Mr. American

by George MacDonald Fraser

  Mr Franklin was forced to agree; he had been prepared to find the Lotus a rather shabby den, run by suspicious-looking characters, but the men and women crowding the dance-floor were all in evening dress, and plainly perfectly respectable members of the upper-middle and middle classes. 'Course, it's not as toney as the Four Hundred, but it's pretty good; plenty of society people come here - I think I've seen your Peggy, once or twice. Come on - let's dance!'

  They threaded their way among the couples on the floor to the smooth rhythm of the orchestra; Mr Franklin was hesitant at first, having fox-trotted only a few times with Peggy, but Pip was an expert and made him feel a far better dancer than he was. He experienced a rather guilty pleasure at the contact of the soft, supple body in its smooth velvet, and the drift of perfume from the blonde head just below his chin - but it was a guilt that came not only from the sensual pleasure of holding her but from the realisation that he was enjoying himself. When he had been out with Peggy, at balls or tea dances, the steps on the floor had been a mechanical ritual for them; they had not been there to dance, but to be part of the social scene, to see and be seen, to keep abreast, and the real business of the evening had been the chatter and exchange with the other guests. But Pip danced with him, and her non-stop talk had none of the social affectation and dreary predictability of Mayfair and Belgravia-as they returned to their table she was describing, with animation, how she had been caught in a police speed trap on the way to Brighton-he found himself laughing at her account of how she had found herself in the dock, and how the elderly magistrate had blushed because she had insisted on kissing the book after taking the oath, although he had explained that it was no longer necessary.

  'I gave it a great big juicy smacker, just to tease him, and everyone in court laughed, and that made him go redder than ever,' she explained. 'But he was all right-let me off with a warning and said it would be ten bob next time.' Why could he listen to her nonsense quite happily, when the upper-class trivia of the smart set so bored him? Was it because one had to do with a real, earthy world, where interesting things happened, and the other was artificial and based on conventions which seemed shallow and manners which seemed false? Humbling thought, was he just finding his own level? The gulf between Hole-in-the-Wall and Wilton Crescent was limitless, but in five minutes Pip would have been at home in the Bella Union or the front parlours of those little settlements of his youth -more at home in the Bella Union, admittedly, sassing the hairy miners and chaffing the waiters, but of the same clay as those frontier folk from whom he came, or of the peasantry of Castle Lancing, for that matter. Peggy's was a different world.

  'All right, come on out of it!' Pip was shaking her blonde head merrily at him across the table. 'You're deep in thought, aren't you - and that's cheek, if you like, when you're being wined and dined by a star of the musical stage who is also one of the most sought-after models in London. Doesn't show proper respect for Scrubb's ammonia if you ask me. Or are you thinking about your Peggy? Wouldn't blame you if you were.' She sighed. 'That's the trouble with squintyeyed little bits of fluff like me - we can't compare with the real lookers. And there's far too many of 'em about these days - I don't mean just in society, like your missus, but in the business. Look at Marie Lohr, and that Gladys Cooper - it's rotten anyone's as beautiful as that. Have you seen My Lady's Dress, where she's a mannequin, and stabs the manager with a pair of scissors through the curtain? - no, of course you haven't, I was forgetting, it's still in rehearsal. Wait'll they see Gladys doing her stuff, though - that'll put Mr Bernard Shaw back in the basket, however many swear words he sticks in his plays. Have you heard about the new one - Pig-something-or-other?'

  'No, I didn't know he had a new play coming out. I saw Great Catherine, though - '

  'Opens next month, all about a flower-girl and this chap teaches her to be a lady, and she shocks everyone by saying "bloody".' Pip giggled. 'Isn't it daft? I mean, everybody swears, and you hear far worse every day, but just 'cos it's in a play they think the Lord Chamberlain'll ban it. Stupid old bastard. If him and the rozzers spent more time keeping little girls off the game, and pinching whiteslavers, it'd be more useful. Here, I'm getting hungry again - what about another dance and then some supper?'

