Love in Our Time (3 page)

“You wanted me, sir?” he said.

He managed all the same to do quite a lot of telephoning during the day; it was one of the advantages of an outside job that, provided you got through the calls, no one at the head office was any the wiser as to what, within reason, you did in between. If you wanted to back a horse or drink a cup of coffee you were able to do so. And so it was that, in between taking a lift up to the third floor of Regent House where Pluvene Raincoats lived and calling on Meteor Motors, he was able to get on to Rex at the showrooms.

Rex was a car salesman in Great Portman Street and it was easy to talk to him on the phone any time of the day. Selling second-hand cars that their previous owners have discarded in desperation depends very largely on the personal touch; and his firm encouraged him in his phone calls. It was from Rex that Gerald had bought his own car.

“That you, old boy?” Rex asked in his clipped, Sandhurst-sounding voice. “How's the car?”

“What I really phoned up about,” Gerald explained, “was to ask if you could come out and see us. Just a little beer-and-sausage party.”

“Swell,” Rex answered. “When is it?”

“Next Friday? Come along about half-past eight.”

“Shall I bring the wife?”

“Oh, yes, of course. Bring her. Bring the wife by all means.”

No doubt Mrs. Beale was in the same sort of hole as Alice; they would be glad to know each other.

“Righty-o. See you on Friday, then. So long, old man.” And Rex had rung off.

Gerald envied him: he was the sort of man who went to parties every night.

The rest of the morning was a mixture of Ridgewells' Port and Bill Graham; M. Maurice, the Hair Specialist, and Ted Baker; Society Gowns Ltd., and Charley Woodman; Schwartzkopf and Himmelmayer, the jewellers, and Jimmy Watson.

By twelve o'clock there were five of the bunch coming. Some of them admittedly sounded a bit surprised; and Jimmy Watson had to get Gerald to repeat his name twice before he caught it. But they all accepted.

The only mistake Gerald made was to ring up Tony. He wasn't really in the group at all. It was simply that he used to turn up at The Spaniards at about the same time on Sunday mornings and drove a Bentley. It was really his car that they had wanted to get to know, not him. But he was friendly enough. He was in Gerald's line of business, too, except that he was at the top of it, and he seemed to have all the money he wanted. That was why he always said whisky when they asked him what he would have.

“Do you want me to bring any girls along?” he asked when he learnt that it was a party.

Gerald paused. He knew the kind of girls that Tony took about with him. They were all the same, all blonde, all obliging and all rather brassy.

“It's my wife's party,” he explained.

“I get you,” said Tony. “We'll give the girls a rest.” There was a pause. “Are you dressing?” he asked.

“Come as you are,” Gerald told him. “It's only quite a small affair. Just some of the bunch.”

“I'll be there,” said Tony pleasantly. “Ta-ta for the present.”

As Gerald put up the receiver he began for the first time to have misgivings about the party. It was Tony's remark about dressing that worried him. He suddenly wondered if all the others were thinking of turning up in dinner-jackets and boiled shirts. The idea hadn't occurred to him before, and it rather frightened him. Perhaps they would think it was a swell sort of do that they were coming to, and would feel pretty sore at having toiled out to Finchley for a couple of sausages and a glass of beer. He remembered, too, that Alice had only met Tony once or twice and hadn't particularly liked him.

In every other respect it was a good, almost a record morning. When he got back to the office he had orders for a full-page, two half-doubles and a six-inch single in his pocket. All that Mr. Potter, the redoubtable North-countryman, had brought in was one half-page and a two-inch stop. It was very handsomely Gerald's day. Mr. Hubbard admitted it, and took it as an opportunity to blow up Mr. Potter …

Gerald's journey back home that night was as exciting as if he had been bringing back a present. He was thinking all the way how pleased she would be about the party he had got together for her. But Alice was not at all pleased. She seemed puzzled and rather resentful.

“If you really want to see them all that badly,” she said, “why don't you go along on Sunday morning like you used to? I wouldn't mind.”

