‘No,’ said Percy. ‘Let me tell you what transpired between me and Elizabeth Bottsworth this morning. Nelson, old man, she said my hat – my Bodmin hat – was too small.’
‘You don’t mean that?’
‘Those were her very words.’
‘Well, I’m dashed. Listen. Diana Punter told me my equally Bodmin hat was too large.’
They stared at one another.
‘It’s the Spirit of something,’ said Nelson. ‘I don’t know what, quite, but of something. You see it on all sides. Something very serious has gone wrong with girls nowadays. There is lawlessness and licence abroad.’
‘And here in England, too.’
‘Well, naturally, you silly ass,’ said Nelson, with some asperity. ‘When I said abroad, I didn’t mean abroad, I meant abroad.’
He mused for a moment.
‘I must say, though,’ he continued, ‘I am surprised at what you tell me about Elizabeth Bottsworth, and am inclined to think there must have been some mistake. I have always been a warm admirer of Elizabeth.’
‘And I have always thought Diana one of the best, and I find it hard to believe that she should have shown up in such a dubious light as you suggest. Probably there was a misunderstanding of some kind.’
‘Well, I ticked her off properly, anyway.’
Percy Wimbolt shook his head.
‘You shouldn’t have done that, Nelson. You may have wounded her feelings. In my case, of course, I had no alternative but to be pretty crisp with Elizabeth.’
Nelson Cork clicked his tongue.
‘A pity,’ he said. ‘Elizabeth is sensitive.’
‘So is Diana.’
‘Not so sensitive as Elizabeth.’
‘I should say, at a venture, about five times as sensitive as Elizabeth. However, we must not quarrel about a point like that, old man. The fact that emerges is that we seem both to have been dashed badly treated. I think I shall toddle home and take an aspirin.’
‘Me, too.’
They went off to the cloak-room, where their hats were, and Percy put his on.
‘Surely,’ he said, ‘nobody but a half-witted little pipsqueak who can’t see straight would say this was too small?’
‘It isn’t a bit too small,’ said Nelson. ‘And take a look at this one. Am I not right in supposing that only a female giantess with straws in her hair and astigmatism in both eyes could say it was too large?’
‘It’s a lovely fit.’
And the cloak-room waiter, a knowledgeable chap of the name of Robinson, said the same.
‘So there you are,’ said Nelson.
‘Ah, well,’ said Percy.
They left the club, and parted at the top of Dover Street.
Now, though he had not said so in so many words, Nelson Cork’s heart had bled for Percy Wimbolt. He knew the other’s fine sensibilities and he could guess how deeply they must have been gashed by this unfortunate breaking-off of diplomatic relations with the girl he loved. For, whatever might have happened, however sorely he might have been wounded, the way Nelson Cork looked at it was that Percy loved Elizabeth Bottsworth in spite of everything. What was required here, felt Nelson, was a tactful mediator – a kindly, sensible friend of both parties who would hitch up his socks and plunge in and heal the breach.
So the moment he had got rid of Percy outside the club he hared round to the house where Elizabeth was staying and was lucky enough to catch her on the front door steps. For, naturally, Elizabeth hadn’t gone off to Ascot by herself. Directly Percy was out of sight, she had told the taxi-man to drive her home, and she had been occupying the interval since the painful scene in thinking of things she wished she had said to him and taking her hostess’s dog for a run – a Pekingese called Clarkson.
She seemed very pleased to see Nelson, and started to prattle of this and that, her whole demeanour that of a girl who, after having been compelled to associate for a while with the Underworld, has at last found a kindred soul. And the more he listened, the more he wanted to go on listening. And the more he looked at her, the more he felt that a lifetime spent in gazing at Elizabeth Bottsworth would be a lifetime dashed well spent.
There was something about the girl’s exquisite petiteness and fragility that appealed to Nelson Cork’s depths. After having wasted so much time looking at a female Carnera like Diana Punter, it was a genuine treat to him to be privileged to feast the eyes on one so small and dainty. And, what with one thing and another, he found the most extraordinary difficulty in lugging Percy into the conversation.
