The Empire Trilogy (47 page)

“I'll see if I can find Edward. But do you really have to go so soon? The party's only just beginning.”

By half past two the number of guests anxious to leave had swollen considerably, but still there was no sign of Edward. The ladies had long ago exchanged their flimsy dancing-shoes for more solid footwear and waited wrapped in furs. The men had found and used Edward's telephone to summon their chauffeurs and now stood, conspicuously overcoated, silk hats in hand, at the door of the ballroom, peering in distractedly in the hope of seeing, if not Edward, at least the Major. But by this time even the Major had disappeared.

The presence of these guests at the door (so obviously leaving but taking such a long time about it) had a debilitating effect on the resolution of those in the ballroom who had decided to stick it out until breakfast was served...for, after all, not everyone has the chance of attending as many balls as the Devereuxs and the Smileys. Every now and then someone would turn his head casually to see if the overcoated defectors were still there (and yes, they
were
!), then, looking thoughtful, would return his gaze to the almost empty expanse of dance-floor where old Mr Norton, stooped and perspiring but feet twinkling as industriously as ever, continued to plough his lonely furrow. He would have been altogether alone had it not been for the fact that there were a handful of the least distinguished guests (the young Finnegans for example whose grandfather owned the drapery) for whom a dance was a dance, no matter what.

By now it had occurred to several of the guests that, although it might be embarrassing to leave so early, it might be even more embarrassing to stay and find oneself eating breakfast
en famille
with the Spencers at a breakfast table set for two hundred.

“Where
is
the dratted fellow?” demanded the overcoated and outspoken Captain Ferguson in a loud voice from the door. He was no longer even referring to Edward, given up for lost and completely mad, but to the equally elusive Major.

“Well, we can't wait all night!”

And at last the defectors moved in a convoy of fur, perfume, silk hats and cigar-smoke towards the foyer. Dragging open the massive front door (the servants had evidently vanished to their own more amusing below-stairs revelry) they found themselves face to face with the very man they had been looking for, the Major. He was carrying in his arms a large bundle of dripping black velvet from which protruded two blue-white feet and a pale, whimpering face.

The Major stepped inside immediately, looking as surprised and disconcerted as the departing guests. Beyond him, in the dark drive illuminated here and there by the lamps of the waiting motor cars, a number of uniformed chauffeurs impassively watched this curious scene.

The Major hesitated for a moment or two, long enough for his dripping black bundle to form a small pool of water on the gleaming tiles, long enough for the departing guests to notice a dark snake of pond-weed dangling from one of the slender ankles.

“Ah, you're off then,” the Major at last murmured somewhat grimly. “I do hope you've enjoyed your...ah!” His words ended with a grunt as the velvet bundle thrashed petulantly, causing the limp strand of water-weed to slither to the floor. The ladies in furs stared at it as if it were an adder.

Meanwhile the Major had turned and was striding swiftly up the stairs with his dripping cargo. He stopped abruptly, however, before he reached the landing and looked down.

“I'll say goodbye to you for Edward. I'm afraid he's indisposed.”

With that he vanished, leaving only that sinister coil of water-weed as testimony to his passing. The departing guests cautiously groped their way out into the night.

As for the Major, he was carrying Padraig swiftly along the corridor towards the linen room, the warmest and driest place he could think of. The boy was trembling, his pearly white teeth were chattering. And no wonder! The water in the swimming-pool must be icy at this time of year. Kicking open the linen-room door he dropped Padraig into the nest of pillows and said sternly: “Now take that wet dress off immediately. I hope this will be a lesson to you, Padraig. If I ever find you dressing up as a girl again I'll throw you in the swimming-pool myself.”

Padraig said nothing, but his whimpering increased in volume. The Major stooped and struck a match to light the oil lamp on the floor. By its light he could see that clouds of steam had begun to rise from Padraig's wet clothes. Poor Padraig! Not only had the Auxiliaries coaxed him with honeyed words to a tryst by the swimming-pool, not only had they thrown him cruelly in, they would also have left him to drown if the Major had not come to the rescue. Poor Padraig! He remembered how Sarah had once said: “With the twins everything has a habit of beginning amusingly and ending painfully.”

