Her Lover (29 page)

'The drawing-room looks a piksher,' repeated Madame Deume, the smiling, confident hostess. 'Still, you know, Didi, there is one tiny improvement we could make one of these days: we could hang curtains over the bay, cotton rep with great big flowers, hand-painted of course, and behind them we could install subdued lighting which can be turned on at night when the curtains are drawn, that's how Emmeline Ventradour has it, it would look very artistic. We'd only switch on when we had guests. But we'll talk about it some other time. Yoo-hoo, darling!' she said this time to her Didi, and she playfully pinched his wrist then shook it this way and that.

When she had finished scouring her teeth with the help of further twitterings and the pocket toothpick loaned by her husband, and had given the alarming crescent under her fingernails another good scraping with Hippolyte's handyman's knife, she felt in the mood for a little of the conversation on elevated topics which she considered to be
de rigueur
at this point of the evening. Breathing minty waftures released by the lozenges she was sucking, she spoke of a book, 'so well written', entitled
The Story of My Life,
which she had made a point of displaying, for all to see, on one of those little trolleys which she called 'wheelie-trays'. She opened the volume, which the world owed to the pen of Queen Marie of Romania, and read out a sentence which had struck her forcibly: 'Blessed, thrice blessed, be the gift which God has granted me of feeling the beauty in things so deeply and of rejoicing in their beauty!'

'Now isn't that lervely! It's so profound!'

'Oh absolutely,' said Monsieur Deume. 'Pwofound's the word.'

'That was written by a queen, dear. Need one say more?'

All graciousness, she gave a delicate smile, for she felt at one with the Queen of Romania, an intuition fuelled by the imminent arrival of the Under-Secretary-General, a high dignitary most certainly on calling terms with the dear Queen, into whose ken she therefore felt she had somehow, by proxy, swum. She had a sense that evening of belonging in the same top drawer. Then she raised the matter of a photograph which she had seen in an illustrated weekly. It showed another queen, who, at some official ceremony or other, had not been afraid to ease one foot out of her shoe to rest it. Just like any other woman! Wasn't that lervely?

Then she drooled over a third queen, who had insisted on travelling by bus, just once, to see for herself, because she'd never been on a bus before! Imagine! On a bus! A queen who could afford coaches and expensive motor cars catching a bus! Wasn't that a lervely, a really lervely, thought! And what about the children of the English royal family, who'd wanted to take the tube, to see what it was like! Those littel princes on the Underground! Too sweet for words! she said with a tender smile. And, added Monsieur Deume, it was democwatic too. Returning to the queen who had caught the bus, Madame Deume quoted another moving incident in which she had been involved.

'While visiting some small town or other, she made a point of shaking hands with one of the Mayor's deputies, a crippled grocer who had been forced by his infirmity to stay in the background in a wheelchair. I mean, she went out of her way,
she
went to
him,
although he was yards away! A grocer! Such a' kind thought! A lervely gesture! As I read about it in the paper, there were tears in my eyes! They say she has magnetic charm, and with it so tremendously at her ease with ordinary people! Now there's someone who thoroughly deserves to have been set on high! Mind you, the same goes for queens in general, they're all so sensitive, so .. . bountiful!'

Her stock of queens now exhausted, there was a silence. They coughed, cleared their throats. Adrien looked at his watch. Nine thirty-seven. 'Another twenty-thwee minutes,' said Monsieur Deume, stifling a nervous yawn. At least, he thought, the visit of this eminent dignitawy - cowwection, dweadful bore, he said to himself, to spite him — would be over by midnight, and then a chap could slip off quietly to bed without having to bellow out any more conversation in the waised tone of voice which showed that a person was socially accomplished, no more jabbewing on about this or that, no more waiting for this other cove to open his mouth first. Suddenly Madame Deume tapped Adrien sharply on the knee.

'Listen, Didi, why don't you tell us a bit about our guest, I mean about his private side, his character, so we get to know him a littel. I'll start: does he believe in God?'

'Haven't a clue. All I know is a couple of things which show what an amazing chap he is. Castro was only saying to me this morning, oh I must tell Ariane, it was Lady Cheyne, who told Castro who often gets invited to her house, so it's authentic. By the by, I must have Castro round to dinner one of these days, he's a sound chap, ever so well-read.'

'Yes, yes, but what about these things you know?'

