Chloe marr, p.25
Chloe Marr, page 25
‘Well, I’m sitting with him, I don’t know if you noticed.’
‘Oh, I thought that was your son,’ said Kitty.
Claude allowed himself a smile, and said, ‘My brother-in-law. They’ve just got engaged.’
‘Darling, how exciting! Who is he?’
‘Carol Higgs.’
Chloe said, ‘Oh!’ Everard said, ‘Now where have I seen that name somewhere?’ Kitty said, ‘In the programme, silly,’ and held it up to him. There was a moment’s silence.
‘Yes, I know what you’re all thinking, but it isn’t like that.’ He explained the translation of Uncle Ambrose into Golden Melody. Chloe and Kitty looked at each other, and laughed. ‘Dear Wil,’ said Kitty. ‘Isn’t he Heaven?’
‘That settles it,’ said Chloe. ‘I can’t wait to meet him. And it will make us six, which is just right.’
‘And I shall be sitting next to you’, thought Claude. ‘Don’t have any more, don’t spoil it.’
Barnaby had been wondering what to do, and had decided anyhow to leave it until the second interval. Since Chloe was in a sense his hostess, he ought to pay her his compliments. Having no reason for going behind, he would have to call upon her in her box. Should he take Jill with him or shouldn’t he? Would she like to come? Would Chloe think he was ashamed of her, or self-conscious about her, if he didn’t bring her? How silly to be bothered by this sort of thing. And how strange to realize suddenly that he had never been with Chloe in company since that first week-end.
‘Enjoying it?’ he said to Jill.
‘Very much, thank you.’
She spoke so earnestly that he said, ‘I didn’t write it, you know, and I didn’t even buy the tickets, so you can say anything you like about it.’
‘I expect you think I’m a very critical sort of person, but I’m not really, I mean I don’t want to be. And I’ve seen so little of the theatre that any play would seem exciting and rather wonderful. I really am enjoying it tremendously, so don’t tell me it’s very, very bad. Is it very, very bad?’
‘You know, I’m rather like you. I can enjoy any play just because it’s the theatre, and I don’t think about whether it’s good or bad until afterwards. I expect we shall both come to the conclusion at supper that it’s not a very distinguished piece of work, but who cares? I’m hungry, and we’re going to have supper together.’
‘I’m getting hungry too.’
‘Good. Now do say Yes or No, just as you feel. If you look up at the box on your left——’
‘The one you waved to?’
‘Oh, did you notice? Well, that’s a very old friend of mine——’
‘The lovely one?’
‘Yes. Miss Marr. She’s also an old friend of Wilson Kelly’s and that’s how I got the tickets from her. So I ought just to say thank you for them in the next interval. Would you like to come and meet her?’
‘Are they all your friends in the box?’
‘Oh, no. I think I know who they are, though. That’s Everard Hale, the oldish one, he’s an M.P. among other things, and that’s Kitty Kelso, I used to see her on the stage, and I rather think the other must be a man called Lancing, Claude Lancing, I’ve heard Chloe talk about him, but I wouldn’t really know. Well?’
‘You go,’ said Jill. ‘I’ll stay here. I shall be quite all right.’
As the first notes of Santa Lucia came through the matchboard and canvas of Mrs Langton’s country house, and over the heads of the matchboard and canvas people who lived there, Chloe put her hand on Everard’s arm and whispered, ‘That’s Claudia’; and when the singer revealed herself, and her very inmost self, to the audience, giving to each man and woman there all her youth and gay prettiness and joy of life, as a thank-offering for the happiness which had come to her, Everard put his hand for a moment on Chloe’s and whispered, ‘That’s love.’
There was a reception going on outside the Royal Box when Barnaby got there. The guests had overflowed from the box into the passage and from the passage into the little withdrawing room. ‘Good evening, Mr Rush,’ said Chloe with what he thought of as her ‘wicked’ smile, ‘I am so glad you could get here.’ As they shook hands, she whispered ‘Darling Barnaby’, and gave him an unfathomable look. Love, reproach, apology, bitterness, pleading—any or all of these, it was gone in a moment; leaving him with the feeling that if he could have translated it, he would have understood her at last. She introduced him to Everard, and added, ‘I was hoping you would bring your Miss Norval up to see us. She’s looking very pretty to-night. What is her name, ducky? You can’t go on hiding it.’
