Wine of Honour

by Barbara Beauchamp

  They went to the flat first, to leave their suitcases. Peter had not been there before and he wandered aimlessly around, peering at the books, while Angela made tea for them. Presently he found an album of photographs and sat studying them and gnawing at his thumbnail.

  “Who’s that?” he asked as she came back into the room. She put the tray down and went to look over his shoulder.

  “Michael Cross. Don’t you recognize him?”

  “I thought it looked familiar. I didn’t know you knew him before the war.”

  “Oh it was taken years ago.” She dismissed Michael with ease.

  “And this?” he had turned a page.

  “A French naval officer I knew in St. Tropez.”

  He flicked over more pages while she poured out tea.

  “You seem to have had a lot of boy friends,” he smiled across at her and helped himself to sugar.

  “I graduated in the 30’s!” she replied easily.

  “You’re right—those were the days,” he agreed. “God, I’d give a lot to go back to them.”

  “We can’t, so why worry? I have no regrets for what’s past.”

  He stared at her in silence. She noticed the deep lines between his nose and mouth and the puffiness beneath his eyes. In spite of it all he was still good looking. There was bone to his face and vitality in the crisp hair greying at the sides. There was more than that, she decided—a very definite charm which even dissipation could not erase. He could be a real person again, but he needed something or someone to shock him back to reality.

  He took a cigarette from a crumpled packet and handed her one.

  “I can’t think why you’ve never married, Angela.”

  “I could say the same about you.”

  “Me? Oh, I’d never have made a go of it.”

  “How can you tell unless you’ve tried a thing?”

  “I know myself too well. Lord, I’d have been a rotten husband. Even in the old days when a chap could make a packet on the Stock Exchange—and I did at times—I knew it would be no good. I couldn’t ask a girl to marry me. I might be broke a few months later. It was always the same. I wouldn’t want my wife to go through that.”

  She thought, he knows his weakness. If only he could be brought to believe that no human being is entirely composed of negative qualities. He must be built up before it was too late. Then she noticed the time and said:

  “Heavens, we must go. Carry the tray back to the kitchen, will you, while I titivate.”

  They were able to get a taxi. Peter said:

  “What about calling in at the Club for a quick one on the way?”

  “No, Peter. We’ll get drinks at Jim’s. I know I’d never drag you from your Club once you got there and this other appointment’s important.”

  He replied, cheerfully enough:

  “In other words you mean I’ve got to stay sober until after the interview?”

  “That was the idea,” she laughed lightly.

  He took her hand and held it between his.

  “You’re awfully kind to me, Angela.”

  “I hate that word.” She tried to move her hand away.

  “No, don’t. . . . Darling, I wish we hadn’t got to go and see your silly Jim Cardew. I wish we could go straight back to the flat.”

  “Even without a drink?” she teased.

  “Um. . . . God, yes. . . .”

  She heard the intensity in his voice and while she responded to his embrace her mind considered, dispassionately, the almost invariable effect that taxis had on men.

  Jim Cardew was elderly and rich and somewhat parvenu. He lived in the sort of flat successful business men refer to as a ‘pied-à-terre’ and anyone else calls a luxury establishment. As they were going up in the lift, Angela felt the first spasm of nervousness about the whole thing. She had not seen Jim since the early years of the war—not, in fact, since the Cardew episode had terminated amicably on both sides. She wondered if Molly Cardew would be there, and hoped not. Molly was considerably younger than Jim and not the sort of woman to foster a business atmosphere which is what Angela hoped to create.

  She glanced at Peter standing beside her and mentally drew up a balance-sheet of his assets and liabilities. He was presentable—at the moment—and had been to the same public school the Cardew boy was at. Jim was a snob and would label Peter a gentleman. Peter had done over five years in the navy. Jim had lived by and from the Black Market for almost the same number of years and was now atoning by advertising that he only liked to employ ex-service men in his many businesses.

