The Complete Short Stories of Evelyn Waugh - Evelyn Waugh [168]
Scott-King slipped away. As though at a great distance he descried Whitemaid, alone at the buffet, and unsteadily made his way towards him.
“Are you drunk?” whispered Whitemaid.
“I don’t think so—just giddy. Exhaustion and the noise.”
“I am drunk.”
“Yes. I can see you are.”
“How drunk would you say I was?”
“Just drunk.”
“My dear, my dear Scott-King, there if I may say so, you are wrong. In every degree and by every known standard I am very, very much more drunk than you give me credit for.”
“Very well. But let’s not make a noise while the Mayor’s speaking.”
“I do not profess to know very much Neutralian but it strikes me that the Mayor, as you call him, is talking the most consummate rot. What is more, I doubt very much that he is a mayor. Looks to me like a gangster.”
“Merely a politician, I believe.”
“That is worse.”
“The essential, the immediate need is somewhere to sit down.”
Though they were friends only of a day, Scott-King loved this man; they had suffered, were suffering, together; they spoke, preeminently, the same language; they were comrades in arms. He took Whitemaid by the arm and led him out of the hall to a cool and secluded landing where stood a little settee of gilt and plush, a thing not made for sitting on. Here they sat, the two dim men, while very faintly from behind them came the sound of oratory and applause.
“They were putting it in their pockets,” said Whitemaid.
“Who? What?”
“The servants. The food. In the pockets of those long braided coats they wear. They were taking it away for their families. I got four macaroons.” And then swiftly veering he remarked: “She looks terrible.”
“Miss Sveningen?”
“That glorious creature. It was a terrible shock to see her when she came down changed for the party. It killed something here,” he said, touching his heart.
“Don’t cry.”
“I can’t help crying. You’ve seen her brown dress? And the hair ribbon? And the handkerchief?”
“Yes, yes, I saw it all. And the belt.”
“The belt,” said Whitemaid, “was more than flesh and blood could bear. Something snapped, here,” he said, touching his forehead. “You must remember how she looked in shorts? A Valkyrie. Something from the heroic age. Like some god-like, some unimaginably strict school prefect, a dormitory monitor,” he said in a kind of ecstasy. “Think of her striding between the beds, a pigtail, bare feet, in her hand a threatening hairbrush. Oh, Scott-King, do you think she rides a bicycle?”
“I’m sure of it.”
“In shorts?”
“Certainly in shorts.”
“I can imagine a whole life lived riding tandem behind her, through endless forests of conifers, and at midday sitting down among the pine needles to eat hard-boiled eggs. Think of those strong fingers peeling an egg, Scott-King, the brown of it, the white of it, the shine. Think of her biting it.”
“Yes, it would be a splendid spectacle.”
“And then think of her now, in there, in that brown dress.” “There are things not to be thought of, Whitemaid.” And Scott-King, too, shed a few tears of sympathy, of common sorrow in the ineffable, the cosmic sadness of Miss Sveningen’s party frock.
“What is this?” said Dr. Fe, joining them some minutes later. “Tears? You are not enjoying it?”
“It is only,” said Scott-King, “Miss Sveningen’s dress.”
“This is tragic, yes. But in Neutralia we take such things bravely, with a laugh. I came, not to intrude, simply to ask, Professor, you have your little speech ready for this evening? We count on you at the banquet to say a few words.”
For the banquet they returned to the Ritz. The foyer was empty save for Miss Bombaum who sat smoking a cigar with a man of repellent aspect. “I have had my dinner. I’m going out after a story,” she explained.
It was half past ten when they sat down at a table spread with arabesques of flower-heads, petals, moss, trailing racemes and sprays of foliage until it resembled a parterre by Le Nôtre. Scott-King counted six wineglasses of various shapes standing before him amid the vegetation. A menu of enormous length, printed in gold, lay on his plate beside a typewritten