Wigs on the Green (14 page)

‘Anything to please you, Miss Eugenia, but I’m afraid I don’t know much about it at present. Wait a minute, though, is it against foreigners and the League of Nations, because if so I’ll join with pleasure. Damned sewers.’

Mr Wilkins had spent several years tea-planting in Ceylon where ‘sewer’ is apparently a usual term of approbrium.

‘It is,’ said Eugenia, earnestly. ‘Some of us think of sterilizing all foreigners, you know, but I’m not sure our Captain would go quite as far as that.’

‘That’s the stuff to feed the troops! Well done! just what they need. I think Hitler’s a splendid fellow too, although I’m not sure he doesn’t carry things a shade far sometimes. I mean, shoot up the chaps as much as you like, but don’t kill their wives at breakfast – Eh?’

‘When shooting is in progress,’ said Eugenia, coldly, ‘the woman’s duty is to retire to her proper place, the bedroom. If she interferes in men’s business she must put up with a man’s fate.’

‘There’s something in what you say, by Jove; women are a damned sight too fond of poking their noses into things that are
none of their business, these days specially. Look here, I’m joining up; what did you say I owe you?’

‘Ninepence a month, the Union Jack shirt costs five shillings, and sixpence for the little emblem. You sign here – see?’

Jasper’s embarrassment as pageant producer reached a climax when Poppy came to him and said, ‘Look here, darling, Marge wants to know whether she can’t be Queen Charlotte instead of Mrs Lace. Do say “Yes”.’

‘No, really, I don’t think she can,’ said Jasper, ‘and anyway why does she want to be, all of a sudden like this?’

‘Well, she didn’t want me to tell you, but I suppose I shall have to. The fact is, you see, she’s keen on Mr Wilkins, and so of course she quite naturally wants to drive in the coach with him.’

‘Darling Miss Smith, you’ll have to tell her to be sensible. Tell her she can make eyes at him on the platform as much as she likes (she had better take a lesson in amorous gestures from Mrs Lace), but I don’t see how the whole works can be altered now.’

‘Oh, dear! Oh, dear! Marge will be simply furious. She is used to getting her own way in life.’

‘All I can say is that she must be furious for once. Why, it’s as much as my place is worth to tell Mrs Lace she can’t be Queen Charlotte – Noel would stop paying my expenses down here most likely, if I did, and you don’t want me to go straight back to London, I suppose! No, my angel, I’m sorry but it’s quite out of the question. Tell you what I will do though, if you like.’

‘What’s that?’

‘I’ll give you a good bite on the back of your neck.’

‘No, thank you,’ said Poppy, ‘I’m a mass of bruises as it is.’

The question, however, was by no means dropped, Lady Marjorie herself coming to the charge, hotly supported by Eugenia.

‘Is this to be a Great Social Unionist rally, or not?’ the latter demanded furiously, ‘because if it is, it stands to reason that we must keep the best parts for Union Jackshirts. Mrs Lace is not only
not one of us, she is a well-known friend of Pacifists – in fact, it would never surprise me if she should turn out to be a Pacifist spy. How absurd then to insist that she shall be the one to drive along hailed by Social Unionist cheers.’

‘I dare say, but you should have thought of all this sooner,’ said Jasper, with some irritation, ‘before it was settled. Personally, I don’t give a damn who plays which part, and I wish you were all at the bottom of the sea, anyway, but you might remember that wretched old Local Beauty is slaving herself to death over your dresses, and if she wants to take the part of the least attractive queen in history, I should have thought it would be a matter of ordinary decency to let her. In any case you must arrange it among yourselves, I absolutely refuse to make any such suggestion to her.’

‘Oh, well, I see your point,’ said Lady Marjorie, good-temperedly, ‘I’ll ask her myself at the committee meeting tomorrow.’

Mrs Lace, however, when approached was perfectly firm. She listened calmly while the suggestion was being made, and then said that it was too unlucky, but Queen Charlotte’s dress was now finished, and could never be altered to fit Lady Marjorie, as there were no means of letting out the seams on the hips and round the waist. Marjorie, who had never been spoken to in such a way before, was more surprised than angry, and took her defeat with the greatest of good humour. Poppy and Eugenia were furious, and said afterwards that Mrs Lace was a spiteful cat, and Poppy said at the time to Mrs Lace that as she looked exactly like Queen Charlotte, she was quite right to keep the part. Unfortunately, owing to its target’s total ignorance of English history, this Parthian shaft went wide of the mark.

