Curtain Call (36 page)

Stephen nodded, and they shook hands on it. Then he heard Druce being hailed by another member, and he exited the Nines for the last time.

THE BENTLEY BUCKED
and hopped on its way down Charlotte Street. Tom had still not got the measure of the machine, and his passenger wasn't slow to advise or to chide. Dressed in an ochre-and-green tweed suit, Jimmy had spread a car blanket over his knees to ward off the November chill. They were exchanging thoughts on the play they had seen the previous night.

‘How about that young Adamson?' he mused, referring to the pretty but gormless star of the evening. ‘The accent was a put-on, surely?'

‘He's a twit. Everything about him is affected, right down to the way he coughs.'

Jimmy laughed. ‘Yes, even his lungs are affected!'

He took out his notebook and jotted the line down. He could use that in his review. The car made another inelegant judder as they pulled up outside L'Etoile. Jimmy scratched his head, and felt a parody coming on.

‘
The car he sat in / Like a refurbished throne, / Bumped on the pavement; the chassis was beat an' old, / Rubber the tyres, and so enfumed that / The windows were dirt-thick with 'em
. . . That's as far as I've got.'

‘“Enfumed”?'

‘Poetic licence, dear,' Jimmy said, preening himself in the rear-view mirror before casting the blanket off his lap. ‘Are you going to pop in?'

Tom shook his head. ‘Work to do. I suppose you'll want collecting.'

‘The birthday boy will be sorry not to see you. Hmm. Say half past three?'

Jimmy climbed out and with a double tap of his cane against the car watched Tom drive off. He had sensed Tom's low mood all morning, and wondered if it might have to do with Miss Farewell. But something warned him off the subject. On entering the narrow front room of L'Etoile he saw László amiably engaged in discussion with a waiter, who looked at a loss, as waiters tended to be when buttonholed for their opinion of
Rosenkavalier
or Siegfried's Funeral March. László behaved to all with the same high-minded but even-handed courtesy, and didn't appear to notice the odd looks he got in return.

‘My good man,' said Jimmy to the waiter, ‘I did telephone to reserve the corner banquette.' He indicated with a nod that the table was occupied, and the waiter hurried off with a promise to look into it. He turned his beam on László. ‘My dear fellow. The happiest of happy birthdays to you!'

László's face creased into his most endearing jack-o'-lantern smile. ‘James! I have taken the liberty of starting upon this intoxicating beverage.' He indicated his huge Martini glass, inside which a plump green olive was lolling.

‘Do you drink from it, or merely swim in there?' asked Jimmy.

László looked at him. ‘Will Thomas not be joining us?'

A line came to Jimmy as he shook his head –
The frog he would a-wooing go
. Poor László. He had nursed an unspoken
tendresse
for Tom which the years, and Tom's perfect obliviousness, had done nothing to diminish. Jimmy preferred not to enquire too closely into his old friend's sexuality. Beyond the shared joke of their being inverts, László had always seemed to him somewhat neuter, and quite probably a virgin. His deep regard and respect for women was, like everything else about him, old-fashioned. He had learned that when László was in his youth, still a piano prodigy, there was a girl he had hoped to marry. No chance of that now: who would dream of taking him on?

The restaurant's maître d' interrupted his reverie. He was explaining, sotto voce, that the four diners had been in possession of the corner banquette since midday, and were refusing to budge. Jimmy looked askance at them.

‘Actors,' he sighed.

‘I believe they are, sir,' replied the maître d', giving a regretful little bow as he withdrew.

He leaned towards László. ‘I wouldn't mind, only you know they're
repertory
actors.'

His good mood was restored when a waiter brought him a Martini of similar dimensions to his friend's. He speared the drowning olive with a cocktail stick and popped it in his mouth. He sat back and gazed around the room, his attention briefly snagged on a woman, her back to him, wearing a hat that looked like a squashed Chinese pagoda.

‘Extraordinary things people put on their heads,' he murmured. ‘Now – here's
un petit cadeau
to mark your half-century.' He carefully placed the parcel he had sneaked in on the table between them. (Tom had done an excellent job with the wrapping.) The recipient gaped dumbly at it. ‘Well,
go on
– open the damn thing.'

