Something in Disguise (18 page)

‘Come to dinner,’ called John, who had seen Oliver’s face.

She lifted her right hand like someone stopping a bus by way of a reply and disappeared through the changing-room door.

‘Does that mean she
is
coming, or she isn’t?’ asked Elizabeth as they walked up the stairs to the restaurant.

‘Time will tell.’ Oliver felt obscurely irritated by the whole encounter. He had been afraid that Ginny would express too much surprise at his presence – thereby implying that
he had followed her to France when he was pretty sure he would have come anyway, whether she had been there or not – but her total lack of interest in his sudden appearance was far more
galling. And John seemed to have run the whole thing . . .

‘Hope you didn’t mind my asking her,’ John was saying, ‘I just thought it might be fun.’

‘Course not. Jolly good idea.’

They went into lunch where Mr and Mrs Dawson awaited them.

In a way, having lunch with two, to him, total strangers was a relief, Oliver thought. It was curiously difficult for him and John to stop being shy with each other: whatever refuge they might
take as a team in admiring or teasing Elizabeth, the fact was that their areas of intimacy with her were necessarily entirely different, and apart from her, they had not so far anything else in
common. They both knew, he felt, that Elizabeth was worrying over them in that intricately illlogical way that girls could, indeed could not
stop
doing, about people they loved. So lunch,
diffused by the Dawsons, was a relief. Arnold Dawson had made a fortune out of camping sites and finally holiday camps. He came from Westmorland and had a gentle wedge-shaped face with soft blue
eyes to match his accent. Mrs Dawson also came from the North Country. They were both in their fifties, but whereas middle age had polished and tidied up Arnold, it had softened and blurred Edie,
whose clothes fitted her like a badly-made loose-cover, and whose dry, oyster-coloured hair rippled in an uncontrollably old-fashioned manner. She wore Marina blue, a shade of muted turquoise. The
Dawsons had married the same year as Princess Marina, and Arnold never liked her to change anything. He called her Mother and constantly told the company what she did, and did not, like –
mostly the latter although she looked far too mild to possess so much and such varied disapprobation.

It was the kind of lunch where, having chosen your main course, you went to a vast table covered with beautiful
hors d’oeuvres
and took what you liked or wanted. ‘Now Mother,
there’s not much here for you, that’s plain, but we’ll do our best.’ And Oliver and Elizabeth watched him allowing her one sardine, ‘You’re not too keen on them,
but you don’t
mind
them in moderation,’ two bits of beetroot, ‘That’s safe enough,’ and half a hard-boiled egg off which he carefully scraped the sauce,
‘She can’t
abide
her food mucked about.’

‘No, I can’t see anything more,’ he said after careful scrutiny. ‘You’ll have to make it up with the steak.’ He spoke, not loudly, but with unselfconscious
deliberation, and her embarrassment at his behaviour was clearly routine; he was drawing attention to her, but he had been doing that for a good thirty years: she merely plucked his arm, said,
‘That’s fine, dear’ and smiled at the general company for support. He took her back to the table where she sat by herself while the rest of the party made their choice.

‘The thing is,’ Arnold said in generally audible confidence to John and Elizabeth, ‘she doesn’t really like travelling abroad – does it to please me, she knows I
like the sun and a bit of a change. A lot of it’s the food you know, but if I take enough trouble over that, and she gets her paper every day, it’s not so bad. I had a yacht once but
she couldn’t stand it, she’s so prone to sea-sickness – put her on a mill-pond and she wouldn’t be able to keep anything down: I said once, Mother I don’t know how you
manage a bath without trouble. I fly her everywhere nowadays: she doesn’t mind that so much. You can’t change your ways at her age, you know, and you can’t
make
ways you
never had.’

Elizabeth said something faintly about the sun being nice for her anyway.

‘Oh not the
sun
!’ he said. ‘Put her in the sun for five minutes and she’s out in a rash – and that’s followed by blisters which I wouldn’t like
to describe . . . I think I’ll go back if you don’t mind, she’s all by herself.’

‘As though he was one of the best, frightfully kind, owners of a dog,’ Elizabeth remarked afterwards. John Cole laughed.

‘He’s a born owner, anyway,’ he said.

After he had asked and been told about Mr Dawson’s empire of holiday camps, Oliver said, ‘Perhaps he’d give me a job.’

