‘What’s that there in that sack?’ interrupted the young policeman. As they all pressed forward to look, he found Susan beside him, and reassured her with a friendly pat on the arm.
‘That?’ Mr Wispell laughed again. ‘That’s Helen. Don’t damage her, I implore you – if my aunt—’
The sergeant had bent down and slit open the sacking with a pen-knife. Soiled and stained, the pale face of a woman glimmered up at him. There was earth in her eyelids.
‘Marble!’ said the sergeant. ‘Well, I’ll be hanged!’
There was the sound of a car stopping at the gate.
‘Heaven almighty!’ ejaculated Mr Wispell. ‘We’re done for! Get this into the house quickly, Jarrock.’
‘Wait a bit, sir. What I want to know—’
Steps sounded on the gravel. Mr Wispell flung his hands to heaven. ‘Too late!’ he groaned.
An elderly lady, very tall and upright, was coming round the side of the house.
‘What on earth are you up to out here, Walter?’ she demanded, in a piercing voice. ‘Policemen? A nice welcome for your aunt, I must say. And what –
what
is my wedding-present doing in the garden?’ she added, as her eye fell on the naked marble figure.
‘Oh, Lor’!’ said Mr Wispell. He flung down the spade and stalked away into the house.
‘I’m afraid,’ said Mrs Wispell, ‘you will have to take your month’s money and go, Susan. Mr Wispell is very much annoyed. You see, it was such a hideous statue, he wouldn’t have it in the house, and nobody would buy it, and besides, Mrs Glassover might turn up at any time, so we buried it and when she wired, of course we had to dig it up. But I’m afraid Mrs Glassover will never forgive Walter, and she’s sure to alter her will and – well, he’s very angry, and really I don’t know how you could be so silly.’
‘I’m sure I’m very sorry, madam. I was a bit nervous, somehow—’
‘Maybe,’ said Mrs Jarrock in her hoarse voice, ‘the poor girl was upset-like, by Jarrock. I did ought to have explained about him and poor Mr Alistair getting blown up in the war and you being so kind to us – but there! Being used to his poor face myself I didn’t think, somehow – and what with being all upset and one thing and another . . .’
The voice of Mr Wispell came booming down the staircase. ‘Has that fool of a girl cleared off?’
The young policeman took Susan by the arm. He had pleasant brown eyes and curly hair, and his voice was friendly.
‘Seems to me, miss,’ he said, ‘Scrawns ain’t no place for you. You’d better come along of us and eat your dinner with mother and me.’
NEBUCHADNEZZAR
You have played ‘Nebuchadnezzar’, of course – unless you are so ingenuous as never to have heard of any game but Yo-yo, or whatever the latest fad may be. ‘Nebuchadnezzar’ is so old-fashioned that only the sophisticated play it. It came back with charades, of which, of course, it is only a variation. It is called ‘Nebuchadnezzar’, I suppose, because you could not easily find a more impossible name with which to play it.
You choose a name – and unless your audience is very patient, it had better be a short one – of some well-known character. Say, Job. Then you act in dumb show a character beginning with J, then one beginning with O, then one beginning with B. Then you act Job, and the spectators guess that Job is what you mean, and applaud kindly. That is all. Light-hearted people, with imagination, can get a lot of fun out of it.
Bob Lester was having a birthday party – his mother and sister and about twenty intimate friends squashed into the little flat at Hammersmith. Everybody was either a writer or a painter or an actor of sorts, or did something or the other quite entertaining for a living, and they were fairly well accustomed to amusing themselves with sing-songs and games. They could fool wittily and behave like children, and get merry on invisible quantities of claret-cup, and they were all rather clever and all knew each other extremely well. Cyril Markham felt slightly out of it, though they were all exceedingly nice to him and tried to cheer him up. It was nearly six months since Jane had died, and though they all sympathised terribly with him for her loss (they had all loved Jane), he felt that he and they were, and ever would be, strangers and aliens to one another. Dear Jane. They had found it hard to forgive him for marrying her and taking her away to Cornwall. It was terrible that she should have died – only two years later – of gastro-enteritis. Jane would have entered into all their jokes. She would have played absurd games with them and given an exquisite personal grace to the absurdest. Markham could never do that. He felt stiff, awkward, cruelly self-conscious. When Bob suggested ‘Nebuchadnezzar’, he courteously asked Markham to make one of his team of actors. Too kind; too kind. Markham said he preferred to look on, and Bob, sighing with relief, went on to pick up a side of trusted veterans.
