Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont (6 page)

Mrs Palfrey, unwilling for him to wander about on this hazardous carpet, got up herself and pressed the bell. Returning to her chair, she bade him sit down.

‘What would you like to drink, Desmond?’

‘Whatever is suitable under the circumstances,’ he said in a low voice; then, bending nearer to her, asked, ‘Who is that old codger over there, staring at me like crazy?’

‘I will tell you later,’ Mrs Palfrey said, avoiding Mr Osmond’s eye.

It was all going with a swing. There would be so much to discuss at dinner. She had had qualms about it; that he would be glum and young and regretful; but now she was under the influence of charm – a new ingredient in her life. The unmended shoes were an eccentricity. She glowed.

‘Will you bring two glasses of sherry, Antonio,’ she said to the waiter. ‘I think medium-dry. Is that all right for you, Desmond?’

Ludo bowed his head.

Mrs Palfrey had murmured those words to herself, going about her bedroom earlier, getting ready: ‘medium-dry’ she had said with an air of sophistication, staring at herself in the glass and bringing the biggest
pearl exactly centre-bottom of the necklace.

‘And may I have the menu and wine-list?’ she added, having also rehearsed that.

The waiter, in the way of looking surprised, put his thin mouth sideways. In this hotel, guests looked at the menu by the lift, or in the restaurant quietly awaited what they expected.
A la carte
was a farce.

Ludo leaned back easily, but his eyes were darting to and fro, noting everything, noting Mrs Arbuthnot noting him, and Mrs Post, in her sad
pot-pourri
colours, fussing over her knitting.

‘Over
there
is Mrs Arbuthnot,’ Mrs Palfrey said, in a low voice to Ludo. ‘With the sticks.’

‘I thought so. I shouldn’t be afraid of her, you know. Although you seem very much the new girl round here.’

‘Of course. Mrs Arbuthnot has been at the Claremont for years.’

‘It has entered her soul.’

‘But we aren’t allowed to die here.’

He threw back his head and laughed.

‘But isn’t that sad?’ she asked doubtfully.

‘I don’t see anything sad about
you,’
he said
He thought, I mayn’t write it down; but please God may I remember it.
We Aren’t Allowed to Die Here.
By Ludovic Myers.

Mrs Post hurried by, slightly ducking her head by way of greeting. Sherry was brought, and Mrs Palfrey handed the menu to Ludo. ‘We can go
à la carte,
if you like,’ she said recklessly.

While he sipped his drink and studied the menu in
silence, she began to urge smoked salmon upon him. She was nervously aware that Mrs Arbuthnot was slowly approaching on her way to the dining-room. When she reached them, she paused. ‘So you have your grandson at last,’ she said to Mrs Palfrey, but looking at Ludo, who stood up quickly, pressing down the sole of his shoes.

Although not even glancing at Mrs Palfrey, Mrs Arbuthnot sensed nervousness in her when she introduced her grandson. She wondered about it, while making a remark or two to Ludo. He seemed to her a quite presentable young man, in spite of the state of his footwear. Educated they all knew he was.

‘Is the British Museum open on Sundays?’ she asked him.

‘Oh, yes, it is one of our busiest days,’ Ludo said smoothly, and Mrs Palfrey felt a surge of admiration and relief.

‘I should like to hear more about it,’ Mrs Arbuthnot said, and again she felt Mrs Palfrey’s tension – a sudden alteration in breathing and a quick ducking of her head. ‘But now,’ she said, ‘I must go in to dinner.’

She inched her way towards the door.

‘Jesus!’ said Ludo. ‘I rather see what you mean. Those wicked old eyes.’

‘She is often in great pain,’ said Mrs Palfrey.

‘We shall have to have our wits about us,’ Ludo said. ‘As a matter of fact, I think I’ll have soup and then the veal,’ he said, kindly choosing from the
table d’hóte.

‘Well, it might be quicker,’ Mrs Palfrey said.

Going in to dinner, she took his arm; but this was so that she might steady him if he tripped again, not to lean on.

‘Well, Grandmamma,’ he said, looking about him and smiling as he unfolded his napkin, ‘I really am awfully hungry.’

