A Fish Dinner in Memison - Zimiamvian Trilogy 02 (26 page)

'You know each other, don't you?' said Mary. 'My brother-in-law,—'

'Mrs. Chedisford? I should think we do!' They shook hands. Fanny looked uncomfortable.

'Edward has shut himself up to work,' Mary said. 'Got to get something ready for one of his hush-hush meetings on Tuesday.'

'O. Well, I'll catch him at lunch. Several things I want to suck his brains about.'

'I doubt whether you'll get him at lunch. Possibly not at dinner even. You'd much better stay the night: we can fit you out. Lovely silk pyjamas. Brand new toothbrush. Everything you want. Do. To please me.'

'Most awfully nice of you, Mary. Upon my word, I think I will.'

'O good. We'll telephone to Jacqueline, so that she needn't be anxious about you.'

‘
Not she. She's too well trained after fourteen years of me, to worry about where I have got to. Tell me, do you think Edward's got one of his berserk rages on him?'

‘I
shouldn't be surprised, from the way he got down to this job, whatever it is, in the library.'

'Rolling his eyes, biting on the rim of his shield, bellowing like a bull?'

'Figuratively, yes.'

'Gad. I'd have liked to have seen it. Does it often happen now-a-days?'

'Well, we haven't seen such a great deal of each other during these nightmare years. No oftener, so far as I know, than it used to do. It's a family trait, isn't it? Fve always understood you had those times of, shall we say, violent inspiration followed by flop like a wrung-out dishcloth, yourself?'

'Who told you that, my dear Mary? Jacqueline?" 'Perhaps.'

'Secrets of the nuptial chamber: by Jove, it's monstrous. Well, I can promise you my goes are as Mother Siegel's soothing syrup compared with Edward's. Do you remember that famous occasion at Avignon, summer before the war?'

‘
Do I not!'

'Yes, but you only saw the working-up. I had a ring seat for the grand main act.' 'What was all this?' said Fanny. 'O, that's a great story.' Tell Miss Chedisford.'

'A great story. I and my wife, Edward and Mary, all sitting enjoying ourselves in one of those open-air cafe
’
places: warm summer night, lovely moon and all that, lots of chairs and tables, folks gossiping away, band playing. Table near us, pretty girl—French—and her young man: nice quiet inoffensive-looking people. Presently, hulking great rascal, sort of half-nigger, looking like one of those Yankee prize-ring johnnies, lounges up, takes a good look at the young lady, then planks himself down at their table. Well, they don't seem to value him: move away. Chap follows them: sized 'em up, apparently: got a bit of liquor on board: anyway, roots himself down on a chair and starts making up to the girl. Young man a bit rabbitish by the look of him: doesn't seem to know quite what to do. Well, Edward watches this for a minute, and his heckles begin to rise. Dam
n it all, he says, ‘I’
m going to put a stop to this. I tried to stop him: none of our business: don't want a scene. Not a bit of it. Up he gets, strolls over in that quiet devil-may-care way of his, stands over this tough and, I suppose, tells him to behave himself. Too far off for us to hear what they said, but evidently some back-chat. At last, man ups with his arm, glass in hand, as if he meant to shy it in Edward's face: however, seems to think better of it.—You remember, Mary?'

'O dear, O dear! go on. It all comes back to me so perfectly.'

"This is fun,' said Fanny. 'I like this.'