In the corridor the Major paused to listen. Had he just heard a cry of pain from somewhere close at hand, perhaps from one of the rooms that lay along this very corridor or the one above? But all the doors were closed; from the linen room alone a thin trickle of yellow light daubed the carpet. Elsewhere all was dark. The cry of a girl? “One of the twins?” he thought anxiously. But he hurried on. He must get some brandy and hot water for Padraig lest the boy catch pneumonia. Perhaps, after all, it had only been the cry of a seagull swooping close to the house.

The number of guests collecting themselves in the foyer had increased, but they and the Major ignored each other. Outside, motor cars continued to arrive, illuminating the green lawns with their sweeping headlamps. A white-haired old gentleman seated on a sofa, palms resting with dignity on a silver-embossed cane, noticed the Major slipping by and wagged a stern reproving finger at him. But the Major paid no attention and hurried on. Hardly had he escaped from the foyer, however, when he came face to face with Miss Archer who said: “Those wretched young men are causing trouble in the ballroom. They've been threatening to shoot the orchestra if they don't go on playing. And they've been making the maids dance with them.”

“My God! You haven't seen Edward? We must find him. Would you mind getting a hot drink for Padraig? He's in the linen room on the first floor. They threw him in the swimming-pool. Thank heaven most of the bloody guests have gone!”

The orchestra stopped playing just as the Major reached the ballroom. The music had grown hysterical, haphazard, a discordant scraping of violins, an outraged groaning of cellos that bore witness to the exhaustion and alarm of the musicians. Then, abruptly, in the middle of the most frenzied passage it had stopped. Now there was utter silence.

A girl was standing in the doorway. She moved aside to allow the Major to pass. It was Sarah.

“What's going on?”

But Sarah ignored him, intent on what was taking place in the ballroom. The Major brushed past her and went inside.

Edward was standing on the orchestra dais, his face dark and congested with blood, his massive body vibrating with fury. He was glaring down at the young men frozen like statues here and there on the empty floor. Behind him the musicians were swiftly and silently packing their instruments into cases and collecting their music. Three or four maids who had been dancing with the Auxiliaries melted away from the floor and vanished.

Edward had begun to stride back and forth along the narrow platform with short, violent steps...a wooden music-stand got in his way, he kicked it aside with a deafening crash, then silence returned except for the ominous creaking of the boards under his weight. As he prowled back and forth his furious eyes remained on the faces of the young men on the dance floor.

Then one of the young men laughed. And at the same time a cold gust of wind blew through the open windows, swirling the curtains and fluttering the tablecloths, making the regiments of candles splutter and grow dim, sending up a blizzard of white petals from a wilted flower that lay beside a lady's forgotten handbag. And then they were all laughing, rocking, hooting with merriment as they strolled unconcernedly towards the French windows. Outside on the terrace they could still be heard laughing as they moved away into the darkness.

Edward stopped pacing. His shoulders sagged and he looked ill. A minute or two passed and then the Major strolled across the floor and looked out over the terrace to make sure they had gone. He only saw a brief glitter in the darkness as an empty wine-bottle flew up from the terrace below, hung for a moment and then plummeted towards the glass roof. It smashed through the roof in a diamond rain and exploded on the floor in a thousand fragments. Edward, Sarah and the Major waited motionless. Presently from the glass roof there came another deafening crash and shower of glass, but this time the bottle dropped unbroken into the empty cushions of a sofa. And that was the end. It was only now that the Major noticed there had been somebody else in the ballroom all the time: sitting on another sofa in the darkest and most obscure corner holding hands were the racing motorist and his lady. But nobody acknowledged their presence and in due course they disappeared without a word.

“Where have you been?” demanded the Major bitterly. “And thanks for leaving me to cope with everything.”

“We'll talk about it tomorrow,” Edward said curtly. Turning to Sarah he added: “I must take you home.” They left the Major standing resentfully amid the broken glass in the middle of the floor.

