Thrones, Dominations Page 7

  Laurence Harwell looked at his wife. He was glad that a woman could once again keep her hair long and remain in the fashion; the two thick plaits of red gold drew him as with a cart rope. The bedroom, with its lucent surfaces of green and blue, had about it an illusion of water. Through its chilly depths one sank, entranced, to find the embraces of the Siren, whose voice, mocking and caressing, was like a carillon of drowned bells. This thought presented itself to Harwell in a less fanciful form.

  He said, ‘I rather wish we’d chosen warmer colours for this room. It’ll be lovely in summer, of course, but then we shall probably be spending most of our time at the cottage. I’d have liked to see you in something like that Carpaccio interior we used for The Winter’s Tale.’

  Rosamund made no direct answer. She said, looking up from the newspaper, ‘I suppose one will have to go into black.’

  ‘By Jove, yes, of course,’ said Harwell, shocked at his own forgetfulness. He put back the tie he was fingering.

  ‘It’s a nuisance. Such a farce. And as though one couldn’t be sorry without. Father has phoned to say he’s coming up to town this afternoon.’

  Harwell noted, as a vexatious coincidence, that something invariably happened to disturb the rosy harmony that should normally follow a night of stars and love. He had come upstairs a little after midnight, emotional from his vigil beside the loudspeaker. Rosamund had not expected him quite so soon. The monotonous announcements had gone on so long unchanged, it seemed as though time had sunk into a stupor that nothing could break. He had said, ‘Go to bed now, darling; probably it won’t happen till about two in the morning.’ His sudden arrival startled her. She said, ‘Not already?’ and he answered, ‘Yes; he’s gone,’ and she could only cry, ‘Oh, Laurence!’ and cling to him. A rich melancholy enfolded them. They felt the grief of a nation lap them in luxurious sheets of sympathetic bereavement. A whole epoch was collapsing about them, while at the core of darkness they lit their small blaze of life and were comforted. It is a pity that reality can never be content to keep the curtain down on a climax.

  ‘Oh, well, that’ll be all right,’ said Harwell, absently. A disquieting thought had just come into his own mind: ‘This’ll knock business flat.’ Gee-up, Edward! was due to open the following Thursday, and it suddenly struck him, that, under the circumstances, the playwright could scarcely have selected a more unfortunate title.

  ‘I wish he wouldn’t. Town doesn’t suit Father. You know it doesn’t.’

  ‘Oh, well,’ said Harwell, a little uneasily, ‘he enjoys it very much, and what’s the odds? It must be pretty slow for the old boy down at Beachington. He can’ – he cast about for a harmless and dignified occupation – ‘He can help choose your frocks for you. He’ll like that.’

  This was true. There was nothing Mr Warren enjoyed more than the illusion of spending the money he no longer possessed.

  ‘I hate wearing black,’ said Rosamund.

  ‘Do you? But you look wonderful in it. I’ve often wondered why you’ve given it up. The first time I ever saw you, you were in black.’

  ‘Yes. I always showed the black models.’ An expression of distaste crossed her face, which Harwell, hunting for a tie, did not see.

  ‘I’ve always wanted to see you in black again. You looked like a Venetian portrait.’

  ‘It’s obliging of the poor King to die and allow you to gratify a long-felt wish. But it’s rather horrible somehow.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’ Harwell was dimly conscious that he had not said quite adequate things, but his brain felt lethargic, and he could not rouse it to cope with this domestic problem in the middle of a national catastrophe and what he knew only too well was going to prove a frightful business emergency. ‘One’s got to do the same as other people.’

  The telephone rang, and he snatched up the receiver. This, of course, was Leinster, sounding the tocsin in a frenzy.

  ‘Yes . . . yes, old man . . . yes, I know; I’d thought of that too . . . Yes – well, it’s no good getting the wind up . . .’

