‘Yes.’
‘Isn’t it amazing?’
‘Extraordinary.’
‘I’m terribly upset, you know.’
‘I’m sure you are.’
‘You don’t sound as though you were. But I am, Val. I’ve cried myself to sleep every night since. I have. I really have. I did love him. Not like Alan, of course, but I did love Ray. Poor Ray! I miss him terribly. Come with me. I’ll call for you at a quarter-to. Not late or early, I think, don’t you? Just on time.’
‘It’s safest.’
‘Val, you sound chilly, almost distant. You’re not angry with me by any chance, are you?’
‘Angry with you? My dear, why should I be? What have you been up to?’
There had been a light, relieved laugh.
‘Nothing. Of course not. I only wondered.’ And then, in a burlesqued cockney accent, ‘We girls are funny sometimes, duck. We imagine things, don’t we? It’s our natures, I suppose. Val?’
‘Yes.’
‘You do like me a little bit, don’t you? We are friends?’
‘Darling, of course.’ Val was not a great actress and a hint of dogged determination came through the words.
‘Honestly?’
‘Oh, don’t be a fool, woman. I’m at work. Of course we are.’
‘All right. You needn’t be so very brittle, need you? It’s a memorial service to my dead husband, you know. You don’t understand, do you, pet? You’re hard, Val.’
The word had done the work it always does, and Val’s face betrayed her, but the telephone had only carried her cool, high voice to the other woman.
‘Am I? I don’t think so. I don’t know.’
‘Take it from me, then. But I don’t blame you. I admire you for it. You don’t know how much you save yourself by it. You miss a lot, but you save more, I think. Look here, what about Lady Papendeik? Would she come with us? We don’t want to look like a couple of floozies. Not that we should, of course. But we both do look so young. Who is she coming with?’
‘She’s not going, I’m afraid.’
‘Oh? Why not? I think she ought to.’
‘She doesn’t feel like it,’ said Val. Tante Marthe had actually said that she knew Ramillies well enough to realize that mere praying for him was a waste of her own and the Bon Dieu’s time, but there seemed no point in repeating it.
‘Oh, I see. Then it’s just you and me and, of course, Sinclair. I’ve tried on the entire ensemble again and I like it enormously. You don’t think those millions of little black butterflies on the cap are a tiny bit pert for the occasion?’
‘No, I don’t think so . . . after all, he liked you to look lovely.’
‘Are you laughing at me?’
‘My dear, why should I?’
‘I never know with you. You don’t understand. I loved him. I adore Alan but I loved Ray. I did. I really did.’
‘You love us all,’ said Val. ‘God bless you. Good-bye, my pet.’
‘Good-bye, darling. A quarter to three, then. I say, Val, don’t wear all black. I’m the widow. You don’t mind me saying that, do you? I thought you wouldn’t. That’s why I love you. I can be myself with you. Val, do you think I’m vulgar?’
‘Not more than we all are. Good-bye, my dear.’
The memorial service was charmingly devised and, since the church specialized in such offices, well carried out. Glancing round the ancient greystone nave, it occurred to Mr Campion that the familiar ‘friends of the bride’ and ‘friends of the groom’ division had been aptly translated into ‘relations and officials’ and ‘friends of the deceased’.
Towser, representing Royalty, and a small brigade of supporters presumably representing Towser, sat on one side of the aisle with the aunts, the half-brother and a host of Army and Club folk, while Georgia and the Caesar’s Court contingent formed the flower of the opposition. Sinclair stood by his mother, his small drawn face stoical.
Val had given her mind to her clothes and her femininity had triumphed. She was exquisite. Georgia’s dark galleon was for once a little heavy, a little funereal, beside this dainty mourning skiff. Val had conceded to the not-all-black request in her own way, and carried, instead of the more ordinary enamel compactum, a pochette made from the chased silver binding of an old German missal, with three or four large real violets threaded through its solid clasp.
