The Twyborn Affair (7 page)

‘Oh no, thank you
—really
!' It brought Madame Vatatzes back to her senses.

Mrs Golson noticed that, although the ankles were shapely enough, the young woman's feet were on the large side, hands too, for that matter. Madame Vatatzes must have been conscious of her feet. She made a move as though to hide them under a skirt which was not long enough. Mrs Golson was reminded of an injured bird made anxious by the presence of some additional and possibly graver threat.

‘I was only thinking of your comfort,' she said.

It restored her own confidence, if only momentarily.

‘Are you English?' she ventured to ask.

‘More or less,' the young woman replied.

‘You speak the language so beautifully.' Mrs Golson paused, and sighed. ‘We are Australians,' she informed her recently acquired friend.

‘So I gathered.'

‘
Ohhh?
' Mrs Golson mewed. ‘Most people tell me there isn't a trace. With men, it's different of course. Curly—that's my husband—is unmistakable. But Curly you haven't met—except … No, tell me,
do—
how can you tell?'

‘By those I've known.' Here Madame Vatatzes smiled her most seductive smile, then veiled her extraordinary eyes. ‘By a certain tone,' she murmured, and left it there.

It went on clanging in Joanie Golson's ears, who, nevertheless, had been known for her game of tennis, and who now played a devious shot.

‘Your husband, I take it, is French?'

Madame Vatatzes returned the ball out of Joanie s reach. ‘No,' she said, ‘he is not French' and sat contemplating her ankle.

Only Curly's arrival could have affected Joanie worse.

Still looking, it was not at her ankle, but into distance, Madame Vatatzes asked, ‘Couldn't you, please, make good your offer? My husband's an old man. And sick. He's probably beside himself.'

Remembering the rorty old boy bashing the piano, Mrs Golson was not deceived by Madame Vatatzes' pathos. She only accepted that the shimmer had faded from the present occasion. What she would have liked to know was how much she had been taken in—but ever. Would she remain the plump turkey, a knife eternally poised above its breast? (She was inclined to dismiss those she had fooled or threatened, because hers was surely only a dessert-knife, not to be taken seriously.)

But she hustled herself away from her doubts, disappointments, and any suspicion of hypocrisy. ‘Oh, my dear, of course—I must
ask them to find Teakle—get him to bring the car round. We'll have you home in no time.'

Mrs Golson smiled at Madame Vatatzes and Madame Vatatzes smiled back. They might have been forking up
Mont Blanc
together in the rotunda below, enjoying that state of perfect feminine collusion, in which advice is given on the falsification of dressmakers' bills, and what He does to them, or doesn't do, is discussed and deplored.

When Curly had to come in.

Mrs Golson decided on cheerful acceptance. ‘This is my husband,' she said. ‘Madame Vatatzes, Curly, has sprained her ankle. We met in the street soon after the mishap. I promised that Teakle would run her home.'

If Curly recognised the ‘looker' he and Teakle had almost run down while she was out walking with her husband, he made no mention of the incident, to Mrs Golson's agreeable surprise. Surely he must recognise her? He was so obviously appreciative of the creature's beauty.

‘You can be sure we'll take the necessary steps, Mrs Vatats …' E. Boyd Golson's pores oozed visible enthusiasm.

Madame Vatatzes lowered her eyes. It was less likely that she should recognise a man who had whizzed past her in a motor-car. She was simply embarrassed by Curly's native crudity. At the same time Mrs Golson's mind could not help reverting to their conversation of earlier. Was it that Madame Vatatzes, behind her silence and her modest expression, sat testing, categorising, perhaps even enjoying, the smell of a man? Mrs Golson was at once shocked by her own disgusting thought, even though it had been forced on her by this new acquaintance.

‘… do something about it at the soonest …' It seemed to Curly's wife that his suit fitted him far too snugly, that he was straining at the seams, cracking, almost stuttering with enthusiasm and the formation of a plan to ease Madame Vatatzes' distress.‘… only thing—Teakle's gone into Toulon by train with some cove he's palled up with at the old hotel.'

‘Then I must make other arrangements. I must hire a cab. I
must
go home,' Madame Vatatzes, again in some distress, insisted.

