The Bachelors (14 page)

Cash,
drugs, and now professional advice. How long would it take for Alice to die if
she were deprived of insulin? How long if she took too much? She may be
careless with her injections. She won’t let me give them to her, she won’t let
me see her taking them.

‘Patrick,’
Alice had said, ‘always gives me the injections himself, he’s so good.’

‘Your
chalet in Austria,’ Patrick had said. ‘We shall be wanting it for a holiday
after the unfortunate court case is settled. And I doubt if it will come to
court, and if so it will only last half-an-hour; I’m certain of acquittal. How
big is the chalet? How high up in the mountain? How far from the nearest town?’

Dr. Lyte
looked round his consulting room and saw there was no escape. He tore a page
from
The Times
and folded it into the shape of a cone. He scooped the
black frail ash of the burnt letter into the cone, rolled it up tight. He
decided to go to his club for a drink before going home, and as he left his
surgery he dumped the paper containing the ashes of his letter to Patrick in
the dustbin among the stained cotton wool and empty sample medicine packages of
the day. He went to his club and was warmed by the immediate greetings of two
of his oldest, most likeable friends.

The
cheerful thought occurred to him that Patrick Seton might even be convicted of
fraud if it came to a trial.

Chapter VIII

RONALD was changing to go
to Isobel Billows ‘cocktail party when the housekeeper from the ground-floor
flat came up and rang his bell.

‘I let
in your secretary this afternoon,’ said the housekeeper. ‘Just thought I’d let
you know. I suppose it was all right.’

‘What
secretary?’ Ronald said.

‘The
girl. The girl that came for your papers.’

‘What
girl?’ Ronald said.

When
the housekeeper, resentful and dispirited, had gone, Ronald looked mournfully
and in vain in the drawer of his desk where he had left the letter which
Patrick Seton was suspected of forging in the name of Mrs. Freda Flower.

‘She
was, I should say, about twenty-eight, late twenties,’ the housekeeper had
said. ‘A fair young woman, well, I should say near to fair-coloured hair, very
pale. How was I to know? She said she was your secretary, and you wanted the
papers in a hurry and you forgot to give her the key. I said, I suppose it’s
all right and I had my niece downstairs so I said, just let yourself out, you
know the way. She looked all right. Remember there was that gentleman that came
that morning when I was doing your cleaning, that came for your brief-case.
Remember you sent him. How was I to know this wasn’t another person that came
to save you the trouble, on account of your difficulty?’

‘I can’t
think who she can be,’ Ronald said.

‘Well,
I don’t take responsibility.’

‘Well,
no,’ said Ronald, ‘of course. Don’t worry, ‘and as soon as she was gone he had
opened the drawer, knowing the letter would not be there. He opened all the
other drawers and looked through the tidy heaps of papers, but simply as a
desperate act of diligence.

Ronald
was filled with a great melancholy boredom from which he suffered periodically.
It was not merely this affair which seemed to suffocate him, but the whole of
life — people, small-time criminals, outraged housekeepers, and all his
acquaintance from the beginning of time. When this overtook him Ronald was apt
to refuse himself comfortable thoughts: on the contrary he used to tell
himself: this sensation, this boredom and disgust, may later seem, in
retrospect, to have been one of the happier moods of my life, so appalling may
be the experiences to come. It is better, he thought, to be a pessimist in
life, it makes life endurable. The slightest optimism invites disappointment.

Isobel Billows’ house was
in a newly smartened street at World’s End which lies at that other end of
Chelsea. The walls and ceiling of her drawing-room were papered in a dull red
and black design. She was giving a cocktail party. Isobel had been three years
divorced from, her husband and always said to her new friends ‘I was the
innocent party,’ which they did not doubt, and the very statement of which
proved, to some of her friends, that she was so in a sense.

