Chloe Marr Page 4

  Claudia coloured charmingly, as she could never have done if told to at the Academy, and said that brothers didn’t notice their sisters’ faces. Claude said she didn’t mean notice, she meant saying complimentary things about it every day, which got boring after about twenty years. Then, the instinctive host, he said, ‘We’ve got nothing to eat or drink. I did warn you, didn’t I?’

  ‘Yes, we have,’ said Claudia quickly, ‘we’ve got the cherries.’

  The look on Claude’s face, which cried contemptuously ‘Cherries for a woman who should be bathed in champagne and caviare!’ had barely time to form. Chloe said eagerly:

  ‘In a paper bag?’

  ‘Yes. Look!’ Claudia pushed them triumphantly along the table.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Chloe, taking her gloves off, ‘I’m going to eat them all. I’ll leave my bracelet in exchange, I’ll give you a reference to my banker, I’ll sign the pledge never to smoke, drink, or swear again, but I’m going to eat them all. Where do we flick the stones? The “we”,’ she added, ‘is purely conventional.’

  Claude opened a window close to the table.

  ‘Is that the sort of little alley I came up?’

  ‘Yes. It’s quite safe.’

  Chloe put a cherry in her mouth, munched, removed the stone, flicked it neatly out of the window, and said, ‘No, I can’t do it alone. It’s no fun. Have a cherry?’ She held out the bag to Claudia. ‘This isn’t unselfishness, it’s just that I like competition.’

  They munched and flicked. Claudia thought: She’s lovely. What a silly, little schoolgirl I seem. She’s so complete. She’s got everything. I shall be like that one day. When I’m playing leading parts. In a year or two. Well, in two or three years. Of course I’m small, but men like small girls. It makes them feel more protective. I wonder if it’s true about Sir Everard—and all the others. Well, why shouldn’t she?

  ‘Did either of you ever discover,’ said Chloe, still eating, ‘why Life was just a bowl of cherries? I used to lie awake and wonder. It kept me awake for years. Then I decided that it wasn’t, and went to sleep again.’

  ‘What did it rhyme with?’ asked Claude.

  ‘That’s the profoundest thing that has ever been said on the subject. Or, indeed, on any subject.’ She felt in the bag, and announced that alas! Life had come to its predestined end. ‘So let’s turn to Art.’

  It was Claudia who insisted on showing Chloe the drawing, the artist saying, but not very convincingly, ‘Oh no, dammit.’ Chloe looked down at it for a long time, and her eyes came slowly, sidelong, up to Claude’s, and sent a message to them; and he read in it a loving acknowledgment of her presence in his picture, and a pledge that it would always be so between them.

  ‘It’s a little like you, don’t you think?’ said Claudia.

  This time it was a smile which flashed to Claude, as Chloe said: ‘Is it? Then what am I supposed to be saying?’

  ‘It’s just a stupid joke,’ said Claude.

  ‘It isn’t, Claude, it’s very good. If you don’t tell her, I will.’

  ‘Hurry up, one of you, I can’t wait.’

  ‘Oh, all right. She says, “Don’t you love Borotra?” and he says, “Yes, I always stay with the Governor.”’ It seemed more unfunny to him now than ever before.

  Perhaps it wouldn’t have seemed very funny to Chloe, but Claudia said quickly, ‘It does sound so exactly like a tropical island, doesn’t it?’ and her desire to help was so obvious that Chloe added to a quick look of understanding which would have thrilled a lover a delighted laugh which would have reassured the most self-depreciative author.

  ‘Oh, but this is wonderful!’ she said. ‘You must have a series. Next week she says, “Don’t you adore Perry?” and he says, “I always drink cider.” The week after——’

  ‘Please don’t think that I like this sort of joke.’

  ‘Don’t stop me. The week after, she says, “What do you think of Austin?” and he says, “I prefer a Morris,” and she says, “What about Lacoste?” and he says, “It’s just as cheap”—in fact, be of good comfort, Master Ridley, we have this day lit such a candle by God’s grace as I trust shall never be put out.’

  ‘If you’re not careful, darling, you’ll be put out.’

