Chloe Marr Read online

  ‘Do you give me best? Do you own that I’m a better Reversi player than you? Because if so, you can have a drink.’

  ‘I do,’ said the Duke. ‘And I want a drink like hell.’

  Chloe swept the counters triumphantly into their box, in case he changed his mind, and busied herself with bottles.

  ‘Your flowers do look so lovely,’ she said. ‘It was sweet of you.’

  ‘It needn’t always be flowers, you know.’

  ‘Well, well, aren’t we lucky?’

  ‘Damn it, you have birthdays, don’t you?’

  ‘Every now and then. Every year, to come out into the open.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Yes, I think I’d better tell you when it’s closer. I’ll write it down, so that there will be no mistake.’

  ‘How old are you, Chloe?’

  ‘Twenty-eight.’

  ‘I’m forty-three.’

  ‘What do I say now?’

  ‘Thirteen years ago——’

  ‘Don’t tell me. I can do it. You would have been thirty, and I should have been fifteen.’

  ‘Yes. Too young. You’d have been too young. Henrietta was twenty-two.’

  ‘This sounds like a near-proposal. If Things had been Different.’

  ‘Supposing they had been?’

  Chloe looked at him thoughtfully, the shaker in one hand, a glass in the other. Under her silent, passionless valuation he began to feel uncomfortable.

  ‘I’m not much to look at,’ he admitted with an uneasy laugh. But it was the first time he had ever thought so.

  ‘Good enough,’ she said absently. And then, making up her mind, ‘Well, we’d have got engaged, anyway.’ She poured out his drink.

  ‘You know, you’re utterly unlike any other woman I’ve ever met.’

  Any other woman would have asked ‘How many women have you said that to?’ but Chloe didn’t. She gave the impression that there weren’t any other women. She smiled an acknowledgment of her uniqueness.

  ‘Now drink that up like a good little boy and then you must go.’ She gave him his cocktail. ‘Because I must have my bath.’

  ‘I’d give a thousand pounds to see you,’ he burst out.

  ‘I’m sure you would.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I oughtn’t to have said that. Not to you.’

  ‘Say anything once, Tommy. I’ll let you know when you ring the bell. Or hit the marker.’

  ‘You know, I’d got quite the wrong idea about you.’

  ‘You’re not the only one. It leads to a lot of disappointment.’

  The Duke nodded, a little gloomily.

  ‘May I bring Henrietta to see you one day?’ he asked; and seemed to be listening to himself with surprise.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Dammit,’ he laughed, ‘I’ve never made that offer to a woman before. But then——’

  ‘I’m different,’ smiled Chloe.

  ‘My God, you are.’ He finished his drink, and stood up.

  ‘Like it?’

  ‘What’s it called?’

  ‘Chloe’s Delight.’

  ‘I’d have drunk it more slowly if I’d known.’

  ‘Now that’s really a nice thing to say, Tommy.’

  ‘I’m sorry about the other day.’

  ‘That isn’t. It’s silly. Of course you took a chance. Why shouldn’t you? I’m glad you did. Now we know where we are.’

  ‘I suppose in a way,’ said the Duke, looking on the bright side, ‘it was a sort of compliment.’

  Chloe laughed, shaking her head at him.

  ‘It’s a compliment which leaps to the mind very easily. You’d be surprised.’ She held out her hand. ‘Good-bye.’

  He took her hand in his, and said, ‘Could we go out one night, do you think?’

  ‘Well, I think now, don’t you?’ He realized that she meant ‘Now that we know where we are.’

  ‘Thank you. I’ll ring up. What are you smiling at?’

  ‘Shan’t tell you.’

  ‘Oh, all right. Good-bye, lovely Chloe.’ He bent and kissed her hand.

  ‘Good-bye, darling. You’re rather sweet.’

  4

  It was possibly the thought of Ellen which had made Chloe smile.

