Riders in the Chariot (39 page)

It was the period when hostesses were discovering
cuisine
_, and introducing to their tables
vol-au-vent
_, _sole Véronique__,
beignets au fromage
_ and _tournédos Lulu Wattier__, forcing their husbands into clubs, hotels, even railway stations, in their longing for the stench of corned beef. Mrs Chalmers-Robinson, in particular, was famous for her amusing luncheons, at which she would receive the wives of graziers--so safe--barristers, solicitors, bankers, doctors, the Navy--but never the Army--and, with discretion, the wives of storekeepers, some of whom, by that time, had become rich, useful, and therefore tolerable. Many of the ladies she entertained, the hostess hardly knew, and these she liked best of all. How she would glitter for the ones who had not yet dared venture on the Christian name.

Mrs Chalmers-Robinson had been christened Madge, but developed into Jinny in the course of things. Those who were really in the know, those whom she
simply adored
_, or with whom she shared some of the secrets, would refer to her as "Jinny Chalmers," while those whom she chose to hold at bay would see her in their mind's eye as "that old Ginny Robinson." And it was not true. Of course she would not deny that she took a drop of something if she happened to be feeling tired, but would drink it down quickly because she so loathed the taste, and later on, when her nerves demanded assistance, and Christian Science would not always work, she did cultivate the habit of standing a glass behind a vase.

But before a luncheon, Mrs Chalmers-Robinson would invariably dazzle. She would come into the dining-room, to move the cutlery about on the table, and add two or three little Murano bowls filled with different brands of cigarettes.

Even if she felt like frowning, she would not let herself. She might say, "How I wish I could sit down on my own to a nice, quiet grill, with you to wait on me, and tell me something interesting. But I must congratulate you, Ruth. You have everything looking perfect."

Although it was at her own reflection that she looked, and touched just once--she would not allow herself more--touched her inexorable skin. Then, quickly, she would moisten her mouth until it shone, and widen her eyes as if she had just woken. Her eyes had remained so lovely, they were terrifying in the face. Such a blaze of blue. They should have given pleasure.

Just then the bell would start ringing, and Ruth running, to admit the ladies who were arriving. The ladies would be exhausted, from all the committees they had sat on, charity balls at which they had danced, race meetings to which they had worn their most controversial clothes. They had been working so hard at everything they had barely strength left to hold a brandy cruster.

The year Ruth Joyner started work at the Chalmers-Robinsons', the ladies were wearing monkey fur. When the girl first encountered that insinuating stuff, it made her go cold. The idea of monkeys! Then she heard it was amusing, and perhaps it was, the live fur of dead monkeys, that strayed down from hats, and into conversation, until forcibly ejected. In the drawing-room, the talk would be all of fur and people. Ladies sat stroking their dreamy wisps, while the smoke reached out and fingered, like the hands of monkeys.

Before one lunch, which Ruth foyner had cause to remember, a lady told the company of some acquaintance common to them all who was dying of cancer. It seemed ill-timed. Several of the ladies withdrew inside their sad fur, others began knotting the fringes. One spilled her brandy cruster, and at least her immediate neighbours were able to assist in the mopping. Until the conversation could resume its trajectory of smoke, violet-scented, where for a moment there had been the stench of sick, drooping monkeys.

Everyone felt far better in the dining-room, where Ruth, and an elderly woman called May, who came in when help was needed, were soon moving in their creaking white behind the chairs of monkey-ladies.

Mrs Chalmers-Robinson kept her eye on everyone, while giving the impression she was eating. She could knit any sort of party together. She heard everything, and rumbles too.

She whispered, "Another of the little soles, Ruth, for Mrs du Plessy. Ah, yes, Marion, they are too innocent to refuse!"

Or, very, very soft: "Surely you have not forgotten, May, which is the left side?"

But the wine had contented everyone. And already, again, there was a smoke, blurry, and blue, of released violets, it could have been.

At the end, when a big swan in spun sugar was fetched in, the ladies clapped their rings together. It was so successful.

Ruth herself was delighted with the cook's triumphant swan. She could not resist remarking to a lady as she passed behind, "It was the devil to make, you know. And has got a bomb inside of it."

