“And the vicar said, ‘I, myself, Mrs Darlinghurst, will tell the bishop about your selfless dedication to the organ fund’. He has no need to say it, of course but I thought it was most Christian of him, don’t you?”
“Oh, yes... yes... Most, er, perceptive of him.”
“That’s what I thought. So I said to him, ‘Vicar,’ I said, ‘I’m only a humble widow...’ ”
What other secrets of her private life she had vouchsafed to the vicar I was never to learn, because from behind me came an earsplitting scream of recognition.
“Darling! Darling, I’m here,” came Ursula’s voice.
I turned round, and only just in time for Ursula flung herself into my arms and fastened her mouth on mine with the avidity of a starving bumble bee sighting the first clover flower of the season. When I finally managed to extricate myself from Ursula’s octopus-like embrace I looked round for Mrs Darlinghurst, only to find her retreating along the platform, backwards, with a look on her face of one, who having led a sheltered life, is suddenly confronted with the more unsavoury aspects of a Roman orgy. I smiled feebly at her, waved good-bye, and then taking Ursula firmly by the arm steered her out of the station while endeavouring to remove what felt like several pounds of lipstick from my mouth.
Ursula was dressed in a very smart blue outfit that highlighted her unfairly enormous eyes, and she wore elegant white lace gloves. Over her arm she carried a curious basket like a miniature hamper with a large handle, which presumably contained sufficient cosmetics to withstand a siege of several years.
“Darling,” she said, peering raptly into my face, “I am going to enjoy this. Such a lovely day! Lunch alone with you, and then the concert... Uuummm! Paradise!”
A number of men in the ticket hall, on hearing her invest the word “paradise” with a sort of moaning lechery that had to be heard to be believed, looked at me enviously, and I began to feel better.
“I’ve booked a table...” I began.
“Darling,” interrupted Ursula, “I simply must go to the loo. There wasn’t one on the train. Buy me a newspaper so I can go.”
Several people stopped and stared.
“Hush!” I said hurriedly, “Not so loud. What do you want a newspaper for? They have paper in the loos.”
“Yes, but it’s so thin, darling. I like a nice thick layer on the seat,” she explained, in a clear voice that carried like a chime of bells on a frosty night.
“On the seat?” I asked.
“Yes. I never sit on the seat,” she said. “Because I knew a girl once who sat on a loo seat and got acme.”
“Don’t you mean acne?” I asked, confused.
“No, no!” she said impatiently. “Acme. You come out all over in the most hideous red spots. Do hurry and buy me a newspaper, darling. I’m simply dying.
So I bought her a paper and watched her disappear into the ladies, flourishing it as a deterrent to germs, and I wondered if any one of her numerous boyfriends had ever described her as the acne of perfection.
She emerged, several minutes later, smiling and apparently germ-free, and I bundled her into a taxi and drove her to the restaurant where I’d booked a table. When we got to the restaurant and had established ourselves the waiter unfurled two enormous menus in front of us. Remembering my friend’s advice I removed the menu deftly from Ursula’s hands.
“I’ll choose for you,” I said. “I’m a gourmet.”
“Are you really?” said Ursula. “But you’re not Indian, are you?”
“What has that got to do with it?” I inquired.
“Well, I thought they came from India,” she said.
“What? Gourmets?” I asked, puzzled.
“Yes,” she said. “Aren’t they those people that spend all their time looking at their tummy?”
“No, no. You’re thinking of something quite different,” I said. “Anyway, be quiet and let me order.”
I ordered a modest but substantial lunch and a bottle of wine to go with it. Ursula chattered on endlessly. She had an enormous variety of friends, all of whom she expected you to know, and whose every concern was of interest to her. From the stories that she told it was obvious that she spent the greater part of her life trying to re-organise the lives of her friends, whether they wanted her to or not. She babbled on like a brook and I listened entranced.
“I’m very worried about Toby,” she confided to me, over the prawn cocktail. “I’m very worried about him indeed. I think he’s got a secret passion for someone and it’s just eating him away. But Daddy doesn’t agree with me. Daddy says he’s well on the way to being an incoherent.”
“An incoherent?”
“Yes. You know, he drinks too much.”
So rich is the English language, I reflected, that this word could, in fact, with all fairness, be used to describe a drunk.
“He ought to join Incoherents Anonymous,” I said without thinking.
“What are they?” asked Ursula, wide-eyed.
“Well, they’re a sort of secret society of... of... um... incoherents, who try and help each other to... well, to give it up and become... um... become...”
“Become coherents!” said Ursula with a squeak of delight.
I must confess this end result had escaped me.
Later on, over her filet mignon, she leant forward and fixed me with her blue, intense stare.
“Do you know about Susan?” she hissed. Her hiss was more clearly audible than her normal voice.
“Er... no,” I confessed.
“Well, she became pregnant. She was going to have an illiterate baby.”
I pondered this news.
“With modem methods of education...” I began.
“Don’t be silly! She didn’t use anything,” hissed Ursula. “That’s what’s so stupid, and her father, naturally, said he wasn’t going to have a lot of illiterates darkening his hearth.”
“Naturally,” I said. “It would turn it into a sort of Do-the-girls Hall.”
“Exactly!” she said. “So her father said she must have an ablution.”
“To wash away sin?” I inquired.
“No, silly! To get rid of the baby.”
“And did she have it?” I asked.
“Yes. He sent her up to London. It cost an awful lot of money and the poor dear came back looking terrible. I do think her father was unfair.”
By this time most of the other tables in the restaurant were listening to our conversation with bated breath.
Over coffee Ursula was telling me a long and very involved story about some friend of hers, who was in dire distress, that she had wanted to help. I hadn’t listened with any great attention until she suddenly said,
“Well, I couldn’t do anything about it then, because Mummy was in bed with a cold and Daddy wanted me to cook him an early lunch because he was taking the bull to the vet to have him castigated... And so...”
“Your father was doing what?” I asked.
“Taking the bull to the vet to have him castigated. He was getting terribly fierce and dangerous.”
How, I wondered, enraptured by the thought, did one castigate a fierce and dangerous bull? But I was too wise to ask Ursula.
“Look, hurry up and finish your coffee,” I said. “Otherwise we’ll be late for the concert.”
“Oooo, yes,” she said. “We mustn’t be late.”
She gulped down her coffee and I paid the bill and ushered her out of the restaurant. We walked through what are laughingly called the Pleasure Gardens of Bournemouth among the faded rhododendrons and the paddling pool and came eventually to the Pavilion.
As we made our way to our seats Ursula insisted on taking her miniature hamper with her.