E. Delafield - The Collected Works of E. M. Delafield (Illustrated Edition)

Am firmly resolved against arriving too early, and do not telephone for taxi until half-past eight, then find number engaged, and operator--in case of difficulty dial 0--entirely deaf to any appeal. Accordingly rush out into the street--arrangement of hair suffers rather severely--find that I have forgotten keys and have to go back again--make a second attack on telephone, this time with success, rearrange coiffure and observe with horror that three short minutes in the open air are enough to remove every trace of powder from me, repair this, and depart at last.

After all this, am, as usual, first person to arrive. Highly finished product of modern civilisation, in white satin with no back and very little front, greets me, and I perceive her to be extremely beautiful, and possessed of superb diamonds and pearls. Evidently Helen de Liman de la Pelouse. This conjecture confirmed when she tells me, in really very effective drawl, that we sat opposite to one another at Pamela Pringle's luncheon party, and may she introduce her husband? Husband is apparently Jewish--why de Liman de la Pelouse?--and looks at me in a rather lifeless and exhausted way and then gives me a glass of sherry, evidently in the hope of keeping me quiet. H. de L. de la P. talks about the weather--May very wet, June very hot, English climate very uncertain--and husband presently joins in and says all the same things in slightly different words. We then all three look at one another in despair, until I am suddenly inspired to remark that I have just paid a most interesting visit to the studio of a rather interesting young man whose work I find interesting, called Hipps. (Should be hard put to it to say whether construction of this sentence, or implication that it conveys, is the more entirely alien to my better principles.) Experiment proves immediately successful, host and hostess become animated, and H. de L. de la P. says that Hipps is quite the most mordant of the younger set of young present-day satirists, don't I think, and that last thing of his definitely had patine . I recklessly agree, but am saved from further perjury by arrival of more guests. All are unknown to me, and fill me with terror, but pretty and harmless creature in black comes and stands next me, and we talk about 1066 and All That and I say that if I'd known in time that the authors were schoolmasters I should have sent my son to them at all costs, and she says Oh, have I children?--but does not, as I faintly hope, express any surprise at their being old enough to go to school at all--and I say Yes, two, and then change the subject rather curtly for fear of becoming involved in purely domestic conversation.

Find myself at dinner between elderly man with quantities of hair, and much younger man who looks nice and smiles at me. Make frantic endeavours, without success, to read names on little cards in front of them, and wish violently that I ever had sufficient presence of mind to listen to people's names when introduced--which I never do.

Try the elderly man with Hipps. He does not respond. Switch over to thinking he knows a friend of mine, Mrs. Pringle? No, he doesn't think so. Silence follows, and I feel it is his turn to say something, but as he doesn't, and as my other neighbour is talking hard to pretty woman in black, I launch into Trade Depression and Slump in America, and make a good deal of use of all the more intelligent things said by Rose and Felicity this afternoon. Elderly neighbour still remains torpid except for rather caustic observation concerning Mr. Hoover. Do not feel competent to defend Mr. Hoover, otherwise should certainly do so, as by this time am filled with desire to contradict everything elderly neighbour may ever say. He gives me, however, very little opportunity for doing so, as he utters hardly at all and absorbs himself in perfectly admirable lobster Thermidor . Final effort on my part is to tell him the incident of the window-cleaner, which I embroider very considerably in rather unsuccessful endeavour to make it amusing, and this at last unseals his lips and he talks quite long and eloquently about Employers' Liability, which he views as an outrage. Consume lobster silently, in my turn, and disagree with him root and branch, but feel that it would be waste of time to say so and accordingly confine myself to invaluable phrase: I See What He Means.

We abandon mutual entertainment with great relief shortly afterwards, and my other neighbour talks to me about books, says that he has read mine and proves it by a quotation, and I decide that he must be distinguished critic spoken of by H. de L. de la P. Tell him the story of window-cleaner, introducing several quite new variations, and he is most encouraging, laughs heartily, and makes me feel that I am a witty and successful raconteuse --which in saner moments I know very well that I am not.

( Query: Has this anything to do with the champagne? Answer , almost certainly, Yes, everything.)

Amusing neighbour and myself continue to address one another exclusively--fleeting wonder as to what young creature in black feels about me--and am sorry when obliged to ascend to drawing-room for customary withdrawal. Have a feeling that H. de L. de la P.--who eyes me anxiously--is thinking that I am Rather A Mistake amongst people who all know one another very well indeed. Try to tell myself that this is imagination, and all will be easier when drinking coffee, which will not only give me occupation--always a help--but clear my head, which seems to be buzzing slightly.

H. de L. de la P. refers to Pamela--everybody in the room evidently an intimate friend of Pamela's, and general galvanisation ensues. Isn't she adorable? says very smart black-and-white woman, and Doesn't that new platinum hair suit her too divinely? asks somebody else, and we all cry Yes, quite hysterically, to both. H. de L. de la P. then points me out and proclaims--having evidently found a raison d' etre for me at last--that I have known Pamela for years and years--longer than any of them. I instantly become focus of attention, and everyone questions me excitedly.

Do I know what became of the second husband?--Templer-Something was his name. No explanation ever forthcoming of his disappearance, and immediate replacement by somebody else. Have I any idea of Pamela's real age? Of course she looks too, too marvellous, but it is an absolute fact that her eldest child can't possibly be less than fifteen, and it was the child of the second marriage, not the first.

Do I know anything about that Pole who used to follow her about everywhere, and was supposed to have been shot by his wife in Paris on account of P. P.?

Is it true that Pringle--unfortunate man--isn't going to stand it any longer and has threatened to take Pamela out to Alaska to live?

And is she--poor darling--still going about with the second husband of that woman she's such friends with?

Supply as many answers as I can think of to all this, and am not perturbed as to their effect, feeling perfectly certain that whatever I say Pamela's dear friends have every intention of believing, and repeating, whatever they think most sensational and nothing else.

This conviction intensified when they, in their turn, overwhelm me with information.

Do I realise, says phenomenally slim creature with shaven eyebrows, that Pamela will really get herself into difficulties one of these days, if she isn't more careful? That, says the eyebrows--impressively, but surely inaccurately--is Pamela's trouble. She isn't careful . Look at the way she behaved with that South American millionaire at Le Touquet!

Look, says somebody else, at her affair with the Prince. Reckless--no other word for it.

Finally H. de L. de la P.--who has been quietly applying lip-stick throughout the conversation--begs us all to Look at the type of man that falls for Pamela. She knows that Pamela is attractive, of course--sex-appeal, and all that--but after all, that can't go on for ever, and then what will be left? Nothing whatever. Pamela's men aren't the kind to go on being devoted. They simply have this brief flare-up, and then drift off to something younger and newer. Every time. Always.