2: Exeunt Severally

FOR Mrs. Basset the high light of the evening came after the meeting had dispersed. Following a custom that had become a convention, Evans remained behind for a few minutes of gossip while he drank a modest brandy and soda, prepared by her own aristocratic hands. It was a delicious interlude of rare intimacy with her idol which she savoured to the full.

“Well, Charlotte,” he said. “I thought the meeting went off pretty well, didn’t you?”

“You managed it beautifully, Clayton. You always do.”

Nobody had ever heard Mrs. Basset address him publicly otherwise than as “Mr. Evans” and, since the death of Mr. Basset ten years before, no human being had been known to have the temerity to call her “Charlotte.” The surreptitious exchange of Christian names never failed to give her the exciting sense of secret indulgence in a guilty pleasure.

With faintly glowing cheeks she went on: “You don’t think there’ll be any trouble with Mr. Ventry, do you?”

“Not the slightest, I should imagine. He’s really not a bad performer when he gives his mind to it, and the Handel piece is quite within his powers. He deserves a run for his money, I think. We may have a bit of trouble about the tuning of the organ, though. I must speak to the city organist about it.”

“I wasn’t thinking about that, but about Mr. Clarkson. Mr. Ventry seemed quite upset over him.”

“I don’t think we need worry about that,” said Evans carelessly. “He’ll soon forget it. Clarkson is quite impossible, anyway. I shall be glad to be rid of him. Why can’t we get anybody to take up these wind instruments seriously, I wonder?”

But Mrs. Basset was not, for the moment, interested in wind instruments as such.

“It wasn’t like Mr. Ventry to show such anxiety about befriending a man,” she observed.

Evans laughed. “Well, his reputation doesn’t run in that direction, so far as I know,” he said. “I’m not well up in these matters myself, but----”

Mrs. Basset pursed her lips.

“There is a Mrs. Clarkson, I know,” she said, reflectively. “I must make inquiries.”

“You think that that may be where Ventry’s interest lies? Well, that’s certainly the oddest motive I’ve ever heard for trying to foist a dud onto an orchestra. But aren’t you being a bit too imaginative, Charlotte?”

“Perhaps I am, Clayton. But Mr. Ventry is a deep person, I am afraid; very, very deep.” She shook her head solemnly, and added: “And fond of women. The very opposite of my idea of what a man should be, in fact.”

“Quite,” said Evans quietly to his glass of brandy. He knew his Charlotte too well to take her more high-flown remarks literally, but the picture she had conjured up of the ideal man who should be a shallow misogynist was a little too much for him. To change the subject, he said: “I hope you approve of the programmes.”

“Of course I do!” Mrs. Basset breathed loyalty, into which she contrived to put a hint of reproach that her loyalty should ever have been questioned. “I was afraid for a moment that there might be a little awkwardness when the name of Lucy Carless was mentioned, but fortunately it all passed off very well.”

“Awkwardness? I know Lucy can be awkward enough sometimes, but why should anyone be awkward about her?”

“Didn’t you know that Mr. Dixon had been married to her?” Mrs. Basset asked solemnly.

“Really? I knew Lucy had been married before her present venture, but I never connected her with Dixon. I’m so bad about people, I’m afraid. Are you sure?”

Debrett had materialized in Mrs. Basset’s hand, apparently of its own volition.

“Married, first, 1937 (marriage dissolved, 1942), Lucille, only child of Count I. Carlessoff; secondly, 1945, Nicola, eldest daughter of Henry Minch, Esquire,” she read. “I wish I could find out who Henry Minch was,” she added. “But Mrs. Dixon is very reserved.”

“Well, that’s Lucy all right,” Evans remarked. “She must be the only violinist on record with a foreign name who prefers to play under an English one. She always was a perverse little cuss. But I hope I haven’t put my foot in it with Dixon.”

“Oh no,” Mrs. Basset reassured him. “He is quite unconcerned about it. In fact, he made a little joke about it---I can’t remember what it was, but I know it was very witty. People are so modern about divorce nowadays, I can’t think why. But of course, Mr. Dixon had something more important to think about this evening. Do you think I ought to have congratulated him or not? It is so awkward.”

“What on earth are you talking about, Charlotte?” Evans stifled a yawn.

“Didn’t you see this evening’s paper? I thought you must have noticed.”

“I certainly saw the paper, but I didn’t observe anything about Dixon in it.”

“Lord Simonsbath’s only son,” said Mrs. Basset portentously, “has been killed in a motor car accident.”

“It seems an odd subject for congratulation, at first sight, Charlotte, but I presume that that book in your hands has something to do with it.”

Mrs. Basset nodded.

“On the failure of the elder branch,” she said, in a hushed tone, “our Mr. Dixon will inherit the peerage.”

“Dear me!” said Evans flippantly. “What a disappointment for Lucy. She always had a hankering after titles.”

“The matter isn’t quite as simple as that,” Mrs. Basset went on. “We can’t be sure yet whether the elder branch has failed.”

“Not be sure? With Debrett to go by? I thought that he at least was infallible in such matters.”

