CHAPTER XII

The Fulton household had always been short of money, for Dick spent too much himself to leave anything for entertaining; thus Victoria had very little experience of lunch parties. Since she had left the Holts she hardly remembered a bourgeois meal. The little affair on the Wednesday was therefore provocative of much thought. Mutton was dismissed as common, beef in any form as coarse; Laura's suggestion (for Laura and Augusta had been called in) of a savoury sauerkraut ('mit Blutwurst, Frankfurter, Leberwurst, etc.'), was also dismissed. Both servants took a keen interest in the occasion.

'But why no gentleman come?' asked Laura, who was clearly ill-disposed to do her best for her own sex.

'In the house I was . . .' began Augusta . . . then she froze up under Victoria's eye. Her mistress still had a strain of the prig in her.

Then Augusta suggested hors d'œuvres, smoked salmon, anchovies, olives, radishes; Laura forced forward fowl à la Milanaise to be preceded by baked John Dory cayenne. Then Augusta in a moment of inspiration thought of French beans and vegetable marrow . . . stuffed with chestnuts. The three women laughed, Laura clapped her hands with the sheer joy of the creative artist.

When Victoria came into the dining-room at half-past twelve she was almost dazzled by her own magnificence. Neither the Carlton nor the Savoy could equal the blaze of her plate, the brilliant polish of her tablecloths. The dahlias blazed dark red in cut glass by the side of pale belated roses from the garden. On the sideboard fat peaches were heaped in a modern Lowestoft bowl, and amber-coloured plums lay like portly dowagers in velvet.

A few minutes before the hour Zoé and Lissa arrived together. They were nervous; not on account of Victoria's spread, for they were of the upper stratum, but because they were in a house. Accustomed to their small flats off Shaftesbury Avenue, where tiny kitchens jostled with bedroom and boudoir, they were frightened by the suggestion of a vast basement out of which floated the savoury aroma of the John Dory baking. Victoria tried to put them at their ease, took their parasols away and showed them into the boudoir. There they sat in a triangle, the hot sun blazing in upon them, stiff and starched with the formality of those who are seldom formal.

'Have a Manhattan cocktail?' asked the hostess.

'No thanks; very hot, isn't it?' said Lissa in her most refined manner. She was looking very pretty, dark, slim and snaky in her close-fitting lemon coloured frock.

'Very hot,' chimed in Zoé. She was sitting unnecessarily erect. Her flat French back seemed to abhor the easy chair. Her tight hair, her trim hands, her well boned collar, everything breathed neatness, well laced stays, a full complement of hooks and eyes. She might have been the sedate wife of a prosperous French tradesman.

'Yes, it is hot,' said Victoria.

Then the conversation flagged. The hostess tried to draw out her guests. They were obviously anxious to behave. Lissa posed for 'The Sketch,' Zoé remained très correcte.

'Do you like my pictures?' asked Victoria pointing to the French engravings.

'They are very pretty,' said Lissa.

'I am very interested in engravings,' said Zoé, looking at the rosewood clock. There was a longish pause.

'I must show you my little dogs,' cried Victoria. She must do something. She went out to the landing and opened the garden door. There she met Augusta carrying a trayful of finger bowls. She felt inspired to overturn it if only to break the ice. Snoo and Poo rushed in, but in the boudoir they also instinctively became very well-bred.

'I am very fond of dogs,' said Lissa. Snoo lay down on her back.

'She is very pretty,' remarked Zoé.

Victoria punched the dogs in the ribs, rolled them over. It was no good. They would do nothing but gently wag their tails. She felt she would like to swear, when suddenly the front door was slammed, a cheerful voice rang in the hall.

'Hulloa, here's Duckie,' said Lissa.

The door opened loudly and Duckie seemed to rush in as if seated on a high wind.

'Here we are again!' cried the buxom presence in white. Every one of her frills rattled like metal. 'Late as usual. Oh, Vic, what angel pups!'

Duckie was on her knees. In a moment she had stirred up the Pekingese. They forgot their manners. They barked vociferously; and Zoé's starch was taken out of her by Poo, who rushed under her skirts. Lissa laughed and jumped up.