László did as he was commanded, and drew out from the box a small and worn leather case, slightly larger than a hip flask. Unfastening the clip he folded it out to disclose a dainty-looking pair of opera glasses, their black lacquer dulled with age. Lifting them from their faded velvet moulding he peered through the lens at Jimmy.

‘O vision entrancing!' He giggled, looking more childlike than ever.

‘I got 'em at Christie's,' Jimmy said. He allowed himself a delicious pause before adding, ‘They once belonged to Brahms.'

At that László lowered the glasses, his face frozen in astonishment. Then he stared at them as if his jesting of the moment before were an impertinence. ‘James . . .' he gasped, shaking his head. ‘This is too much – too much.'

‘I had a tenacious rival in the room. But I felt you must have them – it will lend piquancy to your story about holding the door open for him, where was it –?'

‘Vienna,' said Lazlo, in a small voice. A tear bulged at the corner of his eye.

Jimmy sighed. ‘Come now, don't be a booby. It's just a silly old pair of glasses. You know, if I'd given 'em to one of my young companions he'd most likely have said, “Thanks, Jim, absolute ripper,” then tossed them aside.'

László nodded, blinking through his tears. His voice trembled. ‘I know such lachrymosity embarrasses you, and I apologise. But, James, this is only a wretch's way of acknowledging an extravagant kindness he can never hope to match.'

Jimmy endured a spasm of unhappiness as he heard this. László was as close to poverty as anyone he had ever known, and yet he always marked Jimmy's birthday with a gift – a second-hand book, a gramophone record – which, be it ever so modest, he could probably ill afford. Now the wild generosity of the gift he had made felt, in comparison, a little crushing; it was no rhetoric on László's part to say that he could never hope to match it. Not that Jimmy imagined he ever
would
– only that he wished it had not been explicitly articulated.

His guilt was muddled with exasperation: if only his friend weren't so poor! It even seemed to haunt his choice from the menu. Given that Jimmy was paying, why dine on onion soup when you could have oysters, and an omelette when there was half a lobster? But László was plainly enjoying himself, and he decided after a moment to do the same.

‘A shame Peter couldn't join us. That's the problem with being a GP – always gets in the way of lunch.'

László glanced up from his soup. ‘The dear man telephoned me this morning. He has not forgotten my birthday in twenty-six years. I gather that you are out together next week.'

‘Yes, the Green Carnation Ball, for Oscar's anniversary. I expect it'll be rather louche.'

‘Did you know that
The Importance of Being Earnest
was first written in four acts, and cut down by George Alexander to three? The original third act contained a scene in which Algernon Moncrieff was arrested for debt. When told that he would be taken to Holloway, Algernon says, “Never. If Society thought I was familiar with so remote a suburb it would decline to know me.”'

Jimmy laughed, though he was puzzled. ‘How did you find that out?'

László smiled shyly. ‘You probably don't know that before the war I was the official Hungarian translator of Wilde's plays. My father was friendly with a famous theatre producer in Budapest who asked me to do it.'

Jimmy shook his head, dumbfounded by László's effortless knack for springing a revelation on him. He didn't doubt it was true, for he knew it would never occur to him to lie. ‘And how does Wilde play in Hungarian, I wonder?'

‘Funnier than you would think! Though of course a verb such as “to Bunbury” is not easy to construe.'

‘Hmm. No doubt. Y' know, I remember that whole time around his trial and arrest. The shock of it . . . what I couldn't understand, and still don't, was why he never fled the country when he had the chance. I mean, he knew that Queensberry had got him cold, with the blackmailers and rent boys and what have you. Prison was a near certainty. So why did he stay?'

László's expression was thoughtful. ‘The human capacity for self-delusion is strong. Sometimes we refuse to see what is right in front of us. And Wilde probably did not think a man as
chraazy
as Queensberry could bring him down.'

‘The newspapers didn't help him, of course. “Once they had the rack. Now they have the press.” Talking of which, our man Wyley has been very ill-used.'

