Black August (6 page)

The floor was crowded, but somehow they managed to edge their way into the slowly-revolving mass. Kenyon's height was an advantage, Ann's head barely came up to his chin, so to steer her was easy, and her weight was so slight that he could hardly feel it unless he pressed her to him. As he glanced down he caught a glimpse of the little mole on the curve of her left cheek, and the sight of it thrilled him curiously.

‘Happy?' he asked almost curtly.

‘Oh, need you ask!' came the swift reply, and she seemed to cling more closely to him.

‘Ann?' he whispered a few moments later. She heard him even above the throb of the band, and turned her face up to his in quick response:

‘Yes, Kenyon—yes?' Her eyes seemed enormous, limpid yet sparkling in the reflected light.

For once Kenyon found himself tongue-tied. ‘Just … just Ann!' he breathed; ‘just
Ann
!'

How long they danced Ann could never afterwards remember. She had a vague recollection of Kenyon ordering an ice for her and a brandy-and-soda for himself. They did not say anything particular, and in that swaying throng waltzes or one-way-walks made little difference—only a slower or a faster time.

Quite suddenly it came to her that the great room was two-thirds empty, and she was saying that she simply
must
go home. He settled his bill while she got her coat and then led her out into the street.

‘I shall be all right,' she said as he helped her into a taxi, ‘please don't bother to see me home.'

‘Nonsense,' he laughed. ‘Taxi—272 Gloucester Road,' and in a moment they were seated side by side speeding along the almost deserted Strand.

As he reached out and took her hand she made no pretence of trying to avoid the gesture, but let it rest for the remainder of the journey, warm between his own. Almost impossibly soon, it seemed to her, the cab had stopped—she was getting out, and Kenyon paying off the man. ‘But don't you want to take him on?' she heard herself saying.

‘No, pick up another later.' He stood tall, purposeful—looming above her in the semi-darkness as she inserted her key in the lock.

‘You can't come in, you know!' she said.

‘Can't I?' he squeezed her arm. ‘Don't be silly, Ann—I want to carry away memories of the place where you live so that I can call up pictures of you in my mind. I know there's a sitting-room—you told me so. You trust me, don't you?'

Somehow his quiet, almost mocking assurance made a refusal seem stupid and childish. She turned the key and felt him behind her in the close darkness of the tiny hall.

‘This way,' she whispered, stretching back one hand to guide him as they reached the landing and, with the other, softly opening the sitting-room door.

In the faint light that penetrated through the half-drawn curtains the arm-chairs and settee were just visible as outlines of a deeper blackness. She put out her hand to press the electric switch, then hesitated, remembering suddenly the worn shoddiness of the room—but Kenyon's fingers closed over hers and bore them swiftly downwards as he drew her to him.

Her arms stretched up and closed round his neck, drawing his face down to hers. Something outside her consciousness seemed to impel her movements. She closed her eyes, her heart hammering in her breast as her soft mouth melted into his; standing on tiptoe, straining to him, she returned his breathless kisses with almost savage passion.

As in a dream she found herself lifted—held in the air—and then laid gently on the long settee. He was kneeling beside her, fondling her hands, and repeating over and over again, ‘Ann—Ann—Ann.' Then his arms were tight about her once more.

How long they remained fast in each other's arms, while the silent night wended its way towards the dawn, Ann did not know or care. Her mouth was sore with the strain of repeated kissing yet his fevered lips seemed insatiable of her caresses.

With a sudden devastating unexpectedness the light was on—Gregory Sallust stood, framed in the doorway, returned from his night's work. His paper was even now thundering from the presses, going North, South, East and West, to carry the news of the moratorium to the breakfast tables of the millions.

‘Hullo!' he said. ‘So sorry—had no idea you were still up—only came in for my nightcap—won't be a second.' Then he walked over to the cupboard where he kept his whisky.

Ann noticed through a sort of haze that Kenyon was standing up with his back to the mantelpiece. His hair was rather ruffled, but he looked remarkably self-possessed.

‘It is I who should apologise,' he said. ‘I've been rottenly ill—ate something at supper that didn't agree with me I think. Anyhow, Miss Croome insisted that I should come in and lie down in the dark for a bit, and I'm feeling ever so much better now.'

