Vile Bodies

  “How could I help you? I’ve never written a book in my life.”

  “No, we thought you might give us some money.”

  “You thought that, did you?”

  “Yes, that’s what we thought…”

  Colonel Blount looked at him gravely for some time. Then he said, “I think that an admirable idea. I don’t see any reason at all why I shouldn’t. How much do you want?”

  “That’s really terribly good of you, sir… Well, you know, just enough to live on quietly for a bit. I hardly know…”

  “Well, would a thousand pounds be any help?”

  “Yes, it would indeed. We shall both be terribly grateful.”

  “Not at all, my dear boy. Not at all. What did you say your name was?”

  “Adam Symes.”

  Colonel Blount went to the table and wrote out a check. “There you are,” he said. “Now don’t go giving that away to another drunk major.”

  “Really, sir! I don’t know how to thank you. Nina…”

  “Not another word. Now I expect that you will want to be off to London again. We’ll send Mrs. Florin across to the Rectory and make the Rector drive you to the station. Useful having a neighbor with a motor car. They charge five pence on the buses from here to Aylesbury. Robbers.”

  It does not befall many young men to be given a thousand pounds by a complete stranger twice on successive evenings. Adam laughed aloud in the Rector’s car as they drove to the station. The Rector, who had been in the middle of writing a sermon and resented with daily increasing feeling Colonel Blount’s neighborly appropriation of his car and himself, kept his eyes fixed on the streaming windscreen, pretending not to notice. Adam laughed all the way to Aylesbury, sitting and holding his knees and shaking all over. The Rector could hardly bring himself to say good night when they parted in the station yard.

  There was half an hour to wait for a train and the leaking roof and wet railway lines had a sobering effect on Adam. He bought an evening paper. On the front page was an exquisitely funny photograph of Miss Runcible in Hawaiian costume tumbling down the steps of No. 10 Downing Street. The Government had fallen that afternoon, he read, being defeated on a motion rising from the answer to a question about the treatment of Miss Runcible by Customs House officers. It was generally held in Parliamentary circles that the deciding factor in this reverse had been the revolt of the Liberals and the Nonconformist members at the revelations of the life that was led at No. 10 Downing Street, during Sir James Brown’s tenancy. The Evening Mail had a leading article, which drew a fine analogy between Public and Domestic Purity, between sobriety in the family and in the State.

  There was another small paragraph which interested Adam.

  Tragedy in West End Hotel

  The death occurred early this morning at a private hotel in Dover Street of Miss Florence Ducane, described as being of independent means, following an accident in which Miss Ducane fell from a chandelier which she was attempting to mend. The inquest will be held tomorrow, which will be followed by the cremation at Golders Green. Miss Ducane, who was formerly connected with the stage, was well known in business circles.

  Which only showed, thought Adam, how much better Lottie Crump knew the business of avoiding undesirable publicity than Sir James Brown.

  When Adam reached London the rain had stopped, but there was a thin fog drifting in belts before a damp wind. The station was crowded with office workers hurrying with attaché cases and evening papers to catch their evening trains home, coughing and sneezing as they went. They still wore their poppies. Adam went to a telephonebox and rang up Nina. She had left a message for him that she was having cocktails at Margot Metroland’s house. He drove to Shepheard’s.

  “Lottie,” he said, “I’ve got a thousand pounds.”

  “Have you, now,” said Lottie indifferently. She lived on the assumption that everyone she knew always had several thousand pounds. It was to her as though he had said, “Lottie, I have a tall hat.”

  “Can you lend me some money till tomorrow till I cash the check?”

  “What a boy you are for borrowing. Just like your poor father. Here, you in the corner, lend Mr. What-d’you-call-him some money.”

  A tall Guardsman shook his retreating forehead and twirled his mustache.

  “No good coming to me, Lottie,” he said in a voice trained to command.

  “Mean hound,” said Lottie. “Where’s that American?”

  Judge Skimp, who, since his experiences that morning, had become profoundly Anglophile, produced two ten-pound notes. “I shall be only too proud and honored…” he said.

