Collected Works of E M Delafield

by E M Delafield

  I say weakly that they must have something to drink, and look at the bell — perfectly well aware that maids have gone to bed long ago — but Robert, to my great relief, materialises and performs minor miracle by producing entirely adequate quantities of whisky-and-soda, and sherry and biscuits for Pamela and myself. After this we all seem to know one another very well indeed, and Plum goes to the piano and plays waltz tunes popular in Edwardian days. (Pamela asks at intervals What that one was called? although to my certain knowledge she must remember them just as well as I do myself.)

  Towards one o’clock Pamela, who has been getting more and more affectionate towards everybody in the room, suddenly asks where the darling children are sleeping, as she would love a peep at them. Forbear to answer that if they had been at home at all, they couldn’t possibly have been sleeping through conversational and musical orgy of Pamela and friends, and merely reply that both are at school. What, shrieks Pamela, that tiny weeny little dot of a Vicky at school? Am I utterly unnatural? I say Yes, I am, as quickest means of closing futile discussion, and everybody accepts it without demur, and we talk instead about Auteuil, Helen de Liman de la Pelouse — (about whom I could say a great deal more than I do) — and Pamela’s imminent return home to country house where Waddell and three children await her.

  Prospect of this seems to fill her with gloom, and she tells me, aside, that ‘Waddell doesn’t quite realise her present whereabouts, but supposes her to be crossing from Ireland to-night, and I must remember this, if he says anything about it next time we meet.

  Just as it seems probable that séance is to continue for the rest of the night, Alphonse Daudet rises without any warning at all, says to Robert that, for his part, he’s not much good at late nights, and walks out of the room. We all drift after him, Pamela announces that she is going to drive, and everybody simultaneously exclaims No, No, and Robert says that there is a leak in the radiator, and fetches water from the bathroom.

  (Should have preferred him to bring it in comparatively new green enamel jug, instead of incredibly ancient and battered brass can.)

  Pamela throws herself into my arms, and murmurs something of which I hear nothing at all except Remember! — like Bishop Juxon and then gets into the car, and is obliterated by Plum on one side and elderly Indian on the other.

  Just as they start, Helen Wills dashes out of adjacent bushes, and is nearly run over, but this tragedy averted, and car departs.

  Echoes reach us for quite twenty minutes, of lively conversation, outbreaks of song and peals of laughter, as car flies down the lane and out of sight. Robert says that they’ve turned the wrong way, but does not seem to be in the least distressed about it, and predicts coldly that they will all end up in local police station.

  I go upstairs, all desire for sleep having completely left me, and find several drawers in dressing-table wide open, powder all over the place like snow on Mont Blanc, unknown little pad of rouge on pillow, and face-towel handsomely streaked with lip-stick.

  Bathroom is likewise in great disorder, and when Robert eventually appears he brings with him small, silver-mounted comb which he alleges that he found, quite incomprehensibly, on lowest step of remote flight of stairs leading to attics. I say satirically that I hope they all felt quite at home, Robert snorts in reply, and conversation closes.

  July 13th. — Life resumes its ordinary course, and next excitement will doubtless be return of Robin and Vicky from school. Am already deeply immersed in preparations for this, and Cook says that extra help will be required. I reply that I think we shall be away at the sea for at least a month — (which is not perfectly true, as much depends on financial state) — and she listens to me in silence, and repeats that help will be wanted anyway, as children make such a difference. As usual, Cook gets the last word, and I prepare to enter upon familiar and exhausting campaign in search of Extra Help.

  This takes up terrific amount of time and energy, and find it wisest to resign all pretensions to literature at the moment, and adopt role of pure domesticity. Interesting psychological reaction to this — (must remember to bring it forward in discussion with dear Rose, always so intelligent) — is that I tell Robert that next year I should like to Go to America. Robert makes little or no reply, except for rather eloquent look, but nevertheless I continue to think of going to America, and taking diary with me.

