by Rosie Thomas
‘I see. I understand. It wasn’t a wicked idea.’
‘I did love her, you know. There was a shadow in her, even before he was killed, but she shone all the more brightly for that. Then Richard died and Celia was destroyed by grief, and the doctors got hold of her with their medicines. She always has the little silver syringe with her these days. But I don’t have to tell you about that.’
‘You could have broken off the engagement, I suppose?’
Their eyes met again. ‘No, I couldn’t have done such a thing. I am trying to be as truthful as I can, Nancy.’
He reached into an inner pocket and took out a photograph.
Two young people in period costume were framed by a painted proscenium arch. Richard wore a crown and a doublet and Celia a smaller crown with a long flowing veil.
‘When they were children they liked to put on little stage performances. They loved theatre. This was the last one they did, just before Richard went to France. It was the wooing scene from Henry the Fifth.’
Nancy knew the play although she had read very little Shakespeare. She had seen Jake Jones play Henry.
‘“I will kiss your lips, Kate,”’ she said.
Gil’s smile was painful. ‘Precisely. If you said only that much to her, she would know it came from Richard.’
‘I’m sorry. I can’t do it.’
‘I know. I realised it was wrong to approach you as soon as we sat down at the Ritz. You aren’t a charlatan, not in the least. You are remarkable, just like your mother.’
There was a rushing noise like waves within Nancy’s skull. She turned to him and her eyes travelled over his features.
Then she leaned slowly forward and kissed him full on the mouth. Gil didn’t draw back. There was a moment of stillness before he caught her face between his warm hands, and kissed her in return.
A long moment later they separated. They were both shocked into silence.
At last he stammered, ‘Truly I didn’t mean this to happen. I thought I could see you and talk to you and somehow keep it at bay.’
‘I know. I felt the same.’
He laced her fingers in his, raised their joined hands to his mouth.
‘But it seems that it has happened.’
A bubble seemed to swell inside Nancy.
It’s you, she thought. You are the one I was meant for. Here you are, at last. Here.
‘I am glad,’ she said clearly.
‘God help us. Do you know what you are doing?’
‘No. Yes. I don’t care, I want you.’
‘You want me?’
She looked past the walls of Fifteen, past Gil’s well-cut coat and the cream Bentley and his suave manners, and recognised loneliness as deeply entrenched as her own.
‘I do.’
They studied each other for another moment, like starving people gazing at a banquet. Then Gil abruptly stood up and helped her to her feet.
‘I’ll let you consider that in a cooler light. In the meantime I’ll see you home, if I may?’
She said fiercely, ‘Send me home if you like but I don’t believe I shall change my mind.’
It was the truth and she wanted to acknowledge it. The line was well and truly crossed now.
He touched her cheek and the gesture was more intimate than a kiss.
‘No. I don’t really think either of us is likely to do that.’
Nancy didn’t want the Bentley drawing up anywhere near the house, so when they reached Piccadilly Gil hailed a cab and paid the driver.
‘Twenty Waterloo Street, Clerkenwell,’ she told the man.
Gil stood back from the kerb.
All the way home, through the late-night streets, the iridescent bubble lifted within her.
It was happiness, she realised.
Harry Bolton was about to sail with his regiment to India. Bella and Arthur had invited him with Nancy and Lion to dine again at Arthur’s favourite Greek restaurant, the one with the eager proprietor and the less-than-pristine tablecloths. Harry pretended to balk at the plates of rice and dolmades.
‘Couldn’t we have gone to the Café Royal?’
‘Come on, old chap,’ Arthur laughed. ‘You’ll be eating dinners more far-fetched than this out in ’Pindi.’
‘I imagine the mess cooks will be able to manage consommé and roast beef exactly as they do in Pirbright,’ Harry answered.
‘Darling Harry, you are such a pompous old stick. I so wish you weren’t going away again. I shall miss you like mad,’ Bella told him. She patted her brother’s hand and sighed.
