Neither Five Nor Three (Helen Macinnes) (19 page)

“You’ve been worrying how to tell me about what?” Scott asked, as they began walking down the long hall.

“About Orpen. I heard a lot against him.”

“Why didn’t you tell me before this?”

“Frankly, I didn’t know
how
to tell you. You like him, don’t you?”

“He’s all right.” Scott caught her elbow and guided her toward one of the elevators at the left side of the hall. “Who was talking about him, anyway?”

“Mrs. Burleigh. She’s the daughter of the president of Monroe College—the one who died just after Orpen left.”

“Moira Burleigh? Thank heaven I wasn’t there to meet her that night.” He said to the elevator operator, “Fourteenth floor.”

“I didn’t particularly like her,” Rona admitted.

“She made my life miserable for years. All the kids used to run a mile when they saw her coming. Is she still the same old Moira? I bet she is. Honey, I’ll give you one piece of good advice: only believe half what she says and don’t believe that too much. She’s a comic character, straight out of Sheridan or Molière. Last time I saw her, years ago, it was at some Christmas party or other. She had braces on her teeth, and pink satin slippers.”

Rona laughed. “How on earth did you remember that?”

“Have you seen the size of her feet?”

“Didn’t you dance with her?”

“Not her weight,” Scott said decidedly. “I kept near the door, ready to escape whenever she came toward me. We had quarrelled steadily ever since we were kids. Mother used to make me be polite to her and the rest of her family. But at that dance I didn’t have to be polite to anyone unless I wanted to. Did she talk about it? I bet she did.” He grinned, watching the embarrassment on Rona’s face.

“She lives beside Peggy,” Rona explained as they left the elevator. They had come out on to a broad landing with a single door—a private hall furnished with high dark chests and dim tapestries in fourteenth-century château style.

“Poor Peggy,” Scott was saying commiseratingly as he pressed the doorbell, “you’d better warn her. By the way, how are Jon and Peggy? I hear Jon’s been phoning me once or twice, but I always seem to be out. I’ll give him a ring soon.”

The massive door opened. A manservant with the air of a respectful undertaker stood aside to let them enter. Again there was a hall, long and broad, dimly lit, leading eventually into a room through an arched entrance. The room was filled with people, standing closely bunched together or moving around like a restless tide. Some guests had overflowed into the hall. From adjoining rooms came the rise and fall of voices and laughter.

“Quite a crowd,” Scott said approvingly. Rona, feeling her heels sink deeply into the Chinese rugs, watching the room of haughty Sargent portraits that overlooked the Spanish chests and high-backed Italian chairs, repressed a smile. She gripped Scott’s hand suddenly.

“I told you it would be fun,” he said, his eyes on the people milling around the room ahead. “We’ll find Thelma in the library or music-room. Come along, darling.”

But although Scott was smiling encouragingly, although he had an expectant look on his face, it seemed to Rona that the sudden glance he gave her was anxious. “I’m not too afraid,” she said, smiling back. She lowered her voice. “I got a glimpse of Thelma. That was all.”

Thelma left a group of guests and came forward at that moment, a wide smile on her thin face, her arms outstretched in welcome. Her coarse dark hair was braided with gold ribbon; a short pleated tunic, elaborately draped, belted with a narrow gold cord, flounced over black satin trousers tightly fitted at the ankles. The thongs of gold sandals were laced round her bare feet. The nail on one of her big toes was broken.

“
Darlings!
” she cried. “I’m
so
glad. This is
too
wonderful, but wonderful!”

10

When Scott had said that everyone and anyone would be at Thelma’s party, he had described it accurately. There was a sprinkling of faces whose names needed no repeating—two actresses, a poet, a composer, a producer, a couple of novelists, a playwright, three film stars, and a well-known journalist. (But most of them didn’t stay long, Rona noted. They had come to make an appearance and once that was done, their ranks thinned out.) There was a second group consisting of faces whose names, when they were made known, were easily recognised. (They stayed longer than the first group, but some of them were beginning to leave too.) And the third group, which was waiting determinedly for supper, was one whose faces and names were not recognisable at all. But everyone had one thing in common—they were all as well-fed and well-dressed as the people Scott had disliked on the avenue outside.