  So they danced, and Mr Franklin toyed with a little scrambled egg in the dining-room while Pip set about a rump steak with chipped potatoes and discoursed, between mouthfuls, about the contrast between the high moral tone demanded of the public stage, and the licence accorded to anything which could be dignified under the heading of art. 'I mean, it's all right for every Tom, Dick, and Harry to gape at me with nothing on at the Royal Academy, but if it was on the stage I'd finish up in Holloway. Odd, isn't it. I suppose one's education and the other's dirty. Ah, well.'

  They went back upstairs and watched a girl in Red Indian costume and headdress singing 'The Pipes of Pan', a comedian who, curiously enough, seemed to have laundered his material for the supper-club audience, and when the cabaret was finished, danced some of the less strenuous numbers. But Mr Franklin could sense that Pip was missing joining in the more energetic jazz dances; she sat with parted lips and tapping feet as the couples threw themselves about, and he was not surprised when, towards the finish of a one-step, she guided him through the dancers to the platform, and slipped away for a whispered word with the black pianist. He listened, teeth gleaming in a great grin, and when the dance finished he struck a dramatic chord, clapped his hands to the orchestra with a chant of 'And-a-one-two-three-four!' yelled 'Hit it, honey!' to Pip, and swung into a crashing ragtime number.

  Pip, from the platform, winked at Mr Franklin while the dancers began to stamp, clapped her hands, swayed in time to the music, and in a voice astonishingly strong and clear for her small body, gave tongue:

  'Everybody's doin' it, doin' it, doin' it! Everybody's doin' it, doin' it, doin' it! See that ragtime couple over there,

  Watch them throw their shoulders in the air.

  ..'

  Around Mr Franklin the dancers were clapping and chanting with her, the room began to swing to the heady, insistent beat, the Negro pianist pounded ecstatically, standing up and bouncing as he hit the keys, Pip threw back her head and punched her fists in the air to emphasise the words:

  'It's a bear, it's a bear, it's a bear - oh!'

  Mr Franklin gingerly edged his way to the edge of the crowded floor, out of the shuffling, stamping, chanting throng, but keeping his eye on Pip's impromptu performance. He was no authority on ragtime, or even on stage presentation, but he did not have to be to see how skilled she was, how practised her style, how complete her control of her audience. Hips swinging, shoulders shrugging, she swayed along the front of the stage, coaxing the dancers to even greater exertions, then retreated laughing and clapping, beckoning

  them to follow, then teasing them by dropping her voice to a throaty whisper:

  'It's a bear, it's a bear, it's a bear - ooo-ooh ...'

  and finally strutting forward again to finish on a magnificent, full-throated flourish, arms flung high above her head:

  'Everybody's doin' it, Everybody's doin' it, Everybody's doin' it - now!'

  The applause was thunderous as she took her bow, blowing kisses, planting one on the gleaming black pate of the pianist, and then skipping quickly off, shaking her head with delight at the enthusiastic cries of 'Encore! More! More!' Mr Franklin applauded her as she sank breathless into her chair and seized on the cocktail which he had thoughtfully provided.

  'Phew! I needed that! That got 'em going, though, didn't it? What d'you think, then - has the little girl got a future in show business?'

  'You're tremendous!' he said, laughing. 'I thought you said you didn't have "it", whatever "it" is. They seem to think you've got it, all right.'

  'They're half-sloshed,' said Pip elegantly. 'Putting a number over here's one thing, but there's more to it than that. Hullo, here's Mario on his way - oh, lord, I should have known better! Here, let's be off while the going's good!' />
  She beckoned urgently to Mr Franklin,' who got to his feet just as a beaming and delighted Italian bustled up to their table.

  'Peep! Oh, leetle Peep! You were wonderful! What about an encore, eh? Another chorus - see, they love it! Or the boil' beef and carrots, maybe? Please, Peep, my darling!'

