The Last Houseparty (4 page)

“But Zena …”

“Zena is not in my g-good books at the moment. Let's be off. You'll look after my watch, won't you, Sally?”

The cradle was still restlessly clacking as he closed the door. Mrs Dubigny stopped at the top of the circular stair and put her hand on his sleeve.

“You mustn't think I neglect poor Sally,” she said in a low voice. “It's just that we're still getting used to things here. I must change Nanny's half-day. I didn't realise how busy Fridays were going to be.”

“Oh … I hadn't …”

“When Nanny's here they spend a lot of time in the garden. Didn't she tell you?”

3

Lady Snailwood—Zena to the hundreds of people who knew her, and also to tens of thousands who did not—was in one of her most familiar attitudes, half-curled on a nest of huge satin cushions near the centre of the Great Hall, wearing a white Aertex shirt, white cotton slacks and a pair of strangely mannish brogues, looking tiny compared with the enormous borzoi whose ears she was fondling. She was always smaller than strangers expected and often somehow than acquaintances remembered, but this was evidently one of her days for looking frail and protectorless. It was also one of her days for a faintly Ruritanian accent.

“So here you are at last, Vincent, darling,” she drawled, making it sound as though it was she alone who had organised his rescue from grim dungeons into this house of comfort. “I'm so happy the soldiers let you go.”

“They weren't, very.”

“Silly little men. You must take no notice of them.”

“I have to. It's the system.”

“Then we will change it.”

“You …”

“Don't argue, Vince,” said Harry, who was lolling some yards away on a chintzed armchair, smoking. “Zena means she thinks she would look stunning in a field marshal's uniform. That's what she's after. She's going to start by spending this week-end drilling her guests on the tennis court. You're here to teach her the words of command.”

“Oh yes!” cried Zena, sitting up. “And one day I shall ride my white charger through the Arch of Victory at the head of all my armies!”

“You'll have to arrange for a war, you know,” said Harry. “Enemies to conquer are the main thing, I suppose.”

“They are there already. We will conquer the Bolsheviks. The new Tsar shall ride by my side—only a little behind.”

“On the other hand,” said Harry, “you could arrange for a Wonderland war—victory first, fighting afterwards. I shouldn't be surprised if that wasn't the coming thing in any case.”

Zena lay back among the cushions, which were located where the sunlight, passing through the stained glass at the top of one of the windows, mottled the floor with blotches of colour. It would be difficult to be sure whether Zena was conscious of this effect, and whether she was wearing white to take advantage of it, but as she moved and the colours moved across her it was almost as though she was practising to become the Chameleon Woman in a fairground, effortlessly adapting her own hues to those of the cushions on which she sprawled.

“That stupid Alice,” she yawned. “Of course England is no longer great when it is the only book our intelligentsia really care about. Darling Vince, I am so pleased your stammer is becoming so much better.”

“Pretty well under control, thank you,” said Vincent with no obvious effort over the guttural.

“I do not understand how you can give orders to your men when you stammer so.”

“I'll show you. Parade! Paraaaaade … Shun!”

The commands came out full volume, in the extraordinary gargling yelp of the army drill instructor. The Great Hall was a large enough space to set up a perceptible echo. Zena put her hands over her ears.

“Please do not do that again,” she said. “Now you have given me a migraine.”

“Have you seen?” said Harry. “Zena's had a new picture done.”

“I thought there was something different,” said Vincent. “I'm still not used to the room like this … oh yes, there. I say. I like that much better than the John. I think that's distinctly jolly.”

He went and stood by Zena's immensely elongated piano to look more closely at the portrait.

“Very good likeness of the Duke of Cats, too,” he said. “I'm not sure some of those boats would actually float.”

“My dear old Vince,” said Harry. “If you don't watch out Zena will get you taken on as art critic of the
Morning Post
.”

“Have I said something wrong?”

“Darling Vince,” said Zena. “But come and tell me all about this friend who is coming to visit us—Prince Yasif ibn Sorah. Have I said that right?”

“Don't ask me. Honestly, I don't know him that well. I've an idea the chaps in the Harrow team called him Solly.”

“That won't do, not with Blech here,” said Harry. “Endless confusion. Vince, you're a broken reed.”

