They had neither of them enough chic to work upstairs.
Both had paid good premiums to learn Mrs. Beaver's art.
Beaver sat on beside his telephone.
Once it rang and a voice said, “Mr. Beaver?
Will you please hold the line, sir, Lady Tipping would like to speak to you.”
The intervening silence was full of pleasant expectation.
Lady Tipping had a luncheon party that day, he knew; they had spent some time together the evening before and he had been particularly successful with her.
Someone had chucked …
“Oh, Mr. Beaver, I am so sorry to trouble you.
I was wondering, could you possibly tell me the name of the young man you introduced to me last night at Madame de Trommet's?
The one with the reddish moustache.
I think he was in Parliament.”
“I expect you mean Jock Grant-Menzies.”
“Yes, that's the name.
You don't by any chance know where I can find him, do you?”
“He's in the book but I don't suppose he'll be at home now.
You might be able to get him at Brat's at about one.
He's almost always there.”
“Jock Grant-Menzies, Brat's Club.
Thank you so very much.
It is kind of you.
I hope you will come and see me some time: Goodbye.”
After that the telephone was silent.
At one o'clock Beaver despaired.
He put on his overcoat, his gloves, his bowler hat and with neatly rolled umbrella set off to his club, taking a penny bus as far as the corner of Bond Street.
The air of antiquity pervading Brat's, derived from its elegant Georgian facade and finely panelled rooms, was entirely spurious, for it was a club of recent origin, founded in the burst of bonhommie immediately after the war.
It was intended for young men, to be a place where they could straddle across the fire and be jolly in the card room without incurring scowls from older members.
But now these founders were themselves passing into middle age; they were heavier, balder and redder in the face than when they had been demobilized, but their joviality persisted and it was their turn now to embarrass their successors, deploring their lack of manly and gentlemanly qualities.
Six broad backs shut Beaver from the bar.
He settled in one of the armchairs in the outer room and turned over the pages of the New Yorker, waiting until someone he knew should turn up.
Jock Grant-Menzies came upstairs.
The men at the bar greeted him saying,
“Hullo, Jock old boy, what are you drinking?” or simply
“Well, old boy?”
He was too young to have fought in the war but these men thought he was all right; they liked him far more than they did Beaver, who, they thought, ought never to have got into the club at all.
But Jock stopped to talk to Beaver.
“Well, old boy,” he said. “What are you drinking?”
“Nothing so far.”
Beaver looked at his watch.
“But I think it's time I had one.
Brandy and ginger ale.”
Jock called the barman and then said:
“Who was the old girl you wished on me at that party last night?”
“She's called Lady Tipping.”
“I thought she might be.
That explains it.
They gave me a message downstairs that someone with a name like that wanted me to lunch with her.”
“Are you going?”
“No, I'm no good at lunch parties.
Besides I decided when I got up that I'd have oysters here.”