(tympani roll and crash of lightning)
Or
Hell’s Belles
or
Debut and Swansong
Fondly dedicated to the memory of Frederick Delius 1862-1934, in the hope that he would appreciate this little interlude. The song is real. Hear it, if you can.
I was glad of Mr Whybrow’s support, and his presence both real and substantial. My belly started doing somersaults as we approached our hostess. I’d never been to a soiree before, and I might have known that it wouldn’t be as bad as having one’s teeth drilled without anasthetic, but that’s just how I felt.
Mr Whybrow wasn’t too keen on these functions, either. He was looking straight ahead, but I could see his eyes dismantling the salon through its windows, as though trying to work out where someone had put the unexploded bomb. Out of the corner of his mouth, he muttered, “Don’t see anyone here that I know.”
I bore in mind all that he had told me about these functions. “Sir – just out of curiosity, do these ladies go for married men?”
“Some do. They see it as a challenge.”
That told me a lot on its own. I considered myself Advised.
Miss Crumbleigh-Quandybarre greeted us herself at the door. She was unable to help giving me a profound stare of disbelief that I was the same creature who had inflicted that bucket on her in the shop.
“Why, Miss Bluebird,” she finally said, still gaping. “You look – ah, how nice of you to come.” She retreated half a step as I returned what I considered a charming smile. Were my fangs showing?
The next guest’s arrival brought our introduction to a merciful close, and Mr Whybrow led me into the salon. This, I imagined, was what it was like entering a concert stage. The room was not crowded, but a wise hostess invites quality rather than quantity. A lean, ascetic-looking young man was playing the piano; I noticed Mr Whybrow give him a curious look and shake his head.
I’m sure the room quietened as we went in. Most of the guests were women; I heard a couple of bad whispers in which the word “shopgirl” stood out. I began to get nervous, as though I did not belong. Then, at a particuarly low dip in the conversational buzz, someone said, “So she does exist.”
Mr Whybrow squeezed my hand. “You’d think they’d have learned that by now. Don’t these people talk to each other? Hey, do you remember that time you turned up at Miss Rain’s event, to ask if I needed a lift home? Someone had just said aloud that they doubted you even existed, and ten minutes later, along comes Valerie on the Dreadnought.”
I knew he was only trying to hearten me, but I could not forget the time in question. Yes, my arrival had stilled the whole party and that “someone” had refused to speak to Mr Whybrow for the rest of the evening. I gave a shaky chuckle, by way of reply. But they still thought I was something he’d invented to scare the vultures away? I noticed a certain hesitancy in the manner of most about me. The sort that bode ill. Where they could not turn away in time, I saw daggers in their eyes. I knew that I’d have to watch my every word here. They’d read a slight into the least opportunity and would never forget it.
A hand rested on my arm. It was Miss Crumbleigh-Quandybarre, bubbling with party bonhomie, all nerves forgotten. But then, she had probably read the situation and sensed the unhealthy undercurrent. “My dear, I’m so glad you could come,” she said, deliberately loudly. “That golden voice of yours is not something to be kept under a bushel.”
Mr Whybrow gave me a suspicious frown. “But she only said – “
“No,” our hostess boomed. “Her singing voice.”
Feeling Mr Whybrow’s gaze pinning me down, I flannelled, “I did sing, sir, but that was days ago.”
The frown deepened. I don’t remember finding anything broken.
“No, earlier today,” insisted Miss Crumbleigh-Quandybarre. “Your voice was quite distinctive. I hope you’re going to treat us to a song here.”
Mr Whybrow looked sick. He might have just been told that he’d have to have a boil lanced. With dynamite. “Ah, Miss Crumbleigh-Quandybarre, I’m not sure that – “
“Are you quite sure about that?” I said, simultaneously.
Miss Crumbleigh-Quandybarre cut us both dead with a great fanfare of laughter that even made the pianist miss a beat. “Don’t be silly, dear. I’ve someone who simply must hear you! It’ll be the perfect opportunity.”
All her italics only heightened my disquietude, or whatever happens to disquietude when it turns into a big lead lump in one’s belly. She was plunging into this without any forethought, utterly unaware of the likely consequences. But I had no further chance to protest as she fwoofed off in a cloud of skirts to deal with other guests.
“Is this why she asked you along?” Mr Whybrow murmured clumsily, out of the corner of his mouth. “I don’t remember hearing you sing. Particularly today. Is she sure she’s got the right person?”
Oh dear. Time for another confession. “I’m afraid she has, sir. I did sing. At Llyr.”