“Joan dear,” said Zena. “If you could be an angel and telephone the Foreign Office. Ask for Sir Hugh Swiddle-Smith. He's had lots of postings to disgusting places full of Arabs. He'll know how to pronounce the poor young man's name. Wheedle him, darling, so that he tells you things—oh, how they love being indiscreet, these starchy old gentlemen! Anything that might be useful. Say I send him twenty-seven kisses, but don't call him Hughie unless he tells you to. I'm sure you can do all that.”

Mrs Dubigny had been standing by the fireplace watching Zena's attempts at Vince-teasing with a faint smile, which now broadened with complicity, subversive of the whole male order of things.

“I'll do my best,” she said, and slipped away.

Zena sighed, the weight of the campaign now on her shoulders alone.

“But I made the soldiers let you go this afternoon so that you could prepare me to meet his highness,” she said. “It's very important.”

“I'm sorry,” said Vincent. “The only thing I know for sure is that he c-couldn't pick my top-spinner. Don't imagine that's much use. The Harrow chaps seemed to like him, far as I remember. Honestly, Zena, he's your g-guest, not mine. I'll be friendly with him if he lets me, but …”

“He's your guest, Vince. That's very important. You've got to go in the Daimler and meet him tomorrow morning, because he's coming on the same train as Professor Blech. Charles Archer will go with you to meet the Professor. But it is your task to make the Prince understand that it's just an accident that he happens to be here the same time as the Blechs. Don't you understand?”

“Trouble is I don't know anything about this Blech fellow.”

“He's famous for that,” said Harry. “People not knowing anything about him, I mean. He's a professor of something bizarre—botany, I think. But he's a crony of Chaim Weizmann, and he's very much in with the Paris Rothschilds and that lot, and he's said to have Roosevelt's ear, and so on. Is he here by accident too?”

“Oh no,” said Zena. “He's far, far too clever for that. I asked him to come and explain the Zionist viewpoint to Charles, and I suggested his wife might bring her cello and play to us, and we will take a collection for a Jewish charity. Don't you think that's …”

She was interrupted by the clank of the big iron latch which fastened the pair of black oak doors beneath the gallery. Purser came in and opened both leaves to admit a small procession—first Lord Snailwood, then Thring pulling the rose-trolley, and then a new footman pushing an even odder device, also purpose-built by McGrigor, a big brass tub on a pair of rubber wheels, with a brass jug and other smaller items dangling round its perimeter, giving the effect of part of the armoury of Tweedledum and Tweedledee in Tenniel's illustration to the fantasy Zena so disapproved of. Lord Snailwood added to the sense of ritual entry by carrying before him a single pink rose, half-way between bud and full bloom. He was wearing much the same clothes as in the Birley portrait, tweeds and gaiters. His scalp, tanned and mottled, glistened with mild sweat. He approached Zena and with a stilted bow presented her with the rose.

“Oh, isn't it perfect,” she cooed.

“Perfection to perfection,” said Lord Snailwood, speaking as though he were grumbling about something.

“How sweet you are. Has the darling thing a name?”

“The Doctor, of course. Show standard, in my opinion.”

“Award of merit, dearest. But could I ask you possibly to do the other bowls first and this one after tea? We're talking, you see.”

“Not possible,” said Lord Snailwood. “Terribly sorry, dear, but I must do the big bowl first. Only way to get it right. Can't hope to do that with the left-overs.”

“As a matter of fact,” said Vincent, “I've g-got to be off. I've an appointment in five minutes.”

“Ah, Vincent, glad to see you,” said Lord Snailwood. “I want you to talk to McGrigor about the clock.”

Lord Snailwood always spoke briskly and clearly, but still somehow gave the impression that he wasn't talking to anyone in particular, but rather to the whole room or the passing air. It was as though he lacked confidence in the interest of his remarks to be sure that any one person would want to hear them, and so preferred to send them forth at large in the hope that there might be a pair of ears within range with nothing better to listen to at the moment. Thus among strangers he sometimes evoked no response whatever; more often, because of the inherent value of words that have just passed between the lips of an earl, several of his hearers would hasten to respond, and then halt, mutually abashed. Not many of his utterances were as remarkable as this last.

“You don't say!” said Harry.

“I certainly do say,” said Lord Snailwood. “I will have him up tomorrow morning. Ten o'clock, eh, Vincent?”

“No, dearest,” said Zena. “Vincent has to meet the 10.43 at High Wycombe.”