Marlene
Cooper’s earrings swung with animation as she spoke seriously about
spiritualism to Francis Eccles who had now got a job on the British Council.
Tim, like a bright young manservant of good appearance, sinuously slid among
the guests with a silver dish of shrimps; these shrimps were curled up as if in
sleep on the top of small biscuits. Isobel Billows herself, large,
soft-featured, middle-aged and handsome, had given up trying to introduce
everyone and was surveying the standing crowd from a corner while Ewart
Thornton talked to her, he having had three martinis, in the course of which he
had told Isobel that he had mounds of homework, that a grammar-school master
had no status these days, that spiritualism was the meeting ground between
science and religion, and that he always bought his shirts and flannel trousers
from Marks & Spencer’s. It was at the point of his fourth martini that Ewart’s
deepest pride emerged, to enchant Isobel and make her feel she was really in
the swing by having him at her party. She listened to him wonderingly as he
told her of the real miner’s cottage of his birth in Carmarthenshire where his
father still lived, and the real crofter’s cottage in Perthshire where his
grandparents had lived till late. ‘Latham Street Council School; Traherne
Grammar School; Sheffield Red Brick — only the brick isn’t red,’ boasted Ewart.
‘Three shillings and sixpence a week pocket money all the while I was a
student. From the age often to the age of thirteen I was employed by a
fishmonger to deliver fish after school hours and on Saturday mornings. My earnings
were four shillings a week which, with the similar earnings of my brothers,
went into the family funds. I was given a pair of stout boots every year at
Easter. Most of my clothes were home-made. We had outdoor sanitation which we
shared with two other families—’

‘Were
you ever in trouble with the police?’ Isobel said, looking round in the hope
that someone was listening.

Ewart
looked gravely at a vase of flowers, as if searching his memory, but obviously
he had lost ground. At last he said, ‘No, to be quite honest, no. But I recall
being chased by a policeman. With some boys in some rough game. Yes, definitely
chased down a back street.’ He took out his snuff-box, and looked vexed. ‘I was
definitely underprivileged by birth,’ he said, ‘though not delinquent.’

Isobel
said encouragingly, ‘What was your accent like?’

‘Southern
Welsh. You can still hear the trace of it, mind you.’

‘So you
can,’ said Isobel, who could not.

She
loved his hairy tweed suit and his middle-aged largeness, his drooping jowl.
She wondered why he had never married. She thought, next, that in some way she
ought to feel more grateful for her acquaintance with him than she was, and she
wondered why this was so, and found the reason in his being now only a grammar-school
master after such likely beginnings; a really dramatic rise in life would have
been preferable. But still, he was the real thing, and a great asset to a
party.

Ewart
took a pinch of snuff and said, ‘My father was a real miner, a real one. Half
the men that claim to have come from mining stock, when you look into it, turn
out to be the sons of mine-managers or clerks in the coal offices.’

Tim
came round with his tray of shrimps.

‘Have a
shrimp,’ he said.

Isobel
said, ‘Tim, stay and talk to Ewart. I must have a word with your aunt over
there.’

Tim
took her place with his dish beside Ewart and started eating the shrimps off
the tops of the biscuits.

‘I
daresay,’ Ewart Thornton said, in a definite man-to-man way, as to a senior
prefect, ‘your aunt has told you that she is trying to get together a number of
people willing to give evidence as to the bona fides of Patrick Seton, in case
he is brought to court by that absurd widow.’

‘No,
Marlene hasn’t said anything,’ Tim said, eating shrimps.

‘She
will no doubt be after you,’ said Ewart. ‘She will want you to give evidence in
court for Patrick Seton. I advise you to do no such thing. I advise you rather
to come forward as a witness for Mrs. Freda Flower. Not that I care for Mrs.
Flower, a silly woman, but I feel Patrick Seton is an undesirable character who
does no credit to the Circle. Of course he’s a good medium but—’

‘Have a
shrimp,’ Tim said, ‘before I eat the lot.’

