, told me ...”

But there he broke off—Merivale ushering in a stumpy pugnacious-looking little man more than halfway to sixty, with reddish cheeks, pig eyes and a bristling gray moustache, accompanied by a woman of exactly the same height who might have been years his senior, dumpy and dowdy in an old black evening frock.

“I’m afraid we’re too early”, said Mrs. Clarkford.

“Wethered told me a quarter to eight, and it’s exactly twenty minutes to eight”, corrected her husband, adding, “B.B.C. time”, as he restored a heavy gold watch to the pocket of his slightly frayed waistcoat.

Bryce-Atkinson gave him sherry, which his wife had refused. He planted himself in front of the fire, and puffed out his cheeks.

“The C.R.A. took a toss this afternoon, sir”, explained Bryce-Atkinson. “He probably isn’t finding it so easy to dress.”

“Ought to be more careful at his age”, pronounced Clarkford, with a grand assumption of authority. But Rusty Rockingham recognised the bluff.

The whole of Henry Clarkford’s outward personality—he happened to know—was a bluff. No milder, no kinder English gentleman had ever won a double D.S.O. or educated a family of six on a few hundreds a year and his service pay. And next year, Clarkford would be on the shelf, with three daughters still to marry and two young sons in his own infantry regiment.

“Cutting down his own rations so that they can both have their allowances”, suggested a sudden quirk of Rockingham’s imagination. And it was then memory repeated, “If you were married and had a son, would you want him to follow your own profession?”