The Cherry Blossom Corpse (5 page)

“Right. Steady. I'm all right now. Go forwards.”

“—on
‘Pamela
—Romance or Realism?' I'm sure we all appreciate—”

“No. Not there. Too far back. I shan't hear if I sit there. Not that I want to.”

“—the kindness of Miss—er—Jackhellen in coming to—”

“Further. There's a seat on the aisle there. Damn these chairs. They've got arms. Can you squeeze me through?”

“—and I know you're going to give her a wonderful reception.”

“Right. I'm in. You sit there, Maxwell.”

The mountainous bulk of Lorelei Zuckerman, still in her shapeless but aggressive black bombazine (or whatever) garment, had been aided slowly and painfully through the hall by Felicity Maxwell, and squeezed gingerly on to one of the Hotel Scandilux's unsuitable chairs. Her thick New York drawl echoed over the chairwoman's microphoned coo whenever she had a need or a desire for Felicity to fulfil.

“And now we have a
small
change in the programme which I know is going to thrill you—”

“My handkerchief, Maxwell.”

“Unfortunately, Margaret Bond has had to drop out of the symposium on Second Chance Romances on Wednesday—”

I turned to ask Cristobel what in the world Second Chance Romances were, then once again I thought I knew, so I shut up.

“—but I've been on the telephone this morning to Lorelei Zuckerman, and I'm happy and grateful to be able to report that she has consented to go on the panel
in place of Margaret and give us the benefit of her experience and her truly miraculous expertise.”

“On the financial aspect. I'll talk about the financial side. That's all.”

Lorelei Zuckerman's speaking voice commandeered the hall. The president cooed nervously.

“Quite. That's perfectly understood. And it's not a side any of us would want to ignore, is it?”

“Sure isn't.”

The business of the morning crept edgily on. A financial report was presented by Arthur Biggs in a dry, mildly pompous manner. A discussion was set in train as to where the next meeting should be held in three years' time, and there was a general preference for Paris, France, though since the romantic novel apparently does not flourish in that country of cynical amorousness, there was some doubt whether they had enough active members there to organize it. Throughout the business and discussion Lorelei Zuckerman commented, or commanded Felicity, both in her heedless and high-handed manner. It tensed me up no end, and I could see it made the speakers very jumpy. By about twelve o'clock things were beginning to wind down, and not long afterwards the President announced that:

“I've only one more thing to say, and that's the pleasant news that a lovely, lovely Norwegian cold table lunch will now be served.”

She must have pushed a button somewhere, because the doors at the back now opened, and trolleys laden with food and wine began to be wheeled in and put into position on two or three long tables at the back. Everybody perked up visibly: this was the thing to give one the stiffening to face up to
“Pamela
—Romance or Realism?” in the afternoon. Everyone got up, began chattering, went to inspect the food, and soon began collecting
plates and helping themselves in the approved manner to bits and pieces of this and that. Cristobel piled a plate high—she has a healthy, Girl Guide's appetite—and her morning was made by her being chatted up again by the renegade monk. I got some remarkably good prawns, and some salmon, but to prove that into each life some rain must fall I somehow found myself in a circle around Amanda Fairchild.

“Such
a silly girl they sent to interview me. Did you hear me put her down, Peregrine? She kept going on about escapism and sugar-coated dreams and male dominance and goodness knows what. I don't know what relevance she thought it had. By the end I was
hardly
getting a word in—imagine, darlings!—so I sent her away with a flea in her ear. Then I
crept
like a little
mouse
into your interesting session. Unlike some . . .”

She looked towards where Lorelei Zuckerman was still solidly seated in the body of the hall. Felicity Maxwell had run backwards and forwards, and had procured a little table, as well as a carafe of water to go with the half-bottle of brandy she had brought with her. Now Lorelei Zuckerman sat over a substantial plate, from time to time sending Felicity running back to the table for further helpings of anything that had taken her fancy, and obviously getting great pleasure from seeing her jump up and run. Whether Felicity herself got to eat anything at all I could not see.

“Such
a dreadful woman,” said Amanda complacently. “I really can't imagine Lorelei Zuckerman
having
a second chance romance, can you?—whatever her
startling
expertise in writing them.”

