The Act of Roger Murgatroyd by Gilbert Adair Read Free Book Online Page B

knocked the wind out of his sails. She said – you’ll forgive me, Cora, if I fail to do justice to your impeccable timing – she said, ‘
A has-been!?
’ – and I could see her gearing herself up for one of those epic cat-fights on which theatricals thrive. ‘Why, you putrid little twerp,’ she spat at him. ‘At least has-been means was! You – you weren’t, you aren’t, and you never will be!’
    Well! Raymond plainly wasn’t used to being answered back, and his face was quite a picture. I think it true to say everybody in the room, maybe even Selina, exulted in his come-uppance.
    Our exultation, unfortunately, turned out to be just a tiny bit premature. His eyes narrowing with malice, he at once turned on Cora and he said – he said – ah, well, you have to understand, Trubshawe, I – after all, Cora’s an old crony of mine and – and – all things considered, you really can’t expect me to repeat what he said. All you need to know is that he alluded to certain – to certain scurrilous rumours that have dogged her private life, rumours that have never been more than rumours, you understand, except that Gentry, who of course made his living out of scandal-mongering, proved to be unexpectedly well informed about how she obtained – no, no, I really can’t pursue this line further.
    I did decide, however, that I couldn’t abandon my friend to her fate and I told Gentry in no uncertain terms that he must apologise for such an unwarranted slur on her character. And, to my very great surprise, he did. He actually did apologise forthwith, doubtless because he could see how distressed Selina was by his conduct. For the next hour or so, during most of dinner, he was as sullen as ever but at least he behaved himself, more or less.
    It was while we were all tucking into Christmas pud that he started again with a vengeance – and, given the fool he’d been made to appear by Cora, I’m sure ‘vengeance’ is the right word. He couldn’t forgive any of us for having witnessed the spectacle.
    The first of his victims was Clem Wattis. He had been regaling us with his theories on the far-reaching consequences of the Treaty of Versailles when Raymond, tapping his lips in a feigned yawn, drawled across the table, ‘Oh dear, Vicar, I’m afraid your Great War is in danger of becoming a Great Bore!’
    Clem – as befits his calling – is someone utterly incapable of losing his temper. Indeed, according to Cynthia, he’s so absent-minded his temper is just about the only thing he never does manage to lose. So it was, I suspect, more in sorrow than in anger that he replied to Gentry, ‘I suppose, young man, you think you’re awfully clever.’
    ‘Not at all,’ came the riposte, cool as the proverbial cucumber. ‘It’s only because I’m talking to you that I
appear
clever. Almost anyone would.’
    Now even the Vicar’s dander was up.
    ‘Have you forgotten, you insolent young pup,’ hebarked, ‘it was to make the world safe for the likes of you that we fought the Great War in the first place? And this is the gratitude we get!’
    Whereupon Gentry, he – well, he – what can I say? – he started to cast aspersions on – on the, well, on the exact extent and degree of the Vicar’s wartime duties.
    By then it was evident that nothing and nobody could stem the tide of his bile. He’d somehow got wind of the sordid secrets in each of our lives – every life, as you know, Trubshawe, even the most outwardly blameless, harbours its secrets, for there’s the public life and the private life and then there exists the
secret
life – and each of us in turn came to feel what I can only call the lash of his vitriol.
    And that’s how it was that, thanks to a single gate-crashing guest, our merry little Christmas house-party was to become nothing less than a living nightmare.
    You’ll excuse me, I trust, if I decline to go into greater detail about the painful things we all had to hear about each other. All