Читать книгу Heirs Apparent - Philip Gibbs - Страница 5

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Everything went according to programme as far as the outskirts of Nuneham Courtenay. Julian had instructed the landlord of his rooms to auction a few bits of furniture and pay himself what was due for the lodgings out of the proceeds. There would be a bit over, which he could keep. Clatworthy looked in, very merry and bright because there had not been a whisper about the affair last night as far as he was concerned. He had been fined, of course, for getting into college after midnight. He still maintained that the twenty pounds he had had to pay for the chandelier was not too much for a priceless thrill.

“It fell down like the Crystal Palace, old man! I was buried in glittering gobbets of early Victorian glass. And the surprise of the thing! When I swung from it gracefully like an anthropoid ape in his native haunts, I had a sense of happy certainty that was suddenly shattered by that colossal crash!”

Clatworthy was a little fellow who made an excellent cox, and he had a gift of facial expression which made him very popular in hall, where he set the whole table laughing by his imitations of Queen Victoria, Nelson, old Scrutton, and various animals, including the favourite performance of a monkey scratching himself. He was the Honourable John Clatworthy, but that didn’t matter.

Julian was rather severe with him.

“Of course, you behaved as usual like a gibbering idiot. Those cocktails of yours might have poisoned the whole crowd of us.”

“My dear fellow, they’re marvellous! I learned them from my eldest brother, who learned them from a fellow at G. H. Q. in the late unmentionable War.”

He was genuinely sorry that Julian was going down. However as it was his own last term, they might run up against each other in Town.

“Look me up in South Audley Street, old man. It might save me from suicide. My governor is the gloomiest old beaver that ever sat in the House of Lords. Thinks the country is doomed unless it destroys socialism root and branch and puts a bounty on beet-root sugar.”

After his farewell Julian flung a few things into a kit-bag—razor, hair brushes, his favourite ties, pyjamas, socks, and photographs of girls at Somerville, Lady Margaret’s and Cherwell Edge—not that he cared for them, but it was hardly the thing to leave them behind. He gave a glance or two round the room and then out of the window from which he could see the tower of Balliol and the rookery in the high trees above the quad.

“Well, that’s finished!” he said aloud, and for a moment there was a thoughtful look in his eyes and a half regretful smile. That was all he allowed to the sentiment of the moment. He had had a good time, after all. Probably he would look back to Oxford as the most amusing period of his life. He had made some friends, written some rather decent verse in the Isis, had a considerable amount of good fun. But he had become restless lately, with a fed-up feeling, peeved with everything and everybody. It had led him to play the fool overmuch, through sheer boredom. He had been getting damnably into debt, drinking too many cocktails, rotting himself up with the rowdy set. Well ...

He gave a fiver to the college porter, and then bumped up against Stokes Prichard and two other fellows at the corner of Carfax. They were carrying golf clubs and wheeling bicycles.

“Hullo! Stealing away like a thief in the night?”

Prichard gripped Julian’s arm and said, “See you in town one day, old son,” and refrained from breaking into verse.

Julian was glad to get away without a fuss. Audrey was waiting outside the Clarendon, no longer in a Tudor cap but with a small blue hat tied round her chin with a veil.

“Up to time, you see,” she remarked cheerfully.

Julian nodded and fetched out his car. It was a four-seater Metallurgique which his father had given him last birthday. He had smashed it up in the crossroads at Woodstock and had all but broken his neck in it, to say nothing of Clatworthy’s vertebræ, on a wild drive back after doing a theatre in Town. However it seemed as good as new now, and if there was one thing on earth he could do, it was drive a car.

“Sit behind like a lady, or next to the driver?” he asked Audrey.

She chose to sit next to him after throwing her hand bag onto the seat behind.

“We ought to do it in three hours easy,” said Julian, putting the clutch in.

They swung round by Carfax, narrowly escaping a fellow on an “Indian,” and made for the Henley Road. The Metallurgique was pulling fairly well. A bit cold perhaps. Julian listened to the beat of his engine. He would show Audrey a bit of speed presently.

She sat very quiet until they were in the outskirts of Oxford. Then she squirmed round in her seat for a last look at its spires and towers and said, “Good-bye, Oxford!”

“Feeling mushy about it?” asked Julian.

“Just a bit. I’ve had a glorious time. The best ever!”

She blew her nose with what Julian thought was unnecessary vigour.

He showed her a bit of speed on the road to Nuneham Courtenay. But not as much as he wanted. The Metallurgique was not pulling so well as he hoped. There was a queer kind of rattle in the engine. It was that child Clatworthy’s doing. He had lent it to him a night or two ago for a party up at Boar’s Hill. He had probably made it jump ditches or something. Treated it like a kangaroo or a tank!

“Curse!”

“What’s the matter?” asked Audrey.

Julian didn’t answer for a couple of minutes. Then the Metallurgique made strange noises under the bonnet, rattled like a tin can tied to a dog’s tail, mis-fired terribly, and presently stopped dead.

