The Summer Before the War

“I think Miss Nash believes it will be a pleasure to share Caesar and Virgil with the young,” said Hugh.

Daniel gave a loud snort, and his face, dropping its unpleasant curl of the lip, broke into a grin. Hugh sighed with relief. It usually took Daniel some time to relax into life in Rye. As a young boy he had always seemed to arrive with a scowl, shoulders hunched under some imagined weight, eyes as wary as those of a kicked dog. Hugh, older by two years, would pretend not to notice and busy himself with a book or with helping the gardener pick lettuce for the kitchen, impatient for his younger cousin to shed his outside shell and get back to leading them in crimes and adventures around the woods and town.

It was Daniel who planned the midnight orchard raids, the fishing expeditions, the hikes to the seashore. It was Daniel who could charm the cook into stuffing his satchel with pork pies and hard-boiled eggs, or persuade the milkman to let them ride on his cart into town. Hugh would have liked to be as fearless as Daniel, as filled with ideas and plans, but he was sharply aware that he was endowed with responsibility and a conscience that understood all the potential pitfalls of Daniel’s wilder plans. At least that was what Aunt Agatha told him when Daniel got them lost overnight in Higgins wood; when Daniel broke his arm falling off a tightrope they had strung up to practice for a circus career; when they brought home a sick, three-legged piglet and tried to keep it in an orange crate in the nursery and it deposited dung all over the rug—and frightened Cook with its squealing, rolling escape down the back stairs.

“You are the responsible one.”

“You are the oldest.”

“Daniel doesn’t have a mother to tell him these things.” This last admonition seemed slightly unfair to Hugh. It was hardly his fault that he had a mother still living. They both had fathers, though Hugh’s father was admittedly a much jollier man than Daniel’s. Besides, he was sure plenty of other people, from Aunt Agatha to the Sunday School teacher who clicked his ceramic teeth when he shouted at unruly boys, were available to communicate basic morals to his cousin.

While it seemed unfair to Hugh that he should always be spoken to as if he had been the one to suggest spying on the Gypsies down on the marsh, or borrowing the neighbor’s donkey to re-create an expedition to Bethlehem, he kept his tongue. Even at a young age, Hugh understood that, for reasons that were not explained to him, allowances were made for Daniel’s wildness as well as his scowling arrivals.

Hugh had heard his aunt and uncle discuss quietly, on several occasions, Daniel’s austere boarding school, Aunt Agatha wanting to speak to Daniel’s father and Uncle John urging her not to interfere. Hugh had never thought the school to be the problem, since Daniel seemed to arrive equally morose whenever he came from a visit to his father’s London house. As they grew up, Daniel gradually replaced his brooding with a distant air of cynical composure. He became more popular at school, and Hugh had the distinct impression that his cousin had studied the art of society much harder than mathematics or Greek. At Oxford he seemed to have become quite sought-after by multiple sets, and Hugh had seen less of him in London or Sussex as Daniel accepted invitations to visit country houses, to accompany families to foreign capitals, or to go tramping in the Dolomites or some such rustic area.

“Speaking of Virgil, how was Florence?” asked Hugh.

“For the most part, filled with a crush of English and American matrons all doing their best to squash centuries of history and art into the usual routines of some provincial summer watering hole,” said Daniel. “No more than an hour and a half in the Uffizi because of course there is a luncheon at noon and then it is too warm in the early afternoon to visit churches and tea is at four. And they are all campaigning to show off their gaggle of daughters and so the evenings are all dinners and parties.” He took aim at the phalanx of balls and sent them scattering smartly across the billiard table’s green surface. “They worked very hard to make Italy no more exotic than the middle of Surrey.”

“How did you stand it?” asked Hugh.

“I developed a recurring summer cold,” said Daniel, “so that several whole days were supposedly passed in my room. Soon as the coast was clear, my friend Craigmore and I would sneak off and spend the day in the city by ourselves.”

“Craigmore shares your affinity for poetry?” asked Hugh.

“Oh, God no,” said Daniel. “He is a rather brutish artist and an athlete of the worst kind. But he is a great walker, and we tramped the whole city and up into the hills. I was in charge of taking in the beauty and the art, and telling him what to record in his travel journal, and he taught me how to kill the opposition at tennis.”

“You don’t usually have much patience with philistines,” said Hugh, gripped by a small jealousy that his cousin had so easily traded their summer companionship for another. “But then I believe he has a title?” he added.

“Ouch!” said Daniel. “You don’t usually go in for such blows of sarcasm.”

“Sorry,” said Hugh.

“But you can always be counted upon to apologize.” Daniel jabbed his cue and sank a red ball firmly into a corner pocket. Hugh felt his face flush at the suggestion that his good manners were a kind of weakness. At least they were sincere. He had heard Daniel make many pretty apologies that were all charm and no substance.

“I’m sorry, Hugh, that was unpardonably spiteful.” Hugh searched his cousin’s face for irony but found none this time. “He is Viscount Craigmore, Lord North’s son,” continued Daniel. “In some romantic fit his mother named him Lancelot, so he always goes by Craigmore, even to his closest friends.”

“I quite see his point,” said Hugh.

“He and I intend to go to Paris this autumn to write and paint. We’re talking about starting up a journal that might combine poetry and illustration.”

“How on earth would you get your father to support such a jaunt?” said Hugh. “I thought you kept your poetry pretty well hidden from him.”

“I keep many things hidden from him,” said Daniel. “In this case I’ll tell him that Craigmore’s father has invited me to stay with them in Paris. Father won’t mind me playing the gentleman—especially if I mention that Craigmore has a highly marriageable younger sister.”

“Daniel, don’t tell me you’re in love?” said Hugh. Hope flickered, for if Daniel was in love, he might broach the subject of his own romantic hopes without fear of being mercilessly teased.

“Good heavens, no,” said Daniel. “She’s a poor, pale squab of a thing and she smells like tapioca—but Craigmore feels his father can be persuaded that a few months in Paris, with extra funds for the maintenance of a suitable mistress, is just the gilding a British gentleman needs before settling down to his responsibilities.”

“So poetry will be the mistress?” asked Hugh, as he missed a corner shot and stubbed his cue into the baize. “Would she not be better served by your telling the truth?”

“Good God, no,” said Daniel. “Lord North doesn’t like me much. I think he’s suspicious of people who read.”

“Well, Craigmore’s father may deserve to be fooled, but good luck fooling Aunt Agatha,” said Hugh. “She has expectations that you will now follow Uncle John into the civil service this year.”

“I just have to convince her that I will have regrets for the rest of my life if I fail to grasp this opportunity now,” said Daniel.

“Surely one can write poetry and pursue a responsible career,” said Hugh.

“Perhaps surgery can be a Sunday hobby, but I assure you poetry is life and death for me, Hugh,” said Daniel. “I simply must write, just as you must apparently peer into people’s bleeding bodies on the operating table and pickle chicken heads in Aunt Agatha’s largest jam jars.”

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