  So far, all right. But against that Angela had to admit that Peter showed no great enthusiasm for work, looked half asleep most of the time, could be childishly insulting about people who had made money during the war and, in general, was incapable of carrying on a coherent conversation after a few drinks. Well, she’d have to use all her tact if they got on to dangerous topics.

  Actually everything went much more smoothly than she anticipated. Molly was away in the country. There were champagne cocktails. Jim was pleased to see Angela again and anxious to help any friend of hers. Peter woke up after the second cocktail, uncurling himself like a cat in the sun amidst the luxurious comfort of his surroundings, and was at his most charming.

  He can pull it off, she thought, and let herself relax in the corner of the sofa she was on. At the back of her mind memories stirred. She remembered Peter at the Cock and Pheasant and his voice saying, “I gave all the chaps on my ship my address. . . . I can give them all the introductions they want.” And her own reaction . . . life isn’t going to be like that again.

  But life was like that. Influence, favouritism, string-pulling—it was happening here in this room at this moment. The difference being that Peter was no longer in the traditional role. The Gurneys, born and bred to dispense favours on the less fortunate, were now the marionettes who must dance to the string-pulling of others. In this instance, thought Angela, dispassionately observing Jim Cardew’s increased waistline and remembering the past, Peter was dependent on a scarlet thread.

  She let her glass be refilled and bubbles of champagne and cynicism gurgitated within her. Maybe the war had been won for this, for the same impresarios to stage the same productions, with only the actors reshuffled, re-cast with startling possibilities.

  Yes, Jim’s waistline had increased, just as everything else in this flat had increased: the size of the glasses, the quality of the drink, the gilded mirrors on the walls and the hydrangeas potted indiscreetly about the room. Angela noted a new Dunlop and an Ivon Hitchens from this year’s Academy and remembered Molly’s patronage of the arts.

  Jim Cardew was successful. His chief interests were in cement and building. War or peace, demolition or reconstruction, V-weapons or V-days—it was all the same to him, cement and building, building and cement.

  As a side line he had now bought up a number of derelict boarding houses in London and on the south coast. Once they were restored to an outward semblance of spit and polish he staffed them with managers, accountants, cooks, maids, messengers and boot boys. ‘All ex-service,’ was his boast and ‘A soft number for soldiers’ his slogan. The company was called Victory Hotels Limited. But there was no end to the money to be made out of it.

  He had a job in mind at the moment for a man to co-ordinate the administration of these establishments, someone who would investigate complaints, check up on the buying of market produce and the hiring of labour. Someone who could standardize the everyday running of the Victory Hotels until each was working at a minimum cost and maximum profit.

  “Of course,” Jim Cardew explained to Peter, “you’ll have to start in the London offices. Say three months to learn the works and then you can get cracking. Jump on ’em, that’s the idea. None of your prepared inspections. Just an unexpected call for lunch or dinner and a glance at the books after coffee. Catch ’em as they really are.”

  Peter said:

  “It sounds a pretty good proposition to m
e.”

  Angela was glad that he seemed interested. And then she thought ‘he fought the Nazis at Dunkirk and on the Hood.’ But it was stupid to have associations like that. After all, a job was always a job.

  As they left the flat she felt confident and filled with the satisfaction of having accomplished something definite. It was pleasant to be successful, even in quite small undertakings. But this wasn’t small. It was big and important because it could mean the making of a human life.

  They went to Peter’s Club in Pall Mall where the atmosphere of defunct respectability wound itself like a shroud around Angela’s good humour. Peter explained that none of his friends seemed to go there any more, which didn’t surprise her. They found another taxi and proceeded to Soho. Peter was jubilant and amorous and she let him take control of the evening.

  In the Soho pub there was warm humanity and the friendly smell of beer, tobacco and cheap scent. Peter elbowed Angela towards the counter and she felt happy and young again. The clack of voices almost drowned the metallic clang of a piano played by a young man in a corduroy suit.

