The Late Breakfasters and Other Strange Stories Read online

  Palpably the Duchess had related the story many times, presumably at intervals throughout the day. None the less, Griselda for some reason was not surprised that she still seemed much upset. The Duke came to her, and, saying nothing, put his arm round her shoulder. Suddenly Griselda realized that the dog was dead. She recalled that the Ellensteins had not appeared for breakfast; and, with unreasonable shame, her own confident inner explanation of their absence.

  “How perfectly dreadful!” she said to the Duchess. “I am so very sorry.”

  The Duchess kissed her gratefully. “Thank you, Griselda,” she said. “Fritzi was only an animal, but the death even of an animal that has been a long time——” She left the sentence unfinished, as the Duke led her to a sofa. She looked up brightly, and the more engagingly for what had gone before. “I am absolutely determined not to spoil the dance.” The Duke kissed her left hand. Griselda was pleased that the Duchess had remembered her Christian name aright and called her by it.

  The others present, Mrs. Hatch and Mr. Leech, had doubtless, with the rest of the house, expressed their grief already. Mr. Leech none the less looked exceedingly distressed as he nibbled at a chunk of the unique cake.

  “Come and have your tea, Griselda,” said Mrs. Hatch. “I shan’t require massage, after all, but I daresay you could do with a short rest before you change. Pamela has gone up already.”

  Griselda advanced and sat down with an enquiry after her hostess’s affliction.

  “I’ve been so busy all day that I’ve not had time to think of it. In consequence it has now quite ceased to trouble me.”

  “How splendid!” said Mr. Leech quietly. “Would that all our ills could be cured so readily.” He sighed.

  “Several men have already asked me for dances with you,” remarked Mrs. Hatch to Griselda, “and I’ve booked some of them on this card.” She took a dance programme from her handbag. “Only some of them, of course.” She passed the programme to Griselda. “I won’t ask whether Geoffrey Kynaston was pleased with your progress; but I’ll ask whether you were. Were you?”

  To her alarm and mortification Griselda felt that her brow and neck were hot.

  “I did my best,” she answered. “But Geoffrey tells me I’m too much of a bluestocking to make a dancer.”

  “You’re starting late. But you’re starting under excellent auspices. It’s much too soon to despair.”

  “Of course it is,” said the Duchess. “Griselda may meet her affinity this very night. Then she’ll dance better than all of us.”

  “I don’t know about that,” said Mrs. Hatch. “But the All Party Dance is certainly going to be an occasion. We shall be making history tonight.”

  Griselda felt very ignorant. “Is it such a very special dance?”

  Mrs. Hatch looked at her. “You cannot have been reading the newspapers lately.”

  “Not very much, I’m afraid. I prefer books.”

  “Good thing too. Provided you choose the right books. Millie always had dreadful tastes: Tolstoy, von Hügel, and rubbish like that. Still you ought to know about tonight.” Mr. Leech nodded gravely several times.

  “The country’s on the rocks,” continued Mrs. Hatch. “That I’m sure you must know.”

  “More than usual?” asked Griselda.

  “Much more. You’ve heard about the Roller Report?”

  “I’ve seen the name on the newsbills.”

  “The Roller Committee has presented a Report showing that we’re bankrupt.”

  “And after sitting for only six months,” interpolated Mr. Leech. “That’s where much of the seriousness lies, you know, Mrs. Hatch. Things are really urgent.”

  “Well, you know what that means?”

  “Not a revolution?” This was the Duke.

  “I suppose it means we must all make some more money,” suggested Griselda rather wildly.

  “It means a coalition.”

  Mr. Leech nodded again more gloomily than ever.

  “I see. The dance is to celebrate?”

