by Alec Waugh
“I know. I lost my collar stud. I hadn’t a spare one. You can’t think how hard it is to get hold of one at this time of night. I’d hoped you’ld be late, too.”
“But I wasn’t, Arthur. I was punctual. More than punctual. I’ve been waiting for you,” she lied resolutely, “more than half an hour.”
An expression of the utmost gloom oppressed his features. “Heavens!” he said. “Really. . . oh, but. . . well. . . now we are here, where are we going to dine?”
“Any where you like.”
“But you must choose. What would you like, something quiet or something noisy?”
“Noisy, Arthur, naturally.”
“The Vienna, then. It’s the noisiest place I know.” He spoke petulantly.
“He’s angry,” she thought. “He wanted to go somewhere quiet. Because the food and wine are better there, he’ld say. But I don’t care about what I eat and drink; not really. I want lights and music. Besides, it isn’t really for the food and wine that he wanted to be quiet. He wanted to have me to himself. Which means that he’ld start getting maudlin half-way through dinner; and I don’t like him when he’s maudlin. Not so early in the evening, anyhow.” Later on in the evening, she reflected, it was different. At half-past three or so. You’d dined, and had been on to a cabaret; you’d had supper at Ciro’s or the Kit Cat. You’d gone on to ‘The Green Grotto’ for eggs and bacon. You were tired and happy and at peace. Then it was rather nice to lie back quietly against cushions and have your hand held and hear nice things said to you. That was nice. Then, but not before. Besides,” she thought, “it’s his own fault. If he’d wanted to go to a quiet place, he should have taken me to one without asking my opinion. The man who ask a woman what she wants deserve all that’s coming to him.”
With her conscience cleared she chattered rapidly and ceaselessly as the car swung its way past Knights-bridge down the length of Piccadilly. “I’ll at least see to it,” she decided, “that the lad enjoys himself.” About her own enjoyment she had no doubt whatever.
As the glass doors of the Vienna revolved before her, a wave of scented heat, crested with the noise of music and the swell of talk, surged up to meet her. Her heart beat fast with anticipation. It was only eighteen months since she had dined for the first time in a big restaurant, and the excitement of entering one still slightly took her breath away.
She felt like an actress on the eve of a first night as she hurried across the lounge, as she handed her cloak to an attendant, as she stood before the glass patting the dark hair that coiled over her ears to the soft roll below her neck, as she smoothed with her little finger the powdered surface of her cheeks, as she turned slowly and self-admiringly before the full glass mirror.
She was alone in the cloak-room and the attendant smiled encouragingly at her.
“There aren’t many women who could risk wearing that,” she said.
Melanie smiled back at her. She understood what she meant. It was a young girl’s frock: very simple; mauve and period; the bodice cut close, the skirt billowing and hooped. She had only worn it twice before. It would have been madness to have wasted such a frock on a quiet restaurant where no one could have seen it.
As she walked at the lad’s side into the restaurant she felt even more like an actress going on to the stage. The air was cool on her bare shoulders. But the blood beat hotly through her veins. Heads were turned in her direction. Eyes followed her lingeringly. What were they saying to themselves, she wondered, as she glanced upwards and sideways at the lad.
Something of her self-confidence evaporated, however, as her eyes met his. The lad was not somehow the kind of man beside whom a woman would choose to walk into a restaurant. It was not that he was a discredit to her, but that he might have been a greater credit. The man she would have liked to have been seen walking beside would have been tall and strong and handsome; some vast blond Dempsey of a man, so that people would have said, “What a magnificent couple. Look there. How rarely you see a really attractive woman with a man that’s worthy of her.” Either that or some one elegant, well-produced; in the French sense, fine. He need not necessarily have been young, or tall, or handsome. He could have been short and neat-waisted; foreign, possibly, with a little pointed beard, so that people would say, “What a distinguished-looking man that is beside the extremely pretty girl. I wonder who they are? He looks as though he might be a diplomat.” That was how she would have liked it to have been. It was impossible to produce a really satisfactory effect when you were with the lad. The sooner she got him safely seated at a table the better.
