Night of Triumph (10 page)

After ten minutes, they found themselves under Admiralty Arch. There was no chance of finding Elizabeth, Hugh could see that now. He had gone into a numbed state, but one in which the question
of what profession he would follow in peacetime stood out with painful clarity. Soldiering was out.

‘No,’ said Margaret. ‘No, I can’t see her. Can
you
see her?’

Of course he couldn’t. Nobody could. She was lost in the crowds. But it was very uncharacteristic of Elizabeth simply to walk off like that. Earlier, she had been the one who was anxiously
shepherding their group. What did that mean? Hugh swallowed down the panic-python slithering up his throat.

‘I really do think we can still separate, look for Her Royal Highness and then meet up at an agreed time and place.’

‘Don’t be absurd.’

Paralysed in this stalemate, they both gazed at the pavement, submitting tensely to the shouts and jostles of the rowdy passers-by. Some minutes passed like this.

‘Well, look,’ said Margaret, and she flicked away the cigarette. ‘It’s quite clear to me that Elizabeth has been looking for us in all this mess and she has given up.
Gone back. Which is what we should do.’

There was something in that. Hugh had to admit it. In all probability, Elizabeth had already turned up at the Palace. He was already in trouble. It had already happened. The catastrophic end of
his career in the army had already happened. And this being the case, all he could do now was make it worse by prolonging their absence. Perhaps, he wondered, Margaret herself would say to Their
Majesties that Elizabeth had insisted on striking out on her own. It was possible that she would want to minimise her own culpability in this way.

‘Yes, very good, Your Highness. Let’s return to the Palace now.’

Some people in the crowd were beginning to look twice at Margaret and talk urgently among themselves, but still no one spoke to them. Hugh began to walk back, and Margaret looked at him
contemptuously.

‘
I
want to get a
cab
.’

Crash!

Mr Ware swept the empty glasses off the table with his left hand and lunged at Group Captain Brook with the broken Bass bottle that he clutched in his right.

‘Christ. Steady on.’

Brook dodged to one side, colliding with Colin who was staggering away from the table, towards the bar. The edge of the table impeded Mr Ware’s forward movement and the jagged edge of the
bottle stopped well clear of where Brook’s head would have been.

‘Fucking nance. How dare you?’

‘Argh.’

Attempting to shove the table out of the way, Mr Ware banged it hard against the legs of Brook as he was taking evasive action. The impact evidently infuriated him, and he picked up a chair,
intending to throw it at Mr Ware, but it slipped out of his damp and slippery grip, and hit Colin reasonably hard on his side as he was timidly scurrying along the bar, trying to find some opening
to go through, and duck down and hide, as the barman was now already doing.

‘You filthy sod. How dare you?’

‘To hell with you.’

Brook flung the ashtray at Mr Ware; its powdery grey contents made a vapour trail, which then disintegrated and descended. The ashtray itself ricocheted off Mr Ware’s forehead, and this
assault was clearly far more successful than the aggressor anticipated.

‘Ow! Argh! Cunt!’

Menacingly, his murderous indignation evidently redoubled, and holding one hand up to his injured head, Mr Ware advanced on Brook with his broken bottle in the other hand. Brook, though still
defiant, backed away, unaware that he was being manoeuvred into a corner. His sneer was kept in place very materially due to something that Brook could see and that Mr Ware could not. Ginnie, the
manageress, was advancing on him from behind in a stealthy manner very similar to that with which she had crept up on him just an hour before. But now her face was set like cement. She held a
cricket bat. The men in the club looked on, awed by her imminent intervention.

With a mighty sweep, Ginnie brought the bat down, not on Mr Ware’s head, but on the hand holding the bottle. It dropped. In the same instant, and with practised expertise, Ginnie dropped
her bat, grabbed Mr Ware’s right wrist with her left hand, twisted it sharply behind his back and with the other arm got him round his throat in a choke-hold.

Both dropped to their knees.

‘Now, darling, are you going to calm down, or must I break your arm?’

Mr Ware shook his head, his eyes on the floor.

‘Does that mean, no, you’re not going to calm down, or, no, you’ll not make any trouble?’

‘No trouble. Not make trouble.’

‘Well, all right then.’

