Enough to Kill a Horse (8 page)

She found Basil alone in the sitting room. He was reading some sort of scientific textbook while Martin the cat purred on his stomach and Spike the dog dozed before the fire. The room had been made ready for the party. Glasses and bottles were set out on a table. Saucers of salted almonds, olives and such things had been placed in strategic positions. Jean’s armful of almond blossom filled the window.

Basil glanced up from his book and said at once, ‘From the look of you, you could do with a drink before people start coming.’

Fanny dropped into a chair, saying, ‘Bless you, my darling. What in this world would I do without you?’

Without consulting her, he brought her a whisky and soda.

She took a gulp of it, coughed and said hoarsely, ‘Not that anyone’s likely to come. Laura’s got a bad headache and has gone to lie down. I don’t know if that’s because of the quarrel you said she was having with Kit, or because of Susan, but whichever it is, she’s keeping out of the way. And Kit’s in a stinking temper.’

‘With her?’

‘With me. I said too much as usual.’

‘Well, if only the Mordues would think up some good reason for not coming,’ Basil said, ‘we’d have a nice quiet evening.’

‘Where’s Clare?’ Fanny asked.

‘Changing her dress. Which reminds me, I’d better go and change too.’

‘You look all right to me.’ To Fanny he always looked as if his shirt had just been laundered, his suit just pressed, his shoes just polished. This result he mysteriously achieved without any effort that was apparent to her and without any help from her. But he had his firm code, also mysterious to her, of what he must wear at what time and it was useless for her to try to interfere with it. He made no reply to her now, but, suddenly in a hurry, went out.

Fanny swallowed some more of her drink and found herself beginning to feel better. Another few gulps, she thought, and she would probably be feeling quite human. The room looked charming and felt very peaceful. If only, as Basil had suggested, nobody at all would come and he, she, and Clare could have a nice quiet evening together with all those bottles and the good things to eat, it would really be the best possible thing that could happen.

The bell rang.

Fanny started to her feet. She had not heard the creak of the garden gate that usually warned her of visitors, or the sound of any footsteps on the path, so that the shrill sound of the bell had caught her by surprise. She swallowed the rest of her drink hurriedly, put the used glass down in an inconspicuous place, and went to open the door.

An elderly man, tall, stooping and white-haired, stood in the doorway.

‘I’m afraid I’m rather early,’ he said, smiling hesitantly.

The smile did Fanny a world of good. In an instant she was delighted that there was going to be a party, that guests were arriving.

‘You couldn’t be too early, Sir Peter,’ she said, holding out her hand.

Sir Peter Poulter took it in his, then lowering his head to avoid knocking it in the low doorway, he stepped inside.

At that moment Clare appeared from the kitchen, holding out before her the dish of lobster patties.

Fanny introduced them to each other as they stood in the narrow, stone-flagged passage. She was used to Clare’s odd behaviour on meeting strangers and when Clare fixed a peculiarly intent and curious stare on Sir Peter’s face and said not a word in answer to his greeting, but went on holding out the dish in front of her, as if she expected him to help himself then and there, Fanny was not much put out. She had done what Clare had asked, arranging a meeting for her with Sir Peter. What Clare chose to do about it now was her own affair.

Fanny led them into the sitting room.

Whatever Clare’s motives for desiring the meeting might be, it was apparent that she had dressed for it with greater care than usual. She was wearing her black velvet. This was a garment that she had owned for at least ten years and that she brought out only on very special occasions. It had a full skirt that reached almost to her ankles and a queer little short jacket with old garnet buttons on it. Some precious lace, held by a garnet brooch, fell over the collar of the jacket. For once Clare was wearing high heels and a little powder and lipstick, while a very beautiful little bead bag dangled on a thin gold chain from her arm. The result she had achieved somehow emphasized her usual look of being an underpaid, exceedingly genteel governess, a governess who just now was painstakingly dressed up in her best. At the same time it had that quality of unconscious distinction that never deserted her.

Sir Peter expressed his pleasure at meeting a writer whose work he so much admired, at which Clare looked startled and embarrassed, as if she did not really believe that he could ever have heard of her. But as Fanny poured out drinks for them, he went on to speak of certain characters in her books with genuine acquaintance. Clare at first responded with a look of pain and confusion, but by degrees allowed herself to enjoy the pleasure of accepting his praise and beamed and almost trembled with happiness.

