“Good of you to join me,” he said, a grin spreading over his face.
I padded over toward him and looked up expectantly. He bent down and pushed my bowl toward me. I began to lap up the milk happily, my tail swishing from side to side.
It’s a myth that we only swish our tails when we’re angry.
HENRY’S HICCUP
When the grand pasha’s first son was born in 1900 (he had sired twelve daughters by six wives) he named the boy Henry, after his favorite king of England. Henry entered this world with more money than even the most blasé tax collector could imagine, and seemed destined to live a life of idle ease.
The grand pasha, who ruled over ten thousand families, was of the opinion that in time there would be only five kings left in the world—the kings of spades, hearts, diamonds, clubs, and England. With this conviction in mind, he decided that Henry should be educated by the British. The boy was therefore despatched from his native Cairo at the age of eight to embark upon a formal education, young enough to retain only vague recollections of the noise, the heat, and the dirt of his birthplace. Henry started his new life at the Dragon School, which the grand pasha’s advisers assured him was the finest preparatory school in the land. The boy left this establishment four years later, having developed a passionate love for the polo field and a thorough distaste for the classroom. He proceeded, with the minimum academic qualifications, to Eton, which the pasha’s advisers assured him was the best school in Europe. He was gratified to learn the school had been founded by his favorite king. Henry spent five years at Eton, where he added squash, golf, and tennis to his loves, and applied mathematics, jazz and cross-country running to his dislikes.
On leaving school he once again failed to make more than a passing impression on the examiners. Nevertheless, he was found a place at Balliol College, Oxford, which the pasha’s advisers assured him was the greatest university in the world. Three years at Balliol added two more loves to his life: horses and women, and three more ineradicable aversions: politics, philosophy, and economics.
At the end of his time in statu pupillari, he totally failed to impress the examiners and went down without a degree. His father, who considered young Henry’s two goals against Cambridge in the Varsity polo match a wholly satisfactory result of his university career, despatched the boy on a journey around the world to complete his education. Henry enjoyed the experience, learning more on the racecourse at Longchamp and in the back streets of Benghazi than he had ever acquired from his formal upbringing in England.
The grand pasha would have been proud of the tall, sophisticated, and handsome young man who returned to England a year later showing only the slightest trace of a foreign accent, if he hadn’t died before his beloved son reached Southampton. Henry, although broken-hearted, was certainly not broke, as his father had left him some twenty million pounds in known assets, including a racing stud in Suffolk, a one-hundred-foot yacht at Nice, and a palace in Cairo. But by far the most important of his father’s bequests was the finest manservant in London, one Godfrey Barker. Barker could arrange or rearrange anything, at a moment’s notice.
Henry, for the lack of something better to do, settled himself into his father’s old suite at the Ritz, not troubling to read the “Situations Vacant” column in The Times. Rather he embarked on a life of single-minded dedication to the pursuit of pleasure, the only career for which Eton, Oxford, and inherited wealth had adequately equipped him. To do Henry justice, he had, despite a more than generous helping of charm and good looks, enough common sense to choose carefully those permitted to spend the unforgiving minute with him. He selected only old friends from school and university who, although they were without exception not as well-breeched as he, weren’t the sort of fellows who came begging for the loan of a fiver to cover a gambling debt.
Whenever Henry was asked what was the first love of his life, he was always hard pressed to choose between horses and women, and as he found it possible to spend the day with the one and the night with the other without causing any jealousy or recrimination, he never overtaxed himself with resolving the problem. Most of his horses were fine stallions, fast, sleek, velvet-skinned, with dark eyes and firm limbs; this would have adequately described most of his women, except that they were fillies. Henry fell in and out of love with every girl in the chorus line of the London Palladium, and when the affairs had come to an end, Barker saw to it that they always received some suitable memento to ensure that no scandal ensued. Henry also won every classic race on the English turf before he was thirty-five, and Barker always seemed to know the right year to back his master.
Henry’s life quickly fell into a routine, never dull. One month was spent in Cairo going through the motions of attending to his business, three months in the south of France with the occasional excursion to Biarritz, and for the remaining eight months he resided at the Ritz. For the four months he was out of London his magnificent suite overlooking St. James’s Park remained unoccupied. History does not record whether Henry left the rooms empty because he disliked the thought of unknown persons splashing in the sunken marble bath, or because he simply couldn’t be bothered with the fuss of signing in and out of the hotel twice a year. The Ritz management had never commented on the matter to his father; why should they with the son? This program fully accounted for Henry’s year except for the odd trip to Paris when some Home Counties girl came a little too close to the altar. Although almost every girl who met Henry wanted to marry him, a good many would have done so even if he had been penniless. However, Henry saw absolutely no reason to be faithful to one woman. “I have a hundred horses and a hundred male friends,” he would explain when asked. “Why should I confine myself to one female?” There seemed no immediate answer to Henry’s logic.
The story of Henry would have ended there had he continued life as destiny seemed content to allow, but even the Henrys of this world have the occasional hiccup.
