False Scent

The guests ranged themselves at both sides of the door, like the chorus in a grand opera, A figure appeared in the entrance. It was not Mary Bellamy, but Florence. As if to keep the scene relentlessly theatrical, she began to cry out in a small, shrill voice: “A doctor! A doctor! Is there a doctor in the house!”

When she died it was as if all the love she had inspired in so many people suddenly blossomed. She had never, of course, realized how greatly she was loved, never known that she was to be carried by six young men who would ask to perform this last courtesy: to bear her on their strong shoulders, so gently and with such dedication.

Quite insignificant people were there; her old Ninn, the family nurse, with a face like a boot, grimly crying. And Florence, her dresser, with a bunch of primroses, because of all flowers they were the ones she had best loved to see on her make-up table. And George, the stage doorkeeper at the Unicorn, sober as sober and telling anyone who would listen to him that there, if you liked, had been a great lady. Pinky Cavendish in floods and Maurice, very Guardee, with a stiff upper lip. Crowds of people whom she herself would have scarcely remembered but upon whom, at some time, she had bestowed the gift of her charm.

All the Knights and Dames, of course, and the Management, and Timon Gantry, the great producer, who had so often directed her. Bertie Saracen, who had created her dresses since the days when she was a bit-part actress and who had, indeed, risen to his present eminence in the wake of her mounting fame. But it was not for her fame that they had come to say goodbye to her. It was because, quite simply, they had loved her.

And Richard? Richard was there, white and withdrawn. And — this was an afterthought — and, of course, Charles.

Miss Bellamy paused, bogged down in her own fantasy. Enjoyable tears started from her eyes. She often indulged herself with plans for her funeral and she never failed to be moved by them. The only catch was the indisputable fact that she wouldn’t live to enjoy it. She would be, as it were, cheated of her own obsequies and she felt there was some injustice in this.

But perhaps, after all, she
would
know. Perhaps, she would hover ambiguously over the whole show, employing her famous gift for making a party go without seeming to do anything about it. Perhaps—? Feeling slightly uncomfortable, she reminded herself of her magnificent constitution and decided to think about something else.

There was plenty to think about. The new play. Her role: a fat part if ever she saw one. The long speech about keeping the old chin up and facing the future with a wry smile. Richard hadn’t put it quite like that and she did sometimes wish he would write more simply. Perhaps she would choose her moments and suggest to him that a few homely phrases would do the trick much more effectively than those rather involved, rather
arid
sentences that were so bloody difficult to memorize. What was wanted — the disreputable word “gimmick” rose to the surface and was instantly slapped down — what was wanted, when all was said and done, was the cosy human touch: a vehicle for her particular genius. She believed in humanity. Perhaps this morning would be the right occasion to talk to Richard. He would, of course, be coming to wish her many happy returns. Her birthday! That had to be thought of selectively and with a certain amount of care. She must at all costs exclude that too easy little sum whose answer would provide her age. She had, quite literally but by dint of a yogi-like discipline, succeeded in forgetting it. Nobody else that mattered knew, except Florence, who was utterly discreet and Old Ninn, who, one must face it, was getting a bit garrulous, especially when she’d taken her glass or two of port. Please God she wouldn’t forget herself this afternoon.

After all it was how you felt and how you looked that mattered. She lifted her head from the pillows and turned it. There, across the room, she was, reflected in the tall glass above her dressing-table. Not bad, she thought, not half bad, even at that hour and with no make-up. She touched her face here and there, manipulating the skin above the temples and at the top of the jawline. To lift or not to lift? Pinky Cavendish was all for it and said that nowadays there was no need for the stretched look. But what about her famous triangular smile? Maintaining the lift, she smiled. The effect was still triangular.

She rang her bell. It was rather touching to think of her little household, oriented to her signal. Florence, Cooky, Gracefield, the parlourmaid, the housemaid and the odd woman: all ready in the kitchen and full of plans for the Great Day. Old Ninn, revelling in her annual holiday, sitting up in bed with her
News of the World
or perhaps putting the final touch to the bedjacket she had undoubtedly knitted and which would have to be publicly worn for her gratification. And, of course, Charles. It was curious how Miss Bellamy tended to leave her husband out of her meditations, because, after all, she was extremely fond of him. She hurriedly inserted him. He would be waiting for Gracefield to tell him she was awake and had rung. Presently he would appear, wearing a pink scrubbed look and that plum-coloured dressing-gown that did so little to help.