  THE END

  GAY LIFE

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER I

  CHAPTER II

  CHAPTER III

  CHAPTER IV

  CHAPTER V

  CHAPTER VI

  CHAPTER VII

  CHAPTER VIII

  CHAPTER IX

  CHAPTER X

  CHAPTER XI

  CHAPTER XII

  CHAPTER XIII

  CHAPTER XIV

  CHAPTER XV

  CHAPTER XVI

  CHAPTER I

  (1)

  “Maman, j’ai raté l’autobus!”

  The shimmering heat-haze of the afternoon seemed to quiver as the shrill, lamentable announcement of this disaster broke into the silence that lay over the deserted terrace of the Hotel.

  “Ma-man!”

  It was as though a slight shudder pervaded the Hotel — a preliminary to complete awakening.

  “Maman, j’ai raté l’autobus!”

  The announcement, at its third repetition, resembled a shriek of defiance rather than an admission of defeat.

  The young son of the Hotel proprietor, wearing a pale-blue maillot and a large straw hat, ascended the very last of the numerous steps leading from the dusty red drive to the terrace, and wiped the sweat out of his eyes with the back of his hand.

  “Maman — dites donc — j’ai raté l’autobus!”

  The smooth, black head of Madame appeared from a ground-floor window, and she made imperative signs to her son that he should come in and be quiet.

  But it was too late.

  Mr. Bolham, in No. 16, had indignantly closed his window with a bang. The Morgans’ youngest child, who had presumably been asleep, had awakened and was to be heard singing. The French family next door, perhaps in order to drown the sound, immediately started their eternal gramophone. On the top storey, above Mr. Bolham, a window was flung open with an impetuosity that caused the bathing-dress and cloak that lay on the sill to fall below on to Mr. Bolham’s little balcony, from whence they could only be retrieved by an appeal to Mr. Bolham, who would resent it.

  In the open doorway of the Hotel on the top of the white steps, there suddenly appeared — like a conjuring trick — a number of figures. The chasseur, who had been dozing in a chair behind the little desk of the concierge, sprang into a state of resentful animation, the concierge himself — who had not been visible at all a moment earlier — snapped his fingers and imperatively said psst in the direction of the waiter from whom tea and iced drinks would shortly be ordered — and madame — frowning at her son Edouard, and simultaneously smiling at the wealthy American gentleman in the blue singlet who was passing through the hall — resumed her endless labours on the big ledger in the bureau.

  Edouard — Dou-dou — said Pardon, mademoiselle, and Bonjour, madame, and made his way through the group of Hotel guests to his mother’s little office. Now that it was too late, he carefully lowered his voice as he hung over the desk and related to her the history of his misfortunes with the autobus.

  The visitors, for the most part still rather limp from the afternoon’s siesta, dispersed themselves, in small groups, amongst the little tables that stood all along the terrace, each one sheltered by a huge red-and-white striped umbrella.

  The young Moons, who had only arrived on the Blue Train the day before, and whose first visit to the Côte d’Azur it was, looked as self-conscious as they felt, Angie in brand-new beach pyjamas and Hilary in a black-and-green swimming-suit and bath-robe, and both of them shamefully pink-and-white, except where the sun had already made a small scarlet patch on the back of Hilary’s neck.

 
; The Moons sat together in silence. The little that they had ever had to say to one another had been said in the course of an electrically-charged fortnight, two years earlier, when they had fallen desperately in love. The rest had been an affair of dancing, drinking, kissing and violent love-making, marriage, and rapid and complete satiety.

  They bore one another no malice for their present state of mutual boredom, but took it philosophically for granted. Hilary Moon, who was held to be clever by himself and his friends, was already thinking out the aspect of his marriage that he would present to the next woman with whom he fell in love.

  Angie, with even less subtlety, was merely looking carefully at every man within range in the hope of seeing a certain expression, that she knew well, leap into his eyes at the sight of her beauty.

