Книга - False Scent

False Scent
Ngaio Marsh


Another classic Ngaio Marsh novel reissued.Mary Bellamy, darling of the London stage, holds a 50th birthday party, a gala for everyone who loves her and fears her power. Then someone uses a deadly insect spray on Mary instead of the azaleas. The suspects, all very theatrically, are playing the part of mourners. Superintendent Alleyn has to find out which one played the murderer…









NGAIO MARSH

False Scent










Copyright (#u6617e2d5-770a-520f-a652-7d37aabc7775)


This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

HarperFiction

HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)

First published in Great Britain by Collins 1960

Copyright © Ngaio Marsh Ltd 1960

Ngaio Marsh asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this works

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

Source ISBN: 9780006155904

Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2009 ISBN: 9780007344765

Version: 2018-04-17




Dedication (#u6617e2d5-770a-520f-a652-7d37aabc7775)


For Jemima with love




Contents


Cover (#ubf05b267-ba01-5ee6-b743-d9b70c604f84)

Title Page (#uab345ae1-6f68-5f0e-a278-ad8e025fd9d8)

Copyright

Dedication

1 Pardoner’s Place – 9.00 a.m. (#u19247f70-db0f-5879-9716-c7ccc9163bc2)

2 Preparation for a Party (#u73e90ea2-d6ad-52ca-8202-f2d3ad87ce14)

3 Birthday Honours (#litres_trial_promo)

4 Catastrophe (#litres_trial_promo)

5 Questions of Adherence (#litres_trial_promo)

6 On the Scent (#litres_trial_promo)

7 Re–entry of Mr Marchant (#litres_trial_promo)

8 Pattern Completed (#litres_trial_promo)

Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)

Also by the Author

About the Publisher





CHAPTER 1 (#u6617e2d5-770a-520f-a652-7d37aabc7775)

Pardoner’s Place – 9.00 A.M. (#u6617e2d5-770a-520f-a652-7d37aabc7775)


When she died it was as if all the love she had inspired in so many people suddenly blossomed. She had never, of course, realized how greatly she was loved, never known that she was to be carried by six young men who would ask to perform this last courtesy: to bear her on their strong shoulders, so gently and with such dedication.

Quite insignificant people were there: her Old Ninn, the family nurse, with a face like a boot, grimly crying. And Florence, her dresser, with a bunch of primroses because of all flowers they were the ones she had best loved to see on her make-up table. And George, the stage doorkeeper at the Unicorn, sober as sober and telling anyone who would listen to him that there, if you liked, had been a great lady. Pinky Cavendish in floods and Maurice, very Guardee, with a stiff upper lip. Crowds of people whom she herself would have scarcely remembered but upon whom, at some time, she had bestowed the gift of her charm.

All the Knights and Dames, of course, and The Management, and Timon Gantry, the great producer, who had so often directed her. Bertie Saracen who had created her dresses since the days when she was a bit-part actress and who had, indeed, risen to his present eminence in the wake of her mounting fame. But it was not for her fame that they had come to say goodbye to her. It was because, quite simply, they had loved her.

And Richard? Richard was there, white and withdrawn. And – this was an afterthought – and, of course, Charles.

Miss Bellamy paused, bogged down in her own fantasy. Enjoyable tears started from her eyes. She often indulged herself with plans for her funeral and she never failed to be moved by them. The only catch was the indisputable fact that she wouldn’t live to enjoy it. She would be, as it were, cheated of her own obsequies and she felt there was some injustice in this.

But perhaps, after all, she would know. Perhaps she would hover ambiguously over the whole show, employing her famous gift for making a party go without seeming to do anything about it. Perhaps – ? Feeling slightly uncomfortable, she reminded herself of her magnificent constitution and decided to think about something else.

There was plenty to think about. The new play. Her role: a fat part if ever she saw one. The long speech about keeping the old chin up and facing the future with a wry smile. Richard hadn’t put it quite like that and she did sometimes wish he would write more simply. Perhaps she would choose her moment and suggest to him that a few homely phrases would do the trick much more effectively than those rather involved, rather arid sentences that were so bloody difficult to memorize. What was wanted – the disreputable word ‘gimmick’ rose to the surface and was instantly slapped down – what was wanted, when all was said and done, was the cosy human touch: a vehicle for her particular genius. She believed in humanity. Perhaps this morning would be the right occasion to talk to Richard. He would, of course, be coming to wish her many happy returns. Her birthday! That had to be thought of selectively and with a certain amount of care. She must at all costs exclude that too easy little sum whose answer would provide her age. She had, quite literally and by dint of a yogi-like discipline, succeeded in forgetting it. Nobody else that mattered knew except Florence who was utterly discreet and Old Ninn who, one must face it, was getting a bit garrulous, especially when she’d taken her glass or two of port. Please God she wouldn’t forget herself this afternoon.

After all, it was how you felt and how you looked that mattered. She lifted her head from the pillows and turned it. There, across the room, she was, reflected in the tall glass above her dressing-table. Not bad, she thought, not half bad, even at that hour and with no makeup. She touched her face here and there, manipulating the skin above the temples and at the top of the jaw line. To lift or not to lift? Pinky Cavendish was all for it and said that nowadays there was no need for the stretched look. But what about her famous triangular smile? Maintaining the lift, she smiled. The effect was still triangular.

She rang her bell. It was rather touching to think of her little household, oriented to her signal. Florence, Cookie, Gracefield, the parlourmaid, the housemaid and the odd woman: all ready in the kitchen and full of plans for the Great Day. Old Ninn, revelling in her annual holiday, sitting up in bed with her News of the World or perhaps putting the final touch to the bed-jacket she had undoubtedly knitted and which would have to be publicly worn for her gratification. And, of course, Charles. It was curious how Miss Bellamy tended to leave her husband out of her meditations because, after all, she was extremely fond of him. She hurriedly inserted him. He would be waiting for Gracefield to tell him she was awake and had rung. Presently he would appear, wearing a pink scrubbed look and that plum-coloured dressing-gown that did so little to help.

She heard a faint chink and a subdued rumble. The door opened and Florence came in with her tray.

‘Top of the morning, dear,’ said Florence. ‘What’s it feel like to be eighteen again?’

‘You old fool,’ Miss Bellamy said, and grinned at her. ‘It feels fine.’

Florence built pillows up behind her and set the tray across her knees. She then drew back the curtains and lit the fire. She was a pale, small woman with black dyed hair and sardonic eyes. She had been Miss Bellamy’s dresser for twenty-five years and her personal maid for fifteen. ‘Three rousing cheers,’ she said, ‘it’s a handsome-looking morning.’

Miss Bellamy examined her tray. The basket-ends were full of telegrams, a spray of orchids lay across the plate and beside it a parcel in silver wrapping tied with pink ribbon.

‘What’s all this?’ she asked, as she had asked for her last fifteen birthdays, and took up the parcel.

‘The flowers are from the colonel. He’ll be bringing his present later on as per usual, I suppose.’

‘I wasn’t talking about the flowers,’ Miss Bellamy said and opened the parcel. ‘Florrie! Florrie, darling!’

Florence clattered the firearms. ‘Might as well get in early,’ she muttered, ‘or it’d never be noticed.’

It was a chemise, gossamer fine and exquisitely embroidered.

‘Come here!’ Miss Bellamy said, fondly bullying.

Florence walked over to the bed and suffered herself to be kissed. Her face became crimson. For a moment she looked at her employer with a devotion that was painful in its intensity and then turned aside, her eyes filmed with unwilling tears.

‘But it’s out of this world!’ Miss Bellamy marvelled, referring to the chemise. ‘That’s all! It’s just made my day for me.’ She shook her head slowly from side to side, lost in wonderment. ‘I can’t wait,’ she said and, indeed, she was very pleased with it.

‘There’s the usual mail,’ Florence grunted. ‘More, if anything.’

‘Truly?’

‘Outside on the trolley. Will I fetch it in here?’

‘After my bath, darling, may we?’

Florence opened drawers and doors, and began to lay out the clothes her mistress had chosen to wear. Miss Bellamy, who was on a strict diet, drank her tea, ate her toast, and opened her telegrams, awarding each of them some pleased ejaculation. ‘Darling, Bertie! Such a sweet muddled little message. And a cable, Florrie, from the Bantings in New York. Heaven of them!’

‘That show’s folding, I’m told,’ Florence said, ‘and small wonder. Dirty and dull, by all accounts. You mustn’t be both.’

‘You don’t know anything about it,’ Miss Bellamy absentmindedly observed. She was staring in bewilderment at the next telegram. ‘This,’ she said, ‘isn’t true. It’s just not true. My dear Florrie, will you listen.’ Modulating her lovely voice, Miss Bellamy read it aloud. ‘“Her birth was of the womb of morning dew and her conception of the joyous prime.”’

‘Disgusting,’ said Florence.

‘I call it rather touching. But who in the wide world is Octavius Browne?’

‘Search me, love.’ Florence helped Miss Bellamy into a negligee designed by Bertie Saracen, and herself went into the bathroom. Miss Bellamy settled down to some preliminary work on her face.

There was a tap on the door connecting her room with her husband’s and he came in. Charles Templeton was sixty years old, big and fair with a heavy belly. His eyeglass dangled over his dark-red dressing-gown, his hair, thin and babyishly fine, was carefully brushed and his face, which had the florid colouring associated with heart disease, was freshly shaved. He kissed his wife’s hand and forehead and laid a small parcel before her. ‘A very happy birthday to you, Mary, my dear,’ he said. Twenty years ago, when she married him, she had told him that his voice was charming. If it was so, still, she no longer noticed it or, indeed, listened very attentively to much that he said.

But she let her birthday gaiety play about him and was enchanted with her present, a diamond and emerald bracelet. It was, even for Charles, quite exceptionally magnificent and for a fleeting moment she remembered that he, as well as Florence and Old Ninn, knew her age. She wondered if there was any intention of underlining this particular anniversary. There were some numerals that by their very appearance – stodgy and rotund – wore an air of horrid maturity. Five, for instance. She pulled her thoughts up short, and showed him the telegram. ‘I should like to know what in the world you make of that,’ she said and went into the bathroom, leaving the door open. Florence came back and began to make the bed with an air of standing none of its nonsense.

‘Good morning, Florence,’ Charles Templeton said. He put up his eyeglass and walked over to the bow window with the telegram.

