Sir!' She Said (9 page)

“It's like Hampstead Heath on Easter Monday,” said Melanie.

“It's London enjoying itself,” Druce Mander answered. “And London doesn't change. We stop here,” he called out. “Now, be sure and remember where you park the car. Our bus is on the opposite side of the course.”

In a direct line the bus was less than a hundred yards away. It took them a quarter of an hour to reach it. They were jostled against rough clothes. Rough voices sounded in their ears. There was a smell of beer, garlic and tobacco; of damp and hot humanity. Policemen ordered them about. Race-cards were held beneath their noses. Gipsies offered to tell their fortunes; Revivalists to save their souls. Bookies importuned them from wooden stands. The lad in his elegant morning coat looked singularly ill at ease. His tie was twisted, his collar soiled, his hat was ragged. And though a trickle of sweat ran down his cheek, his shoulders were contracted as though with extreme cold. Mr. Bulliwell, panting at his side, looked little happier. But Mander in his rough tweeds and Burberry was smiling happily. Once or twice he turned to chat with some one who had barged against him.

“We'll soon be out of this,” he said. “It'll be roomier in the bus.”

It wasn't much. On a fine day there would have been plenty of room for the dozen people who constituted Mander's party. But it was cold and wet:
no one particularly wanted to go on the roof. The far end of the floor was occupied by servants. Coats and cloaks filled a couple of seats. The women were huddled on the straight seats by the door. The men were clustered uncomfortably on the conductor's platform.

“I can't introduce you all individually,” said Mander. “I'll just say who each of you is.”

There was a string of names out of which Gavin Todd's alone sounded familiarly to Melanie. He was standing next to her and he smiled pleasantly as his name was mentioned.

“You haven't a race-card,” he said. “Have mine.”

Out of the corner of her eye she observed Mr. Bulliwell making clumsy efforts to edge his way towards them.

“Do you see that fat man over there?” she said; “all the way down here he's been saying how much he's been looking forward to meeting you.”

“That's very flattering; who is he?”

“A Mr. Bulliwell.”

“Bulliwell?” Todd repeated the name pensively, then a look of interest came into his face. “Why, of course, yes,” he said, and turned welcomingly to meet his admirer's approach.

Mr. Bulliwell's face beamed with delight.

“You don't know me, of course,” he began. “But I know you. Followed your career from the very start. Saw you play your first games at Cambridge. Coming down on Friday to see your match with the American. You'll win, I think.”

The young man shook his head. “I shouldn't be too sure of that. I shouldn't bet on it.”

“My dear fellow, I saw you wipe the floor with him at St. Andrews two years ago.”

“Maybe, but I'm not the player I was then. I don't practise enough. I'm too busy nowadays.”

Mr. Bulliwell registered concern. “Now, that's too bad. Too many parties, too popular, I suppose?”

“No fear; too much work!”

“Work? I didn't know you worked.”

“How did you think I lived?” Todd laughed. “I play as an amateur. I've got to earn my living. I assure you, I'm a most industrious stockbroker.”

Mr. Bulliwell looked surprised and interested. “A stockbroker? I'd no idea of that. What firm?”

“Corn Adams.”

“Corn Adams? A very fine firm indeed. I've thought sometimes,” Mr. Bulliwell paused, his forehead wrinkled. “Look here,” he went on. “I didn't know you were in that line. We might possibly be able to help each other. We won't talk shop now, but perhaps you'ld lunch with me one day next week? On Tuesday? Splendid! Boulestin's, then, at half-past one.”

As Mr. Bulliwell moved away Gavin gave a contented sigh. “That's a good day's work done,” he said.

Melanie looked at him in surprise.

“What do you mean?”

“That's what I'm paid to do.”

“What is?”

“Starting people talking about business when they start lecturing me on golf.”

But Melanie still did not understand.