Many people looked at her and there were some who nudged their neighbours and pointed her out. Much of this notice was an ordinary tribute to a distinguished and beautiful woman, but not all. Val was sublimely unconscious of the general interest. She was acutely aware of Alan Dell seated five or six rows behind her and of Georgia kneeling and rising at her side, but save for them the rest of the church might have been empty as far as she was concerned.
Mr Campion was aware of Dell also.
The Vicar of St Jude’s-by-the-Wardrobe had been a soldier himself in his time and had decided to give an address. He was an oldish man with a failing memory, and once or twice during his discourse it became apparent that he had confused Ramillies with some other warrior, but his parsonical intonation robbed most of his words of any meaning whatsoever and fortunately embarrassment was thus avoided.
The homily provided an interlude, however, and during it Campion had leisure to look at Dell.
He was sitting forward, his silk hat hanging from his hand and his face clearly outlined against a pillar. From time to time he glanced towards the backs of the two women sitting far in front of him. Amanda kicked Campion.
‘A.D. looks like that at work,’ she murmured.
He nodded and glanced at the face again. There was no shyness there now, nor was there weakness or uncertainty. The Alan Dell at Ramillies’s memorial service was the Alan Dell of Alandel planes, Val’s love, Sid’s hero and Amanda’s boss. Mr Campion felt more than sorry for him.
He could just see Georgia, looking unapproachable in her beauty, her elegance and her grief. Val, he knew, was beside her, and the thought of her reminded him of the uncanny accuracy of her guesses. Most women were alarming in that way, he reflected again. They muddled through to truth in the most dangerous and infuriating fashion. All the same they were not quite so clever as they thought they were, which was as it should be, of course, but odd considering their remarkable penetration in most other practical matters.
It was astonishing how the simple, direct reactions of the ordinary male eluded them. In many cases he was their main interest and yet they invariably boggled over him, approaching a machine of the relative size and simplicity of a bicycle with an outfit which one might be expected to need to take a watch to pieces.
He glanced at Dell again and picked up some of the other man’s thought; he recognized the pail-of-water-over-the-head experience which Ramillies’s sudden death and Georgia’s sudden release must have been to him. That shock had been physical, of course, while the decent, well-behaved mind, which is always being bewildered by the body’s antics, had no doubt reacted conventionally. The beloved was free and the beloved must therefore be claimed and married, so that, after making all allowances for natural regret at another human being’s untimely end, the heart should be bounding. And yet did Dell’s heart bound? Mr Campion was inclined to bet his all that it did no such thing. In Mr Campion’s opinion Dell was probably disgusted, and, if he was as inexperienced as he appeared to be, disconcerted by himself. In his idle mind Mr Campion addressed him across the church. ‘You’ll ask the woman to marry you, old boy, insistently if you’re pig-headed and half-heartedly if you’re not, and if she agrees to do so with sufficient speed you will marry her, and you’ll become one of the half-resentful, half-obstinately optimistic husbands that the Georgias of this world acquire. But, ever since Ramillies died, ever since the moment when the first word of his death reached you, although Georgia’s body has remained sickeningly desirable and will remain so for some time, every other word that has escaped her, every little offensive trick of mind which she has betrayed and which until now
has been muffled by you automatically because her deficiencies were not your affair, has suddenly become italicised. In fact, ever since Ramillies died Georgia has got on your nerves and you cannot bring yourself to believe that you are such an outsider, or love is so fragile, that the two events have any connexion.’
Mr Campion read the label in his hat. It gave him a childish sense of satisfaction to reflect that this elementary mental process was one that neither Val nor Georgia would ever grasp until it had been bitten into their minds with the slow acid of the years. They would both of them pry and probe with their delicate little forceps, they would weigh intonations and pore over letters, forcing little pieces of jigsaw to fit into fantastic theories as ingenious and delightful as Chinese puzzles, and yet the elementary fact would sit and stare them in the face, defeating them by its very simplicity.
He looked down at Amanda. She was reading in a very old Prayer Book she had found in the pew a Form of Service for Thanksgiving for the Delivery of King James from Gunpowder Plot.
