Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont (19 page)

In spite of his question, she decided to enchant again. She would put one of her spells upon him. ‘And what is wrong with being an actress?’ she asked, in a challenging, flirtatious voice which annoyed him.

I’ll play it tired, he thought. He apologised for a little yawn, looked at her through watery eyes, said, ‘Nothing that I know of,’ and walked towards Mrs Palfrey.

But Willie intercepted him. ‘The john is through there, first on the left,’ he said, pointing with a napkin-swathed bottle.

I suppose I’d better, Mr Osmond thought, annoyed with Willie for putting the idea into his head. He could join Mrs Palfrey later.

The lavatory was pink and silver, everything possible dotted with moss roses. The seat had a candlewick cover. Bloody nonsense, thought Mr Osmond, slamming it back just in the nick of time. He had to feel grudgingly grateful to Willie.

Little jointed stringy things the shape of tadpoles drifted across his vision. He had to keep blinking his eyes to get rid of them, but soon they drifted back. He had tried the white plonk (thin and acid), and then, hoping for something better, since it could hardly be
worse, the red, which was blurred and cloudy.

The door handle went softly down and was at once released. On the other side, Mrs Post hastened away in consternation, wondering how much longer she could safely wait.

Mr Osmond flushed the w.c., and then sauntered about a bit in there, so that anyone interested would think that he was washing his hands, which he could not be bothered to do. He even turned on one of the taps with a great gush which Mrs Post, who had crept up again, listened to in anguish. In spite of all this messing about, passing time, he forgot to button up his flies.

He opened the door and, without any sign of recognition, passed Mrs Post as she dived in.

‘I
say,
old boy,’ said Willie on his way to the kitchen yet again. He nodded at Mr Osmond’s trousers and pressed on, carrying an empty bottle and a nearly empty glass.

Mr Osmond sauntered along the passage, seemed to be bemused by a reproduction of Van Gogh’s ‘Sunflowers’, and hurriedly buttoned up.

‘God, what a boring old party!’ Mrs Burton said, clutching his arm suddenly, as she lurched towards him. ‘How goes it, fellow sufferer?’

As a child he had had a Nannie, who said automatically, a hundred times a day,
‘That’s
no way to talk.’ He thought Mrs Burton might have benefited from her.

‘I haven’t had a word with Mrs Palfrey yet,’ he said, edging away.

Silly old fairy, thought Mrs Burton, who reckoned she knew a thing or two.

To Mrs de Salis’s annoyance, Mrs Palfrey and Aunt Bunty were now sitting down, discussing their varicose veins, although Mrs Palfrey seldom went into such personal matters, but Aunt Bunty was so immediately cosy. Their drawn-up chairs spoiled the look of the room, prevented mingling, and made a different party from the one intended. It was not at all smart to sit down, Mrs de Salis thought. She dashed into the kitchen, having remembered some little sausages heating in the oven. In rather a temper, she jabbed cocktail sticks into them, and bore them forth.

Mrs Burton took one and fanned it about before her mouth, having nearly burned her tongue. Mrs Post peered at the dish and said ‘How intriguing!’ She took the smallest, and gazed at it wonderingly. Mrs Palfrey graciously declined. Mr Osmond looked at his watch. ‘Join us, do,’ said Aunt Bunty, patting the window-seat beside her. So three were sitting down now.

‘We were talking about Brighton,’ Mrs Palfrey said, skipping the varicose veins.

‘Hove is nice,’ he said.

‘Hove is
very
nice,’ Mrs Palfrey agreed.

Mrs Post suddenly sat down and, holding her empty glass, stared ahead of her, smiling. Willie, coming towards her with the wine bottle, was intercepted by his mother, who shook her head meaningly. ‘I think not,’ she said between her teeth.

