Gaudy Night (30 page)

By tea-time, Wilfrid was behaving so tiresomely that Harriet put him away in a rage and sallied out to attend a literary cocktail party. The room in which it was held was exceedingly hot and crowded, and all the assembled authors were discussing (
a
) publishers, (
b
) agents, (
c
) their own sales, (
d
) other people’s sales, and (
e
) the extraordinary behaviour of the Book of the Moment selectors in awarding their ephemeral crown to Tasker Hepplewater’s
Mock Turtle.
“I finished this book,” one distinguished adjudicator had said, “with the tears running down my face.” The author of
Serpent’s Fang
confided to Harriet over a
petite saucisse
and a glass of sherry that they must have been tears of pure boredom; but the author of
Dusk and Shiver
said, No—they were probably tears of merriment, called forth by the unintentional humour of the book; had she ever met Hepplewater? A very angry young woman, whose book had been passed over, declared that the whole thing was a notorious farce. The Book of the Moment was selected from each publisher’s list in turn, so that her own
Ariadne Adams
was automatically excluded from benefit, owing to the mere fact that her publisher’s imprint had been honoured in the previous January. She had, however, received private assurance that the critic of the
Morning Star
had sobbed like a child over the last hundred pages of
Ariadne,
and would probably make it his Book of the Fortnight, if only the publisher could be persuaded to take advertising space in the paper. The author of
The Squeezed Lemon
agreed that advertising was. at the bottom of it: had they heard how the
Daily Flashlight
had tried to blackmail Humphrey Quint into advertising with them? And how, on his refusal, they had said darkly, “Well, you know what will happen, Mr. Quint?” And how no single Quint book had received so much as a review from the
Flashlight
ever since? And how Quint had advertised that fact in the
Morning Star
and sent up his net sales 50 per cent. in consequence? Well, by some fantastic figure, anyhow. But the author of
Primrose Dalliance
said that with the Book of the Moment crowd, what counted was Personal Pull—surely they remembered that Hepplewater had married Walton Strawberry’s latest wife’s sister. The author of
Jocund Day
agreed about the Pull, but thought that in this instance it was political, because there was some powerful anti-Fascist propaganda in
Mock Turtle
and it was well known that you could always get old Sneep Fortescue with a good smack at the Blackshirts.

“But what’s
Mock Turtle
about?” inquired Harriet.

On this point the authors were for the most part vague; but a young man who wrote humorous magazine stories, and could therefore afford to be wide-minded about novels, said he had read it and thought it rather interesting, only a bit long. It was about a swimming instructor at a watering place, who had contracted such an unfortunate anti-nudity complex through etching so many bathing-beauties that it completely inhibited all his natural emotions. So he got a job on a whaler and fell in love at first sight with an Eskimo, because she was such a beautiful bundle of garments. So he married her and brought her back to live in a suburb, where she fell in love with a vegetarian nudist. So then the husband went slightly mad and contracted a complex about giant turtles, and spent all his spare time staring into the turtle-tank at the Aquarium, and watching the strange, slow monsters swimming significantly round in their encasing shells. But of course a lot of things came into it—it was one of those books that reflect the author’s reactions to Things in General. Altogether, significant was, he thought, the word to describe it.

Harriet began to feel that there might be something to be said even for the plot of
Death ’twixt Wind and Water.
It was, at least, significant of nothing in particular.

Harriet went back, irritated, to Mecklenburg Square. As she entered the house, she could hear her telephone ringing apoplectically on the first floor. She ran upstairs hastily—one never knew with telephone calls. As she thrust her key into the lock, the telephone stopped dead.

“Damn!” said Harriet. There was an envelope lying inside the door. It contained press cuttings. One referred to her as Miss Vines and said she had taken her degree at Cambridge; a second compared her work unfavourably with that of an American thriller-writer; a third was a belated review of her last book, which gave away the plot; a fourth attributed somebody else’s thriller to her and stated that she “adopted a sporting outlook on life” (whatever that might mean). “This,” said Harriet, much put out, “is one of those days! April the First, indeed! And now I’ve got to dine with this dashed undergraduate, and be made to feel the burden of incalculable age.”