‘Oh?' Gregory nodded. To Ann's relief he showed no shadow of disbelief in this preposterous story; ‘how rotten for you—may I suggest that a whisky-and-soda wouldn't do you any harm—buck you up a bit before you go home!'

‘Thanks, that's nice of you.' Kenyon drew his tongue quickly across his burning lips, ‘I could do with a drink!'

‘Good, here we are—say when.' Gregory squirted a siphon into an extra glass which he had already filled a quarter full with whisky, and Kenyon picked it up. Ann stood there marvelling at their quiet, easy behaviour, as they talked casually of the moratorium for a moment. By some mysterious freemasonry they already seemed to be on the best of terms, although she had forgotten even to introduce them.

‘Well, I must get along.' Kenyon set down his glass.

‘You'll find a taxi at the end of the road,' said Gregory affably.

‘Thanks—thanks too for the drink. I'll give you a ring, Ann, if I may—sorry to have been such a nuisance to you.'

Kenyon was standing by the door, but Ann felt that he might have been a thousand miles away. By the time she had reached the landing he was half-way down the stairs.

‘Don't bother to come down,' he called. ‘I can easily let myself out.'

The front door banged while she was still upon the second step. ‘He might have waited,' she thought, ‘but of course the darling was trying to make it seem ordinary and natural. Anyhow Gregory couldn't have seen much!' She yawned, suddenly realising how tired she was and went back into the sitting-room to fetch her coat.

Gregory stood there grinning like a fiend. ‘Ann,' he said, ‘Ann—how could you be such a little idiot?'

‘What do you mean?' she cried, her eyelids lowering angrily.

‘I never meant you to go and overstep the mark like that!'

Misunderstanding his meaning completely she flushed scarlet. Thank you, Gregory, what I choose to do is entirely my own affair.'

‘Of course,' he was serious now, ‘but why in God's name pick on a man like that?'

‘He's worth a thousand like you!' she snapped.

‘Perhaps, but he won't be any earthly good to you if we all have to get out in a hurry—and that's what it is coming to, you believe me!'

‘Why?' Ann demanded truculently.

‘Because he'll be too busy with his own crowd.'

‘What exactly do you mean?' she said slowly.

‘Well, you're a typist-secretary aren't you?'

‘What about it? He knows that.'

Gregory set down his glass with slow deliberation; his mouth hung slightly open. ‘Does he? Well, do you seriously think he'll give a damn what happens to you when the crash comes? You've just been an excellent amusement for the evening that's all. A little quiet fun which will be forgotten in the morning. Surely you realise that, unless … Good God! perhaps you don't know who he is?'

‘I do—his name is Kenyon Wensleadale. I was telling you about him only this evening, and that he was getting some sort of Government job.' Ann shivered slightly, feeling for the first time the chill of the night air.

‘Government job, eh?—that's pretty rich.' He shook his head whimsically. ‘You poor little fool, hadn't you the sense to realise that Wensleadale is the family name of the Dukes of Burminster? That young man is the candidate for mid-Suffolk, Ann—and he is known officially as my Lord the Marquis of Fane!'

‘Darling! How divine of you to come!' Lady Veronica Wensleadale was stretched at full length on the comfortable sofa in her private sitting-room. It was on the third floor of the Burminster house in Grosvenor Square, a friendly, well-lit and exquisitely furnished room.

‘My dear! I've been simply dying to see you.' Fiona Hetherington stretched out both her hands. She was Veronica's closest friend and from their greetings one might have imagined that they met after a separation of months. Actually they had seen each other less than ten days before, exchanged letters, and held two long conversations on the telephone in the meantime.

‘Sit down, my sweet, and tell me
everything.
' Veronica pulled the other girl down beside her. She was darker than her brother Kenyon, but a suggestion of red lit the almost black hair on her small and shapely head. As she lay back her slim body was half-buried in the cushions and her pale oval face only just appeared above her knees. A thin spiral of smoke rose from a cigarette in her slender jade holder.

‘I suppose you've heard all these ghastly rumours which are floating round,' Fiona said.

‘Yes, too nauseating, my dear—why don't they have their absurd revolution and get it over!—but tell me about the Tweekenhams' dance?'

