A woman near Derek began to laugh hysterically. Another began to sob. The eyes of the men glinted strangely. A great wave of excitement suddenly seemed to surge right through the watching thousands. In a moment, from stillness the whole human mass began to pulse with a weird, unnatural life.
A great murmur went up. A mingling of shouts and wild laughter. Two men just in front of Lavina began to fight. Another suddenly thrust his way through the crush towards a pretty girl, seized her in his arms and, in spite of her struggles, began to kiss her avidly.
Derek felt an overpowering desire to do the same to Lavina. He was standing just behind her and his arms positively ached to reach out and draw her to him. He fought it down, but suddenly she swung right round and flung her arms about his neck.
For a good minute their mouths were locked together; then, with a little moan, she wrenched her head away and began to hammer on his shoulders with her fists.
Roy had pulled a large flask of whisky out of his hip-pocket and was gulping down its contents as though they were only water.
The baleful rays from the big splodge of reddish-yellow light near the western horizon seemed to have raised the basest passions of the whole multitude. Parliament Hill was now a scene of indescribable confusion. People were fighting, kissing, struggling, rolling on the ground either in the grip of uncontrollable hate or passionate desire.
The comet set twelve minutes after the sun. With its disappearance the shouting died. The red glow faded, giving place to a pink-twinged twilight sky.
People were now coming to their senses as quickly as they had lost them ten minutes earlier. They were apologising to each other on every side and helping their late antagonists up from the ground. Almost at once the great crowd began to disperse, moving down the hill’s sides to the roads that led into London.
Derek took Lavina’s arm. ‘Come on,’ he said gruffly, ‘let’s get back to the car. What happened to us all, God knows! For a few minutes we must have been out of our senses.’
Lavina put a hand over her eyes. ‘Extraordinary, wasn’t it. The thing seemed to exercise a malign influence on everybody. But we aren’t responsible; we only behaved like all the rest.’
Roy followed them, lurching slightly. His breath was coming fast and his eyes were bulging a little from the amount of neat spirit he had consumed in gulp after gulp.
‘That’s all very well,’ he muttered. ‘But if it can do that sort of thing to us now, what effect is it going to have on us in a day or two’s time, when it gets a bit nearer?’
11
‘EAT, DRINK AND BE MERRY …’
Distinctly sobered by this strange experience they regained the car and drove back towards London. Derek took the quieter streets and as they were passing through St. John’s Wood Lavina broke a long silence by saying:
‘Where are you heading for now?’
‘Back to St. James’s Square,’ Derek replied promptly. ‘Surely you’ve seen enough for one night, haven’t you?’
‘Yes. But I was thinking of dinner. Where are we going to feed?’
‘Oh, we’ll knock up something.’
‘Why should we, when the restaurants are still open? It’s getting on for ten o’clock and I feel extraordinarily hungry. Let’s stop on the way back and get something to eat somewhere.’
‘All right,’ he conceded, a trifle reluctantly. ‘Where would you like to go?’
‘Let’s try the Dorchester. We can get there without going through the most crowded parts of the West End.’
‘We’ll have to cross Oxford Street.’
‘We’d have to do that anyway, unless we go right round Hyde Park, via Notting Hill and Kensington.’
‘That’s true. And I can avoid Marble Arch by going down Park Street. The Dorchester let it be then.’
‘That’s O.K. by me,’ Roy muttered from the back, ‘as long as one of you has enough cash to pay for the feast. I’m stony.’
Derek smiled. ‘The meal, if we can get one, is on me. I drew fifty quid out of the bank last week in case of emergencies.’
At Baker Street they came into the crowds again so Derek turned right, into Gloucester Place, then back through Portman Square into Orchard Street. They were hung up for a quarter of an hour at the Oxford Street crossing and in the distance could see masses of people jamming the roadway right up to Marble Arch. But the crowd was good-tempered and eventually they managed to get through; reaching Park Lane at last, and their destination, by way of Deanery Street.