‘A scandal,' said László with feeling. ‘As a matter of fact I wrote a letter to
The Times
deploring the way he has been treated. And I also mentioned his altercation with that brute at the Carlton – nobody who was there that night would have called him a Fascist sympathiser.'

‘Good for you. I didn't see the letter, I'm afraid.'

‘That is because they didn't print it!'

Jimmy winced a little. ‘All the same, he might have exercised a bit more caution. Fancy writing a personal cheque to a man like Carmody . . .'

‘The poor fellow has been deceived,' said László, growing more heated. ‘He believed he was supporting a theatre charity. Why, you yourself were taken in by the scoundrel.'

Jimmy admitted it with a shrug, and privately thanked his stars he had not been induced to contribute more than the cost of two dinners. He wondered if the damage to the painter's reputation would also scare away clients. Wyley had fobbed him off that evening by pleading other commitments. But now? He sensed an opportunity to be grasped.

He loosened another oyster from its shell, and said, ‘Of course now would be the time for friends to show support. I could always, well, renew my offer of a commission.' And if business really had fallen away he might be able to negotiate on the price, too.

‘That would be an honourable gesture,' agreed László, whose expression brightened suddenly. ‘We both may end up immortalised by his hand!'

‘Both?'

‘Ah! I forgot to tell you. I wrote to thank Wyley for his generosity that evening, hardly expecting a reply. Yet one came, and – the most extraordinary thing – he had enclosed with his letter a small pencil portrait – of me! Quite simple, possibly the work of moments, but still, a delight to behold. I must show it to you once I get it back from the framer's.'

Jimmy was aghast, though he tried to shape his features into a semblance of enthusiasm. ‘Yes, you must . . .' That László – frankly, no oil painting – should have wangled a picture from one of the leading portraitists of the day,
without even having to ask
, was too galling for words. And to think of how he had fairly pestered Wyley that evening for the privilege!

‘And yet I don't think we can call Wyley absolutely first class,' he continued, using his Voice of Authority. ‘He's not on the level of Nicholson, or Gunn. And as for those claiming him to be this nation's Sargent – well!'

‘Possibly not,' said László mildly. ‘But I prefer him to all of them.'

Jimmy stared at his companion, hunched over his soup plate. It dimly occurred to him that László had secured this good fortune by virtue of being a kind and deserving person. And that he in contrast would never be thought so, despite his generosity with luncheons and parties and gifts. Unfair, but there it was. He had been in debate with himself as to whether he should invite László to the ball next Monday. It would be a friendly thing to do. But this sudden revelation of his about the sketch had nettled him, and in that moment he decided that the invitation could go hang.

László, unaware of his being passed over, had just excused himself to go to the Gents. His removal had opened a new angle of surveillance across the restaurant, and in turn left Jimmy open to scrutiny – indeed, he could see a lady narrowing her gaze on him and whispering to her younger companion, the one in the squashed pagoda hat, who now turned her head. Her face was very familiar, though he couldn't immediately place it.

He hailed a passing waiter and said, ‘Be so kind as to bring us another of those wines that maketh glad the heart of man.'

The waiter's expression was impassive. ‘Muscadet, was it, sir?'

Jimmy tilted his head sideways in a gesture of agreement, and the man went off. While his attention had been diverted the squashed-pagoda lady had, with feline stealth, padded up to his table. She was dark, attractive, perhaps thirty. He must have seen her onstage, though in their mufti actors weren't always easy to recognise.

‘You're Erskine, aren't you?'

‘I am,' he said, hearing a combative note.

‘I've got a bone to pick with you.'

‘Madam, a whole skeleton, if you wish.' He invited her to sit, but she continued to stand, arms folded loosely across her chest.

‘You once described me in a review as “ungainly”. You also said I didn't know how to walk.'

‘On the second count I was evidently mistaken. Perhaps you could –?'

‘
Fire in the Hole
, four years ago.'

Now the clouds parted, and Jimmy smiled. ‘Why, Nina Land, isn't it? My dear, you're a star!'