‘Embrace me,’ said Mrs Fitch.
‘Please, I beg you,’ said Raymond.
‘You are a homosexual. A queer. I had forgotten that.’
‘I’m not a homosexual,’ shouted Raymond, aware that his voice was piercingly shrill. Heads turned and he felt the eyes of the Tamberleys’ guests. He had been heard to cry that he was not a homosexual, and people had wished to see for themselves.
‘Excuse me,’ said a voice. ‘I’m sorry about this.’
Raymond turned his head and saw Mrs Fitch’s husband standing behind him. ‘Come along now, Adelaide,’ said Mrs Fitch’s husband. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said again to Raymond. ‘I didn’t realize she’d had a tankful before she got here.’
‘I’ve been telling him a thing or two,’ said Mrs Fitch. ‘We’ve exchanged life-stories.’
Raymond felt her legs slip away, and he felt her hand withdraw itself from the pocket of his jacket. He nodded in a worldly way at her husband and said in a low voice that he understood how it was.
‘He’s a most understanding chap,’ said Mrs Fitch. ‘He has a dead woman in Streatham.’
‘Come along now,’ordered her husband in a rough voice, and Raymond saw that the man’s hand gripped her arm in a stern manner.
‘I was telling that man,’ said Mrs Fitch again, seeming to be all of a sudden in an ever greater state of inebriation. Very slowly she said: ‘I was telling him what I am and what you are, and what the Tamberleys think about him. It has been home-truths corner here, for the woman with an elderly face and for the chap who likes to dress himself out as a children’s nurse and go with women in chauffeur’s garb. Actually, my dear, he’s a homosexual.’
‘Come along now,’ said Mrs Fitch’s husband. ‘I’m truly sorry,’ he added to Raymond. ‘It’s a problem.’
Raymond saw that it was all being conducted in a most civilized manner. Nobody shouted in the Tamberleys’ drawing-room, nobody noticed the three of them talking quite quietly in a corner. The Maltese maid in fact, not guessing for a moment that anything was amiss, came up with her tray of drinks and before anyone could prevent it, Mrs Fitch had lifted one to her lips. ‘In vino Veritas,’ she remarked.
Raymond felt his body cooling down. His shirt was damp with sweat, and he realized that he was panting slightly and he wondered how long that had been going on. He watched Mrs Fitch being aided through the room by her husband. No wonder, he thought, the man had been a little severe with her, if she put up a performance like that very often; no wonder he treated her like an infant. She was little more than an infant, Raymond considered, saying the first thing that came into her head, and going on about sex. He saw her lean form briefly again, through an opening in the crowded room, and he realized without knowing it that he had craned his neck for a last glimpse. She saw him too, as she smiled and bowed at Mrs Tamberley, appearing to be sober and collected. She shook her head at him, deploring him or suggesting, even, that he had been the one who had misbehaved. Her husband raised a hand in the air, thanking Raymond for his understanding.
Raymond edged his way through all the people and went to find a bathroom. He washed his face, taking his spectacles off and placing them beside a piece of lime-green soap. He was thinking that her husband was probably just like any other man at a cocktail party. How could the husband help it, Raymond thought, if he had not aged and if other women found him pleasant to talk to? Did she expect him to have all his hair plucked out and have an expert come to line his face?
Leaning against the wall of the bathroom, Raymond thought about Mrs Fitch. He thought at first that she was a fantastic woman given to fantastic statements, and then he embroidered on the thought and saw her as being more subtle than that. ‘By heavens!’ said Raymond aloud to himself. She was a woman, he saw, who was pathetic in what she did, transferring the truth about herself to other people. She it was, he guessed, who was the grinding bore, so well known for the fact that she had come to hear the opinion herself and in her unbalanced way sought to pretend that others were bores in order to push the thing away from her. She was probably even, he thought, a little perverted, the way in which she had behaved with her knees, and sought to imbue others with this characteristic too, so that she, for the moment, might feel rid of it: Mrs Fitch was clearly a case for a psychiatrist. She had said that her husband was a maniac where women were concerned; she had said that he had taken Mrs Anstey to a bed in King’s Cross when Mrs Anstey was standing only yards away, in front of her eyes. In vino veritas, she had said, for no reason at all.
One morning, Raymond imagined, poor Mr Fitch had woken up to find his wife gabbling in that utterly crazy manner about her age and her hair and the lines on her body. Probably the woman was a nuisance with people who came to the door, the deliverers of coal and groceries, the milkman and the postman. He imagined the Express Dairy on the telephone to Mrs Fitch’s husband, complaining that the entire milk-round was daily being disorganized because of the antics of Mrs Fitch, who was a bore with everyone.
It accounted for everything, Raymond thought, the simple fact that the woman was a psychological case. He closed his eyes and sighed with relief, and remembered then that he had read in newspapers about women like Mrs Fitch. He opened his eyes again and looked at himself in the mirror of the Tamberleys’ smallest bathroom. He touched his neat moustache with his fingers and smiled at himself to ascertain that his teeth were not carrying a piece of cocktail food. ‘You have a tea-leaf on your tooth,’ said the voice of Nanny Wilkinson, and Raymond smiled, remembering her.
Raymond returned to the party and stood alone watching the people talking and laughing. His eyes passed from face to face, many of which were familiar to him. He looked for the Griegons with whom last year he had spent quite some time, interesting them in a small sideboard that he had just had french polished, having been left the sideboard in the will of a godmother. The man, a Mr French amusingly enough, had come to Raymond’s flat to do the job there in the evenings, having explained that he had no real facilities or premises, being a postman during the day. ‘Not that he wasn’t an expert polisher,’ Raymond had said. ‘He did a most beautiful job. I heard of him through Mrs Adams who lives in the flat below. I thought it was reasonable, you know: seven guineas plus expenses. The sideboard came up wonderfully.’
‘Hullo,’ said Raymond to the Griegons.
‘How d’you do?’ said Mrs Griegon, a pleasant, smiling woman, not at all like Mrs Fitch. Her husband nodded at Raymond, and turned to a man who was talking busily.
‘Our name is Griegon,’ said Mrs Griegon. ‘This is my husband, and this is Dr Oath.’
‘I know,’ said Raymond, surprised that Mrs Griegon should say who she was since they had all met so pleasantly a year ago. ‘How do you do, Dr Oath?’ he said, stretching out a hand.
‘Yes,’ said Dr Oath, shaking the hand rapidly while continuing his conversation.
Mrs Griegon said: ‘You haven’t told us your name.’
Raymond, puzzled and looking puzzled, said that his name was Raymond Bamber. ‘But surely you remember our nice talk last year?’ he said. ‘I recall it all distinctly: I was telling you about Mr French who came to polish a sideboard, and how he charged only seven guineas.’
‘Most reasonable,’ said Mrs Griegon. ‘Most reasonable.’
‘We stood over there,’ explained Raymond, pointing. ‘You and I and Mr Griegon. I remember I gave you my address and telephone number in case if you were ever in Bayswater you might like to pop in to see the sideboard. You said to your husband at the time, Mrs Griegon, that you had one or two pieces that could do with stripping down and polishing, and Mr French, who’ll travel anywhere in the evenings and being, as you say, so reasonable –’