Mr. Campion's Lucky Day & Other Stories (27 page)

The Perneys were not in the least disconcerted by him. They were as unselfconscious as a pair of savages and as happy as children newly home from school. The extraordinary delight which they seemed to take, both in the house and in the Barings themselves, was bewildering to Gina at first, and afterwards, when she grew used to it, oddly stimulating in spite of the heartbreaking irony of the situation.

The Perneys examined the furniture, expressing frank approval and demanding the history of each piece, until at length even Jan unbent and condescended to honour them with one of his famous impersonations of old Cordigliani, the antique dealer in the Hampstead Road.

Gina found herself laughing, and Victor Perney threw an arm round her shoulders.

“Hell, it’s good to see you two again,” he said with deep satisfaction. “When we saw old Jan in the station we had an awful fear that you might have changed, but you haven’t, you know. You’re just the same. Just as you were ten years ago.”

Gina Baring shot a guilty glance at her husband, but he was not looking at her. He and Sally Perney were exploring the depths of the china cabinet and he had his back to the rest of the room. Presently he turned and spoke with studied casualness.

“By the way, you two. I hope you don’t mind, we’ve got another guest for dinner. Mrs. Lynne Agnew is coming along. We did our best to put her off, but she’s a determined soul.”

The Perneys looked disappointed, but were disposed to be obliging.

“One of the local ladies?” inquired Victor, perching himself on the arm of a sofa. “I suppose you can’t get away from neighbours even here. What’s she like?”

Jan refilled his glass carefully before speaking.

“Charming,” he said at last. “I’ve got a portrait of her in this year” s Academy.”

Sally looked up.

“A rather big thing with a blue background?” she demanded. “I saw it. You did too, Vic. I pointed it out to you.”

‘That’s right. A nice thing. Rather more conventional than your usual stuff, but very pleasant. A grim-faced wench with flowers in her hair.”

Jan’s dark face grew a shade more dusky.

That’s the one.”

Perney raised his glass.

“If she’s a client, God bless her!” he said piously. “God bless all sleek, yellow-haired, hard-mouthed women who want their portraits painted.”

He set down his glass and threw himself on the leopard-skin rug before the fireplace and buried his face in it like a child.

“I was at your wedding.” His smothered voice continued the conversation affably. “Chianti and cake in Jan’s studio. I was fifteen and got drunk as an owl on it. Now you’re successful and I’m married and damn nearly successful myself. Isn’t it miraculous? I say, have you ever done this, Jan? The fur on a leopard’s head is the softest thing in the world. You try.”

In the end they all sampled it, one after the other, even Gina. It was remarkably soft. The short hair caressed their cheeks deliriously.

“A simple pleasure,” remarked Sally Perney, sitting back on her heels and laughing. “I shouldn’t like to do it on our dirty old hearthrug. We’ve got a real genuine Sheraton table though and a lovely Napoleon mirror with eagles. Next month, if all goes well, we’ll buy a corner cupboard.”

Gina blinked. The girl’s enthusiasm contained the genuine note. It echoed faintly down the years, as familiar and astonishing as the call of the first cuckoo in spring. Through the gush, the parrot-talk, the second-rate, the second-hand chatter of their new-won world, it trembled bugle-clear.

She glanced at Jan and he met her eyes and smiled with an amused tolerance which was just a little insincere.

Gina Baring turned away from him and tried to think of Fergus, Fergus who at any rate did want her, Fergus whose hungry, unhappy eyes were forever searching for that key to peace which must always lie hidden irrevocably beneath his own insufficiency. But her lips were unsteady.

It was very fortunate that Lynne Agnew should have chosen that precise moment to arrive. Her appearance caused a diversion which came only just in time. She swept into the room on a wave of faint perfume, her pastel silk striking a conventional note.

Lynne was charming, graceful and glaringly insincere. Beside Salley Perney’s twinkling contentment her very flesh appeared synthetic. She nodded to them all in a correct, distant way, touched Jan’s hand for a moment, and was smilingly infuriating to Gina.

Her coming brought the whole gathering to heel. The question of changing for the meal became a problem. Lynne was both gracious and amused, yet managed to convey that the omission was entirely due to Gina’s incompetence as a hostess though of course Gina was notoriously incompetent and was to be forgiven.

