I let the hearty cries of welcome in the hall below subside and sat on my bed for a while after a door had shut leaving a great deal of silence behind it. Then with Paula’s clear voice beating in my ears (“Beware of Self Pity.” “It is not oneself who is at the centre of things.” “To be happy, forget yourself and take an interest in the rest,” etc. All that unhelpful stuff) I got up and without a glance in the mirror went down to the sitting room.
I felt Jack there almost without seeing him—his big dark figure handing a glass. Mrs. Rose now sitting easily back in a vast sofa, lighting a cigarette, and Mr. Rose his feet in a heavy rug looking as if the world was a good place behind a glass of gin, his eyes on Grace as if they would never look away. For all three it was obvious, though goodness knows how one realises it just by opening a door and one be-spectaded glance (I’d gone back to the glasses), that the evening for them all had great possibilities.
Grace was draped in a chair, still in her jeans, gazing at the huge electric bars that had been fastened across the old marble fireplace. They were sturdy bars and all switched on and the room had several very efficient-looking radiators, too. I grew damp and prickly under the ginger wool the minute I opened the door for the dress had long sleeves and a high neck and was about three-quarters of an inch thick. Our House is very cold with stone floors meant for monks. You get used to it but you always wear a lot of layers. Not here.
Yet Grace—and the Head’s House is no warmer—appeared to be wearing only a long cotton shirt over her jeans, very tight and not even a bra, you could tell, though she was so lovely and thin it didn’t matter. The sheepskin was lying all over the back of her chair and her luggage—a sort of canvas nose-bag with a long bit of string—lay on the rose-coloured carpet. “No, just orange,” she was saying as I came in and looked up into Jack’s face with a slow, sweet smile.
“Bilgie!” cried Jack swinging round. “You’re here. That’s great. Come on—you have Grace’s gin and tonic then,” and he thrust a great big cut-glass drink into my hand, about a quarter of a pint of it. “Found your way? Good. Here’s to you. We won, Humphrey.”
I looked round for someone else and then realised he was talking to his father. “That’s the stuff,” said Mr. Rose. “Let’s have another to celebrate.” He helped himself. “Good game?” They began to talk rugger, Mrs. Rose joining in. She spoke yery knowledgeably, in short bursts, about tries and penalties and conversions. When she wasn’t talking she lit cigarettes. The glasses were refilled again and Mr. Rose waxed very jolly and going across to get himself another gin bent down and whisked away my glass which I saw was empty. I realised that I was feeling very warm and pleasant inside. I had not drunk gin before, associating it either with night clubs which I had not come across or with the sort of person I had sat next to on the bus.
But it was nice. It was making me grin.
“Bilge is grinning.” It was Grace, sipping an orange juice, dropping her eye-lashes. It was the first thing she’d said that acknowledged that I was there. Everyone looked at me and for some reason they all began to laugh, even Grace, throwing her head back and taking in my ginger dress which was getting all steamy under the arms. Jack laughed, too, as if he didn’t really want to but couldn’t help it. Mrs. Rose exploded briefly and Mr. Rose boomed. It wasn’t quite kind the way they laughed. It was at me not with me or for me.
“That’s the stuff,” bellowed out Mr. Rose passing me another quarter pint. “Drink up folks. Dinner’s ready isn’t it Janice?”
We all trooped down into the bowels of the house where there was a room full of curious oak furniture with bulbous legs and an oak hatch through which two hands of an unseen servant kept appearing. Messages were called out in loud voices to this servant by both the dentists—messages full of very good will like “Wotcher, Mac,” and “This looks like just the job, Mac,” “Pretty good nosh, girl. Get plenty yourself,” and you could hear the knife and fork of this person through the hatch, munching apart.
There was prawn cocktail, coq-au-vin and a wonderful chocolate pudding or rather collection of chocolate puddings—round éclair things stuffed with cream and smothered in dark chocolate sauce like Sunday House-gravy. Then there was a huge obtuse-angled triangle of soft creamy cheese and there was with all the courses a lot of wine and I had some of each kind, after drinking the second glass full of gin in a bit of a hurry before we came down.
I didn’t know that there even existed food like this and I ate and ate. I wondered whatever Paula and father would make of it. I wondered how poor Jack Rose managed on our House food at school. I kept on drinking but my glass always seemed to be full and Mr. Rose and Jack walking round and round the table with more bottles. Dimly, as the evening wore on I perceived Grace, cool, silent, beautiful, leaning back with tiny teaspoonfuls of food on her plate, not bothering with it much, or relaxed, watching, smoking a cigarette. Mrs. Rose was now red and shiny in the face, Jack had a really rather silly look on his and Mr. Rose was looking like something that has been boiled for hours and turned into scarlet rubber.
“Do ourselves well here,” he cried. “No surgery tomorrow. No night work for dentists so they can live it up all their lives of a Saturday night. Eh Jack? Not the same for doctors. Doctors can’t let up. You take the chance of a good time while you can get it, boy. You’ve only got six years left. Once you’re out of medical school you’ll have to stick the toffee on your nose.”
Everyone thought this dreadfully funny and I heard myself laughing like mad.
“Liqueurs,” called Mr. Rose. “Crème-de-menthe anyone? Come on Bilgewater—may I call you Bilgewater?”
I looked thoughtfully at the thimbleful of beautiful green liquid.
“I believe she will,” laughed Jack heartily and catching his glance I saw again, even through the haze and the queer tilt of the table, how remarkably small his eyes were, and how careful; and I knew that he had completely forgotten that he’d kissed me last Sarurday week on the pier.
“No thanks,” I said, “I think I’ll go now.”
“Go? Not home I hope?” laughed Mrs. Rose. “Just as we’ve got to know you.”
I was at the door holding hard to the door handle. I couldn’t quite think where I did want to go.
“Ten o’clock news?” suggested Mrs. Rose, which sent them into paroxysms of mirth.
Then Grace was mysteriously beside me hitching her canvas bag on to her shoulder and piloting me through the door. Nonchalant and confident as a pale giraffe she called over her shoulder, “D’you mind? I think it’s bedtime. Goodnight.”
“Which is your room?” I heard her saying. Then all I can remember is sinking or rather having been somehow deep sunk in the cream bed, the light from the square lamp outside lighting up the vegetatious wall paper, the head of the airedale revolving slowly in terrible tilting semi-circles as the bed swooped and tossed on a silent demonic sea.