I Hesitate when friends ask me to recommend hotels in the West Indies. A change of management can transform a hotel within a year, making or ruining it. I have not been to St. Thomas since 1953 and I have no idea what kind of hotel the Harbour View is now. I can only testify that in 1950 it was a very congenial place for any one who enjoys elasticity in his time-table.
It had, from its long, wide veranda, one of the best views in the island, and was run on the European plan. Lunch was not served, and although those who have to catch an early plane could rely upon being fed before they left, there was no fixed hour for breakfast. There were a few small tables and a long central one. At the large table breakfasts were still being served when it was time for the first rum swizzle. In the evening, when there were sufficient guests to justify the serving of a dinner, there was an air of parade, with well-appointed tables and long dresses. But for the most part the atmosphere was that of a casually and friendly run country house, with someone always on the veranda, reading, or playing Canasta, darning a stocking or sipping a highball. It was the right kind of place for people who prefer to leave their plans vague till they can see what the day is like and how competent they feel to face it.
At the back of the veranda was a large courtyard kind of hall, built on the Arab plan with bedrooms opening off it and a staircase leading to the upper storey. On my last afternoon, as I was crossing this hall on my way upstairs, I was checked by the sound of a long, loud, masculine guffaw. I paused. I had heard only one man laugh in quite that way. I was in a hurry. I had my packing to get done, but I had to make certain first. On rubber-soled shoes I moved across the hall. I stood in the shadow of the entrance; and there, at the far end of the veranda, seated on the balustrade with one knee drawn up, with his hands clapsed round it, was a large, heavily built man, florid with blue-veined cheeks and a handlebar moustache. He was wearing white shorts and a white short-sleeved shirt. A yachting cap was tilted over his left eye. He was in the middle fifties. It was over ten years since I had seen him, but no, there was no doubt about it—he was Reggie Thayne.
Some years ago the New Yorker magazine, in the course of a ‘Where are they now?’ article, printed a list of thirty names, each of which had made the headlines, in a sensational manner, in the last thirty years. How many of these names, it asked, would have any concrete significance to the contemporary reader? Personally, I remembered four; and I would doubt if there is a single American, and not more than two or three Englishmen, who would today connect anything definite with the name of Thayne. Yet for a few weeks in the summer of 1938 Colonel Sir Reginald Thayne, Bart., was as much discussed as anyone in England.
‘Grave charge against a Wessex Squire’, that was how the headlines ran, with the letterpress below double-column photographs explaining that a seventeen-year-old village schoolmistress had pulled the alarm-bell of a railway carriage to defend her honour against an alleged assault by the owner of Winchborough Hall, a man of forty, an M.F.H., the husband of Lord Wilmot’s daughter, and the father of two daughters and a son. It was as big a scandal as the neighbourhood had ever known.
Personally, I was especially interested in the case because I had been in the habit for several years of going down into that part of the country and working in a small hotel. I knew the Thaynes quite well, and I was as much surprised as anyone. The whole thing seemed to me, and to everybody else there, inconceivable.
It was not so much that Reggie himself was the last person whom you could imagine in that kind of mess. On the contrary, he was a healthy, full-blooded creature, a sportsman, a man’s man, a moderate drinker but a heavy eater, loud-voiced and always laughing, whether anything particularly amusing had been said or not. And even though he had been for twelve stolid years the champion of law and order, Winchborough’s hereditary figurehead, captaining its cricket side, opening its bazaars, reading the lessons in church, presiding over its committees, serving as Lord-Lieutenant of the county, forty is a dangerous age. No one can count himself immune. It was something altogether else that made Reggie’s predicament so astonishing—the fact that he was Sybil’s husband.
As that he was something special, very special; or rather it was Sybil herself that made him special. It was not just that she was singularly lovely, slim and small with corn-coloured hair and cornflower-blue eyes, a peachbloom complexion and a voice that lilted—there are, after all, a number of lovely women in the world—it was an interior intrinsic quality, a quality that I can only define obliquely.
It was easy to explain why we dislike a person. It is easy to make a catalogue of unpleasant traits. But how are you to indicate what it is about a woman that gives you when you are in her company the sense of having been transported into another country, another climate, where the sun is warmer, the breeze softer, the colours brighter? That is the effect that Sybil had on you. The moment she came into the room the world seemed a more pleasant place.
You could imagine Reggie Thayne, but you could not imagine Sybil’s husband making a pounce at a village schoolmistress. Poor Sybil, we thought, I wonder how she’ll take it.
