Chloe Marr Page 3

  To keep a small girl for the tenth of a year.’

  ‘And don’t tell me,’ he added,’ that you recited that on Speech Day before all the Old Girls and Governesses, Like it?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Chloe thoughtfully. ‘I wonder if it’s true.’

  On their way back from the Four Hundred, Chloe said:

  ‘I am alone in my little service flat, and it is three o’clock in the morning, but if you’d like to come up for a drink, ducky, you can.’

  Everard, who knew that he would get nothing more than a drink, said that he wouldn’t keep her up, and he’d take the taxi on.

  ‘Then good-night, my darling, and thank you for a lovely, lovely time.’

  He put his arms round her as she lifted up her mouth, and held her there.

  ‘God bless you, my sweet,’ he said, as he let her go.

  She jumped lightly out, cried his address to the driver, and was gone.

  ‘And it didn’t mean a dam thing to her,’ thought Everard, as he wiped the lipstick away.

  Chapter Two

  1

  When Claudia Lancing writes her reminiscences, she will probably omit to say that her first inspiration to the stage came from her father, Henry Lancing, whose anecdotes of Civil Service life made it so essential that she should get away from home and do something. Any art is, in a sense, an escape from life, but hers was uniquely an escape from Henry’s life. Claude was coming to London, anyhow; he, obviously, had to ‘do something Claudia, fearing to be left alone with her father, looked round for her life-work, and decided that it was acting. She would come to London too, and attend the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. She and Claude would live together on their mother’s money; little enough, but enough. For the moment Claude saw only the advantages of this arrangement: a housekeeper and a model.

  ‘Right,’ said Claude.

  Henry went more fully into the matter.

  ‘I cannot contest your decision, Claudia,’ he said. ‘I remember Sir Laurence telling me once how when he was at the cross-roads——’

  ‘Yes, you told us, Father,’ said Claudia.

  This might have put off another father, but not Henry.

  ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘then you remember how his father said to him——’ And so on.

  Both Claude and Claudia remembered this well. Over Claudia’s bed was a highly-coloured and highly-imaginative picture by Claude, entitled ‘Sir Laurence at the Cross-Roads’. By Millais out of Tennyson, as he explained.

  They lived in a studio in the Fulham Road; and Claude had the bed behind the screen and Claudia had the cupboard. It was very uncomfortable, but it was a studio, and almost Chelsea. Of the two of them Claudia drew the greater satisfaction from this fact.

  ‘All right,’ said Claude, ‘you can let the expression go for a bit. I’ll tell you when I want it again. It’s only that the expression—I mean the idea—helps to get the body right.’

  How much of man’s achievement in the arts has been inspired by woman. It was only since meeting Chloe that Claude had felt the urge for expressing himself in the comic papers, and acknowledging cheques from them at the end of the month. A side-line, he told himself, to which he could devote his evenings; but a necessary side-line for anybody who wanted to take anybody to the Savoy.

  Claudia smiled rather stiffly and let the expression go. She also put the tennis-racket down.

  ‘Mind my talking?’ she asked.

  ‘Not if you don’t mind my not listening,’ said Claude, busy on his drawing.

  ‘You know, this is really rather good practice for me. I mean getting the expression. Let’s see how quickly I can do it. Amused Contempt—no, that’s not very good. Amused Contempt—that’s better. Now then quickly: Amused Contempt—Surprise—Innocence——’ She contorted her pretty, well-meaning, little face into the positions which are now accepted as expressing these emotions.

  ‘I should have thought,’ said Claude, not looking at her, ‘that it was very bad practice for you.’

  ‘Why?’ said Claudia, still experimenting with Innocence, which she seemed to find elusive; perhaps because the usual adjective for it is ‘wide-eyed’, and her deep-set, eager little black eyes couldn’t do the work. ‘Innocence’ she murmured to herself again, and decided to defend it instead, crossing her hands over her breast.

  ‘The proper way to express an emotion is to feel the emotion first.’

  ‘You can’t always on the stage,’ said Claudia, who now knew all about it. ‘Well, suppose I’m listening to the heroine telling about the hand that came out in the night and clutched at her. Well, naturally I express horror, don’t I?’

