Dancers in Mourning

Chapter 2-2

He had a pleasant but powerful voice and a natural ease of manner very comforting to a stranger. His black hair was strained off his forehead and appeared to be plastered with Vaseline, while his small deep-set eyes were sharp and friendly.

Uncle William plumped himself in a chair and looked at Campion.

“This is Sock Petrie,” he said in much the same tone as he might have pronounced “Exhibit A.” “Oh, and this is Eve. Sorry . . . I didn’t see you, my dear.”

He struggled to get up out of the low chair and was defeated.

A girl came forward to shake hands. She was obviously Sutane’s sister. Campion had never seen a resemblance more clearly marked. He guessed that she was seventeen or eighteen. She had her brother’s arched brows and deep-set, unhappy eyes, as well as a great deal of his natural grace, but her mouth was sulky and there was an odd sense of resentment and frustration about her. She retired to a corner immediately after the introduction and sat very still, her thin body hunched inside her plain cotton dress.

Sock glanced round.

“Let me present Squire Mercer,” he said. “Mercer, for God’s sake shut up a minute and say how-d’you-do.”

The man at the piano smiled and nodded at Campion, but his fingers did not cease their endless strumming. He looked pleasant, even charming, when he smiled, and his eyes, which were not dark, as they should have been, but a light clear grey, grew momentarily interested.

“He’s just a poor bloody genius,” said Petrie, flopping down among the newspapers again. He splashed his beer over himself as he swung one huge leg over the arm and exhibited a runkled sock with an inch or so of bare leg above it. The visitors got the impression that Mercer’s lack of hospitality embarrassed him.

Campion found a chair and sat down. Petrie grinned at him.

“Furious activity mingled with periods of damn-all, that’s what this life is,” he remarked. “What d’you make of this last business? Had time to consider it at all?”

There was a weary sigh from the corner.

“Must we go all over it again, Sock?” Eve Sutane protested. “Silly little odds and ends of rubbish that don’t mean anything. They’re all so petty.”

Petrie raised his eyebrows.

“That how you see it, poppet?” he said. “It’s getting James down, I can tell you that, and it’s bad for his reputation. I haven’t handled his publicity for five years without being able to say that definitely. It’s happening from the inside, you know, Campion. That’s the annoying part. . . . Mercer, must you keep up that same silly little tune?”

The song writer smiled contentedly.

“It’s a funeral march for a dead dancer,” he said. “ ‘Mutes in Dance Time.’ I like it.”

“Very likely. But you’re giving me the pip.”

“Then go away.” There was unexpected fury in the tone and it startled everybody.

Petrie reddened and shrugged his shoulders.

“Go ahead.”

“I shall.”

Mercer continued his strumming. He was quiet and happy again, lost, it seemed, in his own private and particular world.

Petrie returned to Campion.

“There’s a par in the Cornet,” he said, “and another in Sunday Morning. Look at them.”

He took out a wallet which would have disgraced a lie-about and extracted two ragged scraps of newspaper. Campion read them.

GARLIC FOR THE STAR

was the Cornet’s heading.

There are many feuds in stageland. Once a star, of whatever magnitude, becomes really unpopular there is never a shortage of people anxious and able to let him know it. Among the tributes handed over the footlights at a certain West End theatre last night was a little bunch of white flowers. The star took them and pressed them to his nose. Only a long training in the art of self-control prevented him from flinging the bouquet from him then and there, for the white flowers were wild garlic. Somebody disliked him and chose this graceful way of saying so.

Sunday Morning treated the matter in its own way.

DANCING WITH TEARS IN HIS EYES?

Who was the joker who sent Jimmy Sutane a bunch of garlic on the three-hundredth night of The Buffer? It could not have been a comment on his work. Jimmy’s flying feet don’t need encouragement of this sort. Maybe he made someone cry and they wanted to return the compliment.

“I can’t get a line on these until the Press boys get back to work.” Sock retrieved the paragraphs. “But you see what it means. Someone turned that information in early. It was the end of the show when James told that ass Blest about the flowers—far too late to make these rags. That leaves Henry, who I’d pin my shirt to, Richards the doorkeeper, who is beyond suspicion, and, of course, the chap who sent ’em.” He paused. “The information reached these blokes by phone. Any other paper would have rung up for confirmation, but these two print anything. The Cornet left out the name and Sunday Morning got round the libel with a compliment—not that they care for libel. If they don’t get five actions a week they think the rag’s getting dull.”

He grimaced and replenished his tankard from a bottle behind the chair.

“It may be all poppycock but it’s damned unfortunate,” he said. “If it came from outside it might be one of the poor lunatics who badger stage folk until some merciful bobby locks ’em up, but when it’s from inside, like this, there’s genuine malice in it and it’s not so funny.”

Mr. Campion was inclined to agree with him and his interest in the affair revived. Sock Petrie breathed an atmosphere of worldly common sense.

“Is Sutane likely to have any enemies?” he enquired.

Mercer cut in from the piano.

“Jimmy? Oh, no, everyone likes Jimmy. Why shouldn’t they? I mean, I do myself, and I shouldn’t if he wasn’t a good chap.”

