“Why ‘oh’?” he said, but evidently decided against letting her explain. “I’m in rather a desperate state for a pied à terre in London, you see; our house near Wilverton (do you know Wiltshire at all? It’s a delicious county and we have delightful neighbours, Edward Early, the actor, has a place near us, and we see quite a bit of ‘Pogo’ Fairlie, he has that absurd house all over griffins, I expect you saw the photographs recently in Vogue) our place is uninhabitable at the moment owing to burst pipes and a leaking roof and what-have-you (it’s very old; seventeenth century) and I’ve been coming up every other day and sharing with a fellow-hack in Russell Square while poor Margie camps out in the village … but now that you’re in possession here Peggy has very generously decided to let us, Margie and myself, that is, have the flat upstairs. It is furnished. All our stuff, Peggy’s and mine, that is, is still there. (She thought she might let it, you see, at one time.) So all I have to do is to take possession.”
He stopped, smiling with all his teeth and holding out to her his hand, in the palm of which reposed a Yale key.
“Why are we standing up?” enquired Anna, “do sit down, won’t you?” and she sat down herself upon a large bale of faded chintz. “Nell, get Mr. Gaunt a chair.”
“Oh, call me Charles, for God’s sake,” he said, declining with an impatient movement the offer of a cane affair whose seat needed mending. (Nell had given up the idea of telephoning. Unless she shut the door he would hear every word, and even if she did, she could not be certain of privacy.)
“Peggy hasn’t said anything to me about all this, Charles,” Anna began, looking up at him, “in fact, we haven’t seen her since we moved in—”
“She probably forgot. She lives in such a perpetual crescendo since she rocketted to fame on T.V. that she can no longer vizualize the ordinary pattern of existence as lived by normal people. Have you really been here two whole days? I judged from the picturesque confusion that it was last night … you poor housewives … you know, of course, that I’m your ardent champion on the air?”
“We used to hear you quite a lot. We haven’t heard you lately.” Anna’s tone was perfectly placid, but he looked at her suspiciously. (Blast all women who could not be summed up at sight.)
“I haven’t been on the air lately, dear lady; that explains it.” He paused, while his grey face twitched. “But I won’t bore you with a recap, of all the hoo-ha there was some months ago … and I really must get upstairs and open the place up … but what it boils down to is that I’m being given a second chance … oh, they’re not going to let me broadcast to all you unlucky people. They’re quite adamant about that. I’m to be allowed to creep back into the fold via a little programme to the Continent called What’s Wrong Over Here. It’s to deal with things which might be ‘ordered better in England’ … proving there’s nothing wrong at all, really … damn foreigners … what do they know about it anyway, and so on. I’m to be groomed into a kind of poor man’s Gilbert Harding, or so I gather.”
He frowned ferociously and protruded his jaw, while Anna and Nell gaped in fascination. Both shared a passion, seldom discussed and of course never indulged, for the theatre. Any acting, however crude or poor, captured their attention as instantly as if they had been small children.
He relaxed, and gave them his savage mechanical smile.
“Do you usually make tea about this hour in the morning? I know most women like it … don’t let me stop you, if you do … I’m going upstairs now … I’ve taken up enough of your time as it is.”
“Tea?” Anna was following him to the door while Nell, keeping herself in the background, wished that he would hurry up so that she could get to the telephone. “We only finished breakfast an hour ago.”
“My god, whatever ghastly hour do you have it?” pausing halfway up the stairs. “I’m not usually up before eleven.”
“At a quarter to eight,” Anna said, “and I rather dislike tea at any time. What I really like is good tap water. But that’s not easy to find nowadays.”
“You dislike tea? My dear lady, you are unique. You should be signed up at once for What’s My Line.” He was looking down at them, and as he mentioned the panel game they both saw a look of extraordinary venom cross his face.
“If you run into my husband—” Anna sent her voice soaring quietly but easily up the well of the stairs as he disappeared, “just explain who you are, will you? He may think you’re a burglar.”
“So he is,” Nell said in a stage whisper, “or as good as. Mother, is it safe to telephone Aunt Peggy?”
