by Simon Raven
Mrs Fairweather, with Mrs Valley in attendance, was making flurried preparations for a descent on Kensington Air Station.
'No time for tea, no time for tea,' she kept saying.
'I've had mine,' said Esme sillily.
'Get a look at these,' she replied inconsequently — these being a set of amber beads, 'they're meant to remind me of something.'
'They're delicious, at any rate,' said Esme.
'Sandra has such lovely taste,' said Mrs Valley.
'—' said Sandra, who had laddered a stocking.
Esme, feeling something was expected, teetered about as though he had mended stockings all his life.
'I know,' she said, 'Biarritz.'
Mrs Valley raised her eyebrows.
'Such a heavenly place for children,' Sandra went on, 'it's where those beads came from. I was going to mention it to you — it'd be such fun to go there, and it's just the thing for Terence.'
'I'm sure it's heaven,' said Esme.
'Are you quite certain, darling — ' began Mrs Valley.
'Certain of what?'
'About Biarritz being suitable.'
'Of course it's suitable. Charles was almost brought up there.'
'But he's been to prison since.'
'That wasn't Biarritz, it was kleptomania.'
But as usual Mrs Valley had sown the seeds of doubt. Then she turned to Esme.
'Where did you get that suit?' she said, 'my husband's so anxious to find something ready-made.'
'Harrods,' said Esme in a fury.
'Well, I'm not at all sure he'll want to go there. I'll tell him though.'
'Ready, Mr Sa Foy?' asked Sandra, 'we've got ten minutes.'
'I must go home, darling,' said Mrs Valley with a long-suffering look, 'and make poor Tom his supper.'
To his great joy, Esme found they were going in the powder-blue Rolls. There was no sign of the chauffeur (who had gone to seek other employment), and Sandra was going to drive. As they passed Buckingham Palace she discovered it was really only three minutes they had, so they turned down towards the Wellington statue as though all the hounds in Leicestershire were after them. Esme trembled for his beloved Rolls.
At Hyde Park Comer they were engaged in a jam and a Billingsgate match with a taxi-driver. By the Albert Hall they took somebody's indicator off.
'No time,' gasped Sandra through her cigarette: 'take my number,' she yelled, and they zoomed onward.
'Thought we'd go to the cinema tonight,' she said, 'dinner out—the cook's at Badlock. Must be somewhere where I can't see Terence, or I'll probably tear him apart.'
'That'll be very nice — the cinema, I mean.'
'Oh, yes, and here's five quid for expenses, meant to give it you before.'
She left the steering-wheel to take care of itself, dug some cash out of her handbag, realized they had overshot the air station by quarter of a mile, turned in the middle of the road without looking, and roared back.
'Take it,' she gasped, drawing up with scrunch just fifteen minutes late.
Terence was waiting inside, smoking a cigarette, chewing gum, and sitting on his trunk. He wore a gaberdine suit and a tie with a parrot on it — or rather a parrot in the shape of a tie. His face was very handsome and rather young for his age, but it wore a sly and sensual sneer, so that it resembled a late Hellenistic statue of Pan. Esme saw that his forehead was small, narrow and indeed criminal; but there was no doubt that his smile, which he turned on for a moment when he saw his mother, was of extraordinary charm and beauty, for it revealed perfect teeth and converted the expression of his lips into an ordinary, good-humoured sensuality instead of the rather sinister concupiscence they had previously indicated. The cigarette disappeared as though he had been a conjuror, but the gum, which he had forgotten, remained.
'Darling,' said Mrs Fairweather, and enveloped him: 'how perfectly lovely to see you — oh take that wretched gum out of your mouth.'
Terence complied and winked at Esme. When they were back in the Rolls he parked it on her shoe as she bent back to reach for something. Esme began to like him. When they reached the Horse Guards' barracks she found her foot stuck to the clutch, wrenched it away in fury, and stalled the engine. There was a crunch behind, and horns blared. Meanwhile Sandra was picking the loathsome mess off her shoe.
