Deck With Flowers Read online

“Not me.”

  “Not directly—but you’re part of it. You ... Look, I’ve got to do the rest of these deliveries. Could we meet somewhere?”

  “No. I’d like to keep my eye on you. I’ll follow the van.”

  “Don’t be silly. Just name a place, and I’ll be there. Have you had lunch?”

  “No. I was going to have beer and sandwiches in a pub, and after that, I’d made up my mind to make another assault on Number 12A. If you don’t like eating in pubs, I could—”

  “I’m given a free lunch at the patisserie.”

  “Tell them you’ve had another free offer. I’ll wait for you outside the shop.”

  It was not a long wait. He saw the van come into sight, pass him and go round the corner. Following, he saw Nicola backing it into a garage. Then she went into the shop to inform them that she would be lunching out.

  They said little on the way to the pub. Rodney had to concentrate on driving; snow was now falling so thickly that it was settling on the windscreen, and the roads were dangerously slippery. It was with relief that they entered the warm, comfortable lounge and made unhesitatingly for the leather-covered armchairs near the fire.

  “Did you ever hear that old song about ‘London by the sea, that’s the place for me’?” he asked, as he hung up their coats.

  “No. Sing it.”

  “Some other time. It was once the place for me—for over two months.”

  “You lived here, in Brighton?”

  “Yes. My first experience of commuting, and I hope my last. The same faces, the same platform, the same papers under the same arms, the same remarks about the weather, the same—”

  “I’ve got it: you disliked commuting. Are you as hungry as I am?”

  “They’ve got ham and cheese and slices off a joint. Do you want it here by the fire, or up at the counter?”

  “Oh, here. Beef with lots of mustard, please, and maybe tongue too. You can order cakes, if you want them; they buy them from the patisserie.”

  “No cakes. Beer?”

  “Failing hot punch, yes.”

  He carried the food and the glasses and bottles to a table beside them. After the first sandwich, she pulled off her cap and shook her hair free, and it fell to her shoulders, straight and soft and silky, in colour what he termed browny-blonde. Her manner was easy, her speech casual to the point of flippancy. Her glance was direct and—when a gleam of sardonic humour shone in her eyes—disconcerting.

  “When you can talk, talk,” he said.

  “About Madame? Well, it was short and sharp. And a shock, because I’d begun to think she rather liked me. We’d certainly got on well over the work, and during the last week I’d even been promoted to lunching with her—which I’d rather not have done, because there was much too much of everything and I kept remembering the hungry poor. Besides that, when my food was sent into my office room, I could get a break. The last day, I took the last sheets I’d typed into her sitting room, where she spent most of her day. She read them through and then told me I could go home, and said she was sorry she’d kept me late. Then she got up and patted my cheek and said I mustn’t allow her to overwork me. I would have liked to tell her that so long as I got overtime pay, I wouldn’t mind the overtime, but all I did was thank her and say good night. When I got to the door, she said I was to be sure and make a note of all the extra hours—and that’s how we parted. I went into the room farther along the corridor, a room I kept my things in, got into my storm suit and came out—and she was waiting at the head of the stairs, just standing—”

  “Did you work in that room?”

  “No. I worked on the ground floor. The room was only for my personal use during the day. When I came out, she was there, staring. Not staring, glaring. She had the sheets I’d given her in her hand, and suddenly she tore at them—really tore them to pieces—and hurled them at me. Most of the pieces went over the banisters. She was a kind of yellow colour, and her eyes looked like an animal’s. I couldn’t believe she was the gracious, queenly creature I’d seen a few minutes before. I remember thinking that when I got to be an old woman, I’d never let the veils drop, as she’d done; there was something horrible about her, ugly and terribly pathetic. I couldn’t have spoken if I’d tried, but if I had spoken, she wouldn’t have heard, because she’d begun to shout. Servants came running from all directions, but she didn’t seem to see them; she was too intent on yelling at me.”

  “What did she actually say?”

  “Nothing very coherent or connected. As far as I remember, she said I was to remove myself from her sight and never let me see her again. I thought she must suddenly have gone out of her mind—she must have, mustn’t she? I went down the stairs, and for once nobody preceded me to clear a passage or followed me to hold up my train. I had to let myself out. And that’s all.”

  “Not quite. Do you think it was the strain or the pain of writing about the past that—”

  “What pain or strain, for heaven’s sake? Pain or strain? I took most of it down from dictation while she reclined on a sofa in her sitting room, stopping now and then to take a phone call, or make one, or receive a guest, or order tea or coffee or hot chocolate for us both, or send for her manicurist or her masseuse or her hairdresser or chiropodist, or her chauffeur to give orders, or her chef to discuss the next banquet. The next person to write a book will be myself, all about high life. She tossed off details of her past just like someone reading items out of an old engagement book.”

