by Ann Bridge
“What are you going to wear, my dear?” Aunt Bessie asked Amber with maternal solicitude. “Nothing too old, I hope.” Aunt Bessie liked girls to look fresh and girlish; she was inclined to think Amber’s rather sophisticated clothes too mature. She was, however, quite satisfied when her niece finally appeared, ready to start, in a soft lacy affair the colour of pale parchment, with a green hat, green shoes and green parasol. “Hum! You’ve properly let yourself go, haven’t you?” Uncle Bill remarked, looking her up and down. There was indeed a general air of delicate expansion about the flowing softness of the frock, the graceful wide hat, which enhanced the girl’s very considerable prettiness enormously—she looked really lovely. “Jemima! Our Amber will make hay today among the lads of the village!” Harry Leicester muttered to his wife, as they passed through the small willow-shaded Members’ Entrance after greeting the Harrisons’ party outside. “The pretty thing—yes,” Mrs. Leicester answered with the warmth that was so engaging in her voice.
Almost the first people Amber ran into among the throng inside were the Grant-Howards. Dickie hugged her rapturously. Nugent looked her up and down, as Uncle Bill had done, and said “I like the frock, Amber.” In that curious place, a girl’s mind, the conviction of looking really well has an odd quality—it produces a sort of glow, without as well as within. Nugent’s words, with the ensuing pretty compliments from the foreign community, touched up the girl’s face like some magic cosmetic, and gave her in addition a little dash of assurance, a pleasing uppishness that her manner usually lacked. This was well in evidence by the time she met Rupert.
“Hullo, Amber,” he said, stopping in front of her. His light eyes looked her up and down too, but he made no remark. Count Stefany, who was with him, produced some gallant exclamation, which Amber countered with admirable coolness by an enquiry for his wife. Dame! she was getting an air, the young man thought as he looked at her, and abruptly—“Come and bet,” he said. “I want you to make some money for me.”
They strolled towards the pari-mutuel windows, which extended in a long row between the paddock and the grand-stand, greeted at every yard by acquaintances, catching scraps of talk about horses and riders. Amber consulted her race-card, while Rupert took her parasol. He unfurled it and opened it. “What a pretty brolly!” “Brolly indeed!” said she, with fine scorn. “Well, it’s d’une élégance folle, anyhow, like its owner,” he said, shutting it again. Amber paid no visible attention. “Here you are for the Urga Plate—we’re too late for this race,” she said.
“What?” he peered over her shoulder.
The girl made a mark with a silver pencil under a horse’s name. “That.”
Rupertread: “ ‘First Secretary—H. Leroy.’ Oh, come off it!” he said, grinning at her.
“Don’t be so silly! You can’t go past a thing like that. And don’t shout out names,” she reproved him.
They each put five dollars on Rupert’s namesake, and then Amber did some considering. The third race was the Maiden Plate. In loyalty she ought to back Berry, Uncle Bill’s griffin: but she believed Rothstein meant business when he gave her the tip about Crème de Cacao, and she wanted to make some money, for a vague reason which was beginning to take shape in her mind. She finally decided to back Rothstein’s griffin to win, and have something each way on Berry.
They watched the Urga Plate from the rails. Henry Leroy’s scarlet-and-white colours hung half-way round the course in a bunch of ponies—then he left the bunch behind, came level with the leader, a grey pony of Mimi’s, and won easily by two lengths. Rupert was charmed—and he was more charmed still when the chalked board was run up and announced that First Secretary was paying $6.25. He pocketed his winnings with great satisfaction. “Now what?” he said. “You evidently know your job.”
“Well, you really must keep this dark,” the girl said, “Just do what I do.”
“All right—go ahead.”
At a guichet marked “Crème de Cacao” Amber put down five ten-dollar notes. Rupert gaped. “I say, aren’t you going rather a burst?” “Put your winnings on,” was all she said. He did so, obediently. She moved to another window and put ten dollars each way on Berry. He was amused at the way she took command—he liked her certainty: he always did like certainty. And he was enjoying strolling about with her in this crowd: heads turned after her, he caught muttered remarks: she was enchanting today.
