Presently, to a loud cheer from everyone, the boy that Driberg had been talking to before the song began jumped up onto the stage and embraced Colin passionately. Driberg was right behind him, standing at the edge, scowling, attempting to pull at the boy’s jacket. But his companion would not come down; instead, he snaked his arm around Colin’s waist and they duetted at the microphone. When it was time for the final, stridently melodramatic line, Colin gamely attempted a full octave leap, maintained with an uncertain trill.
The song was over. The noise was deafening. Colin made an elaborate curtsey, incidentally disclosing that his frock had some sort of gossamer train, which fishtailed out to the side as he took hold of it with his right hand. If he was irritated at this incursion from the audience, Colin didn’t show it. The boy attempted a bow of his own. Driberg angrily climbed up on the stage and grasped the boy’s forearm. The boy wrenched it away and clung on to Colin’s waist, as Colin continued to beam and bask in the applause. The boy kissed his cheek to cheers and, to more cheers, Colin kissed his new friend’s forehead. They held hands, took a bow together and then, almost without looking at him, the boy planted a hand square in Driberg’s chest – he had again clambered up – and shoved him back, so that he toppled over backwards into the arms of a now infuriated woman. The boy nuzzled Colin; they giggled together and then Driberg came back up to punch Colin, a blow which landed pointlessly on his shoulder. The piano accompaniment stopped as both men crashed off the stage to more roars from the onlookers.
Elizabeth saw Ginnie wading into the crowd, her tolerance clearly tested to its limits. With remarkable strength she wrenched Driberg and his assailant apart and made them shake hands. Then Elizabeth gave a start, as Mr Ware appeared from the back of the crowd, touched her arm and smiled ingratiatingly. He was now dressed entirely differently: in the uniform of an ARP officer. Many revellers noticed his clothing too, and gave cheers and toasts, saluting a civilian hero. These Mr Ware acknowledged with a gracious incline of the head. Tilting his helmet to a more rakish angle, he looked back at Elizabeth and grinned. Elizabeth looked away, and then at her watch. The woozy, unreal sensation from the smoke was now definitely receding, leaving behind it the first feelings of discontent with the present sensation and the first inklings of panic. The time had definitely come to go home. But how?
Colin was pushing his way through the throng, having stepped directly off the front of the stage, transparently keen to maximise the period in which he would be praised and congratulated by the crowd. Emerging after a discreet exit to his makeshift dressing room to get changed, might mean being ignored by an audience whose interest in him had long since evaporated. He was holding his wig in his hand, and that great bald head with its sweat, rouge, and bizarrely disproportionate hoop-earrings, was quite as offensive as anything Elizabeth had ever seen in her life. Nothing at the Windsor Castle Christmas pantomime had ever looked like this.
‘I say, Lil, what did you think?’ he said, as excited as a schoolboy.
‘Oh, ah, awfully good,’ said Elizabeth, looking at her watch again. ‘Terribly good. Well done.’
‘Thanks!’ said Colin, satisfied with this. But his unselfconscious smile dimmed when Mr Ware now spoke to him.
‘Yes. Terribly good, old cock. Are you going on again?’
‘No, I don’t think so. Why?’
‘Well, I think you might as well. Because I think I don’t need you on the venture I had in mind for this evening. And you were saying earlier you didn’t feel like it.’
‘What? Now, really—’
‘Don’t make a big song-and-a-dance about this, Colin. There might be something I can share with you later, but really this is a one-man job. Or rather, one-civilian job. The person I wish to accompany me will be a military type.’ He directed his gaze archly to Elizabeth who, baffled, ignored him. Then he melted away back into the crowd. Where on earth was Mr Coward? Where was Katharine, come to think of it?
A young man came up to Colin, and whispered in his ear. Colin instantly grinned, perhaps expecting some congratulatory flirtation; his expression changed at once to disappointment, and then to alarm. Once the man had gone away, Colin looked feebly around and then turned to Elizabeth; apparently she was the only person to whom he could confide this new complication.
