The Dersinghams occupied a lower maisonette in that region, eminently
respectable but a trifle dreary, between Gloucester Road and Earl’s
Court Road: 34A, Barkfield Gardens, S.W. 5. Nearly all the people who
live in that part of London have the privilege, as the estate agents
point out in all their advertisements, of “overlooking gardens,” which
means that their windows stare down at iron railings, sooty privet
and laurel hedges, and lawns and flower-beds that look as if they
are only too willing to give up the unequal struggle. Some of these
gardens are better than others, but Barkfield Gardens is not one of
them. It is one of the smallest and dreariest of the squares, and is
rapidly losing caste, its houses slipping through the maisonette and
large flat era too quickly and already coming within sight of the
small flats, the nursing homes, the boarding houses, the girls’ clubs.
The Dersinghams did not like Barkfield Gardens. They did not like
their maisonette, all the rooms of which seemed higher than they were
long or broad and were singularly cheerless. Mr. Dersingham never did
anything about it, because he was waiting--as he always said--until
he knew where he stood financially. (From which you might gather that
he knew where he stood philosophically or socially or politically or
artistically.) Now and again, however, Mrs. Dersingham would read all
the advertisement columns devoted to desirable residences, rush round
to some agents, and even inspect a few houses, but as she had never
really decided what it was she wanted, and her husband never succeeded
in knowing where he stood financially, they remained at 34A, in the
rooms that made them seem like insects at the bottom of a test-tube,
grumbling, while a stream of cooks and housemaids, endlessly diverted
from four local registries, flowed through the dark basement, leaving
as sediment innumerable memories of glum looks, impertinent answers,
lying references, missing silk stockings, broken crockery and ruined
meals. For some women this state of affairs, making comfort and
tranquillity impossible, would have had its compensations, for it would
have provided unlimited material for talk, but Mrs. Dersingham prided
herself on not being the sort of woman who spends her time discussing
the shortcomings of her servants. Most of her friends prided themselves
on this fact too, and they told one another what they could have said
had they been that sort of women, and then gave examples. “I know, but
listen to this, my dear,” they all cried at once.
At seven-forty-five on the evening of the dinner party to which Mr.
Golspie had been invited, Mr. Dersingham was busy being his own butler,
attending to the wines. He poured some claret into one decanter, some
Sauterne into another, and some port into a third, then poured a little
gin and a great deal of French and Italian vermouth into a cocktail
shaker, and carried the shaker and some glasses into the drawing-room.
Having done this, he remembered the cigarettes and filled the silver
cigarette box, a wedding present bearing the Worrell colours in enamel,
with _Sahibs_ and some Turkish that his wife always said she preferred
to any other, no matter what they happened to be. Then he presented
himself with a cocktail, looked at the fire, which was blazing
cheerfully, looked at the chairs, which were long, low, fat, and
brown, glanced round the room, which seemed to him a very handsome and
friendly place now that the two shaded lights took away the attention
from the great bleak expanse of wall above, sipped the cocktail, tried
to hum a tune, and began to feel a certain warm glow, a feeling proper
to a host.
Mrs. Dersingham, who was in the bedroom, trying to powder the space
between her shoulder blades, was less fortunate. She felt anxious.
Cook had been rather cross all day and might spoil everything, and
even when she tried, she was apt to make the soup greasy and forget
the salt in the vegetables. And Agnes, the new maid, had pretended to
understand all about serving, but she was so stupid that she might
easily go sticking vegetable dishes under people’s noses anyhow, and
there was bound to be some awful confusion when it came to clearing the
table for dessert. You could laugh it off, of course, but you got so
tired of laughing it off. It was a pity this sort of thing couldn’t be
done properly or laughed off altogether. How terribly tiresome it was!
And then, too, all the time you were so worried and anxious about the
food and the serving, you were expected to be keeping the conversation
going, terribly bright and hostessy.
“I wish,” said a silly girl at the back of Mrs. Dersingham’s mind, a
girl who had always been there but who did not say much except when
she was rather tired or cross--“I wish I was a terribly successful
actress who lived in a marvellous little flat and had a terribly
devoted maid and a dresser and a huge car and nothing much to eat
before the performance and then went on and was absolutely marvellous
and everybody applauded and then I put on a wonderful Russia sable coat
and diamonds and went out to supper and everybody stared. No, I don’t.
I wish I was a terribly successful woman writer with a villa somewhere
on the Riviera with orange trees and mimosa and things and lunch in
the sunshine and marvellous distinguished people coming to call. No, I
don’t. I wish I was terribly rich with a housekeeper and about fifteen
servants and a marvellous maid of my own and umpteen Paris model gowns
every season and a house in Town and a place in the country and a very
attractive dark young man, very aristocratic and a racing motorist or
yachtsman or something like that, terribly in love with me but just
devoted and respectful all the time and coming and looking so miserable
and me saying ‘I’m sorry, my dear, but you can see how it is. I can
never love anybody but Howard, but we can still be friends, can’t we?’”
