The Lonely Unicorn: A Novel

by Alec Waugh

A separation of six months makes in the middle years of a man's life little break in a relationship. Human life was compared over two thousand years ago by a Greek philosopher to the stream that is never the same from one moment to another. And though, indeed, nothing is permanent, though everything is in flux, the stream during the later stages of its passage flows quietly through soft meadows to the sea. A man of forty-five who has been married for several years may leave his family to go abroad and returning at the end of the year find his wife, his home, his friends, to all appearances, exactly as he left them.

Roland returned from Belgium a different person. He was no longer a schoolboy; he was a business man. He had been introduced to big financiers; he had listened to the discussion of important deals; he had witnessed the signatures of contracts. In the evenings he had sat with Marston and gone carefully over the accounts of the day's transactions.

"There's not much profit here," Marston would say, "hardly any, in fact, when we've taken over-head charges, office expenses and all that into consideration. But we're not out for profits just now. We're building up connections. If we can make these foreign deals pay their way we're all right. We shall crowd the other fellows out of the market, we shall make ourselves indispensable, and then we can shove our prices as high as we blooming well like."

To Roland it was a game, with the thrills, the dangers, the recompenses of a game. He did not look on business as part of the social fabric. He did not regard wealth as a thing important in itself. A credit balance was like a score at cricket. You were setting your brains against an opponent's. You made as many pounds as you could against his bowling. He did not allow first principles to attach disquieting corollaries. He did not ask himself whether it was just for a big firm to undersell their smaller rivals and drive them out of the market by the simple expedient of taking money out of one pocket and putting it into another. Business was a game: if one was big enough to take risks one took them.

Within a month Gerald was writing home to his father with genuine enthusiasm.

"He really is first class, father. I thought he would be pretty useful, but I never expected him to be a patch on what he is. He's really keen on the job and he's got the hang of it already. He ought to do jolly well when he comes out here alone. The big men like him; old Rosenheim told me the other day that it was a pleasure to see him about the place. 'Such a relief,' he said, 'after the dried-up hard-chinned provincials that pester me from morning to night.' I believe it's the best thing we ever did, getting Roland into the business."

Roland, realising that his work was appreciated, grew confident and hopeful of the future. They were happy days.

It is not easy to explain the friendship of two men. And Roland would have been unable to say why exactly he valued the companionship and esteem of Gerald Marston more highly than that of the many boys, such as Ralph Richmond, whom he had known longer and, on the whole, more intimately. Gerald never said anything brilliant; he was not particularly amusing; he was often irritable and moody. But from the moment when he had seen him for the first time in Brewster's study Roland had recognised in him a potential friend. Later, when they had met at the Oval, he had felt that they understood each other, that they spoke the same language, that there was between them no need for the usual preliminaries of friendship. And during their weeks in France and Belgium this relationship or intuition was fortified by the sharing of common interests and common adventures.

The majority of these adventures were, it must be confessed, of doubtful morality, for it was only natural that Roland and Gerald should in their spare time amuse themselves after the fashion of most young men who find themselves alone in a foreign city.

In the evenings, after they had balanced their accounts, they used to walk through the warm lighted streets, surrounded by the stir of a world waking to a night of pleasure, select a brightly coloured café, sit back on the red plush couch that ran the length of the room, and order iced champagne. The band would play soft, sentimental music that, mixing with the wine in their heads, would render them eager, daring and responsive, and when two girls walked slowly down the centre of the room, swaying from the hips, and casting to left and right sidelong, alluring glances, naturally they smiled back, and indicated two vacant seats on either side of them. Then there would be talk and laughter and more champagne, and afterwards.... But what happened afterwards was of small importance. Gerald had had too much experience to derive much excitement from bought kisses. And for Roland, these romances were the focus of little more than a certain lukewarm kindliness and curiosity. They were not degrading, because they were not regarded so. They were equally unromantic, because neither was particularly interested in the other. Indeed, Roland was a little dismayed to find how slight, on the whole, was the pleasure, even the physical pleasure, that he received from his companion's transports; these experiences, far from having the devastating effect that they are popularly supposed to have on a young man's character, would have had in Roland's life no more significance than an act of solitary indulgence, had they not been another bond between himself and Gerald. And this they most certainly were.