A Wreath for Rivera

There they sat, wreathed in cigar smoke, candle-lit, an unreal group. He saw them as three dissonant figures at the centre of an intolerable design. “Bellairs,” he told himself, “is a gaiety merchant. Gaiety!” How fashionable, he reflected, the word had been before the war. Let’s be gay, they had all said, and glumly embracing each other had tramped and shuffled, while men like Breezy Bellairs made their noise and did their smiling for them. They christened their children “Gay,” they used the word in their drawing-room comedies and in their dismal, dismal songs. “Gaiety!” muttered the disgruntled and angry Edward. “A lovely word, but the thing itself, when enjoyed, is unnamed. There’s Cousin George, who is undoubtedly a little mad, sitting, like a mouth-piece for his kind, between a jive merchant and a cad. And here’s Fée anticking inside the unholy circle while Cousin Cécile solemnly gyrates against the beat. In an outer ring, I hope unwillingly, is Lisle, and here I sit, as sore as hell, on the perimeter.” He glanced up and found that Rivera was looking at him, not directly but out of the corners of his eyes. “Sneering,” thought Edward, “like an infernal caricature of himself.”

“Buck up, Ned,” Lord Pastern said, grinning at him. “We haven’t had a word from you. You want takin’ out of yourself. Bit of gaiety, what?”

“By all means, sir,” said Edward. A white carnation had fallen out of the vase in the middle of the table. He took it up and put it in his coat. “The blameless life,” he said.

Lord Pastern cackled and turned to Bellairs. “Well, Breezy, if you think it’s all right, we’ll order the taxis for a quarter past ten. Think you can amuse yourselves till then?” He pushed the decanter towards Bellairs.

“Sure, sure,” Bellairs said. “No, thanks a lot, no more. A lovely wine, mind you, but I’ve got to be a good boy.”

Edward slid the port on to Rivera, who, smiling a little more broadly, refilled his glass.

“I’ll show you the blanks and the revolver, when we move,” said Lord Pastern. “They’re in the study.” He glanced fretfully at Rivera, who slowly pulled his glass towards him. Lord Pastern hated to be kept waiting. “Ned, you look after Carlos, will you? D’you mind, Carlos? I want to show Breezy the blanks. Come on, Breezy.”

Manx opened the door for his uncle and returned to the table. He sat down and waited for Rivera to make the first move. Spence came in, lingered for a moment and withdrew. There followed a long silence.

At last Rivera stretched out his legs and held his port to the light. “I am a man,” he said, “who likes to come to the point. You are Félicité’s cousin, yes?”

“No.”

“No?”

“I’m related to her stepfather.”

“She has spoken of you as her cousin.”

“A courtesy title,” said Edward.

“You are attached to her, I believe.”

Edward paused for three seconds and then said, “Why not?”

“It is not at all surprising,” Rivera said and drank half his port. “Carlisle also speaks of you as her cousin. Is that too a courtesy title?”

Edward pushed back his chair. “I’m afraid I don’t see the point of all this,” he said.

“The point? Certainly. I am a man,” Rivera repeated, “who likes to come to the point. I am also a man who does not care to be cold-shouldered or to be — what is the expression? — taken down a garden path. I find my reception in this house unsympathetic. This is displeasing to me. I meet, at the same time, a lady who is not displeasing to me. Quite on the contrary. I am interested. I make a tactful inquiry. I ask, for example, what is the relationship of this lady to my host. Why not?”

“Because it’s a singularly offensive question,” Edward said and thought: “My God, I’m going to lose my temper.”

Rivera made a convulsive movement of his hand and knocked his glass to the floor. They rose simultaneously.

“In my country,” Rivera said thickly, “one does not use such expressions without a sequel.”

“Be damned to your country.”

Rivera gripped the back of his chair and moistened his lips. He emitted a shrill belch. Edward laughed. Rivera walked towards him, paused, and raised his hand with the tips of the thumb and middle finger daintily pressed together. He advanced his hand until it was close to Edward’s nose and, without marked success, attempted to snap his fingers. “Bastard,” he said cautiously. From the distant ballroom came a syncopated roll of drums ending in a crash of cymbals and deafening report.

Edward said: “Don’t be a fool, Rivera.”

“I laugh at you till I make myself vomit.”

“Laugh yourself into a coma if you like.”

Rivera laid the palm of his hand against his waist. “In my country this affair would answer itself with a knife,” he said.

“Make yourself scarce or it’ll answer itself with a kick in the pants,” said Edward. “And if you worry Miss Wayne again I’ll give you a damn’ sound hiding.”

“Aha!” cried Rivera. “So it is not Félicité but the cousin. It is the enchanting little Carlisle. And I am to be warned off, ha? No, no, my friend.” He backed away to the door. “No, no, no, no.”

“Get out.”