Then the lights went low and she began to sing Niall’s songs.
They had written the words between them; the music, of course, was Niall’s. Some were in English, some in French. She had a low, rather husky voice that sometimes went off key, but it did not matter. There was so much warmth and expression to the voice, you did not mind. The songs, which were new to Celia, were not new to the people gathered at the tables. They began to hum, in accompaniment to Freada; softly at first, and then louder, as she swung into the tune, and smiled. Celia felt proud and happy, not because of Freada, whom she barely knew, but because the songs belonged to Niall, her brother. They were his possession, like the drawings that belonged to her. She found herself humming under her breath, like the rest of the people, and glancing at Pappy she saw that he was humming too. There were tears in his eyes as well, but this time the tears were not champagne. They were tears of pride for Niall, the stepson with the bad French blood…
Outside in the vestibule Niall waited for Maria, who was powdering her nose in the cloakroom. He had hoped they would be late enough to miss the cabaret, but they were still on time. He could hear Freada and the piano. She was guying the last line of the song, which always made a prick of irritation. Better that way, perhaps; he could not judge. And, anyway, who cared? Maria came out of the cloakroom.
“How do I look? All right?” she asked.
“I’ve seen you look worse,” he answered. “Must we really go inside?”
“But of course,” she said. “Listen, I hear your song.”
They went through the door and stood beside the entrance, watching Freada. The people were singing with her now, and some of them beat time upon the floor. A few heads turned in the direction of Niall and Maria, and Maria heard a murmur, a faint whisper of applause.
She smiled, stepping forward, not conscious that she did so; it was second nature to smile and move when she heard a movement of applause. Then she noticed that the heads were not turned to her at all, they were turned to Niall. People were smiling and pointing at Niall. Freada, turning from the piano, laughing, jerked her head to him, and the murmur from the people came insistent, loud.
“Le p’tit Niall… Le p’tit Niall…” somebody called, and Maria, alone, ignored, standing against the wall, saw Niall, bored and indifferent, walk across the floor to the piano and, pushing Freada off the seat, sit down and play. Everyone began to clap and laugh, Freada among them, and leaning against the piano she sang while Niall played.
Unnoticed, Maria threaded her way among the tables to the far one in the corner where Pappy and Celia sat. She began to apologize, in a low whisper, for being late. “Hush!” Pappy said impatiently. “Listen to Niall.” And Maria sat, her hands folded in her lap, twisting Niall’s ring on her right finger. She, alone among the audience, did not sing.
Later, when the cabaret was over and they were all sitting around the table having supper, Pappy and Freada deep in technicalities, Maria turned to Niall and said: “You looked awful. I felt quite ashamed. You were the only man in the room who was not dressed.”
“Why should I dress?” said Niall. “They would not mind if I wore a vest and hobnailed boots.”
“The thing is,” she said angrily, “you’ve got a swollen head. I thought it could never happen, but it has. They would not stand for it in London. You’d be a flop in London.”
She shook her head when the waiter offered her champagne.
“Iced water, please,” she said.
“You see my point,” asked Niall, “about a lighthouse or a barge?”
Maria would not answer. She turned her back on him.
“Did I write and tell you about Lord Wyndham’s son?” she said to Celia.
“Yes,” said Celia. “You said he was attractive.”
“He is. He likes me very much. Not married either.”
Out of the corner of her eye Celia saw the wasp-waisted professional dancer approach their table once again. She pushed back her chair in readiness. But the professional did not look at her at all. He bowed low to Maria.
Maria got up from the table, smiling. She floated away with him talking rapid French. For the first time since the cabaret finished the people at the other tables looked away from Niall, and watched Maria.
The earrings suit her, thought Celia sadly, they suit her better than they suit me. I wonder whether she will want me to give them to her.
Beside her, Pappy was talking excitedly to Freada.
“Proud of the children? Of course I’m proud of them,” he was saying. “They only bear out what I have always said. Showmanship is in the blood. I don’t care if it’s a milch cow or a stallion—breeding tells.”
Maria circled past their table in the arms of the professional. Looking over her shoulder, she put out her tongue at Niall.
15
The grandfather clock struck seven. Upstairs there was the sound of bathwater running. Charles must be in after all, and wet from his walk, taking a bath. It was ominous that he had gone straight upstairs and had not looked into the drawing room first on his return. This meant that he had not shaken off his mood. And we were still the parasites.
“I’m not looking forward to supper,” said Niall. “It’s going to be that affair of sitting round the table and nobody saying anything. Except Polly. And she will start one of her conversations: ‘Oh, Mummy, I must tell you what the children said when they were undressing.’ And it will go on and on.”
“It will break the silence,” said Celia. “Better for Polly to talk than one of us. And Charles never listens, anyway. He’s used to it, like a ticking clock.”
“I would not mind if the children said something funny, but they never do,” said Niall. “Perhaps what they said was funny originally, and then Polly squeezes the humor out of it.”