We had not to wait that answer long. Every summer on the last Saturday in June the Duke of Wessex entertained the county. It was the biggest social function of the year. His impressive terraces welcomed some five hundred guests. Most of us imagined that Sybil would stay away.
She did not. Nor could she have been less abashed.
It was a hot, almost too hot, a day, but she looked very cool in flowered muslin under a floppy hat, so cool that you felt a breeze was blowing.
‘What a heavenly day,’ she said. ‘Isn’t Francis lucky! He always has this weather for his parties. We were so sure that it would be fine this week-end that we’d arranged to go over to Le Touquet, and now of course we can’t owing to this absurd mess of Reggie’s. I suppose you saw about it in the papers? Yes, of course you did. One always does see that kind of paragraph. So instead of sunbathing on some lovely beach, we’ve got to spend the week-end with the lawyers. Aren’t you a nuisance, darling!’
He laughed one of his loud, hearty laughs. She raised her hand and patted him playfully upon the cheek.
‘We’ve briefed Patrick Forrester,’ she said.‘I do hope that you are all coming over to hear the case. It ought to be quite amusing. Sir Patrick is such a pet.’
I was in court on Wednesday. The old oak hall where, on so many occasions in the past, Reggie had officiated as Lord Lieutenant gave a curious dramatic irony to the whole affair. This friendly and familiar room, with its time-stained panelling, its tattered banners, its gilt-framed portraits, had been the scene of many of his proudest moments. Was it now to prove the setting of his disgrace?
It was, indeed, in its own way one of the most dramatic mornings I can remember. I had watched so many court scenes on the screen that it was an odd experience to meet one in real life. It was all so leisurely, so casual, it was hard to believe that there was so much at stake.
Nor could anyone have looked less like a screen character than Patrick Forrester. Tall, thin, tired, he was more like a family doctor than a barrister. His appearance was, in fact, his greatest asset; his chief skill as a cross-examiner lying in his capacity to lull a witness into a state of false security. He never bullied a witness. He never rounded on a witness. It was not until his final speech that a witness realized the extent and nature of the admissions that had been drawn from him.
I shall always consider Forrester’s handling of that case a master piece.
The schoolmistress looked, I must say, the last kind of girl whom you would expect to inspire that kind of enterprise. She had come with her parents, and she had put on, presumably under their instructions, a tailored dark-blue coat and skirt that would have been more suitable to a November than an August morning. It made her look uncomfortable. She was of medium height, with a featureless, pudgy face. No doubt when she was in a cheerful mood she had the natural prettiness of youth. But she had no distinction of line and feature. She looked glum and sulky. She gave her evidence in a toneless voice.
She had gone into the town on market day, she said. She had meant to get home for lunch. She had reached the station early and all the carriages in the back coach were empty. Her carriage had remained empty until, just before the train started, Sir Reginald got in. She of course knew Sir Reginald well by sight, she had often talked to him at village fêtes. They said good morning to one another. As is not uncommon in local railway lines in England, there was no corridor to the train. He had sat across the narrow compartment, in the opposite corner, facing her. They exchanged a conventional comment about the weather. Then he opened out his Times. She had a book and she resumed her reading of it. After a little while, Sir Reginald put down his paper. ‘It’s rather warm,’ he said. ‘Do you mind if I let down the window?’
‘Of course not.’
He rose to his feet. He crossed the carriage. He stood by the window. He paused. He turned round towards her. He stared at her. His eyes became very bright. His face got hot. Suddenly he pounced at her with his hands spread out. She was terrified. She wriggled free. She ran to the other side of the compartment. She pulled on the alarm cord. She put her head out of the window. She shrieked for help. She didn’t know what she said.
That was her story as she told it; quietly, sulkily, undramatically. She was a girl whom everyone in court had known since childhood, whose parents everyone respected. Not a word had been breathed against her ever, or against her family.
I looked at Sybil. She was in profile and I could not read the expression on her face. It had been one thing to brave it out last Saturday. It was altogether different now. I wondered how Reggie would behave when his turn came to take the witness-box. His face was flushed. He was no fool. He knew that everyone in court was sorry for the girl. Sir Patrick sensed this atmosphere. His voice was urbane, encouraging; there was to be no bullying, no intimidation; he led the girl slowly through her evidence, step by step. He asked her about her meetings with Sir Reginald. When had she met him last? How often had she seen him in the last six months? He was one of the governors of the school. Did he visit the school often? Six or seven times a year; indeed; and when he did, he usually exchanged some gossip with her? Had he ever said anything to suggest that his feelings for her were not strictly such as were correct between a man in his position and a girl in hers?
