High Society. Part 1

5

High Society. Part 1

    The Queen Mother—Sol found that, though she was a tiny woman, it was difficult to think of Belinda, Lady Cohen, in any other way once Phoebe had mentioned the nickname, maybe it was something to do with that powder blue she wore all the time—the Queen Mother was graciously pleased to hear that Sol had been asked out to dinner on the Thursday evening. It was nice that he was making friends here.

    So far the only residences he’d visited at in New Zealand had been houses (varying in details of design but all wooden and, as he and Abe had noticed, cold), so he was interested to discover that Phoebe lived in an apartment. The apartment building, a solid white stuccoed affair that didn’t look new, contained only three apartments. It was in a little side street that was otherwise lined with solid-looking clapboard houses not unlike the Cohens’, if set in smaller grounds. At first you didn’t realise there were three apartments, you only saw the front one from the road, then as you went down the steep steps at the side of the block you saw they were stepped down the hillside. Thus affording each one a magnificent view of the harbour. Since it was just seven-fifteen when he got there the harbour was dark but you could see the lights on the far shore. There were almost no grounds, just a strip at the front of the block with a few shrubs, and a floodlit lawn at the bottom. Phoebe’s was the middle apartment.

    “Come in,” said the guy who opened the door.

    “Uh—this is Phoebe Fothergill’s apartment, is it?” said Sol feebly.

    “Yeah. She’s in the bath—running late. Come in,” he repeated.

    Sol came in, feeling weak. He didn’t know how long it was since you’d seen guys in the good ole U.S. of A. getting round in long robes like that—unless they were actually African or something—but he guessed it was a good few years, now. The man wasn’t African or something, he was a burly Caucasian with a head of unruly but not Afro grey curls, an almost equally unruly grey moustache, and an amiable grin. The brightly patterned flowing orange robe revealed the neck of a very ordinary brown sweater and the ankles of a very ordinary pair of grey flannels,

    Phoebe’s front hall had a pretty dark blue wallpaper that you could hardly see because of the white-painted bookcases that lined it. The floor was cork tiling with Persian-style rugs—Sol didn’t think they were genuine, he was interested in Persian rugs (the only thing that he and his sister-in-law Pat had in common) but they were attractive. There was a small table that he would have liked to stop to examine: it was in an unusual wood, kind of little dark flecks in the grain, and it held, besides a functional push-button white phone, a blue and white ginger jar, not antique but attractive, a brass cat about six inches high, rather worn-looking but highly polished, and a heavy paperweight in dark blue glass. But the guy in the robe, after taking the raincoat which was the second thing Sol had bought after his arrival in the country (at the shop where he’d bought the tweed jacket which he was wearing over the heavy sweater), ushered him right on in to the living-room.

    The living-room was very warm, which was the first thing Sol noticed about it. It also had a floor of polished cork tiles but this was partly hidden by large rugs, again Persian in style. Belgian, Sol decided. Apricots and fawns predominated in these rugs. The walls were pale cream, but like the hall large stretches of them were covered by bookcases, painted cream but crammed with books, which, though mostly rather faded, added quite a lot of colour to the room. Most of the furniture, which was very plain, was upholstered in cream wool: a divan against the left-hand wall, a solid, squarish couch at right angles to it, facing a large gas fire, and a club chair. The other chair, drawn up to the right of the fire, was a heavy Victorian armchair, elaborately buttoned and upholstered in burnt-orange velvet. To the far right the end wall was completely veiled by fawn velvet curtains, no doubt concealing the windows which looked over the harbour. Over near these windows was a modern oval glass dining table with six light-weight dining chairs with backs and seats in natural cane fitted round it. Before the couch a heavy oblong glass coffee table echoed the style of the dining table. Next to this was a large round pouffe covered in a brown and apricot paisley silk.

    On the divan was a lady reading a book. She could do this easily, the room was far more brightly illuminated than the living-rooms Sol was used to. There were no lamps on side tables in the American fashion, but one standard lamp by the Victorian armchair. Not on.

    “Can I get you a drink?” said the guy in the robe.

    “Thanks,” said Sol limply as the guy retreated to a sideboard in the far right-hand corner.

    “Name your poison!” said the guy cheerfully.

    Sol was familiar with this expression, Sir Jerry Cohen sometimes used it, so he said weakly: “Uh—bourbon, if she’s got it, I guess.” Having realized in the wake of Sir Jerry’s consternation when he’d first asked him for it, that bourbon wasn’t a usual Kiwi drink. At all.

    “Help,” said the guy mildly. He squatted.

    Sol looked uncertainly at the back of the couch and at the lady on the divan.

    “Sit down,” she said in a vague voice, glancing up briefly.

    “Uh—thanks.” He came round the couch and sat down on it. It was very comfortable. And the gas fire sure threw out a lot of heat.

    The lady on the divan was stretched out at full length. She also wore the kind of garments that Sol hadn’t seen anyone back home wear for some time. Trying not to stare, he knit his brows in an effort to remember the name of that leather. It wasn’t suede, it was that wash-leather stuff... Chamois! That was it! The lady was in a long tunic of natural-coloured chamois, with odd little pointed ends here and there adorned with tiny pale pink beads and feathers. It sure was pretty, but... Her blonde hair was in two short braids, the ends tightly wound with pale pink ribbon. Under the tunic, which must reach to about her knees if she stood up, she wore a long, pale pink velveteen skirt. No, it wasn’t, he saw as she moved slightly: long culottes. A high-necked pale pink tee-shirt showed above the uneven neckline of the tunic. She was very pretty, with a roundish, pink-cheeked face and very little make-up; but not young, Sol would have guessed she was around his own age. Would she be the robe-guy’s wife? He squinted at her hands but she was wearing a lot of rings—not elaborate ones but very pretty: several in green jade, a similar plain band in pink, another in coral, a couple with solitaire stones—so it was difficult to tell if one might be a wedding-ring.