“I’m not saying a word against Debrett,” said Mrs. Basset reprovingly. “Of course not. That’s not the point. But the young man who has just died leaves a widow, and the paper says---papers are so crude nowadays---that she is---I prefer to say, in an interesting condition.”

“Interesting appears to be the word,” Evans yawned openly this time. “I shall look forward to the next installment in this drama in high life. If I were in Dixon’s shoes I should pray that it should be a son. I can’t imagine anybody wanting to be a lord in these times.”

Before Mrs. Basset had had time to recover from this blasphemous observation, he had thanked her for his entertainment and taken his leave.

---

Meanwhile, the great-grandson of the second, and prospective heir presumptive to the sixth, Viscount Simonsbath was discussing much the same topics with Nicola, eldest daughter of Henry Minch, Esquire.

Nicola was getting ready for bed when Dixon reached home. He found her sitting at her dressing table, brushing her thick auburn hair with slow, languid strokes, as if at any moment she might stop for sheer exhaustion. She was not really tired, he knew, but merely temperamentally incapable of doing anything in a hurry. She had probably been going to bed for the last hour, and she might continue to brush her hair for another ten minutes, merely because it was too much trouble to stop. He sat down quietly on the bed and watched her with a connoisseur’s approval. Some day, he reflected sadly, Nicola was going to get fat, if she didn’t brisk up a bit and take more exercise; but just at present she was enormously attractive. She had the creamy complexion that sometimes accompanies hair of her particular shade; fine, regular features and particularly beautiful rounded arms. Presently she caught his eye in the looking glass and smiled lazily.

“Well?” she asked, without stopping the slow, rhythmic movement of the hairbrush. “What sort of an evening was it?”

“Much as usual. I’ve been left to do the donkey-work for the concerts, of course.”

“Well, Robert, you know you enjoy doing it, God knows why, so don’t complain. Have you fixed up anything interesting?”

“We’ve fixed up Lucy for the first concert, if you call that interesting,” said Dixon.

Nicola laid down her brush and turned round to look at him.

“The hell you have!” she said softly.

“Any objections?”

“Not a bit. It’ll be rather interesting to see what she looks like now. Pretty gaunt and scraggy, I should imagine, from the way she was going when we saw her last.” She turned back to the glass and contemplated her own pleasing curves with complacence. “Was Billy Ventry at the meeting?” she asked abruptly.

“Oh, very much so. Why do you ask?”

“Nothing . . . He rang me up just after you had gone this evening.”

“What ever for?”

“Well, nominally it was to ask you what time the meeting was fixed for. Actually, it turned out, it was to invite me to come to the pictures with him tomorrow afternoon. I wonder how he found out that you were always kept late at the office on Thursdays?”

Dixon laughed dryly.

“That man is the most unblushing womanizer at large,” he remarked. “Did you accept?”

“I told him I was going to tea with Mrs. Roberts, which happened to be perfectly true. But it interested me, because presumably it means that his present affair with whoever it is is petering out and he’s nosing round for someone else. How do people like Billy manage to get away with it, Robert?”

“Search me,” said Dixon, getting up. “Come on, it’s time we were in bed.”

As he was getting into bed, some twenty minutes later, Robert Dixon remarked: “By the way, you saw the evening paper, I suppose?”

“You left it lying about downstairs,” replied Nicola with a yawn, “but the headlines didn’t look very interesting, and I hadn’t backed anything, so I couldn’t be bothered to open it.”

“Well, if you had, you’d have seen that my cousin Peregrine’s dead. Car smash.”

“Good Lord!” Nicola remained silent for some moments. “There’s no one else between you and old Simmy, then?”

“That’s just the point. There may be. We shan’t know for a month or two. Peregrine’s widow is expecting.”

Nicola began to laugh quietly. “How damn funny!” she remarked.

“I don’t see there’s anything funny about it. It’s a confoundedly embarrassing position for me to be in---for both of us, for that matter.”

“Darling, I know it is.”

“And old Mother Basset gnashing her teeth at me in agonies of silent excitement only made it worse,” Dixon went on.

“She’ll gnash still more when she hears about me.”

“What on earth are you talking about?”

“Well,” said Nicola, “I’ve got a strong notion I’m on the same tack as Peregrine’s widow. I didn’t want to tell you till I was quite sure.”

“Well, well!” said Dixon. He stared at the ceiling in silence for a moment or two and then reached up and switched off the light.

---

Ventry’s house outside Markhampton was a roomy, ugly Victorian place. Ventry would have sold it long before but for the fact that some previous owner had added to it a large, lofty billiard room which, after some ruthless and expensive alterations, served very well to house his organ and an extensive library of music. On returning home from Mrs. Basset’s he went straight to this room, poured himself out half a tumbler of neat whisky, lodged it precariously on the music-rest of the organ, and proceeded to play from memory, with great dash and inaccuracy, the C Major Toccata of Bach. It was one of his favorite pieces, both for its own sake and because the long pedal passage with which it opens leaves the performer’s hand free to pick up a glass when required. When the whisky and the Toccata were both finished he sat for a moment filled with that exquisite feeling which, before the word acquired a political flavor, was known as “appeasement.” The sensation gradually ebbed away as he became conscious of two facts. The first was that his cook had that morning threatened to give notice if her sleep was again disturbed by “noises in the middle of the night”; the other that the telephone was ringing persistently in the hall.

