“I was thinking of a bedroom only.”
“This has a very nice little sitting-room that goes with it. I’m sure you will find it more quiet.”
They reached the floor; doors were thrown open on rooms which in all points proclaimed costliness. Guy remembered why he had come and the laws of propriety which govern hotels; a sitting-room constituted a chaperon.
“Yes,” he said, “I think these will do very nicely.”
When he was left alone, he asked on the telephone for Mrs. Troy.
“Guy? Guy. Where are you?”
“Here in the hotel.”
“Darling, how beastly of you not to let me know.”
“But I am letting you know now. I’ve only this minute arrived.”
“I mean let me know in advance. Are you here for a lovely long time?”
“Two days.”
“How beastly.”
“When am I going to see you?”
“Well, it’s rather difficult. You should have let me know. I’ve got to go out almost at once. Come now. Number 650.”
It was on his floor, not a dozen rooms away, round two corners. The doors all stood ajar.
“Come in, I’m just finishing my face.”
He passed through the sitting-room—also a chaperon? he wondered. The bedroom door was open; the bed unmade; clothes and towels and newspapers all over the place. Virginia sat at a dressing-table covered with powder and wads of cotton wool and crumpled paper napkins. She was staring intently in the glass doing something to her eye. Tommy Blackhouse came unconcernedly from the bathroom.
“Hullo, Guy,” he said. “Didn’t know you were in London.”
“Make a drink for us all,” Virginia told him. “I’ll be with you in a second.”
Guy and Tommy went into the sitting-room where Tommy began peeling a lemon and shoveling ice into a cocktail-shaker.
“They fixed you up all right?”
“Yes. I’m most grateful to you.”
“No trouble at all. By the way, better not say anything to Virginia”—Guy noticed that he had shut the bedroom door behind him—“about our having met at Bellamy’s. I told her I came straight from a conference, but as you know I stopped on the way. She’s never jealous of other women, but she does hate Bellamy’s. Once, while we were married, she said: ‘Bellamy’s. I’d like to burn the place down.’ Meant it, too, bless her. Here for long?”
“Two nights.”
“I go back to Aldershot tomorrow. I ran into a brigadier of yours the other day at the War Office; they’re scared stiff of him there. Call him ‘the one-eyed monster.’ Is he a bit cracked?”
“No.”
“I didn’t think so either. They all say he’s stark crazy at the War Office.”
Soon from the disorderly slum of her bedroom Virginia emerged spruce as a Halberdier.
“I hope you haven’t made them too strong, Tommy. You know how I hate strong cocktails. Guy, your mustache.”
“Don’t you like it?”
“It’s perfectly awful.”
“I must say,” said Tommy, “it took me aback rather.”
“It’s greatly admired by the Halberdiers. Is this any better?” He inserted the monocle.
“I think it is,” said Virginia. “It was just plain common before. Now it’s comic.”
“I thought that, taken together, they achieved a military effect.”
“There you’re wrong,” said Tommy. “You must accept my opinion on a point of that kind.”
“Not attractive to women?”
“No,” said Virginia. “Not to nice women.”
“Damn.”
“We ought to be going,” said Tommy. “Drink up.”
“Oh dear,” said Virginia. “What a short meeting. Am I going to see you again? I shall be free of this burden tomorrow. Couldn’t we do something in the evening?”
“Not before?”
“How can I, darling, with this lout around? Tomorrow evening.”
They were gone.
Guy returned to Bellamy’s as though to the Southsand Yacht Club. He washed and gazed in the glass over the basin as steadfastly as Virginia had done in hers. The moustache was fair, inclined to ginger, much lighter than the hair of his head. It was strictly symmetrical, sweeping up from a neat central parting, curled from the lip, cut sharp and slightly oblique from the corners of his mouth, ending in firm points. He put up his monocle. How, he asked himself, would he regard another man so decorated? He had seen such mustaches before and such monocles on the faces of clandestine homosexuals, on touts with accents to hide, on Americans trying to look European. True, he had also seen them in the Halberdier mess, but on faces innocent of all guile, quite beyond suspicion. After all, he reflected, his whole uniform was a disguise, his whole new calling a masquerade.