  With one half of his mind he was hoping that Claudia had noticed the ‘darling’, with the other half he was hoping that she hadn’t. But Claudia was already thinking ‘What fun if they got married. I should be a bridesmaid, of course. I don’t believe any of those stories. Wasn’t she a great friend of Wilson Kelly’s? Well, I mean, if she’s my sister-in-law, and knows Wilson Kelly, I mean she could hardly help mentioning me to him, and if I went to see him——’ She wondered what time of the year this would be, and what she would be wearing, so that Wilson Kelly would say, after she had laughed once or twice, ‘You’re just the young actress I’ve been looking for, Miss Lancing——’ Of course, it would be Claudia after they had been rehearsing for a day or two, he wasn’t so old really, just right, and of course there was nothing in those stories about him and Chloe, well, there couldn’t be or she wouldn’t be marrying Claude.

  The young married couple were walking round the studio, looking at Claude’s drawings pinned on the walls for decoration. They came to Sir Laurence at the Cross-Roads; and Chloe, hearing the explanation of it, said absently, ‘Do you know anything about potato-crisps?’

  ‘I know that you eat them.’

  ‘I meant socially. Their private lives. I heard a great deal of their inner history the other day from a friend. What one might call the Whole Story. Luckily I haven’t remembered any of it.’

  ‘And your friend’s name wasn’t Henry Lancing?’

  ‘No,’ she said with an appreciative smile for his quickness. ‘But it made me think of the cross-roads in a potato’s life.’

  She said her good-byes, calling them Claude and Claudia, and wished good luck to the drawing. ‘Oh, and, Claudia, if, when you know it all, you want an introduction to any particular person, and I happen to have met him——’

  ‘Oh, you are sweet,’ cried Claudia; and then, wonderingly, ‘Didn’t you ever want to go on the stage?’

  Chloe cleared her throat in an introductory manner, and said: ‘All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women in it players. They have their exits and their entrances. Which is one of the reasons why I am now leaving you. Good-bye, darlings.’

  ‘I’ll see you into a taxi, shall I?’

  ‘Oh, do, Claude, that will be lovely.’

  It was also lovely to kiss her again.

  4

  There was the usual hurry in the morning when Miss Rattigan arrived, Claudia having overslept herself, as she so often did. Miss Rattigan ‘did’ for them, artists being her speciality. She was a bulky but not beautiful young woman; indeed, not so young now; and for more years than she liked to remember she had been afraid that one of her artists would suddenly insist on her posing for him in the nude. Even John Heron, who so far had only painted bowls of flowers on a polished mahogany table, was not above suspicion of working up to Miss Rattigan. Fortunately her mother had told her what to say. ‘Quite quietly, Maude, looking him squarely in the face: “If it’s just me you want, as I might be having tea with a friend, that’s one thing; but I don’t take my clothes off for the King himself in all his glory.” He’ll see at once the sort of girl you are.’ Miss Rattigan was still waiting for an opportunity to show him the sort of girl she was.

  She tapped on Claude’s screen and said: ‘Miss Lancing’s out of the bath, Mr Lancing, and the water’s on the boil.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Claude. He swung himself out of bed, and began to feel for his slippers. ‘What’s the weather like?’

  ‘Nice, bright morning, this morning. I see by the paper there’s been another horrible murder down Maidstone way.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t do it
.’

  ‘I see by the paper they found a clergyman’s collar in the vicinity.’

  ‘Was there a clergyman inside it?’

  ‘Just the collar, Mr Lancing. In the vicinity. I always say, if a girl can’t trust herself with a Reverend, who can she trust herself with?’

  ‘You’re right, Miss Rattigan, it’s a hard life for us women.’ He came from behind the screen in his dressing-gown.

  ‘You’re right there, Mr Lancing. Look at me. I oughtn’t to be doing this reelly.’

  ‘Now I think you’re right again.’

  ‘Well, I don’t do it reelly. I mean it’s more to oblige, as I told you at the time.’ She raised her voice and said, ‘I’m going now, Miss Lancing.’

  ‘Right,’ called Claudia.

  ‘I’m going now, Mr Lancing, if there’s nothing else you want.’

  ‘Right,’ said Claude.

