False Scent

Chapter two Preparation for a Party

Mary Bellamy’s temperaments were of rare occurrence but formidable in the extreme and frightening to behold. They were not those regulation theatre tantrums that seem to afford pleasure both to observer and performer; on the contrary they devoured her like some kind of migraine and left her exhausted. Their onset was sudden, their duration prolonged and their sequel incalculable.

Bertie and Pinky, both familiar with them, exchanged looks of despair. Miss Bellamy had not raised her voice, but a kind of stillness seemed to have fallen on the house. They themselves spoke in whispers. They also, out of some impulse of helpless unanimity, said the same thing at the same time.

“Mary!” they said. “Listen! Don’t!”

They knew very well that they had better have held their tongues. Their effort, feeble though it was, served only to inflame her. With an assumption of calmness that was infinitely more alarming than raging hysteria she set about them, concentrating at first on Bertie.

“I wonder,” she said, “what it feels like to be you. I wonder if you enjoy your own cunning. I expect you do, Bertie. I expect you rather pride yourself on your talent for cashing in on other people’s generosity. On mine, for instance.”

“Mary, darling! Please!”

“Let us,” she continued, trembling slightly, “look at this thing quite calmly and objectively, shall we? I’m afraid it will not be a delicious experience, but it has to be faced.”

Gracefield came in, took one look at his mistress and went out again. He had been with the family for some time.

“I am the last woman in the world,” Miss Bellamy explained, “to remind people of their obligations. The last. However—”

She began to remind Bertie of his obligations. Of the circumstances under which she had discovered him — she did not, to his evident relief, say how many years ago — of how she had given him his first chance; of how, since then, he had never looked back; of how there had been agreement — “gentlemen’s,” she added bitterly — that he would never design for another leading lady in the Management without first consulting her. He opened his mouth, but was obliged without utterance to shut it again. Had he not, she asked, risen to his present position entirely on the wings of her patronage? Besieged as she was by the importunities of the great fashion houses, had she not stuck resolutely to him through thick and thin? And now—

She executed a gesture, Siddons-like in its tragic implications, and began to pace to and fro while Pinky and Bertie hastily made room for her to do so. Her glance lighting for a moment on Pinky she began obliquely to attack her.

“I imagine,” she said, still to Bertie, “that I shall not be accused of lack of generosity. I am generally said, I think, to be a good friend. Faithful and just,” she added, perhaps with some obscure recollection of Mark Antony. “Over and over again, for friendship’s sake, I’ve persuaded the Management to cast actresses who were unable to give me adequate support.”

“Now, look here…!” Pinky began warmly.

“—Over and over again. Timmy said, only the other day: ‘Darling, you’re sacrificing yourself on the altar of your personal loyalties!’ He’s said, over and over again, that he wouldn’t for anybody else under the sun accept the casting as it stood. Only for me…”

“What casting?” Pinky demanded. Miss Bellamy continued to address herself exclusively to Bertie.

“Only for me,” Timmy said, “would he dream of taking into any production of his an artist whose spiritual home was weekly rep. in the ham-counties.”

“Timmy,” Pinky said dangerously, “is producing my play. It’s entirely due to him and the author that I’ve got the part. They told the Management they wanted me.”

Bertie said, “I happen to know that’s perfectly true.”

“Conspiracy!” Miss Bellamy shouted so loudly and suddenly that the others jumped in unison. She was ravaged by a terrible vision of Bertie, Pinky and Timmy all closeted with the Management and agreeing to say nothing to her of their plots and plans. In a Delphic fury she outlined this scene. Bertie, who had been moodily disengaging himself from the remnants of his garland, showed signs of fight. He waited his chance to cut in.

“Speaking,” he began, “as a two-timing, double-crossing rat, which God knows I am not, I take leave to assure you, darling Mary, that you’re wrecking yourself for nothing. I’m doing Pinky’s gowns out of friendliness and my name isn’t going to appear and I must say I’d have thought…”

He was allowed to get no further.

“It’s not,” Miss Bellamy said, “what you’ve done, both of you, but the revolting way you’ve done it. If you’d come to me in the first instance and said…” Then followed an exposition of what they should have said and of the generous response they would have enjoyed if they’d said it. For a moment it looked as if the row was going to degenerate into an aimless and repetitive wrangle. It would probably have done so if Pinky had not said abruptly:

“Now, look here, Mary! It’s about time you faced up to yourself. You know jolly well that anything you’ve done for either of us has been paid back with interest. I know you’ve had a lot to do with my getting on the Management’s short list and I’m grateful, but I also know that it’s suited you very well to have me there. I’m a good foil to you. I know all your gimmicks. How you like to be fed lines. And when you dry, as nowadays you very often do, I can fill in like nobody’s business. In the gentle art of letting myself be upstaged, cheated out of points and fiddled into nonentity, I’ve done you proud and you’ll find I’m damn hard to replace.”

