The Dead of Night

by Oliver Onions

  ‘Here he comes. ’Swellknown author. Forgotten what his books are, but dam’ good; must read ’em, everybody. This is Kathleen. Give him a cigarette, somebody; they’re on the bear. Think you know Bee, Kneller; she’s always using his telephone; dashed good of him. Writes books. Not much of a reading man myself, but dashed proud all same. Hoi, Sylvie, come and say how-d’ye-do to friend of mine, Mr Kneller. Writes hics. Beats me where he gets his ideas from; couldn’t write a hic to save my life. Give him a drink. Have a drink, Aubrey, ol’ man.’

  The drink was brought to Aubrey by a young person in a calyx of flimsy skirt held up by a pair of ribbon braces. A large woolly Bonzo pup nestled in one soft white arm, and she asked Aubrey if she hadn’t met him at the Saturn Club. A young man seated on the bear’s pedestal was making soft terrier-like yelps on that whistle that Aubrey knew so well, and he broke off to ask how long the kippers were going to be. Aubrey suddenly smelt the kippers. Apparently they were cooking in Upwester’s bedroom, for the door opened, showing a bright glimpse. The bedroom was the counterpart of Aubrey’s own, but of course placed the other way round, which, nevertheless, surprised Aubrey a little. It had been turned to the purpose of a ladies’ cloak-room, for piled high on the bed were wraps and furs and cloaks and stoles. On the small bedside table stood a chafing-dish, over which a tall fair-haired youth busied himself with a fork. As the kippers were cooked, two at a time, a young woman set them down before the orange pillars of the electric fire to keep hot. Upwester was introducing Aubrey all over again.

  ‘Splendid author. Full o’ brains. Going to put us all into his book, large as life. Lots o’ copy for him. Put Sylvie in, too – give him ’nother drink –’

  That it was ‘copy’ had occurred to Aubrey too. These merry, careless, perhaps not quite reputable people, who sipped their sweets as they came, certainly were a new aspect of life to him. And now that he was here he intended to enjoy himself. He began to think that he had misjudged his neighbour and his charming friends. One was only young once . . . There was a movement among the cushions where the girl nursed the silk-clad foot, moving her tiny toes about inside. One large liquid eye looked roguishly at Aubrey. Aubrey smiled back. He might ask her to make room for him presently.

  ‘May I help myself, Upwester?’ he asked.

  ‘Pleasure – all there is!’ cried the peer.

  It was a full round Burgundy that Aubrey drank, and he wanted to ask Upwester where he got it. Sound stuff; a few dozen of that wouldn’t be amiss in his own flat! Capital cigarettes, too; Aubrey made a note of the brand. And a devilish pretty bunch of girls old Upwester had got together, too, by Jove! Why shouldn’t Aubrey give a party like this? True, there was Clough. Very good servant Clough was, and knew Aubrey’s ways; but whose flat was it, Clough’s or Aubrey’s? Hang Clough! Clough would have to do as he was told. Aubrey wasn’t going to consult Clough about what kind of party he gave. Jolly nice party, and jolly good host, and jolly girls –

  The bedroom door opened again, and the tall fair-headed young man who had cooked the kippers marched in with them on a dish. But what was this figure that followed, with plates and whatnot piled up on a tray? Eastern, that gold and purple attire? A houri, summoned by the clapping of a caliph’s hands? No. Merely Miss Teddy Seymour, of the ‘Thalia’, dressed in Upwester’s silk sleeping-suit. Aubrey found himself clapping rhythmically with the rest as the procession of two made the tour of the room. He laughed, he laughed; and ‘Haw, haw, haw, haw, haw, haw!’ sounded Upwester’s guffaw.

  Never before in his life had Aubrey Kneller eaten kippers at three o’clock in the morning; never before in his life had he been unable to remember how many glasses of Burgundy he had drunk nor what he had drunk when the Burgundy was finished. ‘Taste mine,’ said the young female with the calyx of skirt, putting her glass, not directly to his lips, but in such a manner that that scented white arm was passed about his neck. Her nape was shingled, and she had a fringe of hair, so that the eyes that sparkled through it should not be too bright to bear.

