‘My God!’ said young Mr Higgs.

  2

  It was rather a bewildering lunch.

  It began in the normal way, Claudia being asked what she would drink.

  ‘I think,’ said Claudia, screwing her little face up as if reviewing the cellar, ‘I think a Gin and It.’ She had no real liking for alcohol, but asking for a Gin and It always gave her a cosy feeling of sophistication; moreover, it was the only cocktail of whose name she was quite certain.

  ‘A Gin and It and a Sidecar,’ said young Mr Higgs to the waiter.

  ‘Do you know, I think I’ll change my mind and have a Sidecar too,’ said Claudia. This also was normal. Any alternative, once she was sure of the name, was an occasion for hope.

  ‘Two Sidecars. What shall we eat? Let’s have oysters, shall we, or do you loathe them?’

  ‘Oh, do let’s. How lovely!’

  Lunch was ordered. He looks about fifteen, thought Claudia, but I suppose he must be more.

  ‘Now then, Miss Lancing,’ said Higgs. ‘By the way, may I call you Claudia? There seems to be a lot of that on the stage, and I was up at Cambridge with your brother. At least, I suppose it was your brother, Claude Lancing.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. Fancy! Did you know each other? I used to come up for May Weeks, at least I did once. What fun if we’d met! Yes, do call me Claudia.’

  ‘My name is Mr Higgs. At least it seems to be. You’d think, by now, Kelly could have called me Higgs. You can call me Carol if you like, but don’t force it. Let it come.’

  ‘Carol. Quite easy.’

  ‘Good. No, I didn’t know your brother. I was at Magdalene. I admired him from a distance. Why do you like this bloody play?’

  Claudia, rather disconcerted, rather angry suddenly, tried to think of reasons for liking the play, or not liking the play; polite explanations or rude explanations why she had said she liked it when she didn’t; and could think of nothing. The drinks coming, she lifted her glass and said snappily, ‘All right, here’s to its failure.’

  A frown creased the fresh simplicity of young Mr Higgs’s face. He held up a hand. ‘Wait!’ he said commandingly. ‘We mustn’t be in a hurry about this.’

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘If it’s a failure, you’re out of a job. Do you mind?’

  ‘Of course I do!’ To have thrown up the Academy for nothing! She realized for the first time how desperately important it was that the play should run. ‘It must succeed! It must!’

  ‘That settles it,’ said Higgs. He raised his glass. ‘Success!’

  ‘Success!’ said Claudia.

  ‘And there’s also the money, we mustn’t forget that. But, oh God, what a bloody play.’

  ‘Then why did you write it?’

  ‘I didn’t. Good Heavens, women, do you realize that in the play which I wrote, Uncle Dudley was a comic character? I still think he’s ineffably comic. I think that, given the right part, Wilson Kelly is our greatest comic actor. Everything he says and does makes me laugh. But he won’t be playing for laughs on the night, and his technique is so good that he probably won’t get them. He’ll get a lot of cheers and a few internal groans. Mine will be the most heartfelt.’

  ‘Well, why did you let your play be made all different? I mean made romantic instead of comic, if that’s what you meant.’

  Higgs slid an oyster into his mouth, swallowed, and said, ‘Have you ever seen a rabbit with a snake?’

  ‘Never, actually.’

  ‘Neither have I. And I rather think I mean a ferret. Fascination, Claudia. That’s the secret. The awful thing is that the rabbit likes it. He knows he’s going to be eaten, and he just can’t resist the novelty of it. That’s me. Rabbit Higgs and Wilson Ferret.’

  ‘Oh!’ said Claudia. She looked a little unhappy.

  ‘I see your point,’ he said. ‘Wilson Kelly is an old friend of yours, and you think I oughtn’t to call him a ferret.’

  ‘Well——’

  ‘I could,’ said young Mr Higgs, considering the point and deciding to be magnanimous, ‘I could make it a weasel.’

  ‘He’s not an old friend of mine, but I’m grateful to him because he’s given me my first chance, and I’m naturally grateful to him—and—and——’

  ‘And you want to be a good trouper, and you’ve read somewhere that good troupers are always loyal to their chiefs.’

