13
Marlow
‘They don’t spend much on heating, do they?’ Beryl said with a shiver as we walked along the freezing corridor.
To access the Green Saloon we had to cross the Marble Room. A large room filled with fine French furniture, precious carpets from the Middle East and stuffed full with priceless works of art. It gave the impression of unrivaled luxury, but once again I had the distinct impression that the house was stalked by a frightening loneliness.
A footman—not the one from earlier—held open a set of tall double doors and ushered us into the Green Saloon. It was another opulent room with more works of art and expensive antiques, but it was much warmer here. A waiter stepped forward and asked us what we wanted to drink. Beryl ordered a glass of white wine and I asked for an American size double measure of Jack Daniel’s. The British idea of a double is laughable.
‘Right away, sir,’ he said and disappeared.
There were about twelve to fifteen people milling around, talking in small groups, but at our entrance almost everyone stopped talking, and was either openly or surreptitiously sizing us up. Maybe I’d had more whiskey than I had intended, but all the men appeared to have been dressed by the same tailor.
Almost immediately my gaze tangled with Olivia’s. She was conversing with a middle-aged couple, but she threw a shy smile in my direction. I nodded and looked away, and my eyes fell upon our hostess. Lady Swanson was standing by the super-large marble fireplace listening attentively to a tall, balding man. As I watched she broke away and came toward us, smiling as if seeing us was a dream come true.
‘Hello, how terribly sweet of you to come all the way from London,’ she trilled.
‘It was kind of you to ask us, Lady Swanson.’ I nodded toward Beryl. ‘This is Beryl Baker, my assistant.’
She smiled charmingly. ‘But of course, I remember you.’
‘You have such a beautiful home,’ Beryl gushed.
‘Yes,’ she said with a little laugh, ‘we rather like it, but it can be frightfully dreary down here, you know. No proper restaurants or theaters and freezing pipes all winter.’
‘I wouldn’t mind. It’s so beautiful,’ Beryl said. Her little face was quite red with excitement. ‘Oh, and thank you so much for inviting me.’
‘Not at all. I’m delighted to have you both here.’ Lady Swanson leaned forward, her eyes sparkling as if she was excluding the rest of the room, and sharing an intimate secret that only Beryl and I were privy to. She was a socially expert individual of the highest order, obviously. ‘Was there a lot of Friday traffic on the roads?’
‘No. It was fine,’ I said, hiding my amusement.
Beryl was still nodding vigorously in agreement when I cast my eye out for the waiter. He was walking toward me with a straight back and a tray with a glass of wine and my whiskey placed on a napkin square.
Beryl and I accepted our drinks and Lady Swanson said, ‘You must let me introduce you to my husband.’
We followed her toward a large, gilded grandfather clock where a rotund, balding, florid-faced man was standing stiffly next to a stout woman with a pink face, fat, heavily bejeweled hands, and a snooty tilt to her nose. Her lipstick had bled into the leathery creases around her mouth.
‘Darling,’ Lady Swanson said, ‘this is Dr. Kane, the hypnotherapist I was telling you about. The one that’s treating Vivi.’ She turned to me. ‘Dr. Marlow Kane, my husband, Lord William Elliot Swanson.’
So that was little Olivia’s nickname—Vivi. Totally unsuitable.
‘Ah,’ he said, his bushy gray eyebrows raised, as he took my hand and pumped it heartily. I could imagine him in a waxed jacket, gun in hand, whistling for his dogs.
‘Hello,’ I said, and listened while Lady Swanson introduced the woman with the greasy lipstick. She had a double-barreled last name that I did not bother to remember. She looked at me vaguely—a subtle method of telling me I belonged to an inferior class.
‘And this is Beryl Baker, his assistant,’ Lady Swanson said. With that piece of information the woman’s eyes completely glassed over.
At that point the butler caught Lady Swanson’s eye. She nodded and excused herself. Lord Swanson nodded blankly at Beryl and turned to me. ‘Did you have much trouble getting here?’
I sighed inwardly. ‘No. It was fine.’
‘No traffic? Don’t people leave London like lemmings at the weekend?’ he boomed.
‘Not this weekend.’
‘Jolly good.’
And with that the conversation was apparently over. He smiled at us in an expansive if dim way, and nodded us away.