‘What about you, Arthur? Damn shame to miss out on Palestine. It’s to be Mesopotamia for you fellows, I hear,’ Harry winked.
‘Is that what you hear? It’s news to me,’ Arthur said. He chewed steadily and swallowed.
Arthur was now commanding a special operations unit for the development of camouflage techniques. That was as much as any of them knew. He joked that given a few yards of muslin and a tin of paint his men could conceal an entire army under a lady’s parasol. Devil loved to hear these stories and he could listen for hours, even though Arthur did not possess the gift for embellishing a tale.
Harry prodded his kleftiko.
‘Ah, I know it’s deeply hush-hush. The RAF chaps are in charge of seeing off the rebels, I believe. But they’ll need you hide-and-seek wallahs on the ground in Sulaymaniyah. Can’t get anything done without army assistance, the crabs, can they?’
Bella shook her head at him. ‘Arthur won’t tell you any-thing, you know.’
‘He will if I take him off to my club after dinner. No man could withstand my subtle line of questioning. We’ll put you girls in a taxi first. Eh, Nancy?’
Nancy and Lion hadn’t joined in any of the army banter. Lion ate quickly, not looking as amused as he usually did. They had been seeing each other less frequently since Nancy had given up her Covent Garden room and moved back to Waterloo Street. Earlier in the evening, as they walked to the restaurant, she had begun to say that perhaps they should think of calling themselves just friends from now on. Lion irritably silenced her before she got anywhere.
‘I don’t want to hear gloom and doom. Can’t we just have a jolly evening for once?’
One more evening, she told herself. She wanted to be fair to Lion. Gil was always in her head, his voice in her ears and his hand on her cheek, even though they had made no attempt as yet to contact each other.
‘You will do nothing of the kind,’ Bella crisply told her brother. ‘We won’t be banished, Nancy, will we?’
The restaurant owner came over with the bill and Arthur quickly paid it, as usual.
The five of them made their way down towards Oxford Street. Bella walked between Harry and Arthur, her arms linked though theirs. Nancy and Lion followed a little behind, isolated in their discomfort with each other.
They reached the corner near Oxford Circus and at first they didn’t pay any attention to a closing-time skirmish that was developing in a bus queue a few yards ahead. A man’s hat was snatched off and sent bowling into the street. He dived after it and a speeding motor bus knocked him down.
Thrown backwards, the man fell in a heap across the kerb. At the same instant there was a screech of brakes and a volley of cursing greeted a second bus approaching from the opposite direction. The driver braked and slewed his vehicle to block the road. Two women were roughly hustled off before this bus rapidly reversed and swung to face the same way as the first.
‘What the hell’s going on?’ Arthur said.
‘Pirates,’ Lion called.
The bus wars were the latest London difficulty. The first bus was a licensed vehicle and the second was a pirate, driving faster so as to scoop up the queues ahead of its competitor. It didn’t matter to the second driver that he already had passengers, including the two women, who had paid to travel in the opposite direction – there were more fares to be collected by going back the way he had come.
‘Bastard,’ one of the women yelled. �
�Bloody crooked bastards.’
No one in the crowd was paying any attention to the man who had been knocked down. He sprawled on the pavement, trying to prop himself up on his elbows.
Harry was the first of their little group to reach his side.
‘Are you hurt, old chap?’
Three young men were playing at hauling the official conductor off his bus. Others pushed past in order to clamber aboard the pirate vehicle. The rogue services were popular because the fares were a penny cheaper. There was a strong smell of drink in the air and the jostling became less playful.
‘We’ve already paid to Holborn,’ the second ejected woman squawked.
‘Change of route, love.’ The pirate conductor barred her way.
‘Form a proper queue,’ the official conductor vainly insisted, trying to defend himself from attack. He was a hollow-chested fellow whose ticket board hung loose on its leather strap. All his potential passengers were already swarming aboard the rival bus.
