“I don’t think you really care about me,” she said, “and I believe I have fallen in love with someone else.”
“I care about you far more than you know and far more than he does, whoever he may be,” I replied, and the odd thing is that it was entirely true about how much I cared. “Who is he, anyway?”
“Why should I tell you who he is?”
“No reason at all. Please forget about him. I love you very much.”
“He’s kinder than you.”
“You don’t know him as well as you know me.”
“He’s much more understanding.”
“You wouldn’t really like to be understood completely.”
“He needs me more.”
“That’s absurd and impossible.”
“He’s much better in bed, Richard.”
And so on and so forth; all the usual tags, so hurtful and yet so meaningless. Clarinda failed to make me chuckle on that occasion.
I daresay that Clarinda was longing to tell me who the other person was, because one usually is; but there was no reason why it should have occurred to me that the person was Ronnie. One had hardly thought of Ronnie as God’s gift to women, as will have been gathered. That had been the whole point about Ronnie.
I only realised when I came upon the two of them at a table in Romulo’s Restaurant, off Charlotte Street (very slightly off). It was a place that Ronnie would never even have heard of but for my talking about it. I was quite certain of that, and the knowledge went a considerable distance to make matters even worse.
It was at least two or three weeks after Clarinda had decided to dispense with me. I am never inclined to press any woman beyond a certain point, and of course it is always lethal to attempt any kind of serious appeal or entreaty, especially when the woman is much richer than oneself, as in the present case.
Now I was with a girl who had the odd name of Aster. I mean that it was her Christian name. Aster had a fringe and a very pretty shape. I was doing my best to feel fonder of Aster than I really was, but of course Clarinda was still for me the real and only thing.
Clarinda was wearing a very thin, very high-necked sweater, which I had never seen before, I very much like women in thin, high-necked sweaters, and I wondered whether she had bought this one because of me, before deciding to take up with someone else. She seemed pale, and Ronnie still seemed pale too, though he had formerly been rather pinkish for most of the time, as nervous people so often are. Yes, I had time to remember my final perception or fancy before my bolt from the Z― estab-lishment.
“What on earth’s the matter?” asked Aster. She knew neither Ronnie nor Clarinda. One likes to keep one’s girls well separated; and not least from one’s day-to-day work.
Aster even clutched my hand. In certain ways, she was quite probably a nicer girl than Clarinda, all the time.
“It’s just someone I know and don’t wish to meet.” I couldn’t hiss in her ear. I had almost to bawl, owing to the general din.
“Shall we go somewhere else?” asked Aster; nice again, because she really meant it, which many girls would not, but quite the contrary.
“It’s not as bad as that,” I replied, trying to heave myself into shape after the shock. “We’ll try for that table in the far corner.” It was most unusual at Romulo’s that there should be an empty table anywhere, let alone in the far corner.
Of course I was bound to encounter Clarinda again and again. In my experience girls at such times usually put forward a special brand of glazed small talk. I simply had to become used to the situation; as on divers previous occasions. I took a reasonable pride in rising above at least the tactical difficulties.
As for Ronnie Cassell, I had the idea that by seating myself in the corner, I could stare at him implacably for most of the evening. Thus might I discomfort him, haunt him, break him down, and submit him to Clarinda’s contempt. In any case, it was not natural that she, of all people, should find anything much in him, of all people.
Properly, Aster should no doubt have been offered the corner seat for herself, but I doubt whether at that moment the idea so much as occurred to me. I ordered us a couple of Camparis, which was really beyond my then standard of living. Romulo’s, as more or less everyone knows, is not an expensive place. It had once been a haunt of bohemia, or so people said. Now there was no longer a bohemia, Romulo’s was almost always packed to the doors with a very mixed crowd indeed. I repeat that Aster and I were incredibly lucky to get that desirable corner table. I afterwards thought there might have been something peculiar about our getting it. Indeed, I believe I thought so immediately.
The order for the Camparis was taken at once, and they appeared on the instant; both of which things at Romulo’s were extremely unusual too. Possibly the Fates had relented to the extent of providing Aster and me with a stimulant; which was likely to be needed in both our cases, though for different reasons. Certainly, I remember, we had the usual difficulty in even placing any further order. I ought by then to have been known at Romulo’s, and perhaps I was; but one cannot always be certain what effect that has. Possibly I was not then taken as seriously as I took myself.
“Which person is it?” asked Aster, who sat against the wall to my right. There was only one other chair at the table, so that there were limits to the crowding-in that could be attempted. It was easily the best table in the room.
Ronnie and Clarinda had managed to annex one of the very few tables for two. I wondered how Ronnie of all people could possibly have achieved this. There was very little booking in advance at Romulo’s. It was generally agreed to be a waste of time. Ronnie simply did not command the muscle needed.
The two of them were seated not facing one another, but at right angles, like Aster and me; so that both of them were in my line of sight, Ronnie’s full, strangely pale face, and Clarinda’s blanched left cheek. How in such a throng could there have been a line of sight in any case; across two thirds of the more or less square room? I do not know. One sometimes encounters such things when one is in an exalted state, as I then was.
