I Ordered a Table for Six

by Noel Streatfeild

  “Well, if I may say so, I think with old friends you should make an exception. I put through an inquiry when I got over, and I learn you are expecting him home next month.”

  Adela laid down her knife and fork. This was unbearable.

  “I’d rather not discuss the matter, Gardiner.”

  Gardiner, conceiving a duty, could not be moved from giving birth to it.

  “I see that, but before we finish with the sad subject, will you tell me your plans for him? I take it that he goes into one of your services, the army, or the navy, or, maybe, the R.A.F.” Adela made a move, but he stopped her. “Listen, just one more moment. You probably dread this meeting with him. You’ll be afraid he’ll be changed and bitter, but it’ll be a fine chance for him. The discipline of the service he chooses, and when he gets leave a loving mother who will help him to forget the past, and, by her love and trust, help him to rebuild himself. I’m saying these things because maybe when this war’s over I can help. I’ve a scheme which I hope to carry out, which will employ a lot of men; I can’t figure right now where Paul would fit in, but I guess I can make a place for him, and it’ll be good work helping to make a finer Britain with the aid of the lessons of this cruel war.”

  Adela could bear no more. Paul coming home to a mother who would help him to rebuild himself—Paul with a job in some philanthropic concern of Gardiner’s. Why torture her? Her eyes had been opened for ever. She had given birth to a monster. A creature who could attempt to murder an old woman for her money, who was dead to shame, who cared nothing that he had kicked his mother into the dirt. A tide of fury was sweeping over her. The grey look left her cheeks and was succeeded by two flaming red patches. Her voice was only just above a whisper, but it had an edge like a diamond.

  “Listen, Gardiner, I’ll tell you something I’ve never told a soul. I loathe Paul. I wish with every breath I draw that he was dead, and I don’t care where he goes when he comes out of prison, but I’m never going to see him again.” There was silence as her voice died away, and in it Adela’s temper evaporated, and she regained control of her senses, and would have given anything to unsay what she had said. She managed to produce a very fair imitation of the poised Adela that everybody knew. She patted Gardiner’s arm. “I must beg you not to repeat what I’ve said to anybody, except of course, to Millicent, if you feel you must. People like you two, who have never known suffering, won’t understand what has driven me to feel as I do, and if you want to be kind you will never mention the subject again.”

  Gardiner was both appalled and moved. In spite of her confession he liked Adela better at that moment than at any other in the years he had been acquainted with her. His mind was so full of his scheme for help for post-war Britain that he was unwilling to lay even his thoughts on one side, but he saw that he was being called on duty. His belief in a God who could and did give orders to his followers was absolute. Adela wondered why he stopped eating and looked at the ceiling, blinking through his glasses as though his vision was dimmed, and he were trying to see more clearly. She supposed he was accepting her wishes, and looking away from her before introducing a new subject. She would have been full of scorn if she had known that Gardiner was saying: “Speak, Lord, for Thy servant heareth.”

  “Paul and I were great friends,” Meggie explained to Noel. “Not always. I think he thought I was just a little girl. But one day I found him lying on the sofa in the drawing-room; he’d an awful headache. My governess has headaches and she kept some powders for them, and I went and took one. I bought some more afterwards and put it back. I asked if he would like to be left alone, because people usually prefer it with headaches, you know; and he said that he was simply hating himself, and I could stay and talk. He felt ever so much better after a bit, and he laughed a lot, and then said would I like to go out with him. We had a beautiful tea with cakes all over cream and whipped chestnuts.”

  Noel wanted the subject brought back to himself. What else had Paul said about him.

  “Funny I only saw you once. I was, in a way, a great friend of his. Of course I didn’t have anything to do with . . .”

  Meggie stopped him.

  “I don’t know why Paul went to prison, and he doesn’t want me to know, so please don’t tell me. I know it was something bad, he told me that himself.”

  Noel was puzzled.

  “How? Did you see him?”

