The Fabulous Mrs. V.

by H. E. Bates

  ‘He obviously doesn’t like it,’ Michaela said. ‘Unless you can think of another explanation.’

  Floater couldn’t think of any explanation at all; he sat mute. At this moment Henry returned to the table with a large orange which he began to peel by savagely biting lumps off it with his front teeth. Several of these lumps he threw straight up into the air without bothering to look where they fell. One of them in fact fell on to Mr. Barclay’s plate, the contents of which had now congealed quite solid, but he took no notice of that either.

  ‘Well, here’s to the wallop,’ Mr. Barclay said. This sudden and unexpected concession to politeness so startled Floater Pearson that he actually stopped dead in the act of lifting his glass. It was then that he thought he detected something very peculiar about the beer.

  It was a sort of strange muddy yellow, he noticed. It looked as if it might have been made with a curious type of floor polish. A few dark objects, rather like dismembered tadpoles, were slowly floating up to the surface of it.

  Before he could make up his mind to take a sample drink of it Mrs. Barclay was back with the food, which was now steaming prodigiously. This was because Mrs. Barclay had decided that her best course was to cut up the remainder of the lamb, submerge it in sauce espagnole and fry it all up rapidly with a bit more pepper.

  Floater, suddenly depressed and feeling appetite leaving him at every breath, merely stared hard at the beer. Mrs. Barclay for some reason seemed to take this as a sign of anticipatory relish and said with enthusiasm:

  ‘Ah! yes, Floater, you must tell us what you think of our beer.’

  ‘Your beer?’

  At this moment Henry got down from table and kicked the entire orange, football fashion, into the air. It fell perilously near to the Pierria di Jabali a la Pirenaica which Mrs. Barclay was now serving to Floater Pearson without arousing any comment from anyone except Floater himself, who said:

  ‘Here, blimey, watch it, mate. Turn it up.’

  ‘It’s dandelion,’ Mrs. Barclay said. ‘It was fresh-made last week. We make it ourselves.’

  Floater lowered his face to the beer. There was a very ropey smell about it, he suddenly decided. It was sort of yeasty.

  By this time Mr. Barclay was shovelling food into his mouth again, washing it down with positive gasps, rather than gulps, of beer.

  ‘It has a certain tang about it, don’t you think?’ he said. ‘You can taste the earth in it, I feel.’

  That was a fact, Floater thought. That was how it tasted: a bit of the yeast and a bit of the earth. He longed deeply for a pint of mild-and-bitter. With apprehension he started to cut at the wild boar, mutton style, with his knife and fork, at the same time glancing out of the corner of his eye to see how Mr. Barclay did it.

  Mr. Barclay, he decided, was a shocking untidy eater. With the gravy spoon in his left hand and a fork in the other he used both implements as shovels. The children were much better. With them the knife and the fork went into the mouth, as Floater knew they should, alternately.

  ‘We make one with herbs too,’ Mrs. Barclay said. ‘Jack-by-the-hedgeside, sorrel, thyme, wild mint—Oh! about a dozen of them. It has a fresher, more aromatic flavour than this. It’s from a very old local recipe.’

  ‘I prefer the dandelion,’ Mr. Barclay said. ‘It has much more nose. It has that tang.’

  Henry, it seemed, preferred it too. He came boldly up, took a sample of beer from Floater Pearson’s glass and spat it on the floor.

  ‘What course are you taking at Art School, Mr. Pearson?’ Mrs. Barclay said.

  ‘Blasted bull-finches!’ Henry shouted. ‘I’ll murder you!’

  Some of Floater Pearson’s sense of humour had, by this time, deserted him. He slowly finished masticating a mouthful of mutton, washed it away with a sip of beer and said:

  ‘Well, as a matter of fact, I was doing the boilers.’

  ‘You mean you’re not any longer?’ Philippa said. ‘Then why don’t you say so?’

  ‘He is what is nowadays politely called redundant,’ Mr. Barclay said. He spoke acidly, openly picking his teeth with a finger nail. ‘In other words, he’s had the sack. In my view damned unjustly.’

  By this time Henry had wandered into the garden, where he was throwing stones at bull-finches. From somewhere came the startling crash of broken glass.

  ‘He’s the victim of social ostracism. Or in this case official ostracism.’

  ‘You’re damn right,’ Floater said.

  ‘You don’t mind my wife knowing this, do you, Floater?’ Mr. Barclay said. ‘As a matter of fact, Floater has done time.’