  While he telephoned, sitting on the edge of the bed, she lay watching him, wondering for the hundredth time what it was about him that so fascinated and excited her, so that she was always in a sick agony of impatience if his attention was given to anybody or anything but herself. He was big, and rather stiffly, though not clumsily, built. She could see the movement of the wide shoulder muscles under his shirt as he reached forward with a grunt to stub out his cigarette in the ashtray that lay on the telephone table beside her. His thick, dark hair, rigorously clipped and disciplined, had an obstinate tendency to wave above the parting; his anxious severity with it amused her daily. His hands, like his voice, were masterful; that they should be passively defied by this outlying and unimportant suburb of himself filled her with a secret zest – it was the impudent self-assertion of the weak confounding the strong. He was being decisive and heartening now to the manager, who, if one side of the conversation was anything to go by, had fallen into a panic. An aroma of authority diffused itself about him, mingling with the male odour of bay rum and shaving-soap. It was perhaps his sheer, unmistakable maleness that she at once adored and resented; he dominated her senses and at the same time infuriated her by his large masculine arrogance. He was so certain of everything, including herself, that she felt she must keep pinching him to remind him that she was there to be noticed. She could always, of course, bring him to heel by withholding herself but the triumph was not lasting. She always gave way too soon, the victim of her own excitement. Yesterday, he had been alert to her. This morning, it was only the voice of the outside, masculine world of affairs that could call the note of awareness into his voice.

  ‘All right, all right,’ he soothed that barking telephone. ‘I’ll come round straight away.’ He turned to his wife. ‘I shall have to push along to the theatre. Leinster has lost his head. They always do.’ He swept the entire theatrical profession into a limbo of fluttering indecision. ‘No good getting the jitters. One must take a line and stick to it.’

  ‘Then we’ll meet at lunch?’

  He shook his head. ‘They want me to run down to the City at one o’clock and see Brownlow. He came in with me fifty-fifty, and he’s all up in the air, thinking he sees his hard-earned dollars vanishing down the drain. Shouldn’t be surprised if he’s right, but one’s got to take risks in this business. I’ll have to try and graft a backbone into him . . . Oh, Hades! We were lunching together, weren’t we? Sorry, sweetheart. We’ll have to make it another day. Somebody’s got to stiffen up this bunch.’

  He blazed serenely, out of her stars, handling money and men with careless assurance.

  ‘It doesn’t matter. I’ll ring up Claude Amery.’

  Claude was the obvious, because the certain card to play. She had only to beckon, and Claude would cancel an appointment with a rich actor-manager. But it was extremely difficult to work up a scene about Claude.

  ‘Yes, that’s a good idea. Why not? He always seems to be at a loose end.’

  ‘Claude’s always ready to break his engagements for me.’

  ‘I dare say,’ said Harwell, getting up and resuming his search for the black tie. ‘Not that I suppose he’s got many to break. He thinks you’ll wheedle me into backing that lousy play of his. Nothing doing. But there’s no harm in it, if he amuses you.’

  How touchingly, how maddeningly blind men could be! The siren smiled a small secret and provocative smile. Unfortunately it was wasted on Ulysses, who had found his tie, and was knotting it with his chin in the air.

  ‘It’s quite a good play, Laurence. Have you read it?’

  ‘My dear child, Amery couldn’t write a commercial play to save his neck. He hasn’t the guts. He can talk fast enough, but he knows I won’t listen to him. Let him blow it all off on you, bless his little heart. I don’t know how you have the patience with these limp youngsters. What is it? Maternal instinct gone wrong?’

  She said, ‘Nothing of the sort!’ with more energy than the o
ccasion warranted, and had the pleasure of seeing him flush.

  ‘I didn’t mean that,’ he said, shortly.

  ‘If you want to go into all that again, I’d rather you did it openly. I hate being hinted at.’

  ‘I’d no intention of going into anything of the sort. You know quite well what I’d like, Rosamund, but if you don’t feel that way, it’s no use arguing.’

  ‘You always sound as though you thought I was being hard and selfish, Laurence. It isn’t that. Of course I’d sacrifice myself in any way. But don’t you see?’