“You’re very hard on Polly,” said Celia. “She’s such a good sort. Really, I don’t know how this house would run without her.”
“If only we didn’t have to eat with her,” said Niall. “It brings out the worst in me. I want to pick my teeth and belch.”
“You do that, anyway,” said Maria. “And I agree about feeding with Polly, but what is her alternative? A tray? Where, and who carries it? And what is put on it? A leg off our cold chicken?”
“She has that, anyway, in the dining room,” said Niall.
“Yes,” said Maria, “but she does carve it off herself. It would be much more insulting if one cut it and sent it out to her somewhere on her plate, like the dog’s dinner. And, anyway, it all started in the war, when everyone had high tea at half-past six. People became community-minded.”
“I never did,” said Niall.
“You didn’t have to,” said Maria. “So typical of you to fire-watch on some old warehouse where nobody ever went.”
“It was very dangerous,” said Niall. “Things dropped all round me as I stood alone on that curious-shaped roof. Nobody will ever realize how terribly brave I was. Far braver than Charles, who was doing something with S.H.A.E.F. or whatever it was.”
“It wasn’t S.H.A.E.F.,” said Maria.
“They all sounded the same,” said Niall. “Like you and E.N.S.A. People got so used to uniforms and strings of letters that they swallowed anything. I remember telling a woman I was working very hard in S.H.I.T. and she believed me.”
Celia got up and began to pat the cushions, and tidy the papers. If she did not do it, nobody else would. And Charles hated an untidy room. Maria never seemed to notice, not at Farthings, anyway. Her own flat in London was always spotless, but perhaps that was because it was her own possession. And Farthings belonged to Charles.
“You know, Niall,” said Celia, “I believe it’s your lack of respect for tradition that has always made Charles a little wary of you.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” said Niall. “I have an immense respect for tradition.”
“Yes,” said Celia, “but a different sort. When you talk about tradition you think of Queen Elizabeth on horseba
ck making a speech at Greenwich, and then wondering whether to send for Essex, or whoever was her person at the time. When Charles speaks of tradition he means the world of today. He means citizenship, doing one’s duty, right versus wrong, what this country stands for, all those things.”
“How tedious,” said Niall.
“There you are,” said Celia. “That’s just the attitude that Charles detests. No wonder that he calls you a parasite.”
“It’s not that at all,” said Maria, getting up and looking into the mirror over the fireplace. “The whole thing is personal. It’s a secret grudge, deep inside Charles. I’ve always known it and pretended to myself it was not there. Since we are all being so frank this evening, let’s admit it.”
“Let’s admit what?” said Niall.
“Let’s admit that Charles has always been jealous of you,” said Maria. There was a long silence. The three of us had never faced up to making this admission before; not in so many words.
“Don’t let’s start playing the truth game. I hate it,” said Celia hastily. Maria was usually so reserved. If Maria’s reserve broke down anything might happen. The fat would be in the fire. And directly she thought of this she wondered what she meant. What fat and what fire? It was all too complicated. The day was getting out of hand.
“When did it start?” asked Niall.
“When did what start?”
“The jealousy,” said Niall.
Maria had pulled out the lipstick she kept hidden behind the candlestick on the mantelpiece, and was making up her mouth.
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “Very early on, I think—probably when I went back to the stage again, after Caroline was born. He put it down to you. He thought you influenced me.”
“No one has influenced you, ever,” said Niall, “and me least of all.”
“I know, but he didn’t understand that.”
“Did he ever say anything about it?” asked Celia.
“No. I just felt it. There was a kind of tension.”
“But surely,” objected Celia, “he must always have known it was bound to happen. You wanting to act, I mean. He can’t have expected you to settle down in the country like an ordinary person.”
“I think he did,” said Maria. “I think he got my character all wrong right from the start. I told you before, it was playing Mary Rose that did it. Mary Rose was a country girl. Always hiding up apple trees, and then disappearing on the island. She was a ghost, and Charles fell in love with the ghost.”
“What did you fall in love with?” asked Niall.
“As I was being Mary Rose, I fell in love with Simon,” said Maria. “And Charles was my idea of Simon. Quiet, dependable, devoted. Besides, at that particular time there was no one much around. And all those flowers.”
“Charles was not the only one to send you flowers,” said Celia. “People were doing it all the time. There was a rich American who sent you orchids twice a week. What was his name?”
“Hiram something,” said Maria. “He chartered a plane once to take me to Le Touquet and I was sick all over his coat. He was awfully nice about it.”
“Was the weekend a success?” asked Niall.
“No. I kept wondering what had happened to the coat. So difficult to clean. And when we flew back on the Sunday night he did not have it with him.”
“Perhaps he gave it to the waiter,” said Niall, “or to the valet de chambre. The valet de chambre, I should think. He would be able to smuggle it away with no questions asked.”