Ian Kilbannock, an arch-impostor in his Air Force dress, came up behind him and said: “I say, are you doing anything this evening? I’m trying to get some people in for cocktails. Do come.”
“I might. Why?”
“Sucking up to my air marshal. He likes to meet people.”
“Well, I’m not much of a catch.”
“He won’t know that. He just likes meeting people. I’d be awfully grateful if you could bear it.”
“I’ve certainly nothing else to do.”
“Well, come then. Some of the other people won’t be quite as awful as the marshal.”
Later, upstairs in the coffee-room, Guy watched Kilbannock going round the tables, collecting his party.
“What’s the point of all this, Ian?”
“Well, I told you. I’ve put the marshal up for this club.”
“But they aren’t letting him in?”
“I hope not.”
“But I thought it was all fixed.”
“It’s not quite as easy as that, Guy. The marshal is rather fly in his way. He’s not giving anything away except for value received. He insists on meeting some members and getting their support. If he only knew, his best chance of getting in is to meet no one. So it’s all in a good cause really.”
That afternoon Guy had his mustache shaven. The barber expressed professional admiration for the growth and did his work with reluctance, like the gardeners who all over the country had that autumn plowed up their finest turf and transformed herbaceous borders into vegetable plots. When it was done, Guy studied himself once more in the glass and recognized an old acquaintance he could never cut, to whom he could never hope to give the slip for long, the uncongenial fellow traveler who would accompany him through life. But his naked lip felt strangely exposed.
Later he went to Ian Kilbannock’s party. Virginia was there, with Tommy. Neither noticed the change until he called attention to it.
“I knew it wasn’t real,” said Virginia.
The air marshal was the center of the party, in the sense that everyone was introduced to him and almost immediately withdrew. He stood like the entrance to a bee-hive, a point of vacuity with a constant buzzing movement to and from it. He was a stout man, just too short to pass for a Metropolitan policeman, with a cheerful manner and shifty little eyes.
When he came to go, Guy found himself at the door with Ian and the marshal.
“My car’s here. Can I give you a lift?”
It was snowing again and dark as the grave.
“That’s very good of you, sir. I was going to St. James’s Street.”
“Hop in.”
“I’ll come too, sir, if I may,” said Ian, surprisingly for there were still guests lingering upstairs.
When they reached Bellamy’s, Ian said: “Won’t you come in for a final one, sir?”
“A sound idea.”
The three of them went to the bar.
“By the way, Guy,” said Ian. “Air Marshal Beech is thinking of joining us here. Parsons, got the Candidates Book with you?”
The book was brought and the marshal’s virgin page presented to view. Ian Kilbannock’s fountain-pen was gently put into
Guy’s hand. He signed.
“I’m sure you’ll find it amusing here, sir,” said Ian.
“I’ve no doubt I shall,” said the air marshal. “I often thought of joining in the piping days of peace, but I wasn’t in London often enough for it to be worthwhile. Now I need a little place like this where I can slip away and relax.”
*
It was St. Valentine’s Day.
The newspapers were still full of the Altmark, now dubbed the “Hell Ship.” There were long accounts of the indignities and discomforts of the prisoners, officially designed to rouse indignation among a public quite indifferent to those trains of locked vans still rolling east and west from Poland and the Baltic, that were to roll on year after year bearing their innocent loads to ghastly unknown destinations. And Guy, oblivious also, thought all that winter’s day of his coming meeting with his wife. In the late afternoon when all was black, he telephoned to her room.
“What are our plans for the evening?”
