Beggar’s Choice

XIV

September 19th-I woke up next morning with the feeling that something had happened, or was going to happen. I wasn’t really awake, and I wasn’t really asleep. The sun was making a bright golden line all round the edge of my blind, and the room was full of that happened feeling.

Then I remembered that what had happened was fifteen pounds-two five-pound notes and five Bradburys. And what was going to happen was new boots, a suit of clothes- and dinner at Leonardo’s. It all felt pretty good, and at the moment I wasn’t bothering about what my principal, or Z, 10’s principal, might be going to ask me to do. I was going to get some new boots even if the skies fell.

I got up and made a list.

A reach-me-down suit-five guineas.

To get my dress clothes out of pawn-thirty bob (I ought to have got more on them, for they were brand new just before the crash, and I’ve hardly had them on since).

Two soft shirts-say, eight and six apiece.

Boots-fifty shillings.

That brought me up to ten pounds two. My hat’s pretty bad, but it will have to carry on for a bit.

I went out and shopped, and came home with my parcels. Then I went and asked Fay if she’d dine with me. I was rather fed up about having to ask her, because she was most awfully rude to Corinna Lee when I introduced them. Corinna is a friend of Peter’s, and I said so, and Fay gave an exhibition performance of bad manners that would be pretty hard to beat.

Well, I asked her to dine at Leonardo’s. She jumped at it, and wanted to know if I’d come in for a fortune. I said Henry Ford had just sent me a check for half a million, so she’d better wear her best dress.

We dined at eight. Leonardo’s wasn’t going three years ago, so I’d never been there. The place was crowded, and the dinner was top-hole. The whole thing felt awfully queer. I kept on finding my thoughts wandering, so that I didn’t hear what Fay was saying. One of the people, at one of the tables, was my employer, making his “observations.” I wondered if I would pass muster, and exactly what would happen if I didn’t. Anyhow I’d spent that ten pounds, and he couldn’t very well take my boots away. It was a very queer evening. I didn’t know a soul in the room. But one of these people knew me, and I naturally wanted to know which of them it was.

All at once I saw that Fay was watching me. She was smoking. The smoke hung round her, and she was looking through it at me. I apologized for being a bad host, but she didn’t answer; she just went on looking through the smoke. Her mouth was all plastered with paint, but the rest of her face was pale. She looked like something artificial in a glass case-beautifully finished and all that, but you wonder what on earth any one would do with it if they had it.

Just as I was beginning to feel annoyed, she said,

“Why did you ask me to dine with you?”

I said the obvious thing.

“Why didn’t you ask Peter’s friend?” she went on- “Clarissa what’s-her name.”

“Corinna Lee.”

“Who is she?”

“An American cousin of mine.”

“And a friend of Peter’s?”

“Yes.”

“What did you tell her about me?”

“I didn’t tell her anything.”

She put her elbows on the table and leaned towards me.

“Did you think I was rude to her?”

“What do you think yourself?”

“I can be ruder than that,” she said, and laughed.

I didn’t like the look in her eye. When I didn’t answer, she began to talk about Rena La Touche the dancer, who had just come in with a boy who looked as if he oughtn’t to have left school, a young ass with pale hair and eyes like a love-sick rabbit. Fay told me his income, and her salary, and how many lovers she’d had in a year, and just what she’d paid for the feather frock she was wearing. She was all feathers and pearls, and bare back, and enormous eyes like pools of ink.

And then all of a sudden she asked,

“Did you tell her I was Peter’s wife?”

“Rena?” I said.

“Don’t be so outrageously stupid! That Clarissa girl.”

“Corinna Lee?”

“It’s all the same thing. Did you tell her?”

“No.”

“Then you’re not to. Do you hear?”

I told her what I thought about this idiot game of secrecy, but she only began to talk about Rena La Touche again.

After dinner we danced. Fay dances beautifully, and the floor was topping. She taught me the new steps. She can be very attractive when she likes. I can understand why Peter…It’s perfectly asinine of them not to give their marriage out.

When we were walking home, I thought she must be thinking me a brute, because the last time we really talked she told me she was absolutely up against it and she asked me to help her. Helping her was going to mean five hundred pounds, and as I hadn’t five hundred pence, it didn’t seem much good talking about it. It was one of the things that made me dally with Z.10 and his offer, so I hadn’t really forgotten Fay-or if I had, it was only for a few hours. It seems stupid to have forgotten a person when you’re actually dining and dancing with her. The fact is, the dining and the dancing rather went to my head-it was like going back to a bit out of the old life-and though I was talking to Fay and dancing with her, I wasn’t thinking about her at all; the nearest I got to her was Peter. When we were walking home I sort of woke up.

It was Fay who wanted to walk. Personally, I was feeling as if I could have walked to Brighton but I should have thought a taxi would have been more in her line. I was feeling a bit reckless, and I thought the exes would stand a taxi all right. She said no, she wanted to walk, so we started off, and for about a mile neither of us said a word.

It was a topping night, warm and windy, with the wind sounding like wings. Fay kept close to me, and all at once I heard her sigh, so I asked her if she was tired, and she said “No” and sighed again. And then I began to feel a brute. I was just going to say something when she pressed up against me and said,

“Have you really come into some money?”

I said “No-I’ve got a job-and part of the job is going and dining at Leonardo’s.”

“With me?” she sounded rather frightened.

“With any one.”

“How odd! I was hoping-Car, is it a good job?”

“I don’t know yet.” Then I went on, “Fay, did you mean all those things you said the other day?”

She slipped her arm through mine.

“Oh, I don’t know. What did I say? I’m damned miserable. Did I say that?”

I felt her shiver up against me.

“You said-”

“What’s the good of talking about what I said?”

“You said you must have five hundred pounds.”

“Can you give it me?”

“No-I can’t.”

“Then what’s the good of talking about it?”

“The man you mentioned-Fosicker-what is he like?” I don’t know what made me think of that, it just came into my head.

“I never mentioned any one.”

“You did.”

“I don’t know any one called Fosicker.”

“You said you got money from him.”

“Are you trying to insult me?”

“You said he paid you.”

She let go of my arm and pushed herself away from me so violently that I stumbled on the curb and nearly lost my balance.

“Hold on!” I said-I was furious. “You told me he paid you for distributing dope.”

She turned round on me in a sort of whirling fury.

“How dare you?” Then she seemed to catch hold of herself and calm down. It would have been more natural if she had gone on being angry. But she didn’t; she laughed and slipped over to me and took my arm again. “You’ve been dreaming, Car darling,” she said.

I wondered what on earth her game was. I could see she was frightened. Had she frightened herself-or had Fosicker frightened her? And who was Fosicker?