Vile Bodies · Chapter 6 (2/3)

“Why shouldn’t I ride with a friend,” she asked plaintively, “without all you girls pitching on me like this?”

“Friend,” said Creative Endeavour. “You never saw her before today,” and she gave her a nasty pinch just above the elbow.

“Ooooh!” said Chastity. “Ooh, please⁠ ⁠… beast.”

Then they all pinched her all over, but precisely and judiciously, so as not to disturb her wings or halo, for this was no orgy (sometimes in their bedrooms, they gave way, but not here, in Lady Metroland’s schoolroom, before an important first night).

“Ooh,” said Chastity, “Ooh, ow, ooh, ow. Please, beasts, swine, cads⁠ ⁠… please⁠ ⁠… oh⁠ ⁠… well, if you must know, I thought she was a man.”

“Thought she was a man, Chastity? That doesn’t sound right to me.”

“Well, she looks like a man and⁠—and she goes on like a man. I saw her sitting at a table in a teashop. She hadn’t got a hat on, and I couldn’t see her skirt⁠ ⁠… ooh⁠ ⁠… how can I tell you if you keep pinching⁠ ⁠… and she smiled and so, well, I went and had some tea with her, and she said would I go out with her in her motor car, and I said yes and, ooh, I wish I hadn’t now.”

“What did she say in the motor car, Chastity?”

“I forget⁠—nothing much.”

“Oh, what.” “Do tell us.” “We’ll never pinch you again if you tell us.” “I’m sorry if I hurt you, Chastity, do tell me.” “You’d better tell us.”

“No, I can’t, really⁠—I don’t remember, I tell you.”

“Give her another little nip, girls.”

“Ooh, ooh, ooh, stop. I’ll tell you.”

Their heads were close together and they were so deeply engrossed in the story that they did not hear Mrs. Ape’s entry.

“Smut again,” said a terrible voice. “Girls, I’m sick ashamed of you.”

Mrs. Ape looked magnificent in a gown of heavy gold brocade embroidered with texts.

“I’m sick ashamed of you,” repeated Mrs. Ape, “and you’ve made Chastity cry again, just before the big act. If you must bully someone, why choose Chastity? You all know by this time that crying always gives her a red nose. How do I look, I should like to know, standing up in front of a lot of angels with red noses. You don’t ever think of nothing but your own pleasures, do you? Sluts.” This last word was spoken with a depth of expression that set the angels trembling. “There’ll be no champagne for anyone tonight, see. And if you don’t sing perfectly, I’ll give the whole lot of you a good hiding, see. Now, come on, now, and for the love of the Lamb, Chastity, do something to your nose. They’ll think it’s a temperance meeting to see you like that.”

It was a brilliant scene into which the disconsolate angels trooped two minutes later. Margot Metroland shook hands with each of them as they came to the foot of the staircase, appraising them, one by one, with an expert eye.

“You don’t look happy, my dear,” she found time to say to Chastity, as she led them across the ballroom to their platform, banked in orchids at the far end. “If you feel you want a change, let me know later, and I can get you a job in South America. I mean it.”

“Oh, thank you,” said Chastity, “but I could never leave Mrs. Ape.”

“Well, think it over, child. You’re far too pretty a girl to waste your time singing hymns. Tell that other girl, the redheaded one, that I can probably find a place for her, too.”

“What, Humility? Don’t you have nothing to do with her. She’s a fiend.”

“Well, some men like rough stuff, but I don’t want anyone who makes trouble with the other girls.”

“She makes trouble all right. Look at that bruise.”

“My dear!”

Margot Metroland and Mrs. Ape led the angels up the steps between the orchids and stood them at the back of the platform facing the room. Chastity stood next to Creative Endeavour.

“Please, Chastity, I’m sorry if we hurt you,” said Creative Endeavour. “I didn’t pinch hard, did I?”

“Yes,” said Chastity. “Like hell you did.”

A slightly sticky hand tried to take hers, but she clenched her fist. She would go to South America and work for Lady Metroland⁠ ⁠… and she wouldn’t say anything about it to Humility either. She glared straight in front of her, saw Mrs. Panrast and dropped her eyes.

The ballroom was filled with little gilt chairs and the chairs with people. Lord Vanburgh, conveniently seated near the door, through which he could slip away to the telephone, was taking them all in. They were almost all, in some way or another, notable. The motives for Margot Metroland’s second marriage2 had been mixed, but entirely worldly; chief among them had been the desire to reestablish her somewhat shaken social position, and her party that night testified to her success, for while many people can entertain the Prime Minister and the Duchess of Stayle and Lady Circumference, and anybody can, and often against her will does, entertain Miles Malpractice and Agatha Runcible, it is only a very confident hostess who will invite both these sets together at the same time, differing, as they do, upon almost all questions of principle and deportment. Standing near Vanburgh, by the door, was a figure who seemed in himself to typify the change that had come over Pastmaster House when Margot Beste-Chetwynd became Lady Metroland; an unobtrusive man of rather less than average height, whose black beard, falling in tight burnished curls, nearly concealed the order of St. Michael and St. George which he wore round his neck; he wore a large signet ring on the little finger of his left hand outside his white glove; there was an orchid in his buttonhole. His eyes, youthful but grave, wandered among the crowd; occasionally he bowed with grace and decision. Several people were asking about him.

