Crazy Pavements

by Beverley Nichols

  ‘I love this,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Perfect. We’ll put it aside and have it taken to your room. Don’t forget this though.’

  He held out the purple bottle, and closed the cup­board doors. By now the whole corridor reeked of war­ring odours.

  ‘If only,’ said Tanagra, ‘somebody divine would call at this very moment. Somebody with thick boots and a heart in the right place.’

  But the only person who came was the footman – to announce to his lordship that cocktails were served in the Venetian hall.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Dinner was over, and as far as Brian was concerned it was a great success. Nobody had put scent in the soup, for the moment the tide of cocktails seemed to have abated, and his shirt, of which he had entertained grave doubts, was doing its duty manfully.

  We may, therefore, pass to the drawing-room, where the ladies, to whom we must now add an æsthetic ex­ample named Gloria Woodroffe, from Chelsea, were discussing the best way of extracting money from men, with the minimum of pain and the maximum of profit.

  ‘I have a marvellous way,’ said Tanagra. ‘I’m ter­ribly nice to foreigners. I bring lots and lots of sun­shine into their lives. And then they ask me to stay with them abroad.’

  ‘But you never go.’

  ‘Never. That’s the whole point. I tell them that I can’t get away from England for a few months, and they return home, leaving a cheque behind to pay for my travelling-expenses. Then I develop appendicitis.’

  ‘But, my dear, that seems hardly worth while. The return fare to Paris, or even Rome . . .’

  ‘Paris!’ Tanagra wrinkled her nose contemptuously. ‘I don’t call that going abroad. I mean America, India – that sort of thing.’

  ‘Oh, that’s marvellous.’

  ‘There was once a divine Indian whom I used to amuse enormously by imitating a cuckoo calling to its young. He said that he could not possibly live without me. The return fare to India, including a private suite, is quite a lot.’

  ‘I wish I’d thought of that,’ said Julia.

  ‘You will, darling, next season,’ droned Lady Jane.

  ‘Then,’ continued Tanagra, ‘there have been quite a lot of Americans. They seem to need sunshine very badly. There was a dear old American millionaire who was studying English folk-lore. I read the lyrics of quantities of American plantation songs, translated them into English, and told them to him at the end of dinner. He said that I had a unique store of informa­tion, which was quite true. I’ve had appendicitis three times for him.’

  ‘One ought to find you somebody in China,’ said Julia.

  ‘My ambition is an Australian. The return fare to Australia, if one does it really well, is nearly three hun­dred pounds. I once enraptured an Australian million­aire by playing Kangaroo games with his children. He loved to join in, too. However, it transpired that he was insane, and his keeper thought I should have a malign influence on him.’

  ‘I should never be able to hold them in check,’ said Gloria, who had discarded her stays and her scruples in the same evening.

  Lady Jane stirred lazily. ‘What makes you think that, dear?’

  Gloria tossed her head, ignoring the question. ‘That’s why I’m so poor.’

  ‘My dear, we all know your way, so why pretend?’

  ‘My way? I don’t do that sort of thing.’

  ‘If forcing defenceless stockbrokers to hire the Æolian Hall while you draw caricatures to the accompaniment of six drums isn’t “that sort of thing,” I don’t know what is.’

  ‘You’re incapable of understanding, Jane darling.’

  ‘So are the stockbrokers. That’s why it’s so cruel.’

  ‘Felix Waldo said . . .’

  ‘Waldo! My God! You’re not going to quote that?’

  ‘Felix Waldo said that if it hadn’t been for the strike he would have founded an institute for me.’

  ‘Wouldn’t that have been a little unbecoming?’ asked Julia. ‘To have an institute named after one seems to argue fifty years of public life.’

  ‘What is public life?’ said Tanagra.

  ‘Everything that a man does before midnight,’ replied Julia.

  ‘Isn’t that horribly like an epigram?’

  Gloria was anxious not to drift out of the limelight. ‘I shouldn’t have cared. I shall have my institute one day.’

  ‘Of course you will, darling. One can see it in your eyes.’