A stone flew from the back of the crowd and pinged off the dark red livery of the official bus. It must have hit someone as it rebounded because there was an oath, and in that instant the mood of the mob swung from merry impatience to fury. A shower of stones whizzed through the darkness. A fist smashed into a face, mouths opened in a black roar of anger. Both buses were engulfed by furious people and the vehicles rocked dangerously as the crowd shoved at them. Jeering men attempted to haul both drivers out of their cabs. Lion stood looking on, and Nancy knew he was enjoying this demonstration of mass choice in the face of imposed regulation.
Arthur hustled Bella and Nancy into the shelter of a shop doorway. Harry was half-kneeling beside the man who had fallen. He stuck out an arm to shield him and in the melee someone stumbled over it. A flicker of memory fleetingly troubled Nancy but everything happened too quickly for her to skewer it.
‘Mind your feet. This man is injured,’ Harry shouted.
A couple of drunken labourers swayed on the platform of the pirate bus. ‘Bleddy hell,’ they catcalled in a parody of an officer’s commanding tones. ‘This men is hart.’
One of them flicked his wrist in an obscene gesture and another spat in Harry’s direction.
‘Fuckin’ toff,’ a voice bawled.
In an instant Harry became the focus of the mob’s rage.
‘What you want with a bus anyway? Why don’t yer get a fuckin’ cab? Or get yer batman to carry yer? Sir?’
The spindly conductor’s ticket board was torn off and tossed into the crowd.
‘Free rides, lads,’ its captor bawled.
Harry sprang up and launched himself into the fray.
‘Run to Great Marlborough Street and fetch a constable,’ Arthur ordered an open-mouthed urchin. ‘Stay here,’ he told Bella and Nancy.
He sprinted after Harry. Lion finally took his hands out of his pockets and loped in his wake.
The pirate driver was out of his seat and a burly man leapt into his place, tooting the horn and madly revving the bus engine. Harry leapt on to the platform beside its conductor and there was a roar as he tried to help the man back down to the street. Before he could do so and before Arthur could break through the mob to reach him, the new driver engaged gear and the bus jerked forward. It zigzagged wildly through the traffic that had built up. The handful of people who had managed to get aboard were flung sideways into the aisle.
Harry had both hands on the conductor’s shoulders and they swayed together like drunken dance partners before they lost their balance. Nancy saw in agonising detail what was about to happen.
Harry’s body flew in a vicious arc.
He would have tumbled into the gutter and perhaps have been only slightly injured but his waistcoat, undone at the bottom buttons, caught on one of two projecting brass hooks at the rear entrance. The conductor would suspend a webbing strap between them to prevent unwelcome passengers from boarding. So Harry’s fall was arrested with a jerk that punched the breath out of him. His torso was hooked like a salmon on a line as his legs helplessly trailed in the road. The bus accelerated away, its driver unaware of what was happening behind him and thinking that the onlookers only cheered him on.
Harry gave one choking cry. His feet raked the dirt like a puppet’s as he tried to scramble to safety. Twenty yards away, Bella pressed her hands to her mouth in a silent scream. Arthur flung himself in the wake of the bus.
The bus cleared the queue of vehicles by making a last violent swerve. Harry’s feet and ankles were crushed between its wheels and the kerb. It began to gather speed.
Panting for breath, Lion had to stop but Arthur sprinted even faster. His arms and legs pumped and the street lamps flashed on his blonde head. Nancy saw him launch himself into a giant leap and with one hand catch the pole at the rear of the platform. By rights his arm should have been torn from its socket but somehow he clung on. He hoisted himself on board and curled his free arm around Harry’s chest. With a colossal effort he dragged his friend’s hips and legs clear of the wheels and on to the bucking platform.
‘Hold him,’ he howled to the horrified conductor and two of the involuntary passengers. He dived the length of the bus but the joyrider only yielded the wheel when Arthur struck him a blow to the jaw. He wrenched the bus into the kerb and it crunched to a standstill. There was a grinding shudder before it stalled, followed by a silence that lasted for three or four seconds.
The only sound was the injured man’s gasp of agony.
