Sir Pompey And Madame Juno

by Martin Armstrong

  The lady raised her shoulders and rolled her fine eyes to the right. ‘Well,’ she replied in her rich contralto, ‘I don’t mind.’

  Sir Pompey gave the order. ‘Believe me, Madame Juno, you will not repent it.’

  The lady’s pupils sharpened; she seemed suddenly to be regarding Sir Pompey from a great distance. But Sir Pompey raised deprecating paws. ‘Now, you mustn’t be cross with me,’ he pleaded. ‘Most ladies would consider it a compliment to be called Madame Juno. Juno, as you know, was a goddess and queen of the Roman heaven, and it popped out, you see, before I knew where I was. The likeness, if I may say so, was so striking. You know Naples? The Museo Nazionale? No? Ah well: if you’d been to the Museo Nazionale at Naples you’d see at once what I mean. But you’d love Naples, my dear lady. Vedi Napoli, you know, e poi muori. So, you see, you must not take it amiss if I name you after a queen. Although, admittedly, there are queens and queens. Some queens have been content to remain merely queens; others, history tells us, have preferred to combine the queen with the quean. One recalls Messalina, Catherine the Great, Mary Queen of Scots, Tamar Queen of Georgia, not to mention all those others of which you, with your better memory, will doubtless remind me. All of which goes to prove that vowels, Madame Juno, are more important than some of our friends would have us believe.’

  Madame Juno eyed Sir Pompey with indulgent tolerance. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I suppose you can’t help it, but I haven’t an idea what you’re talking about.’

  Sir Pompey flung up his hands in despair. ‘You mean to say,’ he exclaimed, ‘that I don’t make myself clear?’

  Madame Juno’s lips curled to a slightly scornful smile. ‘Clear!’ she said. ‘I like that. You see,’ she explained, ‘you’re a bit of a character, that’s what it is.’

  ‘A character!’ wailed Sir Pompey. ‘I call her a queen, Jean, and she replies that I am a character.’ Jean, serving the Châteaubriand, smiled impartially at both. ‘At least, let us hope,’ went on Sir Pompey, ‘not a bad character!’

  A chuckle was heard somewhere deep down in Madame Juno’s jumper. ‘I’m not so sure about that!’ she replied archly.

  Sir Pompey woefully shook his head. ‘Too bad! Too bad! What have I done, Madame Juno, that you should give me a bad character?’ He gazed up at her mournfully like a begging lap-dog.

  ‘Oh, I didn’t give it you: not me,’ The lady’s voice rose on a titter: ‘If you’ve got one, you brought it with you’; and suddenly she began to shake all over. The glasses and cutlery jingled on the table.

  ‘A hit! A palpable hit!’ piped Sir Pompey, softly clapping his hands. ‘Madame Juno, I confess myself beaten.’ He pressed his hands to the left side of his waistcoat to indicate the locality of the wound. Then, beckoning to Henri, he ordered a bottle of Pommard. ‘Unless’ – he turned to Madame Juno – ‘you prefer Barsac?’

  ‘I leave it to you,’ she replied. ‘You know what’s good; I’ve found out that much.’

  Sir Pompey’s mouth wavered loosely into a smile. ‘But how charming of you to say so! Burgundy of one sort or another is a necessity with beef or mutton. Of course, if we were in Dijon, Madame Juno, at the Trois Faisans, you would, I am sure, urge me to order a bottle of Chambertin. But in this barbaric country, whose inhabitants swill beer and stout and the odious spirit called whisky, we must console ourselves with what I know too well to be a very indifferent Pommard. I hope, Madame Juno, that you share my horror of our British drinks?’

  Madame Juno turned a more interested gaze on Sir Pompey. ‘Well,’ she replied, ‘I must say I don’t mind a Guinness.’

  ‘Pah! A black drink!’ It was as if Sir Pompey were spitting out the loathsome liquid. ‘An opaque, black drink, dear lady, even though the flavour were divine, is an abomination. A drink should be rosy or golden, distilled sunlight, essence of the South. Don’t dare, Madame Juno, to look me in the face and tell me you don’t long for the South!’

