Faster! Faster! (24 page)

“Is it open already?”

“Opens next week. They want me to go up before that, naturally. Then—if I get the job—I can meet the people, the members I mean, when they have the opening show—Lord Mayor coming out as large as life, and all the local big-wigs. After that—carry right on.”

“It's marvellous! How excited Claudia will be.”

“D'you think she will?” he asked wistfully. “Lord knows, it'll be a change to have me earning some money. There's only one snag about it, though. They want me to put a couple of hundred pounds into the show—just as a guarantee of good faith.”

“Would that be very difficult to manage?”

“Impossible, so far as I'm concerned. I shall have to have it from Claudia, I suppose. If she can't, or won't, I dare say I could borrow it. It's worth it, to me, to get something to do again.”

“Oh yes, yes!”

“You must have another drink,” said Copper.

“No, really I won't.”

“You
must
,” he insisted. “I'm going to. You must drink to the success of the job, now you know what it is.”

Her head was already swimming slightly, and a pleasant feeling of irresponsibility invading her.

“I shan't be able to attend to anything this afternoon,” she murmured.

“You won't have to, if there's this what-you-may-call-it conference. Unless I'm mistaken, the talking will all be done by Claudia.”

Copper ordered two more cocktails.

He was happier than Frances had ever seen him since the early days of their acquaintance. She remembered, pleasantly sentimental, how much she had liked him then, and how disappointed she had felt at the change in him.

“When can you tell Claudia?”

“After this blessed conference, I suppose. Will it take long?”

“I don't know. About an hour, I think the girls in the office said.”

“I tell you what, I'll call at about four o'clock and take her out to tea or something. Don't say a word, will you?”

“Of course not.”

He raised his glass.

“Well, here's to it!”

“Here's to it,” repeated Frances obediently.

She liked her second cocktail better than she had her first. It seemed less unfamiliar. Moreover, the agreeable sense of irresponsibility was increasing rapidly.

“I never, never,” she said with great earnestness and distinctness, “I never, never was so pleased about anything. I can't tell you, Copper, how sorry I've felt for you heaps of times.”

“It's been pretty rotten—and not only for me. I know I've been a brute, often,” said Copper Winsloe candidly. “I seem to have got into a bloody awful state when I couldn't do anything but curse. I've felt a different man since Branscombe's letter came.”

“When did you get it?”

“Two days ago, but I wasn't going to say anything till I'd actually seen him. I didn't even let Claudia know I was coming up this morning.”

“Is it actually all settled? Oh no—there's the two hundred pounds.”

“There's the two hundred pounds,” he agreed, “and one's got to see the place and the people, and get the once-over. But Branscombe thinks it's a certainty, all right, if I can produce the capital.
They were quite prepared to take his recommendations. Save them the trouble of advertising and so on, I suppose.”

“Where would you live?”

“In the guest-house, to start with. They've got one, of course, for week-end visitors. I'd have a bedroom and an office there. Later on I suppose it might be a question of something more permanent.”

“Do you mean—living there altogether?”

“Well, I don't know. But you see, Frances—it might be worth it. Supposing—just supposing—we were to sell Arling—mortgage and all—we could kind of start fresh, couldn't we?”

Frances felt dimly that there was a drawback to this scheme, and that she ought to put it forward. The idea, however, eluded her.

She took another sip at her cocktail, hoping that it might clear her brain.

Copper was speaking—from rather far away, and without her having heard the beginning of the sentence.

“… and not only is Arling much too big for us, but it's too expensive. It was a perfectly mad thing ever to buy it. But Claudia wanted it so frightfully.”

“She's very fond of Arling.”

“It's a nice enough place,” he conceded, “but not for people situated as we are. The fact is, Sal Oliver once put the whole thing in a nutshell. She's a clever woman, Sal.”

“Oh, very, very,” said Frances enthusiastically.

“She said that what Claudia really wanted, was
to see an extension of her own personality in the children. History repeating itself kind of idea, I suppose. That's why she was so keen on Arling. Seeing herself as a child again, and a young girl—only it was Sylvia and Taffy and Maurice instead.”

“Repeating the pattern,” Frances elucidated, feeling proudly that this was indeed an admirable summing-up.

Copper appeared to feel it so as well.

“That's exactly it. You've got it in a nutshell. Repeating the pattern. She wants to see herself again, living in her children. I suppose it's natural enough. Still, they won't be children much longer. Sylvia isn't living at home and soon Taffy won't be. Home'll just be the place they come back to, for a year or two longer, and then after that they'll make their own lives. What's the sense of hanging on to Arling?”

“But Claudia———”

“Yes, I know,” he said impatiently. “But I've danced to Claudia's tune all these years and I think it's about time I had a say in things. Honestly—don't you agree?”

“Yes, yes, I do,” Frances said solemnly.

She was aware, in a remote kind of way, that she would probably have qualified this statement in a more normal mood. Two cocktails, taken in the middle of the day after a very light breakfast of five hours earlier, had, she felt certain, impaired her powers of judgment.

A happy confidence enveloped her and seemed to vibrate glowingly between herself and Copper Winsloe.

It had been a day of hard work, rushed jobs and continual irritations. Thank heaven, thought Claudia, Ingatestone will be back to-morrow.

She had deliberately arranged to do a certain amount of Mrs Ingatestone's work herself, and this addition to her own multifarious occupations added to the nervous strain under which she laboured.

Her head ached as she presided over the staff conference, and it seemed to her that Sal Oliver was argumentative, Frances Ladislaw half asleep, and the two girls unusually casual and inattentive.

Claudia's self-command enabled her to keep these impressions to herself, but her manner grew more and more curt and peremptory, and as soon as the conference was over she slammed her door viciously and snapped on the red light.

