Buch lesen: «Elephants Can Remember»

CHAPTER 1
A Literary Luncheon

Mrs Oliver looked at herself in the glass. She gave a brief, sideways look towards the clock on the mantel-piece, which she had some idea was twenty minutes slow. Then she resumed her study of her coiffure. The trouble with Mrs Oliver was—and she admitted it freely—that her styles of hairdressing were always being changed. She had tried almost everything in turn. A severe pompadour at one time, then a wind-swept style where you brushed back your locks to display an intellectual brow, at least she hoped the brow was intellectual. She had tried tightly arranged curls, she had tried a kind of artistic disarray. She had to admit that it did not matter very much today what her type of hairdressing was, because today she was going to do what she very seldom did, wear a hat.

On the top shelf of Mrs Oliver’s wardrobe there reposed four hats. One was definitely allotted to weddings. When you went to a wedding, a hat was a ‘must’. But even then Mrs Oliver kept two. One, in a round bandbox, was of feathers. It fitted closely to the head and stood up very well to sudden squalls of rain if they should overtake one unexpectedly as one passed from a car to the interior of the sacred edifice, or as so often now a days, a registrar’s office.

The other, and more elaborate, hat was definitely for attending a wedding held on a Saturday afternoon in summer. It had flowers and chiffon and a covering of yellow net attached with mimosa.

The other two hats on the shelf were of a more all-purpose character. One was what Mrs Oliver called her ‘country house hat’, made of tan felt suitable for wearing with tweeds of almost any pattern, with a becoming brim that you could turn up or turn down.

Mrs Oliver had a cashmere pullover for warmth and a thin pullover for hot days, either of which was suitable in colour to go with this. However, though the pullovers were frequently worn, the hat was practically never worn. Because, really, why put on a hat just to go to the country and have a meal with your friends?

The fourth hat was the most expensive of the lot and it had extraordinarily durable advantages about it. Possibly, Mrs Oliver sometimes thought, because it was so expensive. It consisted of a kind of turban of various layers of contrasting velvets, all of rather becoming pastel shades which would go with anything.

Mrs Oliver paused in doubt and then called for assistance.

‘Maria,’ she said, then louder, ‘Maria. Come here a minute.’

Maria came. She was used to being asked to give advice on what Mrs Oliver was thinking of wearing.

‘Going to wear your lovely smart hat, are you?’ said Maria.

‘Yes,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘I wanted to know whether you think it looks best this way or the other way round.’

Maria stood back and took a look.

‘Well, that’s back to front you’re wearing it now, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, I know,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘I know that quite well. But I thought somehow it looked better that way.’

‘Oh, why should it?’ said Maria.

‘Well, it’s meant, I suppose. But it’s got to be meant by me as well as the shop that sold it,’ said Mrs Oliver.

‘Why do you think it’s better the wrong way round?’

‘Because you get that lovely shade of blue and the dark brown, and I think that looks better than the other way which is green with the red and the chocolate colour.’

At this point Mrs Oliver removed the hat, put it on again and tried it wrong way round, right way round and sideways, which both she and Maria disapproved of.

‘You can’t have it the wide way. I mean, it’s wrong for your face, isn’t it? It’d be wrong for anyone’s face.’

‘No. That won’t do. I think I’ll have it the right way round, after all.’

‘Well, I think it’s safer always,’ said Maria.

Mrs Oliver took off the hat. Maria assisted her to put on a well cut, thin woollen dress of a delicate puce colour, and helped her to adjust the hat.

‘You look ever so smart,’ said Maria.

That was what Mrs Oliver liked so much about Maria. If given the least excuse for saying so, she always approved and gave praise.

‘Going to make a speech at the luncheon, are you?’ Maria asked.

‘A speech!’ Mrs Oliver sounded horrified. ‘No, of course not. You know I never make speeches.’

‘Well, I thought they always did at these here literary luncheons. That’s what you’re going to, isn’t it? Famous writers of 1973—or whichever year it is we’ve got to now.’

‘I don’t need to make a speech,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘Several other people who like doing it will be making speeches, and they are much better at it than I would be.’

‘I’m sure you’d make a lovely speech if you put your mind to it,’ said Maria, adjusting herself to the role of a tempter.

‘No, I shouldn’t,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘I know what I can do and I know what I can’t. I can’t make speeches. I get all worried and nervy and I should probably stammer or say the same thing twice. I should not only feel silly, I should probably look silly. Now it’s all right with words. You can write words down or speak them into a machine or dictate them. I can do things with words so long as I know it’s not a speech I’m making.’