There was a quiet directness about his way of speaking, a simplicity and informality that expressed very pleasantly as great self-assurance. He was a strikingly handsome old man, though his face was deeply lined, while his heavy brow had the waxen look of extreme age or of serious illness and his eyes, shadowed by shaggy white eyebrows, were restless. The big hand, on which the skin looked dry and lifeless, holding the glass that Fanny had brought to him, was not quite steady.

The next guest to arrive was Mrs McLean, the doctor’s wife. Her husband, she explained, had been called out to attend to a boy who had fallen off a bicycle, but if he was through with the boy in time, would look in later. She was a pleasant, talkative woman, whom it was strange to see, Fanny thought, without gardening gloves and a pair of sécateurs in her hand. Fastening on Basil, who had come downstairs just before she arrived, she plunged into a discussion with him of the best position in her garden for a certain lilac bush. She was always seeking counsel about this bush, which had already been moved a number of times, but which had never yet prospered as in her view it should have done.

Soon she was asking Sir Peter his opinion about it. To Fanny’s surprise, he appeared to be as interested in lilac bushes as in Clare Forwood’s books, and seemed sufficiently knowledgeable about them to earn Mrs McLean’s high approval.

It was the same presently with Kit, who came in rather late and with a show of reluctance at appearing at all. Laura’s headache, he said, was still very bad and she could not possibly come down yet. Sir Peter spoke to him about Laura, showing that he remembered having met her and appearing to take an interest in her and her future.

He even succeeded with Tom Mordue. The Mordues arrived so late that Fanny, half-relieved, had almost given them up and when Tom walked into the room ahead of his wife and daughter, he had the expression on his face that meant he was likely to make trouble. Yet after a drink or two and a short conversation with Sir Peter, he started to look quite satisfied with himself, his world and his company.

Afterwards Fanny wondered if the semi-miracle of Tom’s good behaviour might not have been worked by Minnie and Susan as much as by Sir Peter. Minnie kept a nervous eye on him all the evening, as if to remind him of a promise he had given, and Susan once or twice interrupted a remark of his that was spoken on a rising note. Nevertheless, if the two women had succeeded beforehand in establishing some sort of control over Tom, it was Sir Peter who put him into a genuine good humour.

Even Sir Peter’s exclamation of pleasure when he had bitten into one of her lobster patties seemed to Fanny most perfectly satisfactory. It had the same sincerity and the same understanding as he had put into his conversation with Clare about her books. Immediately helping himself to a second, he pressed Fanny not to remove the dish too far out of his reach.

‘I’ve a latent greed in me,’ he said, ‘and I can tell that these are going to make it hard to control.’

‘That’s the way straight to my heart,’ Fanny said. ‘I’m the sort of cook who needs all the praise she can get.’

She passed on with the dish to Susan.

It was Susan who gave her her first pang of doubt about the lobster patties. Biting into one, Susan seemed to go rigid all over before she could swallow. A look of shock appeared in her eyes.

Fanny gave her a worried look.

‘Is something wrong, Susan?’

‘No – oh no, they’re delicious,’ Susan said.

Fanny at that stage still had no doubt of that, so she said, ‘But I meant, is something wrong with you? You feel all right?’

‘Oh yes, absolutely,’ Susan said. ‘I think a crumb went down the wrong way.’

She had relaxed and the emptiness had gone from her eyes, but she was studying the remains of the lobster patty in her hand with a look of startled disbelief.

Susan was small, light and quick-moving and looked even younger than she was. Her hair was thick and fair, cut in a fringe across her forehead and falling straight to her shoulders. Her face was square, with a short nose and a wide, cheerful mouth. In spite of her smallness, there was something sturdy about her, and in spite of her look of candid simplicity, something self-contained. Fanny had recognized more than once that you could not always tell just where you were with Susan.

For instance, this evening she appeared perfectly serene. She was perhaps a little thoughtful, but when she and Kit settled down in a corner of the room to talk to one another, there was no sign of nervousness about her, no trace of uneasiness. Kit himself seemed to become less tense and nervous while he talked to her.