To her surprise, however, she enjoyed both the dinner and the show. There was a refreshing lack of complication about Reggie Pomfret. He knew nothing about literary jealousies; he had no views about the comparative importance of personal and professional loyalties; he laughed heartily at obvious jokes; he did not expose your nerve-centres or his own; he did not use words with double meanings; he did not challenge you to attack him and then suddenly roll himself into an armadillo-like ball, presenting a smooth, defensive surface of ironical quotations; he had no overtones of any kind; he was a good-natured, not very clever, young man, eager to give pleasure to someone who had shown him a kindness. Harriet found him quite extraordinarily restful.

“Will you come up for a moment and have a drink or anything?” said Harriet, on her own doorstep.

“Thanks awfully,” said Mr. Pomfret, “if it isn’t too late.”

He instructed the taxi to wait and galumphed happily up. Harriet opened the door of the flat and switched the light on. Mr. Pomfret stooped courteously to pick up the letter lying on the mat.

“Oh, thank you,” said Harriet.

She preceded him into the sitting-room and let him remove her cloak for her. A moment or two later, she became aware that she was still holding the letter in her hand and that her guest and she were still standing.

“I beg your pardon. Do sit down.”

“Please—” said Mr. Pomfret, with a gesture that indicated, “Read it and don’t mind me.”

“It’s nothing,” said Harriet, tossing the envelope on the table. “I know what’s in it. What will you have? Will you help yourself?”

Mr. Pomfret surveyed such refreshments as offered themselves and asked what he might mix for her. The drink question being settled, there was a pause.

“Er—by the way,” said Mr. Pomfret, “is Miss Cattermole all right? I haven’t seen very much of her since—since that night when I made your acquaintance, you know. Last time we met she said she was working rather hard.”

“Oh, yes. I believe she is. She’s got Mods next term.”

“Oh, poor girl! She has a great admiration for you.”

“Has she? I don’t know why. I seem to remember ticking her off rather brutally.”

“Well, you were fairly firm with me. But I agree with Miss Cattermole. Absolutely. I mean, we agree about having a great admiration for you.”

“How nice of you,” said Harriet, inattentively.

“Yes, really. Rather. I’ll never forget the way you tackled that fellow Jukes. Did you see he got himself into trouble only a week or so later?”

“Yes. I’m not surprised.”

“No. A most unpleasant wart. Thoroughly scaly.”

“He always was.”

“Well, here’s to a long stretch for comrade Jukes. Not a bad show tonight, don’t you think?”

Harriet pulled herself together. She was all at once tired of Mr. Pomfret and wished he would go; but it was monstrous of her not to behave politely to him. She exerted herself to talk with bright interest of the entertainment to which he had kindly taken her and succeeded so well that it was nearly fifteen minutes before Mr. Pomfret remembered his waiting taxi, and took himself off in high spirits.

Harriet took up the letter. Now that she was free to open it, she did not want to. It had spoilt the evening for her.

Dear Harriet,

I send in my demand notes with the brutal regularity of the income-tax commissioners; and probably you say when you see the envelopes, ‘Oh, God! I know what this is.’ The only difference is that, some time or other, one has to take notice of the income-tax.

Will you marry me?—
It’s beginning to look like one of those lines in a farce—merely boring till it’s said often enough; and after that, you get a bigger laugh every time it comes.

I should like to write you the kind of words that burn the paper they are written on—but words like that have a way of being not only unforgettable but unforgivable. You will burn the paper in any case; and I would rather there should be nothing in it that you cannot forget if you want to.

Well, that’s over. Don’t worry about it.

My nephew (whom you seem, by the way, to have stimulated to the most extraordinary diligence) is cheering my exile by dark hints that you are involved in some disagreeable and dangerous job of work at Oxford about which he is in honour bound to say nothing. I hope he is mistaken. But I know that, if you have put anything in hand, disagreeableness and danger will not turn you back, and God forbid they should. Whatever it is, you have my best wishes for it.

