5
Afternoon Delights
Lalla looked around a pretty little square ringed with pavement cafés with a pleased smile on her face. Waving flies away, Peter looked around a filthy little shopping plaza ringed with ersatz pavement cafés belting out too-loud pop music with a scowl on his face. Filth, flies, and noise: they were Downunder, all right.
“You are not going to sit outside in this heat. –With these flies,” he added acidly.
“He said it’s across the way from the Italian one.”
Sighing, Peter crossed the plaza with her. “Lebanese,” he ascertained. “What now: look for the Chinese waitress?”
“Ssh! Shane says it’s air conditioned, and very clean, that’s why his mother likes it. –What?” she said as he pulled her to a halt.
“Lalla,” said Peter Sale grimly: “let me just get one thing clear: are you classing me with the yuppie’s mother?”
“Only because she sounds like a particular sort of lady that likes things to be nice,” said Lalla apologetically. “But you do like things to be nice, don’t you?”
Peter just looked at her limply.
“Come on, I’m sure this is it. He says just to order from the lunch menu.” She forged ahead. Peter just followed her limply.
... “If you’ve never had Lebanese food before,” he said limply, when they’d each eaten a small entrée of hummous followed by a large and quite acceptable—and very clean—falafel roll from the lunch menu not to say the takeaway menu, “why the Devil were you so set on coming here?”
“Because I’d never had it, silly,” said Lalla with a happy sigh. “Wasn’t it delicious?”
“Yes, not bad,” he admitted. “Coffee? And what about”—he smiled—“lokum?”
“What?”
Peter got up, smiling, went over to the counter, and spoke to the middle-aged Chinese (or possibly Vietnamese, he rather thought) waitress. Lalla was thrilled by the Turkish delight and Peter didn’t bother to point out that whoever might have made the falafel rolls, the person responsible for the coffee most certainly could not be Lebanese: his spoon couldn’t stand up in it.
Apparently—according to Shane, or very possibly his mother—if they went down thataway there was a nice little park. They went thataway. Slowly: it was bloody hot and thataway was quite a walk. All shopping precinct; though the flies slackened off once they were away from the cafés. It was a nice little park, but by now the temperature must have been around thirty-five degrees and really, what with the stench of singeing chemically-stripped beef scrapings from the nearby McDonald’s... He led her away from the McDonald’s and under a shady tree. In Australia you were apparently allowed to sit on the grass in public parks. At least, there were no notices stating otherwise.
“This grass,” he said slowly, sitting down on it.
“Mm?” Lalla discarded her hat, lay down flat on her back, took her sunglasses off and looked up into the tree.
Peter glanced sideways at her, smiling a little. “It can’t be natural, can it?”
“Do you mean, is it a native grass?”
“No: I mean, in this heat, and with the dry Australian climate, they must have to pour a million gallons of water over it every day in order to get it to stay green like this.”
“Um... you do see lots of sprinklers on in Australia. When I was in Adelaide the sprinklers seemed to be on all morning.”
“Mm.”
“Though the climate’s drier over there, I think. Um... when I went for a ride on a tram in Adelaide,” said Lalla slowly, “there was a park that was all dried up. Sort of fawnish. It was quite pretty, really, if you didn’t expect parks to be green. There was another New Zealander with me: she thought it was awful.”
“Mm-hm. A friend?”
“No, she was staying at the same place for the conference. She sort of decided we ought to stick together,” reported Lalla glumly. “She complained about things all the time.”
“Apart from the fawn park, what, for instance?”
“Um... The public transport. They had a funny system with tickets that you had to poke into a machine after you’d bought them from the driver. And the food at the hostel place. I thought it was all right, they had huge breakfasts with bacon and spaghetti and sausages and stuff, as well as stewed fruit and Weetbix—you know; and you could eat enough to keep you going all day. And it was all included.”—She hadn’t really needed to point that out: Peter nodded.—“And she didn’t like the tram. It was a real old tram!” she said, looking up at him with a beaming smile. “Wooden.”
“Wooden seats?”
“Um... No. They were upholstered. Quite comfortable, really. The rest of it was wooden, though. And rattly. She thought it was uncomfortable and old-fashioned.”
“Mm.”
“And she didn’t like the ice cream. –It went to the beach. We had an ice cream.”
“I won’t ask what was wrong with it.”
“Nothing. It was different from ours.”
“Mm.”
“There was a place there that sold Lebanese food,” said Lalla with a sigh, “but she wouldn’t let me buy any.”
“For God’s sake! Why didn’t you just ignore her?”
“She wasn’t the sort of person that would let you just ignore her. Actually she was a bit like Mum,” said Lalla glumly.
“That reminds me, when did you have time to tell bloody Ted about your mother?”
“‘Bloody mother’,” corrected Lalla with a sidelong smile. “The other day, in the car. Help, it was only yesterday: it feels like ages.”
Something like that. “Mm.”
“Lie down,” she said.
“What?”
“I said Lie down. Relax,” ordered Lalla.
Peter lay down beside her, arms neatly on either side of his body, flat on his back.
“Not like a corpse!” said Lalla with a loud giggle.
He smiled. “‘No, like a bank for love to lie and play on: not like a corse,’” he murmured.
“The Winter’s Tale. I love it,” she said pleasedly.
Without apparently thinking of taking a single word of it unto herself: yes.
He was wrong, though: after a minute she said in a hollow voice: “Yikes.”
“What?”
Lalla gulped. “Nothing.”
After a moment Peter said weakly: “If we’re back at the Cinderella syndrome, I don’t want to know. –Added to which, I am not an unfledged princeling.”
“No,” she gulped.
Peter lay flat on his back under what looked suspiciously like an English oak and laughed till he cried.
“Actually, she had far more nous than him. It’s interesting,” said Lalla thoughtfully.
