by Alec Waugh
A heterogeneous crowd, and yet the friends all of them of one man.
“There must be something they have in common,” she repeated. “I wonder what it is.”
“Need there be?” Graham suggested. “Don’t you think it’s possible to arrange one’s friends as one arranges one’s correspondence—in pigeon-holes? One lot of friends for one thing, one lot for another. Each group an expression of one side of one’s nature, with no more in common with another than the various departments of one’s correspondence, except that they are all written to the same person.”
“Or than the various bottles in one’s cellar, except that they all inebriate.” This last from Humphrey Stirling in a pale blue shirt and double-breasted grey check suit. He looked considerably more like a painter than a stockbroker.
“But surely,” Joan Faversham insisted, “even if one’s friends are just the expression of a particular side of one, each of those sides is related to something central, so that whatever they express must be related to something central, too.”
“That sounds,” Graham laughed, “exceedingly involved.”
Humphrey Stirling’s thin fingers executed in the air a gesture of resignation.
“Why go into it?” he said, “particularly when the cocktails are as good as these. I shall have another. Chris,” he shouted across the room, “be an angel and shake a bronx for me. I’m feeling terribly subnormal.”
A casual observer would have diagnosed Humphrey’s condition to be at the other extremity of the thermometer. And the diagnosis would have been correct.
It was twenty minutes to one, and Mildred Atkinson had not arrived. For the last three days he had found himself looking forward with a puzzling degree of eagerness to her visit. He had had sent to her a dress in which he was certain that she would look tantalizingly divine. He had rung up the Ritz that morning to book a table, and had put himself to the inconvenience of ordering lunch. It would be maddening were she not to come.
From the hall outside the raised intonation of a woman’s laugh increased to an astonishing extent the pace of his disordered pulse. But for a moment only. It was not hers, that gay, birdlike rippling voice. And it was with a simulated warmth of welcome that he stretched out his hand to greet the plump, comfortable, but by no means unattractive woman that Geoffrey Brackenridge was elbowing towards him. Christopher hurried forward to welcome them.
“This,” Geoffrey Brackenridge announced, “is Mrs. Marchant.”
It was the sort of woman that Christopher had expected. She looked safe, and Geoffrey as befitted a materialist was content to judge all things by their appearance. Safe and worldly and mature, comfortably relieved of her illusions. The ideal mistress: that was how she must seem to Geoffrey. But Christopher could not help wondering whether one could both seem a part and be it.
“It was nice of you, Mr. Stirling,” she was murmuring, “to ask me.”
“It was delightful of you,” he replied, “to accept so informal an invitation. Now let me see, what manner of cocktail would you prefer. The pink-looking fellows, let me warn you, are insidious; they taste of grenadine, but are composed of rum.”
Mrs. Marchant did not appear, however, to be particularly interested in cocktails. She was too anxious to explain to Christopher the mingled causes of her unpunctuality.
“If all my guests,” he began to expostulate, “were to have so ceremonious a sense of time . . .”
But she would not let him finish. There had been telephones and housekeepers and the exigencies of a frock.
“But for such a frock. . . .”
And then they had decided to walk through instead of round the park. And they had lingered; it had been so marvellous; the soft, velvet promisings of spring. “The sort of morning,” she said, “when one can think of life as something that might as well go on for ever.”
“And one of those mornings,” Christopher added, “when one could be content enough to let it stop. Life’s so good on a day like this, that it’s hard to think it can be any better. One has had, one feels, all that there is to have and one might as well go home. It’s different when you haven’t it; when you have had it and have lost it, or have never had it, and think that the show may be over before your turn comes for it. It’s in winter, not in spring, that we can’t face the thought of never seeing blue sky again, and sunlight.”
Sybyl Marchant listened approvingly, smiling up at him from beneath the brim of her wide white hat.
“Perhaps you’re right,” she said. “I won’t say you’re not. Perhaps that’s why lovers would be quite happy to be killed when they’re in each other’s arms. They’re frightened of the future, they are afraid that things will never be so good again. And they feel that while there is a possibility of death uniting them, there is the certainty of life dividing them.”
“And does that sadden you?” Chris asked.
“What sadden me?”
“Just that, things altering.”
She shook her head.
“Not now,” she said. “Not now. Once perhaps. But not any longer. And besides, everything doesn’t alter. All this, for instance,” and she spread out her hand sideways in a circling, inclusive gesture. “Comfort and clothes and leisure; these things that everyone is telling us are of no importance; they last. We outgrow our emotions, but not our tastes. I remember going once to Ranelagh fifteen years ago with a cadet at Sandhurst who was very much in love with me. And when I got home my mother asked me how I had enjoyed myself. ’Oh, awfully much,’ I said, and I told her about the dresses, and whom I had seen there, what I had had for tea and what tunes the band had played. ‘But what about Eric?’ my mother asked me. ‘Oh, Eric,’ I answered, ‘he was quite all right.’ My mother laughed at that. ’ My dear child,’ she said, ‘what a thing to say. Surely you realize that what you feel for Eric, or rather what Eric feels for you, is ever so much more important than anything you’ve seen or anything that you‘ve eaten!’ At the time I felt ashamed. But that’s fifteen years ago. For thirteen years Eric has not mattered to me at all. For ten years I haven’t even known what he has been doing and yet I am still liking nice music and nice clothes and still able to enjoy, Geoffrey, the very admirable dinners that you’re nice enough to give me.”