“A train? You mean he's got to meet a train?”

“Yes, dearest. McGrigor will drive Vincent and Charles Archer to meet the train. When they get back, which will be about eleven-fifteen, they can talk about the clock. There will be time for that before Sir John and the others come. And then in the afternoon some of us are going over to Bullington to play croquet, and the politicians are staying here.”

Zena spoke almost dreamily, but it was characteristic of her that she had the time-table of the week-end precise in her mind, and was able with no fluster at all to accommodate the extra item of talk about the clock. Lord Snailwood nodded.

“Eleven-fifteen, then, Vincent,” he said. “Keep an eye on McGrigor. Don't let him slip away.”

“I'll do my best, sir.”

“Vincent,” murmured Zena. “I am most interested that you have an appointment so soon after coming to Snailwood.”

“Only half an hour. I'll be down for tea.”

“Come here, Vincent darling. Bend down. I want to whisper. Closer.”

Though Vincent eventually knelt with his ear only inches from Zena's mouth, her whisper when it came was as carrying as an actor's. Harry could certainly have heard it, and Lord Snailwood if he'd been listening, and quite likely the pricked ears of Purser and Thring and the new footman, as they waited to perform their functions where the huge bronze urn stood empty on its stand just clear of the overhang of the gallery.

“You are not to debauch any of my maids this visit,” she said. “The servant problem is quite difficult enough without that.”

Before he could protest she laughed like a wicked stepmother, threw her bare arm round his neck and kissed him vehemently. He pulled free and rose, laughing too but without great conviction. His natural flush, combined with the slight struggle, made it hard to say whether he was redder than usual. As he climbed the main stairway at the opposite end from the gallery his figure came and went, framed in the series of lancet arches that partially screened it from the body of the Great Hall. Before he had vanished out of the last one Mrs Dubigny came back, her smiling lips moving slightly as she rehearsed the syllables of the name she had been sent to learn.

III

B
y late March the desert noon already foretold the appalling heat of summer. It seemed worse in the shade of the camouflage, but that was an illusion produced by the stifling dusk, the sheer clarity of the light beyond the awnings seeming to imply more tolerable conditions. Indeed, for a few seconds after one stepped from the darkness the illusion was sustained as the sweat scorched off the skin and boosted the body's natural refrigeration, but those who had fought through the campaigns of 1940 had learnt that the relief was not worth while.

The two Lysanders were parked in echelon, so that their wings could overlap and reduce the camouflage area. The effect was to produce a cave of additional darkness between the fuselages, perhaps faintly cooler because of the double layer of roofing, but containing an air almost unbreathably thick with paint smell and petrol smell and sweat—or more likely urine, where an aircraftman had risked a piss in situ rather than make the theoretically compulsory trip to the reeking latrines.

“Smells like the monkey house at the zoo,” drawled the taller of the two officers who had come into the edge of the shade and now stood silhouetted there, features and badges of rank quite invisible against the glare.

“Been here too long,” said the other man. “We'll be glad to move on, sir. Look for a nice spot for us—palm trees, water to swim in, houris.”

“I don't think you get houris so far west.”

“The men will be disappointed, sir. How are you doing, Mason?”

There was a difference between their voices, slight but definite. The senior officer spoke casually, with a near drawl. The junior used almost the same accent, but with less confidence, as though he had only recently mastered it. His question was answered by a thud and scraping from the darkness, followed by a heavy, uninterpretable grunt.

“We're having to make do with one mechanic, sir,” said the junior officer. “My A/c Airframes got the sand-squitters. Lost a stone in eight hours. But Mason's a first-class chap—I'd rely on him for anything. Only it takes him longer to get round. Be ready by fourteen hundred, d'you think, Mason?”

Again the grunt came, this time probably affirmative. Peering into the cavern it was just possible to see the hindquarters of a man who was leaning into the cabin of the right-hand aircraft.

“Come out of there, man, and make a proper report,” snapped the junior officer. “Good God! What have you done with your face?”

The last words were spoken as the mechanic, after backing ponderously from the cabin, drew himself up and faced them. His head seemed to have disappeared. Only his teeth and the whites of his eyes glimmered in the dimness.

“Went and tried to wipe the sweat off of my face with my oil rag,” he said hoarsely.

