False Scent

‘It’s not a matter of clothes.’

‘No? In any case, you shall instruct me.’

‘I’ve already told Richard I can’t go to the party.’

‘Nonsense, my dear. Of course we can go,’ Octavius said. ‘What are you thinking of?’

‘It’s so hard to explain, Unky. It’s just that – well, it’s partly because of me being in the theatre only so very much at the bottom of the ladder – less than the dust, you know, beneath Miss B.’s chariot wheels. I’d be like a corporal in the officers’ mess.’

‘That,’ said Octavius, reddening with displeasure, ‘seems to me to be a false analogy, if you’ll forgive me for saying so, Nelly. And, my dear, when one quotes it is pleasant to borrow from reputable sources. The Indian Love lyrics, in my undergraduate days, were the scourge of the drawing-rooms.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘It would be extremely uncivil to refuse so kind an invitation,’ Octavius said, looking more and more like a spoilt and frustrated child. ‘I want to accept it. What is the matter with you, Anelida?’

‘The truth is,’ Anelida said rather desperately, ‘I don’t quite know where I am with Richard Dakers.’

Octavius stared at her and experienced a moment of truth. ‘ Now that I consider it,’ he said huffily, ‘I realize that Dakers is paying his addresses to you. I wonder that it hasn’t occurred to me before. Have you taken against him?’

To her dismay Anelida found herself on the brink of tears. ‘No!’ she cried. ‘No! Nothing like that – really. I mean – I mean I just don’t know …’ She looked helplessly at Octavius. He was, she knew, hovering on the edge of one of his rare fits of temper. His vanity had been tickled by Miss Bellamy. He had almost strutted and preened before her. Anelida, who loved him very much, could have shaken him.

‘Never mind,’ she said. ‘It’s not worth another thought. But I’m sorry, darling, if you’re put out over your lovely party.’

‘I am put out,’ Octavius said crossly. ‘I want to go.’

‘And you shall go. I’ll do your tie and make you look beautiful.’

‘My dear,’ Octavius said, ‘it is you who would have looked beautiful. It would have been a great pleasure to take you. I should have been proud.’

‘Oh, hell! ‘ said Amelia. She rushed at him and gave him an exasperated hug. He was much puzzled and hit her gently several times on the shoulder blades.

The shop door opened.

‘Here,’ Octavius said over the top of Anelida’s head, ‘is Dakers.’

Coming from the sunshine into the dark shop, Richard had been given a confused impression of Anelida collaring Octavius in a high tackle. He waited for her to emerge, which she did after some fumbling with her uncle’s handkerchief.

Octavius said: ‘If you’ll excuse me, Nell. Really, one must get on with one’s job.’ He nodded to Richard and limped away into his back room.

Richard was careful not to look at Anelida. ‘I came,’ he said, ‘first to apologize.’

‘Not at all. I expect I behaved badly.’

‘And to say how very glad I am. Mary told me you had decided for the party.’

‘It was terribly kind of her to come. Unk was bewitched.’

‘We are being polite to each other, aren’t we?’

‘Better than flying into rages.’

‘May I call for you?’

‘There’s no need. Really. You’ll be busy with the party. Unk will be proud to escort me. He said so.’

‘So he well might.’ Richard now looked directly at Anelida. ‘You’ve been crying,’ he said, ‘and your face is dirty. Like a little girl’s. Smudged.’

‘All right. All right. I’m going to tidy it up.’

‘Shall I?’

‘No.’

‘How old are you, Anelida?’

‘Nineteen. Why?’

‘I’m twenty-eight.’

‘You’ve done very well,’ Anelida said politely, ‘for your age. Famous dramatist.’

‘Playwright.’

‘I think with the new one you may allow yourself to be a dramatist.’

‘My God, you’ve got a cheek,’ he said thoughtfully. After a moment he said: ‘Mary’s reading it. Now.’

‘Was she pleased about it?’

‘For the wrong reason. She thinks I wrote it for her.’

‘But – how could she? Still, she’ll soon find out.’

‘As I mentioned before, you don’t really know much as yet about theatre people.’

Anelida said, to her own astonishment: ‘But I do know I can act.’

‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘Of course you do. You’re a good actress.’

‘You haven’t seen me.’

‘That’s what you think.’

‘Richard!’

‘At least I’ve surprised you into calling me by name.’

‘But when did you see me?’

‘It slipped out. It’s part of a deep-laid plan. You’ll find out.’

‘When?’

‘At the party. I’m off, now. Au revoir, dear Anelida.’

When he had gone, Anelida sat perfectly still for quite a long time. She was bewildered, undecided and piercingly happy.

Richard, however, returned to the house with his mind made up. He went straight to Charles Templeton’s study. He found Charles and Maurice Warrender there, rather solemn over a decanter of sherry. When he came in they both looked self-conscious.

