Hornet’s Sting (11 page)

“Well, I've got plenty of time, and I can't think of a better way to waste it... May I sit and talk?” He really wanted to sit and look.

She was unfashionably slim and her face had a delicacy that made him feel powerful and protective, until she looked him in the eyes. Fear did strange, apparently useless things to a man, as he knew; it dried the mouth, it tightened the lungs, it made the heart hammer and the palate detect strange metallic tastes. Now he discovered what sudden love could do. It knocked the stuffing out of a chap. Fear multiplied; love subtracted. This was all new to him. Cleve-Cutler had confronted fear and overcome it. He wasn't going to submit tamely to love. “You know, you remind me of someone,” he lied.

“Oh, come on,” she said. “You can do better than that.”

“Um,” he said. He looked away, but looking away was pain. “What I meant was ...” He looked back, and was ruined again. “Look here, you're being jolly unfair.”

“Am I? Well, do something about it.” She was infuriatingly calm. He was in a fever; what right had she to be so calm? “For a start,” she said, “you can tell me who you are.”

You crass ass, he told himself. “Hugh Cleve-Cutler,” he said.

“Ah.” She was looking down at the dancers, which he resented. “I used to know a Stanley Cleve-Cutler.”

“Very remote cousin. Went into the Foreign Office. Never seen again.”

“There you are. I knew you could do better if you tried.” Hope surged in him. “I'm Dorothy Jaspers, which makes me a remote cousin of our hostess.”

“Splendid. May I ask for the honour of a dance?”

“You may ask, but the answer's no.”

He felt as if he'd swallowed a stone. A sane man would get up and leave. He wasn't quite sane at that moment. “Look,” he said, “I'm somewhat confused about exactly what's going on here.”

She turned to him and took hold of his face with both hands
and looked into his eyes. “Tell me true,” she said. “Do you know where we can get a drink at this hour of day?”

“Yes, I think so.”

She let go. “Get your hat and find a cab. I'll meet you downstairs.”

He helped her into the cab. She was smaller than he had thought. The emerald silk dress brushed the ground. Tricky dancing the foxtrot in that, he thought. They went to Taggart's Hotel. On the way, she said nothing. Cleve-Cutler watched her, secretly, and marvelled that no man had captured her. Were they all blind? Was he massively lucky?

Taggart opened the bar for them.

They all drank brandy-sodas and talked about the new shows and the best songs in them, until Taggart went off to organise dinner and left them in charge.

“Decent chap, old Taggart.”

“Yes,” she said, crisply.

“That show he mentioned. We might —”

“Yes.”

“Perhaps some supper? There's a place —”

“Yes.”

“Splendid.” But this was all moving too fast for Cleve-Cutler. “Fancy you knowing Stanley,” he said. “Not that I knew him well.”

“Forget Stanley. This face of yours: it's not your real face, is it?”

“Good God, no.” He'd explained his jaunty looks to so many people—family, army doctors, medical boards – that he was ready with the answer. “Dodged an idiot in a Gunbus, flew into a barn. The quacks stitched me together again. Improvement on the original, some say.”

She freshened his drink with brandy. “Well, damn it all to bloody blazes,” she said, and freshened her own drink. “There are three things I wish I could do. I wish I could dance, and run, and go swimming at the seaside, but I never shall because I have a wooden leg, and it's definitely not an improvement on the original. If you want to see it I charge nothing for public displays but from the funny look on your funny face I suggest you take a big drink first.”

Cleve-Cutler was too shocked to move or speak.

“Take a drink and have a look,” she advised. “Otherwise you'll never believe me.”

“But you're wearing shoes.” His voice was husky; he drank to
strengthen it. He watched, fascinated, as she raised the hem of her long green silk ballgown, and he saw a wooden leg fitted into the right shoe. The hem kept rising. The wooden leg ended just below the knee. Leather straps secured it.

She let the dress fall. He finished his drink in one gulp. “Told you so,” she said.