Disregarding any funny looks that might have been directed to him, Mr Whybrow seized with horror. “Christ! She doesn’t realise she heard you from three districts away!”
“What’ll we do, sir?” I crushed his arm in my fingers, my eyes appealing helplessly. Get me out of this. Please.
Darting glances hither and thither to make sure nobody was looking, he leaned close and whispered, “Give it twenty minutes for the sake of decency, and pretend you’ve got a headache. And then I’ll get us both out of here – ah, good evening, Miss……...”
He leapt almost out of his socks as a gloved hand appeared on his arm. I followed a spindly arm to find the hand’s owner to be a fashionably starved-looking woman wearing more paint than the Sistine chapel.
“You wicked man, Mister Whybrow. Where have you been hiding this musical sensation?”
He clearly did not know who she was. “Ah – fact is, I didn’t know she was one, Miss ……..”
The lady beat her chest with her fan and drew back, in an appallingly exaggerated posture of surprise. Too casually, she rested an accusing finger on his chest. “How is that possible, that you could live with someone and not know they have such ability?”
Carelessly, I said the first thing that came to mind. “Easily enough. How many masters know everything about their shopgirls?”
She swivelled her pipecleaner neck to me and caught her breath as though someone had just broken wind after a surfeit of cabbage and ale. “A – shopgirl? How terribly – quaint.”
I tightened my smile, baring my fangs. As if she hadn’t known. With half the salon talking about me so openly.
She took a quarter step back, as though I myself were a big cloud of said flatulence. Ooh, I could have shot her. But she was not to be put off.
“But from what I’ve heard, you must have been taught by the angels themselves.”
The sarcasm was unmissable. Her lofty, condescending leer made it quite clear that she was out to make me look small in front of everyone else. And as my companion, Mr Whybrow would be made to look even smaller. And that, I found unforgivable. Mischievously slitting my eyes, I reverted to workhouse mode. “’olborn, actually, Miss. The Angel’s two miles furver norf.”
The lady was unprepared for that. She bought a moment’s time by agitating her fan in front of her face. “Clearly not a professional, then. Do stop by for a consultation sometime, if you ever manage to scrape up twenty guineas. Now if you’ll excuse me, there’s someone I simply must talk to – “
She trotted away with the urgency of someone who’d been smitten with diarrhoea. I hardly noticed Mr Whybrow’s complete paralysis as he wished he was elsewhere. My eyes remained focussed on the lady’s back, and inside me, a furious demon flared up, consigning her to the nastiest pit of hell. Now, that was a habit I’d learned to put behind me, under Mr Whybrow’s gentle tutelage. Unfortunately, in the heat of the moment, I forgot everything he’d taught me.
A flame burst up from the lady’s bustle, producing a massed scream from all directions. Even the pianist stopped.
“Oh, Jesus,” muttered Mr Whybrow.
I could only gape, horrified at what I’d done. For a moment, my victim appeared to be the only one in the room who was unaware of what had just happened to her. Then she realised that the entire room’s attention was on her, at the same moment that she smelt something burning.
“Oh, my God! I’m on fire!”
The pianist took that as the cue to launch into “The march of the light cavalry.” Everyone else, however, was paralysed, so I did the first thing that came into my head. “Hold still, Miss!”
As if she would! She began running around in circles like a wet hen, screaming those random things which I suppose one screams when one’s arse is on fire. She was clearly the sort whose idea of dealing with an incident is to yell, ”Don’t just stand there, do something,” and then to claim all the credit for resolving the situation. Loudly.
So I did something. I grabbed a champagne bucket, tossed the bottle over my shoulder, and threw half a gallon of freezing water and ice cubes at her bustle.
“Bullseye!” I exclaimed, triumphantly. Actually, most of it went down her neck, but it dissuaded the flames long enough for her to flee the room ……
……. and leap bustle-first into the lily pond.
The rest of the room was a chorus of gasps that wouldn’t die down. Now, my main fear was that everyone would connect her sudden combustion with me. But nobody seemed to have done so. I squawked a theatrical, “Oh, how awful!” and clung to Mr Whybrow to hide my mirth.
Mr Whybrow held me tighter, to let him murmur into my ear unnoticed by everyone else. “Well done. You know who you’ve just incinerated, don’t you?”
I suspected trouble. My giggles subsided like a failed souffle. “No, sir?”
“Alexandrinetta Moltovoglio, singing professor to the titled.”
Oh, rats.
