Loving, Living, Party Going (58 page)

'Tell me about your toys,' he said.

'My toys, what do you mean? Oh, you're trying to say my charms. No, I certainly won't if you call them my toys.'

'Your charms,' he said.

'Well, if you swear you won't laugh I might.' She was most anxious to tell him because she naturally wanted to talk about herself.

'I won't laugh,' he said.

'I don't know how I first got them,' she said, for she was not going to tell anyone ever that it was her mother, of course, who had given them to her and who had died when she was two years old. Here she broke off to ask him if he had overheard Robert Hignam telling her about that patch of bamboos they had played round as children. 'He is so silly, as if I should ever forget,' she said. 'We were brought up together.' She went on to say what Robert had never known was that one of her charms, the wooden pistol, had been buried plumb in the middle of the bamboo patch. In consequence, and no one had ever known of it, these bamboos, or probably they had been overgrown artichokes, had taken on a great importance in her mind because of this secret buried in them. And she asked Max if he did not think it often was the case that certain things people remembered about when they were children were important to them only because they were far more important to someone else.

She explained that each time they went through those artichokes pretending they were explorers in jungles, she was excited because she knew she had buried her pistol there and because the others did not know., She felt her excitement had made their game more secret
and that it was the secrecy which was what Robert remembered of it. 'So that it was my having hidden the pistol there which made the whole thing for him. He'll never know,' she said.

So her wooden pistol was stained and had rather crumbled away, after she had dug it up, but she had it still, nothing would ever part her from it. The egg she described as being hollow, painted outside with rings of red and yellow, half the size of duck's eggs, and it had inside three little ivory elephants. 'You'll never believe about my egg,' she said, 'and I've never told another soul,' which was a lie. But she did tell him, and it was like this. When she had been no more than four years old she had been out with her nanny for their afternoon's walk. She was carrying a huge golfing umbrella she could not be happy without at that particular time, quartered in red and yellow silk. Her nanny had opened it for her and she was so very small she had had to carry it with both hands to the handle as it spread above her head. Now she also had with her the wooden egg with elephants inside in one of her pockets and as she happened to be walking on a bank a sudden gust of wind had taken hold of her umbrella and, as she had not let go, had carried her for what, at this length of time, she now considered to be great distances, as far as from cliffs into the sea, but what, as it actually happened, had been no more than three or four feet and into a puddle. 'And I said "Nanny, if I hadn't my egg in my pocket I should have been drowned."' Julia could now see herself swaying down 10,000 feet tied to a red and yellow parachute. 'So you see,' she said, 'I can't ever leave it behind now, can I?'

'Yes, I must have looked a sight with my skinny legs,' and as these were now one of her best features she stretched them out under his nose, 'sailing away under my umbrella with the nanny waving so I shouldn't get frightened and let go. I was such a shrimp in those days.'

'I bet you never were,' he said.

'I was.'

'And what about your top?'

'What about my top? Who told you about my top?'

'Nobody.'

'Who told you? I've never said a word about it to anyone.'

'You must have done or I should not have known,' he said uneasily:

Who could have told him? Claire surely wouldn't have. People you trusted talked about you behind your back and ruined everything. He must have been laughing at her all the time she was on about her charms.

'Oh, Max,' she said, 'you are so tiresome.' And then, to cover up her tracks, 'First you wouldn't tell me who Embassy Richard's girl was and now you won't say who told you about me. Who is it?'

He made as if to sit on the arm of her chair.

'No,' she said, 'and if you won't come out with it then you can't expect me to go on filling you up with things to laugh at me about'

'But I was not laughing.'

'Very well then, what toys did you have when you were a little boy.?'

He thought this was an unlucky business. Rather shamefacedly he said:

'I had a Teddy Bear.'

'All little boys have Teddy Bears.'

'Well I say, Julia, I can't help that, can I?'

'What else did you have? What did you have you are ashamed of now?'

'But Julia really, what is there to be ashamed of in a wooden egg?'

'Who said I was ashamed? Don't be so ridiculous. Go on now, what did you have?'

He lied and said: 'I had a doll as well.'

'I don't believe
it.
What sort of a doll?'

'Well, it was dressed up, a girl, in an Eton blue frock.'

'Did you?' she said beginning to smile at last. 'And did you take her to bed with you?'

'Of course. I wouldn't sleep without it.'

'How sweet,' she said ironically, 'how perfectly sweat. And are you ashamed of her now?'

'No, why should I be?'

'No,' she said, calming down, 'there's no reason why one should be, is there?' After all, when one was little one was just like other little boys and girls. But she could not get over someone having told him. Had they been laughing at her over it? Or had he been asking people about her?

'How did you get to know?' she said.

'Someone told me.'

'Yes, I know, but how? I mean people don't just tell things like that.'

He took the plunge into another lie.

'Well, if you must know,' he said, 'I asked them.'

'Oh, you did, did you? So then you know.'

'Know what?'

'The story of my top.'

'No, I don't. All I was told was that you had one – "like Julia who keeps a top" – they said.'

She left over thinking out whether he had really asked after her until she was alone.

'Oh, is that all you know? Then would you like to hear? You swear you aren't laughing.'

'I swear.'

'How much would you like to know?'

Again he came over as if to sit on the arm of her chair.

'If you do that,' she said getting up, 'I shan't be able to tell you about my top.'

He thought bother her top.

'And it's most frightfully important.'

'Do tell me.'

'Do you really want to know? Then I'll tell you. There's no story at all about my top. I've just always had it, that's all.'

He advanced on her as if to kiss her.

'No, no,' she said, 'it's too early in the day yet for that sort of thing,' and as he still came forward she began to step back.