This silly girl still went rambling idiotically on while there returned
into the rest of Mrs. Dersingham’s mind various queries and worries
about the sauce for the fish and the crême caramel not setting properly
and Agnes spilling things. And all the time she was powdering her back
or neck, trying on the crystal beads and then the amber, rubbing her
cheeks with a tiny reddened pad, and staring at her reflection in the
Jacobean mirror that she had bought at Brighton and that turned out
to be a poor mirror and not Jacobean at all. The one consolation was
that you always knew that you actually looked better than you did in
that stupid mirror. Remembering this for the thousandth time, Mrs.
Dersingham switched off the light, stood outside the night nursery a
moment to discover if the children were quiet, then joined her husband
in the drawing-room.
“Oh, thank goodness, nobody’s here yet,” she said, pulling a cushion
or two about, then warming her hands. “It’s such a ghastly rush. It’s
wonderful to have a few minutes’ peace and quietness.” She was already
talking as if company were present.
“Rather,” said Mr. Dersingham, loyally.
She stood in front of him now. “I suppose I look a thorough mess,” she
continued with a relapse into her natural manner.
“Not a bit. Jolly fine,” Mr. Dersingham mumbled, feeling awkward as
usual. He always had a suspicion that he ought to have said something
first: “My word, you’re looking jolly fine to-night,” something of that
sort. But somehow he never did.
“Don’t be _too_ complimentary, will you, darling? Well, I must say I
_feel_ a thorough mess to-night. What I’d _really_ like is early bed
and a book. This rush and seeing people all the time is so terrible.”
Once more, she was beginning to put on her company manner.
Mrs. Dersingham did not look a thorough mess, but neither did she
look as attractive as she hoped she did. She looked like hundreds of
other English wives in their earlier thirties, that is, fair, tired,
bright, and sagging. She had pleasant blue eyes, a turned-up nose, and
a slightly discontented mouth. Her life, apart from the secret saga of
the kitchen and nursery, where creatures with the most astoundingly
good references were for ever turning out to be lazy, impudent, and
thieving, was really rather dull, for she had no strong interests and
very few friends in London. But this she would not admit, not even to
her husband, except on rare occasions when she lost her temper, broke
down, and the truth came blazing through. She pretended that her life
was one exciting and multi-coloured whirl of people and social events.
She did not actually tell lies, but she created an atmosphere in which
every little occurrence was instantly distorted and magnified, like
objects dropped into a glass tank full of water. A tea on Monday and
a dinner party on Friday were transformed into a week’s feasting, a
rushing here, there, and everywhere, not enjoyed but endured. If she
met a person two or three times, then she had met whole crowds of him
or her, day and night. Two matinées (with an old school friend or her
mother up from Worcester) coming within one week reduced her to the
condition of a dramatic critic at the end of a heavy autumn season.
Even when she admitted that she had not attended a certain function,
met a person, seen a play, read a book, she contrived to give these
confessions a positive instead of a negative flavour, and so strong a
positive flavour that somehow she seemed to be in close contact with
the function, person, play, or book. She did this partly by throwing
the emphasis on the auxiliary verb: “No, I _haven’t_ seen her,” or:
“No, I _haven’t_ seen it,” which suggested to the listener that Mrs.
Dersingham had attended a series of important committee meetings, had
thrashed it out, and had decided with the rest that there should be
nothing done about these people, these plays, these books, just yet.
Thus, by this and other methods, she created an atmosphere in which a
few outings and encounters were transformed into a rich and strenuous
social life, which, so strong are our dreams, frequently left her
genuinely fatigued. All this puzzled that simple man, her husband,
but he never said anything now. The last time he had asked, after
the company had gone, why she had complained so much about having to
rush about, when he, for his part, could not see she had done much
rushing about, she had turned on him quite fiercely and said that if it
depended on him she would be sitting moping in the flat, never seeing
anybody or anything, from one week’s end to another, and that the less
he said the better; an answer that left him completely bewildered.
The Dersinghams, standing together now on their bearskin rug, heard
the first guest arrive. It must be either Golspie or the Trapes. It
could not be the Pearsons, who, living in the maisonette above, always
waited until they heard some one else arrive below, before they made
their appearance. And Golspie it was, looking strangely unfamiliar to
Mr. Dersingham in a rather voluminous dinner jacket and a very narrow
black tie. He had hardly been introduced to Mrs. Dersingham before the
Pearsons, who were just as anxious not to be late as they were not to
be first, came in, breathless and smiling.
