The Old Man and Me (14 page)

And here came the Amusing Young People.

“Melinda! Peter! Your guests.”

Thus Melinda! (Daggoner Child One) and Peter! (Daggoner Child Two) were mobilized into action in the foreground while there began with the Daggoners Senior and their group a kind of collective (though I hate to use so strong a word) withdrawing and disappearing action into the background. Mrs. Something-Something, the Dance-loving mother, popped in for a second showering me with Clara Hatch leaflets and reading me selections from the latest Hatch letter, and then disappeared. I was sorry to see her go for her departure—along with whatever else was mysteriously going on at the same time—had left me totally isolated.

C. D. was leaning over the back of my chair. “What’re you
doing?”

“Being ignored.”

He laughed. “And doing it beautifully. Incidentally you’ve got it wrong. You’re not being overlooked—you’re being looked over.”

“Really? What’s the verdict?”

“Formidable.”

“How so?”

“Well, you’re an American, they can see that all right and they know what to make of that. On the other hand you’re calm and reposed and they don’t quite know what to make of that.”

“What do they expect?”

“Arms like windmills. Gushing about how quaint everything is. Drunkish. Loud. That sort of thing.”

“How charming.”

“I exaggerate to make the point. What I mean is—you’ve passed the test. They’ll come around. You watch. Good luck. I’m off.”

“Hey—not so fast! What’s up?”

“Oh—didn’t you know? This is the Kiddies’ Luncheon. We oldsters take off for other parts.”

“What about Ann?”

“She goes with us.”

“I see,” I said. “It’s all a hideous plot. That girl’s not an hour older than me. I’ve seen her teeth and I know.”

C. D. smiled weakly. “I think she must be. Anyway you’re bound to find this all very enlightening. Keep your ears open. I want a full report at tea-time.” And he gave a lock of my hair a little tug of endearment and was gone.

The first one to “come around” was Michael Ward Bell. He said “Michael—” Pause. “Michael Ward Bell,” with a certain amount of loathing at the sound. I said “Honey. Honey Fl—” and he said yes, he knew. He flopped down beside me. Floop. He was handsome with dark hair falling in his face, eyes that slanted slightly, high cheek-bones, and a rosy healthy complexion. The dark searching eyes held me. He looked full of purpose. How young he is, I thought. He wasn’t young. He was probably a couple of years older than me, but I realized with a shock that ever since our meeting I had kept C. D. so completely, undividedly in my thoughts that I judged all people from where he stood. And from where he stood Michael Ward Bell was young.

He smouldered at me balefully. “You like it here?”

“Yes.”

“You do?” He was surprised, almost offended. “You don’t find us dull, quaint, slow, dead?”

“I think it’s beautiful,” I said looking about indicating that I was keeping the conversation general.

“Yes, I expect it is. I’d like to show you around. D’you ride?”

“Unfortunately not.”

“Never mind. I’ll take you around the Point-to-Point in my car tomorrow.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s a bore. God, I’m hungry,” he said angrily. “Aren’t they ever going to feed us? What time is it?”

I looked at my watch. “Only ten of one.”

“What’s that?” he said quickly on the alert. “Say that again.”

“Only ten of one.” I wondered if he’d gone mad.

“Marvellous. It sounds like a literal translation. From the German.”

I sighed inwardly. I was getting very used to this. “What should I have said?” I asked patiently.

“Ten to one.”

“Ten to one,” I enunciated precisely.

“No
t
,”
t
’; ten t” one,” he said, so savagely that when he heard himself back, as it were, he had to laugh.

“Come on, clod. Move. We’re going in,” urged someone called Peter who was standing over us. Not Peter Daggoner. Peter Wimbish (or so it sounded through their typical name mumble). There was also another Michael: Mr. and Mrs. Something’s pimply-faced son. Two Peters and two Michaels, and a man called John. The girls were more imaginatively named. There was Melinda Daggoner whom I began my study around the luncheon table with. She must be the apple of her father’s eye for she was a plain girl with nothing in her face or figure to indicate she would not remain so. As for rebellion I couldn’t detect the slightest twitch of it in her. Then there was Lysander MacClaren and she was something else. About eighteen years old and a knockout. All three of the men she’d arrived with—Peter, Michael, and John—were madly in love with her. You got that at once not only from them but from her. She made it quite clear by her exuberant possessiveness. She was so proud of it you couldn’t possibly begrudge her them; she was enjoying herself too much. They were all three in love with her, but as the lunch progressed I began to perceive that they were all three in love with her quite differently: Peter Wimbish, who was utterly nice, utterly correct, whose face even in its youth possessed a kind of fading beauty, a solid, sweet, decent young man, loved her willingly; the tortured Michael unwillingly; and John, older than the others and of scholarly aspect (why he’s the poor one! my reflexes told me), hopelessly. Nobody seemed to mind except a girl called Clarissa, who was also pretty, though she didn’t trust her looks, and snippy and beady-eyed and full of challenge. And finally there was Lady Rosalind: Rosie, a large, vague, placid girl, with complete aplomb.