‘It was an awful flop, half the people failed to turn up!'

‘But, darling, they were completely loppy to give a party in August, anyhow.'

‘I don't know,' Fiona remonstrated, 'as Parliament is still sitting everybody has stayed on in London this year, but even Peter tried to back out at the last moment—said it was such damned bad taste with the King ill and everything—but we had to go in the end, I couldn't let Angela down.'

‘Poor Angela! she is a complete nit-wit, but such a sweet. It
was hellish to have to refuse her, but I couldn't get away from Holkenham until yesterday.'

Fiona pulled off her hat and shook back her fair hair. ‘Was it amusing?'

‘Grim, my dear—grim.' Veronica cast her eyes up to the ceiling. ‘The house was Strawberry Hill Gothic, not enough bathrooms, and a vast brown-tiled hall—real Neo-Lavatorial!'

‘How depressing. What were the Bronsons like?'

‘Quite too terrible. Of course it's a bit of luck for Kenyon that he was at Magdalen with the son. Old Sir George is practically fighting the election for him, but the old woman was appalling. It is one of those ghastly places where they keep up the prehistoric custom of the men sitting over their port, and as Juliana Augusta went up to bed early the first night the Bronson cornered me in the drawing-room. She third-degreed me about Juliana Augusta's little whims and she must have said “the dear Duchess” forty times in the hour. I think she thought that to say “Your mother” would have been
lèse majest
é.'

Fiona smiled. ‘And what about the young man?'

‘Oh, he was quite a nice little cad—played a decent game of golf and made sheep's eyes at me of course, but the poor lamb was dragged off to do this filthy electioneering most of the time—Hell's Bells!—that's done it.' Veronica grabbed frantically at the end of her cigarette which had fallen from the holder into her lap. When she had succeeded in rescuing the glowing stub she surveyed her light summer frock angrily. Two large yellow burns showed right in the middle of it.

‘Ruined, my dear—ruined!' she exclaimed wildly in her rather high-pitched voice. ‘How absolutely
too
maddening—and the rag's not even paid for!'

‘Poor darling,' Fiona consoled her, ‘but you can have it dyed, I've got quite used to that sort of thing since I married Peter.'

‘I know, sweet—you've been an absolute angel, but I just can't wear dyed clothes.'

‘I do wish you'd be sensible. How you can keep on running up these awful bills, I can't think.'

‘Madness, isn't it.
Maria
threatened to writ me last week!'

‘Did she? My dear, if I were in your shoes I shouldn't be able to sleep a wink.'

‘I don't, darling, at times I squirrel terrifically, but let's face it—if you're not a beauty, clothes do count.'

‘What nonsense—you're, lovely!'

Veronica tapped her high, arched nose. ‘Good old mountain goat, lovie.'

‘How absurd—who wants stupid doll-like prettiness anyhow. You've got the most shapely head I've ever seen, a figure like a sylph and the loveliest pair of legs in London. Besides you're the most amusing person in the world to talk to and men adore that!'

‘Oh, I can get away with murder among the males.'

‘Well, what are you grumbling about then?'

‘Clothes, dearie, clothes, an' 'ow ter pay me bills!'

‘Must you have so many?'

‘Yus! All part of the gime, lovie.'

Fiona nodded. ‘I don't blame you really because you've got such marvellous taste. I expect I should be the same if I looked so devastatingly
chic.
But can't you get papa to increase your allowance?'

‘Not a hope, darling; Herbert is broke to the wide. I cornered the old boy at Holkenham after he'd been at Bronson's ‘96 port, but it wasn't any earthly use.'

‘But he must have a pretty big income still.'

‘He swears he hasn't a bob. It would be different if we could persuade him to close down Banners. That place positively eats money, but he wont. He says it is unfitting that he should add to the number of the unemployed.'

‘It's a pity that some of these beastly Communists can't hear him!'

‘Oh, it's not only that, my dear, he gets all Ducal too! “As long as there has been a Burminster, Banners has been the centre of life for three counties. The Monarch would be most displeased, I'm sure.” Then I just hoot with laughter. You know what a little round fat man Herbert is, and he's just too comic for words when he starts to take himself seriously. No, darling—I'm afraid it's got to be the Purple Monkey in the end!'