Every Man for Himself - Beryl Bainbridge [42]
I spent a good half-hour bathing my forehead, with disappointing results. It was just as well I’d been prevented from delivering my letter to Wallis; my brow had begun to bulge and the skin circling my eye was unmistakably foxed with purple. Just as I was thinking the worst of McKinlay, imagining he’d deliberately mixed too little tea with too much water, he came in and gave me a black satin eye-patch to wear. The effect was pretty dashing.
I arrived in the foyer in time to hear the bugle blow for the serving of dinner and was at once a focus of interest, not all of it friendly. My piratical appearance was taken as proof positive of my part in the fracas over the mental stability of Kaiser Wilhelm and Molly Dodge’s mother. Kitty Webb took my side. When Guggenheim swept past with an ill-concealed glance of disapproval, I heard her say, ‘Benny, it wasn’t Morgan. Sweet Jesus, he wasn’t even there.’
Lady Duff Gordon thought she was behaving like a brick in going out of her way to greet me. ‘Morgan,’ she cried loudly, ‘now the evening can begin.’ When I held her gloved hand in mine she whispered, ‘Boys will be boys, but this particular boy must be more careful than most of causing offence.’ There wasn’t time to ask her why.
Wallis and Ida Ellery were seated at Melchett’s table. The band was playing something from The Chocolate Soldier as I approached. My heart beat like a drum when Wallis looked up and smiled. I felt she could read me like a book and was thankful for the circle of black satin attached to my face; one eye at least would remain a blank page.
I had sat down and was still rehearsing what I might say to her when Rosenfelder, followed by Ginsberg, rushed into the restaurant. The tailor was looking very dapper, hair sleeked back behind his ears, a jewelled pin stuck in his shirt front. ‘Scurra has struck a bargain,’ he called out as he bustled further down the room to join the Duff Gordons’ table. From this distance he continued to communicate with me by means of sign language, hands clasped in prayer, mouth open like a Swiss yodeller. I took it he meant that Adele was going to wear his dress when she sang.
When I turned back from him I was staggered to find Ginsberg seated opposite. Melchett looked uncomfortable but neither of the girls seemed put out. Far from appearing chastened, Ginsberg was as cocky as ever and proceeded to monopolise the conversation. He maintained I was lucky not to have lost my sight and that Hopper should be shot for going on to the racquets court half sober. ‘No wonder he’s lying low,’ he said, which was rich coming from him.
Wallis was affable towards me and even went to the lengths of pressing my foot with hers, though that was when Ginsberg said something asinine about one of the Taft cousins and knocked a glass over. Not that she was really listening. Much of the time she either gazed round the room or stared at the door. If Ginsberg hadn’t been so boring I might have thought she was waiting for someone. When he asked if she was prepared to bet on our time of arrival in New York – he’d been down to the purser’s office and learnt we’d covered 386 miles since yesterday lunch-time – she turned on him. ‘Not all of us are so eager for the voyage to end,’ she snapped.
She looked awesomely beautiful, eyes like brown velvet, cheeks tinted rose, a little blue vein palpitating in the hollow of her throat. In my head I pretended I’d delivered the note and that she and I had met on the promenade and come to an understanding. When dinner was over she would first allow me to take her into my arms on the dance floor and after that – but here, such a picture flashed into my mind of what would happen