“Of course, if you feel you must. But really—! I wash my hands of it all; I’m going down to wash dishes instead. It’s between you and your aunt; I know nothing about it. I only hope they won’t come to blows.”
In the quiet hall, while shafts of dusty sunlight shone on the bare boards, and vague noises of slamming doors, bumping, and windows opening came from the top of the house, Nell listened at the telephone.
“Lady Fairfax’s home,” said Gardis’s pleasant official tones; this was her version of giving the number and exchange, “Who? Oh. (And how are we this morning?) No, you can’t. ’Cause she’s just gone out. Yes. In her car driven by that dirty Jamaican bastard she’s given a job to. (I can tell you I nearly took the next ’plane home when I saw him. I was born well South of the Mason-Dixon, you know.) Where? ’Fraid I don’t know. Nor when she’ll be back. You’re welcome. See you some time maybe. ’Bye.”
But even as Nell, wondering what to do next, put back the receiver, she saw a shadow come up to the glass panels and heard the bell ring. She opened it to Lady Fairfax.
“Poppet”—She was given two scented and painted cheeks, one after another, to kiss, which she carefully did. “Is he here? He is? I knew it. My poor people, I thought; only arrived two days ago and Charles moves in on them. John rang me up late last night, and that was quite enough to warn me that something was in the wind. He never rings unless he can’t resist gloating over me. He doesn’t say anything, of course, but I know from his voice that he’d got his own way about something. And he’s simply dying to get back into the flat. (He has a real fixation on the place.) But I don’t see why he or his father should have it. They haven’t treated me so well—where’s your mother? No, don’t disturb her. This is all very tiresome for her anyway.”
She stopped, and threw back her head. And there, before Nell’s eyes, her face became silently brilliant, as if a light had been set going within her that caused her personality to glow. The transformation seemed to extend even to her hair, and the poise of her short powerful neck. She smiled, and Nell saw her as she appeared nightly to her many million viewers. She put her hand in its violet glove on the banister rail.
“I can tackle friend Charles by myself,” she said, and went quickly up the stairs.
Nell returned to her typewriter. It was as well that she should be heard industriously banging away, and if, in the pauses of tackling friend Charles, Aunt Peggy caught the sound, her approving ears could catch no echo of the ‘gloating’ voice, talking to his mother over the telephone, that was echoing on in Nell’s mental ear. She knew now that she had been a fool to let him come into the house. He might even—she stopped typing, and slowly coloured—he might even have taken the key from some hiding-place upstairs which he knew of. He had not been gone long enough to open the flat, much less to look at it, but he had been gone quite long enough to find a key. After all, Aunt Peggy had said that he was ‘quite capable’ of doing something sneaky. Nell’s typing increased in speed and vigour while the long clear line of her lips almost disappeared into her flushed face. She had been made a fool of, and the fact that she could still feel the pressure of his mouth on one busily-banging hand did not make her mood any sweeter.
Peggy Fairfax, being the mischievous grown-up child whom her viewers loved, almost tiptoe’d through the open door of their former sitting-room and said, “Hullo, Charles,” to her ex-husband’s back.
She kept her voice
quiet but she was incapable of murmuring; her softest sentences came out in a kind of crystal miniature of the normal pitch; and it was these tiny ‘asides’, uttered while she and he had been appearing on a radio programme some eight years ago, the married pair in a team that discussed current problems, which had brought her the beginnings of fame. Audiences had begun to listen delightedly for ‘Mrs. Gaunt’s asides’. Now that she was one of the six top-flight Television stars in the country she still indulged her viewers—judiciously, of course, and after detailed discussion with her agent and advisers—with these naughty-girl, impudent undertone comments. As she spoke to Charles Gaunt her voice held precisely the note most likely to anger him. She knew that she was being unwise but she could not control herself. Really, he and John were behaving like a pair of skunks. After all, they were two to one.