‘Good morning, sir,’ Florence woodenly rejoined. Only when she was alone with her mistress did she allow herself the freedom of the dressing-room.

‘Did you,’ Miss Bellamy shouted from her bath, ‘ever see anything quite like it?’

‘But it’s delightful,’ he said, ‘and how very nice of Octavius.’

‘You don’t mean to say you know who he is?’

‘Octavius Browne? Of course I do. He’s the old boy down below in the Pegasus bookshop. Up at the House, but a bit before my time. Delightful fellow.’

‘Blow me down flat!’ Miss Bellamy ejaculated, splashing luxuriously. ‘You mean that dim little place with a fat cat in the window.’

‘That’s it. He specializes in pre-Jacobean literature.’

‘Does that account for the allusion to wombs and conceptions? Of what can he be thinking, poor Mr Browne?’

‘It’s a quotation,’ Charles said, letting his eyeglass drop. ‘From Spenser. I bought a very nice Spenser from him last week. No doubt he supposes you’ve read it.’

‘Then, of course, I must pretend I have. I shall call on him and thank him. Kind Mr Browne!’

‘They’re great friends of Richard’s.’

Miss Bellamy’s voice sharpened a little. ‘Who? They?’

‘Octavius Browne and his niece. A good-looking girl.’ Charles glanced at Florence and after a moment’s hesitation added: ‘She’s called Anelida Lee.’

Florence cleared her throat.

‘Not true!’ The voice in the bathroom gave a little laugh. ‘A-nelly-da! It sounds like a face cream.’

‘It’s Chaucerian.’

‘I suppose the cat’s called Piers Plowman.’

‘No. He’s out of the prevailing period. He’s called Hodge.’

‘I’ve never heard Richard utter her name.’

Charles said: ‘She’s on the stage, it appears.’

‘Oh, God!’

‘In that new club theatre behind Walton Street. The Bonaventure.’

‘You need say no more, my poor Charles. One knows the form.’ Charles was silent and the voice asked impatiently: ‘Are you still there?’

‘Yes, my dear.’

‘How do you know Richard’s so thick with them?’

‘I meet him there occasionally,’ Charles said, and added lightly, ‘I’m thick with them too, Mary.’

There was a further silence and then the voice, delightful and gay, shouted: ‘Florrie! Bring me you know what.’

Florence picked up her own offering and went into the bathroom.

Charles Templeton stared through the window at a small London square, brightly receptive of April sunshine. He could just see the flower-woman at the corner of Pardoner’s Row, sitting in a galaxy of tulips. There were tulips everywhere. His wife had turned the bow window into an indoor garden and had filled it with them and with a great mass of early-flowering azaleas, brought up in the conservatory and still in bud. He examined these absentmindedly and discovered among them a tin with a spray-gun mechanism. The tin was labelled ‘Slaypest’ and bore alarming captions about the lethal nature of its contents. Charles peered at them through his eyeglass.

‘Florence,’ he said, ‘I don’t think this stuff ought to be left lying about.’

‘Just what I tell her,’ Florence said, returning.

‘There are all sorts of warnings. It shouldn’t be used in enclosed places. Is it used like that?’

‘It won’t be for want of my telling her if it is.’

‘Really, I don’t like it. Could you lose it?’

‘I’d get the full treatment meself if I did,’ Florence grunted.

‘Nevertheless,’ Charles said, ‘I think you should do so.’

Florence shot a resentful look at him and muttered under her breath.

‘What did you say?’ he asked.

‘I said it wasn’t so easy. She knows. She can read. I’ve told her.’ She glowered at him and then said: ‘I take my orders from her. Always have and always will.’

He waited for a moment. ‘Quite so,’ he said. ‘But all the same …’ And hearing his wife’s voice, put the spray-gun down, gave a half-sigh and turned to confront the familiar room.

Miss Bellamy came into it wearing Florence’s gift. There was a patch of sunshine in the room and she posed in it, expectant, unaware of its disobliging candour.

‘Look at my smashing shift!’ she cried. ‘Florrie’s present! A new birthday suit.’

She had ‘made an entrance,’ comic-provocative, skilfully French-farcical. She had no notion at all of the disservice she had done herself.

The voice that she had once called charming said: ‘Marvellous. How kind of Florence.’

He was careful to wait a little longer before he said, ‘Well, darling, I shall leave you to your mysteries,’ and went down to his solitary breakfast.




II


There was no particular reason why Richard Dakers should feel uplifted that morning: indeed, there were many formidable reasons why he should not. Nevertheless, as he made his way by bus and on foot to Pardoner’s Place, he did experience, very strongly, that upward kick of the spirit which lies in London’s power of bestowal. He sat in the front seat at the prow of the bus and felt like a figurehead, cleaving the tide of the King’s Road, masterfully above it, yet gloriously of it. The Chelsea shops were full of tulips and when, leaving the bus, he walked to the corner of Pardoner’s Row, there was his friend the flower-woman with buckets of them, still pouted up in buds.

‘ ’Morning, dear,’ said the flower-woman. ‘Duck of a day, innit?’

‘It’s a day for the gods,’ Richard agreed, ‘and your hat fits you like a halo, Mrs Tinker.’

‘It’s me straw,’ Mrs Tinker said. ‘I usually seem to change to me straw on the second Sat. in April.’

‘Aphrodite on her cockleshell couldn’t say fairer. I’ll take two dozen of the yellows.’

She wrapped them up in green paper. ‘Ten bob to you,’ said Mrs Tinker.

‘Ruin!’ Richard ejaculated, giving her eleven shillings.

‘Destitution! But what the hell!’

‘That’s right, dear, we don’ care, do we? Tulips, lady? Lovely tulips.’

Carrying his tulips and with his dispatch-case tucked under his arm, Richard entered Pardoner’s Place and turned right. Three doors along he came to the Pegasus, a bow-fronted Georgian house that had been converted by Octavius Browne into a bookshop. In the window, tilted and open, lay a first edition of Beijer and Duchartre’s Premières Comédies Italiennes. A little farther back, half in shadow, hung a negro marionette, very grand in striped silks. And in the watery depths of the interior Richard could just make out the shapes of the three beautifully polished old chairs, the lovely table and the vertical strata of rows and rows of books. He could see, too, the figure of Anelida Lee moving about among her uncle’s treasure, attended by Hodge, their cat. In the mornings Anelida, when not rehearsing at her club theatre, helped her uncle. She hoped that she was learning to be an actress. Richard, who knew a good deal about it, was convinced that already she was one.

He opened the door and went in.

Anelida had been dusting and wore her black smock, an uncompromising garment. Her hair was tied up in a white scarf. He had time to reflect that there was a particular beauty that most pleased when it was least adorned and that Anelida was possessed of it.

‘Hallo,’ he said. ‘I’ve brought you some tulips. Good morning, Hodge.’ Hodge stared at him briefly, jerked his tail, and walked away.

‘How lovely! But it’s not my birthday.’

‘Never mind. It’s because it’s a nice morning and Mrs Tinker was wearing her straw.’

‘I couldn’t be better pleased,’ said Anelida. ‘Will you wait while I get a pot for them? There’s a green jug.’

She went into a room at the back. He heard a familiar tapping noise on the stairs. Her Uncle Octavius came down, leaning on his black stick. He was a tall man of about sixty-three with a shock of grey hair and a mischievous face. He had a trick of looking at people out of the corners of his eyes as if inviting them to notice what a bad boy he was. He was rather touchy, immensely learned and thin almost to transparency.

‘Good morning, my dear Dakers,’ he said, and seeing the tulips touched one of them with the tip of a bluish finger. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘“Art could not feign more simple grace, Nor Nature take a line away.” How very lovely and so pleasantly uncomplicated by any smell. We have found something for you, by the way. Quite nice and I hope in character, but it may be a little too expensive. You must tell us what you think.”

He opened a parcel on his desk and stood aside for Richard to look at the contents.

‘A tinsel picture, as you see,’ he said, ‘of Madame Vestris en travesti in jockey’s costume.’ He looked sideways at Richard. ‘Beguiling little breeches, don’t you think? Do you suppose it would appeal to Miss Bellamy?’

‘I don’t see how it could fail.’

‘It’s rare-ish. The frame’s contemporary. I’m afraid it’s twelve guineas.’

‘It’s mine,’ Richard said. ‘Or rather, it’s Mary’s.’

‘You’re sure? Then, if you’ll excuse me for a moment, I’ll get Nell to make a birthday parcel of it. There’s a sheet of Victorian tinsel somewhere. Nell, my dear! Would you – ?’

He tapped away and presently Anelida returned with the green jug and his parcel, beautifully wrapped.

Richard put his hand on his dispatch-case. ‘What do you suppose is in there?’ he asked.

‘Not – ? Not the play? Not Husbandry in Heaven?’

‘Hot from the typist.’ He watched her thin hands arrange the tulips. ‘Anelida, I’m going to show it to Mary.’

‘You couldn’t choose a better day,’ she said warmly and, when he didn’t answer, ‘What’s the matter?’

‘There isn’t a part for her in it,’ he blurted out.

After a moment she said: ‘Well, no. But does that matter?’

‘It might. If, of course, it ever comes to production. And, by the way, Timmy Gantry’s seen it and makes agreeable noises. All the same, it’s tricky about Mary.’

‘But why? I don’t see –’

‘It’s not all that easy to explain,’ he mumbled.

‘You’ve already written a new play for her and she’s delighted with it, isn’t she? This is something quite different.’

‘And better? You’ve read it.’

‘Immeasurably better. In another world. Everybody must see it.’

‘Timmy Gantry likes it.’

‘Well, there you are! It’s special. Won’t she see that?’

He said: ‘Anelida, dear, you don’t really know the theatre yet, do you? Or the way actors tick over?’

‘Well, perhaps I don’t. But I know how close you are to each other and how wonderfully she understands you. You’ve told me.’

‘That’s just it,’ Richard said, and there followed a long silence.

‘I don’t believe,’ he said at last, ‘that I’ve ever told you exactly what she and Charles did?’

‘No,’ she agreed. ‘Not exactly. But –’

‘My parents, who were Australians, were friends of Mary’s. They were killed in a car smash on the Grande Corniche when I was rising two. They were staying with Mary at the time. There was no money to speak of. She had me looked after by her own old nanny, the celebrated Ninn, and then, after she had married Charles, they took me over, completely. I owe everything to her. I like to think that, in a way, the plays have done something to repay. And now – you see what I go and do.’

