Wigs on the Green (13 page)

Typical grievance, thought Noel. ‘My darling,’ he said, ‘there really isn’t much to tell. The history of my life up to date is extremely dull, believe me.’

‘The smallest things about you are interesting to me,’ said Anne-Marie, passionately.

‘Well,’ said Noel, with that bright facetiousness which was such an unattractive feature of his mind, ‘shall we begin at the beginning? I was born of poor but honest parents —’

‘Where?’

‘Where was I born? I don’t know exactly, it was somewhere in the Balkans. My father, you see, was an archaeologist, and he and my mother spent the first years of their married life wandering about in that part of the Continent. I know she had a bad time when I was born, as I was premature, and they could not get hold of a proper doctor for ages. They were both so vague, always.’

‘Yes, I see. So then where were you educated?’

‘In England, of course. After the War broke out circumstances compelled my parents to settle down at Hampton Court, and I went to a private school and to Eton in the ordinary way. They did want to send me to some foreign university, but there were various complications and in the end I went to Oxford.’

‘And your parents – did they never go back?’

‘No. After the War they said they were too old (they had married rather late in life). Besides, things had become so changed then, they preferred to stay on at Hampton Court. Now they are both dead.’

This conversation seemed to confirm suspicions which were
already forming in Mrs Lace’s mind. Noel was obviously the rightful king of some Ruritania, preparing in the solitude of an English village for the
coup d’état
which should restore to him his throne. Any day now the courier might arrive and announce that the time was ripe, the people and the regiments in a proper frame of mind to welcome him back to the land of his fathers. Those two strange men whom she had noticed hanging about the Jolly Roger were doubtless members of his personal bodyguard. Her total ignorance of central European politics and geography, coupled with an imaginative nature, enabled her to treat this conjecture as though it were a solid fact; she did not have the smallest misgiving about it from the first moment of its inception.

‘What made you think of coming down here?’ she asked, boldly.

Noel looked embarrassed. It would be difficult for him to explain his exact motives for coming to Chalford. He wondered whether Mrs Lace had spoken about this to Jasper, and if so what impression she had received from him. In order to be on the safe side, he muttered vaguely, ‘Oh, I don’t know, just waiting for something to turn up.’

The courier. The news from his Capital. ‘And how long will it be before that happens? How much longer do you expect to be here?’

‘Just as long as I can go on seeing you every day, darling Anne-Marie.’

‘I wish you would take me away from here,’ she cried, passionately.

Noel frowned. He had been anticipating some such development to this conversation. ‘My dear,’ he said, in a matter-of-fact voice, ‘Whatever would your husband say if I did?’

‘He would divorce me, and I shouldn’t care a pin.’

‘My darling Anne-Marie,’ said Noel, kissing her hand and holding it in his, ‘I must explain to you, I should have explained before – that I am not in a position to marry anybody. If I were, it would be my dream of dreams to marry you. But, for many reasons this is not possible, alas! You must take my word for it, dearest.’

Now for the storm, he thought, now for half an hour of hysterical reproaches. He knew exactly what would be said, he had heard it all before. ‘To you I have been nothing except an agreeable summer holiday’s diversion, but to me you are life itself,’ and so on. It would take all his tact at the end of it to keep things on their old footing, as he very much hoped he would succeed in doing. For he still thought that Mrs Lace was a wildly attractive young woman.

There was a pause, during which he could feel the storm gathering. Metaphorically speaking, he cowered, putting up his coat collar. But to his enormous surprise and relief no storm broke. Mrs Lace encircled his neck with her arms and whispered in his ear, ‘I quite understand, my own angel; don’t let’s think of this any more. We must be happy together whilst happiness is still possible, and try to forget that the day is at hand when we must part, perhaps for ever. And when that day does come, let us be brave and hide, from the world at any rate if not from each other, our broken hearts.’

Noel could hardly believe his ears. He thought that Mrs Lace was by far the most remarkable woman he had ever met.

‘I always told you she was something out of the ordinary,’ he said to Jasper that evening, after repeating the whole conversation for his benefit. They were on the best of terms now, Noel feeling so much gratitude for Jasper’s surprisingly loyal intervention in this affair that he had forgiven and forgotten the piece of blackmail which had ensued. Ever since that afternoon when Jasper had been to see Anne-Marie she had shown a perfectly stupendous love for Noel, he felt that it would have taken weeks of diffident courtship on his part to produce such a result.

