Deck With Flowers Read online

  He drove as fast as he could through the rain-washed streets—but at this hour, traffic was at its heaviest and vehicles crawled nose to tail, seldom offering a space which he could seize. He did as much thrusting as he could; once he received an impression, strengthened by the remarks of the driver, that he had plunged under the rear of a bus and emerged at the front. As he drove, a part of his mind ranged over the history—which looked like being a brief history—of his association with Madame Landini and her memoirs.

  It was through him that the book had come to the firm of D. S. Claud. It had seemed to him at the time a matter of pure chance, but further acquaintance with Madame Landini had made him realise that in her affairs, not much was left to chance.

  Yet chance had begun it all. On a fine morning last September, he had left the office to keep a business appointment in Knightsbridge. He had not used his car; he had gone by bus and decided to return on foot, giving himself some exercise in the Park on the way. He was walking briskly beside the Serpentine when his musing was interrupted by the sound of a dog fight; a short distance ahead, a bellicose Alsatian was attempting to make a meal of a miniature poodle. The poodle’s owner, an elderly lady, had with more courage than sense snatched the little animal up into her arms and was doing her best to protect it from assault.

  Rodney looked round in the hope of seeing a hero or two speeding to the rescue—but there was only himself. He broke into a run, reached the scene and by seizing the Alsatian in places as far removed from its teeth as possible, managed to drag it to the water’s edge, and dunked the struggling mass of fur. Then he turned to the lady, to find her shaken and dishevelled; the damage to the poodle was a torn ear. Steering them towards the exit and a taxi, he realised that he himself was being steered towards a waiting Rolls-Royce manned by a chauffeur, who at sight of his mistress came hurrying to assist her. Rodney considered his part to be at an end, but was begged by the lady to escort her to her home. He was not surprised to learn that it was in Park Lane, for he had by now identified her: she was Madame Landini, born a Russian princess, in her youth and middle years a concert singer of international fame, now the widow of one of the richest men in Europe and still of sufficient interest to reporters to make her name and appearance familiar to the present-day public.

  There was no conversation on the drive to the house; Madame Landini leaned against the cushions with her eyes closed, while Rodney held the poodle and mopped its ear with his handkerchief. On arrival, he handed Madame Landini out, gave her into the care of a capable-looking butler and accepted the offer of the car to drive him to his office. The incident was reported in the evening papers, the account stating that Madame Landini had been attacked by a dog and rescued by a gentleman named Robert Aird, who did not give his address.

  Ten days passed. Rodney had almost forgotten the matter, when a letter was delivered by hand to the office: Madame Landini wished to give herself the pleasure of receiving Mr. Laird to tea on Thursday at five o’clock.

  He arrived punctually, was admitted, relieved of his wet mackintosh and conducted along broad, thickly-carpeted corridors. A double door was opened, his name was intoned and he found himself in a vast drawing room whose temperature he reckoned to be in the mid-eighties. By the fireplace stood Madame Landini, one arm resting on the elaborate over-mantle—a stately, studied attitude well suited to her long, draped, sea-green gown. He made his way to her, bowed over her hand in what he hoped was polished style, and was invited to be seated.

  Her opening speech expressed gratitude—such courage, such coolness, such strength! Yes, thank you, the little poodle was recovering, it had been sent for recuperation to kennels in the country, she had taken it for a walk that morning never for a moment suspecting that it was in a condition in which it should be kept from gentlemen dogs. But for the intervention of God and His instrument—Mr. Laird—what would have happened?