  ‘I should,’ said Claude.

  ‘Well, but the author might have written it badly, or the actress might be playing it badly, and it mightn’t sound at all horrible. But I could help the audience by showing in my face how horrible it was. What we call playing up to each other. I mean it all helps to create the feeling of horror.’ She added ‘Horror’, and showed him what she meant.

  Claude took one glance at it, and said that it wouldn’t help him at all.

  ‘Well, of course the lighting’s all wrong. I mean, all that comes in, too. The ensemble.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘What I said,’ snapped Claudia, a little annoyed. ‘Considering I rehearse dud scenes from the French classics two days a week, on the off chance that the author knows a couple of French words and wants to get them into his next play——’

  ‘Talking of the classics, did I ever tell you what Sir Laurence said to me once about Catullus?’ began Claude. This was a sure way of restoring good humour. Claudia laughed and said ‘Never, darling, I’ve often wanted to know. Was it at the cross-roads?’ Claude grunted, feeling that Claudia always just carried a thing too far. How different from Chloe. Chloe would never have said, ‘Was it at the cross-roads?’

  ‘I think the racket now, if you don’t mind. In front of the body in two hands. No, not that. You’ve just stepped into a musical comedy saying your only line “Well, girls, who’s for a game?” and the only girl who doesn’t go flat after two notes says “Oh, to be playing again that game of love with Harry at Trouville”: Song “The Game of Love”: and there you are, standing around while she sings, with your racket in two hands, and—that’s what I mean. Good.’

  Claudia was silent for a little, and then said, ‘Well, I mean, take laughing. That’s one of the things we have to do.’

  Claude, who wasn’t interested, asked why.

  ‘In case one of the characters says something funny. Use your brains, darling.’

  ‘Sorry, I’m trying to draw, you know.’ Relaxing for a moment, he said, ‘Are you any good at it?’

  ‘Well, not bad. Say something, and I’ll show you.’

  ‘When is a door not a door?’

  Claudia, who was really rather good at it and had been told so that morning, gave him a ripple of delighted laughter.

  ‘That one went pretty well,’ said Claude, looking thoughtfully at his drawing. ‘I must think seriously about becoming a dramatist.’

  ‘Now I’ll show you Dora. Just give it me again, will you?’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Say the joke again.’

  This time Claudia gave a prolonged nervous giggle, and explained that that was Dora.

  ‘Who’s Dora?’

  ‘One of the girls at the Academy.’

  ‘Was that like her?’

  ‘It was. Really.’

  Claude held his drawing out at arm’s length, and said, ‘Hopeful girl, Dora.’

  ‘Her father makes bicycles or something. I mean she’s all right. I mean for money.’

  ‘I wish Henry made bicycles. Henry would make superb bicycles. They would go on and on and on and round and round and round and never never stop.’

  ‘Oh, do yo
u?’ said Claudia. ‘I think it’s rather fun like this. We’ve got just enough to live on, but not enough to spoil our art.’

  ‘It would take a devil of a lot to spoil my art,’ said Claude, wondering with whom Chloe was dining this Sunday night.

  ‘Is it as bad as that, darling?’ said Claudia brightly.

  ‘Don’t you believe all that rubbish about independent means spoiling an artist. If I had independent means, I shouldn’t be doing this stuff.’

  ‘What’s wrong with it, anyhow? It doesn’t do you any harm, does it, learning how to draw? It doesn’t do an actress any harm going into musical comedy. She can always learn something from it. Stage-sense or timing, or something. It only hurts you if you let it hurt you.’

  ‘Well done, Brighteyes. My God, the girl’s intelligent. Takes after her brother. All right, and now you can give us the famous expression again. Sort of contemptuous amusement—here, where is the damned thing?’ His left hand fluttered round the table and lighted on a piece of paper. ‘“She—that’s you—to latest profiteer: Don’t you love Borotra? He: Yes, I always stay with the Governor.”’

  Claudia, forgetting that she was an actress, gave the nervous laugh of one who had expected the climax later.

