Years of Plenty

by Ivor John Carnegie Brown

To his own astonishment Martin felt greatly relieved.

Godfrey Cartmell was prospective Radical candidate for the division. To pass away the time he had been called to the Bar, but he never had any need or any inclination to practise. At Oxford he had, like most people, been President of the Liberal Club, and his faith was nebulous but genuine. He had had the good sense to marry a capable woman who carried him off maternally and saw to it that he didn't hang about any longer, but made his terms with the Whips at once. Viola Cartmell was neither egoistic nor vulgar, but she combined ambition with practical driving power, and she had eaten the bread of obscurity far longer than she liked. Godfrey had chances, but she saw that he had picked up during his first-class education a capacity for doing nothing in a very charming manner. She had already made him a candidate: she intended to make him a success.

The Cartmells were close friends of the Berrisfords, and it was through the connection that Godfrey had been introduced to the local Liberal Association. Now they had come down to look round: the seat was held by a Tory but had sound Radical traditions, so that a change was not impossible. Naturally Godfrey Cartmell spent much of his time with the agent: his wife thought it more tactful not to be too conspicuous at first, for she had resolved that, when the time arrived, she was to direct the campaign. So she had time to play tennis and go for walks and make, quite unwittingly, a conquest.

It was certainly not with any feminine charms that Viola Cartmell won Martin's adoration: rather it was by reason of her difference from the average girl who came to play tennis or to visit the Berrisfords. There was no need to talk down to her or to make conversation, no need to take the initiative and play the gallant male. Viola neither patronised Martin, as did the men who came to the house, nor expected patronage, as did the girls. She treated him as an equal and talked about reasonable things; she had ideas and could think clearly. If a man had expressed her views Martin would have been interested, but the fact that they came from a woman rendered them doubly attractive. During the vacation Martin had begun to form a vision of the perfect woman: it had been the ideal that appeals to most intelligent boys at some period of their adolescence, the union of masculine mind and female beauty. He was old enough now to be troubled by sex, not as something abstract that might crop up in a theoretical future, but as a present pain and pleasure: in his growing restlessness he tended inevitably to find his ideal personified in every woman who was not quite a fool, the wish being always father to the thought. Viola Cartmell's masculine attributes, her managing ways, and her power of thought and argument gave him a genuine excuse for setting her on his pedestal. Yet Martin's attitude was one of adoration, not of passion. Quite apart from the manifest impossibility of making love, apart too from the fact that, even if circumstances had allowed, he did not know how to make love, he did not even want to make love. He wanted to be with her, to watch her, above all to talk with her: and that was the limit of his desires.

On the tennis court Margaret and he were too strong for Robert and Viola; accordingly the two Berrisfords fought great battles against the visitors and as a rule prevailed. But they were not invincible. Once Martin and Viola had lost two sets in succession and in the third the score was five-three and forty-fifteen against them. Viola had said, "Now we're going to win," and Martin had performed the most impossible feats at the net, smashing and cutting and getting back for the lob.

Martin finished the set with a perfect drive down the said line.

"Wimbledon," said Robert, making no effort to reach it.

As they went in to tea his partner smiled upon him and said: "You were simply wonderful."

That moment gave him greater joy than he had ever gained from the avenging of Gideon or the conquest of Randall's with fraudulent googlies.

On the last day of his holidays (it is a nice point whether the two months before a man goes up to the university are to be called 'summer hols' or 'long vac') a discussion was held after breakfast as to procedure. Robert was sorry, but he had to give himself to the Ethics: he had one day in which to settle the business of friendship and pleasure (long neglected), and he had discovered to his horror that some pieces of Aristotle must be learned by heart with a view to translation. Margaret had to go to a dentist at Plymouth. At last Martin asked Viola Cartmell to come out on the moor and to his joy she assented.