Night of Triumph (3 page)

‘I thought we were going to the Club.’

‘We may very well be going to the Club. But during tonight’s festivities, we shall be showing these two young women the capital.’

‘Are they foreigners?’

‘They have some German ancestry, but no, they are as British as you and me. They have, as it were, been through London but never actually into the streets. That’s where you and I
come in.’

They were now opposite Simpson’s, where Peter’s mother had once bought him a three-piece suit and topcoat, and where his former fiancée had looked at a tray of silver
tie-pins, cuff-links and money-clips, looked up at Peter, burst into tears, run out through the back entrance into Jermyn Street and never contacted him ever again. He was wearing the suit now.

Some ten minutes later, Hugh and Peter arrived at their shared service flat in Oxendon Street. Hugh was running a bath, and padding about the place with a vivid white towel around his waist.
Peter was thoughtfully looking out of the window. They both had drinks.

‘Are we going to be up terribly late tonight, do you think?’

‘Up
late
?’ Hugh looked up from the electric fire, one of whose glowing orange bars he had effortfully turned on by a switch at the side. ‘My dear boy, we are going to be
up all night. It’s going to be back here for breakfast, absolutely roaring. It’s going to be like Eights Week.’

He disappeared into the bathroom, where the sound of running water ceased and there was a sploshing as Hugh disturbed the water’s surface with his finger tips. Peter made no reply, but
continued to look out of the window.

‘Look at the crowds. Extraordinary. And do you know, I don’t see a single policeman. The wireless said there wasn’t an inch of space outside the Palace. People everywhere.
Father said it reminded him of the General Strike, only we’re all on the same side. What’s this thing?’

Peter had picked up a large portfolio in green leather, secured with two tied tassels, which he began to undo.

‘Hugh, what’s this folder thing? Have you been making sketches of Rheims Cathedral or somesuch?’

Peter undid the second tassel, and opened it up to see the photographs inside, just as Hugh, naked, dripping and unsmiling, cannoned into him and furiously snatched the portfolio. Without
looking at Peter, he stalked back into the bathroom and locked the door shut behind him.

‘I wouldn’t have thought that sort of thing was your taste, old boy,’ said Peter at the bathroom door, attempting to be worldly and amused, although in truth this manner did
not suit him and he rather wanted to be told that this portfolio did not belong to Hugh. As if divining this need, Hugh opened the door again and appeared in a damp burgundy dressing gown.

‘It is not mine. It’s a friend’s,’ he said, shortly. ‘I didn’t know what was inside. I wouldn’t dream of making free with someone else’s
property.’

Back on the defensive, Peter made a grimace of concession, walked back into the sitting room and resumed his survey of the crowds as they surged through into Leicester Square. Trying to rejoin
the celebratory mood, he hummed along to the song they were all singing.

‘Bloody hell,’ said Hugh at his shoulder, his dyspeptic humour apparently dispelled and thoughts of a bath apparently delayed. ‘I call that disloyalty to the human race. If the
bloody thing did manage to run away, and the farmer didn’t get his wretched rabbit pie, we would all bloody well starve. Here.’

Hugh passed Peter a copy of the
Daily Express
, unfolded at an inside page.

‘There you are.’

‘What?’

‘Take a look.’

Hugh looked, but all he could see was a photograph of the Royal Family.

‘What is it?’ he asked, mystified.

‘Our target for tonight, old boy,’ said Hugh. ‘Our mission. There are the two girls we’re taking out.’

Uncomprehending, Peter looked back at the photograph, and then around the margins of the page, searching for details that could possibly apply to him, then looked back at the picture. He looked
back suddenly at Hugh, who laughed shrilly.

‘I see the penny has dropped, like a manhole cover released from an upstairs window.’

‘You don’t mean?’

‘I do mean.’

‘How ...?’

‘Mother. She had the call from St James’s. This is a great honour for us, old thing. This is something to tell our grandchildren about. Authorised version, naturally. Should I top
that up, before we venture out?’