“My God! My God! that I should have to listen to this!”

“As for Bertie…”

“Never mind, Pinky,” he said quickly.

“I do mind. It’s true you gave Bertie his start, but what hasn’t he done for you? Your decor! Your clothes! Face it, Mary, without the Saracen Concealed Curve you’d be the Grand Old Lady of the Hip Parade.”

Bertie gave a hysterical hoot of laughter and looked terrified.

“The truth is,” Pinky said, “you want it both ways, Mary. You want to boss everybody and use everybody for your own ends and at the same time you want us all to wallow in your wake saying how noble and generous and wonderful you are. You’re a cannibal, Mary, and it’s high time somebody had the guts to tell you so.”

A dead silence followed this unexampled speech.

Miss Bellamy walked to the door and turned. It was a movement with which they were familiar.

“After this,” she said very slowly, dead-panning her voice to a tortured monotone, “there is only one thing for me to do and much as it hurts me, I shall do it. I shall see the Management. Tomorrow.”

She opened the door. They had a brief glimpse of Charles, Warrender and Richard, irresolute in the hall, before she swept out and shut the door behind her.

The room seemed very quiet after she had gone.

“Bertie,” Pinky said at last, “if I’ve done you any harm I’m desperately sorry. I was high. I’ll never, never forgive myself.”

“That’s all right, dear.”

“You’re so kind. Bertie — do you think she’ll — do you think she can…?”

“She’ll try, dear. She’ll try.”

“It took everything I’ve got, I promise you, to give battle. Honestly, Bertie, she frightened me. She looked murderous.”

“Horrid, wasn’t it?”

Pinky stared absently at the great flask of the scent called Formidable. A ray of sunshine had caught it and it shone golden.

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

Bertie picked up a handful of tuberoses from the carpet. “Get on with me bloody flowers, dear,” he said. “Get on with me bloody flowers.”

Having effected her exit, Miss Bellamy swept like a sirocco past Richard, Warrender and her husband and continued upstairs. In her bedroom she encountered Florence, who said, “What have you been doing to yourself?”

“You shut up,” Miss Bellamy shouted and slammed the door.

“Whatever it is, it’s no good to you. Come on, dear. What’s the story?”

“Bloody treachery’s the story. Shut up. I don’t want to tell you. My God, what friends I’ve got! My God, what friends!”

She strode about the room and made sounds of outrage and defeat. She flung herself on the bed and pummelled it.

Florence said, “You know what’ll be the end of this — party and all.”

Miss Bellamy burst into tears. “I haven’t,” she sobbed, “a friend in the world. Not in the whole wide world. Except Dicky.”

A spasm of something that might have been chagrin twitched at Florence’s mouth. ’’Him!” she said under her breath.

Miss Bellamy abandoned herself to a passion of tears. Florence went into the bathroom and returned with sal volatile.

“Here,” she said. “Try this. Come along now, dear.”

“I don’t want that muck. Give me one of my tablets.”

“Not now.”

“Now!”

“You know as well as I do, the doctor said only at night.”

“I don’t care what he said. Get me one.”

She turned her head and looked up at Florence. “Did you hear what I said?”

“There aren’t any left. I was going to send out.”

Miss Bellamy said through her teeth, “I’ve had enough of this. You think you can call the tune here, don’t you? You think you’re indispensable. You never made a bigger mistake. You’re not indispensable and the sooner you realize it, the better for you. Now, get out.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“Get out!”

Florence stood quite still for perhaps ten seconds and then left the room.

Miss Bellamy stayed where she was. Her temperament, bereft of an audience, gradually subsided. Presently she went to her dressing-table, dealt with her face and gave herself three generous shots from her scent-spray. At the fourth, it petered out. The bottle was empty. She made an exasperated sound, stared at herself in the glass and for the first time since the onset of her rage, began to think collectedly.

At half-past twelve she went down to call on Octavius Browne and Anelida Lee.

Her motives in taking this action were mixed. In the first place her temperament, having followed the classic pattern of diminishing returns, had finally worked itself out and had left her restless. She was unwilling to stay indoors. In the second, she wanted very badly to prove to herself how grossly she had been misjudged by Pinky and Bertie, and could this be better achieved than by performing an act of gracious consideration towards Richard? In the third place, she was burningly anxious to set her curiosity at rest in the matter of Anelida Lee.

On her way down she looked in at the drawing-room. Bertie, evidently, had finished the flowers and gone. Pinky had left a note saying she was sorry if she’d been too upsetting but not really hauling down her flag an inch. Miss Bellamy blew off steam to Charles, Richard and Warrender without paying much attention to their reactions. They withdrew, dismayed, to Charles’s study from whence came the muted sound of intermittent conversation. Superbly dressed and gloved she let herself out and after pausing effectively for a moment in the sunshine, turned into the Pegasus.

