A cocktail menu was presented to them. It was as vast as the Bible and neither of them had the faintest idea about any of the items on it. We are innocents abroad, Gwendolen thought. She started reading the menu out loud to Cobb. It was impossible to tell what the drinks contained from their names alone. The christening of cocktails must be a full-time job for someone.
“What do you think a Highwayman is?” she asked Cobb. “Or, for that matter, a Sunbeam, a Mikado, a King of Britannia—what on earth might be in that, do you suppose?”
“Orange, cognac, Italian vermouth and quinine,” the hovering waiter reeled off without hesitation.
“Blimey. What about it, William—a Bloodhound? A Honeymoon? A Grand Desire?”
He blushed. He was easy to tease. “Do stop,” he muttered, his patience wearing thin. “What do you recommend?” he asked the waiter. “Or we’ll be here all night.”
Buster Browns were eventually proposed by the waiter, who disappeared to fetch them. Cobb lit a cigarette and then remembered Gwendolen. “Do you?”
“No, thank you.”
Once baptized by the first Buster Brown, Cobb surprised Gwendolen by swiftly ordering another. Dutch courage, perhaps. Gwendolen had no idea what was in their drinks but they tasted as harmless as elderflower cordial. Primed by the cocktails, Cobb agreed to partner her in a two-step. Gwendolen’s silver sandals were itching to join others on the dance floor. She had not danced since the war, and although she was rusty from lack of practice and Cobb seemed to have learnt to dance from a manual, after a few circulations of the room they started to fall into the swing of it. Cobb, once he had got over his reluctance to make physical contact with her (or any woman, she suspected), began to seem to enjoy himself a little.
The club was packed. Rather guiltily (she had all but forgotten), Gwendolen remembered the purpose of her visit here—to find the lost lambs. There was, unsurprisingly, no Freda or Florence, nor anything other than pretty, smiling girls doing what they were hired to do, which was dancing with anyone who paid the price. They were certainly, if not maids, then definitely merry.
* * *
—
The Buster Browns, it seemed, had not been as innocent as they had tasted, and feeling rather dizzy Gwendolen was about to suggest to Cobb that they return to their table when there was a tremendous hubbub, followed quickly by the unmistakeable sound of a gun being fired. The shot had the remarkable effect of shocking the boisterous room into complete silence.
Gwendolen could see several more men producing guns and, galvanized by this sight, she grasped a paralyzed Cobb by the arm, pulled him to the side of the room and pushed him into a crouch. If shots were being fired, you did not want to go out of your way to make yourself a target. A volley of shots did indeed follow hard on the heels of the solitary gun. It was like suddenly finding yourself in the middle of a Zane Grey novel, Gwendolen thought. (Mr. Pollock had lost the popular argument on him, too.) Or a war, of course.
The conflict was over so quickly that Gwendolen almost wondered if the cocktails had caused her to hallucinate. The band had not even stopped playing, no one seemed to have been injured, and within seconds people had emerged from their foxholes and started dancing again. Gwendolen turned around to look for Cobb. This might be a good time to leave. She had not found her stray lambs, but at least she would have a tale to tell Frobisher. She did not want to disappoint him by turning up empty-handed in Bow Street on Monday morning. To her surprise, she found that Cobb seemed to have come to the same conclusion—she had been abandoned! Before Gwendolen had time to digest this astonishing fact, she heard a howl of pain. It seemed that someone had been wounded after all. She supposed she should try to help. After all, if there was one thing she knew about, it was gunshot wounds.
* * *
—
“Is it always so lively in the Amethyst?” Gwendolen asked Niven when he drove her back to Knightsbridge in the early hours of Sunday morning.
He laughed. “No, tonight was an anomaly.”
Well, that was an educated word, Gwendolen thought. Not that she had thought him uneducated, but he was a Coker, and Cokers seemed smeared with such blasphemy by all and sundry that she had expected their behaviour to be on a par with the Yahoos. She berated herself for her snobbery.
It was a good-tempered place usually, he said, people came to enjoy themselves, to spend money. “To have fun,” he added, glancing at her, as if to assess what effect that word would have on her, as if she were the apocryphal maiden aunt.
“There’s nothing wrong with having fun,” she said. She had, after all, briefly revelled in being in a roomful of people who were dancing themselves into a dervish-like delirium on a sea of alcohol. She had to admit, she had enjoyed the dancing, the cocktails, the tormenting of Constable Cobb. She had even, and it was perhaps something best kept to herself, taken satisfaction from dealing with a man on the cusp of death. She had felt more like herself than she had done for a long time.
What did Niven regard as fun?, she wondered.
“Fun’s overrated,” he said dismissively, as if she had voiced the question out loud. “Although for those gangsters I suspect that was their idea of it. My mother doesn’t tolerate violence in the club,” he added. “It’s bad for business, and business is everything for my mother.” It took Gwendolen a moment to remember that “my mother” was Nellie Coker—she didn’t seem like anyone’s mother. And Niven didn’t seem like anyone’s son. Some people were complete in themselves, as if born from the earth or the ocean, like some of the gods. Which was not a compliment. The gods were ruthlessly indifferent to humanity.
It had been unexpected, to put it mildly, to discover that Niven was a Coker. Niven was his first name, not his second, that was what had misled her, of course. What a strange coincidence it was that the man who had scooped her up from the pavement in Regent Street the day before yesterday and the man who had been undaunted by trying to save a man’s life tonight were one and the same.
Once Aldo had been stretchered away on an old trestle top that had been commandeered from somewhere, Niven had put his coat around her and said, “I’ll take you home.”
“Your coat will be spoilt by all this blood on me,” Gwendolen said, mindful of how expensive his coat appeared.
“Then I’ll get another one,” he said.
“And will you get another car?” she asked as she slid gingerly onto the cream leather of his splendid car. He laughed and said, “I’d rather not. He was a bleeder, wasn’t he?” He added, “Poor bastard.”
He made no excuse for his language, Gwendolen rather liked that. There had been camaraderie between them as they dealt with the wounded man. They had both seen worse.
They bowled along Piccadilly towards Hyde Park Corner. It was nearly three o’clock in the morning by now and the streets were deserted. Gwendolen supposed the Cokers were nocturnal creatures, quite used to seeing in the dawn. London felt fresh in the night air and she felt strangely elated. She glanced at Niven. In profile he was suspiciously handsome. “You’re staring at me,” he said, without looking round.
“No, I’m not.” She hastily changed the subject. “How did it start? The catalyst for the fight? I didn’t see.”
“Something and nothing. These gangs get worked up pretty quickly. Your partner seemed to abandon you at the first sign of trouble, not very gentlemanly of him. Who were you dancing with?”
“A man,” Gwendolen said. “I was dancing with a man. I don’t know his name.”
He was amused. “So—you came to the Amethyst on your own? And danced with a stranger? Generally only women of ill-repute come to nightclubs on their own and dance with strangers. You don’t strike me as being of ill-repute, I seem to recall you telling me the other day that you were a librarian.”
“I came to London for a friend,” she said. “To look for her sister and her sister’s friend.”
“On a mission, then?” he said.
Was he being sarcastic? It was hard to tell with him.