The pari-mutuel windows were now crowded, and people were flocking into the stand: with “the Maidens” imminent there was a slight tension about the crowd that had been lacking before.
“Let’s go up for this—I must see,” the girl said. They climbed the stairs to the stand and found places with some difficulty.
From the top of the stand the whole course was spread out below them like a painted diagram. A roar of voices floated up from the enclosure below, where the bright dresses among the flowers made a changing pattern of colour, deepened here and there by the light shadow of the willows—the pattern spread up past the luncheon p’engs, an oblong of pale gold straw, and at both ends faded out into a solid line of blue, where the Chinese, yelling and chattering, hung on the rails. The sharp green and white oval of the course stretched out from beneath their feet into the landscape, and returned to them again; between the groups of willows which fringed it, out in the fields, the figures of peasants were quietly at work. Overhead innumerable kestrels, hovering and planing, cried their brief complaint in the blue.
Most strange it is how the same place, seen by the same person, but in two different moods, can wear so different an aspect. This scene, from which Amber had turned in revulsion on Sunday as vulgarly theatrical, was charming today. But now Rupert was beside her, muttering his little short revealing phrases, isolating the two of them in an increasingly intimate companionship. When Hawtrey had tried to annex Miss Harrison for a visit to the paddock, Benenden turned him off with an abrupt— “No, Joe—we’re a combine today, Amber and I: we’re making money. Don’t disturb us.” “It requires concentration,” he said to the girl, “doesn’t it?” Amber only laughed: in her little mood of successful haughtiness she would not be at the pains of framing a reply. But the whole thing was delightful. It would be too much to say that she had missed Rupert, these last weeks: rather he had been squeezed out, to a great extent, by absence and by other interests. Now he was squeezing his way in again, and she was only to realise later that he came to a place prepared for him. For the moment she merely enjoyed the unmistakeable flattery of his fun and amiability.
A stir, as of a breeze, passed over the stand: the crowd thinned in the enclosure, thickened at the rails—the field was passing up to the starting-point. The streaming manes and brightly braided tails of the griffins gave them a wild look, in odd contrast to the conventional dress of the jockeys, as they cantered past, a gay file of colours—Shaw on St. Lawrence, in maroon and gold; Dickie Roberts in pale blue on Crème de Cacao; Mulholland, looking nervous, on Berry. (The Press stable colours were, very appropriately, black and white.) Leroy had scratched Extraordinary and was riding Envoy, a white pony. After a false start or two, the withered Mr. Heseltine got them away. There was some jostling among the bunch of ponies, Amber could not see clearly what, in the scramble for the rails, but as they swept round the curve beyond the paddock they gradually spaced out—Berry and St. Lawrence neck and neck in the lead, with Berry on the rails: then Envoy and Crème de Cacao, and several more lying all together. In this order they ran till the fifth furlong. Now Berry bit by bit cleared St. Lawrence, and came on leading. Roars rose from the stand—“Bill has it! Berry has it!”—yells from the blue line at the rails about “nakö hei ma” (the black pony). But what was this, shooting out from the group, passing Leroy’s red and white, overhauling St. Lawrence? Benenden put up his glasses. “Gosh! It’s our friend,” he said, as he saw the pale blue of the rider. It was, indeed—at amazing speed Crème de Cacao passed his rivals: now he was only a length behind Berry, now level; then, still apparently withou
t effort, galloping easily, he drew ahead and won by three lengths.