Octavius was not in the shop. Anelida, having completed her cleaning, had a smudge across her cheek and grubby hands. She had cried a little after Richard went out in a huff and there had been no time to repair the damage. She was not looking her best.

Miss Bellamy was infinitely relieved.

She was charming to Anelida. Her husband and Richard Dakers, she said, had talked so much about the shop: it was so handy for them, funny old bookworms that they were, to have found one practically on the doorstep. She understood that Anelida was hoping to go on the stage. Anelida replied that she was working at the Bonaventure. With every appearance of infinite generosity Miss Bellamy said that, unlike, most of her friends, she thought the little experimental club theatres performed a very useful function in showing plays that otherwise would never see the light of day. Anelida was quiet, well-mannered and, Miss Bellamy supposed, much overcome by the honour that was being paid her.That was the kindest interpretation to put upon her somewhat ungushing response. “Not much temperament there,” Miss Bellamy thought and from her this was not a complimentary assessment. She grew more and more cordial.

Octavius returned from a brief shopping expedition and was a success. On being introduced by Anelida — quite prettily, Miss Bellamy had to admit — he uncovered his dishevelled head and smiled so broadly that his face looked rather like a mask of comedy.

“But what a pleasure!” he said, shaping his words with exquisite precision. “May we not exclaim ’Hic ver assiduum’ since April herself walks in at our door?”

Miss Bellamy got the general trend of this remark and her spirits rose. She thanked him warmly for his telegram and he at once looked extremely pleased with himself. “Your husband and your ward,” he said, — “told us of the event and I thought, you know, of the many delicious hours you have given us and of how meagre a return is the mere striking together of one’s hands.” He looked sideways at her. “An old fogey’s impulse,” he said and waved it aside. He made her a little bow and put his head on one side. Anelida wished he wouldn’t.

“It was heaven of you,” said Miss Bellamy. “So much pleasure it gave, you can’t think! And what’s more I haven’t thanked you for finding that perfect picture for Dicky to give me, nor,” she improvised on the spur of the moment, “for that heavenly copy of…” Maddeningly, she had forgotten the author of Charles’s purchase and of the quotation in the telegram. She marked time with a gesture indicating ineffable pleasure and then mercifully remembered. “Of Spenser,” she cried.

“You admired the Spenser? I’m so very glad.”

“So much. And now,” she continued with an enchanting air of diffidence, “I’m going to ask you something that you’ll think quite preposterous. I’ve come with an invitation. You are, I know, great friends of my ward’s — of Dicky’s — and I, like you, am a creature of impulse. I want you both—please—to come to my little party this evening. Drinks and a handful of ridiculous chums at half-past six. Now please be very sweet and spoil me on my birthday. Please, say yes.”

Octavius turned quite pink with gratification. He didn’t hear his niece who came near to him and said hurriedly, “Unk, I don’t think we…”

“I have never,” Octavius said, “in my life attended a theatrical party. It is something quite outside my experience. Really it’s extraordinarily kind of you to think of inviting us. My niece, no doubt, is an initiate. Though not at such an exalted level, I think, Nelly, my love?”

Anelida had begun to say, “It’s terribly kind…” but Miss Bellamy was already in full spate. She had taken Octavius impulsively by the hands and was beaming into his face. “You will? Now, isn’t that big of you? I was so afraid I might be put in my place or that you would be booked up. And I’m not! And you aren’t! Isn’t that wonderful!”

“We are certainly, free,” Octavius said. “Anelida’s theatre is not open on Monday evenings. She had offered to help me with our new catalogue. I shall be enchanted.”

“Wonderful!” Miss Bellamy gaily repeated. “And now I must run. Au revoir, both of you. Till this evening!”

She did, almost literally, run out of the shop filled with a delicious sense of having done something altogether charming. “Kind!” she thought. “That’s what I’ve been. Kind as kind. Dicky will be so touched. And when he sees that rather dreary rather inarticulate girl in his own setting — well, if there has been anything, it’ll peter out on the spot.”

She saw the whole thing in a gratifying flash of clairvoyance: the last fumes of temperament subsided in the sunshine of her own loving-kindness. She returned to the house and found Richard in the hall.

“Darling!” she cried. “All settled! I’ve seen your buddies and asked them. The old fuddy-duddy’s heaven, isn’t he? Out of this world. And the girl’s the nicest little thing. Are you pleased?”

“But,” Richard said, amazed. “Are they…? Did Anelida say they’d come?”

“My dear, you don’t imagine, do you, that a bit-part fill-in at the Bonaventure is going to turn down an invitation to my birthday party!”