  ‘I know, darling, I know. Great heavens, I’d be the last person to want to force you into anything.’

  ‘It worries me so, Laurence. It makes me feel as though our love was slipping away somehow. I want you to love me for myself – not for – not for . . .’

  ‘But of course I love you for yourself, dearest,’ he said desperately, coming over to her. ‘How can you possibly think anything else? Oh, damn that telephone! Rosamund, listen . . .’

  ‘Sure?’ She smiled over his head as he knelt, in agitated surrender at the bedside, while the bell shrilled on unheeded.

  ‘Certain. Don’t you know it? Can’t you believe it? What more can I do? Surely, I’ve proved it by this time.’

  Her face hardened. She said coldly, ‘Hadn’t you better answer the telephone?’

  London had an odd feeling about it that morning. There was a stir of mournful excitement: people walked purposefully, yet abstractedly, as though something of secret importance awaited them at the end of their journey. Harriet Wimsey, strolling slowly along Oxford Street, turned her novelist’s mind to wondering what it was that made the crowd seem so unlike its ordinary daily self. Nearly everybody was still wearing colours, yet the atmosphere was that of a funeral – of a village funeral. That was it. London had turned into a great village overnight, where every inhabitant knew the other’s business and could read the other’s mind. All these shoppers in Oxford Street, for instance; they were buying black, thinking about buying black, wondering how much black they could afford, or with how little black they could satisfy the instinct for decent self-expression. Behind the glittering barriers of plate-glass were shop assistants, window-dressers, buyers, managers, displaying black, checking the stock of black, issuing orders to the manufacturers for fresh supplies of black, anxiously calculating how far the demand for black would compensate for inevitable loss on coloured spring goods already ordered. Harriet found herself performing a private calculation about her own wardrobe and checked her thoughts hastily in the middle of a secret lament over a flame-coloured evening gown. She had been rather looking forward to that gown; but still, if you mourn, you mourn, and from that point of view, the more unbecoming the more mournful. One must, however, draw the line at unrelieved black; that, on a simple commoner with a sallow skin and dark colouring, would be mere ostentation of grief. Besides, Peter was taking the thing gravely enough already; there was no need to harrow his feelings further by offending his eye. The black costume she was wearing would do very well – though the addition of the white shirt and tie made her feel as though she were back in Oxford, and bound for the examination schools – but something simple and suitable must be found for the afternoon and evening.

  Habit, and the fellow-feeling that prompts one to mingle with the crowd, had taken her to Oxford Street. Now, however, she turned south, and sought counsel of Alcibiade. This gentleman, to whose establishment she had been introduced by Peter’s mother, had furnished her with a number of frocks for her trousseau. He was, name, appearance, and a plum-coloured velvet jacket notwithstanding, a completely normal Englishman with an artistic eye, a sense of humour and a wife and three children in Battersea; and he had the unusual recommendation that he adapted his creations to the figure he saw before him, and not to an ideal form existing only in the morbid imagination of dress designers. He welcomed Harriet with an air of sincere relief and, deserting several other clients, invited her into his private office.

  ‘Have a cigarette,’ said Alcibiade. He looked into three glass boxes one after another, and pressed a buzzer. ‘Here, Miss Doubleday, take these stinking horrors away and get me a packet of Players.’

  The secretary removed the perfumed cigarettes and Harriet offered the young man her own case.

  ‘Thank you. That’s better. One of these days I shall break out and bawl for a job with Colonel Blimp, or join the North-West Mounted Police. It’s nice to be natural with somebody for a change. Well, now – black, I suppose?’

  ‘Yes, please. I’m afraid I’m not a very good subject.’

  Alcibiade cocked his sleek head sideways.