Anelida finished her tulips and looked directly at him. ‘I’m sure it’ll work out,’ she said gently. ‘All very fine, I dare say, for me to say so, but you see, you’ve talked so much about her, I almost feel I know her.’

‘I very much want you to know her. Indeed, this brings me to the main object of my pompous visit. Will you let me call for you at six and take you to see her? There’s a party of sorts at half-past which I hope may amuse you, but I’d like you to meet her first. Will you, Anelida?’

She waited too long before she said: ‘I don’t think I can. I’m – I’ve booked myself up.’

‘I don’t believe you. Why won’t you come?’

‘But I can’t. It’s her birthday, and it’s special to her and her friends. You can’t go hauling in an unknown female. And an unknown actress, to boot.’

‘Of course I can.’

‘It wouldn’t be comely.’

‘What a fantastic word! And why the hell do you suppose it wouldn’t be comely for the two people I like best in the world to meet each other?’

Anelida said: ‘I didn’t know –’

‘Yes, you did,’ he said crossly. ‘You must have.’

‘We scarcely know each other.’

‘I’m sorry you feel like that about it.’

‘I only meant – well, in point of time –’

‘Don’t hedge.’

‘Now, look here –’

‘I’m sorry. Evidently I’ve taken too much for granted.’

While they stared aghast at the quarrel that between them they had somehow concocted, Octavius came tapping back. ‘By the way,’ he said happily, ‘I yielded this morning to a romantic impulse, Dakers. I sent your patroness a birthday greeting: one among hundreds, no doubt. The allusion was from Spenser. I hope she won’t take it amiss.’

‘How very nice of you, sir,’ Richard said loudly. ‘She’ll be enchanted. She loves people to be friendly. Thank you for finding the picture.’

And forgetting to pay for it, he left hurriedly in a miserable frame of mind.




III


Mary Bellamy’s house was next door to the Pegasus bookshop, but Richard was too rattled to go in. He walked round Pardoner’s Place trying to sort out his thoughts. He suffered one of those horrid experiences, fortunately rare, in which the victim confronts himself as a stranger in an abrupt perspective. The process resembles that of pseudo-scientific films in which the growth of a plant, by mechanical skulduggery, is reduced from seven weeks to as many minutes and the subject is seen wavering, extending, elongating itself in response to some irresistible force until it breaks into its pre-ordained florescence.

The irresistible force in Richard’s case had undoubtedly been Mary Bellamy. The end-product, after twenty-seven years of the treatment, was two successful West End comedies, a third in the bag, and (his hand tightened on his dispatch-case) a serious play.

He owed it all, as he had so repeatedly told her, to Mary. Well, perhaps not quite all. Not the serious play.

He had almost completed his round of the little Place and, not wanting to pass the shop window, turned back. Why in the world had he gone grand and huffy when Anelida refused to meet Mary? And why did she refuse? Any other girl in Anelida’s boots, he thought uneasily, would have jumped at that sort of invitation: the great Mary Bellamy’s birthday party. A tiny, hand-picked group from the topmost drawer in the London theatre. The Management. The producer. Any other girl … He fetched up short, not liking himself very much, conscious that if he followed his thoughts to their logical conclusion he would arrive at an uncomfortable position. What sort of man, he would have to ask himself, was Richard Dakers? Reality would disintegrate and he would find himself face-to-face with a stranger. It was a familiar experience and one he didn’t enjoy. He shook himself free of it, made a sudden decision, walked quickly to the house and rang the bell.

Charles Templeton breakfasted in his study on the ground floor. The door was open and Richard saw him there, reading his Times, at home among his six so judiciously chosen pieces of chinoiserie, his three admirable pictures, his few distinguished chairs and lovely desk. Charles was fastidious about his surroundings and extremely knowledgeable. He could wait, sometimes for years, for the acquisition of a single treasure.

Richard went in. ‘Charles!‘ he said. ‘How are you?’

‘Hallo, old boy. Come to make your devotions?’

‘Am I the first?’

‘The first in person. There are the usual massive offerings in kind. Mary’ll be delighted to see you.’

‘I’ll go up,’ Richard said, but still hovered. Charles lowered his newspaper. How often, Richard wondered, had he seen him make that gesture, dropping his eyeglass and vaguely smiling. Richard, still involved in the aftermath of his moment of truth, if that was its real nature, asked himself what he knew of Charles. How used he was to that even courtesy, that disengagement! What of Charles in other places? What of the reputedly implacable man of affairs who had built his own fortune? Or of the lover Charles must have been five-and-twenty years ago? Impossible to imagine, Richard thought, looking vaguely at an empty niche in the wall.

He said: ‘Hallo! Where’s the T’ang Musician?’

‘Gone,’ Charles said.

‘Gone! Where? Not broken?’

‘Chipped. The peg of her lute. Gracefield did it, I think. I’ve given her to Maurice Warrender.’

‘But – even so – I mean, so often they’re not absolutely perfect and you – it was your treasure.’

‘Not now,’ Charles said. ‘I’m a perfectionist, you know.’

‘That’s what you say!’ Richard exclaimed warmly. ‘But I bet it was because Maurice always coveted her. You’re so absurdly generous.’

‘Oh, nonsense,’ Charles said, and looked at his paper. Richard hesitated. He heard himself say:

‘Charles, do I ever say thank you? To you and Mary?’

‘My dear fellow, what for?’

‘For everything.’ He took refuge in irony. ‘For befriending the poor orphan boy, you know, among other things.’

‘I sincerely hope you’re not making a vicarious birthday resolution.’

‘It just struck me.’

Charles waited for a moment and then said: ‘You’ve given us a tremendous interest and very much pleasure.’ He again hesitated as if assembling his next sentence. ‘Mary and I,’ he said at last, ‘look upon you as an achievement. And now, do go and make your pretty speeches to her.’

‘Yes,’ Richard said. ‘I’d better, hadn’t I? See you later.’

Charles raised his newspaper and Richard went slowly upstairs, wishing, consciously, for perhaps the first time in his life, that he was not going to visit Miss Bellamy.

She was in her room, dressed and enthroned among her presents. He slipped into another gear as he took her to his heart in a birthday embrace and then held her at arm’s length to tell her how lovely she looked.

‘Darling, darling, darling!’ she cried joyously. ‘How perfect of you to come. I’ve been hoping and hoping!’

It occurred to him that it would have been strange indeed if he hadn’t performed this time-honoured observance, but he kissed her again and gave her his present.

It was early in the day and her reservoir of enthusiasm scarcely tapped. She was able to pour a freshet of praise over his tinsel picture and did so with many cries of gratitude and wonder. Where, she asked, where, where had he discovered the one, the perfect present?

It was an opening Richard had hoped for, but he found himself a little apprehensive nevertheless.

‘I found it,’ he said, ‘at the Pegasus – or rather Octavius Browne found it for me. He says it’s rareish.’

Her triangular smile didn’t fade. Her eyes continued to beam into his, her hands to press his hands.

‘Ah, yes!’ she cried gaily. ‘The old man in the bookshop! Believe it or not, darling, he sent me a telegram about my conception. Too sweet, but a little difficult to acknowledge.’

‘He’s very donnish,’ Richard said. She made a comic face at him. ‘He was, in fact, a don, but he found himself out of sympathy with angry young men and set up a bookshop instead.’

She propped up her tinsel picture on the dressing-table and gazed at it through half-closed eyes. ‘Isn’t there a daughter or something? I seem to have heard –’

‘A niece,’ Richard said. Maddeningly, his mouth had gone dry.

‘Ought I,’ she asked, ‘to nip downstairs and thank him? One never quite knows with that sort of person.’

Richard kissed her hand. ‘Octavius,’ he said, ‘is not that sort of person, darling. Do nip down: he’ll be enchanted. And Mary –’

‘What, my treasure?’

‘I thought perhaps you might be terribly kind and ask them for a drink. If you find them pleasant, that is.’

She sat at her dressing-table and examined her face in the glass. ‘I wonder,’ she said, ‘if I really like that new eyeshade.’ She took up a heavy Venetian glass scent spray and used it lavishly. ‘I hope someone gives me some really superlative scent,’ she said. ‘This is almost gone.’ She put it down. ‘For a drink?’ she said. ‘When? Not today, of course.’

‘Not today, you think?’

She opened her eyes very wide. ‘My dear, we’d only embarrass them.’

‘Well,’ he murmured. ‘See how you feel about it.’

She turned back to the glass and said nothing. He opened his dispatch-case and took out his typescript.

‘I’ve brought something,’ he said, ‘for you to read. It’s a surprise, Mary.’ He laid it on the dressing-table. ‘There.’

She looked at the cover-page. ‘Husbandry in Heaven. A play by Richard Dakers.’

‘Dicky? Dicky, darling, what is all this?’

‘Something I’ve kept for today,’ he said and knew at once that he’d made a mistake. She gave him that special luminous gaze that meant she was deeply moved. ‘Oh Dicky! ‘ she whispered. ‘For me? My dear!’

He was panic-stricken.

‘But when?’ she asked him, slowly shaking her head in bewilderment. ‘When did you do it? With all the other work? I don’t understand. I’m flabbergasted. Dicky!’

‘I’ve been working on it for some time. It’s – it’s quite a different thing. Not a comedy. You may hate it.’

‘Is it the great one – at last?’ she whispered. ‘The one that we always knew would happen? And all by yourself, Dicky? Not even with poor stupid, old, loving me to listen?’

She was saying all the things he would least have chosen for her to say. It was appalling.

‘For all I know,’ he said, ‘it may be frighteningly bad. I’ve got to that state where one just can’t tell. Anyway, don’t let’s burden the great day with it.’

‘You couldn’t have given me anything else that would make me half so happy.’ She stroked the typescript with both eloquent, not very young hands. ‘I’ll shut myself away for an hour before lunch and wolf it up.’

‘Mary,’ he said desperately. ‘Don’t be so sanguine about it. It’s not your sort of play.’

‘I won’t hear a word against it. You’ve written it for me, darling.’

He was hunting desperately for some way of telling her he had done nothing of the sort when she said gaily: ‘All right! We’ll see. I won’t tease you. What were we talking about? Your funnies in the bookshop? I’ll pop in this morning and see what I think of them, shall I? Will that do?’

