by Cyril Hare
“As usual, we look like being horribly weak in wood-wind,” Evans remarked. “Fullbright is quite a passable flute, but apart from him there’s nobody capable of playing first in any of the instruments, and we simply haven’t an oboe at all. It’s such a nuisance—it makes the rehearsals so difficult. Dixon, you’ll have to engage the professionals as usual. Let’s see, that will be two oboes, one clarinet——”
At this point Ventry and Mrs. Roberts began to speak at once. Ventry got in first.
“Young Clarkson isn’t at all bad on the old clarinet now,” he said. “He’s come on a lot lately.”
“I know,” said Evans. “I’m allowing for him. He can play second to a good first quite capably.”
“Young Clarkson,” Ventry persisted, “is dead keen to play first this season. He asked me to mention it particularly.”
“He’s not good enough.”
“Young Clarkson says that if he can’t play first this season he won’t play at all.”
“Very well,” said Evans curtly. “Arrange for two clarinets, will you, Dixon, please?”
It was apparent from his manner that there was a point beyond which even anonymous donors could not presume on the conductor’s tolerance, and Ventry subsided with a flush of annoyance. But the matter was not concluded. Mrs. Roberts had not yet had her say.
“Oh, Mr. Evans,” she broke in rather breathlessly, “if it’s a question of a clarinet, I’ve got just the man.”
Pettigrew was decidedly fond of Mrs. Roberts. She was an unassuming, good-natured woman, with an untidy mop of grey hair and a perennially worried expression, which usually proved to be due to a kindly preoccupation in somebody else’s troubles. She was the wife of a competent, successful man of business, the leading auctioneer in Markhampton, and most unfairly had been allowed by fate to become the mother of a long string of competent, successful children, with the result that her highly developed instinct for helping those weaker than herself had to be satisfied outside the circle of her family. A lame dog had but to look at a stile in Mrs. Roberts’s presence to find himself firmly and kindly lifted over to the other side. She had become notorious in this respect, and it was plain from the tightening of the muscles round Evans’s jaw that the prospect of a lame dog among his wood-wind did not appeal to him any more than young Clarkson had done.
“Really, Mrs. Roberts,” he said, “don’t you think it will be best if we leave the clarinets in professional hands in the usual way?”
Mrs. Roberts assumed an air of determination entirely foreign to her except where someone else’s interests were concerned.
“He is a professional,” she answered. “That’s just the point. At least, he used to be. Just at present he’s a Pole.”
There was a pause during which the meeting digested this remark, and then Evans, who, like Pettigrew, had a soft spot for Mrs. Roberts, said kindly: “Perhaps you had better tell us all about him, Mrs. Roberts. What is his name, in the first place?”
“Tadyoose—— Oh, dear! I never can remember it properly—let alone pronounce it. I’ve got it written down somewhere.”
She fumbled in her bag, and produced a piece of paper, which she passed to Evans. On it was written in block capitals the name Tadeusz Zbartorowski.
“Yes,” said Evans, non-committally, “I see that he’s a Pole.”
“He is really a most deserving man,” Mrs. Roberts insisted. “He can’t go back to Poland, he tells me, because of being massacred—if he does go back, I mean. I am most anxious to help him, and I promised——”
“Quite. But what makes you think he can play the clarinet?”
“Oh, he can certainly play—he’s playing now in the Silver Swing Dance Band—that’s only in the evenings, of course. I think he works in the black market when he’s not playing—so sad, isn’t it? But he’d much rather play in a real orchestra, I know.”
“I hardly think——” Clayton Evans began.
“He used to play at the Warsaw opera-house before the war,” Mrs. Roberts added as an after-thought.
“Oh! … That’s put rather a different complexion on the matter. If your friend is everything you say, perhaps we could do something for him.” Evans looked at his watch. “It is getting rather late, and we have three more programmes to settle yet. Dixon, you have some knowledge of Poland, I think. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind seeing this man, and if he is really as well qualified as Mrs. Roberts suggests you could use your own discretion about engaging him.”
