Bond Street Story (12 page)

“I'll go somewhere quiet this year even if I have to go alone,” he promised himself. “My God, yes, that's what I'll do: I'll go off alone.”

He put his feet up on the rest and settled himself firmly back against the cushions. At the mere thought of asserting himself, of walking out on Mrs. Rammell, even if only for a month in the summer, he began to feel stronger, more carefree.

But only for a moment. Already those two drinks that he had taken at the Club were boring holes inside him. It might have been nitro-glycerine that he had just swallowed. He could feel the drilling and blasting going on as he sat there.

“It's no use,” he resumed. “I must watch myself. Must go carefully. Better skip dinner. Turn in early and try to get some
rest. Haven't been sleeping properly. That's my trouble. One good early night, and I'll feel better in the morning.”

“Darling!”

It was his wife's voice that had called him. And coming through from the hard, glazed walls of the bathroom on the other side of the interconnecting door, it sounded shriller and more metallic than ever. There was a note of urgency behind it that startled him.

“Yes, dear?” he said, aware how flat and weary his own voice sounded after the panic note in hers.

“What kept you?”

The door had opened by now, and Mrs. Rammell was standing there. She was undeniably a handsome woman. Tall, fine-limbed, distinguished looking. But distinctly unrestful. Too much of the race-horse about her. Even in the loose bathrobe that she was wearing there was something in the dark, observant eye, the distended nostril, that suggested the starting-gate and the photofinishes.

“Not ... not going out anywhere, are we?” he asked.

But already Mrs. Rammell had turned her back on him. She was over at her dressing-table. And when he suddenly caught sight of her reflection in the mirror he could see that her face was now smeared all over with white stuff. It was like finding oneself married to a witch doctor.

“Don't say you've forgotten,” she said.

She broke off for a moment because some of the cream had gone into her eye. There was a sudden grab for a tissue.

“It's Swami Lal,” she continued, speaking indistinctly from behind the tissue. “That's why we're dining early.”

Mr. Rammell felt the old, familiar trapped feeling returning to him.

“What time?” he asked.

“Seven-thirty.”

Mr. Rammell braced himself.

“Think it'd matter if I don't show up?” he asked. “Feeling a bit under the weather. Thought I might turn in early.”

From one of the drawers in the dressing-table Mrs. Rammell had suddenly produced a little rubber trowel and was violently smacking her own face with it.

Slap! Slap!
“If you don't feel well,”
Slap! Slap!
“of course, you ought to go to bed.”
Slap! Slap!
“As a matter of fact,”
Slap!
Slap!
“I've got a raging headache myself.”
Slap! Slap! Slap!

There was a real viciousness about the last bout of slapping. Mr. Rammell winced as he heard it.

Mr. Rammell loosened his collar.

“Think if you don't mind ...” he began.

But it was too late. There was a sudden whirring sound from Mrs. Rammell's bedroom. It was like a small vacuum cleaner. Mr. Rammell recognized it as the electric massage affair that she used on her chin. Attempting to speak against it was impossible.

Whrrrrrrrrmp!
She stopped the motor for a moment.

“But only if you really feel well enough, of course,” she told him. “I don't want you making yourself ill. Why don't you take something? Then you'd feel better.”

Whrrrrr!
She had started the motor up again.

Mr. Rammell stood there in the doorway.

“I'm not coming down,” he said firmly. “I'm going to bed.”

Whrrrmp!

“It no use, darling,” she said. “I can't hear you with this going on. And do start dressing. They'll be here in a moment.”

Whrrrrr!

Mr. Rammell walked over to the fireplace and rang the bell. He felt he needed something. A whisky and soda probably.

There was silence in the room for a moment.

“I just told you ...” he began again. But there he stopped. It was useless. There was now a loud
hiss, hiss, hiss
coming through the open doorway.

Mrs. Rammell was spraying herself.

Because of the whisky and soda, he felt better again. Much better. He didn't any longer resent the fact that he had been made to put on a black tie. After a day in the office—particularly after such a day—it was really rather pleasant. The only thing that irritated him was the fact that he had been compelled to take his bath and get into a dinner jacket, all at the double. If it had been an exhibition display the whole thing could scarcely have been done faster.

