Collected Works of E M Delafield

by E M Delafield

  I threw the boot-lace in her face.

  It was hysteria, of course. Later, I was to recognize that. Arnold, I believe, recognized it at the time. Stewart may have recognized it. About that, I am not absolutely certain. Mrs. Mardick thought that it was temper.

  Physically, we were all in a low condition because for forty-eight hours we had been unable to get anything to eat or drink, but Stewart and Arnold had begun to talk about James Joyce, and that sort of conversation has always been more important to me than food and drink. It was not till later that I was to know it was that which stimulated me so that I was able to do what I did do without any compunction at all.

  I took Mrs. Mardick’s clothes while she was asleep.

  It was a dishonest thing to have done, and I am not a naturally dishonest person. But I even removed the nightgown that she always wore at night, although three of us had long ago discarded anything of that kind. I left her there like that.

  When she woke she would, I knew, notice nothing. She was not an observant person. I have never heard what actually happened, whether she caught cold or not. After I had left her, I joined the two men, and we went on with the hike.

  I still feel no remorse whatever about Mrs. Mardick. That is what prolonged hiking does to one.

  PORTRAIT OF A DARK CIRCUS

  A Tale (Two or three Tails, in fact)

  I am aware, I can assure you, that this is the story of the Circus, rather than of those who brought about that shattering, overwhelming, cataclysmic disaster to the performing fleas. They, I fancy, would tell you the same thing, if they could make you understand them, and if they were not dead — gone down all together in that last dizzy crash, with the Clown cowering under the gas-jet — it was part of Massa Johnson’s magnificent oddity that he never would adopt electric light — and the acrobats hanging silently, head downwards, from the horizontal bar, looking on.

  These details may seem to you utterly trivial, and I can even believe that you will doubt their truth; but to me, at the time, they all appeared inevitable, even to the Clown’s red-hot poker, that was to play so great a part in the destinies of all of us before the end. Not, you understand, the end of the red-hot poker — though that came into it, too....

  But the performing fleas. The whole troop of them, gathered together in the tent, and Massa Johnson’s six foot eight inches hanging over them, as I saw it that night.

  You’d have liked him if you’d see him then. You couldn’t have helped it. He was such a perfect gentleman. Even the fleas realized that, just before the end came. They didn’t bite. Just gazed up at him, fascinated.

  And here I must interpolate this — namely, that through all the extraordinary catastrophes that followed, one after another and some of them simultaneously, my own reaction was one of purest happiness. But the different ways in which it took hold of us all was part of its strangeness.

  The fleas, for instance, didn’t view it with the absolute detachment of the piebald horse — but then the horse wasn’t being crushed between that gigantic finger and thumb of Massa Johnson’s — wouldn’t have let itself be crushed, I feel nearly certain.

  So we stood, all of us, and watched murder done. Oh, but it was murder. I’m quite clear about that, and so would you have been, if you’d seen that row of fragile corpses, and that massive six foot nine inches towering above them.

  “I didn’t mean to,” he said quietly. “It was a feeling of irritation ...” He stopped, and one of us — I think it was the negro with ears like a dog’s and the ruby bracelet on one ankle — quoted in a curious falsetto whisper: “De mortuis ...”

  And then their trainer came in. Someone — it may have been the cross-eyed dwarf in the spangled tights — attempted to fling an antique purple-and-silver Charles the Second bedspread over the bodies, but not quickly enough. Oh, but not nearly quickly enough.

  He saw. The trainer saw. Saw that the performing fleas wouldn’t perform again, ever.

  That moment did something to all of us. I was to know what, later on. But just then I only saw horror, and chaos, and fierce brilliant colour, and dead fleas, and figures running away, and other figures running after them, and still other figures doing nothing, and those who didn’t look like leopards, or sardines, bore the strangest resemblance to pieces of furniture. It is difficult for me to give you an orderly account of the climax.

  I can see Massa Johnson’s six foot ten inches crashing through the tent, making straight for the three-and-sixpenny seats, and the others following, and I can hear myself quoting from my favourite edition of Don Quixote to the trainer.