“I’ll put him through it all right,” said Dixon, somewhat grimly. “I didn’t live five years in Warsaw for nothing.”
“Now as to the second concert,” Evans went on. “I suggest …”
At this point the treasurer passed into a deep coma.
2
Exeunt Severally
For Mrs. Basset the high-light of the evening came after the meeting had dispersed. Following a custom that had become a convention, Evans remained behind for a few minutes of gossip while he drank a modest brandy and soda, prepared by her own aristocratic hands. It was a delicious interlude of rare intimacy with her idol which she savoured to the full.
“Well, Charlotte,” he said. “I thought the meeting went off pretty well, didn’t you?”
“You managed it beautifully, Clayton. You always do.”
Nobody had ever heard Mrs. Basset address him publicly otherwise than as “Mr. Evans” and, since the death of Mr. Basset ten years before, no human being had been known to have the temerity to call her “Charlotte”. The surreptitious exchange of Christian names never failed to give her the exciting sense of secret indulgence in a guilty pleasure.
With faintly glowing cheeks she went on: “You don’t think there’ll be any trouble with Mr. Ventry, do you?”
“Not the slightest, I should imagine. He’s really not a bad performer when he gives his mind to it, and the Handel piece is quite within his powers. He deserves a run for his money, I think. We may have a bit of trouble about the tuning of the organ, though. I must speak to the city organist about it.”
“I wasn’t thinking about that, but about Mr. Clarkson. Mr. Ventry seemed quite upset over him.”
“I don’t think we need worry about that,” said Evans carelessly. “He’ll soon forget it. Clarkson is quite impossible, anyway. I shall be glad to be rid of him. Why can’t we get anybody to take up these wind instruments seriously, I wonder?”
But Mrs. Basset was not, for the moment, interested in wind instruments as such.
“It wasn’t like Mr. Ventry to show such anxiety about befriending a man,” she observed.
Evans laughed. “Well, his reputation doesn’t run in that direction, so far as I know,” he said. “I’m not well up in these matters myself, but——”
Mrs. Basset pursed her lips.
“There is a Mrs. Clarkson, I know,” she said, reflectively. “I must make enquiries.”
“You think that that may be where Ventry’s interest lies? Well, that’s certainly the oddest motive I’ve ever heard for trying to foist a dud on to an orchestra. But aren’t you being a bit too imaginative, Charlotte?”
“Perhaps I am, Clayton. But Mr. Ventry is a deep person, I am afraid; very, very deep.” She shook her head solemnly, and added: “And fond of women. The very opposite of my idea of what a man should be, in fact.”
“Quite,” said Evans quietly to his glass of brandy. He knew his Charlotte too well to take her more high-flown remarks literally, but the picture she had conjured up of the ideal man who should be a shallow misogynist was a little too much for him. To change the subject, he said: “I hope you approve of the programmes.”
“Of course I do!” Mrs. Basset breathed loyalty, into which she contrived to put a hint of reproach that her loyalty should ever have been questioned. “I was afraid for a moment that there might be a little awkwardness when the name of Lucy Carless was mentioned, but fortunately it all passed off very well.”
“Awkwardness? I know Lucy can be awkward
enough sometimes, but why should anyone be awkward about her?”
“Didn’t you know that Mr. Dixon had been married to her?” Mrs. Basset asked solemnly.
“Really? I knew Lucy had been married before her present venture, but I never connected her with Dixon. I’m so bad about people, I’m afraid. Are you sure?”
Debrett had materialized in Mrs. Basset’s hand, apparently of its own volition.
“Married, first, 1937 (marriage dissolved, 1942) Lucille, only child of Count I. Carlessoff; secondly, 1945, Nicola, eldest daughter of Henry Minch, Esquire,” she read. “I wish I could find out who Henry Minch was,” she added. “But Mrs. Dixon is very reserved.”
“Well, that’s Lucy all right,” Evans remarked. “She must be the only violinist on record with a foreign name who prefers to play under an English one. She always was a perverse little cuss. But I hope I haven’t put my foot in it with Dixon.”