It was raining a little as they came out of the church and they paused for a moment in the half-cupola of the pillared porch. Ferdie Paul joined them. He looked profoundly mournful and his curling mouth was drawn down. His eyes lit up at the sight of Amanda and he congratulated Campion heartily on his engagement, about which he seemed to know a good deal; but having completed these formalities, his gloom returned.
‘It’s bad,’ he said, his unexpectedly thin voice irritable. ‘Damn bad luck all round. Too near the other business. It’s bad for Georgia. People will begin to think she’s poisonous or something, poor girl. It’s amazing what people will think, you know.’
The last remark was uttered with sudden directness and the full brown eyes were intelligent.
‘I don’t know how half the lunatics in this world arrive at their beliefs. By the way, how is Val?’
The connexion between the two remarks was not apparent and Mr Campion looked blank. Ferdie Paul, who was watching him closely, seemed startled and then, if such a thing had been possible, almost confused.
‘She’s here, is she? That’s good. Oh, with Georgia? Really? That’s splendid. She’s been a great comfort there, I know. Georgia’s far more cut up than she shows. I can tell it when she’s working. She’s put up a stronger performance in some respects than I’ve ever heard her give these last few nights, but you can tell she’s running on her nerves.’
He paused and a faint smile passed over his face.
‘Thank God it’s not a farce,’ he said, ‘or we’d have to come off. As it is, the “gallant little woman” can carry on with entire propriety.’
Mr Campion was mildly surprised. The reference to Val had not been lost upon him in spite of the adroit cover-up.
‘The whole thing was a great shock to everyone concerned,’ he said.
‘Oh, my dear chap, frightful! Frightful!’ There was no doubting Ferdie Paul’s sincerity. The nervous energy in his voice was almost a touchable thing. ‘Frightful! I nearly had apoplexy myself when Georgia phoned me. I mean, think of the publicity. If poor old Ray had wanted to make a stink he couldn’t have fixed it better, could he?’
‘I suppose not. Gaiogi seemed upset.’
‘Oh, Gaiogi?’ Ferdie laughed. ‘He took to his bed for three days afterwards. Did you know? He’s in love with that hotel. My God, the fellow sleeps with it. It’s indecent. Here he is. Czar Gaiogi, representing Caesar’s Court.’
The dig was unkind, but apt. Gaiogi Laminoff came out of the church door with the dignity of a sorrowing emperor. He bowed gravely to them and came over.
‘Not a good address, did you think?’ he remarked seriously as he joined them.
‘Rotten. Not an ad. in it,’ said Ferdie maliciously.
Gaiogi raised his eyebrows and turned to Amanda.
‘You are a lovely thing on a sad day,’ he said simply. ‘I am so glad to see you.’
Somewhat ungallantly Mr Campion deserted his betrothed to deal with this sort of impasse as best she could and was relieved to hear her confessing that much the same notion had come into her head at the sight of Gaiogi. He went forward with Ferdie to meet Georgia, who had just appeared.
Val had become separated from her charge during their passage down the aisle and she was waiting with the rest of the fashionable crowd, on whom enforced silence had inflicted a certain simmering quality, when she caught sight of Dell looking at her anxiously.
Her first fleeting impression was that he had been waiting for her, but she dismissed it irritably and favoured him with a faint, cool smile of recognition. He came over to her, edging his way through the group clumsily, and was by her side as the crowd began to move. She was aware that he was making up his mind to speak to her and was suddenly, unreasonably and degradingly, elated, but when the words did come, blurted out huskily as they stepped into the rain, she was only puzzled by them.
‘Val,’ he said, ‘you’ve got intelligence, my dear. You wouldn’t blame the wrong person, would you?’
She had time to stare at him blankly and then Georgia was before them.
‘Come with us, Val. We’ll drop you. For God’s sake don’t smile. You know what photographs are. Where’s Sinclair? Oh well, never mind. He can take a taxi. Come, we can’t stand here. It looks terrible. Come, Alan. Sinclair is a little beast. I told him to stick to me.’
Sir Raymond’s chief mourner was in a pew at the back of the church. A thought had been tormenting him all the way down the aisle and at the last moment he had weakened and given way to it.
