THE GREAT WESTERN Hotel. Convenient to King’s Cross. Maybe too convenient, Daisy thought, touching the ring borrowed from Valerie, unfamiliar and unconvincing, on the fourth finger of her left hand. King’s Cross, gritty, damp, smelling of engine smoke and cheap tobacco; thinly coated with the smaller feathers and droppings of the resident pigeons, and the residue and debris of troops and tired travelers; did she really want to lose her virginity in the atmosphere of a railway station?
It was Patrick’s next leave and—Daisy’s time off delicately orchestrated by Rosemary, the clandestine aspects advised upon by a pruriently sympathetic Valerie—the betrothed couple were in London for what Valerie insisted on referring to as “a dirty weekend.”
Patrick had gone to take a bath; it seemed to Daisy he had been gone a long time. It took her rather longer than it should have, and threw her into a deeper state of ineffectual nervousness, to realize there had been a slight emphasis in the announcement of his bathing plans. Clearly she was supposed to—allowed privacy to—what? To wander about the room, to look at herself in the dressing-table mirror, to apply lipstick, and, on second thought, to wipe it off, to pull back the curtain and look out the window to find black-out material depriving her of further evidence of pigeons and grimy red brick. The bed she avoided, and she was sitting at the dressing table looking at her unconfident reflection when there was a knock at the door.
“Come in,” she called, her heart pounding, imagining a hotel detective. As she turned toward the door, she saw in the mirror that her face was white. After a short moment, the knock was repeated, this time a little louder and with a brisk impatience.
She rose and crossed the room, wondering if hotel detectives really existed or whether they were merely a convention of the comic novel; the possibility of being confronted by one an aspect of clandestine trysts unmentioned by the otherwise informative Valerie. Daisy wished Patrick were there to confront this one as she opened the door, and feared suddenly that his absence was hotel detective related.
Patrick, wearing a camel-colored dressing gown and looking at her quizzically, was standing outside. He held his sponge bag in one hand and his uniform, folded neatly with no socks or underclothing showing, over the other arm.
“I thought for a moment you weren’t going to let me in,” he said affectionately.
“I thought you were the hotel detective,” Daisy said breathlessly, standing in the doorway, a hand on the knob.
“May I come in now?”
“Oh. Sorry.” And Daisy stepped back to let him in.
She closed the door, Patrick set his things down on a chair and looked back at her. Daisy did not meet his eye.
“Were you scared?” he asked.
“A little,” she mumbled.
He took her by the arms and looked at her gently.
“You needn’t be,” he said. “Look at me.”
Daisy reluctantly raised her eyes to meet his.
“Trust me,” he said, and looked at her kindly until she nodded. “I’m not sure there are such people as hotel detectives,” he added. “I’ve never seen one.”
“That wouldn’t prove anything unless you spend a lot of time in hotel rooms with girls of dubious chastity.”
“That is not the kind of question girls are supposed to ask,” Patrick said just as kindly as before, but quite firmly.
Daisy was sorry to hear it. She understood that Patrick was behaving like a gentleman and also protecting both her and himself against the possibility of a sooner or later jealous scene, but she was more curious than jealous. She had hoped he was somewhat experienced; surely one of them, at least, should know how to proceed now.
During the silence that followed, Patrick took her in his arms and held her close to him. Her evening dress left her arms and shoulders bare and she felt the comforting warmth of his dressing gown against her skin. One hand on her waist and one on the naked part of her back pressed her closer; Daisy began instinctively to draw away from him.
“Trust me,” Patrick repeated, and Daisy willed herself to melt into his embrace.
They had had few opportunities for physical intimacy and none in which Daisy had been so lightly dressed. The greater part of their courtship had taken place by letter. Since their engagement they had written letters every second day. These letters were difficult to write for Patrick, because he was not allowed to describe his daily routine at the training course in a country house outside London; for Daisy, because she knew so little of her fiance’s life. She had not—apart from the Westmoreland Nugents—met any member of his family. The letters served to emphasize how little each knew about the other, and neither had developed a knack for exchanging the small, telling details of everyday life, or developing intimacy through the written word. And an awareness of the censor’s eye was an inhibiting factor not to be discounted.