To their surprise, they found the Dorchester packed to the doors. The lounge was as crowded as a railway terminus before a Bank Holiday week-end, and waiters were having difficulty in securing a passage through the crush to bring drinks to those people who had been fortunate enough to obtain tables.
Every table in the Grill Room was also taken but the head waiter, who was standing in the doorway, recognised Lavina.
‘You seem to be doing marvellous business,’ she smiled at him.
He gave her a worried look. ‘It is not good, madame. Many of our waiters have failed to report for duty and many of the kitchen staff are also gone; yet we have to cope with all these people. And we do not like this crowd. Very few of them are our usual patrons and they make unpleasantness for the guests who are still staying in the hotel.’
‘We were hoping to get some supper here,’ she said, ‘but it looks as though that’s impossible.’
‘In the Grill, yes, madame,’ he spread out his hands, ‘but I may be able to get you a table in the Restaurant.’
‘But we’re not changed.’
He shrugged. ‘Temporarily, that rule is no more. People made us withdraw it when they overflowed from the Grill, and old customers like yourself we could not refuse.’
Turning, he forced a way for them through the press and as there was not a single table vacant in the Restaurant he had one set up on the already diminished dance-floor.
They were lucky in getting a bottle of champagne almost at once, but it was a good half hour before the caviare rolled in smoked salmon, which they had ordered as a first course, appeared; and during their wait they had plenty of time to study the people about them.
It was quite clear that very few of them frequented the Dorchester in normal times. Only a handful were in evening dress. Many of the women were exotic-looking ladies, obviously from the streets round Piccadilly, and the bulk of the men were flashily-dressed foreigners of the type that usually haunt the Soho bars.
At nearly every table people were drinking champagne but, although appearances are often deceptive, something about the types which formed many of the groups made Derek wonder vaguely if they meant to pay for it or would try and slip away before their bills were brought to them. He wished now that he had insisted on taking Lavina straight back to St. James’s Square, but she was in excellent form and Roy, his rather weak but attractive face wreathed in smiles, was entertaining her with a series of limericks in Pidgin-English which he had brought back from China.
The band, reduced to half its usual number, was doing its best but it was almost drowned in the babel of voices. The dance-floor was crowded with a solid mass of perspiring humanity. One look round the great room was enough to see that the people in it were the very antithesis of those who were praying in the churches. They typified the wilder elements of the Metropolis whom the possibility of being struck down in three days’ time had released from all normal restraint. Their set faces and harsh laughter suggested a fierce determination to get everything possible out of life while it was still in them.
Perhaps as a result of their recent experience on Hampstead Heath Lavina and her two escorts found themselves unusually thirsty. Between the three of them their bottle of champagne was finished before their hors-d’æuvres arrived, and Derek ordered another.
Twenty minutes went by but it did not appear, and Roy was grumbling about the delay when a big man with a bald head and bushy eyebrows, who was wearing a horse-shoe tie-pin in a striped cravat, le
ant across from the next table proffering a magnum.
‘Here have some of ours, old boy, till yours turns up,’ he leered. ‘It’s all on the house to-night so what’s the odds?’
Roy held out his glass at once and Derek, although he would have liked to refuse, followed suit because the big man looked as if he might resent a refusal and it would have been the height of folly to start a row at such a time on a point of ethics.
‘And some for the little lady,’ said their new acquaintance.
When Lavina’s glass was full the big man picked up his own. ‘Well, here’s to you all! Happy days and three nights of bliss before the old comet hits us!’ He gave a special smirk in Lavina’s direction.
As they were about to drink, a Spanish-looking woman at his table irritably claimed his attention so for the moment they were relieved of his advances.
In spite of the crush Lavina wanted to dance, so Derek took her on to the floor; but when they returned to their table neither their second course nor the second bottle of wine had appeared and it seemed, on looking round the room, that the waiters had given up the unequal struggle.