    “Good grief, what on earth is this?” said the robe-guy with his head in the drinks cupboard.

    Sol was about to tell him never to mind, he’d have Scotch instead, when he withdrew from the cupboard with a bottle in his hand and said incredulously: “Tequila?”

    “That’ll do,” said Sol with a grin.

    “I thought that was illegal,” said the lady on the divan.

    “NO!” the guy replied scornfully. He got up, panting a bit, and said to Sol: “Are you sure? She has got most of the drinks known to Western civilization in there, but bourbon doesn’t seem to be one of ’em.”

    “I guess it ain’t known to Western civilization, huh?” he replied mildly. “Tequila’ll be just fine, thanks.”

    “Don’t you drink it with limes or something?” said the guy dubiously. “Or salt?”

    “Both. If there is any. Or you could just have it on the rocks. If there was any ice.”

    “There’s some in the fridge,” said the lady, not looking up from her book. A kind of female John Aitken without the Limey accent?

    Winking at Sol, the guy replied mildly: “That would be the logical place to start looking,” and went out with the bottle.

    Sol just sat there limply. It was far, far too late to introduce himself. Were they doing it on purpose, to embarrass a simple Yankee boy? No... Well, probably not. Well, possibly not.

    After some time, during which the silence was unbroken except by the sound of the lady turning a page and the faint noise made by the gas fire, which Sol, who wasn’t used to them, decided must be the natural noise made by gas fires, no-one else was panicking, the lady said loudly: “WHAT? Listen to this!” and read out a piece from the book. Which was utterly, utterly unintelligible to Sol. Something about Portuguese something... in the Pacific, was it? He looked at her blankly but she continued loudly: “That was disproved ages ago!”

    “What are you reading?” said the guy, coming back. He came over to them, put down the bottle and a tumbler full of ice on the coffee table, and took the book. “Oh—him,” he said without either surprise or condemnation in his voice. “Well, what did you expect?” He went over to the big burnt-orange chair and sat in it heavily—Jesus, that robe was just the right shade to clash with it real well! “Read the text, not the introduction, you nana,” he said mildly.

    She pouted, but turned over a great wedge of pages, and began to read again.

    Sol looked at the tequila bottle. He looked at the glass tumbler full of ice. He began to feel quite considerably annoyed. He picked up the tequila, unscrewed the bottle, and filled the tumbler. Approximately a double. Not a generous double. Was all this ice technique number three for getting at a simple Yankee boy?

    “Is it okay?” asked the guy uncertainly, after Sol had got a belt down him.

    “Huh?”

    “That stuff. I think she must have got it when she was in Mexico: that was ages ago.”

    “Oh—sure. I don’t guess it goes off. Even in a climate like this.”

    There was a tiny pause. Then the guy said mildly: “Well, anything in the back of our wardrobe turns green in about five seconds, but Phoebe’s flat’s quite dry, really.”

    “I told you to throw those boots out last year,” said the lady, not looking up. –Yup, she must be his wife. Or something.

    Sol took another belt. “Is there a native alcoholic drink?” he asked abruptly.

    “Maori, you mean?”—Sol nodded.—“No, they don’t seem to have had that much enterprise,” the guy replied in his usual unemphatic style.

     Sol by now understood—not from anything the guests at The Chateau had conveyed in either spoken or any other form but mostly from the media—that middle-class intellectuals, which was what he guessed Phoebe’s friends would be, leaned over backwards in their efforts to be non-racist about their native ethnic minority. The results had struck him as so super-uncritical as to be super-patronising, but he wasn’t nearly sure enough of his ground to dare to express this opinion to anybody. So at this his jaw dropped.

    The guy finished his drink without appearing to notice the dropped jaw. “That was bloody awful. –Sweet vermouth,” he explained.

    “Why?” said Sol simply.

    “Because it was there. Like Everest.”

    Sol let out a yelp of laughter. The guy grinned. “I might try that next,” he said, nodding at the tequila.

    “Got a kick like a mule,” Sol told him kindly.

    “Good.”

    “I’d wash that,” Sol added, nodding at his glass.

    “Eh? Oh—good idea.” He wandered out with the glass.

    Sol poured himself another while the going was good. This interval was pretty much like the last except this time the lady didn’t read out anything at all.

    The guy came back and poured some tequila into his glass.

    “You want some of this ice?” said Sol. Very, very mildly.

    “It needs watering down, does it?” he replied with a grin. “All right.” He held out his glass. Limply Sol fished some ice out of his drink and shoved it in the guy’s drink, now not knowing what to think.

    The guy sat down. He took a swig. He swallowed. His eyes went very round. “Ah-hah!” he said. “Real grog!” He took another swig.

    “Good, I’ll have some,” said the lady in a vague voice. Without looking up she held out her glass.

    “You won’t like it,” said the guy. “It’s worse than vodka.”

    “Not worse: better,” murmured Sol.

    “Precisely.” They grinned at each other.

