‘Lord!’ Brian rose to his feet. ‘A week’s wages! That’s six pounds. I’ve only got four.’
Walter leant back and laughed. ‘Oh, you are the world’s prize kid. Four’s tons.’
‘Is it?’
‘Of course.’
‘Honestly though?’
‘Well, you can’t eat more than a pound each. And if you drink more than a pound’s worth of wine you’ll be so tight that it won’t matter.’
‘It’ll have to be champagne, I suppose.’
‘You’ll have to ask her, at any rate.’
‘Suppose she wanted a magnum?’
‘Well, you’d give her a clap over the head and say she could have a small beer.’
‘Ass.’
‘Ass?’
‘Good Lord! It’s nearly seven. I shall go. If I walk, that’s half a crown saved.’
He stood in front of the glass and surveyed himself. Really, it wasn’t so bad. Perhaps a carnation might have added to the effect? No. One mustn’t overdo it.
He sighed and turned round, caught Walter’s eye, and laughed, gurgling for no reason at all.
As Brian approached No. 140 Berkeley Square the shame of not having taken a taxi increased. Perhaps he might wait till somebody else’s taxi passed, and then ring the bell very quickly? If the butler opened the door at once, the servants might think that the passing taxi had been his own. But he rejected this as impracticable. He decided to look very haughty, to frown at all menials who came his way, quelling them. He paused, still two houses away from his destination. A cold wind shook a cluster of yellow leaves from the trees in the square, reminding him that October was almost past. ‘October is the prettiest time of the year.’ This strange sentence from the faded philosophy of his mother floated through his head. What would his mother have thought had she known that he was going to take so superb a creature as Lady Julia Cressey out to dinner? Would not she have burst with pride? Still, she could not have mended his trousers any better than Walter. He fingered tentatively his hind-quarters. One could hardly even feel where the patch had been sewn. And unless anybody asked him to stand on his head, he need have no qualms at all.
Taking a deep breath, and giving a final tug to his tie, he walked up the steps, and rang the bell. Instantly the door was flung open. He saw the same butler who had been so contemptuous on his previous visit. But this time there were also two footmen. This was ghastly. To whom should he give his coat? To the butler, or the tall footman, or the short one? However, he found his coat taken from his shoulders without any choice on his part.
‘Mr. Elme?’ whispered the butler.
‘Yes,’ said Brian in a loud voice. There was no question about his being an ‘it’ now.
‘This way, sir.’
With remarkable agility the butler sprinted up the stairs. Brian was about to sprint also, but remembering that he had to be haughty, he walked slowly, even pausing for effect, to examine a very dull and large-busted Venus who glared at him from a niche in the wall. He would have liked to stroke the lady’s chest, but he felt that this would be carrying sang-froid a little too far. Trembling in every limb he completed the ascent.
Ah! She was there.
‘Good evening.’
‘Good evening.’
He looked at her shyly. She had on something green that glittered. She smelt of violets.
‘I say. You do look lovely.’
‘I – or the dress?’
‘Everything.’
She smiled. ‘It’s made by a man in Paris who can only work well when he’s drunk.’
‘He must have had D.T. when he designed that.’
Fool, fool! Why had he said such an appalling thing? She would despise him. However, she only said:
‘Have a cocktail.’
‘I’d love one.’
‘I’ve had three already, so I’ll just watch.’
He started slightly. Three already? Did that mean he’d have to do the same? If so, he would be entirely hors de combat. Perhaps . . . then she put all other thoughts out of his mind by saying:
‘I hope you won’t be bored. But I’ve asked two other people to come. We’ve got a box, you see.’
Brian went very pale. He put down his glass. He tried to smile. He said: ‘No. I’m delighted.’
His mind was a whirl of conflicting thoughts. Four pounds for four people. Four pounds for four people. What could he do? Could he – oh, God! . . .
‘Only too delighted,’ he repeated.