“A-ha, good evening!” cried Mr. Pearson, as if he had found them out.
“And how are _you_, my dear?” cried Mrs. Pearson to her hostess, in
such a tone of voice that nobody would have imagined that they had met
less than four hours ago.
The Pearsons were a middle-aged, childless couple, who had recently
retired from Singapore. Mr. Pearson was a tallish man, with a long thin
neck on which was perched a pear-shaped head. His cheeks were absurdly
plump, a sharp contrast to all the rest of him, so that he always
appeared to have just blown them out. He was both nervous and amiable,
and consequently he laughed a great deal at nothing in particular,
and the sound he made when he laughed can only be set down as
_Tee-tee-tee-tee-tee_. Mrs. Pearson, who was altogether plump, had her
face framed in a number of mysterious dark curls, and looked vaguely
like one of the musical comedy actresses of the picture postcard era,
one who had perhaps retired, after queening it in _The Catch of the
Season_, to keep a jolly boarding-house. They were a lonely, friendly
pair, who obviously did not know what on earth to do to pass the time,
so that this was for them an occasion of some importance, to be looked
forward to, to be referred to, to be enjoyed to the last syllable of
small talk.
They were now all shouting at one another, after the fashion of hosts
and guests in Barkfield Gardens and elsewhere.
“Found your way here all right then?” Mr. Dersingham bellowed to Mr.
Golspie.
“Came in a taxi,” Mr. Golspie boomed over his cocktail.
“That’s the best way if you’re going to a strange house in London,
isn’t it?” Mr. Pearson shouted. “We always do it when we can afford it.
Tee-tee-tee-tee-tee.”
“And how’s the little darling to-night?” Mrs. Pearson inquired at the
top of her voice, affectionately maternal as usual.
“Oh, we took the infant’s temperature, and it was normal. He’s all
right,” Mrs. Dersingham screamed in reply, elaborately unmaternal as
usual.
“I’m so glad, _so_ glad.” And as she said it, Mrs. Pearson looked all
beaming and moist. “I was so afraid there might be something really
wrong with the dear kiddy. I was telling Walter that you thought it
might be a chill. I’m _so_ glad it wasn’t, my dear. You can’t be too
careful with them, can you?”
“This Russian business looks pretty queer, doesn’t it?” Mr. Dersingham
shouted.
“Very queer. What do you make of it?” Mr. Pearson shouted in reply. He
made nothing of it himself yet, because the evening paper had not told
him what to make of it and he had heard nobody’s opinion yet. On any
question that had its origin west of Suez, Mr. Pearson liked to agree
with his company. When it was east of Suez, he sometimes took a line of
his own, and when Singapore itself was actually involved, he had been
known to contradict people.
“Well, I’ll tell you, Dersingham,” said Mr. Golspie who as usual knew
his own mind. “It’s all a lot of tripe, bosh, bunkum. I know those
yarns. Fellows up in Riga trying to earn their money, they send out
that stuff.”
“That’s terribly interesting, Mr. Golspie,” Mrs. Dersingham shrieked at
him, suddenly looking like a woman of the world who had wanted to get
to the bottom of this business for some time. “Of course, you’ve been
up there, haven’t you?”
“Round about.” And Mr. Golspie gave her a grin, at once sardonic
and friendly. It seemed to tell her that she was all right, not a
bad-looking girl, but she mustn’t try to draw him, for that wasn’t her
line at all, not at all.
“It makes a difference when you’ve been there, doesn’t it?” cried Mr.
Pearson. “You know the facts. Tee-tee-tee-tee-tee.”
“And where do you live _now_, Mr. Golspie?” Mrs. Pearson inquired,
rather archly and with her head on one side.
“Just got a furnished flat in Maida Vale,” replied Mr. Golspie.
“Now I don’t think I know that part,” Mrs. Pearson said, girlishly
reflective.
“There’s a lot of London we still don’t know. Tee-tee-tee-tee-tee.”
“You’re not missing much if you don’t know Maida Vale, from what I’ve
seen of it,” Mr. Golspie boomed away. “Where I live seems to be full of
Jews and music-hall turns. Old music-hall turns, not the good-lookin’
young uns.”
“Tee-tee-tee,” Mr. Pearson put it, rather doubtfully.
“Oh, you men!” cried Mrs. Pearson, who had not lived at Singapore for
nothing: she knew her cues.
“Tee-tee.” Triumphant this time.
Miss Verever was announced, and very resentfully, for already Agnes had
had enough of the evening and she had not liked the way this particular
guest had walked in and looked at her.
There is something to be said for Agnes. Miss Verever was one of those
people who, at a first meeting, demand to be disliked. She was Mrs.
