The street smelt of sweat, petrol and melted tar. A heat wave had set in and Hugo blinked a little as the glare from the pavement struck up at him. He was dangerously exhausted and on the point of collapse. During the past week he had enjoyed, at the most, about eleven hours of repose, and he had not slept since Wednesday. To his friends it seemed as though he must never sleep at all, for he never went home before seven in the morning and had always written something marvellous by lunch time. But he dozed off occasionally while driving from one place to another and sometimes even in his bed if nobody happened to be about.
On the opposite pavement, outside the Duchess of York’s Theatre, he could see boards which said ‘House Full.’ The matinée of his play there had begun. When he went in to lunch he had gone past a long string of patient women sitting on campstools in the sun and many of them had recognised him. Now they were all inside. On a Saturday afternoon, in the middle of a heat wave, after a run of five months, he could fill a theatre. That was why he had been asked to Syranwood. That was why he could talk intimately of Aggie. All these things—Aggie, Syranwood, the campstools and the ‘House Full’ boards, were symbols. They were concrete expression of his enormous success.
For between Aggie and those quiet Sundays beside the chicken run there lay a gulf which only success could span; and down in that gulf he might so easily have spent a life time along with poor old Miss Quartermaine and all the other gifted people who are just not quite successful enough. The very thought of it made him solemn and nervous, for he was too modest to suppose that anything but the most staggering luck could account for it and he could never entirely escape from a fear that there might be, as his aunt would have said, a catch in it somewhere. The Unseen Gods might notice him one day, as he scurried along the street, and change their minds.
His car waited just a little way past the theatre, and he screwed up his eyes against the sun as he looked about for it. Bought a month ago, it did not immediately strike the eye as all the others had, but was upholstered in dark blue and slid about through the traffic like a commanding shadow. A second glance at it was indeed impressive. If only he could reach it unmolested he might look forward to the enjoyment of a good yawn in peace and solitude. Before Waterloo he might get a lot of yawning done and in the train he might even snatch a little sleep. It was in this hope that he had decided to go down by train, for if he had gone by road he would have been obliged to offer a lift to Corny Cooke, who was also going to Syranwood. Before breakfast that morning Corny had cadged for one by telephone, asserting that he would be ready to start at any hour and was about to come round to Hugo’s flat. Hugo replied that he would be at the theatre all the morning and would probably go down by train. Corny asked which train. Hugo told him the wrong one. So that the threat of company on the journey had been averted. His geniality tap must be turned off for a little while, since he knew that extravagant demands would be made upon it at Syranwood. He must sleep first, yawn, sigh, not see anybody.
The door to safety was open before him, and in thirty seconds he would be almost alone. But on the brink he was snatched back. A timid voice hailed him. Turning, he found himself confronted by a very dingy fragment of the past, a dear friend of seven years ago, now left behind in the gulf. For an uncomfortable instant he feared that he was not going to be able to recall her nickname. But before he had finished giving a start of surprise he remembered and brought it out.
“Joey!” He caught at her elbow eagerly. “My Angel! How are you? How’s Squirrel?”
“Oh!” said Joey, looking extremely happy. “Oh!”
She could say nothing but that, for she had run twenty yards, and had been for seven years quite desperately in love with Hugo.
“I sat up all night with your book,” he hastened to assure her. “I couldn’t put it …”
“Oh! Oh!”
“I thought it was so good.”
“Oh!”
“And what are you doing now?”
“Oh! I tried to get into your play but …”
“My dear, I know. I can’t get in myself. It’s absurd.”
“Oh Hugo! It’s wonderful to see you again.”
“Yes, isn’t it? You haven’t changed a …”
“Oh Hugo, it must be wonderful to be so …”
“Pure luck, my dear. But great fun while it lasts. How’s Tiger? And … and B. V.? And Maeve?”
“I suppose you’re in a most awful hurry, Hugo?”
Up went his eyebrows in most expressive consternation as he admitted that he was, as a matter of fact, in an absurd hurry. It was exasperating, just when he had met Joey after all these years. But he had to catch a train at Waterloo. Could he possibly give her a lift anywhere? Fate sniggered at him. He could. Since she could not get into his play she thought that perhaps she might try the Old Vic. Ungraceful but beaming she climbed into the dark blue car and Hugo followed resignedly.
