A View of the Empire at Sunset

by Caryl Phillips

  Lancey placed his hand over his glass to prevent the anxious waiter from pouring him any water. “The wine list, please.” They both watched as the young man scampered away, and then Lancey continued to survey the room. “I hear that once upon a time this Marco held a position at the Ritz in Paris. I’m not clear what led him to join us here in London, but everybody is talking about the man’s supposedly exquisite sense of fashion.” She looked around at the decor and could see that original paintings seemed to cover every inch of the walls, although it was difficult for her to appreciate what most of them were meant to represent. She felt a sense of relief when she spied the occasional fruit bowl, or a sunlit riverbank, among the strange shapes and odd angles which seemed to dominate the majority of the canvases. “Allegedly in his youth the man knew Wilde. In the last year or so of Wilde’s life.” It was clear that were she a good conversationalist she would, at this juncture, have had a comment or observation to make, but once again she felt as though she were failing Lancey.

  “A bottle of Champagne.” He handed the wine list back to the waiter, who continued to hover with pen and notepad in hand. “Well, what are you waiting for? We shall order our food when you return with the bottle.” She winced with embarrassment as the suitably admonished waiter beat a retreat. “Quite extraordinary. You would have thought that having made such an outlay on this business the man might find himself decent staff. And what am I to make of this menu?”

  “It’s in French, Lancey.”

  “Of course it’s in French. I know that, but why is it in French?”

  Marco smiled as he passed by with another couple, whom he seated in an alcove that was half-hidden from view. She noticed that before leaving the alcove their host summoned over a more senior waiter than their own, and then Marco stood sentry while the senior waiter made note of the couple’s order. Eventually both Marco and the waiter moved away from the secluded table, but this time Marco travelled a more circuitous route and avoided their own table as he hurried back to his station near the door.

  Having approved the Champagne, Lancey ordered for them both and then handed the menu back to the young man, who hovered timidly in an ill-fitting suit. She looked at the overstarched collar of the waiter’s white shirt and could see that one tip had escaped from beneath the lapel of his jacket and was turned upwards like a small pyramid. She felt sorry for this disquieted man whom Marco had foisted upon them. “Anything else, sir?” Lancey waved a dismissive hand and then raised his glass and waited for her to do the same. “To the new year,” he declared as they touched glasses.

  A plate of bread arrived at their table, and although she felt that the slices had been cut too thickly, Lancey didn’t seem to care as he broke a piece in half and crushed it into a petal of butter.

  “Remind me, do people speak French on your island?”

  She once again confirmed that English was the native tongue, and then she continued and explained how on a clear day it was quite possible to see Martinique from her mother’s family estate, but Lancey had already lost interest.

  “There’s something unpleasant about this foreign intrusion, don’t you think?”

  She sipped at her Champagne but said nothing, while secretly wishing that Lancey would take the trouble to clarify whether he still maintained tender feelings for her. Please, Lancey, if you loved me just a little, I might not feel so lost. But Lancey said nothing and continued to talk. Had she done something to offend him, or was he now simply displeased with her presence on the perimeter of his life?

  “But I imagine that’s how the American chaps regard me, as part of some foreign invasion. I’m afraid New York can be a damned unrefined place to do business.”

  “How long do you think you might be away?”

  He laughed as he replaced his glass on the table. “Really, my dear, you’re such a funny little thing. It’s just as well that I’m going to America so we can have a little respite from each other, don’t you think?” She occupied herself by breaking off a piece of bread, which she then set on her side plate. Lancey pressed her. “Well?”

  This was how the girls said it usually happened. Some incidental talk about being busy at the moment and not wanting to feel rushed or under any pressure, and then a gradual separation. Apparently, sometimes they offered money, but if there was any protestation or hysterics, then they might threaten a girl with the police. If that happened, then you could be sure you’d never see them again. She watched as Lancey’s smile widened and his mouth began now to dance in the frantic mode, although she could hear no words. She remembered being surprised by that first attempt at a kiss at his club and hoping that everything would be alright; hoping that she would eventually be safe and looked after. That was over a year ago. How stupid. How bloody stupid.

