Circles of Time (16 page)

The Mardi Gras was filled with girls waiting for the fun to begin. It was still a bit early for that, just a few minutes past the legal closing hour. The bandstand was empty, but a large gramophone blared out a one-step. A few girls were dancing with each other while most of the men in the place looked on in amusement. William and David checked their overcoats and strolled to the bar, leaned against the polished mahogany, ordered whiskeys, and watched the girls dancing.

“Jolly good crop tonight,” David said. “Hot little flappers all.”

There was a sameness to them, William thought, like a flock of small, excitable, flashy birds. Their hair was cropped, dresses short—garters revealed as they moved shapely silk-clad legs, bodies revealed also as they danced, buttocks and breasts wiggling under scant frocks.

By midnight the crowds were pressing in. Men in cutaway coats and women in furs rubbed elbows and backsides with shopgirls and typists and young men on the loose. The musicians had arrived and the throbbing, frantic notes of jazz cut through the cigarette haze like a blade.

They latched on to two devastatingly pretty girls and William bought champagne for them—inferior stuff at a pound a bottle—and then the girls, after whispering together, suggested they move on to the Paradise Club in St. Giles High Street. It was two in the morning and they bundled into a taxi, the girls climbing onto their laps. As the taxi roared off into the darkness of the street, William's girl took his hand and placed it inside her dress, pressing his palm against a small naked breast.

“You're full of fuck, aren't you?” she whispered in his ear. “And I'll do what the French girls do—I promise.”

The Paradise Club was even more crowded than the Mardi Gras had been, a smoky, jazz-throbbing cave of a room. The drinks were more expensive, too, and the champagne even worse. Anything could be bought at the Paradise and the girls wanted cocaine. “For later,” they said. “A little snow draws out the pleasure—makes it last longer.” That made another fiver. The thirty pounds were nearly gone.

“We'll go soon,” he said thickly. He was a bit woozy from the whiskeys, champagne, and lack of fresh air. The girl sat close to him, idly stroking his thigh under the table.

“My rooms,” David said. “We'll toss for the bed.”

“All in together,” his girl squealed. “It's ever so much fun that way!”

“Off!” William pushed back his chair and stood up. “Forward the troops!”

He led the way toward the door, forcing a path through the crowd, people still coming into the place. A suffocating odor of wet cloth and furs, stale perfume and cigar smoke. He could see the open door, rain slashing down past the entranceway. Then dark, glistening figures popping through the doorway out of the wet—round black blobs, like seals.

“Coppers!” he yelled. “Oh, the rotters!”

The Chelsea raid had been a sham. They had patrolled Frith Street, biding their time, then had crossed Charing Cross Road into St. Giles.

“Police!”
a sergeant shouted through a megaphone.
“Stay where you are, if you don't mind. No movin' about!”

“This way!” William said. The girls and David held on to his coattails as he plunged back into the crowd and bulled his way toward the bar. There would be a door behind it leading to a cellar where they stored the beer, the crates of whiskey and wine. All clubs were the same in that respect. There would be a way up to the street from there.

“Stop that man!”

Police whistles shrilled and the girls let go of William with a scream and fell away into the crowd. David stumbled over someone's foot and fell. A policeman jumped to avoid stepping on his back.

“Stop in the name of the law!”

William was being propelled onward by his own burst of energy. Christ, he thought gleefully, what a bloody lark! He reached the bar and was prepared to vault it when one of the pursuing policemen grabbed him from the back.

“None of that!”

William shook the smaller man off and sent him flying into a table.

“Grab the bugger, lads!”

Two panting, cursing bobbies lunged at him and held on to his arms, pinning him back against the bartop.

“Come along easy, you bastard!”

“Oh, bugger off.” Strength swelled in him, racing through nerve and muscle. A Viking—a berserker.... He was suddenly back at Eton playing the wall game in mud and rain—kicking, butting …
“Bugger off, I said!”
He hurled them away from him with a roar. No thought of escape now. He was drunk with the need to fight, the pure joy of performing a mindless physical act. He might run like a broken-kneed camel, but, by God, he had arms like anvils. He could fight like a lion. A sweating red face loomed up under a copper's helmet and he drove a hammer blow into the man's jaw—saw him reel back and drop like a wet sack of sand. He burst into laughter and was still laughing when they all came at him like dogs on a fox. A hard wet boot caught him in the stomach … a night stick rose and fell. He felt no pain. A roaring in his ears … and then silence—an odd sort of peace.

“I
N 'ERE AND
mind your manners.”

An elderly police sergeant led him into a cheerless office. A burly man in a badly fitting blue serge suit rose from behind a desk and pointed to a wood chair facing him.

“Sit down, Mr. Greville.” The man's warmth matched the day. Through the barred and dingy windows a cold rain seethed into the cobblestoned inner courtyard of the Chancery Lane police station.

William sat down stiffly. His stomach ached where he had been kicked, and his head throbbed. He stared apathetically at the inspector, who was holding a small white card between his thick fingers.

“The
Hon.
William Greville,” the inspector intoned. “Heppleton Club, St. James's.” He let the card slip from his fingers and gave William a baleful look. “The ‘Hon.' stands for ‘
honorable
,' I take it. You didn't look very
honorable
when you were carried in here Saturday night like something the cat dragged about. No other form of identification in your wallet, so the chief inspector rang up your club. Somebody there informed us who you were, and set the wheels in motion. A club like Heppleton's—well, they know how to look after a member who gets himself in trouble. Lord Stanmore's son, they said.” He made a clucking sound. “Pity. Don't know what's happening these days when the son of an earl gets himself netted in along with common prostitutes and spivs of every description. The lowest of the low, lad. The lowest of the low.” He turned his blue bulk in the swivel chair and gazed morosely at the rain-blackened courtyard. “And two fine chaps of mine in hospital. Broken jaw, cracked ribs. Two servants of the law used cruelly by a man they're duty-bound to protect. Yes, lad, they'd give their very lives if need be.”

