My Other Life (24 page)

I was disconcerted by her not speaking to me, and by her incongruity—she was so bright, so delicate in this big shadowy house—and I was disturbed by the fact that I could not smell food cooking. I slipped into the hall to look for the toilet—the Filipino woman, correctly guessing what I was looking for, pointed to the door when she saw me hesitating. Inside were more black shadows, and dammy walls and cold tiles, and again I wished I had stayed home. A satirical print by Rowlandson hung above the basin.

When I returned to the drawing room, the guests were putting their coats on.

"We're going to dinner," Lady Max said. "It's right down the road."

We trooped out to Brompton Road, to a French restaurant called La Tour Eiffel, and we were shown to the sort of secluded wood-paneled private room that I associated with trysting couples or rowdy men. Over the windows hung dusty velvet curtains with fat gold tassels. After we handed over our coats, Lady Max seated us. I was confused, and I wondered if the others were too. Mrs. Lasch's head was down and she was whispering urgently to her husband. The woman named Pippa was on my right, Marwood on my left.

"Where is Walter Van Bellamy?" Lady Max said.

He had gone—vanished on the way—but Lady Max laughed and said that it was just like him. "He's crackers, you know. The real thing."

A bored-looking French waiter in a much too tight shirt, with damp hair and a hot face, entered the little room and gave us menus and then recited the day's specials and the no-longer-available dishes, speaking in a parody French accent.

Pippa said, "Do you mind? My menu is sticky. I can't stand that," and made a face and handed it to the waiter, who looked offended.

"Shall we have some wine?" Lady Max was addressing the waiter. "The house wine comes in a filthy carafe and tastes like nail varnish. Two bottles of Meursault, make it three, and you can bring them now."

"Drinking Meursault always makes me think I am entering into the spirit of Camus's
L'Etranger,
" Heavage said to me.

But Lady Max was still directing the waiter. She had become a brisk and attentive hostess from her vantage point at the head of the table. There was a tension of authority in the way she sat, in her lifted chin, in the angle of her body—she was twitching, alert, full of suggestions.

After the wine was poured, the waiter took up his pad, saying, "And in addition zere are fresh lobstairs zis ivneen. Zay are not on ze meenue."

"Not real lobsters," Lady Max said, shivering as though insulted by the word. "They're just these pathetic little discolored crayfish from Scotland."

The waiter stood clicking his ballpoint.

"But the potted shrimps are super."

We all ordered potted shrimps.

"And the jugged hare," Lady Max said, and muttered the name in French while licking her lips.

"
Ragoût de lièvre,
" Heavage said in his pedantic accent.

Hearing him, I thought: The English are a nation of pedants, always correcting you, and they hate themselves for being that way, because being in the right is such a dull pleasure.

Lady Max smiled at Heavage—a smile of disapproval—and said, "They do it with chestnuts here."

Most of us ordered that too, except Pippa, who said she was a vegetarian. Hearing her announce it, Marwood growled impatiently. Pippa conferred nervously with the waiter and finally settled on the ratatouille.

"And I will bring a selection of vegetables."

"If you must," Lady Max said. She lit a cigarette and dismissed him, exhaling and flinging smoke at him with her fingers in a witch-like gesture. "They do fuss so, and they don't mean a word of it."

We chatted among ourselves until Pippa called out to Lady Max, "Do you often have supper here?"

"What is supper? Is it something you eat?" Lady Max asked.

Pippa made a terse explanation of the word.

"Surely this is dinner," Lady Max said.

"Working-class people have supper," Marwood said.

"'Working class' is a euphemism I just adore," Lady Max said.

The waiter began serving the potted shrimps—a small ceramic dish of pink bubbly paste, with a stack of toast.

As we spread it on the toast, Lady Max, still smoking, said, "I do hate being served promptly. It's like rudeness, and I always think there's something wrong with the food."

"I come to that conclusion when my menu's sticky," Pippa said.

"Tea is a meal for them. Dinner is lunch," Marwood said. "I know this through my staff. They have 'afters.'"

"They are extraordinary," Lady Max said. "I always think inventing these ridiculous names for meals is a way of saving money on food."

