Eva Trout (5 page)

Change of scene was, thanks to the chauffeur-driven Daimler, a matter of minutes, glided through smoothly. Huge creamy porticoes, lit-up little luxury shops were registered by Iseult. News-flashes from vendors’ corners, orchidaceous flashes from florists’ windows. “Not bad,” suggested the thought-reader, “being back in London?” She gave a sphynx smile. He pursued: “ ‘Once a Londoner, always a Londoner,’ —isn’t it?”

She disobligingly said: “I grew up in Reading.”

“You surprise me.”

Once again, she found on reaching their destination, he had thought of everything. The chaste smallish circular table awaiting them, chairs facing, was in this place the only one of its kind; and as such must have been specially designated by telephone. All other tables-for-two ran along banquettes, whose springiness, by tilting each couple inward, made for a divan-like intimacy. All, whether lovers or not, had the air of being so; nor to this did any seem to object. Their contentment was shocking to Constantine: he could barely look at them. This distaste of his for female propinquity, manifest now that they were in public, to an extent lowered her spirits. Further quenched by the costly duskiness of the restaurant, she could think of nothing to ask for but a daiquiri—what that was, exactly, the exile could not recall. It was chargeable, in any event, to Eva. Nearby, on some other expense account, something or other was being
flambé
: up leaped more flame as in went more brandy. She watched. He asked: “You are interested in cooking?”

“I was thinking.”

“Ah,” said her host resignedly.

“What was her mother like?”

“Cissie? She was delightful.” “Oh?”

“Yes, indeed—dear Cissie. Such enchantingly girlish ways, so charming so often. So deliciously”—his eye skated lifelessly over his guest— “dressed, always. One was devoted to her.”

“She does not sound very like Eva.”

“Not superficially.—Yes, in her day Cissie played quite a part.”

“Such a disaster.”

“
Oh
… Mrs. Arble?”

“Her death.”

“Ah, yes. Yes, indeed: poor Cissie. Such an unspeakable end, not a cinder left.—But just a minute: shall we order, perhaps?”

Their waiter eclipsed their table with two large menus. “
Riz de veau
,” Iseult declared, looking no further. Constantine winced: “You are quite sure?” “Quite.” “Then by all means stick to your guns.
I
” —he erected his menu— ”must deliberate.” Iseult seized the occasion to snap open her handbag, take out the mirror and give herself a subtle, steadying look. “All in order?” he asked, round the barricade.

Iseult kept her head again. “Of course, Eva—”

“—Just a minute: you would not say ‘no’ to oysters?”

“No.”

“
No
?” asked he, assuming a tragic air.

“I mean, no; I would not say ‘no.’ “

“Then there we see eye-to-eye.” The wine waiter came. Constantine, showing more emotion than usual, received the list from him. “
You
,” he informed Iseult, “would say Chablis, probably?”

“Chablis,” she said accordingly.

“If you don’t mind, I fancy we can do better.” So did the wine waiter, an old accomplice … The host, finally, polished his face with a hand and looked round the restaurant. He recalled himself, saying: “You were saying?”

“Eva, of course, can’t remember her?”

“Alas. Motherless from the cradle.”

“So I had thought. Yet—this you may not know, Mr. Ormeau?—she maintains she remembers hearing her mother shriek.”

“Quite impossible.”

“One would prefer to think so.”

“Eva,” he said austerely, “entertains many fantasies—as did Cissie. Fantasies, one could say fancies, were Cissie’s undoing. The hold they gained! Till the sad day came when off Cissie rushed.”

“Mrs. Trout…left?”

“Bolted. Didn’t you know?”

“Nobody told me.”

“You’re neglecting your daiquiri: wasn’t quite what you wanted?” She gulped the daiquiri. “Yes, well there you are,” he continued. “One fine day, out of the blue. One was quite stunned. There we were left,
bouches béantes
, Willy and I. And worse was to follow.”

“The plane crash?”

“
Rather
more than she’d bargained for! And of all places, over the Andes; or rather, on to them. So feckless, so very characteristic. Wouldn’t Paris have done?”

“For what?”

Constantine’s face went puritan. “For what she was up to. A skite with a paramour.”

Iseult winced, in her turn: what a vocabulary! “What a disproportionate end, though! It seems unjust.”

“So unjust to Willy! Such a horrid telegram; he was most upset. What a time one had with him! This may not sound credible, but he wanted to go belting off to the funeral. One dared not take one’s eye off him. Day and night, I remember, we played shove-half penny.”