‘Oh well. I hope everything’ll go all right. But I’m sure it will. Quite a grand luncheon, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ said Mrs Oliver, in a deeply depressed voice. ‘Quite a grand luncheon.’

And why, she thought, but did not say, why on earth am I going to it? She searched her mind for a bit because she always really liked knowing what she was going to do instead of doing it first and wondering why she had done it afterwards.

‘I suppose,’ she said, again to herself and not to Maria, who had had to return rather hurriedly to the kitchen, summoned by a smell of overflowing jam which she happened to have on the stove, ‘I wanted to see what it felt like. I’m always being asked to literary lunches or something like that and I never go.’

Mrs Oliver arrived at the last course of the grand luncheon with a sigh of satisfaction as she toyed with the remains of the meringue on her plate. She was particularly fond of meringues and it was a delicious last course in a very delicious luncheon. Nevertheless, when one reached middle age, one had to be careful with meringues. One’s teeth! They looked all right, they had the great advantage that they could not ache, they were white and quite agreeable-looking—just like the real thing. But it was true enough that they were not real teeth. And teeth that were not real teeth—or so Mrs Oliver believed—were not really of high class material. Dogs, she had always understood, had teeth of real ivory, but human beings had teeth merely of bone. Or, she supposed, if they were false teeth, of plastic. Anyway, the point was that you mustn’t get involved in some rather shame-making appearance, which false teeth might lead you into. Lettuce was a difficulty, and salted almonds, and such things as chocolates with hard centres, clinging caramels and the delicious stickiness and adherence of meringues. With a sigh of satisfaction, she dealt with the final mouthful. It had been a good lunch, a very good lunch.

Mrs Oliver was fond of her creature comforts. She had enjoyed the luncheon very much. She had enjoyed the company, too. The luncheon, which had been given to celebrated female writers, had fortunately not been confined to female writers only. There had been other writers, and critics, and those who read books as well as those who wrote them. Mrs Oliver had sat between two very charming members of the male sex. Edwin Aubyn, whose poetry she always enjoyed, an extremely entertaining person who had had various entertaining experiences in his tours abroad, and various literary and personal adventures. Also he was interested in restaurants and food and they had talked very happily about food, and left the subject of literature aside.

Sir Wesley Kent, on her other side, had also been an agreeable luncheon companion. He had said very nice things about her books, and had had the tact to say things that did not make her feel embarrassed, which many people could do almost without trying. He had mentioned one or two reasons why he had liked one or other of her books, and they had been the right reasons, and therefore Mrs Oliver had thought favourably of him for that reason. Praise from men, Mrs Oliver thought to herself, is always acceptable. It was women who gushed. Some of the things that women wrote to her! Really! Not always women, of course. Sometimes emotional young men from very far away countries. Only last week she had received a fan letter beginning ‘Reading your book, I feel what a noble woman you must be.’ After reading The Second Goldfish he had then gone off into an intense kind of literary ecstasy which was, Mrs Oliver felt, completely unfitting. She was not unduly modest. She thought the detective stories she wrote were quite good of their kind. Some were not so good and some were much better than others. But there was no reason, so far as she could see, to make anyone think that she was a noble woman. She was a lucky woman who had established a happy knack of writing what quite a lot of people wanted to read. Wonderful luck that was, Mrs Oliver thought to herself.

Well, all things considered, she had got through this ordeal very well. She had quite enjoyed herself, talked to some nice people. Now they were moving to where coffee was being handed round and where you could change partners and chat with other people. This was the moment of danger, as Mrs Oliver knew well. This was now where other women would come and attack her. Attack her with fulsome praise, and where she always felt lamentably inefficient at giving the right answers because there weren’t really any right answers that you could give. It went really rather like a travel book for going abroad with the right phrases.

Question: ‘I must tell you how very fond I am of reading your books and how wonderful I think they are.’

Answer from flustered author, ‘Well, that’s very kind. I am so glad.’

‘You must understand that I’ve been waiting to meet you for months. It really is wonderful.’

‘Oh, it’s very nice of you. Very nice indeed.’

It went on very much like that. Neither of you seemed to be able to talk about anything of outside interest. It had to be all about your books, or the other woman’s books if you knew what her books were. You were in the literary web and you weren’t good at this sort of stuff. Some people could do it, but Mrs Oliver was bitterly aware of not having the proper capacity. A foreign friend of hers had once put her, when she was staying at an embassy abroad, through a kind of course.

