Still, as my hair is unusually silky for its reddish colour and dead straight, it is apt to fall forward over my forehead and bother me when it gets too long; so every few weeks I kick myself into sending for the local clipper wielder, and submit myself to his inartistic ministrations.
It is raining today, so as I have a clear morning in front of me I'll polish off my account of that affair at Weylands. I see that I had got to the point where I had fallen asleep in the cottage while waiting for Julia and Uncle Paul to return.
I was woken by the sound of the sitting room door opening with a rattle, then being swiftly shut again. The lights were still on but the fire had gone out, so I must have been asleep for a considerable time. I felt very cold, and shivered as I stood up. The memory of the night's earlier events was just flooding back to me when I heard voices outside in the hall. Someone was muttering something, then Julia's voice came to me quite distinctly as she said:
'So that's why the lights were on! What on earth can Toby be doing here? Thank goodness he's asleep and didn't see me like this. Quick, pull yourself together, now! It's up to you to hold the fort, while I do something to my face.'
Instinctively I had moved towards the door, and she had scarcely finished speaking when I pulled it open. Out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of her back as she hurried into her bedroom, but I found myself looking straight at Uncle Paul.
He was leaning against the wall on the other side of the narrow hallway; and it was clear that Julia's admonition, to pull himself together, had not been given without good reason. He was as drunk as an owl.
Uncle Paul must have been about thirty-seven then. He is a biggish man with red hair and a 'Guards' moustache, brushed stiffly up. He has a ruddy face and pale, rather poppy, blue eyes. Brains have never been his long suit, and he is a weak rather than a bad man. The 'Demon Drink', alas, has always been his failing, and it was the cause of most of the scrapes that he got himself into with my grandfather, when he was younger.
After he married Julia he took a pull on himself. At least, as she is the dominant partner I suppose she made him toe the line. But he continued to have lapses now and then, and it was by no means the first time that I had seen him when he had had one over the eight. Fortunately he is the friendly type of drunk; and as he had always been kind to me in a casual sort of way it made no difference to the mild affection I felt for him.
Bringing himself upright with a shove of his broad shoulders, he grinned at me and said:' 'Lo, old man! How-how are you?'
'I'm all right, thanks, Uncle,' I replied, 'but you're looking a bit partworn. You seem to have been making a night of it.'
"That's it,' he hiccupped. 'Li'le party.'
'It must have been a pretty rough one,' I smiled, as I took in the details of his dishevelled appearance. There were grease stains down one of the lapels of his dinner jacket, his collar was a crumpled rag, his bow tie had disappeared, and there were obvious marks of lipstick all round his mouth. I had never seen him in such a state when tight before.
'That's it; li'le party,' he repeated. 'Was a bit rough. Played Kiss in the ring.'
I had no idea that the parents who were up for a visit indulged in either high jinks or childish games at the Clubhouse in the evenings; but when one is in the middle teens one is still constantly learning unexpected things about the behaviour of grown ups, so I made no comment.
For a moment we remained silent, just smiling inanely at one another, then he said: 'Lesh go into th' sitting room have a drink.'
He had obviously had far more than he could carry already, but it was not my place to tell him so. Accordingly I stood aside and he lurched through the doorway. There were whisky, glasses and a siphon on a small side table. Swaying slightly, he walked over to it and, with a deliberation that did not prevent him spilling some of the stuff, mixed himself a stiff peg.
Having gulped half of it, he muttered: Tha's better,' then relapsed into another longish silence, during which he stared at the carpet.
At length he looked up and asked: 'What you doin' here thish time o'night? Wash game, old man?'
I had no intention of discussing the matter uppermost in my mind with Uncle Paul while he was in that condition; so I simply said: 'I knew you and Julia were arriving this evening, so I thought 1 would slip over and see you. While I was waiting for you to come in I fell asleep in front of the fire.'
'I shee,' he nodded ponderously. 'I shee. Well, here's all th' besht,' and he swallowed the rest of his drink.
A moment later Julia came hurrying in. She had changed into a dressing gown, and evidently done her best to put her face to rights; but I was much more shocked by her appearance than I had been by that of Uncle Paul.
Her dark eyes looked bigger than I had ever seen them, and her face was dead white, so that the patches of fresh rouge stood out on her cheeks like the dabs of paint on those of a Dutch doll. Her full red lips were swollen excessively and broken in places, as though they had been savagely bitten, and a heavy coating of powder failed to hide an ugly scratch that ran from beneath her left ear right down across her throat.
'Good Lord! What on earth has been happening to you?' I exclaimed in alarm.
She did not kiss me, but bent her head and laid her icy cheek against mine for a second; then she said:
'Toby, darling; don't be upset. I'm quite all right, but we've had a frightful time tonight. Has Paul told you about it?'
'Only that you had been hitting it up at a party,' I muttered, 'and that you played kiss in the ring.'
'Paul!' she said sharply, turning to her husband. 'Get up at once, and go to bed.'
My uncle had lowered himself into an armchair and closed his eyes; he was already half asleep. At the sound of her voice he blinked, lumbered to his feet, and with a vague wave of his hand by way of good night, walked unsteadily out of the room.
'I've never seen him as tight as that before,' I said, as he jerked the door to behind him.
'No, thank goodness,' Julia agreed, with a sigh. 'He doesn't often get really stinking. It's a mercy, though, that he didn't kill the two of us tonight. If I'd realised now far gone he was, I would never have let him drive the car.'
'You had a smash, then?'
'Of course! How else do you think I came to get my face in such a mess?'
'I thought you had been down at the Club all this time.'
'If Paul gave you that impression you must have misunderstood him. He is in no state to know what he is saying. We had a few drinks at the Club before we started, and by now he's probably forgotten most of what happened after that.'
'Oh, you poor darling!' I cried, taking her hand. 'Are you quite sure that you're not badly hurt?'
She shook her head. 'No. I'm all right. He drove us into a ditch, and when I was thrown sideways I hit my mouth against something. I've got a few bruises, but nothing to worry about.' Drawing me down on to the settee beside her, she went on:
'As we're coming up here, Paul thought that he would like to see some old friends of his who live about twenty miles away. We wrote and proposed ourselves for dinner. They wrote back and said they would love to have us if we didn't mind a scratch meal at the end of a children's party, as it was their eldest girl's birthday. When we arrived the party was still in full swing. There were quite a number of other grownups there and we must have stood about drinking cocktails for a couple of hours at least.
'It was ten o'clock by the time the children packed up, and close on eleven before we sat down to supper. Afterwards, somebody suggested that we should play the children's games. What with our steady cocktail drinking and the champagne at supper, we were all a bit lit up by then, and just ripe to let ourselves go at any sort of nonsense. We played kiss in the ring, blind man’s buff, postman's knock, and all the rest of it.