  Before the point could be debated, the door opened to admit two footmen and a tea trolley which looked to Rodney the size of a ping-pong table. On it he saw a snowy cloth, several pieces of beautiful Georgian silver, delicate cups and saucers, cress sandwiches, wafer-thin brown bread and butter, hot scones in a covered silver dish, and a variety of cakes and biscuits. There were three cups, and he heard Madame Landini ordering one of the footmen to convey her compliments to Signor Piozzi. Signor Piozzi, entering a few minutes later, proved to be short, stout and grey-haired, with an alert expression and small, extremely shrewd black-button eyes. He was, Madame Landini told Rodney, a financial genius, for over thirty years man of business to her friend the Maharajah of Hardanipur, temporarily on loan to herself to advise in the sale to His Highness of some property she owned in Italy. Signor Piozzi entered the conversation in machine-gun Italian, found that Rodney knew none and with unconcealed annoyance switched to English. He ate and drank nothing. Madame took tea with a slice of lemon. Rodney accepted a biscuit, discovering too late that it was a crackly one which made him sound like a horse scrunching oats. Prevented for a time from conversing, he fell to wondering why the name Hardanipur sounded familiar. In the recesses of his mind, a faint bell had rung. Hardanipur…

  The trolley was wheeled out, Signor Piozzi rose, bowed and beat a brisk retreat. Rodney glanced at his watch and decided that another twenty minutes was as much as etiquette required, or that he could endure. All he need do was stay awake and listen to Madame Landini and try to look interested.

  Listening, he confirmed his impression that on her social chessboard there were no pawns, but a disproportionate number of kings and queens. Also mentioned were some oriental rulers and eastern despots, all old and dear friends, the oldest and dearest being the Maharajah she had previously mentioned. He had, Madame said, been living for many years in Switzerland.

  “You know, he has not been back to India since the British handed over power. He left everything—his palaces, his possessions, his elephants, his thousand servants, his fleets of limousines. Dispossessed, Mr. Laird; this is a link between us. I, too, am an exile from the land of my birth.”

  Overheated, bored, drowsy as he was, Rodney nevertheless came sharply to attention five minutes later, when he detected in Madame’s tone a sudden, subtle change, a fractional change of key that had become familiar to him since first he had begun to have dealings with authors. Meeting them for lunch, he nowadays found it interesting to speculate at what stage in the meal the new note would sound. It might come between the cheese and the coffee; it might even come with the osso bucco; in the case of women writers, it sometimes sounded as early as the soup—but come it inevitably did, this difference that marked the leap from borsch to business, from ravioli to royalties. His eyes, fixed on Madame Landini, showed for a moment surprise and a gleam of expectancy: a proposition was on the way.

  She presented it in businesslike fashion. She had decided, she said, to write her memoirs. People had for some time past been urging her to do so, pointing out the rich treasures of musical, of social, even of political history that would pour from her pen. But she had hesitated because she could not face the side issues, those small, tiresome details that came between an artist and his work, details from which during her career as a singer she had been carefully shielded. She had no wish to entangle herself in a net of agreements, contracts, time schedules. She had almost put aside the project—and then? How extraordinary that out of nowhere had come someone who, besides proving himself a man of courage and delicacy, had also proved to be a member of a publishing firm, someone to whom she could with confidence confide her memoirs, who would undertake to leave her free to devote herself to writing, while he would . . . Here she paused, as the authors paused, leaving the words ‘hand over the money’ hanging in the air.

  He had no doubt that she was shrewd enough to have informed herself of the state as well as the status of the firm. She would have learned that it was reputable, and she probably believed—as he did—that the book would carry its own weight of success. He was aware, before she had finishe
d speaking, that it would act as a blood-transfusion for D. S. Claud—and he would see to it that she became Oliver Tallent’s client.

  When she ended, he heard himself promising to put the proposal before Mr. Claud. He even made a proviso: that she submit the manuscript to him in instalments. This had been a safety measure, for he had no proof that she could write. He had learned that she could.

  She had written half the book—and now refused to go on.

  Oliver was waiting for him in his room at the office.

  “This is how it goes,” he said at once. “You remember the secretary I mentioned last night, the one I engaged for Madame Landini? She had instructions to come to this office every Friday on her way home, to get her salary. Claudius’s accountant paid her. Yesterday, she asked to see Claudius, but he’d left, so she told her story to the accountant, old Armstrong, and asked him to pass it on.”

  “What went wrong?”

