Nobody could fail to notice the gloom which enveloped him after this discovery and all put different constructions upon it. Jasper thought he had probably been gambling on the Stock Exchange; Poppy, that Mrs Lace was being tough to him; and Eugenia, that he had written an article for The Union Jack which had been turned down. This continually happened to her.
Mrs Lace begged in vain for his confidence. It was obvious in her mind that he must have received ill news from his own country, perhaps the regiments were proving unexpectedly loyal to the usurper, or could it be that Communism presented a greater menace than had at first been feared. She spent much of her time poring over her little girl’s map of Europe and hazarding many a guess, but always ended up in a state of mystification. She was sadly deficient in general knowledge and was wont to declare that politics, and especially foreign politics were dreadfully boring compared to art and literature. Her reading of the newspapers was confined to the gossip columns, news about film stars, and such easily assimilated items of information as the birth in Dumfries-shire of a two-headed blackbird.
Noel was most unhelpful. If she threw out some hint such as ‘I often think that it would be both interesting and enjoyable to visit the Balkans,’ he would merely say, ‘What an extraordinary idea, darling. It’s a frightfully expensive journey, and nothing to do when you get there. I should have thought the South of France was more your dish.’ At first, Mrs Lace felt herself to have been insulted by this remark; did he then suppose her to be a mere foolish butterfly searching for pleasure? Later on, however, having pondered over his words, she read another meaning into them. Perhaps, although unable to take his beloved with him to his own kingdom, he had it in mind to install her in some gorgeous villa on the Riviera, where he could visit her when on holiday. She felt that an arrangement of this description would suit her very well, as she was partial both to dagoes and sunbathing. She wondered whether it would be too much to ask for a flat in Paris as well.
Mrs Lace had some difficulty in luring Mr Leader to the Jolly Roger. He felt instinctively that these new people who had come to upset the whole summer would be unlikely to accept him at his own valuation and he very much objected to the company of anybody who might prove to be his intellectual superior. In the end, Mrs Lace managed to persuade him that he had better come with her by hinting that he might be commissioned to design dresses for the pageant, which surely would not go against his conscience so long as he was well paid. He saw the force of this argument, and besides, it was not really in his nature to resist free food.
When they arrived at the Jolly Roger they found the party already sitting round a tea-table in the garden. It consisted of Marjorie, Poppy, Eugenia, Jasper and Mr Wilkins. Noel was not there, having been obliged to go to London for the day. Mrs Lace was annoyed by his absence but concealing the fact she sat down beside Jasper. There was no chair for poor Mr Leader, who was obliged to fetch one for himself out of the parlour. Poppy and Lady Marjorie then made him sit between them, and asked him, with every demonstration of friendliness, why he and his friends had not undertaken an episode in the pageant.
‘Our political principles forbid,’ said Mr Leader. ‘Thank you, I like it very weak, with no milk or sugar, also we are busy men.’
‘So busy,’ said Eugenia, coming straight to the charge, ‘that you still haven’t been to see the inside of our Social Unionist head-quarters.’
‘Not yet,’ said Mr Leader.
‘Did you know that they have been burnt down?’ she inquired, staring at him with eyes like enormous blue headlamps.
‘Have they really? I say, bad luck.’
‘Thank you, we don’t want your sympathy, we want to know what you were doing the night before last?’
Mrs Lace looked anxiously at Mr Leader.
‘Really, I have no idea at all. What were you doing yourself?’
‘Don’t be impertinent,’ said Eugenia, stiffly. ‘It is curious, is it not, that you, a well-known Pacifist, should have been observed retreating guiltily from the scene of incendiarism shortly after the fire began. How do you explain this coincidence?’
Mr Leader silently waited for Anne-Marie to provide his alibi. Anne-Marie did no such thing. She was far from anxious that Noel on the one hand, or Major Lace on the other, should know of her midnight rendezvous. If it were to be disclosed at this table, Noel would certainly hear it from Jasper, and Major Lace from Mr Wilkins. She could not take the risk.
‘Answer,’ said Eugenia, sternly, ‘and answer truthfully. Lies shall not avail you here.’