It was obvious that he was going to point out later that, if Reggie had ever had any intentions towards the girl, the ordinary routine of his life would have given him ample opportunities of indulging them.
Sir Patrick then began to question her about Reggie’s behaviour in the train.
‘You have told us that when Sir Reginald entered the compartment he said, “Good morning.’” Is that correct?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Can you remember his exact words?’
‘He just said, “Good morning.’”
‘Is that all he said?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Was there anything unusual in his manner?’
‘No, sir.’
‘What were you doing when Sir Reginald came into the carriage?’
‘Reading a book.’
‘Did you go on reading?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘What did Sir Reginald do?’
‘He opened out his paper.’
‘How soon after Sir Reginald had arrived did the train leave the station?’
‘In a minute or two.’
‘And you went on reading?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Did the jolting of the train disturb your reading?’
‘Not very much, sir.’
‘Only a very little.’
‘Your attention was, in fact, concentrated on your book?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You took no notice of Sir Reginald?’
‘No, sir.’
‘You were not embarrassed at being alone with him in a compartment?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Did Sir Reginald make any attempt to enter into conversation with you?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Did he do anything to make you feel embarrassed? Did he stare at you, for instance?’
‘No, sir.’
‘He read his paper quietly all the time?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘There was complete silence in the carriage, that is to say, for some fifteen minutes?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘While you read your book and he read his paper?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And the first time that silence was broken was when Sir Reginald asked if he might open the window?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Now I want you, if you will, to explain to the court exactly what did happen. You say he stared at you. Did he do this before or after he had opened the window?’
‘Before.’
‘He walked, that is to say, over to the window, then paused?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Did he make any attempt to open the window?’
‘I don’t think so, sir.’
‘You mean he had not even put his hand on the leather strap?’
‘I don’t think he had, sir.’
‘Are you quite sure of that?’
She hesitated, but he did not press her. ‘We’ll let that wait for a moment. Can you remember how his feet were placed?’ He asked a number of questions on this point. Was Sir Reginald facing the window; was he, that is to say, looking at her over his right shoulder or was he at right angles to the door; in that case he would be staring straight at her.
‘I am anxious to recreate the exact sequence of events,’ he said. ‘Let us assume that this desk is the window and that these two chairs represent the corners of the carriage. Am I to understand that this is how Sir Reginald behaved?’ Sir Patrick walked from the chair over to the desk. This part of the questioning took a little while. The girl hesitated, contradicted herself; finally agreed that Sir Reginald never touched the window strap at all, but as soon as he reached the window turned at right angles, facing her.
‘At right angles to the window, facing you. I see.’ There was a smile on Sir Patrick’s face. It was easy to see the line of defence he had in mind. A large part of his defence would consist in his demonstration of the unlikelihood of Reggie having made such an attempt, at such a place, at such a time. But his chief line clearly was going to be that Reggie, a heavy man, facing the engine and consequently unbalanced, had been thrown forward by the jolting of the train, and that an inexperienced girl had been frightened by what had been a mere mischance. It was a possible if not probable explanation. Whether or not the court believed it, depended, I presumed, entirely on Reggie’s behaviour in the box.
Sir Patrick’s next series of questions left no doubt as to his ultimate intentions.
‘I am most anxious,’ he said, ‘to learn the exact form taken by this alleged assault. I should like the plaintiff to show us exactly what she claims the defendant did. I think it would be easiest if she were to give a demonstration. Suppose, for instance, her mother were to sit in this seat here, then the plaintiff could give a demonstration. She must be able, I am sure, to recall in vivid and separate detail exactly what took place.…’
He took the girl by the hand. He led her in front of the chair where he had placed her mother. ‘Imagine,’ he said, ‘that you are Sir Reginald and your mother is yourself. Will you show us exactly what happened next?’
The girl hesitated and there was a silence. Sir Patrick looked at her thoughtfully, kindlily, then turned towards the magistrate.
‘Perhaps, your worship, in view of the nature of this case, the plaintiff would prefer not to have this demonstration made in public. Perhaps we might clear the court. Perhaps …’
But before the magistrate could answer, the need for him to answer had been removed. Suddenly the girl collapsed, falling forward into her mother’s arms, bursting into tears, crying out between her sobs, ‘He didn’t do it …. It’s all a mistake … He didn’t. He never did.’
