The Expensive Halo: A Fable Without Moral

by Josephine Tey

  “Work!” shrieked Daphne. “What at?”

  “He’s got a job on the Morning News.”

  “Darling, you’re not serious.”

  “Quite. And so is he, apparently.”

  “But, darling, Chit doesn’t imagine that he’s going to turn out every day to a job of that sort, does he?”

  “He does. He says he’s going to prove to himself that he can do it. He’s going to earn his bread for a change, he says.”

  “But the Morning News! Why couldn’t he train horses or something like that, if he wanted a job.”

  “He said that was no good. Said that would be just amusing himself. He wants to work at something that feels like work. Mother wept, and spoiled six-months-worth of face lifting in ten minutes. She wanted him to sell cars if he felt he must do something idiotic. Bobby said he’d be damned if he’d stand round all day in a lavender tie and hope, and she told him not to be wanton, and wept afresh. Father said: ‘Commendable. Very commendable,’ and ran away to his pigs in Berkshire.”

  “Darling, you don’t sound very upset about it.”

  “I’m not. Why should I be? It won’t do Chit any harm and will probably do him a lot of good.”

  “But what’s at the bottom of it all? I think it’s simply ridiculous. He isn’t turning socialist, is he?”

  “I haven’t seen any signs of it.”

  “Then it’s a girl.”

  “You’re growing positively astute, Daphne.”

  “I suppose that she earns her living and he feels he has to show her that he can too.”

  “Solomon, Cheiro, and Joanna Southcott rolled into one!”

  “I do think you might have written and told me all about this when I was being bored stiff listening to Hermione complaining about her husband’s habits. Who is she?”

  “I never can be bothered to write letters. I don’t know her name hut she works in a dressmaking shop. You’ll see her to-night. Chit asked if he might bring her.”

  “I hope I don’t die suddenly, or anything, before she comes. Are they engaged? I mean, do we bless them, or what?”

  “Oh, goodness, no. She’s refused him, I think.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Daphne said mildly. It was beyond the bounds of possibility that anyone had refused Chit. “I must say you’ve got a damned dull crowd. What are all the bishops here for?”

  There weren’t any bishops, but there were more august “names” in the party than Ursula usually bothered to collect. They were all friends of hers, but many of them were not the type of friend who can be rung up on the telephone at eight-thirty and asked to a party at nine.

  “I want them to hear Gareth Ellis play. People have been talking about him ever since that rotten little charity concert of mother’s. I think if they hear him once again they’ll really begin to notice him.”

  “Darling, you’re overdoing it. You’re not in love with the creature, are you? Why didn’t you get your mother to give a show for him? I know she gives ghastly shows, but it’s all the Ellis boy needs. How is he here to-night, anyhow? Has he left Regan already?”

  “No, I’ve begged him off with Regan.”

  Daphne said something unprintable.

  “No, I just asked him nicely. How do you do, Herr Stüwe? So good of you to come! Yes, I know it isn’t often you go to anything so low as parties. But I hope you won’t be bored. I have one or two amusing things for you, and at least one interesting one. No, I won’t tell you. You’ll recognise it when it comes.”

  It was when Gareth was playing that Chitterne and Sara arrived. As they came up the brightly lit, deserted stairs, she said nervously: “Why is everything so quiet?” Then, as they came to the wide-open double doors they heard the sound of the violin in the silence. They paused there, looking over the heads of the seated guests to the player.

  “Why, it’s Gareth!” Sara said, and Chitterne turned to look at her, surprised.

  “Didn’t you know?”

  “No. You said once that your sister liked him, but I didn’t know that he was playing here to-night!”

  “Secretive little devil.”

  “Not really. I haven’t told him about you, you know. It’s just the usual family—in separate compartments.”