‘I say, Lil,’ he said, wheedlingly, ‘I wonder if you could just pop into the Ladies’?’
‘Why?’ was all Elizabeth could manage to say.
‘Because Katharine is in there. I’m sorry. She’s had a spot of bother. Something of an upsetment. It’s something that only a ... only a woman can really help with. Thanks!’ he finished, brooking no demurral. He gestured fastidiously towards a door to the far side of the bar, well away from the stage, and melted away himself.
There was nothing else for it. Elizabeth pushed her way through the crowd, towards the ladies’ lavatory. Perhaps Katharine was upset about something, perhaps she had – Elizabeth cast about for an explanation – perhaps she had laddered a stocking. She would just give Katharine a bit of a pep talk and a cheer-up and then she would find Noël and get out of here.
She went through the door and, at the end of a passage, found two further doors. The only indication as to which was the ladies’ was the fact that there was a large and intimidating man outside what was presumably the gentlemen’s lavatory, preventing access, on the grounds that some sort of private altercation was in progress inside. Elizabeth could hear shoves and raised voices. Avoiding this man’s eye, she pushed at the other entrance and went in.
Katharine was seated on a low wooden stool, by the handbasins. She was looking down, silent, with both hands up to her face.
‘Katharine?’ asked Elizabeth.
Her friend looked up, and Elizabeth saw that her left eye was red and swollen, a discolouration which extended up to her forehead, and that a tooth was missing.
‘What happened? Who did that?’ she asked at last.
Katharine did not answer at first. Then she said:
‘He does it occasionally. I suppose I ask for it. I push him. I provoke him.’
‘My God,’ said Elizabeth, and then turned on a tap, intending to wash Katharine’s bruised face. The first tap yielded nothing; a thin dribble was to be had from the next. There were no paper towels. Elizabeth cupped her hands and splashed water over Katharine’s cheeks as best she could.
‘I told him he should leave you alone,’ said Katharine miserably. ‘I said you should just be allowed to go home. It was my job to find a woman in uniform, you see?’
Elizabeth did not see. She wondered if she could just clean Katharine up, and then make an exit. Instantly, she reproved herself for such a uncharitable and un-Christian thought.
‘So,’ she hazarded, ‘you met some man, some blackguard, and he’s ...’ Her voice dropped in volume. ‘... knocked you about.’
The words felt bizarre on her lips. She had only the smallest notion of how such an event could take place. She understood that Katharine was married, and the censorious part of her guessed that this was the sort of thing that might well happen if you had casual meetings with someone who was not your husband. But then she had casually met people this evening, met them in a way she never would have dreamed of doing on any other night. Did that mean she herself was at risk of being ‘knocked about’?
‘Listen, Katharine,’ Elizabeth said, and paused, wondering if she should give her a sisterly hug. She then did so, kneeling down, embracing her awkwardly as she sat. Katharine returned the embrace, sniffling quietly. She was silently ashamed to realise that she had no intention of calling the police, or allowing this situation to compromise her. Things had clearly got out of control, and Elizabeth now intended to make as clean a break as she could.
‘Listen. Katharine,’ she resumed, ‘I want you to ... to buck up, and to come with me. I’m sure I can get a cab home and drop you off wherever you want to go. This evening has been jolly good fun, or at least it mostly has, and I’m sure we’ve all bee
n doing things we wouldn’t normally, but the time has come now to go home. You should just go home. You, oh.’
Elizabeth had to back away hurriedly as Katharine lurched to her feet, clamped a hand over her mouth, retched unproductively over a handbasin and then spat a mouthful of blood into it. Then she turned back.
‘I know who you are,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘I said, I know who you are.’
‘Oh.’
‘I always wondered what it would be like if I ever met you, like this, and it turns out to be like going out shopping with my mother, on a Saturday, and meeting one of my teachers in a shop.’
‘When did you realise?’
‘When you said all that about Margaret Lockwood.’
‘Well, it’s jolly nice of you not to – not to tell anyone. Are you sure you’re all right?’