This time there was no audience to note the fact that he never forgot an old friend. He had no conceivable reason for being nice to Joey barring the fact that she had been nice to him seven years ago. But he offered her the same eager cordiality which he had dispensed so lavishly in the Acorn. She was pathetic and breathless, and she had run after him for twenty yards down Shaftesbury Avenue, and, poor thing, she looked unprosperous. Imagination reeled before the memory of their early intimacy. For there had been a time when she had been the patron and he the pursuer. Obscure though she might be, she had once disentangled him from an even dimmer world, from his aunt’s back garden, the wire netting, and the hot, henny smell of the chicken run. They had met at a party in Hampstead to which Hugo had been taken by a school friend. He had gone in high hopes because he had been told that he would meet people who “wrote” and the drawer of his washhand stand was, at that time, full of unpublished poems. But the people who wrote were a disappointment. They talked of royalties, editors and each other so intimately, with such a profusion of initials and so many recondite allusions that he despaired of being able to join in. Nor had he ever heard of any of them. His hostess gave them to understand that somebody very much heard of might drop in later, but this never happened. The room was hot, noisy and smoky and he ate a sandwich which made him feel sick. At last he found himself sitting beside Joey on a dusty divan in a corner and she was kind to him. She listened to his shy witticisms and asked if he had ever thought of writing a play. They agreed upon the parlous condition of the theatre, condemned commercial successes, and settled all that they would themselves have done if only they had had a little money. The stage, said Hugo, was so terribly stagey. It was, said Joey, and the Box Office seemed to be the only thing that mattered. A play with ideas had no chance.
That summer she had carried him off to Dorsetshire where she and a group of friends were leading the good life in a colony of bungalows by the sea. They too had nicknames, and they talked about royalties and editors, but Hugo could by then follow them and join in. Some of them did folk dancing, and some wore hand-dyed homespuns, and their typewriters tapped behind the curtains in their cottage windows, and they made great friends with the fishermen. It was the fashion that summer to talk Dorset dialect and to bathe, a little self-consciously, with nothing on. Hugo had been a great success. He organised moonlight picnics and wrote plays which they acted in barns and got up a pierrot troupe. He managed to instil into the whole group an energy and brilliance which it had never had before, so that it was a golden summer for everybody concerned. The memory of it had become a legend, and several of them had since earned a welcome guinea or two by writing it up.
Joey did not wear amber beads or handwoven linen but she looked sticky, and Hugo lived nowadays among women who managed never to do that, even in a heat wave. So that he was obliged to think for a moment regretfully of Caroline Chappell to whom he was reputedly attached, an astonishing and flawless creature like a magnolia tree in flower. He thought of her regretfully because she was at that moment five thousand miles away at the sick bed of one of her parents. He could never remember which, because she had so many, all divorcing each other and marrying somebody else even richer, and all continuing to worship their little Caro. She had been a trifle put out because he would not come with her, but oncoming rehearsals had kept him in London so she had taken her current husband instead. And though he deplored the separation he could not but enjoy this interval of liberty. She was perfect but, like all his other pieces of good fortune, she was exacting.
“What would Caro think of Joey?” he wondered. “And what would Joey think of Caro? Oh these women! These women!”
If there were no women in the world he would still be writing poetry among the wire netting. He could hardly go so far as to sigh for that. But in future he must really try not to collect any more of them. For at Syranwood there would be, not only Aggie, but Laura and Philomena all highly collectable, and he must be very cautious. Caro was quite enough for anybody.
Joey was telling him all about Squirrel’s new novel, repeating solemnly:
“She’s the best of us. Her historical stuff is so marvellous. Don’t you think she’s the best of us?”
Hugo agreed warmly and thought that she well might be. Looking back at it he could hardly believe that he had once joined them in those earnest discussions about their Work. Had he been laughing at them? Had he known, even then, that they were merely a stepping stone? He hoped not. After all a certain development and growth was natural to any one, and he had been very, very young. But the fact remained that there was not a single one of them that he really wanted to see again unless it might be that queer fellow who lived up at the coastguard’s cottage and quarrelled with everybody. But then he did not belong to the group. He just happened to be there.
“Ever see Paul Wrench nowadays?” he asked Joey. “He’s written some marvellous stuff. Lives abroad, doesn’t he?”
Joey blinked, bewildered at being jerked out of the small world in which she lived. Then she remembered.
“Hadn’t you heard?”
“No. What?”
“He’s dead. It was in the papers this morning.”
“Dead? Not really. No, I didn’t see. What made him die? He was quite young. At least, not old.”
“I don’t know what he died of. Tiger’s living with Bunny. Did you know?”
They were crossing the river and the tide was going out. A gull swooped low and flashed whitely past the window of the car. Hugo thought:
“Dead? There’s something wrong about that. I’d always expected …”
What was it that he had always expected? He did not much enjoy Wrench’s poems though he believed that he admired them. They were too bleak and rough. But it was not fair that anyone so disagreeable should be forced to die. Only pleasant people should be cut off in their prime with half their work undone. Waste of this sort had no ornamental grace to soften it.
“Don’t you think so?” Joey was asking plaintively.
He had no idea what she had been saying so he caught her arm and interrupted.
“My dear, I’ve got such a marvellous idea for a play. Do listen. I must tell you.”
He had not time to tell her much for they were turning into Waterloo Station. But it was a kind thought and Joey was radiant. Now she could go home and tell them all that Hugo was just the same, not a bit spoilt, and that he had told her all about his new play just as he used to do. Her faithful brown eyes filled with tears of pleasure. If only it had not been over so soon!