Before he could answer two voices, one elderly and uncertain and the other a fluting alto, were raised outside in the passage:

‘Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you.

Happy birthday, dear Mary,

Happy birthday to you.’

The door opened to admit Colonel Warrender and Mr Bertie Saracen.




IV


Colonel Warrender was sixty years old, a bachelor and a cousin of Charles Templeton whom, in a leaner, better-looking way, he slightly resembled. He kept himself fit, was well dressed and wore a moustache so neatly managed that it looked as if it had been ironed on his face. His manner was pleasant and his bearing soldierly.

Mr Bertie Saracen was also immaculate, but more adventurously so. The sleeves of his jacket were narrower and displayed a great deal of pinkish cuff. He had a Berlin-china complexion, wavy hair, blue eyes and wonderfully small hands. His air was gay and insouciant. He, too, was a bachelor and most understandably so.

They made a comic entrance together: Warrender good-naturedly self-conscious, Bertie Saracen revelling in his act of prima ballerina. He chasséd to right and left, holding aloft his votive offering and finally laid it at Miss Bellamy’s feet.

‘God, what a fool I must look!’ he exclaimed. ‘Take it, darling, quickly or we’ll kill the laugh.’

A spate of greetings broke out and an examination of gifts: from Warrender, who had been abroad, gloves of Grenoble, and from Bertie a miniature group of five bathing beauties and a photographer all made of balsa-wood and scraps of cotton. ‘It’s easily the nicest present you’ll get,’ he said. ‘And now I must enjoy a good jeer at all the others.’

He flitted about the room, making little darts at them. Warrender, a rather silent man, generally believed to entertain a long-standing and blameless adoration of Mary Bellamy, had a word with Richard, who liked him.

‘Rehearsals started yet?’ he asked. ‘Mary tells me she’s delighted with her new part.’

‘Not yet. It’s the mixture as before,’ Richard rejoined.

Warrender gave him a brief look. ‘Early days to settle into a routine, isn’t it?’ he said surprisingly. ‘Leave that to the old hands, isn’t it? ‘ He had a trick of ending his remarks with this colloquialism.

‘I’m trying, on the side, to break out in a rash of serious writing.’

‘Are you? Good. Afford to take risks, I’d have thought.’

‘How pleasant,’ Richard exclaimed, ‘to hear somebody say that!’

Warrender looked at his shoes. ‘Never does,’ he said, ‘to let yourself be talked into things. Not that I know anything about it.’

Richard thought with gratitude: ‘That’s exactly the kind of thing I wanted to be told,’ but was prevented from saying so by the entrance of Old Ninn.

Old Ninn’s real name was Miss Clara Plumtree, but she was given the courtesy title of ‘Mrs’. She had been Mary Bellamy’s nurse, and, from the time of his adoption by Mary and Charles, Richard’s also. Every year she emerged from retirement for a fortnight to stay with her former charge. She was small, scarlet-faced and fantastically opinionated. Her age was believed to be eighty-one. Nannies being universally accepted as character-parts rather than people in their own right, Old Ninn was the subject of many of Mary Bellamy’s funniest stories. Richard sometimes wondered if she played up to her own legend. In her old age she had developed a liking for port and under its influence made great mischief among the servants and kept up a sort of guerrilla warfare with Florence, with whom, nevertheless, she was on intimate terms. They were united, Miss Bellamy said, in their devotion to herself.

Wearing a cerise shawl and a bold floral print, for she adored bright colours, Old Ninn trudged across the room with the corners of her mouth turned down and laid a tissue paper parcel on the dressing-table.

‘Happy birthday, m’,’ she said. For so small a person she had an alarmingly deep voice.

A great fuss was made over her. Bertie Saracen attempted Mercutian badinage and called her Nurse Plumtree. She ignored him and addressed herself exclusively to Richard.

‘We don’t see much of you these days,’ she said and, by the sour look she gave him, proclaimed her affection.

‘I’ve been busy, Ninn.’

‘Still making up your plays, by all accounts.’

‘That’s it.’

‘You always were a fanciful boy. Easy to see you’ve never grown out of it.’

Mary Bellamy had unwrapped the parcel and disclosed a knitted bed-jacket of sensible design. Her thanks were effusive, but Old Ninn cut them short.

‘Four-ply,’ she said. ‘You require warmth when you’re getting on in years and the sooner you face the fact the more comfortable you’ll find yourself. Good morning, sir,’ Ninn added, catching sight of Warrender. ‘I dare say you’ll bear me out. Well, I won’t keep you.’

With perfect composure she trudged away, leaving a complete silence behind her.

‘Out of this world!’ Bertie said, with a shrillish laugh. ‘Darling Mary, here I am sizzling with decorative fervour. When are we to tuck up our sleeves and lay all our plots and plans?’

‘Now, darling, if you’re ready. Dicky, treasure, will you and Maurice be able to amuse yourselves? We’ll scream if we want any help. Come along, Bertie.’

She linked her arm in his. He sniffed ecstatically. ‘You smell,’ he said, ‘like all, but all, of King Solomon’s wives and concubines. In spring. En avant!’

They went downstairs. Warrender and Richard were left together in a room that still retained the flavour of her personality, as inescapably potent as the all-pervasive after-math of her scent.

It was an old-established custom that she and Bertie arranged the house for her birthday party. Her drawing-room was the first on the left on the ground floor. It was a long Georgian saloon with a door into the hall and with folding doors leading into the dining-room. This, in its turn opened both into the hall and into the conservatory, which was her especial pride. Beyond the conservatory lay a small formal garden. When all the doors were open an impressive vista was obtained. Bertie himself had ‘done’ the decor and had used a wealth of old French brocades. He had painted bunches of misty cabbage roses in the recesses above the doors and in the wall panels and had found some really distinguished chandeliers. This year the flowers were to be all white and yellow. He settled down with the greatest efficiency and determination to his task, borrowing one of Gracefield’s, the butler’s, aprons for the purpose. Miss Bellamy tied herself into a modish confection with a flounced bib, put on wash-leather gloves, and wandered happily about her conservatory, snipping off deadheads and rearranging groups of flowerpots. She was an enthusiastic gardener. They shouted at each other from room to room, exchanging theatre shop, and breaking every now and then into stage cockney: ‘Whatseye, dear?’ and ‘Coo! You wouldn’t credit it!’ this mode of communication being sacred to the occasion. They enjoyed themselves enormously while from under Bertie’s clever fingers emerged bouquets of white and gold and wonderful garlands for the table. In this setting, Miss Bellamy was at her best.

They had been at it for perhaps half an hour and Bertie had retired to the flower-room when Gracefield ushered in Miss Kate Cavendish, known to her intimates as Pinky.

Pinky was younger than her famous contemporary and less distinguished. She had played supporting roles in many Bellamy successes and their personal relationship, not altogether to her satisfaction, resembled their professional one. She had an amusing face, dressed plainly and well and possessed the gifts of honesty and direct thinking. She was, in fact, a charming woman.

‘I’m in a tizzy,’ she said. ‘High as a rocket, darling, and in a minute I’ll tell you why. Forty thousand happy returns, Mary, and may your silhouette never grow greater. Here’s my offering.’

It was a flask of a new scent by a celebrated maker and was called ‘Unguarded.’ ‘I got it smuggled over from Paris,’ she said. ‘It’s not here yet. A lick on either lobe, I’m told, and the satellites reel in their courses.’

Miss Bellamy insisted on opening it. She dabbed the stopper on her wrists and sniffed. ‘Pinky,’ she said solemnly, ‘it’s too much! Darling, it opens the floodgates! Honestly!’

‘It’s good, isn’t it?’

‘Florrie shall put it into my spray. At once. Before Bertie can get at it. You know what he is.’

‘Is Bertie here?’ Pinky asked quickly.

‘He’s in the flower-room.’

‘Oh.’

‘Why? Have you fallen out with him?’

‘Far from it,’ Pinky said. ‘Only – well, it’s just that I’m not really meant to let my cat out of its bag as yet and Bertie’s involved. But I really am, I fear, more than a little tiddly.’

‘You! I thought you never touched a thing in the morning.’

‘Nor I do. But this is an occasion, Mary. I’ve been drinking with The Management. Only two small ones, but on an empty tum: Bingo!’

Miss Bellamy said sharply: ‘With The Management?’

‘That gives you pause, doesn’t it?’

‘And Bertie’s involved?’

Pinky laughed rather wildly and said: ‘If I don’t tell somebody I’ll spontaneously combust, so I’m going to tell you. Bertie can lump it, bless him, because why after all shouldn’t I be audibly grateful.’

Mary Bellamy looked fixedly at her friend for a moment and then said: ‘Grateful?’

‘All right. I know I’m incoherent. Here it comes. Darling: I’m to have the lead in Bongo Dillon’s new play. At the Unicorn. Opening in September. Swear you won’t breathe it but it’s true and it’s settled and the contract’s mine for the signing. My first lead, Mary. Oh, God, I’m so happy.’

A hateful and all too-familiar jolt under the diaphragm warned Miss Bellamy that she had been upset. Simultaneously she knew that somehow or another she must run up a flag of welcome, must show a responsive warmth, must override the awful, menaced, slipping feeling, the nausea of the emotions that Pinky’s announcement had churned up.

‘Sweetie-pie!’ she said. ‘How wonderful!’ It wasn’t, she reflected, much cop as an expression of delighted congratulation from an old chum, but Pinky was too excited to pay any attention. She went prancing on about the merits of her contract, the glories of the role, the nice behaviour of The Management (Miss Bellamy’s Management, as she sickeningly noted), and the feeling that at last this was going to be It. All this gave Miss Bellamy a breather. She began to make fairly appropriate responses. Presently when Pinky drew breath, she was able to say with the right touch of down-to-earth honesty:

‘Pinky, this is going to be your Great Thing.’

‘I know it! I feel it myself,’ Pinky said soberly and added: ‘Please God, I’ll have what it takes. Please God, I will.’

‘My dear, you will,’ she rejoined and for the life of her couldn’t help adding, ‘Of course, I haven’t read the play.’

‘The purest Bongo! Comedy with a twist. You know? Though I says it as shouldn’t, it’s right up my cul-de-sac. Bongo says he had me in mind all the time he was writing it.’

Miss Bellamy laughed. ‘Darling! We do know our Bongo, don’t we? The number of plays he’s said he’d written for me and when one looked at them – !’

