The Bachelors (15 page)

The
girl was mightily irritated. ‘Eccie is talking in metaphor,’ she said. ‘I live
in a bedsitter.’

‘I live
in a basement flat,’ said Eccie, still dazed from his elaboration. He looked
from one to the other.

‘Oh, I
see,’ Martin said. ‘Well, you see, I’ve only got a crude legal mind. I—’

‘Carry
on,’ said the girl to Eccie.

Isobel
slid her white plump arm through the dark blue of Eccie’s sleeve. ‘Eccie, I
want you,’ she said, and bore him off somewhere else.

Martin
said to the girl, ‘I’m afraid I interrupted…’ but he was now looking for
Ronald, anxious to know whether Ronald could possibly have been serious when he
said the letter had been stolen, and if so, to tell Ronald how furious he was.

He
smiled formally to the girl and withdrew, first backward a few steps, then
sideways, then right about, so that he could join Ronald where he was standing
with Marlene Cooper and Tim.

‘___must
do something to justify your existence,’ Marlene was saying to Tim, ‘and now is
the chance to show your mettle.’

‘Never
did have any mettle,’ Tim said. ‘Want an olive, Ronald?’

Ronald
looked into his glass at the tiny drop of cocktail left at the bottom of it.

‘Have
an olive, Martin,’ Tim said.

‘What we
want to do,’ Marlene said, ‘is to present a body of witnesses to the court. We
can all testify in our own words. You, Tim, you’ve seen Patrick and you’ve
heard him. You know he’s a real medium, that’s all you’ve got to say. There’s
no commitment attached. But we must give Patrick a character. He’s being
positively framed by Freda Flower and that vile lover of hers. There may be no
case, but as I say, on the other hand, there may be a case.’

Tim
said, ‘Martin Bowles here is the prosecuting counsel in the case, Marlene.’

Marlene
tilted her face to Martin’s. ‘Are you?’ she said, ‘Oh, are you?’

‘Look,’
said Martin, ‘I really can’t discuss—’

‘I
should think you couldn’t,’ Marlene said. ‘You wouldn’t have a leg to stand on.
Nor will you have if it comes to court, let me tell you that. We are all behind
Patrick. I’m behind him. Tim’s behind—’

‘I’d
rather not be involved,’ Tim said.

‘But
you are involved,’ said his aunt.

‘How did it happen?’
Martin said as he drove Ronald home.

‘A
woman came to the house this morning and pretended to be my secretary. The
housekeeper let her in. The letter was gone when I looked for it. I think I
know who’s got it.’

‘Who?’

‘Patrick
Seton’s girl friend. It wasn’t she who actually came to the flat, but I think
Matthew Finch knows the girl.’

‘Who?
Which girl?’ Martin enquired in his legal voice. ‘You don’t make it clear which
is which.’

‘I’ll
try and get the letter back.’

‘We’d
better have the police informed right away, ‘Martin said.

‘All
right,’ Ronald said.

‘Well,
I know it won’t do your reputation much good,’ Martin said, ‘losing an
important document like that. But I don’t suppose you depend much on your
forgery detection work, do you?’

‘I like
it,’ Ronald said.

‘Do you
think you
can
get it back?’

‘I don’t
know,’ Ronald said, deliberately, as one refusing to be a mouse even while the
claws were upon him.

‘I’m
not trying to make things difficult,’ Martin said, ‘but…’

‘But
what?’

‘Well,
you say you can’t work from the photostats. I daresay the photostats would be
taken as some sort of evidence. But you can’t give any evidence of forgery from
a photostat, can you?’

‘Not
really. I’ve got to test the ink and study the writing on the folds in the
paper. That sort of thing.’

‘You’ve
got us in a pickle,’ Martin said.

‘Matthew
Finch knows the girl. I’ll see if he can do something about it.’

‘He was
at the party tonight, wasn’t he?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did
you speak to him about this?’

‘Yes.’

‘You
told him what had happened?’

