For such a woman as Cecilia Mainwaring the public rooms of the Godolphin Hotel would have provided an admirable background. The sparkle of the magnificent chandeliers would have been appropriately reflected in the subtle gleam of her jewellery; the thick carpets would have yielded voluptuously to her elegantly shod feet; she would have swept imperiously down the wide staircase and reclined with regal seductiveness on the richly upholstered sofas.
All this, I need hardly say, was altogether wasted on Julia, whom I found there on the following morning bearing all the signs of a woman who has woken late and risen in haste, with insufficient time to comb her hair or find an unladdered pair of tights. She was sitting in an attitude of weariness in one of the deep armchairs, drinking coffee as if it were essential to her survival, and apparently engrossed in the most recent edition of the
I enquired if she had spent an agreeable evening with the Colonel.
“I cannot say,” said Julia, “that ‘agreeable’ is quite the mot juste.”
“I suppose,” I said, “that he was rather bored
“On the contrary, he enjoyed it enormously, suspending disbelief to an extent that the producer can hardly have dreamt of. He took in particular a great fancy to Helena, whom he described as ‘a damned fine girl,’ and a corresponding dislike to the Count of Roussillon, whom he judged to be unworthy of her affections. So strongly, indeed, did he feel on the subject that in the middle of the fifth act he rose from his seat and shouted, ‘Shame, sir, shame, you’re a scoundrel,’ and I had some difficulty in persuading him to sit down and be quiet.”
“My poor Julia,” I said, “it must have been a most difficult evening. No wonder you are looking a trifle worn.”
“You wrong me, Hilary. Deficient as I may be in moral fortitude, I venture to say that the trifling embarrassment of being almost thrown out of a London theatre would not alone have reduced me to the shattered wreck of humanity which you now see before you.”
“Oh dear,” I said. “What else?”
“We went to Guido’s for dinner, and the Colonel remained preoccupied with the events of the play. He was anxious to believe that in spite of having been perfectly beastly to Helena throughout five acts Roussillon was really deeply in love with her, and would thereafter make her an ardent and devoted husband.”
There seemed to me to be little in the text to justify so sentimental a reading. Roussillon’s attitude to Helena at the beginning of the play is one at best of indifference. By the end of it, when she has forced him virtually on pain of death into an unwanted marriage, and tricked him under cover of darkness into an unintended consummation, is it probable that he will be more kindly disposed towards her? She has demonstrated, no doubt, the intensity of her feelings; but outside the conventions of the romantic novel, intensity of passion affords no guarantee of reciprocity.
“I’m afraid,” said Julia sadly, “that I am of the same opinion. I have always supposed the title of the play to be ironic. Roussillon will continue to be beastly to her and they will live miserably ever after. Moreover, it is clear that he has only his looks to commend him, and in a few years’ time he will no doubt be losing them. Helena will realise too late that she has tied herself down to a bad-tempered and illiterate oaf who doesn’t laugh at her jokes, and she’ll wish she’d stayed in Paris and pursued her medical studies.”
It seemed all too probable.
“But the Colonel, as I say, was anxious to believe otherwise, and I endeavoured, so far as my critical conscience would allow, to agree that he might be right. We were still debating the subject when some of the cast came in — Guido’s, as you know, is rather popular with the theatrical profession — including Roland Devereux, who plays the Count of Roussillon.” Julia paused and lit a Gauloise. “The Colonel plainly felt that this presented him with an ideal opportunity to ascertain the truth of the matter. Before I could do anything to prevent him, he was leaning over Roland, shaking his fist and shouting, ‘Look here, you young blackguard, she’s a damned fine girl and she loves you — are you going to treat her decently or aren’t you?”
“Disconcerting, no doubt, though a remarkable tribute to the quality of the young man’s performance.”
“I am sure that if Roland had understood the position, he would have felt deeply flattered. He did not appreciate, however, that the Colonel’s reproaches were addressed to him in the character of the Count of Roussillon rather than
“I have been given the impression,” I said, “that it was passing but not entirely distant.”
“Well, in terms of time it’s extremely distant. Buried, one might almost say, in the mists of antiquity. In spite of which, Roland leapt instantly to the conclusion that I was the girl to whom the Colonel was referring. So instead of simply telling the Colonel that he didn’t know what he was talking about, he engaged in a spirited defence, pointing out that it was I who had been, as it were, the pursuer, and that whatever my feelings might be, his own were not engaged. This confirmed, of course, the Colonel’s worst fears about Roussillon’s attitude to Helena, and his gallant old heart was moved to indignation on her behalf.”
“Dear me,” I said, “what a very unfortunate combination of circumstances.”
“Yes indeed,” said Julia. “Not made less so by the fact that the gossip columnist of the
Popular stage and TV star Roland Devereux didn’t say “I’ll be talking to my lawyer” when he got an unwanted extra helping in fashionable Guido’s restaurant in Covent Garden last night. Also dining there was nubile tax barrister Julia Larwood, apparently an old flame of Roland’s. He says the romance is definitely over, and these days the curvaceous lawyer certainly seems to be going for the older man — her companion for the evening was well into the senior citizen bracket. But he didn’t seem to think much of the way young Roland had treated her — our picture shows how he made his feelings known.
The accompanying photograph, it is fair to say, showed Julia to some advantage, though emphasising, to an extent that Ragwort would have frowned on, the decolletage previously mentioned. It showed Roland Devereux, on the other hand, at one of those moments when even the most photogenic of actors can hardly appear at his best, that is to say when a military gentleman of advanced years is emptying a plate of spaghetti over him.
“Do you think I can sue them,” said Julia, “for calling me nubile?”
“I fear not,” I said. “As you know, it means merely that you are of marriageable age, though no doubt the readers of the
“I know,” said Julia despondently, “but everyone always knows what’s in it. Extraordinary, isn’t it?”
There was nothing I could say to persuade the poor creature that she would ever again be able to show her face in Guido’s, or in any other restaurant in London, or in any place frequented by the theatrical profession, or indeed anywhere within fifty miles of any newsagent selling copies of the
I had been glancing from time to time towards the increasing throng of men in pinstriped suits gathered round the registration desk, where pretty girls in uniforms were issuing identity badges and bound copies of the lecture notes. I could discern no one, however, who seemed to correspond to the impression I had formed of Gideon Darkside.
The only one who at all attracted my notice was a man who looked to be of a very different sort from the un-charismatic accountant. Though no less soberly dressed than the others, he was somehow of a more carefree and lighthearted demeanour than was generally characteristic of the participants in the seminar. He had twice seemed to be disposed to move in our direction, but then to think better of it and turn away. Finally, however, he appeared to make up his mind to approach.
On observing him, Julia blushed and spilt her coffee over her lecture notes.
I had not at first glance supposed him the sort of man to whom Julia would be susceptible. Tawny-haired and