'Devil,' she said, turning on Terence. 'Devil.' Then she flung the shoe out of the window to fall at the foot of the astonished sentry. 'That'll come off your birthday present,' she remarked in a frozen voice.
After that they drove home without a word.
Once at St Ambrose Gate, Sandra started to change once more, this time for dinner. Besides which a young Swiss called Monsieur Andre had appeared to do something to her hair. Regardless of the fact that Terence knew French almost as well as English (a year in Switzerland had at least seen to that) she commenced on a rapid and demotic account for Monsieur Andre's benefit of the chewing-gum affair. Terence giggled and led Esme off to be shown his American magazines.
These were of three types — comics, science-fiction and horror stories. The comics were relatively educational, being concerned mainly with figures such as Plastic Man or Kid Eternity who devoted their rather equivocal powers to a disagreeable defence of public morality. Science-fiction, on the other hand, was largely amoral: its heroes were androgynous young men in knee-boots and breast-plates, who flitted from end to end of the cosmos, occasionally being blasted with a ray-gun or getting lost in a time-stream. As a boy Esme had had a passion for tales of this type, but they seemed to have developed a great deal since his time, to have lost whatever humanity they had once possessed, and to have been compelled to sacrifice any idea of adventure to an increasing demand for mere pseudo-scientific novelty. Horror stories, finally, were frankly revolting. On the covers green and red monsters either made love or tore each other to bits, while inside there was page after page of bizarre circus antics 'beyond the grave' or in the 'slimy recesses of the Congo'. It puzzled Esme that anyone so apparently intelligent and humorous as Terence should bother about such stuff. The answer was simply that in America it was 'the thing'. Terence would spend hours of fascinated study over these magazines, and then claim that he was merely trying to assess the mental qualities of current American boyhood. This plea had a certain rather dubious ring of authenticity; but what really led Esme to capitulate to the magazines was learning that their main purpose was to be hired out or sold at enormous profit in Terence's Swiss school, there being a dearth of such literature in Switzerland. So it was arranged that next day they should visit a store in St Martin's Lane which abounded in these atrocities, and there lay the foundation of a new and lucrative business against Terence's return in the autumn. Esme thus took the first step along the road to winning the boy's approbation, but he had an uneasy suspicion that Mrs Fairweather would not endorse his method.
The conversation then turned on the house they were in. Esme, still feeling his way, said how nice it was. Terence, almost forgetting his American accent in his excitement, differed firmly. To be brought to St Ambrose Gate, he pointed out, was always the preliminary to some particularly dastardly move on the part of his mother.
'It's the jumping-off place for the big Shanghai,' he explained: 'when I went to Switzerland I was brought along here first. "You're going on a ni-ice trip to the Continent," they said. And inside of twelve hours I was parked at Zurich. I quite like it there,' Terence went on, 'but that ain't the point. I was decoyed.' The whole building was alive it seemed, with similar lowering memories. Esme saw the point. It was the half-way house for disaster. 'Now down at Badlock, it's peaceful. The air's so thick you can hide away behind it, and Madame Fairweather keeps her trap closed for five minutes in a day. Up here it's different. Everybody's on top of everybody and knows where everybody is. They whisper away from breakfast to dinner. They're always up to that, of course, but at Badlock you don't hear 'em.'
Once again, Esme saw the point. St Ambrose Gate was too small for Sandra, her
personality filled the house, you couldn't move an inch without impinging on it. This led to everything becoming magnified and menacing.
'And your mother —?' began Esme.
'Aw, let's have a drink and forget her,' said Terence.
It was no good, thought Esme. He was in such complete agreement with all that Terence's remark implied. Before he knew where he was there would be an atmosphere of complicity — of conspiracy, indeed, and at Sandra's expense. It wouldn't take Terence long to bring him round. They were the same breed, that was the trouble, the same robust, unscrupulous, and self-indulgent breed. They had some Coca-Cola, which turned out to be an oddly attractive drink and made Esme feel still more friendly. And then Sandra came and swept them off to the Savoy.
