Page 15 of Ice in the Bedroom

  'Oh, Miss Foster,' said Mr. Cornelius, 'here you are at last. I have been ringing and ringing.'

  'I'm sorry,' said Sally. 'I was shopping in Brixton, and my native bearer lost the way, coming home. Is something the matter? Nothing wrong with you, I hope?'

  'Not with myself. I am in excellent health, thank you very much. I always am,' said Mr. Cornelius, who had a tendency to become communicative when the subject of his physical condition was broached, 'except for an occasional twinge of rheumatism if the weather is damp. No, it is Mr. Widgeon who is causing me the anxiety. He is sitting under the tree in the garden of Peacehaven, groaning.'

  'Groaning?'

  'I assure you. I had gone to look at my rabbits, one of whom refused its lettuce this morning, a most unusual thing for it to do, for it is generally an exceptionally hearty eater, and I saw him there. I said, "Good afternoon, Mr. Widgeon," and he looked up and groaned at me.'

  'Didn't you ask him why?'

  'I did not like to. I assumed that he had had bad news of some kind, and on these occasions it is always more tactful to refrain from questioning.'

  An idea occurred to Sally.

  'You're sure he wasn't singing?'

  'Quite sure. I have heard him sing, and the sound is quite different.'

  'Well, thank you very much for telling me, Mr. Cornelius,' said Sally. ‘I’ll go and see what's the matter.'

  She hurried into the house, deposited her supplies in the kitchen and went out into the garden. A theory which might cover the facts was forming itself in her mind. Freddie, she had learned from Leila Yorke in their telephone conversation, had been lunching at Barribault’s Hotel at his uncle Rodney's expense, and she knew that when young men accustomed to a cup of coffee and a sandwich at mid-day find themselves enjoying a free meal at a place like Barribault’s, they have a tendency, in their desire to get theirs while the getting is good, to overdo things a little. As she reached the fence, she was hoping that a couple of digestive tablets taken in a glass of water would be enough to bring the roses back to her loved one's cheeks.

  The hope died as she saw him. He had risen from his seat beneath the tree and had begun to pace the lawn, and one glance at his haggard face told her that this was no mere matter of a passing disturbance of the gastric mucosa. Even at long range it is easy to discern the difference between a man with an overwrought soul and one who is simply wishing that he had avoided the lobster newburg at lunch.

  'Freddie!' she cried, and he dragged himself to the fence and gazed at her over it with a lack-lustre eye.

  'Oh, hullo,' he said hollowly, and with a pang she saw that the sight of her and the fact that after that interlude of icy aloofness she was once more speaking to him had done nothing to lighten his gloom.

  'Freddie, darling!’ she wailed. It seemed inconceivable to her that he had not been informed that his story, fishy though, as her employer had rightly said, it was, had passed the censor. 'Didn't she tell you that everything was all right?'

  'Eh? Who?'

  'Leila Yorke.'

  'Oh, ah, yes. She told me, and naturally it bucked me up like a week-end at bracing Bognor Regis. The relief was stupendous. That part of it was fine.'

  'Then what are you looking so miserable about?'

  He brooded in silence for a moment. His aspect would have reminded a Shakespearian student, had one been present, of the less rollicking of the Hamlets he had seen on the stage at the Old Vic and Stratford.

  'I wish I could break it to you gently.'

  'Break what?'

  'This frightful thing that's happened.'

  'You're making my flesh creep.'

  'It'll creep a dashed sight more when you've heard the facts,' said Freddie with a certain moody satisfaction. A man with bad news to tell takes a melancholy pleasure in the knowledge that it is front page news. 'I'm sunk!'

  'What!'

  'Ruined. Done for. I've had it.'

  'What do you mean?'

  'Hang on to your hat while I tell you. You know that Silver River stock of mine?'

  'Of course.'

  'It's no good.'

  'But I thought---'

  'So did I. That's where I made my bloomer. That louse Molloy has turned out to be a hound of the first water. The fiend in human shape is a low-down swindler, who goes about seeking whom he may devour. He devoured me all right. A thousand quid gone, just like that, for a wad of paper that would have been costly at twopence. Oh, by the way,' said Freddie, remembering, 'I've lost my job.'

