From the body of the hall rose more clapping and some shouts of encouragement for the unscheduled diversion.
Three more Vikings appeared near the kitchen entrance. They advanced, whooping and growling.
“Norse,” explained Mrs Goshawk. She added: “Of course, in the real thing, they would have been deflowering everybody.”
Sounds of high commotion in the kitchen were succeeded by the bursting upon the scene of a whole platoon of Vikings. Some were pushing liquor trolleys piled with bottles of all kinds. These they proceeded to distribute with ferocious bonhomie amongst the guests, who, once they had recovered from their natural astonishment, broached and set about sinking the gifts before they could be snatched away again.
Back and forth rumbled the trolleys, bringing fresh relays of port and sherry and whisky, madeira and gin and burgundy, clarets and sauternes, rum and moselles and brandy, kirsch and Benedictine and Calvados.
At first, the Nellies loyally voiced objection to the traffic and tried to remonstrate with the raiders, but they were soon rounded up and herded into a storeroom where diligent administration of port and compliments rapidly rendered them tractable and even affectionate.
The antics of the men in skins and helmets were enjoyed enormously by the party from the Chalmsbury Darby and Joan Club. “It’s a history pageant, you see,” one of the more confident members explained as he prised the seal off a bottle of Grand Marnier with his thumb nail. “Them’s Roundheads.” He poured and immediately swigged a half tumbler. “Here, Maggie, have some orange squash, girl.” Maggie shook her back-tilted head disdainfully; she was enjoying for the first time in a long life the sensation of drinking crème de menthe straight from the neck.
Within twenty minutes of the raiders’ first appearance, half the guests were glassily, irremediably drunk. The reckless intake of exotic and highly alcoholic liquors in bizarre combination exerted upon unseasoned drinkers a powerfully anaesthetic effect. Some simply slumped across the table as if they had been shot in the back of the head. Others fell off their chairs, truffled around a while, then curled in snoring sleep. A wilful minority remained sitting upright, talking incoherently but earnestly to no one in particular until consciousness ebbed to leave them, wide-eyed and waxy, like preserved victims of some sudden Vesuvian disaster.
Among the half who did not pass out—a curious coalition of near-abstainers and hardened topers—there was a wide variety of behaviour. A number of nervous and outraged guests tried to leave the hall, but they were rudely repulsed from the exits by Vikings on guard duty. They had to be content with sitting around and grumbling to one another about the organisers having gone too far and this sort of thing being not what they had expected and wasn’t it time that something was done about orgies because that’s what this was and no mistake.
The disgruntled had a point. To the accompaniment of a Viking trio making sounds upon the Rockadours’ captured instruments like a prolonged railway accident, the merriest element among the still conscious guests was set on a mixed programme of destruction, exhibitionism and, where opportunity offered, fornication. In this last matter, valuable assistance was forthcoming from some of the Nellies, port-primed and paroled from their storeroom gaol for the purpose.
Peter, sober still and dedicated to the higher aims of Mackintosh-Brooke, sat on amidst the chaos and made notes while light lasted.
This was not to be for much longer. What had started as an aimless throwing around of platters and tankards and bottles (Peter’s selection by client freewill of optimum enjoyment posture) was developing, with Viking encouragement, into systematic bombardment of every lamp in the place. One by one, the simulated flambeaux were quenched by a bursting bottle or lopped by a skilfully spun platter. Tankards soared to the rafters, made execution among the electric bulbs and fell out of the resulting gloom upon heads rendered indifferent and strangely wound-proof by prodigious quantities of alcohol.
By the time that only one lamp remained alight in a comparatively inaccessible corner of the roof, even the most disapproving watched with fascination the flight of the missiles. Eventually, a lucky ricochet sent a wildly directed platter straight to the target. The pop of the implosion and the drench of dark that it brought were acknowledged with a great tipsy cheer. For a moment after there was silence. Then came sounds of scuffling and heaving penetrated by squeals. But nothing more was thrown.
A slit of brilliant light expanded to a broad rectangle. Big black shapes, bushy and horned, moved across it.
“They’re going,” whispered Mrs Goshawk to those members of the Hambourne Women’s Institute who had spurned the gift of strong waters and consequently were still capable of being instructed. “Back to the long ships, you know. Mind you, if it had been the real thing they’d have taken us as well.” She shuddered deliciously.
The raiders indeed were leaving. They mustered quickly and quietly in the kitchen, checked their armament, then filed into the corridor and out of the nearest door. A few minutes later, a bus left the parking area behind the club. It was followed immediately by a car.
Somebody found the door and fastened it open. It admitted enough light for survivors to pick their way through the ruins of the feast and escape into the kitchen.
They heard muffled shouts. Fists pounded against the inside of the door of the Tiring Roome of Ye Serving Wenches. When it was unlocked, there emerged three non-collaborating Nellies, the four missing members of the kitchen staff, one business efficiency consultant, and a very angry Wassail Master.
“Whose idea,” demanded Mr Hubbard of his rescuers, “was it to let those sods loose? Bloody jesters and troobadoors and all that’s one thing, but I’m not having my staff molested by a lot of dressed up bloody apes. Where’s Hatch? I tell you I’m not putting up with it.”
And he steamed off along the corridor.
The Nellies peered into the dimness of the banqueting hall. “Christ!” said one, fervently.
Bernard took a look over their shoulders. He had not lost his habitual expression of amiable, alert curiosity, but there was something about the way he subsequently checked his stop-watch against the pressure gauge on the main oven that suggested some degree of temporary disorientation.
Edmund Amis entered.
“Anyone seen Mr Hatch? Mr Hubbard’s rushing round in circles looking for him.”
Shrugs and blank stares.
“Well, he’s certainly not in the gaming room. And he wouldn’t have gone home without saying anything to me.”
Amis glanced at a few faces, then fixed on Bernard as seemingly the least confused person present. “What’s been going on, anyway?”
“My reading, quite frankly,” said Bernard, “is that there have been a number of counterproductive developments, but I have no specific recall of events in this regard.”
A junior cook found voice. “A lot of fellows dressed in skins and that. They locked us up. And some of the girls too. And then they sort of took over the banquet. That’s what Heather said.” He indicated an angular, worried-looking girl whose person was much more modestly accommodated in her orange-seller’s costume than appeared to be the general rule.