Getting It Right (34 page)

‘Are your parents living?’

‘Yes.’

‘Both of them?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you the only child?’

‘Oh, Gordon, what difference could
that
make?’

Sir Gordon waved his heavily laden fork dismissively at her and a pea fell on to the table. ‘Please don’t interrupt, Stella. I am talking to Mr Lane.’

‘Lamb.’

‘I am talking to Mr Lamb.’

‘I have a sister. She’s married.’ Lady Munday, he noticed, had different eating habits. She had speared up all her peas and was now popping bits of carrot into her scarlet
mouth. He glanced at Minnie who seemed simply to be re-arranging the food on her plate.

‘And what does your father do? Is he also concerned with hair?’

‘According to
you
, Gordon, he couldn’t be. Poovy people don’t have kiddies, do they? According to
you
.’

‘He has his own business. He’s a builder.’

‘His own business.’

‘I can’t see what difference it would make anyway. I mean,’ she explained to nobody in particular, ‘he might be a poove and working for someone else.
Or
he might
be poovy and have his own business. Or normal and not. My husband’s idea of normal is another matter; no more of that. I’m sick of that subject. Do you go to the theatre, Mr
Lamb?’

Relieved that the subject looked like changing, Gavin said that he did.

‘And what do you think of it? Nowadays?’

This gave him a fair idea of what
she
thought of it, but he said mildly: ‘Well, we’ve always had marvellous actors, haven’t we? But we seem to be a bit short on
playwrights.’

‘I used to be in the theatre and I couldn’t agree with you more . . . No
spectacle
. No tunes you can sing in the bath.’

‘If he has his own business, why did you not go into it?’

‘I didn’t want to.’

‘Seven thousand sequins sewn on to my dress for one little number! I sang it on a swing: the ropes were made of ostrich feathers. The whole thing only took four minutes. That was the sort
of trouble they took. Now everything’s as drab as can be.’

‘Am I to assume that you are one of those people who believe in pleasing themselves?’

Gavin looked desperately at Minnie, but she, most surprisingly, was positively gobbling her meal; eyes fixed on plate, and shovelling the stuff in as hard as she could go . . .

‘I believe in
trying
to,’ he said; ‘but it’s not all that easy, is it? I mean, there are so many other things you find you’re doing instead.’ (Like
having this amazingly boring lunch with you.
Why
had Minnie asked him?)

‘The old-fashioned virtues such as duty to others, a sense of responsibility and unselfishness mean absolutely nothing to you?’

‘I can’t imagine what on earth they mean to you, Gordon. I’ve never known you to do the teeniest thing for anybody else in your life. You always used to tell me how you knew
how to look after Number One. And I soon found out who that was.’

‘Stella, I am trying to hold a conversation with Mr Ram.’

‘I don’t call cross-examining someone a conversation. We don’t usually
have
conversations at meals . . . We usually eat them in silence. It isn’t a question of
“pas devant les domestiques” it’s pas devant any bloody body. I married beneath me,’ she explained more directly to Gavin, ‘and that’s saying something, if you
saw where I came from.’

And, before the silence could become ungovernably awful, she went on: ‘He’s a self-made man, and quite frankly I don’t think he’s made a very good job of it. I think
anyone else would have done better.’

Minnie quite suddenly slid off her chair and almost ran out of the room.

‘You will observe, Stella, that your thoughtless rambling has upset the girl.’

‘I expect she just wanted to go to the lavatory. And by the way,
his
,’ she pointed a scarlet-tipped finger at Gavin, ‘name is not Mr Lane. We all know that.’

‘I am perfectly aware of Mr Ram’s name,’ said Sir Gordon heavily. His face which had suffused to the colour of a ripening plum during the last few minutes was now draining to
the mauve twilit dusk of far-off hills. Unexpectedly (to Gavin) he offered his wife another gin, and unsurprisingly she accepted. When he had gone to get it, Lady Munday threw back her head and
made a little rocketing raucous noise that Gavin recognized as being her way of laughing. He had been feeling as though he was in some vehicle whose brakes had failed careering downhill towards
some – as yet unseen – dangerous corner: he felt frightened and irresponsible. He looked at his companion warily. He was beginning to see where Minnie got her capacity for embarrassing
people from.