  “She didn’t know. Everything had been going smoothly—no sign of trouble anywhere. Before leaving last night, she took some typed sheets into Madame’s room; Madame looked over them for corrections, said they didn’t need any, and added a few friendly words. The girl—I can’t remember her name—”

  “Baird.”

  “That’s right, Baird. She got ready to leave, went out of her room—and ran straight into Madame, who was apparently having hysterics. She shouted—yelled, this girl said—tore the last sheets of the manuscript into shreds and hurled them over the banisters, and then told the girl to get out and stay out. That’s the story Claudius was told when he arrived this morning. He put a call through to Madame Landini at once, of course, but she’s speaking to nobody.”

  “Who answered the phone?”

  “A voice which summoned another voice which said that the doctor had forbidden any communication whatsoever. Claudius is waiting for us. Let’s go.”

  They walked together down the narrow, uncarpeted corridor, and Rodney opened a door and ushered Oliver into a large room overlooking the street. From behind the desk a thin, stooping, grey-haired man greeted them: D. S. Claud the fourth.

  The firm had been in existence since 1825. The first D. S. Claud, known as Claudius One, had been a country squire with an ample fortune and a splendid estate in Surrey. Casting about for a gentlemanly pursuit with which to occupy some of his leisure hours, he hit on publishing, and rented as business premises a double-storied building not far from Fleet Street. Here he spent the weekday mornings, the afternoons being devoted to the search for medieval suits of armour, of which he had a notable collection.

  His successor, Claudius Two, limited his office mornings to three a week, thus giving himself time to add to his collection of musicians’ marble busts. The available space in the Surrey mansion being taken up by the suits of armour, the busts were displayed in the office.

  Claudius Three was a well-known and popular sportsman who dropped into the office when not prevented by hunting, shooting or fishing. He collected nothing but debts; thus when Claudius Four emerged unscathed from the Second World War, he found himself the possessor of a gratuity, a mortgaged mansion, a moribund publishing firm, eighty busts and sixty suits of armour. He also had a widowed sister named Phoebe, who was even poorer than himself. Together they sold the mansion and the suits of armour, decided to leave the busts where they were, bought two copies of a publication entitled The Ins and Outs of Publishing and went to work, sustained by the hope that the firm’s assets, and the lease of the building, would last as long as they themselves were likely to.

  Claudius Four worked in the room overlooking the street because it was the only view left to him, the low buildings to right and left having been demolished by enemy bombs and giant structures of steel erected in their place. From behind his desk, Chopin and Liszt stared sightlessly across the room at Bach and Beethoven.

  Phoebe, though a widow, had from the beginning of her reign at the office been known as Miss Phoebe. She was, or had been until Rodney’s arrival, the firm’s mainstay and prop. Immensely forceful, she was to her timid brother part bulwark, part bugler sounding the Charge. She acted as extra secretary to both Claudius and Rodney, but her chief usefulness lay in her ability to handle even the most troublesome of authors; she quelled the grumblers and put down the high and mighty. In times of storm, her policy was one of waiting for passions to cool; this she called turning down the gas. Taking authors out to lunch she left to her brother and to Rodney, she herself preparing a snack in a small room which had been fitted up as a kitchen. Childless, she looked on Rodney as a son, but regarded Oliver with jealous suspicion, well knowing that he had done his best and intermittently was still doing his best to persuade Rodney to become his partner.

  On his entry with Oliver, Rodney received a warm welcome, delivered in Claudius’s soft, gentle, musical voice.

  “It’s nice to have you back, Rodney. Sit down. Sit down, both of you. Rodney, this is not a happy return for you, I fear.”

  After his month’s absence, Rodney thought the old man looked shrunken. As usual, he was sitting with a pair of glasses pushed to the end of his nose, the tips of his fingers together, leaning forward in an attitude so reminiscent of a medical practitioner that authors at their first interview found themselves discussing symptoms instead of stories. Never had Rodney felt more strongly that fate had played a mean trick in creating a man for a quiet, country setting and then placing him behind a City desk. Claudius should be pottering about among his rose beds, not rallying his forces to face a literary crisis.

