Inch of Fortune Read online

  SIMON RAVEN

  An Inch of Fortune

  Blond & Briggs Ltd

  London

  Printed in Great Britain First published in Great Britain 1980

  by Blond & Briggs Ltd, London NW2 6LE

  Copyright © Simon Raven 1980

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of Blond &

  Briggs Ltd

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Raven, Simon

  An inch of fortune.

  I. Title

  823'. 9'1F PR6068.A91/

  ISBN 0-85634-108-8

  Introduction

  'Presuming even your capacity for borrowing money without qualm or security has by now lost much of its edge, it only remains that you should make some.'

  Thus the Bursar, in a last attempt to obtain settlement of his college's bills, causes Esme Sangrail Sa Foy, scholar and gentleman, of obscure origins and anything but obscure debts, to be engaged by the Honourable Mrs Sandra Fairweather, as holiday tutor to her adopted son Terence. But this is not to be an easy position. Although Esme is not expected actually to teach Terence anything he is expected to keep a dose watch on his charge. As Terence's psychiatrist Doctor MacTavish explains, Terence has yet to act criminally, and it is Esme's responsibility to ensure that this happy state of affairs continues.

  And so Esme and Terence, kindred spirits, make passage through their summer, from London to the country house at Badlock (scene of a small but tiresome car accident), to Aldeburgh where they discover that the sport of sailing although healthy is best pursued in teashops, and finally to Biarritz.

  But along the way Esme discovers that neither his job for the Honourable Mrs Fairweather nor commissions contiguously accepted are precisely what they seem.

  AN INCH OF FORTUNE, Simon Raven's hitherto unpublished first novel, was written in 1950, and, after originally being rejected for fear of libel action, was lost for almost thirty years, until one copy of the manuscript was discovered late in 1979.

  In a Preface for this, its first publication, the author details inimitably the genesis of the work — and, even more extraordinarily, displays in the novel itself all the by now perennial Raven themes and tensions.

  Preface

  In the summer of 1950 I was employed, during much of the Long Vacation, as bear-leader to the erratic and erotic son of an hysterical millionairess. The more satyr-like wagged the son, the more volatile waxed the mother, and vice versa: and so the thing went on, in a quite unstoppable spiral, gyrating ever faster and fiercer, until the day I got the sack for failing to give proper account of my expenditure on Master Cherubino's laundry at the Grand Hotel du Palais in Biarritz, whither my employer had propelled us because the Windsors and Elsa Maxwell were to be there for the season.

  Back home and in deep disgrace with the tutor of my college (who had procured the job for me through the college solicitors in the hope, now absolutely undone, that I might pay my Buttery bill), I settled down to spend the rest of the Long Vacation, which should have been dedicated to Plato, in turning my cockayne summer into a novel. By November the tale was finished, professionally typed (on credit) and titled: A Passage to Biarritz I called it, in the hope of annoying an Honorary Fellow of my college called E. M. (Morgan) Forster, whom I toadied with the rest but secretly considered to be an idle, pampered, sanctimonious and spiteful old man, pathologically mean with money and for ever sucking up to the working class.

  I submitted my novel to my friend Roger Lubbock of Putnam (London), who very properly refused to publish it on the ground that it was libellous. I had barely troubled, as he pointed out, even to change people's names. Well, I said, would Putnam, as a handsome gesture to an aspirant author, at least foot the typist's bill? No, Putnam wouldn't (and serve me right for my nasty thoughts about Morgan Forster). But what Putnam might do would be to reconsider the book, if I would take it away and rewrite it, altering place, time, incident and nomenclature to a point where the thing could begin to be called fiction.

  To complete the first version I had scanted my studies of Plato: to complete the second I now totally neglected my Fellowship Dissertation. I was not born to be a Scholar, I told myself, but a Alan of Letters — which would pay a great deal better. In the intervals of writing novel reviews for The Listener (a job I had obtained as a reward for amusing Morgan's friend J. R. Ackerley, the Literary Editor, with scabrous stories about Morgan) I laboured to bring A Passage to Biarritz within the bounds of publishable propriety. And by the Christmas of 1951 there it was, my lepidum novom libellum, modo expolitum, newly re-pumiced in text and texture, re-titled An Inch of Fortune, and all ready for re-inspection by Roger Lubbock of Putnam.

  Roger liked it; a contract was about to issue; a cheque for £50 (enormous wealth in those days) was as good as in the post — when Roger's superior, a long, costive, creaking number called Huntington, a kind of thin-skinned crocodile, developed cold feet. The book was still, he said, libellous, although the lady (to my mind) had been clothed in seven veils, and Venice (which I had visited for the first time the previous April) substituted for Biarritz. None of' this sufficed for Huntington. Defamatory, he said; and in any case far too brash and very, very lewd. But of course, if Raven would care to take it away and rewrite it... Raven would not. He had had enough, if only for the time, of being a Man of Letters, and had decided on a preliminary career of action instead: after all, it would pay a great deal better. As indeed, though indirectly, it did. Five years with the Regular Army in Africa and Europe were a far better introduction to both life and letters than hanging round Grub Street, which is what I should have done had my novel been accepted; and the bustle of camp and tavern was in every way more invigorating and educative than fugging in King's College, Cambridge, while it rotted to pieces of tertiary socialism, which would have been my lot had I been invited to continue my academic career. As things were, when the time came for me to leave the Army (slow horses), I had a world I could write about and a style I could write in, this being rooted in the Army's common sense and unrivalled rule of composition — 'Be Brief, Neat and Plain.' And so I conclude that it was a good thing that I abandoned my Dissertation for my novel and an even better thing that I abandoned my novel to go for a soldier. But what of the book itself, An Inch of Fortune? What happened to that?

