Ice in the Bedroom (4 page)

She blew a meditative smoke ring, her thoughts plainly back in the past.

'I was engaged to him once.'

'Really?'

'Broke it off, though, when he started to bulge at every seam. Couldn't keep that boy off the starchy foods. I don't mind a poop being a poop, but I draw the line at a poop who looks like two poops rolled into one.'

'Quite. Have you seen him lately?'

'Not for a year or so. Is he as fat as ever?'

'He came out top in the Fat Uncles contest at the Drones last summer.'

'I'm not surprised. Mark you, I'd have broken the engagement anyway, because soon after we plighted our troth Joe Bishop came along.'

'Joe Bishop?'

'Character I subsequently married. We split up later, and I've been kicking myself ever since. Silliest thing I ever did, to let him go. You married?'

'No.'

'What are you screwing up your face for?'

'Did I screw up my face?'

'I got that impression. As if in anguish.'

'I'm sorry.'

'Quite all right. It's your face. Well, well, it's strange to think that if Joe hadn't come into my life and your uncle had done bending and stretching exercises and learned the knack of laying off sweets, butter and potatoes, you might now be calling me Aunt Bessie.'

‘Leila, you mean.'

'No, I don't. Leila Yorke's my pen name. I was born Elizabeth Binns. You can't write books if you're a Binns. But let's go on roasting your uncle. You don't seem very fond of him.'

'Not at the moment. He has incurred my displeasure.’

'How was that?'

Freddie quivered a little. He always quivered when he thought of his Uncle Rodney's black act. 'He sold me down the river to Shoesmith.'

'Don't you like working for him?'

'No.'

'I wouldn't myself. How is Johnny Shoesmith these days?'

Hearing the Frankenstein's monster who employed him alluded to in this fashion shook Freddie to his depths. A vision of himself calling that eminent solicitor Johnny rose before his eyes, and he shuddered strongly. It was only after some moments that he was able to reply.

'Oh, he's fizzing along.'

'I've known him since we were both so high.'

'Really?'

'He once kissed me behind a rhododendron bush.'

Freddie started. 'Shoesmith did?'

'Yes.'

'You mean Shoesmith of Shoesmith, Shoesmith, Shoesmith and Shoesmith of Lincoln's Inn Fields?’

 'That's right.'

'Well, I'll be a son of a…I mean, how very extraordinary!'

'Oh, he was a regular devil in those days. And look at him now. All dried up like a kippered herring and wouldn't kiss Helen of Troy if you brought her to him asleep in a chair with a sprig of mistletoe suspended over her. That's what comes of being a solicitor, it saps the vital juices. Johnny doesn't even embezzle his clients' money, which I should have thought was about the only fun a solicitor can get out of life. How long have you been working for him?'

'Six months or so.'

'You haven't dried up yet.'

'No.'

'Well, be careful you don't. Exercise ceaseless vigilance. And talking of drying up, you're probably in need of a quick one after your journey. Care for something moist?'

'I'd love it.'

'I've only got whisky, brandy, gin, beer, sherry, port, curacao and champagne, but help yourself. Over there in the fridge in the corner.'

'Oh, thanks. You?'

'Why, yes, I think I might. I've been feeling a little nervous and fragile these last few days. Open a bottle of champagne.'

'Right,' said Freddie, doing so. 'Nervous and fragile?'

'Got a lot on my mind. Widgeon,' said Miss Yorke, 'I am standing at a woman's crossroads. Do you read my stuff?'

'Well – er - what with one thing and another…'

'No need to apologize. One can't read everything, and no doubt you're all tied up with your Proust and Kafka. Well, for your information, it's too sweet for words.'

'Really?'

'Pure treacle. Would you call me a sentimental woman?'

'Not offhand.'

'I'm not. In the ordinary give-and-take of life I'm as tough an egg as ever stepped out of the saucepan. Did my butler show you in when you arrived?'

'No. I came with your secretary, Miss Foster. I met her on the train. We – er - we know each other slightly.'

'Oh, yes, I remember it was Sally who told me you were here. Well, you ought to see my butler. Haughty? The haughtiest thing you ever met. I've seen strong publishers wilt beneath his eye. And yet that man, that haughty butler, curls up like a sheet of carbon paper if I look squiggle-eyed at him. That's the sort of woman I am when I haven't a pen in my hand, but give me a ball-pointed and what happens? Don't keep all that champagne to yourself.'