  “Good old Judge Thingummy,” said Lottie. “That’s the way.”

  Adam hurried out into the hall as another bottle of champagne popped festively in the parlor.

  “Doge, ring up the Daimler Hire Company and order a car in my name. Tell it to go round to Lady Metroland’s—Pastmaster House, Hill Street,” he said. Then he put on his hat and walked down Hay Hill, swinging an umbrella and laughing again, only more quietly, to himself.

  At Lady Metroland’s he kept on his coat and waited in the hall.

  “Will you please tell Miss Blount I’ve called for her? No, I won’t go up.”

  He looked at the hats on the table. Clearly there was quite a party. Two or three silk hats of people who had dressed early, the rest soft and black like his own. Then he began to dance again, jigging to himself in simple high spirits.

  In a minute Nina came down the broad Adam staircase.

  “Darling, why didn’t you come up? It’s so rude. Margot is longing to see you.”

  “I’m so sorry, Nina. I couldn’t face a party. I’m so excited.”

  “Why, what’s happened?”

  “Everything. I’ll tell you in the car.”

  “Car?”

  “Yes, it’ll be here in a minute. We’re going down to the country for dinner. I can’t tell you how clever I’ve been.”

  “But what have you done, darling? Do stop dancing about.”

  “Can’t stop. You’ve no idea how clever I am.”

  “Adam. Are you tight again?”

  “Look out of the window and see if you can see a Daimler waiting.”

  “Adam, what have you been doing? I will be told.”

  “Look,” said Adam, producing the check. “Whatcher think of that?” he added in Cockney.

  “My dear, a thousand pounds. Did papa give you that?”

  “I earned it,” said Adam. “Oh, I earned it. You should have seen the luncheon I ate and the jokes I read. I’m going to be married tomorrow. Oh, Nina, would Margot hate it if I sang in her hall?”

  “She’d simply loathe it, darling, and so should I. I’m going to take care of that check. You remember what happened the last time you were given a thousand pounds.”

  “That’s what your papa said.”

  “Did you tell him that?”

  “I told him everything—and he gave me a thousand pounds.”

  “… Poor Adam…” said Nina suddenly.

  “Why did you say that?”

  “I don’t know… I believe this is your car…”

  “Nina, why did you say ‘Poor Adam’?”

  “… Did I?… Oh, I don’t know… Oh, I do adore you so.”

  “I’m going to be married tomorrow. Are you?”

  “Yes, I expect so, dear.”

  The chauffeur got rather bored while they tried to decide where they would dine. At every place he suggested they gave a little wail of dismay. “But that’s sure to be full of awful people we know,” they said. Maidenhead, Thame, Brighton, he suggested. Finally they decided to go to Arundel.

  “It’ll be nearly nine before we get there,” the chauffeur said. “Now there’s a very nice hotel at Bray…”

  But they went to Arundel.

  “We’ll be married tomorrow,” said Adam in the car. “And we won’t ask anybody to the wedding at all. And we’ll go abroad at once, and just not come back till I’ve wri
tten all those books. Nina, isn’t it divine? Where shall we go?”

  “Anywhere you like, only rather warm, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t believe you really think we are going to be married, Nina, do you, or do you?”

  “I don’t know… it’s only that I don’t believe that really divine things like that ever do happen… I don’t know why… Oh, I do like you so much tonight. If only you knew how sweet you looked skipping about in Margot’s hall all by yourself. I’d been watching you for hours before I came down.”

  “I shall send the car back,” said Adam, as they drove through

  Pulborough. “We can go home by train.”

  “If there is a train.”

  “There’s bound to be,” said Adam. But this raised a question in both their minds that had been unobtrusively agitating them throughout the journey. Neither said any more on the subject, but there was a distinct air of constraint in the Daimler from Pulborough onwards.

  This question was settled when they reached the hotel at Arundel.

  “We want dinner,” said Adam, “and a room for the night.”

  “Darling, am I going to be seduced?”

  “I’m afraid you are. Do you mind terribly?”

