Loving, Living, Party Going

by Henry Green

  As they came in, Robert was explaining to Julia how impossible it was for any search to be made for Thomson. She said:

  'Good heavens, who's that?'

  They saw facing them that little man, with his glass of whisky, and in the other hand a shabby bowler hat. His tie was thin, as thin as him, and his collar clean and stiff, and so was he; his clothes were black, and his face white with pale, blue eyes. Compared to them he looked like another escaped poisoner, and as if he was looking out for victims. Alex, in the silence this man had made with his appearance, asked him loudly if he would have another drink, and this time he nodded, as though he did not want to speak until he could make up his mind which accent would do his trick best this time.

  After she had glanced at Max and seen that he did not seem to care either way about the little man being there, Julia decided it was best to ignore him.

  'But are you sure you gave my name?' she said to Robert.

  'Yes, I did, and he said he felt you would understand.'

  'But what about poor Thomson's tea? He is most frightfully particular about that.'

  'Well, after all, he can get some for himself,' and Robert thought it was absurd. Julia would say nothing of keeping Thomson up for something or other until three in the morning, why start this game about tea?

  Angela said to Max:

  'Darling, who is that man?'

  'Don't know.'

  'But then why is Alex giving him drinks?'

  'Don't care, do you?'

  'Max, darling, is there any chance of going home do you think? I mean, it does seem to be rather hopeless hanging about here.'

  'No chance at all. I couldn't even get an ambulance for Claire's aunt.'

  'What, is she ill?'

  'Didn't you know?'

  'Yes, darling, didn't you know?' Claire said. 'But the doctor says there is nothing the matter with her really. Rest would put her right, he said.'

  Alex was overjoyed, and said why, that was splendid, loudly, and that little man did not seem pleased, gulped down his drink and left them, saying, in Brummagem, she had been cruel bad when he seen her last.

  'Who on earth was that, Alex?'

  'My dear Julia, I'm perfectly sure it was the hotel detective.'

  'But why?'

  'Why? But don't you see that if this Miss Fellowes had been really bad, and he had found out he would have insisted on having her moved.'

  'I don't see at all.'

  'They won't have people, well, people who are very bad in hotels.'

  Claire asked who had said her Aunt May was very bad, and Alex could only say his little man had. Angela said 'Oh, well, if you will believe what he said,' and Julia took that up and said she thought Alex had been perfectly right. Angela, trying to be malicious and yet not rude, said she was horrified to hear Miss Fellowes had been ill, and that she had only remarked to Robin Adams when they met her how she had not seemed right. Alex wanted to ask Miss Crevy where Mr Adams was, but he did not dare, and Claire said yes, she knew, but she thought it so awful of people to saddle others with their family troubles, Max had been perfectly sweet to put her aunt in a room of her own, but it did seem so unfair that all the rest of them should be bothered by it. 'So I didn't tell you,' she said to Angela, and in so doing, gave herself away, for she had at first seemed surprised that Miss Crevy did not know. And Miss Crevy, thinking to withdraw and be nice, said well, poor Miss Fellowes could not help herself feeling ill could she, and, sensing that she must have said the wrong thing, she added that whenever she felt ill she consoled herself with those sentiments.

  'But, darling, why did you think he was a hotel detective?' Julia said to Alex.

  'Because he had a bowler hat, of course,' said Claire. 'If Alex will go to so many films where they are the only people who do wear bowlers, of course, that's how he gets it into his head. No, you needn't be embarrassed, I know exactly how it was, you couldn't have told how ill she was, and I think it was perfectly sweet of you to have looked after this man like you did, and like that angel Evelyna is looking after Auntie May this moment. And that reminds me that I must go back and relieve poor Evelyn, I shan't be long,' and with that she left. Alex felt better but not entirely justified so he asked Julia why she was so certain it could not have been a detective. Julia, however, had seen Max put his arm round Angela Crevy and draw her to the window where they now stood looking down at crowds beneath. Alex did not find that Julia was giving him her attention.