Ginnie released him, standing and theatrically splaying out her palms as she stepped back. Mr Ware clutched his painful right shoulder. Group Captain Brook’s face was very white. His hair
was tousled and his arms and shoulders were shaking. But he was still confident enough to be indignant.

‘Intolerable. Intolerable. Madman.’

‘What was, darling?’ Ginnie looked over to him. Everyone else in the bar was still looking at them. The broken bottle still lay on the floor at Ginnie’s feet.

‘One makes a joke. A simple joke. One never intended the smallest offence.’

‘That what it was?’

Ginnie was looking over at Colin who was looking away, at an angle, at the floor, his doughy face scrunched with anxiety. He shrugged.

‘Now, dearest,’ Ginnie directed this at Mr Ware himself. ‘I want you to pick up that bottle and put it in the bin behind the bar. Will you do that for me?’

Cowed, obedient, Mr Ware got up, gingerly picked up the bottle between finger and thumb and disposed of it as Ginnie had requested. He stood still, awaiting further orders. She went over to him
and gently placed her hand on his tense, quivering shoulder.

‘Darling. I’d like you to go away from here and take a bit of a constitutional. No one’s throwing you out. We all can have a row now and then. It doesn’t matter. No one
gets upset, not really. Everyone here’s got skin like elephant hide. You’re always welcome here, you know that, and I know how much you’ve done for the place. But really on
tonight of all nights, everything has to be sweetness and light. Do you know what I mean?’

Mr Ware nodded, his lips compressed tightly. Colin thought he might be about to cry.

‘Now, why don’t you get a breath of fresh air?’

Mr Ware duly made his way to the exit, and caught a glimpse of Group Captain Brook incautiously smiling with relief and triumph, a smile which was smartly wiped from his face, as Mr Ware glared
directly at him.

None of the men on the door looked Mr Ware in the eye as he left, lighting another cigarette.

It really was dark outside now, though there was an electric light on, and the metal-grille door-hatch was now securely bolted back as he climbed back up the metal stairs and up to pavement
level.

Mr Ware fancied that the darkness was intensified by the crush of people in the Soho streets. There was a whooping and cheering as the crowd saluted a foursome which paraded along Great Windmill
Street: dressed up as Churchill, Stalin and then another white man and then a Chinaman. It was only once they had passed him that Mr Ware could identify this last two from the names they had
written on their backs: General Smuts and General Chiang Kai-Shek. There were Poles, French. He heard a babble of non-English voices. Very pretty women were walking along on the arms of
Americans.

One was saying, ‘The extraordinary thing is that I was at the Berlin Games in ’36. I had tea with the Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha at his villa, on the day of the opening ceremony. My
brother was at school with him. The very day. It was less than ten years ago. Think of that.’

Everyone was very far gone. Mr Ware, who could drink a fair bit without it affecting him physically, couldn’t help feeling intoxicated in the way he always did at the sight of other people
becoming vulnerable. He wondered if he might try taking someone’s wallet. Maybe. Lot of uniforms about. Not as easy as civvy gear: suits, topcoats.

Mr Ware walked and, as he did so, indulged in his mannerism of grinning and winking at every third or fourth person his eyes met. The posher they were, the better bred, the more readily and
politely they attempted to return his smile, thinking that they had met at some stage. It was his way of determining the social class of complete strangers, determining how much cash they were
likely to have on them.

He was still angry – or rather, his anger was still there, but being converted into something else. Into energy and determination. And he was talking rapidly to himself, another habit that
he had had since childhood, and which showed no sign of fading. That Brook fellow. How dare he make those remarks? As if they were friends. As if they were intimates, business associates. Something
strange about him. Group Captain? Group Captain my aching tootsie. If Brook was a Group Captain in the RAF, then Mr Ware was a member of the Sadler’s Wells ballet. His arm hurt where Ginnie
had beat it down with the bat; his other arm hurt where she had twisted it up behind his back, and his throat hurt from where she’d all but throttled him. Mr Ware supposed that he should have
known Ginnie would do something like that to him. He had seen her do it to other men in the club often enough. Never at the start of the evening, though.