‘Morfrey,’ said Barnaby. ‘No secret.’
Chloe frowned and shook her head.
‘What’s it short for?’
‘Short for Jill Morfrey, or possibly Gillian Morfrey.’
‘Oh, I see.’
‘Any relation to Quentin Morfrey?’ asked Everard.
They both looked at him in surprise.
‘Daughter.’
‘Darling, who’s Quentin Morfrey?’
‘Quite a well-known character in the Midlands. Sporting parson. I’ve hunted from his house once or twice. This would be the youngest daughter, I suppose.’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you mean you know her, Everard?’
‘Well, we met once. I don’t suppose she would remember it. She was in her bath. Splashing.’
‘Oh, Barnaby, what a pity you didn’t bring her, so that Everard could see what she’s like when she’s not splashing. Let’s go into the box and look.’
As they glanced down at Jill, she pressed Everard’s arm; and, interpreting this correctly, he said, ‘It would be very delightful if you could both have supper with us. We have two or three other people coming. Do suggest it to Miss Morfrey, will you?’
‘This is damned awkward,’ thought Barnaby. ‘In fact, it’s impossible. You can’t take a person out, and then hand her over to strangers to entertain. Damit, I got the tickets free from Chloe, and now I’m to get the supper free from Hale, and I didn’t even pay for her taxi to the theatre. And what are we doing while they go behind and talk to Kelly?’
‘It’s very kind of you, but I think, perhaps, as we’ve booked a table——’
It sounded silly. Chloe said at once, ‘You can always cancel a table, darling.’
He looked at her, and held her eyes.
‘I know,’ he said, ‘I’ve often had to do it. Often.’ All the unhappiness of meetings stillborn, all the happiness of meetings consummated, swept through his mind. She seemed to know what he was thinking. She gave him that strange look again, and turned away, saying, ‘Well, we’ll wave to you, and you must bring Miss Morfrey over for a moment to see Everard again.’ She seemed to take it for granted that they would be at the Savoy too. It was impossible to explain to her why they wouldn’t be.
‘Yes, please tell her that I should like to renew an acquaintance begun so unconventionally,’ said Everard, as they followed out of the box.
‘I will indeed. She’s a little—not shy exactly, reserved. I don’t think she would want to be thrown into a party of strangers suddenly. But it was terribly nice of you to suggest it, and for my own sake I wish very much——’
‘Not at all. I understand entirely.’
‘She’s working at Prosser’s at the moment—where I am. You could always get into touch with her there.’
‘Ah, yes. I might do that. Thank you.’
So that’s Barnaby, he thought. Chloe might have done a good deal worse. Have they quarrelled; or has he come to the same realization as I have? He has meant more to her than ever I have meant—but how little that means . . .
Barnaby went back to Jill.
4
The play was over. The curtain had risen and fallen, risen and fallen. Claudia had taken a call with Five Star Judy, and the gentle, continuous wave of applause had surged suddenly into an enthusiasm which Judy acknowledged as a particular and not unexpected tribute. Subsequent shouts of ‘Lancing!’ from the front row of the dress circle were no more successful in undeceiving her than they were in bringing Claudia back. The critics were scrambling to get out; the pit and gallery were still clapping methodically, reluctant to believe that the evening’s entertainment was indeed over; the stalls and circles were feeling for their coats, and looking to see where their programmes had slipped to.
Then suddenly the curtain went up again, taking Wilson Kelly completely by surprise. In fact, he had his back to the audience, and his violin under his chin, some of the company having said (one supposes), ‘Do give us that lovely thing again, Mr Kelly, I was in my dressing-room, and couldn’t hear it properly.’ So, the play over, the audience, presumably, on its way out, Mr Kelly picked up his violin . . .
There was a sudden, shattering laugh from the front row of the dress circle.