  The young waiter placed a second bottle of Champagne on the table and then readjusted the white cloth that was draped over his arm. Having untwisted the wire, he pulled at the cork, which, to the poor man’s evident dismay, broke off in the bottle. The waiter began to fish in his pocket for a corkscrew, but Lancey held up his hand.

  “Oh good Lord. What on earth’s the matter with you? Well?”

  The flustered waiter muttered something in French, which elicited from her a sympathetic smile, and then Marco arrived at the table and swiftly picked up the discarded piece of cork.

  “Monsieur Hughes-Smith, I am so sorry for the inconvenience.” With this said, Marco dismissed the young man from his presence with an extravagant twirl of his wrist.

  “Please, the new bottle will be on the house, of course.”

  “But your staff don’t speak English.”

  Marco laughed nervously. “They speak the international language of cuisine, but naturally some are more fluent than others.”

  Marco moved away from the table, and a deeply irritated Lancey threw down his napkin. “Do you suppose that chap imagines that he is amusing?”

  Under different circumstances she would have reached across the table and taken his hand, but the air between them was thick with frustration and it was clear to her that the evening had already been lost. If only he could find it in his heart to drop a hand to her knee beneath the table, as he had often done in the past, then things between them might yet be rescued. That’s all I ask, Lancey. After all, please tell me what unkindness have I ever done to you?

  It was the senior waiter who attended to them for the remainder of their meal. While he was clearly more experienced than the young waiter, their new server seemed determined to talk incessantly in his highly accented English and Lancey could barely contain his annoyance with the garrulous fellow. Eventually coffee was served. “Sugar?” The senior waiter gestured towards the silver chalice that was brimful with cubes, but Lancey shook his head. “I want proper sugar, not these stupid bricks.” The waiter nodded sympathetically. “Yes, of course, sir,” and he removed the offending item.

  “Do you think,” she asked, “that we might write to each other while you are in America?”

  Lancey turned his head from the retreating waiter and looked incredulously at her, as though astonished that she didn’t understand how these matters were supposed to work.

  “Write to each other? About what exactly?”

  It had been a risk to say anything, and she straightaway felt flushed with humiliation, for it was her na ive desire to be safe with him that had led her to forsake her common sense. She stared at Lancey, suspecting that her gentleman had known all along that she was simply not transferable into his world. Did he not feel any responsibility for her buoyant heart? Had the attitude of his mother successfully corroded whatever affection remained unspent? Please, Lancey, talk to me. She had given herself away, and it appeared as though the remainder of her life’s journey would now have to be completed without the consolation of his reassuring presence. A year ago it was Lancey who had helped her to understand how things might begin, but she had received no instruction from him in how to navigate the short, jolting course towards se
paration. Perhaps, unseen by her, a serpent had been slumbering in their bed from that very first evening at his Mayfair townhouse. She looked up as the experienced waiter warily made his way back in their direction with a conventional sugar bowl cradled in his hands. He placed the silver chalice on the table halfway between them both, and then he stepped back.

  “Thank you, sir.” He offered Lancey a deep bow.

  Lancey ignored the man and applied himself to the sugaring of his coffee. Only when he had concluded his task did he once again acknowledge her.

  “I’m sorry,” began Lancey. “We should never have come to this place. This Marco clearly wouldn’t know what to do with a brace of pheasant or a quail. Furthermore, a man who boasts of an association with Wilde is quite simply not qualified to manage a London establishment.”

  She listened, but her eyes were trained upon Marco, who at that moment was standing by the oversized door and fingering his way through a huge vase of ruby red roses and looking for just the perfect stem that he would present her with as she left the restaurant.

