Collected Works of E M Delafield

by E M Delafield

  Mervyn Morgan had been to Eton and Oxford, he had joined the Army in 1914, had been in France and Flanders almost continuously throughout the War, and had been awarded the D.S.O. He had married a charming girl whom he had known ever since she had first ridden to hounds, and whose father’s property joined that of the Morgans in South Wales; and he had gallantly, and not too unsuccessfully, farmed his own land ever since his father’s death, two months after the Armistice. In person, he was tall and young-looking for his years, fair like his children, and a fine horseman. Nothing could be further removed from him than the whimsical, the mischievous, the subtle. Nevertheless, an analogy might be held to exist between Captain Morgan and the character of Peter Pan, for he was essentially of those who never grow up.

  “Why don’t we do something?” enquired Gwennie vigorously. “Let’s swim back to the others. Or would you rather stay here, David?”

  “Which would daddy rather?”

  “I suppose time’s getting on. Is Mrs. Romayne going to drive you back?”

  “I’ll walk with you, daddy,” said David.

  “So’ll I.”

  “Then we’d better get a move on, or we shall be late for dinner.”

  “Isn’t it marvellous having late dinner every night?” said Gwennie in an awed voice. “I don’t see how we’re ever going to be able to settle down at home again, after this. Look, I’m going to dive.”

  She dived very well. Her father had taught her.

  This place, he thought, has brought their swimming on, if it’s done nothing else.

  It had been Mary’s idea to come to the South of France in August. She had an extraordinary passion for the sun, and real, blazing heat. (She’d certainly got it, with the temperature at one-hundred-and-one degrees Fahrenheit by the Hotel thermometer.) An unexpected legacy had come to her the year before, and she had deliberately decided to spend one-third of it on taking them all to this place.

  Mervyn had not approved, but he was a fair-minded man — it was Mary’s money, and they had no debts to speak of — and one might reasonably argue that it would improve the children’s French, and their swimming, and perhaps help Mary to catch fewer bronchial colds next winter.

  They went — but Mervyn, on principle, continued to remind his wife that it was an extravagance, and that he, personally, would have enjoyed Scotland a great deal more. Besides, look at the Exchange!

  There was a second splash, as David jumped into the water after Gwennie.

  “Well — —” said Mervyn.

  He executed a beautiful swallow-dive, since there was no one to see him except his children, who were not looking.

  He had really gone to the distant island-rock all by himself in order to have the fun of trick-diving, at which he was an adept.

  It would have seemed out of the question, to Morgan, to display this accomplishment in front of casual acquaintances or strangers.

  CHAPTER III

  (1)

  Cocktails in the hall before dinner had worked their accustomed miracle. Under their magical influence, a discovery had been made.

  The villa — Les Mimosas — a mile or two from the Hôtel d’Azur in the direction of St. Raphael, to which the young Moons proposed to carry their letter of introduction, was none other than the villa where Mrs. Romayne’s friend, Mrs. Wolverton-Gush, had arrived three days earlier.

  “How marvellous!” ejaculated Angie Moon, absent-mindedly.

  “Quite marvellous!” Hilary added. “The only thing is, the name wasn’t Wolverton-Gush. I mean, one would know so well if it had been, wouldn’t one?”

  “Perhaps she’s leading a double life,” suggested Buckland facetiously.

  “How perfectly marvellous!”

  “Let’s go down and see after dinner, shall we?”

  “Let’s all go,” said Mrs. Romayne. “I could do with another drink, personally. Buck, call that garçong.”

  “I don’t know his name.”

  “Idiot! Besides, it’s Emile.”

  “Talking about names, Hilary, can you possibly remember who it was, at the Mimosas? We think we’ve lost the letter,” explained Angie.

  “It was Chrissie Something.”

  “Oh!” said Mrs. Romayne. “That’s it, then. What’s everyone going to have? Mine’s a Bronx.”

  The Moons, perceiving that they were to be included in a distribution of free drinks, temporarily emerged from their languor.

  Buckland gave the order, and included in it a dry Martini for his own consumption, and Mrs. Romayne signed the bill.

