False Scent (2 page)

The voice that she had once called charming said, “Marvellous. How kind of Florence.”

He was careful to wait a little longer before he said, “Well, darling, I shall leave you to your mysteries,” and went down to his solitary breakfast.

There was no particular reason why Richard Dakers should feel uplifted that morning; indeed, there were many formidable reasons why he should not. Nevertheless, as he made his way by bus and on foot to Pardoner’s Place, he did experience, very strongly, that upward kick of the spirit which lies in London’s power of bestowal. He sat in the front seat at the prow of the bus and felt like a figurehead, cleaving the tide of the King’s Road, masterfully above it, yet gloriously of it. The Chelsea shops were full of tulips and when, leaving the bus, he walked to the corner of Pardoner’s Row, there was his friend the flower-woman with buckets of them, still pouted up in buds.

“Morning, dear,” said the flower-woman. “Duck of a day, innit?”

“It’s a day for the gods,” Richard agreed, “and your hat fits you like a halo, Mrs. Tinker.”

“It’s me straw,” Mrs. Tinker said. “I usually seem to change to me straw on the second Sat in April.”

“Aphrodite on her cockleshell couldn’t say fairer. I’ll take two dozen of the yellows.”

She wrapped them up in green paper. “Ten bob to you,” said Mrs. Tinker.

“Ruin!” Richard ejaculated, giving her eleven shillings. “Destitution! But what the hell!”

“That’s right, dear, we don’ care, do we? Tulips, lady? Lovely tulips.”

Carrying his tulips and with his dispatch case tucked under his arm, Richard entered Pardoner’s Place and turned right. Three doors along he came to the Pegasus, a bow-fronted Georgian house that had been converted by Octavius Browne into a bookshop. In the window, tilted and open, lay a first edition of Beijer and Duchartre’s
Premieres Comedies Italiennes
. A little further back, half in shadow, hung a Negro marionette, very grand in striped silks. And in the watery depths of the interior Richard could just make out the shapes of the three beautifully polished old chairs, the lovely table and the vertical strata of rows and rows of books. He could see, too, the figure of Anelida Lee moving about among her uncle’s treasures, attended by Hodge, their cat. In the mornings Anelida, when not rehearsing at her club theatre, helped her uncle. She hoped that she was learning to be an actress. Richard, who knew a good deal about it, was convinced that already she was one.

He opened the door and went in.

Anelida had been dusting and wore her black smock, an uncompromising garment. Her hair was tied up in a white scarf. He had time to reflect that there was a particular beauty that most pleased when it was least adorned and that Anelida was possessed of it.

“Hullo,” he said. “I’ve brought you some tulips. Good morning, Hodge.” Hodge stared at him briefly, jerked his tail, and walked away.

“How lovely! But it’s not
my
birthday.”

“Never mind. It’s because it’s a nice morning and Mrs. Tinker was wearing her straw.”

“I couldn’t be better pleased,” said Anelida. “Will you wait while I get a pot for them? There’s a green jug.”

She went into a room at the back. He heard a familiar tapping noise on the stairs. Her uncle Octavius came down, leaning on his black stick. He was a tall man of about sixty-three with a shock of grey hair and a mischievous face. He had a trick of looking at people out of the corners of his eyes as if inviting them to notice what a bad boy he was. He was rather touchy, immensely learned and thin almost to transparency.

“Good morning, my dear Dakers,” he said, and seeing the tulips, touched one of them with the tip of a bluish finger. “Ah,” he said, “ ‘Art could not feign more simple grace, Nor Nature take a line away.’ How very lovely and so pleasantly uncomplicated by any smell. We have found something for you, by the way. Quite nice and I hope in character, but it may be a little too expensive. You must tell us what you think.”

He opened a parcel on his desk and stood aside for Richard to look at the contents.

“A tinsel picture, as you see,” he said, “of Madame Vestris
en travesti
in jockey’s costume.” He looked sideways at Richard. “Beguiling little breeches, don’t you think? Do you suppose it would appeal to Miss Bellamy?”

“I don’t see how it could fail.”

“It’s rare-ish. The frame’s contemporary. I’m afraid it’s twelve guineas.”

“It’s mine,” Richard said. “Or rather, it’s Mary’s.”

