A Buyers Market - Anthony Powell [52]
“Even the fairies
Say how sweet my hair is;
They mess my mascara and pinch the peroxide.
I know a coward
Would be overpowered,
When they all offer to be orthodox. I’d
Like to be kind but say: ‘Some other day, dears;
Pansies for thoughts remains still the best way, dears.’”
This verse gave great offence to Mr. Deacon. Indeed, its effect was almost electric in the suddenness of the ferment it caused within him. He brushed away a lock of grey hair fallen over his forehead, and clenched his fist until the knuckles were white. He was evidently very angry. “Insufferable!” he said. “And from such a person.”
He had gone quite pale with irritation. The Negro, too, perhaps himself a vocalist, or performer upon some instrument, had also been watching Max Pilgrim with a look of mounting, though silent, hatred that had contracted the whole of his face into a scowl of self-righteous rage. This look seemed by then to have dramatised his bearing into the character of Othello. But the pianist, taking occasional nips at his champagne, showed no sign of observing any of the odium aroused by him in these or other quarters. Mr. Deacon sighed. There was a moment when I thought he might, there and then, have decided to leave the house. His chest heaved. However, he evidently made up his mind to dismiss unpleasant reflections.
“Your young friend appears to hold the place of honour here,” he said, in a more restrained voice. “Is he rich? Who are his parents—if I am not being inquisitive?”
“They are divorced. His father married a Frenchwoman and lives in Kenya. His mother was a South African, also remarried—to a sailor called Foxe.”
“Buster Foxe?”
“Yes.”
“Rather a chic sailor,” said Mr. Deacon. “If I mistake not, I used to hear about him in Paris. And she started life as wife of some belted earl or other.”
He was again showing recklessness in giving voice to these spasmodic outbursts of worldly knowledge. The champagne perhaps caused this intermittent pulling aside of the curtain that concealed some, apparently considerable, volume of practical information about unlikely people: a little storehouse, the existence of which he was normally unwilling to admit, yet preserved safely at the back of his mind in case of need.
“What was the name?” he went on. “She is a very handsome woman—or was.”
“Warrington.”
“The Beautiful Lady Warrington!” said Mr. Deacon. “I remember seeing a photograph of her in The Queen. There was some nonsense there, too, about a fancy-dress ball she had given. When will people learn better? And Warrington himself was much older than she, and died soon after their marriage. He probably drank.”
“So far as I know, he was a respectable brigadier-general. It is Charles Stringham’s father who likes the bottle.”
“They are all the same,” said Mr. Deacon, decisively.
Whether this condemnation was aimed at all husbands of Stringham’s mother, or, more probably, intended, in principle, to embrace members of the entire social stratum from which these husbands had, up to date, been drawn, was not made clear. Once more he fell into silence, as if thinking things over. Max Pilgrim continued to hammer and strum and take gulps of champagne, while against an ever-increasing buzz of conversation, he chanted his song continuously, as if it were a narrative poem or saga recording the heroic, legendary deeds of some primitive race:
“I do hope Tallulah
Now feels a shade cooler,
But why does she pout, as she wanders so far off
From Monsieur Citroën,
Who says something knowin’
To Lady Cunard and Sir Basil Zaharoff?
Has someone guessed who was having a beano
At Milly’s last party behind the Casino?”
This verse turned out to be the climax. Max Pilgrim, removing his spectacles, rose and bowed. Since the beginning of the song, many people, among them Mrs. Andriadis herself, had drifted away, and the room was now half empty, though a small group of enthusiasts still hovered round