by Nick Salaman
‘You Margot?’
‘Yes, Mr Merriman.’
‘Get out.’
‘What?’
‘You heard me. You run down me. I’ll run-down you.’
‘R … run down?’
‘Don’t play the innocent with me. Get out.’
‘Please, Mr Merriman. I don’t understand.’ Despite her previous bravado, Margot was obviously frightened and distressed. She needed the job, it seemed.
‘You called my guests, what was it? Silly old farts pretending to be important people?’
‘No, I…’ She looked wildly at Marie, wondering how he could have known.
‘No,’ said Mr Merriman, ‘she didn’t tell me. It’s no good looking at her. Come here.’
Margot hesitated, then advanced to the desk. She looked small and vulnerable beside the great purple symbol of authority.
‘Here,’ growled Mr Merriman, basso profundo, motioning her beside him.
She moved nearer. There was a pause. None of the girls moved. Marie stole a glance at Madeleine who was standing behind them with her eyes fixed devotedly on the master. The wolfhound woke up and gave two enormous barks as if echoing its master. Margot lifted an arm as she ducked involuntarily to protect herself and one of her breasts fell out.
Mr Merriman gazed on her with satisfaction as she struggled to replace it and then ran sobbing from the room.
‘Now,’ said Mr Merriman, suddenly in a good humour and addressing himself to the rest of them, ‘it’s my pleasure to welcome you all to another Pilgrim’s Piece Weekend. Our guests include Hamish Tysoe, the broadcaster and celebrity; Sheikh Mustapha el Saba of the Emirates; Professor Ivan Presscott of Reading University; Lord Ettenwater; Bruce Kahn, the international stock exchange guru; one of the under-secretaries at the US Defence Department, over here on a visit, Josh Piecowicz and, last but not least, a very good friend of mine, Dicky Henshaw of the The Other Judas Charity Trust…’
Marie knew that name, though she couldn’t remember why. Perhaps she should be careful with Tricky Dicky. Merriman, still speaking, his eye roving round his audience and his girls like a helicopter searching for low life, suddenly fixed his gaze on her as though his sensors had registered a misfit.
‘…they are all very, very seriously wonderful people, and I want you to make them feel just very much at home. You will find your dinner partners on the table by the photographs. Marie…’
‘Yes, Mr Merriman.’
‘Since this is your first visit with us, I want you to use your eyes, take the place in, don’t miss a trick and stay very close to Madeleine and me. You will be sitting on my right at dinner.’
Marie saw Madeleine go white and sway slightly at this last piece of information. She had doubtless been hoping for the place of honour herself, especially after her useful titbit about Margot’s indiscretion.
‘Oh, right.’
‘She’s a gas, that one,’ said Mr Merriman. ‘I tell her she’s sitting next to me at dinner and she says “Oh right”. Can you beat it? Can you beat that, Madeleine?’
From the look on her face, Madeleine would not simply have liked to beat it, she’d have liked to lash it within an inch of its life and then submerge it in salt water. But she said nothing. It was the only way with Mr Merriman.
***
Marie found Margot touching up her face in her cubicle. She was still in her Merrymaid dress.
‘Aren’t you going then?’ she asked. ‘I thought he’d told you to leave.’
‘Good God, no. He loves that barking bit. He practically had an orgasm when I popped out. He’ll do it to you one day. He does it to everyone. Just cry a bit and make sure the tit comes out, otherwise he’s really cross. He must have caught a complex as a baby. You wait till I catch that bitch Madeleine. She heard me when I was talking to you. She’s always creeping about.’
‘Ah.’
‘You’re right. I’d better watch it. You can’t play the party popper trick too often.’
Somewhere down in the house a gong sounded twice.
‘That’s the drinks gong. Come on, we’re on parade.’
Margot led Marie down the corridor to a small door which opened on to one of the main landings of the house. As they descended the great staircase together, Marie was aware of the grey-haired man in the panelled hall peering attentively at their legs. He stepped forward as she approached ground level, and introduced himself with outstretched hand.
