Something in Disguise (15 page)

‘Steady.’ he said again, but more seriously.

He took her upper arm and walked her through the nearest door.

‘Don’t
frog
march me!’

He laughed. ‘I couldn’t be doing that: you have to be four to one for that. I’m leading you to the nearest comfortable chair which is what one does to girls in your
condition.’ He pushed her gently into it, and took the basket from her.

‘There you are. I say, that’s little Red Riding Hood equipment. Had you suddenly decided that I was a good old-fashioned wolf – look here, what
is
it?’

For the moment she sat down, tears began spurting from her eyes. For a few seconds she glared unseeingly at him, too offended with herself even to search for a handkerchief. He went to the other
side of the room and came back with a tumbler so heavy that her hand shook with surprise at its weight.

‘The male equivalent of a nice cup of tea.’ he said.

‘I don’t like whisky.’

‘As a matter of fact, it’s brandy. Brandy and soda. I should have said the male nouveau riche equivalent of a nice cup of tea.’

She drank some, and then said, ‘It’s simply that things seem awful to me sometimes – nothing, really. Nothing to do with you,’ she added, meaning to sound worldly, rather
than rude. She gave him the glass to hold while she found her handkerchief, and then blew her nose in what she hoped was a practical and finishing-off manner.

‘Have some more brandy. I’m going to have some too.’ He handed her back her glass and went away again. It was a very large, dimly lit room, with two fireplaces and windows to
the floor each end of it: it smelt of flowers and she was glad that it was dimly lit.

When he came back with his glass, he sat on the arm of a huge sofa near her chair and said, ‘We’ve both had rather an awful evening. It’s not surprising that you feel
awful.’

‘What about Mrs Cole?’

‘Don’t worry about her.
She’s
all right.’

‘She’s
not
all right! She clearly wasn’t at all all right!’

‘She was stoned, of course. There’s nothing unusual about that.’

Elizabeth was clutching her tumbler so hard that if it hadn’t been made of plate-glass windows it would certainly have broken. She took a gulp of brandy for courage and said, ‘She
was extremely upset about someone called Jennifer.’ She was watching him narrowly for a reaction.

‘There’s nothing unusual about that. She’s been upset about Jennifer for years.

‘Our daughter,’ he added a moment later: and now it seemed to be the other way round – to be he who was watching her. Staring down at it, she was turning the glass round and
round in her hands, and even with her fringe it was possible to see from the rest of her face that she was frowning. At last she said, ‘Do you mean that she doesn’t
know
where
her
own
daughter lives?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Who stops her knowing? You?’

‘Yep.’

‘That’s monstrous!’

‘Of course, sometimes my security slips up, but not if I can help it.’

‘No wonder she is so dreadfully unhappy.’

‘Yes, it’s not a situation that makes for happiness –’

She got to her feet and looked wildly for somewhere to put her glass.

‘I’m going home now.’

‘You said that before.’ But he rose to his feet and stood towering before her as he took her glass.

She looked defiantly up at him. ‘Now I really
am
.’

He stood quite still watching her face. Then, with neat and gentle movements, he took off his glasses, folded them and put them in a pocket: without the glasses, he looked more simple, more
serious, and inquiring. He put his arms round her, drew her towards him and put his mouth upon hers. They stayed like that for a long time, motionless and utterly silent.

Then they were both sitting on the sofa: he was holding one of her hands in both of his and speaking quite calmly – as though nothing had happened.

‘You see, it’s not only Daphne we have to consider: there’s Jennifer, too. It got a bit much for her having her mother turn up without warning dead drunk, falling all over the
place at Speech Days and sometimes just any old day – anywhere. You know how conservative children are: well poor old Jennifer kept turning out to have a mother not like anybody else’s
mother. I had to put a stop to it. Daphne suffers from gusts of sentimental passion for Jennifer and there is nothing children hate more than that. Do you begin to see, at all?’

She nodded: she felt like two people: one inside, and one sitting on a sofa, talking. She said, ‘But she can’t always have been like this? She must somehow have
got
like
it?’

‘I don’t know when that was. She’d been on the drink long before I met her. When I married her she came off it, because, poor girl, she thought I was going to love her in the
way she wanted. But the trouble with alcoholics is that they can’t love anyone back, you see: they’re too taken up with themselves, and whether people are reassuring and loving them
enough, and nobody ever can, so then they feel let down and switch the situation so that most of the letting down will be done by them. That’s roughly it, I think. But it’s an
impossible situation for children: if you have them, you have to try and protect them from bad luck on that scale. I divorced her.’

He had put on his spectacles again, and was observing her, she found, when she looked up.

‘Years ago.’

‘How old is Jennifer?’

He reflected. ‘Twenty in September.’