  “We won’t take up time now talking about your trip, Rodney,” he said. “I think we ought to discuss first—don’t you?—this business of Madame Landini and her ... shall we call it an attack of temperament?”

  “You think it’s merely temperament?” Oliver inquired.

  “It’s only a guess, a mere guess. I tried several times this morning to reach her by telephone, but the answer was always the same: Madame is ill, and can’t see or speak to anybody. But her display . . . what else can it be called but temperament? We must bear in mind that she is a great artist, and they say that artists are ruled by their temperaments. Mind you, I’m only putting this forward as a . . . well, as a suggestion.”

  “She’s been working hard,” Oliver commented. “She’s probably overworked.”

  “Overworked at what?” Rodney demanded. “All she’s had to do for the past month was sit on a sofa and dictate her memoirs to a secretary.”

  “Such a pity, such a great pity that I wasn’t in the office when she came here last evening,” Claudius murmured. “Perhaps I could have found out what occurred—but the only person left was Mr. Armstrong, and she gave him very few details. Then he paid her salary, and she went away. There must be a great deal more that she didn’t say. We have her address. I feel, Rodney, that you, or Oliver, or both of you should get hold of her and bring her here, or find out from her exactly what took place. Mind you, this is a mere suggestion ...”

  “She was sacked,” Oliver said. “That’s what took place.”

  “But why? That’s what we’ve got to find out. Rodney, can you think of any reason why Madame Landini should have decided not to go on?”

  Rodney saw Oliver’s eyes on him, and guessed what was in his mind; he had never believed that Madame Landini had taken the precaution of making inquiries about the firm before offering the book to Rodney. Now, he seemed to be saying, Madame had decided that the firm hadn’t enough prestige. If that were the case, Rodney thought with sudden fury, then let her take her book to the devil.

  His eyes rested on the spare figure behind the desk, and no illusion clouded his gaze. He knew that Claudius was inefficient and ineffectual and hopelessly behind the times— but he loved him. No words could express what he felt for the firm of D. S. Claud when on a morning in Cornwall more than three years ago he had read their letter and then gone down to the sea’s edge to read it again. Those moments of exaltation, exultation, that time of pure, heady elation he ow
ed to Claudius and Phoebe, who had written—after it had been refused by fifteen publishers—to tell him that they would accept his novel. Nothing—not his knowledge that the book was not worth printing, not his realisation that he no longer wanted to be a writer; not even his belief, later confirmed, that when published it would prove a total loss—nothing could ever take from him or erase from his memory those glorious moments with surf singing in his ears and gulls wheeling round him as he stood with the letter in his hand. When he joined the firm instead of joining Oliver, he felt that he had paid part of his debt; bringing the firm the Landini memoirs had perhaps paid off the rest.

  He heard Oliver speaking.

  “It did strike me”—the deep, precise tones contrasted strongly with Claudius’s gentle, hesitant speech—“that this might be Madame Landini’s way of getting you to offer her a higher scale of royalties. We’ve learned that she’s a first-class writer—which we didn’t know when the contract was drawn up. I haven’t asked you what you think of the book as far as it’s gone, but—”

  “Oh, it’s splendid, splendid. Without any doubt. It’s magnificent. Especially her early life. I was carried away, absolutely carried away by the description of her childhood and her parents and her link with that unfortunate royal family. And the flight to Paris was extremely well told, and their poverty . . . yes, I was carried away, there’s no other way of expressing it. Surely you’re not of the opinion, Oliver, that having got so far, having relived those days, Madame Landini is going to stoop to bargaining for better terms?”

  “It’s a possibility.”

  “No,” Rodney said with conviction. “If that’s what she was after, she would have sent for me and told me so. What’s far more likely is that the last chapter or two upset her—recalling and recording her first husband’s end. She broke off just after his death. That, if you like, could account for her getting into a nervous state. It was a pretty shattering experience. I thought her description of her feelings was pretty moving.”