Friends and Lovers (23 page)

“Frightful day,” she said to the girl, marking tim until Robert could reach them. He appeared almost at once thank Heaven.

“Robert will get you a drink,” she said, with t death’s-head smile, and turned to continue her conversatior with Mr. Bronway, the producer, and Mr. Winson, the edito] of New Views. Saying “Yes?” to Mr. Winson at the righ intervals, she let her eyes flicker unobtrusively towards the doorway every thirty seconds or so, and concealed her worry that neither the star of the new hit. Bright Tomorrow, nor Lady Fenton-Stevens with her delightful Baron Schaudichan, nor Essex Rockfort, the portrait-painter, had yet arrived. And soon, Mrs. Fane’s instinct was telling her, it would be too late for them to arrive. So she set her smile bravely, and said,

“Yes? Yes?” Mr. Winson, fortunately, was accustomed to the hostess look, and he talked calmly on, knowing that his reward was his strategic position next to Mrs. Fane when any guest worth bothering about did present himself.

Robert led Penny towards the other end of the room “Frightful crush, I’m afraid,” he said. He was tall, thin, and dark, with slightly prominent teeth displayed when he gave one of his slow smiles. The lips would draw slowly back in a lazy curve (that was what you were meant to think, she was sure), and then they would just stay that way, curved and lazy. Surely there must be a time-limit.

Penny smiled, tried to look interested, and waited for the next percipient phrase to fall. Robert, she was remembering, was the elder son. Billy was the other one. In between them came Carol. When they all had met six years ago Robert and Billy had been very offhand schoolboys, Robert a lofty prefect with his new motor-cycle. Billy a rather grubby specimen of an over-bullied fag. Carol had been a placid blonde sausage, with shoulder-length ringlets and shapeless legs that emphasized the likeness.

Robert was saying that it was a frightful day. Everything seemed to be frightfully this or frightfully that. Frightful. A frightful word.

Penny smiled again. After that the flow of one-sentence conversation swept smoothly along for five minutes. Robert did not appear in the least disturbed that he hadn’t the faintest idea who she was. And Penny had the impression that he would consider her ‘frightfully’ gauche if she started totell him. She was remembering enough about Robert, anyway, to keep her amused. He had been sent down from Cambridge because of a barmaid, and had now graduated to actresses in London. In addition to acquiring a very elegant way of wearing his blackish-grey flannel suit, with its broadly spaced pin-stripe of white, he had achieved the appearance of always being slightly tired.

Robert, for his part, was deciding that he hadn’t seen this girl’s face in any of the right magazines after all. He looked round for Billy—this was definitely his dish of fruit as Malvina Moore, the star of Bright Tomorrow, made her entrance.

“I say,” Robert suggested with sudden enthusiasm, as he saw his brother obey his summons, ‘you haven’t a drink. Let me find you one.”

Billy, in his first year at Oxford, small and dark, with the appearance of always being slightly tired not yet completely established, came forward slowly. And then, as he saw Penny, his pace and his eyes quickened.

“Yours, I think,” Robert murmured, and made his way towards Malvina.

Billy looked thoughtfully at Penny. I believe I know her, he was thinking.

“Frightful mob,” he said enthusiastically. *I say, you haven’t a drink. Let me.”

Penny smiled as she watched his adroit progress towards the table at the other end of the room. But he would come back, she knew. She glanced round, interested in the faces that surrounded her. It would not be too cruel, she decided, to say that most had come here either to see or to be seen. One face, round, white, innocent in its lack of expression, had almost looked at her twice. It belonged to a young man in the usual pin-striped suit and suede shoes and negligent tie.

Now he gradually drew near to where she stood.

He said, looking determinedly into his glass, “Don’t let Billy inflict a cocktail on you. The sherry at least comes out of a reputable bottle.”

Penny was uncertain whether the remark was addressed to her or not.

She glanced briefly to her right and left, but people there were quite occupied.

He went on talking to his cocktail glass. The trouble is that English ice has too much warm water in it.” He gave her a split-second stare and then fixed his eyes on a music critic’s bald head which seemed to fascinate him.

“You are the American, aren’t you? I think we saw each other vaguely at Nigel’s. Or was it at Bunny’s?” “Not even vaguely,” Penny said.