  Then he broke away, without waiting for me to finish the quotation, and plunged straight into the midst of the three-and-sixpenny seats, and I couldn’t stop him.

  He was going to murder Massa Johnson — the whole six foot eleven of him. They were all in it together, every one of those inches.

  The murder was beginning to attract attention. People didn’t like it. One or two turned round in their seats and said “Hush!”

  A great exhilaration seized me. The circus-ring seemed to be going round and round and backwards and forwards and up and down and in and out, all at once.

  Then I saw that the end, then, was that.

  Massa Johnson and the trainer, locked together, lurching through the three-and-sixpennies, over the barrier, and into the sawdust of the arena.

  There was a silence, a blindness, a deafness, a dumbness....

  Then I thought of another quotation from Don Quixote.

  FLAMBOYANT

  By the author of Pink Post Chaise

  The sun poured down, hotter and hotter and hotter and hotter.

  The Calos (gypsies), dark, splendid, rugged, verminous, filthy, swaggering, and honey-dark, lay at rest in the middle of a cactus-bush. A baby had been born there during the night. Two or three babies. Already their mothers were dancing, singing, drinking wine, walking hundreds of miles behind their husbands and their husbands’ mules. Sometimes the new-born babies walked too, after the gypsy fashion, sometimes they remained, naked, berry-brown, and forgotten, to fend for themselves amongst the cactus-leaves.

  Australia

  The Calos were walking to Australia.

  Presently they reached Wimbledon. The Common was of a sombre, wine-dark beauty, and after a wild, wicked dance or two, the Calos (gypsies) looked about for some cactus-bushes, for it was there that another baby should be born. The baby — a girl, bronze, upright, honey-gold — arrived without waiting for a cactus-bush to be found.

  Almost at once, with a wild, effortless bound into the air, she began to play a pagandi (guitar), to dance the romalis (dance), and to sing flamencos (songs).

  The inhabitants of Wimbledon gathered round, staring at the Calos. Their own brats, fair-skinned, flaxed-haired mommets, performed no such antics.

  Thomas Shovell, lion-headed, mouse-haired, bull-chested, stepped deliberately forward and pointed to the child.

  “How much?”

  The Calo (gypsy) deliberated. He knew that many, many other babies were due to be born before the tribe should reach Australia. At that very moment ——

  (Editor’s Note. — Has there been a mistake? This isn’t “How a Baby is Born,” with nineteen illustrations and an appreciation, is it?

  Author’s Note. — Well, it is and it isn’t. Technically it isn’t, but at the same time, nothing much else is going to happen, except dozens of these Calo (gypsy) babies. And we haven’t got nineteen illustrations. As for the appreciation, that’s rather a question for our readers, isn’t it?

  Editor’s Note. — Something seems to tell me that they won’t.

  Author’s Note. — Of course, if you really feel like that about it, let’s stop. But it’s a pity, especially as it’s all working up to rather a neat point. I was going to refer to the whole lot of babies as Flam an’ Co. — if you see what I mean?

  Editor’s Note (final). — That settles it.)

  HEBRAIC

  By Stern. (But not
very)

  The family lived in Vienna, Constantinople, Paris, London, Putney, Dantzig, and so on. Anywhere except Jerusalem. Great-great-grandmother Czelonitz lived in Jerusalem, amongst gilt candelabra, bonnets trimmed with pink rosebuds, oil-paintings, bustles, crinolines, marrons-glacés, relations, great singers, and lovers. Always lovers, from the early Konrad in whiskers and peg-top trousers, to the ultra-modern Gigi, in running shorts and saxophone. Great-great-grandmother Czelonitz — always called Boadicea by the family, from some odd, Jewish, associative idea about boa-constrictors — had taken and discarded lovers lightly, throughout the ninety-eight years of her easy, drifting, reckless progress that Peter’s Rachel’s Theodosia, doing brilliant work as a plumber-and-fitter in Balham, always said reminded her of the Wandering Jew.

  “Mon Majesté la Roi” Boadicea always called her lovers — for not a Czelonitz amongst them but was at home in every language, from Hebrew (goy and kosher) to Hindustani (mem and sahib).