“We’ll go over there,” she said.
The moment she was at the table she leant forward across it on her elbows looking about her with quick, eager glances, seeing in a first hurried survey the shape and colour of the room; its pale green pillars edged with gilt; the rose-pink curtains falling behind the curved and cushioned window seats; the black ebony of the oval dancing floor; the swinging kaleidoscope of the hanging lustres; the flowered tables; the steaming ice pails at their sides; the reds and lilacs, the yellows, the pinks, the greens; the brocades and marocains and georgettes of Poiret, Paquin, Paris Trades; the handiwork in black and white of Poole, Hawes and Curtis, Anderson and Sheppard. In one glance she took all that in. Then slowly, deliberately, she looked round the room, examining each frock, each face in turn, searching for acquaintances, searching for celebrities.
At her side the lad was asking her about cocktails. What would she have? a Bronx, a Martini, a Manhattan? She shook her head. She didn’t want a cocktail. This room, these lights, this music were all the intoxicant she needed.
“Look,” she said, “isn’t that Judy Carmichael over there?”
The lad was not interesting himself, however, in any number of Judy Carmichaels. He was puzzling over a long, heavily embossed menu.
“Now, what shall we start with?” he was saying. “If we have smoked salmon, we shouldn’t want any fish after our soup. Would you rather begin with grape fruit? Then we could have a sole colbert, or a truite au bleu.”
But Melanie was as uninterested in the menu as was her companion in the Vienna’s clientele.
“I don’t mind,” she said. “I leave it to you. You choose.”
“Oh, but I can’t,” Paramount expostulated. “You must really, surely now. . .”
The waiter shifted from Paramount’s side to Melanie’s.
“Perhaps, Madam,” he said.
Melanie did not care what she ate. She was too excited to notice what she was eating; would be too excited probably to eat anything at all. She took the menu up, and read off the top dish of every heading; it seemed the easiest way, and it didn’t sound too bad. Caviare, Bortsch. Œufs Cocotte. Caneton à la Presse. Pêche Melba. One might do worse.
“And wine,” the lad was asking, “what would you like to drink; a dry or a sweet wine?”
Melanie felt thirsty; she was also hot. An ice cream soda was what she would have really liked. But that, she supposed, she could not ask for. So she took the wine list, read down it till she saw a name that attracted her, glanced to see if its price justified her choice, decided that it did, pointed to Chambertin 1916, ordered herself a glass of water, and leaning across the table, returned to her examination of the room. Was it or was it not Judy Carmichael in the green dress by the second pillar?
At her side the lad was trying to embark on a serious discussion.
“I was reading an article in the Meteor the other day, about young girls being too much in love with life to be able to fall in love with a person. Do you think there is anything in that? I half think there is.”
Melanie nodded her head.
“I expect so,” she said. “Do you see that girl over there, dancing with the very tall, fair-haired man? What do you think of the frock she’s wearing? It’s out of Julia’s shop. I nearly bought it. Julia wanted me to. I wonder if I ought to have. What do you think?’
“You couldn’t conceivably look lovelier than y
ou do,” said Paramount.
“Caviare, madam,” said the waiter.
Melanie conveyed a century of dead sturgeon to her mouth. Then made a wry grimace. She didn’t much care for caviare; any more than she cared for cocktails. If the lad had ordered the dinner himself, it would have cost him less, and would have pleased her more. She pushed the plate forward a little and leant upon her elbow.
Yes, it was a jolly frock. Perhaps she should have bought it. Julia was usually right about clothes; was right about most things, when it came to that; calm-blooded level-headed Julia. Except when she made ridiculous suggestions as she had to-night, about nineteen-year-olds and chaperons. For Julia to talk like that? Julia of all people, when one remembered the way she had talked four years ago. About being able to look after herself; and then all that talk a year later about her flat; how she had maintained that she could not feel really free at home; and that if her father would not give her a flat, she would go and earn the extra four pounds a week that she would need to support it with. For Julia to start talking about chaperons. Dear Julia, so silly and so sweet.