  Angela said to Max, speaking confidentially, that she was having a marvellous time, even if it was a bit overwhelming occasionally. He said he was glad. She went on that it would be so marvellous to be really off, that is, in their train and on their way, with the sun waiting for them where they were going, and that she adored going in boats, other people hated Channel crossings, but for her they were more fun than all the rest of her journey. He squeezed her in reply.

  'Max, darling, where's our tea?' Julia asked.

  He apologized and, going to the telephone, he got on to the management. When he had finished, and they had finally apologized this voice said:

  'Oh, Mr Adey, a lady has been ringing up to ask if you put a call through to her.'

  'Well?'

  'We said that you had not done so '

  Max said right and putting his arm round Julia this time he led her to the window. Looking down she saw the whole of that station below them, lit now by electricity, and covered from end to end by one mass of people. 'Oh, my dear!' she said, 'poor Thomson.' As those people smoked below, or it might have been the damp off their clothes evaporating rather than their cigarettes, it did seem like November sun striking through mist rising off water. Or, so she thought, like those illustrations you saw in weekly papers, of corpuscles in blood, for here and there a narrow stream of people shoved and moved in lines three deep and where they did this they were like veins. She wondered if this were what you saw when you stood on your wedding day, a Queen, on your balcony looking at subjects massed below.

  'It's like being a Queen,' she told Max. He squeezed her.

  'You didn't do anything about Edwards, did you?,' she said and he did not reply.

  She saw the electric trains drawn up in lines with no one on their platforms, everyone was locked out behind barriers and she thought, too, how wonderful it would be when they had arrived.

  Alex came up and said what they saw now was like a view from the gibbet and she exclaimed against that. And Miss Fellowes wearily faced another tide of illness. Aching all over she watched helpless while that cloud rushed across to where she was wedged and again the sea below rose with it, most menacing and capped with foam and as it came nearer she heard again the shrieking wind in throbbing through her ears. In terror she watched the seas rise to get at her, so menacing her blood throbbed unbearably, and again it was all forced into her head but this had happened so often she felt she had experienced the worst of it. But now with a roll of drums and then a most frightful crash lightning came out of that cloud and played upon the sea, and this was repeated, and then again, each time nearer till she knew she was worse than she had ever been. One last crash which she knew to be unbearable and she burst and exploded into complete insensibility. She vomited.

  'Come away for a minute,' Max said to Julia. As they went off and passed that door it opened and Claire came out with Evelyna. Both of them were smiling and said she would do better now, now she had done what the doctor said.

  As she walked down that corridor with Max, and he still had his arm round her, she wondered so faintly she hardly knew she had it in her mind where he could be taking her and all the while she was telling him about her charms, her mood softening and made expansive by his having taken her away.

  Max was dark and excessively handsome, one of those rich young men who when still younger had been taken up by an older woman, richer than himself. Money always goes to money, the poor always marry someone poorer than themselves, but it is only the rich who rule worlds such as we describe and no small
part of Max's attraction lay in his having started so well with someone even richer than himself.

  It was generally believed that he had lived with this rich lady, there was hardly anyone who would not have sworn this was the case, and indeed they were on such terms that both were glad to admit they had. As it happened they had on no occasion had anything to do with each other.

  It follows that, having begun so well, Max had by now become extraordinarily smart in every sense and his reputation was that he went to bed with every girl. Through being so rich he certainly had more chances. He took them and, of serious offers accepted, his most recent had been Amabel.

  Max therefore was reckoned to be of importance, he was well known, he moved in circles made up of people older than himself, and there was no girl of his own age like Julia, Claire Hignam or Miss Crevy – even Evelyna Henderson although she was hardly in it – who did not feel something when they were on his arm, particularly when he was so good-looking. Again one of his attractions was that they all thought they could stop him drinking, not that he ever got drunk because he had not yet lost his head for drink, but they were all sure that if they married him they could make him into something quite wonderful, and that they could get him away from all those other women, or so many of them as were not rather friends of their own. It was for this therefore she made out it meant something to be going on this trip, that it was fun to be walking down this corridor, getting him away from the others, or that was all she would admit she found about him who was more than anyone to her.