“But I want them to come
here
” Gerald explained. “I want you to get to know them.”

“You want me to get to know Tony?” Alice repeated.

“Yes, why not? Tony's all right, isn't he?”

“I suppose so.”

“Well, what's wrong with him?”

“Oh, nothing. Nothing at all. Only I didn't happen to know that he was a friend of yours.”

Gerald crossed over and put his arm round her.

“Don't let Tony get you down,” he said. “There are plenty of others coming.”

“Yes, I know there are. You told me.”

“Well, don't you want them? It's your party.”

“If I wanted to give a party,” Alice said quietly, “I should “ask some of my own friends.”

So that was it! She was hurt because he hadn't invited any of her friends.

“Well, why not ask them now?” he said. “There's plenty of time.” Then he remembered the cost, and added cautiously: “Ask some of them, at any rate. We can't get too many people in here.”

But Alice shook her head.

“It doesn't matter,” she assured him. “You've got enough as it is.” She got up and went towards the door. “We might as well go into the dining-room,” she said. “I had everything ready when you came in.”

The dining-room was not a success. Even in summer, it chilled. They had told themselves, at first, it would look better when it was finished. But they admitted now that they had been wrong. There was too much wood in it already—too much solid, expressionless, un-exhilarating wood. It had been Gerald's idea to keep the furnishing in period; and it was a Refectory Suite that they had bought. It comprised a massive, trestle dining-table with synthetic marks of age cunningly gouged out of it; an imitation linen-fold sideboard, with a built-in knife-tray, similarly scored; and six medieval-looking
chairs. The effect at first sight was overpowering: it was like a little historical tableau from Chartres or Nantes.

It was only afterwards that the concealed screw holes became apparent and the trade-mark of the patented leather substitute on the chairs showed through. Then the whole suite looked a degree less than genuine. Examined closely it had the air of something primitive and hasty; something that might have been hacked out and knocked together by a romantic and historically-minded schoolboy. Even the pictures round the walls—reproductions of Franz Hals's “Laughing Cavalier” and Vermeer's “Head of a Girl,” that actually showed the brush marks—did nothing to mitigate the gloom.

They had been eating in silence for some time—it was a cold meal with a formidable, china wedding present full of salad on the table—when Alice spoke.

“There's Willie,” she said suddenly. “We must have Willie.”

At the name of Willie, Gerald put down his knife and fork. If there was one man more than another that he felt they could usefully drop it was Willie Marsh. No doubt he was genuine and warm hearted enough; and he and Alice had played together as children. But he was really unthinkable; there was something about him that was like a plump dummy out of a second-rate tailor's. Even the way he did his hair was wrong. It was curly hair and he left it to grow into a high, fluffy peak in front. In the result, it gave him a bantam-cock air of jauntiness. The trouble about him was that he had no feeling at all about keeping up appearances: in summer he even used to walk round to tennis with his shoes strung round his racket. Every time Gerald looked at him he
wondered why no one had ever explained things to him. With that presence he was condemned to the least of clerkships all his life. The wheels of the City were greased with the blood of impossible, unpromotable Willies.

“What do you want to invite Willie for?” he asked.

“I like Willie.”

“Yes, I know, but … ” Then he stopped himself. After all, if it was Alice's party he supposed that she had a right to ask whom she wanted. “All right,” he said. “You ask Willie. I hardly know him.”

“You'll like him,” Alice assured him. “I know you will. Willie's ever so nice really.”

The thought of having Willie served to cheer her: it made it all seem so much more like one of the parties she was used to. So far back as she could remember, Willie had come to every party; she had a series of impressions of him as a small boy always red and hot looking and a little awkward, and always in a dark suit that was too small for him—they were the forerunners of the whole range of suits that he bought later on.

When she had cleared away, it was Alice who was the first to mention the party again.

“What are we going to give them to eat?” she asked.

“Sausages,” he told her.

“But there's got to be something else.”

“No, there hasn't,” he said. “Just sausages.”