Unknown to the Major there still remained two Auxiliaries at the Majestic. After Charity's fall the two young men who had been escorting them, the somewhat dubious Matthews and the clean-limbed Mortimer, winked at each other and hastened to assist the girls up the stairs. Charity needed this assistance; she had become extraordinarily sleepy and lethargic all of a sudden; she could hardly keep her eyes open or put one foot in front of the other. Faith, on the other hand, raced up the stairs unaided and even tugged at Mortimer's sleeve (which made Matthews wonder whether his great experience of women, which had led him to choose the more intoxicated of the twins, had guided him to such a wise choice after all) whenever Mortimer, who had become strangely talkative, hung back to chat with his friend Matthews. The truth was that Mortimer, though determined to put the best possible face on it in front of Matthews (to whom he had once, in a moment of weakness, confided the description of one or two fictitious conquests), was distinctly alarmed by the turn events had taken and was secretly wondering just what he was in for...that is to say, he already
knew
more or less what he was in for, having had (or almost had) a thoroughly nauseating experience in a brothel in France, one of those “reserved for officers” (one shuddered to think what those reserved for the other ranks had been like). Even now, chatting garrulously on the stairs about Jack Hobbs hitting long-hops over the pavilion, he had only to close his eyes to see glittering-ringed fingers parting thick white curtains of fat to invite him into some appalling darkness.

Gay as a skylark and with more energy than she could find a use for, Faith had now begun to climb using only one leg, her crinoline ballooning prettily with each hop—but even so she found she was ascending more quickly than the others. Back she came to tug at Mortimer's sleeve again, telling him that he was a slowcoach and that he should forget his beastly cricket and come on up and...“My God! Just look at Catty! You'd think she was sleep-walking!”

Indeed, Charity was swaying helplessly, loose-limbed as a puppet, divinely relaxed. Her eyelids kept creeping down and it took all her strength to force them up a millimetre or two to see what was going on. Climbing unaided would have been out of the question but fortunately Matthews's shoulder was under her left armpit, his powerful arm was wrapped round her back and a hand like a steel hook gripped the bottom of her rib-cage as if it were the handle of a suitcase (this hurt, she knew, but for some reason she couldn't feel it)...“Jolly decent of him to help me, anyway,” she kept thinking.

“Hey! Are you all right, Catty?” Faith's grinning face was saying a few inches in front of her own, emerging out of a grey fog of sleep.

“Of course I am!” she said crossly—or would have said if she had not been so busy with the weight of her eyelids.

“Of course she is!” Matthews echoed her thoughts, though rather defensively. “She's as right as rain.” But at the same time he was becoming increasingly anxious lest he had picked the wrong one. This one was
too
drunk—either that or not drunk enough. Fortunately, while his right hand, fingers dug deep into the soft, elastic flesh of her waist, was holding Charity up by the ribs, his left hand was gripping the neck of a bottle of chilled champagne that he had thoughtfully caught up out of an ice-bucket in case a further anaesthetic should be needed. But what was the matter with that ass Mortimer? Was he showing the white feather in spite of all his big talk? In which case...

But meanwhile they had at last reached the second floor and Faith had picked out two adjoining rooms which she knew to be unoccupied. Having deposited one twin in each of them, the young men emerged for a hasty conference, Matthews suggesting that Mortimer might like to swap...“I think this one prefers you, anyway.”

But Mortimer considered his honour to be at stake and rather haughtily rejected the suggestion, though he knew (and knew that Matthews knew) that he would have been only too glad to accept if it had not been a question of honour.

“But you aren't going to be a cad, are you, Matthews? I mean, your one is dead to the world.”

“Matter of fact, you're wrong there. She's already getting interested...”

Matthews and Mortimer separated on this disagreeable note, the former with every intention of being a cad if he possibly could, the latter determined to put up a good show (or at least not to be sick like last time). Matthews, returning to the room where Charity lay fast asleep on a dusty counterpane, cast an expert eye over her inert form and saw at a glance that he would have to be quick.