False Scent

‘But – even so – I mean, so often they’re not absolutely perfect and you – it was your treasure.’

‘Not now,’ Charles said. ‘I’m a perfectionist, you know.’

‘That’s what you say!’ Richard exclaimed warmly. ‘But I bet it was because Maurice always coveted her. You’re so absurdly generous.’

‘Oh, nonsense,’ Charles said, and looked at his paper. Richard hesitated. He heard himself say:

‘Charles, do I ever say thank you? To you and Mary?’

‘My dear fellow, what for?’

‘For everything.’ He took refuge in irony. ‘For befriending the poor orphan boy, you know, among other things.’

‘I sincerely hope you’re not making a vicarious birthday resolution.’

‘It just struck me.’

Charles waited for a moment and then said: ‘You’ve given us a tremendous interest and very much pleasure.’ He again hesitated as if assembling his next sentence. ‘Mary and I,’ he said at last, ‘look upon you as an achievement. And now, do go and make your pretty speeches to her.’

‘Yes,’ Richard said. ‘I’d better, hadn’t I? See you later.’

Charles raised his newspaper and Richard went slowly upstairs, wishing, consciously, for perhaps the first time in his life, that he was not going to visit Miss Bellamy.

She was in her room, dressed and enthroned among her presents. He slipped into another gear as he took her to his heart in a birthday embrace and then held her at arm’s length to tell her how lovely she looked.

‘Darling, darling, darling!’ she cried joyously. ‘How perfect of you to come. I’ve been hoping and hoping!’

It occurred to him that it would have been strange indeed if he hadn’t performed this time-honoured observance, but he kissed her again and gave her his present.

It was early in the day and her reservoir of enthusiasm scarcely tapped. She was able to pour a freshet of praise over his tinsel picture and did so with many cries of gratitude and wonder. Where, she asked, where, where had he discovered the one, the perfect present?

It was an opening Richard had hoped for, but he found himself a little apprehensive nevertheless.

‘I found it,’ he said, ‘at the Pegasus – or rather Octavius Browne found it for me. He says it’s rareish.’

Her triangular smile didn’t fade. Her eyes continued to beam into his, her hands to press his hands.

‘Ah, yes!’ she cried gaily. ‘The old man in the bookshop! Believe it or not, darling, he sent me a telegram about my conception. Too sweet, but a little difficult to acknowledge.’

‘He’s very donnish,’ Richard said. She made a comic face at him. ‘He was, in fact, a don, but he found himself out of sympathy with angry young men and set up a bookshop instead.’

She propped up her tinsel picture on the dressing-table and gazed at it through half-closed eyes. ‘Isn’t there a daughter or something? I seem to have heard –’

‘A niece,’ Richard said. Maddeningly, his mouth had gone dry.

‘Ought I,’ she asked, ‘to nip downstairs and thank him? One never quite knows with that sort of person.’

Richard kissed her hand. ‘Octavius,’ he said, ‘is not that sort of person, darling. Do nip down: he’ll be enchanted. And Mary –’

‘What, my treasure?’

‘I thought perhaps you might be terribly kind and ask them for a drink. If you find them pleasant, that is.’

She sat at her dressing-table and examined her face in the glass. ‘I wonder,’ she said, ‘if I really like that new eyeshade.’ She took up a heavy Venetian glass scent spray and used it lavishly. ‘I hope someone gives me some really superlative scent,’ she said. ‘This is almost gone.’ She put it down. ‘For a drink?’ she said. ‘When? Not today, of course.’

‘Not today, you think?’

She opened her eyes very wide. ‘My dear, we’d only embarrass them.’

‘Well,’ he murmured. ‘See how you feel about it.’

She turned back to the glass and said nothing. He opened his dispatch-case and took out his typescript.

‘I’ve brought something,’ he said, ‘for you to read. It’s a surprise, Mary.’ He laid it on the dressing-table. ‘There.’

She looked at the cover-page. ‘Husbandry in Heaven. A play by Richard Dakers.’

‘Dicky? Dicky, darling, what is all this?’

‘Something I’ve kept for today,’ he said and knew at once that he’d made a mistake. She gave him that special luminous gaze that meant she was deeply moved. ‘Oh Dicky! ‘ she whispered. ‘For me? My dear!’

He was panic-stricken.

‘But when?’ she asked him, slowly shaking her head in bewilderment. ‘When did you do it? With all the other work? I don’t understand. I’m flabbergasted. Dicky!’

‘I’ve been working on it for some time. It’s – it’s quite a different thing. Not a comedy. You may hate it.’

‘Is it the great one – at last?’ she whispered. ‘The one that we always knew would happen? And all by yourself, Dicky? Not even with poor stupid, old, loving me to listen?’

She was saying all the things he would least have chosen for her to say. It was appalling.

‘For all I know,’ he said, ‘it may be frighteningly bad. I’ve got to that state where one just can’t tell. Anyway, don’t let’s burden the great day with it.’

‘You couldn’t have given me anything else that would make me half so happy.’ She stroked the typescript with both eloquent, not very young hands. ‘I’ll shut myself away for an hour before lunch and wolf it up.’

‘Mary,’ he said desperately. ‘Don’t be so sanguine about it. It’s not your sort of play.’

‘I won’t hear a word against it. You’ve written it for me, darling.’

He was hunting desperately for some way of telling her he had done nothing of the sort when she said gaily: ‘All right! We’ll see. I won’t tease you. What were we talking about? Your funnies in the bookshop? I’ll pop in this morning and see what I think of them, shall I? Will that do?’

Before he could answer two voices, one elderly and uncertain and the other a fluting alto, were raised outside in the passage:

‘Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you.

Happy birthday, dear Mary,

Happy birthday to you.’