“You all right, Mason? I'll be up the creek if you go sick on me too.”

“Sorry, sir. Just swallowed one of these bleeding flies. Stuck in my throat. Got an hour and a bit more work on her, sir.”

“Ready by fourteen hundred, then?”

“'Less I find something needs attention, sir.”

“Report to me at once in the mess tent if you do.”

“Sir.”

“Carry on then.”

The two officers turned and walked into the glare at a lounging pace but still precisely in step. The senior was revealed by the sunlight to be a major in the Intelligence Corps, the junior a pilot officer. They had walked about half-way to the little group of tents when the major halted.

“This man Mason,” he said. “Where's he from, do you know?”

“Somewhere in the Midlands, I think, sir. But he doesn't seem to have much of a tie with home. He never gets any mail, for instance. Worked in a garage before the war, I gather.”

“Did he now? What an extraordinary coincidence. I think it must be the same man who used to service my Jowett. D'you mind if I go and have a chat with him?”

“We really want to be off by fourteen-thirty, latest, sir.”

“Oh, I won't hold him up more than a couple of minutes. I'll see you in the mess tent, if that's all right.”

“Very good, sir.”

Back under the camouflage awning the major stood in silence, watching the mechanic at work. Little was visible of the man above the waist as he leaned in through the cabin door doing something at floor level which apparently demanded brief, precise but effortful wrenchings. He finished and began to back out of the cabin.

“Vince,” said the major.

The movement stopped.

“No, sir,” said the man, mumbling a little.

“You have a most characteristic backside,” said the major. “I've seen it too often poking out of the bonnet of a motor to be deceived. Come on, Vince, I've always hoped we'd meet somewhere.”

Slowly the man turned round.

“Seven three oh oh nine Aircraftman Mason, sir,” he said.

“All right. That's who you are now. I won't tell anyone. But listen. That appalling business at Snailwood. It wasn't you who did it. I'm absolutely certain of that.”

“I …”

“Don't misunderstand me. Of course I never thought it was you because I know you well enough to be sure you wouldn't do anything that foul. That's not what I'm talking about. What I'm saying is that I now know who did do it, though I'll never prove it. I think I know why you cleared out, too, but …”

“I don't know what you're talking about, sir.”

“Yes, you do, Vince, and I haven't got much time, so I'm going to go on talking as if you'd admitted it. There's nothing I'd like better than to get back to the old days, and the old relationship. I still feel that apart from Joan and Sally you're the person I care about more than anyone else in the world—you probably don't know that I've married Joan Dubigny and adopted Sally—but I can see that whatever I think there'd still be problems if you tried to come back, even after the war, so if you want to carry on being A/c Mason, I won't stop you.”

“I don't see how you can, sir. That's who I am.”

“I wish you'd call me Hal. Just here, where there's no one to hear. Never mind. I've got to confess I'm in a bit of a state, Vince. I've been having quite a jolly war so far—I've managed to attach myself to a slightly eccentric general who spends half his energy intriguing against other generals and the other half putting up hare-brained schemes to HQ. Just when everybody's sick of him we manage to pull off something, and then he's a hero and those in power take the chance to pack him off to some other quarter of the war where they don't know about him yet. So I've been around quite a bit, as you can imagine. Now we're here and he's got a notion that the way to stop the Hun coming to punch us back into Egypt, which they're due to do any moment, is to go and punch them first. He's right, in a way—it's almost impossible to fight a defensive battle in the desert—but it means I've got to go and take a look-see what the chances are. You know they've grabbed all our fighter cover and sent it off to Greece? These things are sitting ducks, without fighter cover.”

The major slapped angrily at the nacelle of the Lysander. He had seemed to become more and more agitated as he spoke. The mechanic simply looked at him, unconsciously turning a large wrench over and over in his hands. The sweat and oil gleamed on his forehead and cheeks.

“I do wish you'd give a bit, Vince,” said the major. “But if you won't you won't. Still, there's something I hope you'll do for me. Listen. It's been pretty tricky keeping Snailwood going. It was bad enough before Uncle Snaily died, but at least I had power of attorney then and the lawyers were tolerably helpful. But as soon as he was out of the way Aunt Ivy started to take the line that you were the one who was supposed to inherit and started throwing injunctions around and so on and it's become pretty well impossible. Uncle Snaily left things in a total mess, as you'd expect. Mercifully Zena's married an American and gone to live in New York, but that's the only bright spot. I've been just about able to cope, with Joan's help. But if I catch it on some hare-brained op. my general's dreamed up—I don't mind saying I've got the wind up about this one—Aunt Ivy's going to take the line that with me out of the way you're the heir, no matter what I've put in my will. Down with aunts.”