  Madame Juno considered the matter. ‘Not now!’ she said. ‘London for me, in the winter. In the summer it’s different. Last summer I was at Brighton for a month. Know Brighton at all?’

  Sir Pompey sighed. ‘When we visit Brighton to-day,’ he said, ‘we visit it a hundred years too late.’

  ‘Well, say what you like’ – Madame Juno spoke with some heat – ‘Brighton’s good enough for me. Anyhow, you must admit there’s not much wrong with the Metropole?’

  ‘Not much, perhaps, but certainly, I feel, something,’

  ‘Well,’ Madame Juno confessed, ‘perhaps, after all, I may be prejudiced. You see, I was born in Brighton.’

  ‘Brighton your native place? My dear Madame Juno, you have humanized Brighton for me in a single phrase.’

  Madame Juno, forgetting her lofty airs, bent earnestly forward. ‘You remember Victoria Terrace? Well, we lived there, Mother and me, after Father died. Of course Victoria Terrace was smarter then than it is now. Our rooms were as nice rooms as you’d see anywhere. The first floor, back and front, used to let for three guineas a week in the season.’ She heaved a sigh. ‘It’s strange to walk past the house now. I passed it last summer with the friend I was at the Metropole with.’ Her lips on the word friend closed into the form of a crimson orchid. ‘Of course,’ she went on, ‘I didn’t say anything to him. He wasn’t the sort, you know, that you could mention anything like that to.’

  ‘But you mention it to me, Madame Juno!’

  ‘Yes, I mention it to you, because, though I must say you do run on in the strangest way, I knew from the first minute that you were the right sort.’

  Sir Pompey leaned over and patted her hand. ‘I hope I am, dear lady. Sincerely, I hope I am. A good sort, but, unhappily, a bad lot! At least, many people would call me so.’

  Madame Juno made a gesture of impatience. ‘What does it matter?’ she said. ‘What I look at is whether a person is the right sort or the wrong sort. It’s the only real difference. There’s any amount of people that you might call bad lots that have hearts of gold, as the saying is, when you come to know them, but anyone that’s not a good sort – well, he can be as … well …’

  ‘As irreproachable as Sir Galahad …’

  ‘Yes, and he’s none the better for it.’

  ‘You’re right, Madame Juno. If the heart’s in the right place, everything else ceases to matter.’ Sir Pompey laid a hand on his waistcoat. ‘My heart, I hope, is in the right place; and so, I’m sure,’ – his eyes rested, with a moment’s uncertainty, on the capacious jumper – ‘is yours. But why is it, I keep wondering, that we have never met here before? You are an habituée?’

  For a moment Madame Juno’s eyes narrowed again. Sir Pompey explained. ‘You come here, I mean to say, often?’

  ‘No. Only once before. Last week, with a friend,’ Again on the word friend the large lips pouted into a fantastic flower.

  ‘And you found it so much to your liking that you returned?’

  ‘Yes … es!’she admitted majestically. ‘These French places generally have good cooking, I find. They do things more shick than we do, don’t they?’

  ‘More … ?’

  ‘Well, you know what I mean. More natty, so to speak.’

  ‘So you love good food, Madame Juno?’

  ‘Oh, well … !’ Madame Juno shied at the confession.

  ‘Never be ashamed of loving good food, dear lady. It is only the vulgar who are indifferent to what they eat. Good food, good wine, poetry, music, pictures … !’ Sir Pompey waved a fluent hand as if in the very act of conducting a magic symphony which would transform the Langouste into a palace of the Muses.

  Madame Juno set one noble elbow on the table. ‘Do you go to the pictures much?’ she asked.

  Sir Pompey paused, arrested in the midst of his glowing creation. ‘The … er … ? Ah, the films, the cinematograph, the moving pictures! Often too moving, don’t you think? Palpitante novità, as the Italians say. No, no… no … not often. I miss the spoken word. These close-ups and fade-outs, these “most
disastrous chances,” these “moving accidents by flood and field,” these “hairbreadth ‘scapes i’ the imminent deadly breach,”’ – the table shook under his rising eloquence – ‘they bother me, dear lady: they bamboozle me. I am befogged, bogged, bewildered by the scurry and crash of incident. And, after all, what per se is incident?’ He stared helplessly at Madame Juno.

