Night of Triumph

by Peter Bradshaw

  What a cheeky fib. Margaret had actually caught Hugh’s eye while she was saying it, letting him know that she had jolly well saved his bacon! Hugh even nodded once, and sort of turned that into a tiny submissive bow, and then said loudly that he would go back out and ‘rejoin Peter’ and that he was sure they would all be back soon.

  Well, of course they would! What a lot of silly fuss.

  Margaret considered. If there really was a row about tonight, she would just come up with a couple more fibs. Muddy the waters. She could say that Henry Porchester was with them. Porchy. Porchy would back them up. Porchy was a good egg.

  Here was an advertisement for Pond’s cold cream. ‘It’s still no easy matter to get hold of well-known and trusted creams, such as Pond’s – only a proportion of the pre-war supply is allowed to be made,’ it said. ‘It should be used as sparingly as possible.’

  Margaret looked complacently at the colossal pot of Pond’s on her dressing table. She snuggled further down under the covers, scissoring her legs deliciously against the linen, and continued to read.

  Mickey Rooney, it seemed, was getting paid a bonus of £40,000 by MGM – ’It is typical of the generosity MGM executives have always shown towards Mickey, who is regarded as “their own boy”, since he was practically raised on the MGM lot.’

  Goodness, forty thousand pounds, what a lot of money.

  ‘Was Lilibet having a good time?’ Margaret wondered.

  She imagined that she was having a good time. Or even if she wasn’t, she would begin to enjoy herself by and by. Heavens, how stuffy Lilibet could be sometimes, and how often she forced one into situations where one had to be stuffy as well. Well, now the boot was on the other foot. Now she had put Lilibet into a jolly situation and now Lilibet had to be jolly for once in her life. It was a requirement, like gas masks. Gosh, gas masks. They hadn’t needed them after all, had they? Where was her gas mask, come to think of it?

  Outside, in the far distance, she could hear more singing: ‘I Belong to Glasgow’.

  Margaret read that the Army Pictorial Service had invited soldiers stationed in the Middle East to write in with suggestions telling the film industry what’s what. The winning letter – the chap had got £15 – was from Private JB Steckley of the US Air Corps, who wrote: ‘1. War. (a) Lay off it (b) If you must show us war, show us our Allies. When we see what they are going through, we’ll be twice as glad that it isn’t happening at home.’

  No. Well, it isn’t happening at home. Not any more. The war is over.

  It’s all over.

  Margaret finished her cocoa and replaced the empty mug by her bed. She scraped with her thumbnail at a tiny, dried tide-mark at the lip.

  What was Lilibet doing now? Well, soon she would be back to tell Margaret herself. Margaret expected a sharp knock on her door at any moment, a very cross demand for an explanation. Well, it wasn’t her fault.

  Margaret turned off the light and lay staring at the ceiling on which some light pooled from the window. What would she do tomorrow? Margaret couldn’t imagine. She shut her eyes, and still couldn’t. She would return to the schoolroom, but Lilibet wouldn’t have to. Margaret saw Lilibet floating through their schoolroom like a balloon, and realised that she was drifting off and beginning to dream. She awoke, exhaling heavily through her nose, turned off the bedside light and fell asleep before she could remove the Picturegoer from her pillow.

  Ten

  Katharine and Elizabeth were in the ladies’ cloakroom at the Ritz. The object of the exercise, as Katharine briskly put it, was to get her friend cleaned up, and ready to confront the world. While Elizabeth washed her face, Katharine had her jacket in her hand, attacking it smartly with a stiff clothes brush which the attendant had lent her, and who continued to sit by the door with a saucer of silver coins pointedly displayed: she had seen him in the act of weeding out some coppers and putting them in his pocket. Elizabeth had her glasses on the cabinet surface by the basin while she splashed her face with water, head bowed slightly, not looking at herself in the mirror.

  ‘Don’t you ever take those off?’ asked Katharine.

  ‘Blind as a bat without them.’ Elizabeth tried to shrug while bent over; the effect was of a brief, convulsive hunch. She towelled herself, restored the glasses in such a way that her hands covered much of her face, pulled on the proffered jacket.