‘And as I’ve turned it into my dinner, of course you must dine with me.’
Dine with her?
‘So,’ she went on, ‘would you be an angel and act as host? I think this ought to be enough.’
This? She was holding out three five-pound notes. Was she trying to insult him?
He put his hands behind his back, and moved uneasily from one foot to the other.
‘Please,’ he said. ‘I’d much rather you dined with me.’
‘Don’t be absurd.’
‘But I asked you to dinner,’ he said doggedly.
‘Quite.’ There was a touch of impatience in her voice. ‘And you didn’t ask two other people as well. Therefore it ceases to be your dinner at all. Come along.’ She still held out the notes. Then she stepped forward and stuffed them into his pocket. ‘I’ll dine with you another night.’
Brian felt miserable. There were tears in his eyes. Not only was he faced with an entirely new set of complications, but the honour which he had been about to taste was taken from him. Instead of feeling an equal he now felt more than ever subservient. Yet – what was the alternative? A vast bill that he would not be able to pay? Public ignominy? No. It was no use. He must keep the money. But already the evening seemed to him to be darkened.
‘Whom else have you asked?’ he said, as casually as possible.
‘Only William Motley and Maurice Cheyne.’
And as soon as she had said it, the door opened, and Brian heard the voice of the butler, this time very loud:
‘Lord William Motley. Mr. Cheyne.’
It seemed instantly as though the room were filled with a series of hurricanes.
‘Darling.’
‘Covered with Molyneux.’
‘Ooh – my favourite cocktail!’
‘We both feel like seven sorts of death.’
And a dozen other exclamations.
He took in the details of Lord William’s appearance. He appeared to be about forty-five. On the top of an immense, large-hipped body, a pale head, fitted with eyes of remarkable intelligence, rolled from side to side. The mouth, loose and sensual, was always opening and closing, either in speech, or in the preparation for speech. The small moustache seemed quite out of place. On the first finger of his left hand was a small scarab ring.
He wore a dinner-jacket of the double-breasted variety – (a type rather rare in London in those days) – which he was constantly smoothing down over his hips.
His companion, Maurice, was a pale, good-looking young man, with a dark, Italian face, longish hair, and a clover-red carnation in his button-hole. He seemed very tired, but that, as Brian later discovered, was the effect he always desired to give. Unlike Motley, he wore tails.
Ridiculously, in the maze of introductions, paragraphs flitted through Brian’s head. For example:
‘Smart men don’t seem to have decided yet whether to don full or semi evening-dress, do they, dear? Lord William Motley never wears anything but a dinner-jacket – one of those cute double-breasted sorts – while the Honourable Maurice Cheyne – the good-looking heir of Lord Pedersfield . . .
The concoction of these titbits was interrupted by Maurice himself.
‘Julia is impossible,’ he said. ‘She never introduces anybody. I am the one who is not Lord William.’
He held out his hand with an engaging smile.
Julia detached herself.
‘I’m terribly sorry. Mr. Elme. Mr. Cheyne. Lord William Motley.’
Three ‘how-d’you-do’s.’ And as they went downstairs, Brian heard Lord William saying, ‘What a deliciously new young man.’ Which embarrassed him acutely.
The car slid away from the door, curved through the shadows of the lamplit square, took Carlos Place in a majestic sweep, and sighed itself to rest outside Claridge’s. Nobody had spoken during this brief transit, except Maurice who had said:
‘Does my face look terribly pre-war to-night?’ and had been answered by a languid affirmative from both Julia and Lord William.
Short as the drive was, it had been enough to raise several new problems in Brian’s brain. They were:
1. What was the exact position of the restaurant in the hotel? It would be terrible to lead his guests carelessly to the gentlemen’s cloak-room.
2. Did he have to pretend that he had reserved a table?
3. Ought he to tell them where to sit? If so . . .
However, things moved so quickly that he had little time to decide anything.