“Perdita? Yes, of course she did,” he said, wiping his eyes. “He deals with the same sort of relationship in The Merchant of Venice. –Well, you couldn’t get a stronger woman than Portia, could you?”
“Ooh, yes. ...Help, and in Macbeth!” she gasped.
“Mm-hm: a spectrum of strong ladies. ranging from little Perdita all the way up to Lady M., and the corresponding weaklings who are attracted to them. Ain’t it interesting, though?’
“Yes.” Lalla stared up into the tree. She was obviously lost in Shakespearean rumination. Peter swallowed a sigh and wished they could get back to that precise scene from The Winter’s Tale—and then thought that that was bloody stupid, all the better if she hadn't understood his hint. ...She wasn’t going to tell him about her bloody mother, that was pretty clear. What the fuck had bloody Ted got that Peter Sale hadn’t?
After quite some time Lalla said timidly: “You didn’t tell me about your daughter.”
“Mm? I told you that I had one.” –In the car going to the cocktail party last night he had told her a lot of facts very rapidly. Lalla had felt rather bewildered, the more so as he had spoken of his personal life in the most detached and clinical, indeed uninterested, of tones.
“Yes. Um, is her name Candida? That’s what that lady said.”
“If you mean bloody Belinda Fitzherbert, say so.”
“Lady Fitzherbert: yes,” said Lalla, looking anxiously at his frown.
“What else did she say?”
“Um, not much. That she must be thirteen because her little boy’s the same age.”
“Oh? Thought she’d forgotten she’d ever had any. Well, yes, Candida is thirteen. Used to be almost human.” He grimaced. “Bloody Monica’s been training her to despise Daddy for years, of course, and it seems to have took.”
“I’m sorry,” said Lalla in a strangled voice.
Peter stared blankly up into the tree, the smooth English features unreadable. Lalla thought he wasn’t going to say any more, only suddenly he said, but still in that detached voice he’d used last night: “Of course I was never the ideal husband, but Monica wasn’t hoping for that, she made it clear from the outset she’d taken me on in spite of my faults. But a reasonably acceptable husband would have done—only my succession of intemperate demands and complete ignore ruled me out of the running for that rôle, too.”
Lalla bit her lip and said nothing.
After a while Peter glanced at her and raised his eyebrows sardonically.
“Aren’t there usually faults on both sides?” she said shyly.
“That is the received wisdom,” he agreed drily.
There was a long silence. Lalla didn’t dare to say a thing.
Finally Peter said lightly: “Bullying and neglect were the main accusations. Plus a failure to take any interest in Monica’s interests.”
“What are they?” asked Lalla cautiously.
“Bridge, point-to-point, bridge. Um... bridge parties at home in order to show off the new garden that she had put in at vast expense on the excuse that she wanted to garden like Mummy and never touched once she’d got it, bridge parties with boring friends of similar interests, um… bridge?”
Lalla said in a shaken voice: “You don’t mean that funny card game, do you?”
“I do mean that funny card game: yes.”
She gulped. “A person can’t spend their whole life doing that!”
“Monica could, can, and does. No, well, there was the point-to-point.”
The expression seemed vaguely familiar but Lalla couldn’t make it connect with anything in her head. “Is that some sort of lace-making?”
“Uh—no. They do it with horses,” he said feebly.
“Oh. Oh, yes: didn’t they use to show Princess Anne doing that on TV?"
“More than likely.”
“Horses are beautiful creatures,” said Lalla shyly.
“Not with Monica up!” replied Peter with a sudden snort of laughter. She looked at him hopefully: perhaps he was cheering up.
“People who talk about the finer points of point-to-point in between the finer points of bridge are very boring,” he murmured.
“I suppose so.”
“I will admit that when I married her she was also very pretty and very keen on—not me, precisely: on marriage and on beating Mummy at her own game,” he said thoughtfully.
“Oh.”
Peter raised himself on his elbow and stared out unseeingly across a small Canberra park glittering in the hard heat of the Australian afternoon. “Mummy and Monica have always been best friends, which doesn’t mean they haven’t always been deadliest rivals, too. Mummy was terribly into—not maternity—producing the required number of correct offspring and living the required sort of country-house life while you sent ’em off to school. Mummy’s a bridge bore, too: Lady Sutten-Waddingham, and before you say nobody can be called that, let me assure you Mummy can be, and is. Old Waddingham, that would have been Daddy’s grandfather, I think, was a Victorian ironmonger who came up from nothing and married a Miss Sutten; and it’s E,N: Monica has fits of the screaming meemies if you spell it with an O,N. Where was I? Oh, yes. Old Waddingham married late in life, a Miss Sutten who must have been a quarter of his age, poor little thing, the last of a very old county family, and promptly hyphenated the name and turned himself into a country gent. –One gathers the father sold her, poor little soul. There’s a family portrait of her, a thin little pale thing, looking lost and adrift in the fashions of the time: that’s how I know she was a poor little soul,” he added with a tiny smile, glancing down at her dubious expression.
Lalla nodded seriously.
“However, she had two boys for him, so I suppose the object of the exercise was achieved.”
“Yes. You’re still very keen on inherited property and having boys, in England, aren’t you?” said Lalla simply.
Peter had to swallow. “Mm. Something like that.”
“Personally if I had to appoint a monarch from the Royal Family I’d choose Princess Anne!” she said fiercely. “But I’m a republican, really.”
“Er—mm.”
There was a short pause. Lalla looked sideways at him. Did she dare? Oh, what the heck. “But that doesn't mean I think Paul Keating deserves a gold-plated, ermine-lined dustbin!”
“No!” gasped Peter, his shoulders shaking.