With one of her infuriating moments of penetration, Pinky said, ‘Mary! Be pleased for me.’

‘But, sweetie, naturally I’m pleased. It sounds like a wonderful bit of luck and I hope with all my heart it works out.’

‘Of course, I know it means giving up my part in Richard’s new one for you. But, face it, there wasn’t much in it for me, was there? And nothing was really settled so I’m not letting the side down, am I?’

Miss Bellamy couldn’t help it. ‘My dear!’ she said, with a kindly laugh, ‘we’ll lose no sleep over that little problem: the part’ll cast itself in two seconds.’

‘Exactly!’ Pinky cried happily and Miss Bellamy felt one of her rare onsets of rage begin to stir. She said:

‘But you were talking about Bertie, darling. Where does he come in?’

‘Aha!’ Pinky said maddeningly and shook her finger.

At this juncture Gracefield arrived with a drinks-tray.

Miss Bellamy controlled herself. ‘Come on,’ she said, ‘I’m going to break my rule, too. We must have a drink on this, darling.’

‘No, no, no!’

‘Yes, yes, yes. A teeny one. Pink for Pinky?’

She stood between Pinky and the drinks and poured out one stiff and one negligible gin-and-bitters. She gave the stiff one to Pinky.

‘To your wonderful future, darling,’ she said. ‘Bottoms up!’

‘Oh, dear!’ Pinky said. ‘I shouldn’t.’

‘Never mind.’

They drank.

‘And Bertie?’ Miss Bellamy asked presently. ‘Come on. You know I’m as silent as the grave.’

The blush that long ago had earned Pinky her nickname appeared in her cheeks. ‘This really is a secret,’ she said. ‘Deep and deadly. But I’m sure he won’t mind my telling you. You see, it’s a part that has to be dressed up to the hilt – five changes and all of them grand as grand. Utterly beyond me and my little woman in Bayswater. Well! Bertie, being so much mixed up with The Management has heard all about it, and do you know, darling, he’s offered, entirely of his own accord, to do my clothes. Designs, materials, making – everything from Saracen. And all completely free-ers. Isn’t that kind?’

Wave after wave of fury chased each other like electrical frequencies through Miss Bellamy’s nerves and brain. She had time to think: ‘I’m going to throw a temperament and it’s bad for me,’ and then she arrived at the point of climax.

The explosion was touched off by Bertie himself who came tripping back with a garland of tuberoses twined round his person. When he saw Pinky he stopped short, looked from her to Miss Bellamy and turned rather white.

‘Bertie,’ Pinky said. ‘I’ve split on you.’

‘How could you!’ he said. ‘Oh, Pinky, how could you!’

Pinky burst into tears.

‘I don’t know!’ she stammered. ‘I didn’t mean to, Bertie darling. Forgive me. I was high.’

‘Stay me with flagons!’ he said in a small voice. Miss Bellamy, employing a kind of enlargement of herself that was technically one of her most telling achievements, crossed to him and advanced her face to within four inches of his own.

‘You rat, Bertie,’ she said quietly. ‘You little, two-timing, double-crossing, dirty rat.’

And she wound her hands in his garland, tore it off him and threw it in his face.





CHAPTER 2 (#u6617e2d5-770a-520f-a652-7d37aabc7775)

Preparation for a Party (#u6617e2d5-770a-520f-a652-7d37aabc7775)


Mary Bellamy’s temperaments were of rare occurrence but formidable in the extreme and frightening to behold. They were not those regulation theatre tantrums that seem to afford pleasure both to observer and performer; on the contrary they devoured her like some kind of migraine and left her exhausted. Their onset was sudden, their duration prolonged and their sequel incalculable.

Bertie and Pinky, both familiar with them, exchanged looks of despair. Miss Bellamy had not raised her voice, but a kind of stillness seemed to have fallen on the house. They themselves spoke in whispers. They also, out of some impulse of helpless unanimity, said the same thing at the same time.

‘Mary!’ they said. ‘Listen! Don’t!’

They knew very well that they had better have held their tongues. Their effort, feeble though it was, served only to inflame her. With an assumption of calmness that was infinitely more alarming than raging hysteria she set about them, concentrating at first on Bertie.

‘I wonder,’ she said, ‘what it feels like to be you. I wonder if you enjoy your own cunning. I expect you do, Bertie. I expect you rather pride yourself on your talent for cashing in on other people’s generosity. On mine, for instance.’

‘Mary, darling! Please!’

‘Let us,’ she continued, trembling slightly, ‘look at this thing quite calmly and objectively, shall we? I’m afraid it will not be a delicious experience but it has to be faced.’

Gracefield came in, took one look at his mistress and went out again. He had been with the family for some time.

‘I am the last woman in the world,’ Miss Bellamy explained, ‘to remind people of their obligations. The last. However –’

She began to remind Bertie of his obligations. Of the circumstances under which she had discovered him – she did not, to his evident relief, say how many years ago – of how she had given him his first chance; of how, since then, he had never looked back; of how there had been an agreement – ‘gentlemen’s,’ she added bitterly – that he would never design for another leading lady in The Management without first consulting her. He opened his mouth, but was obliged without utterance to shut it again. Had he not, she asked, risen to his present position entirely on the wings of her patronage? Besieged as she was by the importunities of the great fashion houses, had she not stuck resolutely to him through thick and thin? And now –

She executed a gesture, Siddons-like in its tragic implications, and began to pace to and fro while Pinky and Bertie hastily made room for her to do so. Her glance lighting for a moment on Pinky she began obliquely to attack her.

‘I imagine,’ she said, still to Bertie, ‘that I shall not be accused of lack of generosity. I am generally said, I think, to be a good friend. Faithful and just,’ she added, perhaps with some obscure recollection of Mark Antony. ‘Over and over again for friendship’s sake I’ve persuaded The Management to cast actresses who were unable to give me adequate support.’

‘Now, look here – !’ Pinky began warmly.

‘– over and over again. Timmy said, only the other day: “Darling, you’re sacrificing yourself on the altar of your personal loyalties!” He’s said, over and over again, that he wouldn’t for anybody else under the sun accept the casting as it stood. Only for me …’

‘What casting?’ Pinky demanded. Miss Bellamy continued to address herself exclusively to Bertie.

‘Only for me, Timmy said, would he dream of taking into any production of his an artist whose spiritual home was weekly rep. in the ham-counties.’

‘Timmy,’ Pinky said dangerously, ‘is producing my play. It’s entirely due to him and the author that I’ve got the part. They told The Management they wanted me.’

Bertie said: ‘I happen to know that’s perfectly true.’

‘Conspiracy!’ Miss Bellamy shouted so loudly and suddenly that the others jumped in unison. She was ravaged by a terrible vision of Bertie, Pinky and Timmy all closeted with The Management and agreeing to say nothing to her of their plots and plans. In a Delphic fury she outlined this scene. Bertie, who had been moodily disengaging himself from the remnants of his garland, showed signs of fight. He waited his chance and cut in.

‘Speaking,’ he began, ‘as a two-timing, double-crossing rat, which God knows I am not, I take leave to assure you, darling Mary, that you’re wrecking yourself for nothing. I’m doing Pinky’s gowns out of friendliness and my name isn’t going to appear and I must say I’d have thought…’

He was allowed to get no further.

‘It’s not,’ Miss Bellamy said, ‘what you’ve done, both of you, but the revolting way you’ve done it. If you’d come to me in the first instance and said …’ Then followed an exposition of what they should have said and of the generous response they would have enjoyed if they’d said it. For a moment it looked as if the row was going to degenerate into an aimless and repetitive wrangle. It would probably have done so if Pinky had not said abruptly:

‘Now, look here, Mary! It’s about time you faced up to yourself. You know jolly well that anything you’ve done for either of us has been paid back with interest. I know you’ve had a lot to do with my getting on The Management’s short list and I’m grateful, but I also know that it’s suited you very well to have me there. I’m a good foil to you. I know all your gimmicks. How you like to be fed lines. And when you dry, as nowadays you very often do, I can fill in like nobody’s business. In the gentle art of letting myself be upstaged, cheated out of points and fiddled into nonentity I’ve done you proud and you’ll find I’m damn’ hard to replace.’

‘My God! My God! That I should have to listen to this!’

‘As for Bertie …’

‘Never mind, Pinky,’ he said quickly.

‘I do mind. It’s true you gave Bertie his start, but what hasn’t he done for you? Your decor! Your clothes! Face it, Mary, without the Saracen Concealed Curve you’d be the Grand Old Lady of the Hip Parade.’

Bertie gave a hysterical hoot of laughter and looked terrified.

‘The truth is,’ Pinky said, ‘you want it both ways, Mary. You want to boss everybody and use everybody for your own ends and at the same time you want us all to wallow in your wake saying how noble and generous and wonderful you are. You’re a cannibal, Mary, and it’s high time somebody had the guts to tell you so.’

A dead silence followed this unexampled speech.

Miss Bellamy walked to the door and turned. It was a movement with which they were familiar.

‘After this,’ she said very slowly, dead-panning her voice to a tortured monotone, ‘there is only one thing for me to do and much as it hurts me, I shall do it. I shall see The Management. Tomorrow.’

She opened the door. They had a brief glimpse of Charles, Warrender and Richard, irresolute in the hall, before she swept out and shut the door behind her.

The room seemed very quiet after she had gone.

‘Bertie,’ Pinky said at last, ‘if I’ve done you any harm I’m desperately sorry. I was high. I’ll never, never forgive myself.’

‘That’s all right, dear.’

‘You’re so kind. Bertie – do you think she’ll – do you think she can – ?’

‘She’ll try, dear. She’ll try.’

‘It took everything I’ve got, I promise you, to give battle. Honestly, Bertie, she frightened me. She looked murderous.’

‘Horrid, wasn’t it?’

Pinky stared absently at the great flask of the scent called ‘Unguarded.’ A ray of sunshine had caught it and it shone golden.

‘What are you going to do?’ she asked.

Bertie picked up a handful of tuberoses from the carpet.

‘Get on with me bloody flowers, dear,’ he said. ‘Get on with me bloody flowers.’




II


Having effected her exit, Miss Bellamy swept like a sirocco past Richard, Warrender and her husband and continued upstairs. In her bedroom she encountered Florence who said: ‘What have you been doing to yourself?’

‘You shut up,’ Miss Bellamy shouted and slammed the door.

