Peter Dickinson - Death of a Unicorn

‘Mummy doesn’t. She’s in a filthy mood about something, Mabs.’

‘She’s found out about me and B.’

‘She hasn’t! How?’

‘No idea.’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘Nothing. I suppose she might try and have me declared insane, or something, or break the Trust in your favour, but I don’t think she’d get away with it.’

‘Anyway it’s you she wants, Mabs. You’ve always been the one. Is he here?’

‘Haven’t seen him. He may not come. He wasn’t sure. She says she wants to talk to him.’

‘What on earth about? Oh, if it were anyone else, Mabs, wouldn’t it be bliss to eavesdrop?’

‘She’ll tell him to give me back and he’ll say no. I don’t think she’s met anyone like him before. Listen, darling, suppose she reacts by making life hell for you . . .’

‘Why should she?’

‘She’ll have to take it out on someone. Anyway, you could come and live at my flat if you wanted. I’d have to ask B, of course.’

‘I don’t think . . .’

Close by my shoulder I was aware of one of those minor jostlings you get when somebody tries to head for another part of a crowded room. It was my publisher, escaping the autobiographical lion. Jane and I had been standing at an angle so that we could mutter into each other’s ears, isolated by clamour. This stirring forced us to turn and I found myself face to face with Mrs Clarke, apparently waiting to come through between us. I’d last seen her in quite the other direction, talking to Mummy and Ronnie. She had a photograph in her hand.

‘Oh, Lady Margaret,’ she said. ‘Do you think your dear mother would be kind enough to sign a picture for my collection? I’ve been looking through the file for a good one.’

She spoke perfectly naturally, as if she hadn’t overheard a thing. She’d had a lot of practice, of course, but I didn’t think she could have. Mummy was sure to say something unspeakable to her about the photograph. I tried to head her off.

‘She’s in rather a dicey mood just now,’ I said. ‘Have you met my sister Jane?’

‘I knew it must be,’ said Mrs Clarke. ‘You’re an art student, I believe, Lady Jane. Such a worthwhile accomplishment in a woman, being able to paint and draw beautiful things.’

Jane’s ‘art’ at that stage consisted of welding iron bars and plates to each other until she’d got something like a section of gaunt skeleton with bits of machinery muddled in, and then dipping the result into acid baths to make it go into interesting pits and nodules. She could be very intense about it, and sniffy about pictures and sculptures ordinary people liked, but I’d told her I approved of Mrs Clarke so she was a saint and swallowed her aesthetic pride and talked about our great-grandmother’s watercolours of Italy which hung—hundreds of them—around Cheadle in back passages and bedrooms and were supposed to be rather good for an amateur. In spite of what I’d said to Jane I was really very shaken and worried and longing for B to come. I eased myself away and went off to look for him.

The other room was just as crowded and even noisier. We had hooked the swing doors open, but it was as though they were still exerting their influence, separating the civilised from the rowdy. Most of the Susans were here, quacking away, and the men seemed to look younger too. I weasled my way round, but it wasn’t easy. For a start B was too short for me to see him over people’s heads, and then I was constantly being stopped and asked to settle arguments. It was amazing how that word-list had got everyone going. We’d put a stack of the book out on the landing, just to prove that it was real, but they’d all been snitched. People were holding them open and consulting them so that it looked like a roomful of foreigners trying to carry on conversations with the help of phrase-books. Then people tended to assume that the Susans knew all the answers, as if they’d been born with silver dictionaries in their mouths, when in fact some of them came from decidedly ponsy backgrounds—though girls have a fantastic knack for picking up tones of voice and getting them right. The extraordinary thing was that though I was really aching to find B, and though I also thought my word-list was just a bit of nonsense I’d shoved in to make up space, as soon as anyone asked me about a particular word I couldn’t help talking as though it really mattered. I got into a long argument with Priscilla Stirling, who certainly wasn’t one of the ponsy ones, about ‘mirror’. Perhaps because the Petronella drink was stronger than people realised no one seemed at all bashful about discussing the subject, though they did so with a kind of inquisitive glee, like schoolgirls talking about sex. It must have taken me twenty minutes to find out that B wasn’t there after all.

I met Tom out on the landing. He raised one eyebrow at me, making his face look suddenly very Irish. Ronnie used to say that Tom was really a wild Celt who spent his time trying to pass himself off as an English gentleman-scholar. When he reverted like this it was a sign that he was moderately drunk, though a stranger mightn’t have known.

‘Mabs,’ I said. ‘Jane’s has got short sleeves and no collar.’

‘Easy as that?’

‘Unless we sneak off to the loo and swap.’

‘I shall write a thesis proving that Shakespeare was terrorised by the twins next door when he was a baby. It would explain quite as much as the usual theories about his mother. And then there was Casanova . . .’

‘Supposing it was true.’

‘Mabs, you ought not to know about that.’

‘It tends to come up. I didn’t think you, though . . .’

‘Cheap liquor cheapens the accompanying conversation. Haven’t you noticed? We are all going to have appalling hangovers.’

He finished his glass and smacked it down on the table where the books had been. He was drunker than I’d realised, and upset about something too.

‘What’s the matter, Tom?’

‘Noticed Jack’s not here?’

I hadn’t, though I should have. At a gathering like this the laugh would have been almost continuous, and audible too through the racket.

‘He’s leaving,’ said Tom.

‘Leaving?’

‘Told us not to tell you. Said he didn’t want to spoil your party.’

‘You mean resigning?’

‘Sacked.’

‘No!’

‘Better for him, apparently. Allows him to claim compensation on his contract.’

‘But when . . .’

‘Been brewing. Letter on his desk this morning making it definite.’

‘From Mr B?’

‘Who else?’

Then he must have written it yesterday. We’d eaten alone last night, at the Escargot in Greek Street. It sounds dull, but it had been a lively, easy evening with a lot of talk. We’d gone back to the flat, slept together, kissed when we woke. Surely he could have . . . Perhaps he didn’t want to spoil my party either . . . Then couldn’t he have waited one more day?

‘Who’s going to . . . I mean are you . . . ?’ I said.

‘Not been told. I’d like the job. When this sort of thing has happened in the other departments Brierley seems to have had a man ready.’

‘Oh. But you’ll stay, won’t you?’

‘Will you?’

‘Of course. If he’ll have me, I suppose. I absolutely adore being here.’

‘It may not be the same.’

‘Please stay, Tom. It certainly won’t if you go.’

He laughed, but then his eyes left me. Some of the guests had started to go but others were still arriving, so the terrible old lift was groaning up and down almost continuously. I’d been standing with my back towards it but turned to see what Tom was looking at. B was coming out of the lift, talking to a youngish man whom I recognised but couldn’t put a name to for an instant. Then it came to me. On the stage, about a fortnight before, acting in a revue called Backbites, which I hadn’t thought specially funny but was being talked about because it was different—not just gently bitchy in a revueish way, but rude about real people as though it meant it. The Lord Chamberlain had refused to pass some of the sketches. This man, Brian something, was supposed to have written the unkindest bits as well as being one of the principal actors. B brought him towards us.