Loving, Living, Party Going (54 page)

'But how about my claustrophobia?' Alex asked. They all heard the man near them say to his companion, a woman, no, he would certainly do nothing of the kind. And Julia demanded to know about their luggage, was it to be left out there to be looted, for their porters would not protect it.

'It's all too disastrous,' Alex said and then when he saw Max, who had come up to them, 'my dear,' he said to him, 'hadn't we all better go home and start another day?'

'Can't get home in this fog. No, I've taken rooms here.'

'But, Max, we can't sleep here.'

'You won't have to, old boy. Trains will be running soon. Come along, Angela, let's all go up.'

'If it wasn't so ludicrous it would be quite comic,' Alex said to Julia as they followed. She said she could not go up in the lift, she never could go up in them, would he mind climbing with her? As they went up short flights from landing to landing on deep plush carpets with sofas covered in tartan on each landing, Miss Fellowes was being carried by two hotel porters up the back stairs. For every step Alex and Julia took Miss Fellowes was taken up one too, slumped on one of those chromium-plated seats, her parcel on her lap, followed by the two silent nannies and, coming last, that same man who had sat next her, he who winked.

Max got Angela into one of that pair of rooms he had reserved on one floor so that she could not see Miss Fellowes carried in as Claire seemed so keen on nobody knowing. He said Julia looked a bit down, he had better order drinks.

He telephoned and was just saying:

'Please send up cocktail things. No, I don't want a man, we'll make them ourselves. I want a shaker, some gin, a bottle of Cointreau and some limes. How much? Send up two of everything and about twelve limes. No, no, only one bottle of Cointreau. These people here are fools.' He was just saying this as Julia and Alex came in. Julia said:

'She's arrived, Max.'

'Who, darling?' Angela asked.

'Oh, no one. Wouldn't you like some tea, darling,' she said to Angela, 'it might do us all some good. Max, be an angel and tell them to send up some tea.' So he ordered tea and said they had better send up whisky and two syphons also. Angela, who did not know them well, wondered at how Julia ordered Max about, and at this room, and at the prodigious number of things he had just sent for and then heard him asking for flowers.

Angela said: 'Now Robin isn't here, because you know he is a relation of Embassy Dick's, do tell me, has anyone heard any more about it?'

Alex put her right about that. 'Embassy Richard, dear, not Embassy Dick,' he said.

'Nonsense, Alex, I think Embassy Dick is a perfectly good name for him and a much better one anyway,' said Julia. Max now made one of his observations. 'If he was a bird,' he said, 'he would not last long.' Julia asked him what on earth he meant and got no answer. Then Angela went on to say this Richard had met her mother and for no reason at all, that is to say he had no cause to bring it in to what they had been saying, he had told her mother he would not be able to go to that reception. Alex objected that Embassy Richard was always saying things of that kind, it proved nothing, and Julia wondered whether Angela was not inventing it all. 'But what I mean is,' Angela said, 'he made a point of his not being able to go. So don't you see someone who might have heard him and had got to know that he had not been invited saw their chance and sent that notice to the papers.'

'But surely, my dear, you don't mean to suggest that he sent the message himself.'

'Alex, what do you mean?'

'Look here, Angela, you seem to think that just because someone overheard him making his alibi about that party it proves that someone else must have sent the notice to the society columns. Well,' Alex went on and so lost track of his argument, 'surely that must be so. I mean no one has ever suggested that he sent the message himself.'

'So you said before, so I seem to remember,' Julia said, who loved arguments, 'but I don't see any reason for saying he didn't send it himself.'

Alex was very taken with this suggestion and complimented Julia on it; he said no one had ever thought of it or, at any rate, not in his hearing. Angela said but surely Embassy Richard wouldn't willingly have brought all that on himself to which Alex replied by asking how he could have known the Ambassador would disown him.

'The Ambassador knows him quite well, too.'

'All the more reason then, Angela dear,' Alex said, 'I expect he was fed up with him.'

'Poisonous chap,' said Max.

'Max, darling, don't be so aggravating, which one do you mean, the Ambassador or Richard?'