  “Two Scotch,” Peter attracted the attention of a barmaid.

  “No Scotch, sir.”

  “Couple of gins then.”

  “No gin. Only rum.”

  “D’you want a rum, Angela?”

  “No. Try sherry.”

  They drank sherry at an exorbitant price. A man with a Lancashire voice told them:

  “Got to make your number here before you can get the Ginger Wine.”

  “What’s the dope?” Peter asked.

  “Ginger Wine and a Buster. Vanilla Sandwich if you want a packet of fags, but they’re on the counter tonight so you don’t have to cut the job up.”

  Peter glanced at the empty glass in the man’s hand and then waited for the barman to approach.

  “Three Busters and a ginger ale,” he ordered and, miraculously three gins appeared. He split the ginger ale between them and they drank silently.

  Angela watched a girl in the corner being kissed by a sailor. There was something very satisfying about the performance. She imagined that it must be rather interesting to be about eighteen years old and to have matured during the most devastating war in history. The girl was dewy with youth and the sailor had a beautiful phallic neck, rising like sculptured marble from a surround of blue and white.

  And then Angela saw Brian pushing his way towards the bar. He was shepherding a girl, carving a way through the crowd for her with his broad shoulders and a forceful elbow. She was tiny, not more than five foot two with red-gold hair framing the most perfectly proportioned face Angela had ever seen. ‘Good God,’ she thought. ‘In what nursery do they find them?’ The sailor’s girl and now this child of Brian’s. They had reached the counter and Brian saw Angela and Peter for the first time.

  “Hello, strangers,” he said, and Angela knew he was not too pleased to find them here.

  Peter said:

  “Hello, Brian. What’s it to be?”

  “No. I’m in the chair. This is Serena, Miss Hughes, I should say. This is my brother, Peter, and Angela Worthing. What d’you want, Serena?”

  “I’d like a shandy, please, Brian.” She had a cool little voice and Angela realized that here was a child from no ordinary nursery. Her mind swept back some twenty years to her finishing school in Paris and the débutantes of the twenties. They’d looked tougher and more tailored then, but they didn’t come to pubs like the Golden Fleece.

  Brian said:

  “You’re drinking gin aren’t you?” and then ordered a shandy, two Busters and a large Ginger Wine. Peter said:

  “So you and Brian know this place, do you, Miss Hughes?” And he smiled inanely down at her because no man could look at anything so young and so lovely without smiling inanely. ‘Like the old advertisement for French cheese, La Vache qui Rit,’ thought Angela, coldly, and then smiled, too, because she was reacting as every other woman must to the beauty of Serena Hughes.

  “Yes, we often come here. You see, Brian lives just round the corner,” Serena replied. Peter goggled at her, but Angela knew that the simplicity of Serena Hughes was entirely genuine.

  They had several more rounds of drinks. Serena went from shandy to gin and lime and then back to shandy again, but her face retained its transparent pallor and her voice remained soft and cool. Peter’s eyes took on their accustomed glassy look and he drooped a little over the counter. Angela said:

  “We really ought to go and get some food.”

  Brian, who had suddenly decided to be sociable, suggested they should all go to a club he belonged to where the food was good and they could dance on about two square yards of glass floor if they felt energetic.

  “We might,” Peter added, “go on to the Music Box afterwards. I used to be a member.”

  “No,” Brian said firmly, “not with Serena,” and he tucked his arm through hers as they made their way out of the pub.

  “But I might like it,” Serena said as they walked along the street.

  “I doubt it, and you wouldn’t get the attention you merit. You know what a vain little creature you are, peeking into mirrors and rolling your eyes so as not to miss a single admiring glance.”

  “Oh, Brian, I’m not!”

  Angela thought, ‘He treats her as if she were his favourite young sister’, and wondered exactly how the two had come to this particular relationship.