Lalla smiled, and looked at him hopefully. It hadn’t been the wrong thing to say, after all. Perhaps they could do something nice this afternoon like—um—go on a boat on the lake, or drive round it: Ted said it was a nice drive.
But then he said: “We’d better get going. I’ve got that damned meeting with the Yanks this afternoon: I’ll have to shower and change, I’m sweating like a pig.”
“Oh. Yes,” said Lalla sadly, getting up. Well, at least she hadn’t let on she’d forgotten about his blasted meeting.
Peter had been about to rise and give her his hand. He got up slowly.
“Don’t wear your coat,” she said.
“What?”
“Take it off,” she said, nodding at his jacket.
Limply he removed his suit jacket.
“You must be the only man in the whole country that’s wearing one today.”
“I’m not now, am I?” he said loudly.
Lalla wasn’t too sure why he was cross. “No,” she murmured. “Even if it is only, um, light stuff, it must be hot.”
“Linen.”
“Mm.” It was white. Quite smart, really. Only men didn’t really wear suits like that out here. It was a bit like—well, it made you think “Raffles Hotel” or “Long Live the Empah.”
“What’s the joke?” he said tightly.
“It’s a safari suit for the Tropics!” she choked before she could stop herself. Yikes, now he’d be crosser than ever!
But to her relief he smiled a little bit and said: “Not a safari suit, you moron. it hasn’t got pleated pockets over ninety percent of its anatomy, thus quadrupling its weight.”
“‘Mad dogs and—’” Lalla stopped.
“Quite.”
“Um—sorry!” she gulped.
“Oh, don’t apologise. It’s a habit that appears to have been carried into every farthest corner of the Dominions.”
“Mm!” agreed Lalla on an uncertain note. She was going to laugh—help!
“I don’t mean safari suits!” he said loudly.
“I know!” gasped Lalla, collapsing into helpless giggles.
Peter took her elbow firmly. The flesh was soft and warm: he felt himself flush slightly and said hurriedly: “Come on, it’ll take us three hours to find Ted.”
“He said he’d be in the parking lot at the other end of the—um—where we were.”
“Quite.”
They headed back. It was just as well Peter had an excellent sense of direction, because Lalla, he discovered, had none at all.
“How in God’s name do you manage to navigate yourself round Adelaide and so forth on these conference jaunts you apparently go on with monotonous regularity?” he asked idly as they approached the car.
“Um, I don’t, really.”
“Figures.” He was just about to ask her idly what the Hell the conferences had been in aid of, when bloody Ted got out of the car on a wave of nicely chilled air conditioning, and opened his bloody mouth and said: “How was the Lebanese place, then?”
And that was that, really. He bundled her into the car and suffered the entire report to Ted on the drive home…
“How did it go, dear?” asked Merle, coming into Lalla’s sitting-room with a jug of lemonade.
“Oh! Hullo, Merle, I didn’t realise you were still here!” gasped Lalla.
Normally Merle wouldn’t have been, but she’d stayed on, ostensibly to give the parquet an extra going-over with the electric polisher and to keep an eye on Kathleen’s efforts with the silver, but actually to find out how Lalla’s pool party had gone. “Yes. How was it?”
“Okay. Oh: do you mean the pool party? Well, it was pretty awful, I suppose. Pegeen was very kind, though. Some of those British ladies tried to—um, needle me,” said Lalla, reddening as she realised she’d almost let it out to Merle that she and Peter weren’t really engaged. “You know, mentioning his ex-wife and stuff.”
“You wanna ignore them, Lalla! Bitchy diplomatic types, were they? I know the type: nothing to do all day but gossip. Where’d you go for lunch? Somewhere nice?”
“I liked it. It was a Lebanese place that Shane told me about. I think he liked the food, and it was air-conditioned. And it wasn’t licensed but he said he needed to keep a clear head. Um, and then we went to a little park and he talked about his daughter and his ex-wife and—and I thought it wuh-was okay.”
Merle looked at her anxiously, wondering if they were in the middle of an on-going tiff. Though she couldn’t see Lalla… But she could see him, all right!
“But coming home in the car he, um, I think he was sulking,” she gulped. “Only if he didn’t want me to talk to Ted he could have put the thingy up, couldn’t he?”
“Uh—well, yeah. I suppose not all rich people do want to talk to their driver,” said Merle uncomfortably. “You know."
“Yes. I suppose he thinks I’m a boring lower-class colonial, or something. Well, up his, I’ve told him I’m a republican,” said Lalla grimly.
Merle gaped at her.
Lalla went very red as she realised she’d just said something very un-fiancée-like. “It was pretty hot: I suppose we both got a bit frazzled!” she gasped.
“Yeah. I’ve brought you some lemonade,” croaked Merle.
“Thank you very much,” she said politely.
Merle smiled feebly, said it was nothing, asked if there was anything else Lalla wanted—not expecting the answer Yes—did not get the answer Yes, said she’d be off, then, and tottered out, wondering more than ever what the Hell the set-up was between Lalla and the up-himself, poker-faced Mr Peter Holier-Than-Thou Sale.
Lalla drank some of the lemonade: it was nice. Then she wandered into the bedroom, went over to the window and looked at the tree and the piece of garden wall and saying angrily: “Curse Paul Keating and his blimmin’ dustbin anyway!” inexplicably burst into loud tears, staggered over to the bed, and threw herself face-down on the cabbage roses.
The phone rang at six o’clock. By that time she’d finished her cry, had a sleep and a shower, ventured timidly into the garden and, having failed to find any books at all downstairs, had stolen a book from his bedroom—it was awful, all brown and black with shiny steel tubular chairs and dressing-table legs—and was sneakily reading it with her feet up on her pink rosy sofa.
“Hullo?” she said in a tiny voice. Wishing that he’d decided to have Merle stay on for the afternoons, because really, when you came to think about it, it was a bit spooky with just her in such a great big house.