Whether the flush of pleasure that came at that moment into Geoffrey’s face was an expression of delight at hearing on her lips the utterance of sentiments so analogous to his own, or whether it was the smile with which she had spoken them that moved him, Chris did not know. Probably both, he thought. For they were Geoffrey’s sentiments, and sentiments particularly favourable to the development of such a relationship as he was planning. It was also a very brilliant smile, and Sybyl Marchant was an extremely attractive woman.
“And I hope,” he said, “that you’ll be able to enjoy too this quite respectable cocktail which I perceive that Robinson is bringing you. Sufficiently, at any rate,” he added, “to make you feel you’d like to come for one another Sunday.”
With a smile Sybyl Marchant lifted the long-stemmed glass and smiled across its rim at Christopher.
“That’s very charming of you,” she said. “But it won’t be the cocktails only though that’ll bring me back.”
“As long, anyhow, as you come back!”
“Which you won’t be wanting me to, if I keep you any longer from your other guests. Introduce me, Geoffrey,” she concluded quickly, “to someone who will be not too great an anticlimax after our charming host.”
• • • • • • • •
Slowly Christopher turned round upon his heel. Things seemed to be going well enough. As far as he could gather there were no harassed silences. People moving about all right. The various groups were not too static. Joan Faversham had been a little too long perhaps with her fiancé, but then when people were engaged . . . and there was Lady Heresy who had asked to see his pictures and might be encouraged into a commission.
“Miss Mildred Atkinson.”
For a moment Ch
ristopher blinked dubiously at the somewhat too strikingly attractive person that Robinson was announcing to him. Who was she? Where had he met her? Why, of course. His brother’s latest. He recalled the details of that agitated visit. So nice and Victorian of Humphrey, he had thought, to have an affair with a tea-shop girl. Men were getting such snobs nowadays in these things, that in a few years’ time they would be refusing to sleep with anyone without a title.
“Ah, so you’ve come, how nice of you,” he said. “Humphrey told me that you might be coming. And here he is to help you decide what sort of cocktail you’d prefer. I can recommend the pink ones, but with a caution.”
She half stretched out her hand to Humphrey, then awkwardly withdrew it, and for a moment the conventional insincerity of welcome failed him.
“So you’ve come,” he said. “I—I was afraid you wouldn’t.”
“And now that I have, you don’t know what to do with me.”
She was as nervous as he was, but the conditions of struggle under which she had been reared loaned her a superficial truculence: a veneer of ease that restored to Humphrey his usurped assurance.
“I thought,” she continued, “I’d make you feel awkward.”
“A person,” he said, “as charming as yourself could scarcely fail to.”
She wrinkled scornfully the smooth, clear skin about her nose.
“Oh, yes!” she said aggressively.
“You must remember,” he said smilingly, “that this is the first time I have seen you—how shall I put it?—with untied wings. But as I have arranged that we shall lunch together at the Ritz . . .”
“What?”
“I had hoped,” he said, “that you would have been so thoughtful as to keep the rest of the day free.”
He spoke the words casually enough, but in the eyes that met hers unwaveringly was written the sure promise of intention.
“In the meantime,” he said, “let me introduce you to Lord Heresy, he’s a nice man, I think you’ll like him.”
Her eyes widened as he placed a hand upon her arm. It was a cheap way, he supposed, of making an effect. Still, what was technique if not the adoption of one’s method to one’s material? And it had made an effect all right; it was probably the first time the poor child had ever met a titled person.
“If only,” he thought, “women didn’t make us despise ourselves for the weapons we have to use to get them.”
“May I introduce you, Heresy,” he said, “to a very charming friend of mine, Miss Mildred Atkinson.”
Into Lord Heresy’s face, as he turned towards them, came quickly a hot gleam of pleasure. At last. Here at last was the sort of thing he had been looking for. A Bohemian party, his wife had told him. And he had come expecting to meet a quantity of exciting-looking women; flamboyant and easy of approach. The sort of thing one saw upon the films: with whom he would be able to amuse himself while his wife was examining this painter fellow’s pictures: with whom perhaps . . . well, after all, one never knew.
Instead of that he had found himself in this nondescript crowd . . . these . . . well, what was one to make of them? . . . Some of them seemed the sort of fellows one might meet any day at Boodle’s. And there were others whom one would scarcely trust to black one’s boots. While as for the women ... he supposed they were all right. They were pretty enough, well-dressed enough. But they weren’t what he had expected. He had just been wondering whether he could not conveniently get away. . . . Lucky he hadn’t. Wouldn’t have missed this girl for anything . . . . His breath began to come more heavily as the brown eyes looked steadfastly, inquiringly into his.
“Awful squash here,” he managed to mutter. “Let’s go and sit in the corner over there.”