'Next thing, both standing up; then walk away together, the fellow damned angry, blustering away, but as if under marching orders, in front, scowling and snapping over his shoulder: Edward as if treading on his heels to make him go a bit faster. By God, I said, I'm going to see this through. Left the women, and tooled along behind, keeping out of sight not to annoy Edward; but just in case. They went straight through a kind of passage there is, direction of the Palace of the Popes, till they land up at that hotel—what was it? Silver Eagle or something— and a porter in uniform standing at the door: quiet street, no one about. Poor old bruiser chap hurrying along as if he didn't know why, and didn't quite like it, but just had to: marched off like a pickpocket. The Edward says to the porter, "You know me?" "Oui, monsieur." "Do you see this man?" he says. "Oui, monsieur." "Very well. You're a witness." And he says to the chappie, "You insulted a lady in my presence," he says, "and you insulted me. And when I told you to apologize, you insulted me again. Is that true?" That gets the fellow's rag out proper: wakes him out of his trance. "Yes it is," he says, making a face at him like a hydrophobia pig, "yes it is, you blanky blanking blanker, and I'll blanky well blank you up the blanking blank blank": rush at him, try to kick him, the way those blackguards do; but before you could say knife, Edward grabs him somehow —too quick to see; too dark—but in about one second he has him off his feet, throws him bodily against the wall—plonk! And there he dropped.'

'Threw him? do you mean threw him through the air?' said Fanny incredulously.

'Yes, like a cat. Chap weighed twelve stone if he weighed an ounce. For a minute I thought he was dead: looked damned like it. Nasty mess—'

'O thank you,' Mary said,
‘
we can leave out the decorations.'

Five minutes later, showing Eric his room, she said, 'I ought to have told you about Fanny. She's dropped the
Mrs.
’

'What do you say? Dropped? O Lord, I made a gaff, did I? Can't be helped. What happened?'

'A great many things that had better not'

‘F
ellow turn out bad hat?'

'About as bad as they make them.'

'Marriage of first cousins, wasn't it? and parents disapproved. Quite right too. Divorce, or what?'

'Yes.'

'Quite in the fashion. Damned fool. She's a fine woman. Most people are damned fools, one way or another. I wonder what's become of that nice brother of hers, Tom Chedisford?'

Mary was silent.

'Look here, my dear Mary,' he said suddenly:
‘
you see a lot more of Anne these days than I do. Is everything going as it should there? You know what I mean.'

'Absolutely, I should have said. Why?'

That fellow Charles. Does he treat her properly?'

‘D
otes on her. Always has.'

'He's a dull dog. You think they're happy together?'

Mary laughed. 'Good heavens, I don't know why you ask me these things. Of course they are.'

'A bit hum-drum.'

'Most of us get a bit hum-drum as the years go by.'

'Most of us may, but some of us don't.'

'Perhaps some people get on better that way. One can't lay down a
Code Napoleon
for happy marriages.'

‘
You think she's got what she wants?'

'I certainly think so. If
she hadn't we certainly couldn't give it her.'

Eric wrinkled up his nose and shot out his lips. 'What I don't like to see is the dear girl getting to look more and more like a spinster: kin
d of unattached look. Better ne
ver have married the fellow if the effect of him is to turn her into a maiden aunt Edward hasn't done that to you. Nor I to Jacqueline.'

'O dear, we're getting painfully personal. Hadn't we better stop?'

'Just as you like, my dear. But before we leave the subject I may as well tell you that you and Edward are the only married people I've ever known who always seem as if you weren't married at all, but were carrying on some clandestine affair that nobody was supposed to have wind of but yourselves. And you keep young and full of beans on it, as if you would always go on growing up, but never grow old. Arid if you ask me which of you deserves the honours for that, I'm inclined to think it's honours easy: between the two of you. And you can tell him from me, if you like, that that's my opinion.'

It was past eleven o'clock, the same night. Lessingham was in the library among a mass of papers, books, maps, statistics, and cigar-smoke. 'You'd better turn in now, Jack: be fresh for the morning. We've got most of the stuff taped and sorted now. I'll go on for a bit: get my covering memorandum into shape: that's the ticklish part of it, what the whole thing stands or falls by, and I can do it best by myself. You've got the annexes all off the roneo now, have you?'

'All but Annex V,' said Milcrest.

'You'll have lots of time to finish up before lunch. You're certain they're not going to let us down about that aeroplane?'

'Certain, sir. I got the general's promise from his own mouth. Confirmation in writing too: he rummaged among the papers on the table and produced it.

'Capital. David will run you over to the aerodrome. He'll have to be back in good time to go with me to Carlisle: I start at seven o'clock sharp. All right about my sleeper?'

'Yes.'

