afternoon, playing her a recording of a new Russian pianist.
‘Just lay off the Chopin, Private.’
‘Don’t know any Chopin, sir,’ Purefoy lied. He’d been along to the Albert Hall often enough to rehearsals with Nadine, a world away, a world ago.
‘Well, don’t learn any, then.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Purefoy.
Captain Locke did, one afternoon, play some Chopin on his gramophone. Purefoy recognised it, all right, and as he passed, the melody clutching at him with soft little tearing claws, he caught sight of Locke, inside, listening. The look on Locke’s face was so very lonely that Purefoy called out to him: ‘Now, now, sir, we agreed no Chopin!’ Locke looked up, shocked, startled – pleased.
Purefoy scurried on, away from the captain’s look. I really don’t know my place, do I? But – Oh, yes, I was going to improve myself, wasn’t I? The thought burnt up like all the others, in the grimy, unpleasant duties of the day.
*
Captain Locke was a pure man, with pure and pleasurable tastes. As a boy he had liked to follow the gardener around the old greenhouses at Locke Hill, to smell the earth and help pick the grapes. Latin verse had amused him. When he played cricket he had reminded his cousin Rose of an actual cricket, with his terribly long legs and his cheerful disposition. Even playing his cello, plaintively and not very well, he had looked like a soulful insect, all elbows and knees.
He had noticed a surviving patch of gooseberry bushes on the parados, remnant of some long-gone Frenchman’s garden, and one evening crawled under them, froglike, on his back, to prune them. The new leaves were a golden, melting, greenish colour, and the sun shining through them put him in mind of a chandelier he had come to know during his honeymoon: burnt-sugar Murano glass, eighteenth century. He had seen it often, lying on his back in the big white bed at the Cipriani, while his beautiful soft creamy-rosy-marble wife Julia lay in his arms, or crawled across him, wrapped around him, delighting and enchanting him, as they came to realise that there was really nobody there – no parents, no schoolmasters, no vicars – to tell them they couldn’t or shouldn’t just take off all their clothes in that paid-for foreign room and do anything they wanted. And they did. Things neither of them had ever thought of; things that made them blush. Her beautiful, beautiful flesh, and her sweetness, her kindness to him, and the lovely way she always seemed to be on his side, even when he was being a bit of a twerp, not knowing things about what a woman wants . . . Well, how could he? Sisterless, a schoolboy, a university man . . . Apart from Rose, he hardly knew any woman at all. Rose had a phrase about English public schoolboys: physically over-developed, intellectually semi-developed, emotionally not developed at all. Good old Rose . . .
He and Julia had begun, in their Venetian privacy, to develop that emotional side. When his father had died so suddenly, Julia had been everything a man could wish for. When he was obliged to take over Locke Hill, she had glided into her role as chatelaine with the grace of a woman twice her age. She knew how to talk to servants. She took care. On their return to Locke Hill, after Mother had moved out – said she’d much rather be in the little flat in Chester Square – Julia had made Locke Hill, with its warm red bricks and polished wood and slanting sunshine, into a kind of heaven. She knew how to choose the colours to paint things; she needlepointed charming cushions, her lovely mouth instructed Millie how to plump and place them just so, and called Max the red setter in from the frosty lawn. He quite fell in love again with the crook of her fragrant elbow holding the trug, as she took the lavender from the stone-flagged terrace to the piles of smooth-ironed sheets in the big linen press. Every night he had raced home from Locke and Locke (he’d been promoted – a married man now)
‘Just lay off the Chopin, Private.’
‘Don’t know any Chopin, sir,’ Purefoy lied. He’d been along to the Albert Hall often enough to rehearsals with Nadine, a world away, a world ago.
‘Well, don’t learn any, then.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Purefoy.
Captain Locke did, one afternoon, play some Chopin on his gramophone. Purefoy recognised it, all right, and as he passed, the melody clutching at him with soft little tearing claws, he caught sight of Locke, inside, listening. The look on Locke’s face was so very lonely that Purefoy called out to him: ‘Now, now, sir, we agreed no Chopin!’ Locke looked up, shocked, startled – pleased.
Purefoy scurried on, away from the captain’s look. I really don’t know my place, do I? But – Oh, yes, I was going to improve myself, wasn’t I? The thought burnt up like all the others, in the grimy, unpleasant duties of the day.
*
Captain Locke was a pure man, with pure and pleasurable tastes. As a boy he had liked to follow the gardener around the old greenhouses at Locke Hill, to smell the earth and help pick the grapes. Latin verse had amused him. When he played cricket he had reminded his cousin Rose of an actual cricket, with his terribly long legs and his cheerful disposition. Even playing his cello, plaintively and not very well, he had looked like a soulful insect, all elbows and knees.
He had noticed a surviving patch of gooseberry bushes on the parados, remnant of some long-gone Frenchman’s garden, and one evening crawled under them, froglike, on his back, to prune them. The new leaves were a golden, melting, greenish colour, and the sun shining through them put him in mind of a chandelier he had come to know during his honeymoon: burnt-sugar Murano glass, eighteenth century. He had seen it often, lying on his back in the big white bed at the Cipriani, while his beautiful soft creamy-rosy-marble wife Julia lay in his arms, or crawled across him, wrapped around him, delighting and enchanting him, as they came to realise that there was really nobody there – no parents, no schoolmasters, no vicars – to tell them they couldn’t or shouldn’t just take off all their clothes in that paid-for foreign room and do anything they wanted. And they did. Things neither of them had ever thought of; things that made them blush. Her beautiful, beautiful flesh, and her sweetness, her kindness to him, and the lovely way she always seemed to be on his side, even when he was being a bit of a twerp, not knowing things about what a woman wants . . . Well, how could he? Sisterless, a schoolboy, a university man . . . Apart from Rose, he hardly knew any woman at all. Rose had a phrase about English public schoolboys: physically over-developed, intellectually semi-developed, emotionally not developed at all. Good old Rose . . .
He and Julia had begun, in their Venetian privacy, to develop that emotional side. When his father had died so suddenly, Julia had been everything a man could wish for. When he was obliged to take over Locke Hill, she had glided into her role as chatelaine with the grace of a woman twice her age. She knew how to talk to servants. She took care. On their return to Locke Hill, after Mother had moved out – said she’d much rather be in the little flat in Chester Square – Julia had made Locke Hill, with its warm red bricks and polished wood and slanting sunshine, into a kind of heaven. She knew how to choose the colours to paint things; she needlepointed charming cushions, her lovely mouth instructed Millie how to plump and place them just so, and called Max the red setter in from the frosty lawn. He quite fell in love again with the crook of her fragrant elbow holding the trug, as she took the lavender from the stone-flagged terrace to the piles of smooth-ironed sheets in the big linen press. Every night he had raced home from Locke and Locke (he’d been promoted – a married man now)
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