  She went. Claude shaved. ‘Make the tea, darling, I’m frantically late,’ shouted Claudia. He made it, and retired to the other cupboard, which was the bathroom. . . .

  Claudia rushed in, book in hand. She poured herself a cup of tea, propped the book against the teapot, and muttered to herself. Then she closed her eyes and said aloud:

  ‘Cesario, by the roses of the spring

  By maidhood, honour, truth and everything——

  ‘Thank God, I needn’t draw at breakfast,’ said Claude, coming into the room. He scratched the back of Claudia’s neck, said ‘Good morning, Brighteyes,’ and sat down. She took no notice, but went on:

  ‘I love thee so that, maugre all thy pride,

  Nor wit, nor reason, can my passion hide.

  Do not extort my reasons for this clause——

  For that I woo, thou therefore hast no cause.’

  ‘A great man Shakespeare, I always say,’ said Claude. ‘Would he mind if I had the teapot for a moment?’

  Claudia waved him into silence, and went on:

  ‘But rather reason thus with reason fetter,

  Love sought is good, but given unsought is better.’

  ‘It was,’ said Claude, ‘Burbage’s insistent demand for exit lines which drove Shakespeare back to Stratford at the comparatively early age of forty-five.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Claudia, shutting the book, ‘I know it.’ She poured out her brother’s tea. ‘There’s a tomato if you want it.’

  ‘Thanks. I gather that you are playing the part of Olivia. How Olivia do you feel in the early morning? I feel very.’

  ‘Thank heaven I can learn words. Some of the girls are hopeless. Of course, the men are worse. Dora’s terrible. Of course, it doesn’t matter in a modern play, you can always say something, but if you dry up in Shakespeare, you’re done.’

  ‘Not at all. Why? Historical play. Henry the Ninth, Part Six. There has been a slight hitch in the proceedings, and you and Dora are left alone and wordless on the stage. Is a Lancing to be left wordless? Never. You carry on.’ He sucked at his tomato. ‘Er—yes. Like this:

  ‘Go tell our cousin, Earl of Westmorland,

  Hengist and Horsa, Dukes of Buckingham,

  And Longbow, Strongbow, Wrongbow and the rest

  That these their charges lie upon our hearts

  Most dearly, making that which came before

  As naught compared with that which comes hereafter

  —at which point Richard the Third finds his horse and gallops on. Easy.’

  ‘That’s rather good. I mean it’s rather like.’

  ‘I told you last night I ought to have been a dramatist.’

  ‘Wasn’t last night fun? She is a dear, isn’t she? I think she’s sweet. I think it was sweet of her to say she would introduce me to anybody who——’ Her eye lighted on her wrist-watch, and she jumped up saying, ‘Damn, I shall be late again.’ She vanished into the bathroom.

  There was an anatomy class for Claude this morning. Just before he left for it he rang up Chloe. After a little delay Ellen informed him that Miss Marr was in her bath, and asked if he would leave a message. Failing to improvise anything more transmissible than Hallo darling, he said that Oh, well, it didn’t matter, and came gloomily into the Fulham Road.

  At three o’clock a large basket of cherries was delivered at the studio by Messrs Fortnum and Mason. It was addressed to ‘Mr and Miss Lancing’, and the card within said, ‘Just a slice of life with love from Chloe.’ Claudia thought it was perfectly sweet of her. Luckily she was going to dinner with Dora, and then to a play, so that Claude had the studio and the evening to himself. He wrote to thank Chloe: a long letter covered with little drawings, including one of a potato at the cross-roads. She could hardly fail to ring him up and say how amused she was.

  Chapter Three

  I

  The ‘Prossers’ to which Barnaby had driven after leaving Chloe was established in 1870, as it announced in gold lettering on its windows. This seemed to Barnaby to proclaim Prossers not so much an old-established firm as an old-fashioned one. If one could not go back further than 1870, one should be silent about one’s age.

