Symposium (9 page)

‘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 comfortable 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.’