    “Worse than straight gin?” said the lady.

    Sol shuddered but the guy said: “Definitely.”

    “Oh,” she said. “Well, give me something, for Heaven’s sake!”

    “There’s a nayce whayte wayne at the back of the cupboard,” he replied in mincing tones.

    “Is there? Goodness, Phoebe must have forgotten it was there. Anyway, I don’t want wine, I want a real drink.”

    “Whisky and green ginger?”

    “What?” she said, just as Sol was about to.

    “Ah-hah!” He got up and went over to the cupboard.

    The lady was smacking her lips over a very dark brown drink and the guy was just saying to Sol he wondered how green ginger would go with tequila, and Sol was sniffing the bottle of “Stone’s Green Ginger Wine” and blenching, when Phoebe came in.

    Sol got up. “Hi, Phoebe.”

    “Hullo, Sol; I hope these horrible people have introduced themselves?” she said, grinning.

    “Yes,” said the guy. At the same time Sol said: “No.”

    Sol had gone very red but the robe-guy hadn’t.

    “Let me introduce you,” said Phoebe in a nasty voice to her two friends. “LAURA!”

    The lady on the divan looked up with a jump. “What?”

    “This is Sol Winkelmann,” Phoebe explained.

    “I know,” said the Laura lady simply. She looked down at her book but Phoebe said very loudly: “That rude object on the divan before you, Sol, is Laura Hayes.”

    “Didn’t I say?” said Laura doubtfully to Sol.

    “I guess not. Nice to meet you, Laura.”

    To his pleasure she appeared disconcerted by this and said: “Oh—um, yes,” and blushed.

    “And that lump in the Sixties drop-out gear is Jim Fisher,” continued Phoebe.

    “Hi,” said Jim Fisher mildly.

    “My pleasure,” returned Sol formally.

    “Where in God’s name’s the grog?” added Phoebe, looking round the room.

    “In the cupboard, of course,” Jim returned in mild surprise. He picked up a magazine from the pile on the little table at his elbow.

    Drawing a deep breath, Phoebe said loudly: “I told you to put it on the trolley!”

    “Sorry. Forgot, I suppose,” he offered.

    “What he means is, he got a glass in his fist and never gave it another thought,” explained Laura.

    “You could have reminded him, Laura,” pointed out Phoebe, very nicely.

    “Mm...” She returned to her book. Jim became immersed in his magazine.

    Phoebe marched over to Jim’s side. She switched on the standard lamp. “Ta,” he murmured.

    Phoebe marched back to the door. She switched off the main ceiling light.

    “HEY!” cried Laura.

    Jim just held his magazine up very high.

     Phoebe marched back. She wrenched it off him.

    “Oy,” he said mildly.

    Glaring at her two friends, Phoebe said: “I did not invite you two idiots here to read! You can do that at home any old night of the week. I invited you, in case it hasn’t yet penetrated, to have a nice sociable evening. Socializing!”

    “We thought the party hadn’t started yet,” complained Jim.

    “No: there’s only us and Sol,” explained Laura. Suddenly she gave him a lovely smile. Sol gulped. He smiled back weakly.

    “That dame what you said we had to talk to, she’s not here yet,” explained Jim sadly. “We thought we could enjoy ourselves for a bit.”

    “Yes,” agreed Laura sadly.

    “Go on, Phoebe,” said Sol, grinning broadly: “turn the light back on: let ’em enjoy themselves.”

    Sighing heavily, Phoebe threw the magazine at Jim. She turned the light back on. “Well, come and help me put stuff on the trolley, then,” she said to Sol.

    “Okay.”

    Phoebe looked round the room. “Where is the trolley? –JIM! Where’s the trolley?”

    “Dunno. Where you left it, prob’ly.” He remained immersed in his magazine.

    “I’ll get it,” said Phoebe resignedly. “Hang on.”

    Sol hung on.

    Phoebe came back with an elegant glass and chromium cart. She wheeled it over to the drinks cupboard. They began transferring bottles onto it. Already on it was a silver bucket of ice, a bottle of white wine in another bucket, a neat assortment of glassware, a cocktail shaker and an array of mixers.

    Once Phoebe had ascertained that the tequila was really what Sol wanted and had poured herself a large Scotch, without availing herself of either the ice or the mixers, they sat down together on the couch.

    “How are things at the Cohens’?” she asked politely, twinkling over the rim of the glass.

    “Oh—pretty much the same. Except that Lady Cohen sent that wedding outfit of Pat’s to the cleaner’s while we were down at the mountain. –The acid-green abortion, y’know?”

    “Was this the wrong move?” said Phoebe cautiously.

    Sol replied in horror: “Honey, these here primitive Kiwi cleaners don’t know beans about cleaning Hawt Kew-too-er!”

    Phoebe gave a roar of laughter.

    “Is this Pat Cohen?” asked Laura, suddenly looking up.

    “Uh-huh,” he confirmed. “Pat Winkelmann, she is now.”

    Laura’s mouth sagged open but Phoebe yelled: “NO! His sister-in-law, you cretin!”

    “Oh,” said Laura, sagging back against the piled cushions of the divan. “My God, my heart just about stopped, for a minute, there.”

    “Serves you right,” replied Phoebe, glaring at her.

    “I was at school with her, Sol,” said Laura weakly.

    “I geddit,” he replied.

    Laura smiled weakly. “Is she still—?”

