The thing about Eleanor, Caroline held, was that her real talent was for mimicry, and so she could have taken up any trade with ease, because all she had to do was to mimic the best that had already been done in any particular line, and that gave the impression of the expert.
Caroline was abroad during Eleanor’s marriage; she did not know much about it, only that she had left her husband after the war, and under her married name had started a dancing school with a male partner. Ernest Manders. A few months later, Caroline and Laurence had set up together, by which time Eleanor’s relationship with the Baron was becoming established. What irritated Caroline now about her old friend was the fact that she had seemed not to change essentially in the years since their Cambridge days, and was apparently quite happy with herself as she was. Now Laurence was another like that. But Caroline could like in Laurence many characteristics which in others she could not tolerate. And she was aware of the irrationality and prejudice of all these feelings, without being able to stop feeling them.
But she said, so that her contempt for Eleanor should be concealed, ‘Look at the band-leader. Who does he look like?’ She mentioned a Cambridge don, with his rimless glasses and the sideways mouth.
Eleanor laughed and laughed. She had been drinking more than Caroline that evening. ‘So he does.’ Then she told Caroline a story from which it emerged that this don was dead.
‘I didn’t know that,’ said Caroline, being shocked then that Eleanor had laughed at her joke. When she saw Caroline involuntarily putting her face serious, Eleanor affirmed, ‘But the band boy is the image of the man, just the same.’
Then Eleanor started picking out other members of the band, likening them to men they had agreed in despising during their friendship days. And she got Caroline to laugh, putting their meeting on a basis of workable humour, considering they were supposed to be enjoying themselves: and this was only possible by reference to the one kindly association between the two women, their college friendship. Caroline got over her annoyance at being caught out putting on a grave religious face when Eleanor had laughed at a dead man. And while she entered into Eleanor’s amusement, she felt almost dumb about her suspicion that Eleanor was humouring her on account of her neurosis. She was right; this was exactly Eleanor’s idea as she sat with her dark-brown head leaning over towards Caroline’s much darker brown.
Two bottles of gin had appeared out of the gloom. Laurence, on his third drink from the first bottle, said, ‘I’ve never felt more sober in my life. Some occasions, it just won’t “take”, you simply can’t get drunk.’
Eleanor looked sorry for him, as if she knew he had worry on his mind from Caroline. This annoyed Caroline, because she knew he was worrying about his grandmother most of all.
While she danced with Ernest, who was weird to dance with, flexible, almost not there at all, so that she felt like a missile directed from a far distance, she saw Laurence examining Eleanor’s cigarette case in his nosey way, and thought, ‘He keeps trying to detect whatever it is he’s looking for in life.’ She admired his ability to start somewhere repeatedly; his courage; even if it was only in a cigarette case.
Soon, Laurence and Eleanor were dancing, then she saw that they sat down, and that Eleanor was talking in a confiding way; Eleanor was making small circular movements with her glass, stopping only to sigh reflectively into it before she drank, as often happens towards the end of a drinking night, when a woman confides in a man about another man.
Round the walls of the Pylon, so far as the walls could be discerned, were large gilt picture frames. Inside each, where the picture should be, was a square of black velvet, this being the Pylon’s sort of effectiveness. As she smoothed her slight feet with Ernest, so limp, over their portion of dancing-floor, Caroline caught her view of Eleanor’s head, described against one of the black squares of velvet in the background, just like a framed portrait, indistinct, in need of some touching-up.
FIVE
‘I said, “Willi, this can’t go on, it simply can not go on.”‘ Eleanor was getting maudlin. She was not a neurotic particularly, but that was not why Laurence didn’t much care for her. It was only that he rather liked the Baron, and Eleanor, though her infidelities were her own affair, had never kept very quiet about them, except to the Baron himself who never suspected them.
Laurence, gazing intently at her small gold cigarette case as if it were the book of life itself, nodded his acknowledgement of her confidences.
‘If he had been unfaithful,’ she went on, ‘I could have understood, I could have forgiven. But this obscenity — and apparently it’s been going on for years — I never suspected. Of course I always knew he was interested in diabolism and that sort of thing, but I thought it was only theory. He had all the books, and I thought like a collector you know. But apparently it’s been going on for years, the Black Masses, and they do frightful things, ask Caroline, she’ll know all about the Black Mass. I feel it’s a sort of personal insult to me personally, as if I’d found him out dabbling with a whore. And I said, “Willi, you’ve got to choose, it’s either me or these foul practices — you can’t have both.” Because I tell you, Laurence, it was an insult to my intelligence apart from everything else. He said he was amused by my attitude. Amused. I’m not melodramatic, and furthermore, I’m not religious, but I do know that the Black Mass has a profoundly evil influence truly, Laurence. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if he hasn’t done something to Caroline.’
‘How d’you mean, dear?’
‘Well, I don’t know if it’s true, but I heard that she spent a night with Willi recently —’
‘Yes, he was sweet to her really. She was ill at the time. But I think that was the climax, somehow. I think she’s getting better now.’
‘But I heard that she started hearing things after that night. I heard that and you can’t help hearing things when people tell you, however unlikely.’
Laurence did not quite get the hang of this sentence, and while he was working it out Eleanor persisted, ‘Hasn’t Caroline been hearing things?’
‘About you, dear?’
‘No, voices. Spirits. Hearing —’
‘Come and dance,’ said Laurence.
This was their second attempt. She was even less steady than before, and it took him all his time to keep her upright. He said, ‘Too many people, what d’you think?’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘let’s sit down and drink.’
Ernest and Caroline were already returned. Eleanor said immediately, ‘Caroline, what do you think of the Black Mass?’
Caroline’s mood had become gay and physical; she was still jiggering about with her hands in time to the music. ‘No idea,’ she answered, ‘but ask the Baron. He’s the expert, so I’m told.’ Then she remembered that Eleanor had left the Baron, so she said, ‘Laurence, stop peering at Eleanor’s cigarette case, like an old Jew looking for the carat mark.’
Laurence said, ‘I’m trying to read the motto.’
On the front of the case was a tiny raised crest. Caroline poked her head in beside Laurence’s with exaggerated curiosity. ‘A wolf’s head,’ said Laurence. ‘What’s the motto? I can’t read it.’
‘Fidelis et— I can’t remember, for the moment,’ Eleanor said. ‘I did know. It’s the Hogarth crest. Only a Victorian rake-up, I imagine. My ex-husband gave me that case for a wedding present. He had a passion for putting his family crest on everything. Spoons, hair-brushes, you never saw the like. Caroline, seriously, don’t you think the evil influence that’s over us all is due to these Black Masses? I’ve found out about Willi. I suppose you’ve known all the time, but I didn’t dream. And it takes place at Notting Hill Gate, as you probably know.’