  ‘Well, there is such a thing as loyalty——’

  ‘I think I shall call him “Chief”,’ said young Mr Higgs thoughtfully. ‘I knew there was something I was doing wrong, but I couldn’t put a finger on it. “Yes, Chief.” Sounds much better.’

  Claudia looked round the room and said coldly, ‘Is that John Gielgud over there?’

  ‘Probably. Or Henry Irving.’

  ‘I can’t think why you asked me out to lunch,’ she snapped, ‘if you just want to make fun of my profession, and my part, and the play I’m in, which means so much to me.’

  ‘Well, I can tell you why I asked you out to lunch. Hasn’t anybody else ever told you?’ Claudia’s natural colour deepened suddenly. ‘Yes, that’s why. You really are rather sweet, you know. If an escaped lunatic buys the film rights of this play, and The Times says that I’m the greatest English dramatist since Ivor Novello, will you marry me?’

  ‘You are an idiot,’ laughed Claudia.

  ‘Call me Mr Higgs.’

  ‘Mr Higgs.’

  ‘Heavenly,’ he said, pressing his hand to his heart.

  Claudia laughed again. It was fun being on the stage.

  From time to time during that exciting week at Culverhampton, in dark and dusty corners of the theatre, or in the more cheerful anchorage of the Queen’s Arms bar, Claudia would come across the two authors in earnest collaboration; and young Mr Higgs, conscious of her passing, would take no apparent notice of her, but put two fingers vertically up over each ear and waggle them, as reminder that he was playing his accustomed role. Every snatched meal between rehearsals was hurried down in the publicity of the Queen’s Arms bar, local patrons listening stolidly to the bright chatter, and saying to each other behind hands, after giving the matter full consideration, ‘Actors and Actresses’. Claudia loved those companionable moments. They were all brothers-in-arms, dependent on each other, engaged in a common assault on the public’s emotions. The quarrels and the jealousies would come later. Meanwhile she drank delight of battle with her peers, and showed the delight so ingenuously, was so willing to do anybody else’s work in addition to her own, that she was by way of becoming the mascot of the company, qualified for a smile from everybody and a friendly pat on the bottom from the more experienced men.

  On the morning of the first dress-rehearsal she was looking at attractive things in a shop-window in King Street when a voice behind her said, ‘Yes, yes, pretty and pink, but not warm.’

  She flashed round, coloured and said, ‘Oh, it’s you.’

  ‘That Mr Higgs again. I love the way you blush. We shan’t want those, not with the winter coming on.’

  ‘You are ridiculous. I wasn’t—I was just going to get some ribbon.’

  ‘Jenny would go in a domino

  Pretty and pink but warm,

  While I attended clad in a splendid

  Austrian uniform.

  ‘I thought it sounded familiar. Quotation from Rudyard Kipling and Wilson Kelly.’

  ‘Mr Kelly wants me to have some ribbons on my guitar.’

  ‘Of course, of course. Nice clean ones. Speaking as part-author I see Zella with red and yellow streamers. Her father was President of the M.C.C.—I should have told you this before, it would have helped you to build up the character—and her mother was the Romany Queen of Bognor Regis. She was playing the guitar outside the French windows of his house in Park Lane one night; a full moon hung low in the sky; and the only thing she remembered clearly afterwards was his red and yellow tie, and a voice saying “How’s that?” Otherwise, she used to say, they all seemed much the same to her. That’s why you have this passion for red and yellow.’

  ‘Darling, you have got a nasty mind.’

  How easily she had called him Darling!

  ‘Would you say so?’ He considered it—a little anxiously, it seemed.

  ‘No, darling, of course not,’ said Claudia quickly. She took his arm. ‘Come in and help me buy the ribbon.’ Giving his arm a little squeeze, she said, ‘And don’t be any different.’

  It’s I who am different, she thought. I don’t know what’s happening to me.

  3

  ‘How’s Claudia?’ said Chloe, as the waiter left to look for two champagne cocktails.

  ‘Her first night to-night,’ said Claude. And my first day, he thought. The first meal we’ve had alone together. I wish it hadn’t been lunch.

  ‘Why aren’t you there, holding her hand?’

  ‘Do you mean like this?’ asked Claude, taking Chloe’s from her lap.

  She gave him a smile, and said, ‘Yes, perhaps you’re better in London.’

  ‘We’ll send her a telegram after lunch.’