  ‘Sooner than any of you expect, too.’

  Tanagra leant back. She was wearing a spiritual expression.

  ‘Gloria’s given me an idea,’ she said.

  Lady Jane chuckled. ‘It was an accident, I expect.’

  ‘Religion!’

  Gloria turned away with well-assumed disgust. The others leant forward.

  ‘I am certain there is a tremendous amount of money in religion,’ said Tanagra. ‘Otherwise why should there be so many religious revivals in America? All orga­nized religions are forms of insurance companies. An ordinary insurance company guards against being burnt on earth, a religion guards against being burnt in hell.’

  But at this point the men entered the room, and the discussion faded away.

  Now at last, Brian thought he would be able to talk to Julia. She seemed to have hidden all day, and apart from a few charming but evasive words at dinner she had said nothing to him all the evening.

  But no. It was not to be. Julia pleaded the old-fashioned excuse of a headache and retired to bed. Brian, too, went early, for he was in no mood for the riotous charades which Lord William had suddenly decided to organize.

  As he went to sleep, he swore that he would entrap her on the next day. But was there ever such a difficult house in which to entrap anybody? For when the next day dawned, things became more hectic than ever.

  It began with breakfast. Breakfast had different interpretations for all the members of the party. For Julia it consisted in a little hot water and a couple of aspirins at eleven o’clock. For Lady Jane it meant porridge, and quantities of eggs and bacon in the dining­room at half-past eight, to the accompaniment of a frisking of dogs who mysteriously arrived from nowhere whenever she made an appearance. Gloria ate apples – (rather sour ones) sitting up in bed, clad in a bright orange dressing-gown. Tanagra drank quantities of very strong tea, under the impression that it was good for the nerves.

  But to Lord William, breakfast was a ceremony of peculiar charm. It gave him, for instance, an oppor­tunity of displaying some of his magnificent dressing-gowns, which hung by dozens in a cupboard specially set apart for them. He took, also, a malicious pleasure in observing the faces of those guests whom he could persuade to join him. Their pre-lunch complexions afforded such a strange contrast to their appearance the night before. And since nobody felt inclined to talk, he could croon along contentedly, making outrageous statements without fear of contradiction.

  Therefore at ten o’clock, having arrayed himself in a bright green dressing-gown, with long golden tassels, he called for Rastus – (the negro servant whose acquaintance we have already made) – and informed him that he desired the presence of Mr. Elme and Mr. Cheyne. His principal reason for having these two at the same time was to annoy Maurice, who found it very difficult to look less than thirty before midday.

  Brian had slept till half-past nine. He had then woken, sprang out of bed, wondering if all the others would have had breakfast already. The complete silence of the house reassured him, so that he decided there was time for a cold bath. Just before he got into it he thought he might as well use some of his bath salts. Being ignorant of the true purposes of this luxury he poured a heap into one end, leapt into the bath, and sat down heavily. The accompanying shudder with which he scrambled from the water was not due only to the cold. He felt as though he had sat on some very sharp gravel, and as he peered in to see what it was, he realized that the bath salts had not melted, but were twinkling at him through the water. He therefore contented himself with a cold shower.<
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  He had just finished drying himself when Rastus arrived with his message. Brian started. Would Julia be there? Perhaps. If so, what would she think of his mangy old dressing-gown? Oh, hell! It was in a de­pressed mood that he arrived in Lord William’s little green ‘rest-room,’ and he was still more depressed when he saw nobody but Lord William and Maurice.

  His lordship, however, was delighted, and pressed grape-fruit, and foie-gras, and chocolate, and fried sole upon him as though he were starving. For to Lord William, annoyance of Maurice was one of the chief of life’s pleasures; and he delighted in observing his wounded vanity. Although this young man had shaved, anointed himself and brushed his hair, he looked pale and dissipated. Brian, unshaved and unanointed, had the appearance of radiant youth.

  ‘How does he do it, do you think?’ purred Lord William.

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Look so amazingly fresh? You and I, for example, look like something that the cat has left on the lawn.’ He sighed artificially. ‘But I suppose it’s only youth.’