“And I’m afraid I am not the American, either. But I am a foreigner of sorts, I believe.”

Billy, returning from his pilgrimage, overheard that remark. Speaks remarkably good English, he thought. Now what foreigners had he met in the last few weeks? Where had he seen her?

“Martini, side-car, or sherry?” he asked, balancing the three glasses with practised agility.

“I must warn you the cocktails are Robert’s own concoction. That’s rather his thing, you know.”

“Definitely,” the white-faced young man murmured.

“All the charm of absinth.” He watched Penny as she chose a glass, shook his head with marked disapproval, and said in a shocked voice, “Don’t tell me you prefer sherry!” And then, as she looked slightly startled, he added with a bright smile, “Now do go on telling me about your father’s place in Chile.” He was watching her with warm interest.

“The smallest one,” he said evenly.

“The one with the golf-course and the ski-run.” His interest was now expectant. When he was a small boy he had no doubt examined a fly on the end of a pin with just that very look.

“Oh …” she said deprecatingly, ‘it is really so very small.

Besides, I haven’t visited it for years. I was sent to London. For my health. Lots and lots of fog, the doctors ordered. I simply must have fog.

The young man’s eyes looked at her with disappointment. “And in summer?” His interest was waning. He was already looking round the room for a more likely subject.

“Labrador, usually.”

Billy smiled easily at both of them. He hadn’t the faintest idea of what was happening, but if he smiled and held his glass nonchalantly and looked interested in a polite, vague way … That usually was enough.

The white-faced young man let his eyes rest on the group round Malvina.

“Dear Malvina!” he said, with charming venom.

“She will choose such ghastly plays. Have you seen the new effort? And there’s the chap who invented it.” He nodded towards the author, who had, in a moment of weakness, accompanied Malvina to the party, and was now regretting it as he stood and drank his cocktail in silence, while Robert Fane concentrated on Malvina and Malvina concentrated on her upturned profile.

“It takes a special genius to think up so many cliches in only three acts.

And I’m sure he wasn’t even trying.” He looked at the poor, unsuspecting playwright thoughtfully.

“He needs a little cheering up, I think,” he added, with a sudden gleam of interest in his colour less eyes. He moved away as quietly, as inconspicuously and crab wise as he had arrived.

“It is always difficult talking to Tony,” Billy confessed, under the impact of his fifth cocktail.

“Brilliant chap, of course,” he ended hastily.

“How amusing for him.” Penny was watching that little ray of sunshine now circling round the unfortunate playwright.

“Tony writes,” Billy went on, as if that explained everything.

“How ever does he find time? What has he had published?”

“Well, he has not actually been published yet. He is in the middle of something.”

“A novel about people at cocktail parties?”

“Yes. London life, really. I believe he is putting a lot of us into it.”

“That will be gay.”

“Fun spotting one’s friends,” Billy admitted.

“We are all being made into the most frightful old reprobates, you know.”

“I am sure it will have an enormous success.”

Billy giggled. Must tell that to Tony, he thought, with just that intonation she had used: Tony would be furious. Better not, though: Tony might take him out of the book just to spite him.

And then, at that moment, his sister Carol appeared, looking definitely peeved about something. Penny recognized her mostly by her voice: it had still the same high-pitched, cracked-crystal tone.

“Billy,” it was saying coldly, “Eleanor is here. She and George arrived ages ago.” Carol turned to Penny with a pretty smile.

“I’m afraid my brother has been monopolizing you.”

Billy craned his neck to look round the room.

“Why, there’s old George. Can’t see Eleanor. I’ll go and find her.” He smiled hesitatingly to Penny.

“I’ll bring George over. He’d like to meet you, I know.” Then he felt a wave of supercharged annoyance emanate from his sister, and he left hurriedly.

Carol hesitated. There must be some one to introduce: Billy was such an idiot—he might very well bring George over. Yes, there was Mrs. Bigsley, the almost invisible wife of that awful Labour M. P. God only knew why Father, even if he was a publisher, had to have his parlour pinks to a party. The fact that he made his money out of them, by dolling up Karl Marx for the seven-and-sixpenny trade, was no excuse for inflicting them on the rest of the family.