Mrs Lace now turned to Jasper, and said, ‘How absurd. That child’s passion for play-acting is great fun of course, but doesn’t it make her behave in rather a babyish way sometimes?’
‘If Eugenia suspects a chap of burning down her head-quarters,’ said Jasper, ‘I think it is only fair to them both that he should be questioned and given a chance to clear himself. After all, he was behaving rather suspiciously that night. What have you to say, Leader?’
Mr Leader held his peace.
‘As I thought,’ remarked Eugenia, ‘Van der Lubbe, I always felt that here was no Dimitroff.’
At this insult Mr Leader got up and left the party.
Mrs Lace, if she felt inclined to follow her friend, who after all had stood by her with some courage, made no move to do so. She must, whatever the cost, keep on good terms with Eugenia until the Grand Social Unionist rally, pageant and garden party was over. Not for any loyalty was she going to sacrifice her chance of riding in that coach.
She now chattered gaily about many things, supplementing her remarks with a wealth of gestures, and presently asked Jasper why that naughty Noel had gone to London so suddenly.
‘That is a state secret,’ said Jasper.
She looked at him significantly, and then, lowering her voice, she said, ‘How goes it?’
‘Only too well,’ said Jasper.
‘He tells me nothing.’
‘He is afraid – of spoiling things for you.’
‘This silence is hard to bear.’
‘A woman’s lot is often hard. You must have courage.’
‘When will he have to leave?’
‘¿Quien sabe?’
Mrs Lace wondered whether Lady Marjorie and Mrs St Julien were in the secret, not that it would help her much if they were. She would never be able to worm anything out of them, even if pride permitted her to make the attempt.
‘I wonder,’ she said to Jasper, still in an undertone, ‘if you would write down his motto for me. I thought of having some little memento made for him, a little keepsake, and I should like to have his motto engraved on it.’
‘Certainly,’ said Jasper, who had been finding out one or two things from Mr Wilkins of late. He took the paper and pencil that she offered and wrote. ‘Bella, Horrida Bella.’ Over these words he drew a crown of exaggerated dimensions. Mrs Lace folded the paper carefully and placed it in her bag. She thought it a wonderfully romantic coincidence that her own name should be incorporated in the royal motto of Noel’s ancestors.
‘By the way,’ said Poppy, breaking in on these confidences, ‘I have been meaning for ages to ask you whether you have made out that list of neighbours for Cousin Maud Chalford? I think she is depending on it, and the invitations must be sent during the next day or two, because the time really is getting rather short.’
Lady Marjorie asked Mr Wilkins if he wasn’t living for the pageant and Mr Wilkins said that he supposed he was.
‘I can’t wait,’ said Lady Marjorie.
‘But I’m afraid you’ll have to,’ said Mr Wilkins, who liked to stress the obvious.
‘The list is quite ready,’ said Mrs Lace. ‘I brought it with me so that Eugenia can give it to Lady Chalford without any more delay.’
‘Do let me see,’ said Lady Marjorie. ‘Oh, good! Wilma Alexander. Of course, I forgot that she lives near here – the Faircombes too. I say, Poppy, there are masses of people we know on this list, will it matter, d’you thi
nk?’
‘I don’t suppose they’ll recognize us in our fancy dresses.’
‘Well, it can’t be helped if they do. I really can’t live the whole rest of my life in disguise on account of Osborne.’ She went on perusing the list.
‘The episodes are all arranged for, now,’ Jasper told Mrs Lace. ‘Each branch of Social Unionism in the county is responsible for one. There will be nearly three hundred Comrades acting, as far as I can make out, for whom we have to provide clothes. We shall have to call a committee meeting to discuss it.
‘Then Miss Trant, the organist, has had a wonderful idea. She thinks we should have an Olde Englyshe Fayre going on at the same time, and she is arranging Maypole dances and art needlework stalls and so on.’
‘Oh! surely,’ said Mrs Lace, ‘Olde Englyshe things are rather a bore, aren’t they? I should have thought that we want to keep an eighteenth-century spirit? Why not a Regency Rout for example?’
