Symposium

  ‘Probably not. Perhaps she inherited something wild from me. Is it time for a drink?’

  ‘Yes, and then I have to take you back, right away.’

  THERE was probably nothing more pleasant in the whole of London than the charming love between Hurley Reed and Chris Donovan. They were both convinced that marriage would have spoiled everything for them, and undoubtedly they were right. Hurley was nothing like so wealthy as Chris; as a husband he would have felt diminished, the smaller partner; as it was, the question of greater or smaller didn’t arise. For her part, Chris felt younger not being married, she had been married and had got used to always having a man to keep her company and talk to, but now she was a widow, and rich, she really enjoyed the single-woman feeling, with Hurley as a companion. She found him very entertaining. He depended on her a great deal for the material props to his career; after all, he was not a great artist, he was in a way too much of a thinker to be a true and full-blooded painter, not that he was a big thinker, either; he was an interesting man with some talent. His liaison with Chris had lasted seventeen years, and was still doing very well at the time of the dinner party they were planning, the latest of so many dinner parties they had planned and given.

  ‘Do you remember’, said Hurley, ‘that dinner we gave, something like — it must be fifteen years ago, when that girl got up at the end of the meal and raised her hands to heaven, invoking the Lord to bless us all? It was an amazing performance.’

  ‘The Chilean Ambassador was there,’ said Chris. ‘You didn’t see his face but I did.’

  ‘I did see his face. What was the name of the girl —?‘ said Hurley.

  ‘Beatrice, Beatrice … Wademacher. No, Rademacher. She was that daughter, remember, of Rademacher.’

  ‘That’s right. It was some time in the ‘seventies, mid-’seventies, when the Charismatic Revival was on. She said, “I think we should now pray and ask the Lord to bless us one by one.” And she went on to name us all, didn’t she?’

  ‘No, only a few of us. She apparently didn’t know all our names. But she laid her hands on every head, one by one.’

  ‘Fundamentally’, said Hurley, ‘there was nothing wrong in acting as she did.’

  ‘Don’t you think so? If I remember, you didn’t really like it any more than I did.’

  ‘Not at the time, no, not at the time,’ Hurley said. ‘But now, thinking back, in the abstract, there was an element of courage in that girl. I wonder what became of her.’

  ‘I can’t admire a religion that causes an upset and embarrasses people. There could be no objection to what she said, only the time and the place were wrong.’

  ‘I quite agree.’ Hurley laughed and then said, ‘God, it was awful.’

  ‘Wasn’t it? Of course, there is that parable in the Bible about sending out to the highways and byways to make up a dinner party — there was a question of the host being at a loss because none of his guests could come. I wonder how it would work with us?’

  ‘Going out in the street and stopping people:

  Come to dinner. One would probably be arrested.’

  ‘Maybe a group of students would come,’ mused Chris. ‘Lower-middle-class students. They’re more experimental and diversified than the upper classes.’

  ‘I believe you’re right,’ said Hurley who had experience of students from the past. ‘Maybe their table manners aren’t of the finest, but somehow they inspire more affection, they make more fun.’

  ‘To me,’ said Chris, while the Sunday afternoon lazed on and the rain splashed at the windows, ‘the lower classes always inspire more affection —looking back, it’s the cooks and the greengrocers and the dressmakers that I remember with warmth, not the people I’ve met on social occasions. Bill was rich, of course, and a decent husband. I missed Bill when he died. But that was love, it really was. I’m talking about affection.’

  ‘I know,’ said Hurley. ‘Our dinner to come: I feel a certain affection for everyone we’ve asked. Nearly everyone. I don’t know Helen Suzy very well, and Margaret Damien hardly at all, and yet I can’t get Margaret out of my head with her aggressive teeth and her honey-and-cream philosophy of Les Autres.’

  ‘Perhaps you should paint her,’ said Chris.

  ‘I haven’t done a portrait for years. I don’t know if I could any more,’ Hurley said, but he sounded reflective, so that Chris wondered if really he would like to sleep with Margaret. Chris thought of this without resentment. She herself had a minor attachment to a French orchestral conductor whom she saw nearly always when she went to Paris; she had a flat there and he stayed with her. But her real life was with Hurley and his with her.

  ‘Hilda is convinced’, she said, ‘that William was in some way enticed into noticing Margaret in the first place.’

  ‘Hilda has an exaggerated idea of her son’s value, I should say,’ said Hurley.