  “Yes. Nobody knows that except Uncle Freddie. I’m only telling you because you’re Paul’s friend. He came down, and we went and lay in the wood and talked. Nobody could see us in the wood. Paul was ill; he kept being sick, and he was terribly frightened. He made me make an absolute vow I wouldn’t read a newspaper for six months, and after that not to read anything that had to do with him. He’s coming out of prison next month. I just can’t tell you how I’m looking forward to it.”

  Noel was forgetting himself. What could Meggie mean? Old Paul was a grand fellow at a party all right, and he had liked him in his way, but he was never likely to do much good. What was the “hang out the flags” talk about?

  “If you didn’t see a paper, how do you know he went to prison?”

  “Uncle Freddie told me.” She looked at Noel consideringly. “As you’re fond of Paul too, I’ll tell you what he said, because I expect it’s been difficult for you who don’t do awful things to understand about Paul. Paul was not like you and me. He had an illness, you know, like consumption or anæmia, something that you’ve got always. His trouble was, like with lots of people who are ill, he wouldn’t go to a doctor. Not a real doctor, you know, but somebody who would help him. You see, until the awful thing happened, he didn’t even own to himself that he was ill, at least Uncle Freddie thinks he didn’t, but he did worry about himself sometimes. He did to me. Of course he was always funny at the same time. We played a sort of game. He used to say: ‘I’ll be Paul Perfect this afternoon, according to the Gospel of Jonesy,’ she’s my governess, she’s a perfect darling, but she never understood Paul very well.”

  Noel’s eyes were glued to her.

  “Do you believe that about an illness?”

  “Of course I do. I’ll tell you another secret. Paul writes to me and I write back. He sends the letters to Uncle Freddie and he gives them to me.”

  “Do you think he’s better? I mean, can prison or something like that cure you?”

  Meggie’s eyes darkened.

  “I don’t know if he’s well; but he will be. I’m grown-up now and I can help. Uncle Freddie says that the greatest help to somebody like Paul is somebody who absolutely believes in you, and doesn’t lose heart when the person slips back a bit. You can help too. Uncle Freddie says he’s bound to be a bit out of things when he comes home, and everybody like you and me and mummy being glad to have him back, and certain he’ll be all right in the future, is going to be a terrific help; Uncle Freddie says without that Paul will never get any self respect, and that’s what he’s simply got to have. Of course the war’s a help in a way. Uncle Freddie hopes that he might like to join the navy. I can’t quite see him in the navy, but, of course, he’ll have to be in something. When he worried about himself he never thought he could do anything, but he was wrong. Of course he could really. Once when we were at the zoo he said a thing which shows how miserable he was about himself. We’d been looking at the bears, and I was sorry for them. You know bears are sad, aren’t they? It’s because they look funny and everybody laughs at them, and I’m never absolutely sure their feelings aren’t hurt. And I told Paul what I thought and he said: ‘It wouldn’t be bad if there were zoos for the likes of us. Just sitting all day to be looked at and fed, and no responsibilities.’ I laughed because I thought he was being funny, but he said: ‘Believe me, Meggie, Paul Perfect would be much better off in a zoo.’” Her face was sad, then she looked up at Noel with a beseeching smile. “But you believe he’ll get all right, don’t you? I’m making myself absolutely know that h
e will.” Noel, in a conflict of thoughts, was conscious that he was glimpsing something vital. He had not grasped what it was. It was like a gleam of light in a dark countryside, which vanished and reappeared as he moved towards it. All he had got hold of was that if he got to that light it would mean something stupendous, something that would change his world.

  Adela, as much to keep Gardiner quiet as to be a good hostess, turned to the table.

  “Are you children going to dance between the courses, or will you wait until afterwards? I expect you’re a good dancer, Noel. You ought to dance with him, Claire.”