As the years passed, Henry grew into the habit of never planning ahead, since experience—and his able manservant, Barker—had always led him to believe that with vast wealth you could acquire anything you desired at the last minute, and cover any contingencies that arose later. However, even Barker couldn’t formulate a contingency plan in response to Mr. Chamberlain’s statement of September 3, 1939, that the British people were at war with Germany. Henry felt it inconsiderate of Chamberlain to have declared war so soon after Wimbledon and the Oaks, and even more inconsiderate of the Home Office to advise him a few months later that Barker must stop serving the grand pasha and, until further notice, serve His Majesty the King instead.
What could poor Henry do? Now in his fortieth year, he was not used to living anywhere other than the Ritz, and the Germans who had caused Wimbledon to be canceled were also occupying the George V in Paris and the Negresco in Nice. As the weeks passed and daily an invasion seemed more certain Henry came to the distasteful conclusion that he would have to return to a neutral Cairo until the British had won the war. It never crossed his mind, even for one moment, that the British might lose: After all, they had won the First World War, and therefore they must win the Second. “History repeats itself” was about the only piece of wisdom he recalled clearly from three years of tutorials at Oxford.
Henry summoned the manager of the Ritz and told him that his suite was to be left unoccupied until he returned. He paid one year in advance, which he felt was more than enough time to take care of upstarts like Herr Hitler, and set off for Cairo. The manager was heard to remark later that the grand pasha’s departure for Egypt was most ironic; he was, after all, more British than the British.
Henry spent a year at his palace in Cairo and then found he could bear his fellow countrymen no longer, so he removed himself to New York just before it would have been possible for him to come face to face with Rommel. Once in New York, Henry bivouacked in the Pierre Hotel on Fifth Avenue, selected an American manservant called Eugene, and waited for Mr. Churchill to finish the war. As if to pr
ove his continuing support for the British, on January 1 every year he forwarded a check to the Ritz to cover the cost of his rooms for the next twelve months.
Henry celebrated V-J day in Times Square with a million Americans and immediately made plans for his return to Britain. He was surprised and disappointed when the British Embassy in Washington informed him that it might be some time before he was allowed to return to the land he loved, and despite continual pressure and all the influence he could bring to bear, he was unable to board a ship for Southampton until July 1946. From the first-class deck he waved goodbye to America and Eugene, and looked forward to England and Barker.
Once he had stepped off the ship onto English soil he headed straight for the Ritz to find his rooms exactly as he had left them. As far as Henry could see, nothing had changed except that his manservant (now the servant to a general) could not be released from the armed forces for at least another six months. Henry was determined to play his part in the war effort by surviving without him for that period, and remembering Barker’s words: “Everyone knows who you are. Nothing will change,” he felt confident all would be well. Indeed, on the bonheur du jour table in his rooms at the Ritz was an invitation to dine with Lord and Lady Lympsham in their Chelsea Square home the following night. It looked as if Barker’s prediction was turning out to be right: Everything would be just the same. Henry penned an affirmative reply to the invitation, happy with the thought that he was going to pick up his life in England exactly where he had left off.
The following evening Henry arrived on the Chelsea Square doorstep a few minutes after eight o’clock. The Lympshams, an elderly couple who had not qualified for the war in any way, gave every appearance of not even realizing that it had taken place, or that Henry had been absent from the London social scene. Their table, despite rationing, was as fine as Henry remembered, and, more important, one of the guests present was quite unlike anyone he could ever remember. Her name, Henry learned from his host, was Victoria Campbell, and she turned out to be the daughter of another guest, General Sir Ralph Colquhoun. Lady Lympsham confided to Henry over the quails’ eggs that the sad young thing had lost her husband when the Allies advanced on Berlin, only a few days before the Germans had surrendered. For the first time Henry felt guilty about not having played some part in the war.
All through dinner, he could not take his eyes from young Victoria, whose classical beauty was equaled only by her well-informed and lively conversation. He feared he might be staring too obviously at the slim, dark-haired girl with the high cheekbones; it was like admiring a beautiful sculpture and wanting to touch it. Her bewitching smile elicited an answering smile from all who received it. Henry did everything in his power to be the receiver and was rewarded on several occasions, aware that, for the first time in his life, he was becoming totally infatuated—and was delighted to be.
The ensuing courtship was an unusual one for Henry, in that he made no attempt to persuade Victoria to compliance. He was sympathetic and attentive, and when she had come out of mourning he approached her father and asked if he might request his daughter’s hand in marriage. Henry was overjoyed when first the general agreed and later Victoria accepted. After an announcement in The Times they celebrated the engagement with a small dinner party at the Ritz, attended by 120 close friends who might have been forgiven for coming to the conclusion that Attlee was exaggerating about his austerity program. After the last guest had left Henry walked Victoria back to her father’s home in Belgrave Mews, while discussing the wedding arrangements and his plans for the honeymoon.
“Everything must be perfect for you, my angel,” he said, as once again he admired the way her long, dark hair curled at the shoulders. “We shall be married in St. Margaret’s, Westminster, and after a reception at the Ritz we will be driven to Victoria Station, where you will be met by Fred, the senior porter. Fred will allow no one else to carry my bags to the last carriage of the Golden Arrow. One should always have the last carriage, my darling,” explained Henry, “so that one cannot be disturbed by other travelers.”