Standing in the crowd, which screamed congratulations in four tongues, Amber and Rupert watched Dolly Rothstein lead the pony in. She didn’t do it very well, Amber thought—flamboyant, excited, she laughed, waved, patted the pony, patted the jockey, gave little cries of triumph. But the girl’s heart went out warmly to old Rothstein as he stood rather impassive, cigar in mouth, with a quiet satisfaction on his pale heavy face. “Good, Roberts,” she heard him say, “very judicious.” But the effect of the whole episode was to give shape and precision to the vague idea which had been forming in her mind earlier. This was no less than the ambition to buy a griffin of her own, train it, and run it in the Maidens next year. Waiting in front of the pari-mutuel board, to see what Crème de Cacao would pay, she thought it all out. The stable was the difficulty—the branch of an oleander tickled her cheek, and she moved impatiently to one side. She would have to take someone into her confidence about that, either Uncle Bill, or someone like the Leicesters. And a jockey. Perhaps…
The chalked boards ran up. “Swelp me!” said Rupert. Crème de Cacao was paying $11.25. Amber had cleared over 500 dollars, Rupert 250. He took her elbow. “Good girl! You and I are some combine, aren’t we?” The words set a little pulse flickering in her throat, but— “I’m the managing director,” was all she said. They went and leaned on the rails again, among the geraniums and the oleanders, till the crowd round the tote should have thinned; the smell of crushed turf, the faint smell of the flowers, rose in their nostrils. “Well, no firm could wish for a better,” Rupert said, after a pause. But he wasn’t exactly laughing as he said it. The girl looked out over the course at the kestrels still wheeling in the blue overhead, at the light striking like great chords through the distant willows. Lovely it was, moving—she could almost hear the chords of light vibrate from sky to earth, as she heard the high notes of the kestrels. It was beginning again; the world was stirring into music again. But how did one know if it was real? Or rather, if it was based on anything? And what did one do till one knew? Confused, dizzying, thoughts that were half emotions and emotions that were sketches of thoughts wheeled in her like those brown birds—there, that one—now a spray of oleander hid him behind pink blossoms, as thought faded with a touch of Rupert’s hand again on her arm. “What thinking?” he asked her.
The intimacy of the babyish phrase sent fresh little waves of warmth stealing through her. Startled, with her usual lack of presence of mind, she blurted out the truth—“I was thinking how little I know.”
“H’m,” said Rupert. “Except about horses, yes.” He studied her as she leant against the rails, delightfully dressed, her lovely skin and hair most wonderfully shadowed under the green hat, her eyes still on the wheeling birds. “I’m not sure it isn’t time I started to teach you,” he said abruptly. And again he wasn’t exactly laughing.
They all lunched with the Harrisons—the Grant-Howards, Rupert, Hawtrey, Mulholland and the two Stefanys. Most people in Peking always invited Herman and Mimi de Bulle together, and if they couldn’t ask Mimi—as on this occasion it was obviously useless to do, since she had her own p’eng and party—they did not invite Count Stefany either. But such nuances either escaped Aunt Bessie or she sublimely ignored them: she liked Anna, and invited her and her husband together. And, Aunt Bessie being Aunt Bessie, together they came.
It was already too hot for lunch in the courtyard—they sat in the pavilion, and the gilded image presided solemnly over the meal. But only the image was solemn —and Mr. Hawtrey. Joe was feeling distinctly miffed. There was Amber, looking charming, really charming, prettier than he had ever seen her, even when he had visualised himself, on the drive out, escorting her, his eyeglass in his eye, through the paddock and the enclosure; and that infernal Rupert had mopped her up completely for the whole morning. He couldn’t get a seat by her at lunch, even; she was sitting between Stefany and Mulholland, and talking to Herman about the exact procedure for buying griffins. But his jealous and experienced eye noted with concern her dreamy expression in pauses of the conversation, and how when Rupert spoke she listened, whoever he was talking to. Damn and blast! Something must be done about it. Rupert would charm the eyes out of anyone’s head if he gave his mind to it. Look at Mme. de Clarcns—look, indeed, at poor Lydia, till Bruno came along and went one better! Though what they saw in Rupert, apart from his brains, really beat Joe. Relatively, he was a small man! It was very odd.
He fared no better in the afternoon, however. Rupert continued to monopolise Amber; together they wandered about, betted, stood with heads together over the race-card; together engaged in conversation with other people, only to move off again side by side. By the end of the day it was a source of comment—nothing escapes notice in Peking. “Enfin, elle s’qffiche trop avec ce jeune homme,” Mimi observed virtuously to Count Herman. “Qu’avezvous done, Shaw?” for the jockey burst into a guffaw. “Ah, ça—mais pour les jeunes filles c’est autre chose,” she said, drinking some more champagne, which in the de Bulle p’eng took the place of tea. Champagne no doubt accounted for this frankness. And François’ fears were fulfilled—the defeat of St. Lawrence had upset her; she vowed that Roberts had fouled the pony at the start. There were, in fine, the makings of an incident, and rumours of it reached Sir James, spoiling his tea.
