Family and Friends (10 page)

On the other side of the table a chair has been removed, or rather set back against the wall. ‘My younger daughter is in Paris,’ explains Sofka. ‘She is completing her education there.’ Never did she speak a truer word. For some reason, some ancient sense of identification or approval, Sofka has decided to let Betty have her own way. Funds have been made available to her through the good offices of Maître Blin, who has also seen her installed in a respectable
pension
in the Avenue Mozart. There have been telephone calls to Betty every Friday evening, and when she comes away from the telephone Sofka allows a small smile to play round her lips. Does she secretly rejoice in this outrageous daughter who has the courage to break with the conventions? Does Sofka like the bad rather than the good in her children? If Mimi and Alfred are the alleged and established good son and daughter, deferred to and cherished for their very beautiful qualities, does Sofka nevertheless contemplate with a private delight Frederick’s dissolute charm and Betty’s nerveless insolence? ‘Mama, Mama,’ wheedles Betty on the telephone. ‘Don’t be cross with me, little Mama.’ And she
puts a kiss into the receiver which Sofka hears with a smile. As far as she knows, Betty, respectably housed, is taking singing and dancing lessons, which Sofka hopes she will forget about in due course. What Sofka does not know is that Frank Cariani is still there, albeit at the Hôtel des Acacias, and that under Betty’s direction they have rehearsed a dance routine which the manager of the Moulin Rouge is going to let them try out mid-week when business is slack. They are billed as
‘Bunny et Frank, danseurs de charme’
. Betty calls herself Bunny in Paris. She thinks it more chic.

Alfred flourishes his iron-age instruments and sets about carving the meat. This is the one meal of the week that Sofka does not supervise, leaving it to the housekeeper, who reproduces the Sunday dinners of her childhood: oozing beef, roast potatoes gleaming with fat, cabbage innocent of butter or of caraway seeds. With this, a sauceboat filled with gravy the colour of mulligatawny soup. Sofka finds this meal quite indigestible, but Alfred, for some reason, requests it and seems to enjoy it: Alfred has revealed a nostalgia for an English childhood known mainly through his reading for he never knew it in real life. Sofka’s children have never been to school: they are outside every recognized norm. The boys had a tutor and the girls a governess. They wound up with numerous accomplishments but no real education; this is one of the reasons why they find it so difficult to mix with other young people. From childhood, their ways have been cast among their own kind, and their loyalties to their home and family reinforced by memories of unlimited reading in silent cigar-scented rooms, piano lessons, little recitals, and the chocolates produced from the silver box as a reward. Although this regime is bred into Alfred, he has learned from his reading of Charles Dickens that a more robust attitude pertains to hard labour and the eating of
traditional food. Feeling himself to have laboured hard and long, albeit in a handsome office these days, Alfred asserts his honorary and Dickensian right to the roast beef of old England. He has shown himself a little impatient of the
douceurs
of Sofka’s drawing-room of late, and has turned away from her spiced and subtle cooking. To his mind, Sofka’s odourless yet rich jellied consommé cannot compare with the housekeeper’s dense Scotch broth.

Evie enjoys this sort of food too. So overjoyed is she to be included in this ceremonial meal that she joins in as if she were already one of the family. Seizing a silver spoon she plunges it into the cabbage and hands on the loaded plates; Sofka’s eyelids quiver as dishes are passed round and across the table in genial and plebeian fashion. But Evie is not abashed, and eats with hearty appetite, ready to refuel them all as she sits with spoon poised over the roast potatoes. She manages to talk as well as eat, and this is just as well because the others are on the whole silent. Truth to tell, Evie’s heartiness is rather exhausting to witness and while none of them really approves of it they find it acceptable in the sense that it relieves them of all effort. Frederick is the only one who is listening to her. Sofka, eating minutely, studies her with grave and painful attention. Alfred, wondering, as always, why this food never tastes as good as he expected it to, doesn’t mind Evie; he thinks she will do for Frederick as she is likely to take him over and keep him quiet. Only Mimi smiles gratefully at Evie. Instinctively, Mimi discerns in Evie a rough good nature that has something innocent about it. Innocence. Mimi finds herself still craving it, that perishable commodity, that pearl of reputation and of inward memory.