* * *

It had happened when she was six. Her father was a banker. Liked horses, liked hunting, had an estate in Berkshire. He gave young Dorothy a pony-and-trap, a miniature of the real thing. She wasn't allowed to drive it alone, but one day all the grooms were busy, so she took it. And for fun, she rode the little pony bareback, and they were trotting along a farm track, all going as fine as ninepence, when the pony shied. She was thrown. The trap ran over her leg. Very bad fracture. Lots of operations, but in the end it had to come off.

“That's so dreadfully unfair,” Cleve-Cutler said.

She took his face in her hands, as she had done in the gallery, and looked into his eyes. “Tell me true,” she said. “If your washer-woman's husband had a wooden leg, would you think it dreadfully unfair?”

“Um ... no. Possibly not.”

She released him. “Well, then. It's just people of our class who are supposed to be unblemished.”

“I suppose that's so.”

“I know shops that sell artificial hands and fingers. Even artificial noses. Factory work is dangerous. So is farm work.”

“Excuse me.”

He went to the lavatory and washed his face in cold water. He had seen many violent deaths and mutilations in France. He had seen a pilot walk into a spinning propeller. He had seen men blinded, and men gutted, and men incinerated in the gush of petrol from bullet-holed tanks. But that was war, and they were only men, and they were fighting for decency and purity and all that was best in the world, as symbolised by this wonderful creature he had found in the gallery. Who turned out to be a fraud, a swindle. So maybe the war was a fraud and a swindle too. He leaned on the wash basin and looked at his reflection “We make a fine pair,” he said. He dried his face and went back.

“I know the best place for oysters,” she said.

“I never doubted it for a moment,” he told her. He still loved her. From the knees up, anyway.

* * *

Taggart gave them a large room with a large bed.

Dorothy had been staying at Lady Malplacket's place. She telephoned from the hotel and had someone pack a bag and bring it over.

Cleve-Cutler said: “Won't your cousin think it strange? Moving out like this?”

“Do you care what she thinks?”

They had each undressed separately, in the bathroom. Now she was sitting on the bed, brushing her hair. It caught the light as she moved, black chasing red chasing black.

“I don't want to ruin your reputation,” he said.

“Do you care about my reputation?” She spoke easily, lazily. It had been a long and happy evening. “Now? At this very moment?”

“No.” He sat beside her.

“Good. Because I certainly don't care about yours.” She used the tip of the hairbrush to comb his moustache. “What
do
you care about?”

“You. I care about you. Absolutely.”

“Including the woodwork?” Her arms slipped around his body.

“To be perfectly frank,” he said, “no, I don't feel any affection for the woodwork.”

“Then suppose,” she said. “Suppose I take it off, and you remove your pyjamas.”

“Excellent suggestion.” He stood up. “Long overdue. Warmly welcomed and strongly endorsed by all right-thinking men. Put to the vote and passed nem con.” He threw the pyjamas into a corner and turned around. She was lying on the bed, equally naked.

“My goodness,” she said. “Rather less of me, but a good deal more of you. Isn't that a lucky coincidence?”

“Reminds me of a jigsaw puzzle I got for Christmas,” he said. “Hours of innocent fun.” It made her smile, which was worth more to him than winning his M.C.

* * *

They slept for an hour, and then he awoke, wondering where the hell he was, not France, it didn't feel or smell like France, so what the devil ... And then he remembered, and relaxed. Sharing a bed was a strange experience. He was afraid of disturbing her; on the other hand the lush warmth of her presence was exciting and before he could stop himself his hand had stroked her body; and as if he had touched a trigger she was awake and sitting up, propped on one arm, reaching for his face and kissing it. Soon she was straddling him. Now there's a surprise, he thought. No complaints, though. He worried, briefly, about hurting her damaged leg, before he realised that she was twice as lithe as he was; and in the tangle of limbs, who was counting feet?

After that he slept deeply and awoke grudgingly, he knew not why. The room was black. She was mumbling. Or was she crying? He put his hand on her shoulder. The noise stopped.

“Oh, oh, oh,” she said.

“What's the matter?”

“Poor butterfly.”

That made no sense to him.