We all laughed—dutifully, but a little nervously. Lorelei Zuckerman had that effect on people, I noticed.

“But she certainly could be interesting on the financial side,” said the Kenyan, who had expressed his admiration for Lorelei the previous evening.

And even as we laughed at her, I noticed one nervous conference delegate approach, as it were, the Zuckerman throne, and put a nervous question to her. Mrs. Zuckerman masticated relentlessly, swallowed, and then replied. A further question was put, a further reply given. Amiable she was not, but I was surprised she was replying at all. Arthur Biggs drifted over in her direction, and then Maryloo Parker, then others. When the Kenyan went up to refill his plate he did not come back to our circle, and a minute or two later I saw him around the throne. Amanda Fairchild talked on, gaily, insouciantly, but soon there were big gaps in the group around her, and she could gaze through at the circle congregating round Lorelei.

Amanda could not look ugly. Honey and charm school and facial exercises over the years had built into her face a relentlessly sweet and charming expression, and thus had she gazed from the backs of countless hardback and paper-covered editions. But eyes can less easily be made to lie, and the lights from the chandelier above reflected in Amanda's moist eyes, so that they looked like a hundred silver daggers, pointing in Lorelei Zuckerman's direction. And on Lorelei's face there played something that I could only call the ghost, or parody, of a smile.

A
MANDA PUT ON HER NEXT TURN
the following day at breakfast, and certainly succeeded in monopolizing attention. The previous afternoon and evening had been quiet (and in the case of the lecture on
Pamela
positively somnolent, for it provided an eloquent testimony of what Norwegian students are prepared to put up with). Lorelei Zuckerman had once again eaten alone at dinner, but on the way down she had stopped in the lounge, and Felicity had fetched her a sherry from the bar. While she drank it, with her familiar, compulsive sipping technique, one or two people—notably the Kenyan, who seemed to have a confident way with fearsome females—went up and passed the time of day with her, or put to her practical questions. It would be wrong to imply that with these questioners she was gracious, for
grace was not in her nature, but she did reply without rudeness, or any of the other people-repellant devices which were prominent in her armoury.

Breakfast she took in her room. So at breakfast Amanda was undisputed queen. It was a cold table, with a magnificent display of cereals, cheeses, meats and types of bread and rolls. One fetched for oneself and ate as much as one could, and the only attendant in evidence was the boy who had taken our luggage on the first day. I sat there stoking up for the next few hours. I was finding, contrary to tradition, that Romance made me hungry.

“I say,” I heard Amanda's voice, floating out into the chomping silence: “do you speak English?”

She was holding up a newspaper and addressing the boy, who had just brought in reinforcements of milk and ham. He was really more than a boy—a young man. He was studying English at Bergen University, so he had a smattering.

“Could
you come over here for a moment?”

I now saw that Amanda was flourishing a copy of that day's
Bergens Tidende,
which doubtless she had grabbed on the way down. The boy went over to her table with palpable reluctance.

“Ah—now, you see there is this article about me by . . . Ragnhild Sørby.”

“Jada,”
said the young man. “She is werry vell-known.”

“Fancy!” said Amanda. “Very well-known in Bergen!”

“Werry macho-feminist,” said the boy, becoming more linguistically adventurous.

“The idea appals,” murmured Amanda. “But having met her, I know
exactly
what you mean. Now, what I'd like you to do is cast your eye over the piece and translate for me all the very
nast
iest things she has said about me. One must know one's enemy, so
don't
pull your punches and fudge the translation.”

The boy took the paper with fresh accretions of reluctance, and as he cast his eye over the article his face mantled red.

“I don't know if I find words,” he said.

“I can imagine not,” said Amanda grimly. “But perhaps we find them together. Regard it as a preparation for reading . . . Swift, or somebody of that sort. An exercise in vituperation.”

“We do not do vituperation,” muttered the boy, but gamely he made a try, and in a cooperative effort he and Amanda managed to convey to the assembled breakfast-room the gist of the piece.