‘No,
thanks. He’s a competent medium but there are many brilliant mediums by whom he
could be replaced. He is not irreplaceable. Your aunt, I’m afraid, is not
inclined to listen to reason. I feel we should all do our best to support Mrs.
Flower and___’

‘Have a
drink,’ Tim said, lifting a small glass of liqueur off a tray as the caterers’
man passed them by with his tray.

‘Thanks.
We should all support Mrs. Flower and not Patrick Seton.’

‘I shan’t
support either,’ Tim said, cheerfully. ‘I don’t know a thing about either of
them.’

‘Oh,
come!’ Ewart said. ‘You’ve attended the séances when both have been present.’

‘Only
as a novice,’ Tim said. ‘Really, I’d rather not be involved.’

‘Be
reasonable, my boy,’ Ewart said.

Tim ate
a shrimp. ‘Am being reasonable,’ he said, and licked his finger tips.

‘It’s a
matter of principle,’ Ewart said. ‘Surely you’ve got principles.’

‘None
whatsoever when you actually look into it,’ Tim said.

‘I
thought as much,’ Ewart said. ‘You fellows that have had every advantage in
life—’

‘Was
brought up rough, me,’ said Tim, eating two of the biscuits which were now
deprived of shrimps.

‘Tim!’
shrieked Marlene from not very far away. ‘Come over here a minute, I’ve been
wanting to speak to you all evening.’

‘Must
see my aunt,’ Tim said, and putting down the dish, took off his glasses, wiped
them, put them on, took up a bowl of olives, and joined Marlene.

A serving table had been
set up for the caterers in front of the window; it was spread with a white
cloth and was laid out with bottles and glittering glasses. Ronald Bridges and
Martin Bowles stood out of the way between a corner of this table and the wall.

‘I
could go to Switzerland for Christmas,’ Martin said, ‘if I could get in one
small fraction of the money that’s owing to me. Dozens of briefs but no pay.
Solicitors are crooks, they won’t part with money.’

‘What
do you look like in your wig?’ Ronald said.

‘Quite
nice.’

Ronald
thought this probably true, for Martin was going bald and the impression of an
increasingly high forehead had, over the past five years, thrown his good
features out of balance.

Martin
said, ‘I’ve been invited to Switzerland for Christmas with a party. All married
couples except for me, if I go. It makes one feel young being with married
couples.’

‘Or insignificant,’
Ronald said.

‘Yes,
or insignificant. I always feel a bit
less
than a married man. Why is
that, do you think? Is it because they’ve got more money than us?’

‘No,
married men mostly have less. Obviously.’

‘Well,
they seem to have more money, in a queer sort of way, to be economically
stronger than single chaps.’

‘It’s
an illusion. The truth is, a married man is psychologically stronger.’

‘Yes,
it’s psychological. They make one feel young, even men one was at school with.
How are you getting on with that forged letter in the Seton case?’

‘It’s a
question of responsibility, I think — if they have kids,’ Ronald said, to keep
Martin off the subject of the letter.

But ‘How’s
the forgery work?’ Martin said.

‘The
letter has been stolen from my flat,’ Ronald said, ‘I’m sorry to say.’

‘Come
along,’ said Isobel Billows, ‘you bachelors in a huddle, over there.’ She slid
her white arm through Martin’s and pressed him into a group which included
Marlene with her swinging earrings, Tim with his bowl of olives, a girl wearing
a pink dress, and Francis Eccles, who, in the confidence of his new job on the
British Council, was exuberantly philosophising to the girl and Marlene.

‘You
see,’ he was saying, ‘we are all fundamentally looking at each other and
talking across the street from windows of different buildings which look
similar from the outside. You don’t know what my building is like inside and I
don’t know what yours is like. You probably think my house is comfortably
furnished with its music-room and libraries, like yours. But it isn’t. My house
is a laboratory with test-tubes, capillaries and — what do you call them? — bunsen
burners. My house contains a hospital ward, my house—’

‘Do you
live in a very splendid house?’ Martin said to the girl, for his ears had
selected from Eccie’s speech only the bit about the music-room and libraries.