Desmond had always called her ‘Grannie’, and she had never liked it, for it seemed a name for some mumbling, toothless crone. ‘Grandmamma’ made her sit up straighter.

She smiled back at him and said in a low voice, leaning forward, ‘So far, so good.’

They were drawn together by their complicity. She had kn9wn, after the first hesitant moments of her embarrassment in Harrods, that her deception – their deception – must be treated lightly – as rather a lark. S6 Ludo had described it.

Mrs Burton’s laugh burst out heedlessly at intervals. Her brother-in-law sat back, smiling at the power he had to amuse her.

‘She’s having a high old time,’ said Ludo.

‘Yes. Mrs Burton is rather sophisticated. She drinks a great deal, and goes out a lot and spends goodness knows how much at the hairdresser’s. She practically
lives
there.’

‘It must cost quite a lot to stay here,’ said Ludo in a careless tone.

‘Yes, it does. Quite an amount.’ She looked across the table at him, and he knew that the conversation was closed. All these rich old ladies, he thought.

He drank his soup, ate his veal with a kind of hungry concentration, which was a great pleasure to Mrs Palfrey. She was doing something for him, as he was doing something for her, and when he lifted his glass to her, she felt – for the first time since she came to the Claremont – that she was envied and respected, knowing herself watched from other tables. The waitresses moved about the room like sleep-walkers.

‘The portions are not large, I’m afraid,’ she said, when he had put his knife and fork together on his empty plate. ‘I suppose they are meant for frail old stomachs.’

‘Marvellous food,’ he said happily. ‘I’ve never enjoyed myself more, with my clothes on.’

He said it automatically as he continued to butter and ravenously eat bits of bread.

She flushed, unnoticed by him, and signalled to the waiter to refill his glass. She felt up and down about Ludo – uncertain, then sure – as she had felt when, so long ago, she had fallen in love with Arthur: in those earlier days before she had become quite sure.

The waiter brought some dull-looking pieces of cheese and Ludo cut off hunks from them while Mrs Palfrey sat back; unable to eat any more, but vicariously enjoying his great appetite.

‘The Camembert is wonderful,’ he said. It was really, as she knew, a remaining chalky inch or two, off the rim of some Brie. She smiled and nodded.

With great care, he buttered a little biscuit, balanced a piece of cheese on it and held it up to her. He dodged
it about before her laughing mouth, her protesting fluttering hands and then deftly popped it between her teeth.

‘You will have your grandmother awake with indigestion all night,’ Mrs Arbuthnot said from grimacing lips as she passed their table on her way out of the room. Mrs Palfrey, swallowing the biscuit, felt that she had made an exhibition of herself, or had been made an exhibition of.

Ludo pulled a face at Mrs Arbuthnot’s back as she limped away, and again Mrs Palfrey was not sure – not at all sure.

‘She was quite kind to me on my first night here,’ she said. ‘When I was feeling rather low. She asked me to go down to the television room. One doesn’t forget those things.’

She suffered a little flurry of unpopularity when she asked for their coffee to be served at the table, and by the time it was brought the dining-room was empty save for a couple of glum strangers, and Mrs Burton and her brother-in-law laughing their heads off and drinking brandy. So Ludo and Mrs Palfrey could talk more easily, no longer fearful of being overheard. Once or twice, earlier, they had made mistakes – Mrs Palfrey telling him things which, as her grandson, he must have known already, and he, speaking disrespectfully of his mother, forgetting that she was supposed to be Mrs Palfrey’s own daughter. She had hushed him; but for the sake of seemliness, not expediency. In their different ways, both were too candid for the game.

‘I don’t take sugar,’ she said. He stirred several
spoonfuls of it into his coffee. ‘But I used to like it,’ she said as if she were excusing herself.

‘Good for you.’ He went on stirring his coffee, and then suddenly looked up and smiled.

She had a feeling that they were talking in different languages – each only half-learned by the other. She had never felt this with Desmond; and knew no more young people.

‘I think that when we have finished our coffee, I will see you off, if you don’t mind,’ she said. ‘There is not much point in going back into the lounge to run the risk of being asked a lot of questions.’

‘No, I suppose we shouldn’t push our luck.’

‘And you have your writing to get on with. I mustn’t take up too much of your time.’

