A Quiet Life(70)

‘There’s Percy,’ he said. ‘Let’s pretend we haven’t seen him – he wrote a vicious review of Alistair’s first book.’ And then, with an expression of distaste, he continued. ‘There are all those Polish chaps I was in a meeting with just yesterday. I suppose they’ll come and say something.’ But instead of talking to any of these acquaintances, Edward ordered more and more to drink.

It was after midnight when they saw Nina come in, together with the overweight Swiss man Laura remembered. They were not with Amy, but with another couple, a thin dark man wearing suede shoes and a very young girl, as well as a tall man who looked too young for his shock of striking white hair. Unlike with Laura and Edward, the waiters were quick to find the group a table, and Laura and Edward went over to say hello. Nina introduced them to her friends. The girl, who looked about sixteen, didn’t open her mouth, but the dark man stood up and bowed politely to Laura. When Edward heard this man’s name, however, his smile became fixed. He nodded to the table and walked Laura back to the bar.

Laura tugged on his sleeve as they went. ‘I told you, I want to talk to Nina.’

‘That man is a notorious Polish arms dealer,’ Edward said, draining his cocktail, ‘who made his money selling weapons to Franco.’ And as soon as the drinks were finished, he insisted they left.

When Laura imagined telling Stefan that she had seen, but completely failed to talk to Blanchard, she felt angry and embarrassed. So the next morning after Edward had gone to work she telephoned Alistair. At first she chatted a little about his novel, which he said he had nearly finished, and then she moved the conversation to the point, telling him that she had been dancing at the Dorchester with Edward the previous night and had had such a good time, but that Edward was too busy to go very often, and she wondered whether they couldn’t go together, just for fun. She remembered Alistair’s easy-going attitude on the night that she had been caught by the bombardment, and sure enough he only sounded a little surprised and agreed to come and pick her up on Wednesday evening.

Alistair was just the right company for that environment. He was all interested observation and quick conversation; he was happy to steer her around the dance floor and to look around for acquaintances; there was the editor of a magazine he wanted to write for; there was an American officer he knew slightly, who asked Laura to dance. And then, when Nina came in again very late, he naturally went with Laura to greet her. This time Laura stood solidly by Nina’s table until she had to ask if they wanted to sit down, and Laura made sure she sat next to Nina.

Laura tried to give Nina the kind of sympathetic flattery that usually resonated with other women. She asked where on earth she had got that beautiful dress. She asked if she had heard recently from Sybil – how lonely Sybil must be in the countryside without her friends. She asked what she was doing now that women had been called up, what a bore it was that they were all expected to work. But to all the questions, Nina said very little. ‘Aren’t you dancing?’ Laura said at one point. ‘This band must be better than any I’ve heard since I left the States.’ This was simply a pretence at sophistication, and she was afraid that Nina could see right through it.

‘Well,’ Nina said in a tone of indifference, ‘Chéri doesn’t, you know.’

Laura was surprised to hear her inappropriate endearment for Blanchard, but she turned to Alistair, sensing an opening. ‘You’d love to dance with Nina, I know you would.’

Once they had got up, the space between Laura and Blanchard was empty, but Laura could not believe how hard it was to flirt with a man who did not seem interested in her. There was no energy there between them, and so Laura found herself acting in an absurdly exaggerated way to try to make him notice her, batting her eyelashes as he lit her cigarette, brushing his fingers as he passed her glass, and even touching his leg with hers lightly under the table. She felt like a wind-up doll, turning on a music box, while Blanchard watched her sleepily, with the manner of someone who was used to being amused rather than exerting himself to amuse.

At first Laura was relieved when the other couple she had seen them with before – the Polish man and the young girl – came over to the table, but then she realised that meant the men would talk to one another rather than to her, and when she spoke to the young girl she did nothing but smile.

‘Don’t worry about Ingrid,’ said Victor. ‘She doesn’t talk much.’

‘You like quiet women,’ observed Blanchard.

‘She makes some noise in bed,’ Victor said.

‘That’s where I like a woman to be quiet,’ Blanchard said. Laura tried to break into the men’s conversation with a funny story about life in Toby’s shelter, but she felt her voice falling shrilly over the table and she was aware that she was much too callow to amuse these dissolute, secretive men. When Alistair came back to the table, she was trying to draw Ingrid out, but either because Ingrid was scared of her or had poor English, she only answered in monosyllables.

That Saturday afternoon she went to meet Stefan with a sense of a job badly done. In the café in Balham with steamed-up windows, she told him that it was pointless trying to stalk Blanchard at the Dorchester, that Edward refused to go and she could not ask Alistair to take her again, he could not afford it. Stefan cut the meeting short with an air of disappointed resignation, and Laura was surprised how she replayed and replayed his manner, how much it hurt her. At the next meeting he told her briefly that she had to try again, and before she had time to reply he was gone. This time in The Times newspaper was a brown envelope, and in the envelope was a stack of five-pound notes. Clearly, Stefan had decided to assume that the only barrier was the one she had mentioned, that she could not ask Alistair to treat her.