  'So I went back, darling, and I asked my darling Jemima where could she have put my charms,' Julia said, leaning on him a little, 'and she promised me faithfully they were in my cabin trunk. Are you like that, have you anything you don't like to travel without? Not toothbrushes or sponges I mean, but things you can't use, like mascots.' At this they came to some stairs and the lift.

  'Where on earth are you taking me?' she said.

  'Got some tea for you in a special room.'

  People were going up and down so he took his arm off her as they came up and rang for the lift. She had forgotten, through being with him, her dislike of going in these. As they got out on the next floor she was thinking no one else would have bothered to spare her walking up one flight of stairs.

  'Yes, so then I had to simply fly back, in a taxi this time, as I was terrified I was going to miss you all. You know I've never never done anything so eerie as walking through the Park in the dark when it was only four o'clock or whatever time it was. The extraordinary part was the birds who had gone to sleep as they thought it was night and then were woken up by the car lights so they muttered in their sleep, the darlings, just like Jemima tells me I do when she pulls the blinds. I got so frightened. And then do you know I imagined what I should say to you if I met you walking alone there. But that was silly and then I remembered about my charms and went back to the house like I told you.'

  They came to the room he had reserved.

  'Oh, tea, tea!' she cried as she went in and clapped her hands, 'tea and crumpets, how divine of you, darling, and so grand, just for us two. You know I think I will take my hat off,' and doing this she wandered round looking at pictures on the walls.

  One of these was of Nero fiddling while Rome burned, on a marble terrace. He stood to his violin and eight fat women reclined on mattresses in front while behind was what was evidently a great conflagration.

  'Nero and his wives,' she said and passed on.

  Another was one of those reproductions of French eighteenth-century paintings which showed a large bed with covers turned back and half in, half out of it a fat girl with fat legs sticking out of her nightdress and one man menacing and another disappearing behind curtains.

  'Here's a to-do,' she said.

  Another was of a church, obviously in Scotland, and snow and sheep, at the back of a bleak mountain, fir trees in the middle distance and you could see church bells were ringing, they were at an angle in the belfry.

  'Oh, do look, Max darling, come here. Isn't that like the church at Barshottie which you took last winter, do you remember?' And then as he put his arm round her again she said: 'No, don't do that, it's too hot in here. Let's have some tea or my crumpets will be cold.'

  When she was pouring him out his tea she asked him if he had heard anything about Embassy Richard. Speaking slowly in his rather low voice he said he understood that there had been a girl this man had wanted to see at that party. She wanted to know who that might be but he would not tell her although she pressed him; she approved of his not giving this girl's name away, it proved to her that he was safe.

  'But Max, my dear,' she said, 'surely the point is that Embassy Richard didn't go to the party. Some people think he sent that notice to the papers himself saying he could not attend, and if he did that then he can't have meant to go.'

  'All I know is he's head over heels in love with this girl,' Mr Adey said, 'and he was not invited and she was, and he meant to go whether he got his invitation or not.'

  'But my dear how absolutely thrilling; then why didn't he go?'

  'What I heard was that Charlie Troupe, who knew of this, rang him up to say his girl was not going after all but would be at the Beavis's dance.'

  'I see. All the same, Max, he had only to ring up his friend to see if she was going or not.'

  'No, he had had a row with her.'

  'Then if what you say is right it does look like Charlie Troupe after all, I mean it does seem as though it was Charlie Troupe who sent that notice out. But if you won't tell me the name of the girl I shall still go on believing that Richard did it himself.'

  'Believe it or not, it's true that he didn't and I call it a dirty trick to play.'

