The Fabulous Mrs. V.

by H. E. Bates

  ‘It’s only me, it’s only me. My god-fathers, Tommy, you chose a thirsty day.’

  ‘Connie, my angel,’ Miss Tompkins said.

  She ran forward to press powdery caressive cheeks on the face of a tallish woman in her late seventies who recoiled slightly as if thinking of tossing back the low-cut fringe of her curled coppery hair. As she did so she raised her hand to her hat as if feeling that it might suddenly fall off. Instead the hat, a very small one, sat with surprising firmness on her flaming hair, looking like a white cake decorated with spring-like airiness in a design of narcissi, pink rose-buds and lily-of-the-valley.

  ‘I saw Phoebe Hooper driving up.’ Connie Stevens bore widow-hood with a sort of metallic serenity, perhaps because a third excursion into it had given her both confidence and practice. ‘And with a man. I thought this was just for the old hens today?’

  ‘Her brother. His name’s Horace. He had to be left alone—’

  ‘Horace? I’ve heard of Horace somewhere. Isn’t he in tea or something?’

  Suddenly the door-bell rang again, to be answered this time with calm and beefy promptitude by Maude. At the sound of voices Miss Tompkins turned with the expectation of seeing Phoebe Hooper and her brother Horace, but to her surprise—it was her day of surprises, she suddenly thought, first the azaleas, then the weather, then—it was Dodie Sanders and her mother.

  Dodie Sanders, tall, thin and sallow, with depressed fair hair, had a mouth that was not only unrouged but almost perpetually open in a low droop that gave her a look not at all unlike that of a lean, long fish that had been landed and left on a river bank in a state of gentle expiration. Her eyes were reddish and globular; the lashes were like little gingery red ants nervously dancing up and down.

  ‘Please do go in. Maude will look after you.’ Miss Tompkins felt suddenly, as she always did in the presence of Dodie Sanders and her mother, slightly ill-at-ease. Dodie, although sixty, was like a girl who had never grown up. With fish-like coldness she swam away under the big fin of her mother, who in a shining dress of steel-blue silk glided away to the drawing-room like a watchful shark.

  ‘Ah! it’s us at last!’ Phoebe Hooper, with habitual domination, was already in the hallway, not having bothered with the formality of the bell. ‘You must blame Horace for it. He’s such a slow coach. He was simply ages getting ready.’

  Horace had very much the appearance of a shy and inattentive prawn: the cushiony splendour of Phoebe Hooper, immense in bust and hips, overwhelmed him. Modest grey curls encircled his crimson ears like tufts of sheep wool and two small sepia bull’s eyes stared with wandering apprehension from under mild whiskery grey brows. In one hand he was clutching two long green bottles of wine and in the other a siphon of soda and a third bottle of wine. The strain of this overloading had driven his cream collar and rose-brown bow tie slightly askew and somehow at the same time the trousers of his crumpled fawn suit had become unevenly hitched up, revealing glimpses of white socks that had fallen down.

  ‘This is Horace,’ Phoebe Hooper said. ‘I made him bring the wine because I knew he’d adore making that cup for you. It’s his great speciality—’

  ‘Oh! I don’t know about—’ Horace smiled shyly. Unable to shake hands or finish his mildly protesting sentence, he stood between the two girls with an air of indecisive, wistful meditation. He seemed to be thinking of something far outside the walls of Miss Tompkins’ house: perhaps a quiet glass of Guinness, a walk with a dog, a game of golf somewhere.

  ‘Oh! it’s my day of surprises,’ Miss Tompkins said. ‘First the azaleas, then the sprats and now—this, wine! And of course, the weather—all the time improving as it gets better.’

  Horace reacted to these inconsequential statements with a solemnity far greater than mere surprise. The sheer weight of the wine bottles seemed to drag him down.

  ‘You’d better lead him to the kitchen,’ Phoebe said. ‘Get him to work. Don’t let him get lazy.’

  ‘Oh! yes, of course. This way, this way, Mr. Hooper,’ Miss Tompkins said. ‘Maude will find you all you need.’

  In the kitchen Maude was topping shining dishes of early strawberries with large blobs of cream. At the sudden appearance of Horace and Miss Tompkins she drew herself straight up, as if about to be tartly affronted, but something about Horace’s modest and crumpled appearance made her pause, spoon in air, while blobs of cream slowly dropped to the tablecloth.