“Is that you, Lalla?” he said crossly. “What the Devil are you doing, answering the phone?”
“It rang,” said Lalla in a trembling voice.
“It— Where the bloody Hell’s Mrs Whatsit?"
“She doesn’t come in the afternoons,” said Lalla in bewilderment. “Her and Kathleen stayed on to do the silver and then she went home.”
“Oh, good G— Look, can’t you take charge of the bloody woman? I don’t expect you to rattle round in the house by yourself, answering the phone and the door and God knows what! Tell her to stay on at least till I’m home, for Christ’s sake!”
“Um, I expect she’ll want more money.”
“PAY HER!” shouted Peter.
There was a short silence.
“I’m sorry, Lalla,” he said heavily. “Tell her that whoever the fuck the cheque is coming from, will pay her for the afternoons—or if one of the girls wants to stay on instead, I suppose they might do: but I want someone responsible. And in a uniform.”
“Yuh-yes.”
“Are you laughing?” he said dangerously.
Lalla was now so off-balance that she didn’t know if she was laughing or crying. “No! Um—that uniform’s silly. Do you want them to wear a cap?”
“No. But you are not to answer the door yourself, understand?”
“Yes. –Ted says,” said Lalla, unaware that the phrase was more or less a red rag to a bull, “that Norm won’t let them in, anyway. Unless it’s legitimate business, or—or something. He let Kathleen in because he knows she’s a friend of Donna’s.”
“Who the bloody Hell is N— The security man at the gate?”
“Mm.”
“Have you been talking to him?” demanded Peter grimly.
“Aren’t I allowed to go into the garden?” asked Lalla in a trembling voice.
“Of course you can go into the bloody garden, you’re not in a bloody PRISON!”
There was a short pause during which Peter realised several things, not least the fatuity of what he’d just said. “I’m sorry. Look, it was a shock, realising you were there by yourself. Just—uh—just don’t distract the man at the gate by gossiping with him,” he said limply. “He’s supposed to be on duty.”
“All right. I only went out for a breath of fresh air. But it was awfully humid, so I came in again.”
“Yes. Never mind that. Get on to Mrs Whats—Mrs Linarello, and ask her or one of the girls to come all day, okay? And to be on hand to get you some lunch if you’re not going out.”
“Ye-es... I don’t know her number."
Peter replied with huge restraint: “Shane will give it to you. He’ll be there in twenty minutes or so.”
“Yes,” said Lalla in a tiny voice. “What’s the matter?”
He took yet another deep breath. “Nothing’s the matter; I just didn’t expect you to be answering the phone in person. I wanted to let you know we’ll be eating with a couple of the Americans, tonight. Bernie and Clyde will be there, too. Shane’s bringing you a dress. I don’t want to hear a word about little black numbers, just be in it by the time I get there. Around seven, okay? I’ll change and then we’ll go straight out.”
“Yes,” said Lalla miserably.
“And wear some scent.”
“I haven’t got any,” said Lalla miserably.
“I actually believe that,” decided Peter. “The minute Shane gets there, tell him to get round to the bloody hotel—he’ll know—and get a selection from their boutique. And tell him,” he said slowly and carefully: “only French, with ‘Made In France’ on them.”
“All right.”
“And not Madame Rochas,” said Peter irritably.
“What?”
“Not Madame Rochas, bloody Monica wears it. It’s a nice scent, but—” He broke off.
“I see.”
“Yes,” he said tiredly. “No doubt. Be ready at seven. –And don’t for Christ’s sake try any of the scents until I get there.”
“All right.”
The whole conversation had been one long misunderstanding. Peter wanted to say he was sorry but couldn’t see how to without making even more of a fool of himself. “Very well, then.”
“Is that all, Peter?” she said in a tiny voice.
“Mm. –I didn’t mean to shout at you,” he said lamely.
“No. It—it is a bit spooky with just me here. Even with Norm at the gate. You can’t see him from the house, he’s in his little hutch.”
“Quite.”
“It’s awfully hot in there, couldn’t he have a fan?”
“YES, the bloody man can have a fan!” shouted Peter. “Tell him he can have a fan, tell the whole household it can have as many fans as it likes! JESUS!”
Lalla burst into loud tears.
“For God’s SAKE!” he shouted, crashing his receiver down.
In the adjoining room the Americans avoided the temptation, under the eyes of Bernie Carpenter and Clyde Wainwright, to exchange meaningful glances. Earlier in the day Gary Van Buren had got an earful from his wife who had got it direct from Daphne Horton-Wyatt, and Wilmot Errington had got an earful from his wife who’d had it direct from Belinda Fitzherbert. “Gauche little colonial, far too young for him,” wasn’t the half of it. Not nearly.
The black dress was rather short, a plain moulded bodice held up with tiny shoulder straps set well over towards the arms, the gathered skirt composed of rows of semi-transparent frills on a plain black ground. But not too short: to just above her knees. Peter did not reveal to Lalla that it had come complete with a hugely layered tulle petticoat in mixed bright pink and black and a huge bright pink satin sash incorporating a bright pink satin bow in which was set a large black velvet rose, this decoration meant to be worn at the back. He neither knew nor cared what Shane had done with these possibly d’après-Lacroix accessories.
“Is it all right?” she said nervously.
“Yes. Very much so. You’ve been practising with the make-up, I see. Good. Now, where are the scents?”
“Over there. Some of those strong scents make my sinuses sort of swell up."
Peter was just about to say that good French scents did not make one’s sinuses swell up when she added, backing off: “Especially that Poison stuff."
Discarding this misguided offering from the House of Dior, Peter looked rapidly through them. Finally he fell back on Arpège. The old packaging: the relancé stuff, twice the price for half the volume, evidently had not yet reached the Antipodes. “Sniff this."