Mrs Burton drifted round the room on her own; she
examined photographs, fingered some roses to find out if they were real (they were not), picked up a small china bowl and turned it upside down to look for its mark. Mrs de Salis was glad to see Mr Osmond glancing again at his watch, even more pleased to see Mrs Palfrey, meeting his eyes, very slightly nod. Such delicious complicity,
he
was thinking. Our minds are as one.

Aunt Bunty said, ‘You want to be on your way?’

‘Want to be on your way?’ Willie repeated eagerly, coming towards them. He was fairly fed-up with this whole silly idea of his mother’s. ‘Taxis are something I
can
do.’

He went off at once.

The ladies fetched their coats and stood about, saying polite things about the party. Mrs de Salis, deciding not to spoil the ship for a hap’orth of tar, smilingly marvelled at their kindness in coming. Mrs Post sat down again. It had all been so wonderful, but she wished that she did not feel so strange and far-away. She was even, she decided, a long way away from herself.

‘It’s been so nice,’ Mr Osmond said once more. The chap might be able to get taxis, but he was the devil of a time doing it. Mrs Post unbuttoned her fur coat. Mrs Burton tapped her long nails against the window-pane -a maddening rhythm. ‘Here it is!’ she at last said, seeing the taxi draw up below, and Willie bursting out of it.

‘So nice,’ Mrs Palfrey said. ‘Thank you.’

‘Really wonderful,’ Mrs Post gasped, getting up carefully.

‘Have an eye to Mrs Post, will you?’ Mrs Palfrey murmured to Mr Osmond. ‘The stairs, I mean.’

‘Leave it to me,’ he said, narrowing his eyes to convey understanding.

‘Now you know where to find me,’ Mrs de Salis called from the door as they went downstairs.

When Willie returned, she was limp in a chair with her shoes off, and Aunt Bunty was in the kitchen washing up glasses. The whisky bottle was brought into the open.

‘Sorry, sorry, sorry!’ Mrs de Salis said, waving her hands. ‘Never again, I promise. It was a mistake, I admit. I was only trying to be kind, as is my wont. I did the best I could, as that ghastly old bishop no doubt said to the actress. Oh, sorry, Fay!’

‘The little one in beige and grey was drunk, I think,’ Aunt Bunty said.

‘Well, serve her bloody right.’

‘The noisy one most certainly was.’

‘She had the gall to pick up that Meissen bowl and look at its bottom.’

‘Only it isn’t Meissen,’ Willie said.

‘Don’t fight with
me,
boy!’

‘Mrs Palfrey scarcely put a drop to her lips,’ Aunt Bunty went on.

‘Oh, Mrs Palfrey is of solid worth,’ Mrs de Salis said scornfully.

‘That old chappie is in love with her,’ Bunty said, to their complete amazement.

‘Oh, how revolting!’ cried Mrs de Salis.

‘Bunty, you’ve lived in Brighton for far too long,’ said Fay,

‘Well, I don’t quite know what you mean by that, but …’

‘Do you know, I believe Aunt B. you’re right,’ Willie said.

‘Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve
lived
there, with them,’ Mrs de Salis argued. ‘Day after day, I’ve seen them, listened to them; and I’ve never heard such fanciful nonsense.’

Willie chewed the last, cold sausage.

‘Anyway, I’m fed up with this inquest,’ Mrs de Salis said. ‘It was a ghastly evening, but I’ve apologised once.’

Both Aunt Bunty and Fay Sylvester said how much they had enjoyed themselves.

‘What are we going to
eat?’
asked Willie.

‘Let’s go to the Ching-chong,’ his mother said, referring to the Pavilion of the Lotus Flower. She felt suddenly lively again, and put on her shoes and got up.