  They ceased whispering and listened. Ursula could see them from where she sat, half way down the room, and felt a moment’s pleased surprise at sight of this girl of Chit’s, standing so still and aloof in the doorway. Ursula had been an assured beauty too long to cherish any pangs of jealousy at sight of another’s beauty, and she appreciated with the detachedness of a connoisseur the way Sara’s creamy skin contrasted with her dark hair, the poise of neck and head, the lines of her body under the beautifully cut, jewel-less, dull-red frock. But most of all she appreciated her air. Then she forgot her. Presently she would go over and be nice to her. Meanwhile nothing mattered but the fact that Gareth was playing.

  Gareth was playing, as an encore, the thing that had sung itself in his head the night that Ursula had said she loved him. Ursula could not see Stüwe’s face from where she sat, but his head had not moved since Gareth began to play. Did that augur boredom or extreme attention? She knew now what anxious mothers went through when their brats were reciting “Casabianca” at school prize-givings. She would never be funny about them again.

  Gareth’s last triumphant chord flung itself into the silence like a challenge, and as the clapping burst out she saw Stüwe get to his feet and plough his way through the throng of people and chairs, straight to Gareth. With a little happy sigh she turned away. It was all right then: he had been interested. She could safely leave them alone for a little. If Stüwe wanted to talk to Gareth only God could prevent him, and all those enthusiastic females must wait. She went over to meet Chitterne.

  “This is Sara,” Chitterne said, and Ursula made herself charming. She was so happy that she would have been charming to her worst enemy, and afterwards she never remembered what she had said, but Chit looked so pleased that she was sure she was saying the right thing. Afterwards she had an impression that Chit had tried to get a word in, to tell her something, but she had been too excited to listen. In any case it couldn’t have been important.

  Then Tim Grierson came up and she went away to dance with him. Everyone was either dancing or eating (except Gareth and Stüwe, two black figures away in the distance, half-hidden by the grand piano); Ursula had calculated to a nicety how long they would sit still and yet be entertained. Now the younger crowd were foxtrotting in the ball-room, and the august were sampling the dishes at the buffet.

  “I say, Ursula,” Tim said, as they danced, “do you think me an awful stick?”

  “Of course not, darling! I think you’re adorable.” Tim sighed. “Why the sigh?”

  “I know when you say it like that it doesn’t mean anything. Funny, isn’t it? that I shouldn’t like you to call me darling.”

  “Just because I use it to other people!”

  “No. Because I’ve noticed when you like a person abnormally you never call them darling. Calling a person darling nowadays seems to be the equivalent of an admission of antipathy.”

  “What nonsense. I like you enormously, darling.”

  “But not enough. I meant to ask you to marry me, to-night, but I knew it was no good as soon as I saw you.”

  “Tim! You’re not becoming occult or anything, are you? It won’t do you any good in the army.”

  “No; you see, when I came you looked so—so—radiant’s the word, and then when you spoke it was in the kind way you’d talk to your lap-dog.”

  “If I had one. That’s one thing I’ve never done.”

  “I knew then that it wasn’t me you were radiant about.”

  There was a little silence, and then Ursula said in a gentler tone: “I don’t think I’m the marrying kind, Tim.”

  “You don’t know till you try.”

  “Like everything proverbial, that is just nonsense. People with any intelligence know most things b
efore they try.”

  “But even intelligent people must be surprised sometimes. I suppose you wouldn’t consider being engaged to me just to see what it felt like?”

  “It wouldn’t be any good, Tim darling. We don’t laugh at the same things, and that would be fatal.”

  “What’s that got to do with it?”

  “Everything. If you said a loud ha-ha in the wrong place I should probably murder you.”

  “I shouldn’t mind.”

  “Pale hands I loved, and all that sort of thing? No, Tim, really. It would be carrying a hobby to an excess to break off a fourth engagement, and that’s all that would come of our being engaged. Daphne said the other day that no man liked being treated like a ninepin, which was the way I treated them. What makes you so keen to be another ninepin?”

  “You know very well.”

  “Poor Timothy Andrew Grierson,” she said gently.

  He looked a little surprised. “You’re more sympathetic to-night than I’ve ever known you.”

  “Am I such a hard female?”

  “No, not hard, but you’re always so—so sure of yourself.”

