Henry Green - Loving, Living, Party Going

‘I’m sorry, Alex, but I can’t do anything.’

‘Evelyn,’ he said, about to appeal to Miss Henderson when Julia came in looking rather mad.

‘My dears,’ she said panting, ‘they’ve broken in below, isn’t it too awful?’

Alex laughed. ‘It would be too late,’ he said. Everyone else asked questions together.

‘Why, all those people outside, of course,’ said Julia, ‘and they’re all drunk, naturally. But what are we to do?’

‘Who told you?’

‘That man your Robert sent to find Thomson, Claire.’

‘Oh, my dear, I shouldn’t believe anything he said.’

‘No, well he did seem rather odd about it and there you are. But what are we to do? Where’s Max? Someone ought to tell him. Oh, what are we to do?’

‘Now, Julia,’ Alex said, ‘there’s nothing to get all worked up about—’

‘No, darling, there really isn’t,’ said Claire, and he went on:

‘There’s nothing to do, they won’t come and kill us in our beds because we aren’t in bed.’

She turned away and stamped her foot at this, and Evelyn said: ‘Now, Alex—’

‘No, seriously,’ he said, ‘they’ll stay down by the bar if any have got in and they’ll be got out of it in no time.’

‘Oh, but then they’ll come up here and be dirty and violent,’ and she hung her handkerchief over her lips and spoke through it like she was talking into the next room through a curtain. ‘They’ll probably try and kiss us or something.’

‘I’d like to see them try,’ said Miss Crevy.

‘Now, Julia,’ Alex said, ‘you aren’t in Marseilles or Singapore. You know an English crowd is the best behaved in the world. You’ll be quite all right here.’

She turned round. She was beside herself.

‘Where’s Max?’ she said. ‘I must see him.’

‘And where’s Robert?’ Claire said, afraid for Julia.

‘Max is upstairs with Amabel, darling.’

‘Oh no, Alex, how revolting,’ she said, and gave herself away. She blushed with rage. ‘You mean to say she’s taken him upstairs just when this has happened.’

‘Oh, Julia my dear, do listen to me,’ Alex said. ‘Don’t let it all run away with you.’

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she said, and became quiet with anger.

‘It’s this,’ he said, changing his ground. ‘Please don’t think these people are violent or anything, because they aren’t.’

‘And how d’you know?’

‘Because they never are, they never have been in hundreds of years. Besides, if they have broken in as you say, well here we are inside and we can’t hear a word. I mean, if they were breaking in down below we should hear shouts and everything. Robert would have come up to warn us. Really, you know, I don’t think it can have happened. What I do say is it all proves we should never have stayed when we saw how bad this fog was.’ He spoke to them all. ‘That’s all I’ve been getting at,’ he said, ‘and anyway it’s obvious we can’t get out now if we wanted to.’

‘Oh, why not?’ said Julia.

‘But, darling,’ Evelyn said, ‘for the very reason that all these people haven’t got in, because it is all so locked up that not a soul can get in or out.’

‘Then how did that horrible man do it when Robert sent him to get hold of Thomson?’

‘He’s the house detective.’

‘No, he isn’t,’ said Miss Crevy.

‘And how d’you know?’ he said.

‘I don’t,’ said she, ‘but there aren’t any in this country.’

‘You go into a young man’s room in any English hotel and you’ll soon see.’

‘Don’t be so personal, Alex. Really, what we’ve had to put up with from you this afternoon,’ Claire said, ‘and coming on top of everything else, it’s too much.’

‘Look what we’ve all had to put up with,’ he said. ‘Oh, don’t let’s squabble.’

‘You mean to say,’ said Claire, ‘you don’t think there’s any chance of getting my Auntie May out of here any more? But then what’s to happen to her if she has a turn for the worse? Oh, where is that idiotic Robert? Look here, Alex, I wonder if you would mind so terribly going down and bringing him back up here, you’ll know where to find him, and he’s simply got to do something about my aunt. Really, I’ve done enough, haven’t I, Evelyn? Would you mind, Alex?’

‘No,’ he said, ‘of course not, it’s a good idea,’ and hurried out.

Claire began to explain him away to Miss Crevy. ‘I’m afraid you’ll think him very odd, but he’s had such a miserable time at home for so many years that we’re all used to his being extraordinary so that doesn’t surprise us a bit now, does it, darling?’ she said to Julia to try and stop her thinking about herself. ‘Yes,’ she went on, ‘his mother died when he was ten and he was simply devoted to her,’ and here she began to speak like the older woman she was to become, ‘and then his father went mad and it took a long time or something, anyway it was absolutely exhausting whatever it was, and he has to go down and see him once every month wherever it is he’s locked away. Then he has a sister that no one in the world has ever seen; she’s got something the matter with her, too, and he’s got very little money and he’s perfectly marvellous about it, always paying out for them all the whole time, so that a trip like this means so much to him.’

Miss Crevy was touched. ‘I didn’t know,’ she said.

‘Yes, so we all make rather special allowances for him,’ she went on, ‘don’t we, darling?’ she said to Julia. ‘It’s all so miserable for him really, he hasn’t had a chance.’

‘Why did we let him go? We’ll never get him back.’

‘Now, Julia, do be a dear and don’t fuss.’

‘But I am fussing. I’m fussing madly about my things. They’ll run through my trunks and steal everything, and you know I can’t travel without my charms.’

‘Well then my dear,’ said Evelyn Henderson, ‘what would you like to do? Do you want to go or stay? You can’t very well get out there and sit on your bags in all that crowd, and besides you would get so cold. Now settle down, darling, and wait till Alex comes back with Robert.’

‘Oh, I know,’ she said. ‘I know I’m being tiresome, but I can’t help it, you see, things get too much for me, and it’s so unfair of Max, who ought to be arranging everything for us, going away like this just when we want him most. That’s why it suddenly seemed so fatal to let Alex go, we must have a man about in case those sorts of things happen.’

‘That’s why I sent for Robert,’ said Claire. ‘I don’t want to say anything behind his back that I wouldn’t say to his face, but you know, Alex has been through so much and he’s not one of those people who are made more useful by having had frightful things happen to them. In fact it always seems to me to have made him most frightfully selfish, as if after all those awful things he could only think of his own comfort.’

‘Yes, that’s very true,’ said Evelyn.

‘You know I think people so often go like that,’ Claire went on, ‘not that men are much use anyway, my God, no. Who is it has to get the cook out of the house when she’s drunk, may I ask? But you have to have them around,’ she said to Julia, ‘but at the same time I don’t count Alex as one of them, he’s been through too much till somehow he’s got nothing left.’

Angela said it must have been rather awful for him, but perhaps he was one of those people who never had very much to start with.

‘Oh, no,’ said Claire, too briskly, ‘he’s a dear and a very great friend of mine. In many ways you can absolutely rely on him; no, I can’t really have a word against Alex. I know he complains, but he never really bothers one if you get what I mean. He’s not much use at a time like this, but then who would be with us stuck the way we are, and my aunt in the condition she’s in. Evelyn, my dear, don’t you think we ought to go back to see how she’s getting on, though sometimes I feel as though we bring back luck with us every time we go into that room. What d’you say?’