Vile Bodies Read online

  “He ain’t alone either,” said Lottie with a terrific wink.

  “What, Sir James Brown?” said the Major, shocked in spite of himself. “I don’t believe it.”

  “No, name of Outrage.”

  “He’s not Prime Minister.”

  “Yes, he is. I saw it in the paper.”

  “No, he’s not. He went out of office last week.”

  “Well I never. How they keep changing. I’ve no patience with it. Doge. Doge. What’s the Prime Minister’s name?”

  “Beg pardon, mum.”

  “What’s the name of the Prime Minister?”

  “Not tonight, I don’t think, mum, not as I’ve been informed anyway.”

  “What’s the name of the Prime Minister, you stupid old man?”

  “Oh, I beg your pardon, mum. I didn’t quite hear you. Sir James Brown, mum, Bart. A very nice gentleman, so I’ve been told. Conservative, I’ve heard said. Gloucestershire they come from, I think.”

  “There, what did I say?” said Lottie triumphantly.

  “It is one very extraordinary thing, your British Constitution,” said the ex-King of Ruritania. “All the time when I was young they taught me nothing but British Constitution. My tutor had been a master at your Eton school. And now when I come to England always there is a different Prime Minister and no one knows which is which.”

  “Oh, sir,” said the Major, “that’s because of the Liberal Party.”

  “Liberals? Yes. We, too, had Liberals. I tell you something now, I had a gold fountain pen. My godfather, the good Archduke of Austria, give me one gold fountain pen with eagles on him. I loved my gold fountain pen.” (Tears stood in the King’s eyes. Champagne was a rare luxury to him now.) “I loved very well my pen with the little eagles. And one day there was a Liberal Minister. A Count Tampen, one man, Mrs. Crump, of exceedingly evilness. He come to talk to me and he stood at my little escritoire and he thump and talk too much about somethings I not understand, and when he go—where was my gold fountain pen with eagles—gone too.”

  “Poor old King,” said Lottie. “I tell you what. You have another drink.”

  “… Esteem it a great honor,” said the American, “if Your Majesty and these gentlemen and Mrs. Crump…”

  “Doge, tell my little lovebird to come hopping in… you there, Judge wants another bottle of wine.”

  “… Should honor it a great esteem… esteem it a great honor if Mrs. Majesty and these gentlemen and His Crump…”

  “That’s all right, Judge. Another bottle coming.”

  “… Should esteem it a great Crump if his honor and these Majesties and Mrs. Gentlemen…”

  “Yes, yes, that’s all right, Judge. Don’t let him fall down, boys. Bless me, how these Americans do drink.”

  “… I should Crump it a great Majesty if Mrs. Esteem…”

  And his Honor Judge Skimp of the Federal High Court began to laugh rather a lot. (It must be remembered in all these people’s favor that none of them had yet dined.)

  Now there was a very bland, natty, mustachioed young man sitting there who had been drinking away quietly in the corner without talking to anyone except for an occasional “Cheerioh” to Judge Skimp. Suddenly he got up and said:

  “Bet-you-can’t-do-this.”

  He put three halfpennies on the table, moved them about very deliberately for a bit, and then looked up with an expression of pride. “Only touched each halfpenny five times, and changed their positions twice,” he said. “Do-it-again if you like.”

  “Well, isn’t he a clever boy?” said Lottie. “Wherever did they teach you that?”

  “Chap-in-a-train showed me,” he said.

  “It didn’t look very hard,” said Adam.

  “Just-you-try. Bet-you-anything-you-like you can’t do it.”

  “How much will you bet?” Lottie loved this kind of thing.

  “Anything-you-like. Five hundred pounds.”

  “Go on,” said Lottie. “You do it. He’s got lots of money.”

  “All right,” said Adam.

  He took the halfpennies and moved them about just as the young man had done. When he finished he said, “How’s that?”

  “Well I’m jiggered,” said the young man. “Never saw anyone do it like that before. I’ve won a lot of money this week with that trick. Here you are.” And he took out a notecase and gave Adam a five-hundred-pound note. Then he sat down in his corner again.

  “Well,” said Lottie with approval, “that’s sporting. Give the boys a drink for that.”