  ‘Two telegrams, darling. It’s quantity not quality which counts in the theatre. Nobody reads them, you just pin them up on your screen, and get a mass effect. She’s bound to be dressing with some other girl——’

  ‘Ruby.’

  ‘Very well then, we must beat Ruby’s side of the screen. Would it be nice, darling, to drive round the post-offices of London together, and send her a whole series of telegrams, from John and Jack and Jill and Bill, sort of noncommittal names? And one or two difficult ones just to make her wonder. Would that be nice, darling?’

  ‘I would be nice to drive round the post-offices of London together.’

  She gave him her intimate smile again and said, ‘All right, that’s what we’ll do.’

  ‘And what would be still nicer would be if you came to the London first night with me.’

  ‘I’m sorry, darling. I expect I shall be going with Everard. I generally do.’

  ‘Who’s Everard?’

  ‘Everard Hale.’

  ‘Oh! I thought he was in South America or somewhere.’

  ‘He’ll be back before then. They don’t come to London till November. I had a letter from Wil.’

  ‘Damn and Hell,’ thought Claude, ‘I won’t be jealous, what’s the good when there are so many?’ He said, ‘Did he tell you how she was getting on?’

  ‘No, ducky, I don’t suppose he wants to remember where he met her. He’s getting ready to believe that he discovered her in a cabaret at Runcorn. I do hope the play isn’t too terrible. It generally is.’

  ‘Apparently the author was up at Cambridge with me.’

  ‘That doesn’t really help us, darling,’ smiled Chloe. ‘But it’s nice to know that there were two of you there. How’s Borotra?’

  ‘My God, do you remember that?’

  ‘Well, of course!’ Chloe was surprised.

  ‘Shall I tell you something?’

  ‘You can tell me anything, darling. I’ll stop you if I’ve heard it.’

  ‘When I was waiting for you——’

  ‘Wasn’t I a punctual girl?’

  ‘I suppose so. I got here early. I liked waiting for you, it’s the best part really.’

  ‘Oh, Claude!’

  ‘And all the time I was waiting, I was wondering if you’d recognize me. I shouldn’t have been a bit surprised if you hadn’t. When you came in, I wanted to go up to you and say, ‘I am Claude Lancing’.

  ‘Darling, what do you mean?’

  ‘That’s how you make me feel.’ He looked away from her, he looked down at the tablecloth, and said in a low voice: ‘You don’t recognize me. I want to shake you, and say “Listen! I am Claude Lancing. I’m not Everard this, or Wil that or Percy the other. When you have lunch with somebody else to-morrow, I’m not just the man you had lunch with yesterday—same sort of lunch, same sort of talk, same sort of man. Even though you don’t love me, I’m as different from other men for you, as you are different from every woman in the world for me.” But you make me feel that I’m not. That, for you, I’m not Claude Lancing, but just Monday’s man, who might so easily have been somebody else.’

  Even as the words rushed from him, he was thinking, ‘You fool, you bloody fool, you’ve spoilt everything. The happy lunch, the happy silly afternoon sending off telegrams, the kiss in the taxi. Now you’ve spoilt your only day, now you’ll never get another.’

  The waiter brought the drinks. Chloe said, ‘Let’s drink to Claudia, shall we?’ She lifted her glass.

  ‘Claudia,’ said Claude. ‘I’m sorry, darling. I expect I just wanted a drink.’

  ‘Wasn’t it clever of me to remember her name?’

  ‘Oh, sweetheart,’ he mumbled unhappily, ‘I don’t know why—do forgive me.’

  ‘Why do you say things for which you have to be forgiven immediately after you’ve said them? If you think I’m just a head-hunter, trying to collect a string of men, and not caring anything about them, well, say so, and stick to it, you may be right. I’m sure you’ve read somewhere that women like being treated rough. Well, you would be the only man who’d ever been as rough with me as that, and perhaps I should admire you for it, who knows? But you want it both ways. You want to say the horrible things and let them rankle, and you want me to go on being as friendly as if they’d never been said. That’s rather cowardly—Claude Lancing.’

  ‘That’s another thing about her,’ he thought, ‘she’s so utterly clear-sighted, she sees exactly what I’ve done, what she says is absolutely true.’ And at the same time he was thinking, ‘And it’s absolutely true what I said, only I said it badly’.

