When he pulled himself away, with palpable effort, from the crowd around the tables, and swanned it over to the bar, I downed my brandy and wandered over after him. The bar stools had ugly legs, twisting outwards, and I managed a fairly convincing stumble over one, and knocked his arm just as he was putting his glass down on the bar top.
‘Oh, I say, I’m most frightfully sorry,’ I said. (Do people talk like that still, I wondered?) ‘Have I spilt it? Awfully clumsy of me. Do let me buy you another.’
‘No harm done,’ said the Honourable Edwin Frere. ‘Thanks.’
He named the sort of malt whisky I thought twice about buying even at Christmas, and I named a better brandy than I’d had first time round. I noticed the barman shoot me a sharp glance. I think he put me down as a shyster on the make, and probably thought that I’d chosen a bloody bad victim. We settled ourselves against the bar, gazing over to the roulette room as if it were the Elysian Fields.
‘Haven’t seen you here before, have I?’ said Frere, in a grudging, forced, paying-for-the-drink kind of voice.
‘No,’ I said, nice and casual, but friendly, ‘I’ve only just got back to London. Living it up a bit, you know how it is. I’ve been doing a stint in the Colonies. Australia, actually.’
It would account, I decided, for all my lapses in current upper-class idiom. Frere grunted, I think in commiseration.
‘I thought of Australia once,’ he muttered into his glass, as if confessing a sexual lapse to an Irish priest. ‘You know, contracting out of the rat-race. What’s it like?’
My spirits rose. The sort of person who could talk of going to Australia to contract out of the rat-race was obviously easily fooled.
‘Tophole,’ I said. ‘Sun. Plenty of space. Money.’
A spark of interest crossed his handsome, unlovable face. ‘There is money, is there? Still?’
‘Oh yes,’ I said. ‘I had lots of things going for me there. It’s easy if you know the right people.’
‘Oh, I’ve got contacts,’ said the Honourable Edwin. ‘My uncle was Governor of Tasmania, back in the ’fifties some time.’
‘Couldn’t be better,’ I said. ‘Australians are pretty impressed by that kind of thing, in spite of what they say. Show ’em a title and they grovel.’
A catlike smile crossed his face, but he volunteered no personal information. ‘Tasmania’s a pretty nice spot, isn’t it?’ he said eventually.
‘All right. Pretty. Quiet. Sort of like Devon without the buzz of activity. If it’s money you’re after you wouldn’t go there. Sydney’s your best bet, if you want to make a pile.’
‘I didn’t say I was wanting to make money,’ Edwin muttered gracelessly.
‘You’re crazy if you’re not, with things as they are these days.’
‘True,’ he conceded gloomily. ‘True enough. Trouble with me isn’t not having money. It’s getting through it.’
‘Don’t I know the feeling,’ I said. ‘I remembered Britain as cheap.’
He remained in contemplation of his glass for a bit, then suddenly put it down on the bar.
‘I’ve got to make a phone call,’ he said, and swung off towards a phone in the far corner. Gracious little soul, I thought. I bought myself another drink, calculating that he was more likely to continue talking to me if there was no compulsion on him to buy a round. I looked in his direction. He stood there crouched over the phone, talking urgently; then he gradually relaxed upwards, spread his length against the wall, and began smirking into the mouthpiece. He was a man who was best when he got what he wanted, I thought. At length he put the receiver down and strolled back to the bar, exuding self-love. He glanced at my glass, saw that it was full, and stayed with me.
‘My . . . my girl’s coming,’ he said, oozing a secret smile down into his pale yellow Scotch. My heart leapt up, and it had nothing to do with rainbows in the sky. Surely it couldn’t . . . But I had a sneaking feeling that it just could. I wondered whether to beat a hasty retreat.
‘Perhaps I’d better have a look at what’s going on over there,’ I said.
‘Nothing going till later,’ said Edwin Frere. ‘It’s just small fry there now. Little people, little winnings. Where do your people come from?’
