Casanova's Chinese Restaurant (19 page)

This was nothing less than the arrival of Stringham. At first I could hardly believe my eyes. There he was standing by the door talking to Buster. The scene was only made credible by the fact that Buster looked extremely put out. After what had been said that evening, Stringham was certainly the last person to be expected to turn up at his mother’s party. He was not wearing evening clothes, being dressed, in fact, in a very old tweed suit and woollen jumper. As usual he looked rather distinguished in these ancient garments, which could not have less fitted the occasion, but somehow at the same time seemed purposely designed to make Buster appear overdressed. Stringham himself was, as formerly, perfectly at ease, laughing a lot at something he had just remarked to Buster, who, with wrinkled forehead and raised eyebrows, had for once lost all his air of lazy indifference to life, and seemed positively to be miming the part of a man who has suddenly received a disagreeable surprise. Stringham finished what he had to say, clapped Buster on the back, and turned towards his mother who came up at that moment. I was too far away to hear Mrs Foxe’s words, but, as she kissed her son affectionately, she was clearly welcoming him in the manner appropriate to one returned unexpectedly from a voyage round the world. At the same time, unlike her husband, she showed no surprise or discomposure at Stringham’s arrival. They spoke together for a second or two, then she returned to her conversation with Lord Huntercombe. Stringham turned away from her and strolled across the room, gazing about him with a smile. Catching sight of me suddenly, he drew back with a movement of feigned horror, then made towards the place where I was standing. I went to meet him.

‘My dear Nick.’

‘Charles.*

‘I had no idea you had musical tastes, Nick. Why did you keep them from me all these years? Because I never asked, I suppose. One always finds the answer to everything in one’s own egotism. But how nice to meet again. I am a recluse now. I see nobody. I expect you already knew that. Everybody seems to know by now. It is just a bit like being a leper, only I don’t actually have to carry a bell. They decided to let me off that. Thought I should make too much of a row, I suppose. You can’t imagine what a pleasure it is to come unexpectedly upon an old friend one knew several million years ago.’

There could be no doubt that he was drunk, but, within the vast area comprised by that term, among the immensely varied states of mind and body which intoxication confers, Stringham’s at this moment was that controlled exhilaration of spirit more akin to madness than carousal, which some addicts can achieve after a single glass. He looked rather ghastly when you were close to him, his skin pale and mottled, his eyes sunken and bloodshot. Even so, there was plenty of the old dash about his manner.

‘I had no idea my mother would be giving a party tonight,’ he said. ‘Just thought I would drop in and have a word with her by the fireside as I haven’t seen her for some time. What do I find but a whirl of gaiety. I really came along to tease Buster. I like doing that from time to time. It cheers me up for some reason. You know I now live in a flat at the top of a house owned by a relation of your wife’s – Molly Jeavons, one of the most delightful and charming of people. I sometimes hear about you both from her or from Ted. I dote on Ted. He hasn’t been very well lately, you know, and he gives wonderful descriptions of what is going on in his lower intestine – that war wound of his. One need never be bored when Ted gets on to that subject. He and I sometimes go out for the quickest of quick drinks. I am not supposed to have much in the way of drink these days. Neither is Ted. I am trying to knock off, really—but it seems such a bore to be a total abstainer, as I believe such people are called. I can have just one drink still, you know. I don’t have to keep off it utterly.’

He said these words in such an appealing tone that I felt torn inwardly to think of the condition he must be in, of the circumstances in which he must live. His awareness of his own state seemed almost worse than total abandonment to the bottle. It looked very much as if he might just have come on to his mother’s house that night from one of those ‘very quick drinks’ with Jeavons; perhaps felt unable to bring himself to return to Miss Weedon’s flat and paint in gouache – if it was really with painting that he therapeutically ordered his spare time. His life with Miss Weedon was impossible to contemplate.

