Love in Our Time (12 page)

“Never mind,” he said. “We'll leave it here. I expect it'll come in useful.”

The others had not so far spoken. But Mr. Hill was not to be mulcted of his opportunity for sympathy. He
came up to the head of the bed and inclined his bare, pallid skull towards the sufferer.

“How is the pain, Brother?” he asked.

Mr. Sneyd looked up with understanding eyes.

“It's better,” he said. “Thank you. They give me something in my arm. I had one this afternoon.”

“Keep smiling,” said Mr. Ankerson. He was leaning against a chair rubbing his foot where he had stubbed it. “Never say die.”

“Anything I can do for you?” Mr. Biddle asked.

Mr. Sneyd nodded. It was a meaning, purposeful nod. Obviously there was something pretty heavy on his mind.

“I want you to say a word to Gerald,” he whispered; his voice so low that Mr. Biddle had to bend almost double to catch the words. “It's about Flo.”

“What do you want me to say to him?” he asked.

But he never knew the answer. For at that moment the Sister came back. With her was a squat barrel of a woman. From the different head-dress, below which a single strand of iron-grey hair escaped, Mr. Biddle guessed that she was the Matron. It was not, however, at her head-dress so much as at her face that he was looking. It was of a scorching brick colour. Only after he had stared as it for some time did it occur to him that it might be anger that was giving her that complexion.

“Leave this ward at once, please,” she said.

“But Dr. Seton-Gordon said … ”

“This patient isn't to be disturbed.”

“But Nurse,” Mr. Biddle searched frantically for the right word, “Dr. Seton-Gordon said … ”

The Matron was, however, ignoring him. She had turned to the Sister beside her.

“Send down for one of the porters,” she said.

Mr. Vestry laid his hand on Mr. Biddle's arm.

“We'd better be going,” he advised.

The four men turned sheepishly and began to move towards the door. Only Mr. Biddle thought of stopping to say good-bye to Mr. Sneyd. He hung behind and reached out his hand comfortingly.

“Good-bye, old man,” he said. “We'll see you some other time.”

But Mr. Sneyd would not let him go. He gripped Mr. Biddle's hand, pulling himself up in bed as he did so.

“I haven't told you about Gerald,” he said pathetically. “I haven't had time.”

The Sister came back and disengaged his arm. “You lie down,” she said gently, as though she were talking to a child. “You're tiring yourself out.”

“I want to say something private to Mr. Biddle,” Mr. Sneyd persisted.

“Some other time when you're not so tired,” she said. “You're making yourself ill again.”

“But I want to say it now,” Mr. Sneyd complained.

He passed his hand wearily across his forehead and lay back.

“It doesn't matter,” he said weakly. “It's probably too late.”

Then he closed his eyes and seemed suddenly to be sleeping.

Mr. Biddle turned towards the Matron. He wanted to make it quite clear that he was not the sort of man to cause any difficulties and that the whole thing was the result of a misunderstanding.

“I'm very sorry,” he said. “You see Dr. Seton-Gordon said——”

“It's enough to kill a man in his condition,” the Matron answered.

“Oh, I hope not,” said Mr. Biddle.

“Coming into the ward and making all this disturbance. It's disgraceful.”

Now the Matron mentioned it, Mr. Biddle could not help noticing the disturbance. The occupants of all the other beds were sitting up on their elbows watching: the ward was lined with curious, unhealthy faces. To them, it had been an unprecedented scene. It was almost as though, out of visiting hours, four plain clothes men had paid a visit to Number Six and were now being ejected themselves. Altogether, it was the most stimulating thing that had happened for weeks.

“How do you think he's getting on?” Mr. Biddle asked, jerking his head backwards in the direction of Mr. Sneyd as he spoke.

The Matron pursed her lips and said nothing.

But Mr. Biddle was not to be put off.

“He'll be all right, won't he?” he asked. “You don't think——”

They had reached the door by now and he was not given time to finish his sentence. The other three men were already standing there in an awkward, self-conscious group. They felt that Mr. Biddle had deceived them.

“Good night,” said Mr. Hill.

Mr. Biddle made one last effort to present his credentials. “Dr. Seton-Gordon——” he began.

“Good night,” said the Matron.

It was not until they reached the lobby that Mr. Vestry said anything.