Then Mr Whybrow leaned closer still. “All her pupils have a vibrato you can drive a coach and horses through. The only ones they impress are each other. Oh, and her real name is Nora Hardbung. The only Italian in her blood’s a few bottles of Chianti, and her singing pedigree consists of the Dog and Duck, Southwark.”
A twitch of his mouth against my shell-like made me lean back. He was smiling broadly and unashamedly. “If we weren’t likely to incur the hostility of the rest of the gathering, I’d kiss you for that.”
My spirits rallying, I dared a little smile back. “Perhaps later, sir?”
Anyway, Miss Moltowotsit was quite unhurt, apart from her dignity thanks to the big hole burnt in her bustle. I followed all the mortified looks out of the window; she was returning to her carriage with a pace that suggested she knew of landmines buried in the lawn.
The murmurs died down to a jumble of, “However did that happen?” “Could she have sat on something?” “It’s a bad mistake, using these foreign dry cleaners, you know – “
I was glad that the mutters didn’t include anything like, “It was that shopgirl! It happened right after she’d been talking to her.” They must have made the connection, even if they didn’t understand it. But at least nobody said anything.
I felt Mr Whybrow’s head drop to look at me, and realised that I was still clinging to him rather too intimately. He, of course, knew what happened when I let my temper get the better of me. I turned big, innocent eyes up to him. “I wonder if she stood too close to a candle, sir?”
The nearest candle being twenty feet away and unlit, Mr Whybrow bit his tongue to guillotine his laughter before it could burst. But before he could reply, I found myself thrust away from him by a meaty great elbow.
“Gwd Eev’ning, sir! Yw must be the Mister Whaibrow of whom Ai’ve heard sair much.”
Now, this lady was obviously unaware of that social rule about not upstaging one’s hostess. Her jewellery fairly clanked as she descended on Mr Whybrow’s attention like an avalanche, with a rounded voice like everyone’s idea of a public schoolmistress. As I recovered my breath, he treated the lady to a lethal frown, which bounced off completely.
“That depends on what one’s heard, Madam,” he replied, somewhat tersely.
“Whai, yore the JOOweller, of course! Ai brought mai femily heirlwm specially tw shair yw!”
She leaned forwards, thrusting at Mr Whybrow a cleavage that reminded me of a well-upholstered bum. Across it, sliding about desperately trying to maintain its equilibrium, was a necklace of old round-cut rubies.
“Ah – yes, a handsome piece of work,” he replied, vaguely. I presume he was referring to the lady’s necklace, not her cleavage. All right, I was jealous of her water-wings, which made my own look rather insignificant.
She placed a hand on his arm; I noticed the squeeze she gave him. Turning the ounce of encouragement she’d been given into a ton of enthusiasm, her eyes flared – rather reminiscently of the Golden Grisset’s headlamps, I thought. At any rate, her mouth reminded me of said car’s radiator grille. “It’s such a pity there’s nair dahncing here. Thet’s how to appreciate fain joowellery et its best. Yw simply must come bai and give it a proper lwk – for inshorance purposes, yw knair. Unless yw’d care to examine it aitsaide? The laight’s sair much better in the gahden. Yw won’t need tw bring your assist’nt, of course.” She flapped a dismissive hand somewhere in my direction.
Oh, so I wasn’t imagining it. I did exist. I felt my ire begin to ferment and rise again. This lady was after more than a valuation, and Mr Whybrow knew it, too. Any minute now, he’d be reaching up to loosen his cravat for breath.
Then Miss Crumbleigh-Quandybarre did the best thing she’d done all evening. She interposed herself between Mr Whybrow and his tormentress with an apology that was about as sincere as a politician five minutes after winning an election. “I’m so sorry, Miss Transom, but I simply must introduce our musical duo to someone.” As she spoke, she gave me a slightly nervous look which warned me that she’d suspected the true cause of her guest’s bustle-combustion and was afraid of a repeat performance.
Miss Transom gave a silly little wave as we were led away. “Bai bai for now, sir. Perheps yw’d laik to lwk it over itesaide later, whaile the laight still lahsts?”
That emphasis on the location of her planned tryst - I knew what she wanted him to look over, and it wasn’t the necklace. Mr Whybrow let out an exasperated sigh as we were taken over to the piano. I got the impression that Mr Whybrow envied the pianist, sitting at his instrument and ignored by all.
But anyone who believed the pianist to be shy was deluding themselves. He was a slim, distinguished gentleman a little older than Mr Whybrow, with a clipped voice – altogether, reminiscent of an enthusiastic headmaster. I warmed to him instantly as he rose to shake Mr Whybrow’s hand.
