“You know, my chief objection to Ursula,” Julia said, popping the last piece of sandwich into her mouth with a snap, “is that she’s always one ahead of everyone. As soon as you think you’ve caught up with her you find she’s on ahead again. It can’t be anyone we know or Connie would have recognised him.”
“Peter!” Daphne called across the width of the room to Hudson who was talking to Ursula at the rear window and shaking a container, “bring me something that tastes like a cocktail. That last thing was only fit for a mothers’ meeting.”
“Don’t you think you’ve had enough, darling?” Julia was beginning to be a little frayed.
“I’ve never had enough. Thank you, darling,” this to Clive Forrester, who had brought her cocktail. “Now if you want to exercise that famous Foreign Office tact, for God’s sake take Julia away and give her another sandwich to keep her tongue busy. She thinks she’s Mata Hari.”
“Hallucinations so early in the day?” asked Hudson, sitting down in the place Julia vacated. “It’s you who should be having hallucinations, you know.”
“Not me. I have a head like teak. I say, Peter, you’re a great friend of Grandison’s, aren’t you?”
“The editor, you mean?”
“Yes. Aren’t you great friends?”
“Well, he would say so if I didn’t.”
“Be an angel and remind him that he promised me a contract for six articles.”
“Grandison would promise anyone anything after dinner.”
“Indeed he wouldn’t! It took me half an hour to bring him to the point. And now he seems to have forgotten all about it.”
“What were the articles going to be about?”
“Oh, anything. Drink, if you like.”
“That’s an idea! I didn’t know you could write.”
“I can’t. Not even my name on a cheque at the moment.”
“All right. I’ll see what I can do.”
“You are a lamb, Peter. When Lola gets divorced I’ll send you a little something to help pay the damages.”
Peter glanced across the room to where Lola Kennet, thin and dark and angular, like some rather wicked insect, was talking to Wilmer, the trainer.
“You’re post-dating the cheque rather, aren’t you?”
“Not a bit of it. George Kennet may be a fool about Lola, but he’s not an everlasting fool. What’s Wilmer doing here?”
“On his way home from Kempton. Wants to pump Ursula about Double Bass’s chance tomorrow, I suppose.”
“He seems to have forgotten it,” Daphne said maliciously, watching the trainer’s absorption in Lola.
“Oh, no, he hasn’t,” Peter said serenely. “That’s camouflage. Wilmer’s an adept at it. He’s never been known to look rattled in his life.”
“I suppose we’ve all come for something,” Daphne said, her mind taking a new flight on the wings of the spirit in her glass. “I carne for a drink. What did you come for?”
“I came because Lola didn’t want to go home yet.”
“And Clive came because I should be here, and because, he likes to be seen at the proper place at the proper time. Why did Mark Welby come, do you think?”
“He’s hoping Ursula will go into partnership with him in a flower shop he’s thinking about.”
“Green carnations, I suppose! He needn’t waste his time. Ursula’s strongest complex is being an individual. She hates being a partner.”
“Why is Julia here?” Peter asked, liking the game.
“The usual, of course. Snooping.”
“Well, we all do it. What does she want to find out at the moment?”
“Who Bonjie’s successor is.”
“And who is he?”
“He’s a Russian refugé. Ursula picked up in the Berwick Market. She was so fascinated by the fact that he wasn’t a prince that she carried him off there and then and gave him a meal. Ridoffsky’s his name. He doesn’t dance, arid he’s never washed dishes for a living, and he hasn’t lost a fortune in Russia, arid altogether he’s absolutely unique. The only drawback is that he doesn’t talk English, and Russian is so difficult to learn.”
“Did you tell Julia that one? I don’t wonder she was looking peeved.”
“I don’t see what’s wrong with it. It’s quite a good one, if Ursula chooses to be interested in someone, I don’t see why the whole world should come rushing round like flies to treacle.”
“You mean you don’t see why she shouldn’t tell you.”
“Your psychology’s marvellous, isn’t it, darling?”
“Well, I’m a novelist, aren’t I?”
“So your publishers say. Did you read the notices of Cedric’s exhibition, by the way?”
“Cedric bribed the critics with champagne,” Clive said, overhearing. “They were so tight they couldn’t see, and couldn’t admit it. So they had to say everything was marvellous in case they said something more than ordinarily foolish.”
“Did you hear that he got the Duchess of Bride to fork out for the expenses of the gallery?” Mark said from the fireplace, where he was draped about the mantelpiece.
“Are you talking about Cedric Byron?” Lola asked, ceasing her efforts to make Peter Hudson jealous. “So that’s why he put Ellen Bideford into that serpent tableau at the Jungle Ball! I wondered what he had in his eye when he chose Ellen. It was so patently riot Ellen!”
‘There was a little laugh.
