An Awfully Big Adventure - Beryl Bainbridge [55]
Instead she got into bed. I have my whole life in front of me, she thought. I can’t be hamstrung by sentiment.
Stella had planned to sit next to Meredith at the Christmas Eve party, but Geoffrey got there first. It was her own fault. Not wanting anyone to see her dress from behind – the hem had come undone and she wasn’t wearing stockings – she had hung back as they came through the doors of the Grill Room.
The head waiter made a servile fuss when they arrived and begged permission for a photograph to be taken for publicity purposes. Then Dotty Blundell, who a moment before had drooped under the weight of her leopard-skin coat, flung back her shoulders and lowering her chin gave a peek-a-boo smile. John Harbour, as if looking into a mirror, leaned chummily against Babs Osborne and stared adoringly at the camera. Stella was coughing when the flash bulb went off.
The dance floor, wreathed in blue smoke, was crowded with revellers foxtrotting to the magnified beat of the paper-hatted band perspiring beneath a trembling canopy of holly boughs and mistletoe. An army of waiters carrying silver-plated dishes barged back and forth through the swing doors of the kitchens. The restaurant was so packed that there weren’t enough chairs, and somehow Geoffrey squeezed in between Stella and Meredith. He squatted on his haunches, his pug nose on a level with the table. ‘I can’t go on like this,’ he said, shouting to make himself heard. ‘We have to talk.’
‘Absolutely,’ Meredith replied. ‘Couldn’t agree more.’ And fitting his monocle beneath the bone of his eye he studied the menu.
‘He’s thinking of going into business,’ Stella said. ‘His father would like it.’ Meredith didn’t respond. Geoffrey crouched at his knee like a faithful dog. Another chair was fetched from the store-room and Stella was forced to make a space for it. She could have throttled Geoffrey, wriggling in where he wasn’t wanted.
Bunny was there under duress. ‘I gain no pleasure from that sort of entertainment,’ he had protested earlier to Meredith. ‘I don’t dance, and neither do you. We shall be spectres at the feast.’
‘Bear with me,’ Meredith had said. ‘It may well turn out to be diverting.’
At eleven o’clock, fifteen minutes after being shown to their table, Bunny threatened to leave. He detested turkey and there was nothing else he fancied apart from the chocolate gâteau. Meredith told him to stop moaning and ordered him a double portion of cake as a main course. ‘He’s a sick man,’ he informed the waiter. ‘They couldn’t get all the shrapnel out.’ Bunny saw the joke. He was wearing a clean shirt and a tartan tie under a crumpled blazer whose buttons were missing; he began to laugh and quantities of cigarette ash spilled from his clothing and speckled the tablecloth.
Stella chose fish and regretted it. She kept getting bones in her mouth and each time she took one out O’Hara appeared to be looking in her direction. If it would have caught Meredith’s attention she wouldn’t have minded a bone lodging in her gullet, but then there was always the risk he might think she was merely coughing – she could choke for nothing. Presently she stopped eating and hid the fish under a heap of Brussels sprouts. Geoffrey, the food untouched on his plate, sat sideways on his chair, bellowing into Meredith’s ear. She sat back and freed her hair from the collar of her frock. ‘My dear boy,’ she heard Meredith say, ‘you’re far too sensitive.’
O’Hara, watching Stella, was disconcerted by the wave of tenderness evoked by the sight of her bright hair rippling like a flag against the dark wall. He was half-heartedly involved in a discussion on Mary Deare, who at this moment was speeding in a hired car towards Manchester to spend Christmas Day at the Midland Hotel with an unnamed friend appearing in The Tinder Box. Mary had abrasions in