“Hello, there. Call me ‘Fred.’ ‘fraid I don’t know many people here; I’ve just returned from Paris.”
“Ooh, Paris!” I enthused. “Mr Whybrow’s taken me there.” I hoped the whole salon heard that, to deter any more ladies with intentions.
“Pleasure’s all mine, sir,” Mr Whybrow breezed. “I hope you found Paris successful.” Something seemed to have struck Mr Whybrow; I think he had recognised the pianist from somewhere.
Fred turned a charming smile to me. “And you must be the Miss Bluebird I’ve heard about from our hostess.”
It was nice to meet at least one person here whom I could trust not to assassinate me. I dipped in a curtsy. “It’s very kind of her to mention me, sir, but any musical abilities I have are entirely owing to Mr Whybrow.”
“Oh?” Fred cocked an eye at my master, who seemed stuck for a reply.
“Yes! He’s got me working on Ebenezer Prout, and CPE Bach’s Essay – “
That was clearly the right thing to have said. “Oh, splendid! Then you must be a musical force in no small way yourself, sir?”
Mr Whybrow mumbled something about keeping it up when he could. I was glad Miss Transom was not around to misinterpret his reply.
But Fred’s attention was focussed mainly on myself. I began to suspect that it was not just my musical abilities he was interested in. “That’s splendid. I’m sure he’s proved a most redoubtable teacher. Tell you what, Miss Bluebird – why don’t you show us what you can do?”
“Sir?” I gaped, flashing another helpless look to Mr Whybrow, who gave a great gulp back.
“Give me a moment with our hostess. She said you’d perform for us, and there’s a little number I must try out on this crowd. Don’t worry, Mr Whybrow; I’ll do the accompanying bit.”
Fred vanished to speak with Miss Crumbleigh-Quandybarre. I couldn’t interpret his low mumble, but Miss Crumbleigh-Quandybarre’s gleeful giggle told me all I needed to know. Desperately, I took Mr Whybrow’s arm, not caring who was looking. “Sir, I can’t do this!”
Mr Whybrow spoke through his teeth. “Don’t you know who that is? It’s Frederick Delius!”
“Is he famous?”
“Getting to be very much so. You can’t not do it. If you turn him down, my name’ll be mud.”
“But you know what happens when I – “
“Just stick to your lower register. Get him to transpose down, if you have to.”
I don’t think Mr Whybrow realised how much danger we were in. But before I could utter another word, Fred had returned and taking me by the arm, swung me around to exhibit me like a magician’s assistant. He didn’t waste words; those that he did utter, carried throughout the salon with the effortless fluency of a circus ringmaster.
“I’d like to introduce you to a bright star in the local firmament, Miss Bluebird.” To my extreme embarrassment, Miss Crumbleigh-Quandybarre led the throng in an applause which was out of all proportion to the numbers present. Even Mr Whybrow was grinning proudly as he tried to outclap all the others.
Under the shelter of the clapping, Fred murmured, “My dear, do you think you could sight-read this?”
From the piano, he retrieved a thin sheaf of music. It was a mass of black dots headed, “To the Queen of my Heart.” I flashed it to Mr Whybrow who turned green, and I don’t mean with envy. The accompaniment was not one he’d have wanted to sight-read, grabbing great handfuls of chords. Luckily, the vocal line was much simpler, although I wasn’t happy about some of the leaps.
Delius had seated himself at the piano. “Will B major do, Miss?”
I cleared my throat and replied with a nod, although I should have made him transpose that accompaniment, just to see him suffer. He launched into a tempest of swirling triplets overlaid with a gliding melody in octaves which I found haunting. And Gawd, it was fast! I wanted to let the piano continue, but it was my cue. Luckily, I’d had a lengthy lead-in and while busy, the accompaniment was regular and easy to follow. I kept my gaze on Mr Whybrow for reassurance, and he did not look happy at our prospects.
“Shall we roam, my love, to the twilight grove,
“Where the moon is rising bri-ight?”
So far so good.
“Oh, I’ll whisper there in the cool night air,
“What I dare not in broad daylight!”
That line kept to the low part of my register. Much safer. My audience, however, knew nothing of the doom lurking over their heads. One or two were swaying in time with the accompaniment; even Mr Whybrow had been overtaken by that faraway look that comes when hearing a new piece for the first time, and it’s like a drug.
“I’ll tell thee a part of the thoughts that start
“To being when thou art nigh………..”