‘We like Olde Englyshe best,’ said Jasper, ‘because it is so wonderfully funny. Besides, a pageant must be kept thoroughly lowbrow or it loses all character.’
‘Miss Trant is being very kind and helpful. She is so sweet,’ said Poppy. ‘Do you know her?’
Mrs Lace had spent the eight years of her married life patronizing Miss Trant, whom she regarded as a stupid, common little woman, second only in dreariness to Mr Wilkins. There seemed no end to the pin-pricks which poor Mrs Lace was doomed to endure.
Eugenia, who had sat in silence, munching a twopenny bar, since the departure of Mr Leader, now said she must be off. She hailed Vivian Jackson, who appeared from nowhere, took Mrs Lace’s list of the neighbours, kicked up the Reichshund, who was snoring in the sun; and, still munching, she trotted away. That evening Mr Leader was dragged from his bed by masked men wearing Union Jack shirts and flung into an adjacent duck pond. As the weather was extremely hot he took no chill and suffered nothing worse than a little mortification and the loss of his eau-de-nil pyjama trousers. Nobody else witnessed the affair and Mr Leader did not take any legal or other steps. Nevertheless, the seed was sown of an active resentment against Social Unionism and his treacherous enchantress, Mrs Lace.
14
Lady Chalford sent her motor car to the Jolly Roger with a message that she wished to see Mrs St Julien and Mr Aspect on a matter of extreme importance, and would be greatly obliged if they would come to Chalford House immediately. The car would wait to take them. They entered it with some trepidation, feeling very much like naughty children and wondering which particular enormity had been found out.
When they arrived however, their minds were set at rest on this score; T.P.O.F. was in an almost hysterical mood, but not on account of anything they had done.
‘Dear child, dear Mr Aspect,’ she said, waving the list of neighbours at them, ‘I need your advice, a really dreadful thing has happened – I don’t know when I have felt so much upset. On reading this list I am horrified and disgusted to see that there is nobody on it (not a single soul) whom I could possibly ask inside my house. Do you know that when I had been through it twice I could scarcely believe that there was not some mistake, so I sent for my husband’s agent and he assured me that it is perfectly accurate, every family for miles round is mentioned on it. I had no idea that we lived in such a shocking neighbourhood.’
‘Really,’ said Poppy, with interest, ‘why, whatever is the matter with them all?’
‘The matter?’ said Lady Chalford, in a voice of bewilderment, ‘the matter is that none of them are respectable. I really cannot understand it. Since I stopped going out of course some of the houses have changed hands, but for all that a great many are still occupied by the same families as the ones I used to know quite well, and who were ordinary decent people like you or me. Since those days the most shocking, distressing things seem to have taken place.’
‘What sort of things?’
‘My dear, you may well ask. I tell you this list has upset me more than I can say. Take any name from it at random – they are all alike, they all have some sort of cloud hanging over them. Take for instance the first name, the Alexanders. The late Lord Alexander, my dear husband’s closest friend for many years, has been succeeded at Bruton Park by his eldest son, Lord Bruton whom, as a child, I often held in my arms. Now, what do I learn? This unfortunate young man has been trapped into marriage with a woman years older than himself, a woman from the variety stage; what is called, I believe, a cabaret artiste.’
Poppy gave half a look in Jasper’s direction and they both checked a giggle. Trapped into marriage was hardly the expression to use of Lord Alexander, who was well known to have pursued his lovely wife over three continents before she would make up her mind to marry him.
‘But you know,’ said Poppy, ‘Wilma Alexander is awfully respectable and the sweetest person in the world. You’d love her. They are as happy as kings and she is quite wrapped up in Bertie and the children.’
‘My dear, I am prepared to believe anything you tell me about this Lady Alexander, but I have no intention of inviting her to my house. She may, for all I know, be a most excellent wife and mother, such women sometimes are. But the fact remains that she could never be a suitable friend for a young girl like Eugenia. I don’t want you to think that I am being unduly particular however, so I am now going to read out a few more examples from this unsavoury document.’ Lady Chalford adjusted her spectacles and continued, ‘Here we have the Hon. Adrian and Mrs Duke; Mrs Duke, it appears, is the divorced wife of a colonel, so these two people are in fact living together adulterously.’