“It's very simple,” he explained. “In my own way I'm a fairly well-known person. I've a name, anyhow, that people like dropping into their conversation. They like to be able to say casually: “Young Gavin Todd was telling me the other day. . .” We're all snobs one way or another; there are a good many golf snobs. And as people who don't or can't meet me in the ordinary way are glad of the opportunity of getting to know me through business, a firm like Corn Adams pays me a pleasant salary to wander round the country playing tournaments, challenging American champions, and in the process attracting people like Bulliwell to put their business in my hands in return for the pleasure it gives them to be able to tell their friends I've lunched with them. That's what's called playing golf as an amateur.”

He spoke lightly but ironically. Melanie missed the irony.

“What a heavenly way of earning a living.”

“An easy way, but. . .”

“I don't know what more you want. Doing the thing you like best half the week.”

Gavin shrugged his shoulders. “That part of it's all right, but. . . oh, well, I'm not sure that exploiting personal relationships is the jolliest of occupations. It makes me rather distrustful of friends and friendship, and. . . oh, and other things. Still, I've done my day's work. Let's start enjoying ourselves. If we moved these coats, there'ld be a nice seat for us.”

They moved the coats from one of the narrow seats that face the driver.

“This,” said Todd as a solemn butler handed her a curried lobster, “is probably about the first time you've eaten in a bus since you were a baby in half socks, sucking peppermint.”

And they laughed together, balancing their plates upon their knees, sipping from time to time at the hock cup that was, Todd whispered warningly, insidiously strong. “It tastes like gingerbeer,” he said. “But it isn't, really.” She laughed. He was fun, this boy, she thought. Modest and unassertive. “Cosy” was the word she would have chosen to describe him with. But though his conversation was bright and entertaining, she listened to it with the half only of her attention. With the other half she was watching Mander as he chatted to a tall, handsome woman in the middle thirties. He was talking quickly and, it seemed, amusingly. The woman's lips kept pouting in a smile. It was a smile that irritated Melanie. She felt she was being cheated. Why was Mander talking to her instead of to herself? He had brought her down here. It was nonsense to pretend that it was for the lad's sake that that pencilled note had been sent across the Vienna ballroom. Who would want the lad for his own sake? There he was standing on the conductor's platform, talking to no one, looking lost. Why couldn't he join up with some one and be amusing? His aloofness was intended as a criticism of herself. It looked as though he were saying, “I brought you down here. Now you go and leave me by myself.” As though you went to a party to spend your whole time talking to the person you'd come down with. Really, he was infuriating.

“The first race will be starting in a moment,” the butler said as he removed the remnants of the curried lobster and handed her a wing of chicken.

“Heavens, and I've not backed a horse yet!” cried Melanie. “Which shall I?”

“I,” said Gavin, “have backed Persian Peter.”

The butler shook his head. “I should not have backed that, sir, if I had been you.” He spoke in the suave, pontifical manner of a priest hearing confession. “If I were you, I should back Gardenia.”

“Gardenia,” Melanie turned the page of her programme quickly. “Cerise and blue,” she read. “That sounds heavenly. Arthur,” she called out. “Here's ten shillings. Go and put it on Gardenia for me.”

The lad coloured, hastened forward, took the green note, repeated “Gardenia?” and stepped out into the rain.

“I think,” said Todd, “that we'd better go upstairs.”

It was windy and wet upstairs. Opposite them, across a massed phalanx of umbrellas was the vast outline of the grand-stand. Behind them in the dip were the booths, the darts, the coconuts: beyond the ridge were the swing-boats and the helter-skelters, the Sports Club stand; in between flowed a drenched river of humanity. “Where do they start from?” Melanie asked.

“Over there by the trees just beyond Tattenham Corner.”

“Tattenham Corner? I've heard that name. When'll they be starting?”

“In a minute now. The numbers are up there behind.”

