The Parasites

  Scarcely had he closed his eyes than there came a cautious tap on his door. It was Freada.

  “I can’t find my clothes,” she said. “I’ve got an enormous bedroom like something at Versailles, but not a sign of any paper parcels, or the postman’s bag. Dare I ring?”

  “Yes,” said Niall. “But not in here. You’re not supposed to come into my room.”

  “That’s all right,” said Freada. “They all think I’m your mother. I’m Pappy’s divorced wife. It’s terribly confusing, but it serves.”

  “I think it’s rather shocking,” said Niall. “Why must you be anything?”

  “These people like a tag for everything,” said Freada. “Be a lamb and go down to look for the postman’s bag. It must be somewhere. I want to have a bath. I have an amazing bathroom, with a step beside the bath. And there are prints by Marcus Stone all round the room. True emblems of the Victorian age. I love this sort of house.”

  Niall did not have the courage to ring the bell. Nor to question the servants. He finally discovered the postman’s bag in the downstairs cloakroom, standing discreetly beside several bags of golf clubs.

  As he carried it upstairs Lord Wyndham, dressed for dinner, and looking at his watch, came out upon the landing.

  “Dinner in fifteen minutes,” he muttered. “You have exactly fifteen minutes in which to change. What do you want to do with that sack?”

  “It has something in it,” said Niall. “It’s rather precious.”

  “Ferrets, did you say?” snapped Lord Wyndham. “We never allow ferrets in the house. Ring for Vaughan. Vaughan will take them.”

  “No, sir,” said Niall, “precious. Something rather precious belonging to—my mother.” He bowed his way backwards along the passage. Lord Wyndham stared after him. “Extraordinary youth!” he muttered. “Composer… Paris. All alike.” He hurried down the stairs to compare his watch with the clocks below.

  Freada’s bathroom was full of steam. She was standing up in the bath singing loudly, soaping herself all over. She uttered a cry of triumph at the sight of the postman’s bag.

  “Good for you,” she said. “Hang it up on the door, pet, will you? The steam will take out the creases. I found the paper parcels. They had all been put in one drawer at the bottom of the wardrobe.”

  “You’d better buck up,” said Niall. “We’ve only a quarter of an hour left before dinner.”

  “I’m reveling in this soap,” said Freada. “It’s brown Windsor. A good, old-fashioned brand. I shall take it back with me. They’ll never miss it. Give my back a scrub, angel, between the shoulder blades.”

  Niall attacked her with her battered loofah, and she turned on the hot and cold taps together so that the water gushed like fountains.

  “Let’s have our money’s worth of water,” said Freada. “I know when we get back to Paris we shall find that damn tap has died on us. The concierge will never think of seeing to it.”

  “There, will that do for you?” said Niall, shaking his cuffs. “I must go and change, I shall be terribly late.”

  He went back into Freada’s bedroom, wiping his eyes because of the steam. The running water had prevented them both from hearing the tap on the door. Lady Wyndham, in black velvet, stood on the threshold.

  “I beg your pardon,” she said. “I understood from my maid that there was some misunderstanding about your—your mother’s luggage.”

  “It’s all right,” swallowed Niall. “I found it.”

  “Hoi!” shouted Freada from the bath. “Bring me my towel, baby, from the chair, before you go. I’ve half a mind to pinch that too. The Wyndhams must have towels galore.”

  Not a muscle moved on the face of Lady Wyndham. But there was a strange, baffled look at the back of her eyes.

  “Then your mother has everything she wants?” said Lady Wyndham.

  “Yes,” said Niall.

  “In that case I’ll leave you both to dress,” said Lady Wyndham. “Your room, as I think you know, is on the other corridor.”

  She moved away, majestic, forbidding, just as Freada, stark and dripping, pattered with wet feet into the bedroom.

