The downstairs grill-room at the Ritz had become another world in the first year of war. Not that Troy would spot the difference. He had occasionally visited upstairs at Le Rivoli, but never downstairs to the bar-grill that had become La Popôte … a demotic—”the canteen”—rendered exotic in translation.
It was a descent into a circle of hell.
The walls had been lined with sandbags and wooden struts, so that it looked like a Great War trench writ large. Graffiti were scrawled everywhere, mostly obscene—”Jimmy J. sucks cock,” “Dennis takes it up the …”—and some, no doubt written in desperation or optimism, were just telephone numbers.
There were murals depicting both the last war—a panorama from the Western Front—and this one—the Siegfried Line, crude cartoons of Hitler and Mussolini—and there was a bar, a stage, a band, and a dance floor—and it was packed.
“How,” said Burgess, “can you tell there’s a war on?”
Troy had no idea what Burgess was driving at and said so.
“Alrighty. Let me put it another way. Take a look around. What is different in here, what is happening that might not have been happening in ‘37 or ‘38?”
Troy looked. It seemed at first sight to be the same old hectic toffdom. His own class at leisure with the added ingredient, fear. Another crowded, noisy London bar—and from his point of view utterly unappealing.
“Why not ‘39?”
“No. Last year there was trepidation. I hesitate to call it panic—it wasn’t, but the place would have been as empty as a cobbler’s curse. Think back to before the war.”
“I couldn’t say. I’ve never been here before.”
“You’re kidding?”
“No. I’m not.”
“Never been in the Ritz bar? You’ll be telling me next you’re still a virgin.”
Troy hoped he wasn’t blushing. He wasn’t a virgin. He was, he knew, by the standards of a man like Burgess, inexperienced. He had lost his virginity in circumstances he would never disclose to anyone. Except that he had. Sasha had wormed it out of him, and his sisters had all but toasted his loss in champagne.
“You sound just like my sisters, Guy.”
“I’m flattered. But … you really should get out more. However, you are out and we are in, as it were. What’s different is the sense of urgency. Everyone you see is a bit drunker than they would have been in ‘38, a bit more desperate, a damn sight easier—at least in the sexual sense of easy—and a lot happier. Feeling everything more keenly for ‘39’s seeming brush with nothingness that turned out to be a brush with nothing much. It might well have been the same in the last war, of which I have scarcely more memory than you have yourself, but I doubt that somehow.”
The more he looked, the more Troy saw Burgess’s point, the more he looked, the more it struck him as parodic. Less a reality than a contrivance. A diminution of fear by embracing the fact of war whilst pretending it was all a joke. A celebration too loud, a jollity too forced, a hedonism too readily extolled. A scene from a silent Hollywood epic depicting the fall of the Roman Empire. The British Empire had been waiting years for this. All through the Great Depression, the farce that had been “National Government,” appeasement, the shabby years. Just what the doctor ordered, but delivered by the Führer—an excuse not to give a damn.
He thought he might be the only sober person in the room. And keeping a safe, yet friendly distance from Burgess, quite possibly the only body not to be wrapped around another.
“There’ll be fortunes made in this war,” Burgess was saying. “By arms manufacturers, but above all by hoteliers and publicans. I put my spare change into Rolls-Royce. Aero engines and such, and if I had a bob or two more to spare I’d stick it in a pub or in BSA. Did you ever wonder how many people riding their motorbikes even realise it stands for Birmingham Small Arms? But, I digress—”
Small arms draped themselves around Troy. Fingertips rustled his hair, and a voice husky with fags and booze said, “My my, Guy, you old rogue … you have landed yourself a pretty boy.”
She stepped to one side. A beautiful blonde in her late twenties in a backless, near arseless dress, blew him a kiss.
“You don’t know each other?” Burgess said. “The Hon. Venetia Maye-Brown—Frederick Troy.”
Troy did know Venetia and wished he didn’t. She’d been one of his sisters’ dissolute friends a few years back. It was obvious she didn’t remember him or hadn’t until Burgess made the introduction. Anything in trousers, he thought, probably didn’t include short trousers.
“Not the one who caused the scandal about five years ago?”
“Not to my knowledge,” Troy replied.
“Oh … silly me … not the same family … there was a Troy … you know, those Troys … Sasha’s younger brother … forget the name … but he joined the police. Imagine. A copper! A London beat bobby! Everyone was talking about it. Imagine, having a copper for a little brother … you’d have to hide the reefer every time he came round. Speaking of which, Guy, you don’t happen to have—”
Burgess cut her short.
“Venetia, George Brook-Benton’s waving at you from the bar.”
She turned.
“Oh God. I should never have let him buy me champagne. He’ll expect a fuck now. Still, let it not be said Venetia Frances Adelaide Maye-Brown does not pay her debts. See you later, boys.”
“If you were looking for proof … well, she’s no different from what she was before the war,” Troy said. “She had my pal Charlie when he was sixteen.”
“She’s a bit more blatant, you might agree. She’ll give George his way in the Ladies. But Venetia is a class act. Won’t do it in the Gents. Before the war she might well have insisted he book a room. And for all we know one or two other hopefuls might get lucky in the loo before the Ritz calls time.”
“Are women becoming men?”
“Dunno. And don’t much care. The voracious vamps and the todger dodgers don’t bother me. As long as men …”
Burgess paused, a mischievous twinkle in his eyes.
“… Stay men.”
“What about all those women who dress as men?”
“Ever met one?”
“I might have. But not tonight.”
“Very coy. No Freddie, that one doesn’t wash for a simple, perhaps crude reason. Any man who mistakes a tweed-and-trousers hussie for a chap has no sense of smell.”
Troy looked around La Popôte again. Felt distinctly out of place. As though garbed in a police uniform invisible to all but him. Burgess was right. There were so many senses of the word in which he was still a virgin, on the outside of the party looking in.
“Speaking of which.”
“Speaking of what?”
“Men. Of men … you’re in the minority here … La Popôte isn’t the only nickname—”
“I know. The Pink Sink.”
“Ah … so much for your much-vaunted innocence.”
“Guy … it’s the most notorious queer bar in London. And if you’re suggesting we wade farther in and meet a few ‘chums,’ the ones oblivious to Venetia’s charms … well, I can’t. I’m a serving copper.”
“But you’re not Vice. And you just saw off that prurient flatfoot in Shepherd Market.”
“That was … different. I hold no brief for Vice, and no brief for buggers either, but if a copper is to do his duty and abide by the law it is better that the blind eye he turns stays blind. Whatever you do in the Pink is of no importance to me … but don’t ask me to look any more closely than I have already.”
“Ah, blind. Blind as a bat, blind as a … What is the old adage? In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed trouser snake is king?”
“Goodnight, Guy.”
“We’ll keep in touch?”
“Of course we will.”