Elephants Can Remember
Read Elephants Can Remember Online
Authors: Agatha Christie
Elephants
Can Remember
To Molly Myers
in return for many kindnesses
Mrs Oliver looked at herself in the glass. She gave a brief, sideways look towards the clock on the mantel-piece, which she had some idea was twenty minutes slow. Then she resumed her study of her coiffure. The trouble with Mrs Oliver was – and she admitted it freely – that her styles of hairdressing were always being changed. She had tried almost everything in turn. A severe pompadour at one time, then a wind-swept style where you brushed back your locks to display an intellectual brow, at least she hoped the brow was intellectual. She had tried tightly arranged curls, she had tried a kind of artistic disarray. She had to admit that it did not matter very much today what her type of hairdressing was, because today she was going to do what she very seldom did, wear a hat.
On the top shelf of Mrs Oliver’s wardrobe there reposed four hats. One was definitely allotted to weddings. When you went to a wedding, a hat was a ‘must’. But even then Mrs Oliver kept two. One, in a round bandbox, was of feathers. It fitted closely to the head and stood up very well to sudden squalls of rain if they should overtake one unexpectedly as one passed from a car to the interior of the sacred edifice, or as so often now a days, a registrar’s office.
The other, and more elaborate, hat was definitely for attending a wedding held on a Saturday afternoon in summer. It had flowers and chiffon and a covering of yellow net attached with mimosa.
The other two hats on the shelf were of a more all-purpose character. One was what Mrs Oliver called her ‘country house hat’, made of tan felt suitable for wearing with tweeds of almost any pattern, with a becoming brim that you could turn up or turn down.
Mrs Oliver had a cashmere pullover for warmth and a thin pullover for hot days, either of which was suitable in colour to go with this. However, though the pullovers were frequently worn, the hat was practically never worn. Because, really, why put on a hat just to go to the country and have a meal with your friends?
The fourth hat was the most expensive of the lot and it had extraordinarily durable advantages about it. Possibly, Mrs Oliver sometimes thought, because it was so expensive. It consisted of a kind of turban of various layers of contrasting velvets, all of rather becoming pastel shades which would go with anything.
Mrs Oliver paused in doubt and then called for assistance.
‘Maria,’ she said, then louder, ‘Maria. Come here a minute.’
Maria came. She was used to being asked to give advice on what Mrs Oliver was thinking of wearing.
‘Going to wear your lovely smart hat, are you?’ said Maria.
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘I wanted to know whether you think it looks best this way or the other way round.’
Maria stood back and took a look.
‘Well, that’s back to front you’re wearing it now, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, I know,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘I know that quite well. But I thought somehow it looked better that way.’
‘Oh, why should it?’ said Maria.
‘Well, it’s meant, I suppose. But it’s got to be meant by me as well as the shop that sold it,’ said Mrs Oliver.
‘Why do you think it’s better the wrong way round?’
‘Because you get that lovely shade of blue and the dark brown, and I think that looks better than the other way which is green with the red and the chocolate colour.’
At this point Mrs Oliver removed the hat, put it on again and tried it wrong way round, right way round and sideways, which both she and Maria disapproved of.
‘You can’t have it the wide way. I mean, it’s wrong for your face, isn’t it? It’d be wrong for anyone’s face.’
‘No. That won’t do. I think I’ll have it the right way round, after all.’
‘Well, I think it’s safer always,’ said Maria.
Mrs Oliver took off the hat. Maria assisted her to put on a well cut, thin woollen dress of a delicate puce colour, and helped her to adjust the hat.
‘You look ever so smart,’ said Maria.
That was what Mrs Oliver liked so much about Maria. If given the least excuse for saying so, she always approved and gave praise.
‘Going to make a speech at the luncheon, are you?’ Maria asked.
‘A speech!’ Mrs Oliver sounded horrified. ‘No, of course not. You know I never make speeches.’
‘Well, I thought they always did at these here literary luncheons. That’s what you’re going to, isn’t it? Famous writers of 1973 – or whichever year it is we’ve got to now.’
‘I don’t need to make a speech,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘Several other people who
like
doing it will be making speeches, and they are much better at it than I would be.’
