When I Was Otherwise (22 page)

“Then aren't you going to ask what I meant?”

“No. Because I feel sure you're going to tell me.”

That was better. He had the suspicion it mightn't have been wholly original—though with any luck, of course, she would believe it had—but, yes, it was certainly better.

She chuckled. “Then you're perfectly right, my friend! You obviously know women! I thought you'd come in disguise as… Well, don't you want to guess?”

“No.”

“As the Prince of Wales.”

“The Prince of Wales!”

“Oh yes! You've got a look of him, you know. Hasn't anyone ever said so? Of course, you're bigger than he is, and broader, got shoulders on you, and I do like to see a man with shoulders on him, most women do—but otherwise there's a quite uncanny resemblance. I've always admired the Prince of Wales. Must be a bit of a gay dog; a thoroughgoing rogue if all one hears is true! Probably leads his parents a frightful dance! And what I say is: good luck to him if he does!”

No one had ever mentioned any likeness to the Prince of Wales and Andrew was surprised—though on the whole, he thought, not unpleased. Over their red velvet couch hung a mirror, richly gilded and with cherubs at each corner. He stood up and pretended he had something in his eye while he studied his reflection.

“It must be the colour of the hair,” he said modestly. Reseating himself.

Daisy let that pass. “You know, your hair has a very nice sheen to it. I suppose you always smear it with Brilliantine or some such muck?”

“No. I never use anything.”

“Really?”

They both sat and thought about this. It had the air of an achievement.

“I brush it, though,” he admitted; “brush it regularly.
And
vigorously!” So in truth it wasn't an admission. He thought the second adverb—those things
were
adverbs, weren't they?—preserved it from being that: added an aura of rugged masculinity. He had chosen it with care.

“Ah, so that's the secret, is it? I'm not surprised. And your brown suit sets it off to perfection. I think you know how to put yourself across: a most valuable art—and one which remarkably few men appear to possess, lackaday!”

“Do you mean that?”

“Of course I do.” Daisy was gazing pensively into the depths of her sherry glass. It happened to be empty. She held out the tip of her tongue to catch the last drop.

“To be brutally frank with you,” he said, “I wasn't sure a brown suit was completely right for Simpson's. Naturally I couldn't ask Marsha. But I didn't want
not
to change, if you see what I mean; and especially I didn't want to stay in my office togs—I had the feeling you might think them dull!”

“Oh, I can't tell you how much I hate a uniform: any kind of uniform! Sheer anathema! There may be one or two exceptions, I grant you, like the armed forces. Or anything to do with the nursing profession. Or the police, or the fire brigade, or the horse guards…”

Even she realized that if she meant to go on she might have to reassess the whole strong stand that she had taken.

“Oh yes! I take my hat off to you! How could you possibly have known my one particular
bête noire
? I raise my glass to you! I drink to your sagacity!”

“But, Daisy, your glass is empty.”

“Is it? So it is.”

“Would you like another?”

“Oh, do you really think I should? Are
you
going to?”

“Yes! Why not?”

“Why not, indeed? Let's throw our bonnets over the windmill! Let's eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we…” She paused. “Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be. They say the owl was a baker's daughter.”

He looked at her, puzzled.

She patted his knee reassuringly.

“Don't worry. I haven't gone quite gaga—not yet! But I don't think a person should ever say die. No. Never!”

The waiter glanced up from serving another couple on the far side of the room. Andrew tried to catch his eye; was even, for a moment, rather glad of the diversion.

“And don't worry either,” Daisy added; “I'm not going to be frightfully expensive. In fact I should like to suggest we went Dutch if I didn't fear you'd take offence.”

“Of course I'd take offence,” he replied at once; and very truthfully.

