The Dud Avocado - Elaine Dundy [34]
“But I refuse to believe this, Teddy, you frightful rascal. What a leg-pull I must say! This chap Larry Keevil? Don’t be daft. I never heard such nonsense. I shan’t listen to another word. No really I shan’t.”
“Why nonsense?” asked Larry, really bewildered.
“But you are far too young,” she murmured, suddenly all soft and wondering. It was like watching an early Dietrich film. “I had heard you were a young chap—everyone comments that— but as young as this? Well, really. You are a brave one, oh yes you are, bringing us here the English-speaking Theater in its original! One is frightfully interested in these things—there has always been such a need for it. And such failures. I could tell you—but they lacked vitality just simply. And youth. I see that now. Do you know Jimee Fowler and his bunch? Well, stay clear of them, they are up to no good, I promise. What a row they are kicking up all the time. Such a carry-on, always tickled pink. Don’t pay them any attention, you must promise me. Oh, I know all about them! Oh yes. I know a-very-thing about them, please understand. Back in ’49 it was quite another horse, I assure you. Such an attractive little theater in Montmartre. Such personable young men. Oh, I remember them intimately. Mr. Schmidt and Mr. Curtis and that terribly nice young man Mr. Bartlett …” and lots more of the same—whatever it was.
I flashed a look of amusement at Larry which, to my astonishment, never landed. Quite unself-consciously—quite unconsciously, you might say, her arm curling into his, the Contessa had maneuvered him over to a corner where they sat laughing and chatting together, and from that moment on, a sense of helplessness, of being strangled to death by cobwebs, never left me. On the face of it there was nothing to grasp. A silly middle-aged woman was shrilling confidences into my escort’s ear, all of which could be heard in the next room and none of which couldn’t be shouted from the rooftops, for that matter. “The South of France at that time of year, dear boy?”—a gasp of disbelief, a hand to the breast to still the priceless jewel set quivering by the palpitations of an incredulous heart—“but … but … it would be disastrous. But simply impossible, you know … so full of humans and hotels of a-very description. Such a hullabaloo, I can’t tell you. And the English. I don’t know what! A glance at the sun and they become crazy people, you know …” while the rest of us, as on a spit, were being slowly roasted to death with boredom by Cousin John. There was nothing, one might say, that couldn’t have happened before or that wouldn’t happen again. Nothing to upset me as much as it did. And yet there was this awful feeling of impending doom that I couldn’t shake off—of ruthless, inscrutable and hostile forces at work. And it was only much later on that I realized that if John’s conversation hadn’t been anaesthetizing my brain, I would have caught on much sooner. Even so I doubt if it would have made any difference. I think from the minute I walked through Teddy’s door that night my goose was cooked. The cast was assembled and the die was cast.
But to get on.
As I was saying—crushed, confused, dazed, I was certainly not at my best that evening. John, on the other hand, was in top form—by which I mean he was worse than ever.
We had barely seated ourselves at the dinner table, had barely time to grasp what he was up to, when out from his breast pocket flew a pad and pencil. These he placed purposefully on the table, and with a brief apology to the others for “talking shop” turned to Teddy. It was about the Italian government’s new agricultural reform program that he was concerned. Would the Senor mind giving him a recap, so he could revaluate what he was going to rewrite? For instance, what was the first most important thing about it? And the second? And the third? … That was the soup course.
At the fish, the wine reminded him of a funny thing that happened