Free The Merciless Ladies by Winston Graham Page A

living, and Bertie said yes, so of course there was nothing more to be done.’
    â€˜How long has he gone for?’
    â€˜Two years, to begin. Of course Holly said to Bertie, ‘‘Suppose you get it’’, but Bertie says hardly any body ever dies of leprosy. They’ve some new thing now, the juice of some tree. Works wonders.’
    â€˜Does he know anything about medicine?’
    â€˜He’s been going to night-school. Unknown to us. Very secretive of him. Could you lend me a match, Bill?’
    I pictured Bertie arriving home hours late for dinner two or three nights a week and nobody bothering to ask what he’d been doing.
    â€˜All this unrest’, said Lady Lynn. She had picked up an old newspaper to use in the fire, but had become engrossed in the leading article. ‘Why don’t they build the Queen Mary ? Bankers think man was made to fit money, not money to fit man. One thing I’m pleased about, this Toe H thing has a Christian basis. Some sort of a secret society, founded by the early Christians. Double cross of the catacombs.’
    â€˜I’m sorry I wasn’t able to see him before he left.’
    â€˜I’m all alone’, said Lady Lynn. ‘Except for Vera, who doesn’t count. Have you put water in the kettle, dear? No, well, it’s burnt its bottom. How was Leo when you saw him?’
    â€˜He told you about his job in the orchestra, I suppose?’ I said. ‘Pot-boiling, he called it, in order to work at composition in his spare time.’
    â€˜Holly’s growing into a big girl’, said Lady Lynn. ‘Strange how all the angles become curvilinear. Don’t know quite what we’re going to do with her. The trouble with Leo, of course, is that he wants to find a short cut to success. All glory, like that artist friend of yours.’
    â€˜Paul Stafford?’ I said cautiously. ‘Have you met him?’
    â€˜Leo and Bertie were at the same school, didn’t you know? Vera and I went to a show of his pictures last week in Bond Street. Very dull, I thought. So many faces.’
    Lady Lynn, I reflected, had a talent for summary. But a couple of months afterwards, when Paul Stafford’s second portrait of Diana Marnsett was to be seen, I wondered if Lady Lynn would have used the same adjective.
    A couple of days after Newton, Olive Stafford rang me and said she was having a few people for drinks next Friday, would I come? All my preferences were to think up a hurried excuse, but I weakly accepted, hoping something would really crop up at the office to stop me. Of course it didn’t, and I went along, and about two dozen people were there and we drank White Ladies and talked the usual nonsense that is the lingua franca of the cocktail set.
    I hadn’t seen the flat before and realized that Paul must have been generous with his money if with nothing else. It was all white rectangular furniture with expensive fur rugs on a parquet floor; an easel tastefully decorated one corner and in the other, scintillacing with photographs, a baby grand on which at the moment a man called Peter Sharble, who I understood later was an MP, was strumming a tune or two. When I was about to take the first polite opportunity to leave she whispered: ‘Stay on a bit, Bill. You’ve not got a date? I want to talk.’
    So I was stuck until the last guest left and she said: ‘ I’m going to change my drink: how about you?’
    I joined her in a stiff whisky and we talked in a desultory way in the smoke-laden room. The conversation turned to Paul. She treated it lightly. Pity the ice had cracked so quickly: the thaw had come unseasonably fast. Was it true Paul was painting Diana Marnsett again? He must be getting short of ideas. Or was it just short of money? She hadn’t been to the exhibition at the Grosvenor Galleries. It all seemed vieux jeu to her.
    Olive was growing her hair. The tight chestnut auburn curls