At the Savoy Sandra said, 'I've got to go to Canada for a week in a day or two. You two can be at Badlock. We'll drive there tomorrow afternoon, and I'll come back on Saturday.' Esme blinked. Terence remained impassive — he had heard this sort of thing before.
'When I get back,' she went on, 'we'll talk over what you're to do. Mr Sa Foy and I thought sailing would be such fun, darling.' Terence still remained impassive. If you declined to discuss a thing Sandra soon forgot it. But if you did start talking, whether you used intelligence or temper, whether you had a scene or a friendly argument, the thing would stick in her mind and might even turn into a reality. Sailing was a thoroughly typical craze, he considered. But the way Esme was simpering soon reassured him. He agreed that it might be fun.
In the middle of dinner, Sandra said she was going to ring up Colonel Heffer in hospital. She'd be back before long.
'She'll make us late,' said Terence furiously, and then: 'I think sailing would be such fun, don't you?'
'No,' said Esme, 'I don't.'
'So that's all right. Anything else on the stocks?'
'Biarritz perhaps.'
'Suits me. But she'll string along as well if we go there.'
Esme made a last and despairing attempt at loyalty.
'I think she's great fun.' As a matter of fact, he did.
'Great fun my—,' said Terence: 'if she'd only lay a few eggs, she might have something to cackle about.'
Esme giggled. Mrs Fairweather came back with a packet which she said was special melon seeds the head-waiter had given her.
'Keep them safely, darling,' he said, and handed them to Terence, who threw them under the table.
'The thing is this, dears,' she announced, 'I must go and see Ronnie about half-way through the film. But I'll get back before the end and you can both tell me what's happened.'
The bill came. Among other things, it said ten shillings for melons. Sandra flew into a rage.
'What might this be, pray?' she enquired of a passing waiter who had been serving a totally different table. He went to see. Ten minutes later the head waiter came, but Sandra was ringing up Mrs Valley to say how diabolical the Savoy was. Twenty minutes later she came back. Terence was fuming. 'We'll miss the film,' he said.
'Don't be selfish and extravagant, Terence. You can't go sweeping off and pay ten shillings for nothing at all. Mr Sa Foy, you must teach Terence money-sense. The whole thing's typical. Cinema, cinema, cinema, pay, pay, pay. Here I am enquiring why I'm being cheated, and all you do is grumble.'
It turned out that melons meant melon seeds.
'But this is ridiculous — they were a present.' And indeed they were by the time she had said her say.
They arrived when the film was half over and bought three nine-shilling scats. 'Never be able to find you downstairs.') Sandra went straight off to see Colonel Heffer.
'Where are the melon seeds?' said Esme.
'In the Savoy Grill,' said Terence.
Sandra got back in time for God Save the King. 'But this is absurd, we've been cheated,' she said. 'I understood it was the small picture when we got here.'
'The man did say—,' began Esme.
'Well I'm having my nine shillings back, anyway, didn't see a thing.'
The box office was shut, they said.
She supposed someone had a key.
But everyone had gone home.
No one else would till she had her nine shillings.
In the end the commissionaire (a lover of peace) gave Sandra nine shillings of his own, which she happily accepted.
'Where are those precious melon seeds?'
'You had them,' said Terence and Esme.
'Ring up the cinema, Mr Sa Foy, and ask if they've found any melon seeds.'
They hadn't.
'Try the Savoy.'
Yes, beneath madam's table they had found...
'How in hell did they get there? You'd better drive round at once, no time tomorrow.'
Esme took a taxi and retrieved the melon seeds.
'It's a funny thing, I thought I gave them to Terence. He said no, I put them in my lap... I wonder if it's one of his... I know: he was going to go back there tomorrow, say he'd come from me, that I didn't want them after all, and please to give him the money back.'
'But they were free,' said Esme.
But Sandra was too angry to notice.
You see,' she said, 'the kind of thing I have to put up with.'