She heard a faint chink and a subdued rumble. The door opened and Florence came in with her tray.

“Top of the morning, dear,” said Florence. “What’s it feel like to be eighteen again?”

“You old fool,” Miss Bellamy said and grinned at her. “It feels fine.”

Florence built pillows up behind her and set the tray across her knees. She then drew back the curtains and lit the fire. She was a pale, small woman with black dyed hair and sardonic eyes. She had been Miss Bellamy’s dresser for twenty-five years and her personal maid for fifteen. “Three rousing cheers,” she said, “it’s a handsome-looking morning.”

Miss Bellamy examined her tray. The basket-ends were full of telegrams, a spray of orchids lay across the plate and beside it a parcel in silver wrapping tied with pink ribbon.

“What’s all this?” she asked, as she had asked for her last fifteen birthdays, and took up the parcel.

“The flowers are from the Colonel. He’ll be bringing his present later on, as per usual, I suppose.”

“I wasn’t talking about the flowers,” Miss Bellamy said and opened the parcel. “Florrie! Florrie,
darling
!”

Florence clattered the firearms. “Might as well get in early,” she muttered, “or it’d never be noticed.”

It was a chemise, gossamer fine and exquisitely embroidered.

“Come
here
!” Miss Bellamy said, fondly bullying.

Florence walked over to the bed and suffered herself to be kissed. Her face became crimson. For a moment she looked at her employer with a devotion that was painful in its intensity and then turned aside, her eyes filmed with unwilling tears.

“But it’s out of this world!” Miss Bellamy marvelled, referring to the chemise. “That’s all! It’s just
made
my day for me.” She shook her head slowly from side to side, lost in wonderment. “I can’t wait,” she said and, indeed, she was very pleased with it.

“There’s the usual mail,” Florence grunted. “More, if anything.”

“Truly?”

“Outside on the trolley. Will I fetch it in here?”

“After my bath, darling, may we?”

Florence opened drawers and doors, and began to lay out the clothes her mistress had chosen to wear. Miss Bellamy, who was on a strict diet, drank her tea, ate her toast, and opened her telegrams, awarding each of them some pleased ejaculation. “Darling, Bertie! Such a sweet muddled little message. And a cable, Florrie, from the Bantings in New York. Heaven of them!”

“That show’s folding, I’m told,” Florence said, “and small wonder. Dirty
and
dull, by all accounts. You mustn’t be both.”

“You don’t know anything about it,” Miss Bellamy absentmindedly observed. She was staring in bewilderment at the next telegram. “This,” she said, “isn’t true. It’s just not true. My dear Florrie,
will
you listen.” Modulating her lovely voice, Miss Bellamy read it aloud, “ ‘Her birth was of the womb of morning dew and her conception of the joyous prime.’ ”

“Disgusting,” said Florence.

“I call it rather touching. But who in the wide world is Octavius Browne?”

“Search me, love.” Florence helped Miss Bellamy into a negligée designed by Bertie Saracen, and herself went into the bathroom. Miss Bellamy settled down to some preliminary work on her face.

There was a tap on the door connecting her room with her husband’s and he came in. Charles Templeton was sixty years old, big and fair with a heavy belly. His eyeglass dangled over his dark red dressing-gown; his hair, thin and babyishly fine, was carefully brushed; and his face, which had the florid colouring associated with heart disease, was freshly shaved. He kissed his wife’s hand and forehead and laid a small parcel before her. “A very happy birthday to you, Mary, my dear,” he said. Twenty years ago, when she married him, she had told him that his voice was charming. If it was so still, she no longer noticed it or, indeed, listened very attentively to much that he said.

But she let her birthday gaiety play about him and was enchanted with her present, a diamond and emerald bracelet. It was, even for Charles, quite exceptionally magnificent, and for a fleeting moment she remembered that he, as well as Florence and Old Ninn, knew her age. She wondered if there was any intention of underlining this particular anniversary. There were some numerals that by their very appearance — stodgy and rotund — wore an air of horrid maturity. Five, for instance. She pulled her thoughts up short and showed him the telegram. “I should like to know what in the world you make of that,” she said and went into the bathroom, leaving the door open. Florence came back and began to make the bed with an air of standing none of its nonsense.