"And," Heavage added in an announcing way, "they go to the
toilet.
" He was at the teasing and silly stage of drunkenness—the teasing that turned cruel and then sadistic. "That is, working-class people."

Lady Max smiled disgustedly. She said, "I cannot stand that word. Does anyone actually say it?"

We laughed—everyone except Pippa—to please the hostess, as though none of us actually used the word.

'"Toilets' is an anagram of T. S. Eliot," Mr. Lasch said, but no one heard him because Marwood was being indignant again.

"And 'cheers' is another one I hate," he said.

Hearing him, or rather mishearing him, Heavage said, "Cheers," and emptied his glass.

Looking at me, Lady Max said, "I love the expression 'white trash.' Americans are so graphic. Do you suppose we could introduce it here?"

"I'm sorry, but I find this whole conversation quite objectionable," Pippa said.

Marwood leaned in front of me and put his face against Pippa's and said, "Miss Lower-Middle-Class-And-She-Knows-It is trying to be the sincere proletarian again."

"Of course, with the help of your staff, you're an authority on the subtle nuances of class," Pippa said, blinking but standing her ground.

"Yes, and rather more than I'm given credit for by second-rate book reviewers," Marwood said, making it obvious that at some point Pippa had given one of his novels an unfavorable review.

"Someone, I think it was a shop girl, said 'You're welcome' to me the other day," Lady Max said, ending the standoff between Marwood and Pippa.

"What a ridiculous American expression," Heavage said.

"Have a nice day," Mr. Lasch said to his wife, who replied, "Sony, I have other plans."

But no one took any notice of them, because Lady Max was saying, "'You're welcome' is not ridiculous at all. It's an effective response. Say 'thank you' in England and the other person simply mutters and chews his lips."

"I suppose it's no worse than
prego,
" Heavage said. "It's less objectionable than
bitte.
It's rather like
pozhal'st.
"

"You've lost us," Mr. Lasch said.

"One of those useful and happily ambiguous expressions like 'I'd like to see more of you,'" Lady Max said, and she smiled at me.

Then the jugged hare was served. It came in an earthenware crock submerged with carrots and chestnuts in a brown stew. The waiter hurried back and forth, sighing, laying out the dishes of vegetables, and when he waited on me his whole body radiated sweaty heat, and I could hear him breathing impatiently.

"Bring more wine," Lady Max said.

"Thank you," the waiter said.

"You're welcome," Lady Max said, and looked at Heavage. "You see?"

We were still on language. We discussed the correct pronunciation of certain English names, such as Marylebone and Theobalds and Cholmondley. This, I guessed, was all for my benefit.

Mr. Lasch spelled "Featherstonehaugh" and said, "Fanshaw."

Marwood smiled and said, "I've got one. It looks like 'Woolfardisworthy.'"

"Woolsey," Pippa said, and turned her cold eyes on him.

"My grandfather pronounced the word 'leisure' the American way," Lady Max said, with another glance at me. "Leezhah."

In a solicitous, almost servile way Marwood asked, "How is your daughter Allegra?"

"Flourishing," Lady Max said. "That foolish person Mr. Pieplate—well, that's what I call him—is still chasing her. He took her to an embassy party and she deliberately wore a transparent lace—absolutely in the noddy underneath. It scandalized the Muslims there and it drove him wild. He doesn't even know she's sixteen years old. What an ass he is."

"She might fall for him," Marwood said.

"Lucky old Pieplate if she did. But it won't happen. Allegra's much too heartless. They all are. That's why I don't worry about her. It's her loss. And I know how she feels. At her age I was being squired around by Boothby."

"Wasn't he a bit fruity?" Heavage asked.

"He was, but not exclusively. Anyway I fended him off."

She said
orf,
as she had said
lorse.

Her mention of Lord Boothby turned the conversation to the Kray brothers, a pair of London murderers he had befriended, and to a lot of sixties gossip about the Profumo affair. And again I felt this was for my benefit, as though the dinner were a little seminar on English life that Lady Max had arranged for me.

Seeing a new waiter approach, Lady Max said, "Another waiter, another course. And this one has the implacable look of pudding on his face."

The waiter showed no sign that he had heard this. He said, "Shall I bring the trolley?"