Julia disappeared through a door on the left. Brian was about to follow her through it when he realized that she had gone to a purely feminine institution. Lord William and Maurice then also disappeared through a door. This time he did follow, was stripped of his coat by a footman, given a ticket and pushed outside. Next, they were all walking together through many chairs, covered in rose-coloured silk. He had a momentary impression of bare shoulders, and rows of scarlet, insolent mouths, and then they were standing before a man with a dark smile who must be the head-waiter.
‘Act! Act! you fool!’ muttered Brian to himself. And so he said in a false and muffled voice:
‘I believe you have a table for Lady Julia Cressey?’
But the man was not even looking at him. He was bowing low to Lady Julia. They seemed to know each other intimately. Then with many little beckonings and grimaces he led the way through more tables (on which Brian noticed an astounding and terrifying collection of exotic dishes) to a place in the corner. And they were all seated. How, God knows!
‘I can’t get over this young man.’
The voice came from Maurice, who was openly staring at him. It had the effect of making him sit up and take notice.
‘He looks so distressingly healthy,’ continued Maurice. He turned to Brian: ‘How is it done?’
‘I don’t see what he means.’ Brian glanced appealingly at Julia.
‘I mean what do you use?’
Brian had memories of occasionally drinking fruit salts in hot weather, but surely Maurice could not want to be told that? He had also once used a patent shaving-cream which had brought his face out in spots.
‘I don’t use anything,’ he said.
‘Do you know, I believe he’s telling the truth!’
Maurice eyed him enviously. He was so used to having things done to his own face that the sight of nature unadorned struck him as a personal affront. He invariably spent quite twenty minutes over shaving, had his face massaged twice a week, and, in lieu of sunburn, employed an ochreous powder which gave to his features a slightly less unhealthy appearance than they would normally have presented. It did not strike him as at all unusual to make use of these artifices. All his friends seemed to do the same. One simply had to, in London, or one would look like the wrath of God.
Brian, however, was becoming restive. He cast down his eyes, and then noticed something which made his heart leap with joy.
It was a menu, beautifully written out in a copperplate hand, conducting one gently from a cold consommé to a sole marguerite, from a sole to a quail, from a quail to something which sounded like a successful prima donna, and from the prima donna to coffee. Thank the Lord that was done! He looked up and saw that Julia was watching him. She turned to Lord William:
‘You see, I told him what I liked.’
Lord William bowed. ‘As long as he has not chosen prawns I shall be quite happy. I never take prawns. Prawns have far too much sex.’
‘Nobody suggested them, darling. But . . .’
She broke off to bow to several people at the other end of the room.
‘She does not really know so many people as that,’ said Lord William, in a loud voice. ‘She is merely dotting and carrying one. I do it myself sometimes, when I go to The Everyman, or theatres like that, where of course there is nobody whom one knows. I always choose a very old lady and bow to her frequently, with different expressions. It gives me a feeling of great brutality, which I adore.’
He paused. ‘Julia, surely that is Anne over there?’
‘Where?’ She looked. ‘Yes, it is.’
‘Then I shall tell this young man a story which he may put in his paper. Do you see her – by the pillar?’
But at this point the waiter handed him the wine list. Frowning at the interruption, Lord William waved it in the direction of Brian, drumming meanwhile, with his fingers on the table. Brian took the list, full of trepidation.
Now, there are only two ways of looking at wine lists. That most commonly adopted by the English race is to study it with a flustered ignorance, as in the manner of schoolboys called upon to translate a portion of Æschylus, and then to ask the waiter if a certain wine is ‘all right.’ And after the waiter has firmly dragged the guest’s finger to the bottom of the page, containing wines at double the price, to agree.
The other way is to give the list a haughty glance, indicating a prolonged connoisseurship, to close the book with a snap, and to say, ‘A bottle of ’57. A little iced. Only a little iced.’