'First, there was this fire in a hotel in London. By all accounts he risked his life to rescue two women.'

'Oh, lervely!' exclaimed Madame Deume. 'That means he must believe in God!'

'And then here in Geneva there was a poor girl, a midget, who used to play the guitar in the streets, a beggar in other words. Well, he saved her from poverty, rented a little flat for her, and they say he even pays her an allowance, so now she doesn't have to beg any more, she does voluntary work for the Salvation Army. Quite simply, he completely changed the poor little thing's life.'

'Oooh, I just know that he and I are going to get on!' exclaimed Madame Deume.

'They say the two of them have been seen out walking together. Imagine it: him very tall and her very short, with stubby legs, in her Sally Army uniform.'

'Sounds a vewy decent sort,' said Monsieur Deume, smoothing the wings of his moustache to make them He flat, 'wouldn't you say so, Antoinette?'

'I always commend charity,' she said. Though in his position I don't really think he ought to be seen with a person of lower social rank, especially a person who has been a professional beggar.'

For something to do, the old gentleman hummed quietly to himself, then from the waistcoat pocket of his dinner-suit produced a cheap, thin, black cheroot which he prepared to Hght, not because he felt like a smoke — he was too nervous about the introductions for that — but so that he would have something to cling to when their guest walked through the door. His wife removed the cigar from his mouth and put it away in a drawer.

'Brissago cheroots are common.'

'But I have one evewy evening after dinner!'

'And you are wrong to do so. It makes you look like a post-office clerk. Adrien, you will please turn the conversation round to
The Story of My Life,
which will bring us on nicely to Her Majesty the Queen of Romania, oh and you can mention dear Dr Schweitzer too. That'll give me a chance to get a word in. The
bombe glaceeY
she exclaimed, changing course without warning.

'What about it, Mumsy?'

'We can offer him the
bombe tutti fruttiV

'But Mumsy, we can't possibly. You don't offer guests
bombe glacee
at ten o'clock at night. Whatever would he think?'

'Yes of course, you're right, Didi. But it's such a shame. It won't keep till tomorrow night, it will have melted by then, even in the fridge. We'll have to buy a new fridge, with a deep-freeze compartment, if we can get a good part-exchange on the one we've got. Hippolyte, go this minute and tell Martha she can eat as much of the
bombe glacee
as she wants, it'll be a treat for the poor girl and besides it will be a Good Deed.'

Monsieur Deume obeyed with alacrity and hurried away to bring the good tidings to Martha. In the kitchen, he made great inroads into the
bombe glacee,
shovelling it down until his teeth chattered. Returning to the drawing-room, disguising his shivers, he ventured to ask Antoinette if he could pour himself a small cognac, saying: 'I feel cold all of a sudden, can't think why.'

At nine fifty Madame Deume judged the moment had come to go up to her room and repair what was, in truth, the irreparable. After anointing her bangs with oil of heliotrope, she took a piece of cotton wool and dusted her face with a white powder called Carina, which she used only on special occasions and kept under lock and key in the secret drawer of her dressing-table. Then behind her ears she dabbed a few drops of Floramye, a forty-year-old fragrance. Alluring, with fresh heart, she went downstairs and made her entrance into the drawing-room, the perfumed embodiment of moral worth and social presence, wearing the doleful air of the truly refined.

'What's the time?' she asked.

'Three minutes to ten,' said Adrien.

'Just thwee minutes now,' said Monsieur Deume, holding himself stiffer than a candle.

They waited, not daring now to look at each other. Intermittendy, to fill the vacuum, a sentence rang out hollowly with a remark concerning the temperature, or a comment on how efficient the flush in the downstairs lavatory had been since it had been repaired, or a comparison of the respective merits of the teas of China and Ceylon, the first having a more subtle aroma and the second more body. But hearts and ears were elsewhere. 'Yes,' Madame Deume recited inwardly for the benefit of the ladies she would see the following Monday at the next meeting of the sewing-circle in aid of the converts of the Zambezi, 'the other evening we sat up ever so late, oh a small private function, a family affair really, we had the Under-Secretary-General of the League of Nations round, just him, no one else. An intellectual treat! He's such a charming man, terribly naice and very unaffected, well he was unaffected with us at any rate.'

