‘There’s a nice little place on the left.’
‘Would you care to come and have something with me?’ said Dinny, moved by impulse or by something hungry in the woman’s face.
‘Why! I would,’ said the woman. ‘Fact is, I came out without anything. It’s nice to have company, too.’ She turned up the King’s Road and Dinny turned alongside. It passed through her mind that if she met someone it would be quaint; but for all that she felt better.
‘For God’s sake,’ she thought, ‘be natural!’
The woman led her into a little restaurant, or rather public-house, for it had a bar. There was no one in the eating-room, which had a separate entrance, and they sat down at a small table with a cruet-stand, a handbell, a bottle of Worcester sauce, and in a vase some failing pyrethrums which had never been fresh. There was a slight smell of vinegar.
‘I could do with a cigarette,’ said the woman.
Dinny had none. She tinkled the bell.
‘Any particular sort?’
‘Oh! Gaspers.’
A waitress appeared, looked at the woman, looked at Dinny, and said: ‘Yes?’
‘A packet of Players, please. A large coffee for me, strong and fresh, and some cake or buns, or anything. What will you have?’
The woman looked at Dinny, as though measuring her capacity, looked at the waitress, and said, hesitating: ‘Well, to tell the truth, I’m hungry. Cold beef and a bottle of stout?’
‘Vegetables?’ said Dinny: ‘A salad?’
‘Well, a salad, thank you.’
‘Good! And pickled walnuts? Will you get it all as quickly as you can, please?’
The waitress passed her tongue over her lips, nodded, and went away.
‘I say,’ said the woman, suddenly, ‘it’s awful nice of you, you know.’
‘It was so friendly of you to come. I should have felt a bit lost without you.’
‘She can’t make it out,’ said the woman nodding her head towards the vanished waitress. ‘To tell you the truth, nor can I.’
‘Why? We’re both hungry.’
‘No doubt about that,’ said the woman; ‘you’re going to see me eat. I’m glad you ordered pickled walnuts, I never can resist a pickled onion, and it don’t do.’
‘I might have thought of cocktails,’ murmured Dinny, ‘but perhaps they don’t make them here.’
‘A sherry wouldn’t be amiss. I’ll get ’em.’ The woman rose and disappeared into the bar.
Dinny took the chance to powder her nose. She also dived her hand down to the pocket in her ‘boned body’ where the spoils of South Molton Street were stored, and extracted a five-pound note. She was feeling a sort of sad excitement.
The woman came back with two glasses. ‘I told ’em to charge it to our bill. The liquor’s good here.’
Dinny raised her glass and sipped. The woman tossed hers off at a draught.
‘I wanted that. Fancy a country where you couldn’t get a drink!’
‘But they can, of course, and do.’
‘You bet. But they say some of the liquor’s awful.’
Dinny saw that her gaze was travelling up and down her cloak and dress and face with insatiable curiosity.
‘Pardon me,’ said the woman, suddenly: ‘You got a date?’
‘No, I’m going home after this.’
The woman sighed. ‘Wish she’d bring those bl-inkin’ cigarettes.’
The waitress reappeared with a bottle of stout and the cigarettes. Staring at Dinny’s hair, she opened the bottle.
‘Coo!’ said the woman taking a long draw at her ‘Gasper’, ‘I wanted that.’
‘I’ll bring you the other things in a minute,’ said the waitress.
‘I haven’t seen you on the stage, have I?’ said the woman.
‘No, I’m not on the stage.’
The advent of food broke the ensuing hush. The coffee was better than Dinny had hoped and very hot. She had drunk most of it and eaten a large piece of plum cake before the woman, putting a pickled walnut in her mouth, spoke again.
‘D’you live in London?’
‘No. In Oxfordshire.’
‘Well, I like the country, too; but I never see it now. I was brought up near Maidstone – pretty round there.’ She heaved a sigh with a flavouring of stout. ‘They say the Communists in Russia have done away with vice – isn’t that a scream? An American journalist told me. Well! I never knew a budget make such a difference before,’ she continued, expelling smoke as if liberating her soul: ‘Dreadful lot of unemployment.’