    “Worse, I would guess, Laura. Pat’s clothes, Pat’s hair and Pat’s face would just about sum it up. Morn till night.”

    Laura chuckled. “Mm! I was never in the In-set but it used to be Pat’s dancing classes and Pat’s boyfriends as well, back in those days. And nail-polish was frightfully, frightfully important, too.”

    “I guess the nail-polish still is. And now that you remind me of it, the bridge has taken over from the dancing classes. Only I don’t know about the boyfriends. Maybe that’s worn off now she’s been through one-and-a-half husbands and innumerable cicisbei in between.”

    Laura and Phoebe both chuckled,  but Jim looked up from his magazine and said: “Chips how much?”

    “Good, huh? I read it in your Oxford English Dictionary. There’s some real good reading in that. Solid, ya know? Better than our Webster’s.”

    Grinning, Jim said: “Is it really an Italian word?”

    “Mm-hm.”

    Jim got up, looking determined. “Where’s your dictionary?” he said to Phoebe.

    “Which one?”

    “The super micro-dot one, what else?” said Laura.

    “Yes,” Jim agreed simply.

    “Over there,” said Phoebe limply, waving at the bookcase off to the right rear of Jim’s chair. “Couldn’t you just take it on trust?”

    “Nope: he has to see it in print,” explained Sol, grinning.

    “Yes,” said Jim simply. He dragged a couple of huge dark blue volumes off the bottom shelf of the bookcase, got down on his hunkers in the glow cast by the standard lamp and began reading with the aid of a magnifying glass, breathing heavily.

    “That’s the full version, huh?” said Sol sadly to Phoebe.

    “Yes. The magnifying glass is a bit irritating, mind you.”

    “I was gonna order one of those. Mail-order, ya know?” he said sadly. “Only then I saw the price on it.”

    “I look at it as an investment,” returned Phoebe composedly.

    “Also she couldn’t resist it,” added Laura.

    “Also I couldn’t resist it,” agreed Phoebe.

    “Well, I guess you can justify it, being a teacher an’ all,” he said sadly. “Only I sure couldn’t. So then I had a real inspiration, see? I asked Abe to buy it for my next birthday.”

    “What happened?” asked Phoebe with foreboding.

    “I’ll give ya three guesses,” he said glumly.

    “Is this your brother?” asked Laura. Sol nodded. “He had you clapped up.”

    “Nope.”

    “Well, he got you a series of lengthy therapy sessions,” suggested Phoebe temperately.

    “Nope.”

    “He thought it was a joke,” said Jim in a strange voice from his inverted position on the floor under the standard lamp.

    “You got it,” said Sol glumly.

    Phoebe and Laura fell about laughing. Sol just looked very, very sad.

    Phoebe was just dissuading Laura from trying vodka, lemonade and green ginger when the doorbell went. “Won’t be a mo’,” she said, vanishing.

    Laura made a face at Sol. “I wonder if this’ll be her?” she hissed.

    Sol was just about to make a sympathetic murmuring noise when Jim reported sadly from the floor: “Bugger, it is, too. Ch—um—chih— Crikey, I wonder if that’s right?”

    “Stress on the penultimate syllable, what’s wrong with that?” replied Laura.

    “I Medici,” he pointed out.

    “That’s an exception, you moron!”

     Muttering “Cicisbei,” Jim got down to it again. He was just saying excitedly: “Good grief! I never knew this about cinerarias! Listen to this!” And Laura was interrupting him loudly with: “I know one thing about the cineraria, and that’s its caterpillars that are hairier,” and Sol was shouting with laughter, when Phoebe’s voice said loudly: “Go on in, the zoo’s through here.”

    A contralto that was even lovelier than Phoebe’s own, being rather more musical, returned composedly: “I always assumed that the singular was cinerarium.”

    They all looked round with a start.

    Sol’s knees immediately went wobbly but he managed to totter to his feet. Then he goggled. Laura just goggled. Sol couldn’t see what Jim was doing, as he was behind him. If he wasn’t goggling he was half-blind or unnatural, though.

    Phoebe was entertaining her guests to a very casual dinner on a wet winter’s night in smart dark grey wool slacks and an ample square-shouldered pale grey sweater with a coral scarf at the neck, pinned with a large gold clip. Her hair was in its usual neat French roll. She looked neat, wholesome and not unattractive. The vision in the doorway had chosen to array herself in an outfit that could loosely have been described also as slacks and sweater. Sol guessed. If you were half-blind or unnatural.

    The vision was tallish, but not as tall as Phoebe. She was in yellow. Not a bright yellow, Sol guessed you mighta called it butter-coloured. If you were that bothered about it. Yellow tapered pants, tiny yellow boots, huge wide yellow belt in squidgy leather round the narrow waist, plain thin-knit sweater tucked into the belt… She had one of the loveliest figures that Sol had ever seen. Ever. Without a bra. He’d stake his life.

    The face was a perfect peachy oval with big grey-green eyes. The hair was a mass of long, gleaming golden-brown, softly curled, and pinned up very casually over one ear with a neat little bow. A neat little yellow grosgrain bow. If you were looking closely you might have noticed it.

    There was a gulping noise from somewhere to Sal’s rear. Uh-huh. Then Jim croaked: “No. That’s a recess in which a cinerary urn is deposited.”

    “Cineraria,” said the tall, thin, elderly gent at the vision’s right shoulder, “is a Latin adjective. As youse lot might know if you ever done proper lessons at school.”

