Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont (18 page)

In spite of all her talk, Mrs de Salis had ended up on what Mr Osmond had lost no time in calling ‘the wrong side of the Park’.

It was not until tea-time on the very day of the party that the question of the taxi was mentioned again, and it was to Mrs Post’s great relief that it was.

‘I suppose it would be rather foolish for us not to go together,’ Mr Osmond said.

‘It would be plain bloody daft,’ said Mrs Burton.

Mr Osmond put the tips of his fingers together and looked at Mrs Palfrey, waiting for her opinion, and ignoring Mrs Burton.

‘I agree with you,’ Mrs Palfrey said.

‘Then let us meet in the hall at – say – ten to six – and Summers can whistle up a cab.’

No one consulted Mrs Post, who kept nodding excitedly.

‘It will take more than ten minutes to get across to Bayswater,’ Mrs Burton pointed out.

‘We are bidden for six o’clock. I think for nice timing we should aim at ten past,’ said Mr Osmond. Not to seem too eager, he thought.

‘Oh, I hope he’ll be able to get a cab,’ Mrs Post began, with fresh anguish. ‘Just about six o’clock – the worst possible time.’ She could hardly contain this new anxiety.

‘Ten to six, then,’ Mr Osmond said masterfully. He got up and went to the door. I will sit on one of the little tip-up seats, he thought. Opposite Mrs Palfrey. I will hand
her
in first.

He went up to his room to put on his best, dark, pin-striped suit, his old school tie.

Mrs Post also hastened away. There was only an hour in which to get changed, although everything was laid out in her bedroom, and she had already attended to her nails – buffed them strenuously and pushed back cuticles, with instruments from her girlhood’s manicure-set, which must surely confuse any future archaeologists of the South Kensington dig.

Mrs Palfrey left later, with a more leisurely tread.

Mrs Burton remained, reading a magazine. She, for one, was going as she was, since she was always dressed as if in readiness for a cocktail party, with plenty of dark, draped dresses and costume jewellery. She came down to breakfast thus.

Mrs Post furtively tilted a bottle of lavender-water on to a corner of her handkerchief.

Mrs Palfrey winced, sliding a foot into one of her best glace kid shoes.

Mr Osmond straightened his tie and leaned forwards and grinned at himself in the mirror, seemed fairly satisfied.

Mrs Burton had rung the bell for a quick one.

Summers was more than five minutes trying to get a taxi, and Mrs Post began to wring her hands and fear that they would never get away. She read the menu over and over again, but seemed unable to take it in. It might be in a foreign language, she thought – which, indeed, it approximately was. And dinner itself seemed unreal to her, when so much was to happen first.

They caused quite a little stir, the four of them, and Mr Wilkins, the manager, came to see them off. Mrs Burton overheard a passing guest saying to another, ‘Aren’t they
sweet?’
and nearly burst with rage.

At last, they were down the steps and into the cab and, as they drove off, Mrs Post sat watching the meter and clutching her purse, so that she should be ready
with her share of the fare – and the tip, oh, what about the tip – as soon as they arrived.

Mrs Palfrey had calmly decided to settle up with Mr Osmond later, and when they were alone. This seemed to her discreet. In this new world where women must be expected to pay for things, one had to make up rules for oneself which, in one’s youth, had been decided differently. Having to do this unaccustomed thing, she relied for guidance on common sense and consideration, as she always had.

She guessed that Mrs Burton would make a fuss, waving about a pound note and wondering if anyone had change.

But Mr Osmond’s way of dropping his hand in a chopping-off gesture forbade any discussion as, having paid the fare, he stood aside to follow them across the pavement. Mrs Post was glad of her nylon fur coat. There was quite a little nip in the air, as she had hoped there would be.

The houses in Inverness Crescent had recently been painted. Pillared and porticoed now in dazzling white, and with window-boxes of public-gardens’ flowers of orange and beetroot red, they looked conscious of their rescue from threatened desuetude and decay, looked, for the time-being, most imposing.

Mr Osmond rang the bell under the name De Salis, and held his better ear close to the little grille.

‘Entrez!’
remotely trilled Mrs de Salis’s voice.

I wouldn’t have known what to do, Mrs Post thought, and looked thankfully at Mr Osmond.