Jan glanced at his wife reproachfully, and for a giddy moment Gina even felt incompetent. Perney grinned.

“I can’t change, anyway,” he said. “I didn’t bring any clothes. I’m also starving.”

Mrs. Agnew regarded him with interest for the first time. Her polite astonishment was devastating and he coloured.

Five minutes later they went in to the meal, a chastened company.

Mrs. Agnew did her earnest best to put everyone at their ease, undeterred by the single vital objection that she was not the hostess. In spite of Jan’s determined efforts to ward off the Perneys, she insisted on bringing them into the brittle clatter of malicious gossip about her own acquaintances by pumping them tentatively about their own home and circle.

The Perneys were only too anxious to talk about themselves. After the discomfiture of the first ten minutes, they had evidently decided on Mrs. Agnew’s place in their universe and were anxious to dispose of her quietly and get back to Jan and Gina. Mrs. Agnew, therefore, got a little more than that for which she had bargained.

Sally Perney’s domestic problems proved to be of that sensational nature which sometimes characterises the lives of the employers of the cheaper London help. Her amusements were simple, not to say plebeian.

A well-directed snub, horrid in its cruelty, brought a blush to her cheek and Victor Perney to her defence. He regarded Mrs. Agnew with lazy, friendly eyes and began to scoff at her with that misleadingly ingenuous questioning which is the savagest weapon in the world.

Lynne did not perceive the attack for a long time, and Gina sat helpless, her heart bleeding for Jan and her sense of humour titillated, while Mrs. Agnew was led gently to convey that she thought herself the most beautiful woman in the district, that in her opinion one did not mix socially with people whose income was less than five thousand a year, and that good taste was largely a matter of patronising the most expensive shops.

Perney was delighted with his success and glanced at Jan for approbation. Gina saw the look and writhed in sympathetic discomfort.

After dinner they sat round in the sitting-room. The Perneys did not play bridge and said so cheerfully. They were anxious to do their best to make the enforced hour or so with the difficult guest as bearable as possible, however, and set themselves out to be entertaining.

They were, indeed, extremely amusing. Their chatter about their recent wedding, their parties, the picturesque characters they met, all helped to bring the old familiar gaiety of the early days of their own marriage back to the Barings with a vividness which Gina found stifling.

Lynne Agnew kept her head and stuck to her own rigid code of behaviour with a determination which was at times a little grim. She was a slow-witted woman, but not entirely without perception. She had become aware of her treatment at Perney’s merciless hands quite within half an hour of the moment when he finished with her, and she was wary of him now. But he had grown used to her amused and tolerant expression and was no longer subdued by it.

Gina watched her husband with covert anxiety. She thought only of him. Her tragic part in the comedy was too poignant to be savoured, but she could appreciate his acute embarrassment and sympathise with it.

Jan did his best, but the cards were against him. The Perneys amused and stimulated him in spite of himself. Inevitably the talk turned to old times. Victor Perney lay back in a great armchair and with a few deft brush strokes sketched in a picture of the Barings’ Soho studio. He did this for Mrs. Agnew’s sole benefit, in a spirit of pure forgiveness. He was preparing to talk and wanted her to enjoy the performance, and his word-picture was in the nature of a stage set.

“They were the first of the gang to marry,” he said, his bright round eyes fixed earnestly on the fair, painted face in front of him. “We were all more or less starving, you know. Not a bean between us. One decent suit between a dozen of us, and a good meal for everybody as soon as someone sold a drawing or a relation took pity. You know the sort of thing.”

“I’m afraid I don’t,” said Mrs. Agnew.

“Oh, well, you must imagine it, then,” said Perney kindly. “Jan and Gina were the first to risk marriage. There was a howl from relations and elders generally, prophecies of death and disaster, and so on, and even we were a bit apprehensive.

“We let them alone for at least a week and then crept back, one by one, to see if the rot had set in. They looked much the same, but Gina had cleaned the place up and there was some decent food in the kitchen cupboard. After that, of course, we practically moved in.

“Gina looked after us all. She got Jan going, saw he had a clean space to work in, fixed up for him to sleep occasionally and fed us all at least once a week. It was a revelation to us.

