Max Miners said, “Paul’s one hell of a nice feller. I don’t care whether he’s a genius as a director or not, or what sort of friends he’s got. He’s a nice feller.”
“Who’s arguing about it? He was just sold to me as a genius, that’s all.”
It seemed strange to me that they should talk about the director rather than the play, but I have learned since then that some people interested in the theatre always do that. I asked Sally Metz what she thought. I might have guessed.
“I don’t know, I just don’t know. For me there are too many words and they’re not always in the right order.”
That was a criticism sufficiently sibylline to be safe, but I suppose the safest attitude of all was that of Carl, who didn’t speak a word the whole evening that I heard. Elaine was silent too, and I was struck by the difference between her usual aggressiveness and her defensive attitude in the presence of these not very intimidating people. It seemed to me that she was not enjoying herself as I was. I asked her during this interval whether she wanted to go.
“Do you want to go?”
The serenity induced by the pastis combined with the sense that the play contained a message for me inspired my answer. “No, I’m very happy.”
“It’s a good thing somebody’s happy. I suppose this is all really subtle detective work, and you’re on the verge of making some marvellous discovery.”
She was perfectly right.
Chapter Fourteen
After the Theatre
The Taverne Maximilien Robespierre served food late in the evening, and made some concessions to patrons when it did so. The anteroom was still blood red, but the lighting in the long inner room had been changed. It was now of some mysterious golden shade that made men look bronzed and healthy, while contriving to leave women still palely elegant. One end of the room was reserved for those who drank and played chess, and the other was set with check cloths for those who wanted to eat. A long table had been kept for us, and Betty led the way to it. A man wearing a chef’s hat popped his head out of a cubby-hole beside our table and she said that we would have the usual. To us, when his head had popped back again, she said, “There’s a menu as long as your arm, but steak au poivre is the only thing he can cook well, that and bacon and eggs. And he was sold to me as a bloody genius too.”
She must have ordered more drinks, because I found in front of me a glass containing the now familiar thick green liquid. Water dripped slowly into it through a container, clouding the liquid and subtly changing its colour. I watched the process in fascination, then held up my hand and the dripper was taken away. I sipped the drink, looked up, and saw a man weaving a way through the tables towards us, rather uncertainly. It was Uncle Miles.
It says much for the calmness induced by pastis that I accepted his presence there as something perfectly natural, and merely raised a hand in welcome. Betty, however, got up and embraced him. Uncle Miles responded with a peck at her cheek.
“You look just the same,” she cried. “Except for the hair. But I like it, do you know I think it gives you real distinction?”
Uncle Miles rubbed his hands together in anticipation of a little joke. “You always did say I was bad-tempered, didn’t you, couldn’t keep my hair on.”
Betty ignored this. She put an arm round him. “This is my ex, and I want to tell you all he’s the sweetest man I ever lived with. You just sit down and tell me what you’re doing in Paris, and have a drink.”
Uncle Miles giggled. “I’ve already had two or three. But I won’t say no. First, though, I must have a word with our mutual friend.”
“Chris? I don’t mind telling you, Chris is a marvellous boy. He’s just sat through the most bloody boring play without falling asleep. You know his friend Elinor, don’t you?”
Elaine had put on her spectacles. “Elaine. Elaine Sullivan.”
“We met one day in Folkestone.” Uncle Miles turned to me. “I expect you wonder how I come to be here, but it’s really terribly simple. You shouldn’t have gone off like that.”
“You got my note?”
“Yes, and you left that bit of paper with the address of the Hôtel Oeil d’Or, so we guessed you’d be staying there. When I called there M. Pasquin said you’d told his wife you were coming here. So here I am.”
There was a sudden pop beside my ear. Glasses were being filled with champagne. “It’s not every day you meet up with an ex,” Betty said.
“I say, champers.” Uncle Miles swallowed the contents of his glass at a gulp.
I pushed my glass across to him and ignored Elaine’s basilisk glare across the table. “Here, have mine. I shall have more snake juice.”
The green liquid was poured, the dripper began its work. “I don’t see why you’ve come,” I said, and added in case this sounded discourteous, “Although I’m pleased to see you.”
The bubbles had got up Uncle Miles’ nose. He wrinkled it. “We don’t know how to tell Mamma. The news about David, I mean. I’ve come to bring you back.”
To this I found no reply. Just then the steaks arrived, and we began to eat them. More champagne was opened. Uncle Miles was in ecstasies.
“Isn’t this a mistake, with red-blooded meat? Never mind, it’s a treat anyway.” He raised his glass to Betty, who clinked glasses with him. Max Miners protested that he wanted burgundy.
“Oh, you do,” Betty said. “You don’t like the champagne.”
Max flapped a pinky-black hand. “It’s just not right. Nobody with a palate could drink it with steak.”
“They couldn’t?” Betty had spoken calmly, but her voice was suddenly raised to a shriek. “So perhaps you’d just like to get yourself out of here. You’re abusing my hospitality.”