Lalla sniffed it cautiously. “It’s lovely.”
“Good: give me your wrist. Now,” he said, dabbing some on: “don’t touch that. Let it rest, okay? When I come back we’ll see if it’s gone sour, or changed so much that you hate it, or some such.”
“Yes,” said Lalla, looking after him uncertainly as he hurried off to shower and change.
“AND BRUSH YOUR HAIR AGAIN!” he shouted. “AT LEAST A HUNDRED STROKES!”
Lalla sat down limply at her dressing table. The scent was on the right wrist. She began to brush her hair awkwardly, using her left hand. One, two, three... He was mad, it was like something out of the nineteenth century: a hundred strokes? Twenty, twenty-one—
Apparently the scent did what it was supposed to do, at all events he didn’t tell her to wash it off. In the car he announced he’d get her some pearls. Mad, thought Lalla grimly. And—and fussing over her hair and knowing all about scent and—and make-up and all that stuff…
“What?”
“Nothing.”
Peter said heavily: “Lalla, the female Yanks will be dripping with stuff from Tiffany’s. They’ll think I’m potty, or mean, or both, if they never see you with so much as a string of pearls to your name.” He picked up her hand. “Yes, and while I think of it: no matter what unlikely claws these American dames may be sporting, do not either paint your nails or stick false ones onto ’em. Got it?”
“Um—yes. Um—I thought all the ladies did, these days?"
“Then all the ladies are tarty and vulgar.”
“You know all about those things, don’t you?” said Lalla crossly.
“Mm-hm. That doesn’t make me gay,” he said lightly.
“No,” said Lalla grimly.
Peter laughed a little and made no attempt to argue with her or justify himself.
Lalla had expected the American ladies to be very American and sort of Hollywoodish and even more garishly dressed than Pegeen’s friends: so she was very disconcerted indeed to find they were both horrendously elegant and restrained in appearance. Though certainly Paula Errington was wearing a lot of jewellery, probably diamonds and real gold, though it was very neat and not at all flashy, and Hettie (at first she’d thought it was Hattie but it wasn’t) Hettie Van Buren was wearing big pearls in her ears and round her throat, probably real, not nearly as big as the ones Coralie wore that she said were very In at the moment and that were definitely fake.
Mrs Errington was tall and had incredibly well-behaved blonde hair in a page-boy bob, not a hair out of place, how did she do it? Her dress was, Lalla saw with huge relief, about as short as her own. It was a pale fawn, straight but not absolutely tight, and when Lalla looked at it again she saw it seemed to be two layers. Very plain and sleeveless. Mrs Van Buren was in a pale grey outfit, shiny: it might be silk. A top and long slacks. With a wide sash, sort of creased but you could see it was meant to be. Both the ladies had beautiful shoes and beautiful little purses which matched their outfits. Mrs Van Buren was also quite tall and her hair was brown and in a very neat bun with not a hair out of place. Yikes.
At first Lalla thought that these incredibly elegant ladies were young: for one thing they were both very, very slim. Gradually she realised that although they were both very skilfully made up, Hettie Van Buren was perhaps ten years older than she was herself, and Paula Errington must be at least forty-five, probably more.
It was hard to adjust to the fact that these ladies were not loud and Hollywoodish in their manner any more than in their appearance. Lalla had thought all Americans were. As the dinner proceeded she began to realise that loud Hollywood ladies would have been preferable. Delightful though Paula and Hettie were to look upon, they were impossible to talk to. They kept talking about people they knew and when they did speak to her, it was to ask her really weird things. Like what school, meaning university, had she been to. Why on earth did they want to know that? They didn’t seem to be interested in what subjects she’d done. When she said “Auckland” they both looked at her pityingly and Mrs Errington began to talk about Tania who was at Vassar and Kirsten who had got into Harvard and how thrilled they all were. Lalla had always thought that Harvard was just for boys. She didn’t say anything.
The food was horrible, but she hadn’t really expected anything else. The first course was really peculiar and unfortunately Peter noticed she wasn’t managing it. Honestly, thought Lalla in despair, snails like in Pretty Woman would have been better! Because he said, quite loudly: “Darling, don’t eat this Goddawful vine-leaf thing if you don’t like it.”
“It is peculiar!” she gasped, not knowing where to lock.
Peter was hungry: the afternoon’s meeting had been held in air-conditioned comfort and his system had had time to recover from the park and to realise that that falafel roll hadn’t been all that filling. Left to himself he would have finished the peculiar vine-leaf package containing, ugh, minced white fish, rice, orange zest, and far too much cinnamon. Though he wouldn’t have touched the pool of mango sauce lightly sprinkled with finely sliced chilli that the damned thing was sitting in. He pushed his plate firmly away. Looking relieved, Lalla copied him. He wanted very much to squeeze her hand comfortingly but didn’t dare: God knew how she’d react, and he knew Paula Errington was as sharp as a tack: he didn’t want her to smell a rat, the more so as she had the ear of old Varris Errington, the real power at Errington Barrett. The Erringtons were old New England money but that didn’t mean that there was anything slow or traditional about old Varris Errington’s entrepreneurial style. If Errington Garrett came into the consortium they’d want to take the whole thing over, figuratively if not literally, and he was determined he wasn’t having that. On the other hand, he needed Errington Garrett: the consortium was after finance from Chase Manhattan, and Varris Errington was connected there.
The Van Burens were old New York money, and both Gary Van Buren and Wilmot Errington were, of course, the type of old-money American male whose skin and nails unmistakably demonstrate the loving attentions of a barber and a manicurist: to Peter’s relief Lalla had blinked but then appeared to take them in her stride. Narrowly pleated soft dress-shirts an’ all.