Which the visitor considered inexperienced, though comical.

Dressed in polka dots, and altogether devoid of fur, the lady was of some importance, if no fashion. She was the daughter of an English lord, a fact which roused the respect of elegant women who might otherwise have neglected. Beside her sat a barrister's wife. They called her Magda. Magda was amusing, it seemed, though there were nicer souls who considered her coarse. It was certainly daring of the hostess to seat the barrister's wife beside the Honourable, but daring Jinny Chalmers had always been.

After lunch Magda visibly eased some elastic part of her clothing, and began to light one of her cigars. A few of the ladies were thrilled to see.

"These weeds have on many occasions almost led to my divorce," Magda confessed to her Honourable neighbour. "I hope you will decide, like my husband, to stick it out."

She spoke in a decidedly deep voice, which vibrated through several of the ladies present, and thrilled almost as much as the cigar.

But the Honourable threw up her head, and laughed. Early in life, in the absence of other distinguishing qualities, she had decided on good nature.

The other ladies glanced at her skin, which was white and almost unprotected, whereas they themselves had shaded their faces, with orange, with mauve, even with green, not so much to impress one another, as to give them the courage to confront themselves.

Now Magda, who had tossed off the dregs of her wine, and planted her elbows in the table, remarked, perhaps to the ash of her cigar, "Who's for stinking out the rabbits?"

But very quickly turned to her Honourable neighbour, drawing her into a confidence, of which the latter humbly hoped she might be worthy.

"Or should we say: monkeys?" Magda asked.

But her strings so muted that the other ladies, however they strained, failed to hear.

"Did you ever see,"--the barrister's wife was frowning now--"a bottomful of monkeys? That is to say, a cageful of blooming monkey bottoms?"

Magda could not spit it out too hard.

"In fur pants?"

It was provoking that everyone but the distinguished visitor had missed it, especially when the latter threw back her head, in her most characteristic attitude of defence, and let out a noise so surprising that she herself was startled, by what, in fact, had issued out of memory, where as a little girl on a cold morning, she heard a gamekeeper deride his own performance over an easy bird.

On intercepting that animal sound, some of the ladies looked at their hands, kinder ones thought to gibber. But the parlourmaid offered the important guest a dish of chocolates, seeing that she had begun to enjoy herself at last amongst the monkey-ladies. The Honourable Polka Dots accepted a chocolate with trembling fingers, and after rejecting the noisy foil, plunged the chocolate into her mouth, from which there trickled a trace of unsuspected liqueur, at one corner, over the srnear of lip-salve with which she had dared anoint herself.

The daughter of the lord remained with Ruth Joyner, not because the guest at table was in any way connected with what came after in the drawing-room, rather as some inconsequential, yet in some way fateful, presence in a dream--Ruth did, indeed, dream about her once or twice--a stone figure, featureless, anonymous, stationed at a still unopened door.

Mrs Chalmers-Robinson could not have been altogether pleased with the incident which occurred right at the end of her otherwise successful monkey-luncheon. Or she could have sensed the approach of some more detrimental episode. For she suddenly pushed back her chair, obliquely, and her throat turned stringy to announce, "Let us go into the drawing-room. I dare say some of you would like to make up a table for bridge after we have had our coffee."

Magda was soon apologizing to her hostess, it sounded to the maid, as she managed that heavy silver tray, so could not give all her attention. But caught the drift afterwards, and it was something different.

"But I am most terribly sorry, darling. Would not have mentioned in the circumstances. Multiple Projects certainly down the drain. Such a noise, practically everyone else has heard. Then, bang on top, comes Interstate Incorporated,"

The maid bore her tray in the dance of service, surging steadily, sometimes reversing. Her starch no longer crackled, but the tinkling coffee crystals scattered on the chased silver as the ladies helped themselves from an overflowing spoon.

Under her complexion, Mrs Chalmers-Robinson had turned noticeably pale.

"Bags did not mention any of this," she said, "simply because he has not been here."

Her confession was a doubtful weapon of defence.

"Abandoned as well? But darling, I shall bring my nightie. To say nothing of my toothbrush. I have made shift in so many similar situations, I am almost the professional proxy."

