The Old Man and Me (15 page)

“Michael darling dolt, if you can’t tear yourself away from your dazzling American—for which I shan’t in the least blame you,” she trained her beautiful smile on me for a moment, “we’re going to have to dish you. We’ve long over-stayed.”

Although Michael almost visibly vibrated to her presence he made a tremendous effort at nonchalance. “Shall I go?” he asked me, making sure she heard him. “I’d like to stay.”

“Well, gee it is late and I’ve got to go and—umm—I’ve got something to do.” I pointed in the general direction of the staircase which would lead to my room and what I had to do, whatever the hell it might be. It was all rather un-thought-out but I did have this overwhelming desire to cool it somewhat off the scene awhile. I rose.

“Come along, Michael,” she teased him. “Don’t you know when you’ve been turned down?”

“Shut up, you goose!” he hurled at her.

“Angel!” She came forward, close, staring him straight in the face so that he could get the full impact of her beauty, and then turned and walked lightly away, her skirts grazing his trousers, and his eyes followed after her, utterly bemused.

“Well, goodbye,” he said to me rather sheepishly.

“Goodbye.”

“Oh, about the Point-to-Point—”

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“No. No, I suppose not. You know, I’m going to get away from that bitch someday.”

“Good luck. I feel for you, Michael. It’s a bit like that with me too.” I put out my hand.

“God,” he said shaking it fervently. “Then good luck to you too.”

And at last they were all gone.

C.D. and I met at tea-time. I was feeling—how you say?—splenetic. This he dug like a stoat for he was on his feet in a trice manoeuvring us into a corner.

“Well?” he demanded in greedy anticipation.

“Well,” I retorted peevishly throwing the word back into his lap. He accepted it with equanimity; seemed even encouraged by my mood. “Well, my dear, and what have we seen today?” he pursued with gay archness.

“We have seen the Past,” I snapped, “and it does not work. Actually, it’s been rawthaw end-of-tethering.”

C. D. smiled. “You’ve been listening at any rate. What else have you heard?”

“Lots and lots. Oh, such masses and
masses
, dear boy. The elative d, for instance—dazzling, delicious, devastating, divine: and the deflative b—beastly, bloody, boring, the
bottom
.”

“Go on.”

“Nothing could stop me. Everyone
minds
here. They mind so much, they mind all the time, they mind like anything. They mind the step and they mind the door, and they d’you mind if I just. And there they were, poor dears,
minding
like mad. Everyone minds; but no one understands. They cannot understand what could have possessed such an odd couple to behave so curiously; it’s all too hopeless, clueless, fatal, futile. The opposite from us Americans. We understand everything. We’re always understanding. It’s the thing we do. We can immediately see why the poor kid flipped after the raw deal she got. And what’s more, when you come right down to it, we understand
his
compulsions too.”

C. D. beamed in approval. “Quite true,” he said, “you’ve a proper recording machine in your ear, young lady. What more?”

“Proper,” I said and sighed. “Proper. Only that and nothing more. That’s it. That’s the key to the whole thing. A proper road, a proper car, and the car parked properly on the proper side of the road. Why they use it to mean everything—even improper—‘Yes, but were they having a proper affair?’ And finally,” I ended, panting to the finish with an ardour that was entirely heartfelt, “if they can be insulting, why can they not be insulted?”

C. D. shrugged with becoming modesty. “Thick skins,” he confessed, “our secret weapon. And so I take it you’ve been having a delicious time.”

“Devastating!”

“Beastly?”

“Bloody, boring, the bottom,” I sulked.

“My spies tell me you had a great success with young Ward Bell.”

“He thought I might save him from Lysander.”

“And shall you?”

“What marvellous names all the girls get to have. Lysander. I mean really.”

“Yes, the upper classes have a pretty habit of naming their children after the Greeks, only they’re often so stupid—and Lysander’s family has a particularly long tradition of lovely open faces and small closed minds—they fall into traps from which it is virtually impossible to extricate them. Imagine thinking Lysander a woman’s name.”

“Isn’t it?” I had to ask.

C. D. frowned. “Lysander was a Spartan Naval Commander. I remember once having collected the MacClarens’ wits long enough to point it out only to uncover the more devastating truth that what they actually meant to christen the child was Leander. You know, like Hero and Leander.”