  “Certainly not.” Mr. Leech almost snatched the words from his hostess’s mouth. “I will explain.” It was clear that his life mainly consisted in explaining the same thing to a succession of careless audiences. “When Lord Roller came to me, my first thought, after consulting my colleagues, was to get in touch with Mr. Minnit, though it’s never pleasant to have to ask favours of the Leader of the Opposition. Still one must put the country first, of course. After we had talked things over, Minnit said that he and some of his people would come in with us; but we both thought that something more was needed than a merely administrative change of that kind. After all, Miss de Reptonville, not everybody nowadays even knows who is or who is not in the Cabinet at any particular moment.” He smiled. There was a complete silence. Mrs. Hatch was wriggling her foot in the thick carpet. The Duke’s arm was still round his wife’s shoulders, his hand on her breast. “Something more seemed to us to be needed,” repeated the Prime Minister, blinking. “Something more—so to speak—emotional. In a popular sort of way. Something which appealed to the underlying unity of the nation, the readiness of the people to make sacrifices for patriotic reasons. For sacrifices will certainly be called for. A heavy burden. Oh yes——” He paused again, then pulled himself together. “My first thought was a Mass Meeting in some suitable place, to be addressed by Minnit and myself in turn. Considering the country’s need, I thought we might prevail upon the L.C.C.——”

  “Then fortunately Mr. Leech consulted me,” interrupted Mrs. Hatch. “I happened to be calling in at Downing Street for tea. I saw the answer at once. I offered Beams for an All Party Dance. The press response has shown how right the idea was. Everyone is coming. Not only Minnit and all of them, but representatives of the splinter parties too. Half way through the evening Mr. Leech and Mr. Minnit are going to make their speeches—short speeches, of course—as hostess I insist on that; and everyone will think well of the coalition from the outset, instead of the whole thing falling flat.”

  “Will there be enough people to listen to the speeches?” asked Griselda. “I don’t mean to be rude. I’m sure there’ll be everyone there’s room for. But will there be quite enough to achieve national unity?”

  “People don’t actually need to hear the speeches on these occasions,” replied Mrs. Hatch. “In many cases it is better if they do not. All the press will be coming, and, of course, the speeches will be broadcast. Those are the things which matter nowadays.”

  “I was more than a little doubtful myself at first,” remarked Mr. Leech, “whether we should avail ourselves of Mrs. Hatch’s wonderfully generous offer. But she soon quite won me over.”

  “Melanie,” observed the Duke, tightening his hold upon his wife, “will persuade the Recording Angel to let her organize a dance at the Day of Judgement.”

  Monk entered and began to pound with a gong in the sight of them all.

  “The dressing gong,” said Mrs. Hatch, rising smartly. “Dinner will be in exactly an hour.”

  CHAPTER VIII

  In her bedroom Griselda found a tall thin girl seated in one of the armchairs, who rose as she entered.

  “Who are you?”

  “Louise. If you like, I’ll help you to dress.”

  She was wearing a costly dress of pale grey silk, which tightly fitted her long neck up to her chin and ears, and was buttoned with many small buttons from the waist to the top of the collar, and girdled with a shiny black belt. Her long hair, the colour of smooth water under a grey sky, was drawn into a tight ballet-­dancer’s bun. Her face was exceedingly pale, and made paler with a suggestion of powder almost green in tinge; but her features made an unusual blend of resolution and sensibility, a large nose and small firm chin combining with a slightly sensual mouth and huge dark-brown eyes, full of life and beauty, behind very large and expensive black-­rimmed glasses. Her voice and accent were contralto and cultivated.

  Griselda recalled her hostess’s words: “You don’t know how much Louis
e will do for you.” To have Louise about one, would, she thought, be charming and beautiful. It was the first luxury she had really desired.

  “Hadn’t you better help Mrs. Hatch first? She’ll have to be down to receive people, I expect.”

  “No one outside the house party will be here until nine. Mrs. Hatch particularly wanted me to help you.” Louise smiled delightfully.

  “Thank you.” There was a silly pause. Griselda had placed her handbag on the bed. “I must tell you I’ve never met a lady’s maid.”

  “I’m not exactly a lady’s maid.”

