The Girls of Slender Means (14 page)

    "It was hell," Jane said.

    "I know."

    "Why is he in love with Selina by the way?" Rudi said. "Why doesn't he find a woman of character or a French girl?"

"This is a toll call," Jane said, rapidly.

    "I know. Who's speaking?" said Nancy, the daughter of the Midlands clergyman, now married to another Midlands clergyman.

    "It's Jane. Look, I've just got another question to ask you, quickly, about Nicholas Farringdon. Do you think his conversion had anything to do with the fire? I've got to finish this big article about him."

    "Well, I always like to think it was Joanna's example. Joanna was very High Church."

    "But he wasn't in love with Joanna, he was in love with Selina. After the fire he looked for her all over the place."

    "Well, he couldn't have been converted by Selina. Not converted."

    "He's got a note in his manuscript that a vision of evil may be as effective to conversion as a vision of good."

    "I don't understand these fanatics. There's the pips, Jane. I think he was in love with us all, poor fellow.

The public swelled on V-J night of August as riotously as on the victory night of May. The little figures appeared duly on the balcony every half-hour, waved for a space and disappeared.

    Jane, Nicholas and Rudi were suddenly in difficulties, being pressed by the crowd from all sides. "Keep your elbows out if possible," Jane and Nicholas said to each other, almost simultaneously; but this was useless advice. A seaman, pressing on Jane, kissed her passionately on the mouth; nothing whatsoever could be done about it. She was at the mercy of his wet beery mouth until the crowd gave way, and then the three pressed a path to a slightly healthier spot, with access to the Park.

    Here, another seaman, observed only by Nicholas, slid a knife silently between the ribs of a woman who was with him. The lights went up on the balcony, and a hush anticipated the royal appearance. The stabbed woman did not scream, but sagged immediately. Someone else screamed through the hush, a woman, many yards away, some other victim. Or perhaps that screamer had only had her toes trodden upon. The crowd began to roar again. All their eyes were at this moment fixed on the Palace balcony, where the royal family had appeared in due order. Rudi and Jane were busy yelling their cheers.

    Nicholas tried unsuccessfully to move his arm above the crowd to draw attention to the wounded woman. He had been shouting that a woman had been stabbed. The seaman was shouting accusations at his limp woman, who was still kept upright by the crowd. These private demonstrations faded in the general pandemonium. Nicholas was borne away in a surge that pressed from the Mall. When the balcony darkened, he was again able to make a small clearing through the crowd, followed by Jane and Rudi towards the open Park. On the way, Nicholas was forced to a standstill and found himself close by the knifer. There was no sign of the wounded woman. Nicholas, waiting to move, took the Charles Morgan letter from his pocket and thrust it down the seaman's blouse, and then was borne onwards. He did this for no apparent reason and to no effect, except that it was a gesture. That is the way things were at that time.

    They walked back through the clear air of the Park, stepping round the couples who lay locked together in their path. The Park was filled with singing. Nicholas and his companions sang too. They ran into a fight between British and American servicemen. Two men lay unconscious at the side of the path, being tended by their friends. The crowds cheered in the distance, behind them. A formation of aircraft buzzed across the night sky. It was a glorious victory.

    Jane mumbled, "Well, I wouldn't have missed it, really." She had halted to pin up her straggling hair, and had a hair-pin in her mouth as she said it. Nicholas marvelled at her stamina, recalling her in this image years later in the country of his death—how she stood, sturdy and bare-legged on the dark grass, occupied with her hair—as if this was an image of all the May of Teck establishment in its meek, unselfconscious attitudes of poverty, long ago in 1945.

The End