“Oh good, are there plans? I quite forgot. Tommy’s just left and I was thinking of a lonely early night, dinner in bed with the cross-word. I’d much rather have plans. Shall I come along to you? Everything looks rather squalid here.” So she came to the six-guinea chaperon sitting-room and Guy ordered cocktails.
“Not as cozy as mine,” she said, looking round the rich little room.
Guy sat beside her on the sofa. He put his arm on the back, edged towards her, put his hand on her shoulder.
“What’s going on?” she asked in unaffected surprise.
“I just wanted to kiss you.”
“What an odd way to go about it. You’ll make me spill my drink. Here.” She put her glass carefully on the table at her side, took hold of him by the ears and gave him a full firm kiss on either cheek.
“Is that what you want?”
“Rather like a French general presenting medals.” He kissed her on the lips. “That’s what I want.”
“Guy, are you tight?”
“No.”
“You’ve been spending the day at that revolting Bellamy’s. Admit.”
“Yes.”
“Then of course you’re tight.”
“No. It’s just that I want you. D’you mind?”
“Oh, nobody ever minds about being wanted. But it’s rather unexpected.”
The telephone bell rang.
“Damn,” said Guy.
The telephone was on the writing-table. Guy rose from the sofa and lifted the receiver. Familiar tones greeted him.
“Hullo, old man, Apthorpe here. I thought I’d just give you a ring. Hullo, hullo. That is Crouchback, isn’t it?”
“What d’you want?”
“Nothing special. I thought I could do with a change from Southsand so I ran up to town for the day. I got your address out of the Leave Book. Are you doing anything this evening?”
“Yes.”
“You mean, you have an engagement?”
“Yes.”
“I couldn’t join you anywhere?”
“No.”
“Very well, Crouchback. I’m sorry I disturbed you.” Huffily: “I can tell when I’m not wanted.”
“It’s a rare gift.”
“I don’t quite get you, old man.”
“Never mind. See you tomorrow.”
“Things seem a bit flat in town.”
“I should go and have a drink.”
“I daresay I shall. Forgive me if I ring off now.”
“Who was that?” asked Virginia. “Why were you so beastly to him?”
“He’s just a chap from my regiment. I didn’t want him butting in.”
“Some horrible member at Bellamy’s?”
“Not at all like that.”
“Mightn’t he have been rather fun?”
“No.”
Virginia had now moved to an armchair.
“What were we talking about?” she asked.
“I was making love to you.”
“Yes. Let’s think of something different for a change.”
“It is a change. For me, anyway.”
“Darling, I haven’t had time to get my breath from Tommy. Two husbands in a day is rather much.”
Guy sat down and stared at her.
“Virginia, did you ever love me at all?”
“But of course, darling. Don’t you remember? Don’t look so gloomy. We had lovely times together, didn’t we? Never a cross word. Quite different to Mr. Troy.”
They talked of old times together. First of Kenya. The group of bungalows that constituted their home, timber-built, round stone chimneys and open English hearths, furnished with wedding presents and good old pieces of furniture from the lumber-rooms at Broome; the estate, so huge by European standards, so modest in East Africa, the ruddy earth roads, the Ford van and the horses; the white-gowned servants and their naked children always tumbling in the dust and sunshine round the kitchen quarters; the families always on the march to and from the native reserves, stopping to beg for medicine; the old lion Guy shot among the mealies. Evening bathes in the lake, dinner parties in pajamas with their neighbors. Race week in Nairobi, all the flagrant, forgotten scandals of the Muthaiga Club, fights, adulteries, arson, bankruptcies, card-sharping, insanity, suicides, even duels—the whole Restoration scene re-enacted by farmers, eight thousand feet above the steaming seaboard.
“Goodness, it was fun,” said Virginia. “I don’t think anything has been quite such fun since. How things just do happen to one!”