‘I’m sure you’d make a lovely speech if you put your mind to it,’ said Maria, adjusting herself to the rôle of a tempter.
‘No, I shouldn’t,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘I know what I can do and I know what I can’t. I can’t make speeches. I get all worried and nervy and I should probably stammer or say the same thing twice. I should not only feel silly, I should probably look silly. Now it’s all right with words. You can write words down or speak them into a machine or dictate them. I can do things with words so long as I know it’s not a speech I’m making.’
‘Oh well. I hope everything’ll go all right. But I’m sure it will. Quite a grand luncheon, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Oliver, in a deeply depressed voice. ‘Quite a grand luncheon.’
And why, she thought, but did not say, why on earth am I going to it? She searched her mind for a bit because she always really liked knowing what she was going to do instead of doing it first and wondering why she had done it afterwards.
‘I suppose,’ she said, again to herself and not to Maria, who had had to return rather hurriedly to the kitchen, summoned by a smell of overflowing jam which she happened to have on the stove, ‘I wanted to see what it felt like. I’m always being asked to literary lunches or something like that and I never go.’
* * *
Mrs Oliver arrived at the last course of the grand luncheon with a sigh of satisfaction as she toyed with the remains of the meringue on her plate. She was particularly fond of meringues and it was a delicious last course in a very delicious luncheon. Nevertheless, when one reached middle age, one had to be careful with meringues. One’s teeth? They looked all right, they had the great advantage that they could not ache, they were white and quite agreeable-looking – just like the real thing. But it was true enough that they were
not
real teeth. And teeth that were not real teeth – or so Mrs Oliver believed – were not really of high class material. Dogs, she had always understood, had teeth of real ivory, but human beings had teeth merely of bone. Or, she supposed, if they were false teeth, of plastic. Anyway, the point was that you mustn’t get involved in some rather shame-making appearance, which false teeth might lead you into. Lettuce was a difficulty, and salted almonds, and such things as chocolates with hard centres, clinging caramels and the delicious stickiness and adherence of meringues. With a sigh of satisfaction, she dealt with the final mouthful. It had been a good lunch, a very good lunch.
Mrs Oliver was fond of her creature comforts. She had enjoyed the luncheon very much. She had enjoyed the company, too. The luncheon, which had been given to celebrated female writers, had fortunately not been confined to female writers only. There had been other writers, and critics, and those who read books as well as those who wrote them. Mrs Oliver had sat between two very charming members of the male sex. Edwin Aubyn, whose poetry she always enjoyed, an extremely entertaining person who had had various entertaining experiences in his tours abroad, and various literary and personal adventures. Also he was interested in restaurants and food and they had talked very happily about food, and left the subject of literature aside.
Sir Wesley Kent, on her other side, had also been an agreeable luncheon companion. He had said very nice things about her books, and had had the tact to say things that did not make her feel embarrassed, which many people could do almost without trying. He had mentioned one or two reasons why he had liked one or other of her books, and they had been the right reasons, and therefore Mrs Oliver had thought favourably of him for that reason. Praise from men, Mrs Oliver thought to herself, is always acceptable. It was women who gushed. Some of the things that women wrote to her! Really! Not always women, of course. Sometimes emotional young men from very far away countries. Only last week she had received a fan letter beginning ‘Reading your book, I feel what a noble woman you must be.’ After reading
The Second Goldfish
he had then gone off into an intense kind of literary ecstasy which was, Mrs Oliver felt, completely unfitting. She was not unduly modest. She thought the detective stories she wrote were quite good of their kind. Some were not so good and some were much better than others. But there was no reason, so far as she could see, to make anyone think that she was a noble woman. She was a lucky woman who had established a happy knack of writing what quite a lot of people wanted to read. Wonderful luck that was, Mrs Oliver thought to herself.
Well, all things considered, she had got through this ordeal very well. She had quite enjoyed herself, talked to some nice people. Now they were moving to where coffee was being handed round and where you could change partners and chat with other people. This was the moment of danger, as Mrs Oliver knew well. This was now where other women would come and attack her. Attack her with fulsome praise, and where she always felt lamentably inefficient at giving the right answers because there weren’t really any right answers that you could give. It went really rather like a travel book for going abroad with the right phrases.