“Oh … hullo.” He did not turn round at once from the bookshelf he was studying, but she saw him suppress a great start. His nerves were still bad, poor Charles; yet she was pleased about it, as well. What of her own nerves? Didn’t she have to live the disciplined life of a ballerina, a boxer, a nun? She was simply not in a position to have nerves, and this proved how far she had come from the days of Ask Me Another. She wasn’t complaining; she was only telling herself that she too lived under a strain: that he was not the only one.
He had turned round now and was looking at her. She opened her mouth to begin, not quite knowing what she was about to say, but eager to stop him from beginning, when she saw the room.
He was seeing it too; she could tell that he was, and that was why he was keeping quiet; seeing the shabby cream paint and the ordinary yellow walls and the few good pieces they had chosen together and paid for by halves; seeing, over it all, the familiar ten-o’clock light associated for both of them with breakfast in dressing-gowns, the papers, and arguments over John.
She actually moved a step forward to break the moment of quietness and its spell; not because she ‘could not bear it’ its reminder of ‘the old days’ but simply because she really must get things settled at once; in an hour she was leaving for Manchester, to open, that afternoon, a new T.V. department at a branch of a big multiple stores.
“Charles, you are a swine,” she said irritably, “how did you get in? I could have sworn you hadn’t a key.”
“I hadn’t. But I’ve got one now. You didn’t acknowledge my letters so I got to work myself. I warned you I should.”
“I didn’t read your letters. I told Gardis to burn them or put them down the lavatory or something.”
“You can thank her for my having it.” He took the key out of his pocket and held it up to her on its ring and chain. “She types your letters; she saw the amiable John when she went out last night to see if your car had come (he was hanging about your place, apparently), and told him to tag on to Little Cousin Nell—which he did; got into the house by using his famous charm and took the spare key.”
“From the nail by the meter.”
“Exactly.”
“I’d forgotten we always kept it there,” she said slowly. “That’s surprising, you know. I’m always supposed to have such a head for detail.”
“Two years is a long time, at the pace you and I live now, Peggy.”
“Oh don’t be so sickening!” she burst out. “‘You and I, Peggy’! You make me tired. I think it was a filthy trick, simply filthy. I’m not so surprised at John, because I know he’d do anything to get back here, but I’ll sack Gardis tonight.”
“In spite of her useful new step-papa? Sponsor for one of the best-known brands of toilet-paper in the States?”
“Oh, I’ll find some excuse. She knows I’m not satisfied with her. (Who would be?) And you’d better let me have that key back, Charles.”
“Don’t be a fool, Peg. Give in gracefully. You used to be generous on a shoestring; you can afford to be now. What are you making? Two thousand a year? And all Fairfax’s money behind you if your Public suddenly cools off? (They do, you know. I’ve had some.) Let us have the flat. Don’t be a bitch-in-the-manger.”
“You once told me I made my career on a shoestring too. Don’t try soft-soaping me. That I will not stand.”
“All right, I won’t then. Use your brains. You don’t want a court case, do you? I know I haven’t the shadow of any legal right to the place; so what? You’d win your case but how about the publicity? Your dear Public likes to picture you as a mischievous little girl. They’ll like picturing an old meanie who does her unsuccessful husband out of a three-pound-ten-a-week top flat, because she’s jealous of his new wife, even better, won’t they? And what about the life John’s been leading for the last eighteen months? They’ll enjoy hearing about that, too.”
“Leave John out of it. I’ll deal with John.”
“You’ve dealt so successfully with him up till now, haven’t you? He needs a damn good hiding and two years under an old-type sergeant major. That might make something of him. If he goes on as he is now—”
“Perhaps it will—the Army, I mean, or the Air Force … but don’t let’s start on John, Charles. You know how we always end up … Are you going to give me back the key?”
“Oh, shut up for God’s sake … like something out of Rigoletto … of course I’m not. (You’ve got to hand it to John. He’s bright enough. If he could pull himself together …) You can always have the door padlocked, of course. But I’ll take good care the whole of Fleet Street and Broadcasting House knows about it if you do.”