‘I’m twenty.’

An expression she had not seen before crossed his face: then he said, ‘That’s why I explained this to you. I’m forty-five.’

There was a silence while they looked at each other. Then he took off his glasses again with one hand and put them on a table behind the sofa. ‘I want to kiss you,’ he said, and
there ensued another unknown quantity of time and by the end of it she was lying on the sofa in the crook of one of his arms.

‘Now is the moment for me to examine your face,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry to seem so fidgety, but that means putting on my spectacles.’

‘Who cuts your hair?’ he asked when they were on.

‘My brother.’

‘Good Lord!’

‘He’s not actually a hairdresser.’

‘I can see that.’ He pushed the hair out of her eyes. ‘Anyway, with a forehead like that, it’s a crime to have a fringe or bang or whatever it’s called. Is it my
imagination, or is your hair not perfectly dry?’

‘It mightn’t be. I’d just washed it when you rang up.’

‘
Really
– may I call you Elizabeth? Well,
really
, Elizabeth!’

‘It’s all very well for
you
–’

‘I was waiting for that.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Some disparaging allusion to my baldness. Would it help if I told you that what hair I
have
got is incredibly greasy? A little of it goes a hell of a long way; you should be
thankful it is so much on the decline.’

‘I only meant that you
know
when you are going to work, so you needn’t get caught out washing your hair.’ She sat up. ‘Could I have my brandy?’

‘In a minute; you’re quite perky enough without it. Let me see your eyes.’ He peered very close into her face and she could see two little Elizabeths – like Polyfotos
– one in each lens.

‘What marvellous, translucent whites you have – like a very young child. Or – let me see – thinly-sliced whites of hard-boiled egg – in case you think the young
child stuff is a bit Dornford Yates.’

‘Who’s he?’

‘When we have more time, I’ll show you. True to form, I have nearly all of him in first editions upstairs. I’m afraid I’ve got to take off my glasses again.’

‘I’ll take them off.’

She leaned towards him as she did this and he kept perfectly still. He was staring at her mouth.

At last he took her head between his hands and began kissing her and this time it was different: it was not enough, and she could not bear it to stop. She clung to him and kissed him – the
first time
she
had ever actually kissed in her life; afterwards, she flung her arms round his neck and rubbed her face against his to make the touching go on . . .

‘I’m going to take you upstairs,’ he said. He took her by the shoulders and pushed her a little away. ‘Elizabeth: you’ve never done this before, have
you?’

She shook her head. ‘It’s a kind of love – isn’t it?’

‘At first sight,’ he said.

Oliver loved the whole business of flying, and always managed to get a window seat where the view was not obscured by the aeroplane’s wings. It was wark, as one would
expect at half past midnight, and by the lack of lights below, he guessed that they were flying over the English Channel. He stretched out his legs, threw back his head, shut his eyes and waited
for France. He was on his way to Cap Ferrat, to stay with Elizabeth and the fabulous John Cole. Elizabeth had been there a fortnight already: a week ago she had rung him at Lincoln Street –
in the
morning
– and said how soon could he come? Not for at least a week, he had replied: he didn’t want to sound as though he had nothing better to do as most people who
habitually haven’t, don’t; also Ginny had gone to Eden Roc the day before Elizabeth rang, and the last thing he wanted her to think was that he was chasing her. So he had spent an awful
week by himself in London, not getting down to anything more than ever. He’d been to a sale at Simpson’s and bought himself some rather stunning bathing shorts. Darling Liz had left him
every penny she possessed, but he had thought that if he lived on corned beef it was fair to buy the shorts. The ticket had been sent to him with Mr Cole’s compliments: a perfectly charming
old-world chauffeur (Scottish) had brought it. He had saluted Oliver and then said, ‘Your sister has expressed the wish for a picture of her father which lies on the table by her bed here. If
you will entrust me with it, I will have the office send it out.’ So Oliver had fetched it for him, and the man had saluted again, and said, ‘I hope we shall see you in France, sir.
Your sister sent her love and seemed very well when I last saw her this morning.’ And then he had popped into a silver Rolls-Royce before Oliver could reply.

Liz really was extraordinary. As far as he could make out (and that surely must be, in her case, the whole way), she had lived a kind of schoolgirl, virginal existence, and then, suddenly, he
had got back from seeing May in Surrey to find her not at home which she continued to be all night. When eventually she returned (shortly after he had started seriously to worry), she had been
quite different from anything he had ever known her be; excited and dreamy; partly treating him as though he ought to know everything already; partly behaving as though
he
had incurred some
minor tragedy; quite incapable of any coherent account of herself, but unable to stop talking about it.

‘Do you mean you cooked dinner for him and he seduced you?’

