fancy, I crept to a secret spot under the second-floor guest-room window where a gardener’s ladder stood rooted in a jungle of jasmin. It reached only to the top of the closed first-floor shutters, and though I found a footholdabove them, on an ornamental projection, I could only just grip the sill of a half-open window from which confused sounds issued. I recognized the jangle of bedsprings and the rhythmic tinkle of a fruit knife on a plate near the bed, one post of which I could make out by stretching my neck to the utmost; but what fascinated me most were the manly moans coming from the invisible part of the bed. A superhuman effort afforded me the sight of a salmon-pink shirt over the back of a chair. He, the enraptured beast, doomed to die one day as so many are, was now repeating her name with ever increasing urgency, and by the time my foot slipped he was in full cry, thus drowning the noise of my sudden descent into a crackle of twigs and a snowstorm of petals.
10
Just before Ivor returned from his fishing trip, I moved to the Victoria, where she visited me daily. That was not enough; but in the autumn Ivor migrated to Los Angeles to join his half-brother in directing the Amenic film company (for which, thirty years later, long after Ivor’s death over Dover, I was to write the script of
Pawn Takes Queen
, my most popular at the time, but far from best, novel), and we returned to our beloved villa, in the really quite nice blue Icarus, Ivor’s thoughtful wedding present.
Sometime in October my benefactor, now in the last stage of majestic senility, came for his annual visit to Mentone, and, without warning, Iris and I dropped in to see him. His villa was incomparably grander than ours. He staggered to his feet to take between his wax-pale palms Iris’s hand and stare at her with blue bleary eyes for at least five seconds (a little eternity, socially) in a kind of ritual silence, after which he embraced me with a slow triple cross-kiss in the awful Russian tradition.
“Your bride,” he said, using, I knew, the word in the sense of
fiancée
(and speaking an English which Iris said later was exactly like mine in Ivor’s unforgettable version) “is as beautiful as your wife will be!”
I quickly told him—in Russian—that the
maire
of Cannicehad married us a month ago in a brisk ceremony. Nikifor Nikodimovich gave Iris another stare and finally kissed her hand, which I was glad to see she raised in the proper fashion (coached, no doubt, by Ivor who used to take every opportunity to paw his sister).
“I misunderstood the rumors,” he said, “but all the same I am happy to make the acquaintance of such a charming young lady. And where, pray, in what church, will the vow be sanctified?”
“In the temple we shall build, Sir,” said Iris—a trifle insolently, I thought.
Count Starov “chewed his lips,” as old men are wont to do in Russian novels. Miss Vrode-Vorodin, the elderly cousin who kept house for him, made a timely entrance and led Iris to an adjacent alcove (illuminated by a resplendent portrait by Serov, 1896, of the notorious beauty, Mme. de Blagidze, in Caucasian costume) for a nice cup of tea. The Count wished to talk business with me and had only ten minutes “before his injection.”
What was my wife’s maiden name?
I told him. He thought it over and shook his head. What was her mother’s name?
I told him that, too. Same reaction. What about the financial aspect of the marriage?
I said she had a house, a parrot, a car, and a small income—I didn’t know exactly how much.
After another minute’s thought, he asked me if I would like a permanent job in the White Cross? It had nothing to do with Switzerland. It was an organization that helped Russian Christians all over the world. The job would involve travel, interesting connections, promotion to important posts.
I declined so emphatically that he dropped the silver pill box he was holding and a number of innocent gum drops
10
Just before Ivor returned from his fishing trip, I moved to the Victoria, where she visited me daily. That was not enough; but in the autumn Ivor migrated to Los Angeles to join his half-brother in directing the Amenic film company (for which, thirty years later, long after Ivor’s death over Dover, I was to write the script of
Pawn Takes Queen
, my most popular at the time, but far from best, novel), and we returned to our beloved villa, in the really quite nice blue Icarus, Ivor’s thoughtful wedding present.
Sometime in October my benefactor, now in the last stage of majestic senility, came for his annual visit to Mentone, and, without warning, Iris and I dropped in to see him. His villa was incomparably grander than ours. He staggered to his feet to take between his wax-pale palms Iris’s hand and stare at her with blue bleary eyes for at least five seconds (a little eternity, socially) in a kind of ritual silence, after which he embraced me with a slow triple cross-kiss in the awful Russian tradition.
“Your bride,” he said, using, I knew, the word in the sense of
fiancée
(and speaking an English which Iris said later was exactly like mine in Ivor’s unforgettable version) “is as beautiful as your wife will be!”
I quickly told him—in Russian—that the
maire
of Cannicehad married us a month ago in a brisk ceremony. Nikifor Nikodimovich gave Iris another stare and finally kissed her hand, which I was glad to see she raised in the proper fashion (coached, no doubt, by Ivor who used to take every opportunity to paw his sister).
“I misunderstood the rumors,” he said, “but all the same I am happy to make the acquaintance of such a charming young lady. And where, pray, in what church, will the vow be sanctified?”
“In the temple we shall build, Sir,” said Iris—a trifle insolently, I thought.
Count Starov “chewed his lips,” as old men are wont to do in Russian novels. Miss Vrode-Vorodin, the elderly cousin who kept house for him, made a timely entrance and led Iris to an adjacent alcove (illuminated by a resplendent portrait by Serov, 1896, of the notorious beauty, Mme. de Blagidze, in Caucasian costume) for a nice cup of tea. The Count wished to talk business with me and had only ten minutes “before his injection.”
What was my wife’s maiden name?
I told him. He thought it over and shook his head. What was her mother’s name?
I told him that, too. Same reaction. What about the financial aspect of the marriage?
I said she had a house, a parrot, a car, and a small income—I didn’t know exactly how much.
After another minute’s thought, he asked me if I would like a permanent job in the White Cross? It had nothing to do with Switzerland. It was an organization that helped Russian Christians all over the world. The job would involve travel, interesting connections, promotion to important posts.
I declined so emphatically that he dropped the silver pill box he was holding and a number of innocent gum drops
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