They strolled along, chatting. And, mark you, Elizabeth Bottsworth was a girl a fellow could chat with without getting a crick in the neck from goggling up at her, the way you had to do when you took the air with Diana Punter. Nelson realized now that talking to Diana Punter had been like trying to exchange thoughts with a flag-pole sitter. He was surprised that this had never occurred to him before.
‘You know, you’re looking perfectly ripping, Elizabeth,’ he said.
‘How funny!’ said the girl. ‘I was just going to say the same thing about you.’
‘Not really?’
‘Yes, I was. After some of the gargoyles I’ve seen today – Percy Wimbolt is an example that springs to the mind – it’s such a relief to be with a man who really knows how to turn himself out.’
Now that the Percy motif had been introduced, it should have been a simple task for Nelson to turn the talk to the subject of his absent friend. But somehow he didn’t. Instead, he just simpered a bit and said: ‘Oh no, I say, really, do you mean that?’
‘I do, indeed,’ said Elizabeth earnestly. ‘It’s your hat, principally, I think. I don’t know why it is, but ever since a child I have been intensely sensitive to hats, and it has always been a pleasure to me to remember that at the age of five I dropped a pot of jam out of the nursery window on to my Uncle Alexander when he came to visit us in a deer-stalker cap with ear-flaps, as worn by Sherlock Holmes. I consider the hat the final test of a man. Now, yours is perfect. I never saw such a beautiful fit. I can’t tell you how much I admire that hat. It gives you quite an ambassadorial look.’
Nelson Cork drew a deep breath. He was tingling from head to foot. It was as if the scales had fallen from his eyes and a new life begun for him.
‘I say,’ he said, trembling with emotion, ‘I wonder if you would mind if I pressed your little hand?’
‘Do,’ said Elizabeth cordially.
‘I will,’ said Nelson, and did so. ‘And now,’ he went on, clinging to the fin like glue and hiccoughing a bit, ‘how about buzzing off somewhere for a quiet cup of tea? I have a feeling that we have much to say to one another.’
It is odd how often it happens in this world that when there are two chaps and one chap’s heart is bleeding for the other chap you find that all the while the second chap’s heart is bleeding just as much for the first chap. Both bleeding, I mean to say, not only one. It was so in the case of Nelson Cork and Percy Wimbolt. The moment he had left Nelson, Percy charged straight off in search of Diana Punter with the intention of putting everything right with a few well-chosen words.
Because what he felt was that, though at the actual moment of going to press pique might be putting Nelson off Diana, this would pass off and love come into its own again. All that was required, he considered, was a suave go-between, a genial mutual pal who would pour oil on the troubled w.’s and generally fix things up.
He found Diana walking round and round Berkeley Square with her chin up, breathing tensely through the nostrils. He drew up alongside and what-hoed, and as she beheld him the cold, hard gleam in her eyes changed to a light of cordiality. She appeared charmed to see him and at once embarked on an animated conversation. And with every word she spoke his conviction deepened that of all the ways of passing a summer afternoon there was none fruitier than having a friendly hike with Diana Punter.
And it was not only her talk that enchanted him. He was equally fascinated by that wonderful physique
of hers. When he considered that he had actually wasted several valuable minutes that day conversing with a young shrimp like Elizabeth Bottsworth, he could have kicked himself.
Here, he reflected, as they walked round the square, was a girl whose ear was more or less on a level with a fellow’s mouth, so that such observations as he might make were enabled to get from point to point with the least possible delay. Talking to Elizabeth Bottsworth had always been like bellowing down a well in the hope of attracting the attention of one of the smaller infusoria at the bottom. It surprised him that he had been so long in coming to this conclusion.
He was awakened from this reverie by hearing his companion utter the name of Nelson Cork.
‘I beg your pardon?’ he said.
‘I was saying,’ said Diana, ‘that Nelson Cork is a wretched little undersized blob who, if he were not too lazy to work, would long since have signed up with some good troupe of midgets.’
‘Oh, would you say that?’