  ‘Thank you very much,’ said Claude. He added a line to the joke, and read, ‘“He, under the impression that Borotra is a tropical island: Yes, I always stay with the Governor,” Now we shall all see it.’

  There was no mistake about Claudia’s laugh this time. It was the genuine thing.

  ‘That’s rather good, Claude. Did you make that up yourself?’

  ‘Like Hell I did. God, I sweated blood over that.’

  ‘It’s rather good.’ She was thoughtful for a little, and then said, ‘Of course, you could ask a man if he loved Borotra without having a tennis racket in your hand.’

  ‘Not,’ said Claude firmly, ‘in a comic paper.’

  It had never been a good joke, but somehow it seemed better now that Claudia hadn’t seen it; worthy, almost, of Chloe’s intelligence. That was what was so wonderful about Chloe. She never let you down. There was no flaw in her body, no flaw in her mind. Think of all those girls one met in May Week. All looking very pretty and well-dressed; all gay and charming; and then you sit close up to one and talk to her, and it’s all no good. Something’s wrong. She was all right from the front, and now she reminds you horribly of somebody else; or there’s a bit of superfluous hair about; or there’s a spot coming on the corner of her mouth; or she’s perspiring; or her hands are ugly; or you try one of the three best jokes in the world on her, and she laughs mechanically. Something. But you were safe with Chloe. No matter how close you were to her, she would never let you down.

  ‘I’ve just thought of something,’ said Claudia. ‘Shall I tell you?’

  ‘I don’t see why not.’

  ‘Well, when I say “Don’t you love Borotra?” I’m all interested, and thinking of him, and loving him myself; and it’s only when I hear the answer that I’m contemptuous. Well, if the action of the drawing takes some moments, which moment is it that you’re catching? Is it always the last?’

  ‘Don’t ask me. I hate this sort of joke, anyway. As a matter of fact she isn’t looking contemptuous any more. Just eager and excited.’

  ‘Like this?’ said Claudia eagerly—and excitedly.

  Claude looked at her, and looked beyond her at Chloe, and thought how different, and said ‘More or less’.

  Five minutes later Claudia was standing at his shoulder and saying indignantly that it wasn’t a bit like her.

  ‘It wasn’t meant to be,’ said Claude.

  ‘All the same, she reminds me of somebody.’

  ‘Vaguely like a woman?’ suggested Claude.

  ‘I know! That girl you’re always seeing in the Sketch and the Tatler, the one who’s supposed to be living with Sir Everard Hale. You know! Chloe Marr!’

  In a cold voice, which she hardly recognized, Claude asked her who supposed it; and she knew at once that he knew Chloe Marr and was in love with her. And she knew that, if she were not careful, she would lose him.

  ‘You know what people are,’ she said quickly. ‘They say anything of anybody. I suppose they once had lunch together or something. Besides, if you’re as beautiful as that, people always take it for granted that you’re living with somebody.’

  ‘And who do they say you’re living with?’ asked Claude, his voice friendly again.

  Claudia kissed his ear and said, ‘My clever little brother. But then I’m not beautiful. Like her.’

  The telephone rang, and she said ‘I’ll go, darling’; but Claude in his unhurried way was there before she had finished saying it.

  2

  The General’s wife was staying on with the Claverings for a few days, but the General had to be at work on the Monday; so Chloe had offered to drive him up on the Sunday evening after dinner. The week-end had been like all other week-ends at Croxton. She encouraged her host, who made what would have been outrageous love to her if it hadn’t so obviously been humorous; she played with the twins; she was kind to an average selection of young men, and friendly to the young women. None of them took up very much of her time. The greater part of this week-end, as of all others at Croxton, was spent with Kitty Clavering, once known on the stage as Kitty Kelso. They sat in the garden, or in Kitty’s bedroom, and reviewed the world, told each other stories, and made each other laugh. Kitty, after forty adventurous years, still looked exactly as she must have looked at twelve, with all that wide-eyed innocence which Claudia found it so hard to reproduce.

  ‘I didn’t know you went in for Generals,’ said Chloe, when she was having the guests explained to her. They were sitting in the walled-in garden, eating strawberries.