    “Cineraria,” echoed Laura dubiously in Latin, still goggling.

    “Ashy?” said the vision incredulously.

    “Yeah, ’course!” returned Jim in tones of indecent superiority.

    “Oh, bullshit!” she cried. She rushed over, knelt by him, and, wrenching the magnifying glass off of him, began reading, breathing heavily.

    “Come and sit down, David,” said Phoebe, grinning.

    The tall, thin, elderly gent came in, looking around him with interest.

    “Let me introduce you: David Shapiro; Laura Hayes; and I think you’ve met Sol Winkelmann, haven’t you, David? –Those two over there with their bums in the air are Jim Fisher and Polly Carrano, if anybody’s interested.”

    Sol shook hands with David Shapiro. “Nice to see you again, David,” he said—not at all sure the old gent would remember an obscure Yankee boy encountered at his granddaughter’s wedding.

    But David smiled and said: “How are you, Sol? How was the skiing?”

    “Not bad, thanks,” replied Sol, grinning.

    “I thought Susan might have talked you into going on down to Mount Hutt.”

    Wincing, Sol explained that he’d had to refuse the kind invitation from the Shapiro connections in question, in view of having used muscles he’d forgotten he had, at Mount Ruapehu. –He said “Ruapehu”: you didn’t muck around with David Shapiro. Not more than once, anyroad.

    “Don’t they have water-skiing in Florida?” he replied.

    Sol couldn’t for the life of him work out if the old guy was just being courteous or really wanted to know. “Yes, we do: only in the first place that’s not exactly the same set of muscles; and in the second place unless you’ve got a friend that’s willing to tow you, that’s a real expensive sport: you have to hire the guy with the boat, you see. So I don’t do it that much.”

    “Windsurfing,” said a squashed contralto from the floor.

    Jumping, Sol replied: “Yeah, I do, actually, Polly. When I get the time. Only that exercises the shoulders and the arms more than the legs.”

    She knelt up and smiled at him. “Yes. What do you call the thing that you do it on?”

    “Uh—a board, I guess.”

    Her face fell a foot.

    “The whole apparatus,” prompted David with a tiny smile, sitting down in the big velvet armchair.

    “Uh—a windsurfer,” said Sol.

    “Yes!” she cried. “Now,”—her lovely oval face took on a cunning expression that would have alerted a backward child of two with casts in both eyes—“what would you call a person that does wind-surfing?”

    “An idiot?” said Phoebe mildly.

    “Foolhardy?” suggested David.

    “Sunburnt?” offered Laura.

    Polly choked, but looked pleadingly at Sol.

    “A windsurfer, I guess, Polly,” he said limply. Well, his voice was limp.

    “They say it in American, too!” she cried.

    “Did you imagine it was a usage confined to the Antipodes?” asked David on a slightly acid note.

    “What about ‘cooker’?” she replied cunningly.

    “Highly logical,” he returned caustically.

    “Only if you’re standing on your head,” she conceded, twinkling.

    “Which of course we all are, down here in the Anty-Pohds,” Sol noted.

    They all fell about laughing. Polly’s, Sol noted without surprize, was good. Real good.

    “Well, come on,” said Phoebe, sitting down on the couch again—Sol subsided next her, he didn’t feel his knees were gonna hold out for an instant longer—“give us the gen on cinerarias.”

    “It’s good, isn’t it, Jim?” she said.

    “Yeah. Go on, you can read it,” he offered generously.

    “You found it first,” Polly objected.

    “Okay.” Jim read it out.

    “I’ve never noticed that,” said Laura dubiously.

    “Yeah!” he replied crossly.

    “I always thought it was dew,” admitted Polly uncertainly.

    “The dew sits amongst the individual hairs of the ash-coloured down,” murmured David.

    “Not if they’re grown mainly under glass,” said Jim with his bum in the air again.

    “What?” cried Polly and Laura incredulously.

    “England!” said Phoebe loudly.

    “Oh,” they said in tones of enlightened disgust.

    “Forgive us for letting our subtropical Antipodean prejudices show, Sol,” murmured David.

    “Gee, that’s okay, David, don’t you mind me. –Say, what are these cinny-whatsits, anyroad?”

    He was very gratified indeed when David smiled slowly and replied: “Don’t hand me that loada crap. Boy.”

    Sol lay back against the back of the couch, sniggering. Phoebe looked very pleased. Laura looked utterly disconcerted, Sol was glad to see.

    “Can we drag you two away from that dictionary long enough to pour drinks down you?” Phoebe then asked courteously.

    “We could have them down here,” replied Jim hopefully.

    “Not if you want any dinner.”

    Pouting, Jim got up slowly, and sat in the cream club chair. It was only just big enough for him. But at least it didn’t clash with the robe.

    “Polly?” said Phoebe.

    Polly got up, smiling. “I’m driving; but never mind, I can take a hint.”

    Laura muttered something about “bludgeons” but added loudly: “Come and sit by me, Polly.” She swung her legs off the divan. “Sit there,” she said firmly. “I want to stare at you.”

    “All right,” said Polly, blushing slightly but sitting down obligingly.

    “She is real,” murmured David, as Laura stared hard at her. Polly sustained the stare with reasonable equanimity, but remained slightly pink round the edges.

    Apparently unmoved by her guests’ eccentricities, Phoebe dispensed drinks. David accepted a straight vodka. No ice. Sol accepted another tequila on the rocks. Jim pushed his hostess away, poured a lot of vodka into a tumbler, added a belt of tequila and topped it off with green ginger.