“'Poor butterfly',” she said. “Do you remember? They were dancing to the tune, this afternoon.
Yesterday
afternoon. ‘Poor Butterfly' ...” She sang a couple of bars. “Isn't it a lovely tune? Just perfect for dancing.”

There was nothing he could say to that. He held her and she quickly fell asleep. He was glad of that. He was very tired.

* * *

By dawn she was out of bed and dressing. He allowed himself the luxury of watching, without feeling that he had to abandon the warm sheets. The cold air made him sneeze, and she glanced sideways.

“You're very nimble,” he said.

“Well, I've done it before.”

“Do I mean nimble?” He yawned. “Makes you sound like an acrobat.”

“Do you like racing?” She was as blithe as a blackbird. “Do you like Scotland?”

“Let's see ... Where the whisky comes from?”

“They're racing at Edinburgh this afternoon, Hugh. There's a fast
train,
Monarch of the Glen
, first stop Edinburgh, gets us there in time for the second race.”

“Edinburgh. That's —”

“Four hundred miles. It's a
very
fast train.”

“You're quite mad. We'd never get seats. Not a hope.”

“What a shame.” She put her hat on. “Perhaps I'll send you a picture postcard.”

“Wait! Look, I haven't shaved.”

They went by cab to King's Cross. She called on the stationmaster, and they travelled first class on the
Monarch of the Glen
. Cleve-Cutler shaved. They had a long, lazy breakfast in the dining car as the fields and woods of Hertfordshire rushed past. The ticket collector came by. Dorothy showed him a dull gold medallion, slightly larger than a sovereign, and he saluted and moved on. “Ahah,” Cleve-Cutler said. “Now I know. You're head of the Secret Service.”

“What a wonderful idea.” The sun had come out and she was drowsy in its warmth. “Then I could be invisible. I've always wanted to be invisible.”

“I don't think it works quite like that.”

“Well, I'll be tremendously secret, then. So secret that nobody knows who I am except you, because nobody else knows the password ...” It was a highly satisfying fantasy. She could never be a total part of this world, so she would invent her own world and vanish into it. “What is the password?” she asked.

The words
poor butterfly
came to his mind. He decided not to take the risk. “The password is
Poppycock,”
he told her. “Because I say so ... Now, explain that medal-thing.”

She explained. Father was a director, past chairman, of the railway company, and so travelled free; the medallion was a perpetual ticket for two, anywhere, first class. “He lets me borrow it,” she said. “I'm afraid it doesn't pay for breakfast.”

He rested his head against the cushioned seat. The train strummed through a length of meadows, cattle standing as steam rose from their backs. Suddenly the train hammered into a cutting and made him blink. Now he could see her face reflected in the window. This time yesterday we were strangers, he thought. Lucky, lucky, lucky. And she thought: We could keep travelling for ever, just him and me. On Father's medallion. Together for ever. Then the cutting ended
and the dark battering fell away, and the train went back to its tidy racy strum.

“Do you remember singing ‘Poor Butterfly' last night?” he asked.

She nodded, and hummed a few bars. “Why do you ask?”

“Oh ... just feeling brave, I suppose.”

“You are braver than you know. So many men, when they discover my leg – or rather when they discover no leg – they panic. They decide that the rest of me is ... oh ...”

“Not in full working order?”

“I frighten them. They wonder what other terrors await them if they take me to bed. Men are so nervous.”

“Well, nanny told them if they kept on playing with it, then it would fall off.”

“Did your nanny say that?”

“No. My nanny said if I told her where father kept the whisky hidden, I could do what I damn well liked. So I did and she got the sack, father being nobody's fool.”

“Well, I think you were jolly brave with me.” She looked thoroughly happy. Cleve-Cutler had never made anyone happy before. He was pleased with himself.

* * *

A taxi got them to Edinburgh races. Hugh, betting by instinct, lost a fiver. Dorothy, going always for the second favourite, won thirty pounds. They dined at the Waverley and went back to London by sleeper, thanks to her father's medallion. Hugh took a large fresh salmon with him for Taggart.

“Edinburgh?” Taggart said. “You must be exhausted, so you must.”

“We came by sleeper,” Hugh told him.