  'Oh, Freddie!'

  'Shoesmith drove me out into the snow this morning. One darned thing after another, what?'

  Sally clung weakly to the fence. Freddie, as she stared at him, seemed to be flickering. Not that it made him look any better.

  'The only bright spot is that he gave me a month's salary in lieu of notice, so I'll be able to take you out to dinner tonight. Okay with you?'

  Sally nodded. She felt unable to speak.

  'It'll be something saved from the wreck. We'll go to the Ritz, and blow the expense. We've still got each other. About all,' said Freddie sombrely, 'we have got.'

  Sally found speech.

  'But what are you going to do?'

  'Well, that's rather a moot point, isn't it? What can I do? Try for another job, I suppose. But as what? We Widgeons are pretty hard to place.'

  'You can't go to Kenya now?'

  'Not if I don't raise three thousand pounds in the next day or two, and the chances of that seem fairly slim, unless I borrow a pickaxe and break into the vaults of the Bank of England. I had another letter from Boddington yesterday, saying he couldn't keep the thing open indefinitely and if I didn't want to sit in, he'd have to get someone else. No, it looks as if Kenya were off.'

  Sally started. A thought had occurred to her.

  'Unless---'

  'Unless what?'

  'I was thinking of Leila Yorke.'

  'What about Leila Yorke?'

  'Couldn't you get the money from her?'

  Freddie stared.

  'From Ma Yorke?'

  'Yes.'

  'Three thousand of the best and brightest?'

  'It would seem nothing to her. She's got more than she knows what to do with. Everything she writes sells millions of copies, and that last book of hers was sold to the movies for three hundred thousand dollars.'

  It would be idle to pretend that Freddie's mouth did not water at the mention of such a sum, but he was firm. A Leila Yorke hero, tempted with unclean gold by an international spy, could not have shown a more resolute front.

  'No! No, dash it!'

  'It would only be a loan. You would pay her back later.'

  Freddie shook his head. In many ways his ethics in the matter of floating loans were lax, but on some points they could be rigid.

  'It can't be done. Uncle Rodney, yes. Oofy Prosser, quite. If either of them showed the slightest willingness to cooperate and meet me half way, I would bite his ear blithely. But nick the bank roll of a woman I've only known about a couple of days? Sorry, no. The shot's not on the board. The Widgeons have their self-respect.'

  And a lot of good it does them, Sally would have said, had she been capable of commenting on this nobility. With part of her mind she was in sympathy with the stern, strong, uncompromising man who had uttered these, she had to admit, admirable sentiments. With the other part, she was wishing she could hit him over the head with something solid and drive some sense into him.

  A sudden conviction flooded over her that she was about to cry.

  'I must go in,' she said.

  Freddie gaped.

  'Go in?'

  'Yes.'

  'But I need you by my side. We've a hundred things to thresh out.'

  'We can do that later. I've got to start cooking dinner.'

  'You're dining with me at the Ritz.'

  'I know, but Leila Yorke has to eat. I've bought her a guinea hen.'

  Freddie's emotion expressed itself in an overwrought gesture.


  'Guinea hens at a moment like this! Well, all right. When will you be through?'

  'She likes dining early. I ought to be ready to start at half-past seven.'

  'Right ho.'

  'Goodbye till then,' said Sally, and started for the house just in time. The tears were running down her face as she passed through the back door. She was not a girl who cried often, but when she did, she did it thoroughly.

  She was in the bathroom, bathing her eyes, when the front door bell rang. Wearily, for she assumed that this was Mr. Cornelius, come seeking the latest news regarding his next door neighbour's groaning, she went down and opened the door.

  It was not Mr. Cornelius who stood on the steps. It was a tall, thin, seedily dressed man of middle age, whose face, though she was certain that she had never seen him before, seemed vaguely familiar. He was carrying a large wickerwork basket.

  'Pardon me,' he said. 'Are you the lady of the house?'

  'I'm her secretary.'

  'Is she at home?'

