The twenty-one years that passed between the two great wars seemed to many who lived through them to go quickly. The passage of time is measured by events, and when there are few events time passes unnoticed. It certainly flowed smoothly for Willie Maryngton. When he came to look back on it all, on the eve of the second world war, he was surprised to find how few events there were that stuck out in his memory.
He remembered very well leaving for the Continent two days after the Armistice. It was the journey to which he had been looking forward for years. How different it was from all that he had imagined! The thrill of war had been taken out of it, and there was nothing left but confusion, delay and discomfort. Inaccurate information awaited him at every turn. The troops were moving forward as fast as he was, and much faster than correct news of their movements travelled back.
He caught them up at last, and spent some months with the army of occupation. It was a depressing and disillusioning experience. Depressing because once again he found that the happiest hours spent by his brother officers were the least happy ones for him. These would occur at evening, in the mess, when the port was going round. Then would begin the endless discussions and reminiscences of the fighting. Sometimes these conversations were serious and even melancholy, but more often they were full of gaiety, for men remember more easily, and prefer to remember, the pleasanter incidents in their lives. The war was the great subject that they had in common, and it was inevitable that they should revert to it whenever good cheer and good-fellowship encouraged conversation. Nor could they be expected to know, or, if they had known, to care that the youngest and latest joined officer should suffer from their conversation. How often he felt that if only he had been present at one action all would have been different.
He was disappointed also in the enemy. All his youth he had pictured these formidable people as very fierce, very brutal, very evil, very brave. What he found was a herd of lumbering louts, subservient and clumsy, sometimes sullen and surly, but more often too anxious to please. Were these the same men, or any relation to those who had swept through Belgium almost to the gates of Paris in a few weeks, held up the Russian steam-roller, smashed the empire of the Czars and come near to defeating the Royal Navy in the North Sea? He could hardly believe it.
Nor was he satisfied with the spirit of his own men. He had thought to find in the regiment abroad a little less discipline, perhaps, but more enthusiasm and keenness than at home. So he had been led to expect by returning officers. But this, if it ever had been, was no longer the case. The men were restless and discontented, talking only of the return to civilian life, speculating on how soon it would come, and complaining of the delay. How could Willie at the age of nineteen understand that the morale of troops is better on the eve of battle than on the eve of demobilisation?
This first experience of being abroad with his regiment was not one upon which he looked back with any pleasure, and he was glad to return to England and to find himself quartered in a part of the country where good hunting was easily available. Horses henceforward filled his life. When he was not in the saddle he was talking or thinking about them. Those who do not know would be surprised to learn how large a part horses can come to play in the existence of a man, particularly of a young man, and above all of a young cavalry officer. In the days when horse cavalry still existed, the horse represented for such a one the centre both of his profession and of his recreation. It combined work and play. It could fill every hour of his activities during daylight, and prove an inexhaustible topic of conversation at night. Every day during the winter months, that his military duties permitted, he would hunt, his season beginning, indeed, long before winter with the first morning’s cub-hunting. Point-to-points and steeplechases were the only other amusements in which he indulged. He bought a few jumpers and rode them in races with varying success but with unvarying enthusiasm, and he shocked himself once by saying in the heat of an argument that he would rather win the Grand National on his own horse than be awarded the Victoria Cross. He retracted this wild statement immediately, apologised and said that he must be drunk. But he wasn’t, and there were those among his audience who agreed with him, to such a point can hippolatry stir the imaginations of young men.
The coming of spring meant for Willie the opening of flat racing, which in his opinion was an inferior sport. It meant also polo and the London season.
In the nineteen-twenties London was a gay city and England was a happy land. Those who had lived before the war made unfavourable comparisons with the past, but to the new generation, without previous experience, life as it was seemed agreeable enough. There had been a redistribution of wealth, but there was still plenty of it, and there was a boom of prosperity. The number of war casualties had been greater than ever before, but they were soon forgotten by the majority of the survivors, and the spectre of war was banished from men’s minds.