‘O God, dear God,’ he prayed, ‘if so be it you do exist, hear me. I know they say there isn’t a hell, but if there is, O God, dear God, kind God, don’t let Ray burn. He was only silly, O God, dear God, only stinkingly silly. Don’t let him burn.’
Then, this last orison performed, he scrambled up, caught a verger looking at him suspiciously, and hurried out, his ears burning. The car had gone and he looked about for a cab and would have taken one had not Amanda and Campion met him on a street island and carried him off to tea with them.
Meanwhile Val and Georgia sat side by side in Georgia’s car and Alan Dell sat opposite them.
Georgia was on edge. There was a certain quality of defence about her also which was new in her in Val’s experience. She was working hard. Every ounce of her physical magnetism was forced into service and, because this was hardly necessary and even a large car is a confined space, the effect was overwhelming and uncomfortable.
Val became very quiet, almost sedate. She sat gracefully in her corner, one knee tucked up under her and the four-inch heel of her little shoe showing against the grey rep-covered seat.
Dell looked preoccupied and morose, but Georgia was irresistibly warm. Her life flowed over him, forcing him to respond to it in spite of his inclination, which was towards peace.
‘Oh, darlings, this is the first time that I’ve felt happy since that dreadful afternoon. You’re the two people I rely on most. I couldn’t live without either of you. I know I say and do the filthiest things, but I don’t mean it. Do you think I could take my hat off, Val? No one could see in here, could they? Not to recognize me, I mean.’
Dell took her hat from her outstretched hand and put it down on the seat beside him. The little black butterflies on the crown attracted him and he filliped one of them idly. Georgia laughed.
‘They’re like aeroplane wings, aren’t they?’ she said. ‘Val’s a genius. She’s entirely brilliant. Do you realize that, Alan?’
He looked at the two of them dispassionately, his bright blue eyes reproving.
‘Val is a good friend,’ he said. ‘The best friend you have.’
Georgia shrank back like an abashed baby and there was new colour in her cheeks.
‘Oh, but darling, I know,’ she said with passionate reproach in her tone. She laid a hand on Val’s wrist possessively. ‘I do know. Don’t I know? Alan, why do you say that? I adore Val and Val likes me, don’t you, Val? You do like me. We’ve been
friends for years. We’re all frightfully upset. The service was terribly emotional. That’s why I dread these things. Let’s stop and have a cocktail somewhere. Oh no, I suppose we can’t like this. My God, I suppose we can’t be seen out at all to-night. Where shall we go?’
‘I must go back to Tante Marthe. She’s waiting for me at Park Lane,’ said Val.
‘Oh, must you.’ Georgia did not make the words a question. ‘What a frightful nuisance. I don’t know what we shall do. Alan?’
‘Yes.’
‘Take me up in a plane.’
‘What, now?’
‘Yes, as soon as we’ve changed. Drive me out to Caesar’s Court and take me up in a plane. I want to get away, right away, just for a little tiny while. Do. Please, Alan, because I ask you.’
‘All right,’ he said dubiously. ‘It’ll be frightfully cold, you know, and it’s raining.’
‘Oh, all right.’ Georgia shrugged her shoulders. ‘We’ll light a fire and sit round it and talk, or dress up in old clothes and go to some dirty little Soho restaurant where we shan’t be recognized. What shall we do?’
Val glanced at Dell. He was watching the other woman gravely. There was no telling what was the thought in his mind. He was regarding her earnestly and with evident interest, but his opinion was secret. Val blinked and turned her head.
‘Here we are,’ she said with relief. ‘Will you come in? No? All right. I’ll see you soon, Georgia. Good-bye, Alan.’
Her small gloved hand rested in each of their own for an instant and then she was gone. Georgia looked after her and smiled with genuine sadness.
‘Poor pretty Val,’ she said. ‘Isn’t she a dear?’
Dell did not answer her directly. He moved over into the seat Val had vacated and laid a hand on Georgia’s arm.
The Fashion In Shrouds Page 17