Sincerity made Magda blink, or else it was the brandy weighting her eyelids. Her skin was livery as toads.

"Nothing is settled in a night!" Mrs Chalmers-Robinson bitterly laughed.

"Some things are!" Magda blinked.

The maid wove her dance. In her efforts to hear better, she forgot one or two of the steps, and bumped a lady in the small of her monkey fur. But was, in fact, hearing better.

"Then we are ruined!" laughed Mrs Chalmers-Robinson.

She made it sound like a picnic from which the Thermos had been forgotten.

Magda swore she could kick herself.

"Darling," she said, "you know I adore you. I shall pawn the cabuchon rubies that Harry gave. They have always sat on me, anyway, like bloody boils."

"Coffee, madam?" asked Ruth Joyner of her mistress.

But Mrs Chalmers-Robinson's attention was only half diverted. For the first time the maid realized the truth of what she had already known in theory: that a human being can hate a human being; and even though her mistress was looking through her, as if she had been a window, it began to break her.

"No, thank you," Mrs Chalmers-Robinson answered whitely.

Before she wilted from the waist downward, and was lying, washed-out, on her own ordinarily colourless carpet.

In the natural confusion a Wedgwood coffee cup got broken. There was such a bashing and scratching of jewellery, tangling of sympathy and fur fringes, bumping and recoiling, bending and straightening, that even one or two of the guests felt faint and had to help themselves to something.

After much advice and a hard slap, Mrs Chalmers-Robinson began to stir. She was actually smiling, but from a distance, it could have been the bottom of the sea. She sat up, holding the ruins of her hair. She continued smiling--she could run to a dimple in one corner--as though she had forgotten the season of enjoyment was over.

She was saying, "I am so sorry. I have disgraced." But stopped as she realized the presence of the undertow that must prevent her returning to the surface. "Where," she asked, "where is Ruth?" Feeling the carpet, as if afraid her one hope of rescue was floating away from her. "I shall have to ask you all to go. So maddening." Her laughter was letting her down into a snigger. "But Ruth, where is
Ruth
_?"

After pushing a good deal, the maid reached her mistress, and began to pull her upright. It was not an elegant operation, but succeeded, finally, in a rush. The hostess was supported, and up the stairs, on the white pillar of her parlourmaid. At the top she would have liked to take something of a Napoleonic farewell of the dispersing guests, but the truth suddenly overcame her, and she was bending, and coughing against it, and stifling it with her handkerchief as the devoted servant bore her away.

It was a terrible evening that Ruth had to remember. Never before had she seen her mistress stark naked, and the latter's flesh was grey. Anyone less compassionate might have recoiled from the sac of a slack, sick spider, slithering out of its disguise of silk. But the girl proceeded to pick up what had fallen, and afterwards, when it was Mrs Chalmers-Robinson propped in bed, could look full at her again.

A good stiff brandy, and the prospect of a pity she considered her due, even if she paid it herself, had restored the mistress to the pink. She was dressed in pink, too. Pale. A very touching, classic gown, which stopped before it showed how much she had shrivelled. Nor had she forgotten to frizz out the sides of her hair beneath a bandeau embroidered with metal beads.

"Whatever happens, Ruth," she said, "and I cannot tell you, cannot even guess, myself, the details of the situation, I cannot,
cannot
_ give you up. That is, if you will stand by me in my trouble."

The girl was very awkward, opening cupboards, and putting away.

"Oh, madam, I am not the one to let anybody down!"

She remembered the dead weight of her brother.

Mrs Chalmers-Robinson was agreeably racked. She would have given anything to be able to stuff a chocolate into her mouth. Instead, she looked at the open wardrobe. Such light as succeeded in disentangling itself from the bead fringes of the lampshade made the empty dresses look tragic.

"All my pretty things!" She began to blubber.

Ruth Joyner was breathing hard. But could bear worse blows, if it would help any.

"Freshen up my glass, will you?" the mistress begged. "With just a dash of brandy. What will you think of me? Oh, dear, but I am not like this! It is the prospect of losing just the little personal things. Because, when it comes to breaking point, men are quite, quite merciless."