  ‘I live next door,’ Aubrey by and by heard himself saying, first to one young woman, then to another. ‘All come – whole lot of us! Bee’s coming, ’n Teddy’s coming, ’n jolly ol’ Upwester – fix night – only next door – ’nother jolly party, what? –’

  ‘ ’s a top-hole author – been trying to get know him for months, haven’t I, my jolly old Hicspeare, what?’ Upwester was saying, now here, now there. ‘’Novelist – I saw him this afternoon – haw, haw, haw! Saw him in the tea-shop! Says goodbye to a girl in a taxi ’n meets ’nother one next minute – haw, haw, haw! He’s a lad. Mus’ read his books. Get ’em at Mudie’s. Times Booclub. Look at him – got a crush on Sylvie now! Saw him with girl in a taxi – haw, haw, haw!’

  Once my face was as fair as a lily,

  But look at the funny thing now!

  softly sang the girl with one slipper, holding up a tiny mirror in her hand.

  An electric bell was heard to trill.

  ‘Who’s that?’ Upwester called. ‘Bobbie an’ Lou, I expect. Let ’em in, somebody – night’s young yet – ’sintro duce jolly ol’ Kneller to Bobby an’ Lou –’

  The door of the dark-room opened, a glimmer of white silk muffler became pink, and in came Bobby and Lou.

  Aubrey Kneller woke at midday the next day, and immediately went to sleep again. Coming out of his flat sometime during the afternoon he encountered Upwester, also coming out. At the sudden stopping of the lift that took them down together Aubrey’s hand went to his aching head, but Upwester had a flower in his button­hole and looked as if he had just stepped out of a bandbox. ‘Morning,’ said the peer curtly; and later – for a dog’s body could have done all the thinking of which Aubrey was capable that day – later it occurred to Aubrey that Helen had said of Upwester that he had a sad face. Aubrey, by a great effort, might have summoned up a grin of sorts that afternoon after the night before; but neither by word nor look did Upwester refer to the party. Perhaps that was what Helen had meant. It is sad to know beforehand that even if you make a vow you will not keep it. It is sad to vow over and over again, until at last you vow that you will vow no more, but go whither the stream takes you. It is sad, between a sin and the next, fatalistically to shoulder the burden, without either a look behind or a hope to come. All this was in that curt, prohibitive ‘Morn­ing’ of Upwester’s. And Aubrey Kneller’s subsequent recollection of these things was part of the grief to which he came – the grief that is knowledge.

  9

  Aubrey was in the habit of writing to Helen twice a week. He wrote to her what books he had read, what plays or pictures seen, sent her his press-cuttings, told her how matters were progressing about the Rickmansworth house. Her letters to him were full of how the gardens were looking, how the hens were laying, who had been to tea. Never on either side was there as much as a peep into that surging little world of images that lies between a writer and the tip of his pen.

  But now he felt that either he must write to Helen straight out of that teeming little world or not write at all. What was the good of writing if the words came, not as a heart beats, but as a clock ticks? One morn-ing he tried to tick off a letter to Helen. He stuck half way through. If he had written what he wanted to write he would have said, ‘Of course you see that all this is perfunctory, insincere rubbish. If it were not a Tuesday I don’t suppose I should be writing to you at all. I know before you write it what your answer will be. And so we shall go on, and marry, and live the life that is expected from people in our position, and I shall get just a little bit tired of you – and I’m not sure as a matter of fact that I’m not a bit tired of you now.’ That was what he would have written, and since it was out of the question to write it he left the empty addressed envelope on his desk and went out for a walk.

  He walked across St James’s Square and up towards Jermyn Street, and then turned to the right in the directi
on of Lower Regent Street. And he knew that with every step he took he was telling a lie to himself. His destination did not lie that way at all. He was going to Pountney Place. Yet, despising himself for the subterfuge, he con­tinued the pretence for a little longer. Then, in the middle of the Haymarket, he suddenly stopped. ‘Damned if I’m going on humbug­ging myself like this,’ he muttered. A row of taxis waited. He jumped into the first of them.

