I’d have warned you, but we only decided last night. It’s an April Fool party: that makes the excuse. Bimbo’s scarcely left the telephone since dawn.’
‘We ought to go, darling,’ said Bimbo over her shoulder.
‘I know. Let’s. Goodbye.’ She held out her hand to Nicola. ‘Are you coming lots of times to type for P.P.?’
‘I think, fairly often.’
‘Make him bring you to Baynesholme. We’re off, Harold. Thank you for our nice drinks. Goodbye, P.P. Don’t forget you’re dining, will you?’
‘How could I?’
‘Not possibly.’
‘It was – I wondered, dearest Desirée, if you’d perhaps rather –? Still – I suppose –’
‘My poorest sweet, what are you talking about,’ said Lady Bantling and kissed him. She looked vaguely at Moppett and Leonard. ‘Goodbye. Come along, boys.’
Andrew muttered to Nicola: ‘I’ll ring you up about the train.’ He said goodbye, cordially to Mr Period and very coldly to his step-father.
Moppett said: ‘I had something fairly important to ask you, you gorgeous Guardee, you.’
‘How awful never to know what it was,’ Andrew replied and with Bimbo, followed his mother out of the room.
Watching Desirée go, Nicola thought: ‘Moppett would probably like to acquire that manner, but she never will. She hasn’t got the style.’
Mr Period in a fluster, extended his hands. ‘Desirée can’t know!’ he exclaimed. ‘Neither can he or Andrew! How extraordinary!’
‘Know what?’ asked Miss Cartell.
‘About Ormsbury. Her brother. It was in the paper.’
‘If Desirée is giving one of her parties,’ said Mr Cartell, ‘she is not likely to put it off for her brother’s demise. She hasn’t heard of him since he went out to the antipodes, where I understand he’s been drinking like a fish for the last twenty years.’
‘Really, Hal!’ Mr Period exclaimed.
Moppett and Leonard Leiss giggled and retired into a corner with their drinks.
Miss Cartell was launched on an account of some local activity, ‘– so I said to the rector: “We all know damn’ well what that means,” and he said like lightning: “We may know but we don’t let on.” He’s got quite a respectable sense of humour, that man.’
‘Pause for laugh,’ Moppett said very offensively.
Miss Cartell, who had in fact thrown back her head to laugh, blushed painfully and looked at her ward with such an air of baffled vulnerability, that Nicola, who had been thinking how patronizing and arrogant she was, felt sorry for her and furious with Moppett.
So, evidently, did Mr Period. ‘My dear Mary,’ he said. ‘That was not the prettiest of remarks.’
‘Quite so. Precisely,’ Mr Cartell agreed. ‘You should exercise more discipline, Connie.’
Leonard said: ‘The only way with Moppett is to beat her like a carpet.’
‘Care to try?’ she asked him.
Alfred announced luncheon.
It was the most uncomfortable meal Nicola had ever eaten. The entire party was at cross purposes. Everybody appeared to be up to something indefinable.
Miss Cartell had bought a new car. Leonard spoke of it with languid approval. Moppett said they had seen a Scorpion for sale in George Copper’s garage. Leonard spoke incomprehensibly of its merits.
‘Matter of fact,’ he said, ‘I’d quite like to buy it. Trade in my own heap with him, of course.’ He leant back in his chair and whistled quietly through his teeth.
‘Shall we look at it again?’ Moppett suggested, grandly.
‘No harm in looking, is there?’
Nicola suddenly thought: ‘That was a pre-planned bit of dialogue.’
Alfred came in with an envelope which he placed before Mr Period.
‘What’s this?’ Mr Period asked pettishly. He peered through his eye-glass.
‘From the rectory, sir. The person suggested it was immediate.’
‘I do so dislike interruptions at luncheon,’ Mr Period complained. ‘’Scuse, everybody?’ he added playfully.
His guests made acquiescent noises. He read what appeared to be a very short letter and changed colour.
‘No answer,’ he said to Alfred. ‘Or rather – say I’ll call personally upon the rector.’
Alfred withdrew. Mr Period, after a fidgety interval and many glances at Mr Cartell, said: ‘I’m very sorry, Hal, but I’m afraid your Pixie has created a parochial crise.’
Mr Cartell said: ‘Oh, dear. What?’
‘At the moment she, with some half dozen other – ah – boon companions, is rioting in the vicar’s seed beds. There is a Mother’s Union luncheon in progress, but none of them has succeeded in catching her. It couldn’t be more awkward.’
Nicola had an uproarious vision of mothers thundering fruitlessly among rectorial flower-beds. Miss Cartell broke into one of her formidable gusts of laughter.
‘You always were hopeless with dogs, Boysie,’ she shouted. ‘Why you keep that ghastly bitch!’
‘She’s extremely well bred, Connie. I’ve been advised to enter her for the parish dog show.’
‘My God, who by? The rector?’ Miss Cartell asked with a bellow of laughter.
‘I have been advised,’ Mr Cartell repeated stuffily.
‘We’ll have to have a freak class.’
‘Are you entering your Pekinese?’
‘They’re very keen I should, so I might as well, I suppose. Hardly fair to the others but she’d be a draw, of course.’
‘For people that like lap-dogs, no doubt.’
Mr Period intervened: ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to do something about it, Hal,’ he said. ‘Nobody else can control her.’
‘Alfred can.’
‘Alfred is otherwise engaged.’
‘She’s on heat, of course.’
‘Really, Connie!’
Mr Cartell, pink in the face, rose disconsolately but at that moment there appeared in the garden, a dishevelled clergyman dragging the over-excited Pixie by her collar. They were watched sardonically by a group of workmen.
Mr Cartell hurried from the room and reappeared beyond the windows with Alfred.
‘It’s too much,’ Mr Period said. ‘Forgive me!’ He too, left the room and joined the group in the garden.
Leonard and Moppett, making extremely uninhibited conversation, went to the window and stood there, clinging to each other in an ecstasy of enjoyment. They were observed by Mr Period and Mr Cartell. There followed a brief scene in which the rector, his Christian forbearance clearly exercised to its limit, received the apologies of both gentlemen, patted Mr Period, but not Mr Cartell, on the shoulder and took his leave. Alfred lugged Pixie, who squatted back on her haunches in protest, out of sight and the two gentlemen returned very evidently in high dudgeon with each other. Leonard and Moppett made little or no attempt to control their amusement.
‘Well,’ Mr Period said with desperate