Dancers in Mourning (24 page)

In spite of the noise they make between them as they practise opening doors to visitors, answering bells and so on, I think that Linda is very glad of him. He certainly provides a touch of gaiety in an otherwise sad, unhappy house.

I hope to see you at the funeral of Chloe Pye (what a trial to others that woman must have been in her life, and now in death she retains the same character.
De mortuis!)

I shall come to Town with Jimmy. The relative, who seems a very ordinary sort of person (I think you met her), has shown an almost morbid anxiety to have everyone connected with the woman's death and her work represented at her funeral. Jimmy is naturally anxious to give no offence and I understand that he and all the male principals in my show, as well as those of us present at the house-party, will follow the coffin to its last resting place. I am particularly anxious that you should do your duty and appear. The arrangement is that we shall follow the bears to the cemetery and afterwards return to the house for a few minutes. I did protest at the latter suggestion, which seems unnecessary, for it is not, thank God, as though we were near relatives, but the good Mrs Pole seems adamant and Jimmy is bent on humouring her, a very wise move taken by and large. I hope to see you, therefore at 101, Portalington Road, tomorrow, Friday, at five minutes to two o'clock. Do not disappoint us. I have sung your praises so loudly to Jimmy that I feel I have a personal responsibility.

With kind regards, my dear boy,

Believe me, ever yours
,

William R. Faraday.

P.S. Have just opened this letter again after a turn round the garden, during which I made a somewhat strange discovery. I fear it may lead to nothing more interesting than some pretty yokel idyll, but I report it for what it is worth. Deviating from my usual route round the flowerbeds and the lake I took a path through the plantation. There are some very fine trees here and the sight of them reminded me of my boyhood's bird's-nesting days. Although a little late in the season, I determined to try my luck and see if my eye had lost its cunning. Rather foolish, you will think, no doubt, but it was lucky in a way that the notion came to me, for I soon discovered a this year's mavis nest just within reach of my hand in the crutch of a young elm. I put my fingers in and drew out a screw of paper, of all things! It was a sheet of plain white note and the words upon it were scrawled in pencil in a hand so hurried I could not hope to recognise it instantly even had it been known to me, which I do not think it was. I copied out the message in my notebook and I now send you the page for what it is worth. I left the note where it was, not liking to take it, but I have the calligraphy pretty well photographed in my mind and you can rely on me to look out for it.

W.F.

The enclosure consisted of the memorandum left from a pocket diary and the message, written in Uncle William's flurried pencil, was brief but quite remarkably to the point. On the back of the page he had scribbled an explanatory note:
Found Thursday, mid-afternoon, in bird's-nest in crutch of tree, quarter of a mile inside the White Walls boundary
(
rough estimate
).

The message consisted of a single line, poignant even in that shaking stylised hand:

I love you. I love you. Oh, I love you.

T
HE
small room with the bay window and the clean, hard, stuffed furniture was heavy with the smell of flowers. The sweet cloying scent hung over the whole house, half hiding those other smells, cooking from the kitchen, camphor, floor stain, and the miserable, mean odour of damp handkerchiefs. Petals lay on the imitation parquet in the dining-room, on the imitation Chinese carpet in the parlour and on the imitation Persian runner in the hall. They lay, too, on the narrow staircase down whose sleek red steps the elaborate casket with the silver-plated handles had come swaying dangerously less than an hour before.

It was over. Chloe Pye had gone. The hideous yellow earth in the cemetery had opened and taken her in. The crowd, attracted by her name, her profession, the manner of her dying and the eminence of her mourners, had gone shuffling off again, stumbling over unnamed graves or pausing idly to read the inscriptions on the more ostentatious headstones.

Campion stood in a corner of the parlour fireplace, bending his head a little to one side to avoid the shaded tassel of a hanging candle-holder. The room was packed to bursting point, as were the other two downstairs rooms, but there was no murmur of conversation to alleviate the sense of physical discomfort and the sombre, dark-suited throng stood miserably in a dreadful intimacy, shoulders to breasts and stomachs to backs, their voices hushed and husky and self-conscious.