I am not my own master at the moment, and do not know where I shall be sent next or when I shall be back—soon, I trust. In the meantime may I hope to hear from time to time that all is well with you?

Yours, more than my own,

PETER WIMSEY

After reading that letter, Harriet knew that she could not rest till it was answered. The bitter unhappiness of its opening paragraphs was readily explained by the last two. He probably thought—he could not possibly help thinking—that she had known him all these years, only to confide in the end not in him, but in a boy less than half his age and his own nephew, whom she had known only a couple of weeks and had little reason to trust. He had made no comment and asked no questions—that made it worse. More generously still, he had not only refrained from offers of help and advice which she might have resented; he had deliberately acknowledged that she had the right to run her own risks. “Do be careful of yourself”; “I hate to think of your being exposed to unpleasantness”; “If only I could be there to protect you”; any such phrase would express the normal male reaction. Not one man in ten thousand would say to the woman he loved, or to any woman: “Disagreeableness and danger will not turn you back, and God forbid they should.” That was an admission of equality, and she had not expected it of him. If he conceived of marriage along those lines, then the whole problem would have to be reviewed in that new light; but that seemed scarcely possible. To take such a line and stick to it, he would have to be, not a man but a miracle. But the business about Saint-George must be cleared up immediately. She wrote quickly, without stopping to think too much.

Dear Peter,

No. I can’t see my way to it. But thank you all the same. About the Oxford business—I would have told you all about it long ago, only that it is not my secret. I wouldn’t have told your nephew, only that he had stumbled on part of it and I had to trust him with the rest to keep him from making unintentional mischief. I wish I could tell you; I should be very glad of your help; if ever I get leave to, I will. It is rather I disagreeable but not dangerous, I hope. Thank you for not telling me to run away and play—that’s the best compliment you ever paid me.

I hope your case, or whatever it is, is getting on all right. It must be a tough one to take so long.

HARRIET

Lord Peter Wimsey read this letter while seated upon the terrace of an hotel overlooking the Pincian Gardens, which were bathed in brilliant sunshine. It astonished him so much that he was reading it for the fourth time, when he became aware that the person standing beside him was not the waiter.

“My dear Count! I beg your pardon. What manners! My head was in the clouds. Do me the favour to sit down and join me.
Servitore!
”

“I beg you will not apologise. It is my fault for interrupting you. But fearing that last night might have somewhat entangled the situation—”

“It is foolish to talk so long and so late. Grown men behave like tired children who are allowed to sit up till midnight. I admit that we were all very fractious, myself not least.”

“You are always the soul of amiability. That is why I thought that a word with you alone— We are both reasonable men.”

“Count, Count, I hope you have not come to persuade me to anything. I should find it too difficult to refuse you.” Wimsey folded the letter away in his pocket-book. “The sun is shining, and I am in the mood to make mistakes through over-confidence.”

“Then, I must take advantage of the good moment.” The Count set his elbows on the table and leaned forward, thumb-tip to thumb-tip and little-finger-tip to little-finger-tip, smiling irresistible. Forty minutes later, he took his leave, still smiling, having ceded, without noticing it, rather more than he had gained, and told in ten words more than he had learned in a thousand.

But of this interlude Harriet naturally knew nothing. On the evening of the same day, she was dining alone, a little depressed, at Romano’s. She had nearly finished, when she saw a man, just leaving the restaurant, who was sketching a vague gesture of recognition. He was in the forties, going a little bald, with a smooth, vacant face and a dark moustache. For a moment she could not place him; then something about his languid walk and impeccable tailoring brought back an afternoon at Lord’s. She smiled at him, and he came up to her table.

“Hullo—ullo! Hope I’m not bargin’ in. How’s all the doings and all that?”

“Very well, thanks.”

“That’s grand. Thought I must just ooze over and pass the time of day. Or night. Only I was afraid you wouldn’t remember me, and might think I was bein’ a nuisance.”

“Of course I remember you. You’re Mr. Arbuthnot—the Honourable Frederick Arbuthnot—and you’re a friend of Peter Wimsey’s, and I met you at the Eton and Harrow match two years ago, and you’re married and have two children. How are they?”