A Quiet Life(27)

The group seemed to hesitate as they waited for Edward’s response. He paused to flick ash from his cigarette onto a silver ashtray on a mantelpiece, and then said, ‘He’s always wanted to avoid war …’

‘But cosying up now …’

‘Cosying?’

‘You see him every day, how would you describe it?’

Quentin seemed irritated with his friend, leaning towards him and frowning, but Edward was unresponsive, his head tilted back.

Alistair burst in. ‘If he was trying to negotiate a treaty, would the British public stand for it now?’

‘The great British public would welcome anything that let them off a fight, wouldn’t they?’ Nick gestured at someone for more drinks. As the servant came forward, breaking up the group as glasses were filled, Laura turned to Edward.

‘I’m not from Washington,’ she said, ‘and I’m not an heiress.’

‘But your name is Laura?’

She nodded.

‘Sybil,’ Alistair said suddenly, stopping a blonde woman who was walking past them. She was tall, in a curiously cut, stiff turquoise dress. Laura would not say she was pretty. No, her profile was too dominated by the long nose and the high forehead, but one wanted to look again at that face, to understand the secret of its attractiveness. Quentin turned.

‘I brought a new friend, Sybs – Nina was ill yet again.’

‘Nina telephoned me. I think she is still coming – and this is …?’

It was disconcerting to be addressed in the third person, Laura thought, as Quentin introduced her as carelessly as he had before. ‘Laura, Giles’s cousin,’ he said. She realised again that she was only there as a stopgap, as everyone now began talking about the woman whose place she had taken.

‘Nina takes to her bed for the attention,’ Alistair was saying.

‘Nonsense,’ Sybil stated.

‘Anyone less in need of extra attention …’ Nick said.

‘I think she is punishing me,’ Quentin said, with a theatrically pitiful expression.

‘Are you surprised? I did hear that you hadn’t treated her with chivalry, exactly.’

The comments continued in that vein, crossing and recrossing, and after a while Sybil walked on, not having acknowledged Laura or Winifred at all. Winifred raised her eyebrows at Laura, but Laura was feeling too overwhelmed to respond. To her surprise, it was Edward who addressed her next, as the others went on talking about Nina.

‘You’re not with the embassy, are you? I know some of the chaps in Grosvenor Square.’

‘No, I don’t work, I’m not – I just drifted here to visit family, you know. Not the best timing.’

Edward said nothing, but Laura pressed on, feeling the weight of her embarrassment lessen as she spoke. ‘My mother was keen for me to come – to see my cousins. But now she says I should go back. She’s cottoned on to the fact that things may not be totally safe. It’s taken her a while.’ Edward nodded, again saying nothing. ‘But it seems to be taking lots of people a while.’

‘To see what’s going on?’ Edward said.

‘Yes—’ Laura was going to say more, when she found Winifred at her elbow. She turned to her cousin, but when Winifred asked her how she was finding the party, she wasn’t sure what to say. There was glamour here, surely; the women’s backless dresses, the men in their tuxedos. And yet there was a secret to the evening’s energy that the others were responding to, as the colour grew higher in women’s faces and men’s voices became louder, which was eluding Laura. Instead, she was horribly aware of how uncomfortable she felt it was to be here as a replacement for a woman who – judging by the reactions to her illness – was clearly more of a character, more admired, than she would ever be. So she responded with some blank nothing to Winifred, and raised her glass to her lips, only realising as she did so that it was empty.

At that moment Edward took a silver cigarette case from his breast pocket. She took one when it was offered, just for something else to do with her hands. As Edward flicked the lighter, he spoke to her again.

‘This American chap I’ve got to know at the embassy told me that he thought London was the saddest place he had ever been. Do you think so?’

Laura wondered. This question resonated. She stepped backwards from the group as she considered it, looking at Edward. ‘Well, yes, – I wouldn’t know. But you do feel that people would rather not be living in these times. There is that.’

‘Rather Prince of Denmark.’

Whatever the exact meaning of his last remark, Laura took it to imply that he agreed with her. She waited for him to say more, but the pause that ensued seemed considering rather than empty. As they stood in silence, the conversations of the group continued beside them. This man’s laconic manner might seem offhand, Laura thought, but surely it was just that his rhythms were so different from the starling chatter of the others. While they were striving for effect, their voices tumbling over one another, he was driving at something else.

‘The time is out of joint,’ he said as if in elaboration of his last point, and though Laura could not catch his exact meaning, she caught, or thought she did, the thought behind his words.

‘Not for everyone, though,’ she said, and a great rush of feeling ran through her as she thought of how Florence and her friends saw opportunity even in the danger, the possibility of remaking the world in these forces sweeping over Europe. ‘Not if they see the struggle on two fronts, what it means for all of us.’ The words seemed to have risen through her, and she was not aware until she had spoken them how odd they might sound in that dimly glittering room.