For a while the conversation—mainly about Huntin’, Shootin’ and Social Climbin’—floated five feet above me. About the latter, I must say they were devastatingly outspoken.

“Don’t you believe it. Mind, I’m not saying he doesn’t put on a splendid show about not giving a damn, but Tony would love to be invited there.”

“He’s in for a shock. When you go shooting with them you’re expected to bring your own sandwiches and eat them round the table,” growled Michael into his food.

“—that absurd way she has of trying to scandalize,” the large cow-like Lady Rosalind was saying calmly. “I told her ‘You can’t shock me. He could have been a big, fat, stinking Jew and I wouldn’t have been shocked.’”

A small silence. “I say, Rosie—Black Mark,” John commented finally, schoolmaster to pupil.

“Well, goodness don’t misunderstand me, what I meant was I couldn’t care less. It’s too silly of her to think she’s being daring.”

Lysander took out a long cigarette holder, put a cigarette in it and turned to John to light it for her.

“I say that is vulgar,” said John. “Look, Michael, isn’t it deliciously vulgar, Liz’s cigarette holder?”

“Yes, isn’t it?” Lysander exclaimed at Michael flirtatiously.

“No. It isn’t long enough. This way it’s just common. It wants to be an inch longer. That would make it properly vulgar.”

“Naughty,” said Lysander, delighted at having gotten his goat.

“Eau, Francis was
so
funny about Adrian. Did you hear about it? ‘D’you mind if I smoke?’ he asked him in the middle of a meal. ‘Not at all,’ said Adrian and then turned his back and wouldn’t talk to him for the rest of the evening.”

“Adrian, always trying to be grand. Coventry Irish. Bicycles.”

“Bicycles?”

“Where the family fortune came from.”

“What sort of a time did you have this summer with the Frogs, Peter?”

“Rotten,” replied the young Daggoner. “The usual French boarding-house. Whispering amongst themselves all the time. Shooting stray cats at tea. Got to be pretty end-of-tethering.”

“Poor you,” sighed Lysander.

“Wasn’t that C. D. McKee you were talking with before he slipped out?” Clarissa asked me suddenly.

I said it was.

“But he’s looking so much better since I last saw him. It was most extraordinary how the death of his wife seemed to upset him. When you think that they never got along. She died in America, I believe. She’d gone off and left him. Did you know Pauline?” I shook my head. “Dreary little creature,” Clarissa went on, “though I must say he was vile to her. A most unlikely pair. Nobody could understand why he married her. Her money I suppose.”

“Really,” I murmured faintly. I was beginning to feel sick, I wanted more than anything to change the conversation but my wits had deserted me and I could only go on. “Was she very rich?”

“Pots and pots. She was a funny little thing. Meant well; just wasn’t up to it. And drank so much. Drank badly. She said
tuth
for tooth. I mean what sort of class is that?”

“Why it’s the part of the country you’re from.” (Pauly, poor, poor Pauly. How our sins come home to roost. Forgive me, Pauly, for having done the same thing to you long, long ago.) “You know, we don’t have that sort of class thing in America,” I continued with more spirit. “The way you pronounce things simply depends on where you’re from. It has no more significance than that. We’re not snobbish about regional speech. We think it’s charming.”

“Oh come now,” tinkled Clarissa, though at the same time seeming to purse her eyes, “We can’t let you have that entirely your own way. You may try to disguise your class system with a lot of talk about democracy and equality but it’s there, now admit. Look at all those books on Status Seeking they keep turning out over there. Socking great bestsellers every one of them. Why there’re as many different kinds and shades and classes of Americans as English and we’re getting to know about them.”