“I thought you said you'd got it all arranged,” he remarked bitterly.

“So I had,” Mr. Biddle told him. “Dr. Seton-Gordon said… ”

Mr. Vestry gave a little laugh, a dry hard little laugh.

“Dr. Seton-Gordon isn't the boss here,” he said. “That woman is.”

It was clear and fine outside. Even Pentonville looked bright. The sun, which was still shining somewhere over Regent's Park, caught the chimney-pots one by one and lit them up in a band of crimson along the skyline. All four men stood at the top of the steps and took a deep breath at the sudden peacefulness of the scene.

“Do you think old Sneyd's all right?” Mr. Biddle asked.

“I don't know,” said Vestry firmly, “and I'm not going back to find out.”

It was Mr. Ankerson who proposed that they should all have a spot of dinner together before they went back. He knew a capital little Italian place, he said, at King's Cross where you got a first-class
fritto misto
for one and nine. Mr. Hill approved the suggestion. Living above his shop he sometimes did not dine out for months on end and he always enjoyed restaurant food when he had it. Anything brought to him in a dish and served over his shoulder on to a hot-plate tasted wonderful to him.

But Mr. Vestry refused to be a partner to King's Cross.

“Better come into town and get something decent,” he said. “ Doesn't cost any more in the long run.”

And, like the born leader he was, Mr. Vestry took everything in hand.

“Casino Royal,” he said to the taxi driver.

“Where's that?” asked Mr. Hill.

“Back of Leicester Square,” Mr. Vestry told him. “Put on a floor show afterwards. Best dancing in London.”

Mr. Biddle had heard of the Casino Royal. It was one of London's brighter spots. He only wished that Mr. Sneyd had been well enough to come with them; it might have cheered him up a bit. And Mr. Biddle, sitting up on the hard, little occasional seat beside Mr. Hill—the other two had taken the back seats—with his basket of rejected fruit on his knees, thought of the irony that sends four healthy men out to do themselves well and condemns a wretched invalid to lie down and not see anyone.

The Casino Royal was a plastered mass of ridiculous old-fashioned stucco, brilliantly lit with an animated design in Neon. Over the entrance the ten-foot outline of a dancing girl kicked out her right leg and waved her hands from dusk till one a.m. At one a.m. the caretaker pulled the switch and the façade relapsed for the rest of the twenty-four hours into a cherished example of Edwardian baroque. But when the Neon was blazing it was as though the whole street was on fire; to go in through the chromium revolving doors was like passing through a rainbow.

The inside of course had been modernised. It was now mostly steel and glass and zebra-striped cushions. Even the carpet was zebra-striped. Soft as moss, it engulfed the ankles in a zig-zag pattern of crazy lines. Mr. Biddle stood where he was just inside the revolving doors and stared, but Mr. Vestry seemed perfectly at home. He gave in his hat through the triangular orifice cut in the wall and led them into the amber glow of the main restaurant.

There was no denying that it was good value. For ten shillings and sixpence the diner got six courses of disguised, unnameable food, a communistic share in a dance floor forty feet by thirty and a cabaret of a dozen Casino Lovelies. The communism extended even to the attentions of a group of wandering dance hostesses. These indefatigable and perpetually bright-looking young ladies were in somebody else's arms all the evening. For those who could not afford that kind of women for their own, here was life and sensation and a new horizon at the rate of two and six for about six minutes. To Mr. Hill who sat there rigid and unamused, there was evidently a strong suggestion of the cities of the plain.

The waiter gave them a table in the corner. He had instructions to put white ties in the two front rows, black ties between the gangway and the wall, and ordinary dress in the corners. Mr. Biddle sat in his little alcove and looked out on to a sea of bare backs and uniform, fashionable faces.

Mr. Vestry insisted that they should have champagne. It was not Mr. Biddle's drink and he sipped the stuff suspiciously. But it did its work. By the time the bottle was empty, he had begun to relax a little. It now seemed a thoroughly salutary and beneficial thing that people should have a place like the Casino Royal to come to when they wanted a little relaxation. And somehow Mr. Sneyd and St. Martin's Hospital and the gorgon Matron had passed into the twilight of things. He now saw life in its true proportion again. He decided that he would drop Dr. Seton-Gordon a line to apologise for any inconvenience that had been caused and would look in himself at the proper time to find out what the message was that Mr. Sneyd had wanted conveyed to his son.
As the evening wore on and the images of things became less clearly cut in Mr. Biddle's mind he even thought of asking Gerald himself what it was—but that was a good deal later in the evening after Mr. Vestry had ordered whisky as well.

