‘Oh, well done,’ said Guillaume under his breath. Florence drew closer to him.
The admiral seemed unexpectedly taken aback. ‘You can’t refuse,’ he cried in a shrill voice. ‘I’ve ordered luncheon for everyone at the Carlton.’
‘Sorry, Father,’ replied Kynaston. ‘Griselda and I have another engagement.’
Peggy had drawn back some time ago, embarrassed by the Admiral’s display of emotion, and had somehow got into what seemed mutually satisfying intercourse with Doris, who was regarding Kynaston’s heroism with soft wondering tear-soaked eyes. By this time all the strangers had withdrawn to form a crowd outside.
The Admiral looked with some anxiety at the guard of honour. Clearly he felt that the situation could not be much longer continued without becoming legendary on both lower and upper decks for years to come.
He glared at his son. ‘Boy,’ he said sotto voce, ‘I have only one thing to say. Be a man.’
‘That’s just it, Father. I am a man.’
‘Oh I say,’ interposed Freddy Fisher, who had lost sympathy with Kynaston. ‘Surely you can compromise?’
Outside, the Petty Officer cleared his throat. The men were tiring under the strain of the crossed carbines.
The admiral wheeled. ‘Dismiss your men.’ Then amid the necessary bellowing and stamping, he cried to the party ‘Those who wish for luncheon may follow me. There are cars outside;’ and, ignoring the newly married couple, he left the building.
There was another pause.
‘Go on,’ said Kynaston. ‘Have lunch. Griselda and I will see you later.’ Lena’s eyes were moving round the group. The sacristan was waiting to lock up.
‘I would rather beg my bread on the Victoria Embankment,’ said Guillaume. He was in a passion of indignation. The guard of honour could be heard marching away. Soon the fog hushed them.
‘Please go and enjoy yourselves,’ said Griselda.
A motor-horn blared commandingly. Florence looked out into the murk. ‘That lawyer’s got in,’ she reported.
Among the rest of them Guillaume’s opinion seemed to prevail. Even Freddy Fisher, though horribly disappointed by the turn of events, abided by an unconscious loyalty, to none could clearly say what.
After another minute or two the cars drove off; the Admiral in the first of them, with his only guest; the remainder empty.
Griselda felt still further cut off from the world which had been hers until she visited Beams; a feeling enhanced by Peggy coming up to her, thanking her for the wedding, wishing her happiness, and then departing, her new dress hardly displayed, clearly much upset. Doris, after quietly congratulating the bridal couple, departed with her.
XXX
They lunched at the Old Bell Restaurant, recommended by Barney, who now appeared. He had been delayed by the completion of a commission, his work being much in demand about Christmas time.
‘You can depend on a Trust House for a sound middle of the road meal,’ he said. ‘Besides there’s a dome of many coloured glass: the finest thing of its kind in London.’
In the Ladies’ Room, two things happened. Griselda found that she had already lost her overlarge ring (and Kynaston, of course, had been unable to afford an engagement ring: indeed there seemed, in retrospect, to have been no very clear period during which Griselda had been engaged). Then Lotus pinned her in a corner and said ‘Remember.’ It was just like the ghost of Hamlet’s father. Griselda wondered what would come out of it all.
At luncheon (where Monica would eat nothing but salad) Barney enquired after Peggy; Lana, ostensibly for Barney’s information, told the story of the Admiral’s intervention; Kynaston kept feeling for Griselda’s hand; and Freddy Fisher became drunk with extraordinary rapidity. Lotus seemed increasingly out of it. Griselda wondered whether she was contemplating a final disappearance to a wealthier milieu; then supposed that she could not be, in view of her reminder in the Ladies’ Room. Lotus’s beauty and passion and sense of dress would make her rather a forlorn figure in any modern environment that Griselda could conceive. After a while, Lena, who, unlike Freddy, was drinking heavily, removed her polar outfit, and emerged in her usual shirt and trousers. As well as drinking, she was talking continuously, and without adapting her talk to the particular listener. Griselda looked at her a little doubtfully. Lena often seemed hightly strung for a business partner.
Luncheon ended with Carlsbad plums in honey, halva, black coffee, and (at Lotus’s expense) Green Chartreuses all round. There was some disputation, more or less affable, as they allocated among themselves liability for their respective parts of the bill; during which one of the business men who constituted the main element among the customers, approached Griselda and insisted on presenting her with a large bunch, almost bouquet, of Christmas roses.
‘You look so happy,’ he said, ‘that I should like you to have it.’ Since the beginning of their meal, he had spent his luncheon hour searching the cold streets and stuffy shops. Instantaneously and for an instant it almost made Griselda feel as happy as she looked.
Then Barney was making a speech, and all the waiters and some of the bar and kitchen staff, had entered the room to listen to it. Lotus sat sneering slightly, which only made her more seductive than ever; and indeed it was not the best speech which even Griselda had ever heard. The business men listened like professionals, and at suitable moments led the applause. The speech ended by Barney announcing that now they would leave the happy couple alone together; at which, despite the hour, there was a pleasant round of cheers. Barney then spoke to a waiter, who flashed away. In a moment he was back and speaking in Barney’s ear.
‘I have ordered,’ said Barney, ‘a taxi; and what is more, paid for it. It is yours to go anywhere not more than ten minutes away, or a mile and a half, whichever is the less.’
Everybody leaned from the windows of the Old Bell and cheered as the happy pair entered the taxi, which, having been decorated with white streamers at lightning speed by the driver, was already surrounded by a cluster of strange women, haggard as witches with Christmas shopping.
‘Best of luck,’ screamed Freddy Fisher and threw a toy bomb which he had acquired next door at Gamage’s for the purpose. Considering its cost, it was surprisingly efficacious.
‘Where to?’ enquired the driver.
There seemed nowhere to suggest but back to the attic flat.
XXXI
Griselda wondered when the mysteries would begin.
It seemed not immediately. In the taxi, Kynaston concentrated upon his achievement in routing and evading his father (which had, indeed, impressed Griselda considerably); and in the flat, having changed his suit, he continued alluding to the same subject. He described the wretchedness of his childhood for more than an hour and a quarter, a topic with which Griselda was fairly sympathetic; then unexpectedly said ‘I think we’d better go to the pictures. I feel we should celebrate, and all the cinemas will be shut tomorrow.’
Griselda quickly made tea (neither were especially hungry after their platesful of venison at luncheon) and they found their way through the fog to a double-feature programme which did not come round again until past nine o’clock. Most of the time Griselda sat with Kynaston’s arm round her. She found it pleasant, but detrimental to concentration upon the films. However, it being the programme immediately before Christmas, the films were undemanding.
‘Let’s go to Lyons,’ said Kynaston. ‘You’ll have plenty of opportunity for home cooking in the years ahead.’ He smiled at her affectionately. Griselda smiled back, though suddenly she had wondered what the food was like at the Carlton.
At Lyons, however, the big new Corner House at St Giles’s Circus, the food was, as usual, unlike the food anywhere else, though the ornate building was full of fog, through which the alien waiters called to one another in little-known tongues above the tumult of the orchestra. Griselda and Kynaston ate Consommй Lenglen, turkey and Christmas pudding, followed by portions of walnuts; so that it was nearly eleven before they left.