She said: ‘Don’t mind
me
. I must have a little fun sometimes. I am so hellishly bored. If it wasn’t for that wretched girl I wouldn’t
be
here –
would never have married him.’

In spite of not wanting to, he went on looking at her: she was looking straight at him in just the way that Minnie did when she was telling him something unlikely – except that these same
round eyes were spikey with blue mascara. Also, he had the feeling that she was not lying.

‘For goodness’ sake, don’t marry her whatever you do. You’d have an awful time.’

Before he could say anything to this, Minnie came back into the room. Her face was chalky, but she looked relieved – even managed a little smile at him as she slid back into her seat. She
was immediately followed by her father, whose measured tread and concentration upon the tumbler that he held precluded anything else happening while he was walking about with a drink. Then, when he
had set it before his wife, he went to his seat and rang the bell, so conversation was further suspended.

By the time their meat plates had been cleared and they had all been served with apple pie and a choice of cream or custard, Lady Munday had practically finished her new drink, but Gavin
realized that it had had the effect of shutting her up, since, when conversation was again due to break out she remained silent, picking pieces of apple out of her pastry with her fork. It was Sir
Gordon who returned to the charge.

‘And what are your ambitions? If you have any.’

Gavin, after thinking for a moment, said that he thought he’d like to travel more.

‘You would like to travel more. And what do you intend to do on your travels?’

‘Well – just see things. Look at things.’

‘
See
things? See things,’ he repeated heavily. After – presumably – further thought, he said: ‘I fail to see what looking at things can have to do with
hair
. . .’

Gavin, who failed to see that too, remained silent.

‘I was, after all, inquiring about your ambitions.’

‘I thought you were asking me what I was interested in. I don’t think I’ve got any ambition in the way you mean.’

‘No ambition,’ reported Sir Gordon in a tone that balanced incredulity with disapproval. He looked round the table in a chairman-like manner to gain backing for this decree, but his
wife and daughter were engaged upon eating and not eating their apple pie. ‘I think we will adjourn this discussion until after lunch. We can resume it in my study.’

Which is what happened. Sir Gordon dispatched the women – Lady Munday to a sitting room where she could watch the tennis on television, and Minnie to the swimming pool by herself, after
she had said that she was going to take Gavin for a swim. He then conducted Gavin to a smaller, and intensely dark, room whose walls were upholstered in what looked like dark brown leather. There
was a stupendous desk and Sir Gordon seated himself behind it with his back to the small leaded window. Gavin, who he indicated should sit in an extremely uncomfortable chair facing him, could see
Minnie’s diminishing figure as she wandered aimlessly across the lawn towards the Monkey Puzzle and the wrought-iron gates.

There was a silence, during which Gavin wondered why Sir Gordon, who did not seem to like him, should want to go on talking to him, and secondly, why he, Gavin, who did not even want to be here
at all, was putting up with it.

‘Well, young man. Now we are alone, what have you to say for yourself?’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Don’t come
that
one on me. I wasn’t born yesterday.’ He gave a rather nasty smile, as though there was something obscene in the notion that he might have been,
waited, and as Gavin said nothing – simply stared at him – leaned forward, put his elbows on the desk. ‘I’m waiting,’ he said. The brass buttons on his cuffs were
angled and winking like a flarepath. Then he said: ‘I can understand your not wanting to bring up the subject in front of the women. But we’re alone now!’

‘Bring up what subject?’ In spite of himself, Gavin began to feel vaguely frightened. Here he was, miles from anywhere, shut up with this ghastly old tyrant –

‘It’s no use trying to brazen it out. I have information. I am perfectly aware of what you have been up to.’

This made Gavin feel momentarily better: so far as he knew or could think, he hadn’t been up to anything – didn’t lead that sort of life . . .