‘Northumberland.’
‘Oh yes? Where did you go to school?’
I told him. He was unimpressed. I thought he would turn back to the bar in disgust and drop me till his girl came. But no such luck. He went on effortfully making conversation, asking me what I’d been doing in Australia, where I’d been, who I’d known — there’s nothing more depressing, I think, than the ‘Did you ever run across old “Chucker” Harbottle’ style of conversation. I sank further into fiction, and produced a few imaginary notables of my own for him to deny knowledge of. He kept his end up, in a graceless sort of way, but he kept his eyes skinned around the place, and eventually he was rewarded.
‘There she is,’ he said, with creamy satisfaction. ‘You’ll have to meet her.’
And there she was, the Princess Helena herself, dancing gaily into the gaming room, accompanied by the faintly untrustworthy Secretary, and looking for all the world as if she had spent half her life in shady casinos. Silly girl! The trick was to look as if this was a strange and new experience. I looked around me, thinking to make a second bid at retreat, but as she approached the Honourable Edwin gripped me by the arm and brought me upright to be introduced. And that was a laugh, of course, because he had never even asked my name, or told me his.
‘But we’ve met!’ said the Princess, wide-eyed and gorgeous. ‘Ah, now, it’s — ’
‘Peregrine Tre-mumble, Your Royal Highness,’ I managed to mutter, swallowing my all-too-notorious surname.
‘Yes, of course. It was at — where was it?’
‘A party, Ma’am. I think at Jeremy Styles’.’
It was a name from Joe’s dossier, the best-known one, and it was an unlucky choice. Edwin Frere’s brow darkened, but the Princess refused to notice.
‘That’s right. I remember now. There were so many there. You’re the one who — ’
‘Just back from Australia, Ma’am,’ I cued in. We made a fine romantic duet, we did, a real Ivor Novello and Olive Gilbert. But at least the moment of danger seemed past.
‘Ah yes, that’s right,’ breathed the Princess, hardly at all fazed. ‘Oh, I do love Australia! When I was there last year I was never off the front pages. It was the same in the States. People tell me I oughtn’t to think about things like that, but I’m sorry to say I do!’
One thing I didn’t understand in all this was why the Honourable Edwin had been so keen to keep hold of me, and to introduce me to his prize. Could it be — God forbid! — that he had some suspicion of who I was? If so, we’d put up just about a good enough show to pass muster, I thought. But I changed my mind when I saw the consequence of his introduction. The roulette wheel was now an object of secondary attraction in the room. People started drifting over from the tables and from the card room too, casually collecting around the bar; and some of them were selected by the unlovable Edwin to be introduced to the Princess. Being able, now, to slip to the outskirts of the group, I came to a few conclusions. One was that the principle of selection for this honour was money and power, with money definitely in the lead. The second was that none of these people had been particularly anxious to talk to Edwin Frere before his princess arrived — he had been solitary, perhaps even shunned. I had been used as a signal — that he was willing to introduce people to his prize. Now I could be cast aside, and Edwin could mingle with the favoured, moneyed few. Interesting. I had a feeling that before very long Edwin would be demanding of these chosen few a quid pro quo — several quid, in fact. And that they all knew him, had all been touched by him for ‘loans’ before, and recognized very well the nature of this bargain.
I wondered whether the Princess did too. Because though she behaved with a sort of feather-brained politeness, she soon disentangled herself from this rather portly and
ponderous mob and managed to get herself to my side. It was no great compliment to be found more entertaining than that lot, but in any case the more persistent of them straggled along and introduced themselves to me, bought me drinks (which I accepted) and generally prevented any tete-à-tete in which I could perhaps have made clear my opinion of her choice of venue for out-of-hours fun. Not, I suppose, that I would have dared do that anyway. I was beginning to sense the precise geography of that borderland country of behaviour, into which it was dangerous to stray.
