Final Curtain (14 page)

‘Aunt Pauline,' said Fenella, ‘I'm sorry if you're not pleased, but—'

‘Ssh!' said Pauline.

‘Mother
is
pleased,' said Paul. ‘Aren't you, Mother?'

‘Ssh!' Pauline repeated distractedly.

‘Be silent!' Sir Henry shouted. He was now in the centre of the hearth-rug. It seemed to Troy that his first violence was being rapidly transmuted into something more histrionic and much less disturbing. He rested an elbow on the mantelpiece. He pressed two fingers and a thumb against his eyelids, removed his hand slowly, kept his eyes closed, frowned as if in pain, and finally sighed deeply and opened his eyes very wide indeed.

‘I'm an old fellow,' he said in a broken voice. ‘An old fellow. It's easy to hurt me. Very easy. You have dealt me a shrewd blow. Never mind. Let me suffer. Why not? It won't be for long. Not for long, now.'

‘Papa,
dearest
,' cried Pauline, sweeping up to him and clasping her hands. ‘You make us utterly miserable. Don't speak like that, don't. Not for the world would my boy cause you a moment's unhappiness. Let me talk quietly to these children. Papa, I implore you.'

‘This,' a voice whispered in Troy's ear, ‘is perfect Pinero.' She jumped violently. Cedric had slipped round behind his agitated relations and now leant over the back of her chair. ‘She played the name part, you know, in a revival of
The Second Mrs Tanqueray
.'

‘It's no use, Pauline. Let them go. They knew my wishes. They have chosen the cruellest way. Let them,' said Sir Henry with relish, ‘dree their weird.'

‘Thank you, Grandfather,' said Fenella brightly, but with a shake in her voice. ‘It's our weird and we shall be delighted to dree it.'

Sir Henry's face turned an uneven crimson. ‘This is insufferable,' he shouted, and his teeth, unable to cope with the violence of his diction, leapt precariously from their anchorage and were clamped angrily home. Fenella giggled nervously. ‘You are under age,' Sir Henry pronounced suddenly. ‘Under age, both of you. Pauline, if you have the smallest regard for your old father's wishes, you will forbid this lunacy. I shall speak to your mother, miss. I shall cable to your father.'

‘Mother won't mind,' said Fenella.

‘You know well, you know perfectly well, why I cannot countenance this nonsense.'

‘You think, don't you, Grandfather,' said Fenella, ‘that because we're cousins we'll have loopy young. Well, we've asked about that and it's most unlikely. Modern medical opinion—'

‘Be silent! At least let some semblance of decency—'

‘I
won't
be silent,' said Fenella, performing with dexterity the feat known by actors as topping the other man's lines. ‘And if we're to talk about decency, Grandfather, I should have thought it was a damn sight more decent for two people who are young and in love to say they're going to marry each other than for an old man to make an exhibition of himself—'

‘
Fenella!
' shouted Pauline and Millamant in unison.

‘—doting on a peroxide blonde fifty years younger than himself, and a brazen gold-digger into the bargain.'

Fenella then burst into tears and ran out of the room, followed rigidly by Paul.

Troy, who had once more determined to make her escape, heard Fenella weeping stormily outside the door and stayed where she was. The remaining Ancreds were all talking at once. Sir Henry beat his fist on the mantelpiece until the ornaments danced again, and roared out: ‘My God, I'll not have her under my roof another hour! My God—!' Millamant and Pauline, on either side of him like a distracted chorus, wrung their hands and uttered plaintive cries. Cedric chattered noisily behind the sofa, where Miss Orrincourt still lay. It was she who put a stop to this ensemble by rising and confronting them with her hands on her hips.

‘I am not remaining here,' said Miss Orrincourt piercingly, ‘to be insulted. Remarks have been passed in this room that no self-respecting girl in my delicate position can be expected to endure. Noddy!'

Sir Henry, who had continued his beating of the mantel-piece during this speech, stopped short and looked at her with a kind of nervousness.

‘Since announcements,' said Miss Orrincourt, ‘are in the air, Noddy, haven't we got something to say ourselves in that line? Or,' she added ominously, ‘have we?'

She looked lovely standing there. It was an entirely plastic loveliness, an affair of colour and shape, of line and texture. It was so complete in its kind, Troy thought, that to bring a consideration of character or vulgarity to bear upon it would be to labour at an irrelevant synthesis. In her kind she was perfect. ‘What about it, Noddy?' she said.

Sir Henry stared at her, pulled down his waistcoat, straightened his back and took her hand. ‘Whenever you wish, my dear,' he said, ‘whenever you wish.'

Pauline and Millamant fell back from them, Cedric drew in his breath and touched his moustache. Troy saw, with astonishment, that his hand was shaking.

‘I had intended,' Sir Henry said, ‘to make this announcement at The Birthday. Now, however, when I realize only too bitterly that my family cares little, cares nothing for my happiness' (‘
Papa!
' Pauline wailed), ‘I turn, in my hour of sorrow, to One who does Care.'

‘Uh-huh!' Miss Orrincourt assented. ‘But keep it sunny-side-up, Petty-pie.'

Sir Henry, less disconcerted than one would have thought possible by this interjection, gathered himself together.

‘This lady,' he said loudly, ‘has graciously consented to become my wife.'

Considering the intensity of their emotions, Troy felt that the Ancreds really behaved with great aplomb. It was true that Pauline and Millamant were, for a moment, blankly silent, but Cedric almost immediately ran out from cover and seized his grandfather by the hand.

‘Dearest Grandpapa—couldn't be more delighted—too marvellous. Sonia,
darling
,' he babbled, ‘
such
fun,' and he kissed her.