“You’re so beautiful ... I love you,” he said before he kissed her.
Daisy closed her eyes and felt, for a moment, a dreamy pleasure in his kiss before her body stiffened, not only in fear of the physical act so close at hand, but at his words. She knew she wasn’t beautiful; she was young, healthy, maybe even pretty. And how could he love her; they hardly knew each other.
This was the fifth time they’d been in each other’s company. There had been the day the Royal Oak had been sunk, when she had stood, stocking-footed, in the library at Aberneth Farm, holding a ferret in one hand as they listened to the BBC. And then the visit to Bannock when she and James had disappointed each other. After a self-conscious exchange of letters, on a wet Sunday afternoon, in a teashop with rain streaming down the windows, he had proposed to her over weak tea and sandwiches made with margarine. And after the briefest of hesitations, she had accepted him. Then there had been the awkward day when they had told her parents of their plans; and now, the commitment she had made so casually, so lightly, was to have its first consequence.
“I love you, too,” she said, knowing the words were necessary if they were to make love, sleep together, marry. She felt as though the war had taken time from its normal pattern and sequence and flung it into the arbitrary rhythm of a dream.
Patrick, without loosening his embrace, had one-handedly unfastened the first button on the back of Daisy’s dress, when the siren sounded. Daisy had just felt the first twinge of desire—occasioned, she noticed with surprise, by the adept manner in which Patrick was beginning to undress her—when the air-raid warning threw her sense of time further into the random, formless swirl she had felt a moment before.
Daisy had never been in an air raid before. She had watched the oil tanks in Wales light up the night sky, but she had never been the victim or the target of an enemy attack. Her fear seemed to be diluted by her inability to feel that anything was real. Patrick, who was not experiencing so many things for the first time, seemed calm. But, since he was an officer and a gent, she hardly expected him to panic; it was hard to tell how much danger they were in. Patrick was dressing quickly, getting back into his uniform.
“Get something comfortable and warm; this may take all night.”
A few minutes later they joined the crowd of hotel guests streaming down the stairs. Patrick, handsome and impressive in his uniform; Daisy, a little crumpled in the coat and skirt in which she had traveled. They carried his overcoat, dressing gown, and a couple of pillows and a blanket from the bed.
Outside, the sky to the south glowed red through a dark haze; the clanging of fire engines, anti-aircraft guns firing in the distance, and, closer, a warden’s whistle contributed to an atmosphere of resilient confusion.
“The docks,” Patrick said. “Those poor bastards in the East End have no luck. Come on.”
Daisy followed, scampering to stay close to him in the crowd, to the steps of the unidentified underground station. Beside her, a pale young woman with circles under her eyes carried a sleeping baby; a little girl, in pajamas, bedroom slippers, and a dressing gown, held on to her skirt. The child was not fully awake; Daisy took her other hand to help her down the steep, metal-topped steps, and soon they were all on the platform.
Underground it was quite light; there was noise but different from the one they had heard above. The sounds of sirens and gunfire were fainter, replaced by human voices, the grizzling of a sleepy child and, at the far end of the platform, singing. The wall sign with the name of the station had been removed, and Daisy did not know where they were. Daisy felt as she had as a new girl at school—wide-eyed at strange rituals familiar to everyone else.
“Let’s find a place—as far as possible from what looks like quite a jolly party,” Patrick said, and Daisy followed him along the platform to the darker, quieter end. Once there, he spread out the blanket on the concrete floor and propped the pillows against the tiled wall. Daisy stifled a protest at the casual way he was treating hotel property, and sat down beside him.
“What happens now?” Daisy asked, surprised by how quickly her fear was being replaced by a feeling of how inconvenient it all was.
“This goes on for a little while, then when everyone is in, it gets quieter and people go to sleep until the All Clear. Most of them have got it down to a routine.”
“Even the children?”
“Look.” Patrick gestured at the little family who had come down to the shelter with them. The young mother, her baby, and little girl were already asleep. They lay in an uncomfortable nest of coats and blankets, the baby in its mother’s arms, the little girl snuggled into the small of her back.