Question: ‘I
must
tell you how very fond I am of reading your books and how wonderful I think they are.’
Answer from flustered author, ‘Well, that’s very kind. I am so glad.’
‘You must understand that I’ve been waiting to meet you for months. It really is wonderful.’
‘Oh, it’s very nice of you. Very nice indeed.’
It went on very much like that. Neither of you seemed to be able to talk about anything of outside interest. It had to be all about your books, or the other woman’s books if you knew what her books were. You were in the literary web and you weren’t good at this sort of stuff. Some people could do it, but Mrs Oliver was bitterly aware of not having the proper capacity. A foreign friend of hers had once put her, when she was staying at an embassy abroad, through a kind of course.
‘I listen to you,’ Albertina had said in her charming, low, foreign voice, ‘I have listened to what you say to that young man who came from the newspaper to interview you. You have not got – no! you have not got the pride you should have in your work. You should say “Yes, I write well. I write better than anyone else who writes detective stories.”’
‘But I don’t,’ Mrs Oliver had said at that moment. ‘I’m not bad, but –’
‘Ah, do not say “I don’t” like that. You must say you
do
; even if you do not think you do, you ought to
say
you do.’
‘I wish, Albertina,’ said Mrs Oliver, ‘that you could interview these journalists who come. You would do it so well. Can’t you pretend to be me one day, and I’ll listen behind the door?’
‘Yes, I suppose I could do it. It would be rather fun. But they would know I was not you. They know your face. But you must say “Yes, yes, I know that I am better than anyone else.” You must say that to everybody. They should know it. They should announce it. Oh yes – it is terrible to hear you sitting there and say things as though you
apologize
for what you are. It must not be like that.’
It had been rather, Mrs Oliver thought, as though she had been a budding actress trying to learn a part, and the director had found her hopelessly bad at taking direction. Well, anyway, there’d be not much difficulty here. There’d be a few waiting females when they all got up from the table. In fact, she could see one or two hovering already. That wouldn’t matter much. She would go and smile and be nice and say ‘So kind of you. I’m so pleased. One is so glad to know people like one’s books.’ All the stale old things. Rather as you put a hand into a box and took out some useful words already strung together like a necklace of beads. And then, before very long now, she could leave.
Her eyes went round the table because she might perhaps see some friends there as well as would-be admirers. Yes, she did see in the distance Maurine Grant, who was great fun. The moment came, the literary women and the attendant cavaliers who had also attended the lunch, rose. They streamed towards chairs, towards coffee tables, towards sofas, and confidential corners. The moment of peril, Mrs Oliver often thought of it to herself, though usually at cocktail and not literary parties because she seldom went to the latter. At any moment the danger might arise, as someone whom you did not remember but who remembered you, or someone whom you definitely did not want to talk to but whom you found you could not avoid. In this case it was the first dilemma that came to her. A large woman. Ample proportions, large white champing teeth. What in French could have been called
une femme formidable
, but who definitely had not only the French variety of being formidable, but the English one of being supremely bossy. Obviously she either knew Mrs Oliver, or was intent on making her acquaintance there and then. The last was how it happened to go.
‘Oh, Mrs Oliver,’ she said in a high-pitched voice. ‘What a pleasure to meet you today. I have wanted to for so long. I simply adore your books. So does my son. And my husband used to insist on never travelling without at least two of your books. But come, do sit down. There are so many things I want to ask you about.’
Oh well, thought Mrs Oliver, not my favourite type of woman, this. But as well her as any other.
She allowed herself to be conducted in a firm way rather as a police officer might have done. She was taken to a settee for two across a corner, and her new friend accepted coffee and placed coffee before her also.
‘There. Now we are settled. I don’t suppose you know my name. I am Mrs Burton-Cox.’
‘Oh yes,’ said Mrs Oliver, embarrassed, as usual. Mrs Burton-Cox? Did she write books also? No, she couldn’t really remember anything about her. But she seemed to have heard the name. A faint thought came to her. A book on politics, something like that? Not fiction, not fun, not crime. Perhaps a high-brow intellectual with political bias? That ought to be easy, Mrs Oliver thought with relief. I can just let her talk and say ‘How interesting!’ from time to time.