“Oh no,” Mrs. Basset reassured him. “He is quite unconcerned about it. In fact, he made a little joke about it—I can’t remember what it was, but I know it was very witty. People are so modern about divorce nowadays, I can’t think why. But of course, Mr. Dixon had something more important to think about this evening. Do you think I ought to have congratulated him or not? It is so awkward.”
“What on earth are you talking about, Charlotte?” Evans stifled a yawn.
“Didn’t you see this evening’s paper? I thought you must have noticed.”
“I certainly saw the paper, but I didn’t observe anything about Dixon in it.”
“Lord Simonsbath’s only son,” said Mrs. Basset portentously, “has been killed in a motor car accident.”
“It seems an odd subject for congratulation, at first sight, Charlotte, but I presume that that book in your hands has something to do with it.”
Mrs. Basset nodded.
“On the failure of the elder branch,” she said, in a hushed tone, “our Mr. Dixon will inherit the peerage.”
“Dear me!” said Evans flippantly. “What a disappointment for Lucy. She always had a hankering after titles.”
“The matter isn’t quite so simple as that,” Mrs. Basset went on. “We can’t be sure yet whether the elder branch has failed.”
“Not be sure? With Debrett to go by? I thought that he at least was infallible in such matters.”
“I’m not saying a word against Debrett,” said Mrs. Basset reprovingly. “Of course not. That’s not the point. But the young man who has just died leaves a widow, and the paper says—papers are so crude nowadays—that she is—I prefer to say, in an interesting condition.”
“Interesting appears to be the word.” Evans yawned openly this time. “I shall look forward to the next instalment in this drama in high life. If I were in Dixon’s shoes I should pray that it should be a son. I can’t imagine anybody wanting to be a lord in these times.”
Before Mrs. Basset had had time to recover from this blasphemous observation, he had thanked her for his entertainment and taken his leave.
*
Meanwhile, the great-grandson of the second, and prospective heir presumptive to the sixth, Viscount Simonsbath was discussing much the same topics with Nicola, eldest daughter of Henry Minch, Esquire.
Nicola was getting ready for bed when Dixon reached home. He found her sitting at her dressing-table, brushing her thick auburn hair with slow, languid strokes, as if at any moment she might stop for sheer exhaustion. She was not really tired, he knew, but merely temperamentally incapable of doing anything in a hurry. She had probably been going to bed for the last hour, and she might continue to brush her hair for another ten minutes, merely because it was too much trouble to stop. He sat down quietly on the bed and watched her with a connoisseur’s approval. Some day, he reflected sadly, Nicola was going to get fat, if she didn’t brisk up a bit and take more exercise; but just at present she was enormously attractive. She had the creamy complexion that sometimes accompanies hair of her particular shade; fine, regular features and particularly beautiful rounded arms. Presently she caught his eye in the looking-glass and smiled lazily.
“Well?” she asked, without stopping the slow, rhythmic movement of the hair-brush. “What sort of an evening was it?”
“Much as usual. I’ve been left to do the donkeywork for the concerts, of course.”
“Well, Robert, you know you enjoy doing it, God knows why, so don’t complain. Have you fixed up anything interesting?”
“We’ve fixed up Lucy for the first concert, if you call that interesting,” said Dixon.
Nicola laid down her brush and turned round to look at him.
“The hell you have!” she said softly.
“Any objections?”
“Not a bit. It’ll be rather interesting to see what she looks like now. Pretty gaunt and scraggy, I should imagine, from the way she was going when we saw her last.” She turned back to the glass and contemplated her own pleasing curves with complacence. “Was Billy Ventry at the meeting?” she asked abruptly.
“Oh, very much so. Why do you ask?”
“Nothing … He rang me up just after you had gone this evening.”
“Whatever for?”
“Well, nominally it was to ask you what time the meeting was fixed for. Actually, it turned out, it was to invite me to come to the pictures with him tomorrow afternoon. I wonder how he found out that you were always kept late at the office on Thursdays?”