Wondering if after all everyone had been wrong about Susan, Fanny put the dish she was still holding down on a table and helped herself to a lobster patty.

The next moment she gave a cry.

Everyone looked at her.

She gazed round dazedly, her hand to her throat.

‘Good heavens, why did none of you tell me?’ she asked, spluttering.

She saw then that the remnants of lobster patties had been inconspicuously jettisoned on the edges of plates.

She threw her own into the fire.

‘What on earth can I have put into the things?’ she asked in horrified bewilderment. ‘Oh, I’m sorry! Aren’t they perfectly unspeakable? Oh, I wish you’d told me straight away instead of pretending they were all right.’

‘Never mind, dear,’ Mrs McLean said, ‘we all make mistakes and we can sympathize. I served pancakes with lemon at lunch once, and I put salt on them instead of sugar.’

‘But these tasted quite all right when I’d just made them,’ Fanny said. ‘I tried them and they were just how I wanted them. Oh, what can I have done to them?’

Sir Peter crossed the room, stood looking down for a moment at the dish of patties, then helped himself to another. He bit into it, munched it critically, smiled and said, ‘Perfectly delicious.’

‘But isn’t yours revoltingly bitter?’ Fanny asked. ‘Bitter almost beyond belief?’

‘Not at all,’ he said.

‘Mine was,’ she said. ‘And so was Susan’s. I saw the face she made when she tried to eat it – and I don’t wonder!’

‘I think you must be excessively critical, Mrs Lynam,’ Sir Peter said and helped himself to yet another patty. ‘I find them absolutely first-rate.’

Fanny watched him incredulously as he ate with obvious enjoyment.

‘Mine was so bitter it made my tongue curl,’ she said.

‘Mine’s just perfect,’ he answered.

‘Perhaps I didn’t spoil them all,’ she said. ‘I wonder what I could have done to them. Perhaps I spilt something over some of them, detergent or disinfectant or something. Only I don’t remember doing anything like that.’

‘Well, never mind now,’ Basil said, coming over to the table. ‘Let’s put the rest out of harm’s way, before Sir Peter gets one of the bad ones and loses his good impression of the others.’

But before he could pick up the dish, Sir Peter said, ‘Not if I know it! I want these within easy reach – and if no one else will eat them after Mrs Lynam’s terrible condemnation, that’s my good fortune. I told you I was greedy.’

He carried the dish to a small table close to where he had been standing talking to Clare and resumed his conversation with her.

In a low voice, Fanny said to Susan, ‘I believe he
does
like them.’

‘It looks like it,’ Susan agreed.

‘Then some of them must be all right. If he’d eaten one that tasted like mine did, he simply couldn’t be putting on a show like that – not even if his upper lip was ever so stiff. Yours
was
frightful too, wasn’t it, Susan?’

‘Well, it was rather.’

‘Bitter?’

‘Yes.’

‘What can I have done? What could make them taste like that? God, I feel awful, doing a thing like that. And nobody telling me!’

Susan laughed. ‘You’re among friends, so you shouldn’t worry. We all know how good they can be when they go right.’

‘Thank heaven for Laura’s headache, anyway,’ Fanny said, drawing a deep breath. ‘What would she have thought of me? Somehow I know that she’d have got just the ones that had been spoilt worst of all.’ Looking at Sir Peter, she wondered momentarily what he and Clare were talking about so earnestly and whether or not Clare had divulged to him that she had wanted a meeting with him arranged. ‘He couldn’t be pretending, could he, Susan?’ she said, still very worried. ‘I’d feel awful beyond words if I thought he was doing it just to be kind to me. But honestly, I don’t think he’d be physically capable of it if he’d got one like mine.’

‘No, as a matter of fact, I don’t think so either,’ Susan said. ‘I’d really stop worrying.’

‘But he’s so nice, he just might … No, I really don’t think he could. Most of them must be all right, and just the ones along one edge or something have had something or other spilt over them.’ Fanny lit herself a cigarette and drew in a lungful of smoke, breathing it out again slowly and trying to convince herself as she did so that she was quite reassured. ‘What about the new job that’s in the wind, Susan?’ she said. ‘Are you going to take it?’