  “But the tragedy of her first husband’s death—”

  “I told you there was no pain or strain, and there wasn’t. The details of what you’ve just called a tragedy—which it was—were dictated in between negotiations for the sale of the Landini palace, sorry palazzo, which she’s selling to a Maharajah. Before I went to work for her, I thought that the expression about somebody being so rich that they didn’t know what they were worth, was a ... a figure of speech. It isn’t. Madame Landini doesn’t know. All her millions are looked after by this Italian who’s called Signor Piozzi, who also looks after the Maharajah’s millions. She doesn’t have to give them a thought. Anything that involves money is taken care of for her; she says to this Signor Piozzi: ‘Guido, you will arrange this?’—and he does. I don’t think I could have taken it much longer. I’ve got a piggy-bank mind and I’m stuck with the idea that if you want money, you have to earn it. Another month with Madame, and I’d have become a Marcher. So for the last time, no pain and no strain.”

  “Don’t you think it could have been a financial crisis of some kind?”

  “No.”

  “That attitude of not interesting herself in financial details could be a pose.”

  “It could be, in anybody else. In her, no. She doesn’t think about money in the way that she doesn’t think about driving her car; she leaves driving to the chauffeur and finance to Signor Piozzi and sits back and let them do what they’re being paid to do. The only time—before the outburst—that I ever saw her stirred out of her sleep was when she was dictating the part about where her first husband took the flowers off the deck and down to their suite, and forgot to come back—but I didn’t think she was feeling grief, I thought she was just angry because Fate, for once, had treated her just like anybody else.”

  “Claudius said much the same thing. He was on board.”

  “On board the Atlantis?”

  “Not travelling. Seeing somebody off.”

  “You mean he was there when it happened?”

  “He was there just before it happened. Anton Veitch passed quite close to him as he was carrying the flowers off the deck. Later, the people Claudius had been seeing off wrote from New York to describe what had happened, and their opinion was that the Princess’s reaction wasn’t so much grief as fury.”

  “That checks. So if you want to find a reason for her giving up the memoirs, don’t imagine it was the pain of recalling her first husband, poor fellow.”

  “Poor?”

  “Of
course, poor. Do you wonder he took a dive overboard? How would you have liked to be in his shoes, dragging round the world as her accompanist? He should have been giving concerts of his own—he was a sensational pianist. Didn’t you read what she wrote?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “But what? He fell in love with her, or she made him think he was in love, and they got married, and that was the end of his career.”

  “He might have decided that as her husband and her accompanist, he’d get as far as he would have done on his own as a concert pianist. He—”

  Her sound of contempt halted him.

  “Did you say you’d read what she’d written?” she demanded.

  “Yes. And that’s my opinion. What’s yours?”

  “That you must be pretty insensitive. Have you ever met a pianist, a right-at-the-top, brilliant-future concert pianist?”

  “No.”

  “Neither have I. But I know that after all those years of work, and early success, with the audiences standing up to give him an oration, he—”

  “Ovation.”

  “—he couldn’t have enjoyed trailing on to platforms in the wake of his wife and sitting down with a piece of music in front of him marked: Vamp Till Ready.”

  “There’s no evidence to suggest that he ever—”

  “He ended up in the English Channel, didn’t he? Don’t you call that evidence?”

  “Have it your own way. What upset your mother?”

  “I did. I hadn’t been home for some time. When I took the job with Madame Landini, my mother was in Switzerland. She got back yesterday and so did I—with the news that I’d been sacked. What upset her, I think, wasn’t the fact that I’d been sacked, but the manner of the sacking. She always gets a bit excited when I come home. This time, she bustled round and said she’d get tea ready, and while she was bustling, I went into my room and began to unpack. The rooms we live in, above the shop, aren’t exactly large. I left my bedroom door open, and we could talk without my having to raise my voice. I told her where I’d been working, and made what I thought was a very funny story of how I’d been evicted and . . . Do I mean evicted, or would you like to make that ejected?”

  “Yes. Go on.”

  “I realised, after a little while, that the story couldn’t have been as amusing as I’d thought. She wasn’t laughing, and when I came to think of it, she’d stopped bustling. I looked into the living room and saw her sitting on a chair staring straight in front of her, with her face as white as a sheet and tears pouring—really pouring down her cheeks. I mopped them up, but I saw I’d really shaken her. I myself didn’t in the least mind being yelled at by Madame Landini because I felt so sorry for her, looking the way she did—but my mother obviously took the view that I’d been insulted, not to say humiliated. So now you can see what a pleasure it must have been to get some of her own back on somebody who was connected with the Landini. Do they give you coffee here?”

  “Yes, but I wouldn’t really recommend it.”

  “Then let’s go home. My mother makes wonderful coffee—Swiss-style.”

  “In a moment. I want to clear up one or two points.”

  “Point one?”

  “If Madame Landini recovered from whatever it is she’s suffering from, and decided to go on with her memoirs, would you agree to going back to work for her?”

  “She said she never wanted to see me again.”

  “That was part of the breakdown. I think when she recovers, she’ll want you to go back. Would you go?”

  Something in his tone made her pause before replying. She studied him for some moments and then put a question in her turn.

  “How much would you care if she never finished her memoirs?”

  He frowned.

  “We’d look fools, of course; people would say we rushed her into it too fast, or made a mess of it. I’d be sorry on D. S. Claud’s account; it’s the only big thing he’s ever had a chance to bring out, and as he can’t go on much longer, it would have made a nice happy ending for him. Perhaps one of the reasons Madame Landini has halted is because she’s decided that his imprint doesn’t carry enough prestige—but if I know her, she checked that before letting him have the book.”