‘We were just talking about you,’ Charles said. ‘Have whatever it is you do have at this hour, Dicky. Lager?’

‘Please. I’ll get it. Should I make myself scarce so that you can go on talking about me?’

‘No, no.’

‘We’d finished,’ Warrender said, ‘I imagine. Hadn’t we, Charles?’

‘I suppose we had.’

Richard poured out his lager. ‘As a matter of fact,’ he said, ‘I sidled in with the idea of boring you with a few observations under that very heading.’

Warrender muttered something about taking himself off. ‘Not unless you have to, Maurice,’ Richard said. ‘It arises, in a way, out of what you said this morning.’ He sat down and stared at his beer mug. ‘This is going to be difficult,’ he said.

They waited, Warrender looking owlish, Charles, as always, politely attentive.

‘I suppose it’s a question of divided allegiances,’ Richard said at last. ‘Partly that, anyway.’ He went on, trying to put what he wanted to say as objectively as might be. He knew that he was floundering and almost at once began to regret his first impulse.

Charles kept turning his elderly freckled hand and looking at it. Warrender sipped his sherry and shot an occasional, almost furtive, glance at Richard.

Presently Charles said: ‘Couldn’t we come to the point?’

‘I wish I could,’ Richard rejoined. ‘I’m making a mess of this, I know.’

‘May I have a go at it? Is this what you’re trying to tell us? You think you can write a different kind of play from the sort of thing that suits Mary. You have, in fact, written one. You think it’s the best thing you’ve done but you’re afraid Mary won’t take kindly to the idea of your making a break. You’ve shown it to her and she’s reading it now. You’re afraid that she’ll take it for granted that you see her in the lead. Right, so far?’

‘Yes. That’s it.’

‘But,’ Warrender demanded unexpectedly, ‘she won’t like this play, what!’

‘I don’t think she’ll like it.’

‘Isn’t that your answer? ‘ Charles said. ‘If she doesn’t like it you can offer it elsewhere?’

‘It isn’t,’ Richard said, ‘as simple as that.’ And looking at these two men, each old enough to be his father, each with thirty years’ experience of Mary Bellamy, he saw that he was understood.

‘There’s been one row already this morning,’ he said. ‘A snorter.’

Warrender shot a look at Charles. ‘I don’t know if I’m imagining it,’ he said, ‘but I’ve fancied the rows come a bit oftener these days, isn’t it?’

Charles and Richard were silent.

Warrender said: ‘Fellow’s got to live his own life. My opinion. Worst thing that can happen to a man’s getting himself bogged down in a mistaken loyalty. Seen it happen. Man in my regiment. Sorry business.’

Charles said: ‘We all have our mistaken loyalties.’

There was a further silence.

Richard said violently: ‘But – I owe everything to her. The ghastly things I began to write at school. The first shamingly hopeless plays. Then the one that rang the bell. She made The Management take it. We talked everything over. Everything. And now – suddenly – I don’t want to. I – don’t – want – to. Why? Why?’

‘Very well,’ Charles said. Richard looked at him in surprise, but he went on very quietly. ‘Writing plays is your business. You understand it. You’re an expert. You should make your own decisions.’

‘Yes. But Mary …’

‘Mary holds a number of shares in companies that I direct, but I don’t consult her about their policy or confine my interests to those companies only.’

‘Surely it’s not the same thing.’

‘Isn’t it?’ Charles said placidly. ‘I think it is. Sentiment,’ he added, ‘can be a disastrous guide in such matters. Mary doesn’t understand your change of policy: the worst reason in the world for mistrusting it. She is guided almost entirely by emotion.’

Warrender said: ‘Think she’s changed? Sorry, Charles, I’ve no kind of business to ask.’

‘She has changed,’ her husband said. ‘One does.’

‘You can see,’ Richard said, ‘what happened with Pinky and Bertie. How much more will she mind with me! Was there anything so terrible about what they did? The truth is, of course, that they didn’t confide in her because they didn’t know how she’d take it. Well – you saw how she took it.’

‘I suppose,’ Warrender began dimly, ‘as a woman gets older …’ He faded out in a bass rumble.

‘Charles,’ Richard said, ‘you may consider this a monstrous suggestion, but have you thought, lately, that there might be anything – anything – ?’

‘Pathological? ‘ Charles said.

‘It’s so unlike her to be vindictive. Isn’t it?’ He appealed to both of them. ‘Well, my God, isn’t it?’

To his astonishment they didn’t answer immediately. Presently Charles said with a suggestion of pain in his voice: ‘The same thing has occurred to me. I – I asked Frank Harkness about it. He’s looked after us both for years, as you know. He thinks she’s been a bit nervy for some time, I gather, like many women of her – well, of her age. He thinks the high-pressure atmosphere of the theatre may have increased the tension. I got the impression he was under-stating his case. I don’t mind telling you,’ Charles added unhappily, ‘it’s been worrying me for some time. These – these ugly scenes.’