I replied to Aster. “It’s a chap in the office whom I don’t like. Fortunately, he doesn’t work with me.”
“He’s in a different department?”
“That’s somewhat too large a word.”
“How did you manage to quarrel, then?”
“We haven’t quarrelled. I just don’t like him.”
“The reason why you cannot tell?”
“Exactly. Let’s talk about something else.”
“All right. But you might point him out to me, first. Then I shall take care not to look at him.”
I glanced at her. It was of course Clarinda and not Ronnie who was in my thoughts every minute of the time.
“Come on,” said Aster, taking a determined quaff of her Campari. “Which man is he?”
“The one with the very pale face.”
It was significant that in that packed room I needed to define no further. It could hardly have been more significant.
“With the plain girl who’s very pale too?” asked Aster.
“That’s the one,” I said. “But I don’t think the girl’s particularly plain.”
“They both look like ―,” said Aster, and then stopped, seeming to remember something; perhaps merely her manners.
“Yes,” I said. “They probably do. I think so.”
Aster said not one word more on the subject, and we succeeded, at least marginally, in chattering off and on about other things. It was not a place in which to attempt silent communion, or anything of that kind. Moreover, the difficulty in obtaining one’s food and drink diminished any peace of mind one might hope for.
I settled myself to glowering steadily at Ronnie down the line of sight so conveniently provided by Fortune for the purpose. Another odd thing was that while Aster and I were dutifully discoursing, Ronnie and Clarinda seemed to me at no time to be saying anything at all to one another. Furthermore, I soon realised that they were not eve
n pre-occupied with eating and drinking; though that might obviously have been, as in our case, owing to the difficulty in obtaining proper service in any but the most costly restaurants. Hazards of that kind would serve Ronnie right, I reflected. All that seemed to be happening between the two of them was that every now and then Ronnie swayed across towards Clarinda as if about to kiss her; but he never did quite kiss her. I could not only see that for myself, but most positively sense it too, as one can, even though not always right through a congested mass of people.
Aster was describing her work in a stockbrokers’ office. I knew the place. It was quite near the office of Bream & Ladywell. In fact, I had first met Aster at a telephone box half way between the two.
She went on about her resentment at being debarred, as a woman, from herself treading the floor of the house. Something of value might, I thought, as I sat watching Ronnie and Clarinda, none the less be sieved like gold dust from Aster’s gentle indignation. I had not then learned that nothing of material value can ever be extracted by outsiders from the remarks even of Stock Exchange members, let alone from the remarks of their girl employees. Shortly after that, Aster, in fact, left the stockbroking firm and began to work in a shop in W.1 that sold very expensive diaries and blotters.
I soon found that there was something monotonous, even mesmeric, in just staring at Ronnie and Clarinda, while keeping my end up in conversation with Aster. The muscles of my neck and shoulders were rigidifying, so that soon I might look much as Ronnie was looking. Almost certainly, I was not doing at all well at blighting Ronnie and sending him berserk. It was more as if he were blighting me. My eye did not feel evil beyond what was natural and normal in the circumstances. I began to doubt whether Ronnie, swaying about as he was like some sort of plant or insect, even knew I was there. It was very easy for me to pay more attention to Aster and less to my mission. It was simpler to turn as best I could towards Aster and watch her picking eagerly at the prawned avocado she had selected and which had at last been vouchsafed. I found it reasonably pleasant to look at Aster in any case, whose eyes were almost lost beneath her pendant hair-style. They were pretty green eyes, and a nice shape. Moreover, she was wearing the greenest of dresses. I like green dresses with green eyes.
“Not all the girls feel the same about it,” said Aster. “Something might be done about it if they did.”
“It’s like that everywhere,” I responded encouragingly.
“It’s the trouble with women all the time,” said Aster.
“Even more so with men,” I assured her.
Aster looked sceptical as to that, from behind her hair.
“When you really know them,” I expounded.
“Women will never pull together. Not even in the same office. Never the whole lot in the same direction. We’re all such individualists.”
I nodded affably.
“Men don’t know what women are really like,” observed Aster. She spoke with the particular meaning that woman always bring to that remark.
She had gnawed the last prawn. It was like the title of a novel by Scott Fitzgerald; though at that time I had not passed very far beyond the titles. She was awaiting her sole bonne femme. It was possibly not the ideal selection in a basically Italian establishment, but there it was.
I paid to her last observation the tribute of the best compliment I could muster up. It is immaterial what I said. Indeed, I myself forget what it was; as is scarcely surprising. Over there was Clarinda. The knowledge burnt into me, though, owing to my muscles, I had ceased to gaze upon her always willowy but now ostentatiously jaded frame. Clarinda, the great niece and ward of my chairman, was lost to me by wilfulness. It behoved me for the present to aim less high. With luck, there would come a time.
Aster, though she lacked that decisive gift for making me giggle, though she emitted a faint perfume of cold cream. . . . I began to talk much faster. I had a certain experience of how one does it. I felt I was being fluent and persuasive.