Brian adopted a compromise. He could not look the wine list in the face as though he knew it, for, to him, there was no difference between Louis Roederer or Mumm or Pommery. (Nor, in all probability, is there much difference to most of us.) But he could at least avoid being intimidated by it. He would show the waiter that he was not going to be browbeaten. He would show . . .
But he had no opportunity to show anything at all. For Maurice solved the difficulty by saying, ‘If anybody offers me anything but Ayala ’15 I shall burst into tears.’
Brian looked at him gratefully. Then he glanced at Julia. She nodded. He felt like a ship that has glided into smooth waters after a storm.
Lord William could now continue his story undisturbed. ‘Do you see that woman over there?’ he repeated.
‘The one with the odd face?’
‘Odd is exactly the word. Look at her for a moment.’
Brian looked. And as he looked he felt a strange feeling of foreboding – one of those curious premonitions which occasionally come even to the most superstitious of mortals. It was to be a long time before he would realize the reason for this foreboding, or its justification, and as quickly as it had come it passed. However, he continued to look at her. She had a strange, tight look about the eyes, and a perpetual pout. Her face, indeed, was more like a mask than a human countenance.
‘If he stares much longer she will suspect the worst,’ said Julia.
‘She is always hoping for the worst, and often getting it. Well,’ he said, turning again to Brian, ‘that is Lady Hardcastle. And she is one of the immortals.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I have decided to talk about her, and my scandals never die. They become part of the family history and are gravely repeated by nurses as examples of a great tradition. Shall I tell you my story of Anne?’
Maurice wriggled irritably. ‘This is one of my stories,’ he said.
‘I admit that you gave birth to it. But when you sent it out into the world it was stunted and naked. I heard it crying in the wilderness and I adopted it. I clothed it with the richest adjectives of my own imagination, and fed it with my own wit. As a result, it has grown out of all knowledge. It is no longer your story. It is mine.’
Maurice pouted and consoled himself with an olive.
Lord William leant back and crooned: ‘As the years passed by and Anne gazed into the mirror at the face which had launched a thousand ships – (she was once a great favourite with th
e Admiralty) – she wanted to know how she could possibly stop the wrinkles which time was writing on her brow. As a matter of fact, it was not so much her wrinkles which were worrying her as her mouth. She had a masseur who destroyed wrinkles as efficiently as a Scotch terrier destroys rats. But nobody could help her with her mouth. It seemed to grow larger and larger, and it had a most discouraging droop at the corners.
‘It was in that distant era when facial surgery became so terribly fashionable. Every woman in London was rushing to be butchered, and Lady Hardcastle wanted to rush, too. But she was rather nervous about it. However, one day when the mirror had been particularly insulting, she decided to take her courage in both hands and have her face sewn up. As soon as the operation was over she departed, still bandaged, with her maid, to Florence, informing the world that she had suffered severe facial injuries in a motor smash. The unveiling of the face took place in a darkened room in one of the shabbier palazzos of Florence. A doctor, and a maid, were the only other persons present. As the last bandage was torn away she leant forward with a cry . . .’
‘Go on,’ cried Brian.
‘She saw a woman with staring eyes, and a rose-bud mouth, and’ – Lord William paused – ‘what might best be described as a pout. The lips were pursed together . . . like this.’ And he pouted absurdly.
Brian looked slightly disappointed. ‘Is that all?’ he said.
‘Certainly not. The story now begins.’
He leant forward and fixed Brian with a glittering eye. ‘Filled with gratitude at a blessing which was so evidently inspired from a divine source, Lady Hardcastle decided, on the same afternoon, that she would go to church and offer thanks. She set out alone, pouting with pious pride. She entered the church and knelt down, raising her face up to the fretted roof. She was alone with herself and her mouth.
‘At least she thought she was. For hardly had she knelt down than a dark figure advanced out of the shadows. It was the verger. He touched her on the shoulder. She looked up at him, still pouting. Very gently he said to her, “The signora is not permitted to whistle in the church.” ’
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