“But supposing one of them doesn't like sausages?”

“Well, he goes without,” Gerald replied. It was a point that he hadn't considered before; the newspaper paragraph hadn't said anything about people not liking sausages. It just took it for granted that all Belgravia adored them.

“I'm going to make some sandwiches as well,” Alice exclaimed suddenly. “Then they can all have what they like.”

“O.K.,” said Gerald.

“And I'll make some fruit salad. They'll want something like that after eating sausages.”

“O.K.,” said Gerald again. It seemed useless to argue. She was just beginning to enter into the spirit of the thing, and already she had left him far behind. He had begun by telling himself that they would just have a few friends in, and now he kept consoling himself by reflecting that, as they didn't do it often, they might as well do it properly.

“What are you going to give them to drink?” Alice asked.

“Beer,” he answered. “As much beer as they can drink.”

“There ought to be some cup,” Alice objected.

“What for?” Gerald asked. “Have you ever heard of a man drinking cup?” It seemed a silly sort of suggestion to make.

“Well, what about the women? Why can't they have what they like?”

He paused. “Oh, all right, then. Let's have some cup as well!”

If he had known that this was the way the party was going he wouldn't have minded if Tony had turned up in Court dress. A mere boiled shirt or two would be nothing. All the same, he found it rather flattering. He liked the idea of making a bit of a show now that he was married.

“It's going to be rather fun,” Alice said a few minutes later. “If we push the couch back we could have some
dancing in here afterwards. We could get quite a lot of people in if we had them in relays.”

But Gerald was past raising any objections. He lit a cigarette and lay back in his chair. “It's your party,” he said magnanimously.

Alice got up and sat on the arm. She began playing with his hair. He put his arm round her.

“Sorry I was cross last night,” she said.

“But you weren't. I was.”

She slid off the arm on to his knee.

“I didn't mean to make you cry,” he said.

“It was only me being silly.”

“No, it wasn't. I was beastly.”

He stubbed out his cigarette and put his arms round her.

“Do you love me?” he asked.

“You know I do.”

“How much?”

“All the world and then some.”

“O.K.,” he said.

It was eight-five on Friday evening. The lights were on in both rooms and everything was ready—ready twenty-five minutes too early. Gerald and Alice were sitting there, uncomfortably upright so as not to squash the cushions, looking hopefully at each other. There was an air of tension and anxiety in the room: it might have been a firing squad they were waiting for. It was almost as though each expected the other suddenly to produce the party—Rex and Tony and Willie and the rest of them—complete and in full swing out of a hat.

“I hope they're not late,” Alice said at last.

“Perhaps they've forgotten all about it,” Gerald answered.

Now that the day of the party had come he did not feel so enthusiastic. He couldn't help remembering the amount they had spent on it and he wished that he and Alice could have spent the money quietly on themselves without all this fuss. Altogether, the scale of the thing, once it had been taken out of his hands, appalled him. The original idea of beer and sausages had been discarded entirely. Alice had not been at all impressed by the fact that a peer's daughter did it that way. She knew by instinct that what went down well enough in Eaton Square would be the laughing stock of East Finchley. There were now sandwiches and sausage rolls, a bowl of fruit salad and a trayful of jellies, a large iced cake and
a dish of salted peanuts. The beer—gallon upon gallon of it—stood on the floor in a great forest of bottles. It seemed impossible that fourteen human beings—that was the number it had now reached—who had already eaten a meal that evening could be expected to get through so much by morning. But there it was; and Alice kept getting up and going into the other room to reassure herself that there was enough.

One reason for Gerald's despondency was that he was suffering from a rebuff: it was only a slight one, but he couldn't forget it. Tony's remark about dressing up had worried him at the time. It had worried him still more as the date for the party approached. He saw the others surging into the room with a swish of silk dresses and ostrich feathers and the arctic glare of boiled shirts—and Alice and himself sitting there like a couple of school children in their day clothes. Finally, he had been unable to stand the uncertainty any longer. He had rung up Rex.