  At which Maurice spread more foie-gras on his toast, and wrinkled his nose with indignation.

  But Brian took no pleasure in these compliments. He was thinking of Julia. And later in the day, when they did meet, it seemed impossible to talk to her alone, so utterly lacking in privacy was this strange house. For instance, somebody was always playing the piano. Maurice usually contented himself with the simple melodic progressions of Mr. Irving Berlin, which Lord William rightly described as ‘so virginal and English,’ while Gloria, at various times during the day, would walk hurriedly to the piano, and make sounds which she assured the rest of the company were Stravinsky.

  Occasionally there would be some organized form of amusement. Lord William would propose a visit to the stables, and after a great deal of wrapping up, the party would assemble, clamber into cars, and whirl down the long drive towards a pleasant red-roofed group of buildings in the valley. But, much to Brian’s regret, the stables were never reached, for half-way between them lay the hothouses, and as soon as these were sighted, there would be fevered tappings at the window while the cars slowed down, and they all trooped over the short gravel paths to enter these more attractive institutions. And then they had to wander down long galleries of glass, chattering volubly, their breath steaming, their foreheads glistening, from heat to greater heat, fingering the damp speckled orchids, the murky man-eating plants with crimson veins, the hairy cactus and the evil-smelling lilies that protruded yellow lips above the surface of tepid pools. Each would come away with some souvenir, and when they eventu­ally emerged, there was a fresh scampering to the cars, in which they were shiveringly transported back to blazing fires and frozen cocktails.

  Cocktails, of course, were eternal. The chink of ice in a shaker began to echo in Brian’s nerves in a madden­ing monotone. Whenever there was a pause in the fun, somebody proposed a cocktail, and they all flocked to the side-table in the hall. What effect it had on the others he did not know, but it seemed to be driving him crazy.

  Brian began to wonder if all house-parties were like this. As a boy he had occasionally spent his holidays at the country home of a school-friend, but he could not recall anything in the least like ‘Hayseed.’ For one thing, people had always worn old clothes, whereas here the day was like a perpetual dress-parade. Tana­gra had changed her frock three times since breakfast, and Lord William was always attired as though for Bond Street. He had timidly hoped that his host might propose a little shooting, but the hope was quickly extinguished. Everybody seemed determined to ignore the existence of nature, whether in the shape of the fields, the woods, the birds, or the air itself.

  And still Julia evaded him.

  All day he had been furtively glancing at her. He had tried to catch her eye, to read in it some open avowal or secret understanding. He had tried, too, to waylay her on the stairs, even taking up a position in the corridor outside her room, but the constant passage of footmen and housemaids, who seemed, at ‘Hayseed,’ to be swarming in every direction at every hour, had eventually dislodged him. She had been charming to him of course, laughing with him, even twisting his hair in full view of the assembled company, but otherwise there had been no personal contact. She seemed not to react at all.

  As the day went on, he began to grow desperate. His mind was fevered with constant cocktails, visits to hothouses, and the tinkling of pianos. The adolescent passion which she had originally woken in him was deepening, it was becoming a fire which he could not control. He wanted to take her away, out of all this, out into the fresh air. He did not realize, at that time, how he hated the whole atmosphere of the place. He was still dazzled, doped by the eternal parade of luxury. Yet did he find himself dreaming of a courtship far different from any that could be imagined in such surroundings – a love, free and windswept, set against a background of such hills as only youth can climb, beneath a sky that only youth can paint so bright. Half-fascinated, half-afraid, wholly pathetic, he drifted with this strange crew who had sabotaged him, but always as one apart, as one who still believed that the drifting would end, that eventually the harbour would be reached.

  ‘For a boy’s will is the wind’s will,

  And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.’

  And then, after dinner that night, during a shrill game of amateur theatricals, she whispered to him: ‘Come and talk to me to-night, won’t you, when the others have gone to bed?’

