Birthday Party Read online

  Mr Baker made it clear that he was glad—in a sense, relieved—to give it to him.

  ‘And now,’ said Mr Wender, helping his guest up, ‘we will join Mademoiselle de—but no. For reasons which you will understand she wishes to remain incognito while in London. By the way, she talks English perfectly—unless, of course, you insist on conversing with her in her own language.’ He waited a moment in case Mr Baker insisted, and went on, ‘Should it be necessary to refer to her by name I am permitted to call her Lady Witterman. You won’t mind my introducing you as Sir Joseph?’

  (Undoubtedly Prince Florizel of Bohemia.)

  ‘Well, actually, my name is——’

  Mr Wender waggled a genial hand.

  ‘No names, no pack-drill, as we used to say in the Guards.’

  (Or the Duke of Westminster?)

  They came, arm-in-arm, to the table by the glass screen.

  ‘This, darling,’ said Mr Wender, ‘is Sir Joseph.’

  Miss Flyte nodded sulkily.

  ‘A glass of Pommery, Sir Joseph?’

  Mr Baker wondered if champagne went well with Burgundy, and didn’t see why it shouldn’t try.

  ‘Your very good health. My dear, we must drink Sir Joseph’s health.’

  Miss Flyte, her mouth still sullen, raised her glass to Mr Baker. Then, seeing something in his insignificant face, something which she didn’t see in the faces of the men who made love to her, she gave him a sudden warming smile, and said, ‘All the best.’

  ‘The same to you,’ said Mr Baker, ‘both of you,’ he explained, remembering that the Duke was paying his bill. But, as he drank, he was drinking to Maggie and David. He was drinking their healths in champagne. Real champagne. Pommery. What an evening!

  The Pommery seemed to like the Burgundy. It reminded the Burgundy of a very funny thing which their lessor knew about and nobody else did. That was what made it so funny. That was what made Mr Baker laugh so surprisingly.

  ‘Yes?’ said Mr Wender encouragingly. His eyes went round again to the doorway.

  ‘What,’ Mr Baker invited them to tell him, ‘do they know of England who only England know?’

  ‘What?’ wondered Miss Flyte, assuming that it was a riddle.

  ‘That wasn’t what I said,’ he explained with a happy smile. ‘What I said was nobody knows what happened this morning. Now why does nobody know what happened this morning? Because it’s profound secret.’

  ‘What did happen?’ asked Miss Flyte.

  ‘When I say nobody, I mean nobody-but-three. No,’ said Mr Baker, working it out, ‘four. Probably five. Or six or seven. Things get about. Have you ever,’ he asked on a different note, ‘come across Sir David Shawn Baker in Paris or elsewhere?’

  ‘I seem to have heard of him,’ said Miss Flyte, feeling that it was expected of her. ‘I’ve never actually met him.’

  ‘I have. Just for a moment.’

  ‘What’s he like?’

  Mr Baker reflected for a little.

  ‘On the short side,’ he said, summing it up.

  Mr Wender rose to his feet. One felt that he had been waiting for this moment. Three people in evening dress were coming in. The big woman who led the way, magnificently under-gowned and over-jewelled, glanced at Mr Wender, stood for a moment in surprise, committed Miss Flyte and Mr Baker to memory, and inclined her head to Mr Wender’s bow. The party moved on. Mr Wender sat down and poured himself out the rest of the champagne. ‘I think that’s all right,’ he murmured, gulping it down.

  The waiter brought the bill. Mr Wender put a £10 note on the plate.

  ‘Look, girlie,’ he said, ‘I think I’ll just go and say a word to those people, while you powder your nose. I’ll meet you both outside.’

  They all got up. Mr Baker, surprised to find that he could walk, not only effectively but with a certain dignity, followed Miss Flyte out. She turned to him as soon as they were through the doorway.

  ‘Hat and coat!’ she snapped. ‘Quick!’ She indicated the cloak-room. Then, as soon as he was ready, ‘Come on!’

  ‘But what about Mr—er——’

  ‘Come on!’ She led the way. ‘Ask for a taxi. Tell him Victoria.’

