I Ordered a Table for Six

by Noel Streatfeild

  “Good. Sydney Sand. I dote on him. I hope he sings that song about the land girl.”

  Noel’s mind was on the seating of the table. Blast the old bitch, why couldn’t she have put him next to her? How the hell was he going to get anything said unless he could get sufficient words in during the evening to show her that she had got to see him afterwards. However, he had depended for too many years on meals eaten at other people’s expense not automatically to keep his end up in any conversation.

  “I hope he puts in the verse about the bull.”

  The wine-waiter hovered behind Adela’s chair. Noel could not take his eye off him. For God’s sake, why couldn’t the old cow stop jabbering to the American and attend to ordering the drinks. One cocktail wasn’t going to take him far. He felt as jumpy as hell. It was blasted luck he wasn’t sitting next to the old girl. What the hell was he going to do if she wouldn’t play ball?

  Adela saw the waiter, and she took the book from him and, feeling she ought to throw him a word, turned to Andrew.

  “You like champagne, Mr. Bishop?”

  Andrew flushed crimson.

  “Oh—er—yes. I say, thanks awfully.”

  “Tiresome creature,” thought Adela, smiling sweetly. “He’s shy. Oh, well, Claire must manage him.” She ordered the wine and leant across to Claire. “Mr. Bishop is one of the splendid people who bomb Germany.”

  Claire had seen that making Andrew talk was to be her duty; she turned, with apparent willingness, from her discussion with Noel about Sydney Sand’s more earthy verses. It was a conversation which would have had to finish anyway because Meggie was listening, her eyes alive with interest, fixed on Noel’s profile, which was all she could see of him. “Idiotically arranged table,” Claire thought. “I could have kept that young man amused, but goodness knows what he’s going to find to say to Meggie.”

  “Are you a bomber pilot?” she asked Andrew.

  Andrew was almost past speech. He had been prepared to come and spend a night with Gardiner to please his father, but he was not prepared for this party. He loathed parties, and always managed to avoid them.

  “No. A fighter.”

  Claire was sorry for him. It must be awful to be so shy.

  “It’s grand Mr. Penrose getting over. You know, I hardly believed in him. I thought he was like the Holy Ghost, very influential but non-existent.”

  Andrew’s eyes were glued to Claire in a scared stare. Of the people at the table she frightened him most. Her thin, alive, clever face, dead white, with her mouth painted to match her frock, her restless hands with her nails painted the same scarlet as the frock and mouth, her platinum initialled cigarette-case, which she had laid open beside her, the way she dived into her bag and produced her own lighter and lit her own cigarette, all made him feel inferior and incompetent. There was no doubt she was what the rest of the mob would call lush, but to him she was nothing of the kind. He wished he could have sat next to Meggie. There was nothing frightening about her. In fact she had made him feel less of an idiot than he usually did. Claire’s light sympathy turned to pity. His eyes looked like an unhappy small boy’s. After all, he wasn’t very old, probably not more than nineteen, an infant compared to her twenty-five. She wondered what he would be happy talking about; probably not shop. Perhaps he had a hobby. She hoped he had outgrown stamps, but she was prepared to struggle with anything which would make him talk.

  “Have you got long leave?”

  “It’s finished.”

  “Have you spent it all in town?”

  “No, at home.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Near Liverpool.”

  “Are you a big family?”

  “No. I’ve only one sister.” A picture of Ruth floated in front of him, and he added: “She’s married and got two kids. Bill and Barbara.”

  “He’s fond of the sister,” thought Claire, moving herself to make room for the waiter to put down her plate of oysters.

  “Is her husband in the army?”

  “No, he’s a doctor.” Then, encouraged by Claire’s interested expression, Andrew added: “My people didn’t want her to marry a doctor, but she’s awfully happy.”

  Claire folded a piece of brown bread and butter.

  “Sounds like my family. I married an artist. They didn’t like that.”

  Andrew tried to take a polite interest.

  “Is he in the army?”