‘Whatever it is it’s no good to you. Come on, dear. What’s the story?’

‘Bloody treachery’s the story. Shut up. I don’t want to tell you. My God, what friends I’ve got! My God, what friends!’

She strode about the room and made sounds of outrage and defeat. She flung herself on the bed and pummelled it.

Florence said: ‘You know what’ll be the end of this – party and all.’

Miss Bellamy burst into tears. ‘I haven’t,’ she sobbed, ‘a friend in the world. Not in the whole wide world. Except Dicky.’

A spasm of something that might have been chagrin twitched at Florence’s mouth. ‘Him!’ she said under her breath.

Miss Bellamy abandoned herself to a passion of tears. Florence went into the bathroom and returned with sal volatile.

‘Here,’ she said. ‘Try this. Come along now, dear.’

‘I don’t want that muck. Give me one of my tablets.’

‘Not now.’

‘Now!’

‘You know as well as I do, the doctor said only at night.’

‘I don’t care what he said. Get me one.’

She turned her head and looked up at Florence, ‘Did you hear what I said?’

‘There aren’t any left. I was going to send out.’

Miss Bellamy said through her teeth: ‘I’ve had enough of this. You think you can call the tune here, don’t you? You think you’re indispensable. You never made a bigger mistake. You’re not indispensable and the sooner you realize it, the better for you. Now, get out.’

‘You don’t mean that.’

‘Get out!’

Florence stood quite still for perhaps ten seconds and then left the room.

Miss Bellamy stayed where she was. Her temperament, bereft of an audience, gradually subsided. Presently she went to her dressing-table, dealt with her face and gave herself three generous shots from her scent spray. At the fourth, it petered out. The bottle was empty. She made an exasperated sound, stared at herself in the glass and for the first time since the onset of her rage, began to think collectedly.

At half-past twelve she went down to call on Octavius Browne and Anelida Lee.

Her motives in taking this action were mixed. In the first place her temperament, having followed the classic pattern of diminishing returns, had finally worked itself out and had left her restless. She was unwilling to stay indoors. In the second, she wanted very badly to prove to herself how grossly she had been misjudged by Pinky and Bertie and could this be better achieved than by performing an act of gracious consideration towards Richard? In the third place, she was burningly anxious to set her curiosity at rest in the matter of Anelida Lee.

On her way down she looked in at the drawing-room. Bertie, evidently, had finished the flowers and gone. Pinky had left a note saying she was sorry if she’d been too upsetting but not really hauling down her flag an inch. Miss Bellamy blew off steam to Charles, Richard and Warrender without paying much attention to their reactions. They withdrew, dismayed, to Charles’s study from whence came the muted sound of intermittent conversation. Superbly dressed and gloved she let herself out and after pausing effectively for a moment in the sunshine, turned into the Pegasus.

Octavius was not in the shop. Anelida, having completed her cleaning, had a smudge across her cheek and grubby hands. She had cried a little after Richard went out in a huff and there had been no time to repair the damage. She was not looking her best.

Miss Bellamy was infinitely relieved.

She was charming to Anelida. Her husband and Richard Dakers, she said, had talked so much about the shop: it was so handy for them, funny old bookworms that they were, to have found one practically on the doorstep. She understood that Anelida was hoping to go on the stage. Anelida replied that she was working at the Bonaventure. With every appearance of infinite generosity Miss Bellamy said that, unlike most of her friends, she thought the little experimental club theatres performed a very useful function in showing plays that otherwise would never see the light of day. Anelida was quiet, well mannered and, Miss Bellamy supposed, much overcome by the honour that was being paid her. That was the kindest interpretation to put upon her somewhat ungushing response. ‘Not much temperament there,’ Miss Bellamy thought and from her this was not a complimentary assessment. She grew more and more cordial.

Octavius returned from a brief shopping expedition and was a success. On being introduced by Anelida – quite prettily, Miss Bellamy had to admit – he uncovered his dishevelled head and smiled so broadly that his face looked rather like a mask of comedy.

‘But what a pleasure!’ he said, shaping his words with exquisite precision. ‘May we not exclaim “Hic ver assiduum” since April herself walks in at our door?’

Miss Bellamy got the general trend of this remark and her spirits rose. She thanked him warmly for his telegram and he at once looked extremely pleased with himself. ‘Your husband and your ward,’ he said, ‘told us of the event and I thought, you know, of the many delicious hours you have given us and of how meagre a return is the mere striking together of one’s hands.’ He looked sideways at her. ‘An old fogey’s impulse,’ he said and waved it aside. He made her a little bow and put his head on one side. Anelida wished he wouldn’t.

‘It was heaven of you,’ said Miss Bellamy. ‘So much pleasure it gave: you can’t think! And what’s more I haven’t thanked you for finding that perfect picture for Dicky to give me nor,’ she improvised on the spur of the moment, ‘for that heavenly copy of …’ Maddeningly, she had forgotten the author of Charles’s purchase and of the quotation in the telegram. She marked time with a gesture indicating ineffable pleasure and then mercifully remembered. ‘Of Spenser,’ she cried.

‘You admired the Spenser? I’m very glad.’

‘So much. And now,’ she continued with an enchanting air of diffidence, ‘I’m going to ask you something that you’ll think quite preposterous. I’ve come with an invitation. You are, I know, great friends of my ward’s – of Dicky’s – and I, like you, am a creature of impulse. I want you both – please – to come to my little party this evening. Drinks and a handful of ridiculous chums at half-past six. Now, please be very sweet and spoil me on my birthday. Please, say yes.’

Octavius turned quite pink with gratification. He didn’t hear his niece who came near to him and said hurriedly: ‘Unk, I don’t think we …’

‘I have never,’ Octavius said, ‘in my life attended a theatrical party. It is something quite outside my experience. Really, it’s extraordinarily kind of you to think of inviting us. My niece, no doubt, is an initiate. Though not at such an exalted level, I think, Nelly, my love?’

Anelida had began to say: ‘ It’s terribly kind …’ but Miss Bellamy was already in full spate. She had taken Octavius impulsively by the hands and was beaming into his face. ‘You will? Now, isn’t that big of you? I was so afraid I might be put in my place or that you would be booked up. And I’m not! And you aren’t! Isn’t that wonderful!’

‘We are certainly free,’ Octavius said. ‘Anelida’s theatre is not open on Monday evenings. She had offered to help me with our new catalogue. I shall be enchanted.’

‘Wonderful!’ Miss Bellamy gaily repeated. ‘And now I must run. Au revoir, both of you. Till this evening!’

She did, almost literally, run out of the shop filled with a delicious sense of having done something altogether charming. ‘Kind!’ she thought. ‘That’s what I’ve been. Kind as kind. Dicky will be so touched. And when he sees that rather dreary rather inarticulate girl in his own setting – well, if there has been anything, it’ll peter out on the spot.’

She saw the whole thing in a gratifying flash of clairvoyance: the last fumes of temperament subsided in the sunshine of her own loving-kindness. She returned to the house and found Richard in the hall.

‘Darling!’ she cried. ‘All settled! I’ve seen your buddies and asked them. The old fuddy-duddy’s heaven, isn’t he? Out of this world. And the girl’s the nicest little thing. Are you pleased?’

‘But,’ Richard said, amazed. ‘Are they …? Did Anelida say they’d come?’

‘My dear, you don’t imagine, do you, that a bit-part fill-in at the Bonaventure is going to turn down an invitation to my birthday party!’

‘It’s not a bit-part,’ Richard said. ‘They’re doing Pygmalion and she’s playing Eliza.’

‘Poor child.’

He opened his mouth and shut it again.

‘There’s something,’ Miss Bellamy said, ‘so endlessly depressing about those clubs. Blue jeans, beards and a snack-bar, no doubt.’ He didn’t answer and she said kindly:

‘Well! We mustn’t let them feel too lost, must we? I’ll tell Maurice and Charles to be kind. And now, sweetie, I’m off to keep my date with the Great Play.’

Richard said hurriedly: ‘There’s something I wanted to alter…. Could we – ?’

‘Darling! You’re such heaven when you panic. I’ll read it and then I’ll put it in your study. Blessings!’

‘Mary – Mary, thank you so much.’

She kissed him lightly and almost ran upstairs to read his play and to telephone Pinky and Bertie. She would tell them that she couldn’t bear to think of any cloud of dissonance overshadowing her birthday and she would add that she expected them at six-thirty. That would show them how ungrudging she could be. ‘After all,’ she thought, ‘they’ll be in a tizzy because if I did do my stuff with The Management …’ Reassured on all counts she went into her room.

Unfortunately, neither Bertie nor Pinky was at home but she left messages. It was now one o’clock. Half an hour before luncheon in which to relax and skim through Richard’s play. Everything was going, in the event, very well. ‘I’ll put me boots up,’ she said to herself in stage cockney and did so on the chaise-longue in the bow window of her room. She noticed that once again the azaleas were infected and reminded herself to spray them with Slaypest. She turned her attention, now growing languid, to the play. Husbandry in Heaven. Not a very good title, she thought. Wasn’t it a quotation from something? The dialogue seemed to be quite unlike Dicky; a bit Sloane Square, in fact. The sort of dialogue that is made up of perfectly understandable phrases that taken together add up to a kind of egg-headed Goon show. Was it or was it not in verse? She read Dicky’s description of the leading woman.

‘Mimi comes on. She might be nineteen or twenty-nine. Her beauty is bone-deep. Seductive without luxury. Virginal and dangerous.’ ‘Hum!’ thought Miss Bellamy. ‘Hodge comes out of the Prompt corner. Wolf-whistles. Gestures unmistakably and with feline intensity.’

Now, why had that line stirred up some obscure misgivings? She turned the pages. It was certainly an enormously long part.

‘Mimi: Can this be April, then, or have I, so early in the day, misinterpreted my directive?’

‘Hell!’ thought Miss Bellamy.

But she read one or two of the lines aloud and decided that they might have something. As she flipped over the pages she became more and more satisfied that Dicky had tried to write a wonderful part for her. Different. It wouldn’t do, of course, but at least the loving intention was there.

The typescript tipped over and fell across her chest. Her temperaments always left her tired. Just before she dropped off she suffered one of those mysterious jolts that briefly galvanize the body. She had been thinking about Pinky. It may be fanciful to suppose that her momentary discomfort was due to a spasm of hatred rather than to any physical cause. However that may be, she fell at last into an unenjoyable doze.