  ‘Pountney Place,’ he said.

  ‘Any number, sir?’

  ‘Yes. No, I mean. The far side. I’ll tell you.’

  He didn’t know the number. He didn’t know the name either. Now that he remembered, the new sunblind that had hidden the little Georgian window like an eyelid had not borne a name at all.

  That suddenly struck Aubrey as absurd. A business without a name! Why, businesses ought to be given names before they started, not afterwards! There ought to have been months of advance-advertising! And the giving of names to things was Aubrey’s peculiar trade. Sitting there in the smooth-running taxi he sought a name for the shop in Pountney Place.

  ‘Delia’, of course – with or without the ‘Robes’ or ‘Modes’, just as she liked, but obviously ‘Delia’. In flowing script, diagonally across the blind. Capital D-e-l – , with his forefinger he wrote the name in the air. And perhaps the final ‘a’ ending in a scroll. So intent on his flourishes was he that the taxi had almost passed the demure little shop. He alighted, paid off the taxi, mounted the whitened steps, and once more touched the bell under the brass plate.

  Again she answered the ring herself. Again she wore the featureless frock of yellow and white. But he saw, or fancied he saw, a notable change in her. That first time he had called he had had the im­pression that if he took his eyes off her she might in some way elude him. Only that daub of a mouth had made as it were an exaggerated bull’s eye for his eyes to rest on. But now her cheeks had a faint diffused flush. Her hair had a softer sheen. The soda-water-bottle eyes glowed more lively, even her frail arms seemed to have acquired a substance. Nor was it that he saw her now in the morning light, whereas before it had been afternoon. Aubrey knew very well what it was. He knew exactly what she was thinking of. She had flushed at the recollection of those kisses in the taxi. She glowed more deeply still.

  ‘Good-morning, sir,’ she said, her lids downcast.

  He laughed a little – ‘ “Sir”?’

  ‘Mr Kneller.’

  ‘That’s better. Well, how are you?’

  ‘I’m very well, thank you. Won’t you sit down?’

  ‘Is Mathilde in?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, what were you thinking of doing about luncheon?’

  She told him that she usually had a scone and butter in there.

  ‘A scone and butter? I said lunch!’ he laughed.

  ‘I don’t eat very much.’

  ‘You don’t look as if you did. Well, I hardly mean that perhaps. You look charming. You make me want to kiss you again.’

  ‘Don’t, Mr Kneller,’ she faltered. ‘I’ve made up my mind to be good.’

  ‘What? Is a kiss such a terrible crime?’

  ‘I oughtn’t to have let you.’

  He passed his arm about her and tilted up her face. ‘No?’ he smiled.

  ‘You see I only sell hats, and you’re a famous man,’ she faltered.

  ‘I never heard that famous men went without kisses. There!’ He set his lips to her reluctant ones. ‘And there, and there! Now forget all about that scone and butter. I’m going to take you out to lunch.’

  There was nothing about his being seen in the company of a modiste now. What, was he a snob, that he should deny in public somebody he kissed in private? He rather hoped not! He would not only take her out; he would ‘do’ her as well as he would have done himself. The Hyde Park Grill was quite near. Aubrey chuckled, rubbed his hands.

  ‘Come, get your things on,’ he said. ‘We’re going to the Hyde Park.’

  She fell back almost in terror, her slender fingers pressed into her cheeks. The Hyde Park! Perhaps, passing that establishment in her dusty velvet tam with her bandbox over her arm, she had ventured to lift her eyes to its frontage, but to enter its portals – !

  ‘Oh!’ she breathed; and her ‘Oh’ was the ‘Oh’ of Annie Thompson when Aubrey Kneller, author, had called that restive little creature of his brain to account.

  Jocularly he bustled her. – ‘Come, don’t stand there saying “Oh!” ’

  ‘But – but – I haven’t anything to wear!’ she said, aghast.

  ‘You’ve that new hat.’

  ‘But look at me!’