  “I can tell you about Chrissie, more or less. Her name’s Chrissie Challoner, and she’s one of these creatures who write — don’t ask me what, because I don’t know.”

  “One’s heard of her,” said Hilary, with a slight readjustment of his horn-rimmed spectacles — a gesture that he unconsciously used whenever he was showing off his familiarity with the life of the intellect. (It was a peculiarity that had already been observed and condemned by Mr. Bolham.)

  “One’s heard of her. One or two novels. One hasn’t read them, of course.”

  “Well, I must say I’d never heard of her. But it seems that someone or other lent her this villa, and she felt she couldn’t cope with running it, and servants, and all that, and this friend of mine, Ruth Wolverton-Gush, is doing all that part of it for her.”

  “People who write always pretend they can’t do anything else. It’s a pose, I expect,” said Buckland, looking at Angie Moon.

  “I expect so,” she agreed. “I loathe affectation, don’t you?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Anyhow, Gushie scores,” declared Mrs. Romayne. “She’s on a soft job, from all accounts. The girl’s got lots of money, and doesn’t care what happens so long as she isn’t bothered. She sits scribbling all the morning, I believe, and Gushie sees the cook, and does a bit of typing, and then in the afternoon and evening they just amuse themselves. Gushie’s been with her before, in London. Come on, let’s go and have dinner.”

  The Hotel dining-room was built out on a high terrace, overlooking the sea. Three sides of it were glass-enclosed. The best tables in the room had been allocated in accordance with some secret, and entirely arbitrary, standard of the proprietor’s. They stood near the windows, and had been given to Mr. Bolham, the Morgan family, the three noisy Frenchmen travelling en famille with their wives and a couple of fat, swarthy children, and Mr. Muller, who was by himself, but was said to be expecting his wife and family.

  Down the middle of the room were the other, less favoured, tables — to which not a breath of air could ever penetrate in the middle of the day — and at the far end of it, close up against the screen that concealed the swing-door into the kitchen, was the altogether inferior station allotted to Dulcie Courteney and her father. Usually Dulcie sat there all by herself, and was served last — and sometimes with a strangely curtailed meal, if Henri, the waiter, was in a spiteful mood. A feud subsisted between the Hotel servants and Courteney, whom they regarded as being no better than one of themselves.

  Far down the room — but not as far down as Dulcie — sat the young French couple, the Duvals. She was a plump, brown-skinned, brown-eyed creature, vividly painted, and oddly resembling her equally plump and brown-eyed husband.

  They ate and drank voraciously, and their conversation consisted principally of an interminable discussion on the merits and demerits of the food. Sometimes they argued.

  “Mais voyons, Marcelle, tu déraisonnes ...”

  “Au contraire, c’est toi n’as pas le sens commun ...”

  “Allons, fais l’entêtée, maintenant!”

  “Espèce d’idiot!”

  “Petite sotte que tu es ...”

  Usually their quarrels ended in a sound smack on Marcelle’s bare arm or shoulder from her husband. Then she would very often burst out laughing, and sometimes they would kiss one another openly across the table.

  “My God, they make me sick,” said Angie Moon, watching them.
r />   “Restaurant-proprietors from Lyons or Marseilles, I should imagine,” Hilary said haughtily.

  “They’ve got money, though. I saw them in a huge car this evening, and they’ve ordered champagne — look.”

  “My God, what do people like that want with money?”

  The sommelier came up to Hilary and asked what he would take to drink.

  “I suppose the champagne’s good here. Anyway it ought to be,” said Hilary, and ordered a bottle.

  Dinner was nearly over before the Moons spoke again. Then Hilary said:

  “Is that woman taking her car to look up these Villa Mimosa people?”

  “They didn’t garage it, they left it outside.”

  “I suppose they’re good for a lift.”

  “Yes, they are.”

  Angie knew that Buckland, at any rate, would suggest taking them in the car. Faintly, but unmistakably, she felt already vibrating between them the first magnetic thrillings of mutual attraction.

  Hilary, less fortunate, looked gloomily round the room and decided that it did not contain a single woman who could possibly prove worth his while. He hoped, without seriously expecting the hope to be realised, that Chrissie Challoner might appeal to him. It was in her favour — and Hilary fully realised how much he differed from ordinary men in feeling it to be so — that she was a writer of novels.

