Роберт Эйкман - The Late Breakfasters (Faber Finds)

Hooper’s arm was round her waist. With his free hand, he was unbuttoning her blouse. Moreover, he had already removed her shoes. Griselda felt it was a situation which Lotus (for example) would have managed better than she.

As she awoke, Hooper sat back a little.

‘I do hope you are feeling cured.’

‘Yes, thank you.’ She was rebuttoning her blouse. ‘Well enough to go.’

‘But Gioiosa has prepared some food for us.’

‘Where are my shoes?’

‘Please don’t misunderstand me. I’m very fond of you, Anne Musselwhite.’

‘Where are my shoes?’

‘Sit down and let’s talk it over. I’ll get you a drink.’

Griselda crossed barefoot to the door.

‘You can’t very well go without your shoes.’

‘I’d rather not. I’ll have to explain what happened in order to borrow a pair.’

‘Anne Musselwhite, you’ve got things all wrong.’ He was recharging his big brandy glass.

There was a knock at the door. Griselda opened it. It was Gioiosa.

‘Ready to eat, signore.’

Looking Griselda up and down, whom previously she had only seen seated, and discovering that she lacked shoes, Gioiosa went into extravagant foreign laughter.

‘Grazie, signorina. Non conobbi.’

She was about to go, but Griselda caught her by the arm.

‘Lend me some shoes. Your feet are about the right size.’

‘ You wear my shoes!’ She was giggling like an imbecile.

It seemed hopeless. Griselda dropped her arm and made for the front door. In a moment she was running down the pasage, shoeless like Cinderella at midnight. The carpet in the passage was thick and patterned like a tiger-skin. The walls bore large golden gulls in plastic relief. At the end, an under-porter had been working all day on a defective radiator, and the pieces lay scattered about until he could resume the next day. Some of them had already been kicked quite long distances by passing tenants and visitors.

As Griselda reached the corner where the stair-well began, there was a clatter behind her. She thought that Hooper was in pursuit; then realised that it was only a pair of shoes. She paused and looked back.

‘I tell you, Anne Musselwhite, I think very little to you.’

It occurred to Griselda that if she returned to pick up the shoes there might be further trouble.

‘If you think it’s fair,’ went on Hooper, ‘to take a man’s drink and hospitality, and let him pay for you all round the place, and then give him nothing in return, I for one don’t.’

Griselda turned her back.

‘Won’t you think again? We might go dancing somewhere.’

Griselda’s back was negative.

‘Oh, go to hell,’ said Hooper irritably and slammed the door.

All the same, thought Griselda, it was odd how after weeks and months of only Peggy, she should make so many new friends in so short a time.

Immediately she entered her room, Peggy knocked on her door.

‘Come in Peggy. Sit down. Do you mind if I undress?’

‘I have never thanked you for the picnic.’

‘No need to. I hope you enjoyed it?’

‘I found them interesting to observe.’

‘Lena said something of the same kind.’

‘I thought Lena was more than a little affected, I’m afraid.’

‘Who did you like ?’

‘I haven’t known them long enough to like any of them.’

In view of Barney’s attitude, and the lateness of Peggy’s return from the jollification, Griselda thought that disappointing.

XXVII

Promptly, and on writing-paper which reminded her of Louise’s, Griselda received her reply:

Dear Miss de Reptonville,

Of course I know Louise. But I don’t know where she is. I wish I did. I’m sorry.

Very sincerely yours,

Hugo Raunds.

Kynaston, installed as custodian of the Liberator’s immortal memory, moved into an attic flat near his place of work. He had followed Days of Delinquency with Nights of Negation , but his publishers took the view that the receipts from the former work did not justify further adventures; and he was in a state of melancholy mania.

‘Why not try another publisher?’

‘They all work in together.’

Although it was obvious that he was still seeing Lotus (on one occasion he appeared with a strange scar on the side of his neck), or she him, he became really industrious in paying court to Griselda. He would not come to the shop, for fear of Mr Tamburlane; but they would meet at the northern end of the Burlington Arcade, and Griselda would take him to Greenwood Tree House for a good meal and in order to listen to his difficulties and advise him.

‘If I’m not a poet, Griselda, what am I? Am I any more than a current of hot air?’

Unlike Mrs Hatch, Griselda herself did not care for Kynaston’s poems. ‘You dance very well. Why don’t you try to develop that?’

‘I find it empty. As you dance so little yourself, it’s hard to explain to you.’

‘I suppose so. Have some more stew?’

‘Please.’

‘And more potato?’

‘Please.’

‘And more seakale?’

‘Please.’

Griselda sat back. Fortunately Kynaston’s attacks of self-doubt seldom upset his appetite.

‘A piece of currant bread?’

‘If you can spare it.’

Later, when they were seated one on each side of the electric heater, and Kynaston had been describing the difficulties of his early manhood, and munching cream crackers, he said ‘This is what marriage would be like. I think it would be enchanting.’

Griselda could not possibly go as far as that; but, after her recent loneliness and unhappiness, she admitted, though only to herself, that worse things might easily befall her. Kynaston was not very much of a man, but life, she felt, was not very much of a life.

So before he went she let him kiss her on the eyes, and even neck, as well as on the mouth. It was one thing about him that he had never attempted to seduce her. She was quite uncertain whether he cared for her too much or too little.

There were several fogs in November, a rare thing in London. On the foggiest morning Mr Tamburlane arrived late at the shop, wheezing slightly but jubilant. He wore a thick scarf in the colours (a little too vivid, Griselda thought) of the Booksellers Association, and a black Astrakhan hat.

‘My waywardness has put you to the labour of taking down the shutters, Miss de Reptonville. I can but blame a higher power.’ He indicated the fog. ‘But your magnificent zeal is to be repaid a thousandfold. Yes, indeed.’ He sneezed.

‘There’s a new edition of the Apocrypha come in,’ replied Griselda demurely. ‘Shall I arrange some copies in the window?’

‘Work,’ cried Mr Tamburlane, sneezing again, ‘can wait. There are tidings of joy.’

‘What can they be? Shall I make you a warm drink?’

‘A splendid and original device. Let us split a posset. There’s nutmeg in a mustard tin behind the Collected Letters of Horatio Bottomley.’

Griselda set to work in the back room, while Mr Tamburlane sat complimenting her, his legs stretched out to the large gas fire in the shop. Soon the brew was prepared, and Griselda pouring it into large hand-thrown bowls, the colour of nearly cooked rhubarb.

‘Miss Otter has news.’

Griselda nearly scalded her uvula.

O ф о ф о ф о Я T о ф о Я ,’ exclaimed Mr Tamburlane sympathetically. ‘Let us go further.’ He swept across Griselda’s feet, and, unlocking a drawer, brought out a bottle. ‘We are warned against mixing our drinks, as the idiom is, but I think that on this occasion our common joy will absolve us. Here is finest coconut rum brought direct from the fever belt by one of my clients. It was all he had with which to meet his account, poor fellow. He described it as an antidote against cold feet.’