Outside in the sunlit suburban street a few people still waited. They were curious; but silent and well mannered because of the nature of the occasion. The great moment, when the procession, with black horses, silver trimmings and a glass-sided hearse topped with flowers and old-fashioned black plumes like folded sweeps' brushes, had set out at a snail's pace, was a thing of the past. Mrs Pole's first essay at pageantry was over, but there still remained a few well-known mourners to be seen again.

The houses over the road had blinds drawn as a mark of respect in all the rooms below stairs, but behind the net half-curtains of the bedroom windows bright inquisitive eyes peeped out eagerly, and from the house on the left came sudden flashes as the afternoon sun caught the lenses of a pair of opera-glasses.

A scrawny maid with a black armlet on a black dress, assisted by a perspiring waiter hired from the nearest restaurant, struggled through the crowd with trays on which there were goblets of bright crimson port and dull yellow sherry. As they approached one they would each mutter an imperfectly comprehended formula concerning whisky and soda on the dining-room sideboard ‘if any gentleman would care for it'.

Sutane stood on the hearthrug, outwardly at ease. The bones of his head were unusually apparent, but his blank dark eyes regarded the crush in front of him steadily, if sombrely. There was no way of telling if he was thinking at all.

Uncle William was held in the crush on the other side of the room. Campion caught a glimpse between two black hats of his indecorous pink face and gaily blue eyes. He was not attempting to move because to do so he would have had to pass through the small open circle surrounding Mrs Pole, her son and a solid daughter, fat and self-conscious in a hideous black suit but sticking to her mother's side gallantly with the stoic heroism of adolescence.

Mrs Pole was triumphant and deeply happy but she played her part still, never allowing the satisfaction which filled her so exquisitely to show sufficiently to mar the perfection of her presentation of patient and dignified grief.

It was at the moment when physical discomfort and mental unease seemed to have reached their ultimate pitch that the woman with the glass in her hand came burrowing through the crowd towards Sutane. She stood just in front of him and looked up with a little sly, secretive movement of her head which brought her face just below his own. It was an indescribable gesture, arch and yet ashamed, and it was not at all pleasant.

Campion glanced down at her and experienced that little sense of shock that is part disgust and part irritation at oneself for being disgusted.

She was white and bloated in the face and poor and bent in the body. Her loose black coat was not very clean, and yet the small eye-veil on her hat was arranged by fingers which had known deftness. Her eyes were greasy and shiftless, and there was an ominous twitch at one side of her mouth.

‘Well, Jimmy,' she said, ‘don't you know me?'

Sutane stared at her, and at his side Campion caught some of his horrified surprise.

‘Eva,' he said.

The woman laughed and raised her glass to him. She would be drunk again in a very little while.

‘Little Eva herself,' she said. ‘Come to see the last of the poor old girl for old times' sake. Things had changed, hadn't they, for her and me – and you, too, old boy. You're doing very well for yourself, aren't you? West End manager and everything …'

She had not raised her voice, but because she was the only person in the room who seemed to have something definite to say to anyone everybody listened automatically. She became aware of the silence and turned on them with a swing that was just a little too sudden. Those immediately behind her looked uncomfortable and began to talk hurriedly to each other. The woman returned to Sutane.

A little later in the day she would be grotesque and disgusting, with exaggerated movements and blurred, drivelling speech but now there was only the promise of these things. She came a little closer.

‘I suppose you couldn't use a bright little soubrette who knows the ropes?' she murmured and smiled with sudden bitterness when she saw his involuntary expression. ‘That's all right, Jimmy boy, I'm only kidding. I couldn't walk across a stage these days. I've gone to hell. You can see that, can't you?'

She laughed again, and seemed on the brink of further confidence. Sutane interrupted her. He was as nearly flurried as Campion had ever seen him.

‘Where are you living now?'

‘With my old Mama – old Emma, you remember her.' She was easily diverted and ran on in the same confidential way, as though she were telling secrets. ‘We're in a slum in Kensington. You've forgotten that kind of life. D'you remember you and Chloe and me and Charles on the boat going over? That was a good time – years ago.'