The two front rooms of the flat had been thrown into one by the opening of the folding doors. Though it was November, the night was strangely close, and one of the three tall balconied windows overlooking the river had been thrown open. Across the smoke-filled room and over the heads of the guests, Markham could see the lights of the Surrey side dance in the river like tall Japanese lanterns. The smaller of the two rooms formed a stage for the players, and across the dividing doorway a pair of thick purple curtains had been hung. Outside, in the passage, the players scuffled backwards and forwards amid laughter. Waiting for the game to begin, Markham stared at the curtains. They were familiar. They were surely the curtains from his own Cornish cottage. Jane had hung them across the living room to screen off the dining part from the lounge part. How odd that Bob should have got them here. No, it wasn’t. Bob had given Jane her curtains for a wedding-present, and this must be another pair. They were old ones, he knew. Damask of that quality wasn’t made today.
Bob drew back the curtains, thrust out a dishevelled head, announced: ‘The Nebuchadnezzar has four letters,’ and disappeared again. In the distance was heard a vigorous bumping, and a voice called out, ‘There’s a clothes-line in the kitchen!’ Somebody standing near the door of the room switched off the lights, and the damask curtains were drawn aside for the acting of the first letter.
A Japanese screen at the back of the stage, above which appeared the head of Lavinia Forbes, elegantly attired in a silk scarf, bound round the forehead with a cricket-belt, caused Mrs Lester, always precipitate, to exclaim, ‘Romeo and Juliet – balcony scene!’ Everybody said ‘Hush,’ and the supposed Juliet, producing from behind the screen a mirror and lipstick, proceeded to make up her face in a very lavish manner. In the middle of this, her attention appeared to be distracted by something in the distance. She leaned over the screen and pointed eagerly in the direction of the landing, whence, indeed, some remarkable noises were proceeding. To her, amid frenzied applause, entered, on hands and knees, the twins, Peter and Paul Banaby, got up regardless of expense in fur coats worn with the hair outside, and champing furiously upon the clothes-line. Attached to them by stout luggage-straps was a basket-chair, which, after ominous hesitation and creaking between the door-posts, was propelled vigorously into the room by unseen hands, so that the charioteer – very gorgeous in scarlet dressing-gown, striped sash and military sabre, with a large gravy-strainer inverted upon his head – was nearly shot on to the backs of his steeds, and was heard to mutter an indignant ‘Steady on!’ through his forest of crêpe beard. The lady, from behind the screen, appeared to harangue the driver, who replied with a vulgar and regrettable gesture. A further brief exchange of pantomime led to the appearance of two stout parties in bathrobes and turbans, who proceeded to hoist the lady bodily over the screen. Somebody said, ‘Look out!’, the screen rocked and was hastily held up by one of the horses, and the victim was deposited on the floor with a thud, and promptly died with a considerable amount of twitching and gasping. The charioteer cracked his umbrella across the backs of his horses and was drawn round the room and off again in a masterly manner. A loud barking from the wings heralded the arrival of three savage door-mats, who, after snuffling a good deal over the corpse, started to devour it in large gulps as the curtain fell.
This spirited presentation was loudly cheered, and offered little difficulty to the spectators.
‘Jezebel, of course,’ said Tony Withers.
‘Or Jehu,’ said Miss Holroyd.
‘I do hope Lavvie wasn’t hurt,’ said Mrs Lester. ‘She came down an awful bump.’
‘Well, the first letter’s J, anyhow,’ said Patricia Martin. ‘I liked the furious driving.’
‘Bob looked simply marvellous,’ added Bice Taylor, who was sitting just behind Mrs Lester. Then, turning to Markham:
‘But one does so miss darling Jane. She loved acting and dressing-up, didn’t she? She was the gayest wee bit of a thing.’
Markham nodded. Yes, Jane had always been an actress. And her gaiety had been somehow proof against the solitude of their cottage and his own morose temper. She always would sing as she went about the house, and it had got so terribly on his nerves that he had snarled at her. He had always wondered what she found to sing about. Until, of course, he had found those letters, and then he had known.