“It’s not a bit-part,” Richard said. “They’re doing Pygmalion and she’s playing Eliza.”

“Poor child.”

He opened his mouth and shut it again.

“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.

“Hum!” thought Miss Bellamy.

Now, why had that line stirred up some obscure misgivings? She turned the pages. It was certainly an enormously long part.

“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 Formidable in her hands. She tip-toed 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 tip-toed 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.”

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 Anelida. 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 the top of Anelida’s head, “is Dakers.”

Coming from the sunshine into the dark shop, Richard had been given a confused impression of Anelida collaring Octavius in a high tackle. He waited for her to emerge, which she did after some fumbling with her uncle’s handkerchief.

Octavius said, “If you’ll excuse me, Nell. Really, one must get on with one’s job.” He nodded to Richard and limped away into his back room.

Richard was careful not to look at Anelida. “I came,” he said, “first to apologize.”

“Not at all. I expect I behaved badly.”

“And to say how very glad I am. Mary told me you had decided for the party.”

“It was terribly kind of her to come. Unk was bewitched.”

“We are being polite to each other, aren’t we?”

“Better than flying into rages.”

“May I call for you?”

“There’s no need. Really. You’ll be busy with the party. Unk will be proud to escort me. He said so.”

“So he well might.” Richard now looked directly at Anelida. “You’ve been crying,” he said, “and your face is dirty. Like a little girl’s. Smudged.”

“All right. All right. I’m going to tidy it up.”

“Shall I?”

“No.”

“How old are you, Anelida?”

“Nineteen. Why?”

“I’m twenty-eight.”

“You’ve done very well,” Anelida said politely, “for your age. Famous dramatist.”

“Playwright.”

“I think with the new one you may allow yourself to be a dramatist.”

“My God, you’ve got a cheek,” he said thoughtfully. After a moment he said, “Mary’s reading it. Now.”

“Was she pleased about it?”

“For the wrong reason. She thinks I wrote it for her.”

“But — how could she? Still, she’ll soon find out.”

“As I mentioned before, you don’t really know much as yet about theatre people.”

Anelida said, to her own astonishment, “But I do know I can act.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “Of course you do. You’re a good actress.”

“You haven’t seen me.”

“That’s what you think.”

“Richard!”

“At least I’ve surprised you into calling me by my name.”

“But when did you see me?”

“It slipped out. It’s part of a deep-laid plan. You’ll find out.”

“When?”

“At the party. I’m off, now. Au revoir, dear Anelida.”

When he had gone, Anelida sat perfectly still for quite a long time. She was bewildered, undecided and piercingly happy.

Richard, however, returned to the house with his mind made up. He went straight to Charles Templeton’s study. He found Charles and Maurice Warrender there, rather solemn, over a decanter of sherry. When he came in they both looked self-conscious.

“We were just talking about you,” Charles said. “Have whatever it is you do have at this hour, Dicky. Lager?”

“Please. I’ll get it. Should I make myself scarce so that you can go on talking about me?”

“No, no.”

“We’d finished,” Warrender said, “I imagine. Hadn’t we, Charles?”

“I suppose we had.”

Richard poured out his lager. “As a matter of fact,” he said, “I sidled in with the idea of boring you with a few observations under that very heading.”

Warrender muttered something about taking himself off. “Not unless you have to, Maurice,” Richard said. “It arises, in a way, out of what you said this morning.” He sat down and stared at his beer mug. “This is going to be difficult,” he said.

They waited, Warrender looking owlish, Charles, as always, politely attentive.

“I suppose it’s a question of divided allegiances,” Richard said at last. “Partly that, anyway.” He went on, trying to put what he wanted to say as objectively as might be. He knew that he was floundering and almost at once began to regret his first impulse.

Charles kept turning his elderly freckled hand and looking at it. Warrender sipped his sherry and shot an occasional, almost furtive, glance at Richard.

Presently Charles said, “Couldn’t we come to the point?”

“I wish I could,” Richard rejoined. “I’m making a mess of this, I know.”

“May I have a go at it? Is this what you’re trying to tell us? You think you can write a different kind of play from the sort of thing that suits Mary. You have, in fact, written one. You think it’s the best thing you’ve done, but you’re afraid Mary won’t take kindly to the idea of your making a break. You’ve shown it to her and she’s reading it now. You’re afraid that she’ll take it for granted that you see her in the lead. Right, so far?”

“Yes. That’s it.”

“But,” Warrender demanded unexpectedly, “she won’t like this play, what!”

“I don’t think she’ll like it.”

“Isn’t that your answer?” Charles said. “If she doesn’t like it you can offer it elsewhere?”

“It isn’t,” Richard said, “as simple as that.” And looking at these two men, each old enough to be his father, each with thirty years’ experience of Mary Bellamy, he saw that he was understood.