  None of the Delaneys were on time for dinner. Even Maria, who should have known better, floated downstairs some ten minutes after the gong had sounded. Her excuse was a new dress from her trousseau, that fastened in some curious fashion, from the back. And Charles, she said, had clumsy hands and could not hook her up. Niall felt this story to be fabrication. Had he been in Charles’s place, Maria would never have been hooked at all. Nor would they have dined…

  Pappy, with heightened color and black tie a trifle crooked, betrayed the fact, to his immediate family, that the sustenance between tea and dinner had not proved sufficient to carry him through, and he had been forced to have access to his flask. His smile was broad and tolerant. Celia watched him like a young mother uncertain of the behavior of her child. The fact that she had forgotten to pack her evening shoes did not worry her. Her bedroom slippers were mules and must suffice. As long as Pappy behaved himself nothing mattered.

  Freada made her entry last. Not with intention, because she was without vanity of any sort, but because the winding of the tulle about her hair had taken time. The effect was a little startling, and not what she had intended. It was like the flight into Egypt by an indifferent primitive. Lord Wyndham snapped his watch as she arrived.

  “Twenty-three and a half minutes after eight,” he muttered.

  The party filed into the dining room in silence, and Freada, who always lit a cigarette with her soup, lacked the courage to do so for the first time in her life.

  It was Pappy’s warm, genial voice, always more Irish in intonation at this hour of the evening than at any other time, which broke in above the icy trickle of conversation soon after the fish was served and the champagne had been poured into the glasses.

  “I’m sorry to distress you, my dear fellow,” he called down the table to his host, “but I have a pronouncement to make. The fact of the matter is your champagne is corked.”

  There was instant silence.

  “Corked? Corked?” said Lord Wyndham. “It should not be corked. It has no business to be corked.” The butler hurried to his side in consternation. “Never touch the stuff myself,” said Lord Wyndham. “My doctor won’t allow it. Who else says the champagne is corked? Charles? What is wrong with the champagne? We must not have it corked.”

  Everyone tasted the champagne. No one knew what to say. To agree with Pappy seemed impolite to Lord Wyndham. To disagree made Pappy seem a cad. Fresh bottles were brought. Fresh glasses handed round. We waited in agony while Pappy tasted his.

  “I’d say this was corked too,” he said, his head a little on one side. “It must be a dud case. You must wire your wine merchant on Monday morning. He has no business to palm you off with corked champagne.”

  “Take it away,” snapped Lord Wyndham to his butler. “We’ll drink hock.” The glasses were all removed for the second time.

  Celia gazed steadfastly at her plate. Niall concentrated upon the silver candlesticks. And Maria, the bride, forgot about being the Hon. Mrs. Charles Wyndham, and relapsed once more into her role of Mary Rose. She sat listening to her voices…

  “I think a little music would be very soothing,” said Lady Wyndham after dinner, a note of real sincerity creeping into her voice, and Niall, fortified by hock, escaped to the piano at the far end of the drawing room. And now, he thought, it really does not matter very much what happens. I can do what I like, play what I like, nobody cares, nobody wants to listen, they all want to forget the agony of dinner. This is really where I come into my own, because my sort of music is like a drug to sap the senses, and old Lord Wyndham with his clicking watch can beat time if he cares to, it will take away the memory of the corked champagne. Lady Wyndham can shut her eyes and think of tomorrow’s program. Pappy can go to sleep. Freada can kick her shoes off under the sofa. Celia can relax. The other people can dance or not as they damn well please, a
nd Maria can hear the songs I write for her that she will never sing.

  It was no longer the stiff drawing room at Coldhammer, but any piano in any room where he might be alone. He went on playing, and there was no sound but the sound of Niall’s music, which was dance music different from any other. There was something savage about it and something sweet, it was partly foreign and partly sad, and whether you liked it or not, thought Maria, you wanted to dance; you wanted to dance more than anything in the world.

  She leaned against the piano watching him, and she was not the Hon. Mrs. Charles Wyndham or Mary Rose or any other character she had thought out on the spur of the moment, she was Maria, and Niall knew this as he played, and he laughed because they were together now and he was happy.

  Celia looked at them both, and then at Pappy, who had fallen asleep in his chair, and suddenly she heard a voice beside her say softly, and with infinite regard: “I would give everything in the world to possess that gift. How lucky he is. He will never know how lucky.” It was Charles. And he was staring across the long drawing room at Niall and Maria.

