‘You gave us a fright,’ said Lord Merlin, crossly. ‘Another time, when you are putting on this Cléo de Mérode act, you might send a postcard. For one thing, it is a great pleasure to see you in the part, I wouldn’t have missed it for worlds. I hadn’t realized, Linda, that you were such a beautiful woman.’
Davey was laughing quietly to himself.
‘Oh, goodness, how funny it all is – so wonderfully old-fashioned. The shopping! The parcels! The flowers! So tremendously Victorian. People have been delivering cardboard boxes every five minutes since we arrived. What an interest you are in one’s life, Linda dear. Have you told him he must give you up and marry a pure young girl yet?’
Linda said disarmingly: ‘Don’t tease, Dave. I’m so happy you can’t think.’
‘Yes, you look happy I must say. Oh, this flat is such a joke.’
‘I was just thinking,’ said Lord Merlin, ‘that, however much taste may change, it always follows a stereotyped plan. Frenchmen used to keep their mistresses in appartements, each exactly like the other, in which the dominant note, you might say, was lace and velvet. The walls, the bed, the dressing-table, the very bath itself were hung with lace, and everything else was velvet. Nowadays for lace you substitute glass, and everything else is satin. I bet you’ve got a glass bed, Linda?’
‘Yes – but –’
‘And a glass dressing-table, and bathroom, and I wouldn’t be surprised if your bath were made of glass, with goldfish swimming about in the sides of it. Goldfish are a prevailing motif all down the ages.’
‘You’ve looked,’ said Linda sulkily. ‘Very clever.’
‘Oh, what heaven,’ said Davey. ‘So it’s true! He hasn’t looked, I swear, but you see it’s not beyond the bounds of human ingenuity to guess.’
‘But there are some things here,’ said Lord Merlin, ‘which do raise the level, all the same. A Gauguin, those two Matisses (chintzy, but accomplished) and this Savonnerie carpet. Your protector must be very rich.’
‘He is,’ said Linda.
‘Then, Linda dear, could one ask for a cup of tea?’
She rang the bell, and soon Davey was falling upon éclairs and mille feuilles with all the abandon of a schoolboy.
‘I shall pay for this,’ he said, with a devil-may-care smile, ‘but never mind, one’s not in Paris every day.’
Lord Merlin wandered round with his tea-cup. He picked up a book which Fabrice had given Linda the day before, of romantic nineteenth-century poetry.
‘Is this what you’re reading now?’ he said. ‘“Dieu, que le son du cor est triste au fond des bois.” I had a friend, when I lived in Paris, who had a boa constrictor as a pet, and this boa constrictor got itself inside a French horn. My friend rang me up in a fearful state, saying: “Dieu, que le son du boa est triste au fond du cor.” I’ve never forgotten it.’
‘What time does your lover generally arrive?’ said Davey, taking out his watch.
‘Not till about seven. Do stay and see him, he’s such a terrific Hon.’
‘No, thank you, not for the world.’
‘Who is he?’ said Lord Merlin.
‘He’s called the Duke of Sauveterre.’
A look of great surprise, mingled with horrified amusement, passed between Davey and Lord Merlin.
‘Fabrice de Sauveterre?’
‘Yes. Do you know him?’
‘Darling Linda, one always forgets, under that look of great sophistication, what a little provincial you really are. Of course we know him, and all about him, and, what’s more, so does everyone except you.’
‘Well, don’t you think he’s a terrific Hon?’
‘Fabrice,’ said Lord Merlin with emphasis, ‘is undoubtedly one of the wickedest men in Europe, as far as women are concerned. But I must admit that he’s an extremely agreeable companion.’
‘Do you remember in Venice,’ said Davey, ‘one used to see him at work in that gondola, one after another, bowling them over like rabbits, poor dears?’
‘Please remember,’ said Linda, ‘that you are eating his tea at this moment.’
‘Yes, indeed, and so delicious. Another éclair, please, Linda. That summer,’ he went on, ‘when he made off with Ciano’s girl friend, what a fuss there was, I never shall forget, and then, a week later, he plaqué’d her in Cannes and went to Salzburg with Martha Birmingham, and poor old Claud shot at him four times, and always missed him.’
‘Fabrice has a charmed life,’ said Lord Merlin. ‘I suppose he has been shot at more than anybody, and, as far as I know, he’s never had a scratch.’
Linda was unmoved by these revelations, which had been forestalled by Fabrice himself. Anyhow, no woman really minds hearing of the past affairs of her lover, it is the future alone that has the power to terrify.
‘Come on, Mer,’ said Davey. ‘Time the petite femme got herself into a négligée. Goodness, what a scene there’ll be when he smells Mer’s cigar, there’ll be a crime passionel, I shouldn’t wonder. Good-bye, Linda darling, we’re off to dine with our intellectual friends, you know, will you be lunching with us at the Ritz tomorrow? About one, then. Good-bye – give our love to Fabrice.’
When Fabrice came in he sniffed about, and asked whose cigar. Linda explained.
‘They say they know you?’
‘Mais bien sûr – Merlin, tellement gentil, et l’autre Warbeck, toujours si malade, le pauvre. Je les connaissais à Venise. What did they think of all this?’
‘Well, they roared at the flat.’
‘Yes, I can imagine. It is quite unsuitable for you, this flat, but it’s convenient, and with the war coming –’
‘Oh, but I love it, I wouldn’t like anything else half so much. Wasn’t it clever of them, though, to find me?’
‘Do you mean to