“Good morning, Florence,” Charles Templeton said. He put up his eyeglass and walked over to the bow window with the telegram.

“Good morning, sir,” Florence woodenly rejoined. Only when she was alone with her mistress did she allow herself the freedom of the dressing-room.

“Did you,” Miss Bellamy shouted from her bath, “ever see anything quite like it?”

“But it’s delightful,” he said, “and how very nice of Octavius.”

“You don’t mean to say you know who he is?”

“Octavius Browne? Of course I do. He’s the old boy down below in the Pegasus Bookshop. Up at the House, but a bit before my time. Delightful fellow.”

“Blow me down flat!” Miss Bellamy ejaculated, splashing luxuriously. “You mean that dim little place with a fat cat in the window.”

“That’s it. He specializes in pre-Jacobean literature.”

“Does that account for the allusion to wombs and conceptions? Of
what
can he be thinking, poor Mr. Browne?”

“It’s a quotation,” Charles said, letting his eyeglass drop. “From Spenser. I bought a very nice Spenser from him last week. No doubt he supposes you’ve read it.”

“Then, of course, I must pretend I have. I shall call on him and thank him. Kind Mr. Browne!”

“They’re great friends of Richard’s.”

Miss Bellamy’s voice sharpened a little. “Who?
They
?”

“Octavius Browne and his niece. A good-looking girl.” Charles glanced at Florence and after a moment’s hesitation added, “She’s called Anelida Lee.”

Florence cleared her throat.

“Not true!” The voice in the bathroom gave a little laugh. “A-nelly-da! It sounds like a face cream.”

“It’s Chaucerian.”

“I suppose the cat’s called Piers Plowman.”

“No. He’s out of the prevailing period. He’s called Hodge.”

“I’ve never heard Richard utter her name.”

Charles said: “She’s on the stage, it appears.”

“Oh,
God
!”

“In the new club theatre behind Walton Street. The Bonaventure.”

“You need say no more, my poor Charles. One knows the form.” Charles was silent and the voice asked impatiently, “Are you still there?”

“Yes, my dear.”

“How do you know Richard’s so thick with them?”

“I meet him there occasionally,” Charles said, and added lightly, “I’m thick with them too, Mary.”

There was further silence and then the voice, delightful and gay, shouted, “Florrie! Bring me
you know what
.”

Florence picked up her own offering and went into the bathroom.

Charles Templeton stared through the window at a small London square, brightly receptive of April sunshine. He could just see the flower-woman at the corner of Pardoner’s Row, sitting in a galaxy of tulips. There were tulips everywhere. His wife had turned the bow window into an indoor garden and had filled it with them and with a great mass of early-flowering azaleas, brought up in the conservatory and still in bud. He examined these absent-mindedly and discovered among them a tin with a spray-gun mechanism. The tin was labelled “Slaypest” and bore alarming captions about the lethal nature of its contents. Charles peered at them through his eyeglass.

“Florence,” he said, “I don’t think this stuff ought to be left lying about.”

“Just what I tell her,” Florence said, returning.

“There are all sorts of warnings. It shouldn’t be used in enclosed places.
Is
it used like that?”

“It won’t be for want of my telling her if it is.”

“Really, I
don’t
like it. Could you lose it?”

“I’d get the full treatment meself if I did,” Florence grunted.

“Nevertheless,” Charles said, “I think you should do so.”

Florence shot a resentful look at him and muttered under her breath.

“What did you say?” he asked.

“I said it wasn’t so easy. She knows. She can read. I’ve told her.” She glowered at him and then said, “I take my orders from her. Always have and always will.”

He waited for a moment. “Quite so,” he said. “But all the same—” and hearing his wife’s voice, put the spray-gun down, gave a half-sigh and turned to confront the familiar room.

Miss Bellamy came into it wearing Florence’s gift. There was a patch of sunshine in the room and she posed in it, expectant, unaware of its disobliging candour.

“Look at my smashing shift!” she cried. “Florrie’s present! A new birthday suit.”

She had “made an entrance,” comic-provocative, skilfully French-farcical. She had no notion at all of the disservice she had done herself.