‘I listen to you,’ Albertina had said in her charming, low, foreign voice, ‘I have listened to what you say to that young man who came from the newspaper to interview you. You have not got—no! you have not got the pride you should have in your work. You should say “Yes, I write well. I write better than anyone else who writes detective stories.”’

‘But I don’t,’ Mrs Oliver had said at that moment. ‘I’m not bad, but—’

‘Ah, do not say “I don’t” like that. You must say you do; even if you do not think you do, you ought to say you do.’

‘I wish, Albertina,’ said Mrs Oliver, ‘that you could interview these journalists who come. You would do it so well. Can’t you pretend to be me one day, and I’ll listen behind the door?’

‘Yes, I suppose I could do it. It would be rather fun. But they would know I was not you. They know your face. But you must say “Yes, yes, I know that I am better than anyone else.” You must say that to everybody. They should know it. They should announce it. Oh yes—it is terrible to hear you sitting there and say things as though you apologize for what you are. It must not be like that.’

It had been rather, Mrs Oliver thought, as though she had been a budding actress trying to learn a part, and the director had found her hopelessly bad at taking direction. Well, anyway, there’d be not much difficulty here. There’d be a few waiting females when they all got up from the table. In fact, she could see one or two hovering already. That wouldn’t matter much. She would go and smile and be nice and say ‘So kind of you. I’m so pleased. One is so glad to know people like one’s books.’ All the stale old things. Rather as you put a hand into a box and took out some useful words already strung together like a necklace of beads. And then, before very long now, she could leave.

Her eyes went round the table because she might perhaps see some friends there as well as would-be admirers. Yes, she did see in the distance Maurine Grant, who was great fun. The moment came, the literary women and the attendant cavaliers who had also attended the lunch, rose. They streamed towards chairs, towards coffee tables, towards sofas, and confidential corners. The moment of peril, Mrs Oliver often thought of it to herself, though usually at cocktail and not literary parties because she seldom went to the latter. At any moment the danger might arise, as someone whom you did not remember but who remembered you, or someone whom you definitely did not want to talk to but whom you found you could not avoid. In this case it was the first dilemma that came to her. A large woman. Ample proportions, large white champing teeth. What in French could have been called une femme formidable, but who definitely had not only the French variety of being formidable, but the English one of being supremely bossy. Obviously she either knew Mrs Oliver, or was intent on making her acquaintance there and then. The last was how it happened to go.

‘Oh, Mrs Oliver,’ she said in a high-pitched voice. ‘What a pleasure to meet you today. I have wanted to for so long. I simply adore your books. So does my son. And my husband used to insist on never travelling without at least two of your books. But come, do sit down. There are so many things I want to ask you about.’

Oh well, thought Mrs Oliver, not my favourite type of woman, this. But as well her as any other.

She allowed herself to be conducted in a firm way rather as a police officer might have done. She was taken to a settee for two across a corner, and her new friend accepted coffee and placed coffee before her also.

‘There. Now we are settled. I don’t suppose you know my name. I am Mrs Burton-Cox.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Mrs Oliver, embarrassed, as usual. Mrs Burton-Cox? Did she write books also? No, she couldn’t really remember anything about her. But she seemed to have heard the name. A faint thought came to her. A book on politics, something like that? Not fiction, not fun, not crime. Perhaps a high-brow intellectual with political bias? That ought to be easy, Mrs Oliver thought with relief. I can just let her talk and say ‘How interesting!’ from time to time.

‘You’ll be very surprised, really, at what I’m going to say,’ said Mrs Burton-Cox. ‘But I have felt, from reading your books, how sympathetic you are, how much you understand of human nature. And I feel that if there is anyone who can give me an answer to the question I want to ask, you will be the one to do so.’

‘I don’t think, really …’ said Mrs Oliver, trying to think of suitable words to say that she felt very uncertain of being able to rise to the heights demanded of her.

Mrs Burton-Cox dipped a lump of sugar in her coffee and crunched it in a rather carnivorous way, as though it was a bone. Ivory teeth, perhaps, thought Mrs Oliver vaguely. Ivory? Dogs had ivory, walruses had ivory and elephants had ivory, of course. Great big tusks of ivory. Mrs Burton-Cox was saying:

‘Now the first thing I must ask you—I’m pretty sure I am right, though—you have a goddaughter, haven’t you? A goddaughter who’s called Celia Ravenscroft?’