  Completely bewildered, Mr Baker, as so often before in his life, obeyed instructions. As he took his place in the taxi beside her he was still saying, ‘What about Mr—er——’

  ‘To hell with him!’ said Miss Flyte bitterly. ‘Thinking he was going to get away with that!’

  5

  The fresh air through the open window was doing Mr Baker good. He still wondered why he was there, but now he felt benevolently and intelligently interested in his position.

  ‘Married men!’ said Miss Flyte. ‘They make me sick.’

  Mr Baker waited for further details.

  ‘He asks me to have dinner with him. Well, why shouldn’t I have dinner with him? What else did he think he was going to get? Not bloody likely. (That’s a quotation, ducky, you needn’t look shocked.) And then suddenly there’s his darling wife in the lounge, plastered with Koh-i-noors and looking like the Queen of Sheba’s Aunt Rachel. He’s told her, see, that he’s dining with Sir Joseph Wotsit so’s to discuss a—what’s that thing men like that discuss, financiers I mean?’

  ‘Well, they might discuss so many things. Would it be a merger?’

  ‘Something like that. So now when she comes in and sees him—well, am I going to look like I’m discussing a merger with darling hubby? So I’ve got to be explained somehow, see? Well, he’s a quick thinker, I will say that for him. Well, you see, we’d noticed you at your table—“I wonder who that nice-looking man is,” I said, “seems sort of lonely”—I’d just passed the remark, not thinking any more of it, so now he gets his idea. Because once you’re at our table, he’s all right. There he is, dining with Sir Joseph, and if Sir Joseph brings his wife along, well he can’t help it, can he? So he gets up and bows to her—don’t suppose you noticed, you were telling me about that secret of yours—and then goes up to her table and says, all smiles and handwash, I can just hear him saying it, “Sir Joseph brought the wife along, used to be his secretary, knows all the ins and outs of the business; well, I must be getting along, got to get back to his flat, he’s left some papers behind; how are you, John, how are you, Mary, nice of you to look after the wife while I’m so busy.” Cah! It makes me sick. I’m as good as she is, aren’t I?’

  ‘But not as married to him as she is,’ said Mr Baker mildly.

  ‘Who said I was, and who wants to be? He asked me to come out with him, didn’t he? I didn’t ask him. What’s it matter to me what his wife thinks? If he couldn’t stand up to her, he oughtn’t to of asked me. How did I know he had a wife at all? What would he of thought if I’d said, “Don’t look now but there’s my husband over there, you’d better pretend to be the Archbishop of Canterbury”? What sort of a way is that of having a nice little dinner together?’

  Mr Baker didn’t feel competent to answer any of these questions, nor did he suppose that an answer was expected. All that mattered was that he had dined at the Savoy and had drunk David’s health in Burgundy and champagne. Now he was sitting in a taxi with an extremely pretty girl. All this on David’s birthday. Miss Flyte seemed to remember suddenly that he was there, and that she had certain obligations towards him.

  ‘Victoria all right for you?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes. Oh, yes.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Catch my train, nicely.’

  ‘I’m on the District. Ealing. D’you know that part?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Retired Indians mostly. You know what I mean. Not blacks. Nice part, near the Common where we are. Married, I suppose?’

  ‘Yes.’ She knew by the way he said it that he was in love with his wife.

  ‘What I said about married men making me sick, of course I didn’t mean you.’

  ‘I’m sure you wouldn’t have said so to me, even if I had.’

  ‘I just say anything that comes into my head when I’m angry, and if there’s one thing that makes me angry, it’s bad manners. What’s your real name when you aren’t Sir Joseph?’

  He laughed and said, ‘Baker.’

  ‘Mr Baker,’ she said, looking at him, pondering the name and its owner. ‘Fancy! If it hadn’t been for that wife of his we should never have met. Seems funny, doesn’t it? What: was that secret you were telling me?’

  He coughed apologetically.

  ‘I’m afraid I was a little—I must have been—it’s the first time I’ve ever drunk champagne. And I’d already had half a. bottle of Burgundy.’

  ‘I say, you were going it! What will Mrs Baker say when you tell her?’

  ‘She wanted me to have a good dinner, because, you see„ she—we—we had a son early this morning.’

  ‘First?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Was that the secret?’

