Chloe Marr Read online

  Title

  A. A. Milne

  CHLOE MARR

  Contents

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  1

  As the clock struck twelve on this late June morning, Miss Chloe Marr, fragrant and newly-powdered, came like a goddess from the bath, girdled herself with Ellen’s help, and stepped into her knickers unaided, A telephone bell rang.

  ‘See who it is,’ said Chloe, wrapping a dressing-gown round her. ‘Slippers.’

  Ellen placed slippers at Miss Marr’s feet, and padded to the telephone. ‘All right, all right,’ she grumbled to its ringing.

  ‘If it’s Mr Denham, I’ve gone out, and won’t be back till this evening.’

  ‘Anybody else you won’t be back till this evening for? What about Mr Hinge, or whatever he calls himself?’

  ‘Well, see who it is, don’t stand there talking.’

  ‘Hallo,’ said Ellen down the telephone. She listened, put the mouthpiece against her stomach, and said, ‘Mr Lancing is downstairs.’

  ‘Oh!’ said Chloe. ‘Ask him— No, I’ll speak to him.’

  ‘Miss Marr will speak to Mr Lancing,’ said Ellen to the telephone, and handed it over to Chloe.

  ‘Hallo, darling,’ said Chloe. ‘What are you doing here at this time of day? . . . Well, it’s a very poor excuse. You must think of a better one next time.’ She laughed and said, ‘Well, just five minutes. And Claude! Are you there? Darling, count a hundred first. I’m only just out of bed . . . No, not like that. Like this: One—Two— Three, lunging alternately to the right and left . . . I leave that to you, darling. Inhale through anything you like, as long as you make it a good, honest hundred. Till then.’

  She came to the dressing-table, saying, ‘It’s Mr Lancing.’

  ‘I told you,’ said Ellen. ‘You won’t have time to make your face up while he counts a hundred. More like a thousand’

  ‘Mr Lancing is a painter. Paint means nothing to him. Except for the lips this is a study in the nude.’ She gazed at herself in the glass. ‘Try and make the bed look a little less like a bed; Mr Lancing is very young.’

  ‘He goes on as if he was ninety.’

  ‘When you are my age, Ellen, you will realize that that is one of the signs of extreme youth.’

  Ellen, pulling the eiderdown over the bed and patting out the pillows, laughed cynically.

  ‘When I’m twice your age, more like.’

  ‘I was being polite,’ explained Miss Marr severely. She painted her mouth with a loving finger; and, seeing Ellen in the mirror, said ‘Don’t overdo it. We don’t want him to think I spent the night in somebody else’s bed.’

  ‘What do we want him to think?’ grumbled Ellen.

  ‘That I slept like an innocent child from dusk to dawn, and glided out of my couch at dawn like a—My good Ellen, what the hell do we care what he thinks? There’s the other telephone. See who it is.’

  Ellen listened, and said down the telephone, ‘Just a moment, Lord Sheppey.’ Chloe frowned violently into the mirror, and pointed a thumb over her shoulder at the bathroom. After a suitable pause Ellen said, ‘Miss Marr says can you leave a message, or shall she ring you later, she’s in her bath. . . . Very good, Lord Sheppey. We have your number. I’ll tell her. Good-bye.’ As she hung the receiver up, the bell rang again surprisingly. She listened, and said, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Mr Denham, Miss Marr has just gone out. . . . Yes, she had to be out early to-day . . . I’ll tell her, yes. Yes, as soon as she comes in. We have your number. Good-bye.’

  ‘Well, that’s got rid of two of them for the day,’ said Miss Marr complacently. ‘Listen, there’s Mr Lancing.’ She pulled her dressing-gown more tightly round her and tied its sash. ‘He’s in love with me, Ellen, did you know?’

  ‘You say that of all of them.’

  ‘Well, they all are, aren’t they?’

  ‘More fools they.’

  ‘Oh, well, now you’re opening up an entirely new subject.’ She gave herself a last look. ‘Right, I’m ready.’ She stood up.