“Darling, did you see her at Raoul’s last night with Freddie Owen?” Julie said. “In a frock that looked like a telephone cover that someone had sat on.”
“What does she spend her money on?” some-one asked.
“Cocaine,” Lola said.
“Oh, is she trying that now?”
“I expect she finds it difficult to get a kick out of anything at this late stage,” Mark said.
“Yes. Saturated solution,” agreed Peter.
“You should have seen Freddie holding her as if he had picked something out of the garbage can!”
“That shouldn’t worry Freddie,” someone said, and there was another little laugh.
“Do we never say anything nice about anyone?” Ursula said.
At the tone of her voice there was a pause of astonishment.
“Darling, you haven’t been saved, or anything have you?” Lola exclaimed.
“A soap box, please!” cried Mark. “Any gentleman provide a soap box?”
“I shouldn’t, really, Ursula, you know. Hyde Park corner isn’t your style.”
“What is my style?”
“More Borgia than Booth,” Daphne said.
Ursula glanced across at her. “Cheap alliteration!” she said, but she smiled. They saw the smile, and the conversation gathered itself together and flowed on in its usual groove. For a moment they had almost thought that Ursula was serious.
But the interruption in the tenor of their thoughts, slight though it had been, allowed memories of outside affairs to seep in, and one by one they began to take their departure, casually, with a shouted word of farewell or a mere gesture of leave-taking.
Ursula, watching them go with an aloofness which was now conscious where it had once been inherent, considered them with a good-natured cynicism. Amusing, were they? Some of them. But what more? What more? Surely there must be something in themselves, below that mask of clothes and prattle and savoir faire.
There was Peter Hudson; he had made a reputation with his work; but that belonged to what she thought of as the mask; that was all in the shop window; what was Peter Hudson like himself? Would you rely on him in an emergency? He would be very efficient and kind, of course; and afterwards the incident would be found imbedded in one of his novels. And they were all like that, weren’t they? Their standards were as pitilessly selfish as if they were a panicking mob tramping their fellows under their feet. And they had not the excuse of panic. The only person on whom her mind in its new mood rested with anything resembling approbation was Wilmer. He at least was honest (as horsem
en go) hard-working, healthy, self-respecting; all the good dull virtues she had always professed to find so boring. But Wilmer, although she knew him well, could hardly be called a friend of hers. She had never belonged to a set, certainly; her tastes were too catholic for that; but Wilmer was outside her general daily round. She couldn’t take any credit for Wilmer.
When her guests had drained away the residue proved to be Daphne, firmly entrenched on the sofa, and Clive Forrester looking wistfully at Daphne and longing to go.
Something in the wriggle of Daphne’s shoulders against the cushion indicated that she was settling down for a further session. Clive became desperate.
“I say, Daphne, I’ll have to go, I’m afraid. I’ve got to go to that Roumanian dinner, and it’s at seven-thirty.”
“Good-bye, darling.”
“But aren’t you coming?”
“No, I’m going to have another cocktail and talk to Ursula.”
“You may have six other cocktails, but you’re not going to talk to Ursula,” Ursula said. “She’s going to rest till dinner.”
“Darling, I had no idea you were so decrepit! Have you gone through all the ritual? ‘Place the mirror in a good light and dispassionately examine the countenance. Are there faint lines round the eyes? Is there a slight sag in the flesh at the corners of the—’”
“I say, Daphne, I know seven-thirty is an ungodly hour to have dinner, but it isn’t my fault. Do let me see you home before I have to go and climb into a boiled shirt.”
“Oh, Clive, darling, do go away. You’re exhausting.”
Clive got to his feet (he made a queer straight-up-and-down effect when he stood, rather like a perambulating column) and regarded her more in sorrow than in anger. “Well, I shan’t see you till to-morrow night.”
“If then.”
“But, Daphne! We’re going to dine and dance to-morrow. You promised!”
“Oh, yes, so I did. But I may be dead of cholera by that time.”
“You can only get cholera if—”
“If you argue any more, Clive, she’ll call it off here and now. I should beat it if I were you.” Clive beat it.
“Fancy having that for your steady!” Daphne said elegantly as the door shut behind him.
“Well, have your cocktail. There are glasses and a shaker behind you.”
“I don’t want a cocktail. What I want is a little information. Who is the man you’re keeping up your sleeve?”
“I!” Ursula turned from throwing a cigarette-end into the fire, and stared. “I’m not in the habit of keeping things up my sleeve.”
“I know you’re not. That’s why I’m wondering.” She eyed Ursula through narrowed lids.
“I’d rather be shot straight away without the third degree business.”
“Well, tell me: who were you at the Wigmore Hall with yesterday?”
“The Ellis boy.”
“Who’s that?”
“Regan’s violinist.”
“What! That funny little boy with the red hair?”
“That’s the one. Is that the man I’m supposed to be keeping up my sleeve?”
