“You’re a crafty devil, Tim!” He laughed. “I’ll tell you something — which you know yourself. Logan’s twice as good at her job as you are, and you’re twice as good at handling people. Because why? Because Logan’s got a conscience, and I’m not sure if you know how to spell it.”
“Look here, Remmy; are you trying to be offensive?” For once, to his astonishment, she seemed to resent his badinage. She faced him squarely, resting the wrist of the hand that held the cigar on the edge of the table, while the other tightened on her wineglass. “Because I’m not dependent on you, you know, or anybody else. I can stand on my own feet. And I don’t need to put up with a line of talk I don’t care for from you or the King of England, if it comes to that.”
“Oh, come, come!” he rallied her, a little put out by her reception of his joke. “Where’s your sense of humor? What I’ve always liked about you, Tim, is your honesty. You’ve never put on an act, you’ve never pretended to be anything but exactly what you are. Underneath this business of being all things to all people you’ve been as true to yourself as Logan has been in her different way. You’re a realist; you’ve got no bunkum about yourself or your work, and up to tonight you’ve been as ready to laugh at yourself as at anyone else. I like you, Timson, and I’m damned if I’ll have you turning pettish on me when I treat you to a bit of your own brand of plain speaking!”
She glared at him; then suddenly she flung back her head and laughed in the full-throated, careless fashion that made her so much less than her age. He sat enjoying her healthy, earthy laughter — laughter of an Elizabethan innkeeper’s wife, laughter of Mistress Quickly, laughter of a ripe, comfortable daughter of joy, retired and living at ease on her savings; laughter which, he was ready to stake his soul, her patients never heard — or the two little girls in Plymouth Street. Heads were lifted, and smiles dawned faintly on faces turned in their direction; and Remington, who would have been furiously mortified if his wife had attracted so much attention in one of the grillrooms they frequented, was pleased by it. For there was that in Bell’s laughter which blew away the chaff of petty convention and left the rich residue of grain mellowed by the sun of experience.
“It’s a good thing everybody doesn’t know me as you do! But look here, Remmy” — she sobered herself — “it’s all very well saying I’ve got no conscience. I fit my conduct to my company, and I may say you’ve sent me a nice bunch of crooks in your time!”
He waived this, as of no consequence.
“Listen to me. Would there be anything against Logan’s and you’re working together again?”
She put her head on one side.
“That’s for her to answer, not me. If Alice thinks I played her a dirty trick I don’t suppose she’d want to set up in partnership. Come to that, I don’t know that I want to myself. I’ve got my connection now, and I don’t see what I’d gain by working in with someone else.”
“That’s not the idea ... Bring some more coffee,” he said to the waiter who hovered about a profitable customer, “and then let us alone ... What’s the job worth to you at present, Tim?”
She was evasive, paying more apparent attention to the ash on her cigar than to his question.
“Oh — I don’t know. It’s good enough, for me.”
“I suppose you’re making a pile?” If she says she is, she’s a liar, he was thinking. Like all crazes, the demand for massage went in waves. Just now there was a rush on electrical treatments; the L.C.C., as he had foreseen, had brought out its license, although that, to the disgust of the medical profession, was not aimed at proficiency, being merely a measure of prevention against the use of so-called massage establishments for immoral purposes. Chromium fittings, vibratory apparatus, infrared and ultraviolet were ousting the old-fashioned hand massage; Bell herself had been obliged to invest in a hand battery for the benefit of a few patients who, not inclined to go the whole way in exploitation of the new methods, wanted to add a fillip to their treatments; but he knew she had lost several well-paying patients — not enough, perhaps, to give reason for immediate anxiety, but a trickle is known to grow into a flood, and he had a shrewd suspicion that the tide was running out for Bell and her kind. Ridiculous, of course; for the hand would always be able to achieve many things that are beyond the machine. It had also come to his ears that Bell had been making inquiries about the cost of the installation of electrical apparatus, and that she had visited at least one agent who dealt in consulting rooms in the West End. It sounded as if she was at least considering the establishment of a clinic, which would let her in for a pretty sum and mean the sinking of a good part of the capital she must have acquired. Still, she could probably afford it ... although it would definitely mean taking in a partner who understood work of which Bell had neither experience nor knowledge.