In Brewer Street, two drunk Welshmen were playing leapfrog on the pavement, like schoolboys, one over the other, all the way down the street. A boisterous crowd swarmed by them, cheering. In the
window of a bookshop, a tattered notice read, ‘Second Front Now’ with a picture of Stalin. In the alley that ran alongside it, Mr Ware could see a prostitute giving hand-relief to
someone in uniform. This fellow out on the town spoiling himself, was he? Or perhaps he was down from the provinces for the day to get his British Empire Medal. Or perhaps it wasn’t a
prostitute – who could tell? – perhaps it was his sweetheart, perhaps it was someone he’d met for the first time on this magical night of all nights. This was a lovely little
anecdote to tell their grandchildren. A pool of light revealed them only partially, but Mr Ware could see his kitbag and coat bundled on the ground; the woman had her back to Mr Ware, murmuring
into the chap’s ear and he of course had his eyes shut. Instinctively, Mr Ware wondered if he could pinch the man’s gear, and began to creep up; her wrist was going like the clappers,
the fellow’s knees were sagging and there would never be a better time than now, but he wouldn’t have more than half a minute at the outside. He stepped further into the alley and
looked around – no one there. Stealthily, he approached, close enough to hear what she was saying.

‘There. There. There.’

He came in closer. The woman had her free hand splayed up against the brickwork to her right; her customer’s back was up against the wall. Mr Ware was close enough to see the man was
chewing on the corner of a handkerchief.

Whump.

Mr Ware’s jaw slackened as he felt a hand on his shoulder, still painful anyway. The police?

‘Hello!’

It was Colin, smiling shyly. His greeting, absurdly loud, coincided with a strangled yelp from the man in the alley; the woman had retreated. Neither had noticed Mr Ware, who now stepped back
out into the street.

‘Colin. What the bloody hell do you want?’

Mr Ware was unsettled enough to give Colin a fourpenny one, right then and there.

‘You forgot these.’ Colin’s voice was gentle, reproachful. He held up Mr Ware’s bag, with his ARP overalls and helmet. He had forgotten them; left them behind in the
club. Colin had followed him all the way out here, to give it back to him. He really ought to be grateful.

‘Oh. Well, thank you very much Colin.’

‘Not at all, old thing. Evening!’

Colin was politely greeting the woman emerging from the alley, who was making a brisk exit, having told her mark to wait behind for a moment, for all the world as if she was an office worker
heading for the Underground at the end of a long day.

‘Devil of a job finding you, old boy.’

‘Mm.’

‘But I just about knew your haunts. They’re my haunts as well!’

‘Yes.’

‘Evening!’

Now the customer was coming out. Mr Ware could see his handkerchief coming out of his right hip pocket. Didn’t know what a close shave he’d had. He looked refreshed, calm.

‘Bad business back there in the Club, old thing.’

‘Well yes, I suppose so.’

‘You know what a temper you’ve got. If you’re thinking of looking in again, you’d better stay amicable.’

‘Yes.’

‘Group Captain Brook was only trying to make a joke, to be pleasant.’

Mr Ware was silent.

‘I say, let’s go to the Blue Post for a drink.’

Of course, that place was packed, but some men had dragged the upright piano out into the street for a singsong; many patrons had excitedly followed and so it wasn’t as crowded as it might
have been.

Colin bought Mr Ware another pint of Bass and a packet of cigarettes, assuming that these would have a temporarily calming effect, and they did. He had also got them half of a pork pie. They
made short work of that.

‘You know ...’

‘Yes?’

‘You know, I don’t think we should go out on a job tonight, old thing.’

‘Why not?’

‘Well, frankly I don’t want to work. I just want to relax. I want to relax the way everyone else is relaxing.’ Colin gestured around at all the drunk people, singing.
‘I’m sitting here, drinking beer, but it’s having no effect on me, because I can’t stop thinking about it. And I rather think tonight might be my last opportunity in a while
to, er,
socialise
.’

‘Well don’t then,’ said Mr Ware shortly. ‘Don’t come. You’re not much use in civvies anyway. I’d rather have someone in uniform. That would make it look
better.’

‘But, look, it’s just getting dangerous. I worry about you.’

‘Worry?’ Mr Ware snorted. ‘Don’t worry.’ As if weighing in on his side, the drinkers sang: