The Girl in Blue (5 page)

Abandoned
by Willoughby, he did what most people do when left alone in strange rooms.
Always remembering to keep the head rigid, he wandered to and fro, peering at
this, sniffing at that, fingering papers and wondering how that dictaphone
thing on the desk worked; and he had just concluded a cursory examination of
the shelf of law books and was thinking that he would not care to have to read
them himself, when the door leading into the waiting-room burst open and something
solid entered at a high rate of speed.

‘Sorry,
Bill,’ said this something, ‘tripped.’

With a
sharp cry Crispin put a hand to his neck, which had exploded like a bomb, for
under the impact of this abrupt intrusion there had been no question of keeping
the head motionless. He stood rubbing it vigorously, but was not so preoccupied
with the massage as to be unable to take in the general aspect of the newcomer.

It was
a woman who had joined him, and it did not need a second glance to tell him
that she was a large woman. Somebody less deeply engaged in trying to soothe
his neck might have observed in addition that she was a cheerful woman, a
friendly woman and a woman whom it would be a pleasure to know, but these
aspects of her did not dawn on him till later.

She was
the first to speak. She was one of those women who are always the first to
speak.

‘Hullo,’
she said. ‘You aren’t Bill Scrope.’

Crispin,
courteously stopping rubbing his neck, explained that Bill Scrope had had to
step out, to confer, he imagined, with one of his partners, and would be
returning shortly.

‘I am
his brother,’ he said, ‘his elder brother from the country.’

She
uttered a cry that loosened the plaster on the ceiling. ‘Are you the fellow who
owns this Mellingham Hall joint?’

‘I do
own Mellingham Hall.’

‘I’m
coming there tomorrow. I’m Mrs Clayborne. Well, this is swell, running into you
like this. Gives us a chance to get acquainted. Now I shan’t feel like a kid
going to a new school when I clock in.’

Crispin
was frankly appalled. Although this woman had not spoken a word calculated to
bring the blush of shame to the cheek of modesty, she had shocked him to the
core. He had told Willoughby of his distaste for hearty women, and here was
one, earmarked to share his home, so hearty that the senses reeled. At the
thought of her galumphing about Mellingham Hall his head quivered on its base
and his neck seemed to be on fire. And when she continued, Tell me about this
place of yours,’ only his breeding enabled him to preserve his customary courtliness.

‘Bill,’
she proceeded, ‘says it dates back to Ethelbert the Unready or someone like
that. He says it’s all drawbridges and battlements and things, and there’s a
lake. It must be heavenly.’

Heavenly
was not the adjective that came uppermost in Crispin’s mind when he thought of
Mellingham Hall. It was one he was particularly slow to apply to the lake, an
ornate sheet of water which called for the services of two men at exorbitant
salaries if it was to be kept from smelling to heaven. He disliked the lake
intensely. Sometimes of an evening when all was still and the rays of the
setting sun turned its surface to molten gold, he would stand gazing at it,
wondering if anything could be done about the beastly thing. If seven maids
with seven mops swept it for half a year, do you suppose, he would ask himself
wistfully, that they could get it clear? Very improbable, he felt, and who can
afford seven maids these days?

Mrs
Clayborne was enlarging on her theme. If she had been a house agent hoping to
sell the place to a wavering client, she could not have been more enthusiastic.
She said she had read a lot about these old English country homes in novels and
all that, but had never come across one yet. Some of her friends on Long Island
and at Newport owned pretty palatial joints, but it wasn’t the same, they
lacked the old-world touch.

‘Take
you, I mean. I suppose there were Scropes at Mellingham at the time of the
Flood.’

It was
an unfortunate phrase for her to have chosen, for it reminded Crispin of the
night when the rain had come in through the roof, adding a further forty-seven
pounds five and ninepence to the bill of the repairs people, who at that point
were already more than a hundred and fifty ahead of the game. His hand flew up
to his neck, and she looked at him enquiringly.

‘Why
are you doing that?’

‘I beg
your pardon?’