‘It’s nearly half-past eleven,’ Derek remarked, ‘and it doesn’t look as though we’re going to get our omelette. I think we’d better go home.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ Lavina shrugged. She was staring out under lowered lids, over the cigarette she was constantly puffing, at the jammed mass of dancers. ‘I’m enjoying myself watching all these queer people.’
‘Maybe, but things are going to get pretty tough here soon, unless I’m much mistaken.’
‘Well, I’m not going,’ she said, with sudden firmness. ‘It’s just like a gala night, only the most extraordinary one I’ve ever seen.’
At that moment a man in a check suit pushed his way past their table. He was carrying four bottles of champagne in his hands and others were wedged under his arm-pits.
‘By jove!’ exclaimed Roy. ‘That chap’s been raiding the cellars. I’m in on this. Hang on here, and I’ll get a few bottles.’
‘You can’t do that,’ Derek protested.
‘Why not?’ Roy got to his feet. ‘If the waiters won’t serve us, why shouldn’t we help ourselves?’ He left them abruptly.
That he was right in his surmise that looting had started was soon clear as other men in lounge suits, quite obviously not employed by the hotel, came thrusting their way through the crowded entrance of the Restaurant clutching bottles of champagne, brandy and whisky.
The new supplies of drink were soon in circulation and gave an added fillip to the already irresponsible assembly. Someone else had thought of raiding the hotel’s supply of carnival favours. Coloured streamers, balloons and puff-balls began to be thrown from table to table; paper hats appeared on the heads of the dancers; tin whistles and klaxon horns were thrown from hand to hand and added their noise to the already incredible din.
Roy returned flushed and laughing, with a couple of magnums of Louis Roederer. He gave one to the big man with the horseshoe tie-pin at the next table and opened up the other for his own party.
‘You should just see the crowd in the cellar,’ he grinned. ‘This little beano’s going to cost the hotel a packet. Some of the chaps down there are too tight to move already and others are sitting on the floor lapping it up out of the bottles.’
Derek stood up. ‘Come on, Lavina, I’ve had enough of this. I’m going to take you home.’
‘Don’t be an idiot, darling!’ She smiled serenely. ‘I’ve already told you I’m thoroughly enjoying myself.’
A few tables away a man had a girl pulled back across his chest and was kissing her neck. At another, two men were attempting to fight, while a flaxen-haired young woman screamed drunken curses at them as she endeavoured to pull them apart.
Lavina could see perfectly well what was going on around her and knew that she ought not to remain there any longer; but she was now a little tight herself and in one of her pig-headed moods in which she was capable of almost any folly rather than submit to anyone else’s dictation.
‘Come on,’ said Derek. ‘If we stay here, we’ll get mixed up in some rough-house or other.’
She impatiently shook off the hand he had laid on her arm, and stood up. ‘I’m not going I tell you. Let’s dance.’
‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘I’m taking you home.’
‘All right. I’ll dance with Roy, then.’ She swung round and held out her arms to her cousin.
Roy was a little unsteady on his legs from the considerable amount of whisky and champagne he had consumed and his mouth hung slackly open, but he pulled himself together. Before Derek could say anything further, the two of them had glided off together into the crush.
Derek wished now that he had begged Lavina to come home instead of trying to order her to do so, and determined to try persuasive methods directly she got back to the table. In the meantime, he followed her golden head with an anxious eye as far as he could among the bobbing jam of people.
She and Roy had very nearly completed the circuit of the restricted dance-floor three times—but were hidden from Derek for the moment—when a dark-complexioned, tight-lipped man jumped up from a table and laid a sinewy hand on her shoulder.
‘I want to dance with you,’ he said. ‘My name’s Finnigan and any of the boys’ll tell you that I’m an ace-high picker of good-looking women.
Lavina met his insolent stare with a glance that would have shrivelled most men, but it had no effect whatever on the forceful Mr. Finnigan. With his left hand he gave Roy a violent push in the chest and with his right he wrenched Lavina round to face him.