Florence came in. She had the flask of scent called ‘Unguarded’ in her hands. She tiptoed across the room, put it on the dressing-table and stood for a moment looking at Miss Bellamy. Beyond the chaise-longue in the bay window were ranks of tulips and budding azaleas and among them stood the tin of Slaypest. To secure it, Florence had to lean across her mistress. She did so, delicately, but Miss Bellamy, at that moment, stirred. Florence drew back and tiptoed out of the room.

Old Ninn was on the landing. She folded her arms and stared up at Florence.

‘Asleep,’ Florence said, with a jerk of her head. ‘Gone to bye-byes.’

‘Always the same after tantrums,’ said Old Ninn. She added woodenly: ‘She’ll be the ruin of that boy.’

‘She’ll be the ruin of herself,’ said Florence, ‘if she doesn’t watch her step.’




III


When Miss Bellamy had gone Anelida, in great distress, turned to her uncle. Octavius was humming a little Elizabethan catch and staring at himself in a Jacobean looking-glass above his desk.

‘Captivating!’ he said. ‘Enchanting! Upon my word, Nell, it must be twenty years since a pretty woman made much of me. I feel, I promise you, quite giddily inclined. And the whole thing – so spontaneous: so touchingly impulsive! We have widened our horizon, my love.’

‘Unk,’ Anelida said rather desperately, ‘you can’t think, my poor blessing, what a muddle you’ve made.’

‘A muddle?’ He looked plaintively at her and she knew she was in for trouble. ‘What do you mean? I accept an invitation, most graciously extended by a charming woman. Pray where is the muddle?’ She didn’t answer, and he said: ‘There are certain matters, of course, to be considered. I do not, for instance, know what clothes are proper, nowadays, for cocktail parties. In my day one would have worn –’

‘It’s not a matter of clothes.’

‘No? In any case, you shall instruct me.’

‘I’ve already told Richard I can’t go to the party.’

‘Nonsense, my dear. Of course we can go,’ Octavius said. ‘What are you thinking of?’

‘It’s so hard to explain, Unky. It’s just that – well, it’s partly because of me being in the theatre only so very much at the bottom of the ladder – less than the dust, you know, beneath Miss B.’s chariot wheels. I’d be like a corporal in the officers’ mess.’

‘That,’ said Octavius, reddening with displeasure, ‘seems to me to be a false analogy, if you’ll forgive me for saying so, Nelly. And, my dear, when one quotes it is pleasant to borrow from reputable sources. The Indian Love lyrics, in my undergraduate days, were the scourge of the drawing-rooms.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘It would be extremely uncivil to refuse so kind an invitation,’ Octavius said, looking more and more like a spoilt and frustrated child. ‘I want to accept it. What is the matter with you, Anelida?’

‘The truth is,’ Anelida said rather desperately, ‘I don’t quite know where I am with Richard Dakers.’

Octavius stared at her and experienced a moment of truth. ‘ Now that I consider it,’ he said huffily, ‘I realize that Dakers is paying his addresses to you. I wonder that it hasn’t occurred to me before. Have you taken against him?’

To her dismay Anelida found herself on the brink of tears. ‘No!’ she cried. ‘No! Nothing like that – really. I mean – I mean I just don’t know …’ She looked helplessly at Octavius. He was, she knew, hovering on the edge of one of his rare fits of temper. His vanity had been tickled by Miss Bellamy. He had almost strutted and preened before her. Anelida, who loved him very much, could have shaken him.

‘Never mind,’ she said. ‘It’s not worth another thought. But I’m sorry, darling, if you’re put out over your lovely party.’

‘I am put out,’ Octavius said crossly. ‘I want to go.’

‘And you shall go. I’ll do your tie and make you look beautiful.’

‘My dear,’ Octavius said, ‘it is you who would have looked beautiful. It would have been a great pleasure to take you. I should have been proud.’

‘Oh, hell! ‘ said Amelia. She rushed at him and gave him an exasperated hug. He was much puzzled and hit her gently several times on the shoulder blades.

The shop door opened.

‘Here,’ Octavius said over the top of Anelida’s head, ‘is Dakers.’

Coming from the sunshine into the dark shop, Richard had been given a confused impression of Anelida collaring Octavius in a high tackle. He waited for her to emerge, which she did after some fumbling with her uncle’s handkerchief.

Octavius said: ‘If you’ll excuse me, Nell. Really, one must get on with one’s job.’ He nodded to Richard and limped away into his back room.

Richard was careful not to look at Anelida. ‘I came,’ he said, ‘first to apologize.’

‘Not at all. I expect I behaved badly.’

‘And to say how very glad I am. Mary told me you had decided for the party.’

‘It was terribly kind of her to come. Unk was bewitched.’

‘We are being polite to each other, aren’t we?’

‘Better than flying into rages.’

‘May I call for you?’

‘There’s no need. Really. You’ll be busy with the party. Unk will be proud to escort me. He said so.’

‘So he well might.’ Richard now looked directly at Anelida. ‘You’ve been crying,’ he said, ‘and your face is dirty. Like a little girl’s. Smudged.’

‘All right. All right. I’m going to tidy it up.’

‘Shall I?’

‘No.’

‘How old are you, Anelida?’

‘Nineteen. Why?’

‘I’m twenty-eight.’

‘You’ve done very well,’ Anelida said politely, ‘for your age. Famous dramatist.’

‘Playwright.’

‘I think with the new one you may allow yourself to be a dramatist.’

‘My God, you’ve got a cheek,’ he said thoughtfully. After a moment he said: ‘Mary’s reading it. Now.’

‘Was she pleased about it?’

‘For the wrong reason. She thinks I wrote it for her.’

‘But – how could she? Still, she’ll soon find out.’

‘As I mentioned before, you don’t really know much as yet about theatre people.’

Anelida said, to her own astonishment: ‘But I do know I can act.’

‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘Of course you do. You’re a good actress.’

‘You haven’t seen me.’

‘That’s what you think.’

‘Richard!’

‘At least I’ve surprised you into calling me by name.’

‘But when did you see me?’

‘It slipped out. It’s part of a deep-laid plan. You’ll find out.’

‘When?’

‘At the party. I’m off, now. Au revoir, dear Anelida.’

When he had gone, Anelida sat perfectly still for quite a long time. She was bewildered, undecided and piercingly happy.

Richard, however, returned to the house with his mind made up. He went straight to Charles Templeton’s study. He found Charles and Maurice Warrender there, rather solemn over a decanter of sherry. When he came in they both looked self-conscious.

‘We were just talking about you,’ Charles said. ‘Have whatever it is you do have at this hour, Dicky. Lager?’

‘Please. I’ll get it. Should I make myself scarce so that you can go on talking about me?’

‘No, no.’

‘We’d finished,’ Warrender said, ‘I imagine. Hadn’t we, Charles?’

‘I suppose we had.’

Richard poured out his lager. ‘As a matter of fact,’ he said, ‘I sidled in with the idea of boring you with a few observations under that very heading.’

Warrender muttered something about taking himself off. ‘Not unless you have to, Maurice,’ Richard said. ‘It arises, in a way, out of what you said this morning.’ He sat down and stared at his beer mug. ‘This is going to be difficult,’ he said.

They waited, Warrender looking owlish, Charles, as always, politely attentive.

‘I suppose it’s a question of divided allegiances,’ Richard said at last. ‘Partly that, anyway.’ He went on, trying to put what he wanted to say as objectively as might be. He knew that he was floundering and almost at once began to regret his first impulse.

Charles kept turning his elderly freckled hand and looking at it. Warrender sipped his sherry and shot an occasional, almost furtive, glance at Richard.

Presently Charles said: ‘Couldn’t we come to the point?’

‘I wish I could,’ Richard rejoined. ‘I’m making a mess of this, I know.’

‘May I have a go at it? Is this what you’re trying to tell us? You think you can write a different kind of play from the sort of thing that suits Mary. You have, in fact, written one. You think it’s the best thing you’ve done but you’re afraid Mary won’t take kindly to the idea of your making a break. You’ve shown it to her and she’s reading it now. You’re afraid that she’ll take it for granted that you see her in the lead. Right, so far?’

‘Yes. That’s it.’

‘But,’ Warrender demanded unexpectedly, ‘she won’t like this play, what!’

‘I don’t think she’ll like it.’

‘Isn’t that your answer? ‘ Charles said. ‘If she doesn’t like it you can offer it elsewhere?’

‘It isn’t,’ Richard said, ‘as simple as that.’ And looking at these two men, each old enough to be his father, each with thirty years’ experience of Mary Bellamy, he saw that he was understood.

‘There’s been one row already this morning,’ he said. ‘A snorter.’

Warrender shot a look at Charles. ‘I don’t know if I’m imagining it,’ he said, ‘but I’ve fancied the rows come a bit oftener these days, isn’t it?’

Charles and Richard were silent.

Warrender said: ‘Fellow’s got to live his own life. My opinion. Worst thing that can happen to a man’s getting himself bogged down in a mistaken loyalty. Seen it happen. Man in my regiment. Sorry business.’

Charles said: ‘We all have our mistaken loyalties.’

There was a further silence.

Richard said violently: ‘But – I owe everything to her. The ghastly things I began to write at school. The first shamingly hopeless plays. Then the one that rang the bell. She made The Management take it. We talked everything over. Everything. And now – suddenly – I don’t want to. I – don’t – want – to. Why? Why?’

‘Very well,’ Charles said. Richard looked at him in surprise, but he went on very quietly. ‘Writing plays is your business. You understand it. You’re an expert. You should make your own decisions.’

‘Yes. But Mary …’

‘Mary holds a number of shares in companies that I direct, but I don’t consult her about their policy or confine my interests to those companies only.’

‘Surely it’s not the same thing.’

‘Isn’t it?’ Charles said placidly. ‘I think it is. Sentiment,’ he added, ‘can be a disastrous guide in such matters. Mary doesn’t understand your change of policy: the worst reason in the world for mistrusting it. She is guided almost entirely by emotion.’

Warrender said: ‘Think she’s changed? Sorry, Charles, I’ve no kind of business to ask.’

‘She has changed,’ her husband said. ‘One does.’

‘You can see,’ Richard said, ‘what happened with Pinky and Bertie. How much more will she mind with me! Was there anything so terrible about what they did? The truth is, of course, that they didn’t confide in her because they didn’t know how she’d take it. Well – you saw how she took it.’