Dixon laughed drily.
“That man is the most unblushing womanizer at large,” he remarked. “Did you accept?”
“I told him I was going to tea with Mrs. Roberts, which happened to be perfectly true. But it interested me, because presumably it means that his present affair with whoever it is is petering out and he’s nosing round for someone else. How do people like Billy manage to get away with it, Robert?”
“Search me,” said Dixon, getting up. “Come on, it’s time we were in bed.”
As he was getting into bed, some twenty minutes later, Robert Dixon remarked: “By the way, you saw the evening paper, I suppose?”
“You left it lying about downstairs,” replied Nicola with a yawn, “but the headlines didn’t look very interesting, and I hadn’t backed anything, so I couldn’t be bothered to open it.”
“Well, if you had, you’d have seen that my cousin Peregrine’s dead. Car smash.”
“Good Lord!” Nicola remained silent for some moments. “There’s no one else between you and old Simmy, then?”
“That’s just the point. There may be. We shan’t know for a month or two. Peregrine’s widow is expecting.”
Nicola began to laugh quietly. “How damn funny!” she remarked.
“I don’t see there’s anything funny about it. It’s a confoundedly embarrassing position for me to be in—for both of us, for that matter.”
“Darling, I know it is.”
“And old Mother Basset gnashing her teeth at me in agonies of silent excitement only made it worse,” Dixon went on.
“She’ll gnash still more when she hears about me.”
“What on earth are you talking about?”
“Well,” said Nicola, “I’ve got a strong notion I’m on the same tack as Peregrine’s widow. I didn’t want to tell you till I was quite sure.”
“Well, well!” said Dixon. He stared at the ceiling in silence for a moment or two and then reached up and switched off the light.
*
Ventry’s house outside Markhampton was a roomy, ugly Victorian place. Ventry would have sold it long before but for the fact that some previous owner had added to it a large, lofty billiard room which, after some ruthless and expensive alterations, served very well to house his organ and an extensive library of music. On returning home from Mrs. Basset’s he went straight to this room, poured himself out half a tumbler of neat whisky, lodged it precariously on the music-rest of the organ, and proceeded to play from memory, with great dash and inaccuracy, the C Major Tocatta of Bach. It was one of his favouri
te pieces, both for its own sake and because the long pedal passage with which it opens leaves the performer’s hand free to pick up a glass when required. When the whisky and the Toccata were both finished he sat for a moment filled with that exquisite feeling which, before the word acquired a political flavour, was known as “appeasement”. The sensation gradually ebbed away as he became conscious of two facts. The first was that his cook had that morning threatened to give notice if her sleep was again disturbed by “noises in the middle of the night”; the other that the telephone was ringing persistently in the hall.
Swearing under his breath, Ventry swung his thick legs off the music stool and went to attend to the more tractable of the two troubles.
“Darling,” said a high-pitched voice, as soon as he lifted the receiver, “You’ve been ages answering. Is anything the matter?”
Ventry grunted.
“How did things go at the meeting?”
Ventry was still under the potent influence of whisky and Bach, and for the moment he could think of the meeting only in terms of the City Hall organ.
“Oh, damn well,” he replied incautiously. “Really very well indeed.”
“Then it’s all right about Johnny?” said the voice hopefully.
It was on the tip of Ventry’s tongue to say, “What about Johnny?” but his brain cleared in time. Distastefully, he conjured up a vision of Johnny Clarkson, with the rabbity teeth and narrow, suspicious eyes.
“Oh, Johnny!” he said. “Well, I’m afraid Evans wasn’t inclined to be very helpful so far as Johnny was concerned. In fact, he turned him down flat. I’m awfully sorry, Vi, and I did my best, of course, but there it is.”
“Darling, how sickening!” wailed the voice. “Can’t just nothing be done about it, not even to please pore little Violet?”
“Not unless he’ll come in as second again,” answered Ventry shortly. Mrs. Clarkson’s kittenish manner, he reflected, sounded its worst over the telephone.