  Angie was, indeed, as beautiful as she could well be. To a lovely slimness she added that length of shapely leg that is usually the prerogative of American women. But her sea-blue eyes, her thick fair hair and peach-blossom complexion, were all English.

  She had everything: even to eyelashes that curled up and curled down, and a dimple at the corner of her lovely mouth. Several people had already looked at her rather intently, but Angie knew, without stopping to think about it, that all these people were entirely negligible. Either they were women, or servants, or elderly men whom she, at twenty-four, never took into serious consideration at all.

  Presently, however, two young men appeared. One of them, indeed, was so young that he might be called a boy — perhaps even a schoolboy. Angie’s experienced eye dismissed him, and passed on to his companion. This was a dark, rather thick-set young man of seven-or eight-and-twenty, with brown, bold eyes and remarkably beautiful teeth. There was something faintly unusual in the animation of his face and manner, and the frequency of his smile.

  Angie instantly perceived that he had noticed her the moment he came on to the terrace, and that the ease and sprightliness with which he was now talking to his companion was entirely directed towards herself. With a tiny little sigh of relief, she settled back in her chair, relaxing completely.

  “What are you going to have?” Hilary asked.

  “Orangeade. Iced. Ask if they’ve got any biscuits.”

  Hilary gave the order, frowning slightly. His French was better than Angie’s, but it was not good, and he disliked doing anything that he did not do well. By a natural transition, his thoughts immediately turned to something that he did do well.

  “Shall we go down to bathe, afterwards?”

  “Yes. I wish we had a car.”

  “We might be able to hire one while we’re here.”

  “Oh, could we?”

  “I expect so,” said Hilary negligently.

  There was no reason why the Moons should not hire a car, except that they had no money. They were, however, accustomed to having no money, and they did not allow the lack of it to stand in their way when they wanted cars, or clothes, or drinks, or restaurant meals, or trips to the South of France. They were, of course, in debt, but so were their friends and contemporaries, and still all of them went on spending money that wasn’t there, and somehow, miraculously, evading the continually threatening crash.

  “There’s a garage at the bottom of the drive — quite a big one.”

  “That’s no good. One would have to go to Cannes, or Nice, or somewhere like that, for a decent car,” said Hilary. “I’ll ask the concierge.”

  “We might go in to-morrow morning. I want to get some things,” Angie said eagerly. “Cannes would be better than St. Raphael for shopping, wouldn’t it?”

  She had decided, within the last two seconds, that she needed a large straw hat, of shiny red-and-blue straw, and a wide pair of white silk trousers, and one of those triangular coloured handkerchiefs that went over one’s head, and tied at the back.

  Hilary had decided with equal promptitude that he must get hold of a car somehow — a swift, high-powered car with chromium-plated fittings.

  They sipped through straws at the orangeade in their tall glasses, absorbed in these agreeable fancies.

  Angie, however, did not cease to be aware of the dark young man at the next table, and presently she saw him half-stand up, as a woman in rose-coloured tussore pyjamas came and sat down between him and his companion.

  The sight was faintly disagreeable to Angie, and became more actively so when she discerned that the woman, although not young, was good-looking in very much her own style — fair, and slim, and big-eyed — and with that indefinable air of self-assurance peculiar to a woman who has always been attractive to men. Angie directed Hilary’s attention to the next table by a slight movement of the head.

  “What do you think they are? Mother and sons?”

  “Sons? She’s much too young to be the dark one’s mother,” said Hilary tactlessly. “She might be his wife.”

  “He couldn’t possibly be the boy’s father.”

  “Well — no. Perhaps he’s her second husband.”

  “She wouldn’t be making eyes at him like that, if he was.”

  They gazed at the trio. The boy was silent, and looked faintly bewildered, but the other two were talking and laughing noisily with an air of great intimacy.

  “They aren’t interesting — particularly,” at last said Hilary — meaning that the woman was not the type that attracted him. He looked up and down the terrace and then said, with a shudder:

  “My God — children. You’d think English people would have the sense not to bring children to the South of France in August.”