John said casually, ‘Are you looking for one?’

‘In a sort of a way. The trouble is, you see, that as I know what I like, I
do
mind what I do.’

He looked up to see how this was taken and found Cole regarding him with impassive intentness. He did not reply.

They found out that Ginny
was
coming to dinner. On John’s suggestion, Oliver rang the hotel and asked her if she would like him to fetch her.

So off he went in Elizabeth’s white car in a silk shirt borrowed from John.

‘It would be a frightfully good thing if he
did
find out what he wanted to do.’

Elizabeth was having a shower while John shaved, so she did not hear his reply. When she emerged, sleek and streaming, a few seconds later and said ‘What?’ he simply laughed.
‘I must say that catching you in your odd, dry moments is almost impossible. It’s like living with a seal or an otter.’ Before she could say ‘what’ again, he wrapped
her in a gigantic white towel, wiped her mouth with a corner of it and kissed her.

‘Seriously, about Oliver –’ she began.

‘I was kissing you with the utmost seriousness. What about Oliver?’

‘Well – what about him? Honestly, John,’ she sat on the bath stool hugging her knees, which she always did, he had noticed, when she was settling down to some insoluble
confidence, ‘I don’t want him turning into a lay-by – oh, you
know
what I mean: I do think it’s absolutely extra
ord
inary how men don’t stick to the point
–’

‘Come next door –’

‘Why?’

‘Don’t ask silly questions.’

‘You’re not going to carry me!’ She slipped on to the floor still wrapped in her towel. He stood looking down on her for a moment, then collected the four corners of the towel
and started dragging her at a surprising speed across the marble floor to the bedroom.

‘Sometimes in my loathsome way I even have to
drag
them into bed.’

Very much less later than it seemed to either of them, he said,

‘You
are
like a little cat: just as firm and graceful – just as neat and sweet and only slightly less furry –’

‘You would prefer me even to Ginny?’

‘Ginny?’

‘Her body, I mean.’

‘I thought that was what you meant. I do. I don’t like girls who are all chicken bones and a mass of dangerous corners. I like firm, rounded people.’ He propped himself up on
one elbow. ‘Are you happy, Eliza?

‘You don’t mind my being so much older?

‘Or having been married and having a grown-up child?

‘Or blind as a bat and nearly bald?

‘Then you shall have a drink: anyone as broad-minded as that is bound to be thirsty.’

He picked up the house telephone and said, ‘Two large Paradis, please, Gustave. What a ridiculous name that is. Like a villain’s chauffeur in Sapper.’

She pulled the sheet over and watched him collecting clothes for the evening. Then she said, ‘Are you? Happy, I mean, as well?’

He looked silently at her for a moment, and then said, ‘Oh darling!’ a word he had never used to her before.

Afterwards, Elizabeth remembered everything about that time: the comfortable, untidy room with damp towels, ticking clock and smell of gardenias; the small sunset breeze ruffling muslin by the
balcony windows, and outside, a fiery sky against which small bats occurred and dropped to nowhere like huge pieces of ash. She lay on the bed until the drinks were brought, and afterwards she also
remembered thinking lazily that when you were entirely happy fresh raspberry juice and champagne seem a natural drink. John padded about in a very marvellous dressing-gown, ‘It’s meant
to blind people to my true appearance,’ trying to decide what Elizabeth should wear. ‘You’ve jolly well got to wipe Ginny’s eye, that’s for sure.’ The
coat-hangers clicked against one another. ‘My bet is that she will wear white, so you’d better be in colour.’

‘Why couldn’t I be in white, too?’

‘Because with her black hair it will look as though her mother uses Persil.’

While he was choosing, they heard Oliver returning in the car.

‘Oh lord! I’m not dressed at
all
, and we never talked about Oliver!’

He threw a pleated lime chiffon dress at her. ‘It won’t take you long to get into this, and we’ve got plenty of time to talk about Oliver.’

‘Have we? Really?’

‘All our lives.’

He told Gustave to give Oliver and his guest anything they wanted to drink, and sat on the end of the bed. ‘You have lovely hair. The colour of highbrow marmalade. Wait!’ He seized a
spray full of Bellodgia. ‘Shut your eyes; keep still – no turn round – fine.’ The room smelled of a million gardenias now, and the sun had sunk out of sight.