‘I happen to know that you have designs on my daughter. Have actually, in fact, the confounded cheek to get engaged to her without my permission, and we all know what getting engaged means
in these modern times. Don’t interrupt me. I also know the motives you must have for such behaviour. You think you’re on to a good thing. You think Daddy will pay anything to get you
safely married and you’ll live the life of Riley ever after. Don’t interrupt me. But you’ve made one serious mistake. My daughter hasn’t a penny of her own. Not – one
– single – penny.’ Here he leaned back in his chair again and folded his arms. ‘And finally,’ he announced, ‘if you were thinking of running away with her or
anything silly of the sort, let me tell you it won’t make a blind bit of difference.
Now
you may speak. If you can find anything to say.’

It ought to have been easy, but it wasn’t. Really, he didn’t know where to begin, and almost before the words were out of his mouth he realized that he’d begun in the wrong
place.

‘I don’t want to marry her at all,’ he said . . .

‘You don’t want to marry her! Well, you young hound, you may have to! I’m not having my daughter interfered with for nothing.’

‘I haven’t done anything to her! I don’t know what she’s told you, but I’m just a sort of friend. I hardly know her!’

With some trepidation, he noticed that Sir Gordon’s face was slowly suffusing again to plum, but he felt pretty hot himself. He remembered Minnie’s voice on the telephone –
‘I’ve got a very special reason for asking you’ – and felt himself blushing with rage. This, he soon realized, was misinterpreted by Minnie’s father who leaned forward
suddenly and stabbing a podgy finger at him said: ‘You can’t quite bring yourself to say
that
without shame, can you? When you know all the time the girl’s pregnant. I
suppose you’ll tell me next that you had nothing to do with that?’

‘Yes. I
will
be telling you that. I mean I
am
telling you. But I don’t believe that either. She tells
lies
. She’s always told them,’ he added,
discovering this clearly for the first time. ‘You must know that. She’s neurotic, or something.’

‘Oh – we’ve spent a fortune on that nonsense. If we find someone for her to go to, she doesn’t stay with them. No expense has been spared, believe me. But the fact
remains, that she
is
pregnant; can’t keep her food down, been fainting, all that sort of thing; dammit, she must be pregnant!’

‘She might just be ill. I don’t mean “just”,’ he amended hastily, ‘but if she’s told you she’s pregnant and it’s me, ten to one she’s
making it all up.’

‘You’ve had nothing like that to do with her?’

‘Nothing like that – no.’

Sir Gordon was palpably taken aback. ‘I stopped her allowance,’ he said at last. ‘To try and flush out whoever it was. I thought it had worked because she asked if you could
come down, and I said why, and then she told me. All that. Naturally, I thought you were after her money.’

‘How could I be when she hasn’t got any?’

‘You must have known I was well heeled. Don’t tell me you didn’t know that.’

‘She told me you were a Lord and lived in a castle with a deer park.’ As he said this, he was conscious of treachery to the wretched Minnie.
She
had said all that to please
his mother; she
was
maddening, of course, but she looked ill and was probably off her rocker, and here he was almost colluding with this awful man – getting himself off the hook by
vilifying her. ‘It was just a harmless joke,’ he said weakly.

‘I don’t know about that – course, she was exaggerating a bit. After all, I’ve a title, and this isn’t the only property I own, you know – not by a long
chalk.’

It was almost as though he’d
tried
to be appeasing – as though the mention of the deer park was a kind of sucking up.

‘Well – it would seem that you’re
not
after my money, and that’s one up to you. I’ll make you a proposition. If you marry her and make a success of it,
I’ll give you a real job with prospects. Meanwhile, I’ll pay you a lump sum (to be decided at some later date) to get out of this hairdressing caper on condition that you put the money
down for a house – or a flat if that’s what you turn out to afford. I’ve given up any hopes of her turning out like my Sheila: she’s not going to better herself and
I’m no snob. Mind you, there’s nothing like a wife and child to give a chap a nudge up the ladder. And, if you feel discouraged at times, ’cos mind you, I’ll work you
hard
, make no mistake about that, remember
I
did it. Think of me. Left school when I was fifteen and worked my way up from making the tea.’ Self-satisfaction was making him
sweat, and he pulled out a huge silk handkerchief with bull terriers on it to wipe his face. ‘I’ve her interests at heart,’ he finished, ‘and there’s no more I can do
for her. Won’t be sorry to have her off my hands!’ He smiled as though this was a little joke that he knew Gavin would understand.