  ‘Oh! I am sorry,’ Mrs. Barclay said.

  ‘Not my fault,’ Floater said. ‘I never had nothing to do with it.’

  ‘This was discovered, you understand,’ Mr. Barclay said, ‘after eight months, by some busy-body of a clerk. Eight months Floater worked at the boilers—admirably, to universal satisfaction.’

  ‘What did you do to get imprisonment?’ Michaela said. ‘I’m absolutely fascinated.’

  ‘Well, two pals of mine done a warehouse and I was supposed to be there.’

  ‘And you weren’t?’ Philippa said.

  ‘Well, I were and I weren’t, see? Nothing would have happened if it hadn’t been for a courting couple going by. They had to peep.’

  ‘But that’s anti-social,’ Michaela said. They wouldn’t like it if people peeped at them.’

  ‘That’s right. I was just minding my own business.’

  ‘One debt has been paid,’ Mr. Barclay said, ‘but now another must be extracted. Society, the busy-bodies, must have another pound of flesh. I call that grossly unfair.’

  ‘Bloody unfair,’ Michaela said.

  ‘This sort of thing,’ Floater suddenly said, with an entirely new turn of righteous vehemence, ‘would never happen if people would take and mind their own bleeding business.’

  ‘It’s a gossip-bed,’ Philipa said, ‘that Art School.’

  ‘No, I mean the other,’ Floater said. ‘I had a very nice career in front of me.’

  Mrs. Barclay, after mopping up the last of the Pierria di Jabali with a hunk of bread, remarked that if you looked at it rationally, that is in a purely objective fashion, there was no such thing as right and wrong.

  ‘After all, we would all steal a loaf of bread or a joint of meat,’ she said, ‘if we were hungry.’

  Floater, laughing singingly again, agreed with extraordinary alacrity, delighted to find that there were people of his own way of thinking in the world.

  ‘I never done no wrong,’ he said. ‘The wrong people just happened to be around, that’s all.’

  ‘What disturbs me—’

  ‘Mind if I have a cheroot?’ Floater said. He didn’t usually smoke in the middle of meals but it was the only thing he could think of to take away the haunting taste of the meat and the sauce espagnole, which he had now managed to finish, and the dandelion beer.

  ‘By all means,’ Mrs. Barclay said. ‘By all means.’

  ‘Anybody for a cheroot?’ Floater said. ‘Mrs. Barclay?’

  Mrs. Barclay declined the cheroot and started to clear away the dishes.

  ‘I’ll take one,’ Mr. Barclay said.

  ‘And I too,’ Michaela said.

  As Floater offered his cheroot case, a silver one with what seemed to be an edging of gold, Mr. Barclay, with his artistic sense at once alert, seized upon it with admiration.

  ‘That’s a beautiful thing. What a nice coat-of-arms too.’

  ‘Always been rather fond of it,’ Floater said. ‘Picked it up on the off-chance a long time ago.’

  ‘Cheroots smell awfully good.’

  ‘Nice sample,’ Floater confessed with a certain ample pride. ‘Makes some of ’em look pretty ropey. I like the best.’

  ‘I’m rather afraid I can’t run to them myself.’

  ‘No?’ Floater said. ‘No? That’s bad. Have a packet, Mr. Barclay. I got quite a little stock at home.’

 
After again waving the silver-and-gold case and a packet of cheroots in several directions, as if to indicate limitless generosity, he watched with silent satisfaction as Michaela lighted her cheroot. She did so with a certain expert, adult care.

  Some moments later Mrs. Barclay returned from the kitchen with a small brick of whitish material, garnished with what seemed to be caraway seeds, reposing on a piece of muslin in a saucer.

  ‘Cheese?’ she asked. ‘It’s our own making. Or potato cake? That’s another Spanish dish we’re all rather partial to.’

  ‘I want potato cake!’ Henry suddenly screamed, his entrance from the garden preceded by a stupendous metallic bang, rather as if a bucket had been thrown at a wall.

  Mrs. Barclay was about to cut the potato cake, which had something of the appearance of a lump of rough pumice stone, when Henry advanced on her, picked up the cake and took it away. Sitting with it at the end of the table he locked a pair of broodily defensive arms about it and, as with the orange, started to gnaw lumps off the edges of it, rabbit-fashion, with his front teeth.