‘Yes. I
made the mistake of telling him about the letter in the first place. Then he
informed the girl. He thinks the girl who got into my rooms must be the girl he
knows who works with Patrick Seton’s girl in a coffee bar. This girl is the
friend of the other girl, and—’

‘Who?
Which girl is which? What are their names?’

‘Alice
and Elsie,’ Ronald said. ‘I think we’d better get the police to handle it, as
you suggested.’

Martin
had stopped for the traffic of South Kensington. He sat back from the wheel
and pondered. Then, as he started up the car again, he said, ‘Let’s leave it
that you get the letter back by tomorrow night or we’ll get the police to find
it. If it hasn’t been destroyed by then.’

‘It has
probably been destroyed by now,’ Ronald said in a louder voice than usual. ‘And
actually I think we must inform the police in any case.’

‘They
might ask you awkward questions,’ Martin said.

‘How do
you mean?’

‘Well,
it’s obvious you’ve been careless.’

‘That
can’t be helped now.’

His
melancholy and boredom returned with such force when he was alone again in his
flat that he recited to himself as an exercise against it, a passage from the
Epistle to the Philippians, which was at present meaningless to his numb mind,
in the sense that a coat of paint is meaningless to a window-frame, and yet
both colours and preserves it: ‘All that rings true, all that commands
reverence, and all that makes for right; all that is pure, all that is lovely,
all that is gracious in the telling; virtue and merit, wherever virtue and
merit are found — let this be the argument of your thoughts.’

For
Ronald was suddenly obsessed by the party, and by the figures who had moved
under Isobel’s chandelier, and who, in Ronald’s present mind, seemed to gesticulate
like automatic animals; they had made sociable noises which struck him as
hysterical. Isobel’s party stormed upon him like a play in which the actors had
begun to jump off the stage, so that he was no longer simply the witness of a
comfortable satire, but was suddenly surrounded by a company of ridiculous
demons.

This
passage from Philippians was a mental, not a spiritual exercise; a mere charm
to ward off the disgust, despair and brain-burning.

This
was the beginning of November. It is the month, Ronald told himself in passing,
when the dead rise up and come piling upon you to warm themselves. One is
affected as if by a depressive drug, one shivers. It is only the time of year,
that’s the trouble.

With
desperate method he began to abstract his acquaintance, in his mind’s eye, from
the party, and examined them deliberately to see the worst he could find in
them. One must define, he thought: that is essential.

Isobel
Billows, with her hungry lusts, her generosity wherever she thought generosity
was a good investment, smiled up at him in the glaring eye of his mind.

‘What’s
wrong with me?’ she said.

‘Nothing,’
he said, ‘but yourself.’

‘Oh,
Ronald, you always see the worst side of everything, there’s a diabolical side
to your nature.’

‘What
do you mean, diabolical?’

‘Well,
possessed by a devil, that’s the reason for your epilepsy.’

‘Adulterous
bitch.’

‘Oh,
Ronald, you don’t know how basely men treat me. Men have always treated me very
badly.’

‘A
woman of your class shouldn’t talk like that.’

‘But
they come and sponge on me, Ronald, and then they go away and say, “Oh, her.
You don’t want to have anything to do with her. Don’t listen to her.”‘

Martin
Bowles was her lover, and was also her financial adviser, and, in his legal
capacity, handled her property. ‘… and you see,’ Martin said — he was sitting
at his desk in chambers, in the bright eye of Ronald’s imagination, leaning one
hand on his high bald forehead — ‘I haven’t much freedom, what with my old ma
and the housekeeper, and then there’s Isobel, I’m fairly tied to Isobel.’

‘Will
you marry Isobel?’

‘No, oh
no. It’s a question of business interests.’

‘Have
you misappropriated Isobel’s money?’

‘No, oh
no. I’m on the right side of the law.’

‘Yes,
the right side of the law.’

‘Don’t
be vulgar, Ronald.’

‘It was
you who employed the phrase.’

‘Isobel’s
very well off although she pretends to be poor. She doesn’t live up to her
money, you know.’

‘Fraudulent
conversion, it’s revolting.’

‘Not at
all. There’s nothing fraudulent about it, I’m perfectly safe in the law. There’s
a large sum involved, Ronald, but I’m perfectly safe.’