“But wasn’t Leander the man?” I said puzzled. “I mean so Leander’s a man’s name too.”

“Precisely. One always counts on the MacClarens to be thorough in their bungling. So—shall you?”

“Shall I what?”

“Save him?”

“Oh, well, he’s awfully handsome and
all that
.” I said this slowly and looked worlds at C. D. while I was talking to see if he was receiving what I’d put into “all that” and if it was disconcerting him. He had and it was. “But,” I finished quoting him back at himself, “I don’t think my happiness lies in that direction.”

He looked at me in what I decided was gratitude. We locked looks for a moment.

He leaned forward. “About tonight—”

“Yes—?”

But old men dare not allow themselves the chance of being turned down. Old men have to be very very sure. C. D. paused and when he spoke again I could tell it was not at all what he had originally intended saying. Or rather, he went another route. “You’re going to find it all very boring again. I do wish I could think of something exciting or amusing for you to do,” said the old fraud, furrowing his brow.

“Yes,” I agreed, stretching my body a little and bending a glance in his direction intended to be subtly wanton. “I do wish you could.”

“What sort of thing would excite you and...” His eyes weren’t on me any more. They were on some exquisite little piece of china his chubby hands had picked up from a nearby table and I had the sensation that he was going to pop it into his pocket (with a conspiratorial wink at the passing footman); “—and what sort of thing would amuse you?”

“Why, to be with you,” I replied as though willing to make my feelings clear though a second later: “And to be taken away from all this,” I added mockingly, unable to resist making them unclear again. Old man or not, the proposition was going to have to come from him.

C. D. let his gaze drift towards the french windows. “Begun to rain. Looks like a storm too.”

“Dismal in and dismal out,” was my contribution.

“No after-dinner stroll then.”

“So where else can we go?” I was looking at him again, thinking: O.K., this far I was prepared to go and no further.

“Perhaps instead I can show you around—”

“Around—?”

He giggled. “—my room.”

At last. “That’s an idea. How shall we arrange it?”

“It’s a lovely room,” he said as though he hadn’t heard me. “Quite my favourite. It’s the room they always give me. I keep a few of my books and things here the year round. I had a hand in the decoration, selected the drawings for the walls. A Leonardo. I’ll be interested in your opinion of it. I’ll retire directly the men join the ladies,” he continued without a change of pace or tone, “to avoid getting caught up in a bridge game. Come up about three-quarters of an hour later. We’re less likely to arouse suspicions in the sequence, I think.” Then, on the back of an envelope (careful first to extract the letter, grrr) he drew a map of how to get to his room, which happened to be at the other end of the house from mine, and handed it to me.

“Cool, man, cool,” I said smiling sweetly at him as I took it. And I left him, his face a study.

By the time I was reassembled (or rather re non-assembled) in the drawing-room again I was almost too late for the pre-dinner drink. I had been all this time getting ready. I had been over every inch of my body with loving care. I was bathed and scented and everything touching me was fresh and clean. I’d filed my fingernails and clipped my toenails, scrubbed my ears and elbows devotedly. I had given up mud-packs and hormone creams at the age of thirteen but that evening I carefully washed my face first with very hot and then with icy cold water and had gone to the trouble to make a trip down to the kitchen for a cucumber in order to rub slices of it over my cheeks and forehead. In the bathtub I washed myself in some places three times and put in my diaphragm. All this, I kept telling myself, for
just in case
—for I had by no means made up my mind that
It
was to be tonight. In fact (as near as I could make out what I was up to), it seemed to me I was rather tending to favour delaying tactics. It was strange but true that the more time and the more trouble I took over my ablutions, the more convinced I became that the idea of going all the way with him tonight was a lousy one. After all. This old man. This old, old man. Revolting, wasn’t it? No, my mind was not ready for him. But oh boy, was my body prepared.

C. D. appeared in the drawing-room even later than I so we had a chance for only one small exchange before going in to dinner. However, it did much to make a shambles of the meal for me.

“You’re late,” I said and then I looked at him more closely, for although brushed and combed and freshly shaved there was about him an indefinable air of chaos, a curious rumpledness about his features. “What
have you
been doing?” I asked.