Noel and Jasper, who seldom met these days, over a quiet glass at the Rose Revived, made a point of doing so now, and agreed together that women were impossible everywhere, except in what Eugenia had referred to as their proper place. Noel no longer took Mrs Lace’s side on every subject; feeling quite certain, as he now did, of her great love for him, he was able to adopt a high-handed
attitude towards her, and was by no means inclined to jeopardize all future relations with Eugenia Malmains on her account.

Mrs Lace, on her part, secure in the knowledge of her own romantic situation, felt that she could now alienate dukes’ ex-fiancées and earls’ granddaughters with the most perfect indifference. She carried her head in the air and permitted herself the luxury of being extremely disagreeable to everybody except Noel.

Meanwhile the two detectives continued to ply their lugubrious trade. They appeared to ignore the necessity for repose, and the inhabitants of the Jolly Roger were continually being startled by their appearance in the most unexpected places. They would jump out from dark corners like sinister Jack-in-the-Boxes, at all times of the day and night. It was most unnerving. Finally, Jasper made a heroic if unsuccessful attempt to win their confidence. He stood them drink after drink at the bar. Their heads proved to be of the ox-like variety; and although they unbent after the fourth whisky sufficiently to admit to their profession, and made after the seventh some startling disclosures as to the present tendencies of modern London society, human ingenuity and liberality could push them no further than this. The two things which Poppy was so anxious to find out, namely, whether Anthony St Julien himself was employing them or whether it was the mother of his débutante, and how much or how little they knew of her relationship with Jasper, remained locked in their own bosoms. The end of the matter was that the detectives were obliged to carry Jasper upstairs to bed, where he lay, fully clothed and staring at the electric light bulb until far on into the next day.

‘Never mind,’ he said to Poppy, when he had more or less recovered from the attack of alcoholic poisoning which ensued, ‘I am on exceedingly good terms with them now, which is always something. The worst of it is that I rather think I told them about us being engaged. Would that matter, do you suppose?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Poppy. ‘I don’t think it was very clever of you and anyway we’re not.’

‘Oh! aren’t we? I thought we were?’

‘Not at all,’ said Poppy. ‘You might bear in mind the fact that I have a perfectly good husband already, would you?’

‘Perfectly good strikes me as an euphemism. Besides, it’s quite obvious to any thinking man that you are heading for the divorce courts at present.’

‘That’s no reason for wanting to marry you,’ said Poppy, ‘and anyway I hope you always take very good care to come in through Marge’s room. You do, now don’t you, Jasper?’

‘I do when I remember. That sort of thing is so awfully easy to forget.’

‘I’d be very much obliged if you would bear it in mind all the same. After all, I’ve only got to hold out for long enough and Anthony St. Julien will be forced to let me divorce him. Then we shall be on clover.’

‘Only so-so. Remember what awful times the innocent party has before the absolute, with the King’s Proctor breathing down its neck every night. I often think one should look at every side of a question before settling upon a course of action. However, I see you are admitting our engagement; that’s always something.’

‘Indeed. I am not.’

‘Now I have thought out a very good scheme whereby we might yet be able to raise some money to live on. We will go and see my grandfather, who is binned-up in an asylum near here. He may fall for you (it seems to run in the family), and come across with the goods. You never know.’

‘If he’s binned-up he won’t have any goods to come across with, will he?’ said Poppy.