  'I'm afraid not. But she ought to be back soon.'

  Til come in and wait, if I may,' said the man. 'I've come quite a long way, and I don't want to miss her.'

  He sidled round Sally in an apologetic, rather crushed way, and entered the living-room. He placed the basket on the floor.

  'I've brought the snakes,' he said.

  21

  THERE is nothing like a good facial and a new hair-do for freshening a woman up, and it was with an invigorating feeling of being at the peak of her form that Leila Yorke left the beauty parlour and started homeward in her car. Both physically and spiritually she was one hundred per cent. The Surrey-side suburbs offer very little in the way of picturesque scenery, but they gave her quite an uplift as she drove through them. She found much to admire in Clapham Common, and Herne Hill seemed to her particularly attractive.

  Hers was a warm and generous nature. She liked everybody she met, except when tried too high by an occasional Thomas G. Molloy, and nothing gave her more pleasure than to ameliorate the lot of those around her. The thought that she had been able to bring the bluebird back into Sally's life was a very stimulating one, for she was extremely fond of her and on principle disapproved of young hearts being sundered, especially in springtime. She was looking forward to seeing the girl's face, now that all those foolish suspicions and misunderstandings, so like the ones in her novels, had been ironed out. Wreathed in smiles it would be, she assumed.

  Her assumption was mistaken. Sally was in the front garden of Castlewood when she arrived, but her face, so far from being wreathed in smiles, had a careworn look. It was the look which always comes into the faces of girls who have just left a living-room in which a strange man has been taking snakes out of a wickerwork basket, but Leila Yorke did not know this. The conclusion she drew was that there must have been another rift within the lute between the two young hearts in springtime, and for all her benevolence she could not check a twinge of annoyance. More work, she felt. She enjoyed bringing about reconciliations, but there is a limit. The best-hearted of women does not like to have to be doing it every five minutes.'

  She felt her way into the thing cautiously.

  'Hullo, Sally.'

  'Hullo.'

  'I've had a facial.'

  'It looks wonderful'

  'Not too bad. Widgeon back yet?'

  'Oh, yes.'

  'You've seen him?' 'Yes.'

  'Everything nice and smooth?'

  'Oh, yes.'

  'Then why,' said Leila Yorke, abandoning the cautious approach, 'are you looking like a dyspeptic fieldmouse?'

  Sally hesitated. A witness of her employer's emotional reaction to the recent cats, she shrank from informing her that these had now been supplemented by reptiles of which she knew her not to be fond. But there are times when only frankness will serve. She said:

  'There's a man in there.'

  'Where?'

  'In the sitting-room.'

  'What does he want?'

  Again Sally hesitated.

  'He came in answer to the advertisement.'

  Leila Yorke's face darkened. She drew her breath in sharply.

  'More cats?'

  'No, not cats.'

  'Dogs?'

  'No, not dogs.'

  'Then what?'

  Sally braced herself, feeling a little like one of those messengers in Shakespeare's tragedies who bring bad tidings to the reigning monarch and are given cause to regret it.

  'I'm afraid it's snakes this time,' she said.

  She had not erred in supposing that the words would affect her employer painfully. Leila Yorke seemed to swell like a well-dressed balloon. She was thinking hard thoughts of that unknown sinister Molloy, who stopped at nothing to attain his ends, and she was thankful that in J. Sheringham Adair she had an ally who could cope with him. She hoped that Meredith and Schwed, his assistants, were muscular young men who would spare no effort to show the scoundrel Molloy the error of his ways.

  'Snakes?' she breathed strongly. 'Did you say snakes?'

  'He had them in a basket'

  'In the living-room?'

  'They're all over the floor.'

  'You shouldn't have let him in.'

  'He went in.'

  'Well, if you watch closely, you'll see him going out.'

  The window of the living-room opened on the front garden. With something in her deportment of a leopard on the trail, Leila Yorke went to it and looked in. She stopped, peered, and the next moment reeled back as if the sill on which her fingers had rested had been red-hot. Tottering to the front steps, she collapsed on them, staring before her with rounded eyes, and Sally ran to her, full of concern.