‘Hello,’ he said, smiling in a clenched sort of way and showing tobacco-browned teeth. ‘I’m Ivan Presscott. And you are…?’
‘Margot,’ said Margot, stepping forward trimly. (The costume evoked adjectives likes ‘trimly’. ‘Pertly’ was another favoured by the monthly Merrymaid magazine which was the flagship of the Merrymaid enterprise, featuring Merrymaid of the month amid other buxom undertakings.)
‘Ah, Margot. I see,’ said Presscott professionally, as if she had introduced a subject which prompted the greatest speculation, ‘Margot. Yes. Very well. Mmmm. Margot.’
He ‘mm’ed and ‘Margot’ed a bit more and Marie was just about to pass on towards the half-open door through which emanated sounds of conversation interspersed with the chinking of glasses when the Professor spun round and stopped her with a yellow-fingered hand on her shoulder.
‘Not so fast, girlie,’ he said.
Marie turned. ‘Yes?’
‘I want to know your name.’
‘Marie,’ she said.
‘Oh that’s very nice. Marie. How very nice that sounds. But don’t you think “Marie, Professor” would sound even nicer?’
‘Marie, Professor,’ said Marie.
‘That’s much better. That’s ever so much better. Because that is my title. I am Professor of Applied Psychology … you have heard of applied psychology? That is the subject in which I profess to be an authority. Professor Presscott from Reading. I am more psychotherapist than behaviourist but my door is always open. Reading is the city mainly built on biscuits – and which houses the university in which I pursue my chosen subject which happens to be…’
‘Applied psychology,’ said Margot. ‘Sounds fascinating. Terrific.’
‘You are a bright girl,’ said the Professor as he led the way into the drawing-room. ‘Your friend seems rather dull.’
The room was full of very important people trying not to look down the Merrymaids’ dress-tops.
***
Margot went on with the Professor and joined a group near the fire, but Marie lingered behind, looking, for want of anything else, at the furnishing of the room. It seemed to be well done. There was no purple here: green brocade curtains, green-covered sofas and chairs, a huge Persian carpet lying on polished wood; paintings on the walls, good ones, probably of the Norwich School – yes, she was sure there was a Crome and on the far wall a couple of undoubted Boningtons. There was what looked like a Roubiliac bust on a plinth beside the window; a gilt framed looking glass; some famille rose vases; an Adam fireplace and a Steinway grand piano.
Her art teacher had been something of an authority on fine art and had taught her well. Marie was conscious that in happier times she would have examined all these treasures more closely. She now merely registered them without great pleasure or surprise. They were good things. They happened to be there. She knew that she should do something about her listless attitude – it couldn’t be good to drift along like this – but try as she might she could find no energy, no hope. It was as if much of her mind had been shut up like a holiday house, with dustsheets, waiting for the moment, if it ever came, when someone would draw the blinds and let the sunlight in again. Perhaps, she thought to herself, perhaps this is what a breakdown’s like after all. Someone at school, a girl called Loretta, had suddenly started screaming in chapel one day. The nuns had hustled her away, and told the girls later that she had had a breakdown. They had talked earnestly about it afterwards. Breakdown was such a dramatic word – as if you suddenly wouldn’t work any more, like the school
bus, with a piston sticking out through your head. This dullness of hers, Marie thought, this wasn’t a bit dramatic. But then dullness couldn’t be dramatic, could it, unless you were someone like Dryden or Pope: ‘The midwife laid her hand on his thick skull, with this prophetic blessing: “Be thou dull”’ – That was dramatic. And yes, indeed, that was what had happened to her. The blessing – like her father’s disgrace – had simply got through to her rather late.
She felt a hand falling upon her now, not upon her skull, but upon her shoulder. It made her breasts wobble and she steadied herself apprehensively. ‘A penny for them,’ said a practised voice, mellow with the self-pleasure of a professional communicator. ‘You are lost in thought. I had been hoping to attract your attention.’
