‘Then what’s in it?’
‘It’s fitted.’
‘What, gold and silver stoppers and all that? Come on, it’s insured and chances are he’d like a new one.’
‘Go on if you like and pick up some bird, alive or dead, Thomson, and get yourself your cup o’ tea if you feel like it.’
‘What d’you mean, alive or dead?’
‘Not but you’ll find everything full and more than full out there. There’s trouble enough to get in without trying for a cup o’ tea. Alive or dead? I meant nothing.’
‘Not wrapped up in brown paper you didn’t?’
‘What’s that?’
‘Oh, nothing. This is a rum thing this party. And they call it pleasure, eh?’
‘I don’t know. It’s not their business if fog comes down like it’s done, they can’t be accountable for that.’
‘No, but then why stay here or in that hotel, why not go back and sit down to a nice tea while you wait?’
‘It’s plain to see you haven’t been outside, my lad, not lately. You couldn’t get back now if you tried.’
‘Oh, look at those blue eyes,’ Thomson said, and Mr Adey’s porter lifted his heavy head. Round one massive up-ended cabin trunk a girl was looking. ‘Lovely blue eyes, and I like that nose.’
Edwards said: ‘Now then, don’t let’s have anything like that here.’
‘Anything?’ said Thomson. ‘Did you ‘ear what that rude man called it, a lovely kiss?’ he said, still sitting where he did. ‘What a thing to call it. Listen, if that gentleman with the luggage will drop off again like he ‘as been doing this last thirty minutes and my pal here turns his dirty disapproving face, will you give us a kiss, darling? There’s none could see with these bags and things.’
‘I like your cheek,’ she said scornfully. ‘Here,’ she said, ‘if you want one,’ and crept round and kissed him on his mouth. Not believing his luck he put his arms round her and the porter said, ‘God bless me,’ when a voice over that barricade began calling: ‘Emily, where are you, Emily?’ and he let her go, and off she went.
‘God bless ‘er little ‘eart,’ the porter said, smacking his lips. He called out to his mate, having to shout it there was so much noise: ‘Come up out of the bloody ground, and gave him a great bloody kiss when he asked her.’
‘Poor Thomson,’ Julia said just then to Max, putting on her hat again, ‘d’you think he’s all right, and what about his tea?’
‘We ought to go down,’ he said.
‘Yes, the others will be wondering what’s become of us.’ And what had become of both of them, she asked herself, suddenly despairing; nothing, alas!
‘Oh, Max,’ she said, ‘everything is going to be all right, isn’t it?’
‘All right?’
‘Do you see, I’m wondering about this journey. All the fog and all that,’ she said, leading him off.
‘You do think our train will run, don’t you?’ she went on.
‘It’ll have to.’
‘I know,’ she said, ‘but things don’t always go right because they have to. I wonder if I ought to ring my uncle and let him know what’s become of us,’ she said, because she was not and could not be sure Max would come to anything in the South of France. ‘D’you think I’d better. Max darling, do say something. What do you think?’
He looked at the telephone and considered and at last he told her he saw no point in doing so. And now she remembered those two birds which had flown under the arch she had been on when she had started, and now she forgot they were sea-gulls and thought they had been doves and so was comforted.
‘Good heavens! Come along, what will they think?’ she said brightening. ‘We must get on down.’
‘Well,’ said Thomson, ‘and what do you think of that Emily? Emily,’ he cried in a falsetto voice echoing the old lady who had called her back, but not so loud that she could hear. ‘Where are you Emily, my lovey-dove?’
‘Disgusting, I call it.’
‘And what’s disgusting? Lord, what’s in a kiss? It don’t mean nothing to her, nor anything to me, but it did make an amount of difference when I hadn’t ‘ad my tea.’
‘You do meet some funny ones about these days,’ Edwards said to the porter. ‘Still thinking along of his tea and look what he’s just got.’
‘No,’ said Thomson. ‘No, it’s fellow feeling, that’s what I like about it. Without so much as a by your leave when she sees someone hankering after a bit of comfort, God bless ‘er, she gives it him, not like some little bitches I could name,’ he darkly said, looking up and over to where their hotel room would be. Their porter tapped his forehead. ‘It’s been too much for ‘im,’ he cried at large, ‘too much by a long chalk. So it is for most of these young fellers, carried away by it,’ he said.
‘Waiting about in basements, with no light and in the damp and dark,’ Mr Thomson muttered to himself, and if he and that girl had been alone together, in between kisses he would have pitied both of them clinging together on dim whirling waters.
‘Well, there you are,’ said Julia as she came in and before she could see who was there and in such a tone she might as well have been asking where had they all been all this time. ‘Why it’s you, Angela, my dear,’ she said. ‘Where are the others?’
‘Alex is helping Amabel, actually, in her bath,’ Miss Crevy said, and wished she had a periscope to see that bomb explode. But if it went off it did so out of sight, for Julia did no more than turn to Max, though she did this in the direction her heart had turned over when she heard.
‘How did she get there?’ he said, and he felt shocked.
‘She walked, she told me, and she got here in front of her maid who came in the car.’
‘Is Toddy here then?’
‘Oh, Max,’ said Miss Crevy, ‘who ever heard of Amabel travelling without her maid?’
So she is coming after all, Julia thought, maid and all and six cabin trunks full of every kind of lovely dress. But how unfair, she thought, how vile of her when she knew Max did not want her, how low to pursue him in this way. She also noticed Miss Crevy seemed quick in using her Christian name and wondered if they mightn’t somehow be in league. But it was going to ruin their entire trip her coming, and she went over in her mind when she heard him say he had asked Amabel.
She had been wearing her blue dress and the new shoes and they had gone on together alone somewhere to dance and she had been nervous about whether he would have too much to drink perhaps, but anyway it had been fun and lots of people there and then Embassy Richard had come up. How absurd of Angela to call him Embassy Dick like any bird; she was too free the way she made out she knew people. Perhaps that was why Max had seemed so much against him, but when Richard had come up he had said something jokingly about his knowing someone Max was going to leave behind and who would be simply furious at being left. And that was all, come to think of it, and she had taken it to mean Amabel, but she might be wrong, there might be someone else. What could it mean?
‘I didn’t know Amabel was coming,’ she said, meaning why had he not told her.
‘She was most awfully upset she was so late,’ Miss Crevy told Max, ‘she told me to say to you how dreadfully sorry she was, and of course she would have missed the train if it hadn’t been for this fog. But you see it was just that, the fog’s so thick she simply could not get here, so she says you mustn’t be too hard on her, please, she could not really help herself.’