'Well, after all, Julia, why should he be called Embassy Richard if he wasn't?' Alex said.

Julia said she did not agree, she thought him very good-looking and didn't Angela think so too. Angela agreed and Alex said 'Oh, very fetching!'

'No, Alex, don't, you're spoiling the whole argument by attacking him. It's neither here nor there to say that he's awful, what we're talking about is whether he sent that notice himself.'

Max chose this moment to leave the room and again Angela felt she was out of it, that they were keeping things from her and, as she thought Alex had been tiresome with her over this argument, she decided she would rather go for him.

'Anyhow, Alex,' she said, 'I bet there's one thing you don't know.'

'I expect there are several.'

'And that is that the Prince Royal is a friend of Richard's and
was frightfully angry with his Ambassador when he saw the letter he wrote.'

'I must say I can't see that makes the slightest difference. Anyway I did know about the Prince what d'you call him. You see, Angela, we were arguing about who could have sent the notice if Embassy Richard didn't sent it for himself. I can't see that it matters two hoots if the Prince Royal was cross.'

'I can,' said Julia, entering into it again. 'I think it's a score for Richard if the Ambassador's employer is cross with him for trying to score off Richard.'

'No,' and Alex was now speaking in his high voice he used when he was upset, 'that's not the point. The real point is that the Ambassador ticked off Embassy Richard in public by writing to the papers to say he had never invited him to his party. If the Prince Royal told his Ambassador off for doing it, it doesn't make any difference to the fact that Richard was shown up in public.'

'But Alex, dear, it does,' Julia said. 'If the Prince Royal did not approve, and the party was being given for him, then it means that Embassy Richard should have been invited all the time.'

'I don't see that it does, Julia. He may not have approved of the way his Ambassador did it. My whole point is that the Prince Royal never made his Ambassador write another letter to the papers saying that Richard should have been invited after all. D'you see?'

Angela said 'No, Alex, I don't.'

'Well, what I mean is that you and I may know the Prince Royal was tremendously angry and threw fits, if you like, when he read his Ambassador's letter but the thousands of people in the street who read their newspapers every morning would not hear about it. All that they know is that Embassy Richard regretted not being able to attend a party he was not invited to.'

'Oh, if that's it,' said Angela, 'then who cares about the people in the street and what they think about it.'

They were all silent trying to keep their tempers when Evelyn Henderson came in. They all told her at one time what they had said and what they had meant and when she had gathered what all this was about she said:

'But I don't understand your saying that the Ambassador knew Richard quite well. You know in that letter of his the newspapers printed he said he had never seen him in his life. And then for the
matter of that, isn't the story of Embassy Richard's being a friend of the Prince Royal just the sort of thing Richard would put round to clear himself? Does anyone know, really know, that it's true?'

Angela said well, as a matter of fact, she did know for certain they were friends because her mother knew the Prince Royal well and he had told her so. Alex asked if that was before or after this business about the party and she replied that it was before. He was just about to say the Prince Royal might think very differently about Richard now and Angela was waiting for him – she was in that state she would have accused him of being rude whatever he said – when Alex saw signs of agitation in Evelyn Henderson and guessed she must have news of Miss Fellowes. So, in order to occupy her attention, he began to make peace with Angela while Evelyn drew Julia aside. In a minute these two went out together and Angela, when she saw it, realized how treacherous Alex really was.

When they were outside that room Miss Henderson said to Julia:

'My dear, you look very pale, are you all right?'

'Yes, I think so. I get so excited, up one moment, down the next, you know how it is,' and Miss Henderson when she heard this thought poor child, it is in love. She was three years older than Julia. 'Well,' she said, 'what I wanted to tell you and of course I didn't want the others in there to hear, is that poor Claire's aunt is very ill, I'm sure of it.'

'Oh dear!'

'Yes. Robert has gone to try and find a doctor. I expect there'll be one stuck in this beastly hotel same as we are. But there's more than that. I'm rather unhappy in my own mind about it. She had a parcel of sorts and as we were getting her on the bed it fell down and came open and there was a pigeon of all things inside.'

