Henry Green - Loving, Living, Party Going

‘Isn’t that just what I was saying to you?’ Claire said to Evelyn.

‘Yes, we were,’ said Evelyn.

At this they stood all three facing each other with serious faces, when Robert turned the corner and came down that corridor towards them.

‘What’s this?’ he says, ‘in a committee meeting?’ He smells faintly of whisky.

‘Go away,’ says Claire to him, ‘we’re busy. Run along now,’ she said, and as he went and was just opening the door to go in to Max and Angela, and as they stayed silent so that Max should not hear anything through that open door, the man who had followed Miss Fellowes and whom Alex had taken for a detective also came round that same corner and made after Robert. Julia whispered: ‘Oh dear, who’s this? What can he want?’ she said as he went in after Mr Hignam, ‘or is it another friend of Max’s we have to do with?’

Max, when he saw Hignam, thought it would be best to find out what he could about Amabel rather than pretend he had always known she would be coming, for there was no knowing what she might have said while she was alone with them, so he asked him, ‘What’s this about Amabel?’ Miss Crevy took this to mean that Max had believed her when she had, so she thought, told on Alex. But Mr Hignam had no time to reply that he knew nothing before that false detective was on to him. Putting his head inside he said, ‘I want you,’ in educated accents this time.

‘Yes,’ said Robert, taken aback. ‘Well, what for? Right you are, I’ll come outside,’ he said.

They walked up that corridor where his wife and those two others could not hear them and then Mr Hignam asked again what might be wanted of him.

‘How is she?’

‘How’s who? My aunt, you mean? I say, who are you?’

‘She were mortal bad I reckon when I see her took upstairs,’ this strange man said, speaking now in Brummagem. ‘Now don’t misunderstand me,’ he said. ‘I don’t mean any harm, just a civil inquiry, that’s all. You see I was sitting nigh her when she was taken bad,’ and by now he was speaking ordinarily, ‘and I think I’ll just ask after her.’

‘She’s better, thank you,’ Robert answered, and began to see how he could use this man.

‘Well, ‘ere’s a to-do if you like with this fog and none being able to get off to their own fireside like with no trains running on account of it. But I’m right glad to ‘ear from you as she’s better. Of course it’s different for the likes of you as can afford it, and thank God for it, I say. I’m not one of those as ‘olds there ought only to be the poor and no rich in this world, but it’s different for you so it is as can take rooms and be a bit comfortable like instead of ‘aving to stand like cattle waiting to be butchered in that yard beneath. Not but what I thought,’ he said going back to Miss Fellowes, ‘she looked terrible ill down there in that tea-room where I was just getting a bit of comfort down inside me. I remember it now,’ he said, smacking his lips.

‘What did she have down there?’

‘Why, bless my soul, not more than one small whisky on account of ‘ow strange she was feeling, I’ll be bound. The properest lady that ever stepped,’ he added. ‘I felt sorry for her, that I did; aye and I thought to myself, my lad, I thought, you can go and ask after her, you know a real lady when you sees one. She’s a goner.’

‘She’s what?’

‘Oh, aye, she’s a goner. She’s your aunt, you said. Yes, I don’t give her long.’

‘You know better than the doctor then.’

‘Aye she’s a goner.’

‘Look here, you doing anything just now, what? I mean if I slipped you ten bob, could you get outside?’

‘What for?’

‘Ten bob.’

‘No, what d’you want me to do?’ he said in his educated voice again.

‘Only to go out and find Miss Julia Wray’s man who’s called Thomson and ask him if her luggage is all right. He ought to be with it down in that place where it’s registered.’

After some difficulty Robert got him off and went back to be with Angela and Max. Before he could reach their room Julia called out to him and asked who had that man been and what did he want, Robert answered he had sent him out to find Thomson as she seemed so upset about her luggage, and as he said it he showed how pleased he was; he thought he was killing two birds with one stone. And as he went in and Angela began to ask him this same question, Julia said how perfectly sweet of Robert, and then added to herself, but not that man, couldn’t he have gone himself, not that man of all men? She looked so distracted, Claire said to her: ‘Now, darling, don’t get in a fuss.’

When Mr Hignam had explained, Angela said: ‘But you can’t treat him like that, he’s the hotel detective.’

‘He’s not.’

‘But, Robert, I tell you he is,’ she said, using his Christian name for the first time. ‘Alex found that out when he came in before, and I was here.’

‘He isn’t one.’

This she could take from Max but not from Robert. ‘How do you know he isn’t one?’ she said, going white under her make-up. All of a sudden she was so angry she began to tremble from her toes up.

And Amabel was just drying hers on a towel. The walls were made of looking-glass, and were clouded over with steam; from them her body was reflected in a faint pink mass. She leaned over and traced her name Amabel in that steam and that pink mass loomed up to meet her in the flesh and looked through bright at her through the letters of her name. She bent down to look at her eyes in the A her name began with, and as she gazed at them steam or her breath dulled her reflection and the blue her eyes were went out or faded.

She rubbed with the palm of her hand, and now she could see all her face. She always thought it more beautiful than anything she had ever seen, and when she looked at herself it was as though the two of them would never meet again, it was to bid farewell; and at the last she always smiled, and she did so this time as it was clouding over, tenderly smiled as you might say good-bye, my darling darling.

Angela’s raised voice came through to her.

‘She sounds cross,’ she said to Alex, and he replied she was cross by nature, she did such dreadful things. ‘It was too intolerable,’ he told her, ‘there was this young man of hers, he had gone before you came, and she left him outside and made me come in where I am now, sent me out again into that corridor and then clapped her hands as though she was slapping my face.’

‘Oh, no!’

‘Yes, it’s true.’

‘Alex, my dear, how very funny. Wasn’t it a bit hard on you?’ she said to humour him, and went on drying herself. Her bath-towel was huge and she slowly rubbed every inch of herself with it as though she were polishing. She was gradually changing colour, where she was dry was going back to white; for instance, her face was dead white but her neck was red. She was polishing her shoulders now and her neck was paling from red into pink and then suddenly it would go white. And all this time she dried herself she moved her toes as if she was moulding something.

When Alex came to an end she had not properly heard what he had been saying so she said something almost under her breath, or so low that he in his turn should not catch what she had said, but so that it would be enough to tell him she was listening.

As she went over herself with her towel it was plain that she loved her own shape and skin. When she dried her breasts she wiped them with as much care as she would puppies after she had given them their bath, smiling all the time. But her stomach she wiped unsmiling upwards to make it thin. When she came to dry her legs she hissed like grooms do. And as she got herself dry that steam began to go off the mirror walls so that as she got white again more and more of herself began to be reflected.