False Scent

‘I meet him there occasionally,’ Charles said, and added lightly, ‘I’m thick with them too, Mary.’

There was a further silence and then the voice, delightful and gay, shouted: ‘Florrie! Bring me you know what.’

Florence picked up her own offering and went into the bathroom.

Charles Templeton stared through the window at a small London square, brightly receptive of April sunshine. He could just see the flower-woman at the corner of Pardoner’s Row, sitting in a galaxy of tulips. There were tulips everywhere. His wife had turned the bow window into an indoor garden and had filled it with them and with a great mass of early-flowering azaleas, brought up in the conservatory and still in bud. He examined these absentmindedly and discovered among them a tin with a spray-gun mechanism. The tin was labelled ‘Slaypest’ and bore alarming captions about the lethal nature of its contents. Charles peered at them through his eyeglass.

‘Florence,’ he said, ‘I don’t think this stuff ought to be left lying about.’

‘Just what I tell her,’ Florence said, returning.

‘There are all sorts of warnings. It shouldn’t be used in enclosed places. Is it used like that?’

‘It won’t be for want of my telling her if it is.’

‘Really, I don’t like it. Could you lose it?’

‘I’d get the full treatment meself if I did,’ Florence grunted.

‘Nevertheless,’ Charles said, ‘I think you should do so.’

Florence shot a resentful look at him and muttered under her breath.

‘What did you say?’ he asked.

‘I said it wasn’t so easy. She knows. She can read. I’ve told her.’ She glowered at him and then said: ‘I take my orders from her. Always have and always will.’

He waited for a moment. ‘Quite so,’ he said. ‘But all the same …’ And hearing his wife’s voice, put the spray-gun down, gave a half-sigh and turned to confront the familiar room.

Miss Bellamy came into it wearing Florence’s gift. There was a patch of sunshine in the room and she posed in it, expectant, unaware of its disobliging candour.

‘Look at my smashing shift!’ she cried. ‘Florrie’s present! A new birthday suit.’

She had ‘made an entrance,’ comic-provocative, skilfully French-farcical. She had no notion at all of the disservice she had done herself.

The voice that she had once called charming said: ‘Marvellous. How kind of Florence.’

He was careful to wait a little longer before he said, ‘Well, darling, I shall leave you to your mysteries,’ and went down to his solitary breakfast.

II

There was no particular reason why Richard Dakers should feel uplifted that morning: indeed, there were many formidable reasons why he should not. Nevertheless, as he made his way by bus and on foot to Pardoner’s Place, he did experience, very strongly, that upward kick of the spirit which lies in London’s power of bestowal. He sat in the front seat at the prow of the bus and felt like a figurehead, cleaving the tide of the King’s Road, masterfully above it, yet gloriously of it. The Chelsea shops were full of tulips and when, leaving the bus, he walked to the corner of Pardoner’s Row, there was his friend the flower-woman with buckets of them, still pouted up in buds.

‘ ’Morning, dear,’ said the flower-woman. ‘Duck of a day, innit?’

‘It’s a day for the gods,’ Richard agreed, ‘and your hat fits you like a halo, Mrs Tinker.’

‘It’s me straw,’ Mrs Tinker said. ‘I usually seem to change to me straw on the second Sat. in April.’

‘Aphrodite on her cockleshell couldn’t say fairer. I’ll take two dozen of the yellows.’

She wrapped them up in green paper. ‘Ten bob to you,’ said Mrs Tinker.

‘Ruin!’ Richard ejaculated, giving her eleven shillings.

‘Destitution! But what the hell!’

‘That’s right, dear, we don’ care, do we? Tulips, lady? Lovely tulips.’

Carrying his tulips and with his dispatch-case tucked under his arm, Richard entered Pardoner’s Place and turned right. Three doors along he came to the Pegasus, a bow-fronted Georgian house that had been converted by Octavius Browne into a bookshop. In the window, tilted and open, lay a first edition of Beijer and Duchartre’s Premières Comédies Italiennes. A little farther back, half in shadow, hung a negro marionette, very grand in striped silks. And in the watery depths of the interior Richard could just make out the shapes of the three beautifully polished old chairs, the lovely table and the vertical strata of rows and rows of books. He could see, too, the figure of Anelida Lee moving about among her uncle’s treasure, attended by Hodge, their cat. In the mornings Anelida, when not rehearsing at her club theatre, helped her uncle. She hoped that she was learning to be an actress. Richard, who knew a good deal about it, was convinced that already she was one.

He opened the door and went in.

Anelida had been dusting and wore her black smock, an uncompromising garment. Her hair was tied up in a white scarf. He had time to reflect that there was a particular beauty that most pleased when it was least adorned and that Anelida was possessed of it.

‘Hallo,’ he said. ‘I’ve brought you some tulips. Good morning, Hodge.’ Hodge stared at him briefly, jerked his tail, and walked away.

‘How lovely! But it’s not my birthday.’

‘Never mind. It’s because it’s a nice morning and Mrs Tinker was wearing her straw.’

‘I couldn’t be better pleased,’ said Anelida. ‘Will you wait while I get a pot for them? There’s a green jug.’

She went into a room at the back. He heard a familiar tapping noise on the stairs. Her Uncle Octavius came down, leaning on his black stick. He was a tall man of about sixty-three with a shock of grey hair and a mischievous face. He had a trick of looking at people out of the corners of his eyes as if inviting them to notice what a bad boy he was. He was rather touchy, immensely learned and thin almost to transparency.

‘Good morning, my dear Dakers,’ he said, and seeing the tulips touched one of them with the tip of a bluish finger. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘“Art could not feign more simple grace, Nor Nature take a line away.” How very lovely and so pleasantly uncomplicated by any smell. We have found something for you, by the way. Quite nice and I hope in character, but it may be a little too expensive. You must tell us what you think.”

He opened a parcel on his desk and stood aside for Richard to look at the contents.

‘A tinsel picture, as you see,’ he said, ‘of Madame Vestris en travesti in jockey’s costume.’ He looked sideways at Richard. ‘Beguiling little breeches, don’t you think? Do you suppose it would appeal to Miss Bellamy?’

‘I don’t see how it could fail.’

‘It’s rare-ish. The frame’s contemporary. I’m afraid it’s twelve guineas.’

‘It’s mine,’ Richard said. ‘Or rather, it’s Mary’s.’

‘You’re sure? Then, if you’ll excuse me for a moment, I’ll get Nell to make a birthday parcel of it. There’s a sheet of Victorian tinsel somewhere. Nell, my dear! Would you – ?’

He tapped away and presently Anelida returned with the green jug and his parcel, beautifully wrapped.

Richard put his hand on his dispatch-case. ‘What do you suppose is in there?’ he asked.

‘Not – ? Not the play? Not Husbandry in Heaven?’

‘Hot from the typist.’ He watched her thin hands arrange the tulips. ‘Anelida, I’m going to show it to Mary.’

‘You couldn’t choose a better day,’ she said warmly and, when he didn’t answer, ‘What’s the matter?’