  'When he was in love, you mean,' she said. 'But that's just the time people do play dirty tricks,' and at this she looked very knowledgeable.

  'On each other, yes, but it's not playing the game for a third person to do it'

  'Perhaps Charlie Troupe was in love with her himself. If you would only tell me her name I'd know.'

  'I don't hold any brief for Charlie Troupe or Embassy Richard but I think it was a low-down trick,' he said.

  'People do play awful tricks on each other when they are in love, don't they, Max? I can't understand why people can't go on just being ordinary to each other even if they are in love.' She became quite serious. 'After all, it's the most marvellous thing that can happen to a person, to two people, there's no point in making it all beastly. You know that thing of making up to someone else so as to make the one you really mind about more mad about you, well, I think that's simply too awful, and very dangerous after all.'

  He laughed and asked her if she did that after all, and she laughed and said now he was asking questions. She went on, 'perhaps that girl friend of Embassy Richard's was trying to hot him up with Charlie Troupe, that would fit in with your idea that it was Charlie Troupe who sent the notice out, but if she was, then I think she deserves everything she gets. Why don't you like Embassy Richard?'

  'I don't know, but look at his name. Always crawling round Embassies. And you can see him any night there isn't one of those grander shows on, crawling round night clubs with older women old enough to be his grandmother.'

  At this she thought how odd it was that people always seemed to dislike in others just what they were always doing themselves, for Max went everywhere at night with older women. Then, to get this conversation back to herself, however indirectly, she said:

  'But perhaps Charlie Troupe is only going about like that to make some girl jealous.'

  'Not Charlie Troupe.'

  'I don't know,' she said, 'don't you be too sure. What do we know about anyone?' said she, thinking of herself.

  'Not Charlie Troupe.'

  'Oh, all right. In fact I'm very glad. I think it's perfectly horrible and very wrong to walk out with a third person just because you are in love with another. It's not playing fair. After all, it's the most marvellous thing that can happen t
o anyone, or at any rate that's what they say,' she said to cover her tracks, 'and to make a point of making the real person jealous is simply beastly,' she said with great sincerity.

  Meanwhile Mr Robin Adams, Miss Angela Crevy's young man, sat in a bar downstairs in this hotel and wondered angrily how Angela could go with these revolting people. Here they were engaged, even if it was not yet in the papers he had her word for it, she would not take his ring but she had said she would be engaged to him when she came back from this trip of theirs, so they must be engaged. And then in spite of it she would insist on going off although she knew he did not approve, although she knew it gave him pain, agony in fact; it was perfectly damnable and made him miserable, it was so unfair. At this moment Robert Hignam hit him hard between the shoulders.

  'Robin, old boy, I didn't know you were here,' he said. 'Have you got sick of them upstairs too? Well, I don't mind telling you I've been sent on so many damn messages, fatigues and things, I said to myself it's time you took a rest and went downstairs and got yourself a drink. Not that old Max hasn't seen to the liquid refreshment, there's plenty of that up there – a small Worthington, please miss – but I should be sent off on some message or other for certain the moment I settled down. It's Claire's aunt, you know. Came to see us off and the doctor here says she's tight or so he gave me to believe, and charged me ten-and-six. That's all tommy rot, you understand, there's something more wrong with her than just that, but I'm not telling the girls; one doesn't want them to get upset. But I must tell you,' he went on, thinking poor old Robin seemed a bit glum about something, 'the most extraordinary thing happened about Claire's aunt. I'd been sent off to see whether I couldn't find Angela and you and someone else, I forget which of them it was, and I was finding it pretty dry work so I dropped into the bar outside there. Mind you, no one had said a word to me about Claire's aunt but d'you know the first thing I asked Max – I found him sitting there having one before me – was whether he had seen the old lady. And the next thing was I was her sitting right in the corner and looking pretty queer, too, I can tell you. Bit of an extraordinary thing, wasn't it?'