“If that’s what you want. If I go I don’t come back, you know that. You think you can insult a man just because of the colour of his skin, but you’ll find you’re wrong. There’s a day coming – ”
Betty used a quadriliteral that I had never heard a woman use before. At another time I might have been shocked but on this particular evening it seemed part of the whole dreamlike situation. The response from Max Miners was a flood of abuse which I suppose I had better not set down. Uncle Miles stood up. He was a head shorter than Max, and he held on to the back of his chair for support, but his voice was deep as a gong.
“Now, sir, just remember that you’re speaking to a lady.”
The painter goggled at him, and then walked away. Uncle Miles sat down again, rather shakily. Betty was wiping her eyes. “Miles, darling, you’ll be the death of me, I haven’t been called a lady for years. Still, that’s one genius got rid of. Oh, my God, here comes another.”
Weaving through the crowd in the Taverne (it was now almost full, and there was a considerable hubbub of conversation) came the crop-headed young man from the theatre. Behind him glided another young man, of an elegant willowy handsomeness. He wore a long gold earring in one ear and a large emerald ring on one hand.
“Paul, what you did was terrific, but I’ve got to say it, you were let down by your actors,” Norman Beaver said. Paul raised his eyebrows, not at all disconcerted by the criticism, which was voiced as though it were praise. “I think you know everybody, Betty of course, Sally and Carl, you know Betty’s putting on a show of his stuff. And – ”
“Chris Barrington and his friend Elinor,” Betty said. “And my old man, my ex, come all the way over here to see me. I don’t know about the others, Paul, but I thought your old Ibsen was lousy.”
“You’re always frank,” Paul spoke without enthusiasm. “Paul Delmain. Maurice Fallon.”
They sat down, Delmain next to Norman Beaver, his companion beside me. Elaine leaned across the table. It was the first time she had addressed me since we returned to the Taverne, and I leaned over towards her, so that we must have presented the appearance of puppets simultaneously jerked together.
“Did you hear that?”
“What?”
“His name, Maurice Fallon. Pasqu
in told us.”
I remembered then, perfectly. I turned to the young man. “I think you know a friend of mine.”
His eyes were a bright shallow blue. “What?”
“Blakeney. Percy Blakeney.”
Uncle Miles beat on the table with a spoon and sang:
“Champers with steak, champers with steak,
That’s a discovery all of us make.”
Fallon gesticulated. The light caught the emerald on his hand. He said in heavily accented English, “What are you trying to do?”
“Trying to find him, that’s all.”
“Then you better look in the right place.”
“He was a friend of yours, wasn’t he?”
“A friend.” His laughter was shrill. Paul Delmain looked anxiously at us.
“He’s back in Paris now. I thought he might have been in touch with you.”
“With me. Why should that be?”
“You used to see a lot of him, so I was told. I thought he was a friend of yours.”
“Not of mine. Why should I care for him?” He brought his face close to mine. “He is taking perhaps some more lessons. He is being taught some more magic.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
Delmain had been talking to Norman Beaver. Now he broke off to address Fallon rapidly in French. The sense of it seemed to be that Fallon shouldn’t get upset. What he said had no effect. Fallon spat at me, not intentionally I am sure, but I could feel the spittle on my face. “You should look for him in the rue Peter Paul, he will be learning more magic.” I had no idea what he meant. The expression on his face changed to one of contempt. “But he will not be interested.”
“Why not?”
He drew back a little, looked over as much as he could see of me with a gaze that was like a rake of claws, and repeated scornfully, “Oh no, I do not think he will be interested.”
The ring in his ear swung a little, and I followed its movement. Delmain was on his feet. Fallon flung down his napkin and got up too. Delmain inclined his cropped head stiffly.
“Norman. Betty. We are going.”
I knew I had said something wrong, but couldn’t be sure what it was. It seemed to me that there must be something more to be learned from Fallon. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Don’t go.”
They might as well not have heard the words, and perhaps they didn’t. “Good riddance,” Betty said. “Another genius gone. I’ve had geniuses.”
“What did you say to upset Paul’s boy friend so much,” Norman Beaver asked me.
“Boy friend?”
“What did you think?”
The words came to me like a revelation, the whole evening had been a revelation, but what had it revealed? I understood only that action was vital, and urgent. “We must act.”
“I was an actor once,” Uncle Miles said.
I tried to stand up and discovered one of the other qualities of pastis, that while increasing the acuity of the mind it has a most disconcerting effect upon the legs. My legs felt as though they were not there, and it was certainly impossible for me to stand upon them. I sat down again, put my hands on my legs to make certain that they existed, and repeated what I had said. Elaine was looking at me oddly. Betty asked if I was all right, and I was delighted to hear the clarity with which I answered her.
Immediately afterwards I felt my trunk moving sideways. The sensation was a strange one, for I had the impression that I was watching this from outside and that I actually saw my body’s slow keeling over on to the table, although of course this cannot really have been the case. My left elbow knocked over some glasses, and then the whole top part of my body rested on the table. I heard voices, but they seemed to come from far away. The need for action receded and I was conscious only of serenity, abiding peace.