  Ellen called Miss Marr’s friends by their names: Mr Lancing, Lord Sheppey, Mrs Clavering, and so forth. It was a point of pride with her to hold herself above the ‘Sir’ and ‘Madam’ class of servant. Some of these friends believed that Ellen was an old theatrical dresser whom Miss Marr had found destitute and taken on out of pity. Others, who were not so sure that Miss Marr did things out of pity, thought that Ellen was her old nurse. Nobody asked Chloe. This was partly because, when one knew her well enough to ask her, one knew that the answer would be appropriate rather than authentic; partly because, by the time one knew her as well as that, Ellen had no separate existence apart from Chloe, and Chloe (sometimes it seemed) no separate existence apart from her.

  ‘You know, my dear,’ said Sir Everard one day, ‘when you get married, Ellen will go on your honeymoon with you, and you’ll make up a little bed for her in the corner of your room; and then, if any difficulties arise—and they say that the honeymoon is a difficult time—she can be appealed to with perfect confidence. “We never do, do we, Ellen?”’

  ‘Did you find them arise much, Everard?’

  Sir Everard, who had been married three times, and still was, smiled, and said:

  ‘I was going to add—and you shan’t put me off—that it is the difficulty of making love to you and Ellen simultaneously which has prevented you receiving any offers of marriage so far. Get rid of Ellen, and it may be that a Chartered Accountant would ask for your hand.’

  ‘Goody, goody,’ said Chloe gleefully. ‘A real Chartered Accountant. They’re swell at figures,’ she explained. ‘Like me.’

  Ellen, then, would have to talk to the Duke of St Ives on the telephone, and she wouldn’t say ‘Your Grace’ and she could hardly say ‘Duke’. So what? ‘Yes, Duke of St. Ives, I’ll tell her, we have your number.’ Very awkward for her. But as she helped Miss Marr into the black dress that evening, all she knew was that the Duke had been to tea again, and that the orchids which had just come were from somebody called Tommy.

  ‘Or the blue after all?’ said Chloe, a mirror in her hand, her back to the long glass.

  ‘I don’t think Mr Walsh notices,’ said Ellen wearily. The blue had been on twice already.

  ‘We shan’t be alone at the Berkeley, you know. There are always one or two other people there. And at the Four Hundred.’

  ‘You wore the blue at the Four Hundred last week,’ said Ellen, fastening on to the cue so luckily given to her. The telephone bell rang. ‘That’ll be Mr Walsh.’

  ‘And, as you say, he doesn’t notice. Ask him to come up.’ She held an orchid against her breast at different angles, liking herself. ‘You were quite right, Ellen. The blue would have been terrible.’

  None of Miss Marr’s friends ever ceased to wonder how she could go about with the others, and to all but himself Percy Walsh offered the most constant field of surprised speculation. He was nearly forty; good-looking in what is called (in peace-time) the military style; tall and heavily-built, with an inclination to actual stoutness; slow, deliberate of speech, sure that what he said was worth listening to, that what he had done was worth recounting. So, when he spoke, he never coloured his words, nor tried to make them more interesting; for the fact that it was he who was saying them was surely enough. His slow, lazy, self-assured voice would have given equal value to the regrettable news that he had just shot the Chancellor of the Exchequer by mistake, and to the good news that he had been wearing a pair of Digby and Lawson’s shooting boots when doing it.

  ‘Good evening, darling,’ called Chloe through the door.
br />   ‘’Evening, old girl.’

  ‘Shan’t be a moment. Help yourself.’

  ‘Thanks.’ He helped himself and settled down comfortably. ‘I met a feller once who knew a feller whose governor made potato-crisps, when I say made them, I mean that was what he made.’

  ‘I follow you, darling. (No, just a little higher, Ellen.)’

  ‘Struck me as dam strange, making potato-crisps all day and all night, don’t know what you think about it.’

  ‘Dam strange, darling. (Key in the bag, Ellen?) Still, somebody must make them.’

  ‘Point is it wasn’t a side-line with this feller, he just made potato-crisps. If you’d asked him what he was, he’d have had to say he was the potato-crisp feller. Well, that strikes me as a damned unlikely thing to be.’

  ‘If you’d seen it in a picture, you wouldn’t have believed it was true.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Don’t say another word. I am now about to burst upon your vision.’ She came through the door triumphantly, very tall on her high heels, every inch of her crying, childlike, ‘Look at me!’