‘It does seem to affect everybody.’
‘Affects me, I know,’ and she stared stonily. ‘I suppose you’re shocked at that.’
‘It takes a lot to shock people nowadays, don’t you find?’
‘Well, I don’t mix as a rule with bishops.’
Dinny laughed.
‘All the same,’ said the woman, defiantly, ‘I came across a parson who talked the best sense to me I ever heard; of course, I couldn’t follow it.’
‘I’ll make you a bet,’ said Dinny, ‘that I know his name. Cherrell?’
‘In one,’ said the woman, and her eyes grew round.
‘He’s my uncle.’
‘Coo! Well, well! It’s a funny world! And not so large. Nice man he was,’ she added.
‘Still is.’
‘One of the best.’
Dinny, who had been waiting for those inevitable words, thought: ‘This is where they used to do the “My erring sister” stunt.’
The woman uttered a sigh of repletion.
‘I’ve enjoyed that,’ she said, and rose. ‘Thank you ever so. I must be getting on now, or I’ll be late for business.’
Dinny tinkled the bell. The waitress appeared with suspicious promptitude.
‘The bill, please, and can you get me that changed?’
The waitress took the note with a certain caution.
‘I’ll just go and fix myself,’ said the woman; ‘see you in a minute.’ She passed through a door.
Dinny drank up the remains of her coffee. She was trying to realize what it must be like to live like that. The waitress came back with the change, received her tip, said ‘Thank you, miss,’ and went. Dinny resumed the process of realization.
‘Well,’ said the woman’s voice behind her, ‘I don’t suppose I’ll ever see you again. But I’d like to say I think you’re a jolly good sort.’
Dinny looked up at her.
‘When you said you’d come out without anything, did you mean you hadn’t anything to come out with?’
‘Sure thing,’ said the woman.
‘Then would you mind taking this change? It’s horrid to have no money in London.’
The woman bit her lips, and Dinny could see that they were trembling.
‘I wouldn’t like to take your money,’ she said, ‘after you’ve been so kind.’
‘Oh! bosh! Please!’ And, catching her hand, she pressed the money into it. To her horror, the woman uttered a loud sniff. She was preparing to make a run for the door, when the woman said:
‘D’you know what I’m going to do? I’m going home to have a sleep. My God, I am! I’m going home to have a sleep.’
Dinny hurried back to Sloane Street. Walking past the tall blinded houses, she recognized with gratitude that her love-sickness was much better. If she did not walk too fast, she would not be too soon at Mount Street. It was dark now, and in spite of the haze of city light the sky was alive with stars. She did not enter the Park again, but walked along its outside railings. It seemed an immense time since she had parted from Stack and the dog in Cork Street. Traffic was thickening as she rounded into Park Lane. Tomorrow all these vehicles would be draining out to Epsom Downs; the Town would be seeming almost empty. And, with a sickening sensation, it flashed on her how empty it would always feel without Wilfrid to see or look forward to.
She came to the gate by the ‘jibbing barrel’, and suddenly, as though all that evening had been a dream, she sa
w Wilfrid standing beside it. She choked and ran forward. He put out his arms and caught her to him.
The moment could hardly be prolonged, for cars and pedestrians were passing in and out; so arm-in-arm they moved towards Mount Street. Dinny just clung to him, and he seemed equally wordless; but the thought that he had come there to be near her was infinitely comforting.
They escorted each other back and forth past the house, like some footman and housemaid for a quarter of an hour off duty. Class and country, custom and creed, all were forgotten. And, perhaps, no two people in all its seven millions were in those few minutes more moved and at one in the whole of London.
At last the comic instinct woke.
‘We can’t see each other home all night, darling. So one kiss – and yet – one kiss – and yet – one kiss!’
She ran up the steps, and turned the key.