Oooh – getting high – I felt the ground stir beneath my feet, but put that down to nerves. The song itself was heavenly! I swore that if Mr Whybrow ever sung it to me, I’d fling myself at him and damn the consequences!
“And thy beauty more bright
“Than the stars’ soft light,
“Shall seem as a weft from the sky – “
There was no mistaking it. The house blurred in my vision; a couple of the audience had noticed it as well. Delius, of course, had enough to think about and hadn’t noticed anything untoward. His accompaniment continued with metronomic regularity. Mr Whybrow, however, was definitely aware that we were living on borrowed time. He made a subtle undulating motion with one hand. Keep going.
This Fred Delius was obviously a force to be reckoned with, if he was prepared to chance my singing. But then, he didn’t know the truth, and Mr Whybrow had never seen the song before. The accompaniment settled into a mounting excitement of softly-hammered triplets, like the old workhouse laundry dryer spinning.
“Wilt thou roam with me to the restless sea,
“And linger up on the steep,
“And list to the flow
“Of the waves below
“How they toss and roar and leap?”
Oh, dear, that high G - I shook slightly as a joist slipped underfoot and the floorboard nails creaked. Mr Whybrow was looking definitely worried; I hoped he was ransacking his imagination for a way of terminating the performance prematurely. As for Miss Crumbleigh-Quandybarre, she had got as far as the curious frown stage, as though a wagon with an unusually heavy load was going past.
“Those boiling waves, And the storm that raves
“At night o’er their foaming crest,”
I flipped over the page and my death warrant stared back in the form of a top A sharp. Well within my register, yes. But could the house stand it?
Another glance to Mr Whybrow offered no hope. Keep going!
Yes, he could see that I was on the last page. But he didn’t know the song! It was changing key almost at random, and coming up was a passage marked con tutta forza with three f’s, for the love of God!
“Resemble the strife
“That from earliest life
“The passions have waged in my breast……………..”
Delius was giving it everything he’d got. His furious triplets, with that nobly descending bass, would have drowned an earthquake and that’s nearly what they did drown.
It was the huge lump of plaster falling directly inside the piano with a harrowing clangour of strings that finally warned Fred that all wasn’t as it should be. “It didn’t do this in Paris!” he cried.
You didn’t have me with you in Paris!
I took his stopping as a signal that I, too, could stop. The floor sagged beneath me; that instant perception that one gets when a disaster’s happening, and a zillion thoughts rush through one’s brainpan all at once, told me that the foundations must have gone, and the joists had slipped from their anchorages. Around me, great cracks snaked up the plaster. This house had moments to live.
Screams broke out. It was Mr Whybrow who found his voice first. “Everyone out!”
He grabbed me round the waist and ran outside, carrying me like a piglet he’d just stolen from the market. Bereft of my vision of what was going on behind me, I could only hear the footsteps stampeding out while plaster and timbers crashed through the floor and into the cellar. My hair, which I’d lovingly piled up in best ballroom style, began to fall apart; Mr Whybrow didn’t even break his step as I grabbed my tiara and hooked one end into my cleavage before it could get lost.
He kept running until we were at a safe distance. Then he put me down, nursing my aching diaphragm, while we watched the house consume itself in its final implosion. All watched the walls falling in on themselves, spellbound by the spectacle while thanking whatever manner of being they looked up to that they were still alive to witness it.
The last thing to fall was silence. We could not tear our eyes from the pile of rubble, which had been Miss Crumbleigh-Quandybarre’s house, offering its soul up to heaven in the form of clouds of dust.
The stillness seemed to last forever before someone – it might have been Fred – just had to say it, didn’t they?
“Well, that certainly brought the house down.”
Miss Crumbleigh-Quandybarre gave him a filthy look and took a head count. All had made it out safely, although Miss Transom had left her voluminous skirts behind. I hope she counted herself lucky. She’d come within a whisker of sharing Miss Moltovoglio/Hardbung’s embarrassment.
I wanted to burst out laughing when Mr Whybrow told Miss Crumbleigh-Quandybarre, “I think I’d better take Miss Bluebird home. She has a bit of a headache.”
I don’t think I caught her reply. It sounded like, “Duh.”
It was only when I was safely back in the dear Golden Grisset that the full horror of what I’d done hit me. Mr Whybrow was silent all the way, but then the Golden Grisset was a handful; he was just concentrating on the road.
When we reached the shop, I didn’t know what to say as he held the door open for me without a trace of acrimony on his face. Quite the opposite, in fact.
