She had no sooner finished this than McDougall had come up with a face of gloom to say that he could not carry on without an extra footman.
Aria had rung up Mrs. Benstead only to find that she had no one on her books, but, after a weary search round all the other agencies, she had procured a man who was well over seventy and who had promised to give a hand so long as his arthritis didn’t trouble him too much.
The gong for luncheon booming through the house had taken her by surprise and she had only had time to take a hasty glance at herself in the mirror, to wash her hands, powder her nose and run downstairs before the party was on its way to the dining room.
Dart Huron gave her a dark look by which she guessed that she had offended in some way, but it was Lord Buckleigh who enlightened her.
“You should have been here before the Princess arrived,” he said.
“I had forgotten that she was coming,” Aria confessed.
He grinned at her as he took his place at the table with on one side of him a pretty Socialite who was always hitting the headlines and on the other a Lady-in-Waiting to the Princess.
Lulu Carlo, Aria noted, was entirely at her ease. She appeared to know all these distinguished people well and they made a fuss of her first like millions of the ordinary people because the aristocrats of the celluloid film had the entrée into every heart and home.
Lulu was looking entrancingly lovely in a simple dress of white sharkskin, which had cost a fortune, with huge aquamarines blazing in her ears and round her wrists. She was being charming too in a way that made Aria understand how any man, even someone like Dart Huron, could not help being in love with her.
They were nearing the end of the luncheon when McDougall approached Lulu Carlo’s side and Aria heard him say,
“There is someone to speak to you on the telephone, miss.”
“Who is it?” Lulu demanded.
“A woman, miss. She would not give her name, but said she wished to speak to you about your grandmother, Mrs. Hawkins.”
There was a little lull in the conversation and McDougall’s voice carried quite clearly to those seated round the room. Aria saw Lulu’s face tense. In her eyes there was a sudden look that could only be described as wary.
“I can’t speak now,” she said to McDougall.
She seemed about to say something else when she caught sight of Aria watching her.
“Attend to it, please, Miss Milbank,” she said with authority.
It was an order given in a peremptory manner, which Aria instinctively resented, and yet there was nothing she could do but say quietly,
“Of course, Miss Carlo. I will take a message or ask her to ring back later.”
She rose from her seat and went from the room, going into the morning room to speak as it was the nearest place to the dining room. She picked up the receiver, a white one that toned elegantly with the white-panelled walls and the curtains of white and blue hand-painted linen.
“Hello!”
“Is that Miss Carlo?”
“No, I am afraid Miss Carlo cannot speak at the moment. I am Mr. Huron’s secretary. Can I take a message?”
“I’m speaking for ’er grandma, Mrs. Hawkins,” an uneducated voice said. “She read in the paper as ’ow Miss Carlo was stayin’ at that address and nothin’ will satisfy ’er but that I should telephone.”
“Is Mrs. Hawkins ill?” Aria enquired.
“She’s not any worse than she usually is,” came the answer. “She’s getting’ on for eighty-two, you know, and ’er rheumatism’s bad at times. But what she minds worst is the loneliness. She ain’t got many friends, not where she is now.”
“And where is she?” Aria asked.
“Ninety-two King George Road,” was the answer. “It’s on the outskirts of Putney. One ’undred and seventy one drops you at the door.”
“I understand. I will tell Miss Carlo and see if it would be possible for her to visit her grandmother,” Aria suggested.
“The old lady’d like that. She’s ever so proud of Miss Carlo. Cuts all the bits about ’er out of the papers. It’d be a real treat for ’er to see ’er grandchild, that it would.”
“Well, I will tell her, and thank you for telephoning,” Aria said.
“That’s all right. I goes in to ’elp Mrs. Johnson twice a week. I’ve got fond of the old dear, you can’t ’elp it some’ow.”
“Thank you!” Aria said again and then replaced the receiver.
She did not go back to the luncheon party. She thought it was quite unnecessary for her to join them while they were finishing their coffee and the men were drinking a glass of port.