  ‘Well, he’s quite something on the marriage market. She has left everything, or almost everything, to William. He’s the eldest son. It’s in trust for him, and he gets it when Hilda dies. She thought that a good arrangement. She told me so herself. But you can’t say he isn’t a catch for a girl.’

  ‘They’ll have to wait a long time,’ said Hurley. ‘Hilda’s flourishing. She’ll live for ever.’

  ‘Let’s hope so. But she really is worried about her new daughter-in-law. It was so unlikely that they should just happen to meet in the fruit section of Marks & Spencer’s. It actually could be a put-up job. She could have picked him up deliberately.’

  ‘Look,’ said Hurley, ‘she spoke to him. He didn’t need to answer at length, he didn’t need to strike up an acquaintance. Do you realize that among the number of young people who get together these days very very few begin by being introduced?’

  ‘Yes, I do know all that. Only Hilda is an old friend, Hurley. She told me that it was very spooky there in Fife at the wedding. Nothing you could put your finger on.

  ‘Oh, that’s Scotland. All the families are odd, very odd.’

  ‘Hilda said’, Chris went on, ‘that they weren’t so odd. In fact they were too much all right.’

  ‘She thinks they’re after her money or her son’s money. If I may say so,’ said Hurley, ‘you rich ladies always think in terms of money. The way you go on about it you’d think you were short of the stuff. You never stop talking about who’s married who, and what the fortune is.’

  Chris didn’t refute this, although the accusation wasn’t very true. She had plenty of other subjects to discuss, and generally did so. However, she said, ‘It’s a fascinating subject, Hurley, when you think, or half-think, just possibly a young man and his mother have been plotted against. You said yourself that you felt Margaret was strange.’

  ‘Strange, yes,’ he said, ‘very strange.’

  It was time for drinks. Their conversation became rather contrapuntal. He lamented the fact that he hadn’t been near his studio the whole afternoon.

  ‘It’s Sunday,’ she said, as if that were a factor of any sort.

  He was vaguely looking at the mantelpiece. ‘I adore the Salvation Army,’ he said, with what relevance nobody will ever know.

  ‘Nivea cream’, Chris said presently, as she sipped her vodka and tonic, ‘is my Proust’s madeleine. The only reason I use it. Total recall.’

  ‘Do you know,’ mused Hurley, ‘those champagne growers, the Ferrandi family, one of the cousins was killed by his wife with a blow on the head from a bottle of his own brand of champagne. The French make their bottles very heavy.

  Especially champagne.

  ‘Helen Suzy and Brian have accepted,’ said Chris. ‘I wonder how long that marriage will last?’

  Luke, that Sunday afternoon, came round to see Chris about his employment as an extra at the forthcoming dinner party. To her surprise he brought her a flower, one single very long-stalked, very large-faced yellow dahlia.

  ‘How nice of you, Luke,’ she said, ‘how really very delightful.’ She was interviewing him in a comfor
table sitting-room which was really a pantry attached to the kitchen. ‘I believe you’re an arts graduate?’ she said.

  ‘No, history, ma’am. I’m doing a post-graduate course at London University.’

  ‘I do so admire you Americans the way you don’t scorn manual work while you study.’

  ‘I’ve always found my own education, ma’am. I work to eke out my grants. It’s often a pleasure. And I believe I may benefit in the long run from the experiences I gain in so many different families, different homes.

  ‘We have a reference for you from Ernst Untzinger, a friend of Mr Reed’s. It will be really good of you to come and help us out. I understand you’re the perfect waiter, that’ll be something to boast about when you get the Chair of History at an important university. Ernst refers to you as “Luke” by the way. How shall we call you?’

  ‘Just Luke,’ said Luke.

  Chris was enchanted with his smile, his dark good looks, his easy manners. She thought, ‘I’d far sooner have him as a guest at my table than hire him to wait on us.’

  He told her, as is often the way with the young, with their wide indiscriminate perspectives, how he aimed to go to China, when things had settled down, to South America, to North Africa, to Russia, maybe to study or to teach. Turkey, the Middle East. Not one after the other but all ‘next summer’.

  In came the chef from Mauritius, small, slim, Corby who was and looked about thirty, putting on his chef’s cap and then tying his apron strings. When all these things were done he shook hands with Luke.

  ‘Charterhouse is out at the moment. But he knows you’re coming to help us serve.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Luke.