  He looked at her suddenly with his rare, attractive smile. He said: ‘You know, I can think of lots of things to say, and they are all quite hopeless.’

  A smile glimmered at the corners of Chloe’s mouth as she murmured, ‘One of them mightn’t be.’

  ‘Well, I’ll just give you some of the chapter headings. One: I’m not absolutely certain of this, but I think you look more beautiful when you’re angry——’ He broke off and said, ‘No, I haven’t had enough experience, I shall have to let you know about that later. Two: You enjoy a quarrel, you’re enjoying this thoroughly. Three: You’re quite right, I oughtn’t to have apologized. Apologizing was unforgivable. Four: What I said was true, and at least a dozen men have said it to you before. Only they didn’t say it as clumsily as I did, and as completely out of the blue. What we’re really all saying is, ‘Oh, God, I wish you loved me.’ Five: Thank Heaven, we’re having lunch, so I’ve got another half-hour, anyway, before you say good-bye to me for ever. I do hope you’re hungry, darling. You’ll like the coffee here, it’s wonderful. Six: What it comes to is that, when you’re in love, you’re defenceless. The other person can hit you how and when and where she likes. I resent this, and I had a sudden wild longing to get past your guard and hit you somewhere. At least I suppose that was it. But it’s all very difficult. I feel more and more strongly that Life isn’t just a bowl of cherries.’

  ‘It isn’t.’

  ‘No, I thought not.’

  Chloe said mournfully: ‘I didn’t ask you to love me, darling.’

  ‘Liar.’

  Chloe laughed appreciatively, as if accepting a compliment. Or so it seemed to Claude.

  ‘You’re a standing invitation to love. What you don’t ask is that it should be laid out in front of you. It’s like a man keeping on about the cigars he gave you at Christmas, when you only sent him a Christmas card. It makes you feel uncomfortable, and not quite so sure of yourself.’

  ‘You sound very grown-up, darling. Are you really only twenty-three?’

  ‘Unfortunately.’

  ‘Oh, but why? It’s a nice age to be.’

  ‘Not when the girl you love is twenty-eight.’

  ‘Twenty-seven, darling.’

  He looked at her suspiciously.

  ‘You told me that you were twenty-eight.’

  ‘Ah, but I’ve had a birthday since then.’

  Half sighing, half laughing, Claude said, ‘Oh, God, I do love you. I do love talking to you. When was your birthday?’

  ‘Quite lately. Look, darling, here’s your little family of whitebait. Eat them up nicely.’

  ‘I wish I’d known about your birthday. When was it, Chloe?’ He put a forkful of fish into his mouth.’

  ‘And tuck the tails well in. That’s better. When’s your birthday, darling? I’ll knit you a little bib.’

  ‘I don’t believe you’ve had a birthday.’

  ‘Well, I haven’t actually had it yet.’

  ‘Well, when is it?’

  ‘How you do go on. If you must know, I’m having it. It’s to-day.’

  ‘But—but—but——’

  It was incredible! Incredible that she should have honoured him with her presence on this day, or, having so decided to honour him, not have let him know. Incredible that, being so honoured, he should have chosen this one day as the day on which to insult her.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ he said at last. ‘I don’t mean that I don’t,’ he added quickly, ‘but—well, it’s just that the King ought to be giving a party for you at Buckingham Palace, and you’re lunching here with me.’

  She gave him all her appreciation of this in her eyes, and said: ‘You say very pretty things, darling. Tommy’s giving me a little party to-night at Claridge’s. So I thought it would be nice if you and I had a quiet little lunch together.’

  ‘Who’s Tommy?’

  ‘Just Monday’s man,’ said Chloe with an innocent air. ‘The man I’m having dinner with to-night.’

  ‘Oh, Chloe!’

  With the remorse which he felt came this other sudden feeling of loneliness as he thought of Chloe’s party. Tommy and his friends, and her friends, boisterously gay together, and he so uncompromisingly outside their circle, outside all the many circles which had crossed the circle of Chloe’s life. He hated to know that she had this freedom from him, not only on this night, but on so many days and nights, while he was never free from her. As if she were a disinterested party to whom he could put out a hand for sympathy, he asked, ‘Have you ever been in love?’