In February 1940 coal still burned in the grates of six-guinea hotel sitting-rooms. Virginia and Guy sat in the firelight and their talk turned to gentle matters, their earliest meeting, their courtship, Virginia’s first visit to Broome, their wedding at the Oratory, their honeymoon at Santa Dulcina. Virginia sat on the floor with her head on the sofa, touching Guy’s leg. Presently Guy slid down beside her. Her eyes were wide and amorous.
“Silly of me to say you are drunk,” she said.
It was all going as Guy had planned, and, as though hearing his unspoken boast, she added: “It’s no good planning anything,” and she said again: “Things just happen to one.”
What happened then was a strident summons from the telephone.
“Let it ring,” she said.
It rang six times. Then Guy said: “Damn, I must answer it.”
Once again he heard the voice of Apthorpe.
“I’m doing what you advised, old man; I’ve had a drink. Rather more than one as it happens.”
“Good. Continuez, mon cher. But for Christ’s sake don’t bother me.”
“I’ve met some very interesting chaps. I thought perhaps you’d like to join us.”
“No.”
“Still engaged?”
“Very much so.”
“Pity. I’m sure you’d like these chaps. They’re in Ack-Ack.”
“Well, have a good time with them. Count me out.”
“Shall I ring up later to see if you can give your chaps the slip?”
“No.”
“We might all join forces.”
“No.”
“Well, you’re missing a very interesting palaver.”
“Good night.”
“Good night, old man.”
“I’m sorry about that,” said Guy, turning from the telephone.
“While you’re there you might order some more to drink,” said Virginia.
She rose to her feet and arranged herself suitably for the waiter’s arrival. “Better put on the lights,” she said.
They sat opposite one another on either side of the fire, estranged and restless. The cocktails were a long time in coming. Virginia said: “How about some dinner?”
“Now?”
“It’s half past eight.”
“Here?”
“If you like.”
He sent for the menu and they ordered. There was half an hour in which waiters came and went, wheeling a table carrying an ice bucket, a hot-plate, eventually food. The s
itting-room suddenly seemed more public than the restaurant below. All the fire-side intimacy was dissipated. Virginia said: “What are we going to do afterwards?”
“I can think of something.”
“Can you indeed?”
Her eyes were sharp and humorous, all the glowing expectation and acceptance of an hour ago quite extinguished. Finally the waiter removed all his apparatus; the chairs on which they had sat at dinner were back against the wall; the room looked just as it had when it was first thrown open to him, costly and uninhabited. Even the fire, newly banked up with coal and smoking darkly, had the air of being newly lit. Virginia leant on the chimneypiece with a cigarette training a line of smoke between her fingers. Guy came to stand by her and she moved very slightly away.
“Can’t a girl have time to digest?” she said.
Virginia had a weak head for wine. She had drunk rather freely at dinner and there was a hint of tipsiness in her manner, which, he knew from of old, might at any minute turn to truculence. In a minute it did.
“As long as you like,” said Guy.
“I should just think so. You take too much for granted.”
“That’s an absolutely awful expression,” said Guy. “Only tarts use it.”
“Isn’t that rather what you think I am?”
“Isn’t it rather what you are?”
They were both aghast at what had happened and stared at one another, wordless. Then Guy said: “Virginia, you know I didn’t mean that. I’m sorry. I must have gone out of my mind. Please forgive me. Please forget it.”
“Go and sit down,” said Virginia. “Now tell me just what you did mean.”
“I didn’t mean anything at all.”
“You had a free evening and you thought I was a nice easy pick-up. That’s what you meant, isn’t it?”
“No. As a matter of fact I’ve been thinking about you ever since we met after Christmas. That’s why I came here. Please believe me, Virginia.”
“And anyway what do you know about picking up tarts? If I remember our honeymoon correctly, you weren’t so experienced then. Not a particularly expert performance as I remember it.”
The moral balance swung sharply up and tipped. Now Virginia had gone too far, put herself in the wrong. There was another silence until she said: “I was wrong in thinking the army had changed you for the better. Whatever your faults in the old days you weren’t a cad. You’re worse than Augustus now.”