‘Dodo wasn’t divorced,’ said Poppy, ‘she divorced her husband, who was a perfect brute to her.’
‘I am surprised that you should think it makes any difference. “Till death us do part,” is the vow. If her husband was cruel to her she could apply for a separation and live in decent retirement for the rest of her life. Pray, my dear, do not interrupt me. Here we have Mr John Shipton, grandson of a man who was publicly accused, in his clubs, of cheating at billiards. I well remember the incident, which caused a great deal of unpleasantness at the time; he was, of course, obliged to leave the country. Now, although it is not the fault of this Mr Shipton that he was born into such a family, and although he may be most respectable himself, I cannot risk inviting him here. Bad blood usually comes out sooner or later, and it is impossible to be over careful where a young girl like dearest Eugenia is concerned. Sir Archibold and Lady Faircombe, poor things, have a divorced daughter who runs a dress-shop in London – not very nice, is it? Major Montgomerie’s son was expelled from Eton – in my day when such a disgrace fell upon a family it was usual for them to go and settle in some colony. Mr Newman’s mother was half German and my husband very rightly refuses to have anyone of German extraction inside the house. Lord George Fairbrother is a well-known drunkard and people say that General Parsley had to leave his regiment on account of gambling debts. I won’t bore you with any further accounts of such dreadful people, there are dozens of them on this paper and I can assure you that it is one long sordid tale of vice, drunkenness and gaming too terrible to think about. I’m sure I don’t know what it is that has come over this unfortunate neighbourhood; anybody might suppose it had been cursed.’
It was now quite evident to Poppy and Jasper that Lady Chalford could not be right in the head; her long seclusion, they supposed, had affected her sanity. She must be humoured.
Poppy said, gently, ‘What a dreadful state of affairs, Cousin Maud. Now, you must tell us what you would like us to do about the pageant and garden party on the sixteenth.’
‘That is exactly what I have been so worried about,’ said Lady Chalford, pathetically. ‘After all the trouble you have taken I don’t wish you to be disappointed, and Eugenia, poor child, has set her heart on this pageant. I think her Scouts or Guides or Comrades or whatever she calls them have all been working very hard too, and I am particularly glad to see that she is doing something for the village at last. I never used to b
e able to make her feel the smallest interest until she joined this Movement, whatever it is. So, taking all that into consideration, I have decided that, although it would be out of the question now to entertain my neighbours at a garden party, there is no reason why the pageant should not take place. We will throw open the park on that day, charging a small sum for charity, and like this your time will not have been wasted, and my little Eugenia will not be disappointed.’
‘That is much the best plan,’ said Poppy, soothingly.
‘But, alas! now I am as far as ever from solving the future of my poor little grandchild.’
‘She is very young,’ said Jasper, ‘and I expect you will find that her future will arrange itself quite satisfactorily.’
Lady Chalford gave him a searching look. She seemed about to say something, but refrained.
As he walked home with Poppy through Chalford Park, Jasper said: ‘The poor old female is evidently as stupid as an owl and as blind as a bat. She thinks I’m going to marry Eugenia and what’s more she likes the idea. Somehow I shouldn’t have imagined, from what I know of her moral standards, that I was at all her dish, quite the contrary.’
‘Perhaps her estate agent doesn’t know much about you yet.’
‘Maybe. I’m bound to say I think she has some exceedingly odd views on the subject of social relationships. She ostracizes all the chaps that have had tough luck, like being caught out cheating at billiards or having lousy husbands, whereas one knows she wouldn’t mind a scrap if they did really wicked things like grinding down the poor. I believe that our generation has far better ethical values than hers had; we see the chaps we like, even if they are hell, and avoid the ones we don’t. It’s the only sensible criterion, don’t you agree, Miss Smith?’
‘You can’t talk about ethical values and moral standards,’ said Poppy, bitterly, ‘because you don’t know the meaning of such things.’
‘I’m a nicer guy than you seem to think,’ said Jasper, carelessly. ‘I never do anybody much harm, and I’m loyal to my friends when it comes to the point.’
Wigs on the Green Page 14