  ‘You must let me put some makeup on you, you know,’ said Katharine; she firmly removed the glasses again, and applied eyeliner while Elizabeth submitted.

  ‘You know,’ said Katharine, ‘now you’ll think me awfully tight, but you remind me dreadfully of someone.’

  ‘I know exactly what you’re going to say,’ said Elizabeth smoothly, as she put the glasses back on, and ducking past, left the ladies’ room, leading the way. ‘Everybody says it. You’ll doubtless see a lot of people looking at me twice. It’s Margaret Lockwood. I look very much like Margaret Lockwood.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Oh yes. Margaret Lockwood. It’s a queer thing, I know, but there it is.’

  Soon they were back in the chaotic crush of merry-makers and inebriates in the hotel, and Elizabeth glanced at Katharine, just as she was glancing sidelong at her. But she seemed satisfied with this explanation.

  ‘You stay here, and I’ll get us a drink.’

  Elizabeth positioned herself uneasily next to a large potted plant, and by appearing to check her wristwatch, turning away periodically from the throng and putting it up to her ear, she went unnoticed. It was only once Katharine had gone that she realised that she had no idea what drink she was going to get. Predictably, Katharine reappeared with gins.

  ‘You know, Lil,’ she said, ‘I think you’re much prettier than Margaret ...’

  ‘Oh no,’ interrupted Elizabeth modestly, and added without thinking, ‘she’s much prettier and she always has Papa in fits of laughter.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Oh. Oh, sorry, I was thinking how much my father likes Margaret Lockwood films.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’

  ‘Anyway, I’ve got the doings, here’s how.’

  ‘Thanks, jolly good!’

  Two Americans came over and offered to buy them drinks, and were smoothly rebuffed by Katharine. Elizabeth sipped at her gin, and confided, ‘I’m actually supposed to be out with my sister, at the moment, but I’m afraid I got separated from her, and the two chaps we were with.’

  ‘Oh. Her boyfriend and your fiancé?’

  ‘No, just some nice Guards officers who’d offered to accompany us for the evening.’

  ‘Well! Lil, you dark horse!’

  ‘Oh no, it was nothing like that, really it wasn’t.’

  ‘Huh! A likely tale!’ Katharine slightly slapped Elizabeth’s elbow with the back of her hand to show that she was joshing. ‘Well, out of the frying pan ...’ she added mysteriously. ‘What’s your fiancé’s name, actually?’

  ‘It’s ... it’s Pip.’

  ‘Pip?’

  ‘Yes, Pip.’

  ‘As in Dickens?’

  ‘Mm. And what’s your husband called?’

  ‘He’s called William.’

  ‘And what does he do for a living?’

  ‘Oh, he’s frightfully high up in the Home Office. I just never see him, but now there’s not a war on I expect everything will be returned to normal.’

  ‘I expect so.’

  ‘Well ... Pip. You and Pip. Lil and Pip. On the road to matrimony. Like a Bob Hope picture, isn’t it? Where’s Pip now anyway?’

  ‘He’s onboard ship.’

  ‘Girl in every port?’

  ‘Oh no!’ Elizabeth shook her head and drank some more.

  ‘I say, Lil,’ Katharine suddenly became serious. ‘You know what we were saying before? About the wedding night?’

  Elizabeth nodded.

  ‘Well, will the groom be approaching this in a similar ... a similar state of ...’

  Elizabeth realised that this, along with their honeymoon d
estination, was something about which she had no idea. Katharine placed a delicate hand on her wrist.

  ‘Oh, my dear. I’ve no wish to embarrass you. The point is that the situation is completely different for a man. It is the man’s duty to gain experience. Probably with a professional. Do you know what I mean?’

  Elizabeth didn’t.

  ‘Very often,’ Katharine continued, speaking in a trance of worldliness, ‘a man’s father or uncle will arrange for him to meet a professional, often in France.’

  Baffled, Elizabeth assumed that she meant a medical professional, some sort of genito-urinary specialist.

  ‘My own husband has seen the world, a lot of the world,’ continued Katharine, and again Elizabeth now noticed how her new friend’s manner would veer between knowing, girlish intimacy and a glassy-eyed reverence for what she imagined to be the norms and conventions of society. ‘When we met, he was ... well, he was attached. Engaged, actually.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Elizabeth, not sure how to reply.