“Using you for imagery,” he replied blandly. “Are you shocked?”

I wasn’t right away. I didn’t even get it right away. And if he hadn’t pointed up the first part of the remark by adding the second part I probably wouldn’t have. I probably would have regarded it as merely cryptic, what-the-hell. But finally I got it all right. And when I did, I felt myself go bright pink. I stared hard at my drink. “No ice,” I mumbled shakily. “How quaint. Just like they’re always telling you in those Come to Britain books.”

“Yes it’s frightful, isn’t it?” he mocked me. “How
will
they keep all these people here overnight without ice?” And then he repeated, “Are you shocked?”

I waited for my answer. “Yes,” I admitted at last very low.

“Good, then I’m making contact.”

With that we went in to dinner.

The seating arrangements this time yielded me up the Colonel (a trial in any circumstances, a death sentence in this), his face ablaze with all its oral and muscular eccentricities. He beamed a grimace at me that flickered up one side of his jaw then turned and swooped over to the other side until the same thing happened. It changed sides several times before he spoke. Conversation went like this:

“I say, you haven’t been following the Blake-Sommers controversy in
The Times
?” he misjudged me badly enough to inquire.

“No I haven’t,” I replied.

“Don’t bother. Awful rubbish. Disgraceful business, the whole thing. Information entirely incorrect and misleading. I myself spoke with General Blake the other day and he was letting himself go unusually strong for him on what he said was the most unfair position Breckenfield had put Sommers into by insisting that Dillingham should be sacked.”

“Gee, really?”

“Absolute fact.”

“Amazing.”

“Isn’t it?” agreed the Colonel. “One’s sorely tempted to write in and clear matters up once and for all.”

“But you should, you must.” It was my turn to agree.

He sighed and it came out like the hiss of a steam engine. “Out of the question, of course.”

“But
why
?”

Grimace to me again. “Hmmm. I suppose one would if one was a Yank, wouldn’t one?”

I supposed so too, though what I was supposed to be supposing I couldn’t have guessed. Abruptly I ploughed into my food, letting the whole military matter drop. I really had more pressing things to think about. What was C. D. doing to me? What was he
doing
, the Great God Pan, so alternately repelling and compelling.

I glanced down the table to where C. D., lounged back in his chair idly toying with the stem of his glass, was holding his audience rapt. I noticed that his plate was already clean. He ate faster and more invisibly than anyone I’d ever seen. How did he get it all off the plate and into his maw in so short a time? It disappeared. In
there
. I could see the beginning of his tummy visible over the rim of the table. He caught my eye and twinkled. Pig, I thought violently. Smug pig. How dare you use me for imagery. And without my permission.

Conversation circled around me, a duplicate of the lunch-time one as the children were duplicates of the grown-ups.

“...and ran into Daphne Hyssop at Monte.”

“Still in hot pursuit of the Textile King?”

“The hottest. And talking with an Italian accent now. My dear. Most odd.”

“What a curious affectation. D’you think she really will get him away from the wife?”

“Certainly looked it. Pity. The wife’s an absolute darling. Very bright. Very good at word games.”

“Daphne, I should imagine, somewhat less so.”

“Especially with an Italian accent.”

“Still, it makes one listen.”

“Very hard indeed.”

“So what about him? What’s he like?”

“Nothing at all. Sly provincial; easily offended.”

“I simply
cannot
understand...”

Salad. Dessert. Cheese. And out.

I was drinking coffee in the drawing-room with the ladies. God, I prayed, will the gentlemen never join us? Finally they did. I watched in that dream-like knowing-in-advance-what-will-happen state, while C. D. went through the motions of slipping away pleading urgent unfinished correspondence. As he left I looked pointedly at my watch and then at him. Then I marked time. I refused a bridge game on grounds of ignorance. I played with the dogs, smiled at the children and agreed with everyone how shamefully the weather was behaving. I moved over to where Ann was sitting and listened to some more of her literary confessions: “Only on
one
side of the page,
un
lined, and in
very
large letters.” It took up what was left of my three-quarters of an hour. Bravely I rose. I bade goodnight to my hostess mumbling something about the rain making me sleepy. It sounded very feeble. I don’t care if she believes it or not, I told myself.