‘I would say more than that,’ said Diana firmly. ‘I tell you, Percy, that what makes life so ghastly for girls, what causes girls to get grey hair and go into convents, is the fact that it is not always possible for them to avoid being seen in public with men like Nelson Cork. I trust I am not uncharitable. I try to view these things in a broad-minded way, saying to myself that if a man looks like something that has come out from under a flat stone it is his misfortune rather than his fault and that he is more to be pitied than censured. But on one thing I do insist, that such a man does not wantonly aggravate the natural unpleasantness of his appearance by prancing about London in a hat that reaches down to his ankles. I cannot and will not endure being escorted along Bruton Street by a sort of human bacillus the brim of whose hat bumps on the pavement with every step he takes. What I have always said and what I shall always say is that the hat is the acid test. A man who cannot buy the right-sized hat is a man one could never like or trust. Your hat, now, Percy, is exactly right. I have seen a good many hats in my time, but I really do not think that I have ever come across a more perfect specimen of all that a hat should be. Not too large, not too small, fitting snugly to the head like the skin on a sausage. And you have just the kind of head that a silk hat shows off. It gives you a sort of look . . . how shall I describe it?. . . it conveys the idea of a master of men. Leonine is the word I want. There is something about the way it rests on the brow and the almost imperceptible tilt towards the south-east . . .’
Percy Wimbolt was quivering like an Oriental muscle-dancer. Soft music seemed to be playing from the direction of Hay Hill, and Berkeley Square had begun to skip round him on one foot.
He drew a deep breath.
‘I say,’ he said, ‘stop me if you’ve heard this before, but what I feel we ought to do at this juncture is to dash off somewhere where it’s quiet and there aren’t so many houses dancing the “Blue Danube” and shove some tea into ourselves. And over the pot and muffins I shall have something very important to say to you.’
‘So that,’ concluded the Crumpet, taking a grape, ‘is how the thing stands; and, in a sense, of course, you could say that it is a satisfactory ending.
‘The announcement of Elizabeth’s engagement to Nelson Cork appeared in the Press on the same day as that of Diana’s projected hitching-up with Percy Wimbolt: and it is pleasant that the happy couples should be so well matched as regards size.
‘I mean to say, there will be none of that business of a six-foot girl tripping down the aisle with a five-foot-four man, or a six-foot-two man trying to keep step along the sacred edifice with a four-foot-three girl. This is always good for a laugh from the ringside pews, but it does not make for wedded bliss.
‘No, as far as the principals are concerned, we may say that all has ended well. But that doesn’t seem to me the important point. What seems to me the important point is this extraordinary, baffling mystery of those hats.’
‘Absolutely,’ said the Bean.
‘I mean to say, if Percy’s hat really didn’t fit, as Elizabeth Bottsworth contended, why should it have registered as a winner with Diana Punter?’
‘Absolutely,’ said the Bean.
‘And, conversely, if Nelson’s hat was the total loss which Diana Punter considered it, why, only a brief while later, was it going like a breeze with Elizabeth Bottsworth?’
‘Absolutely,’ said the Bean.
‘The whole thing is utterly inscrutable.’
It was at this point that the nurse gave signs of wishing to catch the Speaker’s eye.
‘Shall I tell you what I think?’
‘Say on, my dear young pillow-smoother.’
‘I believe Bodmin’s boy must have got those hats mixed. When he was putting them back in the boxes, I mean.’
The Crumpet shook his head, and took a grape.
‘And then at the club they got the right ones again.’
The Crumpet smiled indulgently.
‘Ingenious,’ he said, taking a grape. ‘Quite ingenious. But a little far-fetched. No, I prefer to think the whole thing, as I say, has something to do with the Fourth Dimension. I am convinced that that is the true explanation, if our minds could only grasp it.’
‘Absolutely,’ said the Bean.
5 GOOD BYE TO ALL CATS
AS THE CLUB kitten sauntered into the smoking-room of the Drones Club and greeted those present with a friendly miauw, Freddie Widgeon, who had been sitting in a corner with his head between his hands, rose stiffly.