  ‘I am looking at you. Very nice to look at too. You’ve frocks here in the shop, haven’t you? Get one of those. Shoes? Stockings? What’s Harrods’ just round the corner for? We’ll look in there and rig you up. Hurry, now – it’s nearly half-past twelve –’

  He kissed her till her face was rosy, and then pushed her away.

  So it was that two of Aubrey Kneller’s acquaintances, strolling into the Hyde Park Grill an hour or so later, saw Aubrey at luncheon with (as they put it) ‘something to make you sit up’ – something demure but radiant, in a green-and-white hat and frock of dove-grey marocain, with little shoes pressed together under the table as if her feet were saying their prayers, who lifted innocent-looking eyes to Kneller from time to time. One of these acquaintances happened to be Upwester. His fit of next-morning stiffness was apparently over, for as he passed Aubrey’s table on his way out he gave Aubrey a comical, questioning little lift of one eyebrow.

  10

  Helen wrote slowly, putting her pen almost to the paper and then withdrawing it again, and with meditative sidelong glances out of the window from time to time.

  Dearest,

  Only a short note today, as I –

  ‘as I what?’ she asked herself. Why only a short one today?

  – as I haven’t been sleeping very well. I think it was worrying about you. Is anything the matter, darling? Because you know you promised to tell me if anything ever was. There was no letter from you on Thursday, and only the merest scrap on Friday, and you’ve always so much more to write about than I have. Do let me know if anything’s wrong. Things here are much as usual. The gardens are looking lovely, and we had forty-six eggs yesterday. All send love, I don’t mean all the eggs of course, but the people.

  Helen

  ‘There!’ she concluded. ‘He did say four o’clock, and he knows he did, and I will find out who she was! He’s been up to something for months –’

  She sealed and stamped her letter, and put it with the others on the tray in the hall.

  Clough brought this letter to Aubrey with his early cup of tea. Then, instead of withdrawing, he waited, as if he wished to say something.

  ‘Well?’ said Aubrey drowsily.

  ‘Begging your pardon, sir, but I’ve been thinking things over,’ said Clough.

  ‘Oh? Ah! What? What do you say?’ Aubrey yawned.

  ‘It isn’t the place, sir. The place suits me. I couldn’t wish for a better place.’

  ‘What’s this? What do you say?’ said Aubrey sitting up.

  ‘And I’m not saying you aren’t the master, sir –’

  ‘Oh? Then what are you saying?’

  ‘About that party, sir. I should wish to speak to you about it. I suppose those is your orders, sir, and I always have my remedy.’

  ‘Tummy out of order or something this morning, Clough?’

  ‘It’s not for me to take liberties, sir, either with his lordship or anybody else. But it’s all hours of the day and night likewise. It breaks my rest, besides being sinful of itself. Many’s the time you’ve complained about it yourself, sir. So if it’s going to begin here, sir, in this flat that I’ve always looked on as al
l that a flat should be –’

  ‘Look here, do you mean that I’m not to give a party?’ Aubrey demanded, now wide awake.

  ‘I’ve never said that, sir. There’s parties and parties.’

  ‘Perhaps you don’t approve of my guests?’

  ‘I doubt if Miss Boyd would, sir.’

  ‘Clough – ’ said Aubrey.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Nothing. I was only thinking what a priceless undertaker you’d make.’

  ‘Sir!’ Clough could not believe his ears.

  ‘And take that filthy wash away and get me a brandy-and-soda.’

  Aubrey was astonished at himself. A month or two ago he would not have dreamed of using such words to Clough. There had been times when they had been more like cronies than master and man. Especially they had united in deploring the goings-on in the flat across the way. Yet here was Aubrey, not only ticking his faithful servitor off, but doing so with a relish such as he had seldom known.

  Clough drew himself up. ‘I should wish to give notice at once, sir,’ he said austerely.

  ‘Righty-oh, Clough. But get the brandy-and-soda first.’

  ‘I should wish to give notice, sir,’ Clough went on zealously, ‘for your own good – yes, for your own good, sir! It is written in the Book whithersoever these things leads, and you’re going the way you shouldn’t go, Mr Kneller! That young female that’s begun to come up here –’