  ‘This is Phoebe’s brother, Horace. He’s going to make us the most delicious cup or something with wine. Is it Hock, did you say, Mr. Hooper, or Moselle? I think you need lemons for that, don’t you? Do you need lemons?’

  Horace, unloading wine bottles and siphon on the kitchen table with evident relief, said yes, he needed lemons and also ice and a little mint, please, if they had it.

  ‘Plenty of mint in the garden,’ Maude said, her voice brusque as sandpaper. ‘Under the first apple-tree.’

  ‘I must fly back,’ Miss Tompkins said. ‘I hear the bell again.’

  In her light thrush-warbling fashion she flew away, half-singing, ‘I’m coming! I’m coming! I’ll be there!’

  ‘I suppose you’ll need jugs and glasses,’ Maude said. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘A little sugar.’

  ‘Lump or gran?’

  ‘About a dozen lumps, I’d say. And a cup of brandy.’

  ‘Brandy? All we’ve got is cooking.’

  ‘That will do nicely.’

  Maude, returning from a kitchen cupboard with a meagre quarter bottle of brandy, paused to eye the three bottles of Moselle and their companion siphon with flinty disapproval. What were people coming to suddenly, bringing their own bottles to a party? They’d be bringing their own nuts or something next.

  She supposed Mr. Hooper needed a corkscrew too, she said. He’d brought plenty of bottles, she must say. Did he want to get them all squiffy or something?

  Horace, who had no intention whatever of getting anybody squiffy and who hadn’t in the least wanted to make the Moselle cup in the first place but was merely doing so because his sister was a bully and insisted he do a good turn of some kind as a reward for being invited, merely smiled with excruciating shyness again and said:

  ‘It was really my sister’s idea. She gets rather carried away.’

  Something about the smile and the retreating tone of Horace’s apologetic voice made Maude suddenly think of a dog about to cower into a corner after some dire misdeed. She suddenly felt unaccountably sorry for Horace. She knew it was all that Phoebe Hooper’s fault, puffing herself up like a majordomo. The woman was always bossing. She woke up every morning, Maude was sure, with great ambitious ideas bouncing about her head like electrons or whatever they were—let’s all have a picnic, let’s do Twelfth Night out of doors or something—and then made somebody else do all the donkey work. The woman was infuriatingly domineering; she made you wild.

  Horace, now armed with a corkscrew, pulled the first cork with such clean, snapping precision that Maude was actually startled and gave a giggle and said Mr. Hooper sounded very expert. She supposed he was doing things like making Moselle cup all the time?

  Horace, who hadn’t made Moselle or any other cup since his sister’s sixtieth birthday, to celebrate which she had inveigled the two Miss Furnivals into lending their large bushy garden for an Edwardian street pageant accompanied by three cornet and barrel-organ players and a fish-and-chip van, said:

  ‘Well, as a matter of fact, not really. Might I have the ice now? And two jugs please?’

  Obediently she rushed to find ice and jugs. Two tall Venetian glasses of rose-purple colour seemed to her the very things for the cup and after putting down the ice-tray on the kitchen table she started polishing them vigorously with a cloth, saying at the same time:

  ‘You said mint. What about mint now? Shall I go and get it? We’ve got lemon mint too, I think.’

  Horace, who was trying hard to remember the exact proportions of the cup’s ingredients, put a dozen cubes of ic
e in a jug and coloured them with a golden film of brandy. Hesistant about something, he stood biting his lip. Oughtn’t there to be a dash or two of curaçao? Something seemed to tell him so.

  ‘You haven’t a spot of curaçao, I suppose?’

  No, but they had maraschino, Maude said, and she thought also a little cointreau.

  By now Horace was mildly confused. He couldn’t remember for the life of him whether it was curaçao, cointreau or maraschino that the cup demanded and again he stood biting his lip with that shy perplexity that affected Maude far more sharply than any look of open appeal.

  Was something the matter? she said and Horace assured her that no, it was nothing, merely that he wondered if maraschino or—

  Before she could allow herself a second of rational thought Maude made the astonishingly impetuous suggestion that they should be devils—they should put them both in!