  32

  Ramsgate

  Having boarded the train for Ramsgate, she took up a seat in a compartment that was already occupied by an elderly couple who were sitting quietly together. Through the window she saw a handsome young man holding the hand of a young boy, and they were both waving at the old man and his wife. The couple turned slightly and waved back, and as the train began to labour its way out of the station and set out on the two-hour journey to the coast, the couple continued to wave until long after the son and grandson had passed from view. Thereafter, they readjusted their positions and said nothing. The man removed a pair of spectacles from a stiff case he carried in his inside pocket, and he unfolded a newspaper, which he proceeded to read. A half hour later, as the train pulled away from yet another small rural station, the woman reached into her handbag and produced a packet of sweets, which she painstakingly opened and held in front of her husband. He took one without either looking at her or saying “Thank you,” and then returned his attention to his newspaper. His wife, meanwhile, set about emptying the packet of its contents. She looked at the old couple and wondered if this is what Lancey had in mind for his own future, a comfortable descent into old age with a presentable lady whose role was both to serve and to be grateful, and who would continue to behave in such a manner until the bitter end. Lancey’s latest curt telegram had clarified things with regard to their own situation: She was not to contact him. He had already suggested that she take a short break on the coast, at his expense, to “recover herself” after the procedure that he had paid for, and he had sternly counseled her to be more selective with regard to “male friends,” unless she wished to submit to another such undertaking. His allowance aside, he reiterated that she must now learn to live without him, for it was not possible for his name to be associated with a person who now appeared to be making herself available to the type of men who habitually preyed upon young women suffering from low self-esteem.

  The light seemed to change as they approached the south coast. The sky became brighter and seagulls spun into view on tilted wings, but the noisy rattle of the train meant that the screeching birds could not be heard. Then they plunged into a long tunnel, and when they emerged, the train slowed to a walking pace as it began to sidle its way into the station. “The selfish bleeder’s right, you do need a bit of a rest” was Mabel’s verdict. “Now that you’ve got rid of the kiddie, take his money and have a bit of a spree. Put some colour in your cheeks. Whenever we played the seaside towns you used to like the Punch and Judy, didn’t you? Try a donkey ride, or buy yourself a stick of rock, live a bit. But I’m worried about you, love. You’ve got to lay off the booze and stand up for yourself and stop letting blokes take what they want. Are you listening?”

  She was listening, but she decided that Mabel must be talking about somebody else, because she loathed the English coast and the grey, lifeless sea, and the stupid ice-cream sellers and noisy clowns on the pier, and the wind whipping along the beach, and the mist creeping up the streets towards the narrow cobbled alleyways in which every second house appeared to be a glum bed-and-breakfast of some description. “I don’t think you’re well, Gwennie, and I know you’re hurt, given how he just dropped you, but you’re getting a bit of a reputation, you do know this, don’t you?” She watched as the man carefully folded his newspaper and then stood and reached out a hand to help his wife to her unsteady feet. The grateful woman smiled and then passed him the now-empty packet of sweets, which he crumpled and pushed into his jacket pocket. The couple straggled out of the compartment and into the corridor, and she followed and took up a place behind them. All three of them waited for the carriage door to be opened from the outside. It was then that she noticed the man had taken his wife’s hand in his own and was holding on to her in a manner that left her unsure as to which one of them was most in need of comfort and support.