‘Forty
thousand?’

‘How do
you come to know all this, Ronald?’

‘From
piecing together what I hear and see in one direction and another.’

‘My old
ma’s a tyrant, quite a drag upon my life.’

‘You
shouldn’t be living with your mother, at your age. It makes a mess of a man. it
makes for a mean spirit, living with mama after the age of thirty.’

‘You
know, Ronald, you should have been more careful with that letter.’

‘Yes.’

‘And
now you’ve gone and lost it. Shall we inform the police? Shall we ruin your
little reputation as a reliable expert? You shouldn’t have talked.’

‘Please
yourself. I don’t particularly want to get the letter back. Why should I hound
Patrick Seton? He has offended in the same way as you, on a smaller scale than
you, but less cleverly than you.’

‘This
is rather absurd,’ said Martin Bowles in the mind’s ear of Ronald. ‘I won’t
have it.’

‘I won’t
have it,’ Marlene Cooper said, brushing her earrings past Ronald’s mouth as if
he were not there. ‘I won’t have Tim remaining on friendly terms with that
revolting bald barrister.’

‘I like
Martin Bowles,’ Tim said.

‘If
Patrick’s case comes to court your friend will be prosecuting counsel.’

‘Someone’s
got to be prosecuting counsel,’ Tim said. ‘Well, you must give up your
association with him.’

‘I
haven’t got any particular association with him. Martin is just a friend,’ Tim
said.

‘But,
Tim, dear, I saw you with him at Isobel’s party, laughing away as if nothing
had happened. Do you realise that when you give evidence for Patrick, the man
is sure to cross-examine you.’

‘I don’t
want to be involved,’ Tim said. ‘I’m not giving any evidence. We treat your
conspiracy as a joke.’

‘You
are weak,’ Marlene said, ‘like your father and his father before him.’

And so
he is, Ronald thought, viciously, for he was especially fond of Tim. He doesn’t
want to be involved at all; except, of course, with Hildegarde.

‘I did
everything for Ronald that a woman possibly could do,’ Hildegarde said. ‘I
washed his shirts, mended his clothes, I bought the theatre tickets and I set
the alarm clock for him. I made every possible allowance for his disability. I
even helped him in his job. I made a study of handwriting and even ancient
manuscripts. What more could I have done?’

‘Nothing
at all,’ said Tim in the bemused ear of Ronald’s imagination, as he sat there
in his flat in the small hours of the morning. ‘Nothing at all,’ said Tim. ‘Move
over, darling, and don’t kick.’

‘It
makes me kick,’ Hildegarde said, ‘to think of Ronald. If only he had given me
some excuse when he broke with me….’

‘Shut
up about Ronald,’ Tim said. ‘It’s jolly off-putting.’

‘Does
he know about us?’ Hildegarde said.

‘No, of
course not.’

‘He
mustn’t know about us,’ she said. ‘It would upset him and he would never
forgive you. I don’t want to break up your friendship with Ronald.’

‘You’re
sweet,’ Tim said, snuggling down. ‘Lovely to think tomorrow’s Sunday,’ he said,
‘and a long lie in.’

‘Let me
put your pillow straight, sweet boy,’ said Hildegarde. ‘You are all crumpled
up.’

Matthew
had told Ronald: ‘I saw Hildegarde Krall the other evening in the Pandaemonium
Club at Hampstead. She was wearing jeans, looked very nice.’

‘Was
she alone?’

‘Yes,
alone.’

‘Did
you speak to her?’

‘Only
briefly. She left early. Walter Prett was with me. She left when he started
making a nuisance of himself and insulted Francis Eccles.’

Tim, Hildegarde,
Matthew Finch, Francis Eccles, Walter Prett. Ronald got through the list by
half-past three in the morning. Who are they, he thought, in any case, to me?
Why be oppressed by a great disgust? ‘We must go to court,’ Ewart Thornton
says, ‘we must oppose Patrick Seton at all costs. Let us give evidence for a
Mrs. Freda Flower, about whose wrongs none of us cares.’ But why does he induce
in me a condition near to madness?