  Maude’s unexpected suggestion of devilry was accompanied by another giggle or two, and had the instant effect of making Horace stir ice with an over-vigorous rattling spoon, as if uneasily anxious to drown the odd sounds that Maude was making. Any moment now his sister would be storming the kitchen, imperiously calling for the cup, scolding him again for being a slow-coach.

  ‘Oh! all right, let’s put them both in—’

  ‘Do!’ Maude said. ‘Use them up. It’ll be a way of clearing them out. I’ll get the mint now.’

  By the time Maude came back with a handful of fresh mint from the garden the tall Venetian jugs were looking frosty. A translucent glow of green, fresh and light as that of a half-bleached leaf, streamed softly through the rosy-purple patterns of the glass. Finally crowned by mint and ice and lemon the cup looked, as Maude had suggested it would, very expert.

  Shyly Horace resisted flattery. It wasn’t after all, the looks—it was, he reminded her, the taste of the thing.

  ‘May I taste?’ Maude said. ‘Just the weeniest—’

  Maude was quick to find glasses and Horace poured out two cold and inviting measures of the cup, at one of which Maude drank deeply enough to leave a bead or two of green on the lower and longer sprouts of her moustaches.

  ‘I’ve never tasted anything quite like it before,’ she said. ‘I think it’s most unique.’

  Under this generous tribute Horace looked shyer than ever. At the same time, he had to admit, the fragrant coldness of the cup seemed good. It had something to it. It wasn’t bad at all.

  Maude, under the stimulus of a strong second gulp, was about to say again that it was far better than that. The word ‘genius’ hung on her lips. She giggled again and was on the point of asking Horace to top her up when an intruding voice arrested her:

  ‘What’s all this we hear about punch? Or cup or something? Or aren’t we allowed into the wine sanctum?’

  Connie Stevens’ coppery head, arresting as a shining helmet, appeared suddenly in the kitchen door-way. Maude, unable to explain why, felt the moisture all over her body run cold and with a sudden return to customary tartness she said:

  ‘Mr Hooper will bring the wine-cup when it’s ready. Things take time.’

  Without quite knowing what she was doing she snatched up a pair of kitchen scissors and disappeared into the garden, half-running, beefy hindquarters bumping up and down.

  ‘Everybody’s dilating,’ Connie Stevens said. ‘That’s why I came to peep. They all say you’re mixing a beaut.’

  ‘Oh! I don’t know—’

  ‘The girls are lapping up gin like stink already,’ she said. ‘Are you trying to get them all spellbound? By the way, my name’s Connie Stevens. Phoebe told me about you once. Aren’t you in tea?’

  Horace, spurting a final squeeze of soda into the wine-cup, said no, he wasn’t in tea. He had been in plastics. Now he was retired.

  ‘Nonsense. You look far too young to retire.’

  He was afraid it was a fact, Horace said.

  ‘I used to have shares in plastics once. Plastic Research Foundation or something like that it was called. They did marvellously.’

  ‘My company.’

  ‘No wonder. I’m sure you were the wizard.’

  Connie Stevens peered with a sort of spry innocence, eyelashes dancing, into the wine-cup. ‘It looks so artistic,’ she said. ‘I love drinks that look artistic. May one taste? I mean the merest soupçon?’

  ‘I rather think it still needs another stir—’

  ‘The artist’s touch. I know. Will it knock us all flying?’

  Connie Stevens gave Horace a look of slow, exploratory charm. In contrast to Maude, who found herself under the spell of the brown shy eyes, she found herself suddenly engrossed by his ears. They were firm but delicate; they were like a pair of clean rosy fossils. Something about their recurring lines spiralling perfectly inward sent the strangest voluptuous spasm through her, so that she felt sharply annoyed when Maude Chalmers burst in through the garden door like a clumsy bear and said acidly:

  ‘Here’s the lemon mint. I suppose it goes in whole? Or do you chop it?’

  Bear-like still, she threw the stalks of mint on the table and retreated with sweeping haste in the direction of the sitting-room. Connie Stevens merely stared and shrugged her shoulders.

  ‘Strange woman. Embittered. I can’t think why Tommy keeps on with her.’

  Without answering, Horace dropped a sprig or two of lemon mint into the wine-cup, giving it a final stir with a spoon.

  ‘May one taste? You said I might.’