“What was done with Eva?”

“There was a nurse of some sort. I believe, a Latvian.”

“Now there’s no longer a Latvian, Mr. Ormeau”—Iseult looked searchingly at him—”what
do
we do with Eva?”

“You keep to the point so wonderfully—what indeed?” He invoked Heaven. “Such a case-history, the poor dear girl—as I said to you in the first place, such a heredity! Also, I hate to remind you but this is January: April is all but on us. Come April, you and I turn Eva loose on the world. Restraint ended, further control impossible. At large, with not an idea. That fabulous wealth—
she
, who has never owned anything but a Jaguar! At liberty. When one thinks, you know, it’s unthinkable! Rack and ruin—”

He broke off, looking about him pettishly. (Their oysters?) “Necessarily?” meditated Iseult. “I wonder … I don’t think my husband, for one, would share your view. He thinks highly of Eva.”

“Yes, so she tells me.”

“She’s not quite without ideas,” said Iseult, nettled.

“Such as they are, I fear, they resemble Cissie’s.”

“But Mrs. Trout was ‘delightful’?”

“But not normal.—But AHA!” exclaimed the transfigured man, giving a sort of muted bound in his chair, “here we are, don’t you see?” Advancing upon their table came hosts of oysters. Salivating, he had to compress his lips: he leaned back, dotingly watching the feast set down. “Fewer than these —you agree?—would be worse than none … Delightful she could be, could have been. One so wished that she should be. But possessive, vindictive?—frankly, she was maniacal. Willy she wore to a shadow. Such scenes … However …” He not only picked up his fork but described with it a mystical circle, exorcising any and all ill-will from the vicinity of the oysters.

“One should say grace;
I
feel one should say grace!”

“Unfortunately, I’m an agnostic.”

Iseult’s enjoyment of her oysters was at once methodical and voluptuous. The very first she swallowed wrought a change in her. Greed softened and in a peculiar way spiritualised her abstruse beauty, with its touch of the schoolroom. Eating became her—more than once she had been fallen in love with over a meal. She gave herself up, untainted, to this truest sensuality that she knew. Her nonchalance with the menu had been a feint; or more, a prudishness as to her deeper nature—of which the revelation was so surprising, so at variance with the Iseult that had been, as to be first intriguing, then disturbing, then in itself seductive … How she ate, Eric had ceased to notice; and Constantine did not care.

She drank less attentively; that he did note. It was in fact enraging to watch wine vanishing steadily from her glass, as it did, repeatedly thrown away on her. “Not too bad?” he was compelled to ask, raising his own.

“No.—Are you French, Mr. Ormeau?”

“That has been wondered.”

“By descent, I mean.
I
should more have said, Scandinavian.” He looked piqued. She added: “But for your name.”

“Ah—yes. ‘Young, stripling or little elm.’ Elmlet, or elmling. How that made Willy laugh!”

“But you can’t,” went on the emboldened woman, “
be
French. You’ve no psychological sympathy with love.”

“You interest me.” He let his wandering fork tip at and wobble an emptied shell. “That would be your finding, would it?” He watched the shell rock back into equilibrium. “On what grounds?”

“The way you speak!” she cried. “The judgements you pass! Mrs. Trout annoyed you: was she, perhaps, annoyed? ‘Not normal. . She ran away with a lover; that’s wrong, but not so very extraordinary. Rash, not monstrous. Who’s to know what she felt? Not
you
, Mr. Ormeau. In condemning her you seem to me to know nothing at all. She made a mistake, possibly: passion makes for mistakes—one can throw one’s life away.”

Constantine raised an eyebrow. He did so slowly—as slowly, looking the speaker over. “One does not know,” he said. “Or, I do not—you do, perhaps?” All her story, all that made her his creature, was summoned up. A prolonged inhuman condolence was meted out to her. “Cissie,” he said, “did not live to tell the tale.”

Iseult showed spirit. “
I
still think her unfortunate!”

“You take the noble view. But one misapprehension of yours I must clear up. Cissie did not a thing she did out of love. Revenge, purely—I am sorry to tell you.”

“I don’t follow.”

“I don’t wonder! Here, Mrs. Arble, we enter the zone of fantasy.”

She looked speculatively at him across the table, then away —embarked on a train of thought. A feather, loosening from the turban, flirted with one of her cheek-bones—Constantine felt at liberty to look elsewhere. She tucked the feather away. A minute went by. The mountain of cerebration then brought forth what could have seemed a mouse. “Who was the young man?”

