by Ngaio Marsh
‘That is his lordship’s band, miss. They practise in the ballroom.’
‘The band,’ Carlisle muttered. ‘I’d forgotten. Good heavens!’
‘Miss Wayne, my lady,’ said Spence, in the doorway.
Lady Pastern and Bagott advanced from the far end of a long room. She was fifty and tall for a Frenchwoman. Her figure was impressive, her hair rigidly groomed, her dress admirable. She had the air of being encased in a transparent, closely-fitting film that covered her head as well as her clothes and permitted no disturbance of her surface. Her voice had edge. She used the faultless diction and balanced phraseology of the foreigner who has perfect command but no love of the English language.
‘My dearest Carlisle,’ she said crisply, and kissed her niece with precision, on both cheeks.
‘Dear Aunt Cile, how nice to see you.’
‘It is charming of you to come.’
Carlisle thought that they had uttered these greetings like characters in a somewhat dated comedy, but their pleasure, nevertheless, was real. They had an affection for each other, an unexacting enjoyment of each other’s company. ‘What I like about Aunt Cecile,’ she had said to Edward, ‘is her refusal to be rattled about anything.’ He had reminded her of Lady Pastern’s occasional rages and Carlisle retorted that these outbursts acted like safety-valves and had probably saved her aunt many times from committing some act of physical violence upon Lord Pastern.
They sat together by the large window. Carlisle, responding punctually to the interchange of inquiries and observations which Lady Pastern introduced, allowed her gaze to dwell with pleasure on the modest cornices and well-proportioned panels; on chairs, tables and cabinets which, while they had no rigid correspondence of period, achieved an agreeable harmony born of long association. ‘I’ve always liked this room,’ she said presently. ‘I’m glad you don’t change it.’
‘I have defended it,’ Lady Pastern said, ‘in the teeth of your uncle’s most determined assaults.’
‘Ah,’ thought Carlisle, ‘the preliminaries are concluded. Now, we’re off.’
‘Your uncle,’ Lady Pastern continued, ‘has, during the last sixteen years, made periodic attempts to introduce prayer-wheels, brass Buddhas, a totem-pole, and the worst excesses of the surrealists. I have withstood them all. On one occasion I reduced to molten silver an image of some Aztec deity. Your uncle purchased it in Mexico City. Apart from its repellent appearance I had every reason to believe it spurious.’
‘He doesn’t change,’ Carlisle murmured.
‘It would be more correct, my dear child, to say that he is constant in inconstancy.’ Lady Pastern made a sudden and vigorous gesture with both her hands. ‘He is ridiculous to contemplate,’ she said strongly, ‘and entirely impossible to live with. A madman, except in a few unimportant technicalities. He is not, alas, certifiable. If he were, I should know what to do.’
‘Oh, come!’
‘I repeat, Carlisle, I should know what to do. Do not misunderstand me. For myself, I am resigned. I have acquired armour. I can suffer perpetual humiliation. I can shrug my shoulders at unparalleled buffooneries. But when my daughter is involved,’ said Lady Pastern with uplifted bust, ‘complaisance is out of the question. I assert myself. I give battle.’
‘What’s Uncle George up to, exactly?’
‘He is conniving, where Félicité is concerned, at disaster. I cannot hope that you are unaware of her attachment.’
‘Well—’
‘Evidently you are aware of it. A professional bandsman who, as no doubt you heard on your arrival, is here, now, at your uncle’s invitation, in the ballroom. It is almost certain that Félicité is listening to him. An utterly impossible young man of a vulgarity—’ Lady Pastern paused and her lips trembled, ‘I have seen them together at the theatre,’ she said. ‘He is beyond everything. One cannot begin to describe. I am desperate.’
‘I’m so sorry, Aunt Cile,’ Carlisle said uneasily.
‘I knew I should have your sympathy, dearest child. I hope I shall enlist your help. Félicité admires and loves you. She will naturally make you her confidante.’
‘Yes, but Aunt Cile—’
A clamour of voices broke out in some distant part of the house. ‘They are going,’ said Lady Pastern, hurriedly. ‘It is the end of the repetition. In a moment, your uncle and Félicité will appear. Carlisle, may I implore you—’
‘I don’t suppose—’ Carlisle began dubiously, and at that juncture, hearing her uncle’s voice on the landing, rose nervously to her feet. Lady Pastern, with a grimace of profound significance, laid her hand on her niece’s arm. Carlisle felt a hysterical giggle rise in her throat. The door opened and Lord Pastern and Bagott came trippingly into the room.