  “I used to be,” she said reflectively.

  Sara was dancing with Chitterne and praising his sister to him. “I expected she’d be cold but polite. The frozen mitt in the velvet glove, you know. But she was just everyday and nice.”

  “Oh, no one can be ruder than Ursula when she wants to be, but she is never rude gratuitously. She asked you, you know.”

  “I say,” Sara said presently, “perhaps you’d better not tell your sister that I’m Gareth’s sister, ’m?”

  “Why, in heaven’s name, not?”

  “Well, you know, she’s been very nice to me, but she can’t really approve of me, and she does approve of Gareth. If she knew about me she might stop being nice to Gareth.”

  “I don’t know that that would be a tragedy for anyone,” Chit said, a little dryly.

  “But she might be very useful to Gareth just at the beginning of his career,” Sara said, not following his thought.

  “You mercenary little wretch!”

  “I wouldn’t like to spoil anything for Gareth,” she said earnestly.

  “By this time he’s probably told Ursula all about you. He must have seen you.”

  “He’s probably seen me, but I think he’ll say nothing in case he’s spoiling something for me. We’ve always hung together. He must be just as surprised to see me as I was to see him.”

  “My head’s beginning to buzz,” Chitterne said. “The plot is thickening beyond all decency. Let’s have a cocktail.”

  But Sara would not have a cocktail, even a mild one. “Don’t tell anyone, but I’m not very fond of cocktails.”

  “Darling!” he said, smiling at her. “Then I’ll have one.”

  “What, another!”

  “I haven’t had many so far.”

  “Oh, Chit, you have!”

  “Don’t you want me to have another one?”

  “I don’t mind, if you really want one so badly.”

  “I don’t suppose I do want it badly,” he said, reflectively. “Just habit. You’re reforming me, aren’t you!”

  At the end of the third dance Ursula went back to the drawing-room to look for Gareth and Stüwe. They had surely had a sufficiently long tête-à-tête. But they were not there.

  “Have you seen Herr Stüwe, Coggins?” she asked.

  “Herr Stüwe has gone, my lady.”

  “Gone!”

  “Yes, my lady. He went some time ago, and Mr. Ellis with him. Mr. Ellis left this note for your ladyship.”

  The “note” was a scrap of the lined, semi-transparent paper used in pocket diaries. On it in pencil Gareth had written: “Is he mad? Anyhow, I’m going quietly.”

  Ursula laughed outright. “Coggins, I adore you!” she said, and pushed the tiny piece of paper down the bosom of her frock.

  Coggins bowed accommodatingly, and Ursula went back to dance on air for the rest of the evening. She had looked forward like a child to dancing with Gareth, to having Gareth alone for a little after the party, but her disappointment didn’t matter if Stüwe felt like that about him. Nothing mattered but Gareth.

  Chapter XV

  Sara let herself in with her mother’s latch-key. She had shown her mother Ursula’s invitation, and begged for her co-operation. She would have liked to tell her mother the whole truth; all about Chit, everything. But she knew that the mention of Chit would excite her mother’s alarm and produce a lecture about keeping her place, and no latch-key. So she let it he understood that Ursula was inviting her because she had seen her so often in the shop and wanted to give her some pleasure. Mary Ellis was touched that someone who was almost a stranger should have cared for her daughter sufficiently to invite her to her party, and sympathised with Sara’s eagerness to go, but she was no fool. She handled the invitation thoughtfully, and said: “You’re telling me the truth about this, Sara?”

  Sara had said: “Certainly,” and thought: “It’s your own fault if I’ve left something out.” But she had been grateful and a little moved by her mother’s willingness in planning the evasions which were to make the party possible for her. Her father was to be left under the impression that she was in bed; she often went early to bed, where she could read in peace; and there would be no overt lies on her mother’s part. At ten o’clock she would say as usual: “Will you turn the latch in the door, Father?” And the latch would be turned by her unsuspecting parent and opened by Sara with her mother’s latch-key when she came home.

