The Buried Circle - Jenni Mills [139]
I wouldn’t have gone along with it, but I was afraid of his threat. Any hint of what I’d done would’ve killed Mam. She was proper ill, now: some days she couldn’t keep any food down at all. The doctor had told Dad it was nerves, lot of women suffered the same with the war, and Dad believed him, but I didn’t. Mr Cromley’s poison would eat away what was left of her.
He was drunk tonight and so more dangerous still. He was the only one, for a start, who understood what I was doing there, for it had been plain from the moment I arrived that I was out of place. Mr Keiller, with his usual expansive generosity, had invited me on the spur of the moment, and he probably never meant it serious. Even Mrs Sorel-Taylour’s eyebrows rose a little when she saw me in my borrowed pale blue crpe. The dress belonged to one of the nurses at the hospital. It was too big for me and gaped at the bosom, for all I’d tried to pin it to my brassire, and there was a stain near the side seam, which wouldn’t come out though I’d soaked it over and over in cold water. I’d hoped it would be dark enough in the Manor for no one to notice, but every electric light was blazing away behind the blackout like there was no war on, and I had to pull my woollen wrap lopsided to hide the mark.
Donald Cromley must have known how it would be, but he had let me make a fool of myself because it suited him. There had been about twenty people at the party when I arrived. Mrs Sorel-Taylour’s was the only friendly face so I made my way across the room towards her, passing two slick-haired airmen I’d never seen before. One of them was with a girlfriend, lovely in a red silk evening frock, but smelling of Chanel and pig muck.
‘Marvellous to have an excuse to slip into something pretty,’ she was saying, in a cut-glass accent. ‘Being a land girl’s terrific fun, of course, you meet such interesting types…’ She tossed back her waterfall of hair, like Veronica Lake’s, and eyed my dress. ‘A great leveller, war, isn’t it?’
‘Cocktail, Heartbreaker?’ said Mr Cromley, blocking my path and holding out a tall glass with something oily and amber swirling in its depths. ‘Ready to dance for your dinner later?’ His eyes flicked to the tunnel between my breasts. He was flushed, and seemed to find it hard to focus.
‘Frances,’ said Mrs Sorel-Taylour, behind him, ‘how lovely to see you.’ There was an edge to her voice. She took my arm and steered me away from Mr Cromley and his golden glass. ‘There’s fruit punch over here.’ She leaned over to whisper: ‘Donald is already the worse for wear, I’m afraid, and would like everyone else to be that way too.’
I wanted that drink. It might have given me courage. Why had I been so stupid to think I was one of these people? But I let Mrs Sorel-Taylour find me a soft drink, still whispering: ‘He and Mr K have had an argument. Donald took it upon himself to invite his uncle: so discourteous to Alec, without as much as a by-your-leave. When Mr Keiller found out, this afternoon, he made Donald telephone his uncle and cancel the invitation. Stood over him in the office while he did it.’
I felt myself go hot and cold with the mention of Mr Cromley’s uncle. Thank God Mr Keiller had forbidden it. He was by the fireplace, talking to a tall lady in violet satin. She was looking at him in a way I didn’t like.
‘Mrs Keiller was hoping to be here, but telephoned this morning to say she would be needed in London after all,’ added Mrs Sorel-Taylour, and frowned in the direction of the violet lady. Mr Keiller looked up and saw me. He seemed puzzled for a moment, then gave me a brisk nod. He’d forgotten he’d invited me, I could tell.
The drinking went on far too long; it was quarter to ten before we sat down at the table. Mrs Sorel-Taylour saved me from the humiliation of standing ignored at the edge of conversations by introducing me to the other airman, the one without a girl. From his accent–the vowels too flat, the gs a little too carefully