The meat is followed by a pie in a china dish that gushes forth steam as soon as its crust is cracked. This is accompanied by custard, and goes down very well with
Alfred and Evie. Then the plates are removed and into the centre of the long lace tablecloth are placed the two fretted purple and gold china dishes piled high with rather tasteless hothouse nectarines, the silver bonbonnières filled with almonds and muscatels, and the silver box of cigars. As Frederick and Alfred light their cigars their faces change, become hazy, ruminative, more adult, out of reach. This change to the ancestral mode lightens the atmosphere, and Sofka, with a sigh, looks round at her altered family. She acknowledges, after having fought against the idea, that Frederick will marry Evie, who may, indeed, prove to be a devoted daughter-in-law; she is, in truth, a good-hearted girl and marriage will almost certainly tone down that laugh and subdue her restlessness. Sofka is almost reconciled to the idea of Frederick living in Devonshire Place and being a consultant to his brother; if he observes these technicalities Sofka does not mind too much what he does with the rest of his time. And Evie has a sense of family, that much is clear from all her references to her papa whom she calls Dadda. Sofka knows that she can expect to see both Frederick and Evie every Sunday afternoon for coffee and cake.

But it appears that Evie is more devoted to her papa than was apparent at the first. Her one idea is to go back and live with him on the Riviera, taking Frederick with her. Being acutely female, Evie desires to separate Frederick from his mother, although in more moral ways she is prepared to be strictly loyal and respectful. But when Evie’s papa, a short fat man with the high burnish of one who runs a successful private empire, pays a visit to Sofka – and it seems as if by this means the alliance is already cemented – it is clear that the price that Frederick will pay for the hand of his daughter is the general managership of the Hotel Windsor in Bordighera, a recent acquisition which Evie’s father hopes in time to bring
into line with his more prestigious establishments in San Remo and La Spezia. This is a blow to the heart to Sofka, although they all agree that it is a handsome offer and an ideal plan: Frederick is overjoyed. He loves the sun; he loves hotels; he loves company. He is tired of the factory and he longs to let Evie take care of his life. Before they have hammered out the final details it is all arranged.

There is another reason for Sofka to agree to this. Evie’s papa has warned her privately of conditions in Europe and what they mean for families such as theirs. Wars, and rumours of war. Let the children scatter, let them put down roots, let them transplant. Sofka knows that they are safe enough for the time being. But she also knows that she can never go home again.

So here they are in the wedding photograph. It appears to be a very jolly occasion, but perhaps that impression is given by Evie who is laughing, her open mouth revealing her triumphant teeth. Evie is wearing white satin and is carrying lilies; she carries them as if they were some sporting accessory, a tennis racquet perhaps. The vee neck of her white satin dress reveals a longish triangle of skin, and the skirt, which flows into a train at the back, is carelessly hitched up to show her ankles, and her hefty feet buckled into white satin shoes with cuban heels and
diamanté
straps over the insteps. On her head is a sort of satin fender, worn a bare inch above the eyebrows. Where she has got this curiously old-fashioned outfit from Heaven alone knows; but as she refused all Sofka’s advice and offers of help, it looks as if she has been guided by the saleslady at Whiteley’s or Harrods and has come out of it rather badly. But she grins with unabashed cheerfulness, as does Frederick; together they present a double row of teeth and already they are beginning to show a marked resemblance. Linking arms, they turn to each other, mirroring each other’s smile. They will be
happy, no doubt of that. Less smiling, more thoughtful is the bridegroom’s mother, in long grey lace, I am told, with a small hat largely composed of marabou feathers. The bridegroom’s sister does not look well; she wears rose-pink velvet, and either it is too loose or perhaps she has lost more weight; in any event, it does not fit her and her face is sad. But the sensation of the photograph is Betty who has come over from Paris for the wedding; in apricot crêpe, if you please, with a little turban of the same material. Roguishly, she clasps her mama’s arm and peers over her shoulder at the photographer. She knows that her presence at this wedding, and indeed her performance at it, are going to have to compensate for a lot of absence to follow.

The bride’s parents seem quite amiable; fattish people, he looking fat in striped trousers, she looking fat in pale mauve chiffon, with a hat in sweet-pea colours: a terrible choice. They have the dark complexion of people with a year-round tan, and in the photograph they appear to have arrived from another continent. No one has Sofka’s air of suffering majesty, but then the bridegroom’s mother may be forgiven this expression, seeing that she will shortly say goodbye to her elder son. But the bridegroom’s best man has made a very good impression on the visitors and the guests. Alfred, in tails, is as striking now as Frederick was at that earlier wedding. He is, of course, more handsome. Not only is he slimmer, straighter; he has a look of austerity about him, one might say nobility, that almost compensates for his brother’s imminent departure. Strange how dispensable Frederick has suddenly become. Strange how the younger son has grown to resemble his mother. Those clear open eyes, that unflinching gravity of expression. For the girls at the wedding, waiting for the dancing to begin, it is no longer Frederick who is the prize; Frederick has been led off, like a
trophy, by the one who showed the most muscle and who stayed the course the longest. But he is not much missed. It is Alfred now who is the more interesting proposition.