'A dead pigeon? Perhaps she was taking it back for her supper.'

'No, it was all wet.'

'Oh, Evelyna, how disgusting! But how could it be wet?'

'That's what I asked myself. But Claire's old nannie, who has been keeping an eye on her tells me she saw Claire's Auntie May washing it in the "Ladies".'

'Well, I think that's rather sweet.'

'I'm not so sure about that, my darling Julie, and I'd rather you did not say anything to Claire about that part of it. I don't think she
knows and she is so upset already, I don't want her worried any more.'

'Yes, if you say so, but I don't see anything so very awful in it.'

'Good heavens, do you see what I see, those poor old dears are crying. Why,' Evelyn said, hurrying up to where those two nannies sat in tears on a settee, 'it is being a tiresome difficult day for us all, isn't it?' she said to them. 'Now, wouldn't you like a nice cup of tea?'

They made noises which could be taken to mean yes and Julia explained to Miss Henderson how Max had already ordered tea so that it would be easy to carry two cups along to them without Angela knowing. As they moved off down the corridor Evelyn said she did not like the way they were crying, did Julia think Miss Fellowes had done anything? Julia said something or other in reply. She was now struck by how extraordinary it was their being here in this corridor with the South of France, where they were going, waiting for them at the end of their journey. They had all, except for Angela Crevy, been in the same party twelve months ago to the same place, so fantastically different from this. One day would be so fine you wondered if it could be true, the next it rained like anywhere else. But when it was fine you sat on the terrace for dinner looking over a sea of milk with a sky fainting into dusk with the most delicate blushes – Oh! she cried in her heart, if only we could be there now. Indeed, this promise of where they were going lay back of all their minds or feelings, common to all of them. If they did not mention it, it was why they were in this hotel and there was not one of them, except of course for Miss Fellowes and the nannies, who did not every now and again most secretly revert to it.

As for Miss Fellowes, she was fighting. Lying inanimate where they had laid her she waged war with storms of darkness which rolled up over her in a series, like tides summoned by a moon. What made her fight was the one thought that she must not be ill in front of these young people. She did not know how ill she was.

Those nannies, like the chorus in Greek plays, knew Miss Fellowes was very ill. Their profession had been for forty years to ward illness off in others and their small talk had been of sudden strokes, slow cancers, general paralysis, consumption, diabetes and of chills, rheumatism, lumbago, chicken pox, scarlet fever, vaccination and the common cold. They had therefore an unfailing instinct for disaster. By exaggeration, and Fate they found rightly was most often exaggerated, they could foretell from one chilblain on a little toe the gangrene that would mean first that toe coming off, then that leg below the knee, next the upper leg and finally an end so dreadful that it had to be whispered behind hands.

Robert Hignam appeared, asked how his aunt by marriage was and said he thought they would be able to find a doctor for her. Julia said how sorry she felt for Claire, and Robert said yes, it was rather a bore for her. He went on:

'You know, a most extraordinary thing happened about Claire's aunt. You know, Evelyn, you wanted me to go and find Angela and Max. Well, when I found myself outside the bar down there I went in and came up against Max. D'you know the first thing I asked him was whether he had seen Claire's aunt although no one had ever asked me to find her? As a matter of fact Max did not know her by sight but as soon as I'd finished telling him, there she was in a chair, large as life and ill at that.'

'I knew all along I'd forgotten something,' Julia said, but almost to herself and in so low a voice they did not catch it, 'there's Thomson outside now still looking for the others and he's probably looking for us now as well.'

Evelyn told Robert it could never be thought-transference as if anyone had been thinking of Miss Fellowes they could not have known she was ill. He said it had made him feel rather uncomfortable and she said she did not see how it made him feel that. 'That's all very well,' he said, 'but wouldn't you if for no reason at all you began asking after someone you had no reason to think of?'

Evelyn was very practical. 'But that's just it, Robert,' she said, 'you had cause to think of her because you had probably seen her unconsciously as you came in, though you did not realize it at the time, and that is what made you ask after her.'