  ‘Yes. I didn’t tell them at the office, because I thought—well, it was something rather—I know this sounds silly——’

  ‘I shan’t laugh.’

  ‘Well, sort of sacred between Maggie and me. Just for to-day. I didn’t want jokes about it.’

  ‘And now you’ve told me?’

  ‘Yes, but that’s different somehow.’

  She looked at him wonderingly.

  ‘How long have you been married?’

  ‘Ten years.’

  ‘What are you calling him?’

  ‘David Alistair Shawn,’ said Mr Baker shyly. ‘Shawn was his mother’s name.’

  The taximan opened the window behind him, and said, ‘Which lin
e?’

  ‘Main line,’ said Miss Flyte, and to her companion, ‘I’ll pay.’

  ‘No, no,’ he protested. ‘You forget, I didn’t pay for my dinner.’

  ‘D’you mean he paid?’ Miss Flyte laughed happily. ‘Well, that’s a good one. That’s cheered me up a lot. All the same, I’m going to pay the taxi, and you can put half a crown in David’s money-box specially for me. See?’

  ‘Oh, that is kind——’

  She leant across to him suddenly and kissed him on the cheek.

  ‘And that’s for yourself. Because you’re different from all the others. See?’

  The taxi drew up at the station, and they got out.

  6

  Mr Baker was happy. He’d done it. He had dined where he had said he would, he had toasted David in champagne, and it hadn’t cost him a penny. His son, he felt modestly, could be proud of him. The Bakers were not to be despised. When put to it, they could hold their own with the best in the land.

  What a story to tell Maggie!

  Except for that last moment. That, he felt instinctively, must remain untold. The fragrant memory of that touching, unexpected kiss was for himself alone. The thought of keeping anything from Maggie made him a little uneasy, but he assured himself that men and women must always have secrets from each other. When, for instance, Sir David Shawn Baker was Ambassador in Paris, there would be many matters which he would not confide to his wife.

  Anne-Marie

  We had had a good year, and by way of celebration I was giving a little dinner in my Hampstead flat to heads of departments. We had seen quite enough of each other in the last twelve months, but a dinner is a dinner, and something of the sort seemed to be expected of me. I reckoned that if I gave them enough to drink we should get through the meal somehow, but that the hour or so afterwards, before I could decently kick them out, might be a little sticky. Then I had the brilliant idea of engaging a conjurer. Everybody likes a conjurer.

  He introduced himself as the Great Rinaldo. He was a bit of a dago, who wore his evening clothes as if they had been fancy dress; young, apparently, but with a face like old ivory, and thick black hair which he kept shaking back from his forehead. He had the most beautiful hands I have ever seen. I told him that card-tricks would be the most suitable form of entertainment, and he said in a low, melancholy voice that he only did card-tricks now. So card-tricks it was.

  They were brilliant. I suppose they could all be explained, but some of them seemed sheer magic. For instance, he held up the four aces between the fingers of his right hand; they were there, they were not there, they were there again. ‘Spade to the Gardener,’ he murmured, ‘Club to the Clubman, Heart to the Lover, Diamond to—well, you must find your own way, I cannot help you. Off with you!’ He snapped his fingers. ‘And now, gentlemen, if you would feel in your breast-pockets——’ Well, he could have looked me up in Who’s Who and seen that I belonged to half a dozen clubs; but how did he know that Rogers never stopped talking about his tomatoes, and that Nason was still indecently in love with his wife after twenty years of matrimony? The diamond went to Jewell, the head of our Education department.

  One of the most attractive things about him was that he gave us none of that dreary, facetious patter which you get from most conjurers. He talked, of course: conjurers, I understand, have to do this in order to distract the attention; but his talk was more like a musical incantation to the cards, very soothing and restful in his melancholy voice. Altogether he was a great success, and when it was over, I had another bottle of champagne up, filled a glass for him, and we all gathered round his end of the table.

  ‘You say you only do card-tricks?’ I said, to start him off.

  ‘Only!’ said Nason, and everybody laughed.

  ‘Only card-tricks now,’ said the Great Rinaldo. He drank and sighed. I filled his glass again. We all waited . . .