  It was Dr Alvin Strange Prosser who was responsible for the windows. In 1868 he had a care of souls in a Midland town; together with a doctorate of divinity of uncertain origin, and a passion for writing. He began his literary career by interpreting the Bible ‘for students and others’ in a series of broad-minded volumes. His first book (not unnaturally) was Genesis Interpreted by Dr Alvin Strange Prosser. This was followed six months later by Exodus Interpreted by Dr Alvin Strange Prosser, author of Genesis Interpreted. Realizing by the time he got to Deuteronomy that it was the middleman who took the money, he bought back the rights in his earlier books, turned his collar round, and started publishing for himself. It was now the aim of Prossers not only to interpret the Bible, but to bring it right into the homes of the people. A new series was begun, the first of many ‘under the personal editorship of Dr Alvin Strange Prosser’. Two of its earliest and most successful volumes were If David Lived in Dulwich and Joseph in Jermyn Street; but there was an immediate sale even for the last one (published while the Editor was Holidaying in Antioch, and subsequently withdrawn) called Ham at Hampstead. By 1890 Alvin Strange Prosser was sufficiently established in the homes of the people to be identifiable as Prosser. Prosser on the Parables followed Prosser on the Miracles, and preceded Prosser on the Plagues. All this was leading up to the great work to which the author subsequently supposed he had been dedicated in infancy: Prosser’s Midnight Talks with the Dead. The talks were quite informal. ‘Tell me, Ezekiel,’ Dr Prosser would say, and Ezekiel would keep in character as much as possible by replying ‘Hearken, O Prosser Unfortunately, in the middle of a conversation with Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, in which, though outnumbered, he was more than holding his own, Dr Prosser was attacked by vertigo; and though he recovered sufficiently to announce that he was the original Scarlet Woman, and to make a will leaving everything to a Mr Gladstone who had died some years earlier, he was never quite himself again. His death six months later came as a relief to his nephew, and brought certain changes in the policy of the firm.

  The changes, however, were made gradually and sensibly. The nephew was no hypocrite and no fool. The personal editorship of Dr Alvin Strange Prosser was now lost to the firm: moreover, the great man’s only posthumous work, some disordered notes for a Midnight Talk with Rahab, was hardly suitable for publication. Yet the name of Prosser still meant something to the public and its goodwill was not lightly to be thrown away. Money was to be made in the publishing business, not only by sensational fiction; but equally it was not only to be made by free-and-easy religion. The future watchword of Prossers should be Education: education in all branches of knowledge.

  So now, with Barnaby’s help, Prossers, from the top of Chancery Lane, brought knowledge to the fireside.

  Stainer, the managing director, came
into Barnaby’s room, and said, ‘Do you ever go to Wimbledon, Rush?’

  ‘When I can get tickets. It’s not worth standing in a queue.’

  ‘Dolly has a couple for next week. She wondered if you’d take her. You said you were staying in London, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes. I should love to. What day?’

  He had had dinner with the Stainers from time to time. Dolly was small and fair and fluffy and well-rounded, and looked twenty years younger than her husband. In Do’s and Don’t’s for Wives (Prosser, 2s. 6d.) it is written: ‘Never let your husband take you for granted. Show him that his men friends are attractive to you, and he will realize that he must make himself attractive too.’ It was not for Dolly to question a Prosser book. She made it clear to her husband that Barnaby was attractive to her; and Stainer, guessing that Barnaby was in love with somebody else, made it clear to her that he wasn’t in the least jealous. This was disappointing for Dolly, but it gave their friendship a sort of humorous licence which both of them enjoyed.

  ‘Thursday,’ said Stainer. ‘That all right?’

  ‘Oh! What a pity.’

  ‘Engaged?’

  ‘Yes. Damn. The one day.’

  ‘Couldn’t alter it, I suppose?’

  Could he? Should he? Barnaby thought quickly. It was the sort of thing Chloe did to him, and he had never done to her. An arrangement made with her was sacred to him. They had definitely arranged to spend Thursday together, it was already in his engagement-book. To alter it now would mean ringing up, and getting no answer, and ringing up again and getting that damned engaged signal, and then getting through and she not being sure, and she wanting to know who he was going with, and what Dolly was like, and Dolly kept waiting, and unable to find somebody else . . . no, all too difficult. And what did it matter so long as he had Thursday with Chloe?

  ‘No. No, I’m afraid not. Too complicated. Damn, I should have loved it. Tell her so, will you, and how sorry I am.’