The Parrot Cage, page 19
‘Jean-Pierre! How lovely to see you.’
‘Félicitée, so beautiful always. Here, these are for you.’
‘Orchids! You shouldn’t. I don’t need flowers. Look, I’ll just fix them in my dress and then we can go.’
‘Let me help you. Have you a pin?’
She found one, and stood patiently while he expertly pinned the absurdly expensive and rather ugly flowers at her corsage, only letting his fingers stray a little way. Then he bent his undeniably handsome face and kissed her breast just above the flowers.
He took her as usual to one of the astonishingly expensive nightclubs near Piccadilly and was greeted with all the deference due to a rich, high-tipping habitué. Flixe relinquished her cloak in the ladies’room and returned to the hall to take Jean-Pierre’s arm as they were shown to a prominent table. Champagne was quickly brought with all the paraphernalia of silver ice-bucket and thick white napkins. As soon as the waiters had left them, Jean-Pierre raised his glass.
‘Félicitée, to your beautiful eyes.’
Flixe raised her own glass in response, smiled at him over the rim of the glass, and sipped the prickly dry wine.
‘My dear,’ she said softly as she put her glass down, ‘you are far too generous. Champagne, the orchids, and all those presents you keep sending me. You spoil me.’
‘Don’t you like being spoiled?’ he asked. It might have sounded trite or leering, but it was said with such self-derision and such a twinkle in his black-brown eyes that she could not help laughing.
‘Of course I do,’ she said far more naturally. ‘But in the middle of a war?’
‘What has the war to do with us, my darling?’ he said, laying one of his firm hands over hers. ‘I’m over-age for this ridiculous conscription and you’re far too beautiful to bury yourself in khaki serge knickers and those appalling skirts. Thank goodness for your architect.’
‘Yes, indeed. I’m learning a lot, too. It’s extraordinary how one can have been visiting London all one’s life and hardly noticed the churches and parks and statues,’ answered Flixe, hoping to divert him from the subject of knickers.
‘I wish I could take you to Paris, Félicitée. But I shall. When it’s all over.’
‘Do you miss it so much?’ she asked, struck by the change in his voice and expression.
‘Of course. I’ve always thought of France as my real home – and hated my father for exiling me at school here.’
‘So why did you stay once you were grown up?’
He turned away for a moment to summon the waiter to refill their glasses.
‘The demands of his empire. Enjoying its fruits as I do, I could hardly throw it all away once it became mine. But enough of my history, Félicitée. Shall we dance?’
She rose obediently and walked with him to the small floor. As she turned to ‘melt into his embrace’as she sardonically put it to herself, she found herself looking over his shoulder straight into the disapproving face of Johnny Blenkarne, one of the friends of her childhood. His hazel eyes were outraged as they stared at her and her companion. She dropped her painted eyelids and tried to pretend that she had not recognised him.
‘My dear, what is it?’ asked Jean-Pierre caressingly.
‘What do you mean?’ she said, pulling away from him far enough to look into his dark handsome face.
‘You suddenly tensed, as though you were afraid. Chérie, you cannot be afraid of me, can you?’
Flixe smiled at him, leaned forward again and whispered into his ear.
‘But of course, Jean-Pierre. What woman would not be afraid of a man as devastating and famously dangerous as you?’
He laughed and tightened his clasp of her waist.
‘Good,’ he said, and then: ‘My darling, I’m glad you are wearing the Ombres du Paradis. I knew it would suit you. There’s something about the way its first simple fragrance yields after a moment to a richer spiciness that reminds me of you.’
Golly, thought Flixe to herself, how long am I going to be able to hold him at bay? He was a far more sophisticated man than any of the others Suvarov had asked her to charm and she was afraid that he was going to demand his pound of flesh far more insistently than any of the others.
But she managed to keep the conversation relatively impersonal until the early hours of the next morning.
They finished the first bottle of champagne and ordered another; they danced again; they ate the most expensive dishes on the menu; and she managed by deft changes of subject and the odd deliberate misunderstanding to prevent him from moving their relationship on to the next stage. And all through the evening she was aware of the brooding presence of Johnny Blenkarne.
Once he passed near their table and Flixe was afraid that he was going to accost her. To control whatever damage he might do, she leaned forward to whisper to Jean-Pierre:
‘There’s a boy over there I used to know at home. He looks horribly tight. I hope he’s not going to make a scene.’
Jean-Pierre turned deliberately to look at the young man.
‘The RAF officer? Strange that he should have chosen a place like this to ease his Benzedrine hangover.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ said Flixe, genuinely puzzled.
‘That’s all that’s the matter with him. They take it, you know, to cope with the hours they have to fly – and the terror. Then when they come off duty they have to come down from the high it gives them. They become desperately suspicious and often end up in tears. Poor children.’
Despite the apparent sympathy of his last comment, his voice was full of disdain.
‘You sound a little contemptuous,’ said Flixe, giving him a teasing smile to take the sting out of her comment.
‘Not for the children. No, I feel sorry for them. But for the way the war is managed? Yes, I have plenty of contempt.’
At last, thought Flixe silently, here we go. But he brushed aside the subject of the war and talked again about her eyes and worse, and she was forced to suggest that they dance again to break up his increasingly intimate compliments.
She got to bed, alone, at half-past one and she was far too tired to think through all the things he had said and the moments when she might have pushed him further towards the subjects about which Suvarov needed to know. But she woke seven hours later and lay running through it all then.
Jean-Pierre was far more astute than she had thought when they first met, as well as infinitely more appealing. The fact that she was coming actually to like him made the evenings she had to spend in his company almost enjoyable, and yet it added to her difficulties. The whole point of the operation was for her to make him love her – or desire her at least – so that she could demand – or cheat – information out of him. So far she was not doing very well with the information and appeared to be in danger of falling into her own trap.
The flap of the letter box and thump of the mail on to the doormat got her out of bed ten minutes later. She pulled her kimono over her nightdress and thrust her feet into a pair of sloppy sheepskin slippers before going out into the dark little hall to fetch her letters. Then she made herself a cup of ersatz coffee and took it and the post back to bed. There was to be a meeting of the architecture committee at ten-thirty, but she did not have to report to her office before then.
Most of the envelopes contained bills, but there was a sad note from Ming, back at boarding school and struggling, she wrote, to get enough information into her thick skull to pass her Higher School Certificate. Without Annie, Ming had decided that she did not want to leave school at the first opportunity and had yielded to her headmistress’s persuasions that she should take Higher so that if she wanted to try for university after the war she would be qualified to do so.
She wrote that her beloved Miss Roseheath seemed to have forgiven her for her decision, and that the new French master, a refugee called Monsieur Julien, was pleased with her progress in French. But so much of her depression came through the deliberate cheerfulness and schoolgirlish slang that Flixe reached for her own writing things so that she could send a reply straight away. That done, she turned to the last envelope and with a sinking heart saw that it had been delivered by hand and was addressed to her in Johnny Blenkarne’s handwriting. She tore open the thin blue envelope and read:
Dearest, darling Flixe, tell me you didn’t chuck me for that blasted middle-aged dago. You couldn’t have. But if not, why were you dancing with him? Come to the Berkeley with me tonight, Flixe, please. I know you said it wasn’t any good and I promised not to bother you, but I’ve only got twenty-four hours more before I go back on ops. Please, Flixe. Love Johnny.
Poor Johnny, she thought in detached sadness. But there was nothing she could do for him anymore and so she picked up her writing-paper again and tried to be kind.
Dear Johnny [she wrote slowly], Of course I didn’t. I didn’t know ‘that blasted dago’ then (in fact he’s only forty, a half-French British citizen: satisfied?). I told you when we met the last time that I’d only make you unhappy. I’ve always liked you, but I can’t love you. I’m sorry. I’d like to have been able to. You’re kind and sweet and gentle and an old, old friend. Can’t we leave it at that and stop hurting each other?
I’m sorry about the Berkeley, but I can’t see my way to it. Good luck on your next tour. Flixe.
It wasn’t really kind enough, but she had to keep him out of her hair some way or other, and it would only prolong his agony if she went out dancing with him. Shrugging, she put the note in an envelope and stuck down the flap, before getting out of bed to dress in a dark-blue coat and skirt for the meeting.
That evening when she got back to the flat she found Gerry waiting, her face porridge-coloured and tense.
‘Gerry, you look awful. Come on in and tell me all about it,’ said Flixe, unlocking the door and holding it wide open.
‘Sorry, Flixe,’ answered her sister in an oddly brittle tone. ‘I didn’t mean to lie in wait for you and pounce when you must be tired.’
Flixe laughed obediently at her elder sister’s deliberately melodramatic apology.
‘Never mind, ducky. My fatigue is not half as important as the way you’re looking. Come on in and tell me.’ She led the way back into her bedroom and pulled forward the low green nursing chair that stood under the window. ‘Sit in that while I get out of these clothes. It’s ghastly but despite the rationing I seem to be putting on weight and all my waistbands are getting tight.’
Flixe began to strip off her office clothes, every now and then looking at Gerry through her hair. When she said nothing, Flixe tried to imagine what trouble could have brought her to the flat at such an hour.
‘Are you ill, Gerry?’ she asked at last.
‘What?’ said Gerry angrily. ‘No, of course I’m not ill.’
‘Then what is it? Something’s obviously upset you badly. Please tell me. I’m sure I can help – or if not, then perhaps find someone who can. I’ve discovered that I’m quite capable after all.’
Gerry got up from the chair as though impelled by some force outside herself, and stared out of the window. Flixe looked a bit surprised and turned to face her wardrobe to pull out a pair of trousers.
‘All right,’ said Gerry eventually, looking out over Kensington High Street. ‘There doesn’t seem to be a polite way of asking this. So here goes: are you having an affair with Peter Suvarov?’
A lot of things became clear to Flixe at that moment and some of them meant that her voice came out harsh and stinging.
‘Who told you that?’ she asked.
‘So it’s true.’ Gerry looked down at her dark-brown shoes, noticing in a detached way that the lace on the right-hand shoe was frayed and would not last much longer. It would be difficult to get another pair; laces were one of the exasperating items that kept disappearing from the shops. She was trying to develop that thought in order not to have to look back at her sister or notice the faint but insistent smell of her exotic scent, when she felt Flixe’s hand digging into her shoulder.
‘Gerry, this is important, who told you?’ repeated Flixe, this time in a much gentler voice. Gerry turned away from the window to face her sister.
‘Don’t worry, Flixe. I just wanted to know, and now I do know, I’ll go. It’s all right, I won’t tell Diana.’
‘Gerry, shut up and sit down,’ said Flixe, worried both by the expression on Gerry’s face and by the thought of Peter’s security.
‘So you know about Diana, do you?’ Gerry’s comment seemed so irrelevant to all the things seething in Flixe’s brain that she missed the point of it and said briskly:
‘Yes, of course I do. He told me ages ago. But listen, Gerry, that’s not important now. You must tell me who told you. There’s much more to this than you’re supposed to know …’
‘I’ve gathered that much. Both of you have made it very clear that I’m excluded from your … friendship. But I do think one of you might have told me. You must have suspected at least that I was working for him. That alone ought to have given me some right to know what you and he were up to.’ She was silent for a moment, dealing with the massive surge of resentment. But hate it though she did, she could not eradicate it. ‘And what are you thinking of? If he’s told you all about Diana, you know he’s married. How could you, Flixe?’
‘Stop it, or I’ll have to slap you,’ came the answer, hard and quick as a whiplash. ‘You’re getting hysterical. Listen to me: it is very important that you say where you learned that we were having an affair. If you don’t want to tell me, I can ring him up and you can tell him. It is crucial that we know.’
The urgency of it all made Flixe unnaturally earnest, but the issues were too important to bury behind her usual façade of light-heartedness. She saw that something was beginning to filter through Gerry’s hysteria.
‘No one told me,’ said Gerry, slowly. ‘But you see, I saw you. I was on duty at the ARP post by Charles Street one night last month, and I saw you two getting out of a car and being very loverly on the pavement outside some flats.’
Flixe’s deep sigh might have been misread if she had not added a quick explanation.
‘Well if we convinced you, who must know how unlikely it would be, then with luck we really did persuade the man at whom the pantomime was directed.’
‘Pantomime,’ repeated Gerry stupidly. ‘You mean it was an act?’ Her voice sharpened into its normal incisiveness. ‘Flixe, what on earth are you doing?’
Flixe went to her dressing table, dropped on to the stool and started to brush her hair as she thought about the security aspects of this new development. At last she made up her mind and turned on the stool to face Gerry.
‘I’m not supposed to tell, but even Suvarov would agree, I think, that you could do more damage now from not knowing. Gerry, swear you won’t pass any of this on?’
‘Of course,’ she said, and Flixe remembered with regret the old days, when she and Gerry had been able to tell each other everything as a matter of course. Despite their very different characters and occasional jealousies, they had formed an offensive and defensive alliance against governesses, grandparents, parents and the whole adult world. Now Suvarov had put up a great fence between them. Just for a second she felt a violent resentment against him. But it was quickly gone as she remembered everything else.
‘I work for him,’ she said gently.
‘For Peter? You?’ demanded Gerry in a voice that told Flixe exactly what her elder sister thought of her capabilities.
‘Yes; don’t sound so astonished: it’s rather insulting,’ she said in the old voice of half-defensive teasing.
‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to. I was just so surprised. How long?’
‘Have I worked for him?’ Flixe began to pin her hair back in a long roll. ‘From the beginning of RE(1)R – it was I who recommended you. But never mind that now. What you saw was part of an operation.’ Flixe raised her eyes from her own to Gerry’s reflection in the dressing-table looking-glass and the expression of half-frightened hope told her a lot about Gerry’s feelings for their chief.
‘Recently,’ she went on as calmly as she could, ‘it’s been important for me to get pretty close to a group of men, very rich men, who have close contacts with France – Vichy France, and so presumably with the Jerries. The easiest, or at least the quickest, way was to make one or more of them fall for me and … well, you know.’
‘You can’t mean what I think you mean,’ protested Gerry, beginning to look a little angry again.
‘I’m afraid so. In principle at least. Never mind, it’s not important. I had to be introduced to them as a, well … somebody’s girlfriend and it was easiest and safest for it to be as Peter’s. That’s all.’ She pinned in the last of the roll of hair, and turned on her stool to face her sister again.
‘I don’t know what to say,’ announced Gerry.
‘Then don’t say it.’ There was a note of warning in Felicity’s voice that made Gerry look at her very surprised. Flixe might have taken her to task about her appearance once or twice, but she had never spoken in such a tone of cold authority before.
‘No, nothing like that,’ said Gerry quickly. ‘Lord, I haven’t any right to approve or disapprove. But, Flixe, I hadn’t realised. Was that why I hardly ever saw you – for nearly a year?’
‘Partly. Peter wanted to keep us separate and, besides …’ Flixe looked at her elder sister’s serious face and decided that she was just not going to confess to all the other feelings that had kept her away. ‘Tell me something, though, Gerry.’
‘If I can,’ she said carefully.
‘You’ve fallen for Suvarov, haven’t you?’
Gerry stiffened immediately and Flixe began to regret her question.
‘I don’t know what you mean. Do you mean that he talks about me? To you?’
‘Not much, but enough for me to have realised that he cares a lot about you. You look as though you were about to be sick.’