‘Do you know this fellow Moreland?’ he went on. ‘I gather from Buster that the party is being given in Moreland’s honour – that he is a famous musician apparently. It just shows how right it is that I should have to live as a hermit, not to know that Moreland is a famous musician – and have to be told by Buster. All the same, it cuts both ways. If you are a hermit, you can’t be expected to keep up with all the latest celebrities. Buster, of course, was quite incapable of giving any real information about Moreland, the party, the guests, or anything else. He is awfully stupid, poor old Buster. An absolute ape. You know a fact that strikes one very forcibly as one grows older is that some people are intelligent and some are stupid. I don’t set up as an intellectual myself – even though I am a great hand with the paintbrush, did they tell you that, Nick? – but if I were as ill-informed as Buster, I should take steps to educate myself. Go to a night-school or hire a well-read undergraduate to teach me a few things in the long vac. The person I shall have to get hold of is Norman. He will tell me all about everything. Have you met Norman yet? He is simply charming. He is – well, I don’t want to labour the point, and I can see from your face you have guessed what I was going to say, and you are quite right. All the same, my mother has taken him up in a big way. You must meet Norman, Nick.’

‘But I know him well. I have known him for years.’

‘I am surprised at the company you must have been keeping, Nick. Known him for years, indeed. I shouldn’t have thought it of you. And a married man too. But you do agree, don’t you, that Norman is a delightful fellow?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘I knew you would. I can’t tell you how good Norman has been for my mother. Brilliant ideas and helpful comment don’t exactly gush from Buster, with all his manly qualities. Besides, when it comes to doing odd jobs about the house, Buster is no good with his hands. What, you say, a sailor and no good with his hands? I don’t believe you. It’s the perfect truth. I sometimes tease him about it. He doesn’t always take that in good part. Now, at last there is someone in the house who can turn to when it comes to hanging a picture or altering the place of a piece of furniture without smashing the thing to a thousand fragments. Not only that, but Norman decides what detective stories ought to come from the Times Book Club, settles what plays must be seen, gives good advice to my mother about hats – in fact excels at all the things poor old Buster fails at so lamentably. On top of that, Norman won’t be bullied. He gets his own way. He is just about the only person who deals with my mother who does get his own way.’

‘Jolly good.’

‘Look here, Nick, you are not being serious. I want to be serious. People are always charging me with not being sufficiently serious. There is something serious I want to ask you. You know the Abdication?’

‘I heard something about it.’

‘Well, I thought it was a good thing. A frightfully good thing. The only possible thing. I wish to goodness Buster would abdicate one of these days.’

‘Not a hope.’

‘You’re right. Not a hope. I say, Nick, it is awfully nice meeting you again after all these years. Let me get you another drink. You see the extraordinary thing is that I don’t feel the smallest need for drink myself. I rise above it. That shows an advance, doesn’t it? Not everyone we know can make that boast with truth. I must mention to you that there are some awfully strange people at this party tonight. Not at all like the people my mother usually collects. I suppose it is them, and not me. You agree? Yes, I thought I was right. They remind me more of the days when I used to know Milly Andriadis. Poor old Milly. I wonder what has happened to her. Perhaps they have put her away too.’

While he was speaking his eyes were on Mrs Maclintick, who was now making her way towards us.

‘This lady, for example,’ said Stringham. ‘What could have induced her to dress like that?’

‘She is coming to talk to us.’

‘My God, I believe you’re right.’

Mrs Maclintick arrived within range. Cold rage still possessed her. She addressed herself to me.

‘That was a nice way to be spoken to by your husband,’ she said. ‘Did you ever hear anything like it?’

Before I could reply, Stringham caught her by the arm.

‘Hullo, Little Bo-Peep,’ he said. ‘What have you done with your shepherdess’s crook? You will never find your sheep at this rate. Don’t look so cross and pout at me like that, or I shall ruffle up all those dainty little frills of yours – and then where will you be?’

The effect on Mrs Maclintick of this unconventional approach was electric. She flushed with pleasure, contorting her body into an attitude of increased provocation. I saw at once that this must be the right way to treat her; that a deficiency of horseplay on the part of her husband and his friends was probably the cause of her endemic sulkiness. No doubt something in Stringham’s manner, the impression he gave that evening of having cut himself off from all normal restraints, played a part in Mrs Maclintick’s submission. He was in a mood to carry all before him. Even so, she made an effort to fight back.

‘What an extraordinary thing to say,’ she remarked. ‘And who are you, I should like to know?’