‘Well, Papa,' said Millamant, following her son's lead but not kissing Miss Orrincourt, ‘we can't say that it's altogether a surprise, can we? I'm sure we all hope you'll be very happy.'

Pauline was more emotional. ‘Dearest,' she said, taking her father's hands and gazing with wet eyes into his face, ‘dearest, dearest Papa. Please, please believe my only desire is for your happiness.'

Sir Henry inclined his head. Pauline made an upward pounce at his moustache. ‘Oh, Pauline,' he said with an air of tragic resignation, ‘I have been wounded, Pauline! Deeply wounded!'

‘No,' cried Pauline. ‘No!'

‘Yes,' sighed Sir Henry. ‘Yes.'

Pauline turned blindly from him and offered her hand to Miss Orrincourt. ‘Be good to him,' she said brokenly. ‘It's all we ask. Be good to him.'

With an eloquent gesture, Sir Henry turned aside, crossed the room, and flung himself into a hitherto unoccupied armchair. It made a loud and extremely vulgar noise.

Sir Henry, scarlet in the face, leapt to his feet and snatched up the loose cushioned seat. He exposed a still partially inflated bladder-like object, across which was printed a legend, ‘The Raspberry. Makes your Party go off with a Bang.' He seized it, and again, through some concealed orifice, it emitted its dreadful sound. He hurled it accurately into the fire and the stench of burning rubber filled the room.

‘Well, I mean to say,' said Miss Orrincourt, ‘fun's fun, but I think that kid's getting common in her ways.'

Sir Henry walked in silence to the door, where, inevitably, he turned to deliver an exit line. ‘Millamant,' he said, ‘in the morning you will be good enough to send for my solicitor.'

The door banged. After a minute's complete silence Troy was at last able to escape from the drawing-room.

Troy was not much surprised in the morning to learn that Sir Henry was too unwell to appear, though he hoped in the afternoon to resume the usual sitting. A note on her early tea-tray informed her that Cedric would be delighted to pose in the costume if this would be of any service. She thought it might. There was the scarlet cloak to be attended to. She had half-expected a disintegration of the family forces, at least the disappearance, possibly in opposite directions, of Fenella and Paul. She had yet to learn of the Ancreds' resilience in inter-tribal warfare. At breakfast they both appeared—Fenella, white and silent; Paul, red and silent. Pauline arrived a little later. Her attitude to her son suggested that he was ill of some not entirely respectable disease. With Fenella she adopted an air of pained antipathy and would scarcely speak to her. Millamant presided. She was less jolly than usual, but behind her anxiety, if she was indeed anxious, Troy detected a hint of complacency. There was more than a touch of condolence in her manner towards her sister-in-law, and this, Troy felt, Pauline deeply resented.

‘Well, Milly,' said Pauline after a long silence, ‘do you propose to continue your role under new management?'

‘I'm always rather lost, Pauline, when you adopt theatrical figures of speech.'

‘Are you going to house-keep, then, for the new châtelaine?'

‘I hardly expect to do so.'

‘Poor Milly,' said Pauline. ‘It's going to be, difficult for you, I'm afraid.'

‘I don't think so. Cedric and I have always thought we'd like to have a little
pied-à-terre
together in London.'

‘Yes,' Pauline agreed, much too readily, ‘Cedric will have to draw in his horns a bit too, one supposes.'

‘Perhaps Paul and Fenella would consider allowing me to house-keep for them,' said Millamant, with her first laugh that morning. And with an air of genuine interest she turned to them. ‘How
are
you going to manage, both of you?' she asked.

‘Like any other husband and wife without money,' said Fenella. ‘Paul's got his pension and I've got my profession. We'll both get jobs.'

‘Oh, well,' said Millamant comfortably, ‘perhaps after all, your grandfather—'

‘We don't want Grandfather to do anything, Aunt Milly,' said Paul quickly. ‘He wouldn't anyway, of course, but we don't want him to.'

‘Dearest!' said his mother. ‘So hard! So bitter! I don't know you, Paul, when you talk like that. Something'—she glanced with extraordinary distaste at Fenella—‘has changed you so dreadfully.'

‘Where,' asked Millamant brightly, ‘is Panty?'

‘Where should she be if not in school?' Pauline countered with dignity. ‘She is not in the habit of breakfasting with us, Milly.'

‘Well, you never know,' said Millamant. ‘She seems to get about quite a lot, doesn't she? And, by the way, Pauline, I've a bone to pick with Panty myself. Someone has interfered with My Work. A large section of embroidery has been deliberately unpicked. I'd left it in the drawing-room and—'

‘Panty never goes there,' cried Pauline.

‘Well, I don't know about that. She must, for instance, have been in the drawing-room last evening during dinner.'

‘Why?'

‘Because Sonia, as I suppose we must call her, says she sat in that chair before dinner, Pauline. She says it was perfectly normal.'

‘I can't help that, Milly. Panty did not come into the drawing-room last night at dinner-time for the very good reason that she and the other children were given their medicine then and sent early to bed. You told me yourself, Milly, that Miss Able found the medicine in the flower-room and took it straight in for Dr Withers to give the children.'

‘Oh, yes,' said Millamant. ‘Would you believe it, the extraordinary Sonia didn't trouble to take it in to Miss Able, or to give Papa's bottle to me. She merely went to the flower-room, where it seems,' said Millamant with a sniff, ‘orchids had been brought in for her; and dumped the lot. Miss Able hunted everywhere before she found it, and so did I.'

‘T'uh,' said Pauline.