  ‘Don’t arsk me,’ she trolled, resting round, amused eyes on Sir Pompey as on a performing rat.

  ‘It is nothing, madam,’ asserted Sir Pompey. ‘A mere vehicle: no more. That plate!’ He tapped her plate with his fork. ‘Yet what, Madame Juno, is the plate without the pêche Melba? It’s necessary? Oh, I grant you it’s necessary. But without the … er … pêche – the delicacy, whatever it may be, what is it?’

  Madame Juno gazed dreamily at her already empty plate. ‘Not much!’ she said in a dry voice.

  Sir Pompey followed her gaze. ‘Another?’ he cried. ‘Do have another!’

  Madame Juno shook her head. ‘I wish I could,’ she said.

  ‘But you can’t?’

  Again she shook her head. ‘I’ve got to go careful,’ she said. ‘Getting so stout, you see. Why, if you’d seen me only a year ago: I was a mere slyph!’

  ‘You were thin? Tant pis. You have told me, dear lady, the one thing that consoles me for not having met you a year ago.’

  ‘Then you don’t like thin people?’

  ‘Not thin ladies. But you’ll have some coffee?’

  ‘Not for me, thanks. I never could.’

  ‘It keeps you awake?’

  ‘Not that so much. It … well …’ – she patted her chest – ‘it makes me bilious, you know.’

  While Madame Juno had been eating her pêche Melba, Sir Pompey had drunk a cup of coffee and smoked a small cigar. Now he raised a finger. ‘Jean! L’ addition,’

  But Jean was busy with another party, and when at last he ran up with pencil and pad Sir Pompey was absorbed in studying the next table. Jean stood doubtful, waiting. Then he glanced at Madame Juno. She nodded. ‘Together!’ she whispered.

  When Sir Pompey had received his change, he drained his glass and became again absorbed in his neighbours. But not for long. He was roused by the voice of Madame Juno. ‘Hadn’t we better be moving?’ she said.

  Sir Pompey awoke and, leaning across the table, smiled and shook a finger at her. ‘Madame Juno,’ he said, ‘you are not so artless as you would have us believe. That discreet plural was a masterpiece!’

  Madame Juno gathered up her embroidered silk bag. ‘Well, artful or not,’ she said, Tm not artful enough to know what you’re talking about, half the time!’

  She floated up the room, a sloop-of-war under full sail, Sir Pompey bobbing like a little pinnace in her wake. Jean swung the door open and, as Madame Juno passed out, Sir Pompey spoke into his ear. ‘My friend,’ he murmured, ‘I was wrong. The lady is beautiful, but not virtuous!’ and he tiptoed out.

  The Parasite

  ‘Promise me,’ said leeson, leaning across the lunch-table, ‘that you’ll stop me if I become unbearable. You see, normally I lead such a silent life. I have no friends here. Oh, acquaintances, of course; but not one real friend, nobody that I can talk to. That’s why meeting you again after all these years has set me off like this. You are surprised, naturally. In the old days I hardly spoke at all, did I? and even when I did, I never spoke my mind. I was inarticulate, bottled-up in those days – smothered under loads of shyness. What an ass I must have seemed! What an ass, in fact, I really was! And so I am still; but a different kind of ass nowadays. I have learnt by this time to know myself better. Self-knowledge – that is the only good that emerges, among so much that is bad, from a lonely life. Oh, I fully admit that I have no one to blame but myself for my loneliness. A cathedral town is generally a sleepy sort of place, but in a sleepy place there are always friendly people – conventional, of course; but I’m conventional myself. The cathedral organist, you see, is ex officio the musical pundit of the countryside, and when I first came here quite a pleasant little society was waiting for me with open arms. But as soon as callers began to arrive, all my old shyness and fears were up in arms. And when invitations came I funked them. It was the rarest thing in the world for me to screw my courage up to the point of accepting one, and so in the end people got tired of asking me. Soon I had succeeded – as, Heaven knows how unwillingly, I succeeded at Cambridge and everywhere else – in forming a vacuum round myself.