“There’s been one row already this morning,” he said. “A snorter.”

Warrender shot a look at Charles. “I don’t know if I’m imagining it,” he said, “but I’ve fancied the rows come a bit oftener these days, isn’t it?”

Charles and Richard were silent.

Warrender said, “Fellow’s got to live his own life. My opinion. Worst thing that can happen is a man’s getting himself bogged down in a mistaken loyalty. Seen it happen. Man in my regiment. Sorry business.”

Charles said, “We all have our mistaken loyalties.”

There was a further silence.

Richard said violently, “But — I owe everything to her. The ghastly things I began to write at school. The first shamingly hopeless plays. Then the one that rang the bell. She made the Management take it. We talked everything over. Everything. And now — suddenly — I don’t want to. I — don’t — want — to. Why? Why?”

“Very well,” Charles said. Richard looked at him in surprise, but he went on very quickly. “Writing plays is your business. You understand it. You’re an expert. You should make your own decisions.”

“Yes. But Mary…”

“Mary holds a number of shares in companies that I direct, but I don’t consult her about their policy or confine my interests to those companies only.”

“Surely it’s not the same thing.”

“Isn’t it?” Charles said placidly. “I think it is. Sentiment,” he added, “can be a disastrous guide in such matters. Mary doesn’t understand your change of policy — the worst reason in the world for mistrusting it. She is guided almost entirely by emotion.”

Warrender said, “Think she’s changed? Sorry, Charles, I’ve no kind of business to ask.”

“She has changed,” her husband said. “One does.”

“You can see,” Richard said, “what happened with Pinky and Bertie. How much more will she mind with me! Was there anything so terrible about what they did? The truth is, of course, that they didn’t confide in her because they didn’t know how she’d take it. Well — you saw how she took it.”

“I suppose,” Warrender began dimly, “as a woman gets older…” He faded out in a bass rumble.

“Charles,” Richard said, “you may consider this a monstrous suggestion, but have you thought, lately, that there might be anything — anything…”

“Pathological?” Charles said.

“It’s so unlike her to be vindictive. Isn’t it?” He appealed to both of them. “Well, my God, isn’t it?”

To his astonishment they didn’t answer immediately. Presently Charles said with a suggestion of pain in his voice: “The same thing has occurred to me. I–I asked Frank Harkness about it. He’s looked after us both for years, as you know. He thinks she’s been a bit nervy for some time, I gather, like many women of her — well, of her age. He thinks the high-pressure atmosphere of the theatre may have increased the tension. I got the impression he was understating his case. I don’t mind telling you,” Charles added unhappily, “it’s been worrying me for some time. These — these ugly scenes.”

Warrender muttered, “Vindictive,” and looked as if he regretted it.

Richard cried out, “Her kindness! I’ve always thought she had the kindest eyes I’d ever seen in a woman.”

Warrender, who seemed this morning to be bent on speaking out of character, did so now. “People,” he said, “talk about eyes and mouths as if they had something to do with the way other people think and behave. Only bits of the body, aren’t they? Like navels and knees and toenails. Arrangements.”

Charles glanced at him with amusement. “My dear Maurice, you terrify me. So you discount our old friends the generous mouth, the frank glance, the open forehead. I wonder if you’re right.”

“Right or wrong,” Richard burst out, “it doesn’t get me any nearer a decision.”

Charles put down his sherry and put up his eyeglass. “If I were you, Dicky,” he said, “I should go ahead.”

“Hear, hear!”

“Thank you, Maurice. Yes. I should go ahead. Offer your play in what you believe to be the best market. If Mary’s upset it won’t be for long, you know. You must keep a sense of perspective, my dear boy.”

Colonel Warrender listened to this with his mouth slightly open and a glaze over his eyes. When Charles had finished Warrender looked at his watch, rose and said he had a telephone call to make before luncheon. “I’ll do it from the drawing-room if I may,” he said. He glared at Richard. “Stick to your guns, isn’t it?” he said. “Best policy.” And went out.

Richard said, “I’ve always wondered: just how simple is Maurice?”

“It would be the greatest mistake,” Charles said, “to underrate him.”

In their houses and flats, all within a ten-mile radius of Pardoner’s Place, the guests for Mary Bellamy’s birthday party made ready to present themselves. Timon (Timmy) Gantry, the famous director, made few preparations for such festivities. He stooped from his inordinate height to the cracked glass on his bathroom wall in order to brush his hair, which he kept so short that the gesture was redundant. He had changed into a suit which he was in the habit of calling his “decent blue,” and as a concession to Miss Bellamy, wore a waistcoat instead of a plum-coloured pullover. He looked rather like a retired policeman whose enthusiasm had never dwindled. He sang a snatch from Rigoletto, an opera he had recently directed, and remembered how much he disliked cocktail parties.

