‘Nicholas is going to bathe in it tomorrow,’ said William, ‘or hand over ten pounds to me.’
‘Nonsense, William,’ said his mother. ‘I won’t have it. Jonathan, please forbid these stupid boys to go on with this nonsense.’ Her voice, coming out of the dark corner where she sat, sounded unexpectedly loud. Dr Hart turned his head and peered into the shadow. When Chloris said something to him it appeared for a moment that he had not heard her. If, however, he had been startled by Mrs Compline’s voice, he quickly recovered himself. Mandrake thought that he finished his cocktail rather rapidly, and noticed that when he accepted another it was with an unsteady hand.
‘That’s odd,’ thought Mandrake. ‘He’s the more upset of the two, it appears, and yet they’ve never met before. Unless – but no! That would be too much. I’m letting the possibilities of the situation run away with me.’
‘Lady Hersey Amblington, sir,’ said Caper in the doorway.
Mandrake’s first impression of Hersey Amblington was characteristic of the sort of man his talents had led him to become. As Stanley Footling of Dulwich, he would have been a little in awe of Hersey. As Aubrey Mandrake of the Unicorn Theatre, he told himself she was distressingly wholesome. Hersey’s face, in spite of its delicate make-up, wore an out-of-doors look, and she did not pluck her dark brows, those two straight bars that guarded her blue eyes. She wore Harris tweed and looked, thought Mandrake, as though she would be tiresome about dogs. A hearty woman, he decided, and he did not wonder that Madame Lisse had lured away Hersey’s smartest clients.
Jonathan hurried forward to greet his cousin. They kissed. Mandrake felt certain that Jonathan delayed the embrace long enough to whisper a warning in Lady Hersey’s ear. He saw the tweed shoulders stiffen. With large, beautifully shaped hands, she put Jonathan away from her and looked into his face. Mandrake, who was nearer to them than the rest of the party, distinctly heard her say: ‘Jo, what are you up to?’ and caught Jonathan’s reply: ‘Come and see.’ He took her by the elbow and led her towards the group by the fire.
‘You know Madame Lisse, Hersey, don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ said Hersey, after a short pause. ‘How do you do?’
‘And Dr Hart?’
‘How do you do? Sandra, darling, how nice to see you,’ said Hersey, turning her back on Dr Hart and Madame Lisse, and kissing Mrs Compline. Her face was hidden from Mandrake, but he saw that her ears and the back of her neck were scarlet.
‘You haven’t kissed me, Hersey,’ said Nicholas.
‘I don’t intend to. How many weeks have you been stationed in Great Chipping, and never a glimpse have I had of you? William, my dear, I didn’t know you had actually reached home again. How well you look.’
‘I feel quite well, thank you, Hersey,’ said William gravely. ‘You’ve met Chloris, haven’t you?’
‘Not yet, but I’m delighted to do so, and to congratulate you both,’ said Hersey, shaking hands with Chloris.
‘And Mr Aubrey Mandrake,’ said Jonathan, bringing Hersey a drink.
‘How do you do? Jonathan told me I should meet you. I’ve got a subject for you.’
‘O God,’ thought Mandrake, ‘she’s going to be funny about my plays.’
‘It’s about a false hairdresser who strangles his rival with three feet of dyed hair,’ Hersey continued. ‘He’s a male hairdresser, you know, and he wears a helmet made of tin waving clamps and no clothes at all. Perhaps it would be better as a ballet.’
Mandrake laughed politely. ‘A beguiling theme,’ he said.
‘I’m glad you like it. It’s not properly worked out yet, but of course his mother had long hair, and when he was an infant he saw his father lugging her about the room by her pigtail, and it gave him convulsions, because he hated his father and was in love with his mother, and so he grew up into a hairdresser and worked off his complexes on his customers. And I must say,’ Hersey added, ‘I wish I could follow his example.’
‘Do you dislike your clients, Lady Hersey?’ asked Madame Lisse. ‘I do not find in myself any antipathy to my clients. Many of them have become my good friends.’
‘You must be able to form friendships very quickly,’ said Hersey sweetly.
‘Of course,’ Madame Lisse continued, ‘it depends very much upon the class of one’s clientele.’
‘And possibly,’ Hersey returned, ‘upon one’s own class, don’t you think?’ And then, as if ashamed of herself, she turned again to Mrs Compline.
‘I suppose,’ said William’s voice close to Mandrake, ‘that Hersey was making a joke about her subject, wasn’t she?’
‘Yes,’ Mandrake said hurriedly, for he was startled, ‘yes, of course.’
‘Well, but it might be a good idea, mightn’t it? I mean, people do write about those things. There’s that long play – I saw it in London about four years ago – where the brother and sister find out about their mother and all that. Some people thought that play was a bit thick, but I didn’t think so. I thought there was a lot of reality in it. I don’t see why plays should say what people feel in the same way as pictures ought to. Not what they do. What they do in their thoughts.’
‘That is my own contention,’ said Mandrake, who was beginning to feel more than a little curious about William’s pictures. William gave a rather vapid laugh, and rubbed his hands together. ‘There you are, you see,’ he said. He looked round the circle of Jonathan’s guests, and lowered his voice. ‘Jonathan has played a trick on all of us,’ he said unexpectedly. Mandrake did not answer, and William went on: ‘Perhaps you planned it together.’
‘No, no. This party is entirely Jonathan’s.’
‘I’ll bet it is. Jonathan is doing in the ordinary way what he does in his thoughts. If you wrote a play of him what would it be like?’
‘I really don’t know,’ said Mandrake hurriedly.
‘Don’t you? If I painted his picture I should make him egg-shaped, with quite a merry smile, and a scorpion round his head. And then, you know, for eyes he would have the sort of windows you can’t see through. Clouded glass.’
In Mandrake’s circles this sort of thing was more or less a commonplace. ‘You are a surrealist, then?’ he murmured.
‘Have you ever noticed,’ William continued placidly, ‘that Jonathan’s eyes are quite blank. Impenetrable,’ he added, and a phrase from Alice through the Looking Glass jigged Mandrake’s thoughts.
‘It’s his thick glasses,’ he said.
‘Oh,’ said William, ‘is that it? Has he told you about us? Nicholas and Chloris and me? And, of course, Madame Lisse?’ To Mandrake’s intense relief William did not pause for an answer. ‘I expect he has,’ he said. ‘He likes talking about people, and of course he would want somebody for an audience. I’m quite glad to meet Madame Lisse, and I must say it doesn’t surprise me about her and Nicholas. I should like to make a picture of her. Wait a moment. I’m just going to get another drink. My third,’ added William, with the air of chalking up a score.
Mandrake had had one drink and was of the opinion that Jonathan’s champagne cocktails were generously laced with brandy. He wondered if in this circumstance lay the explanation of William’s astonishing candour. The rest of the party had already responded to the drinks, and the general conversation was now fluent and noisy. William returned, carrying his glass with extreme care.
‘Of course,’ he said, ‘you will understand that Chloris and I haven’t seen Nicholas since we got engaged. I