She suddenly felt tired: exultant, but tired. She longed now to be alone, to be pottering about her bedroom, getting ready for bed, and going over the evening in her mind.

‘Here is your handkerchief,’ she said, taking the envelope from her bag. He looked puzzled. ‘When I cut my knee,’ she added.

‘Is it all right? Your knee, I mean.’ He put the envelope in his pocket and cast a glance over the table. Nothing left on it to eat. ‘Well, this has set me up for the next week. It was terrific.’

‘I hope you will come again one day,’ she said anxiously.

She saw a look of uncertainty on his face, and glanced quickly aside.

When she had seen him off, she went to the lounge and sat down for a while, waiting for the effects of coffee to wear off before she went to bed. Mrs Burton and her brother-in-law had returned to the bar. Sometimes when he had made her laugh, she gave him a little push with her elbow. Mr Osmond sat staring in front of him, his hand rising and falling on the arm of his chair as if to some music only he could hear. Mrs Arbuthnot pettishly turned the last pages of the latest Snow; then snapped the book shut. ‘Whether it’s me or not, I don’t know; but it seems to me he’s going off,’ she said, and then, more directly, to Mrs Palfrey, ‘Your grandson seemed to enjoy his dinner.’

‘He seems to enjoy everything,’ Mrs Palfrey said happily.

‘And makes such a fuss of you,’ Mrs Post said in a wistful voice.

‘He has always been very affectionate.’

‘A good-looking young man.’

‘Oh, he reminds me so much of my husband. When we first met.’ Mrs Palfrey was shocked at herself for saying this.

‘Really?’

‘Yes, it is almost uncanny.’

‘Stuffing you with biscuits,’ Mrs Arbuthnot said, suddenly, angrily, unable to bear any more of Mrs Palfrey’s complacency. She leaned forward and slowly massaged her swollen knee.

‘Yes, he’s such a tease,’ said Mrs Palfrey.

‘I suppose now he’s at last turned up we shall be seeing a lot of him.’

‘I expect so,’ Mrs Palfrey said with a perceptible (to Mrs Arbuthnot) air of unease.

Mrs Post knitted away; her lips moving. For some reason, one of her ears was stuffed with cotton wool. She finished a row, looked up with a glazed expression, said, ‘Yes, a nice-looking lad’, and returned to her pattern.

That night, Mrs Palfrey was the first to go to bed.

When Ludo reached home, he was cold; for he had no overcoat. He decided to allow himself the luxury of half an hour’s gas-fire before going to bed, and he knelt before it rubbing his hands. When he was warm, he fetched a notebook and opened it and began to write. It was headed ‘Exploration of Mrs Palfrey’. He wrote steadily for a while: racked his brains, frowning, then suddenly jotted down, ‘We aren’t allowed to die here’. Then he put away the book and began to undress. He found the envelope in his pocket and opened it. Inside the laundered handkerchief was a folded five-pound note and a little card on which was written in a large, surprisingly actressy scrawl, ‘Thank you for your kindness.’

Mrs Palfrey slept well, and all night, and her lips were level, as if she were about to smile.

Half-way through the night, Mrs Arbuthnot gave up hope of sleeping. Her rigid limbs were torture to her, and every attempt at finding a more comfortable way of lying hurt. She switched on the light and decided to make another onslaught on C. P. Snow. But she had lost the thread and could not be bothered to try to pick it up again. She blamed Mrs Palfrey for bringing the book, and the author for writing it.

She sat staring about the room. It was the same shape – small shape – as Mrs Palfrey’s. Her husband would have complained to the management, and with effect. In those days, she had been apprehensive when he did, being a most uncomplaining person herself. Now she had come to complain all the time: and with no effect at all. She saw, with a three-o’clock-in-the-night flash of ghastly clarity, that she complained about things only to underlings like herself, who could do nothing. Her husband went, as he had liked to say, straight to the fountain-head. She was afraid of the fountain-heads. Her husband – so busy being bossy -had left her comparatively badly off; and the fountain-head was concerned only with making the hotel pay. He – they – stuffed elderly women into the worst bedrooms at a price they could just afford; because one-night guests (extra laundry bill) would have made a fuss.