‘Oh,’ said Marie. She looked up and saw a youngish-oldish man with that peculiar gloss on his face that comes from public exposure.
‘You have probably seen me on television,’ said the man. ‘You watch Who’s the Chump?’
‘No,’ said Marie.
‘You must be the only person in this room who doesn’t.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Marie.
‘Don’t be sorry. It’s rather refreshing. I’m Hamish Tysoe.’ The man held out his hand.
Marie shook it. It was rather disingenuous making such a polite and formal gesture with one’s breasts surging around like buoys in a swell. ‘My name’s Marie,’ she replied.
‘You’re new here, aren’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Thought so. What are you doing here? You somehow don’t look the sort.’
‘The sort of what?’
‘The sort of Merrymaid one usually finds here.’
‘Oh.’
‘Not that it’s not charming to find you here,’ he added quickly, thinking that she might be offended. ‘It’s most particularly absolutely spiffingly charming.’
He used words like ‘spiffingly’ a great deal in his programme. It encouraged contestants to be even more chumpish than they were normally.
‘Thank you,’ said Marie. ‘But it doesn’t matter.’
‘Doesn’t matter?’
‘I wasn’t offended.’
‘Ah.’
A footman dressed like a flunkey came up with champagne. Hamish Tysoe sipped thoughtfully.
‘I’m in the Summoner’s Room,’ he said at length.
‘Summoner’s?’
‘All the bedrooms here are named after characters from the Canterbury Tales. You mean you didn’t know? Pilgrim’s Piece you see.’
‘I see.’
‘Last time I was in the Nun’s Priest’s Room. But this time it’s the Summoner.’
‘He had a fyr-red cherubinne’s face,’ said Marie, dully.
‘Capital,’ said Hamish Tysoe. ‘Absolutely ripping.’
He fell about, slapping himself on the thigh, as if she’d said the funniest thing in the world. One or two of the other guests looked over, curiously.
‘Well, I must say,’ he spluttered at last, wiping his eyes, ‘I didn’t expect to hear Chaucer tonight. Not from a Merrymaid. I expect you’d tell me the names of the two heroes in The Knight’s Tale if I asked.’
‘Arcite and Palamon,’ said Marie, without enthusiasm.
English Literature had been taught religiously at the convent, although The Miller’s Tale had been side-stepped.
Tysoe went into an ecstasy of thigh-slapping.
‘What’s up, Hamish?’ enquired Mr Merriman.
‘This girl of yours,’ said Tysoe, wiping his eyes, ‘this girl of yours actually has some frontal lobes.’
‘I know that,’ said Merriman, slightly testily. ‘That’s why she’s a Merrymaid. We pick ’em for their frontal lobes.’
‘Lobes, Merriman … brainbox lobes, not globes. Although the globes are great too.’
‘Sure, sure,’ said Merriman, smiling broadly now, ‘that’s the way we pick ’em. That’s what sets Merrymaids apart. Personality, brains, lobes, globes … that’s our pecking order. Isn’t that so, Madeleine?’
‘Oh definitely, Mr Merriman.’
The gong for dinner sounded.
‘Would you like to take my arm, Marie?’ said Mr Merriman as though bestowing the ultimate benefit.
‘Oh, right,’ said Marie.
‘Doesn’t that kill you?’ said Mr Merriman to the company in general. ‘I say to her would you like to take my arm, and she says “oh, right”!’
Everyone laughed except Madeleine who was half-pleased at her latest recruit’s success, half-sick at being denied the longed-for favour.
‘Remember,’ said Tysoe in Marie’s ear as they went in to dinner, ‘Summoner. I’ll summon ya.’
‘Oh, right,’ said Marie.
Tysoe doubled up with laughter. It was strange how the phrase seemed to have that effect on people. What she really wanted to do was identify Dicky Henshaw and find out what he and the charity were about, but so far, because of these strange media and banking baboons, she’d had no opportunity. Margot had told her ‘the real fun’ started after dinner. Perhaps her opportunity would come then.