“What are you getting at, Remmy?” Trust her not to give herself away!
He had settled himself comfortably into his chair; the cigar, the coffee, the brandy had produced the aura of luxury which increased his confidence and which he knew appealed also to Bell.
“I’ve been thinking for some time of setting up a home for the treatment of neurological cases. My main reason for doing so is that I want to be able to follow experiments under conditions of my own choosing, instead of having to try them on patients in their own homes. It’s impossible to keep a dossier on cases of this sort unless you have the patient under your control; and in the ordinary nursing home, even more so in the hospitals, you can’t establish the conditions which I happen to think are necessary for this kind of work.”
“Well, that sounds a good idea. There’s always money in a nursing home,” said Bell.
“Damnation, I’m not a philanthropist!” He could not help laughing. “Of course there’s money in it — a gold mine. You want the right house — not in this part, with traffic surging up and down all day and half the night; you want the amenities of a first-class hotel with the discipline of a clinic — those, of course, are the trimmings. The rest is my business and, possibly, Logan’s. I won’t bother you with it; you’re such a lazy slut, you wouldn’t know half of what I was talking about!”
“Cut the cackle!” But this was the way to talk to Bell; this suited her. She was smiling now, settled, attentive.
“To cut it short — my idea’s to form a limited company, with three or four shareholders —”
“You’re not inviting me to be a shareholder, by any chance?”
“Why not? It’s money for jam.”
“Because I haven’t got a bean in the world,” she answered, so lightly that for a moment he believed her.
“Tscha! Borrow it.”
“Where from?”
“What does it matter?” This was time-wasting; his voice was impatient. “Go to the loan sharks — I can give you an address — I’ve done it myself, several times.”
“Why, Remmy,” said Bell naively, “I thought your wife had money.”
“So she has; oodles. She’s putting up the bulk of the capital. But I’d like to let you in on the ground floor, Tim, because, personal matters apart, I think you’d be an asset to us, and if you have a stake in the business you’re more likely to take it seriously!”
“M’m. To borrow money you’ve got to have securities.” She was grave enough now.
“Well, you can manage that, surely? You must have investments, scrip of some sort; you’ve been making plenty of money in the last few years.”
She shook her head.
“No, I’ve not put away anything — much,” she admitted.
“What the devil have you been doing with it? I thought you were a business woman!” he mocked her.
“I don’t know anything about the markets, and I’m not going to be a pigeon for the brokers!” she flashed at him.
He grunted.
“I suppose I’ll have to find someone to advise you. Do you mean to say you’ve put all your earnings in the bank?”
“Good gracious, Remmy, you talk as if I
was a millionairess! What do you suppose I’ve got left to put in the bank when I’ve kept two children in first-class boarding schools since 1913 and run a house with a housekeeper for the last two years? Never mind all that. What’s it about Alice? Where does she come in?”
“She comes in, I hope, as matron; I’d have liked her to be a shareholder, but she says, like you, that she has nothing to invest. In the case of Logan, it’s probable; but as for you — houses and schools taken into consideration — I’m damned if I know what you’ve been doing with your ill-gotten gains, Tim, that you can’t raise a few hundred to put into something that will provide you with an income for the rest of your life!”
“I dare say you are. Damned, I mean,” she answered coolly.
“You must have been making most of two thousand pounds for the last couple of years,” he persisted.
“Look here, Remmy; it’s no business of yours. But since you’re so curious — I’ve had plenty of calls on my purse, outside of those of the children.” She sounded almost sheepish.
“Well, well!” His surprise was genuine. “I certainly had you wrong, Tim. I never imagined you were so soft-headed as to indulge in promiscuous charity.”