“Yes,” said Celia. “And being a valet de chambre he would know the right stuff to get to clean the coat. But anyway, a weekend at Le Touquet with Hiram was not the reason why Maria decided to marry Charles. It was not the flowers, nor was it the safe dependability. Nor was it because of Simon and Mary Rose. Maria could have had all those things without marrying. There must have been something very special about Charles, to induce her to throw up the theater for two years and go to live in the country.”
“Don’t goad the girl,” said Niall. “We know perfectly well why she did it. I don’t know why you’re both being so cagey about it.”
Maria put her powder-puff back into the vase where it had been hidden since last weekend.
“I’m not being cagey,” she said. “And if you mean I started Caroline before the wedding, it isn’t true. Charles was far too respectable for anything like that. Caroline was born nine months to the day after the marriage. I was just one of those fashionable brides. Getting married was very romantic. Like being unveiled.”
“Surely you felt a bit of a hypocrite?” said Celia.
“A hypocrite?” said Maria, turning round from the mirror, indignant. “Not in the slightest. Why on earth should I feel a hypocrite? I had never been married before.”
“No, but still…”
“It was one of the most exciting moments in my life. That, and then the wedding at St. Margaret’s, and going up the aisle on Pappy’s arm, white from head to foot. In fact, there was only one bad moment. My shoes were new. I’d ordered them in a fearful hurry, for some reason or other, and the price was on the back. When I knelt down to pray I suddenly remembered that, and I never heard the blessing. I kept thinking:‘Oh God! Charles’s mother will see the price on the back of my shoes.’ ”
“Would it have mattered if she had?” asked Niall.
“Yes. She would have known where I got them from and they cost only thirty bob. I could not have borne it.”
“Snob,” said Niall.
“No,” said Celia. “It isn’t snob at all. I see Maria’s point. Girls are awfully sensitive about things like that. I still am, and I’m no longer a girl, heaven knows. If I buy a dress at Harvey Nichols or somewhere I always cut out the label and leave the back plain. People might think then that the dress came from some special dressmaker, and not a store at all.”
“But who the hell cares?”
“We care. Women care. It’s our personal rather foolish pride. And, anyway, Maria has not told us yet why it was she married Charles.”
“She wanted to be the Hon. Mrs. Charles Wyndham,” said Niall. “And if you think there was ever any other reason you have never really known Maria, although Pappy bred the pair of you.”
He lit a cigarette and threw the blown match onto the mantelpiece beside Maria’s lipstick.
“Is it true?” said Celia, doubtfully. “Was that really the reason? I mean, truthfully. As we seem to be taking down our back hair?”
Maria’s eyes went blank and misty, as they invariably did on the few occasions in her life when she was trapped.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, it’s true. But I was in love with him as well.”
She looked shamefaced, apologetic, like a little girl caught out in a misdeed.
“After all,” she said, “Charles was very good-looking. He still is, in spite of getting rather fat.”
“Funny,” said Celia, “how one can be related to someone, and brought up with them, and yet one never tumbles to a thing like that. That you should want to be an Honorable. It does not really go with your character.”
“Nothing has ever gone with Maria’s character,” said Niall. “That’s what Charles has always found so difficult. She’s a chameleon. She changes her personality to suit her mood. That’s why she’s never bored. It must be lots of fun being somebody different every day. You and I, Celia, have to go on being the same people all the time, for the whole of our lives.”
“But the Honorable,” Celia persisted, not listening to Niall. “I mean, it’s not so very much after all. Had it been a viscount or an earl there would have been something to it.”
“It looked very nice written,” said Maria wistfully. “The Hon. Mrs. Charles Wyndham. I used to try it out on the back page of my engagement book. And, anyway, I did not know any earls or viscounts.”
“You could have waited,” said Celia. “In your position, they would have come along, sooner or later.”
“I did not want to wait,
” said Maria. “I wanted to marry Charles.”
And she thought of Charles and how he had looked in those days. Slim and straight, without the tendency to stoop that he had now, and without the hint of tummy. His hair fair and crisp. Not pepper-and-salt. The very English texture of skin, rather red, but youthfully red. The skin that went with riding well, and playing polo. And always twice a week in that stall in the fourth row, leaning forward, his hand on his knee, holding his chin, and coming round afterwards and tapping on the door of her dressing room, and going out to supper. Being driven in his car. An Alvis. It had red leather seats, and a gray rug that he used to wrap most carefully round her legs in case she should be cold.
The first time he took her out to supper he told her that his bedside book was Malory’s Morte d’Arthur.
“And why can’t they make a play out of that?” he had said to her. “Why can’t some author write the love story of Lancelot and Elaine? You could play Elaine.”
“Yes,” she had said, “I should love to play Elaine.”
And while he retold all the stories in Malory’s Morte d’Arthur—it took nearly the whole of supper—and she listened and nodded, she was thinking of the wedding she had been to the week before, not at St. Margaret’s, but at St. George’s, Hanover Square, and the choirboys wore red gowns under their white frilly surplices, and the church was filled with lilies. There was “The Voice that breathed O’er Eden” and “O Perfect Love.”