“The article pointed out,” the lad was saying, “that it’s not till a person’s fallen out of love with life that she can start falling in love with people. That’s why, it said, French novelists choose women in the middle thirties for their heroines.”
“I think,” said Melanie, “that the rather short man with the woman in the gold tissue dress is the best dancer in the room.”
“Bortsch, madam,” said the waiter.
The soup was palatable, but lukewarm.
“You never get good food anywhere that there’s dancing,” said the lad.
“Let’s dance then,” said Melanie.
The lad was comfortable to dance with, but ungainly as a spectacle. Melanie would have preferred him to look well and hold her awkwardly. “Now, whom would I like to be dancing with?” she thought. Not the dapper little man with the woman in the gold tissue dress. He really was too short. He would have made her look cumbersome. She scanned the other dancers for the perfect partner. Scanned, but did not find him. “If I had the right partner,” thought Melanie as the lad piloted her back to a congealing œuf cocotte, “there’s not a woman in the room that wouldn’t be jealous of me.”
“Cleopatra was close on forty,” the lad was saying, “when she first met Antony.”
“Let’s do it,” wailed the saxophone. “Let’s do it. Let’s fall in love.”
“Juliet, of course, was only fourteen,” the lad continued, “but then Shakespeare was only a child himself when he wrote the play.”
With piercing, agonising intensity, drowning the flow of talk, the clarionette pleaded in unison with the drums.
“Let’s do it,” Melanie hummed. “Let’s do it. Let’s fall in love.”
Yes, but it wasn’t so easy as all that, she thought as she pushed her plate forward to make room for her elbows. It wasn’t anything like so easy as all that. She’ld love to fall in love. For two years she’d been wanting to. But she’d not been able to. Not in the way, anyhow, that one did in books. She had been fond of people, a whole lot fond of them. Once or twice she had been quite thrilled; for about five minutes. She had enjoyed having her hand held by the young men who drove her home from dances. It had been fun seeing people’s faces light with surprise when she came into the room; it had been fun hearing people say “I’ll only go to that party if you do”; and she had felt angry when a man whom she had fancied to be her particular piece of property had his engagement to her third best friend announced the morning after he had told her that he had cancelled a cricket tour for the sake of a single dance with her. She had experienced a number of secondary emotions.
But as for feeling that the meaning had gone out of existence because she had been rung up at quarter past, instead of quarter to eleven, why, she couldn’t even remember when the morning came who’d promised to ring her up and who had not.
“Let’s do it. Let’s do it. Let’s fall in love.”
Wooingly the words were sighed to her.
Well, one day she supposed she would. Most folk seemed to, or said they did. But it was with the feeling that life had somehow cheated her that she looked slowly round the room wondering whether it was by the enchantment that she had missed, that the smiles of this and the other couple were made so light; looking slowly from table to table, from group to group, till her glance fell upon a table by the door against the wall at which two men in dinner jackets were seated by themselves. One of the men was looking at her, intently and purposefully, with eyes that were dark and glowing. His glance did not drop as her eyes met it. She looked away. But she was no longer interested in the other tables, the other frocks, the other faces. She was too conscious of the dark eyes that had met her glance. Were they still fixed on her, she wondered? She looked back and saw they were.
“Let’s dance,” she said.
As they danced, she was conscious of those dark eyes watching her. She piloted the lad towards them. He was forty, she decided, at least forty. He had an interesting face, sallow, fine drawn and lined. The face of a man who has lived life and understands it. “He must have had love affairs,” thought Melanie, “big love affairs, exciting love affairs. What does he think of me, I wonder?.” And she felt angry with the lad for not being different, for not being the vast blond Dempsey, or the dapper fine ambassador who would have made this experienced worldling feel her to be the kind of woman who could get any man she chose. What use was the lad to her? Any woman could get a boob like that.
“Let’s go and sit down,” she said.