‘You
keep rubbing your neck.’

‘I
think I must have been sitting in a draught. It is rather painful.’

All the
motherliness in Bernadette Clayborne came to the surface as if somebody had pressed
a button. It is not only when the brow is racked by pain and anguish that women
become ministering angels. They react to stiff necks with equal promptitude.

‘We
must look into that,’ she said. Take a chair and lean forward as if you were an
early Scrope about to be beheaded on Tower Hill.’

It
would be deceiving the wide public for which the chronicler hopes he is writing
to say that Crispin enjoyed the next few minutes. They were, indeed, some of
the most agonizing he could remember ever living through. He seemed to have
delivered himself into the steely clutch of some sort of machine. Only the
knowledge that it was firmly fastened on at the roots kept him from being
convinced that his head was about to part from the parent spine. He blamed
himself for having been so foolish as to sponsor such a performance.

But, as
has been well said (by John Dryden, 1631—1700, to keep the record straight),
sweet is pleasure after pain. The relief Crispin felt when with a muttered, ‘That
ought to do it’ his assailant relaxed her grip more than compensated for all he
had gone through. Shortly before embarking on her activities she had assured
him that she would teach his little old neck to take a joke, and her prediction
had been amply fulfilled. He sat up. He felt wonderful. He regarded her with
gratitude and awe, marvelling that he could ever have thought her unsuitable
for residence at Mellingham Hall. It was precisely women of her type that
Mellingham Hall had been standing in need of for years.

‘I can’t
thank you enough,’ he said fervently. The pain has completely gone.’

‘I knew
it would. I used to do that to my late husband when he had a hangover, which
was almost daily, and he said there was nothing like it. And now tell me more
about the old home.’

Crispin
would have been delighted to do so, but he had just looked at his watch and it
had told him that he had no time for idle dalliance. Her conversation
enthralled him, but the claims of a to-be-caught train are paramount.

‘I wish
I could,’ he said, ‘but I am afraid I must be going, or I shall miss my train.’

‘Oh
well, I shall be seeing the joint tomorrow.’

‘Yes,
and I hope you will be very happy there.’

‘You
bet. And talking of betting, if you have a moment to spare before you go, can
you direct me to a good bookie? I’ve had a hot tip on a horse, and I don’t know
who to go to over here. Ever hear of a place called Newmarket?’

Crispin
was conscious of a nostalgic pang. The name brought back memories of his youth.
He had probably lost more money at Newmarket than anywhere.

That’s
where it’s running a few days from now. So who do I do business with?’

‘I used
to have an account with Slingsby’s. I still have, I imagine.’

‘Don’t
you do any betting nowadays?’

‘Never.
I have given it up completely.’

‘I
guess you’re wise. I don’t often have anything on myself, but the fellow I was
talking to said Brotherly Love would win going away.’

‘Brotherly
Love?’

That’s
its name. What’s yours, by the way, apart from the Scrope end?’

‘Crispin.’

‘For
heaven’s sake! Not that I’m one to cast the first stone. They christened me
Bernadette. Fortunately everyone calls me Barney. You must, too.’

‘I will
indeed.’

‘Can
you imagine anyone calling anyone Bernadette? Or Crispin for that matter, or
even Willoughby. Nice fellow, Bill. My brother and I are his house guests.’

‘So he
told me.’

‘A bit
overweight, isn’t he?’

‘A
little, perhaps.’

‘My
late husband got that way.

‘Indeed?’

‘Couldn’t
keep him off the starchy foods. But didn’t you say you had a train to catch?’

When Willoughby returned
from his conference, expecting to see an elder brother, he was momentarily
taken aback at finding a changeling in his office.

‘Why,
hullo, Barney,’ he said. ‘Where did you come from?’

‘Out of
the everywhere into here, Bill. I’ve just had a pleasant visit with Crispin. What
a name! I think I’ll call him Crippen.’

‘What
became of him?’

‘He had
to make a train.’

‘Of
course, yes, he told me. And what brings you here?’