“You’re sure? Then, if you’ll excuse me for a moment, I’ll get Nell to make a birthday parcel of it. There’s a sheet of Victorian tinsel somewhere. Nell, my dear! Would you—?”

He tapped away and presently Anelida returned with the green jug and his parcel, beautifully wrapped.

Richard put his hand on his dispatch case. “What do you suppose is in there?” he asked.

“Not — not
the
play? Not
Husbandry in Heaven
?”

“Hot from the typist.” He watched her thin hands arrange the tulips. “Anelida, I’m going to show it to Mary.”

“You couldn’t choose a better day,” she said warmly, and when he didn’t answer, “What’s the matter?”

“There isn’t a part for her in it,” he blurted out.

After a moment she said, “Well, no. But does that matter?”

“It might. If, of course, it ever comes to production. And, by the way, Timmy Gantry’s seen it and makes agreeable noises. All the same, it’s tricky about Mary.”

“But why? I don’t see—”

“It’s not all that easy to explain,” he mumbled.

“You’ve already written a new play for her and she’s delighted with it, isn’t she? This is something quite different.”

“And better? You’ve read it.”

“Immeasurably better. In another world. Everybody must see it.”

“Timmy Gantry likes it.”

“Well, there you are! It’s special. Won’t she see that?”

He said: “Anelida, dear, you don’t really know the theatre yet, do you? Or the way actors tick over?”

“Well, perhaps I don’t. But I know how close you are to each other and how wonderfully she understands you. You’ve told me.”

“That’s just it,” Richard said and there followed a long silence.

“I don’t believe,” he said at last, “that I’ve ever told you exactly what she and Charles did?”

“No,” she agreed. “Not exactly. But—”

“My parents, who were Australians, were friends of Mary’s. They were killed in a car smash on the Grande Corniche when I was rising two. They were staying with Mary at the time. There was no money to speak of. She had me looked after by her own old nanny, the celebrated Ninn, and then, after she had married Charles, they took me over completely. I owe everything to her. I like to think that, in a way, the plays have done something to repay. And now — you see what I go and do.”

Anelida finished her tulips and looked directly at him. “I’m sure it’ll work out,” she said gently. “All very fine, I daresay, for me to say so, but you see, you’ve talked so much about her, I almost feel I know her.”

“I very much want you to know her. Indeed, this brings me to the main object of my pompous visit. Will you let me call for you at six and take you to see her? There’s a party of sorts at half-past which I hope may amuse you, but I’d like you to meet her first. Will you, Anelida?”

She waited too long before she said, “I don’t think I can. I’m — I’ve booked myself up.”

“I don’t believe you. Why won’t you come?”

“But I can’t. It’s her birthday and it’s special to her and her friends. You can’t go hauling in an unknown female.
And
an unknown actress, to boot.”

“Of course I can.”

“It wouldn’t be comely.”

“What a fantastic word! And why the hell do you suppose it wouldn’t be comely for the two people I like best in the world to meet each other?”

Anelida said, “I didn’t know—”

“Yes, you did,” he said crossly. “You must have.”

“We scarcely know each other.”

“I’m sorry you feel like that about it.”

“I only meant — well, in point of time—”

“Don’t hedge.”

“Now, look here—”

“I’m sorry. Evidently I’ve taken too much for granted.”

While they stared aghast at the quarrel that between them they had somehow concocted, Octavius came tapping back. “By the way,” he said happily, “I yielded this morning to a romantic impulse, Dakers. I sent your patroness a birthday greeting: one among hundreds, no doubt. The allusion was from Spenser. I hope she won’t take it amiss.”

“How very nice of you, sir,” Richard said loudly. “She’ll be enchanted. She loves people to be friendly. Thank you for finding the picture.”

And forgetting to pay for it, he left hurriedly in a miserable frame of mind.

Mary Bellamy’s house was next door to the Pegasus Bookshop, but Richard was too rattled to go in. He walked round Pardoner’s Place trying to sort out his thoughts. He suffered one of those horrid experiences, fortunately rare, in which the victim confronts himself as a stranger in an abrupt perspective. The process resembles that of pseudo-scientific films in which the growth of a plant, by mechanical skulduggery, is reduced from seven weeks to as many minutes and the subject is seen wavering, extending, elongating itself in response to some irresistible force until it breaks into its pre-ordained fluorescence.