“Yes, I'm sure you would—and quite right too!” said Daisy, with the same sincerity. “I think that I know you, Andrew, almost as well as you know me! But I'll tell you what we'll do. We'll both have steaming bowls of bread and milk. Very nourishing and most delicious. And it would show, as well, that we're both just a little different—have minds of our own—don't simply ape the common herd…”

“Ugh!” He gave a humorous shudder. “You mustn't think I don't appreciate your motives—I really do, Daisy—though for tonight they're quite unnecessary. But I don't think much of your solution. Of all the things I can't abide, one of them is bread and milk.”

“Yes, I know, dear. It doesn't surprise me in the least. I can't abide it either.” She signalled for the waiter. Successfully.

“No, to hell with the expense!” he said. “Tonight we'll be a couple of beefeaters! We'll pretend that we've been given the freedom of the Tower!”

“‘Oh, she walks the bloody Tower with 'er 'ead tucked underneath 'er arm!'”

Andrew considered, indulgently, that they hardly needed their second sherries—either of them. Despite their undeniably shaky start he couldn't remember now when he had last felt in such good form; anyway, he thought, not since the weekend when she had stayed with them.

Indeed, it came as a slight shock to realize that
that
had been a mere nine days ago. Time had passed slowly since then. He felt as if he might have known her for years.

32

While they were drinking their sherry Daisy asked:

“Now who do you think
I've
come in disguise as? And the answer, I warn you in advance, is
not
Frankenstein's monster. Neither is it Shirley Temple—which some might say was almost the same thing.”

He felt a little awkward, suddenly conscious he was late in complimenting her on her appearance. Yet in fact he hadn't really taken it in. He had been vaguely aware that she looked all right but his mind had been too full of other things; and besides, as he'd made clear before, she wasn't at all the same type as Marsha: Marsha, who had to be assured about her hair, the angle of her hat, her stocking seams, the lack of creases in her dress, the proper handbag, the most appropriate earrings…and so on, and so on, ad infinitum. (Ad
nauseam
!) You couldn't simply say to Marsha, “You look very nice,” and leave it at that. “Do I really pass mustard?” she would ask. “You wouldn't let me look a frump? I'd so hate to disgrace you. You don't think I should change?” And this, as likely as not, when they were already fifteen minutes late.

“You look very nice,” he said to Daisy. She had on a dark green thing—silk, wasn't it?—with long sleeves and a high collar. But whereas Marsha would have carried an evening purse scarcely large enough to hold a compact, Daisy carried what was by comparison a Gladstone bag. Yet, now he came to think of it, he did believe there was something slightly different about her, not quite the way he recollected.

Well, she was wearing makeup, of course. She was wearing a little more, he fancied, than Marsha had applied for her on either the Saturday
or
the Sunday when they had spent a further unconscionable time at Marsha's dressing table. And possibly his first fleeting thought
had
been that it appeared a trifle crude, until he'd checked himself and realized Daisy wasn't a woman most people would have equated with an English rose. Roses required delicacy. Daisies asked for something bolder.

“Come on,” she said. “You haven't guessed.”

“I can't.”

“No such word!”

“Mary Pickford?” Unaccountably, this was the first name that came into his head. He believed Daisy herself must have spoken of her, along with Greta Garbo.

“You mean—Mary Pickford in her heyday?”

“Yes.”

“The world's sweetheart?”

He nodded. He supposed she was if Daisy said so.

“Well, I can see why you would think that. To an extent. It must be this infernal wig.”

He almost choked.

“Wig?”

“You silly ass,” she said. “You didn't imagine all these curls were mine? Had just sprung up over the past two weeks?”

He
knew
there had been something different.

“You see, I've decided to follow Marsha's advice: I'm letting my own hair grow. But in the meanwhile… Why do you look so disbelieving? Have I got to pull it off to prove it?”

And she was truly—yes, she was truly—he could have sworn she was truly going to do it.

“No, no!” he said. “No! Of course I believe you.”

He looked about him quickly and got out his handkerchief and surreptitiously wiped his forehead. Also, the sides of his nose.

“No, it suits you awfully well, Daisy. Er…what a lark. You really are a card.” That nauseating word, but for the moment he couldn't think of any other to improve on it.

