A Handful of Dust - Evelyn Waugh [16]
Three
"Where's mummy gone?" "London." "Why?" "Someone called Lady Cockpurse is giving a party." "Is she nice?" "Mummy thinks so. I don't." "Why?" "Because she looks like a monkey." "I should love to see her. Does she live in a cage? Has she got a tail? Ben saw a woman who looked like a fish, with scales all over instead of skin. It was in a circus in Cairo. Smelt like a fish too, Ben says." They were having tea together on the afternoon of Brenda's departure. "Daddy, what does Lady Cockpurse eat?" "Oh, nuts and thins." "Nuts and what things?" "Different kinds of nuts." For days to come the image of this hairy, mischievous Countess occupied John Andrew's mind. She became one of the inhabitants of his world, like Peppermint, the mule who died of rum. When kindly people spoke to him in the village he would tell them about her and how she swung head down from a tree throwing nutshells at passers-by. "You mustn't say things like that about real people," said nanny. "Whatever would Lady Cockpurse do if she heard about it." "She'd gibber and chatter and lash round with her tail, and then I expect she'd catch some nice, big, juicy fleas and forget all about it." Brenda was staying at Marjorie's for the night. She was dressed first and came into her sister's room. "Lovely, darling, new?" "Fairly." Marjorie was rung up by the woman at whose house she was dining. ("Look here are you absolutely sure you can't make Alan come tonight?" "Absolutely. He's got a meeting in Camberwell. He may not even come to Polly's." "Is there any man you can bring?" "Can't think of anybody." "Well we shall have to be one short, that's all. I can't think what's happened tonight. I rang up John Beaver but even he won't come.") "You know," said Marjorie, putting down the telephone, "you're causing a great deal of trouble. You've taken London's only spare man." "Oh dear, I didn't realise..." Beaver arrived at quarter to nine in a state of high self-approval; he had refused two invitations to dinner while dressing that evening; he had cashed a cheque for ten pounds at his club; he had booked a divan table at Espinosa's. It was almost the first time in his life that he had taken anyone out to dinner, but he knew perfectly how it was done. "I must see your Mr. Beaver properly," said Marjorie. "Let's make him take off his coat and drink something." The two sisters were a little shy as they came downstairs, but Beaver was perfectly at his ease. He looked very elegant and rather more than his age. 'Oh; he's not so bad, your Mr. Beaver,' Marjorie's look seemed to say, 'not by any means,' and he, seeing the two women together, who were both beautiful, though in a manner so different that, although it was apparent that they were sisters, they might have belonged each to a separate race, began to understand what had perplexed him all the week; why, contrary to all habit and principle, he had telegraphed to Brenda asking her