  “He was. He was killed at Dunkirk.” Claire wished that her anxiety to put the boy at ease had not made her mention Lin. She never did speak about him, and now she saw that having to say he was dead had pushed Andrew into further abysses of shyness. She messed about with her oysters to give him time, and then said: “I like doctors. Is your brother-in-law a surgeon?”

  “No. That’s the worst part. It’s a panel practice.”

  “It would be,” thought Claire, who had of recent years only known one doctor socially, and he was a surgeon for female complaints, which had produced in him a sardonic humour about the sex. He plainly was going to be no help now. She swallowed an oyster and struggled on.

  “What does a panel doctor do exactly?”

  Andrew lit up. He had spent so much of his holidays, since Ruth married, with her and Robert, that he could answer that question.

  Claire put on the alert face of the good listener and let her mind drift. This conversation was bringing back another. She and Lin travelling on that little B.I. boat from Singapore to Bangkok. There was only one other passenger, a pitifully shy young man joining some firm in the town. Lin had made friends with the chief engineer and they were proposing to mix a cocktail called “Tiger’s milk,” the engineer’s speciality. The weather was appalling. It was the beginning of the monsoons and the sky was lowering, the heat unbearable, and the sea heaving, and the boat had what the captain called “a bit of a dance” in her motion. “If it’s going to save my life,” she had said, “for heaven’s sake mix the cocktail, but don’t ask me to move; I don’t dare, and for God’s sake take the young man with you.” Lin had sat on the foot of her chair and held her hands, his gay grey eyes laughing into hers. “Mind over matter, my sweet. You talk to the young man, and the reward will be you’ll forget your inside.” “Darling, he’s so heavy on hand and it’s so hot,” she had complained. Lin had pulled up his long length. “He’s shy, poor fellow. You be nice to him,” and he had sloped off after his engineer.

  “Ruth wanted to be a doctor herself, so of course it’s awfully interesting for her Robert being one.”

  “Tell me about Ruth.”

  “Queer,” thought Claire. “I saw Lin then as clearly as if he were at the table. He might just have said: ‘He’s shy, poor fellow. You be nice to him.’”

  As Claire turned to talk to Andrew, Noel looked round at Meggie. He had registered both her outburst over Letty, and her remark about oysters for hospitals, and had decided he would talk to Claire, for this girl was clearly a bore, a pity for she looked a grand little piece, and, being Paul’s sister, she might have been fun. As he looked at her he put on what he knew to be his most effective expression, a half smile, with his eyebrows lifted, and he said, on an inflection pregnant with meaning:

  “Well?”

  He had seldom found this method of starting the ball rolling fail. There were dozens of ways in which a girl could answer, and by her reply he knew his next move.

  Meggie beamed at him.

  “So you do remember. I was so afraid you’d forgotten, because I was much younger then. Do you know, meeting you is one of the loveliest things that’s happened to me for ages; and it’s very odd really because in a way I didn’t want to come to-night, because of a great friend who’s been drowned.”

  Noel speared an oyster, and wondered what she was talking about.

  “I’m delighted I’ve made your day.”

  Meggie
dropped her voice.

  “Speak very low because Mummy mustn’t hear. Do you know, you are the only friend of Paul’s I’ve met since he went away.”

  Noel was out of his depth. He had not supposed any of the family would want to meet Paul’s friends. It had been a tremendous surprise to him when Adela had rung him up, and a bigger one when he had been asked to dine. He felt ill at ease. His armour of brightness and polish, which he wore at a party, seemed ineffectual before Meggie, and he had nothing else to put in its place. He was conscious that the amusing young officer who had sat down at the table was disintegrating into the Noel who hardly ever appeared in public, the Noel who had no self-confidence at all, and was scared of making a fool of himself. He groped for the right voice for a sophisticated young man-about-town, but he did not find it.

  “Am I? Always the little gentleman and glad to oblige.”

  She laughed.

