False Scent

‘I imagine,’ she said, still to Bertie, ‘that I shall not be accused of lack of generosity. I am generally said, I think, to be a good friend. Faithful and just,’ she added, perhaps with some obscure recollection of Mark Antony. ‘Over and over again for friendship’s sake I’ve persuaded The Management to cast actresses who were unable to give me adequate support.’

‘Now, look here – !’ Pinky began warmly.

‘– over and over again. Timmy said, only the other day: “Darling, you’re sacrificing yourself on the altar of your personal loyalties!” He’s said, over and over again, that he wouldn’t for anybody else under the sun accept the casting as it stood. Only for me …’

‘What casting?’ Pinky demanded. Miss Bellamy continued to address herself exclusively to Bertie.

‘Only for me, Timmy said, would he dream of taking into any production of his an artist whose spiritual home was weekly rep. in the ham-counties.’

‘Timmy,’ Pinky said dangerously, ‘is producing my play. It’s entirely due to him and the author that I’ve got the part. They told The Management they wanted me.’

Bertie said: ‘I happen to know that’s perfectly true.’

‘Conspiracy!’ Miss Bellamy shouted so loudly and suddenly that the others jumped in unison. She was ravaged by a terrible vision of Bertie, Pinky and Timmy all closeted with The Management and agreeing to say nothing to her of their plots and plans. In a Delphic fury she outlined this scene. Bertie, who had been moodily disengaging himself from the remnants of his garland, showed signs of fight. He waited his chance and cut in.

‘Speaking,’ he began, ‘as a two-timing, double-crossing rat, which God knows I am not, I take leave to assure you, darling Mary, that you’re wrecking yourself for nothing. I’m doing Pinky’s gowns out of friendliness and my name isn’t going to appear and I must say I’d have thought…’

He was allowed to get no further.

‘It’s not,’ Miss Bellamy said, ‘what you’ve done, both of you, but the revolting way you’ve done it. If you’d come to me in the first instance and said …’ Then followed an exposition of what they should have said and of the generous response they would have enjoyed if they’d said it. For a moment it looked as if the row was going to degenerate into an aimless and repetitive wrangle. It would probably have done so if Pinky had not said abruptly:

‘Now, look here, Mary! It’s about time you faced up to yourself. You know jolly well that anything you’ve done for either of us has been paid back with interest. I know you’ve had a lot to do with my getting on The Management’s short list and I’m grateful, but I also know that it’s suited you very well to have me there. I’m a good foil to you. I know all your gimmicks. How you like to be fed lines. And when you dry, as nowadays you very often do, I can fill in like nobody’s business. In the gentle art of letting myself be upstaged, cheated out of points and fiddled into nonentity I’ve done you proud and you’ll find I’m damn’ hard to replace.’

‘My God! My God! That I should have to listen to this!’

‘As for Bertie …’

‘Never mind, Pinky,’ he said quickly.

‘I do mind. It’s true you gave Bertie his start, but what hasn’t he done for you? Your decor! Your clothes! Face it, Mary, without the Saracen Concealed Curve you’d be the Grand Old Lady of the Hip Parade.’

Bertie gave a hysterical hoot of laughter and looked terrified.

‘The truth is,’ Pinky said, ‘you want it both ways, Mary. You want to boss everybody and use everybody for your own ends and at the same time you want us all to wallow in your wake saying how noble and generous and wonderful you are. You’re a cannibal, Mary, and it’s high time somebody had the guts to tell you so.’

A dead silence followed this unexampled speech.

Miss Bellamy walked to the door and turned. It was a movement with which they were familiar.

‘After this,’ she said very slowly, dead-panning her voice to a tortured monotone, ‘there is only one thing for me to do and much as it hurts me, I shall do it. I shall see The Management. Tomorrow.’

She opened the door. They had a brief glimpse of Charles, Warrender and Richard, irresolute in the hall, before she swept out and shut the door behind her.

The room seemed very quiet after she had gone.

‘Bertie,’ Pinky said at last, ‘if I’ve done you any harm I’m desperately sorry. I was high. I’ll never, never forgive myself.’

‘That’s all right, dear.’

‘You’re so kind. Bertie – do you think she’ll – do you think she can – ?’

‘She’ll try, dear. She’ll try.’

‘It took everything I’ve got, I promise you, to give battle. Honestly, Bertie, she frightened me. She looked murderous.’

‘Horrid, wasn’t it?’

Pinky stared absently at the great flask of the scent called ‘Unguarded.’ A ray of sunshine had caught it and it shone golden.

‘What are you going to do?’ she asked.

Bertie picked up a handful of tuberoses from the carpet.

‘Get on with me bloody flowers, dear,’ he said. ‘Get on with me bloody flowers.’

II

Having effected her exit, Miss Bellamy swept like a sirocco past Richard, Warrender and her husband and continued upstairs. In her bedroom she encountered Florence who said: ‘What have you been doing to yourself?’

‘You shut up,’ Miss Bellamy shouted and slammed the door.

‘Whatever it is it’s no good to you. Come on, dear. What’s the story?’

‘Bloody treachery’s the story. Shut up. I don’t want to tell you. My God, what friends I’ve got! My God, what friends!’

She strode about the room and made sounds of outrage and defeat. She flung herself on the bed and pummelled it.

Florence said: ‘You know what’ll be the end of this – party and all.’

Miss Bellamy burst into tears. ‘I haven’t,’ she sobbed, ‘a friend in the world. Not in the whole wide world. Except Dicky.’

A spasm of something that might have been chagrin twitched at Florence’s mouth. ‘Him!’ she said under her breath.

Miss Bellamy abandoned herself to a passion of tears. Florence went into the bathroom and returned with sal volatile.

‘Here,’ she said. ‘Try this. Come along now, dear.’

‘I don’t want that muck. Give me one of my tablets.’

‘Not now.’

‘Now!’

‘You know as well as I do, the doctor said only at night.’

‘I don’t care what he said. Get me one.’

She turned her head and looked up at Florence, ‘Did you hear what I said?’