Warrender muttered: ‘Vindictive,’ and looked as if he regretted it.

Richard cried out: ‘Her kindness! I’ve always thought she had the kindest eyes I’d ever seen in a woman.’

Warrender, who seemed this morning to be bent on speaking out of character, did so now. ‘People,’ he said, ‘talk about eyes and mouths as if they had something to do with the way other people think and behave. Only bits of the body, aren’t they? Like navels and knees and toenails. Arrangements.’

Charles glanced at him with amusement. ‘My dear Maurice, you terrify me. So you discount our old friends the generous mouth, the frank glance, the open forehead. I wonder if you’re right.’

‘Right or wrong,’ Richard burst out, ‘it doesn’t get me any nearer a decision.’

Charles put down his sherry and put up his eyeglass. ‘If I were you, Dicky,’ he said, ‘I should go ahead.’

‘Hear, hear!’

‘Thank you, Maurice. Yes. I should go ahead. Offer your play in what you believe to be the best market. If Mary’s upset it won’t be for long, you know. You must keep a sense of perspective, my dear boy.’

Colonel Warrender listened to this with his mouth slightly open and a glaze over his eyes. When Charles had finished Warrender looked at his watch, rose and said he had a telephone call to make before luncheon. ‘I’ll do it from the drawing-room, if I may,’ he said. He glared at Richard. ‘Stick to your guns, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘Best policy.’ And went out.

Richard said: ‘I’ve always wondered: just how simple is Maurice?’

‘It would be the greatest mistake,’ Charles said, ‘to underrate him.’

IV

In their houses and flats, all within a ten-mile radius of Pardoner’s Place, the guests for Mary Bellamy’s birthday party made ready to present themselves. Timon (Timmy) Gantry, the famous director, made few preparations for such festivities. He stooped from his inordinate height to the cracked glass on his bathroom wall in order to brush his hair, which he kept so short that the gesture was redundant. He had changed into a suit which he was in the habit of calling his ‘decent blue’ and as a concession to Miss Bellamy, wore a waistcoat instead of a plum-coloured pullover. He looked rather like a retired policeman whose enthusiasm had never dwindled. He sang a snatch from Rigoletto, an opera he had recently directed and remembered how much he disliked cocktail parties.

‘Bell-a-mé-a, you’re a bell of a bóre,’ he sang, improvising to the tune of Bella Filia. And it was true, he reflected. Mary was becoming more and more of a tiresome girl. It would probably be necessary to quarrel with her before her new play went on. She was beginning to jib at the physical demands made upon her by his production methods: he liked to keep his cast moving rather briskly through complicated, almost fugal patterns and Mary was not as sound in the wind as she used to be. Nor in the temper, he reflected. He rather thought that this play would be his last production for her.

‘For she’s not my, not my cuppa tea at all,’ he sang.

This led him to think of her influence on other people, particularly on Richard Dakers. ‘She’s a seccuba,’ he chanted.’ ‘She’s an o-ogress. She devours young men alive. Nasty Mary!’ He was delighted that Richard showed signs of breaking loose with his venture into serious dramatic writing. He had read Husbandry in Heaven to Gantry while it was still in manuscript. Gantry always made up his mind at once about a play and he did so about this one.

‘If you go on writing slip-slop for Mary when you’ve got this sort of stuff under your thatch,’ he had said, ‘you deserve to drown in it. Parts of this thing are bloody awful and must come out. Other parts need a rewrite. Fix them and I’m ready to produce the piece.’

Richard had fixed them.

Gantry shoved his birthday present for Miss Bellamy into his pocket. It was a bit of pinchbeck he’d picked up for five bob on a street stall. He bought his presents in an inverse ratio to the monetary situation of the recipients and Miss Bellamy was rich.

As he strode along in the direction of Knightsbridge he thought with increasing enthusiasm about Husbandry in Heaven and of what he would do with it if he could persuade The Management to take it.

‘The actors,’ he promised himself, ‘shall skip like young rams.’

At Hyde Park Corner he began to sing again. At the corner of Wilton Place a chauffeur-driven car pulled up alongside him. The Management in the person of Mr Montague Marchant, exquisitely dressed, with a gardenia in his coat, leaned from the window. His face and his hair were smooth, fair and pale, and his eyes wary.

‘Timmy!’ Mr Marchant shouted. ‘Look at you! So purposeful! Such devouring strides! Come in, do, for God’s sake, and let us support each other on our approach to the shrine.’

Gantry said: ‘I wanted to see you.’ He doubled himself up like a camel and got into the car. It was his custom to plunge directly into whatever matter concerned him at the moment. He presented his ideas with the same ruthless precipitancy that he brought to his work in the theatre. It was a deceptive characteristic, because in Gantry impulse was subordinate to design.