  “It is lovely meeting you. You say silly things just like Paul, and I remembered you the moment you came into the room. I’ve always hoped and hoped I’d meet a friend of his, it’s so miserable never talking about him except to Uncle Freddie, for although he’s marvellous, he was never what you’d call a friend of Paul’s. We saw you outside the place where you sold motor cars, do you remember? Paul said afterwards that you’d have always sold things like motor-cars whenever you’d been born. He said you’d have worn a natty toga and sold chariots if you’d belonged to Rome.”

  “It’s not a bad job.”

  “Of course it isn’t, but the army’s better, I should think. Paul will be thrilled to see you in khaki. He was being angry about jobs that day we met you. You see, he couldn’t get one himself and he was worried.”

  Noel’s eyes opened. If there was one thing Paul had never done it was worry, no matter how great the need. Of course, Sampson had usually done the worrying for everybody, and he might have been away at the time Meggie was talking about, but even then he could not imagine Paul worrying. One of the things that had made Paul such fun was that he never seemed to think at all; he laughed at everything.

  “I never knew him worry much.”

  The waiter was pouring out the champagne. Adela looked up at him.

  “Just half a glass for Miss Framley, and don’t refill her glass.” Out of the corner of her eye she had been watching with increasing anxiety Meggie’s intimate talk with Noel. What could they have to whisper about? Surely Noel could not be so tactless as to be speaking of Paul. She leant across the table. “I hope she’s amusing you, Noel. What’s she talking about?”

  Meggie caught her breath, but she need not have worried.

  “The army.”

  Adela relaxed, and prepared herself to re-gather the threads of her conversation with Gardiner, but he forestalled her.

  “Who is that young man?”

  Adela had not foreseen that question being asked. It had been asked indirectly by Letty, who had been told he was the son of an old friend, in a voice calculated to make her remember her place; but Gardiner could not be snubbed, nor could he be told about old friends, for with the shockingly good memory for names which was a part of all Americans, he would tell Millicent exactly whom he had met at dinner, and Millicent would inquire about the Deeves’ family in her next letter. The best plan was to speak the truth. She had gone over in her mind everything about Paul that she had told Millicent in recent letters; he was now supposed to be stationed in Scotland.

  “A friend of Paul’s, he’s stationed in London and Paul wrote from Scotland asking me to ask him to something. Paul . . .”

  Gardiner laid his hand on Adela’s.

  “Don’t go on, Adela dear. I said to Millicent that if you never mentioned Paul then neither would I, but that if you did speak of him then I should tell you right out that Millicent and I know all about him and we always have, and how deeply we sympathise.” Adela had pulled her hand from under his, and was making a great effort at holding complete control of herself, but her make-up could not hide that she had turned white, and she had to grip her hands together under the table to disguise how they were shaking. Gardiner’s voice was very gentle. “Maybe it hurts you to speak of the poor boy, but I figured that, old friends as we are, I couldn’t let you tell me tales such as you’ve written Millicent.”

  Adela was shaking all over, and to prevent this being obvious took her strength. Her voice was barely a breath.

  “When did you know?”

  The waiter brought the next course and showed it to Adela, who nodded vaguely. Gardiner waited until they were both served.

  “Right back before you left Bermuda we knew something was wrong. Why, Adela dear, the moment your cable came, Millicent got right on to me and she said to call up the uncle Meggie was staying with, and see if I could get some news of how Paul was; you see, Millicent thought that if he were not going to live she would travel home with you. Meggie’s uncle wasn’t there, but I spoke to your sister-in-law, Mrs. Framley. She said: ‘It’s not illness, it’s more terrible than that,’ and that was all.”

  Adela, with an effort of will, lifted her hand on to the table to reach for her champagne. Gardiner put the glass in her hand.

  “Did they write and tell you?”

  “Why, no. We read it in the papers. There was an account in most of our papers, and I always see The Times.”

  Adela felt not only undressed, but uncorsetted. What a fool she had been looking. How could she have been such a lunatic as not to remember that Gardiner was quite likely to see an English paper.