“Charity hell.” She sat scowling through the smoke of the cigar which she held between the first and second fingers of her strong left hand. He glanced at the hand: square, well kept, typical of the abounding vitality of the woman. “If you want to know the truth — I’ve got brothers, and they’ve got families.”
“Blood thicker than water; is that it?”
“Blood my foot. They’re just a set of no-good small-timers, and I don’t care if I never see any of them again. I don’t want them! I won’t have them about me!” She spoke with unwonted violence. “And I’ve bought ‘em off, d’you see? Oh, dear me, yes! When I hadn’t a penny to call my own I was the dog’s body to the lot of them. They thought they could wipe their feet on me. There was another tune when I started to have a bit of success and showed myself independent of them. Talk about the whirligig of time! Don’t get this wrong, Remmy.” She leaned her deep bosom against the table and looked directly into Remington’s eyes, with a curious, youthful candor in her own. “I’ve got no sort of bitterness about Stan and Albert and Ozzy. I never wanted to humiliate them or anything of that kind. But I was glad when the time came for me to help them. It gave me back my pride and my freedom. Take my tip, Remmy: there’s no way of getting rid of people like lending ‘em money!” There was no trace of bitterness in her rich laugh.
“I expect you’re right. I’ve done more borrowing than lending in my life, I’m afraid.” Now what possessed him to say that? It was not the kind of admission expected from a successful Harley Street man. But there was something in her plain honesty that forced honesty from one in return. All the same, his eyes slid sideways, wondering if he had spoken a little loudly.
“Are you short now?” She took him up quickly.
“Are you going to offer me a loan?” he mocked her.
“Oh, I dare say I could raise an odd hundred —”
“Don’t be a fool! You’re the last person I would rook if I got in a jam.”
“And don’t you make any mistake: I don’t go round looking for somebody to rook me. You’ve been a good friend to me, Remmy; you gave me my start, and I don’t forget my debts.”
“Gammon. Let’s have some more brandy, shall we?” He advanced the bottle toward her glass, which she covered with the palm of her hand.
“Hold on. Let’s get this finished first. Leave out the question of the shares; I can’t say any more about that for the present. What else do you want out of me?”
“I don’t know if it’s worth discussing. The proposition I was going to put to you doesn’t mean much unless you’ve got a financial interest in the venture as a whole.” He hoped, by his assumption of indifference, to rouse her curiosity, and knew he had succeeded when, after an interval of lip biting, she offered:
“Well — mind, I can’t promise anything. But I suppose I might raise a private loan.”
“I should have thought it would be easy. You’re in Lois Thesiger’s pocket, aren’t you? And Pixie Carpenter thinks you’re one of the Seven Wonders. You’ve got a nice rich connection, and I bet one of them would be quite ready to stake you to a proposition like this.”
“That’s not my line of country.” She shook her head. “No — I’ve got one or two other things in my mind; I’ll have to think them over and see what can be done ... Now what’s the other thing you’ve got on your mind?”
“Well, I’d like to have you on the staff of course. That’s what I’m getting at, really; the shares are a side issue.”
“But I couldn’t do that, Remmy! What? Live in? And who’s to look after the girls?”
“No, I don’t mean that. We’d have to see how it worked out; either a part of each day or a couple of full days a week. It would depend on the cases of course. You’d get a retainer and a percentage of the profits —”
“You mean I wouldn’t get the whole of my fee? What I charge private patients?”
“That wouldn’t be economic, would it? That’s why I say that, apart from holding shares, the proposition is hardly worth considering from your point of view. Except that you’d have a settled income instead of a fluctuating one; some people would prefer that ... You’re so much of a gambler that it probably doesn’t appeal to you.”
“Well, you don’t expect me to jump at it, do you?” she said after a further pause for reflection.