Both resplendent in the uniform of the Scots Guards, Peter and Hugh were soon walking down the street, bestowing beaming smiles on everyone they saw. They were moving far more quickly than in
the car. The crowds parted for them. They were actually being cheered. It was the way they were dressed, naturally, and something to do with their ferociously brushed hair, each in a razor-sharp
side-parting: Peter’s dark, Hugh’s sandy-blond.

Hugh had it in mind to stop for a pint at a pub, but they made time for an American newsreel camera crew, and a woman with chic cropped hair, interviewing passers-by.

‘Do you think the war changed the British view of America?’ she asked.

‘I think it has very much reinforced it,’ replied Hugh, with a perfectly courteous smile.

‘Do you think the war has changed the British relationship with America?’

‘Oh, we are as close as cousins.’

‘And who is your favourite American motion picture star?’

‘I would say Lou Cost–’

Hugh was interrupted by a football from an impromptu game outside a café, which struck him unpleasantly on the back of the neck. Livid, he turned around to see that the majority of the
players were policemen, the first he had seen on duty that day. They cheered and motioned for him to throw it back. Mastering his anger, aware that the cameras were still rolling and that the
American interviewer’s amused gaze was still on him, Hugh affected a hearty, tolerant laugh and threw the ball back to them, swinging his arms from the side, however, as if making a rugby
pass.

‘There.’

Five minutes later, they had come back to a pub quite near Piccadilly Circus: the Captain’s Cabin. They both ordered pints of warm, brimming Bass and these, as well as the warm cheers
their uniforms elicited, restored their good humour.

‘I say, I’m rather looking forward to tonight. When should we arrive at the Palace?’ asked Peter, but this last word showed a want of discretion and Hugh frowned. His eyes
flickered around the bar in which they were the centre of attention and he shook his head minutely.

‘Soon. Soon.’

Peter looked at his watch. The frosted glass of the pub, chased with Edwardian advertisements of ales and fortified wines, was darkened with a press of people, all excited by each other, all
wanting their gathered force to cohere into one great moment. This was what his father had told him about 1926, the General Strike. They eavesdropped on the conversation at the next table.

‘What are you going to do now, Bill?’

‘Well, I expect Laura and I can get married.’

‘Oh, jolly good. In Saxmundham?’

‘That all depends.’

‘Harry back?’

‘No. Still in Singapore. Hasn’t got his demob papers. Could be another year.’

‘Do you know what John’s last letter said?’

‘No. What?’

‘Said his CO asked him, are you a communist or just a trouble-maker?’

‘What’d he tell him?’

‘Bit of both. Cheer-o!’

Under their feet was a continual grinding and scrunching of glittering grit, from the heels and soles of newly polished shoes; people slid back and forth to the bar with drinks and orders for
drinks, sometimes coming back to tables in the Saloon Bar with full glasses on round tin trays. The upright piano in the corner had its lid pulled up by one man who, with two fingers, plunked out a
children’s tune on the black notes.

A cheer and a groan. Someone else took over, rolling up his sleeves, meshing his fingers together and bending them out backwards until they all cracked. Then he played
‘Roll Out The Barrel’ and Hugh joined in cheerfully, and Peter did his best, smiling thinly and uncertainly. He didn’t know any of the words, other than those which were in the
title.

‘Hugh.
Hugh
.’

‘Mm?’

‘I, ah, where’s the ...?’

‘Over there.’

He pointed to a door round by the other side of the bar, so low and unostentatious, Peter assumed it must be a locked store cupboard. He placed his lit cigarette in the ashtray and sidled
through the press with his palms raised and head tilted back, as if gracelessly performing the preliminary moves in some sort of mambo.

After a futile shove, and then a pull, the door opened onto a descending staircase, almost entirely dark, which led to a dank room. As the door to this shut firmly behind him, Peter was
confronted by a stooping man in a chalk-stripe suit, with a large, balding head and an ingratiating smile: simply standing there. A length of white shirt-tail protruded from his fly-buttons.

‘Hello,’ he said.

Peter considered briefly pretending to have forgotten something – perhaps accompanying this with a snap of the fingers and a pantomimed vexed expression, before turning to flee back up the
stairs. But the man stepped away from the urinal, and motioned for Peter to approach.

‘I do apologise,’ he said, and then, ‘Do you have the time?’