Ten o'clock was struck simultaneously by the Neuchatel clock and the three other clocks in the house, all scrupulously kept to time by Monsieur Deume. Adrien stood up and his adoptive father followed suit. It was a solemn moment. The mistress of the house caressed her neck to ensure that her velvet choker was perfectly positioned, then adopted a pose of dignified expectancy, and smiled with the aforementioned doleful air which left her squinting teeth highly visible.

'Aren't you going to get up too, poppet?'

'The lady of the house remains seated when she receives a gentleman,' said his poppet, who, having spoken with the voice of authority, shut her eyes.

After, running a comb through his wispy beard, Adrien suddenly decided that the de-luxe art books he had bought the day before would be better if arranged in a geometric order. Then he mixed them up again because on second thoughts they were better as they were, looked more intellectual. Madame Deume gave a start, and her adipose lump swayed like a gracefully dangling bauble.

'What is it?' she asked.

'Nothing,'said Monsieur Deume.

'I thought I heard a car.'

'Just the wind,' said Adrien.

Monsieur Deume opened the window. No, there was no car.

At ten minutes past ten it was agreed that the Argentinian dinner had probably started late, it was the sort of thing you had to learn to put up with from South Americans. Furthermore, perhaps the Under-Secretary-General had embarked upon some weighty discussion with the delegates, exactly the sort of thing that happened over the coffee and cigars. 'He could hardly get up and go just as some important decision was about to be taken,' said Madame Deume. 'Wather,' said Monsieur Deume.

At twelve minutes past ten, Ariane, in a black crêpe dress, finally put in an appearance. After issuing smiles to all those present, she enquired, with an innocent flutter of her eyes, if they were waiting for the Under-Secretary-General. She could jolly well see that they were waiting for him, replied Adrien, who made the muscles of his jaws stand out to lend his face a look of indomitable energy. There had been a minor misunderstanding, explained Monsieur Deume. At what time was the Under-Secretary-General coming? she asked, meticulously separating each of the syllables of the long title. About ten o'clock, replied Madame Deume tardy.

'I'll wait with you,' Ariane said pleasantly.

She sat down. She crossed her arms and observed that it was a trifle cold in the drawing-room. She crossed her legs. Then she stood up, asked to be excused for a moment, said she was going to get a fur wrap. When she returned, her mink stole over her shoulders, she sat down again quietly and stared at the floor. She sighed. Then, as good as gold, she crossed her arms again. A moment later, she unfolded them and yawned politely.

'If you're jdred, why not go and have a he-down,' said Madame Deume.

'How kind. I must admit I do find waiting here in the cold a little tiring and I am rather sleepy as a matter.of fact. So I'll say goodnight, Madame. Good-night, Da-Da, good-night Adrien. I do so hope your guest won't be long.'

At ten twenty-seven Adrien rearranged his art books symmetrically and then remarked that the wind was getting up. Monsieur Deume added that in his opinion there was a storm bwewing, that it had gwown noticeably cooler, and that it might be a good idea after all to light a few sticks in the gwate. Madame Deume said there wasn't any more wood in the cellar, and in any case lighting a fire on the first of June was quite unheard of. At half past ten she announced that her back was playing up. 'Shush! a car!' warned Monsieur Deume. But none of the cars that passed the house ever stopped. At ten thirty-two, a loud burst of the 'Marseillaise' played on the piano came from the second floor and rang throughout the house. This was followed by a slushy tune from the ballet
Coppélia.
'An odd way of feeling sleepy,' commented Madame Deume.

At ten thirty-five old Monsieur Deume sneaked his fifth biscuit, smuggled it into his mouth, and let it dissolve secretly inside his closed jaws. He coped with the business of swallowing it as best he could. At ten forty he was on to his ninth, and this time managed the thing with rather more recklessness, for Madame Deume's eyes were now closed in silent martyrdom. From the second floor, the funeral march by Chopin crept lugubriously downstairs, while the silence in the drawing-room deepened, the wind moaned outside, Monsieur Deume masticated the decreasingly appetizing biscuits with cheerless pleasure, and, stationed by the door, the shivering Martha, dressed up like the maid in a farce, continued to stand guard. The wind-increased in strength, and it was Adrien's turn to remark that a storm was brewing. Then the silence closed round them again and Monsieur Deume shuddered. Should he get his coat? No, it would only make her cross.