'Here Vic,' said Duckie ponderously, 'give us a hand, old girl. Never can jump about after gin and bitters,' she added confidentially as they helped her up.

The ice was effectually broken. They filed into the dining-room in pairs, Victoria and Lissa being slim playing the part of men. How they gobbled up the hors d'œuvres and how golden the John Dory was; the flanks of the fish shone like an old violin. Augusta flitted about quick but noisy. There was a smile on her face.

'Steady on, old love,' said Duckie to her as the maid inadvertently poured her claret into a tumbler.

'Never you mind, Gussie,' cried Zoé, bursting with familiarity, 'she'll be having it in a bucket by and by.'

Augusta laughed. What easy going herrschaft!

The talk was getting racier now. By the time they got to the dessert the merriment was rather supper than lunch-like.

'Victoria plums,' said Lissa, 'let us name them Bonne Hotesse.'

The idea was triumphant. Duckie insisted on drinking a toast in hock, for she never hesitated to mix her wines. Victoria smiled at them indulgently. The youth of all this and the jollity, the ease of it; all that was not of her old class.

'Confusion to the puritans,' she cried, and drained her glass. Snoo and Poo were fighting for scraps, for Duckie was already getting uncertain in her aim. Lissa and Zoé, like nymphs teasing Bacchus, were pelting her with plum stones, but she seemed quite unconscious of their pranks. They had some difficulty in getting her into the boudoir for coffee and liqueurs; once on the sofa she tried to go to sleep. Her companions roused her, however; the scent of coffee, acrid and stimulating, stung their nostrils; the liqueurs shone wickedly, green and golden in their glass bottles; talk became more individual, more reminiscent. Here and there a joke shot up like a rocket or stuck quivering in Duckie's placid flanks.

'Well Vic,' said Zoé, 'you are very well installée.' She slowly emptied of cigarette smoke her expanded cheeks and surveyed the comfortable little room.

'Did you do it yourself?' asked Lissa. 'It must have cost you a lot of money.'

'Oh, I didn't pay.' Victoria was either getting less reticent or the liqueur was playing her tricks. 'I began with a man who set me up here,' she added; 'he was . . . he died suddenly' she went on more cautiously.

'Oh!' Zoé's eyebrows shot up. 'That's what I call luck. But why do you not have a flat? It is cheaper.'

'Yes, but more inconvenient,' said Lissa. 'Ah, Vic. I do envy you. You don't know. We're always in trouble. We are moving every month.'

'But why?' asked Victoria. 'Why must you move?'

'Turn you out. Neighbours talk and then the landlord's conscience begins to prick him,' grumbled Duckie from the sofa.

'Oh, I see,' said Victoria. 'But when they turn you out what do you do?'

'Go somewhere else, softy,' said Duckie.

'But then what good does it do?'

All the women laughed.

'Law, who cares?' said Duckie. 'I dunno.'

'It is perfectly simple,' began Zoé in her precise foreign English. 'You see the landlord he will not let flats to ladies. When the police began to watch it would cause him des ennuis. So he lets to a gentleman who sublets the flats, you see? When the trouble begins, he doesn't know.'

'But what about the man who sublets?' asked the novice.

'Him? Oh, he's gone when it begins,' said Lissa. 'But they arrest the hall porter.'

'Justice must have its way, I see,' said Victoria.

'What you call justice,' grumbled Duckie, 'I call it damned hard lines.'

For some minutes Victoria discussed the housing problem with the fat jolly woman. Duckie was in a cheerful mood. One could hardly believe, when one looked at her puffy pink face, that she had seen fifteen years of trouble.

'Landladies,' she soliloquised, 'it's worse. You take my tip Vic, you steer clear of them. You pay as much for a pigsty as a man pays for a palace. If you do badly they chuck you out and stick to your traps and what can you do? You don't call a policeman. If you do well, they raise the rent, steal your clothes, charge you key money, and don't give 'em any lip if you don't want a man set at you. Oh, Lor!'

