Short Stories Page 4

  “Mr. Johnson’s motives, from the point of view of the Chancery Bar, were perfectly straightforward and understandable: he needed the house for his development scheme and Ronnie didn’t want to sell. If Gary had become the person with the power of sale, he would have had no choice: the loans that Johnson had made to tide him over until pay day amounted to a substantial sum—more than he had any hope of repaying. Gary had to do as he was told.”

  “A triumph indeed,” said Selena, “both for you and for the Chancery approach. And I hope acknowledged as such by the press.”

  “Well, not exactly,” said Eve. “As a matter of fact, they described it as a triumph of feminine intuition over masculine logic. Still, one can’t have everything. Yes, thank you, Basil, I will have a little more brandy.”

  Malice Among Friends

  Veronica I recognized at once. If I hesitated to cross the room and greet her with the warmth usually shown by a novelist to a distinguished literary critic, it was because of a moment’s disconcerting doubt about her companion, who looked so much like—and yet could not possibly be—so amazingly like Rosemary.

  Once, certainly, they had been friends. Until halfway through our second year at Oxford they had wandered constantly in and out of each other’s rooms, making each other coffee, sharing suppers of burnt scrambled eggs, exchanging books, records, and confidences. The friendship between them-—Veronica dark, angular, and reserved, Rosemary an effervescent blonde—seemed a striking example of the attraction of opposites. It had ended, however, in a degree of rancor that the passage of a mere twenty years could not be expected to assuage.

  A man, I need hardly say, was the cause of the trouble—one Geoffrey, reading English at Balliol—though not altogether in the usual way. Neither his attachment to Rosemary nor its reciprocation would have caused Veronica any resentment. There was, however, another factor in the equation: the editorship of Abattoir—an undergraduate journal doubtless now long forgotten, but whose columns we thought then a sure stepping-stone to intellectual glory. Geoffrey desired it above all things; so did Veronica.

  Geoffrey was the favorite for the post, Veronica an almost hopeless outsider. The members of the committee responsible for the appointment, though supporters to a man of women’s liberation, felt that to choose a woman would somehow be . . . inappropriate. A woman, at that, not notable for personality or glamour; Veronica had not in those days the style and confidence of her later years, and presented an appearance verging on dowdiness.

  A sensitive woman, in Rosemary’s position, might have suffered from conflicting loyalties. Rosemary evidently did not. She devoted herself wholeheartedly to the campaign for Geoffrey’s appointment—a campaign not of honest debate but of subtle and stealthy denigration, of damning innuendo slipped artlessly into coffeehouse gossip. She did not forget her friendship with Veronica; she remembered it all too well, lending to every scrap of malicious rumor the authority of the personal confidante. Friends of Veronica with less claim to intimacy were left powerless in rebuttal.

  Veronica’s unglamorous exterior, whispered Rosemary and rumor, was a mask for her true character. It concealed a woman of unprincipled and insatiable sensuality, knowing neither shame nor scruple in pursuit of her desires. The list of her conquests was too scandalous to be spoken aloud. Were she appointed editor, the contributors would doubtless be drawn from among her lovers; but never mind, said Rosemary and rumor--that would not unduly restrict the field, and some of them were quite distinguished.

  With the photograph, the campaign at last overreached itself.

  I happened myself that evening to be in the bar of the Eastgate, and saw Geoffrey and Rosemary at a table in the far corner, with several members of the committee crowded around them. Something was passing from hand to hand, productive of gasps and guffaws. Someone called out to me to come and look.

  The photograph showed Veronica reclining on a bed, disposed in attitude of languorous abandon and draped in folds of gauzy nylon more subtly revealing than mere nudity. Though not in any obvious sense compromising—she was alone on the bed—it could not be taken for the portrait of an innocent.

  “Isn’t it amazing,” said Rosemary, “how attractive Veronica can look when she really wants to? No, honestly, Geoffrey, I can’t possibly say who took it, that’s absolutely confidential. No, it wouldn’t be fair-after all, he is a senior member of the University, and married and so on, and I don’t suppose it was his fault, poor chap. When Veronica wants a man, she gets him.”

  At that moment, by some lucky or unlucky chance—she was not an habitué—Veronica came into the bar.

  Rosemary admitted, in the rather appalling scene that followed, that she herself had taken the photograph, having roused Veronica, late one night, to assist in experiments with a new flashlight. She admitted also, under a tempest of questioning, to a number of other lies. She had done it all, she said tearfully, to please Geoffrey. Geoffrey, in scarlet rage, denied all responsibility for her behavior, called her by several disagreeable names, and walked out. She followed him, weeping.

  For Veronica, it might be said, the affair ended not unhappily. Contempt for Geoffrey and sympathy for her might not in themselves have sufficed to ensure her appointment. Ironically, it seemed to be the notion (especially prevalent among those who had seen the photograph) that there must after all have been a grain of truth in the stories, and that Veronica was a woman with hidden depths, which was finally decisive in her favor. For the remainder of their time at Oxford, however, she and Rosemary were never again known to speak to each other.

  No—even after twenty years, it certainly could not be with Rosemary that Veronica, champagne glass in hand, was now conversing with such intimacy and animation. And yet, when they turned, smiling, in response to my greeting, I saw that it certainly was.

  It occurred to me then that they had never ceased to be friends. I felt, for the first time, rather sorry for Geoffrey.