Dersingham’s mother’s cousin, a tall, cadaverous virgin of forty-five
or so, who displayed, especially in evening clothes, an uncomfortable
amount of sharp gleaming bone, just as if the upper part of her was a
relief map done in ivory. In order that she might not be overlooked
in company and also to protect herself, she had developed and brought
very near to perfection a curiously disturbing manner, which conveyed
a boundless suggestion of the malicious, the mocking, the sarcastic,
the sardonic, the ironical. What she actually said was harmless enough,
but her tone of voice, her expression, her smile, her glance, all
these suggested that her words had some devilish inner meaning. In
scores of smaller hotels and _pensions_ overlooking the Mediterranean,
merely by asking what time the post went or inquiring if it had rained
during the night, she had made men wonder if they had not shaved
properly and women ask themselves if something had gone wrong with
their complexions, and compelled members of both sexes to consider
if they had just said something very silly. After that, she had only
to perform the smallest decent action for people to say that she had
a surprisingly kind heart as well as a terrifyingly clever satirical
head. This was all very well if people had booked rooms under the same
roof for the next three months, but on chance acquaintances, wondering
indignantly what on earth she had against _them_, this peculiar manner
of hers had an unfortunate effect.
She now advanced, kissed her hostess, shook hands with her host, and
then, pursing her lips and screwing up the rest of her features, said:
“I hope you’ve not been waiting for _me_. I’m sure you have, haven’t
you?” And strange as it may seem, this remark and this simple question
immediately made the whole dinner party appear preposterous.
“No, we haven’t really,” Mr. Dersingham told her, at the same time
asking himself why in the name of thunder they had ever thought of
inviting her. “Somebody still to come. The Trapes.”
“Oh, I’m glad I’m not the last, then,” said Miss Verever, with a bitter
little smile, which she kept on her face while she was being introduced
to the other guests.
A minute later, the Trapes arrived to complete the party. Late guests
may be divided into two classes, the repentant, who arrive, perspiring
and profusely apologetic, to babble about fogs and ancient taxis
and stupid drivers, and the unrepentant, who stalk in haughtily and
look somewhat aggrieved when they see all the other guests, their
eyebrows registering their disapproval of people who do not know what
time their own parties begin. The Trapes were admirable specimens of
the unrepentant class. They were both tall, cold, thin, and rather
featureless. Trape himself was an Old Worrelian and a contemporary of
Dersingham’s. He was a partner in a firm of estate agents, but called
himself Major Trape because he had held that rank at the end of the
war and had become so soldierly training the vast mob of boys who were
conscripted then that he could not bring himself to say good-bye to
his outworn courtesy title. He was indeed so curt, so military, so
imperial, that it was impossible to imagine him letting and selling
houses in the ordinary way, and the mind’s eye saw him mopping up, with
a small raiding party, all flats and bijou residences, and sallying out
with an expeditionary force to plant the Union Jack on finely timbered,
residential and sporting estates. His wife was a somewhat colourless
woman, very English in type, who always looked as if she was always
faintly surprised and disgusted by life. Perhaps she was, and perhaps
that was why she always talked with a certain ventriloquial effect,
producing a voice with hardly any movement of her small iced features.
Leaving them all to shout at one another, Mrs. Dersingham now slipped
out of the room, for it was imperative that dinner should be announced
as soon as possible. She returned three minutes later, trying not
unsuccessfully to look as if she had not a care in the world, a sort
of _Arabian Nights_ hostess, and then, after the smallest interval,
Agnes popped her head into the room, thereby forgetting one of her most
urgent instructions, and said, without any enthusiasm at all: “Please,
m’, dinner’s served.”
Mrs. Dersingham smiled heroically at her guests, who, with the
exception of Mr. Golspie, looked at one another and at the door as if
they were hearing about this dinner business for the first time and
were mildly interested and amused. Mr. Golspie, for his part, looked
like a man who wanted his dinner, and actually took a step or two
towards the door. Then began that general stepping forward and stepping
backward and smiling and hand-waving which take place at this moment in
all those unhappy sections of society that have lost formality and yet
have not reached informality. There they were, smiling and dithering
round the door.
“Now then, Mrs. Pearson,” cried Mr. Golspie in his loudest and most
brutal tones. “In you go.” And, without more ado, this impatient guest
put a hand behind Mrs. Pearson’s elbow, and Mrs. Pearson found herself
through the door, the leader of the exodus. They crowded into the small
dining-room, where the soup was already steaming under the four shaded
electric lights.
“Now let me see,” Mrs. Dersingham began, as usual, feeling that these
guests were not people now but six enormous bodies of which she, the
wretched criminal, had to dispose. “Now let me see. Will you sit there,
Mrs. Trape. And Mrs. Pearson, there.” And then, having disposed of the
bodies, she had time to notice that the soup looked horribly greasy.