  Percy looked at her, getting slowly to his feet.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Don’t hurry me, there’s a word I’m trying to think of; what it comes to is, if I were one of these poets you hear about, that’s the word I’d use.’

  ‘I simply can’t wait. I suppose it’s no good suggesting some?’

  ‘Radiant. That’s it, radiant.’

  ‘Darling, you don’t have to be a poet to think of a long word like that.’

  ‘It’s just a word I happened to see, and I said to myself, “That’s how the old girl looks sometimes.” Well, let’s have a kiss.’

  He put an arm round her waist, and kissed her.

  ‘Has anybody ever fallen down when you’ve done’ that?’ asked Chloe. ‘One of your smaller girl-friends? Or do you warn them to get the back foot up against something?’ She took her drink from the table, glancing at her face in the mirror above it. She was intact.

  ‘Leaving all that on one side and going back to what I was saying, it struck me as more than a bit surprising if you asked a feller what his son was going to do, talking about his son and wondering, well, not really giving a damn of course, but just for something to talk about, and he said he was going to make potato-crisps. Well, it’s just how it strikes you.’

  ‘Could I have the last little one, do you think?’

  ‘Oh, sorry.’ He held out the dish, so nearly empty.

  ‘I always wondered who ate them,’ said Chloe, nibbling delicately, ‘but I do see now that there must be a very impressive sale for them.’ She sat down on the arm of his chair. ‘Where are we going? I think the Berkeley, and the Paul Muni.’

  ‘Right. I did explain to you, didn’t I, how it was about supper. This feller Chater. George Chater.’

  ‘Is she pretty? (Ellen, ring up the Berkeley and ask for a sofa-table for Mr Walsh.) Dark or fair?

  ‘Who?’

  ‘This girl you’ve thrown me over for.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m talking about George Chater. He lives down at Woking, don’t ask me why, but there it is, that’s where he lives, and he’s coming up from Woking and giving this party. His uncle left him a very tidy tea-business in the City, and when he’s not there, he’s down at Woking, and he’s throwing this party at the Embassy for a niece of his who’s just got engaged—by a very odd coincidence, at least it strikes me as odd—to this feller I was telling you about whose governor makes potato-crisps. So it all looks as though I shall meet him to-night. Hanson his name is, I ought to have told you that before. You’ve heard of Hanson’s Potato-Crisps?’

  ‘After to-night, darling, I shall be able to say truthfully that I have. Did you keep your taxi?’

  A sudden light came into Percy’s eyes.

  ‘That’s a dam strange thing,’ he said. ‘I never thought of that before. How would it be if I rang up this feller Chater, and asked him if I might bring you along to the party? I don’t suppose he’d mind.’

  ‘I don’t suppose he would, darling, but his niece might.’

  ‘Why?’

  Chloe smiled and stood up, and looked down at herself, and sighed, and said, ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘It’s just that I don’t like to think of you beating up for home at the very moment when things are beginning to hot up, as you might say.’

  ‘Oh, Percy, don’t be so stupid,’ said Chloe impatiently. ‘I’m supping at the Savoy with Everard, and we’re going on to the Four Hundred. My cloak, Ellen.’

  5

  Sir Everard Hale had once declared his feelings for Chloe to be those of an incestuous uncle. ‘However,’ he added, ‘luckily I am not your uncle.’

  Chloe gave him an amused smile, and said that he might as well finish the sentence.

  ‘The end is not yet; I am still hoping,’ said Everard firmly. ‘What I am trying to explain now is that Conscience, who has an absurd reputation for being well-informed, never says to me behind her hand, ‘Remember you have a wife’, but ‘Remember she is your niece’. Why is that?’

  They were at the Savoy to-night; in the corner of the window which Chloe loved, for it put the whole Grill Room in front of her, and yet left her private. Everard was fifty-something. He looked like a well-preserved actor who was still looking fifty-something when he was really sixty-something. He was very proud of Chloe; and it was partly the realization of this which made him think of himself as her uncle, or some one responsible for her. He liked to believe that Chloe had come out, or, anyhow, bloomed under his auspices. He enjoyed introducing important people to her, and seeing them fall, as instantly as had he, to her compelling conjunction of beauty and wit. So proud, so complacent might a Sultan feel displaying his latest purchase, or a newly-married husband still sure of his young wife. It made him, as Barnaby had cried to be made, ‘different from the others’, when in fact he was as much her slave as all of them. But a slave who wore his fetters lightly, with an air of tolerant amusement.