There was a pause. The major's last three words had had almost the intonation of a question.

“Sir?” said the mechanic.

“All right. I shouldn't have tried it. The point is, your mother …”

“Pardon me interrupting, sir. My mother's passed on.”

“Not as far as I'm concerned, Vince. She's alive and kicking in my world, and more of a nuisance than ever. If I thought the only reason you'd cleared out was to be shot of her, I wouldn't have blamed you. I don't blame you anyway, damn it. But …”

“Pardon me, sir. Mr Toller told me …”

“Quite right. I'll leave you alone. But assuming I come back in one piece—and really there's no reason why I shouldn't—things have been quiet enough, in all conscience. If only they hadn't withdrawn those bloody fighters … Think it over, won't you, Vince? There's nothing I'd like better than a good long talk. Leave a note for me with the mess waiter, or someone, and we'll wander out under the desert stars and talk as though there'd never been any war and Zena had never come to Snailwood.”

The appeal in the major's voice was very strong. The mechanic hesitated, nodded and began to turn back towards his work. He paused.

“You won't say anything to anyone about this, sir?”

“What? No, no, of course not. Fact, I've already told Toller you're the chap who used to service the Jowett. If it's any inducement to you, Vince, I've a bottle of Scotch in my kit. Carry on then, Aircraftman.”

The major's salute deliberately mimed the total superiority of the officer caste. Back in his role, he lounged into the sun-glare and out of sight. The mechanic stood where he was, gazing apparently without seeing it at the Lysander, but there was a sense of intelligence gathering itself to a focus to consider a problem. His hand teased unthinkingly at his upper lip. Suddenly he drew a deep breath and then shuddered, as if deliberately disrupting the image that had formed itself in his mind. He returned to his work.

Owing to the exigencies of war the inquiry into the loss of the Lysander did not take place for nearly three weeks and was in any case brief. Aircraftman Mason was a witness. He produced an oily job sheet, and told the inquiring officer that he had serviced both engine and air-frame, the latter being necessary because of the illness of A/c Strong. The Lysander had been fully airworthy, though a week before the loss he had discussed with Flight Lieutenant Allison the possibility of cannibalising one machine to ensure the safety of the other, and they had agreed that there might be a need for that if spares did not arrive, but not for a couple of months or more. Meanwhile having two aircraft available when only one was needed for regular use allowed proper maintenance to be carried out on the other one, with the additional safety that that implied.

There was one brief diversion from matters mechanical.

“I understand that on the morning after the loss the mess waiter returned to you a note you had left for Major Quintain,” said the enquiring officer. “Perhaps we had better hear whether that had my hearing on the state of the Lysander.”

“No, sir.”

“Nevertheless would you mind telling us what was in the note.”

“Well, sir, it was like this. I'd run across Major Quintain before the war. He had a little Jowett what he used to have a lot of trouble with the carburettor of—he'd get it into his head it was running too thin and he'd try and adjust it himself and make a balls of it, mid then he'd think it was the timing and foul that up too, messing round, and only when the Jowett was hardly going he'd bring it along to me to put right. Happened time and again, almost like it was it game between us. Well, you see, bumping into each other there, he thought he'd like a chat about old times. There wasn't time before the flight if I was going to get the plane set up, so he said what about after. He told me he'd a bottle of Scotch in his baggage and he left it to me to fix some place we could meet and have a nip or two. That's what the note was about.”

The social difficulty, even under desert conditions, involved in an officer from another unit sharing so rare a commodity with an Other Rank while failing to do so with his hosts in the mess—though it was for that that he had originally brought the bottle, no doubt—was clear to the inquiry. Some kind of semi-secret rendezvous among the dunes would certainly have been necessary. So the inquiry moved on, reaching the obvious verdict that no blame attached to anyone for the failure of the Lysander to return, but that the actual cause of that failure—enemy action, breakdown, pilot error—could not be known until the wreckage, now several hundred miles away after the abrupt retreat, was found.

It never was.