The party wasn’t helping Rona’s temper one bit. She was feeling critical of everyone—including Scott and herself. She could blame her mood on the fact that she never accepted invitations from people she disliked; this afternoon, she had let herself be persuaded into breaking this rule, and now she was suffering because of it. Or was that fair to Scott? She hadn’t been persuaded. She had been curious. If Murray were at this party, perhaps Nicholas Orpen would be found here too. She looked for Orpen continually, but she couldn’t see him.

So here she was, standing in this monstrous music-room with its Louis XV chairs, Lalique vases, velvet curtains, Oriental rugs, all pushing a spinet and a piano into the background. Like everything else in this strange apartment, there was a clutter of wealth, a total disregard for suitability. And now she was listening to a bald-headed man in a baggy tweed suit, who had proudly announced he was the only business-man in the room. (He seemed to think it a distinction that he might be taken for a writer or an actor.) He was, of course, exceedingly polite; they were all extremely polite. They had drifted, those unknown faces, those unheard names, in a constant stream toward Rona. They all seemed to know who she was, and there had been plenty of conversation.

Perhaps that was what worried her. It was a kind of purposeful conversation as if they were sounding out her opinions. In a way, she felt as if she were being interviewed for a new job. If she gave an answer which was approved, she could see a little glow of interest in the polite faces. If she answered in a way that wasn’t approved, she noticed that the faces went quite dead—a cold expressionless mask slipped over them and she might have been speaking to a blank wall. The strange thing about this approval or disapproval was its uniform quality. All those who had been talking to her, seeking her out (for she had made no move to join any group once Thelma had snatched Scott away leaving Rona to fend for herself), seemed to agree in all their points of view. She had noticed this after the third encounter with one of Thelma’s guests. She had begun to test it on those who spoke to her afterward. The result was unmistakable: their reactions were always the same. If she said the Marshall Plan was a good thing, a dead face looked at her. If she said the Marshall Plan was a grave mistake, an interested eye told her to go on. It was the same with every topic that came up—whether it was the UN or ballet, the Atlantic Pact or the latest novel, the Communist trials or a new play, everything was measured from one political line of judgment. These People (for that’s how she was beginning to think of them) not only thought exactly the same way, but saw everything in a political light. I might as well be reading
Pravda
, Rona thought.

Fun, Scott had said... But to her it was completely comic in another sense. True, a newspaperman had an inquiring mind, and here was certainly a story ready for the writing. The apartment furnished by the power of money, with no taste, no discrimination. The silly woman playing hostess to a group of people... Just what
are
they? Rona wondered.

She was listening at this moment to the bald-headed business-man who was explaining, more in sorrow than in anger, that the universities were in danger of losing their liberties through this ill-advised inquiry into teachers’ politics. And as she listened, she was studying the clothes and faces around her. Communists? Fellow-travellers? Yet if anyone ever owed anything to capitalism, they certainly did. They were apparently educated, obviously well-clothed and well-nourished. Then she looked for Scott. He was in an amiable group near the door. Seemingly, to judge by the interested faces around him, Scott wasn’t running into any difficulties. Yet she knew, from hearing him talk at her own parties, or with Peggy and Jon Tyson, or with other friends, that Scott’s political ideas coincided a good deal with her own. Something is wrong with me today, she decided. I’m seeing far too many implications; I’m going slightly crazy.

“Now don’t you agree?” the bald-headed man asked.

“Agree?” she echoed in embarrassment.

“If we all support the men with real courage in the universities, the men who refuse to be blackmailed into telling what politics they have, then we have a real chance of keeping our liberties, don’t you think?”

“But why should a teacher hide his politics? I’m a Democrat, and I don’t care who knows it.”

“Surely you see the dangers? It is all a gross invasion of our privacy.”

“When the census man arrived to interview me last week, I told him much more about myself than the fact that I was a Democrat,” Rona said with a smile. “And when I came home from Mexico last summer, I listed everything I had bought for the customs officer. In a sense, that’s an invasion of privacy too; but it has got to be done, hasn’t it? To protect us from crooks?”