“Not at all. You had better come round one evening and I’ll show you some figures; they might help to decide you.” He added, “There’s another consideration. You’ve said you’re beginning to find the work heavy; well, this may be easier. It will probably mean free times, which won’t tie you to the nursing home. You were thinking of launching out in a bigger way, anyhow, weren’t you?”
“How did you hear about that?” she shot at him.
“Oh, I’ve got my spies. It’s not my business to advise you, but I think it would be the opinion of most people that mine’s the better offer. It need not take more than half the capital you’ll need if you set up on your own; you’ll have no overhead and no responsibilities outside your actual work. I should think that, after the first two or three years, the profits will be equal; eventually they should be considerably larger. And you will still be in touch with your private connection —”
“All right, I’ll think it over.” She looked at the plain gold watch, on its broad leather strap, which she wore on her left wrist. “I must be off; Kathleen’s a hellion about not going to bed unless I’m in.” She turned to thank the waiter who hurried forward to help her into her coat — thanking him as a human being, not as a servant; the reflection of her overflowing good-fellowship, which took no account of class, was on the man’s face as he asked:
“Would you like a taxi, madam?”
“If you don’t mind dropping me first” — Remington interrupted her answer to the man — “I’ll send you home in the car; unless, of course, something’s come in while we were dining.”
“Don’t you bother.” She gave her cheerful, accomplice’s wink to the waiter, who hurried in search of the commissionaire. “And by the way: about my professional call on you — thank you for nothing!” He chuckled.
“You can give yourself a hypodermic — I’ll send along some ampoules, and next time you’re in we’ll have another look at you. Not that there’s a thing the matter with you, except that you need a rest. Stop a minute.” He took out his diary, and Bell, glancing over his shoulder, grimaced at the blackened pages.
“Remember when it was an adventure to cycle over to the Red Lion for a cut off the Sunday joint?”
“Those were good days” — absently, fingering the pages; unconsciously the Harley Street note had crept back into his voice, the note of the present, patronizing the past. “What a nuisance: I don’t seem to have an evening until the twenty-seventh — nearly three weeks. Th
at suit you?”
“Leave it,” said Bell carelessly, buttoning up her coat. “I’ll give you a blow on the phone, and we’ll fix up a quarter of an hour somewhere. And thank you for my good dinner, Remmy.”
Oh, God, thought Bell as the taxi bore her away to the outer fastnesses of Chelsea: I’m tired, tired, tired., ...
Chapter III
“I DON’T KNOW WHY I’ve got in the habit of looking at myself lately.” She pressed a loose puff a little closer above her ear. I was wrong about this dress, she reflected. Pink’s for the young. I believe I’m beginning to look my age. With which, defiantly, she fixed a bright smile on her mouth and looked across the room at her companion.
“Well!” Even in her own uncritical ears her voice struck a slightly too determined note of cheerfulness. “What’s the news? What have you got to tell me, after all these weeks?”
Richard felt his own smile congeal. It was so long since he had had a tête-à-tête with Bell, he felt he had lost the art of it. The flow of dry ribaldries, the “back answers” which he had gradually acquired as part of their conversational currency, seemed for the present to have dried up at their source. He smiled apologetically, leaning forward to help himself from the plate she advanced toward his elbow.
“I never eat with my tea, excepting when I come to see you!” Perhaps the compliment would tide over his social shortcomings. “News? I’m afraid I haven’t a thing; you’re the one for the news, Bell — considering how you get out and about!”
“Pooh! You’re not interested in bedroom chitchat!” she rallied him.
“It doesn’t come much my way; I should think it’s — fascinating!” He tried to meet her on her own grounds of levity.
“Well, let me see. You know Lois Thesiger is going to be married again?”
“Solness? Yes, she’s brought it off this time. I suppose that means a wedding present. What would she like, Bell? You know her tastes better than I.”
“I think she’d like anything — so long as it’s expensive — and difficult to get.” From anyone else, he thought, that would be purely malicious; from Bell it’s no more than a candid appreciation of Lois’s tastes. He joined in her laughter.
Bell Timson Page 18