The vine-leaf thingies were followed by quail. Lalla had never even seen it before but nobly concealed her shock at being faced with a whole little bird. Yikes: it made you feel you ought to become a vegetarian on the spot! It was really peculiar, sitting on a bed of finely sliced red cabbage and diced apple, with a sort of yucky sauce with green thingies in it, strong-tasting. No-one else was eating the puff of green fluff and the blue flower off to the side of their plates so Lalla left hers severely alone, too. She tackled the little bird manfully but the red cabbage was too much.
“Leave it, darling,” said Peter in her ear. –He had spotted from the presence of green peppercorns and apple that the thing was probably based on a minceur recipe for, if he remembered rightly, duck breast; but God knew how the cabbage had got in on the act.
Lalla left it gratefully.
Bernie Carpenter, who was on her other side, had cheerfully consumed a whole crayfish; now he sat back in his chair and said with a happy sigh: “You shoulda had the cray, Lalla. It was good.”
“Um, not in summer,” said Lalla faintly.
“Good grief, don’t tell me you’ve been letting him brainwash you!”
Lalla swallowed and looked at him helplessly.
“Look, he’s a Pom. Ignore every word he says about food: they invented the meatless sausage!”
At this Peter glanced round and said coldly: “Damper."
Bernie Carpenter collapsed in sniggers, gasping: “Ya got me there, mate!” He then told Lalla a long story about the efforts of the sister-in-law of someone he knew to celebrate a traditional Christmas up at Katherine. After a long period of confusion Lalla realised it was a town in the Northern Territory. She didn’t know whether to believe him or not: surely no-one would really turn their air conditioner on for three months just for a pudding?
The red cabbage didn’t seem to count as a vegetable because vegetables were served as well, from separate dishes. Weakly Lalla ate small portions of little bright yellow buttons that didn’t taste of anything and left the mucked-up silverbeet severely alone.
Out of the corner of his eye Peter could she was having difficulty getting herself round the spinach purée: it did taste damned odd, what in Christ could they have done to it? “Leave the spinach, darling. Leave some room for pudding,” he said.
“Yes,” said Lalla in relief. “It isn’t spinach, is it? I think it’s silverbeet,” she added shyly.
“What was that, Lalla?” asked Mrs Errington, leaning forward.
“Silverbeet,” said Lalla limply. “Don’t you have it in America?”
“Well, no: I don’t think so. It sure is stronger than our spinach.”
“Yes. People grow it a lot in their back gardens in New Zealand; I suppose they do here, too,” ended Lalla feebly, realising too late that this was not a need-to-know of terribly elegant, rich American ladies.
“Looks like spinach, does it, Lalla?” asked Wilmot Errington with interest.
This was dreadful! Dreadful: they were all looking at her and waiting for her to answer! She’d never even met anybody that hadn’t heard of silverbeet, before. She’d thought everybody must have heard of it, it was as common as carrots or potatoes!
“It’s um—darker. And shinier. And, um, I suppose the leaves are thicker,” she said feebly. “Coarser.”
“Yeah, that’s right,” Bernie Carpenter joined in. “Hardly ever see English spinach in these parts. –Maybe I should have warned you types it’s nearly always silverbeet here when the menu says ‘spinach’. –Swiss chard to you, Peter, old mate.”
“You most certainly should: I’ve been sitting here racking my brains over what they could have flavoured the spinach with!” said Peter strongly.
Bernie gave a yelp of laughter, and to Lalla’s relief everybody smiled and the subject seemed to be closed. She sat there looking at her mashed-up silverbeet and the little bright yellow buttons that you thought were going to be delicious, and then they tasted of nothing, and wondered what on earth she imagined she was doing. Because if there was anything needed to rub it in that she and Peter Sale came from two different worlds—which after this morning there wasn’t, really—this would have been it.
At long, long last, after gracious goodbyes from the Americans and Clyde Wainwright, and hearty goodbyes from Bernie Carpenter, who shook Lalla’s hand too hard, they were able to climb thankfully into their car and drive off with Ted into the night.
“Go on, say it,” said Peter, after a considerable period of silence had elapsed. “It was bloody. Unfortunately no-one’s ever told Paula Errington that most of the world doesn’t give a damn if her kids go to Vassar and spend their summers at Cape Cod.”
“Their clothes were wonderful,” said Lalla faintly.
“The other American style,” he said languidly.
“It must be: I never even dreamed that American ladies could look so nice.”
“Quite. Well, I’m very glad to know you noticed.”
“Yes. I—I usually don’t take much notice of clothes,” said Lalla shyly, “because they’re all so horrid. And—and I can never find anything that fits, and if I do find something nice it’s always the wrong size or—or I can’t get served.”
Suddenly Peter put his hand on hers where it lay on her knee. “Yes,” he said, squeezing it very hard.
Lalla’s ears and cheeks burned and unexpectedly her eyes filled with tears: not because he was hurting her hand, though he was, a bit: but because... She couldn’t have said why, really.
“Hettie wears a lot of Armani’s prêt-à-porter stuff. Er—ready-to-wear? Off the peg, Lalla.”
“I see,” said Lalla blankly.
“Understated.”
“Um, yes. So were they, tonight?” she groped.
“Er—think Paula’s was a Lanvin, actually—haute couture. Um... dunno, darling: I don’t think Hettie’s was. But it was nice, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. Lovely. Wasn’t it clever, having the sash in a darker grey? And I loved their shoes!” she said fervently.
“Yes; Americans do have nice shoes.”
After quite some time Lalla said: “Peter, do—do the ladies in your family buy, um, model frocks?”
“Designer stuff? Well, not all the time. For special occasions—yes. Though if I was mug enough to up the alimony, Monica would probably wear them all the time. She used to be fond of the younger London designers, fifteen years or so back, but these days she’s fallen back on the staider French houses, like bloody Mummy. –When we were married her every second word was ‘Mummy’ or ‘Daddy’, as part of the effort to convince me that the vast amounts of money she proposed flinging away were to be flung away on the correct sorts of things.”