The irresistible force in Richard’s case had undoubtedly been Mary Bellamy. The end-product, after twenty-seven years of the treatment, was two successful West End comedies, a third in the bag, and (his hand tightened on his dispatch case) a serious play.

He owed it all, as he had so repeatedly told her, to Mary. Well, perhaps not quite all. Not the serious play.

He had almost completed his round of the little Place and, not wanting to pass the shop window, turned back. Why in the world had he gone grand and huffy when Anelida refused to meet Mary? And why
did
she refuse? Any other girl in Anelida’s boots, he thought uneasily, would have jumped at that sort of invitation: the great Mary Bellamy’s birthday party. A tiny, handpicked group from the topmost drawer in the London theatre.
The
Management.
The
producer. Any other girl — he fetched up short, not liking himself very much, conscious that if he followed his thoughts to their logical conclusion he would arrive at an uncomfortable position. What sort of man, he would have to ask himself, was Richard Dakers? Reality would disintegrate and he would find himself face-to-face with a stranger. It was a familar experience and one he didn’t enjoy. He shook himself free of it, made a sudden decision, walked quickly to the house and rang the bell.

Charles Templeton breakfasted in his study on the ground floor. The door was open and Richard saw him there, reading his
Times
, at home among his six so judiciously chosen pieces of
chinoiserie
, his three admirable pictures, his few distinguished chairs and lovely desk. Charles was fastidious about his surroundings and extremely knowledgeable. He could wait, sometimes for years, for the acquisition of a single treasure.

Richard went in. “Charles!” he said. “How are you?’

“Hullo, old boy. Come to make your devotions?”

“Am I the first?”

“The first in person. There are the usual massive offerings in kind. Mary’ll be delighted to see you.”

“I’ll go up,” Richard said, but still hovered. Charles lowered his newspaper. How often, Richard wondered, had he seen him make that gesture, dropping his eyeglass and vaguely smiling. Richard, still involved in the aftermath of his moment of truth, if that was its real nature, asked himself what he knew of Charles. How used he was to that even courtesy, that disengagement! What of Charles in other places? What of the reputedly implacable man of affairs who had built his own fortune? Or of the lover Charles must have been five and twenty years ago? Impossible to imagine, Richard thought, looking vaguely at an empty niche in the wall.

He said, “Hullo! Where’s the T’ang musician?”

“Gone,” Charles said.

“Gone! Where! Not broken?”

“Chipped. The peg of her lute. Gracefield did it, I think. I’ve given her to Maurice Warrender.”

“But — even so — I mean, so often they’re not absolutely perfect and you — it was your treasure.”

“Not now,” Charles said. “I’m a perfectionist, you know.”

“That’s what you say!” Richard exclaimed warmly. “But I bet it was because Maurice always coveted her. You’re so absurdly generous.”

“Oh nonsense,” Charles said and looked at his paper. Richard hesitated. He heard himself say,

“Charles, do I ever say thank you? To you and Mary?”

“My dear fellow, what for?”

“For everything.” He took refuge in irony. “For befriending the poor orphan boy, you know, among other things.”

“I sincerely hope you’re not making a vicarious birthday resolution.”

“It just struck me.”

Charles waited for a moment and then said, “You’ve given us a trememdous interest and very much pleasure.” He again hesitated as if assembling his next sentence. “Mary and I,” he said at last, “look upon you as an achievement. And now, do go and make your pretty speeches to her.”

“Yes,” Richard said. “I’d better, hadn’t I? See you later.”

Charles raised his newspaper and Richard went slowly upstairs, wishing, consciously, for perhaps the first time in his life, that he was not going to visit Miss Bellamy.

She was in her room, dressed and enthroned among her presents. He slipped into another gear as he took her to his heart in a birthday embrace and then held her at arm’s length to tell her how lovely she looked.

“Darling, darling, darling!” she cried joyously. “How
perfect
of you to come. I’ve been hoping and hoping!”

It occurred to him that it would have been strange indeed if he hadn’t performed this time-honoured observance, but he kissed her again and gave her his present.

It was early in the day and her reservoir of enthusiasm scarcely tapped. She was able to pour a freshet of praise over his tinsel picture and did so with many cries of gratitude and wonder. Where, she asked, where,
where
had he discovered the
one
, the
perfect
present.