Instead she went back to her typewriter, trying to cope with the arrears of correspondence.
She had been there for perhaps an hour when Lulu Carlo’s Italian maid knocked at the door.
With a regretful look at the letter that she was halfway through, Aria followed the maid down the passage to Lulu Carlo’s bedroom.
The film star was sitting in front of the mirror powdering her nose and scrutinising minutely a tiny flaw at the corner of her red mouth.
“Oh, there you are, Miss Milbank,” she said ungraciously as Aria entered. “What was the telephone call about that came at lunchtime?”
“It was a woman speaking for your grandmother, Miss Carlo,” Aria said. “She is very anxious to see you.”
“As if I have the time!” Lulu exclaimed angrily. “I hope you said it was quite impossible.”
“I didn’t know what to reply. I waited to hear your wishes on the subject.”
“How did she know I was here?”
“She saw it in the newspapers,” Aria replied. “Apparently your grandmother is very proud of your success and cuts out all the references to you.”
Lulu Carlo put down the hand mirror with a decided slap on the dressing table.
“It’s ridiculous and extremely annoying,” she said. “I do the very best I can for her. She should have more sense than to get people to telephone me at inconvenient moments.”
“That the moment was inconvenient was perhaps not her fault,” Aria said. “The woman speaking was, I gathered, a cleaner in the house where your grandmother is living.”
“Well, you tell McDougall,” Lulu went on, apparently not listening to Aria’s explanation, “that in future he should not mention names at the table. Saying ‘your grandmother – Mrs. Hawkins’, in front of all those people.”
“You asked him who was on the telephone,” Aria protested. “He had to give you the correct answer.”
“Well, how was I to know who it was likely to be?” Lulu asked irritably.
She looked at Aria as she spoke and then added even more irritably,
“You wouldn’t understand, of course, but everybody has always believed that I’m an American. There’s no prestige in being English. Besides, the studio put out the story of my origin and where I came from. They won’t care for this sort of thing.”
“I don’t see why anyone should know about it,” Aria said soothingly.
“Know about it!” Lulu said with something like a scream. “Didn’t you see their faces at lunch when McDougall said ‘your grandmother, Mrs. Hawkins’? Hawkins sounds like an American name, doesn’t it? Or even Scandinavian, which is supposed to account of my fair hair? Do you suppose they weren’t all agog and at this very moment aren’t whispering among themselves? Oh, I know how people talk, I tell you – especially about someone like me.”
She was so upset that Aria could not but feel sorry for her. She could, in a way, sympathise with Lulu for having her schemes upset by a chance word, a telephone call that had come at the wrong moment.
“I am sorry,” she murmured ineffectually.
“I could say that she married again, couldn’t I?” Lulu said. “I never thought of that until this moment. She can be my mother’s mother, the Scandinavian one. I don’t know what they said about my old home in Sweden. I shall have to check up. But as far as this lot are concerned
my grandmother has remarried.”
She smiled suddenly, the lovely flashing smile that had captured the hearts of the so-called civilised world.
“That’s all right then, Miss Milbank.”
“But what about your grandmother?” Aria asked. “I think that, as she knows you are here, she will be hoping to see you.”
“Well, then she’ll have to be disappointed,” Lulu Carlo said and the hard note had returned again to her voice. “I pay for her rooms, that ought to satisfy her. Six pounds a week it costs me. But then some people are never satisfied. Order her a bunch of flowers or something and have them sent there. Or, better still, take them from the garden.
“There will very likely be some fruit to spare as well. Mr. Huron won’t mind. Of course he knows the truth about all my family, you realise that. I have no secrets from him, because we are going to be married.”
“So you told me,” Aria remarked.
“Not that there’s any reason to discuss it with him,” Lulu went on. “Men are bored with their wives’ relations, we all know that. But you send the old girl some fruit and flowers.”