‘I suppose,’ Warrender began dimly, ‘as a woman gets older …’ He faded out in a bass rumble.

‘Charles,’ Richard said, ‘you may consider this a monstrous suggestion, but have you thought, lately, that there might be anything – anything – ?’

‘Pathological? ‘ Charles said.

‘It’s so unlike her to be vindictive. Isn’t it?’ He appealed to both of them. ‘Well, my God, isn’t it?’

To his astonishment they didn’t answer immediately. Presently Charles said with a suggestion of pain in his voice: ‘The same thing has occurred to me. I – I asked Frank Harkness about it. He’s looked after us both for years, as you know. He thinks she’s been a bit nervy for some time, I gather, like many women of her – well, of her age. He thinks the high-pressure atmosphere of the theatre may have increased the tension. I got the impression he was under-stating his case. I don’t mind telling you,’ Charles added unhappily, ‘it’s been worrying me for some time. These – these ugly scenes.’

Warrender muttered: ‘Vindictive,’ and looked as if he regretted it.

Richard cried out: ‘Her kindness! I’ve always thought she had the kindest eyes I’d ever seen in a woman.’

Warrender, who seemed this morning to be bent on speaking out of character, did so now. ‘People,’ he said, ‘talk about eyes and mouths as if they had something to do with the way other people think and behave. Only bits of the body, aren’t they? Like navels and knees and toenails. Arrangements.’

Charles glanced at him with amusement. ‘My dear Maurice, you terrify me. So you discount our old friends the generous mouth, the frank glance, the open forehead. I wonder if you’re right.’

‘Right or wrong,’ Richard burst out, ‘it doesn’t get me any nearer a decision.’

Charles put down his sherry and put up his eyeglass. ‘If I were you, Dicky,’ he said, ‘I should go ahead.’

‘Hear, hear!’

‘Thank you, Maurice. Yes. I should go ahead. Offer your play in what you believe to be the best market. If Mary’s upset it won’t be for long, you know. You must keep a sense of perspective, my dear boy.’

Colonel Warrender listened to this with his mouth slightly open and a glaze over his eyes. When Charles had finished Warrender looked at his watch, rose and said he had a telephone call to make before luncheon. ‘I’ll do it from the drawing-room, if I may,’ he said. He glared at Richard. ‘Stick to your guns, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘Best policy.’ And went out.

Richard said: ‘I’ve always wondered: just how simple is Maurice?’

‘It would be the greatest mistake,’ Charles said, ‘to underrate him.’




IV


In their houses and flats, all within a ten-mile radius of Pardoner’s Place, the guests for Mary Bellamy’s birthday party made ready to present themselves. Timon (Timmy) Gantry, the famous director, made few preparations for such festivities. He stooped from his inordinate height to the cracked glass on his bathroom wall in order to brush his hair, which he kept so short that the gesture was redundant. He had changed into a suit which he was in the habit of calling his ‘decent blue’ and as a concession to Miss Bellamy, wore a waistcoat instead of a plum-coloured pullover. He looked rather like a retired policeman whose enthusiasm had never dwindled. He sang a snatch from Rigoletto, an opera he had recently directed and remembered how much he disliked cocktail parties.

‘Bell-a-mé-a, you’re a bell of a bóre,’ he sang, improvising to the tune of Bella Filia. And it was true, he reflected. Mary was becoming more and more of a tiresome girl. It would probably be necessary to quarrel with her before her new play went on. She was beginning to jib at the physical demands made upon her by his production methods: he liked to keep his cast moving rather briskly through complicated, almost fugal patterns and Mary was not as sound in the wind as she used to be. Nor in the temper, he reflected. He rather thought that this play would be his last production for her.

‘For she’s not my, not my cuppa tea at all,’ he sang.

This led him to think of her influence on other people, particularly on Richard Dakers. ‘She’s a seccuba,’ he chanted.’ ‘She’s an o-ogress. She devours young men alive. Nasty Mary!’ He was delighted that Richard showed signs of breaking loose with his venture into serious dramatic writing. He had read Husbandry in Heaven to Gantry while it was still in manuscript. Gantry always made up his mind at once about a play and he did so about this one.

‘If you go on writing slip-slop for Mary when you’ve got this sort of stuff under your thatch,’ he had said, ‘you deserve to drown in it. Parts of this thing are bloody awful and must come out. Other parts need a rewrite. Fix them and I’m ready to produce the piece.’

Richard had fixed them.

Gantry shoved his birthday present for Miss Bellamy into his pocket. It was a bit of pinchbeck he’d picked up for five bob on a street stall. He bought his presents in an inverse ratio to the monetary situation of the recipients and Miss Bellamy was rich.

As he strode along in the direction of Knightsbridge he thought with increasing enthusiasm about Husbandry in Heaven and of what he would do with it if he could persuade The Management to take it.

‘The actors,’ he promised himself, ‘shall skip like young rams.’

At Hyde Park Corner he began to sing again. At the corner of Wilton Place a chauffeur-driven car pulled up alongside him. The Management in the person of Mr Montague Marchant, exquisitely dressed, with a gardenia in his coat, leaned from the window. His face and his hair were smooth, fair and pale, and his eyes wary.

‘Timmy!’ Mr Marchant shouted. ‘Look at you! So purposeful! Such devouring strides! Come in, do, for God’s sake, and let us support each other on our approach to the shrine.’

Gantry said: ‘I wanted to see you.’ He doubled himself up like a camel and got into the car. It was his custom to plunge directly into whatever matter concerned him at the moment. He presented his ideas with the same ruthless precipitancy that he brought to his work in the theatre. It was a deceptive characteristic, because in Gantry impulse was subordinate to design.

He drew in his breath with an authoritative gasp. ‘Listen!’ he said. ‘I have a proposition.’

All the way along Sloane Street and into the King’s Road he thrust Richard’s play at Marchant. He was still talking, very eloquently, as they turned up Pardoner’s Row. Marchant listened with the undivided though guarded attention that The Management brought to bear only on the utterances of the elect.

‘You will do this,’ Gantry said as the car turned into Pardoner’s Place, ‘not for me and not for Dicky. You will do it because it’s going to be a Thing for The Management. Mark my words. Here we are. Oh, misery, how I abominate grand parties!’

‘I’d have you remember,’ Marchant said as they went in, ‘that I commit myself to nothing, Timmy.’

‘Naturally, my dear man. But naturally. You will commit yourself, however, I promise you. You will.’

‘Mary, darling!’ they both exclaimed and were swallowed up by the party.

Pinky and Bertie had arranged to go together. They came to this decision after a long gloomy post-luncheon talk in which they weighed the dictates of proper pride against those of professional expediency.

‘Face it, sweetie-pie,’ Bertie had said, ‘if we don’t show up she’ll turn plug-ugly again and go straight to The Management. You know what a fuss Monty makes about personal relationships. “A happy theatre is a successful theatre.” Nobody – but nobody can afford to cut up rough. He loathes internal strife.’

Pinky, who was feeling the effects of her morning excesses, sombrely agreed. ‘God knows,’ she said, ‘that at this juncture I can ill-afford to get myself the reputation of being difficult. After all, my contract isn’t signed, Bertie.’

‘It’s as clear as daylight: magnanimity must be our watchword.’

‘I’ll be blowed if I crawl.’

‘We shan’t have to, dear. A pressure of the hand and a long, long gaze into the eyeballs will carry us through.’

‘I resent having to.’

‘Never mind. Rise above. Watch me: I’m a past master at it. Gird up the loins, dear, such as they are, and remember you’re an actress.’ He giggled. ‘Looked at in the right way it’ll be rather fun.’

‘What shall I wear?’

‘Black, and no jewellery. She’ll be clanking.’

‘I hate being at enmity, Bertie. What a beastly profession ours is. In some ways.’

‘It’s a jungle, darling. Face it – it’s a jungle.’

‘You,’ Pinky said rather enviously, ‘don’t seem to be unduly perturbed, I must say.’

‘My poorest girl, little do you know. I’m quaking.’

‘Really? But could she actually do you any damage?’

‘Can the boa-constrictor,’ Bertie said, ‘consume the rabbit?’

Pinky had thought it better not to press this matter any further. They had separated and gone to their several flats, where in due course they made ready for the party.

Anelida and Octavius also made ready. Octavius, having settled for a black coat, striped trousers and the complementary details that he considered appropriate to these garments, had taken up a good deal of his niece’s attention. She had managed to have a bath and was about to dress when, for the fourth time, he tapped at her door and presented himself before her, looking anxious and unnaturally tidy. ‘My hair,’ he said. ‘Having no unguent, I used a little olive oil. Do I smell like a salad?’

She reassured him, gave his coat a brush and begged him to wait for her in the shop. He had old-fashioned ideas about punctuality and had begun to fret. ‘It’s five-and-twenty minutes to seven. We were asked for half-past six, Nelly.’

‘That means seven at the earliest, darling. Just take a furtive leer through the window and you’ll see when people begin to come. And please, Unk, we can’t go while I’m still in my dressing-gown, can we, now?’

‘No, no, of course not. Half-past six for a quarter-to-seven? Or seven? I see. I see. In that case …’

He pottered downstairs.

Anelida thought: ‘It’s a good thing I’ve had some practice in quick changes.’ She did her face and hair, and she put on a white dress that had been her one extravagance of the year, a large white hat with a black velvet crown, and new gloves. She looked in the glass, forcing herself to adopt the examining attitude she used in the theatre. ‘And it might as well be a first night,’ she thought, ‘the way I’m feeling.’ Did Richard like white? she wondered.

Heartened by the certainty of her dress being satisfactory and her hat becoming, Anelida began to daydream along time-honoured lines. She and Octavius arrived at the party. There was a sudden hush. Monty Marchant, The Management in person, would ejaculate to Timon Gantry, the great producer, ‘Who are they?’ and Timon Gantry, with the abrupt grasp which all actors, whether they had heard it or not, liked to imitate, would reply: ‘I don’t know, but by God, I’m going to find out.’ The ranks would part as she and Octavius, escorted by Miss Bellamy, moved down the room to the accompaniment of a discreet murmur. They would be the cynosure of all eyes. What was a cynosure and why was it never mentioned except in reference to eyes? All eyes on Anelida Lee. And there, rapt in admiration, would be Richard.…





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