  Griselda blushed. “I’m so sorry. Mrs. Hatch——”

  Louise waved away her apologies. “We’ll have to learn from one another. About each other, I mean.”

  They were standing in the middle of the floor, looking at each other, about three feet apart.

  “Are you coming to the dance?”

  Louise shook her head. “Political dances are not my thing. Not that kind of dance. Therefore I’m not asked.”

  “What do you do?”

  “Various things. But now it is time that I help people to dress.”

  “For dances you don’t go to?”

  “And for some I do.”

  “Do you like the work?”

  “I have a certain natural aptitude, I think,” Louise answered solemnly. “And little alternative. I am destitute and unqualified. But I don’t give satisfaction, I’m afraid.”

  “I think that Mrs. Hatch might be hard to please. From what little I’ve seen of her, of course.”

  “It’s I who am hard to please. At least, harder to please than Mrs. Hatch.” Again she smiled.

  “I see.”

  “Shall we begin?”

  Louise helped Griselda remove her jacket, and pulled her jumper swiftly over her head.

  “I expect you would like a bath?”

  “I’m afraid of the machine.”

  “I’ll try to protect you from it.” Louise began to operate the formidable equipment, while Griselda removed her remaining garments.

  In a remarkably short space of time Louise was announcing that the bath was ready. “Hot,” she added. “And deep. We’ve won. It’s a beautiful bath.” She stared for a moment at Griselda’s naked body. The steam of the bathroom had made her face glisten very slightly, despite the careful make-­up. “Given the right dress, you will be the belle of the ball,” she said.

  For the second time that evening Griselda felt herself blush; this time, it seemed, all over her body, making her look absurd.

  “Fortunately,” she replied, “I have exactly the right dress.”

  Likewise the bath was the right temperature, the right depth, accompanied with the right accessories, a new cake of heavily scented soap and a huge white bath towel. Griselda entered it, letting the water rise above her shoulders.

  “Which dress?”

  Griselda shouted back. “The taffeta.” It was wonderful.

  Louise appeared in the bathroom door, which Griselda had left open. “Your dress is good. Really good.” Griselda felt flattered and pleased that Louise did not seem surprised, she whose taste, it was obvious, was unapproachably high.

  “I told you it was.”

  Louise was withdrawing to the bedroom, but Griselda stopped her.

  “Come and talk to me.” She had never spoken like that before. “Or is it too hot and steamy?”

  Louise shook her head and sat on the bath stool, an inappropriate throne.

  “Undo the collar of your dress. Make yourself comfortable.”

  Louise shook her head again. “My dress must be worn severely.”

  “It becomes you.”

  “I have no wish to look like everyone else. It is one thing about my life here that it enables me not to. Soon even nuns and nurses will be wearing little cotton frocks from Marks and Spencer.”

  Griselda remembered what Kynaston had said about the photo­graph of Doris. She thought for a moment.

  “Cotton frocks are comfortable.”

  “But do they appeal to the senses? Are those who wear them satisfied?”

  “Does what one wears affect that?”

  “Very much indeed. One’s body needs to be always conscious of its clothes. One reason why there are so many more unsatisfied women than there used to be, is that they have forgotten that.”

  “I fear my clothes are very commonplace. Except that dress.”

  “I will help you to do better if you like.”

  “Thank you. But I have very little money.”

  “That matters more than it should, but less than you think.”

  “Then I should like you to help me.”

  “Of course there are limits to what I can do. But if you are seriously interested, I might later introduce you to Hugo Raunds. He lives entirely for clothes. He designed this dress. You’ve probably heard of him. As it happens, his father, Sir Travis, is coming tonight. Not that all this matters much, as I’ll be leaving here at any moment, and that will be that.”

  “Where will you go?”

  “I shall try to find someone amenable to my ways.”

  Griselda began to fill the bath with strongly smelling soap.

  “I know so little of life. Oh, curse.”