“That’s right,” put in old scholarly John. “There was a time when we thought all Americans were gangsters.”

“And we thought all English were gentlemen,” I replied.

“Hah, hah. Fair enough,” guffawed John as yet another one of my deliberately offensive retorts missed its mark.

“No, but tell, that pronunciation of tooth, would it be middle class?” Clarissa went back to worrying over her bone.

“I dunno. I guess so,” I said giving up.

“
Lower
middle class?” she persisted.

I paused, as if actually considering the thing carefully. “
Middle
lower class,” I answered finally. “Or rather, half way between middle lower class and
lower
lower class.” I wondered if I was going to get away with this. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Michael glaring viciously at me.

But Clarissa seemed satisfied. “Eau rareli,” she said nodding and lunch plodded on.

They talked of country matters. The neighbouring peasantry was in pretty bad shape. The rate of idiocy was rising. “It’s that inbreeding, of course.”

“The new bus routes are helping a lot, though.”

“Why?” I’d pledged myself to silence after my last exchange but this seemed too fascinating a non sequitur to let go.

“Gets them away from their villages a bit more.”

“Gets them away from their families, he means.”

“You mean incest?”

“What else?” gloomed Michael.

Back to my food.

“The last time I was in Paris,” Clarissa was telling one of the Peters, “I found it completely spoiled. I was walking around the Place des Vosges having a gorgeous time thinking thank God they’ve left something alone and of course—wouldn’t you know it?—some American came up to me and said, ‘Say, Miss, where can I park my car?’”

“What should he have said?” Michael snarled at her.

“Why quite,” she replied quickly and turned to me. “Zactly my point. That’s what I so envy you Americans, your sense of the contemporary. It’s the only way to be now. The
assurance
with which they cover the Continent looking for car-parks...”

“Yes?” threatened Michael.

Clarissa faltered. “What I mean is, we’re such sticks about these things. We’re hopeless abroad. Always afraid one’s going to offend someone or that there’s a law against whatever one’s about to do. It’s too boring. I expect we are whatchecallit.”

“Anachronisms.”

“Well I couldn’t care less,” the pansy-eyed Lysander cooed languidly. “Had the most divine feeling sailing down the Beaulieu river the other day in an old-fashioned motor-launch collecting shoals of people who’d somehow got us muddled with the Royals. I waved back. My dear, I felt glorious.” The cigarette smoke from the absurd holder curled lazily upwards and her lashes swept her cheeks as she melted her men, one after the other.

I decided it would be more rewarding from a research point of view if I stopped listening to the conversation as sense and looked upon it instead as a word-game, noting which words turned up with the highest frequency so that I could report my findings back to C. D. Lunch finally drifted to a stop and we were back in the drawing-room, the prickly Michael sticking to me like a burr, jamming me into the corner of a sofa. “We’re awful, aren’t we?” he flung at me. “Go on, admit that’s what you’re thinking. It’s written all over your face.”

“My face is a blank,” I said, astonished.

“Exactly,” he replied. “Well?”

“Well what?”

“What do you think of us?” he persisted.

I think you should all be stuffed and put into a museum was what I thought. Jesus, I suddenly felt enough vituperation in me for a five-page Philippic but a certain kind of cheap pride prevented me from turning it loose on him. It would seem as if I were allowing them to get me down. Which they were. And then there was that other thought—the bad one: These people were only, after all, displaying the kind of snobbery that I’d used towards Pauly.

“Come on,” he was prodding me.

“Well, it’s hard to say. I do get a kind of amidst the alien corn feeling with you all. But I suppose that’s only natural. You’re so...different. That’s all.”

“What’s America like?”

“Different,” I said stubbornly.

“It better be!” he said in tones of such overwrought despair that again listening to their echo he was forced to laugh. Though a second later he was more serious than ever. “Listen, you’ve got to help me,” he pleaded. “I’ve got to find myself. D’you think I could find myself in America? God, I wish I could go!”

“What’s stopping you?” I asked sharply. I felt sorry for him and all that (and patriotically soothed that England had her own version of our Crazy-Mixed-Up etcetera) but he was a real flip, this cat, and as for me I was hardly in the position to tell people how to go about finding themselves. He didn’t answer my question but following his black stare enabled me to answer it for myself: Lysander, collecting her men, had found one missing and was advancing in our direction.