  He drew back her chair, chuckling and making sounds of entreaty, waving and nodding to the orchestra, but Pip shook her head playfully, patting his cheek and retreating.

  'Not on your life, Mario! Gee, the cheek of it! I'm a member here, aren't I? And you want me to keep your show going free! You want to hire yourself a good rag singer, that's what you want to do, ducky!'

  'Oh, Peep!' The manager spread his hands, stricken. 'Who sings ragtime as well as you? Oh, just one encore! Pleee-z, Peep, for Mario!'

  'See my manager!' laughed Pip, shaking her head firmly. 'No tickee, no ruddy washee, see? If you're lucky I might look in again next week and give your patrons a boost. But no more tonight, darling. We're off!'

  'I give you free subscreeption-no?' The manager smiled coaxingly. 'Ah, Peep, you are cruel. Never mind, I love you, leetle sweetheart!' He bowed over her hand and kissed it resoundingly. 'Good-night, darling, good-night, sair!' And he bowed them away from their table, Pip glowing with her small triumph, and Mr Franklin smiling at her obvious pleasure.

  To his surprise, when he looked at his watch, it was nearly one o'clock. He took her back to Bloomsbury in a taxi and saw her into the hallway of her ground-floor flat. She opened her door with her key and said: 'Like a cup of coffee? And I mean coffee - no hanky-panky, mind.'

  'I like that!' said Mr Franklin. 'Who took advantage of my backwoods ignorance that night at the Monico?'

  'That was different,' said Pip indignantly. 'You weren't a respectable married man then.'

  So he sat decorously on the couch in her cheerful little living-room, hung with the posters of her shows, and photographs of scenes from musicals, while she prepared coffee in the tiny kitchen. There were pictures of Pip herself, ranging from a chorus group in which she could be seen, looking very small and pale in a lace bonnet and parasol, obviously at the beginning of her career, to a large hand-coloured photograph over the fireplace, in which she stood pertly posed in tricorne hat, brief embroidered tunic, tights and high heels, with a riding switch tucked under one arm, and a lace handkerchief negligently flourished.

  'That's me as Dandini,' she explained, as they sipped their coffee. 'You know, in Cinderella. What, you've never seen a panto? You haven't lived, my lad. Dandini's the Prince's mate, who goes round trying the glass slipper on the girls - nice little part, and all you need is legs and impudence.'

  'You love it, don't you?' he smiled `Well, I hope it keeps fine for you, Pip, because you deserve it. I hope nothing comes along to spoil it for you.'

  'My, that's solemn!' Pip grimaced. 'What should spoil it?'

  'I don't know. Nothing, I guess. It's just - oh, you read nothing but crisis in the papers, and suffragettes, and strikers, and war scares, and then you see all those people enjoying themselves, having great fun ... but it's kind of frenzied, somehow, as though everyone were trying to cram as much as they can into the time that's left to them. Maybe it's the ragtime, and I'm getting old.' He laughed. 'I guess it's just the same in every age, and people like me get sour and feel it can't last.'

  'You're not sour!' said Pip. 'I never met anybody less sour than you. But you're sad, aren't you - as if you were disappointed? Hasn't England been the way you thought it would be?'

  He thought of Castle Lancing, and Peggy, and Samson, and Pip, and said at length: 'It's been better - most of it. Not everything, but most things. I'd just like to see it last, that's all.'

  'Don't you worry about that,' said Pip confidently. 'We always have lasted, haven't we? Gee, don't tell me about changes - I've seen plenty in my time. So you just get used to 'em, and make the best of it. If there's a war, in Ireland or somewhere - well, it'll get over, I reckon, and there's nothing you and me can do about it. But I don't reckon there will be - I mean, there hasn't been a real war for ever so long, has there? Not like the ones they told us about at school - Napoleon and the Light Brigade and that sort of thing.' She smiled and shook her head. 'I won a prize book at school, Our Indian Sisters, for reciting that at the Christmas concert - "Half a league, half a league, half a league onward". Good poem, that - and the first engagement I ever got anything for. Knocked 'em cold in the front stalls, took a couple of curtains, and did the last verse of "Gunga Din" as an encore. Six years old I was, and they damned near had to use the hook to get me off'

  They talked for another quarter of an hour, and then Mr Franklin said he must go. Pip saw him to the door, they thanked each other for the evening, and she laid a hand on his shoulder.