  So they all had another drink.

  Presently the young man stood up again.

  “Toss you double-or-quits,” he said. “Best-out-of-three.”

  “All right,” said Adam.

  They tossed twice and Adam won both times.

  “Well I’m jiggered,” said the young man, handing over another note. “You’re a lucky chap.”

  “He’s got pots of money,” said Lottie. “A thousand pounds is nothing to him.”

  (She liked to feel like that about all her guests. Actually in this young man’s case she was wrong. He happened to have all that money in his pocket because he had just sold out his few remaining securities to buy a new motor car. So next day he bought a secondhand motor bicycle instead.)

  Adam felt a little dizzy, so he had another drink.

  “D’you mind if I telephone?” he said.

  He rang up Nina Blount.

  “Is that Nina?”

  “Adam, dear, you’re tight already.”

  “How d’you know?”

  “I can hear it. What is it? I’m just going out to dinner.”

  “I just rang up to say that it’s all right about our getting married. I’ve got a thousand pounds.”

  “Oh, good. How?”

  “I’ll tell you when we meet. Where are you dining?”

  “Ritz. Archie. Darling, I am glad about our getting married.”

  “So am I. But don’t let’s get intense about it.”

  “I wasn’t, and anyway you’re tight.”

  He went back to the parlor. Miss Runcible had arrived and was standing in the hall very much dressed up.

  “Who’s that tart?” asked Lottie.

  “That’s not a tart, Lottie, that’s Agatha Runcible.”

  “Looks like a tart. How do you do, my dear, come in. We’re just thinking of having a little drink. You know everyone here, of course, don’t you? That’s the King with the beard… No, dearie, the King of Ruritania. You didn’t mind my taking you for a tart, did you, dear? You look so like one, got up like that. Of course, I can see you aren’t now.”

  “My dear,” said Miss Runcible, “if you’d seen me this afternoon…” and she began to tell Lottie Crump about the Customs House.

  “What would you do if you suddenly got a thousand pounds?” Adam asked.

  “A thousand pound,” said the King, his eyes growing dreamy at this absurd vision. “Well, first I should buy a house and a motor car and a yacht and a new pair of gloves, and then I would start one little newspaper in my country to say that I must come back and be the King, and then I don’t know what I do, but I have such fun and grandness again.”

  “But you can’t do all that with a thousand pounds, you know, sir.”

  “No… can’t I not?… not with thousand pound… Oh, well, then I think I buy a gold pen with eagles on him like the Liberals stole.”

  “I know what I’d do,” said the Major. “I’d put it on a horse.”

  “What horse?”

  “I can tell you a likely outsider for the November Handicap. Horse named Indian Runner. It’s at twenty to one at present, and the odds are likely to lengthen. Now if you were to put a thousand on him to win and he won, why you’d be rich, wouldn’t you?”

  “Yes, so I would. How marvelous. D’you know, I think I’ll do that. It’s a very good idea. How can I do it?”

  “Just you give me the thousand and I’ll arrange it.”

  “I say, that
’s awfully nice of you.”

  “Not at all.”

  “No, really, I think that’s frightfully nice of you. Look, here’s the money. Have a drink, won’t you?”

  “No, you have one with me.”

  “I said it first.”

  “Let’s both have one, then.”

  “Wait a minute though, I must go and telephone about this.”

  He rang up the Ritz and got on to Nina.

  “Darling, you do telephone a lot, don’t you?”

  “Nina, I’ve something very important to say.”

  “Yes, darling.”

  “Nina, have you heard of a horse called Indian Runner?”

  “Yes, I think so. Why?”

  “What sort of a horse is it?”

  “My dear, quite the worst sort of horse. Mary Mouse’s mother owns it.”

  “Not a good horse?”

  “No.”

  “Not likely to win the November Handicap, I mean.”

  “Quite sure not to. I don’t suppose it’ll run even. Why?”

  “I say, Nina, d’you know I don’t think we shall be able to get married after all.”

  “Why not, my sweet?”

  “You see, I’ve put my thousand pounds on Indian Runner.”

  “That was silly. Can’t you get it back?”