Chapter Sixteen
1
Christmas was here before you knew it—or so everybody told everybody else.
As a special tribute to the season there was an entirely new Children’s Play at the Belvedere Theatre, with, luckily, all the old ingredients. Owing, it seemed, to a long-standing engagement which it had been impossible to break, Wilson Kelly had been forced to withdraw his successful romantic comedy, Golden Melody, while it was still playing to capacity. What was the Metropolis’ loss, however, was the provinces’ gain, for Mr Kelly was now making an extended tour of the more important towns with his full London company. In the spring he would return to London with a new comedy which he was writing in conjunction with a distinguished man of affairs, whose name for the present must remain a close secret.
This was what Mr Pope Ferrier told Our Theatrical Correspondent, and what Our Theatrical Correspondent received with an indifferent ‘Quite, old man—what’s yours again?’ and passed on to his readers. No doubt some of them believed it.
Claudia did not believe it. Whatever else in it might be true, it was not true to speak of the ‘full’ London company. The talented young actress who played Zella was staying in London. She had decided to leave the stage.
The choice between a Woman’s Love and Her Career, which has used up so many thousand feet of celluloid, had not exercised her long. Between her art on the one side and, on the other, the mending of her husband’s socks after dinner while he read his new play aloud to her, Claudia hesitated for a moment only; a moment’s waiting for the flash of inspiration which revealed her as the producer of that new play. She would be known far and wide as a Great Producer, and famous dramatists from all over the world would beg her to produce their plays, and she would say, ‘I’m sorry, but I only produce my husband’s plays.’ Well, she might make an exception for Shaw, if he wrote anything as good as St Joan again, but he was probably getting too old for that. ‘Produced by Claudia Lancing’; and, of course, the gossip writers would remind people that she was really Mrs Carol Higgs, and only produced her husband’s plays. What fun it would be!
And, if it hadn’t been for Chloe, she would still be at the Academy, having tea with Herbert Potter! (She might give Herbert a very small part in Carol’s next play.) Darling Chloe! Darling Carol!
On Sunday Carol took her to the tall house in Portman Square, where he lived with The Aunts.
There were four of them. Aunt Harry and Aunt Jo were twins. Aunt Jo was the elder by five minutes, but for sixty-five years Aunt Harry had disputed this; and since no third party was now living who had been within sight or sound of their arrival, and since the first-comer had long discarded whatever sign of priority had been affixed to her at the time, it was difficult for Aunt Jo to say more in reply than, ‘Now, Harry, you know that’s not true.’ Aunt Harry’s original theory had been that the doctor had found her under the first gooseberry bush he had come to, and had put her in his bag, and had then found Aunt Jo a few minutes later under another bush. So naturally when he came to the house and opened the bag, Aunt Jo was on top and came out first, and everybody supposed that she was the elder. It seemed a logical explanation of the way these mistakes arise, and there were moments when Aunt Jo was shaken. Later, when the facts of life had seeped through to them, Aunt Harry shifted her ground. With a lack of logic equally unanswerable, she claimed that the monthly nurse had risen up in the dead of night and changed the ribbons which identified them. ‘Harry, you know that’s not true,’ Jo had said weakly, and Harry had answered, ‘How do I know? Everybody knows that nurses are always being bribed to change babies. Because of Succeeding to Estates. Why, you’ve only got to look at us to see that I’m much, much older.’—‘You mean fatter,’ said Jo; ‘and anyhow, five minutes couldn’t make all that difference.’ Harry said darkly that it wasn’t just the five minutes, it was Everything.
They were now seventy. Aunt Harry’s conviction that she was the elder was no less assured; but there were times when the truth presented itself to her in a new form: when it was she who had always been recognized as the elder, and Jo who had put about this ridiculous story of babies changed at birth. This left Aunt Jo more shaken than ever. She felt that she was being robbed of something, but didn’t know what. In fact, seniority mattered little. They ran the house together: Aunt Harry, as the more masterful, controlling and dismissing the servants; Jo, as the more methodical, controlling and balancing the accounts. When frontier skirmishes threatened, they appealed to Aunt Amy.