‘I’m sure that I’m not all right. But I keep telling you, it’s you I’m worried about.’
‘Don’t worry about me. You’ll be perfectly all right, you know, once your husband comes home.’
‘No, no. It was my husband that did this to me.’
Elizabeth now registered that Katharine’s accent had descended the class scale.
‘What? He’s come back? Where is he?’
‘He’s here. You’ve spent the whole evening with him, you silly mare.’ Katharine’s swollen, leaden face turned on Elizabeth and accentuated the unthinkable insult with a sullen glare. ‘It’s William. He’s my husband.’
Elizabeth’s mouth opened, and at first couldn’t reply. She swallowed and said, ‘You mean – Ware? Mr Ware?’
‘Yes.’
‘And he’s the one who has treated you like this?’
She did not hear the door open behind her.
‘Yes.’
‘So everything you’ve told me ... isn’t true?’
The door banged open and Elizabeth turned around. Katharine looked down.
‘Sorry to come in here,’ said Mr Ware easily. ‘I couldn’t get into the gents. A fellow seems to be standing guard out there; some sort of disagreement in progress therein.’ He gave Katharine a soiled handkerchief, and she wordlessly pressed it against her cheek, which was now beginning to balloon in such a way as to make speech all but impossible. Widening his own mouth as if to yawn, he picked a fragment of cigarette paper from his lower lip and spoke again:
‘In answer to your question, no, it’s not true. We often work independently. Especially when it’s up to my lady wife here to pick someone up, someone like you.’
‘Pick someone up? But why?’
‘Oh ...’ slurred Katharine vaguely, quietly, almost to herself. ‘jutht for, well, for fun, and thometimes William needth them for hith ARP work.’
‘Your ARP work? Why on earth do you need to pick up a stranger for your ARP work?’
Mr Ware went into a lavatory stall and began to urinate. The noise was as loud as a chain being lowered onto a steel floor. ‘You know, Lil ...’ he said thoughtfully, speaking over his shoulder. ‘You don’t realise what goes on. We’ve all had it hard in London, during the Blitz. We haven’t had enough food to eat. We’ve been asked to sacrifice. And you people, you high-ups, you haven’t been asked to sacrifice a single bit.’
He came out, zipping himself up, not washing his hands, looking her in the eye. Elizabeth now considered that her best approach was to humour this man, to get herself out of this awful situation as quickly as possible. But her training, her idealism, her patriotism, all made it impossible to say anything other than the following:
‘That’s not true. Rationing has been for everyone.’
‘That’s a lie. A rotten lie.’ Mr Ware now eyed her coldly, perceptibly ratcheting up his defiance and aggression. Elizabeth wondered if he, like Katharine, knew who she was.
‘Yes, yes, you had rationing,’ he continued. ‘You’ve had the coupons. Oh dear, yes. But you’ve got cash, and rationing never mattered for you well-off types. You can go to restaurants any time you want. You can get all the food you want. You can stuff your faces, and you did. Can I? Can she?’ His voice became shrill and he pointed to Katharine, who cringed into her clothes. ‘So don’t give me any of that old moody, Lil,’ he said. ‘Don’t give me any of that old flannel. You folk have been protected in this war. Insulated. It’s the East End that got the brunt of it.’
Elizabeth attempted to assert herself. ‘That’s all perfectly true, Mr Ware, and I entirely see your point, but now I have to—’
Mr Ware placed the palm of his hand square in Elizabeth’s chest, and shoved hard enough for her to topple backwards onto Katharine.
‘You just hold your horses, missy. You just settle down.’
Elizabeth slithered off Katharine, moving to the side, not certain that this manoeuvre would not provoke another assault. No one had treated her like this in her life. Her father had never struck her, and even Margaret would not presume to show such familiarity.
‘Will you kindly allow me to pass?’
All Mr Ware did in response to this was light a cigarette and flick away the spent match so that it struck her on the cheek. She could feel the tiny, disagreeable sting of its heat, but proudly suppressed the impulse to bring her fingers up to her face.