  ‘I believe you know the Suzys,’ said Corby with a slight accent of grandeur. ‘Lord and Lady Suzy?’

  ‘Only by hearsay,’ said Luke.

  ‘I’ll leave you to talk,’ said Chris. ‘See you Thursday, 18th October.’

  ‘What will you have?’ said Corby. ‘A beer? Cup of coffee?’

  ‘Nothing, thanks. Charterhouse is the butler?’

  ‘Well, yes, butler. You know a butler isn’t really a butler unless he has a household of servants beneath him and a housekeeper to work with. It’s like a general without an army. Here we don’t even have a platoon. But Charterhouse has a butler’s training. I was trained in Berne and Lyons.’

  ‘I’d like to meet Charterhouse,’ said Luke. ‘Before the party.’

  ‘Oh, just for a serving job it isn’t necessary. I’ll show you the dining-room. You’ve heard of the Suzys? They’ll be here at the dinner.’

  ‘You must get to know some interesting people,’ said Luke. And he said, ‘I’ve got to go now. Maybe I’ll look in some time tomorrow, next day, and see Charterhouse. When’s the best time?’

  ‘Five o’clock,’ said Corby. ‘Five o’clock is always the best time for everybody and everything. You can’t spend the best part of three years in Lyons without knowing it.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Luke. ‘I’ll remember that. I believe the Untzingers are coming to the dinner, do you know them at all?’

  ‘By name,’ said Corby. ‘By name. Charterhouse would know them by sight. Another name that’s on the list of guests is Damien. Multi-millionaires. Either husband and wife or mother and son, I couldn’t tell you for sure.’

  ‘Goodbye, Corby,’ said Luke.

  ‘Goodbye, Luke.’

  Their goodbyes were not for long, for Luke did come round by the back door at five o’clock next day. He found Charterhouse in, and under cover of being shown the exact disposition of the serving table and sideboard of the dining-room — a veritable rehearsal — managed to obtain a great deal more information about the guests than he had obtained from Corby.

  ‘People called Suzy,’ said Charterhouse. ‘A lord and a lady. Then people called —’

  ‘I guess they did the Suzys’,’ said Luke.

  ‘I daresay,’ said Charterhouse. ‘They were the people they burgled. They were actually upstairs asleep the whole time, they weren’t out of London as supposed, but they got away with it, up to a point.’ Luke did not seem puzzled by the identification of the alternative ‘theys’. He obviously knew who Charterhouse meant. ‘They’, said Charter-house, standing tall and dignified in Chris Donovan’s blue dining-room, ‘left a picture by early Francis Bacon on the wall and took a mirror instead. Utter fools. They only had the boot of a car and they said that’s all they would fit in. When they found they’d been robbed they were gloating over the picture being left behind.’

  Corby the chef appeared at the door of the dining-room.

  ‘Chef?’ said Charterhouse.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Corby.

  ‘I am explaining to our young man,’ said Charterhouse, ‘the lay of the land for the forthcoming dinner.’

  ‘It isn’t no banquet,’ said Corby.

  ‘Banquet or no banquet,’ said Charterhouse, ‘to me it is an occasion. I am a perfectionist as regards occasions.’

  ‘I guess I’ll manage,’ said Luke.

  ‘He should know who’s who at the dinner,’ said Charterhouse to Corby.

  ‘Why?’ said Corby. ‘One serving one plate, is the same as any other plate. Unless there’s a special diet present.’

  ‘I’ll manage, I guess,’ said Luke who was decidedly nervous.

  ‘If you guessed you’d manage why did you come back to see me?’ said Charterhouse very cool, very lofty. ‘Mr Corby, if you please.’

  ‘What?’ said Corby.

  ‘Let me finish instructing our young man as to his duties and what they imply as regards the personalities expected.’

  ‘Not necessary,’ said Corby. Nevertheless, he retreated. Mrs Donovan and Mr Reed did rather appreciate Charterhouse, they respected his haughtiness. Those butler’s manners were worth their weight in gold.

  ‘Now,’ said Charterhouse, when he was sure that the chef had gone right away out of earshot, ‘another couple that will be here for the dinner and therefore away from home at that hour, are called Untzinger.’

  ‘I know the Untzingers. Ella gets me jobs. She sent me here.’

  ‘Their surroundings?’

  ‘Comfortable. But nothing much for our friends. We should be careful.’