***
The dining room was, in its way, as well-appointed as the drawing room. There was a Reynolds on the wall behind the Sheraton sideboard, flanked by a couple of Lawrences – each one a portrait of a lovely woman. There was a voluptuous Etty nude over the mantelpiece.
The table itself was long, enticingly caparisoned with white linen and sparkling silver, like a bride for her spouse, and adorned with a pair of exquisite Georgian candlesticks whose light was thrown back a thousand times by three different sizes of Waterford crystal beside each place.
‘You sit here,’ commanded Mr Merriman, ‘beside my very good friend Dicky Henshaw.’
Now that was more like it, Marie thought. She turned to her right and was greeted by a thousand-watt smile. Dicky Henshaw was a sleek man in his late forties with dark hair, tanned face and very white teeth.
‘Hi,’ said a grizzled man inclining to portliness who was drawing out a chair opposite her. ‘Josh Piecowicz.’ He had a look both of cunning and authority about him that Marie had seen before on a portrait of a sixteenth century pope by Lorenzo Lotto.
‘How do you do,’ said Marie.
‘Doesn’t that fold you up?’ said Josh Piecowicz.
‘Sure does,’ smiled Dicky Henshaw. ‘I thought style had gone out the window till I came to Britain.’
‘But in a Merrymaid, for chrissakes?’
‘Why not in a Merrymaid?’ rejoined Mr Merriman. ‘I would have said you would expect it in a Merrymaid.’
‘Yeah, I reckon you would say that,’ observed Mr Piecowicz, wryly.
‘Oh really, Mr Merriman, this is awfully nice wine,’ said Merrymaid Trisha, a stunningly pretty redhead from Chelmsford, with a 40B bust and a brain the size of a mustard-spoon, who was sitting next to Piecowicz. She would show the little newcomer that she wasn’t the only one with a bit of style. She crooked her little finger round the Waterford stem and sipped her Corton-Charlmagne, pouting with what she considered ladylike refinement. You could see Piecowicz wishing he had a Waterford penis. He turned to her, transparent with lust.
Henshaw, however, was made of suaver stuff. Marie had noticed that, almost alone among the men, he didn’t seem interested in bosoms.
‘I understand you’re from Scotland,’ he said to her.
Merriman shot him a glance that Marie intercepted. Who had told him that? She was sure she hadn’t mentioned to anyone where she came from. It was the kind of question Merrymaids (UK) Ltd did not ask. But there was no point in denying it. She did not have the energy.
‘Och aye,’ she said.
‘Beautiful country,’ he said. ‘We have offices in Glasgow and Aberdeen, of course.’
‘Of course,’ said Marie. Smoked salmon had arrived and she pushed it listlessly around her plate.
‘Sometimes our chairman goes there. He says it’s business but I reckon it’s the fishing.’
; ‘Fish?’
‘What you’re eating now.’
‘Oh. Salmon.’
‘King of fish, Marie. You can’t say “oh, salmon”. Not of salmon out of the Spey.’
‘Oh. Right.’
‘I like your attitude, Marie. You’re really relaxed.’
‘Oh?’
‘I’m sleeping in the Pardoner’s Room. I hope you’ll come round later for a chat.’
‘Ah. Well…’
‘If you ever felt like moving on…’ he lowered his voice so that Merriman, who was being buttonholed by Madeleine, couldn’t hear. ‘If you ever felt like moving on from here, we could maybe find you a job.’
‘In Glasgow?’
‘If you like.’
‘I don’t think so, thank you.’
‘In the States, then.’
‘Ah.’
Even in apathy, she could see there might be some advantage in going to America. It would be a fresh start. With the Aunts’ name, her old name, of Sinclair, no one would connect her with her father and the taint of Lavell. She leant towards the man with renewed attention
‘Think about it,’ said Henshaw.
‘Oh, I will. Right. Certainly. I should like that.’