But nothing of this touched Amber. A return to her former uppishness had seemed the best treatment of the situation, on the whole. “You are in your element in all this, aren’t you?” said Rupert to her, with a lazy mixture of mockery and approbation, when she had successfully squeezed a tip out of Dickie Roberts in the paddock—“I believe a racing-stable is your spiritual home.” And some movement of contrariety checked her first impulse to tell him how much less at home she had felt lately in the world of those who dealt with horses. She agreed. “You don’t look the part, you know,” he said. “What part do I look?” she wanted to know. Rupert hesitated for once. “No part—yet,” he finally brought out. “You look very pretty indeed,” he said then, with firmness. “Are you vain?” he asked. Her answer—“I should like to be,” set him chuckling with its candid unexpectedness. “Well, do be—you’ve every reason to.”
Joe’s turn only came that night. He craftily arranged with Aunt Bessie to call for Amber—Joe had a car of his own—take her to the Rothsteins’ party at the Peking Hotel, and bring her back. Aunt Bessie accepted this escort gratefully. It was nice to have someone steady, like Joe, to look after the dear child. The Rothsteins’ parties were sometimes rather rackety, she believed.
The struggle of the human heart to make its own meaning clear to itself is not, as a rule, the simple matter that in fiction it is represented to be. It is generally a slow and tortuous business, confused by irrelevancies like pride or caution, held up by the competition of other interests, worried by the intervention of the questioning brain; pushed forward, on the other hand, by all sorts of accidents. Actually it was Mr. Hawtrey’s own endeavours to improve his position which in this case opened Amber’s eyes as to where she stood. Seated at a table for forty, in the vast, skilfully illuminated dining-room at the Hotel de Pékin, behind the screen of conversation, the pretty finished façade of her appearance and her smile, she was working away at her theory of Benenden, fitting into it the events of the day. He had said this, and that—“You look very pretty indeed,” “ I think it’s about time I started to teach you.” She did, as it were, sums with them, carrying forward the debit or credit balance of previous conversations, previous reckonings. Teach her what? The mere thought of one possible answer to that question set up a curious stifling pulsation within her. But she still conceived it to be in her power to go forward or back, or remain placed; still imagined that her heart would answer to the helm. Now and then—for the talk was mostly of horses—she drifted off into a contented recollection of those five hundred dollars, and the griffins she could buy; then she came back to Rupert again. And then the music began.
&n
bsp; M. Rothstein had done himself rather well on this occasion. The immense table not only carried vases of roses—the whole surface was strewn, thickly as they would lie, with lilies of the valley. Men filled up the champagne-glasses almost between every mouthful; the chef had been subsidised, so had the band. Half-way through the meal the White Russian chef d’orchestre stepped out with his violin, came and stood by the table and began to play the “Chant hindou.” The melody, heavily sweet as the overpowering perfume of the lilies, stole round the table, with the ring of well-fed and satisfied faces, the shirt fronts, the shoulders and the jewels—carrying a hint of unseen beauty, like the night wind off some tropic shore. It filled Amber with a strange languor; leaning back in her chair, holding a spray of lilies, she surrendered herself to the exotic sweetness. This sort of music was new to her—at home, apart from jazz, it was the clear cool purities of Mozart or Bach or Corelli with which she was familiar. This saccharine sensuous stuff took her by surprise, had her at its mercy. This then was the land into which one might be led, this place of dim enchantments. Rupert’s face swam before her, his light eyes, his smile; his voice, caressing and mocking, was in her ears, his hand on her arm. As air led on to air she found it harder and harder to reply to remarks addressed to her, to hear what was said, so caught was she in her dream. When, with the advent of coffee, the chef d’orchestre returned to his place and couples began to move out into the room she hardly noticed it—she started when Joe touched her shoulder and said “Come and dance.”