CHAPTER THREE
Pre-Prandial
HE WAS SHORT, NOT MORE than five foot seven, but so compactly built that he did not give the impression of low stature. Everything about him was dapper, though not obtrusively so; his clothes, the flower in his coat, his well-brushed hair and moustache. His eyes, light grey with pinkish rims, had a hot impertinent look, his underlip jutting out and there were clearly defined spots of local colour over his cheekbones. He came briskly into the room, bestowed a restless kiss upon his niece and confronted his wife.
‘Who’s dinin’?’ he said.
‘Ourselves, Félicité, Carlisle, of course, and Edward Manx. And I have asked Miss Henderson to join us, tonight.’
‘Two more,’ said Lord Pastern. ‘I’ve asked Bellairs and Rivera.’
‘That is quite impossible, George,’ said Lady Pastern, calmly.
‘Why?’
‘Apart from other unanswerable considerations, there is not enough food for two extra guests.’
‘Tell ’em to open a tin.’
‘I cannot receive these persons for dinner.’
Lord Pastern grinned savagely. ‘All right. Rivera can take Félicité to a restaurant and Bellairs can come here. Same numbers as before. How are you, Lisle?’
‘I’m very well, Uncle George.’
‘Félicité will not dine out with this individual, George. I shall not permit it.’
‘You can’t stop ’em.’
‘Félicité will respect my wishes.’
‘Don’t be an ass,’ said Lord Pastern. ‘You’re thirty years behind the times, m’dear. Give a gel her head and she’ll find her feet.’ He paused, evidently delighted with the aphorism. ‘Way you’re goin’, you’ll have an elopement on your hands. Comes to that, I don’t see the objection.’
‘Are you demented, George?’
‘Half the women in London’d give anything to be in Fée’s boots.’
‘A Mexican bandsman.’
‘Fine well set-up young feller. Inoculate your old stock. That’s Shakespeare, ain’t it, Lisle? I understand he comes of a perfectly good Spanish family. Hidalgo, or whatever it is,’ he added vaguely. ‘A feller of good family happens to be an artist and you go and condemn him. Sort of thing that makes you sick.’ He turned to his niece: ‘I’ve been thinkin’ seriously of givin’ up the title, Lisle.’
‘George!’
‘About dinner, Cile. Can you find something for them to eat or can’t you? Speak up.’
Lady Pastern’s shoulders rose with a shudder. She glanced at Carlisle who thought she detected a glint of cunning in her aunt’s eye. ‘Very well, George,’ Lady Pastern said, ‘I shall speak to the servants. I shall speak to Dupont. Very well.’
Lord Pastern darted an extremely suspicious glance at his wife and sat down. ‘Nice to see you, Lisle,’ he said. ‘What have you been doin’ with yourself?’
‘I’ve been in Greece. Famine relief.’
‘If people understood dietetics there wouldn’t be all this starvation,’ said Lord Pastern, darkly. ‘Are you keen on music?’
Carlisle returned a guarded answer. Her aunt, she realized, was attempting to convey by means of a fixed stare and raised eyebrows, some message of significance.
&nb
sp; ‘I’ve taken it up, seriously,’ Lord Pastern continued. ‘Swing. Boogie-woogie. Jive. Find it keeps me up to the mark.’ He thumped with his heel on the carpet, beat his hands together and in a strange nasal voice intoned: ‘“Shoo-shoo-shoo, Baby. Bye-bye, Bye, Baby.”’
The door opened and Félicité de Suze came in. She was a striking young woman with large black eyes, a wide mouth, and an air of being equal to anything. She cried: ‘Darling—you’re Heaven its very self,’ and kissed Carlisle with enthusiasm. Lord Pastern was still clapping and chanting. His stepdaughter took up the burden of his song, raised a finger and jerked rhythmically before him. They grinned at each other. ‘You’re coming along very prettily indeed, George,’ she said.