  “I gave it to a Major.”

  “What sort of a Major?”

  “Rather a drunk one. I don’t know his name.”

  “Well, I should try and catch him. I must go back and eat now. Good-bye.”

  But when he got back to Lottie’s parlor the Major was gone.

  “What Major?” said Lottie, when he asked about him. “I never saw a Major.”

  “The one you introduced me to in the corner.”

  “How d’you know he’s a Major?”

  “You said he was.”

  “My dear boy, I’ve never seen him before. Now I come to think of it, he did look like a Major, didn’t he? But this sweet little girlie here is telling me a story. Go on, my dear. I can hardly bear to hear it, it’s so wicked.”

  While Miss Runcible finished her story (which began to sound each time she told it more and more like the most lubricious kind of anti-Turkish propaganda) the ex-King of Ruritania told Adam about a Major he had known, who had come from Prussia to reorganize the Ruritanian Army. He had disappeared south, taking with him all the mess plate of the Royal Guard, and the Lord Chamberlain’s wife, and a valuable pair of candlesticks from the Chapel Royal.

  By the time Miss Runcible had finished, Lottie was in a high state of indignation.

  “The very idea of it,” she said. “The dirty hounds. And I used to know your poor father, too, before you were born or thought of. I’ll talk to the Prime Minister about this,” she said, taking up the telephone. “Give me Outrage,” she said to the exchange boy. “He’s up in number twelve with a Japanese.”

  “Outrage isn’t Prime Minister, Lottie.”

  “Of course he is. Didn’t Doge say so… Hullo, is that Outrage? This is Lottie. A fine chap you are, I don’t think. Tearing the clothes off the back of a poor innocent girl.”

  Lottie prattled on.

  Mr. Outrage had finished dinner, and, as a matter of fact, the phrasing of this accusation was not wholly inappropriate to his mood. It was some minutes before he began to realize that all this talk was only about Miss Runcible. By that time Lottie’s flow of invective had come to an end, but she finished finely.

  “Outrage your name, and Outrage your nature,” she said, banging down the receiver. “And that’s what I think of him. Now how about a little drink?”

  But her party was breaking up. The Major was gone. Judge Skimp was sleeping, his fine white hair in an ashtray. Adam and Miss Runcible were talking about where they would dine. Soon only the King remained. He gave her his arm with a grace he had acquired many years ago, far away in his sunny little palace, under a great chandelier which scattered stars of light like stones from a broken necklace, a crimson carpet woven with a pattern of crowned ciphers.

  So Lottie and the King went in to dinner together.

  Upstairs in No. 12, which is a suite of notable grandeur, Mr. Outrage was sliding back down the path of self-confidence he had so laboriously climbed. He really would have brought matters to a crisis if it had not been for that telephone, he told himself, but now the Baroness was saying she was sure he was busy, must be wanting her to go: would he order her car.

  It was so difficult. For a European the implications of an invitation to dinner tête-à-tête in a private room at Shepheard’s were definitely clear. Her acceptance on the first night of his return to England had thrown him into a flutter of expectation. But all through dinner she had been so self-possessed, so supremely social. Yet, surely, just before the telephone rang, surely then, when they left the table and moved to the fire, there had been something in the atmosphere. But you never know with Orientals. He clutched his knees and said in a voice which sounded very extraordinary to him, must she go, it was lovely after a fortnight, and then, desperately, he had thought of her in Paris such a lot. (Oh, for words, words! That massed treasury of speech that was his to squander at will, to send bowling and spinning in golden pieces over the floor of the House of Commons; that glorious largesse of vocables he cast far and wide, in ringing handfuls about his constituency!)

  The little Baroness Yoshiwara, her golden hands clasped in the lap of her golden Paquin frock, sat where she had been sent, more puzzled than Mr. Outrage, waiting for orders. What did the clever Englishman want? If he was busy with his telephone, why did he not send her away; tell her another time to come: if he wanted to be loved, why did he not tell her to come over to him? Why did he not pick her out of her red plush chair and sit her on his knee? Was she, perhaps, looking ugly tonight? She had thought not. It was so hard to know what these Occidentals wanted.