  Claude Lancing came into the sitting-room. He was small and dark and neat, with an odd air of being both alert and imperturbable. His movements were quick, but made without any appearance of hurry. If you were told that he was a first-class boxer, you would believe it, and it would be true. If you were told that he was a first-class painter, it would not be true, but he believed that it was going to be. After all, he was only twenty-three.

  ‘Darling!’ called Chloe from her bedroom. ‘Come in!’

  As he came, she leant towards him, holding out her cheek for his kiss. His hand made to go round her waist, but she was quick too, and had had much more practice. She caught the hand in hers, giving it a loving squeeze and returning it to him. His kiss came no nearer to her mouth than she had intended. She went back to her dressing-table. ‘You can sit there and watch me do my face,’ she said, as she tied up her hair.

  ‘Must you? I was wondering why you looked so lovely.’

  ‘“And I’d always thought she was so plain,” you’d been saying to yourself. Ellen, I think Mr Lancing must want a drink. Sit down, Ellen will get it.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘I’ll have just a sip of yours. I shall be drinking like a mad thing in about half an hour. So you think I look better without my little make-up?’

  ‘Yes. Of course, you can’t help being beautiful with a face that shape——’

  ‘And eyes like stars, and teeth like pearls, and a nose like a scimitar—go on,’ scoffed Chloe.

  ‘Not stars. Wet violets with the sun on them.’

  ‘Yes, I’ve heard that said before.’

  ‘I’ll tell you one thing about you.’

  ‘Do. I know nothing of the subject.’

  ‘You’re the only woman I’ve ever met who doesn’t get a kick out of being told she’s beautiful.’

  ‘And you’re twenty-three, and you’ve met your mother and your old nurse and your sister Claudia. Fancy!’

  ‘Well, you’re rather overstating the case. My mother died when I was two. I may have said “Pitty Mummy,” but I wouldn’t know her reactions.’

  ‘Oh, darling, I’m sorry.’ She put an impulsive hand out to him, and he held it. ‘I don’t mean about your mother dying, because I expect you’ve got over it by now, or about being a little lost orphan, but——’ She took her hand away, and said, ‘Ellen, why did I say I was sorry? What am I sorry for? I can’t imagine. Is that Mr Lancing’s drink?’

  Ellen came to them with the incomparable Chloe Cocktail.

  ‘Give it to me,’ ordered Chloe. She sipped it, leaving a kiss within the cup, and bestowed it on Claude as it were a decoration. ‘There, darling. And I’ll only put a very little make-up on to-day, if you like me best like that.’

  ‘Bless you,’ said Claude, looking into her eyes, and drinking to her.

  Chloe gave him all her heart in her eyes, or what he thought was her heart, and retur
ned to the mirror. ‘How’s Claudia?’ she asked brightly. ‘Getting on nicely?’

  ‘I don’t know what she’s like at the Academy, but she’s terribly like an actress at home.’

  ‘There was a time when I thought of being an actress, but Ellen said I was one already, and the urge left me.’

  ‘That I never did, Miss Marr,’ said Ellen indignantly.

  ‘Then I must be thinking of somebody else. Or something else. Enjoying your drink, darling?’

  Claude nodded. He had a wonderful feeling of well-being. He could see himself sitting there: at ease in Chloe Marr’s bedroom: the Beautiful and Notorious Miss Marr. And then another picture came suddenly into his head: of Venus and her Mirror: a modern Venus, all curves and litheness, seated at her dressing-table, and, reflected in the mirror far away and small, a very old gentleman sitting up stiffly, in a very stiff collar, on a very stiff chair, holding a top-hat stiffly on his knees. It would be an allegory of— of something. Or perhaps leave out the man, and the mirror too if it came to that, and just put poor old Ellen in. Or Ellen’s face in the mirror. Two women, showing what beauty must come to. Yes, that would be good. But of course he’d seen it first as a very small old gentleman in a top-hat, so perhaps——

  ‘What are you thinking about, darling?’ said Chloe to the mirror.

