“Oh, the ladies are going to talk about their confinements.” Frank seemed delighted. He pressed a glass into Sylvia’s hand. “Do harrow us, freeze our blood.”
“Well, I know nothing about it,” Elvie said, in the manner of one delivering a crushing snub. “I only left school last year.”
“Thanks,” Sylvia said. “Cheers, everybody.” She sipped her gin. “Oh, it’s very strong,” she said. “Do you have children, Mrs. Toye?”
“I have six.”
Colin turned and regarded the neat little woman with open astonishment.
“My goodness,” Sylvia said. “I expect they keep you busy.”
“They don’t keep me busy,” Mrs. Toye said, a shade reproachfully, “they keep me occupied.”
Sylvia was silent for a moment; all were silent. “Well, Charmaine,” she said at last, “I’m not going to cut any figure beside you. This is my fourth I’m expecting, and I’m quite sure it’ll be my last.”
“Oh, not Charmaine.” Mrs. Toye closed her eyes. “Not as in the popular song.” She sang softly, “‘I wonder why you keep me waiting, Charmaine, my Charmaine.’” Her eyes snapped open again. “Charmian, as in Iras and, A and C. ‘Give me my robe put on my crown I have immortal longings in me.’ If you find it easier, do call me Mrs. Toye.”
“‘Withered is the garland of the war, the soldier’s pole is fallen,’” Toye remarked. “That of course is a more than faintly ludicrous line. Really, I sometimes wonder if Shakespeare had any sense of the sexually ridiculous.”
Toye had by now taken up his stance before the fireplace, and was toasting his meagre buttocks before the electric logs. “Do go on with what you were saying,” he ordered Frostick. “About the
Stewart Colman leaned forward confidentially. “Between you and me,” he told Colin in a hoarse whisper, “these dinners are a bit pretentious. Frank’s a bit pretentious. I don’t know what they’re talking about half the time. Truth be known, I don’t think they know themselves. Intellectually speaking, it’s a case of fur coat and no knickers.”
Unexpectedly moved by this image, Colin looked at Colman gratefully. He wondered when dinner would appear; he was feeling very hungry. Sylvia edged towards the end of the chaise-longue, away from Charmian, and touched his hand.
“Colin, are they all mad,” she muttered, “or have they had too much to drink? That woman singing…”
“I don’t know. Keep your voice down. Try to take no notice.”
“Can’t we go?”
“Not till after dinner. Have a drink of your gin, and then you’ll feel more into things.”
“Can we go right after the meal?”
“Yes, I don’t think they’ll miss us.”
A gust of Elvie’s piercing chatter blew across them.
“I don’t think they’d miss us if we went now,” Sylvia said.
Frank was moving amongst them, circling the room with a bottle of Gordon’s in one hand and a bottle of Johnnie Walker in the other. He poured a liberal measure of the gin into Charmian Toye’s glass, a quintuple by Colin’s estimate. Colin could not help but total it up and add in the cost of the whisky Frank slopped into his own glass. Ashamed of himself, he looked at his watch, as a diversion. It was ten-thirty.
“By the way,” Frank said, giving himself a final dash of Scotch, “I’ve invited Yarker to join us for dessert. I didn’t think we wanted Yarker for the whole evening, and yet I did think that at some point Yarker would be necessary.”
“Does he know when to come?” Elvie asked.
“Yarker always knows the moment,” Frank said. “You should know that, Elvie.”
“Christ, yes,” Frostick said, with a smile that showed his gums.
“Do you remember when he put Charmian’s knickers on his head and pelted everybody with sardines? Yarker’s good value.”
Colin’s heart was sinking fast. The present company he could possibly cope with, but this threat of physical extravagances seemed unbearable. Would it be worse in anticipation, or worse in reality? People said that things were never as good as you hoped or as bad as you feared, but then, he thought with a pang, there had been Isabel, and on the other hand there had been the time he had his wisdom tooth out.
“By the way,” Frostick said, “when’s the food, Frank?”
“Oh, stop fussing. Where’s your glass?”
It was another three-quarters of an hour before they were seated at Frank’s elaborately laid table. Sylvia and Colin were at opposite ends, but Elvie and her husband had been seated together, because, Mrs. Toye advised mysteriously, “it was not yet a year.” By now it had become clear to Colin that the Toyes and the Frosticks were at home in the house, because the men had become ruder to Frank, and had started to help themselves to drinks. It seemed also that the two couples knew each other well, even intimately. Colin felt a sense of sinister exclusion. He had hoped to be seated with Gail Colman, but he had Charmian instead. He thought that with this seating plan the evening had reached its nadir, but he did not know then what would occur over the saltimbocca.
Muriel had decided to go to bed. When she was halfway upstairs, a sharp pain brought her to a dead stop, as if someone had slammed a door in her face. She put a hand to her back and stood where she was, her large feet wedged a little sideways and her hand slapped down on the banister rail, flatly where it had fallen. After a time, when the pain ebbed, she turned gingerly and sat down on the step. She waited, not aware of what she was waiting for, not trying to think about it. Lately the affairs of her body had taken a turn for the worse; here was a turn for the worser. Evelyn had just gone on being the same, except snide and looking sideways and jeering about