“Our generation had the wind up about marriage. We were all brought up to believe that for the thinking man, marriage is death. Jan and Gina risked it and proved it to be a damn fine idea. We were convinced. We saw it work. Marriage is all right. Marriage is good.”

Lynne Agnew laughed. The little tinkling sound jarred in the breathless room.

“How terribly amusing!” she said, and turned to Jan. “I didn’t know you’d had such a difficult beginning, my dear.”

“Difficult?” roared Perney, suddenly infuriated. “My dear girl, you don’t understand. It wasn’t difficult. It was glorious.”

Mrs. Agnew flushed.

“You must forgive me,” she said, “but I can’t bear sordid stories. They’re too Russian, too depressing.”

Gina caught a glimpse of Perney’s wrathful face and Jan’s pallid, tight-lipped mouth, and struggled with the nightmare.

“It was a long time ago,” she said feebly. “We’ve almost forgotten it.”

“I haven’t,” said Perney obstinately, “and I’m never going to forget it.” He sat up. “It was the most enlightening, stupendously comforting thing that ever happened to me, that discovery. I could thank you two on my knees for pointing it out to me. Marriage is all right. Given the right ingredients, it’s the secret of happiness. It does exist. It can be done.”

Mrs.
Agnew rose. There was a set smile on her red lips, and her movements were studiously graceful.

“I have a long drive home,” she said. “You’ll be gone in the morning, won’t you, Mr. Perney? It’s been so interesting meeting you. Good-bye. Good-bye, Gina. Good-bye, Mrs. Perney. Jan, I shall see you tomorrow.”

She gathered up her bag and made her exit. Jan hurried after her.

Perney rose.

“I suppose I’d better go, too,” he said. “I didn’t mean to annoy the wretched woman, but she got me down.”

He went out to obtrude his friendly personality upon the departing guest. Gina dared not stop him. She was panic-stricken. She was dimly aware that a matter which a few hours before had seemed so very personal had now become a broader problem.

Sally Perney’s sharp whisper cut through her thoughts.

“It’s definitely female, isn’t it?” she said. “It’s got its eye on your old man. I do admire you, Gina. You didn’t murmur. I’d have scratched and disgraced myself.”

She plumped herself down on the rug and sat clasping her knees, her small, bright face raised to the other woman’s.

“It’s just instinctive with me. Vic says I behave like a bantam hen, but I can’t help it. Even if I
know
it’s quite safe and the silly little girls haven’t got an earthly, yet I go for them with my claws out. Of course, it’s different for you, in a way. You and Jan must be so absolutely one person after all this time. Still, I’d have snapped at her. She was so disgustingly possessive.”

Gina looked at the girl and smiled at the hopelessness of it all. Mrs. Perney misunderstood her.

“I know I’m silly,” she said. “I always remember you and Jan getting rid of the White Crow. In times of stress that recollection heartens me. It can be done. You do remember the Crow, Gina? She was a model or something, a great white face and a predatory leer. Doesn’t that bring her back to you?”

Gina Baring’s mind was jolted back to a scene in the studio in the third year of their marriage. She saw herself trembling, angry and excruciatingly jealous, with Jan, cold and uncomfortable, at her side.

“My dear, you’re being damned silly,” she had said to the languid, vacant face before her. “A little disgusting, too. Do go away.”

The
naivet
é of the words brought a blush to her cheeks as she remembered, and she wondered why. Was it that they were then all young, all so idealistically sure of the sanctity of the new love they had discovered?

‘The White Crow,” she said aloud. “Poor girl, we didn’t like her, did we?”

“Jan hated her,” said Sally Perney complacently. “Vic says Jan was shocked by her.”

Gina stared at her and her heart contracted as her early success was so lightly explained. She was saved from betraying herself by the return of the men. Perney came in grinning.

“She’s gone, silly old trumpet,” he said, rubbing his bony hands together. “Let’s go along to the studio and look at Jan’s stuff. Can I have some beer? Put the brandy away, Gina, now the guest has gone.”

Mrs. Baring glanced at her husband and was startled to see that the expression in his eyes was as helpless as her own.

At three in the morning they were sitting before a fire still talking, with the room a chaos of canvases and pencil studies around them. Perney and Gina had raided the kitchen at midnight and the remains of a scratch meal lay on trays on the model’s throne behind them.