  ‘It’s an amazing thing, Oliver-a thing I have never yet managed to understand. Why should some of us be created apparently for no other object than to be our own worst enemies? Look at me, for instance. I really rely tremendously on others: I have an immense need of companionship and affection: my desires are all outwards, not inwards: and yet, whenever these things are put within my reach, some irresistible weakness cripples me just as surely as if the hand I was going to stretch out were suddenly paralysed. And that’s not the only effect of this absurd impotence. It not only prevents my advancing, but also, when I have, on rare occasions, succeeded in overcoming it, it takes its revenge by making me ridiculous in the eyes of the very people with whom I want to appear to advantage. Lord! How often I have cursed my idiotic weakness! It was the same when I was a boy at school, and the same, as you remember, at Cambridge. Why, it was only by accident, after all, that I got to know you. Don’t apologize, Oliver. I know well enough what really happened that day you gave me such a fright in the organ-loft. It was your fatal love of music that let you down that time. You happened to be passing the chapel at the moment and you heard someone playing the D minor Toccata, so you went in to listen. And then, wondering who on earth it could be who was playing so remarkably well (you see, Oliver, I don’t entirely despise myself nowadays), you thought you would sneak up the stairs of the organ-loft to find out. You must have come up very quietly, because I didn’t hear a sound. Tennis-shoes, perhaps? I thought so. Suddenly I caught sight of your face appearing round the corner of the organ-case. I nearly jumped out of my skin. And how annoyed you were at being discovered! Oh, it’s no good denying it: I remember your face. You thought for a moment of bolting, but, for some reason, you hesitated, and next moment you felt that it was too late, and so you came round and stood beside me. You were in shorts and a blazer and looked very superior. I knew you quite well by sight: you were one of the vigorous, games-playing crowd that I always regarded with fear and admiration. And you, of course, like every one else, looked on me as a freak; but you did not like to be rude even to a freak, so you sat down on the stool beside me and asked me to go on with the Toccata. I was pleased at that, because organ-playing was the one thing in which I felt quite certain that I was superior to most people. When I had finished the Toccata, I asked you if I should do the Fugue. You nodded, and I saw in your face that you were really impressed by my playing. I played one thing more, I forget what, and then you asked me to play the A minor Prelude and Fugue. That was your undoing, Oliver: because it gave me an opportunity and, for a wonder, I actually took it. Do you remember? I hadn’t the A minor with me, “but I’ve got it in my room,” I told you, “and if you …” Good Lord! I remember to this day my panic at this unprecedented boldness … “if you would come round this evening I’ll play it for you, after a fashion, on the piano.”

  ‘I never thought you would come, Oliver. Once out of the loft, that, I thought, would be the end of you. But to my surprise and delight you turned up in the evening, and that gave me a firmer hold on you. I was desperate, you see, like a spider who has stuck his web in the wrong place and sits waiting in vain for flies. You, Oliver, were my unique fly, and I was determined to hold on to you for all I was worth. Several times, later, you tried, didn’t you? to let our acquaintanceship lapse. Now, don’t deny it. I could give you chapter and verse-remind you of each occasion in all its details. We solitary folk have prodigious memories for anything like that, you know. You must often have wondered why I held on to you so pertinaciously, because we got al
ong, on the whole, very badly, didn’t we? I irritated you horribly, and no wonder; and though your kindness of heart prevented you from abandoning me, it did not prevent you from turning on me when your patience was finally exhausted and telling me I was an infernal ass. About every other day you used to point out to me quite clearly that I was an ass. I never attempted to defend myself. In the first place, I didn’t know how to argue in those days; and even if I had, I didn’t believe in myself enough to dare to uphold any opinion of mine that anyone contradicted. Besides, I didn’t want to annoy you: I was willing to stand anything from you so long as I could keep you. I was really almost in love with you in those days. You represented, you see, my sole contact with humanity outside my family. I remember several of those times when you turned on me. Once we had been talking of … I don’t remember what … pictures, carpets, decoration? I don’t know: anyhow, we got on to the subject of colour. “Well, of course,” I remember saying, “I don’t like bright colours.” That made you very angry. “How can you say you dislike bright colours?” you said. “It’s absurd. You might as well say you dislike loud music.” I murmured something about that being different. “No, it isn’t,” you snapped. “It’s exactly the same. I could understand it if you objected to certain bright colours in a certain place, just as I might dislike a loud passage in a certain Beethoven Symphony: but to say, wholesale, that you dislike bright colours is just as silly as to say that you dislike loud music.”