Yes, I shall always say that Sir Patrick’s handling of that case was a masterly performance.
When I met the Thaynes three days later, Sybil was at her liveliest.
‘I feel so sorry for the poor girl,’ she said. ‘She’s a case for the doctor. It was pathological. She’s full of inhibitions and timidities, and then finding herself alone with Reggie—all the novels that she reads feature a wicked baronet. She lost her head and then she was frightened of admitting it. Perhaps she didn’t even know she was lying. The imagination of an adolescent can be so vivid. I’m terribly sorry for her parents. I’m trying to persuade them not to leave the village. They’ve lived here all their lives. I suppose Susan will have to go, but I’ve written to a school where Reggie’s got a pull. I’m sure they’ll be able to find a place for her. Of course we’re paying all the expenses of the case. But it is tragic for them.’
There was no note of triumph in her voice, not a suggestion of vindictiveness, of resentment that her own name had been dragged into a scandal; for she was sufficiently a woman of the world to realize that some measure of scandal would attach to her for ever.
‘I’m so glad you were all in court,’ she went on. ‘You know how it’s going to be. People always say that there can’t be smoke unless there’s fire; I suppose that the younger generation, who’ll never have a chance to get the facts right, who’ll just have heard backstairs whispers, will soon be referring to Reggie as ‘the wicked baronet’; of course, one only had to look at the girl to realize that there couldn’t be anything in it, or for that matter,’ she paused and laughed, ‘for that matter one only had to look at my dear sweet Reggie.’ She raised her hand and gave his cheek a pat. It would have been impossible for her, we all agreed, to have carried the thing off better. And when we learnt later that not only had Susan Carter found a post in a school in Wales but had become the wife of the headmaster, it was generally conceded that what had promised to be a tragedy and a disgrace could not have turned out more satisfactorily for everyone.
But that was in the summer of 1939; within a few weeks not only had every trace of such a scandal been washed from memory, but the whole way of life typified by Winchborough had been relegated to the past. ‘The power of “the big house” ‘—all such feudal survivals as ‘the Lord of the Manor’ and ‘the squire’ had become anachronisms. I have not been to Winchborough since. I heard sometime in late 1940 that the house had been requisitioned by an evacuated ministry. But the following September I was posted overseas to Syria, and in the vast concentration camp of the Middle East I heard no Winchborough gossip. By the time I eventually returned to England it was as a kind of Rip van Winkle to find that I had lost touch with more than half of my friends.
That, indeed, is one of the minor tragedies of the war. For six years we were isolated by the particular kind of war work we were doing. It was almost impossible to pick up the threads.
But melancholy though it has been to lose touch with so many friends, there has been, in compensation, the surprise every now and then of meeting an old friend in a totally unexpected place, and it very certainly was all of that to meet Reggie Thayne in St. Thomas on the veranda of the Harbour View Hotel.
I hurried over. ‘My dear Reggie, what a surprise,’ I said.
He took my outstretched hand, but his stare was blank. He had not the least idea who I was. Which is another of the melancholy things about that eight-year gap: you do not realize how much you have changed yourself until an old friend fails to recognize you.
I introduced myself. ‘Of course, the writing fellow. Sybil kept telling me I should read your books. Never quite got round to it. You had McCartney’s, hadn’t you?’
I hadn’t. But I let it pass. I asked him about Winchborough.
He shrugged.‘I couldn’t afford to keep it on. A place like that has to be run properly or not at all. And if I wasn’t running Winchborough, what was there for me to do in England? I couldn’t just sit around in White’s all day. Besides, England’s no place for a wife, washing up dishes all day long.’
‘Where are you living now?’ I asked.
‘In St. Kitts of course.’
The ‘of course’ amused me. There is a certain type of person who expects his friends to be informed about the details of his own career at every stage of it, though he himself is completely indifferent to their doings; St. Kitts happened to be an island in which, at that time, I had never spent more than half a day. I recalled it as a plain of cane-fields, backed by hills. I asked him how he liked it.
‘Grand. Just the life for me.’ He had a schooner-type yacht, he told me. One of his guests was an American. That’s how he happened to have dollars to spend in a hard-currency port. He raised sugar and was trying experiments with secondary crops. He sat on the Legislative Council. He was clearly leading in the Caribbean a life of public responsibility very similar to his former one in Wessex.
‘Does Sybil like it as much as you?’ I asked.
‘Sybil? How does she come in?’
‘Didn’t you say something about not wanting to have your wife wash up dishes all the time?’