  ‘My art,’ said Claude, with one of his rare smiles.

  ‘So am I.’ She looked at herself more closely. ‘Well?’ she said, turning round. ‘What’s the verdict?’

  Claude took a deep breath.

  ‘You were right,’ he said. ‘You couldn’t be more beautiful than that.’

  Chloe laughed triumphantly, and the telephone bell rang. ‘Darling, you’ll have to leave me now. I must dress.’

  2

  As Barnaby had often told her, she was the loveliest, sweetest, truest, kindest, most generous girl in the world. Always, afterwards, he had realized that she was none of these things. Except loveliest. Hers was not a benignant beauty, a beauty that comforted, a spiritual beauty which illumed and made more beautiful the beauty which hid it. Her beauty was beauty triumphant; alive, challenging, insistent; a brilliant attack on the sex of every man. Was it a cold, deliberate attack? When he was away from her, he wondered. When he was with her, he surrendered. It was happiness just to look at her. So he looked at her once a week . . . and thought about her for the rest of the week.

  Barnaby was thirty-something; with an honest, blunt-nosed, ugly, handsome face, and friendly grey eyes under upward-pointing eyebrows. As he took those eyes off her to look at the bill, she said, ‘Are we being good, darling?’

  Chloe liked going to the expensive places to lunch, and Barnaby liked taking her to them; but they had an understanding that the bill was never to be more than twenty-four shillings. Once, a long time ago, it had been twenty-four shillings, and she had said, ‘Now, let’s never go beyond that.’ When they didn’t go beyond it, they were good.

  ‘Fairly good,’ he said.

  She withdrew her eyes from her little mirror, glanced at the bill, and said, ‘Oh, darling!’

  ‘We had an extra cocktail,’ he explained.

  ‘So we did,’ she said, relieved, and went back to her mirror. ‘We’re really quite good now, aren’t we?’

  ‘I don’t know about good,’ said Barnaby. ‘I’m just sensible. And if you think I’d rather lunch for a shilling by myself at some beastly tea-shop than lunch with you here for thirty shillings, you’re just an idiot.’

  ‘Darling!’ She gave him that lovely, quick, tender smile which she had given, he knew, to a hundred men, but which remained always a private benediction. ‘Do I cost you very much?’

  ‘Not a penny too much, sweetheart.’

  ‘Well, it isn’t really, is it? We have lunch or something once a week, when we’re both in London, which makes it a good deal less than once a week, and if it’s only just over a pound each time——’

  ‘I thought a perfect lady never went into all this.’

  ‘Darling, I’m never a perfect lady with you. Haven’t you discovered that yet?’

  ‘Not as completely as I should like.’

  Again that smile, with a hint of laughter this time, intimate and loving. Even if all the others had had it, he didn’t mind.

  ‘I always feel different with you. You know it.’

  ‘Good heavens, yes. I’m practically the only nice man you’ve ever met.’

  ‘Well, you’re the only one I can say what I like to.’

  ‘What would you like to say?’

  Her hand found his, and stayed there. ‘What I was going to say——’

  ‘—lady or no lady——’

  ‘—was that it only comes to fifty pounds a year, and we do get a lot of happiness for that, don’t we, darling?’

  ‘We do. It’s worth three times the money.’

  This was as well, because that was what it was: about a hundred and fifty, one way and another. However, he lived on the other four-fifty as happily as he could have lived away from Chloe on anything.

  She began to look for her gloves. Generally they went back to look for them, or she took another pair from her bag, and said, ‘Never mind, darling. I can ring up.’

  ‘When do we meet again, sweetie?’

  ‘When you like,’ said Barnaby. ‘Couldn’t we have a day in the country together?’

  ‘What about the stuffy old office?’

  ‘I’m taking a week’s holiday next week. To fit in with one of these family men.’

  ‘Darling, how exciting! Why didn’t you tell me? Where are you going?’

  ‘I’m waiting for you to say. Is next Thursday all right?’

  ‘Don’t be silly, ducky. Aren’t you going away properly?’

