Something in Disguise (11 page)

While Henry was seeing to his drink, the colonel picked up the business-like typewritten menu. Potted shrimps, fresh asparagus,
paté maison
and
oeufs en gelée
: damn
difficult to choose. A young waitress with rippling red hair, and a real figure, came to clear away the spare place.

‘Good morning.’

‘Good morning, sir.’

‘Haven’t seen you before. What’s your name?’

‘My name is Maureen, sir.’

She wore high-heeled shoes and definitely naughty stockings.

‘From Oiled Oiland are you?’

‘From Dublin, sir.’

She had bent to pick up the mitred napkin and put it on her tray. ‘There is something about a starched apron stretched across a decent pair of breasts that brings out the worst in
me,’ he thought, delighted with himself.

He watched her walk languorously across to the sideboard with her tray: good from the back, too. He turned to the second course. Salmon trout, game pie, roast saddle of lamb, grilled kidneys and
bacon . . .

‘Here you are, sir. No ice for you, isn’t it, sir.’ It was Henry with the drink. ‘I’ll send Doris to you for your order.’ Two members had entered the
dining-room and stood waiting for their table and to tell Henry that he didn’t look a day older.

The colonel sipped his drink and felt in his inner breast pocket for his spectacles. He was wearing a lemon yellow carnation, that looked very well against his fine, black-and-white houndstooth
check. Now he could see the menu with no trouble at all, and by God, it made a nice change from poor old May’s efforts: all one wanted was good, simple food, produced at regular intervals
with no fuss. He decided upon potted shrimps and game pie. Doris, standing by the sideboard, realized that he’d decided and padded over to him. She wore sensible, low-heeled shoes with double
straps, thick, fawn cotton stockings and a very great deal of uncompromisingly heavy make-up. Her uniform made her look as though she’d be a wonderful old girl in an emergency.

‘Ready to order, sir, are you?’

‘Why not, Doris, why not? Tell me – what is your opinion of the game pie?’

‘It’s very nice, sir.’

‘Then I’ll risk it. Now, as we both know perfectly well what garden peas are, what other vegetable would you recommend?’

‘I’d have the broccoli, sir – it’s fresh.’ She’d told him at least fifty times that the peas were frozen, but he’d got it into his head that they were
tinned and there was no shifting him.

‘And what to start with, sir?’

‘A few potted shrimps would do.’

‘Thank you, sir. I’ll send the wine waiter.’

When he had ordered his usual, half a bottle of club claret he started to review his morning’s work. ‘Lawyers all the morning – you know how it is,’ he murmured to
himself, in case he met any members he knew who would ask him what he was doing with himself these days. He didn’t – not even the member who had suggested this particular firm to him as
very decent chaps. It had been a ticklish business. Because what he’d wanted to know didn’t sound right, somehow, as something to walk in and ask a total stranger about. He’d had
to sort of lead up to it – hedge the whole thing a bit. He’d been wanting to make his will, he said, and old so-and-so had put him on to
you
. They’d had a brief talk – well,
exchanged a few remarks about their supposedly mutual friend (whom he had only met twice) at the end of which he decided that the lawyer barely knew who they were talking about. So much the better:
he didn’t like the idea of his private affairs getting about, and although these chaps were supposed to be discreet – how could you tell? Well – about his will. He didn’t,
of course, want to leave his wife in a jam, and although he was in the best of health, it was as well to be on the safe side. The lawyer (his name was Mr Pinkney) who had been trained for years to
agree with this view, agreed with it. He’d have to make a list of his securities and so forth: there would be a pension of course, but apart from that . . . but the thing was, that their
house, their home in Surrey, happened to be in her name – so legally he supposed it was hers anyway, whether he kicked the bucket or not? And he fixed the lawyer with a look of piercing,
frank anxiety. Yes, of course, the house (freehold or leasehold? Freehold? So much the better) was certainly the property of his wife – he’d be very happy to look at the deeds of
course, but from what the colonel was telling him there would seem to be no doubt upon this point. The colonel relaxed almost theatrically – that is to say that if you had been up to a
hundred yards away from him at the time you would have seen that that was what he was doing. It depended, Mr Pinkney went on rather more warmly (nice old chap – simply didn’t know the
first thing about business; you got it again and again with these retired servicemen), on the size of the colonel’s estate. One might reach a position where, if things were not carefully
arranged, his wife might not have sufficient income to
live
in the house, in which case, although it was a realizable asset, she might be placed in some temporary embarrassment . . . She
wouldn’t
want
to live in the place without him, the colonel said: far too big for her – she’d be lonely in it. That reminded him of another, small point: supposing
she
were to die – would the house then naturally belong to him? Trifling point, but as he was here, he might as well clear up everything he could. Had his wife made a will, Mr Pinkney
inquired? He believed she had made one years ago – before she married him. All wills made prior to marriage become invalid upon that ceremony, and it was necessary to make fresh ones. Of
course, if Mrs Browne-Lacey did
not
make another will, her estate would naturally go to her husband – and vice versa. Unless, of course there were children on either side by previous
marriages? What would happen then? asked the colonel – a trifle sharply (Mr Pinkney must understand that all this legal jaw was quite difficult for a plain, simple, ordinary man to follow),
he hadn’t quite grasped what Mr Pinkney was driving at about children . . .