‘And so you shall, dear lady,' E. Boyd Golson assured her. ‘I'll drive you there myself.'

‘That is so kind. Only three or four kilometres along the road to Les Sailles,' Madame Vatatzes informed him. ‘Normally, I walk it. We both walk it—in cool weather.'

‘You can rely on me, madam, to drive you to the frontier if necessary.'

This was an event Joan Golson had not bargained for. Again she had the impression of straining tweed, bursting flesh, and worse still, her late father-in-law's professional hands dealing with a bolt of calico. The thought of entrusting her precious jewel to Curly's gallantry was almost more than she could bear.

‘Oh, do take care!' she gasped. ‘Don't talk too much! My husband's inclined to be a reckless driver.'

She stood pleating the skin above her nose, inside their encrustation of rings her white hands plump and helpless at her waist.

‘Nobody else has ever complained about my driving. If you feel that way, Joanie, come along for the spin. Lay a restraining hand on my arm whenever you think it necessary.'

‘Oh dear, no! In such a wind—and when was my poor advice ever taken?'

She laughed, and so did Curly.

Then Madame Vatatzes advanced, and again thanked Mrs Golson for her kindness. ‘Without you, everything might have been so much more disagreeable.' The young woman's handshake was so frank in its expression of warmth that Mrs Golson's rings were driven into her.

Their visitant was going. She was leaving on Curly's tweedy arm. Joanie had not allowed herself the last delicious spasm of a glance into Madame Vatatzes' eyes. She knew she was sulking, a silly schoolgirl standing in the doorway, no doubt looking white about the gills as she watched them down the corridor. That ratty little fur the girl was wearing! For a mad instant Joanie contemplated tearing
her sables off the gilded chair-back where she had hung them, rushing down the grey expanse of corridor, to arrive before the lift door opened, and fling her furs round the girl's shoulders, not so much to spite Curly as to offer a token of her own passion.

But mercifully she did nothing so foolish, and the door of the cage opened, and Madame Vatatzes turned to wave, not with a flutter of the hand as one might have expected, but with the whole arm, describing a lovely, leisurely arc. At this distance one could not distinguish the eyes, but the smile opened in the terracotta face. Mrs Golson was glad she could not see the eyes; they troubled memory, and with it most of the certainties of life.

 

The Golsons did not investigate each other, unless surreptitiously, till the following morning, for Joan had taken a sleeping draught (‘too mild to be habit-forming') and Curly was exhausted by too much unexpected excitement, and finally, too much champagne.

Over breakfast, tea and
assiette anglaise
for Curly, chocolate for Joan (‘only one cup—so rich the spoon stands up in the stuff') each wondered how best to re-open the situation of the evening before. When Joan was peeved, he knew too well, she might stay peeved for a day or two; while she could not have borne Curly's boots trampling the most refined and complex sentiments of any she had experienced.

It was Mrs Golson, however, who opened the attack, and brutally. ‘I do hope the poor thing wasn't cold—motoring—and only that little balding fur.'

Curly had to laugh. ‘You don't suppose, precious, that I let her freeze—that I didn't put an arm round her—on our reckless drive.'

His lips looked quite revolting under the blandishment of fat ham.

‘You're so heavy, darling, in your humour. I prefer you when you're natural.' Mrs Golson's pout had a chocolate stain in one comer; she could not know about that, only the dob of chocolate on the bosom of her négligée, with which she was now trying to deal.

‘You delivered her safe and sound, I take it. Did they ask you in? You were away so long for such a short distance.'

‘We had some conversation on the doorstep. The French don't ask you in.'

‘He's not French—and she's English—not quite, but sort of.'

‘Well, the old bloke's something foreign—and nutty as a fruit-cake.'

‘Greek, to be precise. I had it from the English Tea-room.'

‘Well, foreign. And nutty.'

‘Did she tell you anything—on the reckless drive?'

‘What would she tell me? We talked a bit—as you do with a woman—an attractive one.'

‘I'd have thought her rather too mannish for your taste.' It pained Mrs Golson deeply to have to make this accusation.