Chapter Twenty-one
WILFRID’S mood when he left his publisher at ‘The Jessamine’ was angry and confused. Without penetrating to the depths of Compson Grice’s mental anatomy, he felt that he had been manipulated; and the whole of that restless afternoon he wandered, swung between relief at having burnt his boats and resentment at the irrevocable. Thus preoccupied, he did not really feel the shock his note would be to Dinny, and only when, returning to his rooms, he received her answer did his heart go out to her, and with it himself to where she had fortuitously found him. In the few minutes while they paraded Mount Street, silent and half-embraced, she had managed to pass into him her feeling that it was not one but two against the world. Why keep away and make her more unhappy than he need? And he sent her a note by Stack next morning asking her to go ‘joy-riding’. He had forgotten the Derby, and their car was involved almost at once in a stream of vehicles.
‘I’ve never seen the Derby,’ said Dinny. ‘Could we go?’
There was the more reason why they should go because there seemed to be no reasonable chance of not going.
Dinny was astonished at the general sobriety. No drinking and no streamers, no donkey-carts, false noses, badinage. Not a four-in-hand visible, not a coster nor a Kate; nothing but a wedged and moving stream of motor ‘buses and cars mostly shut.
When, at last, they had ‘parked’ on the Downs, eaten their sandwiches and moved into the crowd, they turned instinctively towards the chance of seeing a horse.
Frith’s ‘Derby Day’ seemed no longer true, if it ever was. In that picture people seemed to have lives and to be living them; in this crowd everybody seemed trying to get somewhere else.
In the paddock, which at first sight still seemed all people and no horses, Wilfrid said suddenly:
‘This is foolish, Dinny; we’re certain to be seen.’
‘And if we are? Look, there’s a horse!’
Quite a number of horses, indeed, were being led round in a ring. Dinny moved quickly towards them.
‘They all look beautiful to me,’ she said in a hushed voice, ‘and just as good one as the other – except this one; I don’t like his back.’
Wilfrid consulted his card. ‘That’s the favourite.’
‘I still don’t. D’you see what I mean? It comes to a point too near the tail, and then droops.’
‘I agree, but horses run in all shapes.’
‘I’ll back the horse you fancy, Wilfrid.’
‘Give me time, then.’
The people to her left and right kept on saying the horses’ names as they passed. She had a place on the rail with Wilfrid standing close behind her.
‘He’s a pig of a horse,’ said a man on her left, ‘I’ll never back the brute again.’
She took a glance at the speaker. He was broad and about five feet six, with a roll of fat on his neck, a bowler hat, and a cigar in his mouth. The horse’s fate seemed to her the less dreadful.
A lady sitting on a shooting-stick to her right said:
‘They ought to clear the course for the horses going out. That lost me my money two years ago.’
Wilfrid’s hand rested on her shoulder.
‘I like that one,’ he said, ‘Blenheim. Let’s go and put our money on.’
They went to where people were standing in little queues before a row of what looked like pigeon-holes.
‘Stand here,’ he said. ‘I’ll lay my egg and come back to you.’
Dinny stood watching.
‘How d’you do, Miss Cherrell?’ A tall man in a grey top-hat, with a very long case of field-glasses slung round him, had halted before her. ‘We met at the Foch statue and your sister’s wedding – remember?’
‘Oh! yes. Mr Muskham.’ Her heart was hurrying, and she restrained herself from looking towards Wilfrid.
‘Any news of your sister?’
‘Yes, we heard from Egypt. They must have had it terribly hot in the Red Sea.’
‘Have you backed anything?’
‘Not yet.’
‘I shouldn’t touch the favourite – he won’t stay.’
‘We thought of Blenheim.’
‘Well, nice horse, and handy for the turns. But there’s one more fancied in his stable. I take it you’re a neophyte. I’ll give you two tips, Miss Cherrell. Look for one or both of two things in a horse: leverage behind, and personality – not looks, just personality.’
‘Leverage behind? Do you mean higher behind than in front?’
Jack Muskham smiled. ‘That’s about it. If you see that in a horse, especially where it has to come up a hill, back it.’
‘But personality? Do you mean putting his head up and looking over the tops of people into the distance? I saw one horse do that.’
‘By Jove, I should like you as a pupil! That’s just about what I do mean.’
‘But I don’t know which horse it was,’ said Dinny.