  ‘He was engaged, yes,’ Katharine reasserted, as if clearing up, for good and all, an evasive ambiguity which others had been trying to foist on her. ‘We met in Pangbourne. It was just before the war. His people had a place there.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘There was a party at his parents’ house. William was there and she was there too. Now, I know what you’re thinking.’

  ‘Well,’ said Elizabeth politely, ‘it is rather late, and I suppose I was just wondering if I ought to be getting ba—’

  ‘You’re thinking that this was actually the engagement party itself. That I had insinuated myself into someone else’s home and nabbed another girl’s man. Not a bit of it. I actually found William rather a bore at first.’

  Katharine now looked around, and said, ‘Do you suppose we shall ever find somewhere to sit down?’

  ‘Well, I—’

  ‘Anyway, I arrived on my own. And do you know what struck me first about William? His eyes. Those terribly sad spaniel eyes!’ Katharine laughed convulsively, like a sneeze, and for the first time Elizabeth realised how far gone she was. ‘How I used to tease him afterwards about his poor-me look!’

  She was continuing to scan the room, but there were no free tables.

  ‘I knew he was unhappy. And the woman he was with, well! She was clingy and destructive. And frankly she wasn’t quite the thing, do you know what I mean? Perhaps William had thought it frightfully romantic to get engaged to someone like that. But actually it wasn’t practical at all. How on earth was she supposed to mix socially with William’s people? Oh, no. It wouldn’t do at all. What about that one?’

  Katharine pointed sharply at a table which appeared to be empty, but no. A rowdy group of Canadians got there first.

  ‘Anyhow, I could tell that William was discontented. He began to confide in me almost from that very first evening. I sat next to her father at dinner: an awful old bore, and a nasty piece of work at that. He actually put his hand on my thigh during the meal; I stuck his leg with a fork. He let out a yelp and had to pretend he’d been stung by a wasp!’

  Katharine laughed fondly at the memory.

  ‘“What wasp?” said his wife, a terrible old dragon. “Wasp I tell you!” he shouted and went out to bathe his leg under cold water, though the silly old fool had to pretend it was wrist because nobody would believe a wasp could sting him through his trousers, not that anyone believed him in any case. Anyway, our eyes met. William could sense that something was going on; he could sense that I had asserted myself and he respected me for it. I was also wearing an extremely low-cut gown.’

  ‘Was William working for the Home Office at that time?’ enquired Elizabeth politely.

  ‘Oh, yes. He was. Anyway, it was a fine summer’s night and everyone mingled in the back garden after dinner; there were candles on stalks and they had staff bringing round glasses of pudding wine on trays. It was rather ghastly actually, but anyway that’s when William introduced himself. His fiancée was – well, she was somewhere else. Perhaps she was up in the bathroom, attending to her poor papa’s wasp-sting. Do you want a cigarette, incidentally?’

  Katharine held out a packet to her. Elizabeth considered. Margo had claimed recently to have smoked a cigarette, but Elizabeth didn’t believe her, and of course they had had a quarrel about it. It was precisely the sort of thing they were always arguing about these days, and these days Margaret appeared, irritatingly, to be somehow overtaking Elizabeth in the growing-up stakes, to be more knowing about the ways of the world.

  ‘All right, yes, thank you.’ She took one and demurely put the wrong end in her mouth, with the filter-tip pointing out. What an odd taste. Katharine wordlessly removed it, turned it round, re-inserted it. Then she asked a passing waiter if he had a light. Smoothly, the man produced a lighter from his hip pocket; the tiny flame kissed the tip of both their cigarettes and Elizabeth wondered how she knew how to suck in at the moment of lighting. She was not so foolish as to try to suck down the smoke into her lungs directly; instead she swirled it around her mouth and gently exhaled. The mild euphoria had nothing to do with nicotine: Elizabeth had passed herself off as a member of the glamorous smoking classes. She placed the cigarette between her middle and index finger and held her hand steady over the glass, marvelling at how easily these gestures came to her: discreetly twirling hand movements as formal and yet relaxed as those of a flamenco dancer. She took another gulp of gin and found herself smiling, almost grinning, at what Katharine was saying.