“See the beaver with the medal,” said Humility to Faith.

“Who is that very important young man?” asked Mrs. Blackwater of Lady Throbbing.

“I don’t know, dear. He bowed to you.”

“He bowed to you, dear.”

“How very nice⁠ ⁠… I wasn’t quite sure.⁠ ⁠… He reminds me a little of dear Prince Anrep.”

“It’s so nice in these days, isn’t it, dearest, to see someone who really looks⁠ ⁠… don’t you think?”

“You mean the beard?”

“The beard among other things, darling.”

Father Rothschild was conspiring with Mr. Outrage and Lord Metroland. He stopped short in the middle of his sentence.

“Forgive me,” he said, “but there are spies everywhere. That man with the beard, do you know him?”

Lord Metroland thought vaguely he had something to do with the Foreign Office; Mr. Outrage seemed to remember having seen him before.

“Exactly,” said Father Rothschild. “I think it would be better if we continued our conversation in private. I have been watching him. He is bowing across the room to empty places and to people whose backs are turned to him.” The Great Men withdrew to Lord Metroland’s study. Father Rothschild closed the door silently and looked behind the curtains.

“Shall I lock the door?” asked Lord Metroland.

“No,” said the Jesuit. “A lock does not prevent a spy from hearing; but it does hinder us, inside, from catching the spy.”

“Well, I should never have thought of that,” said Mr. Outrage in frank admiration.

“How pretty Nina Blount is,” said Lady Throbbing, busy from the front row with her lorgnette, “but don’t you think, a little changed; almost as though⁠ ⁠…”

“You notice everything, darling.”

“When you get to our age, dear, there is so little left, but I do believe Miss Blount must have had an experience⁠ ⁠… she’s sitting next to Miles. You know I heard from Edward tonight. He’s on his way back. It will be a great blow for Miles because he’s been living in Edward’s house all this time. To tell you the truth I’m a little glad because from what I hear from Anne Opalthorpe, who lives opposite, the things that go on⁠ ⁠… he’s got a friend staying there now. Such an odd man⁠—a dirt-track racer. But then it’s no use attempting to disguise the fact, is there.⁠ ⁠… There’s Mrs. Panrast⁠ ⁠… yes, dear, of course you know her, she used to be Eleanor Balcairn⁠ ⁠… now why does dear Margot ask anyone like that, do you think?⁠ ⁠… it is not as though Margot was so innocent⁠ ⁠… and there’s Lord Monomark⁠ ⁠… yes, the man who owns those amusing papers⁠ ⁠… they say that he and Margot, but before her marriage, of course (her second marriage, I mean), but you never know, do you, how things crop up again?⁠ ⁠… I wonder where Peter Pastmaster is?⁠ ⁠… he never stays to Margot’s parties⁠ ⁠… he was at dinner, of course, and, my dear, how he drank.⁠ ⁠… He can’t be more than twenty-one.⁠ ⁠… Oh, so that is Mrs. Ape. What a coarse face⁠ ⁠… no dear, of course she can’t hear⁠ ⁠… she looks like a procureuse⁠ ⁠… but perhaps I shouldn’t say that here, should I?”

Adam came and sat next to Nina.

“Hullo,” they said to each other.

“My dear, do look at Mary Mouse’s new young man,” said Nina.

Adam looked and saw that Mary was sitting next to the Maharajah of Pukkapore.

“I call that a pretty pair,” he said.

“Oh, how bored I feel,” said Nina.

Mr. Benfleet was there talking to two poets. They said “… and I wrote to tell William that I didn’t write the review, but it was true that Tony did read me the review over the telephone when I was very sleepy before he sent it in. I thought it was best to tell him the truth because he would hear it from Tony anyway. Only I said I advised him not to publish it just as I had advised William not to publish the book in the first place. Well Tony rang up Michael and told him that I’d said that William thought Michael had written the review because of the reviews I had written of Michael’s book last November, though, as a matter of fact, it was Tony himself who wrote it.⁠ ⁠…”

“Too bad,” said Mr. Benfleet. “Too bad.”

“… but is that any reason, even if I had written it, why Michael should tell Tony that I had stolen five pounds from William?”

“Certainly not,” said Mr. Benfleet. “Too bad.”

“Of course, they’re simply not gentlemen, either of them. That’s all it is, only one’s shy of saying it nowadays.”

Mr. Benfleet shook his head sadly and sympathetically.

Then Mrs. Melrose Ape stood up to speak. A hush fell in the gilt ballroom beginning at the back and spreading among the chairs until only Mrs. Blackwater’s voice was heard exquisitely articulating some details of Lady Metroland’s past. Then she, too, was silent and Mrs. Ape began her oration about Hope.

“Brothers and Sisters,” she said in a hoarse, stirring voice. Then she paused and allowed her eyes, renowned throughout three continents for their magnetism, to travel among the gilded chairs. (It was one of her favourite openings.) “Just you look at yourselves,” she said.