  33

  Christmas

  She spent the days leading up to Christmas by herself in the Chalk Farm rooms that Lancey paid for, as she was fed up with the league of morose men who at the end of the night might push a sovereign into your bag. On Christmas Eve she finished a second bottle of red wine and then sat quietly by herself combing her hair. She missed her head being fogged in the manly scent of his shaving cream; she missed the sweet aroma of his superior cigars; she missed walking with him. She knelt down by the side of the bed and tried to dredge up a prayer that she might place on her tongue, but her memory would not release one. She felt his loss as a wound, but nothing really mattered a straw. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw her stockings hanging out to dry on the back of a chair in front of the gas fire, but she hadn’t the energy to find a coin to drop into the slot meter, which would have enabled her to turn on some heat. Perhaps it was her imagination, but she suddenly felt as though she was being menaced by mosquitoes, and then the sound of excited voices in the passageway startled her, but why bother to get to her feet? Happy Christmas, Gwennie. But there was no shouted friendly greeting, for she didn’t know these people and they didn’t know her. In the cupboard there were water crackers and some milk chocolate and a little whisky, and she felt ashamed of how she had allowed Lancey to undo her in this way, for there was nothing dignified about wanting a person who didn’t want you. It was shameful. That was it, shame. She tried to recall the lyrics to a mournful song that spoke of shame, but her mind began to spin. It was Mabel who was looking down at her when, on Christmas morning, her eyes hatched and she began to swim back to the world. The doctor wore no expression and he spoke first in a crisp, well-pressed voice. “Sit up properly, miss.” She could see Mabel in a modish new hat starting to cry, and then she saw her landlady quickly pull a handkerchief from her apron pocket and hand it to her friend. Mabel unfolded the handkerchief and balled it up in her face. “Oh, Gwennie, how could you do this? Why didn’t you let me know you were feeling wretched?” The doctor asked her friend to stand back and give him some room, and the landlady took Mabel’s arm. But Mabel kept repeating herself. “You should have let me know. Listen, love, I’d have come round straightaway if you weren’t feeling yourself. There’s no need for you to have gone and done this.”

  34

  South of the River

  Late one morning, she lay sprawled on the bed in her room staring impassively out of the window. It was almost noon when she hauled herself upright, and through the oval that she created with her hands she could now see only grey sky, and she tried hard to empty her mind of the events of the previous evening, including the man’s name. Once again her memories came rushing back, and her fingers began to quiver and the oval frame collapsed, and she decided to roll over onto her side and curl up into a ball. With Mabel’s assistance she had left Chalk Farm and found a new place to live in Bloomsbury, and once she was settled, she informed Lancey that she had relocated and gave him the address to which her monthly allowance cheque should be sent. She then did as Lancey had demanded a
nd returned his letters and messages, but after countless months of hearing nothing further from him, it was Mabel who insisted that she should stop feeling sorry for herself and finally put “that rotten bastard” out of her mind. “You need to get yourself back into the swing of things and start to see some decent new gentlemen.”

  They had sat in the back of a motorized taxi as it bullied its way past a few horse-drawn hansom cabs and then continued to speed its way through the lamplit streets of the city. They were leaving behind the elegant squares and sumptuous terraces of the well-heeled, and it soon became clear to her that they were now moving purposefully in the direction of the river. She had already marked Mabel’s friend down as a dull man whose company at dinner had been unrewarding, to say the least, and whose clumsy attempt to reach across the table and stroke her cheek had established a trying tone to the evening. Having traversed the moonlit black water, squalour hurried into view and closed in on them as the pavements were suddenly crammed with dirty-faced ruffians. On certain streets it seemed to her that whole families had banded together and were wandering aimlessly, as though refugees from some great catastrophe, but she found it difficult to watch them, for she knew that by doing so she was simply reducing them to the role of filth-encrusted street performers. Down a side street she could just about make out a ghostly pack of dogs who appeared to be freely scavenging, and still this man had not turned from the window to face her and let her know what, if anything, was coursing through his closed mind. The man continued to sit perfectly erect, with both hands clamped tightly on top of his cane. She presumed that for her escort this was most likely a journey into a familiar underworld where the prospect of showing this sylphlike girl a desolate part of the city no doubt caused him some tremor of amusement. She looked at the man and imagined that were she a more compliant character they would most likely be relaxing in his Chelsea drawing room with glasses of Madeira to hand and a bedroom in their future, but instead they were plunging ever deeper into this abyss, and the man continued to say nothing at all and simply stared vacantly out of the window.