  ‘William was showing me around the garden – although what right he had to do that, I don’t know. It was clear he just wanted to get me on my own. We walked off from the group, talking of this and that. I rather boldly asked him if he was unhappy, and he said he was. So handsome. My dear, you mustn’t be shocked. We kissed right then and there. He took me round the waist like this—’

  She took Elizabeth round the waist with her right arm, her left hand adroitly holding drink and cigarette.

  ‘And kissed me like this—’

  Katharine kissed Elizabeth for the second time, and Elizabeth now realised that their position behind the large plant obscured their clinch from the view of the other drinkers. She struggled and squeaked, trying also to smile indulgently, but was on the point of relaxing, when Katharine suddenly released her and continued:

  ‘My dear, I wriggled and wriggled, just like that, but William was so passionate. It was clear to me his engagement was at end. We were married at Christmas. Now. Isn’t that a romantic story?’

  ‘Excuse me, miss.’

  Katharine turned around and appeared highly irritated and displeased to find a man with sandy, receding hair, heavy bags under his eyes, and a slight squint. Elizabeth could see that one of his eyes looked straight ahead, and the other turned out. Like everyone else here, he was clearly incapable.

  ‘I saw that you two ladies had nowhere to sit, and I wondered if you would like to join me and my friend? And I can’t let a girl in uniform stand around in discomfort. The name’s Ware.’ The man smiled and held out his hand. Elizabeth shook it.

  ‘Well, Mr Ware,’ she said, decisively forestalling what she assumed would be Katharine’s rebuff, ‘thank you. That would be very kind. Come on Katharine!’

  Mr Ware turned on his heel and Elizabeth followed; after a beat, so did Katharine. Through the murky crush, they found that this man did indeed have a table, a cramped square table that the staff had evidently used for drinks or stacking plates, but which had now, on this special night, been commandeered for the customers. There was someone else there, too, an older, balding man in a chalkstripe suit, slumped rather miserably. Elizabeth noticed that, as the evening wore on, about one in a dozen of the people she had seen that night were actually in the grip of intense, frozen misery, like gaunt statues around which heedless people danced.

  ‘Ah!’ said Mr Ware, briskly. ‘This is my friend Colin. He was just being a bit of a bore on the subject of how he will fare as a wine merchant
in peacetime. For Gawd’s sake, buck up Colin.’

  ‘Awfully sorry,’ said Colin, grinning sheepishly and apologetically. ‘He’s quite right. Now’s not the time to talk about that. I’m Colin Erskine-Jones. How do you do? Very pleased to make your acquaintance.’

  Katharine and Elizabeth introduced themselves and sat down, and Katharine appeared to have resumed her air of someone cheerfully out on the town, game for anything.

  ‘Apart from anything else, Colin had better get into a better mood,’ said Mr Ware, briefly checking his watch. ‘He’s putting on an entertainment later on for one and all.’

  Elizabeth asked, politely, ‘Really? Are you, Mr Erskine-Jones?’

  ‘Oh yes, that,’ grimaced Colin. ‘It’s really nothing.’

  ‘Ho no it isn’t,’ said Mr Ware, ‘it’s quite something. You two ladies play your cards in the correct manner and you could witness one of the most remarkable amateur talents in London.’

  ‘Now I really am intrigued,’ said Katharine smoothly.

  The conversation lulled for a moment, and Colin suddenly narrowed his eyes and leaned forwards. ‘You know, you have a look of someone ...’

  ‘Yes,’ said Elizabeth smartly, ‘Margaret Lockwood. Everyone says so. Listen to that.’ For the first time, they listened to a trio of piano, bass and accordion thumping out dance tunes in the din. The noise and crush had almost drowned them. ‘I say, Mr Ware,’ said Elizabeth impulsively, ‘would you like to dance?’

  For the tiniest fraction of a second, Mr Ware looked affronted at this presumption, suspecting a tease. Then he replaced this expression with one of roguish wonder.

  ‘Goodness me,’ he piped schoolmarmishly. ‘What an inversion of the natural order of things! Are you asking, miss?’