He roared with laughter.
‘I don’t, but my wife’s not Sybil.’
‘You’re divorced, you mean?’
He nodded. It was the first that I had heard of it. But then that was not surprising. With newspapers reduced to four-sheet dimensions during the war, only the most sensational cases had been reported.
‘Who’s Sybil married to?’ I asked.
‘No one, as far as I know.’
‘How did it all come to happen then?’
He shrugged. ‘The war gave me a good excuse: having to give up Winchborough, I mean to say. It made a break and the break once made … I knew I never could go back.’
I looked at him interrogatively. When I had come across to him, he had been in a group, but the others, seeing that we were talking ‘about old times’, had moved away. We were alone and out of earshot.
’You mean that you broke it up?’ I asked.
He nodded. I was astounded.
‘I always thought you were so happy.’
‘So we were till that damned case came on.’
‘But I thought she was so marvellous about it all.’
‘That was the trouble. She was too marvellous.’
Then I understood, or thought I did. I had read once a restoration comedy called A Woman Killed by Kindness. This was that drama in reverse; the case of a man, or rather of a marriage, that kindness killed. Sybil had been too marvellous, too gracious, too forgiving. It was more than a man’s dignity could stand …. Yet if Sybil had been too forgiving, there must have been something to forgive; or at least Sybil had thought there was.
‘Then she didn’t believe your story, after all? She pretended to in public, but when you were alone …’ I checked. No, no. That couldn’t be the explanation. Under these conditions the question of magnanimity could scarcely have come in. Wasn’t there another explanation? Had Reggie really made this insane assault, had he confessed to Sybil; and had she accepted his guilt with a graciousness that he had found humiliating? Was that the explanation? I waited, curious, expectant.
He shook his head.
‘She never doubted my word for a single instant. That was what I couldn’t stand, living with a woman who just couldn’t believe that it would be possible for me to behave like that.’
‘Then you really did …?’
Again he shook his head. ‘Was it likely—with a station only five minutes off! But when I got up to let than window down … it was a warm June day, there was a scent of summer in the carriage, she was wearing a loose cotton blouse. It was low cut. I was standing over her. She looked so cool and white and soft. It took me off my guard. At college I’d knocked about a bit. But since I married … well, that kind of thing dies down in marriage. I’d been completely faithful … that’s why it knocked me off my guard. I stared. She look up and our eyes met. I could see at once that she knew exactly what was in my mind. Sybil was right, no doubt, about her being pathological. She was hysterical and inhibited. She stared at me, dazed, hypnotized like a rabbit with a snake. I had the feeling I could have done anything, any damned thing I wanted with her. I can’t begin to tell you what I felt. It was the most violent sensation that I had known for years. Then suddenly she screamed, dived across the carriage, and before I could stop her she’d pulled the cord and was screaming her head off through the window.
‘Yes, that’s what happened. But could I explain to Sybil? Could I hell! You saw how she behaved in public. She was just like that with me. “How tiresome for you. That poor silly girl. I wonder who’d be the best counsel to defend the case.” She scarcely listened to what I had to say. “But of course you didn’t; no one who knows you could possibly doubt that, for a single instant.” That was what the trouble was. I had learnt more about myself in those two minutes than in all the twenty years that I’d been adult. I felt I’d been a stranger to myself all my life. I felt I’d been living with a stranger all those years. But to Sybil I was the same person that I’d always seemed. I stood it as long as I could for appearances’ sake. But I couldn’t keep it up. My whole life was a sham. I was pretending to be something I was not. I couldn’t be myself with Sybil. I couldn’t help remembering that that girl in that one moment had read right into my very soul. She learnt more about me in that one minute than Sybil had in a dozen years.…’
He paused. He looked away. He drew a long, slow breath.
‘I hadn’t anybody else in mind when I insisted on that divorce. I didn’t expect to marry again. But I knew that if I did, I’d want a wife who’d know without my telling her the kind of person that I really was or could be. I never knew I’d have the luck … but look, here is Diana.’
He had risen to his feet and his eyes were shining in a way that I had never seen them shine before. A tall and youngish woman had just come on to the veranda. She was dark-haired, dark-eyed, with a dead pale skin. She must have been nearly six feet tall. She moved in akind of glide—there was something of a panther’s quality about her.
‘Isn’t it nearly time that you were thinking of buying me a drink?’ she said. Her voice was a deep contralto. It would have been hard to find anybody more unlike Sybil.
1950