“Oh, darling!” Daphne laughed a laugh of pure amusement, clear and ringing, a rare demonstration on her part. “Oh, darling, I apologise! It’s all Julia’s fault. Give Julia an inch and she’ll make an ’ell of a lot. And there’s no one else on the tapis?”
“No one else.”
“That sounds convincing enough! I think I’ll catch Clive on the doorstep if I hurry. No use paying for a taxi when there is someone handy to do it for one. ’Bye, darling. Did you count whatsisname’s freckles, by the way? As big as sixpences, aren’t they!”
“Now, if she meets him on the stairs,” Ursula thought, amused, “she will be given furiously to think again.” And she wondered whether in that case Daphne would have the nerve to come back for another cocktail. She thought that she probably would. Daphne had nerve for anything.
But it was a quarter of an hour later that Florence opened the door and said that there was a Mr. Ellis downstairs; should she show him up? And presently Florence ushered him in. He stood shyly, a few steps inside the room, his hat still in his hand, his dark overcoat unbuttoned and his violin case tucked under his left arm. “A funny little boy with red hair”: Ursula thought, as she went to meet him. That is how a stranger saw him. And to her he was so dear and so lovely that her heart melted into a warm liquid place in her breast at the very memory of him.
“Throw your hat and coat down over there somewhere, and come over to the fire.”
“I’m afraid I’m late,” he said. He did not tell her that he had wasted almost ten minutes walking round the square trying to get up sufficient courage to ring the bell.
“Just a little, but I’m glad you are. It gave me more time to get rid of the tea-time crowd. Are you cold? What kind of cocktail do you like?”
“Oh, I won’t have anything, thank you.”
“But you must have something!”
“I’d rather not now, please. Perhaps after I’ve played.”
She had said: “Play the things you like best,” but he hesitated. He had been told at college that his taste was outré to the point of being bizarre, and to-night he wanted to play something that might please her. She was his hostess, and—oh, well, he just wanted to please her. He asked her what kind of music she liked.
“Anything except variations on a theme,” she said
“Don’t you like variations?”
“I hate them. They’re like—like fretwork. Niggling.”
He laughed aloud. “You should have a debate with Dolmetsky,” he said. “They’re his passion.” He played some very safe Mozart, an elegie by Fauré, and a Sarasate jota. At first he was self-conscious, but presently he forgot her. On his face came that intent look which had first charmed her at Regan’s rehearsal. When he looked like that, unconscious of anything but his music, he seemed suddenly defenceless against the world, like a person asleep, and one was moved to the same impersonal tenderness as one is on watching someone asleep; he had discarded the shell of artificiality which we wear in our awareness of the world, and had become an absorbed child, his being laid bare for any passer-by to view. His raptness had none of the self-induced trance of the platform performer; it was the grave, self-forgetting interest of a child; Ursula had seen the same look on the face of a small boy building bricks alone in a nursery.
His head was silhouetted against the blue of the uncurtained window, and the lamplight shone down on it and made it a flame. It was a completely stained-glass effect; a young saint and martyr on a blue background. It was a beautiful blue, the window; but sad, unsatisfying. A rush of pity flooded her love for him; he was young and vulnerable, and life was bitter, and someday he must die. The cruelty, oh, the cruelty of it! A log fell, and the bitter tonic scent drowned the sweetness of the lilacs. She mocked at herself. She was being maudlin. She, Ursula Deane. Gareth was not in the least the fragile and defenceless martyr. He was a young wretch who had not hesitated to make fun of Jan Vek; he was a still-growing boy with a very healthy appetite for food. It was the fragility which had first made her notice him certainly, but it was the young wretch who had forced her interest that morning at Regan’s. Funny to think that if he had not grimaced at the pianist she might never have thought any more about him. Or—would she?
He finished playing, and she was so enthusiastic that he said: “If you are so fond of music why don’t you go to the opera?”
“Opera gives me giggles. But how do you know I don’t?”
“Well, I’ve seen your people there often, but I’ve never seen you. They go a lot, don’t they?”
“You mean mother goes and father is taken. Mother goes because the opera is the only place in London nowadays where you can wear a diamond fender without looking a fool. It’s either that or entertaining your husband’s political party, and the opera is much cheaper and less exhausting.”
Gareth looked amused. “You’re exaggerating
, aren’t you? They must like it to go so often.”
“My dear man, mother doesn’t know ‘Rule Britannia’ from ‘God Save The King,’ and father’s favourite instrument is a gong. You’re too trusting, you know. Don’t imagine when you are a big pot and a crowded hall is listening breathless to your playing that all these people came to hear you. Everyone will be there because everyone else is, and they’ll be breathless only because they’re afraid they’re going to sneeze in the pianissimo passages.”
The Expensive Halo: A Fable Without Moral Page 10