A pile of letters to be signed lay on her desk. She read each one through, making an alteration here and there.

I shall have to stay at Sal's flat to-night, she told herself. I can't face that drive through the traffic, and I drive so badly when I'm tired. Claudia knew—it was one of the facts that she faced most fearlessly and frequently—that, although she was a
careful driver, she was not a good one. Extra fatigue was always liable to make her movements rather slower, her judgment a shade less accurate, than was desirable.

Perhaps it wasn't altogether to be wondered at.

One couldn't do everything—although one might try.

The inter-office telephone-bell rang.

“Yes?” said Claudia. She allowed herself to sound just as exasperated as she felt at this fresh demand upon her attention and energy. It was much better that the office should realize the tension under which she was living and working: otherwise they might become careless, and allow unnecessary interruptions.

Claudia's “Yes?” therefore sounded, even to her own ears, not so very unlike a sharp bark.

“If you please, Mrs Winsloe, Mr Winsloe is in the office. Shall he come up?”

The children, thought Claudia. Which of them is it? Maurice …

“Please show him up at once,” she directed, and leant back in her chair.

Copper had never before come to the office except by appointment.

In the four and a half minutes that elapsed before Edie knocked at the door, Claudia had mentally lived through a good deal. With complete composure and presence of mind she had handed over one or two urgent pieces of work to Sal Oliver, had commanded Miss Frayle to sign the remainder of the letters for her, put a telephone-call through to Arling and given various instructions, sent Edie
for a taxi, and stepped into it, directing the driver to go—where?

Was it Sylvia, or Taffy, or Maurice?

“Come in!”

It was Edie's deprecating knock, but she did not appear. The door opened as though by an invisible agency, and Copper came in, wearing an unmistakable air of jauntiness and an unwonted flower in his button-hole.

Claudia instantly recognized that all her fears had been without any foundation at all.

“Copper!” she said sharply. “Is anything wrong with any of the children?”

“Good God, no! Why should there be?”

Claudia visibly relaxed in her chair.

“I'm sorry—it was silly of me,” she said very sweetly. “When I heard you were here, quite suddenly, I thought you might have come to fetch me because one of them had met with an accident or was ill.”

“Well, I haven't.”

“I'm so glad.”

She looked at him expectantly.

“I say, Claudia, come out and have tea somewhere. Not now this minute—but when you're ready.”

“But my dear—I'd love it, of course, but I do wish you'd warned me. I didn't even know you were coming up to London.”

“I know you didn't. As a matter of fact I've got something to talk to you about. Can you come now?”

She shook her head.

“Not possibly. I've got a woman coming to see me at four o'clock—that's in ten minutes—and I want to give Frayle some dictation before she goes—and then Collier is bringing me some accounts to go through—oh, Copper, why
didn't
you let me know you were coming?”

“I didn't know you'd be so tied up,” he said gloomily. “You've got to have tea
some
time, haven't you?”

“Not necessarily. If I do, it's only a cup that stands on the corner of the table while I work.”

“That's the way women always go on,” muttered Copper.

“I can't help it, dear, really. You know,” said Claudia mildly and reasonably, “I don't come to the office just for fun, to do nothing.”

“I should have thought you could spare half an hour or twenty minutes, I must say.”

Claudia sighed.

Then she said brightly: “Well, I must see what I can do. Sit down and smoke a cigarette, Copper, and perhaps I can reorganize things a little. I suppose you've had lunch?”

“Yes.”

He had reverted to his customary monosyllabic way of answering, and Claudia stared at him in some perplexity.

“There's nothing wrong, is there?”

“No,” said Copper, without much exultation. “No, there's nothing wrong.”

By half-past four it had become possible for Claudia to delegate some of her tasks, and complete others. She threw on her hat and coat and rejoined Copper, who had retreated downstairs.

She found him in conversation with Miss Frayle. A peculiar gift for finding out by instinct the proximity of any man, and immediately entering into conversation with him and keeping him entertained thereby, was known in the office to be one of Frayle's leading characteristics.

Even Claudia was aware of it, and rather amused by the graceful creature's pose as she stood balancing a wire basket on one hip, her eyes raised appealingly to Copper's face, her expression one of candid satisfaction in his society.

When Claudia appeared Miss Frayle scarcely moved—yet in some indefinable manner she instantly ceased to be a bewitching
houri
and became instead a competent young worker.

“Goodbye,” said Copper.

“Goodbye, Mr Winsloe,” drawled Miss Frayle with her best sham-American intonation.

Copper followed his wife into the street.

“Where would you like to go?”

“The nearest place,” she said wearily. “I've had the most frightful rush all day and I'm not nearly through yet. I wonder where they'd serve us quickest.”

“Shall we go to the Savoy?”

“Not unless we've come into a fortune Copper.
I think Lyons would be more suitable.”

In the end they went to neither of these extremes, but to a small tea-shop
off
the Strand.

There, Copper told Claudia his news.

She listened attentively, her eyes widening every now and then.

“But, my dear—it's—it's all such a surprise. I had no idea.”

“Neither had I until I got Branscombe's letter.”

“Why didn't you tell me?”

“I thought I'd like to get something settled first. It's my own show, come to that.”

“But naturally. Of course. Only it's so … Tell me, are you committed definitely yet?”

“I don't know what you mean by ‘committed.' They've practically offered me the job, if I can raise the two hundred pounds capital—which I shall eventually get back, of course, in salary—provided the directors pass me—and Branscombe is one of them, and was practically told he could appoint anybody he thought suitable.”

“Copper, it's all splendid, I'm sure, but …” She hesitated, and then asked him if he would like a second cup of tea.

“Yes, please. What were you going to say?”

“I was only going to ask if you know anything at all about this enterprise—this country-club experiment. Except, of course, what Branscombe has told you.”