Swearing under his breath, Ventry swung his thick legs off the music stool and went to attend to the more tractable of the two troubles.

“Darling,” said a high-pitched voice, as soon as he lifted the receiver, “You’ve been ages answering. Is anything the matter?”

Ventry grunted.

“How did things go at the meeting?”

Ventry was still under the potent influence of whisky and Bach, and for the moment he could think of the meeting only in terms of the City Hall organ.

“Oh, damn well,” he replied incautiously. “Really very well indeed.”

“Then it’s all right about Johnny?” said the voice hopefully.

It was on the tip of Ventry’s tongue to say, “What about Johnny?” but his brain cleared in time. Distastefully, he conjured up a vision of Johnny Clarkson, with the rabbity teeth and narrow, suspicious eyes.

“Oh, Johnny!” he said. “Well, I’m afraid Evans wasn’t inclined to be very helpful so far as Johnny was concerned. In fact, he turned him down flat. I’m awfully sorry, Vi, and I did my best, of course, but there it is.”

“Darling, how sickening!” wailed the voice. “Can’t just nothing be done about it, not even to please pore little Violet?”

“Not unless he’ll come in as second again,” answered Ventry shortly. Mrs. Clarkson’s kittenish manner, he reflected, sounded its worst over the telephone.

“And that’s just what he won’t do---he’s got a positive thing about it. You know what he is when he’s like that. Billy boy, what are we going to do? If he isn’t in the orchestra it’ll mean he’ll be at home every evening, and you know what a suspicious devil he is. We shan’t have a chance to see each other.”

“I know.” Ventry did not sound unduly distressed at the prospect.

“It’s only because he’s out at his Masonic meeting I’ve had the chance to ring you up,” Violet went on peevishly. “It’s like living with a detective in the house, having him around. D’you know, I’ve been wondering if he hasn’t begun to suspect something lately. Can he have found out anything, do you think, Billy boy?”

It was borne in on Ventry with all the force of a sudden revelation that he loathed above all things being called “Billy boy.”

As he was pondering this significant fact the voice asked reproachfully, “Haven’t you anything to say to comfort your pore little Violet?”

“We’ve got to be pretty careful, that’s all,” said Ventry firmly. The idea of being taken in adultery by Johnny Clarkson filled him with nausea. “I think we’d better lie low---not see each other for a bit, and so on.”

“Billy boy, you’re wanting to get rid of me!”

“Nonsense, Vi, nonsense, but you must understand . . .”

It was fully five minutes before he could finally put the receiver down. Upstairs, he could hear shuffling sounds which, he knew, meant that his cook was ostentatiously and revengefully wakeful. He went up to bed heartily cursing the whole race of women; but while he was undressing he contrived to think of two or three exceptions to the general ban.

---

In the Markhampton Palais de Dance things were just beginning to warm up. A Select Dance, promoted by the Imperial and Antique Community of Bisons, was in progress, and the Silver Swing Band (under the direction of its talented and popular conductor, Syd Smithers) was giving of its best. The din was terrific. The clarinetist, his fingers flying automatically up and down the wooden barrel of his instrument, kept his large, melancholy eyes fixed upon the leader’s gyrations and tried in vain to dissociate himself from the hideous noises he was producing. Why, he wondered for the hundredth time that evening, should his instrument be prostituted in this way? The saxophone---of course. The piccolo---perhaps. But why---as the band launched into yet another repetition of that haunting refrain, “Livin’ an’ Lovin’ for Yew”---why the clarinet?

At the first interval he slipped off the platform and made his way to a telephone box at the back of the hall. It was late, but he knew that Mrs. Roberts would excuse him, and he could not wait till the morning for the news he sought.

“Mrs. Roberts? This is Tadeusz Zbartorowski speaking. Forgive me to be so late, but I had to know. Is it arranged for me that I play in your orchestre? . . . I see. I thank you very much, Mrs. Roberts. And this Mr. Dixon, I see him when? . . . Good, that will arrange itself, I shall satisfy him. And what do we play? . . . Oh, you have forgot! That is a pity, but Mr. Dixon will know perhaps. . . . Who, did you say? . . . Lucy Carless! Well, even for her I don’t mind playing now. . . . No, I did not mean that, Mrs. Roberts, but there are things that---no matter, it is a long time ago now. . . . Yes indeed, I am very happy, Mrs. Roberts. I thank you many times. And, Mrs. Roberts, there is a friend of mine who perhaps can find me some nylon stockings if you would let me know your size. . . .”

---

“Well,” said Eleanor Pettigrew, “how did you manage at the meeting?”

“Splendidly,” yawned her husband. “Splendidly.”

“What was settled?”

“Let me see. The anonymous donor is going to have a stab at the City Hall organ, and Dixon couldn’t Carless.”

“Wretched man! Is that all you learned at the meeting?”

“Absolutely all. Except that Mrs. Basset has some prewar sherry which is not to be despised.”

“That,” said Eleanor rather coldly, “I had gathered already.”