'Oh, sorry.'

'And don't spill it. The prudent man doesn't waste a drop.'

'It's good stuff.'

'It's excellent stuff. It's what Johnny Shoesmith needs to make him realize he isn't something dug out of Tutankhamen's tomb. Where was I?'

'You were saying what happens.'

'What happens when what?'

'When you get a ball-pointed pen in your hand.'

'Oh, yes. The moment my fingers clutch it, Widgeon, a great change comes over me. I descend to depths of goo which you with your pure mind wouldn't believe possible. I write about stalwart men, strong but oh so gentle, and girls with wide grey eyes and hair the colour of ripe wheat, who are always having misunderstandings and going to Africa. The men, that is. The girls stay at home and marry the wrong bimbos. But there's a happy ending. The bimbos break their necks in the hunting field and the men come back in the last chapter and they and the girls get together in the twilight, and all around is the scent of English flowers and birds singing their evensong in the shrubbery. Makes me shudder to think of it.'

'It sounds rather good to me. I wouldn't mind getting together with a girl in the twilight.'

'No, it's kind of you to try to cheer me up, Widgeon, but I know molasses when I see it. Or is it "them"? The critics call my stuff tripe.'

'No!'

'That's what they do, they call it tripe.'

'Monstrous!'

'And of course it is tripe. But I'm not going to have a bunch of inky pipsqueaks telling me so. And I'm fed to the teeth with all these smart alecks who do parodies of me, hoping to make me feel like a piece of cheese. The worm has turned, Widgeon. Do you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to write a novel that'll make their eyes pop out, What some call an important novel, and others significant. Keep that champagne circulating. Don't let it congeal.'

'But can you?'

'Can I what?'

'Write an important novel.'

'Of course I can. All you have to do is cut out the plot and shove in plenty of misery. I can do it on my head, once I get started. Only the trouble is that as long as I remain at Claines Hall, Loose Chippings, I can't get started. The atmosphere here is all wrong. Butlers and moats and things popping about all over the place. I've got to get away somewhere where there's a little, decent squalor.'

'That's exactly what Sally Foster was saying.'

'Oh, was she? Nice girl, that. She ought to marry somebody. Maybe she will before long. I think she's in love.'

'You do?'

'Yes, I've an idea there's someone for whom she feels sentiments deeper and warmer than those of ordinary friendship. Well, if so, I wish her luck. Love's all right. Makes the world go round, they say. I don't know if there's anything in it, Or if there's anything in that bottle. Is there?'

'Just a drop.'

'Let's have it. What were we talking about?'

'You were getting away somewhere where there was a spot of squalor.'

'That's right. I thought I'd be able to swing it here by going the round of the local pubs and having the peasantry bare their souls to me. Thomas Hardy stuff. Not a hope. At the end of a week all I had discovered about these sons of toil was that they were counting the days to the football season so that they could start in on their pools again. Makes one sick. No help to a woman. Why are you looking at me like a half-witted sheep?’

'Was I?'

'You were.'

'I'm sorry. It's just that when Sally Foster was telling me about this new binge you were contemplating, I had an idea. I believe I've got the very spot for you. Castlewood, Mulberry Grove, Valley Fields.'

'Where's that?'

'Just outside London. I doubt if you could find a greyer locality. The man who lives next door to me keeps rabbits.'

'Oh, you live in Valley Fields?'

'That's right. Castlewood's next door to me on the other side. And it's vacant at the moment and fully furnished. You could move in tomorrow. Shall I fix you up with the rabbit-fancier? He's the house agent.'

'H'm.'

'Don't say "H'm!"' 'I wonder.'

'I wouldn't. Strike while the iron's hot is my advice.'

But Miss Yorke insisted on relapsing into thought, and Freddie scanned her pensive face anxiously. On her decision so much depended. For he was convinced that if he could only get Sally on the other side of the garden fence that divided Peacehaven from Castlewood, he would soon be able to alter the present trend of her thoughts with the burning words and melting looks he knew he had at his disposal. He had lived in the suburbs long enough to be aware that the preliminaries of seventy per cent of the marriages that occurred there had been arranged over garden fences.