And, apparently, without the slightest reason. It was 7.30 already. And so far there was no sign of anyone. Moreover, in the lull, Mrs. Rammell had sneaked away somewhere. Whenever she found herself with a spare moment on her hands, she always rang up someone. She was probably in the morning-room at this very moment fixing up for the ruination of another perfectly good evening. Mr. Rammell poured himself out a drink, lit a cigarette and waited for his wife's friends to arrive.

Mr. Aubrey Burnett, very pink and extremely apologetic, was the first. He was a thin, reed-like young man with a high, lisping voice and big agonized eyes like a fawn's. He had a nervous habit of glancing over his shoulder while he was speaking. If there had been a large dog in the room he would probably have fainted.

But at the reassuring sight of Mr. Rammell he rushed forward. He wathn't late, wath he? he asked. It had been thimply terrible all day: really he hadn't known whether he wath on hith head or hith heelth. Ath it wath, Felithity would be arriving theparately. She had been athithting with an exthibition over in Thouth Kenthington, and wath ruthing over here. Whatever else Mr. Burnett was not sure about, he was positively certain that Felithity wath ruthing.

Mr. Rammell had Mr. Burnett all to himself for nearly ten minutes. And if it had been one moment longer, Mr. Rammell was afraid that he would do something terrible. Like kicking little Mr. Burnett on the shins. Or
woof-woofing
at him. Ballet was the subject of their conversation. And Mr. Burnett was firmly of the opinion that in variouth athpecth of décor and dethign Mr. Rammell's own son, young Tony Rammell, thowed more than promith, he thowed real geniuth ...

Mr. Burnett was saved from assault only by the arrival of Mrs. Rammell. She was apparently devoted to Mr. Burnett. They started talking together intimately. Mr. Rammell had the uncomfortable feeling of being an outsider. From time to time he caught odd snatches of conversation. Thkandinavian thoprano at the Wellth ... thimply marvellouth—thuperb voith ...

Then the Cuzzenses arrived. Judith and Mrs. Rammell were old friends. And rather demonstrative. Even though it was only last Monday that they had seen each other there was more than a hint of the pierhead and arrival platform about the embrace they got into. Mr. Burnett came dangerously near to being crushed between them as they flung themselves into each other's arms. He retreated cautiously until his back was right up against a bookcase, and remained there quivering.

Major Cuzzens himself kept right out of it. He was a big, gloomy man with immense dewlaps like a bloodhound. There was something essentially sad and forlorn about him as though he was aware that he was entirely superfluous and at a loose end unless he was given something to smell and go trailing after. Mr. Rammell rather liked him.

“Do'you do,” he said, in a deep melancholy bay, and then went silent again.

But Judith was never silent. She had, Mr. Rammell decided,
the loudest voice that he had ever heard from any woman. Loud and hard and piercing. It was like the sound of a wireless set that had been turned up too high. Even the crackles and the atmospherics were there. It was as though at any moment she might start giving out police announcements and news bulletins.

Major Cuzzens turned to Mr. Rammell.

“Who's the fellah?” he asked.

Mr. Rammell tried hard to forget how much he disliked young Burnett.

“I beg your pardon,” he said. “Weren't you introduced?”

“Do'you do,” said Major Cuzzens, thrusting out a large flat hand. “Goin' to dance for us, eh?”

Mr. Burnett gave a shudder. The hunted look was inescapable now.

“Oh, no,” he explained. “Really, I athure you. That ithn't me. I'm not Thwami Lal. He'th bithy rehearthing. We than't be theeing him until after dinner.”

Major Cuzzens turned a deeply-set, rather red-looking eye in Mr. Burnett's direction.

“Thought you couldn't be,” he said. “Fellah's black, isn't he?”

Mr. Burnett started quivering again.

“Good grathiouth, no,” he said. “Not black. Jutht paletht coffee. Nothing in the thlightetht negroid. He'th Perthian acthually.”

Major Cuzzens gave a little sniff. It seemed as though he had got on to something at last and had no intention of being fooled by anybody.

“Same thing,” he said. “I've been out there. I know 'em.”

