“Oh well, we’ll call him what he wants,” the other man grumbled. “But either we should all go under our real names, or we should all have pseudonyms.”
“What?” Colin stared at him for a moment, and returned his attention to Frank’s question. “Of course I have, of course I’ve seen it,” he said heartily.
“I didn’t think you had. I’ve moved the idiot box into the morning room, not that I ever watch the thing except for the odd documentary, and the telephone’s through there in the junk room. They couldn’t seem to understand that I wanted it through there.”
“Why not?” the grumbling man said. “Most telephone conversation is junk. The art of letter writing is dead.”
“Colin, have you met—I’m sure you must know Edmund Toye?”
“I’m afraid not. How do you do?”
“Now that is a question.” Edmund Toye was a yellow-faced man, with a goatee and a snide pseudo-aristocratic expression; not unlike Cardinal Richelieu in some respects, but very unlike him in others. “Now that is a piece of what you might call conversational junk. I mean, you say how am I, but if I were to tell you about my spondylitis, you would be very put out. My dear lady,” he said to Sylvia.
“Edmund,” a woman said in a sweetly warning tone. She presented them in turn with her hand. “I am Charmian Toye.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Sylvia said.
“Now that is what I call an overstatement,” Toye said. “Or a piece of hypocrisy. At best, she might be indifferent, certainly she has no reason to be pleased, and in fact she is simply trying to impress us with her grasp of the social niceties.”
“Well, well,” Charmian said. “We may just get along stormingly together, and she may be awfully pleased in the end, so you see, Edmund, she is only anticipating. Anyway, it’s a perfectly innocuous statement. Or so I should have thought. It may pass without comment.”
“It may, but of course,” said Edmund, “it has not.”
Momentarily, Colin was alarmed. Who were these people with the odd names, and had they been drinking? Well, yes, obviously, but had they been drinking too much, or did they always talk like this? He was glad to see that one of his colleagues from school was present—Stewart Colman, who taught English—but although he was at least sanely named he was not a reassuring dinner companion. He seized Colin’s hand now and pumped it earnestly, wisely adding no spoken greeting. There was a peculiar glint in his eye, Colin thought. He was a wiry man with very black hair. During his last summer vacation he had grown a beard, which to his grief and astonishment had sprouted the vibrant shade of bitter thick-cut marmalade. Having braved ridicule on the first day of term, he would not court more by shaving it off. His wife, Gail, was a big-boned woman of thirty-five, contrastingly sober in hue, who followed him around like an apology.
“Well, you seem to be saving lots of time by recognising the Colmans,” Frank said. “Though I must say, Colin, you do appear a trifle distrait.”
“I’m just sorry we were so late. I can’t apologise enough.” He paused, wary in case this turn of phrase should excite Edmund Toye’s derision. “We must have held up dinner.”
“Oh, we hadn’t thought of dinner,” Frank said. “We’re doing some serious drinking. Let me provide for you. Whisky, I suppose, and for you, Sylvia? Gin all right? Gin’s all right for Sylvia. Anything in it, Sylvia? Splash of something? Orange? Good Lord, I didn’t think anyone over the age of sixteen drank gin and orange. Never mind, my dear, you shall have whatever you desire, I’m no snob.” Frank whirled about, Sylvia’s coat in his arm like a comatose dancing partner.
“Here is Brian Frostick, and this is Elvie, whom we immediately notice is Brian’s very newly married wife.”
Frostick was gaunt and pallid, and intimated that he was a solicitor; his wife Elvie, no more than twenty to his forty, was brown and short, with cropped hair and sturdy bare shoulders rising from the flounces of a vivid scarlet dress. Her handshake was bone-crunching.
“Well, why don’t you sit?” Frank demanded. “I’ll dispose of Sylvia’s outerwear and give you drinkies in a trice, when I think how to manage it.” He wandered from the room.
“Frank’s well away,” Frostick said. He sniggered.
“I say,” said Edmund Toye sharply, “don’t sit there.”
Sylvia stopped, her backside in mid-air, then reached behind her to retrieve a violin, which Frank had placed carelessly on a chair in an effort to raise the cultural tone. She held on to it, looking about her helplessly. Soon, Colin thought, she would become angry.
“Oh, do,” Toye said with a gesture. “By all means, if you feel moved. I dare say Frank can provide a selection of sheet music. You do play, I suppose?”
“You suppose wrong,” Sylvia said. Her voice was flat. “I just want to know what to do with it.”
“My dear lady,” Toye said. Colin took the violin from Sylvia and edged up a very tarnished silver candelabra to place it on a sidetable. Mrs. Toye was patting the chaise-lounge beside her. She was a tiny woman, buttoned-up and rather cross, with a small pointed face and an air of extreme self-possession.
“What a pity, Sylvia,” Frostick said. “What a pity, I really thought you would give us a recital. What a merry little Zingara you looked, in your festive red and green.”
“What’s a Zingara?” Elvie asked.
“A type of gypsy, I believe,” Edmund Toye said. “Speaking of the Romany people, does anyone, I wonder, read George Borrow nowadays?”
At that moment Frank arrived with the drinks. Gail Colman leaned forward and asked Sylvia pleasantly, “When are you due?”
“July.”