‘Well, he couldn’t eat much of the dinner. We had caviare for breakfast – not with spoons, though – to revive us because we hardly slept a wink, you can’t can you,
if you’re in bed with people you don’t know very well – it’s
so
fascinating talking to them in between –’

‘Now Liz. Listen to me –’

‘Darling Oliver I
do
. Whatever happens. I shan’t stop loving you – what
ever
happens everything will be all right. How many hours is it till seven
o’clock?’ But she went upstairs, without waiting for an answer.

‘Isn’t it amazing – the first person I meet –’ she said, turning on the bath on her way up.

‘He’s
not
the first person you’ve met. He’s probably about the ten thousandth person you’ve met –’

‘You know perfectly
well
what I mean. I mean the first person I’ve
met
. Goodness I’m tired! I feel as though I’ve got roots coming out of my legs that have
to be torn up every time I move.’ She threw herself on her bed: he stood morosely over her.

‘He asked who cut my hair,’ she said looking up at him with a wealth of meaning that he couldn’t fathom.

‘Who
is
he?’

‘He lives in Pelham Place. I said you weren’t a hairdresser, of course – do you know, he’s got a sunken bath
in
his dressing-room?’

‘What does he
do
?’

‘He’s nouveau riche. He told me. He has the most beautiful hands –’ she gave a little shiver and fell silent.

He had opened his mouth to tell her to stop being so silly and make sense but she had smiled at him – half triumphant, half appealing (she looked tireder and prettier than he’d ever
seen her) – and then, without the slightest warning, fallen asleep. And ever since then . . .

And he had not only not set eyes on the famous Mr Cole, he hadn’t even spoken to him on the telephone. A few days after meeting him, Liz had announced that they were going to France. She
had also said that she was going to ring him to make a plan for his joining them when she knew what the house was like, and sure enough, she had done just that, the day that he’d been giving
up hope.

So here he was – in the aeroplane, just in time because he had been getting very tired of corned beef. When the stewardess appeared, he asked whether there was anything to eat. She was
afraid she thought there wasn’t. What about a drink? He felt in his pockets and there seemed to be enough there so he said yes – a bear. The lights of the French shore appeared below;
tiny, twinkling and very yellow, and he began to feel positively excited. The stewardess came back with some beer and a packet of biscuits done up in Cellophane. Most of the other passengers were,
or seemed to be asleep.

‘It’s these tourist flights,’ she said, ‘they don’t issue meals if they can help it: not if it’s a short flight like this one, and late-night flight at
that.’

It’s funny how hungry you have to feel, he thought, to want to eat assorted sweet biscuits. The stewardess was – a bit more than kindly – adjusting the table for his beer. She
was the wrong age for him – he liked women of thirty-odd or not over twenty-one; besides, her eyes and her breasts were too close together, and anyway, his hands were far too full with Ginny.
So he thanked her lying back with his eyes shut, and she went away. He hadn’t told Ginny he was coming. He planned to ring her up – very casually – or better still, encounter her
in the pool at Eden Roc . . . She was the kind of girl who would wear the scantest bikini and no bathing cap – she’d come up from some dive, with streaming hair and golden waterproof
skin, to find him . . . Perhaps
that
wouldn’t bore her. Ginny’s boredom threshold was one of the lowest he’d even read about, let alone met. She combined an attention span
about many things that would disgrace a teenage puppy, with a startling, and morbid, capacity to stick to some dreary point – like getting blackheads out of her legs or how many calories she
had consumed that day. One of the deadly attractions of people who are easily bored is the challenge of not boring them: it tickled the vanity in a very private place. She often bored him (the
other side of the coin): but just when he was deciding that he couldn’t stick much more of whatever she was or wasn’t being at the time, she did, or said something wholly unexpected,
funny and endearing. The fact that she was so frightfully, chronically, hereditarily rich
had
to be treated by anyone of sensibility as a sort of controllable, but unfortunate disease
– like diabetes. Regular injections of homespun affection, honesty, and common sense were essential to people in her position if they were not to go into a coma of indulgent self-pity or
persecution mania. Blaming your parents provided some sort of domestic release: in Ginny’s case she had a good choice; each of her parents had remarried four times, so there were ten people
in this relation to her. She lived a kind of upper-class Esperanto: in certain places with certain people; they could come from anywhere, but they had to be able to be in approximately the same
position . . . It was a very small, jet-propelled and gilt-edged world. Because everybody in it was on the move, they tried to make everything the same wherever they were, and being very rich, of
course they succeeded. Naturally, from time to time, they felt the need of variety: Oliver, being only twenty-four, did not at all understand that that was what he was in aid of. He provided a
– not very marked – contrast to Scrabble, Martinis, massage, sun tan, water-skiing, in-jokes, and being a socialist in your spare time.