It was only natural that when I ran out of words for the moment, I should once more glance over to Clarinda, bidding her a spiritual and undeclarable farewell.
Clarinda was not there; and nor was Ronnie. The whole room had somehow closed up on me. Though to myself I seemed to have done so much conversing, and ruminating, and deciding, and persuading, the time which had actually passed since I had ceased to stare hypnotically was really very short. Aster was about two thirds of the way through the top side of her sole, but no more than that.
I underwent another metamorphosis, and a painful one. Instead of lightly touching Aster’s pretty little bosom, as I had purposed less than two minutes before, I found that I was feeling giddy and sick. Seriously sick.
“I’m sorry,” I gulped, and made a dash for it. I had to push through all the mixed mob that was there. I must have behaved very strangely, and perhaps looked more strangely, because Aster was on her two feet in an instant, and trying to restrain me. It was bound to be too late. No-one could have held me.
The hall outside (hallway might, for that cramped place, have been a better word) was even more solid with people than the restaurant itself. As happened on most nights, they were almost fighting to go further. Two men in white jackets were always needed to keep them in line.
I was looking, basically, for somewhere to throw up; even the street outside. Most assuredly, I had no idea at that point of setting eyes upon Clarinda. But as I flailed about, far from sure where I was even aiming to go, I heard her unmistakable voice behind my ear.
“Save me, Richard. Save me, please. Forgive me and save me. Please, Richard.”
I managed to wheel as soon as I heard her, and there she was, right at my back, not merely whiter than white, but with eyes enlarged almost beyond recognition; perhaps by tears? That was something else I had never before seen. I could not have imagined that Clarinda of all people could ever possibly have looked so unsure of herself. I was simple then.
I clutched at her, but found that I was grasping some other silly woman, and one who was obtrusively married.
“I am so sorry,” I said. “I was reaching for someone else.”
The married lady drew herself into herself, and her attendant slave completed the process.
But Clarinda had vanished again. Doubtless Ronnie was awaiting her on the steps. It was impossible seriously to wait for anyone inside that messy hallway. Perhaps I should add here that the steps up to the door of Romulo’s, once famous, were later done away with. After their big fire, that was. The whole place was modernised even further, and all the ceilings dropped, and everything levelled.
I quite forgot all about being sick, and, with a speed that later amazed me, I took another important decision. I decided that instead of leading Aster further down the primrose path, I should confide in her and tell her the truth, the real story. I daresay this was not so much heroism as cowardice. After what had happened, I simply could not have managed to pick up with Aster where I had left off; and, on the other hand, I could think of nothing but Clarinda’s distorted eyes, and simply had to talk about them. I do realise, and I realised then, that girls who accept entertainment, may have to accept much else too in an evening; but is it not true that exactly the same applies to the men in the different cases? It is simply how life works out for everyone; if lived at all fully, that is.
I shoved my way back as swiftly as I could. I was quite surprised not to find my empty chair commandeered, and, no doubt, the third man himself in a third chair. However, in its own way, luck was still holding. In fact, the third chair had been borrowed by a party sitting six at a table for four. One bonus more.
“Are you all right? You look dreadful.”
“I had a shock. I’m better now, thank you.”
“You look very nearly as white as that friend of yours.”
“I’ve decided to tell you about him. And about the girl with him. Would you like a zabaglione?”
“Yes, please. I thought it best to finish the sole before it got
cold. I’ve eaten the parsley too. Do you mind?”
“No, I don’t think so. Shall we have another half bottle?”
“Will you be all right, if we do?”
“It’s exactly what I require.”
But of course the zabaglione was for her alone.
Aster put her hand on my arm. “All right,” she said quietly. “I’ll do whatever you say.”
She really was a very sweet girl, I thought. I leaned across the fish’s skeleton and kissed her gently but with considerable significance.
Then I slowly sank back. “His name’s Ronnie Cassell,” I began, “and I used to be rather fond of that girl he was with. Several things have happened, and I’m not keen on thinking about them, so I’ve decided to talk about them instead. I’ve decided to take you into my confidence. When I’ve finished, we’ll have some coffee and some really exotic liqueurs, and you can tell me quite frankly what you think.”
No-one should suppose that these various remarks reflected my general standard of living at that time. They merely prove that I was desperate.
Aster heard me out in silence, though occasionally glancing at me from the corner of her green eye. She lapped lingeringly through the zabaglione. I had ordered half a bottle of still Sauternes, which is a perfectly good wine when taken with something like zabaglione.
At the end of my narration, there was a pause. I was quite exhausted by having to relate so many peculiar and painful things in so loud a voice. Aster was slowly scooping up her last glutinous droplets.
“You are in love with her.”
I suppose I might have guessed it would be her first remark.
“I don’t really know,” I said.
It is of course the form of words we all use.
Aster picked up yet another spoon with which to make an absolutely final job.
“You know what’s going on as well as I do, Richard,” she said, as she scraped and licked. “You don’t need advice.”
“What do I need?”
“Care and protection, I suppose. You’ve managed to fall in love with an unsuitable person.”
Year's Best Weird Fiction, Volume Three Page 17