Jasper watched the situation developing itself with fiendish amusement, and could not resist telling Poppy what he had done.

‘Oh! I say, poor Mrs Lace,’ she said, laughing, ‘anyway, I don’t suppose she believed a word of it.’

‘Didn’t she just? Well then, why is she being so nice to Noel all of a sudden? She would hardly look at him before.’

‘That’s true. I think it’s awfully funny, but awfully unkind of you, Jasper.’

‘Not at all. The girl’s having a fine time, and so is Noel. I think it was exceedingly nice of me, especially as I could have had her myself by raising a finger, and she’s quite a cup of tea you know.’

‘Really, Jasper, you are outrageous. Pass me the soap-dish, will you?’

Next time they were all together Poppy could not resist treating Noel with exaggerated deference for the benefit of Mrs Lace.

As for Anne-Marie, her dreams became daily more extravagant. She saw herself now as the central figure of an impending tragedy. The farewell scene – Noel booted and spurred, and glittering with decorations, kissing her goodbye in the moonlight while an equerry, holding two horses, awaited him at a discreet distance. ‘Keep this ring and wear it always, it was my mother’s.’ He would tuck her little glove (or handkerchief, she had better order some new ones) into his belt, and gallop away, leaving her in a dead faint. Dreary weeks would follow, during which she would scan the papers for news of his triumph. Then, much later on, the wedding. Anne-Marie, drawn as by a magnet to his capital, would be standing in the crowd while Noel rode in state to marry some royal princess of an unexampled hideosity. His eye would light upon her as she stood there heavily veiled, and pierce her disguise. He would turn deathly pale and bite his lip until the blood came, to hide its quivering. Then, regaining his composure with a kingly gesture, he would ride on amid the huzzas of the populace. At that moment the assassin would draw his weapon, quick as thought she would throw herself before him, and stop the bullet with her own body, to die a few minutes later in the arms of Noel. As he closed her eyes he would pluck from his bosom, and pin to hers, the highest Order that was his to bestow. An alternative. Perhaps in the hour of his triumph he would send for her and install her in some gorgeous palace, joined to his own by an underground tunnel. She would be his good genius, guiding him with her wonderful feminine intuition
through the quagmire of internal and international politics. The statesmen of all countries would bow before her and solicit her good offices with the king, and when she died her strange life would be written in several different languages. In fact, there was no end to these interesting possibilities.

The day after his scene with Mrs Lace, Noel was obliged to go to London. His lawyer wanted to see him; a visit to his dentist was becoming necessary. Jasper suggested that as he was going anyway, he should use the opportunity to buy some little present for Anne-Marie.

‘I’ve never known it do much harm at this stage in the proceedings,’ he said, ‘and after all, you’re simply stiff with cash old boy aren’t you?’

Noel said it was no thanks to Jasper if he was. He thought the idea a good one, however, and when he had finished all his business and eaten his luncheon he went to a pawnshop and bought a small but pretty aquamarine set in a ring. The price, as the jeweller told him, was extremely reasonable, and this was because the market had been flooded ever since the sale of the Russian Imperial jewels, which had included several parures of this stone.

When he slipped his present on to Anne-Marie’s finger he said, to make it seem more romantic, ‘This ring, my beloved, once shone upon the finger of an Empress, but she wasn’t half as beautiful as you.’

‘An Empress!’ cried Mrs Lace. ‘How wonderful!’

Meanwhile arrangements for the pageant were going ahead in good earnest. It had been settled that the inhabitants of the Jolly Roger, Mrs Lace, Eugenia and her Comrades of the Chalford Branch, were to be responsible between them for providing all the clothes and for the opening scene, in which George the Third would arrive and be welcomed to Chalford House. After this, George and Charlotte, surrounded by their courtiers, were to mount a small platform on which there would await them two
thrones, and here they would remain whilst the other scenes, consisting of salient events of the reign, were enacted on the lawn before them. These episodes were being entrusted by Eugenia to various neighbouring branches of Social Unionists, each branch to be responsible for one episode. (Mr Leader and his friends, having learnt that the pageant was in aid of the Social Unionist funds, had politely intimated to Mrs Lace that they would be unable to help.)

