TABLE-TALK

By HELEN SIMPSON

THE present-day dinner table is no longer an arena: Its chill surfaces of glass or steel are not warmed by the light they throw upwards, chill and ghostly as a glow- worm's gleam ; the foods that flit over it are without body ; its wines, dismayed or muddied by traffic vibra- tion, command interest only for their kick. Rightly, no- body lingers at such tables. Which of us now can take his twelve courses like a man, with no aid save that of the life-giving sorbet in the middle ? The conversations that decorated pre-War feasts as lightly and unmeaningly as smilax are dead as mutton, or rather lamb, for mutton is the Peter Pan of proteins ; on menus at least it never grows up, and so can never die. Dinner-table talk nowa- days is brazen. The man on my right may say to me : " What's your name ? Mine's Blugg. That was my grandfather who got ten years for fraud the other day. I tout cars for a living. What's your job ? " No room is left here for those pretty exchanges that went by rule like a bout with foils. What sport is there in such a grandfather, blurted out in the first minute ? He should have taken half an hour to elicit amid a dozen delicious titillations, wondering just how far one might go, and what attitude to strike when at last, obliquely, he was arrived at.

I regret this present-day bluntness, as an old gentleman renowned for his hands with a horse may regret the passing of tandems. Let me say without any false modesty, being modern for once, that. I was good at the little lost conversational games ; finding out a neighbour's pro- fession, his politics, his favourite sport, and all without once employing the direct question, which ranked with shooting a sitting bird as the mark of the social clod.

However, one evening very lately chance threw down to me something like one of the old challenges. My right-hand neighbour was enigmatic ; whether cautious, terrified or dumb I could not at first make out. He seemed to have none of the ordinary, reflexes. At last it became clear that he was simply shy. When I saw this I let him alone, and began a monologue which lasted through the fish. A spaniel-like gratitude showed in the eyes, which now and then were lifted my way above a fork. When I had done, and was about to turn left, the shy man, in dread of the more forbidding and as yet untried woman on his right, with a kind of timid violence, as a rabbit will bite, said : " I believe I know somebody you know, old Joe Anderson." I have never had an acquaintance or friend called any- thing like that, but to say so would have nipped this conversational bud too cruelly. Here at last was a test of skill, and it was with something of the ancient glow that I answered : " Of course, Joe ! Tell me, what's he doing now ? "

" He's over this side," said the shy. man, giving away the first point, for this is a phrase only used with reference to the Atlantic. Australians and Canadians come home for a trip ; Indian and African exiles get leave ; Conti- nentals are over on a visit.

" Then why hasn't he been to see me ? " I asked indignantly.

" Well," answered the shy man, dubiously, " he mightn't like to. His wife, you know."

Now this might have meant one of three things : that Joe's wife was recently dead ; that she was drunken, or delicate ; or that she was jealous, and did not care for Joe to see old friends. I played for safety, told the truth.

" She's since my time, I .think. Anyhow, I've never met her."

" I suppose not. He keeps her rather dark. Not that it's anything to be ashamed of, really ; I mean, I suppose all of us are the unnatural ones, really. Only it's funny to think of Joe."

This offered an embarrassment of conjecture. Un- natural—what is natural ? To eat vegetables, perhaps. But one does not keep vegetarians dark. Nothing to be ashamed of—an Oxford Grouper ? They have no use for bushels. I played for time with a safe one, marvelling at the shy man's release from his bondage, and marking that the excitement which freed him, and was connected with Joe's wife, must mean something altogether out of the way.

" She keeps him in order, I expect," I said.

My neighbour disclaimed this at once; with a great air of being fair to all concerned.

" Oh no, I'll say that for her. It wouldn't do for him —business and so on. She doesn't insist on his following suit—" He broke off, and actuallylaughed. " Well, that's the wrong way to put it, but you know what ,I mean."

I did, or thought so. That demi-semi joke was the clue, and I followed it up at once along the lines of my guess. • " Poor Joe ! It's all right for home-life, I suppose. But what about parties ? Don't they tend rather to get together ? "

" Do they ? All the time. Some of them look all right. One thing Joe says, it's ruined the Folks Bergeres for him."

After that there was no room for doubt. I could place Joe. He was one of those Americans for whom Parisian choruses strip, whose naïve undying confidence in French wickedness keeps the tourist trade alive, but who had respect nevertheless for womankind and his wife's whims as befitted the citizen of a matriarchy. The wife, kept dark, but not for any reprehensible reason ; whose behaviour was more natural than ours, really ; for whose idiosyncrasy suit was the wrong word—she, of course, was a nudist.

As the talk swung centre, following a question from the host, I leaned back comfortably with my claret under my nose. Somehow and suddenly it seemed to have im- proved ; but I daresay the remembered whiff of older vintages lent it bouquet.