Grand Days Read Free Page B

responsiveness. Again, she quickly saw that it was not a nasty embarrassment he wished upon her. She decided to try her most difficult way, the Way of All Doors, which required her to try to be adept at talking of all things with all people. It would be the grandest way of all if she could ever confidently install it.
    But he spoke. ‘I’ll begin again.’ He was not teasing now and was going back to comradeship. ‘You see, Vyvyan Holland, whois a member of the Saintsbury Club, is Oscar Wilde’s son.’
    â€˜Oscar Wilde’s son ?’ There was still more to the anecdote. The play was not finished.
    â€˜The mother adopted her family name because of the scandal.’
    â€˜I know of the scandal of Oscar Wilde,’ she said firmly, testing her footing along the ledge of the Way of All Doors. ‘Even in Australia we have heard of the scandal of Oscar Wilde.’ As she said it she was disappointed with herself. She’d sworn never to apologise for her nationality.
    â€˜Of course you have. Anyhow, Oscar Wilde’s son is a member of my club and, in De Profundis , Oscar Wilde recalls a meal he had with Lord Alfred Douglas.’
    â€˜His lover,’ she said. ‘Oscar Wilde’s boyfriend.’ She strengthened it with spice. ‘His concubine.’ Again firmly using the Way of All Doors and finding that she could go that Way with poise.
    He seemed eased by her frankness. ‘Yes, his lover. Wilde describes a meal of ortolans eaten at the Savoy with Lord Alfred, and there I was, eating these with Vyvyan Wilde-Holland just last night at the Club des Cent. So, you see — that is my anecdote.’
    The warmth of shared purpose returned to the lunch for two, in the railway dining car, at the first sitting, on the train from Paris to Geneva.
    As she looked over his anecdote she forgave him for his playing with her, and appreciated it as a rather breathtaking anecdote. Rather fine. The teasing had been more like gentle tickling. But the anecdote had, still, a question mark hooked into it, which she hadn’t time to unhook.
    She said to him, ‘That was a fine anecdote.’
    â€˜Thank you. I’m glad it pleased you. Finally.’
    â€˜I have not eaten ortolans,’ she said cautiously, his conversation having not told her what ortolans were.
    â€˜I was shown how to eat them only last night by Monsieur Massenat,’ he said, and she noted that by his confession of a minor ignorance he was either admitting their equality or pretending to an equality, or appealing for an equality, careful now not to play with her or to try to overwhelm her. ‘Monsieur Massenat took the bird by the head and put its body into his mouth. Thus.’ He mimed this.
    Conversationally, the waiting, at least, had worked. She now knew something of what an ortolan was.
    â€˜Biting through the neck, you chew gently, rejecting any tough morsels. The tiny bones will break. I felt like a cat. So small are the birds that three make only a moderate size course. We accompanied it with a burgundy from 1919, Clos de Tart.’
    â€˜We have had to travel some distance to reach the conclusion of this anecdote,’ she laughed, ‘which I now observe — checking back over the conversation — makes no reference to oxtail Florentine.’ They both laughed.
    â€˜I apologise. I talk in riddles.’
    It was no riddle, it was a tease, but she had wriggled out of it and Tipped him Up, even enjoyed the tickling a little, and they were back together in the conversation. She had wriggled out of it affectionately and had not recoiled. She had granted him, she hoped, some of the pleasure of his tease, and she hoped she had not gone out of the reach of his flirting.
    She laughed, and executed the Way of Companionable Directness. ‘It was a tease — you were trying to tease me, if not to embarrass me, for your own fun, and to flirt.’ They laughed as he agreed, and