  It was one o’clock. The menagerie of guests had retired to their separate cages. Brian stood at his door, listening. Had he not been stimulating his courage with several whiskies and sodas, he would not have dared to leave his room. And even now, he was afraid – sickeningly afraid – and he could not analyse his fear. She had told him to come. ‘To talk!’ She had told him. If she hadn’t wanted him why ask? A sudden wave of courage surged through him. He walked down the long corridor and knocked, boldly at her door.

  ‘Come in.’

  She was standing near the window, waiting. How clear-cut, cameo-like she looked! In her red dress she seemed as a single scarlet line splashed against the curtain’s gold.

  His heart was beating so loudly that he feared she would hear it.

  ‘You really did mean I could come and see you?’

  ‘Of course, you silly boy. Come and sit down.’

  He sat down at the end of the sofa.

  ‘You’re terribly young, aren’t you?’

  He looked at her silently. Then he shook his head. ‘I feel very old to-night.’

  ‘Really? Why?’

  ‘Because I’ve met you.’

  She laughed – the tired tinkle of a laugh that held for him so much magic. And then again her hand stole out to his, resting on it, pressing it.

  ‘You did that once before,’ he whispered.

  ‘Did I?’

  ‘Yes. At the theatre. I’ve been wondering ever since if it meant . . . anything.’

  ‘What could it mean?’

  ‘That’s what I want to know.’

  ‘Why do you want to know?’

  ‘Because’ – and he spoke very slowly, with a catch in his throat – ‘because you’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.’

  She leant back her head. Why did these words always give her so much delight? Why, when she heard them, had she the sense of a curtain rising, with hushed music – a sense of being the heroine on that fairest of all stages, the stage of one’s own mind, when the limelight is lit by one’s own most secret vanity?

  ‘Go on,’ she said. And then, ‘darling,’ as an after­thought.

  ‘Yes,’ he said gravely, ‘I must go on. I’ve got to go on. I’ve got to tell you. If I didn’t tell you I should die.’ There was no hint of mockery in his words.

  He crossed his hands, as though in prayer.

  ‘I’ve got to tell you something I’ve never told to any other woman in my life. Something I shall never tell any other woman again. The telling of it is rather hopeless. I know t
hat. But I can’t help it. I’ve got to tell you that I love you.’

  Her hand, very slowly, came out to meet his. He took it. He was not looking at her. He was looking into the smouldering embers.

  ‘You’ve come to mean life to me,’ he went on. ‘Just that. The curve of your neck – that’s a sort of way to Paradise. The way you move your hands – they could lift me to heaven. Your smile . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  He turned to her. His face suddenly seemed old, seared with pain. ‘Isn’t it all damnable?’

  ‘Brian!’

  ‘You see – to you it’s such an old story.’

  She closed her eyes. The child was becoming intelli­gent. This would never do. She achieved a very effective sigh, and turned her head.

  ‘At least – I believe it is.’ He paused. A burning coal fell with a foolish hiss on to the hearth. ‘Isn’t it?’

  There was a faint shake of the head.

  He tightened his grip on her hand. Oh – that hand – that arm – that body. . . . ‘You have heard it all before – haven’t you?’ He leant towards her. ‘All this is old to you. Old.’

  She frowned. Her fingers closed mechanically upon the old brocade cushion by her side. Old! Why had he said that word? Oh – she was a fool to bother with him. Impatiently she drew herself up, and looked into the flagging, languid fire.

  ‘You’re terribly complimentary.’

  ‘Darling. For God’s sake don’t be angry.’

  ‘Angry?’ She laughed. ‘Am I being angry?’

  It was exquisite to see the pain which this sudden change of tone caused him.

  ‘I’m such a fool. It’s because I feel so – so fearfully about it all.’

  ‘Really?’

  Oh! the chill in her voice. He turned away, and studied the carpet. There were lots of silken shapes on the carpet. Roses and formal flowers and crimson circles. Crimson circles and formal flowers and roses. Damned funny. Oh – so funny! His forehead lifted itself, and something outside him seemed to twist his mouth into a smile – then, he realized that he was being theatrical and absurd. He got up and walked to the window.