She repeated:
‘I now wish to leave. Will you kindly ...’
Katharine began, feebly, ‘William, don’t go to that houthe, pleathe no, ’thpecially not with her. Perhapth you’d better jutht ...’
‘You,’ he shrieked at her, a syllable that extended for two distinct, indignant notes, dipping down in tone. ‘You can belt up. You can keep your nose out. No one invited you. No one asked you. You can stay here. While Lil and I get this thing done.’
Mastering her fear and her rage, Elizabeth decided the time had come for the ultimate question.
‘Do you know who I am?’ she asked him, drawing herself up to her full height and squaring her shoulders. Katharine gave a tiny whimper.
Mr Ware looked disconcerted. He leant forward and looked into her face with a theatrically baffled frown, as if to ask, not who this young woman was, but what sort of young woman could dare to attempt intimidating him with such a ridiculous line. Then he looked closer, and then suddenly looked away, down to his left shoe, considering something, perhaps the identity of some entirely hypothetical person on whose behalf his wife might conceivably risk a battering from him. His head jerked back to look at Elizabeth and his eyes widened. Then he jumped back, gave a little, high laugh like a mouse-squeak, and brought his palms together as if in prayer, then up to his open mouth.
‘William,’ moaned Katharine, ‘you’ll thwing for this, you’ll—’
The music had resumed outside, and the drumroll and cymbal clash coincided with the second, brutal slap Mr Ware gave Mrs Ware. Elizabeth jumped forwards, but Mr Ware had removed the Luger from his ARP bag and now it was in her face, the gun barrel almost touching her nose.
‘Your Royal Highness?’
Twelve
Elizabeth left the lavatory with Mr Ware close behind her, the gun jammed into the small of her back. He had already told her: the slightest false move from her, the slightest attempt to warn anyone, to cry out, and she would ‘get it’.
‘Just stay calm,’ he had told her, grimly. ‘Don’t act out of character and draw attention to yourself. Don’t try and smile. You haven’t been smiling the rest of the evening, Gawd only knows. Just looking as if you were at a fucking funeral.’
Was that true? Elizabeth thought she had been smiling benignly and attractively the entire time. Her mouth went into a thin, stretched, trembly line, the way it went when she was upset as a small child. Everything in her life was far away from her now: her parents, her sister, Philip. She saw it as if through the wrong end of a telescope.
They came out of the corridor, through the bar and back into the club. The point of the gun was sometimes pressed directly onto one of her vertebrae, and sometimes into the space in between. Literally everyo
ne in the club was now attempting to dance, sloppy and careless.
Driberg came over. He had Colin with him and another boy, a different boy, slight, dark, with a sleepy-lidded look and a thin fuzz of a moustache.
‘My dear!’ Driberg called genially to her. ‘Where have you been? Do you want to come with us? We’re going to the Brown Bomber in Wardour Street. I am a member, you know. They serve a rather tasty bacon sandwich. Pickled onions. It’s so much less formal than this.’
A man in his late sixties wearing a vivid yellow fright wig lurched forwards between them and attempted to vomit on the floor.
‘You see, this is what I am talking about,’ said the dark, slight boy who had a slight Spanish accent. Colin nodded, but continued to look at Elizabeth.
The entire group moved a pace or two to the left to dissociate themselves from this man. Elizabeth felt the gun continue to jab into her spine. Driberg noticed how Mr Ware seemed to stay unnaturally close behind her back.
‘Are you ... leaving us, Lil?’ he presumed to ask.
‘Yes, I think it’s past my bedtime,’ replied Elizabeth in a voice no one could hear. But they saw her smile and nod.
‘And where are you off to, old boy?’ Driberg said to Mr Ware, more sharply. ‘And why on earth have you got that kit on?’
‘I’m off myself,’ he returned. ‘Thought I might have a stroll up Hyde Park way. I was going to get Lil here a cab outside the Criterion.’
Night of Triumph Page 11