  “Not as much as all that,” said Nina, and added in Cockney, “Charmed, I’m sure.”

  Everyone had finished dinner. They dined alone in a corner of the coffee room, while the other waiters laid the tables for breakfast, looking at them resentfully. It was the dreariest kind of English dinner. After dinner the lounge was awful; there were some golfers in dinner jackets playing bridge, and two old ladies. Adam and Nina went across the stable yard to the taproom and sat until closing time in a warm haze of tobacco smoke listening to the intermittent gossip of the townspeople. They sat hand-in-hand, unembarrassed; after the first minute no one noticed them. Just before closing time Adam stood a round of drinks. They said:

  “Good health, sir. Best respects, madam,” and the barman said, “Come along, please. Finish your drinks, please,” in a peculiar singsong tone.

  There was a clock chiming as they crossed the yard and a slightly drunk farmer trying to start up his car. Then they went up an oak staircase lined with blunderbusses and coaching prints to their room.

  They had no luggage (the chambermaid remarked on this next day to the young man who worked at the wireless shop, saying that that was the worst of being in a main-road hotel. You got all sorts).

  Adam undressed very quickly and got into bed; Nina more slowly arranging her clothes on the chair and fingering the ornaments on the chimneypiece with less than her usual self-possession. At last she put out the light.

  “Do you know,” she said, trembling slightly as she got into bed, “this is the first time this has happened to me?”

  “It’s great fun,” said Adam, “I promise you.”

  “I’m sure it is,” said Nina seriously, “I wasn’t saying anything against it. I was only saying that it hadn’t happened before… Oh, Adam…”

  “And you said that really divine things didn’t happen,” said Adam in the middle of the night.

  “I don’t think that this is at all divine,” said Nina. “It’s given me a pain. And—my dear, that reminds me. I’ve something terribly important to say to you in the morning.”

  “What?”

  “Not now, darling. Let’s go to sleep for a little, don’t you think?”

  Before Nina was properly awake Adam dressed and went out into the rain to get a shave. He came back bringing two toothbrushes and a bright red celluloid comb. Nina sat up in bed and combed her hair. She put Adam’s coat over her back.

  “My dear, you look exactly like La Vie Parisienne,” said Adam, turning round from brushing his teeth.

  Then she threw off the coat and jumped out of bed, and he told her that she looked like a fashion drawing without the clothes. Nina was rather pleased about that, but she said that it was cold and that she still had a pain, only not so bad as it was. Then she dressed and they went downstairs.

  Everyone else had had breakfast and the waiters were laying the tables for luncheon.

  “By the way,” said Adam. “You said there was something you wanted to say.”

  “Oh, yes, so there is. My dear, something quite awful.”

  “Do tell me.”

  “Well, it’s about that check papa gave you. I’m afraid it won’t help us as much as you thought.”

  “But, darling, it’s a thousand pounds, isn’t it?”

  “Just look at it, my sweet.” She took it out of her bag and handed it across the table.

  “I don’t see anything wrong with it,” said Adam.

  “Not the signature?”

  “Why, good lord, the old idiot’s signed it ‘Charlie Chaplin.’ ”

  “That’s what I mean, darling.”

  “But can’t we get him to alter it? He must be dotty. I’ll go down and see him again today.”

  “I shouldn’t do that, dear… don’t you see… Of course, he’s very old, and… I dare say you may have made things sound a little odd… don’t you think, dear, he must have thought you a little dotty?… I mean… perhaps… that check was a kind of joke.”

  “Well I’m damned… this really is a bore. When everything seemed to be going so well, too. When did you notice the signature, Nina?”

  “As soon as you showed it to me, at Margot’s. Only you looked so happy I didn’t like to say anything… You did look happy, you know, Adam, and so sweet. I think I really fell in love with you for the first time when I saw you dancing all alone in the hall.”

  “Well I’m damned,” said Adam again. “The old devil.”

  “Anyway, you’ve had some fun out of it, haven’t you… or haven’t you?”

  “Haven’t you?”