  It vanished altogether. What remained and still remains is the original book, A Passage to Biarritz, which had been renamed An Inch of Fortune for working purposes even before I began to revise it and should, I think, retain that title now.

  Rejected by Putnam, by Roger Lubbock and the scaly Huntington, rejected even by traitorous me, it yet survived at the bottom of tin trunks and cricket bags, in cellars and in baggage holds and under the stairs of distressful lodgings, until one day it surfaced from beneath a pile of Racing Calendars and Loeb editions of Plato's Dialogues. A clear sign from the gods that it was time to attend to it again; so I gave it to Anthony Blond of Anthony Blond Ltd. (as it then was), who forgot to read it. Again the poor battered manuscript descended into the underworld, but somehow travelled as the firm travelled, from Chester Row to Doughty Street to Caroline Place to Museum Street . . . where, at long last, as Blond & Briggs Ltd was preparing to remove for the final time, it came to light once more and was for the first occasion in twenty-eight years, positively and sympathetically read.

  Libellous it is no longer (if ever it was), for one cannot libel the dead. Brash it still is, I admit; lewd it still is, I fancy; but in any case at all, or so at least I have been sincerely assured, it is vigorous and it is funny. I very much
hope some few, or even some many, may find it so. For it takes me back to my spunky youth, when I first went to Biarritz thirty years ago, saw Elsa Maxwell plain and even bowed to Wallis Windsor.

  S.R.

  Venice 1980

  Iras Am I not of fortune better than she?

  Charmian Well, if you were but an inch of fortune better than I, where would you choose it?

  Iras Not in my husband's nose.

  Antony and Cleopatra, William Shakespeare

  I

  So here one was, thought Esme, excitement over, tears shed, excuses and promises judiciously inserted, sitting in a train on the dirtiest line in England at four o'clock on the hottest afternoon of the summer. This was what came of extravagance. All his friends seemed to receive last-minute cheques on these occasions, with implied permission to repeat the whole performance. All he had received was a card, which said Mr E. S. Sa Foy was requested to call on the Bursar at seven o'clock on Wednesday. When he had done so, there had been five minutes of otiose discussion (why did he spend money he hadn't got?) followed up by what was on first appearances an even more otiose discussion on the subject of ways and means. His means, it had soon been discovered, were palpably inadequate to the occasion; but it was only when the conversation had been brought round to ways that the full horror of the situation had become evident.

  'So what it amounts to,' said the Bursar with intensity, 'is this. The full amount of your debt to this college is something over two hundred pounds. You are due to take your degree in a year, by which time this bill — as well as next year's — must be paid. You receive your usual allowance in July, and apart from this you have nothing at all.'

  'That's right,' said Esme.

  'I therefore propose — and not merely for the sake of argument — the following arrangement. By July 15 you will give me a cheque for three-quarters of the sum you are due to receive — which will work out at sixty pounds. By September 15 you will produce a further sixty pounds, and as you will not be in residence during the Long Vacation, the quarterly allowance on your scholarship will realize yet another twenty-five. All this will account for nearly a hundred and fifty, which is a good start at any rate. 'But where,' said Esme, 'am I to get sixty pounds to give you on September 15?'

  'I was coming to that,' said the Bursar. 'Presuming even your capacity for borrowing money without qualm or security has by now lost much of its edge, it only remains that you should make some. In order to save sixty pounds you will have to make a good deal. I therefore propose blindfolding my conscience and recommending you for a job — this job,' he said, passing a disagreeable— looking letter, 'so please read that.'

  Esme read it.

  Dear Sir, (it said)

  I am writing on behalf of my client, who prefers, for the time being, to remain anonymous.

  She is looking for a young man, of good intelligence and a responsible attitude, to act as tutor to her eldest adopted son. This boy is at present at school in Switzerland, having been involved in an unfortunate set of circumstances which made it necessary for him to leave Eton at the age of fourteen and a half.

  He returns for his summer holiday on July 5, and will be in this country until the beginning of September. The tutor would be engaged for the whole of this period, his salary would be high, and all his expenses, including laundry, paid.

  His duties would not involve teaching anything to the boy, but he would be required to accompany him constantly, to check any attempts at action of an anti-social nature, and above all to watch for any tendencies towards psychopathic behaviour.

  If you have in mind a young man of suitable disposition who is prepared to undertake such employment, I should be much obliged if you would communicate with me. All information given in this letter is kindly to be regarded as strictly confidential.

  I am, sir,

  Yours truly,

  Frederick Gower, of Gower, Constantine and Gower Ltd, Solicitors.