Back at the table with the complicated machinery of a caneton à la presse in front of her, her self-confidence in part returned. At any rate this stranger would realise that she was being done well by her unimpressive host. Boldly she looked across the room. The dark eyes were still turned upon her. They were looking intently, not smilingly, but with an awareness of mutual recognition. With those eyes still fixed upon her, the man put his hand into his hip pocket, drew out a leather note case; opened it, took out a card, drew from his trouser pocket a gold pencil, and began to write.
“I suppose it really is impossible,” the lad was saying, “for a person to fall in love who’s thinking half the time of things like clothes and motor cars that aren’t connected in the least with love.”
Melanie nodded. Yes, she supposed it was. And “I wonder,” she thought, “what he’s writing and whom he’s writing to.” It was a funny thing to be doing in a restaurant. It was funny the way in which he had done it: looking at her like that, and then with his eye still on her taking that card and that pencil from his pocket: almost as though that writing and that look were part of the same process: almost as though it were to her that the note was being written.
Not that it was, of course. It could not be. How could it be. He was sending a message to a friend: to his club perhaps: to book a table or to countermand an order. There were a hundred and one reasons for writing notes. Any one of which was more probable than that he should be writing one to her. Of course he was not writing to her. People did not do that kind of thing. It was the kind of thing that happened in books, but never did in life. In real life people did not write notes to strangers that they had seen across a restaurant. He could not, of course he could not. She could not possibly have made all that effect on him.
But the message, whatever it was, had been written. A waiter had been beckoned, explanations were being given. There was no pointing. Just an inclination of the head and the waiter was coming across the room, threading his way gingerly between the tables towards their table. The dark eyes were looking intently at her.
But it can’t be, she thought: it can’t. Though even as she thought it, she knew it could. She knew it was. There was no other table that the waiter could be coming to. What am I to do? she asked herself. What am I to do? She felt lost, helpless, incredibly childlike in the presence of this experience, this knowledge of the world.
&n
bsp; Another moment and the waiter would be at her table. She shut her eyes in a desperate attempt to think, to collect and free her thoughts from the magnetism of that dark gaze. What shall I do, she thought. Through the darkness of closed eyes she heard the waiter’s murmuring.
“Mr. Arthur Paramount. A note for you from the gentleman across the room.”
She opened her eyes, staring blankly at the piece of pasteboard covered with minute handwriting. To the lad, that message!
She had not long to wait for the explanation. The lad was garrulous with interest. “How curious,” he was saying. “And I didn’t know he was in England, even. Do you see that dark man over there at the table by the door, in a dinner jacket? That’s Druce Mander, the financier, you must have heard of him. He’s terribly rich: and famous. He’s been trying to get me on the’phone all day, he says. He wants me to join his party to the Derby. Awfully decent of him. I didn’t know he took the slightest interest in me. He’s asked me if I’ld like to bring a girl with me, to make the numbers equal. I say,” he added, “would you come to his party, I wonder? I wish you would. He’s sure to do us awfully well. Do come, Melanie!”
Melanie hesitated. “When is the Derby?” she asked.
“Wednesday, the day after tomorrow.”
The day after tomorrow! She had promised to lunch on Wednesday. And to play tennis and to go to a cocktail party, and she half thought she had promised to go with her mother and that young American to a theatre. She thought she had. But she dismissed the knowledge. Tennis, cocktails, theatres. They could go, all of them. Here was something she could not afford to miss.
“Thank you very much,” she said. “I’ll love to.”
She nodded her head slowly. It was to the lad she nodded, but it was with her attention centred upon the dark eyes so closely watching her; that were wondering, she knew, whether she would accept or not.
Chapter III
The Other Daughter
Melanie had scarcely been in bed four hours when the alarm clock at her sister’s side trilled its imperious summons. Julia opened her eyes and blinked sleepily at the sunlight that was streaming in shafts of amber light through chintz curtains on to grey-blue walls and a primrose ceiling. “So soon,” she thought, as she swung herself out of bed, felt for and found her fur-lined moccasins, and shuffled across the passage to the bathroom.