  “She told me it was through you.”

  “So it was, in a way, and I was glad because it was a chance to pay back something to Claudius.”

  “You owed him something?”

  “He published a book of mine.”

  “You write books?”

  “Not any more. Just that one. No more.”

  “Why not?”

  “No gift, no talent, not even any desire to write any more. Besides discovering that I couldn’t write, I discovered that it’s a lonely profession. I wanted to move in a world of writers, not to shut myself up with one book. And I wanted to move in a book world, not to bury myself in a remote corner of Cornwall.”

  “I’ve heard of people writing books in London. Why did it have to be Cornwall?”

  “That’s where my home is. I hadn’t long been down from Oxford, and I announced that I’d decided to become a writer. My father thought—said—that I was off my head, but my mother persuaded him to let me live in the gardener’s cottage while I produced my masterpiece. The book might have gone better if she hadn’t come down every hour or so to ask whether I was cold or hot or hungry or thirsty or comfortable—or if my sister hadn’t brought her friends down to peer through the windows to watch an author at work.”

  “What was the book about?”

  “War. A re-hash of Napoleon’s campaigns, with Bonaparte on the move, while from up above, Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar looked down and watched what he was doing, and told each other how he should have done it. I’d read history at Oxford and thought the idea was magnificent, but the book never got off the battleground. My father, who’s ex-Royal Navy, took to looking in and trying to persuade me to switch from generals to admirals, so that he could give me a few tips. After a time, all I wanted to do was throw the damned thing into the sea, but I had to justify all those impressive speeches I’d made before moving into the gardener’s cottage. So I finished the book, and it was refused by fifteen publishers—and then D. S. Claud wrote to say they’d take it. Nobody’ll ever know how I felt when I read that letter. It put a brand on me—D. S. Claud’s.”

  “Did the book sell?”

  “Are you crazy? It fell dead on the printing press. The thing is that Claudius took it. I’m not only grateful for myself; my mother still goes round telling her friends what a pity it was I gave up a successful writing career to go into publishing. Even my father can be heard muttering that I gave it up against his wishes. So there’s the answer—rather a long answer—to your question as to whether I care whether Madame Landini goes on, or doesn’t go on. If she does, will you?”

  “I might. Do you think she’ll finish the book?”

  He hesitated.

  “It doesn’t seem to me,” he said at last, “that her outburst was connected with the book. You said she read through the last sheets you’d typed, and passed them. What I think is that during the time you were putting on what you called your storm suit, she had a telephone call that upset her—a call from whom, or what about, we’re not likely to find out.”

  “I thought of that. It was the only reason I could find for what she did. I wondered if the Maharajah had rung up to say he wasn’t coming, after all. That would have shaken her; she’d made some expensive preparations for his reception.”

  “He came. I saw him when I went to the house yesterday.”

  “Then that kills my only theory. Was he wearing a diamond-studded suit?”

  “No. He was in Indian dress.”

  “Perhaps he’ll calm her down and make her start writing again. If she doesn’t, then what?”

  “We’ll be no worse off than we were before. Shall we go and get this coffee?”

  He paid the bill and they went out to the car, making a dash through the snow and shivering unti
l the car heater began its work.

  “Did you say your mother was Swiss?” he asked.

  “I said her coffee was. She’s Swiss-born, the daughter of a Swiss pastry-cook who worked in England and got himself naturalised—her, too—but decided in the end to go back to Switzerland. My mother stayed in England and got married, and she and my father—he was English—started the shop; his main job was keeping the accounts and ordering stores and sending out bills. When he died, my mother found she couldn’t run the place alone, so my grandfather came over from Switzerland to help—but he was too old to do it for long, and the business began to run down. If I’d been older, I could have helped, but I was five when my father died and twelve when my grandfather died, so I wasn’t much use. When I was sixteen, I decided to leave school and take a hand. I used what money there was to divide the house into top and bottom, and we let off the shop and the rooms behind it, and live upstairs. That way, we get the rent and we also get jobs helping with the making and distribution of the pastries. That’s my life history up to date.”

  “Not quite. When did you start working in London?”

  “Two years ago, when I was twenty-one. It was my mother’s idea. She thought that once I got out of patisserie circles and up to London, I’d fall in with the rich and the great—and you see how right she was. Before the Landini job, I didn’t do too well. I’m not highly qualified, and the money I earned didn’t go very far. If my mother had ever seen the dump I lived in, she would have died right on its dirty doorstep—but I kept her away.”

  “How many people do you know in London?”

  “People—or men? If you mean men, I don’t have to stay home if I feel like going out. I never had a job that came within miles of the Landini one, as far as interest goes. I can see why you want to bring the book out. I’ve never typed memoirs before, but they can’t all be like hers. The only thing...”

  “Well?”

  “She juggles with the truth now and again. I mean, when she’s talking. For instance, that story she tells everyone, about how you saved her from being eaten by a dog—it’s never the same twice. So how true are the memoirs?”