False Scent

Pinky laughed rather wildly and said: ‘If I don’t tell somebody I’ll spontaneously combust, so I’m going to tell you. Bertie can lump it, bless him, because why after all shouldn’t I be audibly grateful.’

Mary Bellamy looked fixedly at her friend for a moment and then said: ‘Grateful?’

‘All right. I know I’m incoherent. Here it comes. Darling: I’m to have the lead in Bongo Dillon’s new play. At the Unicorn. Opening in September. Swear you won’t breathe it but it’s true and it’s settled and the contract’s mine for the signing. My first lead, Mary. Oh, God, I’m so happy.’

A hateful and all too-familiar jolt under the diaphragm warned Miss Bellamy that she had been upset. Simultaneously she knew that somehow or another she must run up a flag of welcome, must show a responsive warmth, must override the awful, menaced, slipping feeling, the nausea of the emotions that Pinky’s announcement had churned up.

‘Sweetie-pie!’ she said. ‘How wonderful!’ It wasn’t, she reflected, much cop as an expression of delighted congratulation from an old chum, but Pinky was too excited to pay any attention. She went prancing on about the merits of her contract, the glories of the role, the nice behaviour of The Management (Miss Bellamy’s Management, as she sickeningly noted), and the feeling that at last this was going to be It. All this gave Miss Bellamy a breather. She began to make fairly appropriate responses. Presently when Pinky drew breath, she was able to say with the right touch of down-to-earth honesty:

‘Pinky, this is going to be your Great Thing.’

‘I know it! I feel it myself,’ Pinky said soberly and added: ‘Please God, I’ll have what it takes. Please God, I will.’

‘My dear, you will,’ she rejoined and for the life of her couldn’t help adding, ‘Of course, I haven’t read the play.’

‘The purest Bongo! Comedy with a twist. You know? Though I says it as shouldn’t, it’s right up my cul-de-sac. Bongo says he had me in mind all the time he was writing it.’

Miss Bellamy laughed. ‘Darling! We do know our Bongo, don’t we? The number of plays he’s said he’d written for me and when one looked at them – !’

With one of her infuriating moments of penetration, Pinky said, ‘Mary! Be pleased for me.’

‘But, sweetie, naturally I’m pleased. It sounds like a wonderful bit of luck and I hope with all my heart it works out.’

‘Of course, I know it means giving up my part in Richard’s new one for you. But, face it, there wasn’t much in it for me, was there? And nothing was really settled so I’m not letting the side down, am I?’

Miss Bellamy couldn’t help it. ‘My dear!’ she said, with a kindly laugh, ‘we’ll lose no sleep over that little problem: the part’ll cast itself in two seconds.’

‘Exactly!’ Pinky cried happily and Miss Bellamy felt one of her rare onsets of rage begin to stir. She said:

‘But you were talking about Bertie, darling. Where does he come in?’

‘Aha!’ Pinky said maddeningly and shook her finger.

At this juncture Gracefield arrived with a drinks-tray.

Miss Bellamy controlled herself. ‘Come on,’ she said, ‘I’m going to break my rule, too. We must have a drink on this, darling.’

‘No, no, no!’

‘Yes, yes, yes. A teeny one. Pink for Pinky?’

She stood between Pinky and the drinks and poured out one stiff and one negligible gin-and-bitters. She gave the stiff one to Pinky.

‘To your wonderful future, darling,’ she said. ‘Bottoms up!’

‘Oh, dear!’ Pinky said. ‘I shouldn’t.’

‘Never mind.’

They drank.

‘And Bertie?’ Miss Bellamy asked presently. ‘Come on. You know I’m as silent as the grave.’

The blush that long ago had earned Pinky her nickname appeared in her cheeks. ‘This really is a secret,’ she said. ‘Deep and deadly. But I’m sure he won’t mind my telling you. You see, it’s a part that has to be dressed up to the hilt – five changes and all of them grand as grand. Utterly beyond me and my little woman in Bayswater. Well! Bertie, being so much mixed up with The Management has heard all about it, and do you know, darling, he’s offered, entirely of his own accord, to do my clothes. Designs, materials, making – everything from Saracen. And all completely free-ers. Isn’t that kind?’

Wave after wave of fury chased each other like electrical frequencies through Miss Bellamy’s nerves and brain. She had time to think: ‘I’m going to throw a temperament and it’s bad for me,’ and then she arrived at the point of climax.

The explosion was touched off by Bertie himself who came tripping back with a garland of tuberoses twined round his person. When he saw Pinky he stopped short, looked from her to Miss Bellamy and turned rather white.

‘Bertie,’ Pinky said. ‘I’ve split on you.’

‘How could you!’ he said. ‘Oh, Pinky, how could you!’

Pinky burst into tears.

‘I don’t know!’ she stammered. ‘I didn’t mean to, Bertie darling. Forgive me. I was high.’

‘Stay me with flagons!’ he said in a small voice. Miss Bellamy, employing a kind of enlargement of herself that was technically one of her most telling achievements, crossed to him and advanced her face to within four inches of his own.

‘You rat, Bertie,’ she said quietly. ‘You little, two-timing, double-crossing, dirty rat.’

And she wound her hands in his garland, tore it off him and threw it in his face.

CHAPTER 2 (#u6617e2d5-770a-520f-a652-7d37aabc7775)

Preparation for a Party (#u6617e2d5-770a-520f-a652-7d37aabc7775)

Mary Bellamy’s temperaments were of rare occurrence but formidable in the extreme and frightening to behold. They were not those regulation theatre tantrums that seem to afford pleasure both to observer and performer; on the contrary they devoured her like some kind of migraine and left her exhausted. Their onset was sudden, their duration prolonged and their sequel incalculable.

Bertie and Pinky, both familiar with them, exchanged looks of despair. Miss Bellamy had not raised her voice, but a kind of stillness seemed to have fallen on the house. They themselves spoke in whispers. They also, out of some impulse of helpless unanimity, said the same thing at the same time.

‘Mary!’ they said. ‘Listen! Don’t!’

They knew very well that they had better have held their tongues. Their effort, feeble though it was, served only to inflame her. With an assumption of calmness that was infinitely more alarming than raging hysteria she set about them, concentrating at first on Bertie.

‘I wonder,’ she said, ‘what it feels like to be you. I wonder if you enjoy your own cunning. I expect you do, Bertie. I expect you rather pride yourself on your talent for cashing in on other people’s generosity. On mine, for instance.’

‘Mary, darling! Please!’

‘Let us,’ she continued, trembling slightly, ‘look at this thing quite calmly and objectively, shall we? I’m afraid it will not be a delicious experience but it has to be faced.’

Gracefield came in, took one look at his mistress and went out again. He had been with the family for some time.

‘I am the last woman in the world,’ Miss Bellamy explained, ‘to remind people of their obligations. The last. However –’

She began to remind Bertie of his obligations. Of the circumstances under which she had discovered him – she did not, to his evident relief, say how many years ago – of how she had given him his first chance; of how, since then, he had never looked back; of how there had been an agreement – ‘gentlemen’s,’ she added bitterly – that he would never design for another leading lady in The Management without first consulting her. He opened his mouth, but was obliged without utterance to shut it again. Had he not, she asked, risen to his present position entirely on the wings of her patronage? Besieged as she was by the importunities of the great fashion houses, had she not stuck resolutely to him through thick and thin? And now –

She executed a gesture, Siddons-like in its tragic implications, and began to pace to and fro while Pinky and Bertie hastily made room for her to do so. Her glance lighting for a moment on Pinky she began obliquely to attack her.