She paused and Campion kept his eyes studiously on the wall opposite him because he knew that Sutane was looking at his face. The woman continued:

‘Poor old Chloe! I never thought she'd beat me to it. I'm the one who ought to be in my grave. I'm not safe out alone nowadays. I shouldn't be here if someone hadn't brought me along. He's a nice boy to look up her old pal and bring me along to see the last of her. He's going to take me back, too. He's got to or I shan't get back. There he is, over there. Little Benny Konrad. I'd never seen him before. Nice of him, wasn't it?'

Her weak, indeterminate voice trailed away and she laid a flabby hand in a tight discoloured kid glove on Sutane's wrist.

‘So long, old boy,' she said and gave him once again her odd, bleary smile with the nauseating dash of coquetry in it. ‘We'll have a drink to the old days some time perhaps?'

The remark was barely a question, but amid the bitterness and defeat in her voice a little flame of hope quivered and died and she smiled to herself. She went away, the crowd parting for her as she blundered towards Konrad.

Sutane rattled the money in his pockets, glanced sharply at Campion, who did not look at him, and prepared to make the initial effort towards escape.

‘Campion, we'd better go,' he said softly. ‘Come on.'

Mr Campion followed him with a curious unwillingness. As they approached Mrs Pole there was a momentary diversion. The maid reappeared in the doorway holding a florist's envelope above the heads of the visitors. It was a sensible enough precaution, since the crowd was very thick, but it gave her entry an air of triumph which was incongruous. She reached her mistress as Sutane and Campion came up and they overheard her breathless message.

‘Boy just brought these 'M. Said order bin delayed. Would you please excuse?'

Mrs Pole took the frail package and tore it open in a ponderous irrevocable fashion which she seemed to find compatible with her tragic rôle. A large bunch of purple violets fell out on to the floor and the daughter stooped to retrieve them, blushing painfully. Mrs Pole discovered a card in the debris of the envelope and read from it aloud:

‘
Chloe from Peter
– “
That perfect likeness
” –'

The quotation puzzled her and she repeated it, turning the card over as if she expected to find a clue to its meaning upon the other side. Frustrated, she shrugged her plump black shoulders and dismissed the mystery.

‘Somebody who knew her, no doubt,' she said. ‘She had a lot of friends. What a pity these came so late, or they might have gone with the others. Put them in water for me, Joannie. If I have time I'll take them down to the grave tomorrow. What a lot of flowers she's had! Wherever she is I'm sure she's pleased. Must you go, Mr Sutane? It was very kind of you to come. I know she would have liked to have seen you all here. Poor, poor girl!'

Sutane shook hands with her and murmured a few eminently suitable words. Campion, who was not without grace himself, admired his elegant and comforting ease.

As they struggled out of the door the daughter of the house panted behind them, clutching Peter Brome's bouquet.

They had passed the straggling group of sightseers outside the iron gate, had seen them nudge each other and stare at Sutane with studiously blank faces, and they were half-way down the broad, hot road to the taxi rank before Uncle William caught them up. He was blowing gently and still flourished a crisp white handkerchief as he appeared between them.

‘Don't blame you for forgettin' me,' he said. ‘Distressin' experience. Glad to get out myself. Terrible situation if grief was genuine, but more bearable than this. Not so embarrassin'. Haven't felt so damnably indecent since I was a child at the same sort of function – better class, of course.'

The final observation was in the nature of an aside, a placatory offering to some past relative, no doubt.

Sutane did not speak at once. He was striding along, his head thrust forward and his hands in his pockets. His face was sombre and Campion was very much aware of his thoughts.

‘Ghastly,' he said suddenly. ‘Ghastly. It didn't even make you wish you were dead. We'll take that cab over there. Campion, I want you. Don't clear off.'

He spoke with his old nervous authority which it was only possible to disobey and not to ignore. Mr Campion climbed into the cab after Uncle William, feeling that he was making a great mistake.