'And they know at Carlton House Terrace to expect me for bath and breakfast on Tuesday morning, and that you sleep there Monday night?'

'Yes.'

'I may have to go straight on to Paris: can't tell till after Tuesday's meeting. If so, I'll want you with me. Make all arrangements on that assumption.'

'Right, sir.'

'Off you go to bed, then. We've done a rattling good day's work. Good night.'

Lessingham, left to himself, lighted a cigar, threw up his legs on the sofa, and for a quarter of an hour sat thinking. Then he sprang up, went to the writing-table, and set to work. Two o'clock struck, and still he wrote, tossing each sheet as it was finished onto the floor beside him. At three he put down his pen, stretched his arms, went over to the side-table where, under white napkins, cold supper was appetizingly set out: chicken in aspic, green salad with radishes, and things ready for making coffee. By twenty past he was back again at work. Day began to filter through the curtains. It struck five. He drew the curtains: ate a sandwich: opened a bottle of Clicquot: collected the sheets off the floor, and sat down to go through them: checking, condensing, a rider here, a rider there, here three pages reduced to one, there an annex brought up into the body of the memorandum, or a section of the memorandum itself turned into an annex, this transposed, that deleted, the whole by pruning and compression brought down from about seven thousand words to three. Eight or nine pages
, perhaps, of open-spaced typing
: three foolscap pages, three and a half at most, the Foreign Office printer would make of it; apart from the annexes, which contained the real meat, the factual and logical foundation upon which the whole proposal rested. But which nobody would read, he said in himself as he snapped to the self-locking lid of the dispatch-box over the completed whole. What are the facts and what is logic? Things to play with: make a demonstration: dress your shop window with. Facts and logic can make a case for what you please. The vast majority of civilized mankind are, politically, a mongrel breed of sheep and monkey: the timidity, the herde
d idiocy, of the sheep: the cunn
ing, the dissimulation, the ferocity, of the great ape. These facts are omitted in the annexes, but they are the governing facts; and policy will still be based upon them, and justified before the world as embodying the benevolent aspirations of the woolly flock together wit
h the cleverness of the bandar
log. And the offspring of such a policy will be such as such a world deserves, that was mid-wife to it: a kind of bastard Egyptian beast-god incarnate, all ewe-lamb in the hinder parts with a gorilla's head and the sphinx's claws of brass; likely to pass away in an ungainly and displeasing hara-kiri: head and claws making a bloody havoc of their own backside and puddings, and themselves by natural consequence perishing for lack of essential organs thus unintelligently disposed of.

It was nearly half past nine when he rang the bell for Milcrest. "There it is, in the box. I don't want to see it again. Pull off copies for circulation: I rely on you to check it: wake me if there's any real doubt on any point, otherwise don't. Leave me two copies in my pouch: take the rest personally to 2 Whitehall Gardens without fail this evening. The sooner the better.' He yawned and stretched. 'I'm a fool,' he said: 'kicking against the hard wall.'

Dog-tired suddenly, he went upst
airs
and, without enough energy to undress, flung himself on his bed just as he was. His brain had been working at full pressure for twenty-two hours on end. In less than a minute he was fast asleep. Mary peeped in at the door: came in softly: put an eider-down over him, and went out again, closing the door soundlessly behind her.

He woke late in the afternoon, had a bath, came down to tea, settled Eric's problems for him, and by seven o'clock was well on the way to Carlisle. Old David's heart was in his mouth, between the terrifying speed and the cool control of Lessingham's driving.

Summer night wheeled slowly above the out-terraces of Memison: the moon up: Venus in her splendour like a young moon high in the west. The King said, 'He is returned to Acrozayana, to hold to-morrow his weekly presence. That is well done. And you shall see there is a back-bias shall bring him swiftly here again.'

Vandermast stroked his beard.

The King said, 'I am troubled in a question about God. Omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience: having these three, what hath He left to hope for? By my soul, did I find in myself these swelling members grown out of form,—to do all, to know all, to be all,—I swear I'd die of their tediousness.'