At Lady Molly's - Anthony Powell [38]
‘Why, hullo, Hopkins,’ said Norah Tolland, her face suddenly clearing, and showing, for the first time since I had been in the room, some signs of pleasure. ‘What can we do for you?’
‘Hullo, girls,’ said the woman at the door.
She made no attempt to reply to Norah’s question, continuing to gaze round the room, grinning broadly, but advancing no farther beyond the threshold. She gave the impression of someone doing a turn on the stage.
‘If you take to leaving your front door on the latch,’ she said at last, ‘you’ll find a man will walk in one of these days, and then where will you be, I should like to know? By Jove, I see a man has walked in already. Well, well, well, never mind. There are a lot of them about, so I suppose you can’t keep them out all the time. What I came up for, dear, was to borrow an egg, if you’ve got such a thing. Laid one lately, either of you?’
Norah Tolland laughed.
‘This is my sister, Lady Frederica Budd,’ she said. ‘And Mr.—’
‘Jenkins,’ said Eleanor, in answer to an appeal for my name.
Eleanor was, I thought, less pleased than Norah to see the woman they called Hopkins. In fact, she seemed somewhat put out by her arrival.
‘Pleased to meet you, my dear,’ said Hopkins, holding out her hand to Frederica; ‘and you, my boy,’ she added, smirking in my direction.
‘Miss Hopkins plays the piano most nights at the Merry Thought,’ said Eleanor.
This explanation seemed aimed principally at Frederica.
‘You ought to look in one night,’ said Hopkins. ‘But come soon, because I’ve got an engagement next month to appear with Max Pilgrim at the Café de Madrid. I’ll have to make sure that old queen, Max, doesn’t hog every number. It would be just like him. He’s as vain as a peacock. Can’t trust a man not to try and steal the show anyway, even the normal ones, they’re the worst of all. Now the other thing I wanted to remind you girls about is my album. You’ve still got it. Have you thought of something nice to write in it, either of you?’
It appeared that no good idea had occurred either to Eleanor or Norah for inscription in the album.
‘I shall want it back soon,’ said Hopkins, ‘because another girl I know—such a little sweetie-pie with a little fragile face like a dear little dolly—is going to write some lovely lines in it. Shall I repeat to you what she is going to write? You will love it.’
Frederica Budd, who had been listening to all this with a slight smile, imperceptibly inclined her head, as one might when a clown enquires from his audience whether they have understood up to that point the course of the trick he is about to perform. Eleanor looked as if she did not particularly wish to hear what was offered, but regarded any demur as waste of time. Hopkins spoke the words:
‘Lips may be redder, and eyes more bright;
The face may be fairer you see tonight;
But never, love, while the stars shall shine,
Will you find a heart that is truer than mine.’
There was a pause when Hopkins came to the end of her recitation, which she had delivered with ardour. She struck an attitude, her hand on her hip.
‘Sweet, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘This friend of mine read it somewhere, and she memorised it—and so have I. I love it so much. That’s the sort of thing I want. I’ll leave the album a little longer then, girls, but remember—I shall expect something really nice when you do, both of you, think of a poem. Now what about that egg?’
Norah Tolland went into the kitchen of the flat. Hopkins stood grinning at us. No one spoke. Then Norah returned. On receiving the egg, Hopkins feigned to make it disappear up the sleeves of her shirt, the cuffs of which were joined by links of black and white enamel. Then, clenching her fist, she balanced the egg upon it at arm’s length, and marched out of the room chanting at the top of her voice:
‘Balls, Picnics and Parties,
Picnics, Parties and Balls …’
We heard the sound of her heavy, low-heeled shoes pounding the boards of the uncarpeted stairs, until at length a door slammed on a floor below, and the voice was cut off with a jerk.