Left alone with Griselda, Mrs Hatch was clearly about to say something of the utmost significance. Her mien was almost frightening with import. But Monk entered and asked if he could clear; and once more Mrs Hatch wearily acquiesced.
‘Shall Stainer serve tea, ma’am? It’s the usual time.’
‘Do you want any tea, Griselda?’
‘Yes, please,’ said Griselda stoutly. ‘If I could first remove your boots.’
‘Remove what you like,’ said Mrs Hatch; then, addressing Monk, added ‘Tea for Miss de Reptonville. And I suppose we may have visitors. Tea for five or six. Nothing for me.’
Griselda began to realize that few things are so important in any kind of shared life with the moods of the person it is shared with. Mrs Hatch was being quite unlike herself. Griselda recalled Louise’s words about the difficulty of living with anyone, and that even Louise had shown signs of a moodiness which would doubtless wax on longer and less desperate acquaintanceship.
To judge by her past experience, she suspected that so many medlars had made matters worse by giving Mrs Hatch colic.
It took Griselda twenty minutes to remove the boots, and to oil and part her hair; and when she again descended it was to find that Mrs Hatch’s single visitor that Sunday had arrived, a certain Mrs Cramp, the wife of a neighbouring landowner. It was still raining hard.
‘Bitches,’ cried out Mrs Cramp in a loud harsh voice like a police whistle, ‘have two or three times the staying power of dogs. If not more.’
A fire had been lighted and the scene offered all the cosiness of an English country house at Sunday teatime; though none of the other guests seemed eager to partake. Griselda soon learnt that Pamela had already left without saying Goodbye to anyone, even to her hostess. In the end, however, George Goss clumped down the stairs.
‘Think I’ve thrown up the worst by now, Melanie,’ he announced. But he seemed too dispirited even to pester Griselda. He sat by himself crumbling a lump of the famous cake and casting round the furniture for the alcoholic provision normally made for him.
‘Melanie,’ he said at last. ‘Could I have a drink?’
This time Mrs Hatch did not even answer; and George Goss continued to sit feebly opening and closing his fingers, like a frustrated crustacean.
Nor did Edwin fare better. When he reappeared from the telephone room (it had been converted from its previous function of downstairs lavatory), Griselda was startled to notice that his face was pale and his hair almost dishevelled round the ears. Manifestly he was using all his worldly knowledge and resource to conceal that anything was wrong. He accepted tea and cake; but every now and then Griselda heard him whispering to himself between mouthfuls. The words sounded like ‘It can’t be. It can’t be.’ The crisis came quite suddenly: Edwin sat up straight in his chair, and, returning his cup, from which he had been drinking, to his saucer, cried out: ‘The Pope must intervene.’ After that he seemed to recover rapidly, and to return to his normal, exceptionally well-adjusted frame of mind; but not before Mrs Hatch had said in the rudest possible way ‘Edwin Polegate-Hampden, you bore me.’ It was proof how hard to disturb was Edwin’s fundamental equilibrium that he was able to smile and reply ‘The ex-Empress used to say exactly the same.’ Edwin then munched briskly and began to draft a long sequence of telegrams for Monk to spell out as best he could to a country telephone operator on a Sunday evening. Mrs Hatch even seemed almost to demur at Monk being given this employment.
Dinner was worse. The Duke and Duchess made a belated reappearance, the Duchess, evening dress being inconsistent with the Sabbath, in a short gown of olive-coloured satin, rather more shiny than would have best suited any other wearer but exactly right for her; and Edwin seemed entirely restored to cheerfulness by the knowledge that Monk was still faithfully at work on his behalf and on behalf of enduring humanity. But George Goss was still rather ill, and also empty, as the rattlings and roarings of his intestines bore witness whenever conviviality ebbed, which was frequently. For Mrs Hatch’s mien had by now become such as almost to cancel all faintest prospect of the jovial. Griselda sincerely wondered what could be the matter with her.
It was unfortunate that none of the company, pleasant people though they all were, really appealed to Griselda as a sympathetic conversationalist. After all, it was her last evening as a guest at Beams. Did most house parties deflate in this way? she wondered. She tried to place in her mind the exact time when the gaiety had been at its height, the social balloon most stuffed with gas. She was unable to settle this time. She could only think of Louise, who seemed in no way whatever a part of her surroundings. This, however Griselda reflected, was probably wrong: one had to put up with George Goss belching and with hours of wasted living if one was to have any hope of minutes with such as Louise.
‘The thing I can least abide in life,’ announced Mrs Hatch, apropos of some behind-the-scenes domesticity, ‘is deceit. Did you know, Stainer, that my grandfather in Greece once strangled with his own hands a servant who deceived him?’
‘No, mum,’ said Stainer, shaking all over, and beginning to snivel.
‘It was only a small matter. It was the principle my grandfather cared about. And I feel precisely the same as my grandfather. Do you understand what I say?’
Stainer was now speechless.
‘Answer me, please. Do you understand?’
‘Yes, mum.’ The words were hardly audible in the unpleasant hush that had fallen upon all present. Griselda reflected upon the fact that, unlike most domestic servants she had encountered, Stainer seemed to contemplate neither cheeking Mrs Hatch nor leaving her employ.
‘Then you will never attempt to deceive me again?’
‘No, mum.’
‘Very well then. Serve the ortolans.’
Griselda thought not of ortolans, but of falcons: of a sky full of falcons and herself a dove amongst them. She was frightened.
Their spirits temporarily broken, the Duchess did not suggest games, nor Edwin bridge. Instead, Mrs Hatch, apologizing perfunctorily to her guests and referring them to their own devices, ordered Monk, by now as one shellshocked with telephoning, to bring her the big ledger, and settled down to an evening of entering up accounts, which she did with no small dexterity. The full deployment of her powers required concentration, however; and it was soon to be made clear to the luckless company that the continuum was readily disturbed. Edwin who would probably have liked to attempt flirtation with Griselda, or something tending in the same direction with the Duchess, was reduced to drafting a study for The Times Literary Supplement to be entitled ‘A Case for Holy Living.’ The Ellensteins and Griselda felt remarkably bored, and began, in their different ways, to think of bed, although it was not yet half-past nine.
Suddenly George Goss roared out ‘In Christ’s name, Melanie, what’s the matter with you?’ Griselda realized that he was crazed from lack of liquor.
Mrs Hatch who was adding an entire long column, made a small tight gesture of exasperation, utterly murderous, but said or did nothing further. George Goss began to stagger away, questing for a drink, a lion at last.