“Bell-a-me-a, you’re a hell of a bore,” he sang, improvising to the tune of “Bella Figlia.” And it was true, he reflected. Mary was becoming more and more of a tiresome girl. It would probably be necessary to quarrel with her before her new play went on. She was beginning to jib at the physical demands made upon her by his production methods. He liked to keep his cast moving rather briskly through complicated, almost fugal, patterns and Mary was not as sound in the wind as she used to be. Nor in the temper, he reflected. He rather thought that this play would be his last production for her.

“For she’s not my, not my cuppa tea at all,” he sang.

This led him to think of her influence on other people, particularly on Richard Dakers. “She’s a succuba,” he chanted. “She’s an o — ogress. She devours young men alive. Nasty Mary!” He was delighted that Richard showed signs of breaking loose with his venture into serious dramatic writing. He had read Husbandry in Heaven to Gantry while it was still in manuscript. Gantry always made up his mind at once about a play and he did so about this one.

“If you go on writing slip-slop for Mary when you’ve got this sort of stuff under your thatch,” he had said, “you deserve to drown in it. Parts of this thing are bloody awful and must come out. Other parts need a rewrite. Fix them and I’m ready to produce the piece.”

Richard had fixed them.

Gantry shoved his birthday present for Miss Bellamy into his pocket. It was a bit of pinchbeck he’d picked up for five bob on a street stall. He bought his presents in an inverse ratio to the monetary situation of the recipients and Miss Bellamy was rich.

As he strode along in the direction of Knightsbridge, he thought with increasing enthusiasm about Husbandry in Heaven and of what he would do with it if he could persuade the Management to take it.

“The actors,” he promised himself, “shall skip like young rams.”

At Hyde Park Corner he began to sing again. At the corner of Wilton Place a chauffeur-driven car pulled up alongside him. The Management in the person of Mr. Montague Marchant, exquisitely dressed, with a gardenia in his coat, leaned from the window. His face and his hair were smooth, fair and pale, and his eyes wary.

“Timmy!” Mr. Marchant shouted. “Look at you! So purposeful! Such devouring strides! Come in, do, for God’s sake, and let us support each other on our approach to the shrine.”

Gantry said, “I wanted to see you.” He doubled himself up like a camel and got into the car. It was his custom to plunge directly into whatever matter concerned him at the moment. He presented his ideas with the same ruthless precipitancy that he brought to his work in the theatre. It was a deceptive characteristic, because in Gantry impulse was subordinate to design.

He drew in his breath with an authoritative gasp. “Listen!” he said. “I have a proposition.”

All the way along Sloane Street and into the King’s Road he thrust Richard’s play at Marchant. He was still talking, very eloquently, as they turned up Pardoner’s Row. Marchant listened with the undivided though guarded attention that the Management brought to bear only on the utterances of the elect.

“You will do this,” Gantry said as the car turned in to Pardoner’s Place, “not for me and not for Dicky. You will do it because it’s going to be a Thing for the Management. Mark my words. Here we are. Oh misery, how I abominate grand parties!”

“I’d have you remember,” Marchant said as they went in, “that I commit myself to nothing, Timmy.” ”

“Naturally, my dear man. But naturally. You will commit yourself, however, I promise you. You will.”

“Mary, darling!” they both exclaimed and were swallowed up by the party.

Pinky and Bertie had arranged to go together. They came to this decision after a long gloomy post-luncheon talk in which they weighed the dictates of proper pride against those of professional expediency.

“Face it, sweetie-pie,” Bertie had said, “if we don’t show up she’ll turn plug-ugly again and go straight to the Management. You know what a fuss Monty makes about personal relationships. ‘A happy theatre is a successful theatre.’ Nobody — but nobody can afford to cut up rough. He loathes internal strife.”

Pinky, who was feeling the effects of her morning excesses, sombrely agreed. “God knows,” she said, “that at this juncture I can ill afford to get myself the reputation of being difficult. After all my contract isn’t signed, Bertie.”

“It’s as clear as daylight; magnanimity must be our watchword.”

“I’ll be blowed if I crawl.”

“We shan’t have to, dear. A pressure of the hand and a long, long gaze into the eyeballs will carry us through.”

“I resent having to.”

“Never mind. Rise above. Watch me. I’m a past master at it. Gird up the loins, such as they are, and remember you’re an actress.” He giggled. “Looked at in the right way it’ll be rather fun.”

“What shall I wear?”

“Black, and no jewelry. She’ll be clanking.”

“I hate being at enmity, Bertie. What a beastly profession ours is. In some ways.”

“It’s a jungle, darling. Face it — it’s a jungle.”

“You,” Pinky said rather enviously, “don’t seem to be unduly perturbed, I must say.”

“My poorest girl, little do you know. I’m quaking.”

“Really? But could she actually do you any damage?”

