CHAPTER 2

       Assembly

      I

      On the following day Mandrake observed his host to be in a high state of excitement. In spite of his finicky mannerisms and his somewhat old-maidish pedantry, it would never have occurred to his worst enemy to call Jonathan effeminate. Nevertheless he had many small talents that are unusual in a man. He took a passionate interest in the appointments of his house. He arranged flowers to perfection, and on the arrival of three boxes from a florist in Great Chipping, darted at them like a delighted ant. Mandrake was sent to the Highfold glasshouses for tuberoses and gardenias. Jonathan, looking odd in one of his housekeeper’s aprons, buried himself in the flower room. He intended, he said, to reproduce bouquets from the French prints in the boudoir. Mandrake, whose floral tastes ran austerely to dead flowers, limped off to the library and thought about his new play, which was to represent twelve aspects of one character, all speaking together.

      The morning was still and extremely cold. During the night there had been another light fall of snow. The sky was leaden and the countryside seemed to wait ominously for some portent from the north. Jonathan remarked several times, and with extraordinary glee, that they were in for a severe storm. Fires were lit in all the guest rooms, and from the Highfold chimneys rose columns of smoke, lighter in tone than the clouds they seemed to support. Somewhere up on Cloudyfold a farmer was moving his sheep, and the drowsy sound of their slow progress seemed uncannily near. So dark was the sky that the passage of the hours was seen only in a stealthy alteration of shadows. Jonathan and Mandrake lunched by lamplight. Mandrake said that he felt the house to be alive with anticipation, but whether of a storm without or within he was unable to decide. ‘It’s a grisly day,’ said Mandrake.

      ‘I shall telephone Sandra Compline and suggest that she brings her party for tea,’ said Jonathan. ‘It will begin to snow again before six o’clock, I believe. What do you think of the house, Aubrey? How does it feel?’

      ‘Expectant and luxurious.’

      ‘Good. Excellent. You have finished? Let us make a little tour of the rooms, shall we? Dear me, it’s a long time since I looked forward so much to a party.’

      They made their tour. In the great drawing room, seldom used by Jonathan, cedar-wood fires blazed at each end. Mrs Pouting and two maids had put glazed French covers on the armchairs and the bergere sofas.

      ‘Summertime uniforms,’ said Jonathan, ‘but they chime with the flowers and are gay. Admire my flowers, Aubrey. Don’t they look pleasant against the linen-fold walls? Quite a tone-poem, I consider.’

      ‘And when seven furious faces are added,’ said Mandrake, ‘the harmony will be complete.’

      ‘You can’t frighten me. The faces will be all smiles in less than no time, you may depend on it. And, after all, even if they are not to be reconciled, I shall not complain. My play will be less pretty but more exciting.’

      ‘Aren’t you afraid that they will simply refuse to stay under the same roof with each other?’

      ‘They will at least stay tonight, and tomorrow, I hope, will be so inclement that the weather alone will turn the balance.’

      ‘Your courage is amazing. Suppose they all sulk in separate rooms?’

      ‘They won’t. I won’t let ’em. Confess now, Aubrey, aren’t you a little amused, a little stimulated?’

      Mandrake grinned. ‘I feel all the more disagreeable sensations of first-night nerves, but – all right, I’ll admit to a violent interest.’

      Jonathan laughed delightedly and took his arm. ‘You must see the bedrooms and the boudoir and the little smoking room. I’ve allowed myself some rather childish touches, but they may amuse you. Elementary symbolism. Character as expressed by vegetation. As the florists’ advertisements would have it, I have said it with flowers.’

      ‘Said what?’

      ‘What I think of every one.’

      They crossed the hall to the left of the front door and entered the room that Jonathan liked to call the boudoir, an Adams sitting room painted a light green and hung with French brocades whose pert garlands were repeated in nosegays which Jonathan had set in the window and upon a spinet and a writing-desk.

      ‘Here,’ said Jonathan, ‘I hope the ladies will forgather to write, gossip and knit. Miss Chloris, I should explain, is a “Wren,” not yet called up, but filling the interim with an endless succession of indomitable socks. My distant cousin, Hersey, is also a vigorous knitter. I feel sure poor Sandra is hard at work on some repellent comfort.’

      ‘And Madame Lisse?’

      ‘The picture of Madame in close co-operation with strands of khaki wool is one which could be envisaged only by a surrealist. No doubt you will find yourself able to encompass it. Come along.’

      The boudoir opened into the small smoking room where Jonathan permitted a telephone and a radio set, but which, he explained, had in other respects remained unaltered since his father died. Here were leather chairs, a collection of sporting prints flanked by a collection of weapons and by fading groups of Jonathan and his Cambridge friends in the curious photographic postures of the nineties. Above the mantelpiece hung a trout rod complete with cast and fly.

      ‘Sweet-scented tobacco plants, you see,’ said Jonathan, ‘in pots. A trifle obvious, but I couldn’t resist them. Now the library.’

      The library opened out of the smoking room. It had an air of being the most-used room in the house, and indeed it was here that Jonathan could generally be found among a company of books that bore witness to generations of rather freakish taste and to the money by which such taste could be gratified. Jonathan had added lavishly to the collection. His books ranged oddly from translations of Turkish and Persian verse to the works of the most inscrutable of the moderns, and text-books on criminology and police detection. He had a magpie taste in reading, but it was steadied by a constancy of devotion to the Elizabethans.

      ‘Here,’ he said, ‘I was troubled by an embarrassment of riches. A Shakespearian nosegay seemed a little vieux jeu, but on the other hand it had the advantage of being easily recognized. I was tempted by Leigh Hunt’s conceit of “saying all one feels and thinks in clever daffodils and pinks; in puns of tulips and in phrases, charming for their truth, of daisies.” Unfortunately the glasshouses were not equal to Leigh Hunt in mid-winter, but here, you see, is the great Doctor’s ensign of supreme command, the myrtle, and here, after all, is most of poor Ophelia’s rather dreary little collection. The sombre note predominates. But upstairs I have let myself go again. A riot of snowdrops for Chloris (you take the allusion to William Stone’s charming conceit?), tuberoses and even some orchids for Madame Lisse, and so on.’

      ‘And for Mrs Compline?’

      ‘A delightful arrangement of immortelles.’

      ‘Aren’t you rather cruel?’

      ‘Dear me, I don’t think so,’ said Jonathan, with a curious glance at his guest. ‘I hope you admire the really superb cactus on your windowsill, Aubrey. John Nash might pause before it, I believe, and begin to plan some wonderful arrangement of greys and elusive greens. And now I must telephone to Sandra Compline, and after that to Dr Hart. I am making