V
The next morning, when Esme and Terence were having breakfast (Sandra never got up till about twelve) the secretary arrived. She was a youngish woman with the 'Indian Army wife' sort of look, which generally comes from having a husband in a supposedly responsible position and the certain knowledge that he will probably have to go behind a counter in Marks & Spencer on his retirement. Her first husband had indeed been doing something in the African police but his abilities had warranted employment only in the least salubrious districts, and the end of all his efforts for promotion was a fatal dose of fever.
On her return to London, Mrs Donovan as she had then been called had been duped (she was made for it) into marrying a succulent rascal called Chaser. At the time he appeared to have a good deal of money. This he may or may not have had, but he certainly had another wife. For the time being, however, all went well. The other wife did not appear while the evidences of a considerable income did. They included a wedding present to Mrs Chaser in the form of a large Bentley.
For some months she lived happily enough in a fool's paradise and a succession of night clubs. One day, however, a large cheque Chaser had written appeared on the breakfast table with a not very polite request for an explanation. This in itself was simple enough. He had run through his own money and all Mrs Chaser's savings as well — he had asked her to hand them over for investment. Why he had taken the trouble to improve her sense of security with a Bentley nobody ever found out. Perhaps he had a good heart. But even then the exchange had been a good one, for Mrs Chaser's little bit of cash had amounted to £6,ooo-odd, what with legacies and the Savings Bank, while the Bentley was of a none too recent year and second-hand at that. But second-hand or not, it was all there was to meet the crisis — a point that Chaser, whose experience of such situations was considerable, was not slow to appreciate. By lunchtime the following day he and the Bentley had driven out of Mrs Chaser's life for ever, leaving only a lugubrious succession of bad cheques, which appeared by every post in inexorable sequence, and a note to explain that her name was still in fact Donovan, so that financial claims at any rate were out.
If Mrs Chaser was not responsible for the cheques, she was for herself. A job was the only thing. It so happened that about this time Mrs Fairweather had caught the sixteenth secretary embezzling the stamp money; and as her name was triply black-listed by every agency in London, had been compelled to advertise. Mrs Chaser appeared in answer, mercifully retaining enough of the Indian widow look to be considered sound, and got the job along with her first square meal for a week.
Now when Mrs Chaser had first been taken on, though she had been depressed by the inadequacy of Donovan and disillusioned by the villainy of his successor, she had still been a fairly normal woman. That is to say she believed in England, in overdra
fts, in the Navy League and in God, which for a woman of her class and upbringing is what might have been expected. Sandra soon changed all that. It was not that the paperwork was excessive, though what with the constant flux of servants and prolonged correspondence about bills in which Sandra was being cheated, it was apt to be a bit muddled. It was the house at St Ambrose Gate which finished Mrs Chaser, and above all the one most terrifying and maddening feature of it — the incessant and prolonged telephone calls.
These started on her arrival at 9.30 every morning. From then until 5 p.m. a never-ending succession of tradesmen, lawyers, friends and relations, enemies and anonymous beggars kept the telephone in her office wailing like all the lost souls in unison. Nor had the unhappy woman been born with the knack of spotting the essential end of a conversation and making firmly and laconically towards it. She would get bogged down, like her employer, in complicated irrelevances and heartbreaking appendices without ever discussing the main point at all. This meant that either the call was repeated a few minutes later or else that she herself had to ring back. The second, she found, was almost worse. For she was developing a neurotic horror of the telephone, and to approach it in cold blood and without immediate compulsion was almost more than she could bear. The influence of the instrument was eating into her health, her brain and her soul. After a month she was an embittered woman and rapidly on the way to becoming a dangerous one.
All this may seem comparatively unimportant: but it meant that Esme, try how he might, had an enemy in the house from the start. Everything about him was calculated to antagonize the wretched Mrs Chaser, who, whereas in better days she would rather have liked him, was now conscious to the depths of her corroded being first of Esme's purely amateur status as a wage earner, secondly of the preferable nature of his employment, and thirdly and above all of the fact that his salary was considerably higher than her own — the more so as he had all found>