At this moment. however, Mrs. Bigsley could be excused even for her taste in clothes.

“Ah, Mrs. Bigsley,” Carol said, lightly trapping her by the arm as she passed by.

“How nice to see you.”

“I must leave,” Penny said quickly.

“Must you?” Carol lost all interest in Mrs. Bigsley, who went on her way towards the safe shadow of her husband.

“Goodbye, Carol. It has been a most amusing party,” Penny said, which was true enough in the wrong way. She could not resist adding, “It has been ages since we met, hasn’t it?”

“Yes, hasn’t it?” Carol said, and concealed her bewilderment admirably.

Penny relented. She was about to say, “I’m Penelope Lorrimer, you know.” But at that moment George Fentonstevens appeared at her elbow.

“I thought it was you,” he said, with obvious pleasure. “And how is Inchnamurren?”

It was at this moment, too, that Mrs. Fane brought Essex Rockfort over to meet her daughter. It had taken her a very adroit half-hour of manoeuvres to achieve that. Essex Rockfort had reached the plane of success when he did not paint a portrait unless he was interested in the subject. His price was enormous, of course; but it could be adjusted considerably, it was said, if he found a face that stimulated his imagination. Naturally, at this stage in one’s carefully planned offensive, one did not talk of prices: money was a vulgar subject which one avoided.

“Carol!” Mrs. Fane said, with a warning sweetness in her voice.

George said quietly to Penny, “Let’s try the music-room. It is less crowded there. Are you down here on holiday?” He led Penny authoritatively away from the little group. Strange, he was thinking, I didn’t notice on Inchnamurren what a peach she is. He began talking with enthusiasm to make up for lost time.

Carol watched them leave the drawing-room, and her mother’s eyes followed her look, and then tried to recapture her attention. But it remained vague and wandering in spite of a sharply sweet “Darling ..

” In any case, Essex Rockfort only spoke about two sentences, and after one keen glance at Carol’s face let his eyes roam back towards Malvina. Mrs. Fane smiled in resignation and let him go: this was hardly the moment to introduce Carol, after all. She looked at her daughter. Really, after all the money spent on that dress, and all the trouble having her hair and skin treated, Carol might at least have tried to put some animation into her face for Essex Rockfort. Of course, her features fell naturally into repose, serene and ladylike: only they didn’t have to be such a … such a … Mrs. Fane put the idea of blank walls firmly out of her mind.

“Carol!” she said sharply, still smiling. And then she looked towards the music-room.

“Who is she?”

“I don’t know,” Carol said, so crossly that all Mrs. Fane’s annoyance disappeared, and she became the defending mother once more.

“Don’t worry, darling,” she said, with decision, and began to move towards the music-room.

It took a little time, for a hostess must drop an appropriate sentence to each guest en passant. And sometimes the sentence would stretch to a paragraph if the guest was of particular importance. It was quite a feat, she considered, to be able to move about the crowded room at all and remember what fame was attached to which face. (Apart from misquoting three lines of Eliot to one of the quieter painters, and praising the Manet exhibition at the Orangerie in Paris to a self-effacing poet, she managed remarkably well.

A most successful party, she decided: scarcely a face to be seen whose name was not a pleasure to pronounce. And then her delight in the chorus of “Darlings,” so easily given and received as she made her much-interrupted way across the room, suddenly faded as she reached the music-room and saw George and the girl with no name.

The girl was about to leave. Mrs. Pane recognized the symptoms with a practised and relieved eye. So she halted in the doorway, and made small talk with that awful Bigsley creature, much to his surprise.

One couldn’t be too obvious, she thought, still keeping an eye on the girl.

She would have been amazed to know that Penny had just refused an invitation to dinner.

Penny and George had had a pleasant conversation. George had, naturally enough, talked about David once she had brought him carefully round to her favourite subject. It was surprising in some ways to find that George had obviously no idea of her visits to Oxford or of David’s to London. But she remembered that George and David had not been seeing very much of each other this winter—each was too busy with his own interests and friends. And she also remembered that David had kept her very much to himself when she visited Oxford, because, as he frankly said, he saw little enough of her as it was, and he was damned if he were going to share her round.