LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER 3 Pre-Prandial

      He was short, not more than five foot seven, but so compactly built that he did not give the impression of low stature. Everything about him was dapper, though not obtrusively so; his clothes, the flower in his coat, his well-brushed hair and moustache. His eyes, light grey with pinkish rims, had a hot impertinent look, his underlip jutting out and there were clearly defined spots of local colour over his cheek-bones. He came briskly into the room, bestowed a restless kiss upon his niece and confronted his wife.

      ‘Who’s dinin’?’ he said.

      ‘Ourselves, Félicité, Carlisle, of course, and Edward Manx. And I have asked Miss Henderson to join us, tonight.’

      ‘Two more,’ said Lord Pastern. ‘I’ve asked Bellairs and Rivera.’

      ‘That is quite impossible, George,’ said Lady Pastern, calmly.

      ‘Why?’

      ‘Apart from other unanswerable considerations, there is not enough food for two extra guests.’

      ‘Tell ‘em to open a tin.’

      ‘I cannot receive these persons for dinner.’

      Lord Pastern grinned savagely. ‘All right. Rivera can take Félicité to a restaurant and Bellairs can come here. Same numbers as before. How are you, Lisle?’

      ‘I’m very well, Uncle George.’

      ‘Félicité will not dine out with this individual, George. I shall not permit it.’

      ‘You can’t stop ‘em.’

      ‘Félicité will respect my wishes.’

      ‘Don’t be an ass,’ said Lord Pastern. ‘You’re thirty years behind the times, m’dear. Give a gel her head and she’ll find her feet.’ He paused, evidently delighted with the aphorism. ‘Way you’re goin’, you’ll have an elopement on your hands. Comes to that, I don’t see the objection.’

      ‘Are you demented, George?’

      ‘Half the women in London’d give anything to be in Fée’s boots.’

      ‘A Mexican bandsman.’

      ‘Fine well set-up young feller. Inoculate your old stock. That’s Shakespeare, ain’t it, Lisle? I understand he comes of a perfectly good Spanish family. Hidalgo, or whatever it is,’ he added vaguely. ‘A feller of good family happens to be an artist and you go and condemn him. Sort of thing that makes you sick.’ He turned to his niece: ‘I’ve been thinkin’ seriously of givin’ up the title, Lisle.’

       ‘George!’

      ‘About dinner, Cile. Can you find something for them to eat or can’t you? Speak up.’

      Lady Pastern’s shoulders rose with a shudder. She glanced at Carlisle who thought she detected a glint of cunning in her aunt’s eye. ‘Very well, George,’ Lady Pastern said, ‘I shall speak to the servants. I shall speak to Dupont. Very well.’

      Lord Pastern darted an extremely suspicious glance at his wife and sat down. ‘Nice to see you, Lisle,’ he said. ‘What have you been doin’ with yourself?’

      ‘I’ve been in Greece. Famine relief.’

      ‘If people understood dietetics there wouldn’t be all this starvation,’ said Lord Pastern, darkly. ‘Are you keen on music?’

      Carlisle returned a guarded answer. Her aunt, she realized, was attempting to convey by means of a fixed stare and raised eyebrows, some message of significance.

      ‘I’ve taken it up, seriously,’ Lord Pastern continued. ‘Swing. Boogie-woogie. Jive. Find it keeps me up to the mark.’ He thumped with his heel on the carpet, beat his hands together and in a strange nasal voice. intoned: ‘“Shoo-shoo-shoo, Baby. Bye-bye, Bye, Baby.”’

      The door opened and Félicité de Suze came in. She was a striking young woman with large black eyes, a wide mouth, and an air of being equal to anything. She cried: ‘Darling – you’re Heaven its very self,’ and kissed Carlisle with enthusiasm. Lord Pastern was still clapping and chanting. His step-daughter took up the burden of his song, raised a finger and jerked rhythmically before him. They grinned at each other. ‘You’re coming along very prettily indeed, George,’ she said.

      Carlisle wondered what her impression would have been if she were a complete stranger. Would she, like Lady Pastern, have decided that her uncle was eccentric to the point of derangement? ‘No,’ she thought, ‘probably not. There’s really a kind of terrifying sanity about him. He’s overloaded with energy, he says exactly what he thinks and he does exactly what he wants to do. But he’s an oversimplification of type, and he’s got no perspective. He’s never mildly interested in anything. But which of us,’ Carlisle reflected, ‘has not, at some time, longed to play the big drum?’

      Félicité, with an abandon that Carlisle found unconvincing, flung herself into the sofa beside her mother. ‘Angel!’ she said richly, ‘don’t be so grande dame. George and I are having fun!’

      Lady Pastern disengaged herself and rose: ‘I must see Dupont.’

      ‘Ring for Spence,’ said her husband. ‘Why d’you want to go burrowin’ about in the servants’ quarters?’

      Lady Pastern pointed out, with great coldness, that in the present food shortage one did not, if one wished to retain the services of one’s cook, send a message at seven in the evening to the effect that there would be two extra for dinner. In any case, she added, however great her tact, Dupont would almost certainly give notice.

      ‘He’ll give us the same dinner as usual,’ her husband rejoined. ‘“The Three Courses of Monsieur Dupont!”’

      ‘Extremely witty,’ said Lady Pastern coldly. She then withdrew.

      ‘George!’ said Félicité. ‘Have you won?’

      ‘I should damn’ well think so. Never heard anything so preposterous in me life. Ask a couple of people to dine and your mother behaves like Lady Macbeth. I’m going to have a bath.’

      When he had gone, Félicité turned to Carlisle and made a wide helpless gesture. ‘Darling, what a life! Honestly! One prances about from moment to moment on the edge of a volcano, never knowing when there’ll be a major eruption. I suppose you’ve heard all about ME.’

      ‘A certain amount.’

      ‘He’s madly attractive.’

      in what sort of way?’

      Félicité smiled and shook her head. ‘My dear Lisle, he just does things for me.’

      ‘He’s not by any chance a bounder?’

      ‘He can bound like a ping-pong ball and I won’t bat an eyelid. To me he’s Heaven; but just plain Heaven.’

      ‘Come off it, Fée,’ said Carlisle. ‘I’ve heard all this before. What’s the catch in it?’

      Félicité looked sideways at her. ‘How do you mean, the catch?’

      ‘There’s always a catch in your young men, darling, when you rave like this about them.’

      Félicité began to walk showily about the room. She had lit a cigarette and wafted it to-and-fro between two fingers, nursing her right elbow in the palm of the left hand. Her manner became remote. ‘When English people talk about a bounder,’ she said, ‘they invariably refer to someone who has more charm and less gaucherie than the average

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