“They called me a bastard,” William said quietly, “and tried to throttle me.”

“You
are
a bastard,” the inspector whispered, his voice like a cold wind. “If I had my way I'd boot you into a cell and swallow the key. Packet of cocaine in your pocket—two years for that alone. Someplace terrible hard. Wormwood Scrubs picking oakum with your fucking bleeding fingers.” He turned back to the table and drew a cigarette from a tin of Navy Cut. He lit it with a match and dribbled smoke from the corner of his mouth.

“Your family solicitor was rung up. Sir Humphrey Osgood. He'll smooth the waters, I expect. I just wanted you to know what I think of you.”

“I don't really give much of a damn. About jail, I mean.”

“Oh, no. Wouldn't do, would it? Just about anything short of murder. The upper classes. God help us all.”

Sir Humphrey Osgood had posted bail and done all else that needed to be done. He sat in the back of his Daimler next to William and sorted fussily through the contents of his briefcase. He was a tiny man with a head too big for his body and was referred to by his fellow lawyers—but not out of malice—as “the dwarf.” There was nothing dwarflike about his intellect or legal shrewdness.

“Monday is always the very devil of a day, William, or I'd go with you and wait for your father.”

William studied the raindrops meandering down the glass of the side window.

“You had to telephone him, I suppose.”

“I'm surprised you need ask that, William. Of course I had to call him. This is no boyish prank you're charged with. You're in quite serious trouble. Quite serious indeed.”

“Two years in Wormwood Scrubs,” William muttered.

“What's that you say? The Scrubs? Well, hardly. We'll get you off with a payment of damages and a stern warning from a magistrate, more than likely. Won't be
that
simple, but we'll find a way, never you fear.” He tapped on the glass that separated him from his chauffeur and the driver pulled into Bell Yard and stopped in front of the law courts. “I must leave you now. Sure your head's all right?”

“Quite sure. A police doctor looked me over. I've got a hard head.”

“A thick skull is more like it. My man will take you to the office and you'll tell Mr. Daventry and Mr. Marble everything that took place Saturday night and early Sunday morning.
Everything.
Is that clear? Each word said, every thought that crossed your mind, every gesture made. No need to feel shy. It may all seem very sordid to you, but nothing shocks
us.
We happen to have a client at the moment who has been accused of doing the most dreadful things with a cricket bat upon the person of a young woman. No, lad, you'll hardly upset us.”

T
HEY GAVE HIM
tea and cigarettes and he told the whole sorry tale, holding nothing back.

“Ah,” Mr. Daventry said after a glance at Mr. Marble. “Did it offend and upset you when the young lady intimated her willingness to commit an act of sodomy?”

“Did it? I don't think so.”

“Meaning that you're not sure. The act being illegal and contrary to nature, you could well have been disturbed by the suggestion and, thus, far from your normal state of mind.”

William puffed on a Woodbine and looked away. Through the tall windows of the office he could see the dome of St. Paul's through drifting plumes of rain. It was that sort of nonsense, he supposed, that would have made it impossible for him to have been a successful lawyer even if by some miracle he had passed the bar.

“That could be true. I certainly was not in my normal state of mind.”

“Of course you weren't, dear boy,” Mr. Daventry said, sounding pleased. “
We
know that.”

His father had waited patiently in the anteroom, scorning the copies of
Tatler
and
Illustrated London News
that were stacked neatly on a table. He had dressed hurriedly, William could tell. Short boots, his oldest tweeds. He looked immeasurably tired.

“Hello, Father.”

“William,” he acknowledged curtly as he got to his feet.

“I'm very sorry about—”

The earl raised a hand. “Please, William. Spare me the apologies. There is really nothing you can say. Nothing at all. I went to the house first. Talked to the servants. I'd set none of them to spy on you, so I cannot fault them for failing to inform me of your activities over the past six weeks. Your lying about all day, staying out most of the night. I telephoned King's and was informed—rather unkindly, I must say—that you had been booted from college quite some time ago.”

“Yes. I intended to tell you about that—when the time was propitious.”

They were the same height. Two tall men standing eye to eye.

“That time is now, I presume, when the cat's out of the bag. How you managed to afford your pointless and tawdry pleasures I can't for the life of me imagine.”

So the Biscuit Tin Society had not been exposed. He was grateful for that, for his partners' sakes if not his own.

“I have friends.”

“Yes,” the earl said bitterly. “I can imagine what kind. Roaring boys and Covent Garden nuns!”

There was nothing further to be said. They were silent in the taxi that took them to Waterloo, silent on the platform as they waited for the 4:12 to Godalming, and silent in the carriage as the train raced across the storm-swept Surrey landscape.

Banes was waiting at the station with the Rolls and they got in and sat on opposite sides of the back seat, as far from one another as it was possible to get.

“Does Mother know?”

“I thought it best not to tell her. She will have to know eventually I imagine, unless Osgood can pull enough strings to keep it out of the press and out of a public court. As for your ‘leaving' school, she will of course have to know that eventually. I told her I had to go up to London on business and that you were coming back with me—a half-holiday of some sort.”

“I regret your having to lie on my behalf, Father.”