  It was close on midnight when we all dispersed to bed. The music had done what the hostess had demanded. Everyone was soothed, except the player. He alone would not sleep with deep content.

  “Come and see my room,” said Maria, coming out onto the corridor in her nightgown, as he was passing by the door on the way to the bathroom. “It’s paneled. It has a carved ceiling.” She took his hand and pulled him inside the room.

  “It’s lovely, isn’t it?” she said. “Look at that molding over the fireplace.” Niall looked. He cared nothing about molding.

  “Are you happy?” he said.

  “Madly,” said Maria. She tied a blue ribbon round her hair. “I’m going to have a baby,” she said. “You’re the first person I’ve told. Except Charles, of course.”

  “Are you sure?” said Niall. “It’s a bit soon, isn’t it? You’ve only been married a month.”

  “It must have happened bang off at once, in Scotland,” said Maria. “It sometimes does, you know. It’s smart, isn’t it? Like royalty.”

  “Why royalty?” said Niall. “Why not a young cat with kittens?”

  “I think it’s like royalty,” said Maria.

  She climbed into bed and patted the pillows.

  “Does it make you feel any different?” asked Niall.

  “No, not really. A bit sick, that’s all,” said Maria. “And I have funny little blue veins all over my top. Look.”

  She shook her nightdress off her shoulders, and he saw what she meant. Pale blue veins stood out clearly on her small white breasts.

  “How queer,” said Niall. “I wonder if that always happens.”

  “I don’t know,” said Maria. “It rather spoils them, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes, I think it does,” said Niall.

  Just then Charles came into the room from his dressing room. He stood staring, while Maria pulled her nightdress up again with unconcern.

  “Niall was just saying good night,” said Maria.

  “So I see,” said Charles.

  “Good night,” said Niall. He went out of the room, shutting the door behind him.

  He felt very wide awake and very hungry, but it would be simpler to eat the furniture in his room than to creep downstairs and seek out the mysteries of the Coldhammer larders. It was always possible, of course, that Freada, knowing his habits, had secreted the rolls from dinner in her evening bag, and had them hidden at the moment under her pillow. Niall turned along the corridor towards Freada’s room, but at the top of the staircase he found his way barred by Lady Wyndham. More formidable than ever in a quilted dressing gown, and gray with fatigue, she was in consultation with two housemaids who carried cloths and pails.

  “Your mother left the taps running in the bathroom,” she said to Niall. “The water has overflowed, of course, and seeped down into the library below.”

  “I’m terribly sorry,” said Niall. “How very careless of her. Is there anything I can do?”

  “Nothing,” said Lady Wyndham, “nothing at all. We have done what we can, for the moment. The men must see to it in the morning.” She disappeared towards her own apartments, followed by the housemaids.

  “At least one thing is certain,” thought Niall, as he crept to Freada’s door, “and that is that none of the Delaneys will be asked again. Except Maria. Maria will go on coming to Coldhammer week after week, month after month, until she dies, a dowager, in that bed.”

  He did not knock on Freada’s door. He went and felt under the pillow. Yes, she had remembered. There were two rolls there and a large banana. He began to unpeal the banana, silently, in the darkness.

  “You know what you’ve done?” he said to Freada.

  But she was nearly asleep. She yawned and turned her back.

  “I sopped up most of it with my evening dress,” she said. “I gave the tulle to the housemaid. She was pleased.”

  Niall finished his banana.

  “Freada.”

  “What?”

  “Does it hurt very much to have a baby?”

  “It depends upon the hips,” she murmured, heavy with sleep. “They must be wide.”

  Niall threw the banana skin under the bed, and composed himself for sleep. But sleep eluded him. He kept wondering about Maria’s hips.

  At three in the morning a crash in the corridor brought him to the door. Pappy could not sleep either. But not for the same reason. Disturbed by Lord Wyndham’s staircase clock, he had tried to stop it, forcing back the hands, and the pane of glass lay shattered at his feet.