“I see: the things Mummy and Daddy had. She really did want to be just like her parents,” said Lalla slowly.
“Yes; I thought I’d tried to indicate that.”
“It hadn’t really sunk in... I can’t imagine wanting to be like Mum!” said Lalla fervently. “And Dad’s so... ineffectual. Imagine wanting your husband to be like that! He’s the sort of man that’s very meek most of the time but then he suddenly bursts out and loses his temper, and you never know when it’s going to happen. He never loses it with Mum, but I haven’t managed to figure out whether that’s because he’s scared of her or because they’re always putting up a front for us kids: solidarity, you know."
“I see. And what’s your mother like?"
His hand was still over hers: Lalla blushed as she suddenly realised this, but said: “Well, awful, really. Very bossy. No, that’s not quite it. She is bossy, mind you, but... Intolerant, I suppose. She’s never ready to—to concede that other people might want to do things differently from her.”
“Or that their way may be equally valid? Mm,” he said as she winced and nodded: “sounds like bloody Mummy. And your dad sounds very like poor bloody Daddy. He’s long since passed over, by the way: think living with Mummy got too much for him. He handed in his final papers when he was only fifty.”
“I can understand that. You wouldn’t feel that life was worth living."
“No,” he agreed. He was aware his hand was still over hers. He didn’t have any impulse to remove it, though.
They were almost home when she said: “Hettie Van Buren actually recognised my scent. Imagine that!”
This would have been when the two of them went off to the lavatory together: Peter had cringed where he sat but had been powerless to prevent it. “Mm, it is a classic. And?” he added in a hollow voice.
“I said you’d bought it for me—that was all right, wasn’t it?”
“Very fiancée-like,” he said, smiling a little.
“Good,” said Lalla in relief.
“That all?”
“Um—that she said to me, you mean? No-o... She asked me if I’d ever been to Queensland, and I said no, and then she said that Gary wants to go up there but she’d heard it’s terribly humid. Cairns, is where he wants to go. So I said yes, it is, my brother Bill and his wife went there on their honeymoon around this time of the year, and Marlene said it was stifling: she hated it. So Hettie said she hated the humidity, too, and she’d tell Gary he could go by himself if he was that keen. –I think she was cross with him, I think he’d made the bookings and everything without asking her. And then she said what were we doing next weekend, so I said I thought, um, that we might go to see Bruce’s stud.”
“And?” said Peter in a hollow voice.
Lalla swallowed. “You did sort of— Um, you didn’t say we absolutely couldn’t.”
He squeezed her hand again. “Mm—didn’t meant that. I’ve worked out we can fit it in: I’d like you to see old Bruce’s ‘beautiful’ horses, Lalla.”
“Thank you very much,” said Lalla politely.
Evidently she hadn’t realised he was quoting her own expression: Peter swallowed a sigh. “Go on: what came next: a heavy hint from Hettie Van Buren?”
“Yes! How did you know?” she gasped.
“Long experience.”
“Ye-es... But a very up-market lady like that, and very rich and everything, why would she need to hint?”
“Er... Put it like this: Bruce’s horses have been winning races all over the world just lately: anybody who is anybody in racing or who even knows people in racing has heard of him, and the Van Burens have never met him.”
“I see.”
“Go on: what did you say to her?” said Peter in a doomed voice.
“Um—she— Um, well, she sort of talked about Pegeen so I said that I was having lunch with Pegeen tomorrow and—and maybe she’d like to come, because I was sure Pegeen wouldn’t mind!” she gulped.
“You never told me you had a lunch date tomorrow,” said Peter crossly.
“Pegeen said you and Bruce would be tied up all day tomorrow.”
“Mm. Very likely.”
“Did I do something wrong?” asked Lalla in a tiny squashed voice.
“No.” He cleared his throat. “No: you did everything right, Lalla. Inviting Hettie to meet Pegeen was precisely the right thing to do. And—uh—you were very good tonight, all round,” he ended lamely.
“Was I really? When Paula said she’d always adored baroque pearls I couldn’t say it.”
“Couldn’t say what?” asked Peter, genuinely blank.
Lalla licked her lips. “‘I love them too : Peter spoils me,’” she croaked.
Peter gave a yelp of laughter. “Thank God you didn’t: I’d have had hysterics!”
“Oh,” said Lalla limply. “Really?” She couldn’t see it, he was always so cool and controlled in company.
“Well, I’d have had a bloody hard time trying not to!”
There was a short pause during which Peter discovered he had actually been about to raise her hand to his lips and kiss it. Irritably he told himself he was a bloody fool and he’d better watch it. He released her hand abruptly.
After a little while Lalla said wanly: “I dunno what dress to wear tomorrow. I like that white dress, only I wore it today; I suppose wearing it two days running’d be wrong?”
“Uh—yes,” he said with an effort. “I’ll come up with you and have a look at them, okay?”
“Yes, thanks.”
Her voice sounded damned odd: “Is it okay?” he said uncertainly.
“Mm.” Lalla stared into the dark thinking bitterly she was an idiot: it had come over her all of a sudden as he let go of her hand that she had fallen hopelessly in love with Peter Sale. Much, much worse than with Matt; and it was far beyond anything she’d ever felt for Professor Black. What a total clot she was: the minute she’d got that swoopy feeling in her tummy when she’d first laid eyes on him she should have run like the wind.
Peter looked at her doubtfully but as at that minute bloody Ted said cheerfully and redundantly: “We’re here!” he didn’t say anything.
In the virulently pink bedroom he stared blankly into an almost empty wardrobe. “What the—?”
