Nothing So Strange. James Hilton
she didn’t mind if they talked politics or business or art or sport—even if they were intellectual she never tried to match them at it, and if they weren’t she would make them feel a freemasonry existing between her and them in a world, or at a table, of highbrows. Actually she was cleverer than she pretended—not that she was especially modest, but in her bones she felt that men do not like clever women, and what she felt in her bones counted more than anything she could think out with her intelligence. She had had an upper-crust education composed of governess, boarding school, then finishing school abroad, and probably she had forgotten 95 per cent of everything she had ever learned from textbooks; but she had done nothing but travel and meet some of the world’s most interesting people for almost twenty years, and the result was a quick-minded knowledgeableness unspoiled by knowledge. It made her understand politicians rather than politics and diplomats rather than diplomacy. She talked plenty of nonsense, and it was easy to trap her, though not always to prove that she was trapped; and she would go on discussing a book she said she had read but manifestly hadn’t, or she would break up a dull conversation with some fantastic irrelevance for which everyone was secretly grateful.
After dinner I wasn’t anywhere near the nervous man, but when the party broke up it appeared we were scheduled to drop him where he lived, which was in our direction, and because we were also taking two other guests on their way, he sat in front with Henry. We dropped these others first and then he moved inside, but there was hardly time for talk before he began urging us not to drive out of our way, his place was only a short walk from the main road, anywhere near there would do. But my father insisted: “No, no, we’ll take you right up to your door”; so Brad had to direct Henry through a succession of side streets, and eventually gave the stop signal in the middle of a long block of four-story houses with basements. He said good-night and thanked us, bumping his head against the top of the car as he got out.
“North Dakota,” my father said, as we drove away.
“Yes, he told me too,” said my mother. “I’d have known it was somewhere in the Middle West from his accent.”
“Thank goodness for that,” I said, and mentioned the Englishman’s compliment to me.
My father smiled and seemed in an unusually good humor. He wasn’t always, after parties at other people’s houses. He said: “I find my own Kentucky drawl a great help with the English. It makes them think me tough and guileless, whereas in reality I’m neither.”
“And in reality you haven’t even got a Kentucky drawl,” said my mother.
“Haven’t I? How would you know?… Well, coming back to Dakota. I had some talk with him after the ladies left the table. Seems he’s a research lecturer at your college, Jane.”
“Then that’s where I must have seen him before. I had an idea I had.”
“A young man of promise, from all accounts,” my father went on. “Byfleet spoke highly of him.”
My mother commented: “If we’d had any sense we’d have dropped him at the corner as he asked us. He probably didn’t want us to know the sort of place he lives in.”
“Oh nonsense. A boy like that, making ends meet on a few fees and scholarships—nobody expects him to stay at the Ritz. Probably has to count every penny, same as I did when I was his age in New York. It’s good for him, anyway, till he gets on his feet…. Brains, good looks, and a tuxedo—what more does he need?”
“He’s very shy,” my mother said.
“That’ll wear off.”
“So will the tuxedo. It was frayed at the cuffs already.”
My father looked interested. “You noticed that, Christine? I’ll tell you what I noticed—he doesn’t drink, he doesn’t smoke, and he was hoping you’d rescue him from that Hathersage woman he was next to, but you didn’t till nearly the coffee stage…. Must read her new novel, though. They say it’s good.”
That was typical of my father; he respects achievement and is always prepared to weigh it against not liking you, so that in practice he likes you if you are successful enough. Julian said that once, and he was successful enough; doubtless therefore in those days my father thought Brad was going to be successful enough. I remember arguing it out with myself as we drove home.
* * * *
I saw Brad the morning after the Byfleet dinner; we ran into each other at the College entrance in Gower Street. I suppose this was really our first meeting; he would have passed me with a nod, but I made him stop. “So you’re here too?” I said.
“Hi, there. Sure I am.”
“That was a good party last night.”
“Er…yes….” Then suddenly, with an odd kind of vehemence: “Though I don’t like big parties.”
“It wasn’t so big. Were you bored?”
“Oh no, not a bit. I’m just no good at them. I don’t know what to say to people.”
“Neither do I. I just chatter when I’m chattered to.”
“I wish I could do that…. Or no, perhaps I don’t. It’s a terrible waste of time.”
“For those who have anything better to do. Do you think you have?”
He looked as if he thought that impertinent. I think now it was.
“Yes,” he answered, smiling.
“That sounds rather arrogant.”
But now he looked upset. He didn’t like being called arrogant.
“No, no, please don’t misunderstand me…. I guess I just tell myself it’s a waste of time because I can’t do it. Especially amongst all the big shots—like last night. I don’t know why I was asked.”
“Why did you go?”
“Professor Byfleet has helped me a lot, I didn’t like to refuse.”
“He probably asked you on account of my father, who’s an American too.”
“I know. He told me. He asked me what my work was, but I was a bit tongue-tied. I’m afraid I made a fool of myself.”
“I don’t think you did. It’s by talking too much that most people do that.”
“Personally I agree with you.” There was no inferiority complex about him, thank goodness. The truculence and the humility were just edges of something else.
“Anyhow,” I said, “he liked you.”
“Did he?” Because he looked so embarrassed I couldn’t think of anything else to say. He fidgeted a moment, then glanced at his wrist watch. “Well, I must be off to my lecture….” His second smile outweighed the abruptness with which he left me standing there.
When I got home that night I told my mother I had seen him again. She said, with a flicker of interest: “Really? I think Harvey had better ask him here sometime—some evening we’re just ourselves.…”
* * * *
But of course there wasn’t often such an evening. My parents both liked company; my mother preferred musicians, artists, society people, and my father balanced this with businessmen, lawyers, politicians. Without much snobbery, he had a very shrewd idea of who was who and who really mattered; and in England he felt that he still mattered himself, not merely because he was rich, but because few English people appreciated the changes in America that had put him out of favor. So also English and foreign politicians listened to his advice, not with any idea of taking it, but as an act of educating themselves in some mythical American viewpoint which they believed he represented, and they were doubtless relieved to find him a generous host and a reliable keeper of secrets. I didn’t have a feeling that I was ever completely close to him, or that, inside his own private world, he had ever got over the death of his only son by a former wife during the First World War.
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