‘Oh,’ said Mrs Oliver, rather pleasurably surprised. She felt she could deal perhaps with a goddaughter. She had a good many goddaughters—and godsons, for that matter. There were times, she had to admit as the years were growing upon her, when she couldn’t remember them all. She had done her duty in due course, one’s duty being to send toys to your god-children at Christmas in their early years, to visit them and their parents, or to have them visit you during the course of their upbringing, to take the boys out from school perhaps, and the girls also. And then, when the crowning days came, either the twenty-first birthday at which a godmother must do the right thing and let it be acknowledged to be done, and do it handsomely, or else marriage which entailed the same type of gift and a financial or other blessing. After that godchildren rather receded into the middle or far distance. They married or went abroad to foreign countries, foreign embassies, or taught in foreign schools or took up social projects. Anyway, they faded little by little out of your life. You were pleased to see them if they suddenly, as it were, floated up on the horizon again. But you had to remember to think when you had seen them last, whose daughters they were, what link had led to your being chosen as a godmother.

‘Celia Ravenscroft,’ said Mrs Oliver, doing her best. ‘Yes, yes, of course. Yes, definitely.’

Not that any picture rose before her eyes of Celia Ravenscroft, not, that is, since a very early time. The christening. She’d gone to Celia’s christening and had found a very nice Queen Anne silver strainer as a christening present. Very nice. Do nicely for straining milk and would also be the sort of thing a god-daughter could always sell for a nice little sum if she wanted ready money at any time. Yes, she remembered the strainer very well indeed. Queen Anne—Seventeen-eleven it had been. Britannia mark. How much easier it was to remember silver coffee-pots or strainers or christening mugs than it was the actual child.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘yes, of course. I’m afraid I haven’t seen Celia for a very long time now.’

‘Ah yes. She is, of course, a rather impulsive girl,’ said Mrs Burton-Cox. ‘I mean, she’s changed her ideas very often. Of course, very intellectual, did very well at university, but—her political notions—I suppose all young people have political notions nowadays.’

‘I’m afraid I don’t deal much with politics,’ said Mrs Oliver, to whom politics had always been anathema.

‘You see, I’m going to confide in you. I’m going to tell you exactly what it is I want to know. I’m sure you won’t mind. I’ve heard from so many people how kind you are, how willing always.’

I wonder if she’s going to try and borrow money from me, thought Mrs Oliver, who had known many interviews that began with this kind of approach.

‘You see, it is a matter of the greatest moment to me. Something that I really feel I must find out. Celia, you see, is going to marry—or thinks she is going to marry—my son, Desmond.’

‘Oh, indeed!’ said Mrs Oliver.

‘At least, that is their idea at present. Of course, one has to know about people, and there’s something I want very much to know. It’s an extraordinary thing to ask anyone and I couldn’t go—well, I mean, I couldn’t very well go and ask a stranger, but I don’t feel you are a stranger, dear Mrs Oliver.’

Mrs Oliver thought, I wish you did. She was getting nervous now. She wondered if Celia had had an illegitimate baby or was going to have an illegitimate baby, and whether she, Mrs Oliver, was supposed to know about it and give details. That would be very awkward. On the other hand, thought Mrs Oliver, I haven’t seen her now for five or six years and she must be about twenty-five or -six, so it would be quite easy to say I don’t know anything.

Mrs Burton-Cox leaned forward and breathed hard. ‘I want you to tell me because I’m sure you must know or perhaps have a very good idea how it all came about. Did her mother kill her father or was it the father who killed the mother?’

Whatever Mrs Oliver had expected, it was certainly not that. She stared at Mrs Burton-Cox unbelievingly.

‘But I don’t—’ She stopped. ‘I—I can’t understand. I mean—what reason—’

‘Dear Mrs Oliver, you must know … I mean, such a famous case … Of course, I know it’s a long time ago now, well, I suppose ten—twelve years at least, but it did cause a lot of attention at the time. I’m sure you’ll remember, you must remember.’

Mrs Oliver’s brain was working desperately. Celia was her goddaughter. That was quite true. Celia’s mother—yes, of course. Celia’s mother had been Molly Preston-Grey, who had been a friend of hers, though not a particularly intimate one, and of course she had married a man in the Army, yes—what was his name—Sir Something Ravenscroft. Or was he an ambassador? Extraordinary, one couldn’t remember these things. She couldn’t even remember whether she herself had been Molly’s bridesmaid. She thought she had. Rather a smart wedding at the Guards Chapel or something like that. But one did forget so. And after that she hadn’t met them for years—they’d been out somewhere—in the Middle East? In Persia? In Iraq? One time in Egypt? Malaya? Very occasionally, when they had been visiting England, she met them again. But they’d been like one of those photographs that one takes and looks at. One knows the people vaguely who are in it but it’s so faded that you really can’t recognize them or remember who they were. And she couldn’t remember now whether Sir Something Ravenscroft and Lady Ravenscroft, born Molly Preston-Grey, had entered much into her life. She didn’t think so. But then … Mrs Burton-Cox was still looking at her. Looking at her as though disappointed in her lack of savoir-faire, her inability to remember what had evidently been a cause célèbre.