Victoria was impressed by Henry’s mastery of the arrangements, especially remembering the absence of his manservant, Barker.
Henry warmed to his theme. “Once we have boarded the Golden Arrow, you will be served with China tea and some wafer-thin smoked salmon sandwiches, which we can enjoy while relaxing on our journey to Dover. When we arrive at the Channel port, we will be met by Albert, whom Fred will have alerted. Albert will remove the bags from our carriage, but not before everyone else has left the train. He will then escort us to the ship, where we will take sherry with the captain while our bags are being placed in Cabin Number Three. Like my father, I always have Cabin Number Three; it is not only the largest and most comfortable stateroom on board, but it is situated in the center of the ship, which makes it possible to enjoy a comfortable crossing even should one have the misfortune to encounter bad weather. And when we have docked in Calais you will find Pierre waiting for us. He will have organized everything for the front carriage of the Flèche d’Or.”
“Such an itinerary must take a considerable amount of detailed planning,” said Victoria, her hazel eyes sparkling as she listened to her future husband’s description of the promised tour.
“More tradition than organization, I would say, my dear,” replied Henry, smiling, as they strolled hand in hand across Hyde Park. “Although, I confess, in the past Barker has kept his eye on things should any untoward emergency arise. In any case, I have always had the front carriage of the Flèche d’Or, because it assures one of being off the train and away before anyone realizes that you have actually arrived in Paris. Other than Raymond, of course.”
“Raymond?”
“Yes. Raymond, a servant par excellence, who adored my father. He will have organized a bottle of Veuve Clicquot ’37 and a little Russian caviar for the journey. He will also have ensured that there is a couch in the railway carriage should you need to rest, my dear.”
“You seem to have thought of everything, Henry darling,” she said as they entered Belgrave Mews.
“I hope you will think so, Victoria; for when you arrive in Paris, which–I have not had the opportunity to visit for so many years, there will be a Rolls-Royce standing by the side of the carriage, door open, and we will step out of the Flèche d’Or into the car, and Maurice will drive us to the George V, arguably the finest hotel in Europe. Louis, the manager, will be on the steps of the hotel to greet us, and he will conduct us to the bridal suite with its stunning view of the city. A maid will unpack for you while you retire to bathe and rest from the tiresome journey. When you are fully recovered we shall dine at Maxim’s, where you will be guided to the corner table farthest from the orchestra by Marcel, the finest head waiter in the world. As you are seated, the musicians will strike up. ‘A Room with a View,’ my favorite tune, and we will then be served with the most magnificent langouste you have ever tasted, of that I can assure you.”
Henry and Victoria arrived at the front door of the general’s small house in Belgrave Mews. He took her hand before continuing.
“After we have dined, my dear, we shall stroll into the Madeleine, where I shall buy a dozen red roses from Paulette, the most beautiful flower girl in Paris. She is almost as lovely as you.” Henry sighed and concluded: “Then we shall return to the George V and spend our first night together.”
Victoria’s hazel eyes showed delighted anticipation. “I only wish it could be tomorrow,” she said.
Henry kissed her gallantly on the cheek and said: “It will be worth waiting for, my dear, I can assure you it will be a day neither of us will ever forget.”
“I’m sure of that,” Victoria replied as he released her hand.
On the morning of his wedding Henry leaped out of bed and drew back the curtains with a flourish, only to be greeted by a steady drizzle.
“The rain will clear by eleven o’clock,” he said out loud with immense confidence, and hummed as he shaved slowly an
d with care.
The weather had not improved by midmorning. On the contrary, heavy rain was falling by the time Victoria entered the church. Henry’s disappointment evaporated the instant he saw his beautiful bride; all he could think of was taking her to Paris. The ceremony over, the grand pasha and his wife stood outside the church, a golden couple, smiling for the press photographers as the loyal guests scattered damp rice over them. As soon as they decently could, they set off for the reception at the Ritz. Between them they managed to chat to every guest, and they would have been away in better time had Victoria been a little quicker changing and the general’s toast to the happy couple been considerably shorter. The guests crowded onto the steps of the Ritz, overflowing on to the sidewalk in Piccadilly to wave goodbye to the departing honeymooners, and were sheltered from the downpour by a capacious red awning.
The general’s Rolls took the grand pasha and his wife to the station, where the chauffeur unloaded the bags. Henry instructed him to return to the Ritz, since he had everything under control. The chauffeur touched his cap and said: “I hope you and madam have a wonderful trip, sir,” and left them. Henry stood on the station, looking for Fred. There was no sign of him, so he hailed a passing porter.
“Where is Fred?” inquired Henry.
“Fred who?” came the reply.
“How in heaven’s name should I know?” said Henry.
“Then how in hell’s name should I know?” retorted the porter.
Victoria shivered. English railway stations are not designed for the latest fashion in silk coats.
“Kindly take my bags to the end carriage of the train,” said Henry.
Collected Short Stories Page 42