Peter found it difficult to urinate in front of other people at the best of times. It was the sort of thing which, unfairly, aroused suspicion in the services, as if you were a moral danger to
your brother officers. He frowned, looked down, and ducked into the single, enclosed cubicle. Peter closed the door behind him, but was afraid to lock that, in case he was trapped. By pressing
against it with his outstretched, tensed fingertips, he was able to keep the door secure while he relieved himself. After finishing, he listened. There was nothing outside but a dripping,
foul-smelling quiet. Gradually, Peter relaxed. His breathing rate slowed. He stopped trembling. He calmed. He looked around at the words crudely scrawled on the walls, and smiled. Peter adjusted
his dress, pulled the chain, and opened the door.

‘I said –
do you have the time?
’ said the man evenly, still there, his smile still in place, as if easy-going and tolerant of Peter’s caprice.

Peter pushed past him, suppressing a thin squeak of anxiety, and began to wash his hands. This he made take longer than usual, and when he looked up, the man had gone. Sternly resolving to leave
this place, and worrying that both their uniforms were going to get stained in some way, Peter marched back up the stairs and into the crush by the bar. ‘Jerusalem’ was now being played
on the piano, to a storm of whistling. He mambo-ed back round to their table, to discover the very same man again, seated with his back to him, and in intimate conversation with Hugh.

‘Ah, Peter,’ said Hugh cheerily, ‘this is Colin Erskine-Jones. A capital fellow I’ve just met.’

Colin turned and rose to shake Peter’s hand. His manner had changed, perceptibly. The ingratiating manner had been removed; in its place was a smooth condescension.

‘We’ve not been introduced,’ he said, ambiguously.

‘How do you do?’ said Peter.

Without replying directly to this, Colin turned back to Hugh.

‘Well, war work, you know,’ he said, evidently in answer to a previous question. ‘I actually volunteered for the ARP.’

‘Really?’ It was unusual for Hugh to appear surprised at anything, and Peter noted it.

‘Oh yes. Really.’

‘Clearing bomb damage and so forth?’

‘Quite. Some of the chaps used to come straight from the regular jobs, work all night, and then go back to the office the next day with never a wink of sleep.’

‘Marvellous. But wasn’t it frightfully dangerous?’

‘Oh, yes. But rewarding.’

Colin accompanied this last remark with an enigmatic smile, that both men found supercilious.

‘Can I get you another?’

‘Oh now, Hugh, surely we have to push on, rather?’

The extraordinary honour that had been conferred on them by this evening’s ‘chaperoning’ duty, and the necessity of not making a mess of things, pressed on Peter’s
mind.

‘Oh, Peter, don’t be a wet blanket. We’re in no great rush.’

‘It’s already twenty past.’

‘So you
do
have the time.’

Simply to get away from Colin, Peter glumly volunteered to get three gins, threaded his way back to the bar, and made a fat and grimy tube with his coins while waiting to be served. A thin man
with a pink face – the colouring was, on closer inspection, caused by a widespread latticework of infinitesimally fine broken veins – listened to his order with a lizardly flick of his
eyes in Peter’s direction and then, without making any effort to pour out the drinks, resumed his conversation.

‘We mustn’t let our guard down. We mustn’t just slack off.’

‘Oh no.’

‘No.’

‘We have to continue the battle in the Far East. The Japanese.’

‘It makes my blood boil to think how they treated our chaps.’

‘We wouldn’t have treated
them
like that.’

‘Ah well, it’ll soon come. Victory in Japan. And then this will all be over.’

‘Victory in Japan ...’ murmured someone into his Guinness.

‘Victory in Japan,’ said someone else, raising his glass, as if proposing a toast.

‘Ah, yes. It’s a good life, you know, as long as you don’t weaken.’

This was an unfortunate moment for Peter to feel slightly dizzy, and to slump against the bar. He should have had something more to eat before he came out. A good life if you didn’t
weaken? What on earth did that mean? In what sense did being strong make it a good life? How?

‘Shall I carry the gins for you?’ said the pink-faced man suddenly, and his open contempt, and that of his fellows, made Peter pull himself together and refuse the request. He still
did not quite understand that his uniform was triggering conversations about the war everywhere within earshot.