“She’s eighty-two,” Aria said hesitantly. “You don’t think that you could find the time to see her if only for a moment?”
“No, I don’t!” Lulu Carlo answered abruptly. “And that’s definite, Miss Milbank. And, incidentally, it’s my business what I do about my grandmother. You send her the flowers and the fruit, as I have told you, and that’s the end of it.”
There was nothing Aria could say and she went from the bedroom back to her own room. There she found Lord Buckleigh lounging in an armchair.
“I wondered where you had disappeared to,” he began. “The others are changing for tennis. Are you coming to play?”
“No of course not,” Aria answered. “I am far too busy.”
“Why didn’t you come back to the luncheon table?” he enquired.
“There didn’t seem much point. I had finished and I thought everyone could get on very well without me.”
“I missed you,” he said, his eyes on her face.
“Thank you for the compliment,” she smiled. “But I am not so stupid as to believe it.”
“You don’t take me seriously, that’s what’s the matter,” Lord Buckleigh said. “I’m falling more in love with you every moment and you either laugh at me or avoid me. What am I to do about it?”
“At this moment I suggest you go and play tennis.”
“What did Mrs. Hawkins have to say?” he asked disconcertingly.
“It wasn’t Mrs. Hawkins speaking,” Aria replied evasively.
“You’re trying to put me off,” he said accusingly. “I had no idea that the fair Lulu had relations in England. Was her name originally Hawkins, do you think?”
“I understand from Miss Carlo that her grandmother married again,’” Aria said primly.
She didn’t like Lulu Carlo, but she was determined to be fair to her.
Lord Buckleigh threw back his head and laughed.
“So that’s her story, is it?” he enquired. “Well, I would rather like to see this grandmother of hers. I bet, if the truth be known, she’s a skeleton in our little Lulu’s cupboard.”
“Don’t be so horrid,” Aria said. “You may not like Miss Carlo, but at the same time she has made a big name for herself. She has a right to some privacy in her personal life.”
Lord Buckleigh rose to his feet and walked across to the desk where Aria was already seated at the typewriter.
“You’re a loyal little thing,” he said in a gentle voice. “The sort of wife that any man could rely on. It’s a pity I have no money and can’t ask you to marry me.”
Aria was so surprised that she could not help turning her head to look up into his face.
“Yes,” he said, seeing the expression of interrogation in her eyes. “Yes, that’s how I feel about you. Stupid, isn’t it? I have met so many different girls who have meant nothing to me – but you’re different.”
“But you haven’t known me long enough to be sure of anything, let alone your own feelings,” Aria said.
“Who’s been telling you that sort of nonsense about love?” he asked. “Love is either there or it isn’t. From the first moment I saw you I knew I was in love. It’s hopeless, it’s insane, but there it is. I love you!”
He picked up her hand as he spoke and turning it over kissed her palm. Then before she could recover from her surprise at his sudden seriousness, Lord Buckleigh had gone from the room and she heard him singing as he went down the passage.
Her smile was tender as she fitted a fresh piece of paper into her typewriter.
Even if he could afford to keep her, she decided, she would not want to marry him. At the same time, she liked him – liked the gay irresponsibility about him, his boyish frankness, the aura of almost perennial good humour that seemed to exude from first thing in the morning to last thing at night.
She finished the letter, did two or three of the more urgent ones and then sat for a moment deciding what to do next.
The thought of Lulu Carlo’s old grandmother was so vividly in her mind that she knew her conscience would not rest until she had gone to see the old lady.
There was something pathetic in the story of her cutting her grandchild’s Press notices out of the paper, yearning to see her, hoping against hope that she would pay her a visit. And she never would, Aria thought. Lulu Carlo was a snob as well as an adventuress.
It was quite obvious that she would never risk visiting her grandmother in case the Press should get hold of it.
On an impulse Aria picked up the house telephone and rang through, first to the gardens and then to the garage.