‘Oh, God,’ Bella moaned. Nancy tried to turn her aside but she broke out of her grasp.
With a blast on their whistles two police constables dashed round the corner. The crowd immediately melted into the side streets, leaving only the grim-faced bus crews, licensed and pirate, and a handful of witnesses.
‘I fetched the rozzers, didn’t I, like the gent told me?’ the urchin said.
Arthur had already folded his coat under Harry’s head. He was exploring his injuries as Bella and Lion and Nancy reached them. The girls had been hampered by their high-heeled shoes so they kicked them off and ran the last few yards in their silk stockings.
They stared at the mess of crushed leather, torn socks and bloody flesh shockingly spiked with bone that had been Harry’s ankles. It seemed impossible that such a disaster could have unfolded in the brief moments since they had left the Greek restaurant. Bella dazedly sank down beside Harry on the bus platform and cradled his head in her lap.
‘Darling, you have hurt your feet. I know it hurts but you will be all right, Arthur and I will take care of you. Just lie still for me.’
‘Thank you,’ Harry murmured.
A trickle of blood ran from the corner of his mouth and Bella touched it with her handkerchief. Nancy groped for Lion’s hand.
The police acted with speed. The burly man had been seized as he tried to run off and handcuffs were sprung about his wrists. Two more officers sprinted up and restrained the opposing crews. The women who had been expelled from the pirate bus were excitedly shouting their accounts of what had happened, and the man whose lost hat had triggered it all sat on the kerbstone with his head in his hands.
One policeman bent down beside Harry and Arthur and Bella and Lion. His helmet was pushed back from his forehead, making him look as if he was in fancy dress.
‘There’ll be an ambulance along directly. I won’t take a statement from you now, but I’ll need all your names and addresses.’
‘My friend saved me,’ Harry murmured. ‘He risked him-self for me. I’d have been dragged under the wheels otherwise.’
‘He did.’ Bella was fierce.
‘Anyone would have done the same,’ Arthur said.
An ambulance bell was shrilling in the distance. Harry struggled to sit upright, propping himself against Bella’s knees so that he could peer down at his injuries. His mouth twisted at the sight.
‘I say, how strange. That one should live through everything we did, Arthur old chap, only for this to happen on the pavement in Oxford Stre
et.’ He had gone very white. ‘Be a brick and light up for me before the stretcher bearers get here, would you?’
Arthur took out his case, tapped the tobacco and clicked his lighter, drawing in the smoke himself before placing the cigarette between Harry’s lips. Nancy thought that Cornelius must have performed the same small service countless times.
Bella went off in the ambulance with Harry. Arthur assured her he would telephone General Bolton and break the news. The man who had been knocked down was taken away too and Nancy and Arthur were left with Lion as the last spectators drifted away.
Lion rubbed his eyes. ‘This is horrible,’ he muttered.
Nancy would have welcomed his comforting, but with the props of comedy and ironic detachment removed he didn’t seem to know what to do. Would Gil, she thought?
Yes, he would.
She held on to Arthur’s arm instead, although he was anxious to telephone Harry’s father before following Bella and his friend to the hospital.
‘I’ll take Nancy home,’ he told Lion and there was no further discussion. Lion trudged away towards Shepherd’s Market without looking back.
At home in Waterloo Street Devil had returned from the theatre and Cornelius was still up. They listened in shock as Nancy told them what had happened. Arthur went away to telephone, and came in again to tell them that the General was on his way and the hospital reported that Harry was already with the surgeon. He sank down at the kitchen table and accepted the brandy poured by Devil.
‘Bella insists there’s nothing I can do there. She’s waiting for her father to arrive. Did you see how calm she was, and how she looked after Harry? She is amazing.’
‘She is,’ Nancy said gently.
The glass rattled as Arthur drank the brandy and she exchanged a glance with Cornelius.
Devil shook his grey head. ‘What a cruel accident to hap-pen to a fine, fit young soldier. Will he walk again, do you think?’