Mr Pinkney had explained. Having established that there were no children of the present marriage, nor likely to be, he had gone carefully into the respective situations of Alice and of Oliver
and Elizabeth. The colonel had thanked him heartily for making everything so clear, had got to his feet saying that the whole matter needed thinking about, but that he would be in touch when he had
done his sums, and had finished by giving Mr Pinkney one of his handshakes (Oliver had once described them as Tarzan pretending to be a Freemason).

By now he was well into the game pie and wondering whether he would have room for cheese. There was no need to worry about
Alice
; she would never cause any trouble, and in any case, as he
had explained to Mr Pinkney, she had married a man of substance. The trouble, which he had
not
mentioned to Mr Pinkney, was clearly May’s children. She was besotted with them, and
really he wouldn’t put it past her either to leave them so much of her estate that the house had to be sold to realize the cash for them, or, and possibly worse, to leave them the actual
house. And it was now clear that if she
didn’t
make another will, they – in fact he meant Oliver – would start kicking up if they didn’t get what they thought was a
fair share of the great-aunt’s money. Elizabeth would almost certainly get married, but who knew what the feller might turn out to be like? One of those grasping fellers with a legal mind, or
else one of those damn pacifist wallahs who wouldn’t use birth-control. It really wasn’t fair at his time of life that he should have to sit here worrying whether he would have a roof
over his head. He wouldn’t have cheese – just a brandy with his coffee. Lucky to be able to afford
that
.

‘One of them is cherry brandy and the other’s orange curaçao.’ May looked from Dr Sedum to Lavinia. She looked both anxious and triumphant; she was
very proud of herself for remembering the two miniature bottles she’d given the children in their stockings at Christmas, but she was worried lest both drinks might prove too
frivolous
for Dr Sedum. The coffee – made the way that Elizabeth had taught her – now stood on the trolley. It
was
such a pity there was no brandy, but she’d said that once –
before she’d remembered the miniatures.

‘Which are
you
going to drink?’ inquired Dr Sedum.

‘Oh neither. I don’t like it – them. At least, sometimes I do, but not today.’ (It was frightful the way she caught herself out telling a lie to Dr Sedum – it
showed what she was like. ‘I expect I only noticed it because he was here, and really I tell thousands of lies without noticing’.)

Dr Sedum turned to Lavinia: she did not mind which she drank. Impartiality – in Dr Sedum’s case, a touch roguish – seemed to be the code; May, without meaning to, suddenly
imagined Oliver being there, but dismissed him at once. Oliver wouldn’t really understand Dr Sedum, who was simply trying to . . .

‘. . . enter into the spirit of the thing.’ He was smiling again.

‘I’m afraid there isn’t much spirit in two miniatures.’ May heard herself saying this as though someone else had said it.

The drinks were poured, and people lit cigarettes. Now, perhaps Dr Sedum would talk. He did.