As he led her across the room towards the high-piled heap of cushions, his fingers through the thinness of her frock pressed significantly the soft flesh of her upper arm.
• • • • • • • •
“And is that all?” Lady Heresy was asking.
For a moment Christopher hesitated: then walked towards a farther easel.
“There’s only this,” he said, and pulled a long strip of faded blue brocade from the tall gilt frame it covered. It was the picture with which he had made his name; and Lady Heresy, as had so many others in the past, gave a little gasp as she looked at it.
On the catalogue of the exhibition it had been labelled, half ironically, Love—1906. And there was not a detail of hair and fashion that did not contradict emphatically what was the fashion for every woman in that room. Instead of the sleeked Eton crop and shingle, the masses of black hair had been heaped high and wide about the face like the hair of a drowned woman still under water. Instead of the straight-falling stream-line effect of the modern frock, there was the tight low-cut bodice embellished with wreath upon wreath of rose-pom-pom, to accentuate the swell of the high corseted bosom. Instead of the knee-high skirt with its shapely curves of calf, one silk-shod ankle alone was visible beneath the black velvet that fell wide and bell-shaped in funereal folds from the high-held waist. Round the white column of her throat instead of the tight string of imitation pearls had been set carelessly across one shoulder an immense ostrich feather boa. There was nothing in the picture that did not date; nothing equally that was not dateless. In the dilation of that dark eye’s pupil, in the glint of moisture on that red, half-parted mouth, in the sleek transparency of that ivory-pale skin, in the finger’s tightening upon the handle of the jewelled fan had been set and for all time on record the fatal, the inevitable appeal of the woman for whom nothing beyond love exists, the woman who is born for love: to love and to be loved; to whom in terms of love the panorama of the world’s activities is presented; to whom money and the race for money exist only as a means to love; to purchase or to decorate: for whom music is no more than an excitant to love and literature a commentary: faithless and faithful there is nothing that for love she will not surrender, since nothing is of more worth to her than love; nothing also that she will not betray when love has passed, for where love is not, all is valueless: the woman who, if she destroys life ultimately, will make it worth living first.
Joan Faversham, standing on the other side of Christopher, shuddered a little as she looked at it. There, in the droop and rhythm of those languid eyelids, in that protruded ankle, in those half-parted lips were symbolized those elements of life that frightened her. There was the record set of that long bondage that most men at one time or another seem fated to undergo, of that spell that so few women can exert, and that for which so many women suffer; that spell which she had not laid, she knew, on Graham; which lay beyond her capacities, in that unknown, uncharted country in which it was her prayer never to have to tread.
With a shiver she turned away.
“I must be going, Christopher,” she said abruptly. “It’s been heavenly. I have enjoyed it so.”
“You can’t think how much less enjoyable it would have been without you,” and across his face flickered that quick characteristic smile, so diffident and yet so winning, which gave to his compliments, however obviously insincere, a peculiar illusion of reality. “Of course, this isn’t quite true,” that smile appeared to say, “but if it were, how jolly, and now I come to think of it, I’m not sure it isn’t.”
“And let’s see now,” he added, “where’s Graham got to? Ah yes, over there, talking to my old friend Gwen Lawrence.”
She followed his glance across the room.
“It looks,” she said, “as though Graham knew her.”
“It was in his company,” Christopher Stirling informed her, “that I met her again the other day. It must have been ten years nearly since I’d seen her.”
“Really!” And by an immense effort Joan contrived to keep the intonation of her voice natural. “I suppose,” she said, “that was at the Gloucester Galleries?”
“The Gloucester Galleries? Where are they? No, it wasn’t there. Where was it? Let me see. Ah, yes: Romano’s; they were lunching there together.�
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Joan did not start or gasp; did not betray, in fact, the slightest sign of interest or surprise. She had mentioned the Gloucester Galleries, because Graham had told her that he had gone on there after he had seen her home, because it had seemed to her the only place where he could during the last few days have been seen with any woman other than herself. She did not start or gasp. But where her hands were clasped behind her back she could feel the pulse in her wrist throbbing furiously.
They had been lunching together there.
She tried to think back over the past few days. On what day could it have been? She had thought herself to know so well the details of Graham’s diary.
Saturday it could not have been. Saturday clearly was impossible. He had been playing football against Bedford; he had caught a train from St. Pancras at twelve o’clock.
Friday? Friday was the day of the staff meeting. And always on Friday he made a point of lunching with one or other of the departmental managers to discuss such points as might be on the agenda.
Thursday? No, it wouldn’t have been Thursday. On Thursday afternoon he had lunched at Lady Caldwell’s.
Wednesday was the day he had told her he could not lunch with her because he had a business lunch appointment.
Tuesday? It couldn’t have been Tuesday. Tuesday had been the day of the wretched evening that should have ended at the Gloucester Galleries.
Monday? It couldn’t have been Monday. On Monday he had lunched with her father at their club.
And yet one day that week it must have been, because he had said when they had met that morning: “By the way, I met Christopher Stirling this week and he asked me if we would come to one of his cocktail parties. What about pushing along there now? It might be rather amusing, don’t you think?”