So we made conversation — about Australia, about parties, about pop music (concerning which the Princess seemed to have an enormous store of useless information), and the fat industrialists and their fat wives said how they loved the Beatles and wasn’t it awful about John Lennon, and quickly changed the subject to Middlesbrough or Derby or wherever they came from so that they could assure the Princess of the great joy her visit to open the local sauna bath for geriatrics had given the populace of these places. Sparkling it was. Frankly, if I had been the young lady I would have given the swift boot to any boyfriend who involved me in tedious encounters of this kind — especially one who then left me in the lurch and patently pursued ends of his own, as Edwin Frere was at that moment doing. In fact, I did at one stage think I caught the shadow of a distinctly royal displeasure cross her face when she looked in his direction. Mostly however, training held, and she maintained an air of composure and vague goodwill.
What was not to be doubted, though, was her pleasure when she caught sight of a new arrival.
‘Jeremy!’ she said, to a figure lounging in through the main door. ‘What a lovely surprise!’
As a surprise I rated it a good deal lower. I kicked myself again for mentioning the name of Jeremy Styles when I could have come up with any old fictitious one. But Styles was an actor, and who could have expected him to show up here? Luckily the Princess appreciated the problem, dragged me over to him crying ‘Peregrine you know, don’t you?’, and then took us both off to the safety of the bar.
Danger over, I thought. But I wasn’t too happy when Styles told the barman to line up three doubles, just for him.
Styles, as I said, was in a new play at the St George’s. Unluckily it was one of those two- or three-character jobs which is all anyone can afford to put on in the West End these days, and consequently it ended rather early, when the duologue ran thin. He was a bit greasepainty behind the ears, and generally had the look of still being half on stage. He was, of course, immensely handsome, even — I have to admit it — magnetic. His whole body had a tense energy which demanded to be noticed, and he made himself felt and understood even over a wide radius. Some of the Birmingham drearies, for example, showed signs of wanting to join us, but it needed no more than a pregnant stare to make them swerve aside to the other end of the bar. He had fair, cornlike hair, wavy and clinging round his shirt collar at the back; he had arrogant eyes, delicately hooked nose, and an egotistical mouth, the sort that announces that its owner is not to be crossed. But you’ve probably seen him on television scores of times: he’s played Stephen Guest and Mr Darcy on the screen, and George Osborne in a stage musical of Vanity Fair. He looks good in breeches, and knows how to sit down in a swallow-tail coat. But I have to admit he looked all right whatever he wore, and the Princess obviously thought so too.
‘Jeremy is an actor,’ she announced happily. ‘I’m sure you’ve seen him on television.’
‘Many times,’ I said. ‘I enjoyed your Mr Darcy very much.’
‘Oh, it got to Australia, did it?’ said the Princess wickedly.
Styles had nodded off-handedly at my compliment, and now he said: ‘Some private joke?’
‘Very,’ said the Princess Helena. ‘How did the performance go tonight?’
‘Quite well,’ said Styles. ‘Very well, really. We haven’t had time to go stale. The audience is still lively. The American summer invasion hasn’t got under way.’
‘Do you prefer the stage to television?’ I asked.
‘Of course he does,’ said Helena. ‘It’s in his blood.’
Jeremy Styles scowled: ‘I prefer television,’ he muttered.
‘I didn’t realize you came of an acting family,’ I said.
‘Oh God,’ said Jeremy Styles.
‘He does,’ said the Princess, ‘but he doesn’t talk about them, except when he’s drunk, do you, darling?’
As if to illustrate her point, Styles downed his second whisky and began talking about them, gesturing all the time with a sort of erratic theatricality.
‘You wouldn’t have heard of them. My mother was a sort of second-string leading lady. Used to take over leading roles after the plays had run a year or so. Or take over for the tours, in the days when we still had provincial touring theatres. She was a bitch, an arrant, rampant, straight-down-the-line bitch. She dragged along my father when it was possible — he took small roles, and they brought in enough to cover the cost of his brandy. People ten rows back used to send notes of complaint to the theatre management. When there was no part for him, or when the directors were fed up with his slurred incompetence, she latched on to someone else for the duration. I was dumped in the dressing-room, dumped in the theatre bedroom, even locked in the wardrobe one whole night, when I cried. That was my childhood.’