He put a hand to the front door and it swung magically inwards.

The hall had black and white tiles and an arrangement of plastic flowers on a table. Music came from an opened door on the first floor, to which they rather breathlessly climbed. And there was Mrs de Salis waiting with arms outspread to welcome them.

‘Oh, it is like old times,’ she cried.

Each one, as they approached, she kissed or, rather, laid her cheek to theirs. Mr Osmond, coming last, held out his hand. ‘You shan’t escape,’ she said, and gave his pink cheek, in passing, a little smear of lipstick.

Well, that’s starting off on the wrong foot with a vengeance, he thought.

The ladies were taken into Mrs de Salis’s bedroom to leave their coats. Mrs Post’s eyes darted about, noting pink-frilled valance, buttoned satin, enormous scent-spray … no, there was no time to notice any more. Mrs Palfrey patted her hair with her large hands, and seemed ready for the fray. Mrs Burton lifted her skirt and tugged at her roll-on. ‘Well, girls,’ she said, ‘let’s get at it.’

‘Red or white?’ they were asked by Mrs de Salis’s adorable Willie, who could not have been recognised from the photograph they had been shown at the Claremont. His hair had receded, his once-pretty, sensuous face was now pouchy, with dark shadows under the eyes.

The bottles, as Mr Osmond had already noted, were turned so that the labels were away from gaze, and when Willie lifted one to pour out, he swathed it in a
napkin, as if it were champagne. A nice touch, Mr Osmond thought grimly.

Willie was drinking some amber-coloured drink in a a large glass which he often topped up in what Mr Osmond supposed was the kitchen. From there, he brought out a dish of peanuts.

There were two other guests, a large and jolly woman, whom Willie addressed as Aunt Bunty, and an elderly actress, of whom Mrs Post alone had heard. She was there to impress the guests from the Claremont and clearly understood this role, and at once began to dazzle and fascinate.

Mr Osmond stood near to Willie, wondering once more, what could have happened to all the old men. An ancient filthy story came to mind, and he was about to share it with his only ally, when he saw Mrs Palfrey standing by the window, and he felt ashamed. He told Willie instead a very slightly risqué one he had heard on the wireless. Willie laughed excessively. ‘Oh, I can see, sir, you’re one of us,’ he said. He would not let up on the ‘sir’. When one’s old, Mr Osmond suddenly marvelled, no one calls you by your Christian name. You might just as well not have it.

Mrs Palfrey – who, for a moment or two, had paused by the large window, looking at plane trees – felt unsettled. After hotel life, this flat seemed so personal, in spite of the anonymity of its furnishings; so free and yet a haven. She felt a transitory longing for such a home, where she might potter from room to room and take her own time over everything, even entertain a
little – Ludo to dinner; her Claremont friends for sherry. Yet she knew that she was past all hope of it. She began to feel tired as she reviewed the idea: she thought of the stairs, and the shopping, and the cleaning and washing-up, taps needing washers, pipes freezing, window-cleaners not arriving, no one arriving.

She had never been a good cook, for in the East it had been done for her. To say the Rottingdean meals had lacked variety was the kindest way her efforts could have been described. She knew it and did not want to have to try again.

The music came softly through – ‘Some Enchanted Evening’. Mrs Burton had gone from humming, to singing the words, would soon dance a few steps, Mr Osmond thought.

‘Now, Bunty!’ Mrs de Salis said at Mrs Palfrey’s elbow. And there was Bunty dragged up from her chair and brought over to mingle a bit and be introduced. ‘Here is Mrs Palfrey. And this is my sister-in-law, Bunty, who lives in an hotel in Brighton.’

‘Adore Brighton,’ Bunty said.

‘She’s come to stay for three days only, and that will be that, and nothing will persuade her to stop a minute longer.’

‘She wears me out,’ Bunty explained to Mrs Palfrey. (Mrs de Salis pouted, but looked not unpleased.) ‘We always end up squabbling.’

Yes, Mrs Palfrey could understand this. She gave a smile which meant nothing, and took a cautious sip of her wine.

‘Bickies?’ Mrs de Salis had been to fetch some. Mrs Palfrey took one. Bunty scooped up a handful.