I introduced them, but neither was inclined to pay much attention to names or explanations. Stringham, for some reason, seemed set on pursuing the course he had begun. Mrs Maclintick showed no sign of discouraging him, beyond a refusal entirely to abandon her own traditional acerbity of demeanour.

‘Fancy a little girl like you being allowed to come to a grown-up party like this one,’ said Stringham. ‘You ought to be in bed by now I’m sure.’

‘If you think I don’t know most of the people here,’ said Mrs Maclintick, uncertain whether to be pleased or offended at this comment, ‘you are quite wrong. I have met nearly all of them.’

‘Then you have the advantage of me in that respect,’ said Stringham, ‘and so you must tell me who everyone is. For example, what is the name of the fat man wearing a dinner jacket a size too small for him – the one drinking something from a tumbler?’

If there was any doubt about the good impression Stringham had already made on Mrs Maclintick, this enquiry set him immediately at the topmost peak of her estimation.

‘That’s my husband,’ she said, speaking at once with delight and all the hatred of which she was capable. ‘He has just been vilely rude to me. He hates wearing evening clothes. The state they were in – even though he never gets into them – you wouldn’t have believed. I had to tack the seam of the trousers before he could be seen in them. He isn’t properly shaved either. I told him so. He said he had run out of new blades. He looks a fright, doesn’t he?’

‘He does indeed,’ said Stringham. ‘You have put the matter in a nutshell.’

‘If you had heard some of the things he has been shouting at me in this very room,’ said Mrs Maclintick, ‘you would not have credited your hearing. The man has not a spark of gratitude.’

‘What do you expect with a thick neck like that?’ said Stringham. ‘Not gratitude, surely?’

‘Language of the gutter,’ said Mrs Maclintick, as if relishing her husband’s phrases in retrospect. ‘Filthy words.’

‘Think no more of his trivial invective,’ said Stringham. ‘Come with me and forget the ineptitudes of married life – with which I was once myself only too familiar – in a glass of wine. Let me persuade you to drown your sorrows.

While the Rose blows along the River Brink
With old Stringham the Ruby Vintage drink …

It isn’t ruby in this case, but none the worse for that. Buster’s taste in champagne is not too bad. It is one of his redeeming features.’

Mrs Maclintick was about to reply, no doubt favourably, but, before she could speak, Stringham, smiling in my direction, led her away. Why he wished to involve himself with Mrs Maclintick I could not imagine: drink; love of odd situations; even attraction to a woman he found wholly unusual; any of those might have been the reason. Mrs Maclintick was tamed, almost docile, under his treatment. I was still reflecting on the eccentricity of Stringham’s behaviour when brought suddenly within the orbit of Lord Huntercombe, who was moving round the room in a leisurely way, examining the pictures and ornaments there. He had just taken up
Truth Unveiled by Time
, removed his spectacles, and closely examined the group’s base. He now replaced the cast on its console table, at the same time smiling wryly in my direction and shaking his head, as if to imply that such worthless bric-à-brac should not be allowed to detain great connoisseurs like ourselves. Smethyck (a museum official, whom I had known as an undergraduate) had introduced us not long before at an exhibition of seventeenth-century pictures and furniture Smethyck himself had helped to organise, to which Lord Huntercombe had lent some of his collection.

‘Have you seen your friend Smethyck lately?’ asked Lord Huntercombe, still smiling.

‘Not since we talked about picture-cleaning at that exhibition.’

‘Before the exhibition opened,’ said Lord Huntercombe, ‘Smethyck showed himself anxious to point out that
Prince Rupert Conversing with a Herald
was painted by Dobson, rather than Van Dyck. Fortunately I had long ago come to the same conclusion and had recently caused its label to be altered. I was even able to carry the war into Smethyck’s country by enquiring whether he felt absolutely confident of the authenticity of that supposed portrait of Judge Jeffreys, attributed to Lely, on loan from his own gallery. What nice china there is in this house. It looks to me as if there were some Vienna porcelain mixed up with the Meissen in this cabinet. I believe Warrington knew something of china. That was why Kitchener liked him. You know, I think I shall have to inspect these a little more thoroughly.’