Carlisle wondered what her impression would have been if she were a complete stranger. Would she, like Lady Pastern, have decided that her uncle was eccentric to the point of derangement? ‘No,’ she thought, ‘probably not. There’s really a kind of terrifying sanity about him. He’s overloaded with energy, he says exactly what he thinks and he does exactly what he wants to do. But he’s an oversimplification of type, and he’s got no perspective. He’s never mildly interested in anything. But which of us,’ Carlisle reflected, ‘has not, at some time, longed to play the big drum?’
Félicité, with an abandon that Carlisle found unconvincing, flung herself into the sofa beside her mother. ‘Angel!’ she said richly, ‘don’t be so grande dame. George and I are having fun!’
Lady Pastern disengaged herself and rose: ‘I must see Dupont.’
‘Ring for Spence,’ said her husband. ‘Why d’you want to go burrowin’ about in the servants’ quarters?’
Lady Pastern pointed out, with great coldness, that in the present food shortage one did not, if one wished to retain the services of one’s cook, send a message at seven in the evening to the effect that there would be two extra for dinner. In any case, she added, however great her tact, Dupont would almost certainly give notice.
‘He’ll give us the same dinner as usual,’ her husband rejoined. ‘“The Three Courses of Monsieur Dupont!”’
‘Extremely witty,’ said Lady Pastern coldly. She then withdrew.
‘George!’ said Félicité. ‘Have you won?’
‘I should damn’ well think so. Never heard anything so preposterous in my life. Ask a couple of people to dine and your mother behaves like Lady Macbeth. I’m going to have a bath.’
When he had gone, Félicité turned to Carlisle and made a wide helpless gesture. ‘Darling, what a life! Honestly! One prances about from moment to moment on the edge of a volcano, never knowing when there’ll be a major eruption. I suppose you’ve heard all about ME.’
‘A certain amount.’
‘He’s madly attractive.’
‘In what sort of way?’
Félicité smiled and shook her head. ‘My dear Lisle, he just does things for me.’
‘He’s not by any chance a bounder?’
‘He can bound like a ping-pong ball and I won’t bat an eyelid. To me he’s Heaven; but just plain Heaven.’
‘Come off it, Fée,’ said Carlisle. ‘I’ve heard all this before. What’s the catch in it?’
Félicité looked sideways at her. ‘How do you mean, the catch?’
‘There’s always a catch in your young men, darling, when you rave like this about them.’
Félicité began to walk showily about the room. She had lit a cigarette and wafted it to-and-fro between two fingers, nursing her right elbow in the palm of the left hand. Her manner became remote. ‘When English people talk about a bounder,’ she said, ‘they invariably refer to someone who has more charm and less gaucherie than the average Englishman.’
‘I couldn’t disagree more; but go on.’
Félicité said loftily: ‘Of course I knew from the first, Mama would kick like the devil. C’la va sans dire. And I don’t deny Carlos is a bit tricky. In fact, “It’s Hell but it’s worth it” is a fairly accurate summing-up of the situation at the moment. I’m adoring it, really. I think.’
‘I don’t think.’
‘Yes, I am,’ said Félicité violently. ‘I adore a situation. I’ve been brought up on situations. Think of George. You know, I honestly believe I’ve got more in common with George than I would have had with my own father. From all accounts, Papa was excessively rangé.’
‘You’d do with a bit more orderliness yourself, old girl. In what way is Carlos tricky?’
‘Well, he’s just so jealous he’s like a Spanish novel.’
‘I’ve never read a Spanish novel unless you count Don Quixote and I’m certain you haven’t. What’s he do?’
‘My dear, everything. Rages and despairs and sends frightful letters by special messenger. I got a stinker this morning, à cause de—Well, à cause de something that really is a bit diffy.’
She halted and inhaled deeply. Carlisle remembered the confidences that Félicité had poured out in her convent days, concerning what she called her ‘raves’. There had been the music master who had fortunately snubbed Félicité and the medical student who hadn’t. There had been the brothers of the other girls and an actor whom she attempted to waylay at a charity matinée. There had been a male medium, engaged by Lord Pastern during his spiritualistic period, and a dietician. Carlisle pulled herself together and listened to the present recital. It appeared that there was a crisis: a ‘crise’ as Félicité called it. She used far more occasional French than her mother and was fond of laying her major calamities at the door of Gallic temperament.