There was dancing first; Mr. Vestry suggested it. He said that it was good for the figure and that he had read somewhere that ninety per cent of the men who died under sixty were non-dancers. He led the way himself with a girl in a black dress and a halo of expensive looking, red-gold hair. When he came back to the table he was perspiring freely and breathing in little gasps. He looked like an elderly man who has run too fast for a bus. But the girl, he reported, was perfect; she danced like a bird.

Mr. Ankerson was the next one to dance. He did not cut a good figure. As he slopped round the floor, he lounged against the girl as if she were a bar counter. He returned, however, thirsting for more: it needed only practice, he said, to get back into it again.

Mr. Hill meanwhile looked on in silent, sober austerity. He had said that he would come with them and there he was; beyond that he clearly was not going.

“Why don't you shake a foot, Biddle?” Mr. Ankerson asked. “Do you a world of good.”

“Oh, no,” said Mr. Biddle decidedly. “Not in my line at all.”

“That's what you think,” Mr. Vestry replied. “Just you wait and see.”

One of the indefatigable young ladies was passing at that moment and Mr. Vestry called her over.

“Doreen,” he said.

“My name's Chloe.”

“All right, Chloë. My friend, General Biddle, wants to have a dance with you.”

“How do you do, General?” Chloë answered. She smiled charmingly, revealing her pretty teeth and waited for Mr. Biddle to do something. It had often seemed to her that the Casino Royal was filled entirely with middle-aged men, not in the pink of condition, who called her by the wrong name and gave their friends military titles.

“Come on, Biddle,” urged Mr. Vestry. “Can't keep the young lady waiting all night.”

Mr. Biddle got awkwardly to his feet and held out his hand. From nowhere the picture of the deceased Mrs. Biddle came into his mind; he saw her standing there, large and chaste and unsensational. But he had nothing with which to reproach himself. This was the nearest he had ever come to being unfaithful even to her memory. And the scramble down there on the dance floor was more like mob-rule than intimacy.

“I'm afraid you'll find me awfully bad,” he said.

“Oh, no, I'm sure I won't,” Chloe answered. “You big men are always the best dancers.”

Mr. Biddle danced three times more with Chloe and once with a girl who had fair hair almost the colour of flour. She seemed bored with the whole thing and danced impersonally and absent-mindedly—but she looked like a child of noble family from Hollywood. He thought how astonished Alice would have been could she have seen him. Every time he caught a glimpse of the two of them in one of the mirrors he was a bit astonished himself.

Because it was England, the drinks on the table presented a special difficulty. At five minutes to midnight the waiter warned them that they must re-order and drink up, and a few seconds later returned with a
loaded tray full of liquors which he distributed in the name of temperance. Mr. Ankerson, however, was well provided for already. He had ordered a bottle of whisky for himself and was quietly enjoying a one-man orgy in the corner. He had his own siphon and used it sparingly as though it was not to be squandered.

Mr. Hill had deliberately and a little ostentatiously moved his chair some distance away from him.

Then the waiter came and broke the news to Mr. Ankerson that, as it was after twelve, he would no longer be allowed to drink even his own whisky. Mr. Ankerson took the information badly. He became noisy and violently anti-social. At first he seemed to imagine that it was some personal animosity on the part of the waiter that was depriving him of his drink. And it was not until he found that there was no law against taking the bottle away with him that his peace of mind returned. He gathered it up to him like a
prima donna
clutching a sheaf of lilies and made his way to the cloakroom.

Mr. Vestry crossed the floor to give the girl with the red-gold halo a little mark of his esteem at having achieved the miracle of helping him to forget that he was sixty-two and that Mrs. Vestry, who was now asleep on one side of the large double bed in the front bedroom of Deepdene, Whetstone Avenue, was sixty-one. Mr. Biddle wondered if he ought to do the same. But he could not find either of his partners; nor did he know how much to give them. In the end, he followed Mr. Ankerson.