All that the country had to offer in the way of enjoyment was laid before a young subaltern in a good regiment with an agreeable appearance and ample means. Willie helped himself generously to the good things that were offered him, but he did not fall into excess. Although he had no parents to guide him, their place was taken by the regiment, which he loved and honoured more than anything else in the world, and which therefore exercised over his conduct as strong an influence as any parents could have done. There were certain things which officers in that regiment did not do, and those things would never be done by Willie Maryngton.
He danced, he rode, he went racing and indulged in all the pleasures that became his age and circumstances. He was fond of dancing, but, out of the ballroom, he spent little of his time with girls. He found them difficult to talk to, and the regiment disapproved of men who were always hanging round women’s petticoats.
He took a flat in Jermyn Street and joined another club, to which his father had belonged, and where the atmosphere was very different from that of the military club to which he belonged already. Most of the members were older men, but, although at first he was intimidated, he soon made many friends among them, for towards his elders he bore himself with a frank, unassuming manliness that quickly won for him sympathy and goodwill.
During these years, although it may be said that he had found his place in the world and was occupying it with confidence, he never forgot what he had missed, or ceased to regret it. A chance question from a neighbour at a dinner-party, ‘Where were you in the war?’ a chance remark from an old member in the club, ‘You young fellows who’ve been through the war,’ would bring back a pang of the anguish he had felt when he was first told of the Armistice. And now that he was beginning to meet, as grown men, those who had been still at school on that day, he felt that they also had an advantage over him.
Hunting in the winter, polo in the summer and racing all the year round demanded an income larger than Willie’s, and although he was not extravagant he came gradually to understand, as the years went on, that he was living beyond his means. It therefore came to him as a relief rather than a blow when he learnt that the regiment was to go to India. He was at the time facing a financial crisis. The prospect of cutting down his hunters, and perhaps having to give up polo altogether, was not a pleasant one. The news brought down upon him his creditors like a swarm of locusts. He was horrified to discover how much he owed. London tradesmen are very patient with rich young officers in good regiments, but their patience comes abruptly to an end when there is any question of the young gentlemen proceeding overseas for an indefinite period. Willie had to sell out capital in order to meet his liabilities, and discovered, as so many have before and since, that it is always the very worst moment to sell. Looking back on it all, Willie remembered only some very dull conversations with solicitors which had depressed him more than the knowledge that he had to face life in future on a reduced though still adequate income.
He almost lost sight of the Osbornes during these years. Mrs. Osborne wrote to him at regular intervals, giving him full information about each member of the family. Garnet was working in one of the large military hospitals; Horry, having done well at the Academy of Dramatic Art, was usually with some touring company in the provinces; Felicity was at school in Brussels. They all seemed very far away from the life that Willie was leading.
He saw Horry once before he left for India. He was having supper at the Savoy Grill with some brother officers after the theatre. Horry was there with a very pretty girl. Neither Horry nor his companion was in evening clothes, which slightly distressed Willie. But the girl was lovely, and one of his companions suggested that he should invite them both to join their party. Guilelessly Willie approached them and asked:
‘Hallo, Horry! won’t you both come over and sit with us?’
‘No, we certainly won’t,’ said Horry gruffly.
Willie was taken aback.
‘Why not?’ he asked.
‘Because we think you’d bore us to death,’ said Horry.
The girl saw the hurt look on Willie’s innocent face, and gave him a charming smile of compassion, which softened the blow.
Later, when he saw the two of them leaving the restaurant, he ran after them and asked Horry to lunch with him on the following day.
‘No, I won’t,’ said Horry, who seemed still unaccountably annoyed.
‘Oh,’ said Willie, ‘that’s too bad. I’m off to India at the end of the week, and you may never see me again.’
‘You’re going to India?’ cried Horry. ‘How was I to know? Of course I’ll lunch with you to-morrow, bless you. Sorry I was cross. Name the time and place.’
Willie suggested his club. Horry demurred.
‘Wouldn’t a restaurant be more fun? I tell you what, let’s go to Ornano’s, where we dined together on Armistice night.’
And so it was agreed.