By now Judith and Mrs. Rammell had screamed their way through the arrangements for a charity party, and had joined the others in front of the fireplace. Then Felicity Burnett arrived.

Mr. Rammell wasn't really sure which of the two Burnetts it was that he disliked the more. Mrs. Burnett was young—not much more than twenty-two or twenty-three—and pretty in a china doll, fancy powder bowl kind of way. She looked as if she might have been first prize at a better class hoop-la stall.

Round her neck she wore a thin strip of black velvet ribbon, and another piece was tied round her left wrist. Her hair, which was ash pale and quite straight, was cut into a fringe in front. And she stared very straight and fixedly out of a pair of deep cornflower blue eyes. The eyes were so fixed, indeed, that there was just the suggestion that perhaps they didn't ever close. It could have been that the manufacturer, satisfied that he had produced
a winner for looks, didn't care very much whether this particular doll could go to sleep, or talk, or even move its joints.

Mr. Rammell was instinctively suspicious. The Burnett affair didn't seem to him like a real marriage at all. It was more like a conspiracy. It was as though young Aubrey, all purple socks and amber cuff links, must have combed London to find someone more aggressively feminine than himself. And to show how right he had been in his choice, Felicity had developed a speaking voice that might have come from beneath a pink bassinette cover.

“I'm tewwibly sowwry, Mrs. Wammell,” she said, her eyes larger and more fixed and dewy looking than ever. “Please don't be cwoss with me. I wushed all I could. Oh Mr. Wammell ...”

She had swung round by now, turning her whole head so that her eyes did not have to move at all. And she was holding out her hand as though she were giving him something that he ought to treasure.

But Mr. Rammell was no longer even looking at her. He was staring at the door. And so was Mr. Rammell. It was Sir Harry who stood there. He stood in the doorway beaming at everyone.

“Was to-night, wasn't it, m'dear,” he said cheerfully.

So far as Mrs. Rammell was concerned, the whole dinner party was dreadful. Quite dreadful. For a start, seven was such a ridiculous sort of number. And really her father-in-law was at his most impossible. His attitude towards sweet little Mrs. Burnett was one of practically adolescent infatuation. He hovered all round her like a big white moth. And talked! Talked incessantly. Talked about everything that didn't belong to her world and Mrs. Burnett's at all. Cricket, Newmarket, Cowes, city finance, scandals. It was like having some terrible old rip from the Press Club sitting at her right hand and showing off in front of everyone.

She hoped desperately that he would be a little quieter and more tractable as the evening wore on. But Sir Harry had spent most of the afternoon sleeping. He was now fresh with a healthy, mid-morning kind of freshness. And he and Major Cuzzens were getting on famously. When the men came up and joined the ladies in the drawing-room Sir Harry and the Major were linked arm in arm.

“Dirty business,” Sir Harry was saying. “Naturally it finished him. Couldn't show his face in the City again.”

“Fellah was a dago, wasn't he?” Major Cuzzens inquired.

He spoke in a tone that made it clear that he would have regarded that as explaining, even excusing, everything.

“Oriental,” Sir Harry answered dropping his voice a little so that it now came as a hoarse carrying whisper. “One of those turban johnnies. Slit your throat as soon as look at you ...”

Mrs. Rammell rose hurriedly.

“I've kept this chair over here for you, Father,” she said. “Major, won't you ...”

But Sir Harry would have none of it.

“Can't split us up like that,” he said. “Only jus' gettin' to know each other ...”

The room was filling up rapidly by now. The six rows of gilt chairs had the cream of the Old English Madrigal Society and the Ballet Lovers' Group sitting uncomfortably upon them, alongside others from the Natural Posture Guild and the Yoga League. Aubrey Burnett began recognizing people. There was a lot of polite social waving.

Sir Harry turned to Major Cuzzens.

“Rummy looking lot,” he said, slowly and distinctly. “Can't think where she finds 'em.”

Major Cuzzens leant forward confidentially.

“Do with a haircut most of them.”

But the leaning posture had been a mistake. The words came out considerably louder than he had intended. Mr. Burnett looked nervous again as though he expected to be suddenly attacked with comb and scissors.