“Poor Charles,” she said, where she stood by the window looking out over the quiet leafy road and distant Heath, “you’re so envious, aren’t you.” Her tone was pensive rather than mocking.
“Not envious. A bit sore, perhaps. Another kind of woman might have taken her husband up with her.”
“I did try, at first.”
“You ‘tried’! Yes, you did, didn’t you … forcing me down people’s throats until they almost screamed at the sound of my name … you were so tactful, you were so apologetic when I didn’t do as well as you’d hoped … and all the time you were on the up-and-up yourself, standing on me and kicking me aside when you’d got where you wanted …”
She was watching him. Now she interrupted in a gentle tone, as if his violence had caused her own to disappear.
“But none of that’s true, Charles. It’s just that you haven’t got star-quality.”
“And neither have you, by God,” he said very loudly, out of a red face, “and you wouldn’t be where you are now if we didn’t live in an age when T.V. blows up a personality like a cheap balloon. … The whole thing’s utterly artificial. I made more real reputation with The Aftermath than all you and your friends on T.V. put together.”
“Oh, now let’s talk about The Aftermath … that masterpiece that nobody under fifty’s ever read or heard of … you talk about my reputation being artificial—your’s is just dead.”
There was a pause. The room looked calm and pretty and did not lack signs that people of culture had lived there. The words hung in the air, and rang on, and on, in the mind’s ear. Their silent sound shocked the two a little. Charles said in a moment, sitting down on the divan with a sigh:
“Peg, it costs me twenty pounds a week to keep Hayter’s going; just to keep it going, with food for myself and Margie and the dogs, and a bit of entertaining (yes, I know that goes on the Expenses Account but you know how things mount up as well), and I’m being perfectly frank with you; I must have a pied à terre in London if I’m to get back on the air. It’s a new programme—they’re going to try me out on it, and if I’m any good I’m going on a publicity tour through the Benelux countries next month, building up goodwill. You know how little work I’ve done lately. I don’t mind telling you it’s been a hellish time for both of us. Margie’s been a brick. In some ways she’s not the right wife for anyone who means to get to the top but she does her best to keep up, poor kid, and I’m grateful. But it’s been difficult, damned difficult, for both of us, and now I’ve got the ch
ance to get back on the air and drop this blasted hack-work for the Sunday rags, I’ve got to have somewhere in London. And I can’t afford six guineas a week for a furnished place, yet I’ve got to have somewhere presentable. (You know how it is.) Now will you be a sport? I can’t put it in any other way. Let me have the flat? It’s lying idle, you can’t need to let it, it’s doing nothing, you might just as well. Will you? I think you owe me something.”
“I suppose John will come here and live with you,” she said.
“Oh, John …” He gestured impatiently. “I don’t know, I suppose so. He seemed very keen to get back here when I mentioned that we might. But you can never tell with John.”
Lady Fairfax did not seem to hear what he was saying. She was holding her wrist to her ear and distractedly shaking it.
“My watch has stopped! Blast the thing. Charles, what’s the time? Is yours right? I limited myself to half an hour for this business …”
“It’s a quarter to ten,” he said.
“Oh … I must go at once …” She was halfway to the door. “I’ve got someone coming at ten past …” Her voice sounded absent and in some way her personality and her attention seemed no longer to be in the room. “Very well, you can have it. It’s against every single wish and principle that I’ve got and I think you and John have behaved like a couple of swine about the whole affair but I’m sick to death of arguing and I simply haven’t the time to do anything else about it … don’t you find that, Charles?”
She turned for a moment, as she stood at the door, “Don’t you find there’s never a minute for anything? I loved it at first, it gave me such a feeling of being really alive, but sometimes now it does get me down a bit … it’s frightening.”
He shook his head. “Males are better fitted for the rough and tumble. I find it exhilarating.”
“I’ll let you have something in writing,” she called as she hurried down the stairs.
He leant back, and lit a cigarette. He was experiencing strong feelings of satisfaction and triumph. His knowledge of Peggy’s nature and habits had served him well; how much in character that last, generous, flung-back cry had been!
Here Be Dragons Page 6