“Poor old Ma,” Betty laughed.
“What’s that?” Kitty asked, hanging round Ramsay’s neck like a boa constrictor as he opened an envelope addressed to him.
“Get off, you’re strangling me.”
She read aloud. “You are invited to Romps. The Honourable Pamela Berowne requests your company at a Baby Party.”
“What the heck is that?” Shirley asked. “Do you have to bring a baby with you? That would be a nightmare.”
“She’s a Bright Young Thing,” Ramsay said gloomily, unwinding Kitty from his neck. “She’s in pursuit of me,” he added. “God knows why.”
“I know Pamela,” Betty said. “She’s not in the least bit bright.”
All of the Cokers poured scorn on the so-called Bright Young Things.
“She’s not even that young,” Shirley said.
“Just a thing, then,” Betty said.
They cackled, delighted with themselves. They often were.
“Are you going to go?” Kitty asked Ramsay.
“Maybe. Something interesting might happen, I suppose.”
“Something you could write about,” Shirley said encouragingly.
“Ma will want you to show your face,” Betty said. “Fly the Amethyst flag.”
“We have a flag?” Kitty asked.
“Your friend Vivian Quinn will go, I expect,” Betty said.
“He’s not my friend,” Ramsay said. “His column’s moronic. He’s moronic.”
“Vivian Quinn?” an eager Kitty said to Ramsay. “I didn’t know he was your friend.”
“He’s not my friend,” Ramsay said. “Why does everyone say he is? I just happen to know him, that’s all. I don’t even like him.”
“You see him all the time,” Betty said.
“I see you all the time, that doesn’t make you my friend.”
“Apparently,” Betty said, unflustered by this slight, “he’s writing a roman à clef. I wonder if you’ll be in it, Ramsay,” she laughed. “Are you all right, Edith? You look like you’re going to be sick.”
Edith did look green but remained stoically at the table.
“Why on earth should I be in it?” Ramsay said. “I’ll have Quinn killed if I am.”
“By whom?” Kitty asked.
“Niven, of course,” Shirley said.
“You can do your own dirty work,” Niven said. “I’ve done enough killing.”
“Have you? Killed people?” Kitty asked, seeing Niven in a new, interesting light.
“What do you think war is, you idiot?”
Betty had moved on from her salad to a peach that she was flaying meticulously with a little solid-silver penknife that was engraved with her initials and had been given to her by an admirer. Nellie was in two minds about this gift—more useful than flowers, certainly, but to what end would you give a woman a knife?, she puzzled. It was an invitation to a stabbing, in Nellie’s opinion. Chekhov had his gun, Betty has her knife. Caution seems to be required in her narrative.
“I saw you yesterday,” Betty said accusingly to Niven.
Niven had still not sat down or removed his coat. He was someone who was always either coming or going, they found it disconcerting when he lingered like this between the two states.
“Near St. James’s,” Betty persisted. “You were stopped at those new ‘traffic light’ things and there was a woman in the car.”
“Who was she?” Shirley asked.
“No one,” Niven said.
“She must have been someone. Were you taking her for a spin?”
Betty guffawed in a very unladylike way and said, “Oh, is that what they call it now?”
“Did you, Niven?” Kitty asked with commendable innocence. “Take her for a spin?” He ignored the question.
“Are you going out again?” Betty asked him. He ignored that question, too. “Give us a lift, won’t you? Shirley and I are going to Selfridges.”
“Can I come with you?” Kitty asked.
“No.”
Niven had the best car, they were all agreed—a Hispano-Suiza so magnificent that people stopped in the street and gazed in awe at its beauty. (“Divine,” Kitty drawled, fluttering her hands in an inexplicable gesture. She always had some star or celebrity that she was emulating. She tended towards iconolatry.)
“Well, will you give us a lift, Niven?” Betty said. The now naked peach on her plate was a perfect ripe globe that could have understudied for one of the golden apples that distracted Atalanta.
In answer, Niven reached for the peach and took a great bite out of it, at which outrage Betty jumped like a scalded cat, yelling at him that he was a dark-hearted bastard who deserved to die, and Edith said, “There’s a child present” (“Where?” Kitty asked), adding, “Do put the knife down, Betty.”
Niven clicked his fingers and Keeper jumped to attention. The pair of them left swiftly before anyone could claim a seat in the Hispano-Suiza.
The rest of them parted as smoothly and instinctively as a flock of crows will suddenly break apart and scatter, each to its own destination. Edith went to “have a lie down” in her room, but only got as far as the downstairs cloakroom, where they all heard her being sick.
“I hope whatever it is isn’t catching,” Betty said.
“She was drinking gin last night,” Shirley said.
“She really shouldn’t, doesn’t have the stomach for it.”
Betty and Shirley had to cram themselves into Betty’s little Sunbeam while Ramsay, bolstered by Shirley’s faith in him, disappeared to his room to think about his novel. Writers needed to think a great deal, in fact they almost needed to do more thinking than writing.
A discarded Kitty returned to the window seat and finished the equally abandoned peach. She was hoping that the mysterious man might have returned to his watch, but the gardens were empty so she ran herself a bath and emptied an entire jar of Betty’s Mermaid bath salts into it. Afterwards, feeling rather shrivelled, she asked the cook to make her chocolat chaud (“Eh?” the disgruntled cook said) and then pilfered several large slices of ham from the larder and ate them, until she felt almost as sick as Edith.
* * *
—
When Nellie eventually returned home to Hanover Terrace from her enchantment in the park she took Kitty by surprise, appearing suddenly at the French windows. She was locked out and Kitty let her in, although it crossed her mind not to.
“Shouldn’t you be in bed?” Nellie said.
“I’ve only just got up,” Kitty said reasonably.
The Dardanelles
Niven took up his usual post in the barber’s chair, where he was muffled in a steaming towel by a mournful man called Emin who seemed to carry the weight of the Ottoman Empire on his back. He was a fierce type, too, wielding his cut-throat razor with a dramatic flourish. They were in largely mute agreement over many things, particularly both Churchill and the disastrous folly of Gallipoli, but even so Niven restrained himself from voicing his thoughts on the subject as no man wants to discuss politics with someone holding an open blade in their hand.
Emin meant “trustworthy” in Turkish, he had told Niven on more than one occasion, as if he needed to prove his honourable credentials. Niven, on the other hand, liked to keep his virtues well hidden from the world. The woman, for example, spied by Betty in his car in St. James’s yesterday had indeed existed, but she was not the sort of woman that Betty presumed. Betty was both long-sighted and short-sighted at the same time—a considerable feat (or “blind as a bat,” according to Nellie). If she had been wearing her spectacles, she might have recognized the woman as one of the cleaners from the Amethyst. (Or perhaps not. Betty wasn’t the sort to remember cleaners.) The cleaner had broken an ankle falling down the stairs in the club and Niven had carried her all the way back up to the top—and she was the hefty sort—and then driven her to St. Thomas’s hospital, where he counted off five pound notes from his wallet and gave them to her, because he knew Nellie would give her the sack when she found out. Absenteeism was not tolerated at the Amethyst, no matter the cause. It ensured the staff stayed hale and hearty, Nellie said. “Pour encourager les autres, and so on.” Niven could have done with his mother by his side in the trenches during the war. The peace was a different matter.