  ‘Oh, my sweet, this isn’t Generals. This is the General, the one I ran away with. Cecil. Didn’t I ever tell you about him?’

  ‘No, darling. Make it up as you go along.’

  Kitty, not really needing the invitation, slapped Chloe’s hand and said, ‘It was when I ran away from my first husband, Ernest. I pinned a note on the bed-spread. No sooner had I left the house, and gone to have my hair set before joining Cecil at Victoria Station than Ernest comes creeping into my bedroom and pins a note on my pin-cushion. That, darling, is what I call irony. The two notes, so near to each other, yet so far. Each with an irrevocable message to communicate, yet irrevocably prohibited from communicating it. Do you mind all these long words?’

  ‘I’m keeping up splendidly,’ said Chloe. ‘He was running away too?’

  ‘Yes. I suppose so. I never heard who she was. He just said, vulgarly and rather crudely, “Good-bye, Kitty, I cannot bear it any longer.”’

  ‘And what did yours say?’

  ‘Mine said with infinite pathos, “Good-bye, Ernest, I cannot bear it any longer.”’

  ‘Much more dignified, darling.’

  ‘That’s what I thought. Fortunately Elise kept her head. As soon as she found the notes, she rang up my hairdresser, and I returned at once and consulted my solicitor. On his instructions I wrote another little note, saying, “Come back, Ernest, I cannot bear it any longer.”’

  ‘What about Cecil? Or is he still at Victoria?’

  ‘Don’t be silly, darling. He’s just round the corner. Perhaps I had better lower my voice a little.’ She pitched it a note or two higher, and went on: ‘All would have been well if Ernest, who was a very literal-minded man, hadn’t immediately come back to me; and we didn’t part until six months later, by which time Cecil had got tired of waiting, married somebody else, and was sent to some station abroad.’

  ‘He seems fond of stations. Is this the wife?’

  ‘Yes. Don’t laugh, darling, but her name is Victoria. It’s impossible to say that there is no Design in Life.’

  From the moment it was suggested to him, the Gene
ral had looked forward to that evening drive with Miss Marr, and he was naturally a little disappointed when he discovered that Ellen was included in the party. He had hoped to hold Chloe’s hand most of the way, but now he didn’t; either because he felt he didn’t know her well enough, or because he felt he didn’t know Ellen well enough. In fact, neither of them would have thought anything of it. And since an invitation to supper, if it were to be worth while, would have to exclude Ellen, and he was beginning to think that this was impossible, he did not suggest supper, nor ask her in for a drink on arriving at Eaton Place, but merely kissed her hand, as any General might, and decided to order a few roses next morning on his way to the War House. So Chloe came to her own little flat in South Audley Street, to find herself alone in London on a Sunday night at the ridiculous hour of ten. She promptly rang up Barnaby. Hearing that Barnaby was in the country, and wouldn’t be back till Monday evening, she rang up Claude.

  3

  Claude had wondered whether to kiss her. He thought that he would like his sister to see him kissing Miss Chloe Marr, and he thought that he would like it to be a secret between him and Chloe, and he thought that Chloe mightn’t like Claudia to know that he kissed her, and he thought that Chloe might be annoyed if a secret were made of anything so simple as a kiss. All this would have made it difficult for him, if Chloe had not made it so easy. The arm which she held out was uncompromisingly straight, and the smile said anything which he liked to believe. He shook hands and introduced her to Claudia.

  ‘I hope you didn’t mind me wishing myself on you,’ Chloe said to her, with the warm friendliness which radiated from her so naturally at a first meeting. ‘I’m a very good listener, and having heard everything about you, except the one thing that matters, I felt I must come and see you. And, to be quite frank, I was all alone, and very bored.’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Claudia eagerly. ‘It’s lovely to see you.’

  Claude gave his sister an approving smile for this, and asked Chloe what was the one thing that mattered.

  ‘Well, naturally, what a woman looks like. I guessed you were pretty, but not nearly as pretty as this. Of course I only had Claude to go by,’ she added, with a mocking smile for him.