  It was three years ago (said Rinaldo), on a Saturday night at Blackpool, that Carlotta left me. Between the shows we had had our last quarrel. Once more she had accused me of loving Anne-Marie more than I loved her, and now at last it was true. One cannot go on saying this to a man without it becoming true in the end. Did I, then, want her to leave me? Not consciously, for I needed both of them. Both of them were indispensable to my art. But down in the subconscious, I suppose, I was saying ‘To hell with Carlotta’.

  Carlotta was my partner. She stood by my table looking gay and pretty, and she gave me the accessories of my art as I needed them. From her wide but lovely mouth I drew the flags of all nations; as the Vanishing Lady from the hermetically sealed cabinet she brought our turn to its triumphant conclusion.

  I am an artist, and I take my art seriously. When I found Carlotta, she was with a juggler who called himself Hal I. Butt; that, gentlemen, gives you an idea of the life she was leading before she met me. I rescued her from this, but unfortunately I was unable to blot out the past altogether. Our first few months together were happy, and then she began to relapse. She played for laughs. At the close of one of my most brilliant feats, as the audience was about to thunder its applause, Carlotta would look at me with a comically exaggerated awe, and say, ‘Coo!’—and the applause would turn to shouts of laughter. A serious artist does not want laughter. When I asked any gentleman in the audience to lend me his watch, she would frown and shake her head warningly at them, implying by this that I was a confidence trickster. I, the Great Rinaldo! Once, when a gentleman in the front row of the stalls was fumbling for his watch in one pocket after another, she leant over to him and said helpfully, ‘Or a sundial’; which was foolish, and would have made the trick impossible. Always now, when the show was ended, we would have a scene, and always the scene would end with Carlotta in tears, crying that I did not love her any more. Gentlemen, how can one love a woman who says ‘Or a sundial’ when I ask any gentleman in the audience to lend me his watch?

  ‘You love Anne-Marie more than you love me,’ she would cry for the hundredth time, and now it was true. Anne-Marie was sweet and gentle. She never made a mockery of my art, never tried to be funny at the climax of my professional skill. She had been with me for two years before I found Carlotta, and knew all my ways. We loved each other dearly . . .

  Anne-Marie was my rabbit . . .

  That last performance at Blackpool. Always, previously, we had made it up before we did our turn again, but now, for the first time, Carlotta and I went on to the stage at enmity with each other. I was afraid. I told myself that she was planning a great humiliation for me to-night, a louder laugh than she had ever got before. To my surprise she played her part perfectly; not a smile from the audience, nothing but that wave of wonder and applause which is so necessary for the serious artist. So we came to the Grand Finale, the Vanishing Lady. I knew then that she had been saving herself up for this. Once she had said to me in her frivolous way, ‘It would be rather funny if I didn’t vanish one night, and when you threw open the doors of the cabinet, I was still there.’

  ‘Funny?’ I exclaimed.

  ‘Yes, and I said reproachfully, “Darling, you forgot to leave the corkscrew.” Get a good laugh that would.’

  A good laugh! To-night, I told myself, she was playing for the greatest laugh of all.

  We came to the finale. She is in the cabinet. Six of the audience, including two sailors, have examined it, have assured themselves that there is no way out. The band plays. I stand there exercising all my will-power, for I feel that it is a struggle of wills between us, and I stand there compelling her to play her part, to do what is needful and to vanish. The band stops. The whole house is hushed. I make a pass over the cabinet, the one that my grandfather has taught me. I cry ‘Voilà!’ as I fling the doors wide. What shall I see?

  All is well. She is not there.

  The audience applauds. I bow. I hold the applause until Carlotta comes tripping down the centre aisle. She joins me on the stage, and together we make our final bow . . .

  But what is this? She does not come! I signal for the curtain to descend. I rush to the wings. ‘Where is she? Where is she?’ The men shake their heads. Nobody has seen her. They ring the curtain up again. I am there bowing. Still no Carlotta tripping down the aisle; still, however, the torrents of applause. And then, suddenly, the applause turns to laughter! Never, gentlemen, have you heard such laughter. It thunders in my ears, and I cannot understand it. Furiously I tell myself that Carlotta has not left the stage, that she is here behind me, making funny faces at the audience. I take a quick look round. She is not there. But at my side—what do I see?