B
ETTY HAS
taken so easily to her vagabond Parisian life that one is tempted to think that there is some validity in the theory of rootless cosmopolitanism which has been applied to her and her kind. Every morning she trips out of her one-room flat for milk and a roll and trips back again to make her breakfast. This is the only meal she has at home, for she cannot, of course, cook or housekeep, and in any event she has a passion for cafés, bars, restaurants: she would spend her day in them if she could, and frequently does. In the sharp air of that late November it is Betty’s delight to steal out in the early morning, buy the warm bread, and then steal back to bed, also warm, and lie there like a cat, dozing and stretching, until about eleven o’clock. Then it is time for her bath, and the long elaborate business of preparing herself for a day in the public eye. Seated before her dressing-table, with its light mist of peach-pink powder and the odd discarded necklace, Betty makes up her flawless young face with the expertise and the severity usually reserved for the middle-aged. Unsparing are the glances she directs at herself, noting a smudge in the lipstick or an uneven shading on one cheek-bone. Does she see the bluish shadows under the eyes which are a legacy of all her late nights and dozing mornings? Probably not; in any event, she looks marvellous.

The flat is a mess and Betty cannot always prevail on the concierge, Madame Mercier, to clean it. When she moved in, just before Frederick got married, it was because she was bored with the unyielding respectability of the Pension Mozart, and anyway it was too tiring to have to go round to the Hôtel des Acacias every night. She was lucky to find this place, for although it is small it is private and Frank can be here all the time when she wants him. Funnily enough, she quite likes being here on her own. It is not that Frank is not in love with her, but that he is too simply in love with her to satisfy Betty’s tastes. Frank is one of those artless men who fall in love and take this condition to be a licence for reminiscence: childhood, schooldays, family stories – an endless stream of mildly affectionate talk and no surprises. This is not to Betty’s taste at all. Betty surrounds herself with a drama and an excitement that leaves no time for anybody’s childhood. Betty is so violently single-minded that she will flirt with herself if there is nobody else immediately available. Betty would like a man of moods and passions, apt to fly into jealous rages which neither of them need take seriously, with no childhood to speak of, slightly cruel and unreliable, knowing all the best places, theatrical, like herself, loving play rather than truth, faithful but pretending not to be, abusive and despairing: such a man she would understand perfectly. But for Frank, who turns up every morning in time to take Betty out to lunch and who will stay with her all day, being unable to think of anywhere else to go, and who will be with her all night if she wants him, and who will, in all this time, wear a sunny and slightly puzzled smile, and will long to tell her of some family holiday in the distant past or some anecdote about his married sister, but who is quite used to being ignored, Betty has little sympathy and less and less patience. For this reason she has taken to snapping at
him quite viciously, usually in public; she likes to show off her power over him. So that Frank is not entirely happy; it has become apparent, even to him, that he is too respectable for her. She refuses to marry him, although he, like the honourable soul he is, has asked her. Marriage is not in Betty’s plans at all, at least, not marriage to Frank. He is useful as an escort, and nothing more. Or rather, was useful. When Betty thinks of him she shrugs. And when Frank looks at her he becomes thoughtful. She has developed far beyond him, out of his reach. When she sends her laugh pealing through smoky restaurants late at night, and when people, or rather other men, turn round and watch her appreciatively, Frank begins to wonder what his mother and his sisters would have made of Betty had they known her. It is in any event inconceivable that they should meet her in her present state. Frank feels some moral discomfort at this dilemma, which was entirely of Betty’s own making, although he does not allow himself to blame her. Not yet. He feels a genuine unhappiness at the irresolute and excitable nature of life here. Frank is really a man of solid upbringing and settled habits; apart from his startling gifts as a dancer he is as regular in his patterns of thought and behaviour as his father’s metronome. He is conscientious and kind and, in Betty’s view, hopelessly incorruptible. Perhaps he would have been happier with Mimi after all.