“Do you mind frightfully if I nip out here?” he entreated. “I’ve cut it rather fine. Benson will take you on to the Old Vic or anywhere you want to go. Good-bye, Joey darling. It’s been delicious. And I must see more of you. Do let me come sometime? Will you? Will you? I should adore to. If I may I’ll ring you up in the … good-bye …”
He ran very fast into the station, saw with a shock that he really had cut it fine, sprinted down the platform and plunged into the safety of an empty compartment just as the train began to move. His suitcases and golf clubs were flung in after him. The door slammed. He was alone. Flinging himself full length upon the cushions he shut his eyes.
Five minutes later the indefatigable Corny Cooke, making a tour of the train to see who was in it, peeped through the corridor window and went bustling off to spread the news that Hugo Pott had gone to sleep in the last compartment. Aggie heard it first because she was the train’s most precious ornament. She had suddenly declared that she could not endure the dust of the Portsmouth road on such an afternoon and there had been great excitement at Waterloo.
She was not very much interested in Corny’s news, because she had picked up a new friend on the platform, a young person looking like the Discobolos of Myron who was, in fact, a Dominion bowler. She was busy telling him how she had been obliged to take a bismuth meal and what it had looked like when it was photographed, indicating all the places on her stomach that it got to on the way. They were getting on at a great rate and the stranger was much less embarrassed than he would have been had he known who she was. A pardonable liveliness tempered his admiration, for he supposed her to be an ageing courtesan got up to look like that Lady Agneta Melotte whose picture he had seen in the papers.
“Hugo’s here,” chirruped Corny, putting his head into their compartment. “He’s asleep.”
Aggie blinked her beautiful, shallow eyes and asked who Hugo might be.
“Hugo Pott,” explained Corny reproachfully.
Because Aggie knew quite well that Hugo had been asked to Syranwood especially in order to amuse her, because it had been decided that he was really too nice and too successful to be given up to that dreadful Brazilian with all the husbands. It was a rescue party, this week-end was.
“Hugo Pott,” he said.
And he stared at Discobolos enquiringly.
“Which reminds me,” said Aggie, growing more genial, “I’d like some tea. Or coffee. Some iced coffee would be nice, don’t you think?”
“But Aggie, there isn’t any. I told you when you sent me before. There’s no tea car on this train.”
“Why not?”
“It’s too early.”
“Not if I want it. I daresay the guard has some. He told me to let him know if I wanted anything. Tea will do if he hasn’t got coffee. Ask him, will you, Corny?”
Discobolos, who looked upon Corny as an interfering rival, got up and shut the door into the corridor. It was a magnificent, caveman gesture and Aggie began to giggle. Corny observed them through the window for a few minutes with melancholy attention and then went on down the train. He could find nobody else for Syranwood in the other first-class carriages, but he saw several friends and exchanged news of various other week-end parties. By the time that he had worked through them all he knew who was going to stay where at half the houses on the South-Western line, and had learned that his wife had done very well at Newmarket the day before. He was glad of that for he had seen an Aubusson carpet which would look nice in his flat in Whitehall Court and he thought that he had better hurry up and buy it before anything happened.
At the end of the first-class coach he paused and considered, for the corridor was hot and the train swayed abominably. But curiosity buoyed him up and he began a survey of the third-class passengers. Here he found three more guests for Syranwood, all literary, and for a moment he looked a little blank. It was not fair of Geraldine to ask him to that sort of week-end. But then he remembered Hugo and Aggie in the coach behind and cheered up. Besides which, Gibson Grey, though a publisher, was very popular and Philomena, his wife, knew everybody. She was Geraldine’s cousin. As for Sir Adrian Upward, he had quite a place of his own. Duchesses would send the proofs of their first novels to him, commanding that he should edit the punctuation. For years he had been ‘that clever Mr. Upward’ to any hostess who liked good talk at her dinner table, and when Aggie’s baby was born he was sent for to read Donne to her while they gave the chloroform.
“Hugo’s here,” vouchsafed Corny. “He’s asleep.”
“Who else?” asked Upward, slowly lowering his weekly review.
“Only Aggie.”
Gibson Grey said:
“How useful, Corny, to have you as a liaison officer between us and the first class. Now do you happen to know …?”
Corny knew everything. It was to be quite a small party. Only Laura Le Fanu, Geraldine’s daughter, and Laura’s husband and two of Laura’s men, Walter Bechstrader and a new boy friend.
“Somebody she ran across in Mit-Europa last year. Name of Usher. Ford Usher. Nothing known about him except that he has discovered a cure for malaria.”
Sir Adrian knew, it appeared, more than that. He had read a series of articles on Ford Usher’s discovery. The cure, he said, consisted of the administration of an anti-malaria parasite carried by a mosquito called culex pseudopictus.
“Laura’ll be busy,” commented Gibson Grey. “I suppose Pott has been provided for her too.”
“Oh, no,” Corny corrected him. “For Aggie.”