GAY LIFE (A Satire on the Lifestyle of the French Riviera). E. M. Delafield
cope with running it, and servants, and all that, and this friend of mine, Ruth Wolverton-Gush, is doing all that part of it for her."
"People who write always pretend they can't do anything else. It's a pose, I expect," said Buckland, looking at Angie Moon.
"I expect so," she agreed. "I loathe affectation, don't you?"
"Absolutely."
"Anyhow, Gushie scores," declared Mrs. Romayne. "She's on a soft job, from all accounts. The girl's got lots of money, and doesn't care what happens so long as she isn't bothered. She sits scribbling all the morning, I believe, and Gushie sees the cook, and does a bit of typing, and then in the afternoon and evening they just amuse themselves. Gushie's been with her before, in London. Come on, let's go and have dinner."
The Hotel dining-room was built out on a high terrace, overlooking the sea. Three sides of it were glass-enclosed. The best tables in the room had been allocated in accordance with some secret, and entirely arbitrary, standard of the proprietor's. They stood near the windows, and had been given to Mr. Bolham, the Morgan family, the three noisy Frenchmen travelling en famille with their wives and a couple of fat, swarthy children, and Mr. Muller, who was by himself, but was said to be expecting his wife and family.
Down the middle of the room were the other, less favoured, tables—to which not a breath of air could ever penetrate in the middle of the day—and at the far end of it, close up against the screen that concealed the swing-door into the kitchen, was the altogether inferior station allotted to Dulcie Courteney and her father. Usually Dulcie sat there all by herself, and was served last—and sometimes with a strangely curtailed meal, if Henri, the waiter, was in a spiteful mood. A feud subsisted between the Hotel servants and Courteney, whom they regarded as being no better than one of themselves.
Far down the room—but not as far down as Dulcie—sat the young French couple, the Duvals. She was a plump, brown-skinned, brown-eyed creature, vividly painted, and oddly resembling her equally plump and brown-eyed husband.
They ate and drank voraciously, and their conversation consisted principally of an interminable discussion on the merits and demerits of the food. Sometimes they argued.
"Mais voyons, Marcelle, tu déraisonnes ..."
"Au contraire, c'est toi n'as pas le sens commun ..."
"Allons, fais l'entêtée, maintenant!"
"Espèce d'idiot!"
"Petite sotte que tu es ..."
Usually their quarrels ended in a sound smack on Marcelle's bare arm or shoulder from her husband. Then she would very often burst out laughing, and sometimes they would kiss one another openly across the table.
"My God, they make me sick," said Angie Moon, watching them.
"Restaurant-proprietors from Lyons or Marseilles, I should imagine," Hilary said haughtily.
"They've got money, though. I saw them in a huge car this evening, and they've ordered champagne—look."
"My God, what do people like that want with money?"
The sommelier came up to Hilary and asked what he would take to drink.
"I suppose the champagne's good here. Anyway it ought to be," said Hilary, and ordered a bottle.
Dinner was nearly over before the Moons spoke again. Then Hilary said:
"Is that woman taking her car to look up these Villa Mimosa people?"
"They didn't garage it, they left it outside."
"I suppose they're good for a lift."
"Yes, they are."
Angie knew that Buckland, at any rate, would suggest taking them in the car. Faintly, but unmistakably, she felt already vibrating between them the first magnetic thrillings of mutual attraction.
Hilary, less fortunate, looked gloomily round the room and decided that it did not contain a single woman who could possibly prove worth his while. He hoped, without seriously expecting the hope to be realised, that Chrissie Challoner might appeal to him. It was in her favour—and Hilary fully realised how much he differed from ordinary men in feeling it to be so—that she was a writer of novels.
(2)
A painful situation prevailed at the table to which Mr. Bolham, day by day, and almost meal by meal, arrived later and later to confront his secretary.
Conversation between them, since the decrees of civilisation forbade that it should be dispensed with altogether, was becoming increasingly difficult. It had always lacked spontaneity, even at the very beginning of their association, for Denis was too self-conscious, and Mr. Bolham too critical, for the successful manufacture of small-talk.
Each had made efforts, especially at first.
Denis had offered small and platitudinous observations on subjects that he held to be relevant to Mr. Bolham's work, until his intuition had warned him that he was losing ground rather than gaining it.
Mr. Bolham had—at the very beginning—mentioned books and authors, and Denis had followed his customary methods and had claimed, brightly and enthusiastically, to know something about almost all of them. Again, and very swiftly, an inner certainty gripped him unpleasantly somewhere in the midriff, and he knew that his employer had seen through his small pretences, and was probably despising him for them.
The most unsuccessful phase of all had been that in which Mr. Bolham had tried to show an interest in the life and circumstances of his secretary, to the terror and horror of Denis, whose private life was even more complicated than are most private lives, being hedged about by a number of small, sordid, makeshift arrangements, of which he was intensely ashamed, and punctuated by the jobs that he had obtained through personal interest, and lost through incompetence.
In addition, the varied aspects of himself that he was in the habit of presenting to the world would, Denis felt certain, lay him open to a charge of insincerity if any of his employers, friends, or acquaintances should ever meet and compare notes. He was therefore at continual pains to con ceal the identity of these one from another. All these fears—added to his original fear of the penetrating and cynical eye of Mr. Bolham, which was increasing daily—combined to turn their tête-à-tête meals into an ordeal that Denis found little short of purgatorial, nor was it much more endurable to Mr. Bolham.
"I hope you have some work for me this evening, sir," Denis said uncertainly, after a protracted silence.
"Nothing this evening, thank you. Go out—go down to the Casino—swim by moonlight. Anything you like."
"I dare say I shall take a walk. I'm used to a great deal of exercise," replied Denis. He made such statements entirely at random, scarcely stopping to reflect whether they were true or untrue, driven only by his anxiety to impress, and—in this case—by a nagging suspicion that Mr. Bolham thought him deficient in manliness.
"Walk by all means," replied his employer. "Will you have coffee?"
"Thank you so much—if you're having some."
"Un café," said Mr. Bolham to the waiter.
He knew that Denis knew that he never took coffee, and Denis was aware that he knew it. Nevertheless, Denis was compelled to utter his little meaningless formula of conditional acceptance. He wanted coffee because he was naturally greedy, and because he had often been so poor that it was almost impossible to him to refuse anything that would be paid for by somebody else.
In the condition of inward conflict that was his usual state of mind, Denis followed Mr. Bolham from the dining-room.
As he went, he was alert to catch the eye of anyone who might possibly be looking at him. It gave him self-confidence to be recognised, and it also, subconsciously, made him feel safer. If he was looking at the people whom he passed, then they could not, themselves,