"It will just be stale gâteau and puddings and sticky buns on wheels." She was not facing the waiter when she added, "Why don't you just flambé some crepes for us. There's a good chap."

For the next twenty minutes the waiter labored at his portable grill, first making the crepes—seven of them—and then folding them in a silver dish. He methodically made the sauce, scorching sugar cubes with melted butter in a frying pan and then sousing the crepes with this sauce. He poured gouts of Grand Marnier onto them after that, and set them on fire. He then rearranged them on individual plates, still spooning sauce, and served them.

This elaborate procedure killed conversation, and when we started eating the crepes, and Pippa made a remark about them—"Delicious. This is only the second time in my life..."—Lady Max cut her off, as though it were bad manners to comment on the food.

"Queen Mum's out of the hospital today, bless her," Lady Max said.

"The Royal Barge," Heavage said, frowning drunkenly.

"I know several of her intimates," Lady Max said. "They call her Cake, you know, behind her back, and I do think it suits her. Her staff are exclusively poufs. One night she got on the phone to them—they were in the kitchen. She said, 'I don't know about you queens down there, but this queen wants a drink!'"

It was well after midnight—you knew it from the gloomy resentment on the waiters' faces as they ostentatiously stood around after liqueurs and coffee. They had missed the last tube trains. There was only the chance of an irregular night bus from now on.

The bill, folded in half, had been resting on the saucer at Lady Max's elbow since coffee. She had taken no notice of it.

At last, exhaling smoke on it, she unfolded it by poking it open with her fingers and said, "I'm terrible at maths. What is ninety-six divided by seven?"

Ninety-six pounds was the amount of my monthly mortgage payment, and it seemed incredible to me that we had gobbled up a whole mortgage payment. And, worse, that I was being asked to pay my share. I remembered Lady Max saying, "Bring more wine."

"Is service included?" Marwood asked.

Heavage picked up the bill and squinted at it. "Call it fourteen each," he said.

The Lasches had gone pale, their faces displaying the agony I felt.

"And a quid each for the tip." Heavage dropped the bill.

"Fifteen even." Marwood began poking through bank notes in a leather pouch.

Fifteen pounds. It was what I was paid for a book review. Heavage knew that but did not seem to care. I pretended to look through my wallet, but I knew when I heard the figure that I did not have it, nor any sum near it, and neither did Pippa, and this inspired in me a sort of kinship with her. She wrote Lady Max a check, and so did Mr. Lasch. I fingered a crisp five-pound note. I had some coins but needed them for the bus.

"I'll have to owe you the rest," I said.

"I'll collect it one way or another," Lady Max said.

The bus went only as far as the depot at the south end of Battersea Bridge, and so without enough money for another bus fare I walked the rest of the way home in a drizzling mist, kicking the paving stones.

The only certainty in my London life was my writing. I felt this was a way for me to make a place for myself in the city. Although the novel I was writing was a jungle book, it was penetrated with London. It was my London work. And I wondered whether the opposite might be true—if I wrote a London story in New Guinea, would the book seem jungly and overbright?

I needed to sit down alone and write the next day. Alison had asked without much interest how the evening had gone and I said fine.

"Rich food, small talk, gossip, and indigestion. I didn't even get drunk."

"I'm glad I stayed at home," she said.

I somewhat envied her indifference. It was the reason she could be so serene. But I was obnoxiously curious about everything and had to pretend not to be, because it was so un-English to be nosy and to ask probing questions.

I said almost nothing else to her about the strange meal, Lady Max's Dutch treat—the way she had invited us, ordered all the food and wine, and then charged us. I concealed my embarrassment, because I could not tell her the whole truth. How could I tell Alison these misleading details until I knew everything myself? This was a story without an ending, without even a middle. I felt sure there would be more. There would be consequences.

I sat down and continued my novel, as I did every day. I wrote a paragraph that day and a few pages the next. If I wrote nothing in the morning, I forced myself to write something after lunch. And on the days when I wrote well, I often turned aside and did a review—I had time for it because I had done my own work first. That week, after I made headway with my book, I read the first volume of
The Letters of Henry James
and made notes for what I hoped would be a lead review.