  “How Millicent must have laughed at my letters!”

  “Laughed! Why, Adela, they were just the most pitiful things we had ever read. Millicent cries over every one. To see you making up all these tales. ‘I wonder she hasn’t told me,’ she sometimes says, ‘why, what’s a friend for if you can’t just naturally tell her all your troubles?’ Then she remembers how English you are, and maybe wouldn’t care to write that way.”

  The champagne was not helping Adela much. She knew she must be looking ghastly. Between sips, she kept her head down so that the rest of the table should not see her face. Meggie was so absorbed in Noel that she was noticing nothing, she had not even an idea what she was eating. Noel, unable to be chained by any conversation of which he was not the subject, and at all times too anxious about the impression he was making, not to cast looks around to see if he were being talked about, had noted Adela’s distress, and, as he saw it, he searched for its possible cause, and whether it could have any effect on what he had to say to her. Except that Gardiner was an American, Noel knew nothing about him, but could imagine no word he could possibly have said to Adela which could affect his situation, unless it was that she had lost her money, or that Paul was dead, and it seemed very unlikely an American would bring news of either event, or that anybody, American or not, would think the dinner-table the place to hand out such news. With a mental shrug of the shoulders he dismissed Adela’s trouble and went back to Meggie. Probably the old girl had eaten a bad oyster. If she had, he hoped she soon went to the lou and got rid of it, so that her mind was clear for him later on.

  Claire, turning an interested face to Andrew, and occasionally focusing on what he was saying, so that she could throw out remarks to keep him going, could not pull her mind from the past. That picture of herself and Lin on the boat to Bangkok had stirred her memory. She did not want it stirred, for her memories hurt like a nagging nerve in a tooth; but she could not stop the thoughts coming. It was always like that. Something brought Lin back, and one thought led to another. To help her switch her mind she let her eyes roam round the room, and as they moved she focused Adela; it was at the moment when Gardiner passed her the glass of champagne. Claire was momentarily startled out of her thoughts. ‘What on earth? I didn’t believe the aunt could be pushed off her balance. What can the American be telling her?’ Seeing Adela temporarily out of the running, Claire looked ac
ross at Noel and Meggie. If their conversation was hanging fire she must stop Andrew’s chatter, and start some hare the four of them could chase. One look, however, at Meggie and Noel satisfied her that she had not got to bother about them. Meggie was speaking earnestly, but in too low a voice for Claire to hear what she was saying. Noel seemed happy listening to her, “which only shows,” thought Claire, “that he’s a nicer young man than I thought, or else he’s fallen for her.”

  Gardiner was upset at the effect of his words on Adela. Millicent never interfered with him, but she had said that she thought it would be better to let Adela keep up the myth about Paul doing well in the army. “You see, Gardiner,” she had said, “poor Adela’s one of those who just seems to go through her life and learn nothing. As a girl she was real smart, but she’s just not developed. I just hate to say it, for it seems unkind, but I wouldn’t wonder if all she’s told us about Paul wasn’t to save her pride, just as much as to save Paul. I’ve been sorry for her for years, for she was so proud of that boy, and he was nasty through and through; but I guess telling her we know the truth isn’t going to help her any.” Gardiner, though admitting that Millicent might be right in her reading of Adela, had refused to subscribe to it. “You may be right but I just can’t let her tell those falsehoods to me. If it’s true that she has never developed, then the greater need she has of friends. Trouble like she has suffered needs to be taken in a very big way.” Now, looking at pale, shivering Adela, it seemed to him that Millicent had been wrong though she might have been right in saying he should keep silent; but not for the reason she had given, but because Adela’s suffering had been so terrible, that she had endured all she could, and, by opening the subject, he had started her pain again.

  “Would you like to go outside, Adela? I’m afraid I’ve upset you.”

  Adela pulled together the threads of her courage. She took up her knife and fork.

  “It’s quite all right. It was a shock to find that you and Millicent have always known. Naturally it’s not a subject I ever discuss.”