  'Well?' said the Bursar.

  'I imagine my intelligence is good enough.'

  'And your attitude, your disposition?'

  'At least I wasn't sacked at fourteen and a half.'

  'But you were at seventeen and a half, and in circumstances so discreditable and disgusting that even you have not boasted of the fact to more than about half your friends.'

  'That was a long time ago,' said Esme without conviction.

  'And the little incident that nearly led to your being deprived of your commission?'

  'That was only slackness — an oversight, nothing fundamentally disgraceful.'

  'But most certainly unsatisfactory. Now let's get this straight, Esme. I happen to like you, and there's no doubt that every now and again you do us all credit — more by accident than design of course, but you still do us credit. There was that prize, and your First, and the favourable impression you made on the Warden of Wadham. Against these, there is the incident at Bolsover's twenty-first birthday party, the limerick about the President, the time you borrowed the Treasurer's Bentley, and, above all, this persistent and enormous debt — which in any case is probably a mere thimbleful of weak tea when compared with others you owe in the town and to friends. So what happens? We like you, we mean to keep you, but if only you'd just pretend to make the tiniest effort to pay the merest fraction of your bill, it would be so encouraging. But you haven't, you won't, and you say you can't.

  'So I'm finding you a job. But this letter is from the firm that also handle the college affairs, their client is certain to be well known, and if there's even so much as the merest sniff of an incident, I'll have you transferred to Liverpool for ever. So there,' said the Bursar.

  'But I haven't got the job yet.'

  'All I can say is you'd better get it. I've written to the head of the firm with a personal recommendation of you — your abilities, your understanding, your tact and your social address. If they don't examine your past record you'll hear from them soon enough. So that, for the time being, is that. Now if you'll please go away, taking your bill with you as a little reminder of the trouble you've caused, I'd be much obliged. And, Esme,' said the Bursar, 'please, please, please, no incidents.'

  That had been a wreck ago. Five days later Esme had had a telegram, which said, 'Telephone WEL 4464 re tutoring Terence Fox. McTavish.' So he had borrowed half-a-crown in sixpences from the Bursar, and had been curtly told that Dr McTavish was out on a case but had left word for Mr Sa Foy to ring Badlock 412 (wherever Badlock might be, thought Esme, as he hurried off to touch the Bursar for another half-crown) where he could speak in person, to the Honourable Mrs Sandra Fairweather, his prospective employer it appeared.

  The 'phone was answered by a throaty, empire-building sort of voice, presumably but not incontestably feminine.

  'I want to speak to the Honourable Mrs Sandra Fairweather,' said Esme.

  'Mrs Fairweather speaking,' said the voice, as though the sun never set on it.

  'Oh. Yes. This is Mr Sa Foy here. I think—'

  'Who?' said the voice.

  'Mr Sa Foy. I—'

  'Hurry up,' said the voice, 'my dog's just gone on the carpet and if I don't hit it now, it'll forget why.'

  'Mr McTavish, that is Dr McTavish, said I was to r—'

  'Oh, it's Mr Sa Foy, you might have said so. When can you come and be interviewed? Badlock's no way at all from Cambridge, and the car can meet you at the station. Whatever I think of you it'll be worth the journey, because I can show you my borders — they're magnificent just now, a great stinking mess, by Heaven, it might have been a horse. Will tomorrow do? McTavish will be here — and a sick friend of mine from London who may die — you won't mind that? — he's done it all over the place.'

  'It sounds very pleasant. What time?'

  'Five-thirty at the station. As I say, McTavish will be here. He's made a stench like a sewer. I'll teach you to shit. Good-bye, Mr Sa Foy.'

  'Good-bye,' said Esme.

  Esme Sangrail Sa Foy was twenty-two years old and came of a tota
lly obscure family. (Heaven alone knew where his name had come from.) But his paternal grandfather had been very rich and his father, though the youngest son, had not been poor. The pity of course was that Esme's mother, who adored him, had never possessed a penny. Indeed that was thoroughly typical of his fortune all round. His godfathers were perpetually dying intestate, while his maternal grandmother, who worshipped him, had become a very rich woman due to the death of a cousin — but only a week before she herself gave up the ghost, in consequence of which she had not had time to alter her will. But as Esme, who was then nineteen, had remarked, one was beginning to expect this kind of thing; and indeed it was just as well he received an early inoculation.

  His father was a futile and embittered man who had spent all his life pretending to look for a suitable occupation. Since he had £2,000 a year of his own it had to be exactly suitable — which, after the first month, no occupation ever was. So he developed a grudge about the difficulty of life on £2,000 a year and the general lack of suitability, for a man of his type, of every known occupation, and settled down to play round after round of golf in order to preserve his appetite — which was quite unnecessary, as he was in any case an inordinately greedy man. After he was forty-five he could neither play so well nor so often (age and the war having taken their toll of himself and his companions), with the result that, while his appetite was unimpaired, he became more embittered than ever. In after years Esme would measure his own transition from childhood through adolescence and to man's estate not so much by time or by incident as by the increasing disagreeableness of his father ('that was the year when he thought he had an ulcer').