The porter faltered. He had put one hand behind his back. “Yes, but Mr Parry...”
“Dismissed.” Rothermere, though brusque, sounded regretful. “They should have told you.”
He strode past the porter, entered the door, turned right along a corridor, crossed the hall, into which it led, and left the building by its main entrance in Southgate. On his way to Fold’s, some twenty yards distant, Rothermere noted with approval that street parking was prohibited throughout the area.
Julia Harton had arrived early at the restaurant in order to study, away from Mrs Cutlock’s heavily suggestive solicitude and the demands of a Thornton already bored with holidays and impatient to return to school on the morrow, the curious communication from Happy Endings Inc.
She sniffed musingly the medicinal tingle of the bubbles bursting from her double Campari and soda, and read:
You have been selected, on the recommendation of persons of financial probity and social eminence, who work as a voluntary body to advise this organisation, as a suitable candidate for assistance and support by Happy Endings Inc.
Our Confidential Research Division experts have already examined data relevant to your case, and I am delighted to be able to tell you they have decided that your high Community Rating merits the offer of a very special service—that of our Cliveden Bureau.
The Cliveden Bureau operates as a general rule for the exclusive benefit of titled selectees. Some of the country’s oldest families have been enabled by the Bureau to make matrimonial readjustments without fuss or scandal, and it has long enjoyed their confidence and gratitude. Now you, Mrs Harton, because of the delicacy of your social connections, and the necessity of avoiding scandal that might weaken your husband’s commercial standing (and hence his capacity to compensate you adequately for the dissolution of your marriage), may share with the greatest in the land the privilege of Benefit without Bother.
Terms, of course, are an immaterial consideration in the context of the work of Happy Endings Inc., but we would assure you at the outset that a minimal percentage—a mere out-of-pocket reimbursement—is the total of our expectation.
All you need do in order to take advantage of this offer is to telephone the undersigned at Flaxborough 2229. He has the pleasure of being the representative appointed to be especially responsible for your interests.
For the next quarter of an hour, Julia sipped her drink and idly amused herself by comparing each new arrival with her mental picture of Mortimer Rothermere. Most of the diners could be disqualified at once; they were local business or professional men known to her, at least by sight. As Julia had expected, none was accompanied by a wife at this time of day. Her assignation might be noticed, but it would not be diligently monitored.
At last the door was pushed open in the confident, but not quite brash, manner exactly suitable to the entry of a man with broad shoulders, a greying but impeccably trimmed beard that emphasised his rosiness of cheek, an eye bright and watchful yet calm, and a big expanse of brow beneath the sort of hat that kings used to wear to race meetings.
He had an air, Julia decided. He had tone. Moreover, even if there was a hint of corsetry about him, he was not at all bad looking. She hoped very much that he was Mr Rothermere.
And so he was. But for some moments he remained where he stood, just inside the restaurant’s entrance, peering vaguely into the pink dusk of the long, narrow room.
Five years before, Fold’s had been a homely, slightly shabby eating house; its glass-topped tables a-clatter with cruets and thick tumblers and much worn cutlery with ornate, cast metal handles, each with a tiny drainage hole out of which vestiges of washing-up water would trickle upon the wrists of the unwary. In those days (“I think I’ll have the beef, Miss, and the apple crumble to follow...”) the ordinariness of the food had been honestly proclaimed in the light from high, naked windows. Now, though, the windows were darkened; some were masked in heavy velvet, others turned into alcoves, shallowly shelved to display culinary whimsicalities—a pepper mill, an old enamelled herb jar, a copper ladle. What light there was came from thickly shaded sconces. It was just enough to convey the prices on the menu as impressions rather than statements. It was a blush of well-being; a subtle reminder to the beneficiaries of Cultox Nutritionals (Catering Division) that spending money, unlike making it, carried the obligation of grace.
A shadow became flesh.
“Sah...” suspired the head waiter. He stood at Mr Rothermere’s side, looking prepared not so much to serve him as to truss him up.
Mr Rothermere continued to stare down the room. One did not look at head waiters: direct regard would be abdication.
“Sah?” The man’s face jerked upward; taut, helpful, insolent.
“Mrs Harton, I believe, is lunching here.” Mr Rothermere took a gold watch from his waistcoat and frowned at it, as if to invite the commemoration of this particular minute snatched from an unimaginably busy day.
The head waiter reached into the air and snapped a little of it between finger and thumb.
One of the floor waiters materialised from the gloom.
“Table six,” said the head waiter. He glanced distastefully at Mr Rothermere’s brief case and umbrella. The subordinate put out his hand. “Might I, sir?”
Ignoring him, Mr Rothermere turned and began walking past tables. The waiter had almost to run to overtake him and to become, with bobs and napkin flutterings, the dancing partner of the pulled-out chair.
Mrs Harton watched over the top of her glass. She inclined her head very slightly. Mr Rothermere gave her a full bow before taking his seat. Then, for four or five seconds, he gazed upon her with every appearance of fond approval.
“You look,” said Mrs Harton, “just like Edward the Seventh.”
Mr Rothermere chuckled delightedly. With plump, white fingertips he patted and caressed his moustache. Julia noticed how small and pink was the mouth framed by all the carefully groomed whisker-work.
The mutual examination was interrupted by the descent before each of a menu the size of a card table.
Julia returned hers at once without looking at it. She ordered a cheese omelette, a little salad and French bread. From behind the other menu came cautiously the voice of Mr Rothermere. He asked for translations of some of the more ecstatic prose passages. The waiter—also, it seemed, a stranger to menu language—met each inquiry with the earnest assurance that the comestible indicated was “very nice, sir.”
Resignedly, Mr Rothermere gave the signal for the menu to be hauled up. “It had better be the sweetbreads.” He held up a hand in a delicate measuring gesture. “Very few mushrooms. And no potatoes.”
Julia now saw that her companion had assumed a pair of gold-rimmed half spectacles. They gave him an even more benign appearance. “Whenever I see a bill of fare like that,” he said to her, “I can hear the dull thud of the freezer lid and the whine of the infra-red resuscitator. We live in wicked times, Mrs Harton.”