He sipped some more of his sherry. An awful thought occurred to him. The makeup somehow seemed especially heavy now that he knew the black hair was a wig. “Good God,” he asked himself, “will people start to view her as…well, as some kind of painted woman?” He looked around him again, hurriedly, to see if people had that sort of look upon their faces.

On the whole, he thought, they hadn't.

“I'll tell you what I admired about Mary Pickford?” Daisy gave her husky laugh. “The one thing I admired about her?”

“Why? Is she dead then?” Andrew felt surprise.

“Dead? Not at all! Good heavens, no. But by now he's past his best. He used to be such a…such a real swashbuckler. So athletic—glorious—in his prime.”

“She's not…! She never was…!” Andrew hadn't once seen Mary Pickford, it was true, but no one had ever mentioned to him that Mary Pickford was a man. The world's sweetheart? Daisy must be teasing him. Or was he being naïve? Visions of men trying to pass themselves off as women—visions of pansies, child molesters, the Marquis de Sade—of powdered cheeks, pomaded quiffs, puckered bow mouths—swept exotically before his eyes. He had no knowledge of anything like that, except for what a prefect had once asked him to do at school—but naturally he hadn't complied; and Dawson anyway had later been expelled. “Daisy, why do you call him ‘her'?”

She looked at him enquiringly.

“I mean her ‘him'?”

“What on earth is the good fellow talking about?” she asked the room at large. For a moment he was half afraid the room at large might answer.

“You said that he was so athletic—glorious—in his prime. Mary Pickford.”

“No, you silly ass! Douglas Fairbanks. Her husband.” It was the best joke she had heard in a long time. He wasn't sure if he himself emerged from it too well but because he hoped he was just as good a sport as the next man he pretended to laugh with her wholeheartedly: a far more gentle laugh, however—nothing that, even remotely, approached a guffaw.

Yet how could
any
living soul want to dress up as a woman, he thought, in the lingering, illogical aftermath.

“But if you're not Mary Pickford,” he asked, still determinedly smiling, “who are you?”

“Catherine the Great! Empress of all the Russias! I should have hoped it was rather obvious!”

All he knew about Catherine the Great—and this again came from school, though not from any history lesson—was her apparently insatiable sexual appetite. He shifted uncomfortably; and wondered, not for the first time, whether he might have bitten off more than he could chew.

But by then it was half past seven and their table was ready; things improved again after this. When they were seated and had chosen their dinner—both the food and the drink (
that
was always a slightly tricky part, the selection of the wine, but Daisy had simplified his task enormously by declaring she would rather have cider; Marsha would have said, “You choose; pick me something nice; surprise me,” and would probably have chirruped to the wine waiter, “Really we don't know a
thing
!” or have giggled when he had to sample and pronounce); when their napkins were unfolded and their devilled whitebait in front of them and Daisy had picked holes in all the women's hats—her own was shoved into her handbag—when all this had taken place, she said, with fork poised to attack, “Well, don't we make a most impressive couple: the Empress Catherine the Great and His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales? No wonder every eye in the place is turned towards us!”

Again, he swiftly ascertained that it wasn't.

“Figuratively speaking, I meant to say.”

“Of course.”

“I see you're beginning to speak my language!”

“I thought I'd been doing that ever since we met.”

“I mean—like a native,” she amended hastily, and with what she regarded as a touch of inspiration. “This is very good.”

“Yes, isn't it? The waiter must have recognized me.”

“HRH?”

He nodded. “A bit of a gay dog!” he said. “Mind you,” he added after a moment, and speaking more seriously, “it does seem I'll have to settle down somewhat on coming to the throne.”

“Yes, I know. It's almost a pity. But I think you'll make a first-rate king. One in a million. Shakespeare wrote a play about you.”

“He did?”

“
Henry IV
, Parts 1 and 2. That's when you sowed all your wild oats. And
Henry V
. That's where you smashed the Frogs at Agincourt and showed the whole world who was who! You really put us English on the map! I think we should drink a toast to that!”