  The Piccolo Club was small and overcrowded, but the food was excellent. Peter said he didn’t want anything to eat and Angela could have smacked him as he toyed and thrust aside the hors d’oeuvres on his plate.

  Serena said:

  “Ooh, steak tonight, and it’s not horse, look at the fat. I know it was horse at that funny restaurant the other night, Brian, but I was too hungry to care.”

  Even Peter enjoyed the steak and as he ate, he became less glassy. When he asked Angela to dance, she knew he was all right. Peter was like that: a few drinks and he appeared to totter with tipsiness; then would come a quite long spell of outward control, during which he managed to consume a great deal without deterioration. After that, it was anyone’s guess as to what he might do.

  Angela thought, ‘it’s funny the way Peter can dance; it’s probably the one thing about him which hasn’t gone blunt,’ and she let herself go to the rhythm of the band which consisted of a pianist, a drummer, and a man who alternated between the accordion and the violin. It was, she decided, exactly what a dance band should comprise in a small setting like this.

  Peter said:

  “Angela, later on, let’s talk.”

  “Yes.”

  “We will, won’t we, when we get back?”

  “Yes.”

  “Just what you want, you know? I’m all right.”

  “Yes.”

  They went back to the table and there was coffee. Brian said:

  “Serena wants to dance with you, Peter. She says you were the only couple in that crush who looked as if they still had the floor to themselves.”

  “Oh, I’m no good. I’ve forgotten all the steps. What about some drink?”

  “I’ll see to that. You go and exercise the child.”

  Serena pulled a face at him. Peter said:

  “Will you, Serena?”

  “If you insist . . .” but she was looking at Brian. He spoke to a waiter.

  “A jug of lager and some lemonade. What about you, Angela?”

  “Lager, thank you.”

  “Make it two jugs, George.”

  When the drink arrived, he said:

  “Peter’s looking much better. What have you been doing to him, Angela?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I don’t believe it. You can tell me, you know.” She wondered if he were a little tight.

  “Well, I’ve got him a job,” she answered lightly.

  “Good God! What in?”

  She told him about Jim Cardew and the cocktails in Sloane Street. He said:

  “It may work.” />
  “What d’you mean?”

  “Angela, let’s be frank. You’re in love with Peter, aren’t you?”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea. I find him attractive. Why?”

  “Oh, don’t keep asking questions. Do you really know him?”

  “You seem to be the one for asking questions.”

  He laughed, and poured lager into their glasses. Somewhere in the middle of the tiny floor Peter’s dark head was visible, smiling down at Serena.

  “Don’t worry about Serena,” Brian said, “she’s not interested in Peter.”

  “You’re quite the cad, aren’t you, Brian?” she asked, fingering the glass before her. He looked at her and his voice changed.

  “Am I? I don’t mean to be, but I spent a long time learning to come to the point quickly. I suppose the niceties got brushed off sometime.”

  She felt softened then. It was difficult to remember Brian as a soldier, he looked so different now.

  “What are you doing, Brian?” she asked.

  “Advertising, It’s good fun in a way. I can get quite worked up about the merits of somebody’s soap and cures for catarrh. Actually, I’m only a contact man. I don’t draw pretty pictures or write clever slogans.”

  “Why should you?” she asked.

  “Because I’d like to. I’d like to be that sort of a person. Oh, God, here are the others. Come and dance.”

  “What about Serena?”

  “Serena’s all right. I’ve told her what to do. Come on; let’s talk.”

  Preceding him to the dance floor, she laughed to herself at the thought of the Gurney family. It only needed Lady Gurney to appear with an invitation to tea, for conversational intercourse to be completed. Sir James and Daphne didn’t count.

  Brian said:

  “What are you grinning about?”

  “Your family. What do you want to talk about?”

  “Let’s dance first.”

  He was not as good a dancer as his brother. Angela was bumped unceremoniously round the room but, physically, Brian was the more stalwart partner: shoulder to shoulder, limb to limb, there was greater security. Twice round the floor and he said: