The Day Gone By by Richard Adams Page A

that the Captain had told, or ill-bred boasts which he had made at the South Berks Club in Newbury, or with a scornful mention of his ‘farm’, which was no farm at all. I liked the Captain and I liked my father, and sometimes I would try to mediate. ‘But, Daddy, even if he is a bounder, you must agree he’s very generous.’ ‘Yes,’ replied my father, ‘with other people’s money.’
    Another time, when I was older - perhaps sixteen - and presumably to be relied upon not to repeat things, he and I were talking about the Captain when I asked some question or other about how he had come to be where he was.
    â€˜Why, he married that woman for her money, of course,’ answered my father. ‘You couldn’t marry her for anything else, could you?’
    I realize now that to my father, who had endured disapprobation and family hostility to marry my mother without a penny, for love, this would seem the ultimate in caddishness. And yet I myself am not so sure. Mrs C. lived as happily as she could well have hoped to. She liked and respected her husband, who was always genial and friendly to her. She had two sons and, under his dispensation, more fun than, with her looks and disposition, she could possibly have had otherwise. Whatever infidelities he went in for he kept well away from his own doorstep, and I never heard the least trace of a cross word between them. Yes, he was a sharp scamp (he could always spot in a moment how any card trick was done), but one of Falstaffian charm. I wonder, might my father’s resentment have had in it an ingredient of jealousy? He himself had always been a shy, correct and upright man. ‘Lo, these many years have I served thee, neither transgressed I at any time thy commandments. Yet thou never gavest me a kid . . .
    We never had quite enough money for our establishment. Throughout the eighteen years of my childhood the servants gradually grew fewer and fewer, until at last there was none. My father suffered much financial anxiety, I know. But I think I perceive, now, another factor also. He himself, as he always used to say, was a poor mixer; except for my elder sister’s and brother’s tennis parties in the summer, we didn’t entertain much, and we never went away for holidays. My father, celibate for forty years, had for all I know lived a rather restricted life, working at home with my grandfather. His reward was his sense of his own correctness. But then he had torn up the rule-book and married my mother. Mightn’t an uncharitable person possibly have compared
her
to Captain Cornwallis? (Though she played her social part admirably and had adapted very well: I doubt whether anyone round Newbury thought her socially below my father.) The Captain, coming from nowhere, could handle people and had got what he was after by means of cheek and an outgoing temperament. My father’s style, on the other hand, was based on reticence and propriety. How aware was he that this was because, when put to it, he had little real force of character? There is nothing in Christian doctrine which forbids marrying for money. It was, rather, the Captain’s style which my father disliked. Yet my childhood would have been far less enjoyable without the Captain.
    Another neighbour, whom my father did like, was ‘Uncle’ Urling. Uncle Urling was also a stockbroker. I remember him as a portly, ruddy-faced, genial man, who enjoyed spending money. He had two daughters, Mary and Sheila. Mary was my own age and a friend and playmate - my best friend, I think, next to Jean Leggatt and Ann Lester. (Ann was the daughter of the manager of the Newbury Waterworks.) I would dispute any idea that I preferred the company of girls to that of boys. It was just the way things fell out. Mary played the piano well and my mother wanted me to do the same; but somehow I never could take to it. (More of this anon.) The Urlings had a hard tennis court, the