‘Adore anything cheesy,’ she said.

‘You’re crafty,’ Mrs Burton said to Willie, looking at his glass.

‘Not allowed wine, my dear lady,’ he said. ‘Gout.’

‘My sympathies. I suffer from it myself,’ Mrs Burton lied.

‘Yes, it’s very nasty. Not nice. Not nice at all. Will you have a peanut?’

Mrs Burton looked scornfully at the peanuts and did not answer him.

‘I well remember you as Mrs Darling,’ Mrs Post was saying. ‘I took my little nephew to it. It doesn’t seem possible. He’s a married man with teenage children. He lives in Canada, of course. It must have been around nineteen-twenty-four, we went … wasn’t it?’

‘Much
later,’ Fay Sylvester snapped. After this, she would have liked to drift away from Mrs Post, but that she seemed the only one who had ever heard of her. She decided to bully her instead of dazzling.

‘Bloody awful play,’ she said.

‘Peter Pan?’ cried Mrs Post in astonishment; then thought how people did seem to swear nowadays.

‘I hate kids,’ said Fay Sylvester, whose real name was Felicity Sheringham-Vincent. She wished she had not changed it, but it had seemed a good idea at the time. ‘My ex-husband always said that a man who hates children cannot be entirely bad.’

Mrs Post looked like a teased child and glanced about her.

‘Drink up,’ Willie said in an automatic voice, as if he were a nurse administering medicine. ‘Buckets of plonk we must get down us.’

‘Us!’ Mrs Burton heard, furiously.

‘Can’t face it at breakfast, d’you know.’

Well, he didn’t want
this
little party, Mr Osmond calmly thought. And he’s not really here.

The turned-down, muffled music ran out, and no one except Mrs Burton noticed and she felt only a vague lack of something.

‘What was your favourite part?’ Mrs Post went eagerly on. She had never met an actress before, and could tell her cousin all about it.

‘Hedda Gabler,’ Mrs Sylvester said, after a little pause to consider – nose deliciously wrinkled, she opined – one great role against another. The risk was justified.

‘What was that in?’ Mrs Post inquired.

‘Now, you’re pulling my leg,’ was all that Fay Sylvester could say to this, not knowing that, in the middle of the night, Mrs Post might worry about her reply.

‘You must … I insist … have one of these quite delicious peanuts,’ she said.

‘Yes, I will be tempted: though I’m sure I shall spoil my dinner.’

‘From all that Megsy tells me of that ghastly hotel, you won’t be missing much.’

‘Oh, but it’s quite …’ Megsy! she thought.

‘Have another nut.’ Quite sharp, Fay’s tone. A command.

Mrs Post considered the dish, and then carefully picked out one nut, as if it were different from the others. ‘So nice,’ she murmured, meaning the party, not the peanut.

‘Well, we men are a bit thin on the ground,’ Mr Osmond said affably to Willie.

‘And this one’s a bit thin on the top, too,’ Willie said, matching the geniality. ‘You must come over and meet old Fay.’

This was almost the last thing Mr Osmond wished to do; and, Fay, having heard the ‘old’, put on a couldn’t care less look. She gave Willie a different look, which somehow – perhaps because she had been an actress -conveyed to him, ‘Don’t think I don’t know about
you.’

‘Of course,’ Mrs Palfrey was saying, ‘there must be a lot going on in Brighton.’ She sometimes considered Brighton. The winter milder. The air cleaner. The whole of the South Coast lay before her. I’m not bound to the Cromwell Road for the rest of my life, she thought – more unsettled than she knew by Mrs de Salis’s flat.

‘Somehow, you know, you don’t
go
to it, though, what’s going on, I mean,’ Aunt Bunty said. ‘I’ll tell you something,’ she said, with a sort of sideways, conspiratorial look, ‘and don’t repeat it beyond these four walls, still less within, I have never put my nose inside the Royal Pavilion.’

‘I haven’t been to the Victoria and Albert Museum,’ Mrs Palfrey said, with a little smile.

‘Well, why the hell should we?’

‘So you were a stage-actress,’ Mr Osmond said to Fay Sylvester.

She was not his idea of an actress – flat-chested, thin hair, croaky voice.