  ‘Had a good day?’ he asked, putting up an unnecessary eye-glass through which to study the menu.

  ‘Lovely, thank you, Everard.’

  They ordered supper, while the champagne, ordered in advance, was uncorked and poured out. Everard raised his glass, and said with as much feeling as his nature allowed him to express, ‘Always.’

  ‘Always, darling,’ said Chloe, in her cool, velvet voice, touching her glass against his.

  ‘Well, what’s come over the tape to-day? Any new quotations?’

  Chloe laughed, and said that Hales Preferred had gone up a point.

  ‘Not they. I’m steady in the market at 78, and you know it. What of that new young fellow? Claude, isn’t it?’

  ‘Claude Lancing?’

  ‘May be. He comes to the mind as Claude. Being new he should be quoted at ninety. I shall have the intense satisfaction of watching him drop, point by point.’

  ‘Don’t be so absurd, Everard. He’s only twenty-three. I mean age. Well—every way.’

  ‘It’s a wonderful age to be,’ said Everard wistfully. ‘If I were twenty-three, I should ask you to wait five years until I had caught you up, and then marry me. Has he done that yet?’

  ‘He has asked me to marry him. Of course.’

  ‘And so as to be sure of losing neither him nor yourself you said, “Let’s go on as we are, and see how we feel.”’

  ‘I told him,’ mocked Chloe, ‘that he must ask my Uncle Everard.’

  ‘To which he replied: “I will live in thy heart, die in thy lap, and be buried in thy eyes; and, moreover, I will go with thee to thy uncle’s.”’

  ‘Claude, poor darling, would have to go by himself to his uncle’s, before he could even buy a licence.’

  ‘You ignore the supre
me aptness of my quotation, probably because you didn’t recognize it as one. How like a woman.’

  ‘Dearest, dearest Everard, I played Benedick at school, and barely recognized it because you said it so badly. Listen.’ She clasped both hands to her heart, leaning towards him. You felt that Benedick was down on his knees at Beatrice’s feet. ‘I will live in thy heart’—the lovely voice throbbed with emotion—‘die in thy lap’—the ecstasy of dying so!—‘and be buried in thy eyes’—ah! the peace of it! Whereupon Benedick rose, dusted his knees, and added in a bright, cheerful voice: ‘And, moreover, I will go with thee to thy uncle’s.’

  ‘Darling, darling, marry me,’ urged Everard, quite carried away. ‘You’re heaven. I can’t do without you.’

  ‘What about your wife? You’d have to do without her.’

  ‘We’ve gone into all that. She’d divorce me, and be glad to.’

  ‘As you say, darling,’ said Chloe gently, ‘we’ve gone into all that.’

  ‘Sorry. I’m a fool.’ He drank deeply, wiped his mouth, and said with a wink, ‘Stopped being a fool.’

  ‘You’re very sweet,’ said Chloe, smiling fondly at him. ‘I couldn’t do without you.’

  ‘Good. To return to your incredible schooldays: I suppose they made you play Benedick because even then you despised matrimony.’

  ‘I was a great big girl.’

  ‘Then you can’t have looked much like Benedick. All the same, I wish I’d known you then.’

  ‘You’re the second man who’s said that to-day. I must look up a photograph.’

  ‘Who’s the other?’ asked Everard jealously. ‘Not young Claude? He’d have been in his rompers.’

  ‘Tommy.’

  ‘St. Ives? Yes, I was afraid it was coming. Be gentle with him. He can’t help being a Duke.’

  ‘Don’t you trust me, darling?’

  ‘Shall I give you another quotation?’

  ‘Oh, do you know another one?’

  Everard laughed, and quoted:

  ‘If all the harm that’s been done by men

  Were doubled and doubled and doubled again,

  And melted and fused into vapour, and then

  Were squared and raised to the power of ten,

  It wouldn’t be nearly enough, not near,