‘Take your hands off me,’ she snapped, white with rage; but Finnigan only grinned at her.
‘I like a girl with spirit,’ he said, and, grabbing her small waist, jerked her to him.
She was not in the least frightened, but absolutely beserk with rage. Her eyes became hooded—mere slits in her pale little face—and the corners of her small mouth turned right down at a sharp angle. Raising her right hand she smacked Mr. Finnigan with all her force across the face.
As he jerked back, surprise gave place to black anger in his dark eyes; but before he could do anything further Roy had recovered and hit him an ineffectual blow which grazed his cheek.
In a second, Finnigan braced himself, swung round, and struck out with deadly precision. His fist took Roy under the chin and he went sprawling to the floor among the dancers.
Someone laughed hysterically, a woman screamed, but Finnigan took no notice. Completely unruffled, he turned back to Lavina and said smoothly:
‘Now that’s settled, we’re going to dance, and I’ll teach you how to smack people a bit later on this evening.’
As Finnigan grabbed her again she looked wildly round for Derek but could not see him. Then, on her right, she suddenly caught sight of the big bald man with the horse-shoe tie-pin.
‘Half a minute! What’s all this?’ he exclaimed, advancing on Finnigan.
‘You keep out of this, Harris, or I’ll put my boys on to you,’ snapped the Irishman. ‘This little floosie’s my pigeon.’
‘Oh, no, she’s not,’ declared Harris. ‘As for the boys, there’s plenty of mine here, too.’
Finnigan still had hold of Lavina by one wrist but Harris put an arm round her shoulders from behind. Pulling her to him he gave her a sloppy, wet kiss which landed under her right ear.
‘Oh, no, she’s not,’ he repeated. ‘We’re acquainted already—been neighbours all the evening. I’ve only been waiting my chance to have a dance with her until the party got going.’
‘Stop it, both of you!’ Lavina’s voice came hoarse and unnatural. ‘Let me go! I don’t want anything to do with either of you.’
So many quarrels over women were now taking place that the squabble for Lavina had passed almost unnoticed. Everything had happened so quickly that Roy was still sitting on the floor dazedly fingering his injured chin, while the dancers continued to jig all about them.
Suddenly Finnigan released Lavina’s wrist, thrust his hand under his arm-pit and withdrew it clutching a razor; the sharp edge uppermost across the back of his knuckles.
He made one slash at Harris but the big man was extraordinarily agile. Thrusting Lavina aside, he ducked; and next second he had also whipped out a razor.
Both men began to shout at the top of their voices and almost immediately their respective adherents came charging through the crowd towards them.
Within a moment a gang battle was in full progress. The dance-floor became a scene of wild confusion. Screaming women fought their way from it between the nearest tables. Bottles and glasses were being hurled; blood was flowing from ugly razor slashes. Lavina missed one right across her face only by inches and another in the neck because she tripped and fell.
Derek had jumped to his feet directly the shouting started. Using his elbows indiscriminately on men and women, he forced his way forward until he saw Lavina. As the floor cleared of non-combatants he made better progress and began to hit out savagely at any of the men who barred his path.
Roy had staggered to his feet again but he was still half dazed. Harris and his men were getting the best of the battle. Finnigan and his boys were being driven back. Derek was still some distance off, fighting with a fleshy, craggy-faced man.
In a gallant attempt to save Lavina, Roy plunged into the whirling mêlée. In doing so, he blundered into Finnigan from behind and threw him off his balance. With a blasphemous curse the Irishman fell to the floor.
Stooping, Roy grabbed Lavina and dragged her to her feet. Finnigan was up again, but in his fall he had dropped his razor. Reaching behind him, he snatched up an empty champagne bottle, and, raising it aloft, he brought it down with all his strength on the back of Roy’s head.
At that moment Derek reached them. As the blow fell he lashed out with all his force and, catching Finnigan full under the jaw, sent him flying backwards among the tables.
Sixty Days to Live Page 12