  'What is it? What's the matter?'

  Leila Yorke spoke in a whisper. Her words were hard to catch, but Sally understood her to say that this, whatever it was, was of a nature to beat the band.

  'I might have guessed. Who else would have snakes?'

  'You mean you know this man?'

  'Do I know him!'

  Sally gasped. She saw now why the visitor's face had seemed familiar. There were six photographs of him in her employer's bedroom.

  'It isn't---?’

  'Yes, that's who it is. Looking just the same as ever. Of all the darned things! I want a drink.'

  'You're feeling faint?'

  'I'm feeling as if some hidden hand had scooped out all my insides and removed every fibre of muscle from the lower limbs.'

  'There's some cooking sherry in the kitchen.’

  'Lead me to it. Ha!' said Leila Yorke some minutes later, putting down her glass. 'I think that was rat poison, but it's done me a world of good. I feel myself again. Let's go!'

  She led the way to the living-room, and paused in the doorway.

  'Hullo, Joe,' she said.

  At the moment of her entry, the visitor had taken up one of the snakes with which the room was so liberally provided and was running it pensively through his fingers, like a man whose thoughts were elsewhere. Hearing her voice, he started violently and stood staring, the snake falling from his nerveless grasp.

  'Bessie!' he cried.

  Now that she was able to examine him more closely, Sally could see the justice in her employer's criticism of him as weak. His was a pleasant, amiable face, the sort of face one likes at first sight, but it was not a strong one. Weakness showed in the mild eyes, the slightly receding chin and the indecisive lines of the mouth. It would, as Leila Yorke had suggested, have had to be a very non-belligerent goose to which this man could have said 'Bo!', and Sally found herself wondering, like everybody else on meeting an attractive woman's husband, why she had married him. Wherein lay the powerful spell he exercised on such a dominant character?

  She sensibly reminded herself that it is fruitless ever to try to find the answer to a question of this sort. Love, as a thinker once said, is blind, and these things have to be accepted. She supposed that somebody like Rodney, Lord Blicester, would seek in vain for an explana
tion of why she loved his nephew Freddie. Joe Bishop was still staring.

  'Bessie!' he gasped again, and ran a finger round the inside of his collar, as he must have done a hundred times when registering agitation on the stage. 'Is it you?'

  'It's me. Pick up those damned snakes,' said Leila Yorke briskly. Sally, who had sometimes wondered what lovers say when meeting after long separation, felt that now she knew. 'The same old faces!' said Leila Yorke, eyeing the reptiles with disfavour. 'That one's Clarice, isn't it?'

  'Yes, Bessie.'

  'And Rupert over there?'

  'Yes, Bessie.'

  'Well, pick them up and put them back in their basket. They remind me of your mother. How is your mother, by the way?'

  'She passed on last year, Bessie.'

  'Oh,' said Leila Yorke, and it was so obvious that only with difficulty had she checked herself from adding the word 'good' that for a moment there was an embarrassing silence. 'I'm sorry,' she said, breaking it. 'You must miss her.'

  'Yes.'

  'Well, now you've got me.'

  Joe Bishop's spaniel eyes widened.

  'But, Bessie, you don't want me back?'

  'Of course I want you back. I've been pining away to a shadow without you. I've got octopi spreading their tentacles for you all over London. Why didn't you let me know you were hard up?'

  'I didn't like to.'

  'You an extra waiter with half a dozen snakes to support, all wanting their hardboiled eggs of a morning. It is hard-boiled eggs the beastly reptiles eat, isn't it?'

  'Yes, Bessie.'

  'Runs into money, that. Took all your tips to foot the bill, I should imagine. I do think you might have come to me.'

  'But, Bessie, I couldn't. We moved in different worlds. I was down and out, and you were rich and famous.'

  'Rich, yes, but as for famous, make it notorious. There isn't a critic in England who doesn't shudder at the sound of my name.'

  'I think your books are beautiful. Do you know something, Bessie? I started to make a play of one of them.'

  ‘Which one was that?'

  'Heather of the Hills.’

  Leila Yorke frowned thoughtfully, a finger to her chin.