  ‘Not very,’ he said frankly. ‘But it’ll be all right if we keep it away from the face. I’ve got a model you can wear. With a sort of Elizabethan collar – rather entertaining. Not feminine, I give you my word of honour, but on the other hand quite definitely female. Ah, thank you, Doris. There, you see, that is undoubtedly your frock, and what is more, I will lay any money you can walk straight into it. I thought of you when I composed it; and that’s a lie, though you’d be surprised to know how many of one’s vainer customers believe it. I was really thinking of a Breton cook we had last summer holidays. The collar is pleated the Breton way, over straws.’

  ‘I like it very much,’ said Harriet, ‘only . . .’

  ‘Only what? It’s not fussy. I wouldn’t dream of giving you anything fussy.’

  ‘No; but won’t these pleats. . . ?’

  She was on the point of saying, ‘. . . take a lot of laundering and keeping in order?’ Years of hard work on a restricted income had ingrained in her a distrust of the ‘little white collar’ and the ‘starched frill’. She readjusted herself sharply. ‘Will my maid understand them?’ As the words were uttered she realised that Mango would find the things a heaven-sent challenge to perfection.

  ‘Send her to us,’ said Mr Hicks (for that was, in fact, his name), ‘or let us have the collars and we’ll keep them in order for you. You’ll want them clean every day this weather. A dozen? I’ll see how quickly we can get them made. And there’s a design just gone into the studio that is rather your style, which we could carry out at once if you liked it. Well, yes, we are a little rushed, but we’ll let the Pretty-pretties and the Ugly-wugglies wait. I don’t know,’ he added dubiously, ‘which of the two kinds I dislike most. You’d like to slip into this, I expect?’

  Harriet said she would, and asked whether Mr Hicks had borne her in mind while designing any black evening dresses.

  ‘You were constantly in my thoughts,’ said he, unblushingly. An album of sketches lay beside him, and he slid out the contents upon the desk.

  The material side of life was becoming too easy, thought Harriet. One was in danger of forgetting the bad old times altogether, and if one did, what sort of books would one write?

  Lord Peter sat on the edge of his brother-in-law’s desk at Scotland Yard.

  ‘It gives me,’ he said, ‘the curious sensation of having suddenly grown very old.’

  ‘Old?’ retorted Chief Inspector Parker. ‘We shall all be grey-headed here in about two ticks.’ He sat surrounded by reports on the whereabouts and recent behaviour of alien undesirables, all of whom had to be checked up, located, put under supervision, admonished, or, in extreme cases, evacuated in preparation for a royal funeral, with its inevitable complement of foreign bomb-fodder. The Jubilee had meant plenty of hard work and extra policemen; but that had been a domestic affair. Nobody but an out-and-out loony would want to throw things at an English constitutional monarch. But the moment you opened the door to the uneasy continent of Europe, the shadow of a ‘regrettable incident’ came looming up on the threshold. And an incident at a funeral was unheard of. Quite apart from international complications, such a thing would be revolting to the British mind, which feels respectably about funerals.

  ‘I liked the old man,’ said Peter, unheeding. ‘He stood for something.’

  ‘You’re right there,�
�� agreed Mr Parker.

  ‘Hell!’ said Peter suddenly. ‘Well, there it is.’

  ‘It had to come some time.’

  ‘Yes, well. I’ll clear out of your way. Give my love to Mary. When are you both coming to see us?’

  The Chief Inspector scowled at his littered desk. ‘If I ever have a moment to call my own – but Mary would love to. Are you all settled in?’

  ‘Quite, thanks.’

  ‘All well?’

  ‘Yes.’ The affirmative was decided, and Mr Parker nodded. ‘I think,’ pursued Peter rather hastily, as though he had in some way betrayed an unbecoming emotion, ‘marriage is going to have a bad effect on me. I feel mental arthritis setting in. I shall probably renounce the merry murder-chase, and abandon myself to the care of landed property and the supervision of a household.’

  ‘Uxorious beast,’ said his brother-in-law severely, contradicting himself a moment later by observing: ‘Then you must be getting old. You don’t feel drawn to a nice little nest of agitators in Bloomsbury? Unlicensed firearms, seditious pamphlets and incitement to violence?’