It was with mixed feelings that Willie remembered the luncheon that took place on the following day. His first impression was that Ornano’s had changed. It was no longer the magic haunt where illustrious beings consumed rare dishes and precious wines. It was a distinctly second-rate restaurant frequented by the riff-raff of Fleet Street and the Strand. The head-waiter of international renown had long ago soared to higher spheres, and the clientele had deteriorated. Willie noticed a couple of bookmakers, whom he knew, drinking champagne with two buxom blondes. He obscurely felt, although it would have been impossible for him to express the feeling in words, and he would have protested had he been charged with it, that this was a place to which he did not belong. What was worse, he felt that Horry did belong to it. Horry ordered a ‘gin and it’ as though he were at home, and Willie felt he was being pompous when he said he would prefer a glass of sherry.
Horry was not unaware of the impression that Willie was receiving.
‘This place has gone down a bit, but I still like it. You meet all sorts here, and the grub’s good; but of course it’s not the place it was in the days of Luigi.’
‘Why were you so cross with me last night?’ asked Willie.
‘It wasn’t you, old boy; it was your friends. I know the type – more money than brains – stroll into the Savoy Grill half-tight and think they can pick up any girl they see there.’
‘No, no,’ Willie protested indignantly, ‘they’re not like that at all. They’re very good chaps; all in my regiment. I told them I knew you, and they said couldn’t we all get together and have a jolly evening.’
‘Yes, and you probably told them I was on the stage, and they assumed she was, too, and they thought because she was an actress one of them might go home with her.’
Willie indignantly denied the accusation.
‘Look here,’ said Horry. ‘Supposing they’d met another fellow in the regiment, one of their own sort, out with his sister, and supposing she’d been a pretty girl, do you think they’d have suggested joining up?’
‘Yes,’ said Willie, candidly, ‘I think they would.’
‘Well, I don’t,’ retorted Horry, ‘and that’s what made me so damned angry. Perhaps I was wrong, but you know what esprit de corps is – honour of the regiment and all that sort of twaddle. Well, we people on the stage feel about our profession as you do about yours, and however it may have been in the past, our morality in these days is just as good as anyone else’s – better, perhaps, because we work harder. So it makes me mad with rage when people treat actresses as though they were all no better than they should be. And that was what I felt was happening last night. The girl I was with is an actress, as a matter of fact, and she happens to be an angel – happily married: her husband’s playing lead in a first-rate show on tour, and she may be getting a West End job. I adore her, but I’m not in love with her. I’ve never even held her hand in the taxi. I kiss her on the cheek, you know, when we meet or say good-night, just as I would Mum or Felicity. So you can imagine what I feel when I think people are treating her like a tart.’
‘Yes, I think I can,’ said Willie, ‘but really you’re wrong about the brutal and licentious soldiery. None of us were tight last night, and if you had come over to our table you would have had nothing to complain of; everybody would have treated her just like a lady.’
‘Just like a lady,’ echoed Horry, ‘but she is a lady, damn you! and much more of a lady than lots of the melancholy sisters of second-rate Army officers that I’ve met.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake don’t get angry again,’ said Willie. ‘You know jolly well that I didn’t mean it that way. I meant they would treat her just the same as anybody else.’
Horry recovered his good temper without difficulty, and they talked of other matters. There was no more quarrelling, but the conversation was not what it should have been between two fosterbrothers on the eve of a long separation. They clung rather desperately to family matters, both feeling conscious of the lack of other topics. There were jokes about old Garnet, speculations on Felicity’s future, slight anxieties about Mrs. Osborne’s health. But when these subjects were exhausted and they tried to talk of themselves, they were both conscious that there was a mutual lack of interest. They had no friends in common. Horry cared nothing about the Army and as little about horses. Willie tried valiantly to discuss the theatre, but his interest in it was limited to musical comedy and revue. He hadn’t seen the plays that Horry talked of, nor even heard the names which he mentioned with the greatest respect. So that they were both secretly glad when the meal was over, although they were both sincerely sorry to say good-bye.