“I told Shane to take back the ones you really hated. Merle said she was sure you could get your money back, they hadn’t even been worn.”
Limply Peter looked through the remainder. God. On enquiry Lalla revealed she wasn’t specially fond of bright yellow. That would explain why two of the outfits were, then. On further enquiry she revealed that the orange dress was rude and only there because Donna and Kathleen had insisted she keep it. Peter made her get into it immediately.
When she came back in it, his jaw dropped. It was an extremely simple little sleeveless number, with an off-the-shoulder neckline like Hettie Van Buren’s of this evening. Unlike Mrs Van Burden’s tastefully restrained outfit, however, the flame-coloured shift—not orange—which came to about six inches above Lalla’s very nice knees, showed everything she had.
“See? It’s rude!” she said despairingly.
Peter became aware he was standing there gaping like a stranded trout. Like a stranded trout with a monster hard-on, actually. Fortunately Lalla was too innocent to notice it. “They’re wearing ’em like that.”
“They are NOT!”
“Hush. Some of ’em are, but not to nice lunches with nice American ladies, I grant you. You can save that for—er—a quiet little dinner with me.”
Lalla was now about the same shade as the dress. “Is it a dinner dress, though?”
Who cared? “Yes,” he said firmly.
Lalla chewed on her lip but didn’t argue.
He eventually persuaded her into trying the skirt of the bright yellow linen-look suit and a white cotton top. She marched off to the bathroom, pointing out crossly that the top was a singlet. So? It wasn’t a Ralph Lauren one, true, but then with that pair in it, it didn’t need to— Oh, good Lord: the Australasian vernacular. She’d meant it was a vest! A laugh rose in Peter’s throat: he had to swallow hard.
The view was pretty spectacular when she came back in it but after the orange thing nothing short of actual nudity could have rocked him. Or to put it another way, made it get any harder and hotter. “Mm. Good. I won’t ask if you bought any decent belts. Just wait there.”
By the time he’d trekked all the way down to his room and found a selection of belts and trekked all the way back to hers the hard-on had still not taken the hint so it was pretty plain it wasn’t going to. It was, in fact, pretty plain. He still didn’t think she’d notice it, though.
Lalla had been too embarrassed to notice anything. And far too stirred up by having him come into her bedroom again to even be capable of wondering if perhaps he might be as stirred up as she was. Added to which, as Peter had correctly surmised, she was not at all the sort of young woman who instinctively glances at a man’s genitals.
He chose a nice lizard belt for her. The total effect was quite elegant. After that he suddenly couldn’t take another bloody second of it: what with the pair of them in the white singlet and the Arpège, which was definitely her scent, and the long, silky hair, which was tumbled all over her shoulders— He said an abrupt goodnight and hurried out.
Lalla carefully removed all the things she was supposed to wear tomorrow and put them tidily away. Then she had a shower, in a sort of trance. Then she got into bed, still in a sort of trance, and automatically picked up the book that lay on her cabinet. Yikes, it was his book! Lalla shot out of bed, hurtled into the lacy white negligée that went with the pink nightie that she was conscientiously wearing, even though it was awfully scratchy, and flew down the white shag-pile without even stopping to think.
“Peter!” she gasped, knocking on his door.
Peter was sitting up in bed, waiting for John Faraday to call with his nightly report. He’d just reached for his book and found it wasn’t there. His heart gave a ridiculous leap. Rubbish: probably some minor domestic emergency: couldn’t open her window or get the loo to stop flushing or some such. “What is it? Come in!”
Lalla came in, very flushed. “I’m sorry! I took your book!”
Limply Peter held out his hand for Barnaby Rudge. “I was just wondering where it was.”
Lalla held it out to him, hoping her hand wasn’t going to shake. It wasn’t that he wasn’t wearing pyjamas: he was, pretty dark blue ones, but the jacket wasn’t done up and you could see his chest, and it was a lot musclier than she’d thought when he’d had his clothes on and it was quite tanned, and she didn’t know why she’d thought he might be one of those very smooth men, but he wasn’t: she could see his chest hair, it was short and very curly and not too thick, awfully sexy.
Peter felt himself redden like an idiot. She was making it bloody clear she wasn’t as unaffected by him as he’d thought. “Thanks.”
“There isn’t anything to read at all in this house,” said Lalla lamely.
“No. If one discounts the rude books. Er—did you open those, by the by?”
“Yes, I thought they might be worth reading,” she said with a sigh.
“Ouch,” said Peter, grimacing.
“Yes. Um—well—” said Lalla, backing off.
Peter opened his mouth but at that moment the phone rang.
“Yes?” he said with a sigh. “Yes: go ahead, John.”—He could see Lalla was backing right off.—“Hang on a minute, John. –Thanks for Barnaby Rudge. Goodnight.”
“Goodnight,” said Lalla, hurriedly exiting.
“Go on,” said Peter heavily to his PA in far-off London
Lalla retreated glumly down the corridor. She hadn’t thought of it until she’d got there, because it wasn’t the sort of thing she’d ever have dared to do if she had thought about it, but wouldn’t you think, that when someone—well, a girl—came into a man’s room in their negligée and everything, he might— Well, no. It was the sort of thing that might happen to some people, but not to Lalla Holcroft.
In his hideous brown and black bedroom Peter gritted his teeth and concentrated grimly on what his PA was saying. He’d been within an ambsace of flinging back the sheet and inviting her to hop in with him. Saved by the bell, you could say. It would have been bloody silly. Bloody silly.
Lalla went back to her room, got into bed, switched the lamp off, put her head under the pillow and cried soundlessly for some time, completely unaware that Wednesday might have had a very different ending indeed if John Faraday’s call had not been so ill-timed.
Next chapter:
https://thelallaeffect.blogspot.com/2024/01/diivine-comedy.html
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