The Complete Short Stories of Evelyn Waugh - Evelyn Waugh [128]
“Oh, no. Shall I tell you? I saw you in the Ritz the day Lucy lunched with you.”
“Why didn’t you come and talk to us?”
“Lucy wouldn’t let me. She said she’d ask you to dinner instead.”
“Ah.”
“You see, for years and years the one thing in the world I’ve wanted most—or nearly most—was to meet you and when Lucy calmly said she was going to lunch with you I cried with envy—literally so I had to put a cold sponge on my eyes before going out.”
Talking to this delicious girl about Lucy, I thought, was like sitting in the dentist’s chair with one’s mouth full of instruments and the certainty that, all in good time, he would begin to hurt.
“Did she talk about it much, before she came to lunch?”
“Oh no, she just said ‘I’m afraid I’ve got to leave you today as Roger wants me to lunch with one of his old friends.’ So I said, ‘How rotten, who?’ and she said, ‘John Plant,’ just like that, and I said, ‘John Plant,’ and she said, ‘Oh, I forgot you were keen on thrillers.’ Thrillers, as though you were just anybody. And I said, ‘Couldn’t I possibly come,’ and she said, ‘Not possibly,’ and then when I was crying she said I might come with her to the lounge and sit behind a pillar and see you come in.”
“How did she describe me?”
“She just said you’d be the one who paid for the cocktails. Isn’t that just like Lucy, or don’t you know her well enough to tell?”
“What did she say about the lunch afterwards?”
“She said everyone talked about Kipling.”
“Was that all?”
“And she thought Roger had behaved badly because he doesn’t like smart restaurants, and she said neither did she, but it had cost you a lot of money so it was nasty to complain. Of course, I wanted to hear all about you and what you said, and she couldn’t remember anything. She just said you seemed very clever.”
“Oh, she said that?”
“She says that about all Roger’s friends. But, anyway, it’s my turn now. I’ve got you to myself for the evening.”
She had. We were sitting at dinner now. Lucy was still talking to Mr. Benwell. On my other side there was some kind of relative of Roger’s. She talked to me for a bit about how Roger had settled down since marriage. “I don’t take those political opinions of his seriously,” she said, “and, anyway, it’s all right to be a communist nowadays. Everyone is.”
“I’m not,” I said.
“Well, I mean all the clever young people.”
So I turned back to Julia. She was waiting for me. “D’you know you once wrote me a letter?”
“Good gracious. Why?”
“Dear Madam, Thank you for your letter. If you will read the passage in question more attentively you will note that the down train was four minutes late at Frasham. There was thus ample time for the disposal of the bicycle bell. Yours faithfully, John Plant,” she quoted.
“Did I write that?”
“Don’t you remember?”
“Vaguely. It was about The Frightened Footman, wasn’t it?”
“Mm. Of course I knew perfectly well about the train. I just wrote in the hopes of getting an answer and it worked. I liked you for being so severe. There was another girl at school was literary too, and she had a crush on Gilbert Warwick. He wrote her three pages beginning, My Dear Anthea, all about his house and the tithe barn he’s turned into his workroom and ending, Write to me again; I hope you like Silvia as much as Heather, those were two of his heroines, and she thought it showed what a better writer he was than you, but I knew just the opposite. And later Anthea did write again, and she had another long letter just like the first all about his tithe barn, and that made her very cynical. So I wrote to you again to show how different you were.”
“Did I answer?”
“No. So then all the Literary Club took to admiring you instead of Gilbert Warwick.”
“Because I didn’t answer letters?”
“Yes. You see, it showed you were a real artist and didn’t care a bit for your public, and just lived for your work.”
“I see.”
After dinner Roger said, “Has little Julia been boring you frightfully?”
“Yes.”
“I thought she was.