“Giles-Georgie-Gerald? At this distance of time, I could hardly tell you.
He
terminated, poor wretch.”

“Are you sure?”

“No survivors.—Why?”

“I don’t mean that. I mean, are you sure he’d existed? Was he ever met, was he seen?
He
was not a fiction?”

“Mrs. Arble? I’m a little at sea.”

“I was thinking of Eva.”

“Very properly, yes. But in what connection?”

“Eva’s engagement. Eva’s unspecified bridegroom—
that
mystery.”

“Mystery,” he said agreeably, “was the word for it.” But his mind was elsewhere. “What are they doing, what on earth are they up to—or not up to?” He cast about him accusingly.

“I’ve never known them so slow here; it’s getting scandalous. Or your
riz de veaus
receiving special attention, do let’s hope! … Yes, but of course yes: Eva’s romance.”

“You believe there was one?”

“A trifle dreamed-up, perhaps. If you wish to know who Mr. X was, I cannot help you. Ask her.”

“But you’re her guardian.
You
didn’t?”

“One felt some delicacy.”

“Your approval was necessary. You gave it?”

“It never came to that point, as frankly one rather felt it might not… . AH!” Leaning back, unstrung, he watched the trolley’s advance. Vibrations of heat invaded the table; covers were lifted—one disclosure being that Constantine was to partake of woodcock. “I hope,” he said kindly, “
you
will have no regrets.”

They ate.

Iseult drew breath. Ominously, she touched her lips with her napkin—back to the chase? “But you were quite involved in this, Mr. Ormeau. Some castle you own, you promised her for the honeymoon.”

“Castles in the air, castles in the air: what harm? Not, of course, that this castle does not exist: anything but! It’s, I think, pretty. At the far end of nowhere. It made a delightful school—a school, alas, in ways ahead of its time. (You would have been interested, I’m certain.) Since then, wasted: really almost a tragedy. And the rates, oh dear! It was Willy’s most generous gift; and was—you will know this?—Eva’s first
alma mater
. Can one wonder her fancy wove its way back?” He took on conviction with every mouthful of woodcock. “Eva is chronically romantic; that, I need hardly tell
you
! So much so that to isolate a ‘romance’—”

“I did not. I’m asking about her ‘engagement.’ At the time, it did rather perturb me. She was under our roof.”

“So she was. But as one saw, it blew over.”

“It seemed to me symptomatic.”

“I’m sure, rightly; how very acute you are! Exactly what superseded it, one wonders? And what may not supersede
that
? One will have to watch. Mrs. Arble, our responsibility does not end with April. Or so I feel.”

“Do you?”

“I do. We must face this: Eva’s capacity for making trouble, attracting trouble, strewing trouble around her, is quite endless. She, er, begets trouble—a dreadful gift. And the more so for being inborn. You may not realise for how long and how painfully closely I’ve known that family. The Trouts have, one might say, a genius for unreality: even Willy was prone to morose distortions. Hysteria was, of course, the domain of Cissie. Your, er, generous defence of Cissie won’t, I hope, entirely blind you to how much of what was least desirable in Cissie is in her daughter. Eva is tacitly hysterical. —Has Eva been truthful with you?”

“Not lately.”

“Yours is the paramount influence.”

“No longer.”

“She rebels against it, I grant—but that’s proof, isn’t it?” He paused. “You and I, Mrs. Arble, are wicked people. We know, at least, what the form is. You and I cut ice. We effect
something
, and—do you know?—it’s not always quite for the worse. Don’t blinker yourself.”

Iseult gave a dizzied touch to her turban. She leaned back from the table; her skin glistened. “Airless in here—isn’t it?”

“Probably.—Mrs. Arble, you
must keep
Eva!”

She mutinied. “I am sorry, I have done all I can.”

He raised, then touched, a barely-visible eyebrow. “You would not be entirely single-handed. Not quite unaided.”

“You mean there’s Eric?”

“Such a delightful certainty! But you and
I
should, probably, keep in touch? Closer in touch than hitherto. Er— collaborate.”

Iseult took stock of him anew. Mere misgivings gave place to incredulity: he did not seem possible—did not seem likely, even. Nothing authenticated him as a “living” being. A figure cut from some picture but now pasted on to a blank screen. To be with him was to be
in vacuo
also. She said to him: “Do you know, Mr. Ormeau, I have actually no idea what you do. What you actually
do
, I mean.” “I import.”