‘There’s something,’ Miss Bellamy said, ‘so endlessly depressing about those clubs. Blue jeans, beards and a snack-bar, no doubt.’ He didn’t answer and she said kindly:
‘Well! We mustn’t let them feel too lost, must we? I’ll tell Maurice and Charles to be kind. And now, sweetie, I’m off to keep my date with the Great Play.’
Richard said hurriedly: ‘There’s something I wanted to alter…. Could we – ?’
‘Darling! You’re such heaven when you panic. I’ll read it and then I’ll put it in your study. Blessings!’
‘Mary – Mary, thank you so much.’
She kissed him lightly and almost ran upstairs to read his play and to telephone Pinky and Bertie. She would tell them that she couldn’t bear to think of any cloud of dissonance overshadowing her birthday and she would add that she expected them at six-thirty. That would show them how ungrudging she could be. ‘After all,’ she thought, ‘they’ll be in a tizzy because if I did do my stuff with The Management …’ Reassured on all counts she went into her room.
Unfortunately, neither Bertie nor Pinky was at home but she left messages. It was now one o’clock. Half an hour before luncheon in which to relax and skim through Richard’s play. Everything was going, in the event, very well. ‘I’ll put me boots up,’ she said to herself in stage cockney and did so on the chaise-longue in the bow window of her room. She noticed that once again the azaleas were infected and reminded herself to spray them with Slaypest. She turned her attention, now growing languid, to the play. Husbandry in Heaven. Not a very good title, she thought. Wasn’t it a quotation from something? The dialogue seemed to be quite unlike Dicky; a bit Sloane Square, in fact. The sort of dialogue that is made up of perfectly understandable phrases that taken together add up to a kind of egg-headed Goon show. Was it or was it not in verse? She read Dicky’s description of the leading woman.
‘Mimi comes on. She might be nineteen or twenty-nine. Her beauty is bone-deep. Seductive without luxury. Virginal and dangerous.’ ‘Hum!’ thought Miss Bellamy. ‘Hodge comes out of the Prompt corner. Wolf-whistles. Gestures unmistakably and with feline intensity.’
Now, why had that line stirred up some obscure misgivings? She turned the pages. It was certainly an enormously long part.
‘Mimi: Can this be April, then, or have I, so early in the day, misinterpreted my directive?’
‘Hell!’ thought Miss Bellamy.
But she read one or two of the lines aloud and decided that they might have something. As she flipped over the pages she became more and more satisfied that Dicky had tried to write a wonderful part for her. Different. It wouldn’t do, of course, but at least the loving intention was there.
The typescript tipped over and fell across her chest. Her temperaments always left her tired. Just before she dropped off she suffered one of those mysterious jolts that briefly galvanize the body. She had been thinking about Pinky. It may be fanciful to suppose that her momentary discomfort was due to a spasm of hatred rather than to any physical cause. However that may be, she fell at last into an unenjoyable doze.
Florence came in. She had the flask of scent called ‘Unguarded’ in her hands. She tiptoed across the room, put it on the dressing-table and stood for a moment looking at Miss Bellamy. Beyond the chaise-longue in the bay window were ranks of tulips and budding azaleas and among them stood the tin of Slaypest. To secure it, Florence had to lean across her mistress. She did so, delicately, but Miss Bellamy, at that moment, stirred. Florence drew back and tiptoed out of the room.
Old Ninn was on the landing. She folded her arms and stared up at Florence.
‘Asleep,’ Florence said, with a jerk of her head. ‘Gone to bye-byes.’
‘Always the same after tantrums,’ said Old Ninn. She added woodenly: ‘She’ll be the ruin of that boy.’
‘She’ll be the ruin of herself,’ said Florence, ‘if she doesn’t watch her step.’
III
When Miss Bellamy had gone Anelida, in great distress, turned to her uncle. Octavius was humming a little Elizabethan catch and staring at himself in a Jacobean looking-glass above his desk.
‘Captivating!’ he said. ‘Enchanting! Upon my word, Nell, it must be twenty years since a pretty woman made much of me. I feel, I promise you, quite giddily inclined. And the whole thing – so spontaneous: so touchingly impulsive! We have widened our horizon, my love.’
‘Unk,’ Anelida said rather desperately, ‘you can’t think, my poor blessing, what a muddle you’ve made.’
‘A muddle?’ He looked plaintively at her and she knew she was in for trouble. ‘What do you mean? I accept an invitation, most graciously extended by a charming woman. Pray where is the muddle?’ She didn’t answer, and he said: ‘There are certain matters, of course, to be considered. I do not, for instance, know what clothes are proper, nowadays, for cocktail parties. In my day one would have worn –’
‘It’s not a matter of clothes.’
‘No? In any case, you shall instruct me.’
‘I’ve already told Richard I can’t go to the party.’
‘Nonsense, my dear. Of course we can go,’ Octavius said. ‘What are you thinking of?’
‘It’s so hard to explain, Unky. It’s just that – well, it’s partly because of me being in the theatre only so very much at the bottom of the ladder – less than the dust, you know, beneath Miss B.’s chariot wheels. I’d be like a corporal in the officers’ mess.’
‘That,’ said Octavius, reddening with displeasure, ‘seems to me to be a false analogy, if you’ll forgive me for saying so, Nelly. And, my dear, when one quotes it is pleasant to borrow from reputable sources. The Indian Love lyrics, in my undergraduate days, were the scourge of the drawing-rooms.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘It would be extremely uncivil to refuse so kind an invitation,’ Octavius said, looking more and more like a spoilt and frustrated child. ‘I want to accept it. What is the matter with you, Anelida?’
‘The truth is,’ Anelida said rather desperately, ‘I don’t quite know where I am with Richard Dakers.’
Octavius stared at her and experienced a moment of truth. ‘ Now that I consider it,’ he said huffily, ‘I realize that Dakers is paying his addresses to you. I wonder that it hasn’t occurred to me before. Have you taken against him?’
To her dismay Anelida found herself on the brink of tears. ‘No!’ she cried. ‘No! Nothing like that – really. I mean – I mean I just don’t know …’ She looked helplessly at Octavius. He was, she knew, hovering on the edge of one of his rare fits of temper. His vanity had been tickled by Miss Bellamy. He had almost strutted and preened before her. Anelida, who loved him very much, could have shaken him.
‘Never mind,’ she said. ‘It’s not worth another thought. But I’m sorry, darling, if you’re put out over your lovely party.’
‘I am put out,’ Octavius said crossly. ‘I want to go.’
‘And you shall go. I’ll do your tie and make you look beautiful.’
‘My dear,’ Octavius said, ‘it is you who would have looked beautiful. It would have been a great pleasure to take you. I should have been proud.’
‘Oh, hell! ‘ said Amelia. She rushed at him and gave him an exasperated hug. He was much puzzled and hit her gently several times on the shoulder blades.
The shop door opened.
‘Here,’ Octavius said over