He drew in his breath with an authoritative gasp. ‘Listen!’ he said. ‘I have a proposition.’

All the way along Sloane Street and into the King’s Road he thrust Richard’s play at Marchant. He was still talking, very eloquently, as they turned up Pardoner’s Row. Marchant listened with the undivided though guarded attention that The Management brought to bear only on the utterances of the elect.

‘You will do this,’ Gantry said as the car turned into Pardoner’s Place, ‘not for me and not for Dicky. You will do it because it’s going to be a Thing for The Management. Mark my words. Here we are. Oh, misery, how I abominate grand parties!’

‘I’d have you remember,’ Marchant said as they went in, ‘that I commit myself to nothing, Timmy.’

‘Naturally, my dear man. But naturally. You will commit yourself, however, I promise you. You will.’

‘Mary, darling!’ they both exclaimed and were swallowed up by the party.

Pinky and Bertie had arranged to go together. They came to this decision after a long gloomy post-luncheon talk in which they weighed the dictates of proper pride against those of professional expediency.

‘Face it, sweetie-pie,’ Bertie had said, ‘if we don’t show up she’ll turn plug-ugly again and go straight to The Management. You know what a fuss Monty makes about personal relationships. “A happy theatre is a successful theatre.” Nobody – but nobody can afford to cut up rough. He loathes internal strife.’

Pinky, who was feeling the effects of her morning excesses, sombrely agreed. ‘God knows,’ she said, ‘that at this juncture I can ill-afford to get myself the reputation of being difficult. After all, my contract isn’t signed, Bertie.’

‘It’s as clear as daylight: magnanimity must be our watchword.’

‘I’ll be blowed if I crawl.’

‘We shan’t have to, dear. A pressure of the hand and a long, long gaze into the eyeballs will carry us through.’

‘I resent having to.’

‘Never mind. Rise above. Watch me: I’m a past master at it. Gird up the loins, dear, such as they are, and remember you’re an actress.’ He giggled. ‘Looked at in the right way it’ll be rather fun.’

‘What shall I wear?’

‘Black, and no jewellery. She’ll be clanking.’

‘I hate being at enmity, Bertie. What a beastly profession ours is. In some ways.’

‘It’s a jungle, darling. Face it – it’s a jungle.’

‘You,’ Pinky said rather enviously, ‘don’t seem to be unduly perturbed, I must say.’

‘My poorest girl, little do you know. I’m quaking.’

‘Really? But could she actually do you any damage?’

‘Can the boa-constrictor,’ Bertie said, ‘consume the rabbit?’

Pinky had thought it better not to press this matter any further. They had separated and gone to their several flats, where in due course they made ready for the party.

Anelida and Octavius also made ready. Octavius, having settled for a black coat, striped trousers and the complementary details that he considered appropriate to these garments, had taken up a good deal of his niece’s attention. She had managed to have a bath and was about to dress when, for the fourth time, he tapped at her door and presented himself before her, looking anxious and unnaturally tidy. ‘My hair,’ he said. ‘Having no unguent, I used a little olive oil. Do I smell like a salad?’

She reassured him, gave his coat a brush and begged him to wait for her in the shop. He had old-fashioned ideas about punctuality and had begun to fret. ‘It’s five-and-twenty minutes to seven. We were asked for half-past six, Nelly.’

‘That means seven at the earliest, darling. Just take a furtive leer through the window and you’ll see when people begin to come. And please, Unk, we can’t go while I’m still in my dressing-gown, can we, now?’

‘No, no, of course not. Half-past six for a quarter-to-seven? Or seven? I see. I see. In that case …’

He pottered downstairs.

Anelida thought: ‘It’s a good thing I’ve had some practice in quick changes.’ She did her face and hair, and she put on a white dress that had been her one extravagance of the year, a large white hat with a black velvet crown, and new gloves. She looked in the glass, forcing herself to adopt the examining attitude she used in the theatre. ‘And it might as well be a first night,’ she thought, ‘the way I’m feeling.’ Did Richard like white? she wondered.

Heartened by the certainty of her dress being satisfactory and her hat becoming, Anelida began to daydream along time-honoured lines. She and Octavius arrived at the party. There was a sudden hush. Monty Marchant, The Management in person, would ejaculate to Timon Gantry, the great producer, ‘Who are they?’ and Timon Gantry, with the abrupt grasp which all actors, whether they had heard it or not, liked to imitate, would reply: ‘I don’t know, but by God, I’m going to find out.’ The ranks would part as she and Octavius, escorted by Miss Bellamy, moved down the room to the accompaniment of a discreet murmur. They would be the cynosure of all eyes. What was a cynosure and why was it never mentioned except in reference to eyes? All eyes on Anelida Lee. And there, rapt in admiration, would be Richard.…

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