Duckie went on, and as she spoke her bluntness caused Victoria to visualise scene after scene, one more horrible than another: a tall dingy house in Bloomsbury with unlit staircases leading up to black landings suggestive of robbery and murder; bedrooms with blinded windows, reeking with patchouli, with carpets soiled by a myriad ignoble stains. The house Duckie pictured was like a warren in every corner of which soft-handed, rosy-lipped harpies sucked men's life-blood; there was drinking in it, and a piano played light airs; below in the ground floor, through the half open door, she could see two or three foreigners, unshaven, dirty-cuffed, playing cards in silence like hunters in ambush. She shuddered.

'Yes, but Fritz isn't so bad,' broke in Lissa. She had all this time been wrangling with Zoé.

'No good,' snapped Zoé, 'he's a . . . a bouche inutile.' Her pursed-up lips tightened. Fritz was swept away to limbo by her practical French philosophy.

'I like him because he is not useful' said Lissa dreamily. Zoé shrugged her shoulders. Poor fool, this Lissa.

'Who is this Fritz you're always talking about?' asked Victoria.

'He's a . . . you know what they call them,' said Duckie brutally.

'You're a liar,' screamed Lissa jumping up. 'He's . . . oh, Vic, you do not understand. He's the man I care for; he is so handsome, so clever, so gentle . . .'

'Very gentle,' sneered Zoé, 'why did you not take off your long gloves last week, hein? Perhaps you had blue marks?'

Lissa looked about to cry. Victoria put her hand on her arm.

'Never mind them,' she said, 'tell me.'

'Oh, Vic, you are so good.' Lissa's face twitched, then she smiled like a child bribed with a sweet. 'They do not know; they are hard. It is true, Fritz does not work, but if we were married he would work and I would do nothing. What does it matter?' They all smiled at the theory, but Lissa went on with heightened colour.

'Oh, it is so good to forget all the others; they are so ugly, so stupid. It is infernal. And then, Fritz, the man that I love for himself . . .'

'And who loves you for . . .' began Zoé.

'Shut up, Zoé,' said Duckie, her kindly heart expanding before this idealism, 'leave the kid alone. Not in my line of course. You take my tip, all of you, you go on your own. Don't you get let in with a landlady and don't you get let in with a man. It's them you've got to let in.'

'That's what I say,' remarked Zoé. 'We are successful because we take care. One must be economical. For instance, every month I can. . . .' She stopped and looked round suspiciously; with economy goes distrust, and Zoé was very French. 'Well, I can manage,' she concluded vaguely.

'And you need not talk, Duckie,' said Lissa savagely. 'You drink two quid's worth every week.'

'Well, s'pose I do,' grumbled the cherub. 'Think I do it for pleasure? Tell you what, if I hadn't got squiffy at the beginning I'd have gone off me bloomin' chump. I was in Buenos Ayres, went off with a waiter to get married. He was in a restaurant, Highgate way, where I was in service. I found out all about it when I got there. O Lor! Why, we jolly well had to drink, what with those Argentines who're half monkeys and the good of the house! Oh, Lor!' She smiled. 'Those were high old times,' she said inconsequently, overwhelmed by the glamour of the past. There was silence.

'I see,' said Victoria suddenly. 'I've never seen it before. If you want to get on, you've got to run on business lines. No ties, no men to bleed you. Save your money. Don't drink; save your looks. Why, those are good rules for a bank cashier! If you trip, down you go in the mud and nobody'll pick you up. So you've got to walk warily, not look at anybody, play fair and play hard. Then you can get some cash together and then you're free.'

There was silence. Victoria had faced the problem too squarely for two of her guests. Lissa looked dreamily towards the garden, wondering where Fritz was, whether she was wise in loving; Duckie, conscious of her heavy legs and incipient dropsy, blushed, then paled. Alone, Zoé, stiff and energetic like the determined business woman she was, wore on her lips the enigmatic smile born of a nice little sum in French three per cents.

'I must be going,' said Duckie hoarsely. She levered herself off the sofa. Then, almost silently, the party broke up.