Leila Yorke came out of her reverie.

'I hadn't thought of the suburbs. What I had in mind was a bed-sitting-room in Bottleton East, where I could study the martyred proletariat and soak in squalor at every pore.'

Freddie yelped like a stepped-on puppy.

'Bottleton East? You're off your onion…I mean, you have an entirely erroneous conception of what Bottleton East is like. It's the cheeriest place in England. I sang at a Song Contest there once, so I know. The audience was the most rollicking set of blighters you ever saw. Never stopped throwing vegetables. No, Valley Fields is the spot for you.'

'Really grey, is it, this outpost of eternity?'

'Couldn't be greyer.'

'Squalor?'

'It wrote the words and music'

'Gissing!' exclaimed Miss Yorke, snapping her fingers. Freddie shook his head.

There's very little kissing done in Valley Fields. The aborigines are much too busy being grey.'

'I didn't say kissing. I said Gissing. George Gissing. He wrote about the suburbs, and it's just the George Gissing sort of book I'm aiming at.'

'Well, there you are. Didn't I tell you? You can't miss, if you string along with George Gissing. Ask anybody.'

'He was as grey as a stevedore's undervest.'

'Very stark. I've always said so.'

'Widgeon, I think you've got something.'

'Me, too.'

'The telephone's in the hall. Ring up that rat-catching friend of yours, the house agent fellow, and book me in at this Castlewood hovel, starting tomorrow. And—correct me if I'm wrong—I think this calls for another half-bottle.'

'Me also.'

'Make a long arm,' said Leila Yorke.

5

IN the whole of London there is no interior more richly dignified—posh is perhaps the word—than the lobby of Barribault's Hotel in Clarges Street, that haunt of Texas millionaires and visiting maharajahs. Its chairs and settees are the softest that money can provide, its fighting dim and discreet, its carpets of so thick a nap that midgets would get lost in them and have to be rescued by dogs. It is the general opinion of London's elite that until you have seen the lobby of Barribault's Hotel, you have not seen anything.

Some forty hours after Freddie Widgeon's visit to Loose Chippings, the quiet splendour of this beauty spot was enhanced by the presence of a superbly upholstered man of middle age who looked as if he might be an American senator or something of that sort. He had a frank, open face, fine candid eyes and a lofty brow rather resembling Shakespeare's. His name was Thomas G. Molloy, and he was waiting for his wife, who was due that morning to leave Holloway gaol, where she had been serving a short sentence for shoplifting.

He looked at his wrist watch, a little thing his mate had picked up at a Bond Street jeweller's while doing her Christmas shopping. The hands pointed to one-fifteen, and he began to feel worried, for though he knew that she would be having a shampoo and a facial and possibly a perm after leaving her recent abode, he had expected her long before this. He was consulting the timepiece again some uneasy minutes later, when a voice behind him said: 'Hi, Soapy!' and he spun round. She was standing there, looking, it seemed to him, as if instead of in the deepest dungeon beneath Holloway gaol, she had been spending the last few weeks at some bracing seashore resort like Skegness.

Dolly Molloy unquestionably took the eye. She was a spectacular blonde of the type that is always getting murdered in its step-ins in mystery stories. Her hair was golden, her eyes hazel, her lips and cheeks aflame with colour, and she carried herself with a challenging jauntiness. Wolf-whistling is of course prohibited in the lobby of Barribault's Hotel, so none of those present attempted this form of homage, but quite a few of the visiting maharajahs looked as if they would have liked to, and it was plain that it was only by the exercise of the most iron self-restraint that the Texas millionaires were holding themselves in. You could see their lips puckering.

Soapy Molloy was devouring her with adoring eyes. Few more loving husbands than he had ever cracked rocks in Sing Sing.

'Honey! I didn't see you come in.'

'I was back there, hiding behind a pillar. There was a guy having a cocktail I didn't want to see me. Nobody you know. Fellow of the name of Prosser.'

'Not the one they call Oofy?'

'I don't know what his first name is.'

'Guy with pimples?'

'That's right. Why, do you know him?'

'Must be the same. Young Widgeon next door to Castle-wood introduced me to him. I've something to tell you about Prosser.'

'Me, too, you, but it can wait. Let's eat, Soapy, I'm starving.'