“Can the boa constrictor,” Bertie said, “consume the rabbit?”

Pinky had thought it better not to press this matter any further. They had separated and gone to their several flats, where in due course they made ready for the party.

Anelida and Octavius also made ready. Octavius, having settled for a black coat, striped trousers and the complementary details that he considered appropriate to these garments, had taken up a good deal of his niece’s attention. She had managed to have a bath and was about to dress when, for the fourth time, he tapped at her door and presented himself before her, looking anxious and unnaturally tidy. “My hair,” he said. “Having no unguent, I used a little olive oil. Do I smell like a salad?”

She reassured him, gave his coat a brush and begged him to wait for her in the shop. He had old-fashioned ideas about punctuality and had begun to fret. “It’s five-and-twenty minutes to seven. We were asked for half-past six, Nelly.”

“That means seven at the earliest, darling. Just take a furtive leer through the window and you’ll see when people begin to come. And please, Unk, we can’t go while I’m still in my dressing-gown, can we, now?”

“No, no, of course not. Half-past six for a quarter-to-seven? Or seven? I see. I see. In that case…”

He pottered downstairs.

Anelida thought, “It’s a good thing I’ve had some practice in quick changes.” She did her face and hair, and she put on a white dress that had been her one extravagance of the year, a large white hat with a black velvet crown, and new gloves. She looked in the glass, forcing herself to adopt the examining attitude she used in the theatre. “And it might as well be a first night,” she thought, “the way I’m feeling.” Did Richard like white? she wondered.

Heartened by the certainty of her dress being satisfactory and her hat becoming, Anelida began to daydream along time-honoured lines: She and Octavius arrived at the party. There was a sudden hush. Monty Marchant, the Management in person, would ejaculate to Timon Gantry, the great producer, “Who are they?” and Timon Gantry, with the abrupt gasp which all actors, whether they had heard it or not, liked to imitate, would reply, “I don’t know but by God, I’m going to find out.” The ranks would part as she and Octavius, escorted by Miss Bellamy, moved down the room to the accompaniment of a discreet murmur. They would be the cynosure of all eyes. What was a cynosure and why was it never mentioned except in reference to eyes? All eyes on Anelida Lee. And there, wrapt in admiration, would be Richard…

At this point Anelida stopped short, was stricken with shame, had a good laugh at herself and became the prey of her own nerves.

She went to her window and looked down into Pardoner’s Place. Cars were now beginning to draw up at Miss Bellamy’s house. Here came a large black one with a very smart chauffeur. Two men got out. Anelida’s inside somersaulted. The one with the gardenia was Monty Marchant and that incredibly tall, that unmistakably shabby figure was the greatest of all directors, Timon Gantry.

“Whoops!” Anelida said. “None of your nonsense, Cinderella.” She counted sixty and then went downstairs.

Octavius was seated at his desk, reading, and Hodge was on his knee. They both looked extraordinarily smug.

“Have you come over calm?” Anelida asked.

“What? Calm? Yes,” Octavius said. “Perfectly, thank you. I have been reading The Gull’s Hornbook.”

“Have you been up to something, Unk?”

He rolled his eyes round at her. “Up to something? I? What can you mean?”

“You look as if butter wouldn’t melt on your whiskers.”

“Really? I wonder why. Should we go?”

He displaced Hodge, who was moulting. Anelida was obliged to fetch the clothesbrush again.

“I wouldn’t change you,” she said, “for the Grand Cham of Tartary. Come on, darling, let’s go.”

Miss Bellamy’s preparation for the party occupied the best part of ninety minutes and had something of the character of a Restoration salon, with Florence, truculently unaware of this distinction, in the role of abigail.

It followed the after-luncheon rest and, in its early stages, was conducted in the strictest privacy. She lay on her bed. Florence, unspeaking and tight-mouthed, darkened the room and produced from the bathroom sundry bottles and pots. She removed the make-up from her mistress’s face, put wet pads over her eyes and began to apply a layer of greenish astringent paste. Miss Bellamy attempted to make conversation and was unsuccessful. At last she demanded impatiently, “What’s the matter with you? Gone upstage?” Florence was silent. “Oh for heaven’s sake!” Miss Bellamy ejaculated. “You’re not holding out on me because of this morning, are you?”

Florence slapped a layer across Miss Bellamy’s upper lip. “That stuff’s stinging me,” Miss Bellamy mumbled with difficulty. “You haven’t mixed it properly.”

Florence completed the mask. From behind it Miss Bellamy attempted to say, “All right, you can go to hell and sulk there,” but remembering she was not supposed to speak, lay fuming. She heard Florence go out of the room. Ten minutes later she returned, stood for some time looking down on the greenish, blinded face and then set about removing the mask.

