‘And I’m sure well deserved. Why wouldn’t it be. What’s it to be sir.’
‘A bottle please. Of champagne. Heidsieck. Charles.’
‘Ah I see what you mean now about the recreation. Very good sir. How many glasses sir.’
‘Just one.’
Never in all one’s too brief life has one ever savoured one’s semi anonymous loneliness so much. Pity watching these ears here, that they do not, as a horse’s might, tell you what they are thinking. My god that waiter would do as butler at Andromeda Park next time Crooks hangs himself. Dear me. What have we here. A book. Heavens someone’s erudite. Ah a novel. Light reading. Clearly that is what it is. Someone then wants to be entertained. Flick open the pages. Dear me. Do one’s eyes set upon the obscene. Threw her down with his mouth eagerly hard upon hers. How did this ruddy piece of saucy literature get into the country.
‘Do you mind. That happens to be my book.’
Hardly dare look up. In fact. I won’t. No. It can’t be. But if it is. That ruddy bloody woman from Greystones. I shall commit murder. Steal just a peek. Ah these are rather elegant high heeled shoes. Attached very pleasantly to a distinctly young and trim ankle. Pretty skirt. O my god. It’s even worse. Baptista. Consuelo.
‘I am sorry. The book simply happened to be here on the chair.’
‘Well I was in fact sitting at this table.’
‘I am frightfully awfully sorry. But of course I shall move.’
‘Well you needn’t do a song and dance, not on my account.’
Darcy Dancer getting to his feet. Handing the red bound book across the table. Into this rather surprisingly long fingered bejewelled hand, with an absolutely monumentally large diamond sported on one of her phalanges. Thick gold bracelet on her right wrist. And an equally thick one on her left. Each set with three acorn sized rubies. This bloody bitch kicked me in the head. Spurned my Mr Arland. Was even whipped in the nude across an hotel floor by the Mental Marquis. And now has the unmitigated gall to pretend that I was trying to steal her filthy disgusting book. And now with every table occupied I shall have to decamp. Ah. The waiter. Have him serve me on another surface as many miles away as possible. Even out on the stair steps in the hall will do.
‘Sorry madam, I thought you had left.’
‘No, I was just getting my reading glasses I forgot in my room. Perhaps you can find me another table. I’ll sit over there at the bar and wait till a table’s free.’
‘Very good madam.’
‘There’s no need to you know, I’ll move. I’ve clearly taken your place.’
‘No. That won’t be at all necessary I’ll move over there. I see at least a chair free. Or it was free.’
‘No I insist. I’ll move.’
‘Well pardon me ladies and gentlemen, may I, as the servant at your disposal, do the Solomon here. Since there is nowhere else to sit for the time being. Would it solve the problem now, if you both sat down, right here with the four chairs available, and two extra for an arriving guest if need be. Now if I may make so bold it isn’t as if you were cat and dog is it.’
‘No it isn’t. Do you mind, Mr Kildare then if I sit down.’
‘Do please sit down if you wish.’
‘Ah now ladies and gentlemen that’s better now isn’t it. Sure if the big world out there worked as well we wouldn’t have had a war. And what may I now get for you madam. Or are you waiting.’
‘No I’m not waiting. As a matter of pleasure I’ll have the same as Mr Kildare is having. Only a snipe will do.’
‘Well, do please. Then. That’s a whole bottle. Have some of mine.’
‘Are you sure you don’t mind if I do.’
‘No not at all, please do.’
‘Then I shall.’
Our immaculately white coated waiter having safely placed one’s ice bucket, now flourishing his tray as if he were throwing the discus, and bowing deeply.
‘Ah there’s now a satisfactory solution to a dilemma. Requiring as it merely does. Just one more glass.’
God. What a day. Here I am. Seated with the last person in the world I could imagine I’d ever be saddled with. At least her voice seems to have slight overtones of friendliness in it. Suppose one merely starts off with some utterly inane non leading question. Avoiding all and any mention of hunting of course. Since I’m supposed to have attempted to have raped her or something. When in fact I nearly killed myself saving her life. Astonishing how such an upstart from a small country town, just because she is pretty, can put on such airs to float all by herself into the Shelbourne Rooms and even pretend to include me in the same social bracket as if she were a member as one is oneself of the landed gentry. I suppose she could just scrape by as an adherent of the professional classes, having, as she has, a monkey tree growing in her front garden. In spite of rumours of her father owning a butcher’s, chemist’s and haberdashery. All one knows is her mother threw tantrums merely to get her dancing lessons from the Count when he was teaching us in the great castle, and has since been taking her to every bloody race meeting in Ireland in the biggest hats in order to get her picture in the papers.
‘And what are you doing up in town Baptista. If one might inquire.’
‘You might. I am here because my husband is not here.’
‘I see.’
‘No you don’t actually. It so happens my husband is a bit of a pompous ass.’
‘I see.’
‘Do you really see, or are you being like every one of those people one meets, full of their ad nauseam euphemisms. My husband who used to absorb all his time playing rugby, now absorbs all his time at his mills in Bradford, Manchester and Leeds, and is mostly interested in the weft and warp of his cloth. Less than a fortnight after our wedding, his bolts of gabardine plus a certain piece of fluff, seemed to take up far more of his attention than I did.’
‘Why don’t you divorce him then.’
‘He may be an ass, but I’m not exactly one. There are as it happens, considerable compensations. Which we won’t go into here and now.’
The champagne poured into our glasses. One had somehow, in distaste of her, forgotten how spectacular her golden hair and blue eyes could be, albeit so slightly marred by an overly upturned nose. As she sits, highly perfumed, sleeves pulled back from her rather nice wrists. As well as all the conspicuous jewelry, she is actually wearing a smile on her lips. My god she doesn’t sound like the Baptista I so recently pulled by her legs and hair up out of the muddy ditch. Or when she was so full of her priggish social climbing snobberies and far too good for my Mr Arland. Sucking up to her betters all over the parish.
‘I suppose Darcy Dancer you’re sitting there thinking I’m still full of my former priggish snobberies.’
‘O no. No. Of course I’m not.’
‘Well that’s exactly the look you’re wearing on your face, changed now of course to your one of utter amazement. You see I’ve found something which replaces my snobberies entirely.’
‘I’m not amazed, but I would like to know what it is new you’ve found. Sorry. I didn’t quite mean that.’
‘Of course you meant it. But what I’ve found in a word. Is money. And you are amazed aren’t you. Money simply buys people. Buys them anywhere, anyplace, anytime. And one no longer need ride on one’s high horse. But I think you should come down off yours. Or do you prefer instead we bore each other with stupid little bits of contrived small talk.’
‘Well, the champagne, I hope, if you pause to taste it, is not the least contrived.’
‘Ha ha, touché. Well perhaps you are not then, completely the stuck up little gallant one has come to regard you as.’
‘Heavens. You don’t appear to entertain a very high opinion of me.’
‘Nor, wouldn’t you admit, do you entertain one of me. But then, really when you look into it close enough, we’re nothing but a pair of Irish country yokels, up in town behaving as if we weren’t. But at least you do, I must say, have rather good taste in your choice of champagne.’