  17

  The nurse had left everything prepared. There was nothing Maria had to do or to find, all was put ready for her. There were four lots of napkins ready folded on the towel-horse before the fire, the Harrington squares inside the turkey towel, and new pins to go with each. The feeds were mixed ready in the bottles, and the only thing to be done, said the nurse, was to stand the bottles in hot water for a few minutes, and they would reach the required heat. If Caroline was restless during the afternoon sleep, then she should be allowed a little drop of water in another smaller bottle. But she would not be restless. She always slept. At five o’clock she could lie awake and kick for half an hour or so, she always enjoyed this, it would be good for her limbs. “And I will try to be back soon after ten,” said the nurse. “It’s just a matter of getting onto that bus, and whether I can see my mother off safely on the train.”

  And she had gone. Out of reach, out of sight, the heartless, damnable woman, just because she had to see her wretched mother who had been ill, and Maria was left with Caroline for the first time alone.

  Charles was away. It would happen that Charles was away. There was some idiotic dinner near Coldhammer that he had to attend which Maria was certain could not be of the slightest importance; but Charles had firm principles about these things, a promise was a promise, he must never let people down. And he had gone off quite early in the morning in the car. Celia, who should have been available, also begged to be excused.

  “I can’t come, Maria,” she said on the telephone. “I have an appointment that I must keep. Besides, Pappy isn’t very well.”

  “How can you keep an appointment if Pappy isn’t well?” protested Maria.

  “Because it’s quite handy,” said Celia. “It’s only a matter of taking a taxi to Bloomsbury. But to come out to you at Richmond would take the entire day.”

  Maria rang off, in a temper. It was really very selfish of Celia. If only the nurse had given her longer warning, she could have wired to Truda. Truda could have come from the little cottage where she lived now in retirement at Mill Hill, and spent the day. The only thing was that Truda was so crippled with rheumatism, she might have made an excuse as well. Everybody made excuses. Nobody would put themselves out to help Maria. She looked out of her bedroom window and saw with relief that there was no movement within the white pram. The pram was motionless. With any luck the pram w
ould remain motionless until after lunch.

  Maria set her hair in pins, and looked at the new photographs. Dorothy Wilding had really done them proud. Charles looked a little stiff, and his jaw seemed heavier than it was in reality, but they were the best of herself for a long while, and with Caroline in her arms looking up at her and smiling, the whole effect was really very good. “The Hon. Mrs. Charles Wyndham at home. Mrs. Wyndham was, before her marriage last year, the well-known actress, Maria Delaney.” Why was? Why put her in the past tense? Why insinuate that Maria Delaney did not exist anymore? It came as quite a shock to her when she read the lines in the Tatler. She had shown them to Charles with irritation.

  “Look at this,” she said. “Anyone would think that I had given up the stage.”

  “Haven’t you?” he said, after a moment or two.

  She stared back at him, puzzled.

  “Why, what do you mean?” she said.

  He was tidying his desk at the time, putting his pens straight and his letters.

  “Nothing,” he said. “It does not matter.” He went on straightening things, rummaging in pigeonholes.

  “Of course I couldn’t act when I was having a baby,” said Maria, “but people send me plays all the time. People are always ringing up. Surely you didn’t think…” She stopped, because she realized suddenly that she did not know what Charles did think. She had never asked him. It had not occurred to her. Nor had it seemed important.

  “The old man is getting rather frail,” said Charles. “By rights we ought to be more often down at Coldhammer. I’m not entirely happy about being here at Richmond. There’s too much to do down there.”

  Too much to do… That was the agony of Coldhammer. There was nothing to do. Nothing, that was to say, for Maria. It was all right for Charles. It was his home, it was his life, he never seemed to have a moment free when he was there.

  “I thought you loved this house,” said Maria.

  “I do,” said Charles. “I love it because I love you, and it’s the first home we’ve had together, and Caroline was born here, but I think we ought to face up to the fact that it’s temporary. One of these days my job will be looking after Coldhammer. And you will have to help me.”