  Then the telephone rang again.

  “Will you hold on a minute? Father Rothschild wants to speak to you,” said a voice. “… Is that you, Outrage? Will you be good enough to come round and see me as soon as you can? There are several things which I must discuss with you.”

  “Really, Rothschild… I don’t see why I should. I have a guest.”

  “The baroness had better return immediately. The waiter who brought you your coffee has a brother at the Japanese Embassy.”

  “Good God, has he? But why don’t you go and worry Brown? He’s P.M., you know, not me.”

  “You will be in office tomorrow… As soon as possible, please, at my usual address.”

  “Oh, all right.”

  “Why, of course.”

  Four

  At Archie Schwert’s party the fifteenth Marquess of Vanburgh, Earl Vanburgh de Brendon, Baron Brendon, Lord of the Five Isles and Hereditary Grand Falconer to the Kingdom of Connaught, said to the eighth Earl of Balcairn, Viscount Erdinge, Baron Cairn of Balcairn, Red Knight of Lancaster, Count of the Holy Roman Empire and Chenonceaux Herald to the Duchy of Aquitaine, “Hullo,” he said. “Isn’t this a repulsive party? What are you going to say about it?” for they were both of them, as it happened, gossip writers for the daily papers.

  “I’ve just telephoned my story through,” said Lord Balcairn. “And now I’m going, thank God.”

  “I can’t think of what to say,” said Lord Vanburgh. “My editress said yesterday she was tired of seeing the same names over and over again—and here they are again, all of them. There’s Nina Blount’s engagement being broken off, but she’s not got any publicity value to speak of. Agatha Runcible’s usually worth a couple of paragraphs, but they’re featuring her as a front-page news story tomorrow over this Customs House business.”

  “I made rather a good thing over Edward Throbbing being in a log shanty in Canada which he built himself with the help of one Red Indian. I thought that was fairly good because, you see, I could contrast that with Miles being dressed as a Red Indian tonight, don’t you think so, or don’t you?”

  “I sa
y, that’s rather good, may I use it?”

  “Well, you can have the shanty, but the Red Indian’s mine.”

  “Where is he actually?”

  “Heaven knows. Government House at Ottawa, I think.”

  “Who’s that awful-looking woman? I’m sure she’s famous in some way. It’s not Mrs. Melrose Ape, is it? I heard she was coming.”

  “Who?”

  “That one. Making up to Nina.”

  “Good lord, no. She’s no one. Mrs. Panrast she’s called now.”

  “She seems to know you.”

  “Yes, I’ve known her all my life. As a matter of fact, she’s my mother.”

  “My dear, how too shaming. D’you mind if I put that in?”

  “I’d sooner you didn’t. The family can’t bear her. She’s been divorced twice since then, you know.”

  “My dear, of course not, I quite understand.”

  Five minutes later he was busy at the telephone, dictating his story. “… Orchid stop, new paragraph. One of the most striking women in the room was Mrs. Panrast—P-A-N-R-A-S-T, no, T for telephone, you know—formerly Countess of Balcairn. She dresses with that severely masculine chic, italics, which American women know so well how to assume, stop. Her son, comma, the present Earl, comma, was with her, stop. Lord Balcairn is one of the few young men about town…

  “… the Hon. Miles Malpractice was dressed as a Red Indian. He is at present living in the house of his brother, Lord Throbbing, at which yesterday’s party was held. His choice of costume was particularly—what shall I say? hullo, yes—was particularly piquant, italics, since the latest reports of Lord Throbbing say that he is living in a log shack in Canada which he built with his own hands, aided by one Red Indian servant, stop…”

  You see, that was the kind of party Archie Schwert’s party was.

  Miss Mouse (in a very enterprising frock by Cheruit) sat on a chair with her eyes popping out of her head. She never could get used to so much excitement, never. Tonight she had brought a little friend with her—a Miss Brown—because it was so much more fun if one had someone to talk to. It was too thrilling to see all that dull money her father had amassed, metamorphosed in this way into so much glitter and noise and so many bored young faces. Archie Schwert, as he passed, champagne bottle in hand, paused to say, “How are you, Mary darling? Quite all right?”