After dinner that evening, the lounge was very quiet. Tourist visitors had departed on what they so often called ‘a night on the town’; Mrs Post had faded away to bed; Mrs Burton had followed, angrily, mumbling deridingly to herself as she went up in the lift. ‘Gout, that’s a good excuse! A bloody nerve.’ She had pressed the wrong button and, stepping from the lift, found herself in unknown surroundings. This was the last bloody straw she told herself, aloud. When she reached
her bedroom, she was all to pieces. She stormed about, blaming first Willie for his wine, and then her husband for dying. ‘You
would!’
she sobbed to his memory. ‘You bloody would!’ An icy little voice at the back of her mind warned her that she was becoming theatrical. She slumped on the side of the bed, and watched her hands swinging limply to and fro between her widespread knees. ‘
He
would have insisted on me having a proper drink,’ she grumbled – her husband now in the second person. After the ghastly wine, she had tried, on her return, to right herself with whisky, had not managed to eat much dinner, had come to bed. ‘You could die from it,’ she declared, meaning that party.

Mrs Post had lain quietly down and switched off the bedside lamp. Her head was like a magic-lantern into which slides were thrust noisily, one after the other. Mrs Darling of Peter Pan, opened and shut her mouth, but nothing came out of it – a pity, for Mrs Post had hoped to remember some of this conversation for her cousin; there had been sausages, she thought, certainly peanuts; Mrs Burton had sung loudly, rather disgracing them, but that was earlier on; Willie had rather disappointed.

‘I’m glad I went,’ she thought defiantly, ‘but I shouldn’t like to have to go again tomorrow.’

‘Now,’ said Mrs Palfrey to Mr Osmond – they were alone in the quiet lounge after dinner. ‘There is something towards the taxi.’ She had taken a ten-shilling
note from her bag, folded it and tucked it under his coffee saucer.

‘But I should have liked …’ he began.

‘Well, I like
too,’
she said, smiling but firm.

She is admirable, he thought, dealt with money as a man might … no fuss … no embarrassment.

‘Thank you, then,’ he said. ‘It was a rum old do, wasn’t it?’ he ventured. He would have liked, in private, to have torn it all to shreds; but was cautious – rightly, as it turned out. ‘I shouldn’t wonder if it made one livery,’ he said.

‘I was fairly careful,’ Mrs Palfrey said.

‘Well, it was good of her to remember us, I suppose.’

‘Very
good,’ Mrs Palfrey said, shutting the door on any gossiping. What an admirable Nannie
she
must have had, he thought.

L
UDO had disappeared from Mrs Palfrey’s life. L
‘Never lend money to friends, unless you wish to lose them,’ her husband had often said. She now fretted about this advice, which seemed to be turning out to be well founded, as so much else of Arthur’s wisdom had proved to be. More simply, she seemed to have written a cheque for fifty pounds to rid herself of perhaps the only person she now loved.

Apart from her private grief, she still felt bound to save her public face; although, since Mrs Arbuthnot had left, and she had seen how seldom Mrs Post’s cousin, Mr Osmond’s sisters came to visit
them,
there was no longer any need to pretend and make excuses. From habit and, also, because talking of Ludo made him feel more real – as lovers discover to the boredom of everybody else – Mrs Palfrey made out a story of increased pressure at the British Museum.

‘Is he in Egyptology?’ Mr Osmond inquired.

‘Archives,’ she said, retreating behind that word.

‘Must have a chat with him some time,’ Mr Osmond said. ‘My uncle was a keen Egyptologist. Not my bent; but some of it adhered. I might not disgrace myself in such a conversation.’

Ludo was working in a place remote indeed from the British Museum.

Intent to help his mother and to repay Mrs Palfrey’s loan, he had taken another of his little jobs. It was, this time, as a waiter in a small Greek restaurant off the Fulham Road.

The Plaka
was in a basement throbbing with
bouzoukia
and smelling of charred lamb. In this deafening noise, Greek refugees became more Greek than ever before in their lives. English Philhellenes
Kalisperassed
about the place continually.

Ludo, always lacking in stamina, found so much exuberance fatiguing. He had to be wary, too. Just when he had decided that he must intervene to break up an argument of threatening dimensions, the protagonists would suddenly smile, throw up their hands, then embrace one another. He had no code of behaviour to go by.