  Adela was speaking too automatically to notice the reactions of the table, or she would have seen that she was half-way through what she had to say before the four grasped they were being spoken to, and even when she had gained their attention, that they were pulling their thoughts to her from great distances. Noel and Claire, well trained guests, got to their feet, and, in answer to a querying smile from Noel, Claire moved with him to the floor and they began to dance. Noel danced like a professional, almost too much so. The mind could strip him of his khaki, put him in evening dress, and place him in the South of France being the well-paid darling of a rich, ageing woman. Claire moved beautifully. She was so emaciated that Noel might have been dancing with a head attached to some yards of scarlet chiffon. The band was playing “Room Five-hundred-and-four”: Claire was steeled to resist the assault of sentimental music. Not that she belittled its danger: too well she knew how easily it could get beneath her armour of self-control. The words ran through her mind:

  “That perfect honeymoon alone with you,

  In Room Five-hundred-and-four!

  We turned the key in the door,

  We hadn’t dared to ask the price,

  That kind of thrill can’t happen twice,

  And who could bargain over Paradise? . . .”

  She considered the words as they passed, and her lips turned up at the corners in a half smile. What a comic, empty world it was. If Lin could see her now in the red frock he had loved, crawling round the room pretending to dance, how he would laugh. He would know just what a hideous joke it was to suggest that either of them could live without the other.

  Noel looked down at her. Thank goodness, she seemed to be one of those girls who liked dancing in silence. Steering her expertly up and down the room, he tried to catch the elusive thought that hovered somewhere at the back of Meggie’s conversation. What had she said that had given him such a kick? She had been talking about Paul, and his coming out of jug. She had been saying that she was going to buck him up and all that stuff. No, he couldn’t get it. Queer, because there had been something.

  Claire, feeling the khaki of Noel’s tunic, gave in to an overwhelming longing and closed her eyes. “Where shall we dance? Not this sordid hole. You’d always hated this place, Lin. I know, we’ll go to Claridges. It’s that night you got your first pip. What a fool you were! You bought me that yellow frock to wear. I told you it swore with khaki, and you said I was to trust your artist’s eye. God, I’ll never forget your face when I took you to the glass and showed us how we’d look dancing together. You almost tore it getting me out of it. We drank that awfully good hock, and you would make up clerihews about the rest of the room. You were so pleased with the one about Prunella Punt. Of course I knew before you started why you’d picked that name. It was a lovely night. We walked home, and you ruined my shoes making me see your favourite bits of London by moonlight. The black-out hadn’t been done when we got in and you wouldn’t let me draw the curtains. I said I couldn’t see, and you undressed me.”

  “Wouldn’t you two like to dance?” said Adela to Andrew and Meggie.

  Meggie was trying to be the grown-up person her mother expected to see, and not show that she was cross. She supposed people who gave parties had to keep talking to everybody, but she did wish her mother would leave her and Noel alone. All the years Paul had been away, and her longing to talk to somebody about him—not somebody old like Uncle Freddie, but a real friend of Paul’s, like Noel, who would be interested in talking about him. Uncle Freddie wasn’t interested in Paul exactly; it was more in Paul’s soul. Souls were, of course, very important, but they weren’t interesting to talk about like people. Her face was a window through which her thoughts shone. Adela’s mind was switched for a moment from herself to her daughter. Meggie was looking mulish. There was no other word for it. The child, now that she had seen how well Noel danced, probably wanted to take the floor with him herself but to show it was really unpardonable. Andrew, wrested from his happy chat of Ruth and of Robert and his patients, and the funny doings of Bill and Barbara, had sprung, the moment he realized that Adela was talking about dancing, crimson-faced and awkward, to his feet. Seeing Claire sent off with Noel, he had smiled anxiously and inquiringly at Meggie. Meggie, suffering real pain at the severing of her line of thought, had not even seen that he was looking at her. Adela, staring at Meggie’s pretty, but now disconsolate face, became conscious that she did not like her. All the child’s life she had admitted that she did not care for girls, qualifying the statement by a remark that, of course, daughters were an exception. It seemed that her whispered, violent outburst about Paul had broken down thought barriers, for now her mind shouted: “I do dislike that child!” She had not the reasoning power to see that for her to produce a daughter had been a tiresome thing enough, but to produce a pretty daughter whom everybody loved, while she produced only one son, and he an enormity, was perversion. Her voice regained its strength, and sprang out like a whip.

