G.P.F. dropped the letter delicately and turned over the sheaf of paper clippings. “Peer Sued for Kidnapping Stepdaughter,” he read: “Peer Practices Nudism”; “Scene in Mayfair Courtroom”; “Lord Pastern Again”; “Lady Pastern and Bagott Seeks Divorce”; “Peer Preaches Free Love”; “Rebuke from Judge”; “Lord Pastern Now Goes Yogi”; “Boogie-Woogie Peer”; “Infinite Variety.”
G.P.F. glanced through the letterpress beneath these headlines, made a small impatient sound and began to write very rapidly indeed. He was still at this employment when, glancing up at the blinded window, he saw, as if on a half-developed negative, a shoulder emerge through the fog. A face peered, a hand was pressed against the glass and then closed to tap twice. G.P.F. unlocked his door and returned to his desk. A moment later a visitor came coughing down the passage. “Entrez!” called G.P.F. modishly and his visitor walked into the room.
“Sorry to harry you,” he said. “I thought you’d be in, this morning. It’s the monthly subscription to that relief fund. Your signature to the cheque.”
G.P.F. swivelled round in his chair and held out Lady Pastern’s letter. His visitor took it, whistled, read it through and burst out laughing. “Well!” he said. “Well, honestly.”
“Press cuttings,” said G.P.F. and handed them to him.
“She must be in a fizz! That it should come to this!”
“Damned if I know why you say that.”
“I’m sorry. Of course there’s no reason, but — How have you replied?”
“A stinger.”
“May I see it?”
“By all means. There it is. Give me the cheque.”
The visitor leant over the desk, at the same time reading the copy sheets and groping in his breast pocket for his wallet. He found a cheque and, still reading, laid it on the desk. Once he looked up quickly as if to speak but G.P.F. was bent over the cheque so he finished the letter.
“Strong,” he said.
“Here’s the cheque,” said G.P.F.
“Thank you.” He glanced at it. The signature was written in a small, fat and incredibly neat calligraphy: “G. P. Friend.”
“Don’t you ever sicken of all this?” the visitor asked abruptly with a gesture towards the wire basket.
“Plenty of interest. Plenty of variety.”
“You might land yourself in a hell of a complication one of these days. This letter, for instance — ”
“Oh, fiddle,” said G.P.F. crisply.
“Listen,” said Mr. Breezy Bellairs, surveying his band. “Listen, boys, I know he’s dire but he’s improving. And listen, it doesn’t matter if he’s dire. What matters is this, like I’ve told you: he’s George Settinger, Marquis of Pastern and Bagott, and he’s Noise Number One for publicity. From the angle of news value, not to mention snob value, he’s got all the rest of the big shots fighting to buy him a drink.”
“So what?” asked the tympanist morosely.
“ ‘So what’! Ask yourself, what. Look, Syd, I’m keeping you on with the Boys, first, last and all the while. I’m paying you full-time, same as if you played full-time.”
“That’s not the point,” said the tympanist. “The point is I look silly, stepping down half-way through the bill on a gala night. No! I tell you straight, I don’t like it.”
“Now, listen, Syd. Listen boy. You’re featured aren’t you? What am I going to do for you? I’m going to give you a special feature appearance. I’m going to fetch you out on the floor by me and take a star call, aren’t I? That’s more than I’ve ever done, boy. It’s good, isn’t it? With that coming to you, you should worry if the old bee likes to tear himself to shreds in your corner for half an hour, on Saturday night.”
“I remind you,” said Mr. Carlos Rivera, “that you speak of a gentleman who shall be my father-in-law.”
“O.K., O.K., O.K. Take it easy, Carlos, take it easy, boy! That’s fine,” Mr. Bellairs gabbled, flashing his celebrated smile. “That’s all hunky-dory by us. This is in committee, Carlos. And didn’t I say he was improving? He’ll be good, pretty soon. Not as good as Syd. That’d be a laughable notion. But good.”
“As you say,” said the pianist. “But what’s all this about his own number?”
Mr. Bellairs spread his hands. “Well, now, it’s this way, boys. Lord Pastern’s got a little idea. It’s a little idea that came to him about this new number he’s written.”
“ ‘Hot Guy Hot Gunner’?” said the pianist, and plugged out a phrase in the treble. “What a number!” he said without expression.