Chapter Fifteen
The Magician
I opened my eyes and shut them again instantly. Outside there was a harsh intolerable light that screwed up the eyeballs. With the lids shut things were better. Or were they? My head felt as if it were being struck regular blows with a hammer and when I raised it a little, still with closed eyes, I felt an atrocious pain in the neck. Had I been involved in an accident, and landed in hospital? Cautiously I opened my eyes again, and with even greater caution lifted my head. I was in bed, in my room at the Hôtel Oeil d’Or, and I was wearing pyjamas. The discovery, although reassuring in a way, was too much for me. I sank back on to the pillows and groaned.
A couple of minutes later I made a daring move. I raised my whole body, swung my legs out of bed, and put my feet to the floor. The hammers pounded on my head, and my mouth felt as if a bonfire had been lighted in it and the remains were still smouldering. I stood up with the help of a bedpost, and measured the distance from bed to washbasin. Three strides. I felt the Ancient Mariner’s need for water. If water could be sprayed inside my mouth and splashed over my head I felt that I might live, but could I reach the washbasin without falling? Relinquishing the bedpost I flung myself forward. I did not fall, but caught my head a nasty crack against a glass shelf just above the basin. I was pouring water into and over myself when the door opened. Elaine stood there, in light blue blouse and dark blue skirt, looking extremely bright and fresh.
She was not sympathetic. “I thought you were dead, but I see you’ve woken. It’s ten o’clock.” I groaned, and stretched out a hand for help to return to bed. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Back to bed.”
“Nonsense. We’ve got things to do.”
I said feebly, “What things?”
“Last night you kept saying we must go to some street or other – the rue Peter Paul. I don’t know why.”
I managed to reach the bedpost again, and sat down shakily. “What happened last night?”
“You passed out. Beaver and that poetess and I brought you back here. Beaver and Pasquin put you to bed.”
“Where was Uncle Miles?”
Her smile was grim. “He passed out too, five minutes after you. Betty Urquhart took him home. Do you think she’s attractive?”
The hammer thudded so loudly I hardly knew what I was saying. “Yes, I suppose so.”
“More than I am? Perhaps you don’t think I’m attractive at all.”
I felt unable to cope with this. “Don’t be silly.”
It was obvious that I had said the wrong thing. “You certainly made a pretty fair fool of yourself last night. Surely you realised that young man was queer.”
“Fallon, you mean.”
“Who else? Obviously he was a friend of Blakeney’s and then the magic man, whoever he is, replaced Fallon, and Fallon was jealous. He thought you were another rival. But I suppose you were too tight to grasp any of it. The Wainwrights certainly can’t carry their liquor.”
“I wasn’t tight. I remember everything perfectly.” And as I said it, I did remember everything, the play, the conversation with Fallon, and the conclusions I had drawn. But there was something else, something Elaine had said this morning. “What was it you said?”
“What are you talking about?”
“When you came in here you said something.”
She repeated it, as if she were speaking to a child. “I said that I thought you were dead, but I saw you’d woken up.”
“Of course,” I said. “Ulfheim.”
I sank back on the bed. Now I held all the threads in my hands. I knew why Blakeney had been sent over to England, why Arbuthnot had spoken as he had, who had killed Sullivan and Thorne.
“Come on,” Elaine said. “Get up.”
“Just a minute. The programme.”
“What programme?”
“The play. Comédie d’Amour. Have you got it?”
She looked at me as if she thought I were mad, then without a word went out of the room and came back with a copy of the programme, which she thrust at me. I pointed at the names of the characters with a shaky finger, and picked out two: “Styver, a clerk”, “Straamand, a clergyman.”
>
“Well?”
“I knew while I was watching the play that there was something I ought to understand about it. The man who called himself Wainwright took the name of Stiver in Paris, and do you know what an anglicisation of Straamand is? It’s Strawman. If you remember, Ulfheim said we could call him Strawman, a clergyman.”
She put on her spectacles as though they might enable her to sea through this fog. “What then?”
“The two names came from this play, Comédie d’Amour.”
“And how does that help?”
“Ulfheim, too. I remembered when you said you thought I was dead, but I’d woken up. Ulfheim is a character in Ibsen’s last play. Do you know what it’s called? When We Dead Awaken.”
“I still don’t understand.”
“No, I suppose you need a special sense of humour to understand why that’s funny.” I sighed and gathered myself together. “Come on, then, there’s no time to lose.”
She began to laugh. “Speaking of sense of humour, you’ve no idea how funny you looked in that place, falling sideways like a statue.”
“I’m sure. If you’ll go out, I’ll get dressed.”
She walked over and stood at the window, with her back to me. “I don’t want you falling asleep again. I won’t look.”
“Thanks.”
“You do think I’m as attractive as that woman, don’t you?”
“Betty? I told you not to be silly. She’s old.”
As I was shakily putting on my trousers she said, still with her back to me, “I’ll tell you something else that happened last night. After you’d been put to bed you got up again and came into my room.”
“What happened?”
“Don’t you remember?”
“Well – ”
“Then you’ll never find out, will you?” And in fact I
never did.
Ten minutes later I was dressed and descending the stairs, feeling still distinctly shaky. As we passed Pasquin’s sitting-room the little man popped out, drew us aside, and patted me on the shoulder.
The Belting Inheritance Page 18