  ‘A Mr Roland Sykes. Unmarried. He has money. His things should be of interest. There is a couple newly married called Damien. Now, you ask your executive people about the Damiens. His mother is a multi-millionaire. I’m not sure, but I imagine she’ll be at the dinner. If she’s of any interest, and she should be of interest, let me know. I’ll write out a list of addresses for you.

  Luke’s role was merely that of informer. He had started off as a genuine party-helper, employed by catering firms and private people. And he was, indeed, a genuine post-graduate in modern history. Some months ago he had been approached by a fellow-waiter at a grand and luxurious wedding. ‘I wish’, said the waiter, ‘I had a list of these guests and their addresses. All absent from home hours and hours today. A list would be worth a fortune.’

  Luke was puzzled at first, but remarkably quick to perceive the point. He loaded his tray with champagne and orange juice, ready to circulate with it outside the marquee. He looked at his fellow-labourer and cast a glance round the hundreds of guests. ‘The moneyed class,’ murmured Luke. ‘That’s right,’ said his companion behind the white cloth-covered table. He was there to serve special requests. ‘Whisky and soda, sir? Of course. Which brand?’

  At the end of that long Saturday of the country wedding, Luke went back up to London by car with his new friend who asked to be called Garnet. They went to a club to eat and relax. And there Luke learned of the exact prices to be gained by anyone with a list of good names, or even one name, present at a party and therefore away from home. Luke and Garnet, who also boasted a few more reliable members of his team, were assured of their pay whether the names were useful or not, as Garnet pointed out. ‘More often than not’, confided Garnet, ‘it’s too risky. Servants, guards, in the ho
use. Dogs. Sophisticated alarms. They’re alarms that go off at the police station but not in the house, so the police have time to come and catch the fools. All that is no concern of us. Sometimes the people don’t go to the dinner or whatever at the last minute. Not our fault. No concern of us. We give the list and take the money. It could be done by word of mouth, no proof. As I say, a list like the wedding today would be worth a lot. Somebody else no doubt provided one. But, as I say, even if it’s a duplicate a list is a list and the principals pay. They like to encourage. They’re generous, as I say.’

  As Garnet said they would be, they had been generous with Luke. He had been far enough away from any field of action not to feel any guilt. Ella and Ernst would have said they could trust Luke with their lives. They wouldn’t ever need to lock anything up with Luke in the house. They were right. They had no idea how greatly Luke prospered.

  ‘Luke, I have a friend, the artist Hurley Reed and his life-companion, extremely charming Chris Donovan. They’re giving a party. We’ll be there. Will you give them an evening of your time to help with the serving?’

  ‘I think so,’ said Luke. ‘Hopefully I’ll be free.’ To Ella this meant he would certainly take on the job. She had never known him refuse.

  It was only the matter of the very expensive watch that gave them to think, and then they thought wrongly, both arriving at the immediate conclusion that Luke had received this many-thousand-dollar treasure in return for sexual favours.

  Helen Suzy was writing to her friend, Brian Suzy’s daughter.

  Dear Pearl,

  I suppose Brian wrote and told you about our robbery. You can imagine he was very upset, in fact a bit too upset in my humble opinion. I know you warned me he’s another generation, they think of their goods and chattels. You can’t take it with you. Pearl, I think sometimes I’m going crazy. He says he’s been raped, how would he know about rape? In fact in a funny psychological way he wants to be raped, they say we all do!!! I feel I sympathize with your Mother when she was married to him. But it’s still another generation. I was truly sorry our stuff was stolen, and that they urinated all over. We had to get the walls done anyway. I never liked those chair covers. Now we hear the gang is operating outside London, a house in Dulwich and a big house in Wembley. The people were out but they wounded a servant who is still in hospital. The police say it’s the same gang as came to us. They seem to know. We were in bed. We could have been killed. They seem to have found out in the other cases when people were out to dinner or the theatre. The big thing as Brian will have told you was they left the Picture on the wall by Francis Bacon, very costly. Now he’s cutting down on the phone etc. to make up for our losses, so I didn’t ring you up. In my humble opinion we should spend more to cheer ourselves up like a trip to Venice. Brian says maybe yes, a trip to Venice, so I put an idea in his head perhaps. We have a couple of dinner parties then we could go off. He has a burglar alarm put in the corner of the rooms that blinks electronically, but not in the bedroom. I put my foot down at that. You can imagine!