Rehearsals for the first scene had already begun. Mrs Lace, having resigned herself to the dismal necessity of driving with Mr Wilkins, was greatly cheered when Jasper promised her that Noel, taking the part, and wearing the actual clothes of the Lord Chalford of the day, should receive them at the front door, help her from the coach and arm her to the platform, where he would then present an address of welcome. Eugenia, as the Prince of Wales, Poppy as Fanny Burney, and Lady Marjorie as the Duchess of Devonshire, would also be there to greet them with billowing curtsies. Mrs Lace felt that after all there would now be even greater opportunities for interplay of flirtatious gestures between herself and Noel than if they had arrived together in the coach, and was happy. Jasper, when the first rehearsal was over, told Poppy that in the minds of those who saw the pageant horrid scandals would be associated with the hitherto unsullied name of Queen Charlotte.

Lady Chalford had invited Jasper to write and produce the pageant on the grounds of his grandfather’s well-remembered talent for composing Valentines. Jasper was finding the job anything but agreeable, each decision in turn seemed to give offence to somebody, while Eugenia plagued him unmercifully, insisting that he must introduce a strong Social Unionist interest.

‘My dear child, I don’t see how I can,’ he said, in despair. ‘I mean, think for yourself, what have George the Third and Social Unionism in common? Not one single thing.’

‘And what about the Glory of England?’ cried Eugenia, in a grandiose voice.

‘Glory of bottoms. The ordinary person simply remembers George the Third by the fact that he went mad and lost America. That’s all he’s ever supposed to have done for England, poor old boy.’

‘I can’t help it,’ said Eugenia, ‘If we are having a Grand Social Unionist rally and pageant, Social Unionism has got to come into it somehow.’

Jasper tore his hair.

Next day Eugenia appeared very early at the Jolly Roger having spent a sleepless night in the throes of composition. As soon as Jasper was up she handed him a document, which ran as follows:

Hail! and thanks for all your good wishes, we are happy to be among our loyal Aryan subjects of Chalford and district. In our speech today we thought we would tell you of a very curious prophetic dream which we had last night. We dreamt that by degrees this, our glorious country, will begin to sink into the slush and slime of a decaying democracy. America, as we are sure you must have all noticed with horror, is already tainted with the disease, and we expect we shall soon have to be kicking her out of our glorious Empire; but even this wonderfully foreseeing action on our part won’t make any difference in the long run. Nothing can save our country from a contagion which is to sweep the earth. Never mind, Britons, do not despair, for in our dream we foresaw that when you shall have been plunged into the darkest night, governed (if one can use such a word) by a pack of disastrous old ladies who ought to have been dead for years, a new day will dawn, the old ladies will be forced to retire to their unhallowed beds, and their place at Westminster will be taken by young and victorious Comrades. In those days, the streets will ring with the cry of youths who will march, each carrying his little banner, towards the fulfilment of a Glorious Britain. A new spirit, the spirit of Social Unionism will be abroad in the land, vitality will flow back into her withered veins, hateful democracy will die the death. We will now all sing the Social Unionist Hymn, ‘Land of Union Jackshirts, Mother of the Flag.’

‘What d’you think of it?’ asked Eugenia, anxiously.

‘It’s a fine speech,’ said Jasper, who had evidently got some beer up his nose and was choking into a handkerchief.

When Mr Wilkins saw it he said that it was very good but much too long for him to learn by heart.

‘Oh! you must try,’ said Eugenia. ‘It would spoil a speech like that if you read it. Learn one sentence every day – you’ve got heaps of time.’

‘I’ll try,’ said Mr Wilkins, good-naturedly.

‘I’m hoping,’ continued Eugenia, ‘that you will join the Social Unionist party. You are asked to pay ninepence a month, the Union Jack shirt costs five shillings and the little emblem sixpence. When you have signed on you will be able to use the head-quarters as much as you like. I hope to arrange for instruction in boxing and other Social Unionist sports there soon, and we shall be having a social every Tuesday evening as well. So do join up.’