The dead look spread over the man’s face. He smiled, not convincingly, and after a brief safe remark about the water scarcity this winter and the rainmakers now at work, he saw a friend in another corner of the room.

Perhaps I
am
going crazy, Rona thought. She looked around the crowded music-room, suddenly feeling alone. Very much alone. Scott was no longer standing near the door. She would have to search for him, plead a headache, and get out into some fresh clean air.

A woman, quiet, middle-aged, stubbed out a cigarette on the ashtray beside Rona. “Did someone bring you here?”

Rona, surprised, said yes, a friend had brought her.

“That’s what happened to me,” the woman said. “But I’m leaving. Like to come along?”

Rona said she couldn’t, not yet.

“Fine friends you and I have,” the woman said bitterly, and turned away.

Rona’s face flushed. She watched the woman walk determinedly out of the music-room.

“We haven’t all got her courage,” a thin high voice said quietly beside Rona. “Have a cigarette?” the voice deepened unexpectedly. Rona turned to see a man, less tall than she was, with a smooth pale face, thin red hair, horn-rimmed glasses, and a tendency to be overweight. He was holding a glass in his hand, and he obviously had held several in the course of the afternoon. She remembered that he had been hovering vaguely near her for the last half hour, talking to no one, listening, ignored, a solitary kind of figure to be at a party.

“No, thanks,” she said. “I was just about to—”

“—find Scott and ask him to take you away?” The voice began low and ended high. But it was still very quiet, almost hushed: “Don’t look so surprised. You are Rona Metford, aren’t you? Yes, we all know about you. And how are you enjoying your education?”

Rona stared at him blankly. The constant little smile still played over his face, but his eyes were unhappy.

He went on, “What do you think of the party?”

Rona didn’t answer him.

“You aren’t enjoying it? In spite of all our efforts?” His voice was mocking. Then it became serious. “I’ve been listening to your conversations. Do you mind? My manners were always bad, I’ve been told.”

Rona looked for Scott. He still hadn’t come back.

“Sit down, shall we? Please. I’d like to talk to you.” There was a note of earnestness in the comic voice that caught Rona’s attention. She sat down on a yellow satin chair and watched him light another cigarette.

“You don’t have to get mixed up with this crowd,” he said. His thin high voice broke in the middle of the sentence and slid into baritone. “This isn’t the place for you.” He looked round the room and shook his head.

“What about you?”

“I’m supposed to belong here.” He shrugged his shoulders. “But I go away. Last time, I went as far as Texas. I try to make up my mind. I argue myself into thinking I’ve got enough courage. I come back. I hope to see everything has changed, so that I won’t have to act. But things aren’t any different, either with Thelma or with me. And I can’t speak out. So I go away again.” He took a long drink. Rona watched him, wondering what he was talking about. It obviously made sense to him. He added, “I keep looking for people like you, or like that woman who left. But she left, didn’t she? And you’ll leave, too. That’s it, they all leave.”

Rona said, “Why do you keep looking?” She was baffled. Perhaps he was drunk after all, and her first guess had been correct.

“To give me a little more courage,” he said with an uncertain smile. He looked at the people in the room. “They don’t look very terrifying, do they?”

“Are they?” She tried to keep her face serious.

“Only when you know what’s behind them.” He was watching her now. “You don’t believe me,” he said almost sadly.

“I—I don’t know quite what we are talking about.”

“Don’t you? Or are you afraid, too, of looking a fool by putting your thoughts into words?”

He was far from drunk, she thought. “All right,” she said. “What are these people? Communists?”

“I know of only three in this room who admit they are. The others? They say they aren’t. They are the non-Communist Communists.”

“Everyone here?” She looked at the doorway in alarm, but Scott still wasn’t there.

“No, not all. That woman who left; you; that silent man over there in the grey suit; that worried young man by the spinet... and a few others. But either they’ll walk out as the woman did, or they’ll be flattered into coming again.”

“Flattered? I’ve been far from flattered today.”

“What? You don’t want to be considered a great brain?” he asked with a return to sarcasm.