  It was strange to be sneaking into her own home in the middle of the night. She had never done this before, and she found it pleasant and exciting. She understood the fascinations of burglary now. She wondered if her mother was lying awake listening for creaks on the stairs. But of course she was! She could not imagine her mother going to sleep when anything in the least out of the ordinary was happening to any of her children. She might be a strict mother, but she was terribly fond of all of them. It must have been difficult, all those years, torn between father and them. In the warmth of her gratitude Sara loved her mother consciously. As she crossed the hall and crept up the first flight of stairs, she remembered some of the many times when her mother had come to the rescue and lifted her out of the childish hells which her father had lit for her. There was the time when she had been chosen to dance at a drill display at school. She had had to have special shoes for it. But her father, although the shoes were called drill shoes in his hearing and not dance ones, had refused to produce the money for them. It was “unhealthy vanity,” “posturing with their bodies before the crowd,” “encouraging them to think more about their bodies than their souls”; and much more on the same theme. She was to tell her mistress that she couldn’t have the shoes, and that would be an end of it. Like many another sensitive child in a similar position, Sara had contemplated suicide. Even now, all those years after, she could feel the sick despair rush over her as if it were yesterday. But her mother had bought the shoes for her with money she had saved out of the house-keeping allowance, and Sara had danced, not quite as happily as she might have, perhaps (the glory had been smirched) but secure in the knowledge that her mother would shield her if her father heard about it. She had implicit faith in her mother.

  She was climbing the stairs in the dark lest the light should shine below her parents’ door. They might think that it was Gareth, or Matt, but she didn’t want anyone coming out to investigate. She was still several steps from the landing when she heard her parents’ door open.

  It opened gently, almost surreptitiously, and her first thought was that it was her mother slipping out to see that she was safe.

  “It’s me, mum,” she whispered.

  The light was switched on, dazzling her; and directly in front of her at the top of the stairs stood her father.

  “I thought as much!” he said; and at the triumph in his silly, wheezing voice she realised that he had somehow suspe
cted and had been lying awake all those hours, gloating over the prospect of her discomfiture. “I thought as much, my lady! Where have you been? Eh? Where have you been, and who were you with? Sneaking into a God-fearing house at this hour of the night! Answer me, where have you been?”

  He was a ludicrous sight, standing there in his nightshirt, his spindly shanks bare, and the brown waisted overcoat he wore to business flaring jauntily from the apologetic and depressed folds of the under-garment. His skinny, chicken neck looked even more chicken-like without the whited wall of semi-clerical collar which fenced it in the day-time. Sara’s heart was beating fast with shock and involuntary surrender to her old childish terror of him. But her mind stood aloof, and marvelled that this scarecrow figure should have had the power to make six persons’ lives a misery all those years.

  “What clothes are these you’ve got on? Eh? Where did you get these clothes? Where did you get the money to buy that sort of thing? What are you thinking of; a daughter of mine, parading herself in the raiment of the devil!” The sight of his daughter’s shining figure standing out against the drab, varnished wallpaper of the staircase seemed to madden him.

  Sara clutched more tightly the sleeves of her tissue coat (the coat she had made with such love and joy) and clenched her teeth. Let him rave; she would not be drawn.

  And rave be did, his voice growing higher and higher, his vocabulary becoming momentarily more biblical—and disgusting. At the sound of his raised voice her mother appeared, and tried to interfere in her defence, but she was greeted with a new tirade. Hadn’t he told her to stay where she was? Hadn’t he? He would have a talk with her presently. She was every bit as bad as this wanton here. Who had given the girl the key, eh? This was why she couldn’t produce it to-night! She was a traitor in the house, a traitor to her marriage vows. She was—

  “Hush, Father, oh hush, please!” Mary said. “Mr. Dastur must be hearing every word. You’re shaming us all!”

  “Shaming you! You should have thought of that before bringing shame on my house! Letting your daughter go out dressed like a street-woman Traipsing about London when God-fearing folk are behind locked doors, and sneaking in like a thief with her guilt thick on her.”