  (2)

  A painful situation prevailed at the table to which Mr. Bolham, day by day, and almost meal by meal, arrived later and later to confront his secretary.

  Conversation between them, since the decrees of civilisation forbade that it should be dispensed with altogether, was becoming increasingly difficult. It had always lacked spontaneity, even at the very beginning of their association, for Denis was too self-conscious, and Mr. Bolham too critical, for the successful manufacture of small-talk.

  Each had made efforts, especially at first.

  Denis had offered small and platitudinous observations on subjects that he held to be relevant to Mr. Bolham’s work, until his intuition had warned him that he was losing ground rather than gaining it.

  Mr. Bolham had — at the very beginning — mentioned books and authors, and Denis had followed his customary methods and had claimed, brightly and enthusiastically, to know something about almost all of them. Again, and very swiftly, an inner certainty gripped him unpleasantly somewhere in the midriff, and he knew that his employer had seen through his small pretences, and was probably despising him for them.

  The most unsuccessful phase of all had been that in which Mr. Bolham had tried to show an interest in the life and circumstances of his secretary, to the terror and horror of Denis, whose private life was even more complicated than are most private lives, being hedged about by a number of small, sordid, makeshift arrangements, of which he was intensely ashamed, and punctuated by the jobs that he had obtained through personal interest, and lost through incompetence.

  In addition, the varied aspects of himself that he was in the habit of presenting to the world would, Denis felt certain, lay him open to a charge of insincerity if any of his employers, friends, or acquaintances should ever meet and compare notes. He was therefore at continual pains to conceal the identity of these one from another. All these fears — added to his original fear of the penetrating and cynical eye of Mr. Bolham, which was increasing daily — combined to turn their tête-à-tête meals into an ordeal that Denis found little short of purgatorial, nor was it much more endurable to Mr. Bolham.

  “I hope you have some work for me this evening, sir,” Denis said uncertainly, after a protracted silence.

  “Nothing this evening, thank you. Go out — go down to the Casino — swim by moonlight. Anything you like.”

  “I dare say I shall take a walk. I’m used to a great deal of exercise,” replied Denis. He made such statements entirely at random, scarcely stopping to reflect whether they were true or untrue, driven only by his anxiety to impress, and — in this case — by a nagging suspicion that Mr. Bolham thought him deficient in manliness.

  “Walk by all means,” replied his employer. “Will you have coffee?”

  “Thank you so much — if you’re having some.”

  “Un café,” said Mr. Bolham to the waiter.

  He knew that Denis knew that he never took coffee, and Denis was aware that he knew it. Nevertheless, Denis was compelled to utter his little meaningless formula of conditional acceptance. He wanted coffee because he was naturally greedy, and because he had often been so poor that it was almost impossible to him to refuse anything that would be paid for by somebody else.

  In the condition of inward conflict that was his usual state of mind, Denis followed Mr. Bolham from the dining-room.

  As he went, he was alert to catch the eye of anyone who might possibly be looking at him. It gave him self-confidence to be recognised, and it also, subconsciously, made him feel safer. If he was looking at the people whom he passed, then they could not, themselves, be watching him unobserved.

  “Waller, are you doing anything after dinner?” asked Buckland, as he went past.

  “Nothing very special. Not in the early part of the evening, at any rate.”

  People might think that he wasn’t any good at his job if he had too much free time. He had hinted once or twice before that much of his work was done in the silence of the night. And indeed, he would willingly have worked at so suitable and dramatic an hour had Mr. Bolham suggested it. But Mr. Bolham never did.

  “Come along with us, and pay a call on a celebrated lady-novelist. We’ll make a party of it, won’t we?” Buckland appealed to Mrs. Romayne.

  “That’s right. The new people are coming along — their name’s Moon. They’ve got a letter of introduction or something. We’ll make a night of it. Can’t you get Mr. Bolham to come too, Mr. Waller?”

  “I think he has some reading he wants to do. But I should be very pleased indeed — that is to say, if it isn’t an intrusion — —”

  “We’ll go in the car,” said Mrs. Romayne, powdering her nose.