  “Meggie! Do you see that Mr. Bishop is asking you to dance?”

  Gardiner flinched at her tone. Andrew swallowed and turned an even deeper red.

  “Oh no, I didn’t. I mean, I’d much rather not dance if she doesn’t want to.”

  Her mother’s tone brought Meggie from her thoughts of Paul. She was shocked that Adela had to use that voice to her. She must have been behaving simply terribly: everything at once, gauche, lacking in savoir faire, and all, for her to be so angry. She saw Andrew’s scarlet, fussed face, and was overcome with contrition.

  “But I do want to dance. I think it’s terribly nice of you to ask me, because I’m not very good. Miss Elsie Collerman, who’s my dancing mistress in the country, says she doesn’t know anybody who’s had more time and money spent on them for so little effect.” They had walked to the floor. “I say, I wasn’t being rude to you; I was thinking of something else. Do you do that sometimes?”

  “Rather. Almost all the time.”

  They began to dance. Meggie, enjoying the gaiety, stopped feeling upset at the abrupt termination of her talk with Noel. She began to sing:

  “We don’t live there any more,

  But still in mem’ry I adore

  The sweetest room I ever saw

  A Seventh Heaven on the old fifth floor

  Our Room Five-hundred-and-four.”

  “I do think this is a nice tune. Of course, it’s awfully soppy, but songs are. Should you think anybody really adores a room in their memory? Imagine me saying to you, ‘You should see my schoolroom, a seventh heaven on the old top floor,’ and I could have when I lived in London because my rooms were at the top.”

  Andrew laughed, happily at ease.

  “All songs are full of love and all that. You’d think there was nothing else in the world.”

  “It’s idiotic, because, although of course everybody means to get married some time, husbands and wives aren’t the only people who love each other. I mean, I simply adore my uncle and aunt, but you never hear songs about people loving their relations.” They were next to a table where newcomers were joining a party. “Yes, it went quite a bit ago,” the man said. “That’s why we’re late, everybody’s after the taxis.” “Is it noisy?” somebody asked, and the girl who had just arrived said: “Pretty considerable din.” Meggie gripped Andrew’s arm. “I believe the
re’s an air raid.”

  He paused.

  “Do you want to go home?”

  She moved her feet impatiently.

  “Of course not. Only I’ve never been in one, and you can’t help wanting to know what it feels like.”

  “You won’t hear it down here, being underground, and the band.” He saw Meggie’s face, which had an intent expression. “You’ll be all right down here.”

  Her eyes were puzzled.

  “Do you know, I don’t feel anything at all. I thought even knowing I was in an air raid I’d feel something. Like going to the dentist, a sort of lift feeling, but I don’t. It’s disappointing in a way. Do you feel frightened when you fly?”

  “I was in a bit of a flap the first time I flew solo. At least I was until I was up. Then I stopped thinking.”

  She caught something in his tone.

  “Is it so lovely flying?”

  “Wizard.”

  “But isn’t it awful when you have to go and fight another aeroplane?”

  “I’m only a sprog. I’m going to join my first operational unit to-morrow.”

  “You’re excited about it.”

  “Yes. Matter of fact, this war business has been a bit of luck for me. I like flying, and I’m all right at it. I’m a dim at everything else. I was going to Oxford. My brother, he’s dead, he got a first. You’re supposed to be a first or a blue or something like that in our family.”

  “You sound like me, a disappointment to your relations. Mummy’s awfully nice about it, but I’m not turning out as she would like. I’m gauche, and I’ve no poise, and no savoir faire. She’d have liked a daughter like Claire. That’s my cousin you were talking to.”

  “She’s nice.”

  “She’s an angel, but as well she’s all the things mummy likes. I expect your family have got pleased about you now, haven’t they, and stopped fussing over silly things like firsts and blues?”

  “Oh no, not yet. After all, I’ve done nothing.”