  Hilary, however, had overrated the sense of his compatriots. They had with them three children, of the fatal ages of eight, ten, and fourteen years old.

  It was nothing to Hilary, or to his wife either, that the three children were good-looking, in a clear-cut, distinguished way, with beautifully bronzed skins and heads of golden hair that gleamed in the sun.

  The Moons knew that all children were undesirable. They cost money, they interfered with every adult form of enjoyment, they attracted attention that should have been bestowed elsewhere, and they not infrequently gave rise to the type of conversation most disliked by the Moons, since it was neither flippant, suggestive, amorous, nor scandalous.

  “I hope to God,” said Hilary disconsolately, “that a few amusing people are going to turn up in this hole. Otherwise it won’t have been worth coming.”

  “There are the people in the villa,” suggested Angie — but languidly, for she knew that the people in the villa, one of them a friend of a friend of Hilary’s, were unescorted women and therefore uninteresting to herself.

  “We might look them up after dinner.”

  “Or before dinner.”

  “Too obvious, a bit. They’ll have to ask us to a meal, anyway, and there’s no sense in rushing things.”

  “Well — —”

  Angie’s eye roved away once more, as a noisy group of French people came up the steps, talking and laughing. The women were young, fat, dark, and wore very smart bathing-dresses and sandals. The men were dark and fat, too, and full of animation. They all looked hard at Angie, and, having passed, looked back again. The impression that she had obviously created pleased her faintly, but the group was too evidently a family one. There was little satisfaction to be got out of the admiration of a middle-class Frenchman taking a holiday with his wife and — probably — sisters-in-law.

  Angie’s thoughts, followed by her glance, slid round again to the dark young man, and she saw that he — or more probably his companions — had been joined by two other men, one of them of some age between forty-five and fifty, an obvious American, and the other one fair and undersized, and very much younger.

  The place, Angie decided, wasn’t going to be hopeless at all.

  “I’m going to have another orangeade,” said Hilary. “What about you?”

  “All right.”

  She didn’t want the orangeade, but drinking it would be something to do, and it was worth while sitting on for a bit, let
ting all these men watch her, more or less surreptitiously, and giving them the chance of realising that she and Hilary were staying at the Hôtel d’Azur, and that they could get to know her without any difficulty at all.

  (2)

  Mr. Bolham, having been roused from some extremely serious reading that was his form of relaxation, looked with slight, habitual distaste at his elderly form and bald head reflected in the mirror, approved at the same time his beautiful white flannels, and went downstairs.

  He walked, in preference to using the lift which had, three days earlier, stuck half-way down, imprisoning Mr. Bolham tête-à-tête with Mrs. Romayne, the lady now sitting, in pale pink pyjamas, on the terrace below. This misadventure, although it had only lasted for the space of seven minutes, had led to Mrs. Romayne’s assuming an intimate and proprietary air towards Mr. Bolham ever since, and this, in its turn, had occasioned in Mr. Bolham a complex in regard to the use of the lift. He walked down the shallow white marble stairs.

  At the Hotel entrance, he stood on the top step of another flight that led on to the terrace, and looked down on the red-and-white umbrellas, the little tables, the palm trees, and the several groups of Hotel guests sitting either in the shade or in the blaze of brilliant sunlight that still poured down steadily.

  It was the misfortune of Mr. Bolham to dislike, temperately but quite genuinely, the majority of his fellow-creatures. He felt rather more conscious than usual of this idiosyncrasy, as he stood, unobserved, in the entrance-way of the Hotel.

  He saw at once that some new people — the Moons — had arrived, and that the girl was strikingly pretty. The beauty of her face left him perfectly cold, for he descried in it neither intelligence, kindness, nor sensitiveness — but he was faintly moved by the beautiful lines of her body.

  (Though by the time they’ve been here twenty-four hours, and she’s got properly acclimatised, thought Mr. Bolham, I shall have seen practically all there is to see. She’s the kind that comes down to dinner in shorts and a handkerchief.)