  “My dear, I never hated anything so much in my life… still, as long as you enjoyed it that’s something.”

  “I say, Nina,” said Adam after some time, “we shan’t be able to get married after all.”

  “No, I’m afraid not.”

  “It is a bore, isn’t it?”

  Later he said, “I expect that parson thought I was dotty too.”

  And later. “As a matter of fact, it’s rather a good joke, don’t you think?”

  “I think it’s divine.”

  In the train Nina said: “It’s awful to think that I shall probably never, as long as I live, see you dancing like that again all by yourself.”

  Six

  That evening Lady Metroland gave a party for Mrs. Melrose Ape. Adam found the telegram of invitation waiting for him on his return to Shepheard’s. (Lottie had already used the prepaid reply to do some betting with. Someone had given her a tip for the November Handicap and she wanted to “make her little flutter” before she forgot the name.) He also found an invitation to luncheon from Simon Balcairn.

  The food at Shepheard’s tends to be mostly game pie—quite black inside and full of beaks and shot and inexplicable vertebrae—so Adam was quite pleased to lunch with Simon Balcairn, though he knew there must be some slightly sinister motive behind this sudden hospitality.

  They lunched Chez Espinosa, the second most expensive restaurant in London; it was full of oilcloth and Lalique glass, and the sort of people who liked that sort of thing went there continually and said how awful it was.

  “I hope you don’t mind coming to this awful restaurant,” said Balcairn. “The truth is that I get meals free if I mention them occasionally in my page. Not drinks, unfortunately. Who’s here, Alphonse?” he asked the maître d’hôtel.

  Alphonse handed him the typewritten slip that was always kept for gossip writers.

  “H’m, yes. Quite a good list this morning, Alphonse. I’ll do what I can about it.”

  “Thank you, sir. A table for two? A cocktail?”

  “No, I don’t think I want a cocktail. I really haven’t time. Will you have one, Adam? They aren’t very good here.”

  “No, thanks,” said Adam.


  “Sure?” said Balcairn, already making for their table.

  When they were being helped to caviar he looked at the wine list.

  “The lager is rather good,” he said. “What would you like to drink?”

  “Whatever you’re having… I think some lager would be lovely.”

  “Two small bottles of lager, please… Are you sure you really like that better than anything?”

  “Yes, really, thank you.”

  Simon Balcairn looked about him gloomily, occasionally adding a new name to his list. (It is so depressing to be in a profession in which literally all conversation is “shop.”)

  Presently he said, with a deadly air of carelessness:

  “Margot Metroland’s got a party tonight, hasn’t she? Are you going?”

  “I think probably. I usually like Margot’s parties, don’t you?”

  “Yes… Adam, I’ll tell you a very odd thing. She hasn’t sent me an invitation to this one.”

  “I expect she will. I only got mine this morning.”

  “… Yes… who’s that woman just come in in the fur coat? I know her so well by sight.”

  “Isn’t it Lady Everyman?”

  “Yes, of course.” Another name was added to the list. Balcairn paused in utmost gloom and ate some salad. “The thing is… she told Agatha Runcible she wasn’t going to ask me.”

  “Why not?”

  “Apparently she’s in a rage about something I said about something she said about Miles.”

  “People do take things so seriously,” said Adam encouragingly.

  “It means ruin for me,” said Lord Balcairn. “Isn’t that Pamela Popham?”

  “I haven’t the least idea.”

  “I’m sure it is… I must look up the spelling in the stud book when I get back. I got into awful trouble about spelling the other day… Ruin… She’s asked Vanburgh.”

  “Well, he’s some sort of cousin, isn’t he?”

  “It’s so damned unfair. All my cousins are in lunatic asylums or else they live in the country and do indelicate things with wild animals… except my mamma, and that’s worse… They were furious at the office about Van getting that Downing Street ‘scoop.’ If I miss this party I may as well leave Fleet Street for good… I may as well put my head into a gas oven and have done with it… I’m sure if Margot knew how much it meant to me she wouldn’t mind my coming.”