The words were articulated so carelessly that the sense was only just clear. Campion glanced at him curiously, looking for some hint of sarcasm in the remark. He met the light grey eyes directly and was astonished. Mercer, he saw suddenly, was that rarity in a modern world, a simple literalist. His face was bland and innocent; he meant exactly what he said.

Sock smiled into his tankard and afterwards caught Campion’s eye.

“There’s a lot in that, Mercer,” he said, and there was more affection than patronage in his tone.

The man at the piano went on playing. He looked calm and happy.

A shadow fell across the threshold and Uncle William sat up abruptly.

“Ice water,” he ejaculated guiltily and Petrie groaned.

Chloe Pye came into the room, conscious of her figure and ostentatiously annoyed. She ignored both Campion and Uncle William, who had struggled out of his chair at great personal inconvenience to meet her, and spoke plaintively to Eve.

“Would it be too much trouble for me to have some ice water? I’ve been sweltering in the garden for hours.”

“Of course not. I’ll send for some, Chloe.” The girl pressed a bell push in the panelling. “By the way, this is Mr. Campion. You know Uncle William, don’t you?”

Miss Pye regarded the strangers with open hostility. Her lips were petulant and, Campion was amazed to see, there were actual tears in her eyes.

“We met in the drive,” she said and, turning her back on them, leant on the piano to talk to Mercer.

It was an odd little display and Campion, whose experience did not include many women of forty who dressed and behaved like sulky six-year-olds, was a little shocked. He felt elderly and out of his depth.

An unexpectedly correct manservant appeared in answer to the bell and was dispatched for the water. When it came Miss Pye took it modestly.

“I hate to be so much trouble,” she said, making big eyes over the rim of the glass, “but poor Chloe was t’irsty. Move up, Squire darling. She wants to sit on the music bench too. What are you going to play for me?”

Campion, who had expected a minor explosion, was relieved to see Mercer make room for her. He was not pleased but did not seem to be disposed to make a fuss. The woman put her glass down and thrust an arm round his shoulders.

“Play some of the old songs,” she said. “The ones that made you famous, sweetheart. Play ‘Third in a Crowd.’ It makes me cry whenever I hear it, even now. Play ‘Third in a Crowd.’ ”

Mercer appraised her with his frank eyes.

“But I don’t want to make you cry,” he said and played again his little half-finished melody, which was beginning to irk even the iron nerves of Mr. Campion.

“Don’t you, darling? You are sweet. Play ‘Waiting’ then. ‘Waiting’ reminds me of happy days in the sun at Cassis. Or ‘Nothing Matters Now.’ ‘Nothing Matters Now’ was pure genius, pure, unadulterated genius.”

Mercer, who seemed to accept the tribute without surprise or embarrassment, played through the chorus of the song, which had captured the great hairy ears of the unfastidiously musical a few years before. He guyed it gently but without bitterness and when he had finished nodded thoughtfully.

“One of the better of my Wurlitzer numbers. Pure Vox Humana,” he observed.

“You’re not to make fun of it,” protested Chloe. “It’s got the s****l urge, or whatever they call it. It grips one in the tummy . . .”

“Whether it makes one sick or not,” put in Petrie. “How right you are, Miss Pye.”

“Oh, Sock, is that you, darling? I saw a heap of smelly old clothes in the chair. Don’t interrupt me. We’re getting off quietly. Play something else, Squire.”

Eve rose to her feet.

“Lunch in half an hour if it’s not postponed,” she said. “I’m going to wash.”

She slouched off and Chloe looked after her.

“Like Jimmy, but no lift—no lift at all,” she said. “An odd little face, too. Squire, I’ll play you one of your own songs that you’ve forgotten. Get your hands out of the way.”

She wriggled closer to him and began to play a melody which was only faintly familiar. It had been popular in the early post-war days, Mr. Campion fancied, somewhere about the time of “Whispering” and “K-K-K-Katie.” The name came back to him suddenly—“Water-Lily Girl.”

“Corny old stuff,” said Mercer. He seemed a little irritated.

“No, you’re to listen.” Chloe was insistent. Over the piano’s broad back they could see her looking up into his face while she played the song execrably, separating the chords and lingering sickeningly on each sentimental harmony.

She went right through the tune, playing the verse as well as the chorus. Mercer seemed to have resigned himself, but when she had finished he edged her gently off the seat and went back to his little half-born melody.

Miss Pye walked over to Sock and perched herself on the arm of his chair. She was still angry with Campion and Uncle William, it seemed, for she ignored them pointedly. Sock pulled her down onto his knee.

“What a nasty little girl,” he said, managing to convey that he was a man of experience, that she was a nuisance, and that while he knew perfectly well that she could give him at least ten years she was a pretty little female thing and he forgave her. “So precipitate,” he continued. “You met us all for the first time last night and now here you are crawling all over us in a bathing suit.”

Miss Pye got out of his arms and settled herself on the edge of the chair again.

“You’re rude,” she said. “Jimmy and I are old friends, anyway, and I met you once at the theatre.”

“That’s no excuse.” Sock was only partially playful so that the scene was not without its embarrassment. “That is Mr. Mercer, the composer, you’ve been talking to over there. He’s a bachelor and a misogynist. He saw you for the first time late last night. If you work too fast you’ll give him blood pressure.”