They all loved Aunt Amy, for she had been the pretty one. There had been a day, and none of them could ever forget it, her 21st birthday, when a young gentleman in the Diplomatic Service had seemed to be on the edge of proposing for her hand. He had been put next to her at the family dinner-party that night, and the rest of them had made a point of chattering eagerly among themselves and away from the about-to-be-happy pair, leaving the lovers isolated in a sea of talk, to murmur unheard whatever it is which lovers say when they are alone. Suddenly one of those strange unconcerted silences stilled the family chatter . . . and out of the void rang the high, clear voice of Amy.
‘Tell me, Mr Sowerbutt,’ it said in bell-like tones, ‘do you believe in the Immaculate Conception?’
Mr Sowerbutt lost all his diplomacy, and turned bright scarlet. Amy looked at him in surprise, looked at the horrified faces all round her, and went as white as her napkin. The family hurried back into a vociferation of chatter, in its eagerness to pretend that there had never been a silence, that the awful words had never been said. Harry on Mr Sowerbutt’s left asked him if he had ever done any diplomacy in Broadstairs, insisted loudly that there was no place like Broadstairs for diplomacy. A Mr Stenning on Amy’s right stammered to her of a curious affair he had read about the other day, really most bewildering, but perhaps he should explain first that he was in the wholesale cloth business. As soon as it was decent, the ladies ascended to the drawing-room, Amy, at a sign from her mother, continuing up the staircase to bed. In the dining-room, Mr Sowerbutt was accorded the privileges of an invalid, entitled to have all the vintage port which he wanted, and not to be asked any difficult questions.
It was never properly explained to the Head of the Family: Grandfather Higgs, as we must call him. As subjects for con-versation, Sex and Religion were equally shocking to Grandfather Higgs. This appalling and blasphemous combination of the two, introduced at a dinner-table by a young woman, who should have no conception— that is to say, no understanding of what—of such things —well, he simply could not conceive—that is, understand how a daughter of his—did she realize that she was practically asking a guest at his house, in the most unladylike way conceive—con—imaginable, asking him if he were a Christian?
‘I wasn’t, Papa,’ sobbed Amy. ‘It doesn’t mean that at all.’
‘Doesn’t mean what?’
‘D-doesn’t mean what you think it means.’
‘And what, pray, do you think that I think it means?’
This might have gone on for a long time, had not Grandmother Higgs taken her husband on one side, and whispered in his ear.
‘Who said so?’ growled Grandfather Higgs resentfully.
‘Amy says she read it in a book, a religious book which Mr Manley gave her for her birthday. After all, dear, he did christen and confirm her, he wouldn’t choose an unpleasant book—she just happened to glance at it that afternoon, and was so surprised, and couldn’t help wondering if everybody else knew——’
‘My point, Emily, is simply this. Here is something, we need not go into details, which everybody believes. Why insult——’
‘They don’t!’ cried Amy. ‘I don’t!’
‘You don’t?’ said Grandfather Higgs, aghast. ‘Do you mean to tell me that a daughter of mine——’
‘Romish doctrine,’ warned Grandmother Higgs behind her hand.
‘Just what I was saying,’ said Grandfather Higgs alertly. ‘Either this young man is a Roman Catholic, or he isn’t. I suppose you will grant me that?’
‘Yes, dear,’ said Emily.
‘Very well. If he is, then it is an insult to ask him if he believes what all Catholics believe. If he isn’t, then it’s an insult to suggest that he believes what no Protestant believes. In either case an insult.’ He clutched his beard in his hand and summed the matter up. ‘A blasphemous insult, with a nasty savour of sex about it.’
That was the end of Aunt Amy’s romance. She should have consoled herself with religion, but somehow failed to do this; perhaps she felt that it was responsible for enough already. From that day she withdrew into herself. She was not unhappy, for she was now an object of interest, and that has never made a woman unhappy. Her parents watched her with misgiving, her sisters waited in half-admiring, half-fearful expectation, all wondering ‘what Amy would say next’. She found it easier to say nothing. When the others talked, she would smile mysteriously to herself, as Mona Lisa smiled . . .