  But a succession of lovers was not enough for Boadicea’s gay, exuberant, indomitable vitality, inherited from the famous Nicolai Nicolaivitch Czelonitz, that itinerant pedlar known to have walked from Buenos Aires to the Albert Memorial, and to have picked up five devoted wives in succession on the way, besides laying the foundations of the family fortunes by his persuasive Czelonitz charm of manner in selling rabbit-skins and boot-laces, so that no housewife could resist them.

  The whole of that charm of manner had descended to Boadicea, together with the abundant hair of Great-great-great-greatest-grandmother Anabella from Munich, and the embroidered purple-and-gold spangled tights that had belonged to German Trudi’s Abraham’s Betsinda’s youngest, in Cracow. It was that charm, that driving vitality, that whole forceful personality, that had succeeded in bringing together the forty-eight remaining branches of the family, under Boadicea’s roof in Jerusalem, for the wedding of young Ernestine Czelonitz to her cousin, young Vladimir Czelonitz Czelonitz, of the second lot of the Bloomsbury Czelonitz.

  “Me, I will make you an Appelstrudel,” chanted Boadicea, her contralto voice — beautiful, though never at all in tune — booming above all the English, Jewish, German, French, Czecho-Slovakian, Russian, Central-American voices of the Czelonitz clan.

  Young Ernestine and young Vladimir, ultra-modern Harlequins looking as though they had been cut out of coloured paper and pasted on to the furniture, sat smoking cigarettes, drinking cocktails, humming Jazz, using slang expressions, and discussing sex — typical examples of the modern type of Czelonitz.

  Their great-great-grandmother Boadicea, glancing at the thin, whimsical, ironic, impudent, daring, incredibly sophisticated period-piece that they presented, frowned. The Czelonitz frown. The same frown that Ancestor Adam Czelonitz had frowned at his wife, Eve, when the gates had been shut behind them....

  “Me, I do not approve of this marriage,” burst out Boadicea.

  Ernestine and young Vladimir, true moderns, shrugged their shoulders. The Czelonitz shrug. The very one, probably, that met Ancestor Adam in return for his frown.

  “Allons! Avanti! Caramba!” cried Boadicea, throwing out clouds of energy, vitality, and sex appeal. “It is that I will arrange this affair. I have the sagacity of our Grandfather Maximilian, the flair of our third cousin Gretchen of Pomerania, the determination of Uncle Fernando and his wife Carolina, who met in an old furniture shop in Madrid and were married next day before the consul in St. Petersburg. I will arrange it all, mes enfants.”

  The Czelonitz looked at one another in despair. The Paris lot raised their eyebrows at the Moscow lot, with whom they had never been on speaking terms since the affair of Aunt Suzanne’s fifth girl with Great-uncle Antonio Czelonitz’s son by his first wife, picked up on the quay at Marseilles.

  “Me,” said Boadicea, “I am a widow. Three, five, seven times a widow. It is better that I should marry Vladimir. The little Ernestine can live with us, is it not, and any of the family that wish. The more,” said Boadicea, “the merrier.”

  No Czelonitz had ever been known to defy the super-grandmother. It was the Czelonitz tradition to be ruled, root and branch — branches — by a Matriarch.

  Young Vladimir, sulkily reluctant, had to yield and be married by Boadicea. Ernestine had to come and live in the Palestine flat. The rest of the Czelonitz clan, from the original Jerusalem lot to the newly discovered Esquimaux lot started at the North Pole by Reuben’s eldest early in nineteen-hundred, were obliged to come and settle close by.

  As Boadicea, in her magnificent, opulent, daring, Czelonitz way, declared: The more the merrier.

  That, indeed, was the family motto of the house of Czelonitz.

  WHITE WICKEDNESS; OR, ON THE WAUGH-PATH

  One

  “Us, Cain, Emperor of Ruritania, Chief of the Cannibal Tribes of Wogga-Wogga-Wogga, do hereby proclaim ...”

  Cain stopped dictating and gazed out at the dhows, the natives, the mango-trees, bazaars, Arabs, monsoons, typhoons, massacres, spirillum ticks, revolutions, and other items of local colour.