  ‘I was really going to serve Little Pigs of Heaven today,’ Mrs. Barclay said, ‘but—’

  Good Gawd, Floater thought. Wild boar for first and now little pigs for afters. What next? He longed deeply again for a straight pint of mild-and-bitter and thought also, with incongruous relish, of something nice and sweet, like a good rice pudding.

  ‘It’s all sugar and eggs and chocolate sauce,’ Michaela said. She puffed cheroot smoke across the table in an obliterating cloud. ‘Do you know Spain?’

  Floater had to confess that he didn’t. Spain was out of his world. No mention having been made of the fact that Henry had apparently taken the potato cake for keeps, Floater now stared moodily at the home-made cheese, watching Mrs. Barclay cutting it into small parsimonious slices. He was a bit shocked, he told himself, about Henry. It was a bit near the knuckle to take things like that. And at your ma’s table too.

  Mr. Barclay now poured out more dandelion beer and Philippa, tucking her chin with almost accusatory earnestness into her cupped hands, said:

  ‘Were you awfully repressed as a child?’

  Floater, assuming with a typical singing laugh such as he hadn’t given for some time that this meant him, said no, he didn’t think so, not all that much. He was out on the spree most of the time.

  ‘Were you beaten, I mean, an awful lot?’

  ‘Like bleedin’ hell,’ Floater said. ‘The old man used to belt the old woman and then she used to ruddy well take it out on me, the old bitch.’ Floater blew cheroot smoke with a certain regal air, plushily off-hand, not only as if he were perhaps proud of these recollections but as if also with intention of drawing attention to an emerald ring on his right third finger and a pair of gold-and-pearl cuff-links in his canary yellow shirt sleeves.

  This air of opulence was suddenly intensified as he picked up a butter knife and with it speared a piece of cheese.

  ‘You’re wearing a ring,’ Mrs. Barclay said. ‘I really hadn’t noticed it before.’

  ‘Keepsake,’ Floater said. He turned and looked Mrs. Barclay full in the face, for the first time. His dark eyes had a deeply scrutinous air about them, almost luxurious in feeling, and she felt herself slipping into a state of light hypnosis as he said:

  ‘I see you don’t wear no jewellery, Mrs. Barclay. You ought to, really. Would suit you.’

  Mrs. Barclay, with a certain coolness, deliberately withdrew into herself. She found jewellery a social vulgarity; it was like having too much money or being too successful; it really wasn’t nice.

  ‘Oh! no, I don’t think so. Jewellery really isn’t for me.’

  ‘Oh! I thought you liked it sort of. You just admired my ring.’

  ‘Well, it’s rather like make-up. You can tolerate it in others while not using it yourself.’

  Mr. Barclay, dozy by this time, swigged at dandelion beer and then spread his elbows broadly over the table and munched pieces of home-made cheese, putting them into his mouth with his fingers.

  ‘You still have a few pieces your mother left you, though,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ Mrs. Barclay said. ‘That was why I noticed the ring. It’s awfully like one of hers.’

  ‘Oh?’ Floater said. ‘It is?’

  ‘I did think at one time of saving them for the girls, but—’

  ‘Oh! no thanks,’ Michaela said. ‘That primitive sex display stuff—’

  As she spoke Henry hurled a large lump of potato cake as big as a croquet ball at the casement window, where it landed with a loud bang, at the same time yelling ‘Cheese!’ Mr. Barclay dutifully passed what remained of it to him and Floater said:

  ‘Like to have a look at that piece some time, Mrs. Barclay, if I might.’

  ‘Fetch it down,’ Mr. Barclay said. ‘Let Floater have a look at it.’

  While Mrs. Barclay had gone upstairs Mr. Barclay felt it opportune to ask Floater how the prospect of another job was going. Not all that well, Floater told him. It wasn’t easy. The word had got round. ‘I’ll have to move to another districk,’ he said and the words were almost sad.

  ‘Where to?’ Mr. Barclay said.

  ‘No idea yet,’ Floater said. ‘And if I did I wouldn’t say.’

  ‘You could tell me. You can trust me.’

  That was the great thing, he thought. To impart trust. To create an atmosphere of solid, mutual reliance.

  ‘Granted, Mr. Barclay. All the same I’m keeping mum to one and all. I’m sliding out. I got to have a clean slate and it’s the only way.’

  ‘I sympathise,’ Mr. Barclay said. ‘God, I feel bloody angry about it.’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘I feel angry and ashamed!’ Mr. Barclay said. ‘Yes: I even feel ashamed!’