At the time, she knew that it was absolutely fascinating – although of course, very difficult. Afterwards, they had got to their feet, put on their coats, stood silently eyeing one another
(a kind of mystical weighing up, she had felt, although
she
was naturally not up to this process; she knew she wasn’t fit, as they so obviously were, to weigh anyone) and then walked
quietly to the Bentley, where Dr Sedum most
humanly
had wound a rather ugly woollen muffler round his throat before getting into the front seat beside Lavinia – all without a single
(unnecessary) word; oh yes, as they drove off, he raised his hand in a manner which reminded her, before she could stop herself, of the queen mother. Then, after they had gone, almost at once, as
she turned to the huge prison front door, she had started trying to sum up all those breathtaking things he had been saying. About one’s identity and not actually having one – it being
all a desperate egocentric invention. Only, on the other hand, everybody had what he described as a true personality buried out of sight of conscious understanding. How did one find it then, she
had asked? A very good question, he had answered. The trouble with very good questions seemed to be that their very quality guaranteed their not being answered. There would be a pause, and then
– he had so much to give – he would say something quite different. There were certain people, he had said, who were searching for something very difficult to find, who did not
want
or expect the search to be an easy one. Not for them the panacea of some universal dogma and a set of rules, penalties and rewards. There were a few people who understood that there
could be no rules, no penalties and no rewards. A rule only manifested itself after one had broken it: the person paying a penalty was the last one to discover what it was, and to be aware of a
reward was to understand a failure in oneself. There was no such thing as cause and effect, simply a chain joined upon itself and one had the choice of being a bead upon the chain, or the chain
itself. What happened when one became one of those things? But this, alas, turned out to be another good question. It was not possible either to take or to give anything to anyone: the hysteria of
that kind of practical morality had to be discarded. People were not able either to give or to take – they simply were; the problem was how to discover
what
they were. It was sometimes
necessary to demonstrate the impracticability of giving and taking by going through these motions: many people embarking upon the precious and mysterious search had to be initiated in this manner.
One could not understand the emptiness of any gesture until one had made it. Then he had talked about the Unconscious Self and Emotion – not as she, May, and indeed most people defined that
word, but something that none of us were, initially at least, capable of feeling (that was when she realized that it had a capital E); indeed, most people went through their lives without being
aware of its existence; ‘Like me,’ she had thought – she was indeed, she felt, like most people in every respect. What did one do with this Emotion when one got hold of it? A good
question: one had then to make it continuous. It sounded awfully tiring, she had thought, and then felt thoroughly ashamed of herself for being so feeble. While she was thinking this, Dr Sedum had
gone on speaking, but so quietly that she hadn’t been able to hear, let alone understand what he had said. Then he suddenly rose, and suggested looking at the house. She had thought that he
meant he wanted to go to the lavatory, but she had turned out to be embarrassingly wrong. He had wanted to see the whole house, and so, uncomfortably, she had showed both him and Lavinia.
‘Some white elephant,’ Lavinia had remarked at the end of their tour. ‘Oliver, my son, said a real white elephant couldn’t possibly be more trouble and would be far more
interesting.’ Neither of them had smiled, and she had realized that darling Oliver would seem incurably frivolous to them. Back in the morning room, Dr Sedum had murmured that it was always
easier to set out on a journey lightly appointed, and then, Lavinia having reminded him that
he
had an appointment in London, they all got up from the chairs they had returned to. That was
roughly it. But she couldn’t pretend to herself that she under
stood
much of it. They had said that they would get in touch with her very soon, so at least she hadn’t been
rejected out of hand. That was something. She walked dreamily back to the morning room in order to set about the frightful task of returning it to its usual state of barren, under-furnished
drabness. She was immensely
interested
, she repeated to herself, but not yet actually
enlightened
.

Hilda had one of those awful beds that squeaked. As he leaned forward to pull on his socks, the colonel shifted his weight to allow for or avoid the noise, and failed.
He’d got one sock on before he realized that it was inside out. Damn, he thought. It was extraordinary how everything invariably combined to irritate him after one of these sessions. He would
set about them feeling quite jolly and serene: ring up Hilda, who seemed always to be free and always glad to see him – ‘Pop along’ to her place (remember to ring her flat bell in
the rhythm of ‘Colonel Bogey’ – it always made her laugh) and there you were; Bob’s your uncle, all that kind of thing. Hilda was the good old-fashioned sort; properly
dressed to start with, but nippy enough getting out of it all – or whatever combination of all you fancied – and then there was a nice cup of tea and Bourbon biscuits afterwards . . .
here she was, with the tray, before he’d even got his
socks
on dammit.