  *

  (Publishers’ Note to Author. — What does all this mean? It’s not at all the kind of thing your public expects of you.

  Author’s Reply. — I think I want to write that kind of book. You know — bitter irony about the British Empire and those who help to make her what she is.

  Publishers’ Note. — Well, for Heaven’s sake be funny about it. Remember Vile Bodies.

  Author’s Reply. — All right, all right. There are going to be any number of vile bodies about this book before I’ve done with it. Still, I think I see what you mean.)

  Two

  Basil. — Is there a party going on in this house?

  The Butler. — Two my lord.

  Basil. — Hallo there’s Petunia! Hallo Petunia my sweet could you let me have three thousand pounds?

  Petunia. — The man who slept with me last night took all my money it’s so awkward I don’t know who to borrow from next.

  A Detective. — Shall I get a warrant issued for his arrest?

  Petunia — That’s no good darling the man who brought him didn’t tell me his name.

  The Butler. — Are the bailiffs to have champagne or not your Grace?

  *

  (Publishers’ Note. — A welcome return indeed to the meticulous realism and almost photographic accuracy of an earlier style — but what is to be the connecting link between the haut monde of Mayfair and the Emperor Cain and all that local colour?

  Author’s Reply. — I don’t know.)

  Three

  For some minutes the British Ambassador and the Governor-General had been eating salmi of lobster out of tins. Presently the Papal Legate had some too. The Chargé d’Affaires, the First Minister, and a couple of Plenipotentiaries, were eating soft roes on toast, out of other tins. They all called one another by nicknames.

  “Toto, where are the despatches?”

  “I’m awfully sorry, H.E., the puppy’s eaten them.”

  “Hope they don’t make him sick.”

  “I say, Birdie-boy, is it true that black fellow What’s-his-name has been massacred at least three times by some of his own people?”

  “I don’t think so, Pansy-face.”

  “Why don’t you think so, darling?”

  “I don’t think it was some of his own people. I think it was all of them.”

  *

  (Author’s Appeal to Publishers. — How’s that? Rather subtle irony, don’t you agree? That ought to get under the skins of the Colonial Office and the Foreign Office and the Diplomatic Service all right.

  Publishers’ Reply. — Of course it ought. Rather. Still, from a retail point of view, that really isn’t going to help your sales tremendously. Wouldn’t it be possible just to tighten the thing up a bit?

  Author’s Reply. — I’ve still got one idea left. I can use that.)

  Four

  Lady Jane Jump and Miss Mary Minns were dressed for the tropics exactly alike in solar topis, khaki shirts
and skirts, thick shoes and stockings, and green spectacles. The front teeth of each projected, and both were flat-footed. They represented a Type of English Womanhood.

  *

  (Publishers’ Note. — It’s your book, of course, but isn’t this — or aren’t these — the least little bit out of date?

  Author’s Reply. — Very likely. I got them out of the better-class French illustrated comic papers of the late ‘eighties.

  Publishers’ Reply. — Quite.)

  Five

  Evening in Wogga-Wogga-Wogga. The new British Resident sat on the veranda with his mistress drinking sundowners and eating caviar out of tins.

  “What happened to that black Emperor, Cain?”

  “Oh, we cut off his head.”

  “Good business.”

  “Yes, wasn’t it.”

  “What was the end of his Army?”

  “Our fellows turned a dozen machine-guns on ’em.”

  “Very sound. And what about all those secretaries and people?”

  “Just hanged — all except a few whom we burnt alive. Do let me have a turn with the yo-yo now, darling.”

  Night in Wogga-Wogga-Wogga.

  *

  (Publishers’ Query. — But is that the end?

  Author’s Reply. — I’m afraid so. Rotten, isn’t it?

  Publishers’ Note. — That’s all right, my dear chap — we’re sending it to the Book Society.)

  THE GREATER BRITAIN, BY A GREATER BRITON

  “Up, Guards, and at ’em.”

  (Famous quotation quoted by the author on being relieved of office.)

  Introduction

  Romulus and Remus were the founders of Imperial Rome. From them we derive the famous story of the Wolf, symbolizing what the British Empire has now got to keep from the door.