“Take it easy now, Happy. This little number his lordship’s written will be quite a little hit when we’ve hotted it up.”
“As you say.”
“That’s right. I’ve orchestrated it and it’s snappy. Now, listen. This little idea he’s got about putting it across is quite a notion, boys — in its way. It seems Lord Pastern’s got round to thinking he might go places as a soloist with this number. You know. A spot of hot drumming and loosing off a six-shooter.”
“For crisake!” the tympanist said idly.
“The idea is that Carlos steps out in a spot light and gives. Hot and crazy, Carlos. Burning the air. Sky the limit.”
Mr. Rivera passed the palm of his hand over his hair. “Very well. And then?”
“Lord Pastern’s idea is that you get right on your scooter and take it away. And when you’ve got to your craziest, another spot picks him out and he’s sitting in tin-can corner wearing a cowboy hat and he gets up and yells ‘Yippy-yi-dee’ and shoots off a gun at you and you do a trick fall — ”
“I am not an acrobat — ”
“Well, anyway you fall and his lordship goes to market and then we switch to a cod funeral march and swing it to the limit. And some of the Boys carry Carlos off and I lay a funny wreath on his breast. Well,” said Mr. Bellairs after a silence, “I’m not saying it’s dynamic, but it might get by. It’s crazy and it might be kind of good, at that.”
“Did you say,” asked the tympanist, “that we finish up with a funeral march? Was that what you said?”
“Played in the Breezy Bellairs Manner, Syd.”
“It was what he said, boys,” said the pianist. “We sign ourselves off with a corpse and muffled drums. Come to the Metronome for a gay evening.”
“I disagree entirely,” Mr. Rivera interposed. He rose gracefully. His suit was dove-grey with a widish pink stripe. Its shoulders seemed actually to curve upwards. He was bronzed. His hair was swept back from his forehead and ears in thick brilliant waves. He had flawless teeth, a slight moustache and large eyes, and he was tall. “I like the idea,” he said. “It appeals to me. A little macabre, a little odd, perhaps, but it has something. I suggest, however, a slight alteration. It will be an improvement if, on the conclusion of Lord Pastern’s solo, I draw the rod and shoot him. He is then carried out and I go into my hot number. It will be a great improvement.”
“Listen, Carlos — ”
“I repeat, a great improvement.”
The pianist laughed pointedly and the others grinned.
“You make the suggestion to Lord Pastern,” said the tympanist. “He’s going to be your ruddy father-in-law. Make it and see how it goes.”
“I think we better do it like he says, Carlos,” said Mr. Bellairs. “I think we better.”
The two men faced each other. Mr. Bellairs’s expression of geniality had become habitual. He might have been a cleverly made ventriloquist’s doll with a pale rubber face that was constantly and arbitrarily creased in a roguish grimace. His expressionless eyes with their large pale irises and enormous pupils might have been painted. Wherever he went, whenever he spoke, his lips parted and disclosed his teeth. Two dimples grooved his full cheeks, the flesh creased at the corners of his eyes. Thus, hour after hour, he smiled at the couples who danced slowly past his stand; smiled and bowed and beat the air and undulated and smiled. He sweated profusely from these exertions and at times would mop his face with a snowy handkerchief. And behind him every night his Boys, dressed in soft shirts and sculptured dinner-jackets, with steel pointed buttons and silver revers, flexed their muscles and inflated their lungs in obedience to the pulse of his celebrated miniature baton of chromium-tipped ebony, presented to him by a lady of title. Great use was made of chromium at the Metronome by Breezy’s Boys. Their instruments glittered with it, they wore wrist-watches on chromium bracelets, the band title appeared in chromium letters on the piano, which was painted in aluminium to resemble chromium. Above the Boys, a giant metronome, outlined in coloured lights, swung its chromium-tipped pendulum in the same measure. “Hi-dee-ho-dee-oh,” Mr. Bellairs would moan. “Gloomp-gloomp, giddy-iddy, hody-or-do.” For this and for the way he smiled and conducted his band he was paid three hundred pounds a week by the management of the Metronome, and out of that he paid his Boys. He was engaged with an augmented band for charity balls, and sometimes for private dances. “It was a grand party,” people would say, “they had Breezy Bellairs and everything.” In his world he was a big noise.