“Time for a night cap, I think. Care to join me?”
So that was it. He was saving his fury for the privacy of the back office. But I was wrong. He sawed off two lumps of coffee, and while his soldering irons heated up in the stove, he poured us two glasses of brandy. Big ones. I remarked that my gown had survived without a crease, although my coiffure was in ruins. But that was down to Mr Whybrow’s rapid exit, not the cataclysm itself.
I took a great gulp of brandy. It made me choke, but it jolted my whirling mind back on track. Mr Whybrow had yet to speak; I suddenly knew how someone felt when the prison warder tipped that last glass of brandy down his gullet before propelling him through to the next cell, thence to the great beyond by means of one long drop.
Infuriatingly, Mr Whybrow swirled his brandy round a little. Bad news. He was searching for the right way to put something dire.
“Thank you,” he told me, quietly. “You’ve saved me no end of trouble there.”
“Sir?” I croaked. Was he being sarcastic, or had I overlooked something. For God’s sake just get it over with and explode!
He gave a humourous little snort and winked to me, that unflappable man I’d come to know. “So that old report about the workhouse chapel was true. I never imagined I’d have occasion to be grateful over your little talent, but I am.”
“Sir, I destroyed her house! Aren’t you even a little bit angry with me?”
“Why should I be?” He even looked puzzled that I should have suggested such a thing. “This is Caledon; she can soon get another. And she’ll have achieved her social pinnacle, albeit in a manner she’d never expected to. Nobody’ll forget that soiree in a hundred years. What’s more important is that now, none of that crowd will touch me with a barge pole. Pity about Fred, mind; I rather liked him, and that song was superb. I don’t suppose he’d have been coming back, anyway, so it’s no great loss.”
I wanted to believe him, but it seemed preposterous. I’d been taken to a society soiree where I’d torched a lady’s bustle, and destroyed the house as effectively as with a fifteen-inch shell. Mr Whybrow saw that I was still, genuinely, struggling to come to terms with the facts. He put his glass down.
“Maybe this’ll convince you that I’m not about to toss you into the harbour with a hundredweight of lead around your ankles. I hope you won’t consider it a liberty.”
I followed his eyes, mine coupled to his like two railway carriages as he stood over me for a moment, smiling benignly. I felt no urge to resist or move out of the way as he lowered his face, to plant his lips squarely on mine. I realised that his hands had settled on my hips as I yielded to the velvety living firmness suffusing my whole being with his fondness. I pressed back a little, and we stood for a long moment, savouring each other.
When he pulled back, I told him, with a shiver in my voice, “I’d never consider that a liberty coming from you. Thanks for everything – including being so understanding.”
Seizing my moment, I kissed him back, caring nothing for the consequences. But as I reminded myself, at this stage I was being very foolish in still clinging to that particular fear, after all that we’d shared together. I held him firmly – not passionately, just enough to tell him that he was welcome at any time. And he stood wallowing in his welcome, his lips pulsing into mine with a soft, subtle rhythm.
I left it to Mr Whybrow to break the kiss with a damp, sucking noise. “I really am sorry about that lady’s bustle, sir,” I told him.
He grinned back. “She had it coming.”
Pulling back a little, I studied him analytically, as though a puzzle was writ on his face. “Sir – how is it that you always manage to turn disaster into a triumph for me?”
“I didn’t. You did. Besides, I know my Valerie doesn’t have a wilful bone in her body.”
“My Valerie.” Not, “My shopgirl.” But there was more.
“Would you believe me if I said that no man could have been more proud than I was, to be seen there with you?”
I wanted the earth to open up and swallow me. “If you say so, sir.”
Playfully, he bipped the tip of my nose with a fingertip. “I do say so. And I think you know so. I don’t want you to worry about anything that happened this evening, d’you hear?”
That was his way of saying good night. “If you say – “ I broke off and grinned back. “Thank you, sir.”
Postscript
We were never invited back to Miss Crumbleigh-Quandybarre’s, although for a couple of weeks there was nothing much to invite people back to. The media had a field day; overnight her soiree became a society sensation that fuelled the gossips for weeks. I expect that Miss Crumbleigh-Quandybarre was livid to find that in all those lengthy dramatic accounts, she was mentioned only in passing as the owner of the house. All the interviews had been with Frederick Delius.
Most of the articles I read accorded me with a personal tribute from Fred, which I found touching.
I’d never been called a “Doomsday weapon” before.
No comments:
Post a Comment