‘I came
to borrow a dollar or two. I’m cleaned out.’

‘Shopping?’

‘And
contributing to the support of London’s hard-up citizens. There’s something
about me that seemed to draw the panhandlers the way catnip attracts cats, and
I’m down to my last dime. If you don’t give me of your plenty, I’ll have to
skip lunch. Good for the figure, of course, but not a pleasant prospect.’

‘My
dear Barney, of course you’ll lunch with me.

The
needy never turned from your door, eh?’

‘You
won’t mind my nephew being there?’

‘I won’t
mind a horror from outer space being there if there’s lots to eat and drink’

There
will be. This is a celebration. I’ve just bought
The Girl in Blue.’

‘Who’s
she?’

‘She is
a miniature by Gainsborough. She is wearing a blue dress, so the late
Gainsborough, hunting around for a title, called her
The Girl in Blue.’

‘Very
clever of him. Think like lightning, these artists. Where are we lunching?
Excuse me bringing the subject up, but I’m starving.’

The
Savoy.’

‘Shall
we be going before I swoon?’

‘I’m
ready. Off to lunch, Mabel,’ said Willoughby as they passed through the
waiting-room.

‘Bon
appétit,
Mr Scrope.’

‘Good
God! French and everything.’

‘And if
anybody wants him,’ said Barney, ‘say he’s tied up in an orgy and it’s no use
them waiting, as he doesn’t expect to sober up for months and months and
months. It’s a celebration. He’s just been buying girls in blue.’

CHAPTER FIVE

1

T
he
celebration banquet was all that Willoughby had promised it would be. It ended
at about half past three. Willoughby went back to his office, Jerry to his
rooms, and Barney resumed her exploration of London. Her brother Homer at the
moment was talking to Vera Upshaw outside Flannery and Martin’s book shop in
Sloane Square, where they had just met.

There
was nothing coincidental in their meeting. One sees in it something of the
inevitability which was such a feature of Greek tragedy. Sloane Square is not
far from Chelsea Square, and any guest of Willoughby’s at 31 Chelsea Square
would naturally go to Flannery and Martin when he wanted a book. Homer, who had
read and admired Vera’s
Morning’s At Seven,
was anxious to obtain its
successor, the recently published
Daffodil Days.
And as for Vera, the
flat she shared with her mother was just around the corner and she looked in on
Flannery and Martin a good deal to see if they had any copies of her brain
child. Sometimes she came in the morning, sometimes in the evening. Today she
had come in the afternoon, and she was still there when Homer reached journey’s
end.

The
gentlemanly young clerk who presided over the shop would gladly have seen her
leave. Charmed at the outset of their relations by her radiant beauty, he had
come to dread her visits. It seemed impossible, when she commented on the
absence of copies
of Daffodil Days,
to convince her that he was just a
Hey-you about the place and was not invited to join the discussion when Flannery
and his partner Martin were deciding what books to stock. Mere quibbling his
reasoning struck her as, and she mentioned this to him.

The
clerk was mopping his forehead, wondering what could have induced him to sign
on for his current post when there was such a brisk demand for strong young men
to clean streets, and Vera had turned to run her eye over the shelf where
belles-lettres of an older vintage were kept, to make sure that
Daffodil
Days
had not slipped in there by mistake, when the door leading into the
street opened, admitting a rush of warm air and something short, stout and
American which seemed at first sight to be all horn-rimmed spectacles. She gave
it no attention beyond a quick uninterested glance. Short stout Americans meant
nothing to her, whether spectacled or with 20-20 vision. Only when, addressing
the clerk, he uttered the astounding words ‘Have you a book called
Daffodil
Days
by Vera Upshaw?’ did she whip round, her lips parted, her eyes wide,
and her lovely body tingling as if some practical joker had run a powerful
instalment of electricity through it. It is doubtful if a girl had been so
thrilled since the one in the Indian Mutiny who heard the skirl of the bagpipes
at the siege of Cawnpore.