  'You're a gent, Mr American, d'you know that?' she said. 'Your Peggy's a lucky girl.'

  'I don't know about that - what makes you think so?'

  'Never mind,' said Pip, mysteriously, and then added: 'All right, then - I'll tell you. You didn't spoil the evening, the way most men would - married or not. By trying it on, I mean.'

  'Don't think I wouldn't like to,' said Mr Franklin.

  'Don't think I wouldn't, either,' said Pip. 'But I'm glad you didn't.' She slid her arms up round his neck and kissed him gently but firmly on the mouth, and he kissed her gently back and said, in a bass voice:

  'You don't have to if you don't want to, you know.'

  'Oh, get out before I put you on the street!' giggled Pip, pushing him over the threshold. 'Here, mind and give us the office about the Royal Academy - it's in May. And I'll show you works of art.' She gave him a wave. 'Chin-chin.'

  He walked out to the street, turning west, and never noticed the taxi which pulled away from the kerb opposite and trundled past him towards Russell Square.

  19

  A few days later the nation learned to its relief that the Curragh Mutiny was over. Mr Asquith announced to an attentive Parliament that there was no question of using the Army against the Ulster Loyalists, the officers who had resigned withdrew their resignations, and there was rejoicing in the Protestant North, and among all opponents of Irish Home Rule, at what they interpreted as a climb-down by the Government.

  One person who did not rejoice was Mr Franklin, scanning the papers in vain for any mention of exceptions among the officers who had withdrawn their resignations. As it stood, it looked as though Arthur must be back in the Army again, in which case there was the delicate matter of ten thousand pounds of Mr Franklin's hard-won fortune floating about unaccounted for. He waited a day or two, partly because Peggy's arrival back from Switzerland was imminent, and partly in the hope of receiving word from Sir Charles, or from Arthur himself, that the heir to the Clayton baronetcy, was, indeed, a civilian after all. Then, since nothing happened, he wrote to Sir Charles at Oxton Hall, seeking news, but making no mention of the funds provided for Arthur's business career.

  By way of reply he received a visit from Sir Charles himself, who had arrived in London ostensibly to get his hair cut at his favourite establishment in St James's, but in fact, Mr Franklin guessed, to discuss the recent sensation with cronies at his clubs and the War Office. He called at Wilton Crescent after lunch, apparently in excellent spirits, although he expressed disappointment at finding his daughter still absent.

  'You're having a long spell as a grass widower,' he said, and Mr Franklin nodded, offered refreshment, and asked if Sir Charles had got his letter.

  'Yes, indeed, it arrived before I left. It surprised me a little, because I had assumed Peggy was at home - you didn't mention she was still away - and that Arthur would have been in touch with her before he went off.'

  'Went off? Didn't he go back to the Army, then?'

  Sir Charles smiled thinly. 'Oh, yes, he went back. But I gather he was one of the last to withdraw his resignation, with a great show of reluctance - he even suggested to his commanding officer that it might be as well if he were given extended leave -
the implication being that if the Government even looked like going back on their word, he'd slap in his papers again. He seems to have played the firebrand rather strongly, and his C.O. wisely decided he'd be better out of the way for a couple of months. So the young scoundrel has got himself a pleasant holiday out of it - and impressed his seniors that he's a man of staunch Loyalist sympathies. No bad thing these days. I just hope he doesn't overdo it; he's a shrewd child, but one wouldn't want him to give his chiefs the impression that he's too clever by half.'