An Awfully Big Adventure - Beryl Bainbridge [54]
‘Once or twice,’ admitted Harcourt.
‘There was one particular evening when Jerry sent up a barrage of Verey lights. They were trying to find our position.’
‘I remember you telling me,’ Harcourt said.
‘It was different for our Stella. In her case someone was all too willing to abandon her.’
‘I don’t quite follow your gist,’ said Harcourt.
Vernon remained silent for perhaps half a minute. ‘No,’ he said, at last. ‘It’s not easy.’
Just then Lily shouted up from the basement to complain that the kitchen range was smoking again. ‘I blame next door,’ Vernon told Harcourt. ‘They eat different food. It’s bound to affect the chimney.’
‘Would you like me to accompany you?’ Harcourt asked. ‘To the match?’
Vernon was staggered. Never once had his supplier suggested they should meet socially. Over the years they had attended the same victuallers’ functions, and on every occasion Harcourt had kept very much to his own table. He had raised his glass civilly enough in recognition of Vernon’s presence whenever their eyes had met across the floral displays, and he had always been very effusive if they chanced to meet in the queue for the cloakroom or on the pavement outside the State Restaurant, but he had held his distance in mixed company, had never introduced him, for instance, to Mrs Harcourt. Not that she was anything to write home about, in spite of coming from the Wirral.
‘Much obliged for the offer,’ Vernon said, ‘but I shan’t go. The wife’s brother is coming up for the festivities.’
He was cock-a-hoop when he recounted this part of the conversation to Lily. ‘The nerve of it,’ he crowed. ‘Muscling in on a theatrical invitation. It just shows you how pushy the educated classes can be when they smell an advantage.’
He didn’t tell Stella he had been asked to the football match. She too had received an invitation, to a supper dance at Reece’s Grill Room on Christmas Eve. Originally St Ives had intended a foursome consisting of himself and Dotty, Babs Osborne and her elusive foreigner. Incapacitated as he now was and about to go off to stay with his mother in Weston-super-Mare, St Ives had sold the tickets to Desmond Fairchild. The party had since grown and extra tickets had been bought. The company had clubbed together to pay for her and Geoffrey. It was a sort of Christmas present.
‘That was kind, wasn’t it?’ said Lily. ‘I hope you thanked them.’
‘We run errands for them all day long,’ Stella retorted. ‘I don’t have to go overboard with delight.’
‘Is Geoffrey your partner then?’ asked Lily. She was smiling, participating at second hand in the evening to come.
‘No, he isn’t,’ snapped Stella. She wanted Lily to stop talking. It was spoiling things, this building up of expectations.
‘Well, who is?’ said Lily. ‘You’ll need a partner.’
‘It’s not that sort of do. We’re not in couples. Grace Bird is an abandoned wife and Babs’s Stanislaus has jilted her. Not that she accepts it. She keeps ringing him and sending him presents.’
Lily said Babs was a foolish girl. No man liked to be chased. She should buy herself a new frock and set her cap at someone else. That would soon bring this Stan chap running.
‘Why would it?’ asked Stella. ‘If he doesn’t want her?’
‘He doesn’t want her,’ squealed Lily, ‘because he’s got her. He’d soon change his tune if he thought she’d lost interest. They’re all the same. You tell her from me.’
Stella tried to imagine a younger Lily giving Uncle Vernon cause for jealousy. It wasn’t possible. The real Lily sat opposite, her too brightly coloured hair set in stiff waves about her faded face.
‘Hasn’t your Mr Potter got a young lady?’ persisted Lily. ‘It stands to reason a man like that would have a partner.’
‘Shut up,’ Stella shouted. ‘Not everybody needs propping up, you know. Not everybody wants . . .’ and trailed into silence, for Lily’s eyelids were now fluttering, holding back offended tears. Stella jumped up and made a clattering show of stacking the supper plates onto a tray.
Alone in her room, struggling into her ice-cold nightgown, she felt ashamed. It was unjust of her to disregard