    “What’s it like?” asked Sol faintly.

    “Gruesome.” He stirred it with his finger, tasted it again and added: “Alcoholic, though.”

    “I dunno why I put out all these chintzy mixers,” grumbled Phoebe.

    “No,” agreed David.

    Grinning, Phoebe said loudly: “Wouldn’t somebody like a lovely something with ginger ale or soda water or lemonade in it? Or tonic? I could do you a lovely gin and tonic.”

    “Have you got any orangeade?” asked Polly.

    “Aw, come on!” she cried.

    “Sit still!” said Laura irritably.

    Obediently sitting still, Polly tried to squint at her hostess without moving a muscle of her face and said: “If you put a drop of gin in it, it could be a screwdriver.”

    “No,” said David firmly. “Not with that bloody car. You can have one glass of wine with the meal, and that’s it.”

    Cunningly she replied: “Maybe we aren’t having wine, though.”

    “Yes, we are,” he replied unemotionally. “A decent burgundy. I brought it.”

    “I’m not all that fond of wine, really,” she said sadly.

    “All the more for the rest of us!” replied Jim, chuckling evilly. “Where is it?”

    “In the kitchen,” said Phoebe. “And for God’s sake don’t start chambréing it by that ruddy gas fire, it’ll explode or something.”

    “What, the fire?” said Sol.

    “Are you too hot? Take that coat off, for God’s sake.”

    Looking sheepish, Sol removed his jacket.

    “He expected to freeze in a New Zealand home,” noted David, turning Phoebe’s gas fire down.

    “Did you?” asked Laura, wrenching her eyes off Polly’s face.

    “Yeah. Well, I always have, up to now,” he said, grinning sheepishly. He was getting real good at that.

    “Can I move now?” asked Polly in a strangled voice.

    “Yeah, all right,” Laura conceded, sighing. “Greenish wash, I think,” she said to Phoebe.

    “Isn’t that a bit obvious?”

    “Mm-mm... Fawnish?”

    “That would be more subtle,” conceded Phoebe.

    “A gouache, do you reckon?” said Laura, holding her head on one side and looking at Polly again.

    “If you’re up to it,” said Jim.

    Laura made a face at him.

    “You’re L.G. Hayes; I’m sorry, I didn’t realize; Phoebe never said,” said Polly, turning very red. This did not spoil her beauty, however. If anybody was noticing.

    “I didn’t want to forewarn you, Polly,” said Phoebe said with a laugh in her voice: “I didn’t want you to get all dressed up for her.”

    Sol choked into his drink. This hardly mattered: David and Jim were also choking.

    “Will you sit for me?” said Laura abruptly.

    Polly swallowed. “I’d love to, Laura; only, um, my husband did write to you once about doing a portrait, and you turned him down.”

    “Did I?” she said blankly. “When was this?”

    “Um... Just after the twins were born, I think. Getting on for four years ago, I suppose.”

    Suddenly Jim let out a roar of laughter. “I remember! You said she was some fat, pug-faced society dame that’d want to be done in satin and pearls!”

    “I probably said puce satin and pearls, actually,” admitted Laura, pulling a face.

    “That one you did of Lady Westby was wonderful,” murmured Polly.

    “Thanks. She hates it,” replied the artist. They chuckled.

    After a moment Laura added uneasily: “Not everyone approves of representational stuff, these days. Could you bear it on the wall?”

    “Don’t worry, Jake’ll build a room round it,” she assured her glumly.

    “Rubbish,” said David mildly. “He’ll hang it in the smaller sitting-room that you usually use in the evenings.”

    “Mm,” she admitted with a little smile.

    “Wait! Now I advance my Brilliant Thort!” said Phoebe. They looked at her in trepidation. “What do you say to a Vigée Le Brun effort?” she said to Laura. “She’s got three lovely kiddies, you know.”

    “Don’t tempt me,”

    Polly swallowed. “It wouldn’t work. I mean, I’m sure you could do it, Laura. Only he hates things that are in the style of.”

    “Would this imply,” murmured David, “that that thing in your mushroom dining-room—?”

    “That painting? Yeah,” said Polly glumly. “It’d keep an entire orphanage for the next three generations if he sold it and invested the proceeds.”

    “It’s a hard life,” he murmured.

    “Well,” said Phoebe, “it was just a thought. –Come on, Sol; you can open the wine for me.

    They went out to the kitchen. Sol didn’t know whether to be glad or sorry. “Polly’ll be the Benedictine-definer, huh?” he said when they got there.

    “Mm. –It doesn’t unscrew,” she said drily, handing him a bottle and a corkscrew.

    “Uh-huh.”

    “I’m sorry about the blasted Hayes-Fisher ménage,” she said abruptly as he struggled. “They’re worse before feeding time.”

    “That’s okay. –So they are a ménage?”

    “Oh, very much so. Three boys: they’d be—uh—sixteen, eighteen and twenty, now, I think.”

    “I—see!” he panted. The cork came out with a bang. You couldn’t have called it a pop. “What in God’s name is this? –Oh.”

    “Mm. I think the old guy’s been saving it up. For an occasion where the company, if not the food, would do it justice.”

    “Mm-hm.” Sol struggled with David’s second bottle, pausing to say: “He was real disappointed when she said she didn’t much like wine, huh?”

    “Yes. But I believe that’s perfectly true; I’ve never socialized with them but I’ve seen her at University Women’s dinners a couple of times, and she usually has a cocktail if there’s one going, and doesn’t bother with the wine. Mind you, it’s usually foul at those does. Local plonk.”

    “Yeah—oof!” The second cork came out. “Got it bad for her, huh? Poor old guy.”

    “Mm... Only if he was—let’s say, for the sake of argument, forty-five,”—Sol swallowed—“I doubt if he’d get within a hundred yards of her. So possibly there are compensations. At least he has her company.”

    “Unlike the queue, huh?”

    “Quite.”

    “Don’t worry, I’m not thinking of joining it. I know something way out of my class when I see it. But a guy can look on and think wistful thoughts, can’t he?”

    Phoebe got a lettuce out of the fridge. “Yes. But I’ve have said it was rather a case of a guy being unable not to think wistful thoughts.”

    “Cain’t fight Nature,” he replied smugly.

    “No. –Do you think we need a salad as well as vegetables?”

    “Don’t ask me, I never been in High Society before.”

    “What does Lady Cohen serve?”

    “Meat and three veg, I would have thought,” said that other contralto. Polly came into the kitchen, smiling. “David says if I’m very good I can have an orangeade with one spoonful of gin and we’ll call it a spatula.”

    Choking, Phoebe gasped: “Okay! –Sorry, Polly, I’d forgotten your dehydrated state! Um, there’s no orange squash but there’s some juice in the fridge—would that do you?”

    “Yes, fine.” She opened Phoebe’s fridge. She bent. Thank You, God.

    “Anyway, what does the Queen Mother serve?” said Phoebe to Sol as Polly poured juice into a glass that held a tiny smear of gin.

    “Who?” said Polly.

    “Belinda, Lady Cohen,” said Phoebe, making a face.

    “Ooh, that’s a good name for her! –Yes, go on, Sol: what does she serve?”

    “We-ell... I could tell you last night’s menu as a for instance. There was just her and Sir Jerry and us three.”

    “That’ll do,” approved Phoebe, leaning on the bench.

    “First we had a small pear juice each. Except Sir Jerry had to have a prune juice.”

    Polly choked. “Is this apocryphal?”

    “No!” he said indignantly. “Gee, ya come out here to the Anty-Pohds, all eager and expectant-like, and you’ve barely taken a breath before they start taking it out of ya just because you’re a simple Yankee boy!”

    “Simple my arse,” said Phoebe. “Get on with it—we believe you. What was next?”

    “Well, in our honour we had soup. They don’t always have it. Sir Jerry didn’t want to drink his, he said it was—say, maybe I better not tell you in mixed company.”

    “Phoebe can leave the room,” said Polly, grinning.

    Phoebe shook a cleaver at them.

    “It was chicken soup. He said it was gnat’s piss.”—Polly choked.—“And Belinda told him to stop swearing. So he said ‘Swearing, schmearing.’”

    “This is apocryphal!” cried Phoebe.

    “I swear on the Flag,” he said quickly.

    “The Confederate flag?” asked Polly suspiciously.

    “Is there any other?”

    “Go on,” they said, grinning.

    “Uh—yeah, that was the soup. Pat wanted a dry sherry with it but her mother told her she was drinking far too much, and alcohol was ruin to the complexion at her age.” He looked cautiously at them but they both just swallowed. “Then we had the main course. Sir Jerry had a decent Cabernet Sauvignon to go with that.”

    “Was it?” asked Phoebe.

    “Yeah. Well, it was Australian. But very drinkable, I thought.”

    “Well, what was the food?” she demanded.

    “Gee, you Kiwis sure don’t understand the art of yarn-spinnin’! Uh—now, lessee, the main course...” Phoebe shook the cleaver. Grinning, Sol said: “Well, I don’t guess it was meat and three veg, exactly. There was roast lamb, and your local sweet potato, roast; Belinda done tole me its name, but shucks—”

    “Stop it!” they howled.

    “Shucks, it done gone plumb out of ma— Yeah, okay. I have forgotten it. But that was veg number one.” They both gulped, and he realized he’d make an error with the vernacular. “And number two was roast ordinary potato; and number three was carrots, and number four was greens.”

    “‘Greens’?” echoed Phoebe hollowly.

    “I’ll have been silverbeet,” decided Polly.

    “Yeah. That was it,” he said.

    His audience looked at each other with a wild surmise. Sol began looking round for the peak in Darien. Now what had he said?

    “Americans!” said Phoebe in despair.

    “You have to feel sorry for them,” agreed Polly, shaking her head.

    “Huh?”

    “That WAS meat and three veg, you moron!” said his lover loudly.

    “No, four: see—”

    “You don’t count the potato,” she said flatly.

    Sol looked wildly at Polly, but she confirmed: “My mum certainly doesn’t.”

    “Boy, oh boy,” he said, shaking his head, “and they say America’s the land of plenty.”

    The ladies managed to ignore this and Polly asked: “What about pudding?”

    “Well, first Abe and I had another glass of wine each, but Lady Cohen wouldn’t let Sir Jerry, she said it was bad for his liver.”

    They stared grimly at him. “We did have dessert,” he said quickly. “It was real good. I’da called it a lemon chiffon pie, but she called it a lemon meringue p—”

    “UGH!” cried Polly, shuddering all over. It was real good.

    “No, honest, Polly: it was delicious. The Queen Mother’s a real good cook.”

    “I can’t stand lemon meringue pie; the very thought of it makes me want to vomit,” said Polly, shuddering again. It was real good.

    “Good thing I decided not to make one, then,” said Phoebe mildly. “—Don’t worry,” she added to her guest’s look of horror, “I couldn’t make one of those bloody things to save my life!’

    “Good,” said Polly weakly.

    “That was it, then?” asked Phoebe.

    “Purty much; uh-huh. After dinner we went into the drawing-room and us guys had a liqueur with our coffee.”

    “What about Pat?” said Phoebe weakly. “Or wasn’t she allowed one?”

    “She’d have been helping the Queen Mother to load the dishwasher,” said Polly.

    “Not Pat!” they replied with one voice.

    “Nup,” added Sol. “She just had a liqueur. No coffee.”

    They eyed him warily.

    “Does it keep her awake?” asked Polly finally.

    “Uh-uh,” he replied in the negative.

    “So-ol!” cried Phoebe, brandishing the cleaver.

    “She said it was like dishwater.”

    After some time Polly croaked: “Is that true?

    “Sure,” he replied blandly. “It was like dishwater.”

    “What did the Q.M. say?” croaked Phoebe.

    “She told her she was looking tired and suggested an early night,” said Sol blandly.

    After a minute Polly whispered: “Straight away? Without—without even deigning to notice the dishwater remark?”

    “Mm-hm.”

    Polly let out a shriek. Phoebe let out a bellow. They fell around the kitchen laughing.

    “Perfect!” gasped Phoebe.

    “Typical, you mean!” gasped Polly.

    “Yup, it sure was,” he drawled. “Real High Society.”

    “Oh, dear,” sighed Phoebe at last. “I might have known... Well, shall I do a salad or not?”

    “David loves them,” said Polly. “If you can do a decent salad dressing, of course.”

    “Thousand Island?” suggested Sol. She gulped.

    “Would he like to make the dressing himself?” asked Phoebe weakly.

    “He’d love to,” Polly admitted, smiling. “If you’ve got a good olive oil, real wine vinegar and a decent mustard. Preferably French.”

    “I might manage to scrape those up,” she said feebly, opening cupboard doors.

    “Good. I’ll go and tell him.”

    “No, hang on, Polly.”

    “What?” said Polly amiably, pausing with her hand on the kitchen doorknob. Her right hand, the one with the huge big yaller stone that Sol hadn’t even begun to kid himself was a topaz. On her left hand the even huger emerald set in not-small diamonds was presumably her engagement ring. The guy could afford all that and had her, too? Kind of a case of unto them that hath it shall be given—ya know?

    Phoebe was rather pink. “It is okay about the portrait, is it? I didn’t actually ask you round here to tout for a commission for dratted L.G. Hayes.”

    Smiling, Polly replied: “It’s fine; Jake’ll be thrilled. But I ought to warn you, he went crazy over that picture of the two little girls in her last exhibition. You know, the ones in overalls, sitting on the window seat. With the nasturtiums behind them.”

    “Mm; it was nice. Sentimental but nice.”

    “I thought it actually avoided being sentimental. It was the overalls, I think. Well, as much as pictures of kids can avoid being sentimental,” she said tranquilly.—Sol could feel his jaw going saggy, though he tried to stop it.—“But the thing is, he’ll probably put the hard word on her to do one of the kids. Or me and the kids, or any permutation or combination you can imagine.”

    “I don’t think she’ll mind. If she doesn’t want to, she’ll say so. She’s very strong-minded, you know.”

    Muttering: “She’ll need to be,” Polly opened the kitchen door.

    “Are permutations and combinations different? I thought they were the same thing,” murmured Sol.

    “NO!” she replied with huge scorn, and went out.

    “All right: go on, laugh!” he said crossly to his helplessly whooping lover. “What did I say? I cain’t help bein’ a dumb Yankee boy, you know!”

    “Not—that!” gasped Phoebe. “Boy—you—bombed—there!” she gasped.

    “Yeah. OKAY!” he yelled. “What’s so funny?”

    “She’s a—statistical—linguist!” gasped Phoebe.

    After several stunned moments, Sol managed to say, very faintly: “Crap.”

    “No; truly,” said Phoebe, wiping her eyes. She blew her nose loudly.

    “Geddouda here,” he said weakly.

    “She lectures at the university: only part-time at the moment, because of the three kids. And she’s written several books. You could hardly have said anything more—”

    “Yeah, yeah.”

    “More calculated to show yourself up,” finished Phoebe kindly.

    “I’m goin’ right back into that there sitting-room and drink myself silly!” he promised.

    “Do that. Someone might as well keep Jim and Laura company,” she returned, grinning.

    Sol pushed the door firmly shut and said, leaning on the inside of it: “But first you can come right on over here and give me a kiss. Because otherwise I’m sure never gonna work up the guts to—”

    Phoebe stopped his mouth in the indicated fashion.

    “That’s better,” he said at last into her neck.

    “Mm,” she sighed.

    “I was beginning to wonder if you’d gone off of this simple Yankee boy.”

    “I’m never quite sure of the appropriate etiquette on these occasions,” she said frankly. “I didn’t want to embarrass you.”

    Sol returned to the sitting-room with a great big smirk on his face.

Next part of Chapter 5:

https://theamericanrefugeeanovel.blogspot.com/2022/11/high-society-part-2.html