  When Mrs. Barclay at last came back with the ring, a largish one with a diamond and emerald setting, Floater purred over it as over the egg of a rare and exquisite bird.

  ‘This ’ere’s a beaut,’ he said. ‘Your old lady gave you this?’

  ‘She belonged to the age that set a lot of store on these things. The old establishment. It isn’t surprising it’s cracked up now.’

  ‘My God, not,’ Michaela said. ‘All that title muck—’

  ‘Blah!’ Philippa said. ‘Blah!’

  Floater now eyed the ring with a fervour so nearly amounting to reverence that he took several deepish swigs at the dandelion beer without really being aware of it.

  ‘Want to sell it?’

  ‘I hadn’t thought of it.’

  ‘Pay for a good many holidays in Spain.’

  Mr. Barclay sat upright in sharp alarm, his voice giving several unusually high croaks of inquiry.

  ‘Several holidays in Spain. Several?’

  ‘Of course I don’t know what it costs there—’

  ‘Oh! it’s cheap,’ Mrs. Barclay said. ‘That’s the beautiful thing about it. It’s cheap.’

  ‘But several holidays? Several? How much do you think—’

  ‘Oh! this little piece is worth about four hundred nicker—perhaps more—’

  ‘Nicker?’ Mrs. Barclay said.

  ‘Quid,’ Floater said, ‘pounds.’

  ‘Good God Almighty,’ Mr. Barclay said, ‘we could take one of these villas on the Costa de Sol—weeks of it, months, my God—Floater, how on earth do you come to know about these things?’

  ‘It used to be my trade,’ Floater said. His voice was ever so slightly pained; it might have been that he felt professionally slighted. ‘I was in the trade.’

  ‘My God, that would solve everything,’ Mr. Barclay said. July, August, September. October even—I’d say we ought to sell.’

  ‘Why keep this ostentatious muck?’ Michaela said. ‘You might as well have a lump of Uranus.’

  ‘Quite so,’ Mrs. Barclay said. ‘All right, I’ll sell it. I don’t know why I didn’t before.’

  ‘Like me to put you in touch with a good man?’ Floater said. The words were skinned off the mouth wit
h a suavity as cool and soft as a grape. ‘Hatton Garden. He’ll give you the tops.’

  ‘Well, that’s nice—’

  Suddenly Floater, rather as if granting a favour, displayed his own ring again.

  ‘Did a little repair job on this for me not long ago. Take a deck at that little stone there—the emerald. Come loose. He put it back again. Offered me two hundred and fifty for the ring but I said no, it was keepsake: I said no.’

  ‘How shall we get it there?’ Mrs. Barclay said.

  ‘Post,’ Floater said. ‘Registered. Unless you—I’ll give you the address.’

  ‘Unless what were you saying?’

  ‘I’m going up there tomorrow,’ Floater said. ‘I’ll be seeing this bloke. His name’s Rothman. Of course that’s if you trust me—’

  ‘Trust you, man? Of course we trust you,’ Mr. Barclay said. ‘Trust is the essence of the whole affair. As long as the Art School trusted you all was well. The moment trust was withdrawn the whole fabric crumbled.’

  ‘Logic,’ Michaela said. ‘Exactly.’

  ‘My husband is quite right,’ Mrs. Barclay said. ‘Of course we trust you. Implicitly.’

  ‘Well, as I say. I got to go up there on the off-chance of a job and if I can do you a good turn—’

  ‘All the luck in the world for the job,’ Mr. Barclay said. ‘Don’t forget the reference I gave you—’

  ‘Not likely,’ Floater said. ‘He always pays cash, this bloke. No trouble at all. I expect I’ll be back on the six o’clock—’

  ‘I somehow feel it’s a good omen for us both,’ Mr. Barclay said. ‘I do believe it’s a good omen.’

  ‘More cheese!’ Henry started shouting and promptly threw another piece of potato cake at the window.

  ‘Another cheroot, anybody?’ Floater said and expansively waved the gold-and-silver case this way and that.

  ‘I think I will,’ Mr. Barclay said, his voice thick now with dandelion beer. ‘You’ve got good taste in that direction, I must say, Floater. Good taste.’

  ‘I always try to have good taste, Mr. Barclay,’ Floater said. ‘I think it goes a long way.’

  ‘Beyond question it does,’ Mrs. Barclay said.

  ‘I’ll give you a receipt for the ring,’ Floater said. ‘Just to make it all fair and square.’