There was a little more time when they went downstairs to find that Oliver had taken Ginny to see the pool. They sat on a sofa with another drink talking about him quietly;
Elizabeth explained – not again, but in the context of Oliver – how awful their stepfather was, ‘The kind of man who’d almost
force
you not to settle down in case he
started approving of you. Oliver simply loathes him: breaking up his marriage with May is Oliver’s dearest wish,’ and John sat regarding her benignly with his glasses on and not saying
anything. A relative of Gustave’s came and lit the candles on the dining table: instantly, moths collected for their doom: and just as Elizabeth was starting to worry about their fate they
heard the others returning; Oliver’s voice and Ginny’s little exclamations of bare incredulity. John picked up Elizabeth’s hand and kissed it.

Ginny wore the smallest white dress Elizabeth had ever seen in her life. It fastened on one shoulder with a huge gilt buckle: ‘She looks like someone in a Roman epic,’ Oliver
explained. All her nails were painted gold and her hair was carelessly piled on top of her head. When Elizabeth said what a terrific dress it was, Ginny replied that it was absolutely all
she’d got.

‘I think the pool’s just top
dog
,’ she said to John Cole during the
langouste
. ‘Mummy always meant to put one in, but Jean-Claude was so
fright
fully
mean and kept saying what was the sea for. He should have been stung to death by jellyfish and Portuguese men-of-war but it didn’t happen to be a good year for them. I collected a whole lot
in a suitcase and put them in just as he was diving off that board but he didn’t even notice. I think success spoils men far more than women, don’t you?’

‘I’m glad you like the pool,’ John said, ‘I thought we’d come back and swim in it after the night club.’

‘Take my father, for instance,’ Ginny continued, ‘oh good about the swim; Mummy said he was absolutely charming until he made that movie with her, but with just the tiniest
speck of fame he became ghastly. I’m sure it’s all right what
you
do,’ turning to John. ‘After all, you’re not in the least famous are you? Just
rich.’

‘That’s it.’

Then, just as Oliver was saying, ‘Anyway, Ginny, you’d be a rotten judge of character –’ the telephone rang, and after an interval Gustave came for John, who got up
saying, ‘Do go on with the duck – don’t wait.’

He did not come back until halfway through the duck, and the moment Elizabeth saw his face she knew that something was wrong.

‘That was Jennifer,’ he said looking at Ginny. ‘Apparently you’ve invited her to stay.’

‘I just called her up this afternoon and told her to come on out. I didn’t invite her to the Roc. I assumed she’d be staying here.’

Elizabeth realized that it was worse than she had thought when he came back on to the terrace. ‘What time is she arriving?’ she asked, she hoped, casually.

‘Tonight. On the same plane that Oliver came on.’ He met her eye with no expression at all.

That was that. They finished dinner and went to the night club. When he was dancing with her, John said, ‘You know this changes things?’

She looked at him dumbly – suddenly so frightened about them she couldn’t even ask what things.

‘I’ve told the servants to move me into another room. I didn’t want it to be like this. Jennifer’s not – I’ve given her too rough a time. Damn that
interfering little girl.’

There was an act at the night club whereby they collected somebody off the floor and asked them a string of questions: the trick was that you must not say ‘no’. If you succeeded for
long enough you got a bottle of very nearly undrinkable champagne. Ginny achieved this, and behaved as though it was really an achievement. She was unaware of tensions. Oliver knew that Elizabeth
was anxious, and Elizabeth became increasingly frantic about John, who seemed to have retired from the scene – seemed hardly to know her. Oliver danced with her and said, ‘Don’t
get so worked up. Of course she’ll like you.’

‘It doesn’t just seem to be that.’

‘What is it, then?’

‘Don’t know.’

He hugged her. ‘Anyway – I’m here.’

‘
Why
did Ginny do it?’

She felt him stiffen. ‘
I
don’t know. They’re friends: I expect she just thought it would be fun to see Jennifer.’

She didn’t answer that: Oliver was too mad about Ginny to
want
to understand.

Later, she danced with John and they didn’t talk. Night clubs were bad for seeing anyone’s face but her neck ached with staring up at him. When the music stopped, he wrapped his arms
round her. Then, she said, ‘Do you want me to go away?’ But he didn’t hear her because of people clapping the band, and she hadn’t the courage to say that again.