She looked behind her at the wide framework of the board, saw the name Gardenia, the number, 5, and another, 21, beyond it, asked for an explanation, was given it, did not understand it, glanced at her card, re-read “Cerise and blue”; heard from a mile and a half away the cry, “They're off!” heard the cry louden round the bend, heard at her elbow the whisper, “Look, at the end there now,” clutched at the field-glasses that were held out to her, failed to focus them on the splash of colour that quavered at the end of the green avenue, strained with her bare eyes at the nearing cluster, looking for “Cerise and blue,” for the number 21, heard through the thunder of shouts the name “Gardenia,” saw in an uncomprehending flash the horses pass below her, turned dazed and puzzled to meet Todd's laughing congratulations. “Beginner's luck,” he cried.

She did not understand. “Do you mean I've won?” she gasped.

“Most certainly. And at five to one.”

Five to one. That would be two pounds ten. She would buy a large bottle of black narcissus, she decided, as she made her way downstairs. The butler received her gratitude with complacence. “I am accounted a very tolerable judge of horseflesh,” he told her, as he handed her a replenished plate. Two pounds ten. It would be a heavenly large bottle that she could get for that, or would it be more fun to get a bag? It would be fun, anyhow, to hear those notes crinkle into the one she'd got. She looked round for Arthur Paramount.

He was standing, a dejected figure, on the lower step. The smartness that he had surveyed so proudly five hours earlier had utterly departed. His hat was such as a music-hall comedian would have thanked heaven for. His tie and collar were such as a music-hall comedian would have thought twice about. “Aren't I rather overdoing it?” he would have asked himself. The well-cut coat was soaked and shapeless. The sponge bag trousers fell creaseless to muddied shoes. His face was in keeping with his appearance. It was perplexed and mottled.

“Arthur,” Melanie called out, “my fifty shillings!”

The perplexed look darkened. The lad hesitated, then decided upon honesty. “I can't find the bookmaker,” he confessed.

“What! he's welshed, and my first bet, too!”

“No, no, not that, I think in time you'll get it. Of course, I'm sure. But there are so many of them. It's such a crowd and in the wet. Every one that I've been to has said it isn't him.”

Melanie raised a hand wearily against her forehead. Really, but he was being intolerable. “You mean to say,” she began.

The lad was garrulous with explanations. “It'll be all right,” he endeavoured to assure her. “I'll go out in a minute or two. I'll find him this time. I was just waiting till this particular bit of rain blew over.”

At this point Druce Mander joined the conversation. “Now, what's all this about?” he asked.

“It's nothing,” Paramount told him. “It was just that I couldn't find my bookie—it'll be all right. In a minute or two I'll go again.”

Mander laughed.

“You'll do nothing of the sort,” he said. “You'll come in here and get yourself something to eat and drink.” And taking the lad friendlily, almost affectionately, by the arm, he led him up to the end of the carriage and delivered him into the butler's charge.

“Hand me over the ticket,” he said. “I'll go and find your rascal for you.”

With a smile to Melanie he was gone.

In ten minutes he was back, with three brown notes in his hand. “Here's your fifty shillings,” he said, “and the ten shillings of your original wager. Not too bad for a first bet.”

“Were you as lucky?”

“I didn't bet.”

“Waiting for the big race?”

He shook his head. “I never back horses.”

“You don't like gambling?”

“I adore it.”

“Then I should have thought that a pound or two would make all the difference to your enjoyment of a day's racing.”

He smiled. “I don't call that gambling. Putting on a few pounds that you'ld be quite glad to see back, but don't mind losing. I call it gambling when you're playing for more than you can afford to lose; when winning's going to make life fuller for you; when losing's going to make it so much narrower that you daren't face the possibility of losing. That's what I call gambling.”

Melanie pouted. “That doesn't sound too comfortable.”

“It isn't. It depends on what you want out of life, security or excitement.”

He spoke quietly. But there seemed a vast background of experience behind his words. This man has lived, thought Melanie.

“These things are relative,” he went on. “If we were to take your own case, I don't want to be impertinent, but I suppose your people give you an allowance?”

“They do.”

“I don't know if they're strict about it, if they expect you to keep within the limits?”

“They're pretty strict.”

“So that if you were to spend your month's allowance within the first week of that month, you wouldn't like to go to them for more. You'ld have a pretty wretched time for the remainder of the month.”