'No, Max, I'm not going to start a chase round this squalid room.' And as he came up to her she brought her hands smack together as though she were bringing him out of a trance. 'Go back and sit in your chair,' she said, 'mix yourself another drink if you like, but you aren't going to muss me up now.' He did as he was told and she was pleased she could make him do as she told him. Then she wondered if he wasn't angry, which he was. So she came over to where he was sitting, and, his hands taken up with pouring out his drink, she kissed his cheek and then sat down opposite.

There was a silence and then he exclaimed:

'By God, I wonder if they have sent up those flowers.' He went to telephone and got on to Alex at last and asked him. Alex said yes the flowers had arrived.

'Are they all right? I mean are they decent ones?' Alex said they were and Julia wondered, when he put down the receiver and went over to the window, that he had not asked Alex to have them sent up to her.

In the meantime Hignam had persuaded Robin Adams that he would do better to come upstairs and see what had become of the others. Against his better judgment Mr Adams had agreed. As he had not been able to leave this hotel owing to those steel doors having been shut down, he considered he might as well be with Angela if he could not get away from their bloody party. He might be able to be of service to her yet.

Now both Julia and Angela had kissed their young men when these had been cross, when Mr Adams had made off down in the station and when Max had stopped chasing Julia to sit in his chair.

People, in their relations with one another, are continually doing similar things but never for similar reasons.

All this party had known each other for some time, except Max and Angela. Max had taken them up and they had got to know Angela through him. When Max had asked her she had insisted on going although her parents had objected that she did not know them well. Now that she was with them she was not enjoying it because she found she was without what she would call one supporter among them.

For when Angela had kissed Mr Adams she had not wanted him to stay, it had been no more than a peck, but now she had seen more of their party she wished she had kissed him harder, and she was beginning to blame him. He had been extremely tiresome and he had deserved it when she had sent him off. But she felt now that she had never deserved it when he had gone.

As for Julia she had kissed Max to keep him sweet so to speak, and so, in one way, had Miss Crevy kissed her young man. But what lay behind Julia's peck was this three weeks they both had in front of them, it would never do to start too fast and furious. Angela had no such motive because Mr Adams was not coming with them.

Angela then was more than missing her young man. Accordingly when he was led by Robert Hignam into this room where she was sitting she was glad to see him. And Alex was very glad to see him. He had been made more and more nervous by Miss Crevy because
he could see she was getting in a state. He called out what would he have to drink and Angela said to him:

'Where have you been all this time?'

Now that he did see her again Mr Adams was so thankful he could find nothing to say. He thought she looked so much more lovely than ever, almost as though he had expected to find she had been assaulted by those others with her clothes torn and her hair hanging down as he put it, although she wore it short. It was then her mood so swiftly changed that it began to seem too tiresome the way he stood there saying nothing when he should have come back long ago. Unfortunately for him he was so taken up with his feeling of how madly beautiful she was that he feared he would give himself away if he went anywhere near her. She felt she could never forgive him if he stayed away, but he went over to Alex and Robert Hignam and mixed himself a drink, turning his back.

If Julia's fears had left her earlier when Max arrived in the lounge downstairs and, at the first sign of him, she had forgotten how angry she had been at his not turning up before, Angela was now the reverse of comforted when she saw Mr Adams, even if she had been longing for him to come back. Anyway she thought it monstrous that he should stand as he did with his back to her. She said:

'Isn't someone going to ask me what I'd like to drink?' and she put emphasis on the someone. This brought them all over to her side apologizing and carrying the tray with everything on it. When Mr Adams apologized he tried pathetically enough to make his voice sound as though he were saying in so many words how sorry he was that he had ever gone and even, by the tone of it, how unlucky she was to have one such as he so full of her. But his putting himself in the wrong only made her feel more sure that she was right and he might as well have said it to his glass for she proceeded to ignore him.

Her answer was to begin making up to Alex. She called him darling, which was of no significance except that she had never done so before, and he did not at once tumble to it that her smiles and friendliness for him, which like any other girl she could turn on at will so that it poured pleasantly out in the way water will do out of taps, had no significance either. Still it was very different from how she had been when they were alone together and as he could not
bear people being as cross and hurt with him as she had seemed to be he was both surprised and pleased.

'And, darling,' she said to Alex, 'do you know what is on the other side of that door there?'

He went to see. 'Beds!' he cried.

'Yes, twin beds. But I brought my own sheets.'

He was still pleased even if this last remark embarrassed him as much as it had done when, at first sight of him down in the station she had called out had he brought his bed. Then he wondered if this change of manner did not come from her wanting to annoy this Robin Adams or to make him jealous. He said she thought of everything and went on,

'But it's really rather early for that sort of thing, isn't it? There's no close season, I know that, but we've got the whole night before us, if you know what I mean.'

'Alex, darling, how can you speak like that? It's the most pansy thing I ever heard you say. And in any case,' she went on, 'it wouldn't be very nice in a sleeper, would it?' Alex passed this off by saying he had given up all idea of their getting a train that evening. As for Mr Adams he had been so tormented when he saw her again by such a crawling frenzy of love for her that he had not been fit to hear what was going on. This now, however, began to percolate through to him as when clouds curtain an August day that has been enormously still and soft with elms swooning in the haze; and as hot days can become ominous and dark so soon he began to dread what she might make him hear.

Alex said well come along then, knowing that she would never commit herself in front of those others. He suspected that she was only trying to distress this poor creature Adams and was curious to see how she would get out of going into that bedroom with him. He was sure she would never do it and yet she would only make herself look ridiculous now if she did not go. She said he didn't seem very keen, it was hardly flattering to her she said and he thought of answering this by asking her why didn't she try one of the others then, but he refrained, he was afraid this would be too awkward for her. All he did say was that she would soon see who was being flattered once the door was locked on them.