Night Over Water - Ken Follett [25]
“Oh, goodness, yes, I’d better.”
Harry squeezed her hand for encouragement, then helped her up. They went into the dressing room. She gasped when she saw all the drawers open. Harry handed her to her chair. She sat down and started looking through her jewelry. After a moment she said: “I don’t think he can have taken much.”
“Perhaps I surprised him before he got started,” Harry said.
She continued sorting through the necklaces, bracelets and brooches. “I think you must have,” she said. “How wonderful you are.”
“If you haven’t lost anything, you don’t really have to tell anyone.”
“Except Sir Simon, of course,” she said.
“Of course,” Harry said, although he had hoped otherwise. “You could tell him after the party’s over. That way at least you won’t spoil his evening.”
“What a good idea,” she said gratefully.
This was very satisfactory. Harry was immensely relieved. He decided to quit while he was so far ahead. “I’d better go down,” he said. “I’ll leave you to catch your breath.” He bent swiftly and kissed her cheek. She was taken by surprise, and she blushed. He whispered in her ear: “I think you’re terribly brave.” With that, he went out.
Middle-aged women were even easier than their daughters, he thought. In the empty corridor he caught sight of himself in a mirror. He stopped to adjust his bow tie and grinned triumphantly at his reflection. “You are a devil, Harold,” he murmured.
The party was coming to an end. When Harry reentered the drawing room, Rebecca said irritably: “Where have you been?”
“Talking to our hostess,” he replied. “Sorry. Shall we take our leave?”
He walked out of the house with his host’s cuff links and twenty pounds in his pocket.
They got a cab in Belgrave Square and rode to a restaurant in Piccadilly. Harry loved good restaurants: he got a deep sense of well-being from the crisp napkins, the polished glasses, the menus in French and the deferential waiters. His father had never seen the inside of such a place. His mother might have, if she had come in to clean it. He ordered a bottle of champagne, consulting the list carefully and choosing a vintage he knew to be good but not rare, so that the price was not too high.
When he first started taking girls to restaurants, he had made a few mistakes; but he was a quick learner. One useful trick had been to leave the menu unopened, and say: “I’d like a sole. Have you got any?” The waiter would open the menu and show him where it said Sole meuniere, Les goujons de sole avec sauce tartare, and Sole grillée, and then, seeing him hesitate, would probably say: “The goujons are very nice, sir.” Harry soon learned the French for all the basic dishes. He also noticed that people who frequently ate in such places quite often asked the waiter what a particular dish was: wealthy English people did not necessarily understand French. Thereafter he made a point of asking for the translation of one dish every time he ate in a fancy restaurant; and now he could read a menu better than most rich boys of his age. Wine was no problem, either. Sommeliers were normally pleased to be asked for a recommendation, and they did not expect a young man to be familiar with all the chateaus and communes and the different vintages. The trick, in restaurants as in life, was to appear at ease, especially when you were not.
The champagne he chose was good, but there was something wrong with his mood tonight, and he soon figured out that the problem was Rebecca. He kept thinking how delightful it would be to bring a pretty girl to a place like this. He always went out with unattractive girls: plain girls, fat girls, spotty girls, silly girls. They were easy to get acquainted with; and then, once they had fallen for him, they were eager to take him at face value, reluctant to question him in case they should lose him. As a strategy for getting inside wealthy homes it was matchless. The snag was that he spent all his time with girls he did not like. One day, perhaps ...