Twenty minutes later she slipped downstairs to find a car waiting for her at the front door. The back seat was filled with flowers and beside them was a big basket of early strawberries from the hot houses.
Aria sat in front with the chauffeur, a young man, who had not long left the Army and who regaled her with tales of his experiences overseas until they reached the outskirts of London.
There was a map in the car and they asked the way of a large number of Policemen, but even so they got helplessly lost, until finally they found King George Road, a dingy back street sloping down to the river. Number ninety-two was a high house badly in need of repair.
The paint was peeling off the window frames and there was a smell of bad cooking and accumulated dirt, which was obvious from the very moment one stepped under the crumbling portico.
Aria rang the bell, but there was no answer. She rang again with the same result and then a young woman in slacks, with a handkerchief over her head and a cigarette hanging out of her mouth, came out of the door carrying a shopping basket.
“Can I see Mrs. Hawkins?” Aria asked. “I have been ringing for some time. I think the bell must be broken.”
The woman stared at her in surprise.
“Hasn’t been working for years,” she said. “You ’ave to shout. I’ll tell Mrs. Johnson that you’re ’ere. She’ll show you which room it is.”
She walked across the narrow hall and, putting her head round the glass partition, shouted down the stairs to the basement,
“Hi, Ma! Are you there?”
She waited and shouted again.
“Ma! Someone wants you.”
Again there was no answer. She came back and said to Aria,
“Mrs. Johnson must be out or upstairs. You’ll find Mrs. Hawkins on the third floor. Go straight up.”
“Thank you!” Aria said.
She took the flowers from the chauffeur and the basket of strawberries and started up the narrow stairs. Many of the banisters were missing and the linoleum on the staircase was so worn that Aria felt its condition must be dangerous for anyone as old as Mrs. Hawkins when she came downstairs.
Up she climbed. There was the sound of voices and radios coming from the rooms she passed. She gathered that this was a boarding-house, evidently a successful one for it was
obvious that every room was occupied.
There were two doors on the third floor, one had a piece of paper pinned to it and Aria paused to read it.
“Keep out,” she read. “This room is private and I don’t want any nosey parkers prying about in it.”
She looked at the message in astonishment when she heard the voice coming from the room next door. It was a raucous and ugly voice, high in anger.
“And I’ll thank you not to encourage them to write me rude messages,” it said. “Is this my ’ouse or isn’t it, I should like to know? Any more from either of you and don’t think I’m carryin’ your meals upstairs in future. You can come down like the rest of ’em or go without. I’ve only got one pair of ’ands, that’s all and I can’t do any more than I do, and that’s a fact.”
Another voice said something gently, but was hardly allowed to speak.
“It’s all very well for you sittin’ up here as if you were a Duchess, waited on ’and and foot. But I’m not ’avin’ any more of it, do you understand? You and your aches and pains. I’m sick to death of you! Well, I’ve made myself clear. No more meals upstairs. I can’t ’elp it that you can’t walk. You should be in ’ospital or in the grave at your age!”
The door opened suddenly and a woman came out onto the landing.
She was a short red-faced woman with eyes that were too close together and hennaed hair frizzed into tight curls on top of her head. She was dressed in a tight lacy jumper and a skirt that was too short and strained across her behind.
Her coarse fat hands were bedecked with cheap rings and flamboyant pearl earrings graced her thick ears.
She was still shouting when she saw Aria and her voice died abruptly in her throat.
“What do you want?” she asked aggressively.
At the same time a hint of respect appeared in her small shrewd eyes as she took in Aria’s general appearance and the flowers and fruit in her arms.
“I have come to see Mrs. Hawkins,” Aria replied.
The woman pulled the door behind her close to.
“I’m afraid she isn’t well enough to see anyone today,” she said quickly. “It’s a pity, but it’s doctor’s orders. Are those flowers for ’er and the fruit? I’ll give them to ’er when she’s a bit better.”
Love Forbidden Page 10