Magically, self-doubt began to spread in the audience. Mrs. Panrast stirred uncomfortably; had that silly little girl been talking, she wondered.

“Darling,” whispered Miss Runcible, “is my nose awful?”

Nina thought how once, only twenty-four hours ago, she had been in love. Mr. Benfleet thought should he have made it three percent on the tenth thousand. The gatecrashers wondered whether it would not have been better to have stayed at home. (Once in Kansas City Mrs. Ape had got no further than these opening words; there had been a tornado of emotion and all the seats in the hall had been broken to splinters. It was there that Humility had joined the Angels.) There were a thousand things in Lady Throbbing’s past.⁠ ⁠… Every heart found something to bemoan.

“She’s got ’em again,” whispered Creative Endeavour. “Got ’em stiff.”

Lord Vanburgh slipped from the room to telephone through some racy paragraphs about fashionable piety.

Mary Mouse shed two little tears and felt for the brown, bejewelled hand of the Maharajah.

But suddenly on that silence vibrant with self-accusation broke the organ voice of England, the hunting-cry of the ancien régime. Lady Circumference gave a resounding snort of disapproval:

“What a damned impudent woman,” she said.

Adam and Nina and Miss Runcible began to giggle, and Margot Metroland for the first time in her many parties was glad to realize that the guest of the evening was going to be a failure. It had been an awkward moment.

In the study Father Rothschild and Mr. Outrage were plotting with enthusiasm. Lord Metroland was smoking a cigar and wondering how soon he could get away. He wanted to hear Mrs. Ape and to have another look at those Angels. There was one with red hair.⁠ ⁠… Besides all this statesmanship and foreign policy had always bored him. In his years in the Commons he had always liked a good scrap, and often thought a little wistfully of those orgies of competitive dissimulation in which he had risen to eminence. Even now, when some straightforward, easily intelligible subject was under discussion, such as poor people’s wages or public art, he enjoyed from time to time making a sonorous speech to the Upper House. But this sort of thing was not at all in his line.

Suddenly Father Rothschild turned out the light.

“There’s someone coming down the passage,” he said.

“Quick, get behind the curtains.”

“Really, Rothschild⁠ ⁠…” said Mr. Outrage.

“I say⁠ ⁠…” said Lord Metroland.

“Quick,” said Father Rothschild.

The three statesmen hid themselves. Lord Metroland, still smoking, his head thrown back and his cigar erect. They heard the door open. The light was turned on. A match was struck. Then came the slight tinkle of the telephone as someone lifted the receiver.

“Central ten thousand,” said a slightly muffled voice.

“Now,” said Father Rothschild, and stepped through the curtain.

The bearded stranger who had excited his suspicions was standing at the table smoking one of Lord Metroland’s cigars and holding the telephone.

“Oh, hullo,” he said, “I didn’t know you were here. Just thought I’d use the telephone. So sorry. Won’t disturb you. Jolly party, isn’t it? Goodbye.”

“Stay exactly where you are,” said Father Rothschild, “and take off that beard.”

“Damned if I do,” said the stranger crossly. “It’s no use talking to me as though I were one of your choir boys⁠ ⁠… you old bully.”

“Take off that beard,” said Father Rothschild.

“Take off that beard,” said Lord Metroland and the Prime Minister, emerging suddenly from behind the curtain.

This concurrence of Church and State, coming so unexpectedly after an evening of prolonged embarrassment, was too much for Simon.

“Oh, all right,” he said, “if you will make such a thing about it⁠ ⁠… it hurts too frightfully, if you knew⁠ ⁠… it ought to be soaked in hot water⁠ ⁠… ooh⁠ ⁠… ow.”

He gave some tugs at the black curls, and bit by bit they came away.

“There,” he said. “Now I should go and make Lady Throbbing take off her wig.⁠ ⁠… I should have a really jolly evening while you’re about it, if I were you.”

“I seem to have overestimated the gravity of the situation,” said Father Rothschild.

“Who is it, after all this?” said Mr. Outrage. “Where are those detectives? What does it all mean?”

“That” said Father Rothschild bitterly, “is Mr. Chatterbox.”

“Never heard of him. I don’t believe there is such a person.⁠ ⁠… Chatterbox, indeed⁠ ⁠… you make us hide behind a curtain and then you tell us that some young man in a false beard is called Chatterbox. Really, Rothschild⁠ ⁠…”

“Lord Balcairn,” said Lord Metroland, “will you kindly leave my house immediately?”

“Is this young man called Chatterbox or is he not?⁠ ⁠… Upon my soul, I believe you’re all crazy.”

“Oh yes, I’m going,” said Simon. “You didn’t think I was going to go back to the party like this, did you?⁠—or did you?” Indeed, he looked very odd with little patches of black hair still adhering to parts of his chin and cheeks.

“Lord Monomark is here this evening. I shall certainly inform him of your behaviour⁠ ⁠…”

“He writes for the papers,” Father Rothschild tried to explain to the Prime Minister.