“Carburettor’s choked probably,” said Audrey helpfully.

Julian did not respond to this theory. He got out in his leisurely style and had a look at the engine. Then he laughed, in a vexed way.

“Looks serious to me. That jester Clatworthy! The bearings have gone to blazes, I’m afraid. He must have run it without oil or some fool’s trick like that.”

Audrey came and peered at the engine.

“ ’Fraid I can’t advise!”

There was a garage near by, in a big shed. Julian strode over to it, and beckoned a fellow in overalls busy with a disintegrated Ford.

“You might take a look at this sewing machine,” said Julian, in his most casual voice. “It’s developed a little heart trouble.”

The man took a look—a long look—at it, and then grunted.

“Well, you won’t get much further with it to-day! Why, the bearings are all gone! Some one’s been treating it rough, I should say. Running it hard without a drop of oil. Fair cruelty!”

“Yes,” said Julian. “That’s what I thought.” He cursed Clatworthy again.

“You’ll have to leave it with me,” said the man.

“How long?”

The man thrust his hair back with an oily hand.

“Can’t say, I’m sure. About a fortnight. Maybe longer. It’s a job.”

“A fortnight!” cried Audrey.

“That’s that,” remarked Julian, and he lit a cigarette.

“What’s to be done?” asked Audrey. “Is there any chance of a train from this place? I hate the idea of tramping back to Oxford and getting one there. Such an anti-climax!”

“Yes,” said Julian. “I’m always against turning back.”

It was a quarter to three, and an afternoon in May. The sky was as blue as the sea at Capri, except where white clouds floated lazily like sleeping swans. The sun was bright, but not too hot on the road to Nuneham Courtenay. It bronzed the thatched roofs of the cottages, and played among the fruit trees in the gardens, laden with white blossoms. A pleasant breeze stirred the wallflowers and phlox in front of the cottage by which Julian stood smoking. There was a nice smell about. Some one had been cutting grass near by. A peacock on the stone gate post outside a private park spread its tail in the sun with lazy vanity. Bees were humming, birds singing.

“I hate trains on a day like this,” said Julian. “Those third class carriages with hot country girls, the usual sailor, the baby with chocolate, the parson in the corner with the Morning Post. Oh, Lord! ... Why not walk to London?”

Audrey received the idea as an inspiration.

“Noble thought, Julian! Why not, indeed?”

“Easy walking,” said Julian. “No record-making. A pleasant amble. Henley to-night, if we feel like it, Maidenhead to-morrow, stop when we’re tired.”

“Perfectly glorious!” cried Audrey, “and the most romantic way of leaving Oxford after being sent down.”

“Romantic? Oh, don’t let’s worry about that. Shoes any good?”

Audrey studied her brown shoes and looked at one sole backwards.

“Stout as clogs. My old golf shoes.”

“Well, what about kit? No fun if we have to carry much. A razor for me, and a pair of pyjamas.”

“Pyjamas and a tooth brush for little me.”

They took rather more than that but not much. After rummaging in their bags they made a common dump in Julian’s knapsack. He rolled Audrey’s pyjamas—blue silk—round his own, which were pink, and put her slippers, tooth brush, and a silver-backed hair brush and comb with his razor and other small essentials, in the middle of the bundle.

The garage man watched their arrangements with amazement.

“You two ain’t going to walk to London? It’s sixty miles and more! I wouldn’t do it for gold.”

“We’re doing it for fun,” said Audrey. “And it’s not to London but to Surrey. Adventure! Nature! England in May-time!”

“There’s a very good train from Oxford,” said the man.

“We dislike trains,” said Julian.

He handed the man his card and desired word when the Metallurgique was restored in health.

The oily man laughed good-naturedly.

“You’ll be damn tired before you get into Surrey. The roads seem a long sight shorter in a car. If you took my advice—”

“That’s all right,” said Julian, “and here’s something for your trouble in advance.”

He gave the man a ten shilling note and then turned to Audrey.

“Ready to push off?”

“Why not?”

They walked down to the village of Nuneham Courtenay, and Audrey stopped at a small shop to buy some acid tablets.

“Good as thirst quenchers,” she remarked.

Julian decided that some of the cottages belonged to the period of Charles II.

Audrey had left her motor veil behind in the car, and pressed her little blue hat closer over her brown hair. She walked with an easy swinging stride which Julian had remarked on the golf links. She also held her head high and had a smile about her lips. She wore a tight-fitting “jumper” of pale blue and a short brown skirt. Julian found nothing wrong with her appearance likely to discredit him in the face of the sun. He walked without a hat and with his knapsack slung over one shoulder. An old lady coming out of one of the cottages stopped to stare after them as they passed, walking briskly a yard apart, and her wrinkled old face smiled as though she liked the look of them. Youth and May-time! A good sight for old eyes, after the massacre of English boyhood.