  Horace, uneasy at Maude’s acid departure, poured out half a glass of wine-cup. Connie Stevens took it, held her little delicate hat with her free hand and sipped at the glass with lips that, heavy with lip-stick of a deep shade of coppery rose, were designed to match her hair.

  After drinking, she paused, held up her eyes in a half-voluptuous glance to heaven and said that some of them would certainly know when they’d had this. This was it: the real McCoy.

  ‘It’s pretty mild really,’ Horace said. ‘It’s just refreshing. I think we’d better take it in.’

  The sitting-room was electric with female voices and springing laughter. Miss Tompkins greeted the arrival of the wine-cup with rising warbles of delight. Her hands played scales in the air. A whole regiment of hats swivelled sharply to concentrate on Horace, modestly bearing the two jugs, but had scarcely a glance for Connie Stevens, carrying a tray of glasses, until Maude rushed up with something like outrage and took it away.

  ‘On the table here, on the table here,’ she commanded. ‘Set it down here.’

  Horace, dutifully setting down the two jugs on a corner table, looked like a one-man patrol ambushed and far out-numbered. Elderly ladies, gay as dolls, seemed to spring from everywhere. Miss Tompkins warbled, for perhaps the tenth time, that when they each had their cup they must take it outside: it was so sunny, so absolutely perfect, they mustn’t miss the azaleas. There mightn’t be another day.

  ‘Well, young man,’ a clear soprano voice said and Horace, in infinite astonishment, suddenly realised that this could only mean himself. He turned from pouring the first of the wine-cup into glasses to find himself confronted by a neat vision in a white silk suit threaded with narrow charcoal stripes and a little hat, not unlike a silvery pineapple, with an inch or two of light grey veil, that sat slightly tilted on a head of impeccably curled dark grey hair. Lithe and straight as a cane, with eyes as blue as larkspur, she didn’t look a day over sixty, Horace thought. ‘What’s all this about your Moselle-cup I hear?’

  ‘This is Miss La Rue,’ Miss Tompkins told him. She longed to tell him too that, as all the girls knew, Miss La Rue was within a month or so of ninety, but Miss La Rue was so engrossed in sprightly appreciation of both Horace and the glass of wine-cup he had by now put into her hands that Miss Tompkins realised sadly that she was very much de trop and said only, before moving away: ‘You must talk to her. She has the most wonderful memory. Astonishing. She remembers everything.’

  ‘I certainly remember this,’ Miss La Rue said. No
tremor of age was detectable in voice, air or eye as she lifted her glass and stared at Horace through it, as if with the intention of examining him microscopically. ‘I first had this at Ascot in ’89. That was a glorious day too. Rather like today.’

  She drank, afterwards sucking delicately at her firm moist lips.

  ‘No curaçao?’

  No, Horace had to confess, no curaçao.

  ‘Great pity,’ she said. ‘It gives that touch.’

  She nevertheless gave him a glance of matchless gratitude, eyes glowing with the iridescence of young petals. Receiving it, Horace felt for some reason extraordinarily young, almost boyish; he was suddenly a character in some distant, long-lost school party.

  ‘You’re spilling it, you’re spilling it!’ It was Maude Chalmers now, in rigid reprimand. ‘All over the place. Give it to me, do, give it to me.’ She snatched the jug from his hands. ‘You can’t trust them, Miss La Rue, can you? You can’t trust them.’

  In contrast to this dark insinuation Miss La Rue looked, as her eyes smiled under the grey fringe of veil, all trust and light.

  ‘What of these azaleas I hear so much about?’ she said. ‘Aren’t you going to take me to see them?’

  ‘Of course. Whenever you wish.’

  Horace, less shy now and suddenly feeling more youthful than ever, prepared to move away.

  ‘Not without your cup, surely?’ she said. ‘I’ll take a little more too before we go.’

  Armed with full glasses, they walked slowly into a garden so drenched with sunlight that it gave a fantastic acidity to the brightness of the lawn’s new-mown grass. The amazing transparence of blue sky seemed to lift the whole world up. The voices of several ladies chirping about the thick orange and pink and yellow forest of azaleas might have been the cries of birds.

  Presently Horace was uneasily astonished to find Miss La Rue taking his arm: not lightly, but in an earnest lock, almost a cuddle. A breath of perfume, so delicate that the mere movement of her arm might have released it, rose in the air. It might have been mignonette, he thought.