“Looking like an azalea past its prime . . . a manner compounded of gush, condescension and affection—”

“Affect
at
ion, darling, I would imagine.”

“Affectation . . . the candy-floss dream-factory . . . reading her books is like swimming in warm treacle . . . the lowest common denominator of escapist literature . . . she has done more to downgrade women's estimation of themselves than anyone since Strindberg . . . a quisling and a stool-pigeon from the world of male dominance . . .”

“Well, I think I get the
gist,”
said Amanda, apparently quite happy. “Thank you
so
much.” I expected her to tip him, but she merely dismissed him with her most brilliant smile, doubtless regarding it as payment enough. “Well, I must say I
do
feel flattered. The influence she attributes to me! Such significance as a phenomenon! I'm
so
pleased to know what she said. It will enable me to thank her in the most appropriate manner, should I come across her again!”

And she smiled a smile of luxurious anticipation.

The session that morning was short, for at eleven-thirty a fleet of buses was to come to the Hotel Scandilux to take us on our tour of Hardanger. The shortness was
a blessing, for the symposium on
Whither the Gothic?
might more aptly have been called
Wither the Gothic,
for it spluttered and guttered and finally died the death as speakers were reduced to suggesting, vaguely and without conviction, computers as the possible future direction. I tried to imagine word processors taking over from Frankenstein's monster and the mad wife in the attic, and failed. I had only come along to the session because I was booked on the bus tour after it. Cristobel had sat with the ex-monk for the
Pamela
lecture the day before, and she sat with him again today. My days as cicerone were over. I sat there exercising my mind with historical mysteries: the fate of Darnley, of Amy Robsart, of Louis XVII. I didn't bother with the Princes in the Tower. I had long ago decided to dissent from the conclusions of Josephine Tey's Inspector Alan Grant.

Finally the chairwoman declared that this discussion had been fascinating, stimulating, and everything it hadn't been (as chairmen do all over the world), but that the buses were waiting, and she knew we were going to have a perfectly
fab
ulous tour, so we really must get going, mustn't we? All of us who had unrestricted use of our limbs jumped up and swarmed towards the lifts and the stairs. The others were wheeled off by relatives or attendants. We emerged from the hotel on to Bryggen, blinking at the dazzling sheen of sun on water, gazing over to the cluster of white wooden houses on the other side of the fjord. As we jostled, in the manner of these gatherings, towards the buses and what we hoped would be the best seats, I witnessed an Encounter I was pleased not to miss. Amanda, resplendent in scarlet shantung, discovered that her interviewer of the previous day was to be with us on the tour, no doubt to get material for further invectives. It was with unconcealed relish that Amanda boarded her.

“Look, darling,” she called, billowing out her splendid full coat, “a
peony
past its prime today!”

The interviewer was not capable, I suspected, of being ashamed, but she sure as hell looked awkward. Amanda smiled ferociously, having conveyed the information that she had read and understood, and then passed on, prancing, to another bus.

As in supermarkets, when one makes for the shortest queue one invariably gets behind someone whose goods aren't price-marked and who laboriously pays by cheque, so I made for a bus that turned out to have an arthritic American waiting to get on, and I landed up with a seat three-quarters of the way back. Lorelei Zuckerman, by the way, was not the arthritic American. She was not coming on this trip, and neither, consequently, was Felicity. Lorelei had announced that she might hire a chauffeur-driven car and do the trip later in the day—a foolish decision, I thought, since one can see so much less from a car, but one pretty typical of the Zuckerman.

So there I was, on the bus with Maryloo Parker, who at least was a friendly—a potentially over-friendly—soul. I looked around to see who else I knew. The sodden Finn was lolling over a double seat, a half-bottle of vodka protruding from his pocket. However clear the day, and it was beautifully clear, with deep blue skies, Hardanger would be seen by him through a thick spirituous mist. Cristobel and her monk were sitting still further down than me, on the back seats, deep in discussion, probably about sacred and profane love. Down towards the front were Arthur Biggs and a male friend—one so important that Mrs. Biggs had been relegated to the seat behind, with a sallow-looking Mediterranean lady with whom she was trying vainly to make conversation.