  ‘No. I’d go away improperly, if you’d come. We’d go to Brittany. I know a village.’

  Again that quick look, that quick intimate smile. But different. No one had ever had it like that before. Except—— Well, what did it matter, anyway?

  Chloe sighed and put on her gloves.

  ‘Why don’t we?’ she asked.

  ‘God knows.’

  ‘I don’t love you enough, my darling.’

  ‘So I suppose.’

  ‘You wouldn’t like it if I wasn’t really loving you.’

  ‘Yes, I should.’

  She laughed happily.

  ‘Oh, darling, I’m glad you said that. I should have hated you if you’d gone all Tennyson suddenly.’

  ‘Try hating me for a change. Anything to be different from the others. As a matter of fact, I shouldn’t like it.’

  ‘I think you would. I think you would.’

  ‘No. If you did it for me, you would do it for all the others. I should hate that.’ Chloe flashed a look at him, and drooped her head to her gloves. ‘Let’s stick to England. Thursday? If you don’t feel like the country, we could take a hamper to Lord’s. Gentlemen and Players.’

  ‘All right, darling. And we’ll go to Brittany one day.’

  ‘We will.’

  ‘I absolutely promise.’

  ‘So do I. I may be ninety at the time, but I’ll make the crossing somehow.’

  ‘We’ll come on deck in our bath-chairs, and have them side by side.’

  ‘I hope it will be calm. It wants to be calm for bath-chairs.’

  ‘They’ve got brakes they put on them now so that they don’t roll backwards down the Leas at Folkestone. They used to lose a lot of old ladies at one time.’

  ‘I’ll inquire into all that,’ said Barnaby.

  ‘Oh, darling, I do love you,’ cried Chloe, and it sounded to him like a sudden cry from the heart, but meaning, ‘Oh, darling, I wish I loved you!’

  In the taxi he said, ‘Take off your gloves till we get to Antoine’s.’

  ‘Dar
ling . . . Will you take the taxi on?’

  ‘I think I’d better, or I shall be late. Where shall we go on Thursday?’

  ‘We’ll see how we feel, darling. Ring me up on Tuesday, and we’ll talk it over.’

  ‘Right.’

  Even if he were married to Chloe, even if Chloe were his own for ever, he would have to leave her now. He couldn’t sit holding her hand for an hour and a half while she had her hair set. It would look so strange.

  ‘Good-bye, my darling, my Chloe.’

  ‘Good-bye, dear one. Thank you for my lovely lunch. And you’ll ring up on Tuesday. Eleven o’clock.’

  A quick light kiss on his mouth, and she was gone. ‘Prossers,’ said Barnaby savagely to the driver. ‘At the top of Chancery Lane.’

  3

  Miss Marr, her hair newly set and looking, which was one of its charms, as if it had been set yesterday, was sitting on the divan with the Duke of St Ives. Many a woman had found that this was a dangerous thing to do, but not Chloe. She had met him a fortnight ago. She knew all about the Duchess and faithful Freddy Winter; she knew all about the Duke and as many glamour girls as had names to identify them. When he said, with a conquering smile, could he come to see her and perhaps they might go out somewhere (what?), she asked him to tea. She let him in herself; they were obviously alone in the flat. He must have thought that this was too easy. Chloe must have thought so too. He went away with a bewildered look on his face, and an invitation, for which he had thanked her humbly, to come to tea again some time. To show the purity of his intentions this time, he had brought a game called Reversi with him. (‘Any sort of game,’ he had said at Hamleys. ‘Isn’t there something called Ludo or something? Or anything.’) They sat on the divan together, but the Reversi board was between them. It was their fifth game and what made it very exciting was that they had each won two.

  ‘Go on, Tommy, I can hardly bear it.’

  Chloe was as excited as a child. If the Duke didn’t do anything about it, and he didn’t see what he could do about it, two whole rows of his black counters were going to be red. ‘Is it my turn, is it my turn?’ she said impatiently.

  ‘Damn,’ said the Duke gloomily. ‘It looks as if you’re going to win.’