Every Man for Himself - Beryl Bainbridge [13]
When Kitty paused at our table she brushed my cheek with her hand.
‘Morgan,’ she breathed. ‘How thrilling to see you.’
Ginsberg boasted he knew her, of course. He held she truly loved Guggenheim and that it wasn’t doing her a power of good. I thought that was phooey judging by the size of the sapphires in the necklace about her throat, and said so. Wallis Ellery gave me one of her glances and pronounced it a vulgar observation, which shrivelled me, though I laughed it off.
A curious interchange took place when Melchett leapt up at the approach of a woman escorted by a pink porpoise of a man. He was about to greet them when the woman cried out, ‘Our name is Morgan.’
‘Yes, indeed,’ said her companion, adding with exaggerated emphasis, ‘We are always known as Mr and Mrs Morgan.’
Melchett looked fairly taken aback, at which the woman pressed her finger against his lips and said, ‘Charlie dear, not a word,’ and swept on.
‘How very rum,’ said Melchett.
‘What Morgans are those?’ I asked mystified.
‘Not Morgan at all,’ he replied. ‘That was Lord and Lady Duff Gordon.’
There were eight of us at table; Hopper, Melchett, Ginsberg, George Dodge, his half-sister Molly, the Ellery sisters and myself. Ida Ellery wasn’t pretty, which is possibly why she was so good-natured and easy to be with. We were all madly in love with her sister Wallis, who was as clever as Sissy and absolutely unobtainable. In Wallis’s company it was impossible not to stare, and dangerous, for if she caught you and was in the mood to look back her gaze was so level and her expression so mocking it could turn one to stone. She had warm dark eyes and a pale full mouth, and just above her lip there was the faintest fuzz of down which glinted chestnut where the light touched. No one ever dared flirt with Wallis. Dancing with her was like holding cut glass; Hopper got it about right when he complained she made him feel he left finger marks.
We much admired the dining saloon, all, that is, except Wallis. In her opinion it was a travesty to do up a room in the Jacobean style and then paint the woodwork white. As for the cream vases stacked with lilies, why, it made her feel she was at a funeral.
‘It does smell like a florist’s,’ agreed daffy Ida, who would have sold her soul to keep the peace.
‘It’s not the lilies,’ exclaimed Molly Dodge, ‘it’s Ginsberg. He’s been to the barber’s shop,’ and she cruelly wrinkled her prominent nose.
‘It’s the latest French cologne,’ he told her, not in the least put out.
‘You won’t catch Morgan setting foot in the barber’s,’ said Hopper, and launched into a highly embellished version of my encounter with the dying man in Manchester Square.
‘He didn’t die in the chair,’ I said. ‘Nor was he covered in blood. He died rather peacefully, probably from heart failure.’
‘How did you know he was dead?’ asked Wallis.
‘Because he died in my arms . . . in the street.’
She shivered, but persisted. ‘But how did you know? What did he look like . . . ?’
‘He was quite tall,’ I said. ‘And he had dark hair.’
‘Not him,’ she said. ‘Death. What did death look like?’
I noticed her hands. She was brushing one tapering finger against the pulse in her wrist. One should always attempt to understand what is being asked of one, I thought.
‘As though a light had gone out,’ I said, and would have told her more if her sister Ida hadn’t shuddered and begged me to talk about something less sinister.
We all drank a great deal. When I first heard my voice getting louder I was angry at myself, but by then it was too late. Most of us had got used to alcohol fairly early on in life. At Harvard only the swots and the athletes kept themselves pure; members of the smart set were expected to drink themselves under the table.
Ginsberg grew heated pretty quick. He and George Dodge had begun a discussion