‘You’re just making a good moan out of it,’ said Helena. ‘It must have been awfully exciting, really.’
‘You think so? Do you know, I could barely read when I was nine. The thing was so notorious that someone informed the local educational authority of some dreary burgh where we happened to be camped for some period longer than a week. My parents pulled the charming gypsies act — they were bringing me up as a child of nature. But the rest of the company didn’t play up. They had to send me to school — dumped into a tiny private school in a dumpy town in Essex, chosen because it was cheap and difficult to get to on visits. I’d seen so few kids I didn’t know what playing meant.’
‘Doesn’t sound much worse than being royal,’ said the Princess.
‘I wonder you went on stage yourself,’ I said, trying to puncture the self-pity. Jeremy Styles shrugged his expressive shoulders.
‘I was seduced by a theatrical knight at the age of fifteen. He got me a job carrying spears in Julius Caesar, and shoved himself up me regularly between dying in battle and being pronounced the noblest Roman of them all. Since then I’ve never been out of a job. It’s not as though work is easy to come by these days. Besides, I’m not fit for anything else.’
‘Doomed,’ said the Princess. Jeremy Styles looked at her petulantly, as if used to being taken seriously.
A shadow passed over the table. I looked up. It was Edwin Frere — fair and flushed, with a mixture of uncertainty and ill-temper in his face.
‘Oh Helena,’ he said. ‘I want you to come and meet a friend of mine.’
The way he put it was hardly respectful, and the Princess reacted.
‘Not now, Edwin,’ she said coolly, and turned back to us. Jeremy Styles, who had just downed his third whisky, was by now looking as flushed as Frere. He sniggered insultingly.
‘You’re with me, remember, Helena,’ said Frere, compounding his sin.
‘I’m not, so far as I know, with anyone,’ said Helena. ‘I came on my own. Leave us alone for a bit, will you, Edwin?’
Jeremy Styles extended himself elegantly in his chair, and drawled: ‘Yes, go back to playing “touch”, can’t you, Frere?’
People for miles around could see that an insult had been intended, and an instant hush descended over the bar.
‘What the hell did you say?’ demanded Frere, stepping closer, but with bluster in his tone.
‘You heard. Leave us alone.’
‘You goddamned little player, you — ’
Styles got to his feet.
‘Get out of my light, Frere. Don’t start acting as if you’d got rights. There are other claims staked here.’
I had got to my feet, and I took
them both by the collars and dragged them apart.
‘For God’s sake act your age,’ I told Styles. ‘You’re not fourteen.’
‘All actors are fourteen,’ hissed Styles. ‘Just get that upper-class sponge off our backs, will you, and — ’
But I wasn’t listening to him. I suddenly realized that the Princess Helena was no longer at the table, and was heading unobtrusively for the door. I dived out after her, and caught her up at the top of the stairs. As we darted down them, I heard the sound of a table overturning behind us.
‘Right,’ said Helena briskly. ‘The car is just down the road. Signal it, and I’ll be with you by the time it gets here.’
And she briskly dispensed with the fawnings and toadyings of the casino manager at the foot of the stairs, sending him up to the sounds of unarmed combat above. She threw her coat elegantly over her shoulders, and glided through the main entrance and down to the car, where I stood holding the door open for her.
‘Get in with me,’ she said, and we started off.
Once speeding towards the Palace, she relaxed.
‘Weren’t they naughty,’ she giggled, with childish pleasure. ‘Just the sort of scene I absolutely oughtn’t to be involved in.’
‘I should think not, Ma’am,’ I said. ‘You got out of it very smoothly.’
‘I did, didn’t I? But it’s happened before.’
Really the coolness of the lady frightened me.
Death and the Princess Page 4