‘I had supposed,’ he said, in a cold, level voice, ‘that this was a quiet retreat for gentlemen. As I perceive that it is a blasted Zoo, I will withdraw.’
And he left the room in a marked manner.
There was a good deal of surprise, mixed with consternation.
‘What’s the trouble?’ asked an Egg, concerned. Such exhibitions of the naked emotions are rare at the Drones. ‘Have they had a row?’
A Crumpet, always well-informed, shook his head.
‘Freddie has had no personal breach with this particular kitten,’ he said. ‘It is simply that since that week-end at Matcham Scratchings he can’t stand the sight of a cat.’
‘Matcham what?’
‘Scratchings. The ancestral home of Dahlia Prenderby in Oxfordshire.’
‘I met Dahlia Prenderby once,’ said the Egg. ‘I thought she seemed a nice girl.’
‘Freddie thought so, too. He loved her madly.’
‘And lost her, of course?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Do you know,’ said a thoughtful Bean, ‘I’ll bet that if all the girls Freddie Widgeon has loved and lost were placed end to end – not that I suppose one could do it – they would reach half-way down Piccadilly.’
‘Further than that,’ said the Egg. ‘Some of them were pretty tall. What beats me is why he ever bothers to love them. They always turn him down in the end. He might just as well never begin. Better, in fact, because in the time saved he could be reading some good book.’
‘I think the trouble with Freddie,’ said the Crumpet, ‘is that he always gets off to a flying start. He’s a good-looking sort of chap who dances well and can wiggle his ears, and the girl is dazzled for the moment, and this encourages him. From what he tells me, he appears to have gone very big with this Prenderby girl at the outset. So much so, indeed, that when she invited him down to Matcham Scratchings he had already bought his copy of What Every Young Bridegroom Ought To Know.’
‘Rummy, these old country-house names,’ mused the Bean. ‘Why Scratchings, I wonder?’
‘Freddie wondered, too, till he got to the place. Then he tells me he felt it was absolutely the mot juste. This girl Dahlia’s family, you see, was one of those animal-loving families, and the house, he tells me, was just a frothing maelstrom of dumb chums. As far as the eye could reach, there were dogs scratching themselves and cats scratching the furniture. I believe, though he never met it socially, there was even a tame chimpanzee somewhere on the premises, no doubt scratching
away as assiduously as the rest of them. You get these conditions here and there in the depths of the country, and this Matcham place was well away from the centre of things, being about six miles from the nearest station.
‘It was at this station that Dahlia Prenderby met Freddie in her two-seater, and on the way to the house there occurred a conversation which I consider significant – showing, as it does, the cordial relations existing between the young couple at that point in the proceedings. I mean, it was only later that the bitter awakening and all that sort of thing popped up.’
‘I do want you to be a success, Freddie,’ said the girl, after talking a while of this and that. ‘Some of the men I’ve asked down here have been such awful flops. The great thing is to make a good impression on Father.’
‘I will,’ said Freddie.
‘He can be a little difficult at times.’
‘Lead me to him,’ said Freddie. ‘That’s all I ask. Lead me to him.’
‘The trouble is, he doesn’t much like young men.’
‘He’ll like me.’
‘He will, will he?’
‘Rather!’
‘What makes you think that?’
‘I’m a dashed fascinating chap.’
‘Oh, you are?’
‘Yes, I am.’
‘You are, are you?’
‘Rather!’
Upon which, she gave him a sort of push and he gave her a sort of push, and she giggled and he laughed like a paper bag bursting, and she gave him a kind of shove and he gave her a kind of shove, and she said, ‘You are a silly ass!’ and he said, ‘What ho!’ All of which shows you, I mean to say, the stage they had got to by this time. Nothing definitely settled, of course, but Love obviously beginning to burgeon in the girl’s heart.
Well, naturally, Freddie gave a good deal of thought during the drive to this father of whom the girl had spoken so feelingly, and he resolved that he would not fail her. The way he would suck up to the old dad would be nobody’s business. He proposed to exert upon him the full force of his magnetic personality, and looked forward to registering a very substantial hit.
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