‘Killed? You mean—an accident?’

‘Oh no. Not an accident. In one of those houses by the sea. Cornwall, I think. Somewhere where there were rocks. Anyway, they had a house down there. And they were both found on the cliff there and they’d been shot, you know. But there was nothing really by which the police could tell whether the wife shot the husband and then shot herself, or whether the husband shot the wife and then shot himself. They went into the evidence of the—you know—of the bullets and the various things, but it was very difficult. They thought it might be a suicide pact and—I forget what the verdict was. Something—it could have been misadventure or something like that. But of course everyone knew it must have been meant, and there were a lot of stories that went about, of course, at the time—’

‘Probably all invented ones,’ said Mrs Oliver hopefully, trying to remember even one of the stories if she could.

‘Well, maybe. Maybe. It’s very hard to say, I know. There were tales of a quarrel either that day or before, there was some talk of another man, and then of course there was the usual talk about some other woman. And one never knows which way it was about. I think things were hushed up a good deal because General Ravenscroft’s position was rather a high one, and I think it was said that he’d been in a nursing home that year, and he’d been very run down or something, and that he really didn’t know what he was doing.’

‘I’m really afraid,’ said Mrs Oliver, speaking firmly, ‘that I must say that I don’t know anything about it. I do remember, now you mention it, that there was such a case, and I remember the names and that I knew the people, but I never knew what happened or anything at all about it. And I really don’t think I have the least idea …’

And really, thought Mrs Oliver, wishing she was brave enough to say it, how on earth you have the impertinence to ask me such a thing I don’t know.

‘It’s very important that I should know,’ Mrs Burton-Cox said.

Her eyes, which were rather like hard marbles, started to snap.

‘It’s important, you see, because of my boy, my dear boy wanting to marry Celia.’

‘I’m afraid I can’t help you,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘I’ve never heard anything.’

‘But you must know,’ said Mrs Burton-Cox. ‘I mean, you write these wonderful stories, you know all about crime. You know who commits crimes and why they do it, and I’m sure that all sorts of people will tell you the story behind the story, as one so much thinks of these things.’

‘I don’t know anything,’ said Mrs Oliver, in a voice which no longer held very much politeness, and definitely now spoke in tones of distaste.

‘But you do see that really one doesn’t know who to go to ask about it? I mean, one couldn’t go to the police after all these years, and I don’t suppose they’d tell you anyway because obviously they were trying to hush it up. But I feel it’s important to get the truth.’

‘I only write books,’ said Mrs Oliver coldly. ‘They are entirely fictional. I know nothing personally about crime and have no opinions on criminology. So I’m afraid I can’t help you in any way.’

‘But you could ask your goddaughter. You could ask Celia.’

‘Ask Celia!’ Mrs Oliver stared again. ‘I don’t see how I could do that. She was—why, I think she must have been quite a child when this tragedy happened.’

‘Oh, I expect she knew all about it, though,’ said Mrs Burton-Cox. ‘Children always know everything. And she’d tell you. I’m sure she’d tell you.’

‘You’d better ask her yourself, I should think,’ said Mrs Oliver.

‘I don’t think I could really do that,’ said Mrs Burton-Cox. ‘I don’t think, you know, that Desmond would like it. You know he’s rather—well, he’s rather touchy where Celia is concerned and I really don’t think that—no—I’m sure she’d tell you.’

‘I really shouldn’t dream of asking her,’ said Mrs Oliver. She made a pretence of looking at her watch. ‘Oh dear,’ she said, ‘what a long time we’ve been over this delightful lunch. I must run now, I have a very important appointment. Goodbye, Mrs—er—Bedley-Cox, so sorry I can’t help you but these things are rather delicate and—does it really make any difference anyway, from your point of view?’

‘Oh, I think it makes all the difference.’

At that moment, a literary figure whom Mrs Oliver knew well drifted past. Mrs Oliver jumped up to catch her by the arm.

‘Louise, my dear, how lovely to see you. I hadn’t noticed you were here.’

‘Oh, Ariadne, it’s a long time since I’ve seen you. You’ve grown a lot thinner, haven’t you?’