‘ —And as a matter of fact,’ Félicité was saying, ‘I hadn’t so much as smirked at another soul, and there he was seizing me by the wrists and giving me that shattering sort of look that begins at your boots and travels up to your face and then makes the return trip. And, breathing loudly, don’t you know, through the nose. I don’t deny that the first time was rather fun. But after he got wind of old Edward it really was, and I may say still is, beyond a joke. And now to crown everything, there’s the crise.’
‘But what crisis. You haven’t said—’
For the first time Félicité looked faintly embarrassed.
‘He found a letter,’ she said. ‘In my bag. Yesterday.’
‘You aren’t going to tell me he goes fossicking in your bag? And what letter, for pity’s sake? Honestly, Fée!’
‘I don’t expect you to understand,’ Félicité said grandly. ‘We were lunching and he hadn’t got a cigarette. I was doing my face at the time and I told him to help himself to my case. The letter came out of the bag with the case.’
‘And he—well, never mind, what letter?’
‘I know you’re going to say I’m mad. It was a sort of rough draft of a letter I sent to somebody. It had a bit in it about Carlos. When I saw it in his hand I was pretty violently rocked. I said something like “Hi-hi you can’t read that,” and of course Carlos with that tore everything wide open. He said “So.”’
‘“So what?”’
‘“So,” all by itself. He does that. He’s Latin-American.’
‘I thought that sort of “so” was German.’
‘Whatever it is I find it terrifying. I began to fluff and puff and tried to pass it off with a jolly laugh but he said that either he could trust me or he couldn’t and if he could, how come I wouldn’t let him read a letter? I completely lost my head and grabbed it and he began to hiss. We were in a restaurant.’
‘Good lord!’
‘Well, I know. Obviously he was going to react in a really big way. So in the end the only thing seemed to be to let him have the letter. So I gave it to him on condition he wouldn’t read it till we got back to the car. The drive home was hideous. But hideous.’
‘But what was in the letter, if one may ask, and who was it written to? You are confusing, Fée.’
There followed a long uneasy silence. Félicité lit another cigarette. ‘Come on,’ said Carlisle at last.
‘It happened,’ said Félicité haughtily, ‘to be
written to a man whom I don’t actually know, asking for advice about Carlos and me. Professional advice.’
‘What can you mean! A clergyman? Or a lawyer?’
‘I don’t think so. He’d written me rather a marvellous letter and this was thanking him. Carlos, of course, thought it was for Edward. The worst bit, from Carlos’s point of view was where I said: “I suppose he’d be madly jealous if he knew I’d written to you like this.” Carlos really got weaving after he read that. He—’
Félicité’s lips trembled. She turned away and began to speak rapidly, in a high voice. ‘He roared and stormed and wouldn’t listen to anything. It was devastating. You can’t conceive what it was like. He said I was to announce our engagement at once. He said if I didn’t he’d—he said he’d go off and just simply end it all. He’s given me a week. I’ve got till next Tuesday. That’s all. I’ve got to announce it before next Tuesday.’
‘And you don’t want to?’ Carlisle asked gently. She saw Félicité’s shoulders quiver and went to her. ‘Is that it, Fée?’
The voice quavered and broke. Félicité drove her hands through her hair. ‘I don’t know what I want,’ she sobbed. ‘Lisle, I’m in such a muddle. I’m terrified, Lisle. It’s so damned awful, Lisle. I’m terrified.’
Lady Pastern had preserved throughout the war and its exhausted aftermath, an unbroken formality. Her rare dinner parties had, for this reason, acquired the air of period pieces. The more so since, by a feat of superb domestic strategy she had contrived to retain at Duke’s Gate a staff of trained servants, though a depleted one. As she climbed into a long dress, six years old, Carlisle reflected that if the food shortage persisted, her aunt would soon qualify for the same class as that legendary Russian nobleman who presided with perfect equanimity at an interminable banquet of dry bread and water.
She had parted with Félicité, who was still shaking and incoherent, on the landing. ‘You’ll see him at dinner,’ Félicité had said. ‘You’ll see what I mean.’ And with a spurt of defiance: ‘And anyway, I don’t care what anyone thinks. If I’m in a mess, it’s a thrilling mess. And if I want to get out of it, it’s not for other people’s reasons. It’s only because—Oh, God, what’s it matter!’
