False Scent

‘That’s what you think.’

‘Richard!’

‘At least I’ve surprised you into calling me by name.’

‘But when did you see me?’

‘It slipped out. It’s part of a deep-laid plan. You’ll find out.’

‘When?’

‘At the party. I’m off, now. Au revoir, dear Anelida.’

When he had gone, Anelida sat perfectly still for quite a long time. She was bewildered, undecided and piercingly happy.

Richard, however, returned to the house with his mind made up. He went straight to Charles Templeton’s study. He found Charles and Maurice Warrender there, rather solemn over a decanter of sherry. When he came in they both looked self-conscious.

‘We were just talking about you,’ Charles said. ‘Have whatever it is you do have at this hour, Dicky. Lager?’

‘Please. I’ll get it. Should I make myself scarce so that you can go on talking about me?’

‘No, no.’

‘We’d finished,’ Warrender said, ‘I imagine. Hadn’t we, Charles?’

‘I suppose we had.’

Richard poured out his lager. ‘As a matter of fact,’ he said, ‘I sidled in with the idea of boring you with a few observations under that very heading.’

Warrender muttered something about taking himself off. ‘Not unless you have to, Maurice,’ Richard said. ‘It arises, in a way, out of what you said this morning.’ He sat down and stared at his beer mug. ‘This is going to be difficult,’ he said.

They waited, Warrender looking owlish, Charles, as always, politely attentive.

‘I suppose it’s a question of divided allegiances,’ Richard said at last. ‘Partly that, anyway.’ He went on, trying to put what he wanted to say as objectively as might be. He knew that he was floundering and almost at once began to regret his first impulse.

Charles kept turning his elderly freckled hand and looking at it. Warrender sipped his sherry and shot an occasional, almost furtive, glance at Richard.

Presently Charles said: ‘Couldn’t we come to the point?’

‘I wish I could,’ Richard rejoined. ‘I’m making a mess of this, I know.’

‘May I have a go at it? Is this what you’re trying to tell us? You think you can write a different kind of play from the sort of thing that suits Mary. You have, in fact, written one. You think it’s the best thing you’ve done but you’re afraid Mary won’t take kindly to the idea of your making a break. You’ve shown it to her and she’s reading it now. You’re afraid that she’ll take it for granted that you see her in the lead. Right, so far?’

‘Yes. That’s it.’

‘But,’ Warrender demanded unexpectedly, ‘she won’t like this play, what!’

‘I don’t think she’ll like it.’

‘Isn’t that your answer? ‘ Charles said. ‘If she doesn’t like it you can offer it elsewhere?’

‘It isn’t,’ Richard said, ‘as simple as that.’ And looking at these two men, each old enough to be his father, each with thirty years’ experience of Mary Bellamy, he saw that he was understood.

‘There’s been one row already this morning,’ he said. ‘A snorter.’

Warrender shot a look at Charles. ‘I don’t know if I’m imagining it,’ he said, ‘but I’ve fancied the rows come a bit oftener these days, isn’t it?’

Charles and Richard were silent.

Warrender said: ‘Fellow’s got to live his own life. My opinion. Worst thing that can happen to a man’s getting himself bogged down in a mistaken loyalty. Seen it happen. Man in my regiment. Sorry business.’

Charles said: ‘We all have our mistaken loyalties.’

There was a further silence.

Richard said violently: ‘But – I owe everything to her. The ghastly things I began to write at school. The first shamingly hopeless plays. Then the one that rang the bell. She made The Management take it. We talked everything over. Everything. And now – suddenly – I don’t want to. I – don’t – want – to. Why? Why?’

‘Very well,’ Charles said. Richard looked at him in surprise, but he went on very quietly. ‘Writing plays is your business. You understand it. You’re an expert. You should make your own decisions.’

‘Yes. But Mary …’

‘Mary holds a number of shares in companies that I direct, but I don’t consult her about their policy or confine my interests to those companies only.’

‘Surely it’s not the same thing.’

‘Isn’t it?’ Charles said placidly. ‘I think it is. Sentiment,’ he added, ‘can be a disastrous guide in such matters. Mary doesn’t understand your change of policy: the worst reason in the world for mistrusting it. She is guided almost entirely by emotion.’

Warrender said: ‘Think she’s changed? Sorry, Charles, I’ve no kind of business to ask.’

‘She has changed,’ her husband said. ‘One does.’

‘You can see,’ Richard said, ‘what happened with Pinky and Bertie. How much more will she mind with me! Was there anything so terrible about what they did? The truth is, of course, that they didn’t confide in her because they didn’t know how she’d take it. Well – you saw how she took it.’

‘I suppose,’ Warrender began dimly, ‘as a woman gets older …’ He faded out in a bass rumble.

‘Charles,’ Richard said, ‘you may consider this a monstrous suggestion, but have you thought, lately, that there might be anything – anything – ?’

‘Pathological? ‘ Charles said.

‘It’s so unlike her to be vindictive. Isn’t it?’ He appealed to both of them. ‘Well, my God, isn’t it?’

To his astonishment they didn’t answer immediately. Presently Charles said with a suggestion of pain in his voice: ‘The same thing has occurred to me. I – I asked Frank Harkness about it. He’s looked after us both for years, as you know. He thinks she’s been a bit nervy for some time, I gather, like many women of her – well, of her age. He thinks the high-pressure atmosphere of the theatre may have increased the tension. I got the impression he was under-stating his case. I don’t mind telling you,’ Charles added unhappily, ‘it’s been worrying me for some time. These – these ugly scenes.’

Warrender muttered: ‘Vindictive,’ and looked as if he regretted it.

Richard cried out: ‘Her kindness! I’ve always thought she had the kindest eyes I’d ever seen in a woman.’

Warrender, who seemed this morning to be bent on speaking out of character, did so now. ‘People,’ he said, ‘talk about eyes and mouths as if they had something to do with the way other people think and behave. Only bits of the body, aren’t they? Like navels and knees and toenails. Arrangements.’