  ‘On another occasion we were in the chapel, looking down from the organ-loft. The chapel, I remember, delighted you from that point of view, and you were praising the Wren reredos. “Well, of course,” I objected, “I don’t care for marble/’ That set you off again and you gave me a tremendous dressing. Whether what you actually said was justifiable or not I don’t remember, but at least, knowingly or unknowingly, you had in your fury got at the essential, which was that bright colour and hard marble were just what my personality lacked. Yes, you must have suffered much from me in those days, Oliver, but at least your suffering was in a good cause. You made life bearable for me at Cambridge. Without you I should have been completely walled up in my shell. As it was, I enjoyed, through you, a pale, vicarious participation in the jolly side of Cambridge life. When you used to come into my rooms and begin arguing and swearing and knocking things about, I used to feel marvellously refreshed and released, You gave me back my self-respect, so long as you didn’t tell me too often, and with too much fury and conviction, that I was an ass. With such a normal, healthy creature as you were I had the inexpressible consolation of feeling normal too. You see, I wasn’t reserved and tame and silent from choice. It was as though I were somehow muted, gagged, crippled by some mental deformity from which I could not break free. It was the same with games. I did not avoid them because I disliked them. On the contrary, I longed to be able to play them. It was fear, not dislike. I was frightened of them-but not of being knocked about or hurt. No, I was just mortally afraid of making a fool of myself. I was too self-conscious: I had none of that direct animal energy which finds its natural expression in sports. I hadn’t the single-minded passion in pursuit of a football or hockey-ball which makes the athletic youngster as sure and inevitable as the ball itself. My mind would have been occupied with the comic ungainliness of my run, the certainty that every one was laughing at me. And, of course, I was right. I was ungainly and ridiculous, and if I had tried to play football every one would have laughed at me, undoubtedly. I see myself doing it: a series of lamentable antics, enough to make a dog laugh. But which, I have often wondered, came first? Was it my shivering self-consciousness that produced the clumsiness, or the clumsiness that destroyed my nerve? It seems unjust, doesn’t it? that a boy’s life should be made miserable to him by these strange inner schisms, these hopeless incompatibilities between the desire and the physical skill to accomplish the desire. So you see, games were the supreme and inescapable evidence of my defeat, my humiliation. Naturally, I hated them. And I hated them still more after I got to know you, because they were always reminding me that I was not, really, your companion and your equal – that there was a whole delightful world into which you could escape from me, and when I used to meet you in shorts and a sweater hurrying off with some other brawny fellow to play football, I felt contemptible, forlorn, and devoured with jealousy. I daren’t have spoken to you on those occasions. However, I too had another world in which I used to disport myself. I used to compose. You didn’t know I used to compose in those days? No, of course you didn’t. Do you think I would have told you? Not likely! I was much too ashamed. Before setting to work I used to sport my oak and always, when I had finished, I locked away every scrap of manuscript. Not that I thought my compositions bad. On the contrary, I thought them very good. And so they were – quite good, some of them: I was looking over a few the other day. No, I’m wrong. It wasn’t that I was ashamed. I was afraid, afraid of exposing something that was so undisguisedly and vulnerably myself. Of course you might have liked them. That would have been wonderful: but the risk was too great.’