‘That’s awkward.’ And then she saw the interested benevolence on his face stiffen. He lifted his hat and turned away. Wilfrid’s voice behind her said:
‘Well, you’ve got a tenner on.’
‘Let’s go to the Stand and see the race.’ He did not seem to have seen Muskham; and, with his hand within her arm, she tried to forget the sudden stiffening of Jack Muskham’s face. The crowd’s multiple entreaty that she should have her ‘fortune told’ did its best to distract her, and she arrived at the Stand in a mood of indifference to all but Wilfrid and the horses. They found standing room close to the bookmakers near the rails.
‘Green and chocolate – I can remember that. Pistache is my favourite chocolate filling. What shall I win if I do win, darling?’
‘Listen!’
They isolated the words ‘Eighteen to one Blenheim!’
‘A hundred and eighty!’ said Dinny. ‘Splendid!’
‘Well, it means that he’s not fancied by the stable; they’ve got another running. Here they come! Two with chocolate and green. The second of them is ours.’
The parade, enchanting to all except the horses, gave her the chance to see the brown horse they had backed adorning its perched rider.
‘How d’you like him, Dinny?’
‘I love them nearly all. How can people tell which is the best by looking at them?’
‘They can’t.’
The horses were turning now and cantering past the Stand.
‘Would you say Blenheim is higher behind than in front?’ murmured Dinny.
‘No. Very nice action. Why?’
But she only pressed his arm and gave a little shiver.
Neither of them having glasses, all was obscure to them when the race began. A man just behind kept saying: ‘The favourite’s leadin’! The favourite’s leadin’!’
As the horses came round Tattenham Corner, the same man burbled: ‘The Pasha – the Pasha’ll win – no, the favourite – the favourite wins! – no, he don’t – Iliad – Iliad wins.’
Dinny felt Wilfrid’s hand grip her arm.
‘Ours,’ he said, ‘on this side – look!’
Dinny saw a horse on the far side in pink and brown, and nearer her the chocola
te and green. It was ahead, it was ahead! They had won!
Amidst the silence and discomfiture those two stood smiling at each other. It seemed an omen!
‘I’ll draw your money, and we’ll go to the car and be off.’
He insisted on her taking all the money, and she ensconced it with her other wealth – so much more insurance against any sudden decision to deprive her of himself.
They drove again into Richmond Park on the way home, and sat a long time among the young bracken, listening to the cuckoos, very happy in the sunny, peaceful, whispering afternoon.
They dined together in a Kensington restaurant, and he left her finally at the top of Mount Street.
That night she slept unvisited by doubts or dreams, and went down to breakfast with clear eyes and a flush of sunburn on her cheeks. Her uncle was reading The Daily Phase. He put it down and said:
‘When you’ve had your coffee, Dinny, you might glance at this. There is something about publishers,’ he added, ‘which makes one doubt sometimes whether they are men and brothers. And there is something about editors which makes it certain sometimes that they are not.’
Dinny read Compson Grice’s letter, printed under the headlines:
MR DESERT’S APOSTASY.
OUR CHALLENGE TAKEN UP.
A CONFESSION.
Two stanzas from Sir Alfred Lyall’s poem Theology in Extremis followed:
Why? Am I bidding for glory’s roll?
I shall be murdered and clean forgot;
Is it a bargain to save my soul?
God, whom I trust in, bargains not.
Yet for the honour of English race
May I not live or endure disgrace …
I must be gone to the crowd untold
Of men by the Cause which they served unknown,
Who moulder in myriad graves of old;
Never a story and never a stone
Tells of the martyrs who die like me,
Just for the pride of the old countree.
And the pink of sunburn gave way to a flood of crimson.
‘Yes,’ murmured Sir Lawrence, watching her, ‘ “the fat is in the fire”, as old Forsyte would have said. Still, I was talking to a man last night who thought that nowadays nothing makes an indelible mark. Cheating at cards, boning necklaces – you go abroad for two years and it’s all forgotten. As for sex abnormality, according to him it’s no longer abnormal. So we must cheer up!’
The Forsyte Saga, Volume 3 Page 48