‘She was decent,' he said, forking into his mouth a sliver of red beef from the depleted serving dish.

‘The house, anyway, is most attractive.'

‘The house? You know it?'

It seemed to Mrs Golson that her whole ethos, the knowing and the not knowing, the necessary lies and the half-truths, was threatened by her unfortunate lapse.

Then she had another of her brainwaves. ‘She told me about it; She described it,' she muttered, ‘and it sounded charming. Pink. Slightly dilapidated …' She went through a whole catalogue for the garden, as Madame Vatatzes herself would never have done, her garden as familiar as the ratty stone-marten stole; but Curly, who never noticed gardens, would not be aware of her subterfuge.

As indeed he wasn't. ‘The gate'll fall down if they don't do something about it,' he declared like any practical Australian male (the elderly refined Greek, Monsieur Vatatzes, would certainly give no thought to the matter as, seated on the piano-stool, he dashed off duets with his charming wife).

‘“
Crimson Cottage
”!' Curly snorted, and opened
Le Petit Niçois
, which he did on principle, as part of the morning ritual, while un
able to read what was inside. ‘Did you know there's a war brewing? I bet you didn't, Joanie treasure!'

She was outraged. ‘Of course I did! I have it from the English Tea-room that war is inevitable. Kaiser Wilhelm's determined to have one. The French will resist. The English will come to their assistance—though the French don't count on it. So Miss Clitheroe says.'

‘Where does that put us—as Australians?'

Mrs Golson hesitated. ‘I expect Australia will do the right thing, provided it doesn't go against good sense.'

‘But us Golsons!' Curly insisted.

‘Do we count?' Joanie answered.

For an instant they looked at each other, trying to decide.

Then Curly ventured, ‘I don't want it to look as though we're doing a skedaddle, Joan dear, but I can't see it 'ud be practical to let the
Simla
sail without us.'

‘Yes, darling, I know it would only be
sensible
to catch the
Simla
.' Agitation and the division of loyalties caused Mrs Golson to lash her rather large thighs around each other inside the peach chiffon négligée. ‘At least you might investigate—run over to Marseille with Teakle and pay a deposit on the cabin.'

Play for time, play for time … Surely there would be a letter of thanks? too much to hope for an invitation? at least a formal call when the ankle allows. Even if they missed the
Simla
her passionate desire to renew acquaintance with Madame Vatatzes convinced Mrs Golson that she was ready to face the passions of war—a war which in any case was only rumoured and too remote from the Golsons to affect their actual lives.

When Curly said, ‘You can be sure I've paid the deposit. It only remains to clinch the deal. And that's what I'm going to do. It wouldn't be reasonable, Joanie, if I didn't.'

‘Well,' she said, looking down her front into the jabot in beige Brussels in which the dollop of chocolate had lodged, ‘you are a man of course, and your attitude is that of a man. Don't think I don't appreciate you, darling.' She raised her head and aimed a
ravaged smile, while stroking the necklaces of Venus in the plump throat which he admired and she deplored. ‘
But
as a foolish romantic woman I can't help thinking of all the people—the
little
people—that
femme de chamber
Joséphine, honest old Teakle remaining behind in poor England—even the abominably superior Miss Clitheroe—all those we'd be running away from and leaving to be swallowed up by a war;' then when she had risen, and executed a figure or two in peach chiffon, ‘the Vatatzes too—that old man and his young wife—who don't belong anywhere, it seems—but will be caught—subjected to all the terrors—the horrors.'

Mrs Golson had never thought like this before. She could not help feeling impressed by her own illumination.

And Curly was so proud of Joanie. He would have liked to bed her if he hadn't decided to run over to Marseille and make sure of their passage to Sydney—‘home', as opposed to Joanie's ‘Home', where the shops were, the real, Bond Street ones, not Golsons' Emporium.

Joan Golson thought she had probably lost. She would be carried back out of the iridescence into a congealing of life, from which only Eadie Twyborn had rescued her at brief moments. And she had neglected Eadie. That letter she had started and never got down to writing. But what could one say when all was surmise, suspicion, doubt, or dream? One would never be able to conclude, never live out the promises.