Her answer was to begin making up to Alex. She called him darling, which was of no significance except that she had never done so before, and he did not at once tumble to it that her smiles and friendliness for him, which like any other girl she could turn on at will so that it poured pleasantly out in the way water will do out of taps, had no significance either. Still it was very different from how she had been when they were alone together and as he could not bear people being as cross and hurt with him as she had seemed to be he was both surprised and pleased.
‘And, darling,’ she said to Alex, ‘do you know what is on the other side of that door there?’
He went to see. ‘Beds!’ he cried.
‘Yes, twin beds. But I brought my own sheets.’
He was still pleased even if this last remark embarrassed him as much as it had done when, at first sight of him down in the station she had called out had he brought his bed. Then he wondered if this change of manner did not come from her wanting to annoy this Robin Adams or to make him jealous. He said she thought of everything and went on,
‘But it’s really rather early for that sort of thing, isn’t it? There’s no close season, I know that, but we’ve got the whole night before us, if you know what I mean.’
‘Alex, darling, how can you speak like that? It’s the most pansy thing I ever heard you say. And in any case,’ she went on, ‘it wouldn’t be very nice in a sleeper, would it?’ Alex passed this off by saying he had given up all idea of their getting a train that evening. As for Mr Adams he had been so tormented when he saw her again by such a crawling frenzy of love for her that he had not been fit to hear what was going on. This now, however, began to percolate through to him as when clouds curtain an August day that has been enormously still and soft with elms swooning in the haze; and as hot days can become ominous and dark so soon he began to dread what she might make him hear.
Alex said well come along then, knowing that she would never commit herself in front of those others. He suspected that she was only trying to distress this poor creature Adams and was curious to see how she would get out of going into that bedroom with him. He was sure she would never do it and yet she would only make herself look ridiculous now if she did not go. She said he didn’t seem very keen, it was hardly flattering to her she said and he thought of answering this by asking her why didn’t she try one of the others then, but he refrained, he was afraid this would be too awkward for her. All he did say was that she would soon see who was being flattered once the door was locked on them.
This surprised her into saying, ‘Oh, I don’t think I’d allow you to do that.’ Her pretence was wearing rather thin he thought and decided to drive her further into a corner. He asked why on earth not and was enormously touched when she explained that she would never let him lock the door because of course she would not mind being caught with him. He suspected she was only playing him up and he knew it was fatuous but he could not help being flattered. He tried to appear cross in order to hide this and so as to lead her on.
‘You mean it would not matter if you were caught with me, either to you or anyone else,’ he said. Robert Hignam interrupted:
‘Don’t let that worry you. I’ll stand on guard and if I whistle three times, what, you’ll know someone is coming.’
Mr Adams walked to the window and wondered, as he tried not to hear, if he was going to be sick.
‘But I don’t mind,’ she said, ‘you old silly,’ using one of Claire’s expressions to her husband, ‘don’t you understand I don’t mind if anyone did find us? Has no one ever made a proposal to you?’
This word proposal seemed to him to have a fatal ring and rather in desperation he said well, all right, come on then. ‘Well, all right, come on then,’ she echoed, ‘that’s a fine way to put it. Well, hold the door open for me.’
‘Where on earth is Max?’ said Mr Adams, turning round from his window. Alex and Robert Hignam were disgusted to see his face had gone white.
‘Now, look here, Angela,’ Alex said, determined now to escape, ‘what about that hotel detective?’
Robert Hignam led Mr Adams away to have a drink in the other corner.
‘I must say you don’t seem very gallant,’ she said and thought poor Robin had looked awful, but he must learn his lesson and it was too late to turn back now, she would look silly if she did.
‘Alex,’ she said, ‘Alex,’ and jerked her head towards that other room she stood outside by the open door. He saw now those others were not watching, that she only wanted to say something in private and he felt proportionately foolish for ever having imagined she meant a rough and tumble. He hurried in and she shut them in and said:
‘Now you must go straight out into the corridor by that other door over there and don’t come back.’
‘You aren’t going to do something awful, are you?’ he said, because after all he did not know her well enough to say he would stand for no further baiting of Mr Adams.
‘Now, Alex, run along now at once,’ and he did go, feeling outraged at having been so used. The moment he had shut the door she clapped her hands twice. Mr Adams, of course, was in her room at once, slamming the door behind him so Robert Hignam could not follow. He found her sitting in front of the glass, powdering her face, and apparently calm as calm.
‘What?’ he said, ‘what?’
‘What do you mean?’ she said.
‘Was that you slapping someone’s face?’ he said and he was panting hard.
‘Who slapped whose face? I didn’t hear anyone,’ she said.
‘I heard it twice,’ he said and his knees were trembling.
She burst into tears, her face screwed up and got red and she held her handkerchief to her nose and sniffled as if that was where her tears were coming from.
‘Oh, my God,’ he said and then his knees went so that he thought he would sink to the floor, where he had been standing.
Speaking through her handkerchief, her voice going up and down and interrupted by sobs, grunts and once she choked, she was saying:
‘You’ve been so beastly to me. Going away when you did. As if I was nothing to you. And all these beastly people being beastly to me. How do you expect me to love you? How could you go like that? Oh, I do feel so miserable.’ At this point she got hiccups. ‘How could you? I feel I could die. I feel so miserable.’
He began moving towards her, saying darling, darling. By this time they neither of them knew what they were doing.
When Alex came back through the corridor into this sitting room where they had all been, Robert Hignam became facetious which was his way of hiding curiosity.
‘I say, old boy, that was a bit sudden, wasn’t it, what did you do to the girl?’
Alex hated him for it. He said if he could only strangle her now he would, ‘and you too,’ he thought of saying.
‘But come on, what did you do to the poor girl to make her fetch you one like that?’
‘Nothing, you poor fool, nothing at all. Oh, all right, laugh, yes, but can’t you see all she was doing was playing me up to make her boy friend.’
Robert felt somehow he had been put in the wrong, but he was not going to stop for that, he wanted to get down to it. ‘Right,’ he said, ‘right, I’d spotted that. As a matter of fact, if I’d been you I doubt if I’d have gone in the first place.’
‘Afraid of Claire coming in I suppose.’