  “Thank you so much. I should be delighted to come. Thank you.”

  With a little bow, he moved on.

  “Ass!” said Mrs. Romayne, audibly.

  Denis supposed that she was addressing Buckland. He thought her a dreadful woman, but he wanted to meet young Mrs. Moon, whose looks he had admired very much on the terrace that afternoon, and he was excited at the idea of going to see a celebrated novelist. He wished that he had ever read any of her books.

  In the hall, Mr. Bolham was talking to Mrs. Morgan. He had taken a chair, and the coffee — Denis’s coffee — was on a little table in front of him.

  Denis nervously poured some out into the cup. Then he saw Gwennie Morgan, and instinctively he smiled at her, and for a moment forgot Denis Waller.

  “I’m sorry to say I’ve got to go to bed,” announced Gwennie resentfully. “I suppose you’re going to have a marvellous time.”

  “Not specially, Gwennie. I’m going to be taken by Mrs. Romayne to call on a lady who writes books.”

  “That’s much more exciting than just going to bed. Is Patrick Romayne going with you?”

  “I don’t know. I hope he is.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, I think he’s a very nice boy, don’t you?” Denis enquired mildly.

  He remembered with genuine compassion that Patrick was in need of help. Denis had meant — and still meant — to try and gain an influence over him. Service, thought Denis vaguely and splendidly .... Service and brotherhood....

  “Oh, Mr. Waller,” said the breathless voice of Dulcie Courteney. “Oh, I must tell you, — what do you think? — Pops is arriving to-morrow! Isn’t it lovely?”

  “How exciting,” said Denis sympathetically. “You didn’t think he’d be coming so soon, did you?”

  “No, Mr. Waller, I didn’t. It’s lovely, isn’t it? I must tell Mrs. Morgan.”

  She told Mrs. Morgan, who made suitable reply, and was backed up by an
indeterminate murmur from Mr. Bolham, and then Dulcie looked all round the hall.

  “I feel I simply must tell everyone,” she announced in her lisping treble. “You see, it’s so lovely for me. I do love my Pops. You see, I haven’t got a mummie, like Gwennie and Olwen have, and so Pops means just everything to me.”

  She flitted off, and Denis, who was really rather touched, observed: “Poor little thing!”

  “Poor little thing nothing,” harshly and unexpectedly exclaimed Mrs. Romayne at his elbow. “That kid makes me perfectly sick, with her Pops this and Pops the other. No wonder she hasn’t got a mother! Any woman would leave a child like that.”

  “If you had a child like that, would you leave her?” enquired Gwennie with assumed artlessness.

  Her mother said: “Good-night, Gwennie. Go now,” and Mrs. Romayne laughed.

  “I like Gwennie,” she said good-temperedly. “She’s so downright. Well, boys and girls, what about it? The car’s outside.”

  She swept out, with the air of one making an exit.

  Denis, following with Buckland, heard Mrs. Morgan’s low, clear voice addressing Mr. Bolham.

  “I don’t think I should exactly call Gwennie downright, myself. She’s much too Welsh.”

  “Personally, I should say she was abominably and precociously subtle-minded,” said Mr. Bolham, and they both laughed.

  Denis was quite startled at the sound of a laugh from his employer.

  The Buick was outside.

  “Who’s driving, Coral?” enquired Buckland, speaking rather too loudly. It was the first time he had called her Coral in public.

  “I’ll drive myself, for a change. Get in, everyone.”

  “Isn’t Patrick coming?” asked Buckland uneasily.

  “No, he says he’s got a book he wants to finish. Get in, Mr. What-is-it — oh, hell, can’t we all use Christian names and have done with it? I’m Coral.”

  “I’m Hilary, and she’s Angie.”

  Denis said nothing. He was divided between his anxiety to please the people with whom he found himself, and prove himself at home in their group, and his nervous, middle-class anxiety as to the conventionalities. He felt sure that the Morgans, for instance, wouldn’t exchange Christian names with hotel acquaintances. Mrs. Romayne, unaware of these conflicting points of view, settled the matter for him.