  A sud had entered one of her eyes. Louise rose and carefully removed it with a handkerchief, which she took from a pocket in the skirt of her dress. It was a silk handkerchief and soothing: though the pain remained, therapeutic in sensation, but curing nothing; probably, in fact, Griselda feared, damaging slightly the conjunctiva. Louise had resumed her seat. She was wiping her large glasses on the handkerchief.

  After thanking Louise, Griselda continued: “All I know comes from books. It’s a wonder I keep my end up as well as I do.”

  “Books are better, I think, most of the time,” replied Louise. “The more you know of life outside them, the less it’s like them. But there’s one problem that you have to solve if you’re to go on profiting from books, and books won’t help you much to solve it.”

  “And that is?”

  “The problem of finding someone, even one single person, you can endure life with. To me it’s acute.”

  Inadvertently Griselda knocked the large slippery cake of soap on to the floor, where it slid out of sight.

  “I always thought that difficulty was peculiar to me,” said Griselda.

  Louise had laid her glasses on the stool and was groping for the soap.

  “Please stop,” cried Griselda. “I should be getting out anyway. It was selfish of me to ask you to sit in all this steam.”

  Louise returned the soap to its lair and resumed her glasses.

  “I’m not all that short-­sighted,” she remarked. “Though I am, of course, a little short-­sighted I don’t have to wear glasses. It’s just that glasses suit me. We may as well get something from modern inventions.”

  Griselda was out and towelling.

  She found that Louise had laid out new underclothes for her.

  She submitted to being dressed by Louise, to having Louise brush her short hair, even to being made up by Louise; all with a strange remote pleasure, possibly recalled from childhood, though certainly not consciously, for Griselda could recall little of her childhood that was pleasant, except books.

  It all took a long time, and as they worked, they talked.

  The remarks they exchanged became shorter and rapider; varied with occasional longer passages such as in normal converse no one listens to. They began, without any feeling of guilt, to talk about the people in the house.

  “Have you ever set eyes on the mysterious Austin Barnes?”

  “No.”

  “Why does he never appear?”

  “The coalition. He hates it.”

  “Oh yes. I heard about the coalition during Tea.”

  “Also he thinks he ought to be Prime Minister and not Leech.”

  “I see.”

  “Also he’s afraid of Mrs. Hatch.”

  “I like the Ellenste
ins.”

  “Yes,” said Louise. “The Ellensteins are good. One could not endure living with them, but they are really good. And that is most unusual.”

  “What about the Duchess’s dog?”

  “It was Stephanie.”

  “Who’s Stephanie?”

  “Stephanie des Bourges. She’s a ghost.”

  “So the house is haunted?”

  “Only occasionally. Stephanie comes only at certain times.”

  “I could wish the times weren’t the present.”

  “I could not. Stephanie was my only friend until you came.” This now seemed to Griselda not even to call for acknowledgement. “In fact she came because I was here.”

  “Do you talk to her?”

  “Oh yes, often. She’s a lonely ghost.”

  “When did you last talk to her? Last night?”

  “This afternoon.”

  “Where?”

  “Here. I was talking to Stephanie just before you came in. I talked to her here yesterday too.”

  “Do you mean that I’ve been given the haunted room?”

  “Dear Griselda, you couldn’t expect a beautiful woman like Stephanie—for she is beautiful, fortunately—to come to my little turret and probably wake up the servants below into the bargain? Now could you?”

  “I suppose not,” said Griselda. “But it explains why I slept badly last night.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Louise. She was drawing on one of Griselda’s stockings and now paused for a moment, kneeling at her feet. “It is not that this is the haunted room or anything so vulgar, if you will forgive me putting it so. You think of it like that because you think a ghost must be bad. This is merely the room where Stephanie and I meet because, being at the end of the corridor and usually unoccupied, it is quiet and seldom disturbed. And you mustn’t think of poor Stephanie as bad either. Ghosts only harm those who fear them. Stephanie is one whom I find it easy to love. And you must do the same, Griselda.”

  “I’ll try.” Louise began attaching the stocking to its suspender. Griselda felt curious. “Do you see her by daylight?”