He wished he had not come to this party. He was out of place here, and Tom Deering knew it and was sneering at him. He could see Tom’s dark, sardonic face in the far corner against the door. He must be remembering things too, the sleek devil. Well he, Markham, had put a spoke in Deering’s wheel anyhow, that was one comfort.
In spite of the open window, the room was stifling. What did they need with that enormous fire? The blood was pumping violently through his brain – he felt as though the top of his head would lift off. There were far too many people for the place. And they made so much noise. Something fearfully elaborate must be in preparation, to judge by the long wait and the running of feet on the landing. This was a tedious game.
The lights clicked off once more, and a voice announced ‘Second letter,’ as the curtains drew apart.
The apparition of Betty Sander in an exiguous pair of pale pink cami-bockers, with her hair down her back, embracing the deeply-embarrassed George P. Brewster in a tight-fitting gent’s union suit, was hailed with happy laughter.
‘The bedroom scene!’ exclaimed Mrs Lester, prematurely as usual. After an affecting exchange of endearments, the couple separated, George retiring to the far side of the piano to dig industriously with the coal-scoop, while Betty seated herself on the sofa and combed her hair with her fingers. Presently there advanced through the door the crimson face of Peter Barnaby, worming along at ground-level, with energetically working tongue. Behind it trailed an endless length of green table-cloth whose slow, humping progress proclaimed the presence within it of yet another human engine – probably the second Barnaby twin. This procession advanced to the sofa and rubbed itself against Betty’s leg – then reared itself up rather awkwardly in it mufflings and jerked its head at the aspidistra on the occasional table. Betty registered horror and refusal, but presently yielded and took from amid the leaves of the aspidistra a large apple, which she proceeded to eat with expressions of enjoyment, while the combined Barnabys retired behind the sofa. At this moment, George, wiping the honest sweat from his brow, returned from his labours with the coal-scoop over his shoulder. On seeing what Betty was about, he dropped the scoop and flung his arms to heaven. After some solicitation, however, he accepted his share of the feast, carefully polishing the apple first on his union suit. After this, he appeared to be suddenly struck by the indelicacy of the union suit and, moreover, proceeded to point the finger of scorn and reprimand at the cami-bockers. Betty, dissolved in tears, rushed to the aspidistra, tore off two large leaves (‘Oh, the poor plant!’ cried Mrs Lester) and attached them severally, with string, about the waists of George and herself. Then, from behind the Japanese screen appeared the awful presence of Bob, in the scarlet dressing-gown and a bright blue table-cloth, and wearing a large saucepan-lid tied to the back of his head. An immense beard of cotton-wool added majesty to his countenance. The delinquents fell flat on their faces, and the curtains were flung to amid rejoicings.
‘Now, was that Adam or Eve?’ demanded Miss Holroyd.
‘I think it was Eve,’ said somebody. ‘Then the whole word might be Jehu.’
‘But we’ve had Jehu.’
‘No, we haven’t, that was Jezebel.’
‘But they can’t be giving us Jehu and Jezebel again.’
‘JE, JA, JE, JA . . .’
The lights were on again now. Queer how white and unnatural all their faces looked. Like masks. Markham’s fingers pulled at his collar. Jezebel, Adam – wanton woman, deluded man. J, A, Jane. So long as the whoredoms of thy mother Jezebel and her witchcrafts are so many. If Deering had known that those letters had been found would he be smiling like that? He did know. That was why he was smiling that dark smile. He knew, and he had put Bob up to this. Let the galled jade wince. Jade; J, A, Jade. J, A, Jane. Jade, Jane, Jezebel. The dogs shall eat Jezebel in the portion of Jezreel. Dogs. Dogging his footsteps. The Hound of Heaven with a saucepan-lid on his head. Jehovah. JAH. J, A, Jane . . .
The lights went out.
They had draped a sheet over some chairs to form a little tent. At the door sat Bob, in the dressing-gown and the white beard, but without the saucepan-lid. Paul Barnaby, wearing a handkerchief over his head and a short tunic with a sash round the waist, presented him with frugal meal of two dried figs on a plate. In front of the tent stood a tin bath full of water and surrounded with aspidistras.