‘That’s just where you’re wrong, little Miss Know-all. You see, my grandfather is in a very special kind of bin, for lunatic peers only, and it has quite different rules from the ordinary sort. It was endowed by some rich old peeress in 1865 who was clearly insane herself; she had it built on the exact plans of the House of Lords, so that the boys should feel at home, and she made up the rules as she went along. I once got hold of a copy of them, feeling it might come in handy – here we are.’ He pulled a bundle of typescript
out of his pocket. ‘I’ll read you out the bits that matter,’ he said. ‘First of all there’s a sort of preface, pointing out that madness is an infliction which can befall any one of us, from the most humble to the most noble, and that therefore it is quite possible even for peers of the realm to be attacked by this distressing malady. The old girl goes on to say that for too long it has been a disgraceful scandal, a blot on the name of England, that such quantities of these poor, good old men should, through no fault of their own, have been allowed to perish in the hateful and unrefined atmosphere of the common mad-house. This scandal apparently weighed on her mind to such a degree that she spent most of her time visiting the poor good old men and trying to ease their lot by reading to them, teaching them poker work and other useful and profitable occupations, and providing them, as far as the regulations of their bins permitted, with those little luxuries which do so much to make life worth living. “I feel,” she says, “and our dear Queen has been gracious enough to approve of my sentiments on this subject, that the
most
one can do for gentlemen who have so
faithfully
served their Sovereign and their Country, but who through the inscrutable visitation of Providence have been rendered unable, not only to continue such service, but to enjoy any of the amenities of life, and worse yet are cut off from the society of their
loved
ones and of those of their fellow peers upon whom the infliction has
not yet
fallen, can never be too much.” And so on and so forth. Now – are you listening, Miss Smith – here is the rule on which I build my hopes, Rule 6.

‘“In order that these unhappy noblemen should be enabled to preserve that measure of self-respect which their birth should guarantee, but of which circumstances too often conspire to rob them, the inhabitants of Peersmont shall be entitled, under this foundation, to the full and entire control of one half of their incomes during life, and to the full and entire disposal, by testament, of one half of their fortune after death.”

‘That’s quite plain, isn’t it? You see she made up all these rules for the place and they were ratified by Act of Parliament. Now I
happen to know that the old boy, my grandfather, is worth over a million altogether, and he is a complete miser, so it stands to reason that if he has been controlling, say £25,000 a year for the thirty years that he has spent at Peersmont, he must now be worth a tidy penny. On the other hand, it is like squeezing blood out of a stone to get any of it. I know my poor mother has been going to see him for years and has never managed to extract a penny. Uncle Bradenham is a miser too, it’s a family trait.’

‘Doesn’t sound all that hopeful,’ said Poppy.

‘It’s pretty hopeless I can tell you, that’s why I’ve never bothered to go and see the old boy before. All the same, there can be no harm in trying, and it would be quite funny to see over Peersmont. Lady Chalford keeps on offering to lend me her car whenever I want it, so I vote we go over there one day this week and try our luck, eh?’

‘K.O.,’ said Poppy indifferently.

Jasper went to see Lady Chalford about the pageant, as indeed he did most days, and asked whether he could borrow the car. They were on very good terms; she thought him a delightful young man, and made no secret of her wish that he should ally himself to her family by marrying Eugenia; Jasper, on his side, was getting very much attached to the old lady.

‘By all means,’ she said, ‘I shall be enchanted to lend you the car. Yes, take Poppy with you; it will do poor Driburgh good to see her pretty face. Now which day had you thought of going? Tomorrow? Very well then, I shall tell the gardener that he is to pick a really first-class bunch of grapes and some peaches for you to give dear Driburgh from me with very many messages. I shall be very anxious to have an account of how you find him.’

Jasper was pleased to hear this. First-class grapes and peaches were a long-felt want at the Jolly Roger, where the strawberries were over and the raspberries were becoming decidedly squashy.

‘Should he seem to be more or less himself,’ Lady Chalford continued, little suspecting that such black thoughts lurked in the
mind of her young friend, ‘my dear husband and I would be most happy to receive him here some time. Now I wonder, for instance, if the curator would permit him to come over to see the pageant. Anyhow, I leave it in your hands, Mr Aspect, to do as you think best.’

Lady Chalford then spoke of the pageant. ‘You have all been most kind. I am more grateful to you than I can say for relieving me of any trouble in this matter. It would have been far beyond my powers to organize a thing of this sort, living as I have for so long in seclusion. That dear little woman, Mrs Lace now – so clever of you to find her. She tells me that she knows all the neighbours for miles around. I have asked her to revise my list so that we can send out the invitations. My husband’s agent will then look through it for me and tell me all about the people, so that I can be quite sure that I shall ask nobody who it would be unsuitable for my little Eugenia to meet. One cannot be too careful, of course. Mrs Lace herself is, he tells me, the daughter of a rural dean, and Lace I know to be a much-respected name in these parts; the family has lived at Comberry for a hundred years or more and Major Lace is a lay rector. I am perfectly contented for Eugenia to make friends with them, quite suitable people. Now, tell me, when is dear Poppy’s husband expected down here?’