The toilet continued in icy silence, proceeding through its manifold and exacting routines. The face was scrutinized like a microscope slide. The hair was drilled. The person was subjected to masterful but tactful discipline. That which, unsubjected, declared itself centrally, was forced to make a less aggressive reappearance above the seventh rib where it was trapped, confined and imperceptibly distributed. And throughout these intimate manipulations, Florence and Miss Bellamy maintained an absolute and inimical silence. Only when they had been effected did Miss Bellamy open her door to her court.

In the past, Pinky and Bertie had attended: the former vaguely in the role of confidante, the latter to advise about the final stages of the ritual. Today they had not presented themselves and Miss Bellamy was illogically resentful. Though her initial fury had subsided, it lay like a sediment at the bottom of her thoughts and it wouldn’t take much, she realized, to stir it up.

Charles was the first to arrive and found her already dressed. She wore crimson chiffon, intricately folded and draped with loose panels that floated tactfully past her waist and hips. The décolletage plunged and at its lowest point contained orchids and diamonds. Diamonds appeared again at intervals in the form of brooches and clips, flashed in stalactites from her ears and encircled her neck and wrist in a stutter of brilliance. She was indeed magnificent.

“Well?” she said and faced her husband.

“My dear!” said Charles gently. “I’m overwhelmed.”

Something in his voice irritated her. “You don’t like it,” she said. “What’s the matter with it?”

“It’s quite superb. Dazzling.”

Florence had opened the new bottle of scent and was pouring it into the Venetian glass atomizer. The air was thickened with effluvium so strong that it almost gave the impression of being visible. Charles made the slightest of grimaces.

“Do you think I’m overdressed, Charles?” Miss Bellamy demanded.

“I have implicit faith in your judgment,” he said. “And you look glorious.”

“Why did you make a face?”

“It’s that scent. I find it a bit too much. It’s — well…”

“Well! What is it?”

“I fancy indecent is the word I’m groping for.”

“It happens to be the most exclusive perfume on the market.”

“I don’t much like the word ‘perfume’ but in this case it seems to be entirely appropriate.”

“I’m sorry,” she said in a high voice, “that you find my choice of words non-U.”

“My dear Mary…!”

Florence screwed the top on the atomizer and placed it, with the three-quarters emptied bottle, on the dressing-table. She then retired to the bathroom.

Charles Templeton took his wife’s hands in his and kissed them. “Ah!” he said. “That’s your usual scent.”

“The last dregs.”

“I’ll give you some more.”

She made as if to pull her hands away, but he folded them between his own.

“Do something for me,” he said. “Will you? I never ask you.”

“My dear Charles!” she exclaimed impatiently. “What?”

“Don’t use that stuff. It’s vulgar, Mary. The room stinks of it already.”

She stared at him with a kind of blank anger. His skin was mottled. The veins showed on his nose and his eyes were watery. It was an elderly face, and not very handsome.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said and withdrew.her hands.

Warrender tapped on the door and came in. When he saw M iss Bellamy he ejaculated “What!” several times and was so clearly bowled over that her ill-humour modulated into a sort of petulant gratification. She made much of him and pointedly ignored her husband.

“You are the most fabulous, heavenly sweetie-pie,” she said and kissed his ear.

He turned purple and said, “By George!”

Charles had walked over to the window. The tin of Slaypest was still there. At the same moment Florence re-entered the room. Charles indicated the tin. Florence cast up her eyes.

He said, “Mary, you do leave the windows open, don’t you, when you use this stuff on your plants?”

“Oh for heaven’s sake!” she exclaimed. “Have you got a secret Thing about sprays? You’d better get yourself psychoed, my poor Charles.”

“It’s dangerous. I took the trouble to buy a textbook on these things and what it has to say is damn disquieting. I showed it to Maurice. Read it yourself, my dear, if you don’t believe me. Ask Maurice. You don’t think she ought to monkey about with it, do you, Maurice?”

Warrender picked up the tin and stared at the label with its red skull and crossbones and intimidating warning. “Shouldn’t put this sort of stuff on the market,” he said. “My opinion.”

“Exactly. Let Florence throw it out, Mary.”

“Put it down!” she shouted. “My God, Charles, what a bore you can be when you set your mind to it.”

Suddenly she thrust the scent atomizer into Warrender’s hands. “Stand there, darling,” she said. “Far enough away for it not to make rivers or stain my dress. Just a delicious mist. Now! Spray madly.”

Warrender did as he was told. She stood in the redolent cloud with her chin raised and her arms extended.

“Go on, Maurice,” she said, shutting her eyes in a kind of ecstasy. “Go on.”

Charles said, very quietly, “My God!”

Warrender stared at him, blushed scarlet, put down the scent-spray and walked out of the room.

Mary and Charles looked at each other in silence.

The whole room reeked of Formidable.