“Londoners,” Patrick said. “They can adapt to anything on their home ground. Rosemary’s evacuees didn’t last long, did they?”
“In and out in two weeks. Rosemary couldn’t have been kinder—when they went she felt guilty but relieved.”
“They could get used to bombs, rationing, noise, and danger, but they couldn’t deal with the horrors of fresh air, cows, and meals not wrapped in newspaper.”
“They missed their homes and their families and friends, and they probably couldn’t get used to being looked down on or condescended to,” Daisy said, surprising herself with a sharp note of defensiveness in her voice. “I think it’s somewhat to their credit.”
“So do I,” Patrick said, smiling. “I shouldn’t like to live somewhere that when I left, the best of them felt guilty but relieved.”
“What would it be you couldn’t manage without?” Daisy asked, after a moment. The platform was filling with bodies, but it had already become a little quieter. She spoke in a lower tone.
“Someone like-minded to talk to, I suppose. And you?”
“Kindness,” Daisy said, feeling a little silly. “It’s less lonely.”
“So we both depend on other people to get through this—through anything, I suppose.”
“My mother depends on books, silence, and privacy.”
“Privacy is quite a usual one, I imagine. It’s probably one of the worst things about being a prisoner.”
“Lack of privacy. And no control over noise. Or having the window open.”
Patrick nodded; it went without saying that they were talking about aspects of imprisonment other than death, physical pain, fear, or starvation.
“Music seems to be the main—the essential—comfort for an extraordinary number of people. People who didn’t seem to pay it much attention in peacetime. Any kind of concert is packed out. There’s a fellow in my regiment who sits by himself every evening and reads music. He doesn’t even hum; every now and again he nods as though acknowledging something. No one ever disturbs him.”
“Tea.”
“Tea and teddy bears and the BBC,” Patrick said, laughing. “Lie down, we’re probably going to be here all night.”
Daisy, a little awkwardly, wriggled herself forward until she was lying down. Patrick lifted his dressing gown and spread it loosely over her.
“You might want to take off your coat,” he said.
Daisy sat up, took off her jacket, and lay back on the pillow. Patrick took off his shoes and lay down beside her.
“Teddy bears,” he repeated thoughtfully, and put an arm over her body and drew her to him. “How little I know about you, my sweet Daisy. Are you afraid?”
He did not reply; instead he tucked her shoulder under his armpit and slid his other arm under hers, taking her breast in his cupped palm.
“Of course I’m afraid,” Daisy said, her voice a little breathless.
“You’d be mad or unusually unimaginative if you weren’t.” Patrick’s fingers gently squeezed her breast as his thumb, just as softly, stroked it. “What are you afraid of?”
“You know.”
“I do, but it’s—ah—helpful to name one’s fears.”
“I’m afraid of the bombs. I’m afraid of sleeping with you. I’m afraid of getting married. I’m afraid—although more often the idea gives me pleasure—of not having any idea of what it will be like after the war. If it ever ends.”
“Very reasonable fears. And do you want reassurance and comforting meaningless platitudes?”
“No,” Daisy said dubiously; a large part of her wanted exactly that, but she also thought Patrick might have something better to offer.
“What do you do when you’re afraid? What do you hold on to?”
“What do you mean?” It was the most intimate question she had ever been asked.
“There has to be a thought, a memory, an image, that you invoke and use to supplant the fear. What is it?”
Daisy lay quiet for a moment; the feeling of Patrick’s body against hers, larger, stronger, and, it seemed, protective, encouraged her to confide in him. It felt like an offering, a submission of her will to his.
“Poetry. The first two and a bit lines of ‘Dover Beach.’
The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits.
It makes me feel calm and still.”
“Yes,” Patrick said, and nodded.
“And you?”
Patrick hesitated, but he did not simulate incomprehension.
“I’ve never told anyone this.”
“Did you think I had?” Daisy said, indignant.
“No. Of course not. Mine’s just a memory. From when I was a boy.”
Patrick paused a moment, Daisy imagined him concentrating before he started. “Hacking home from hunting—in the mist. With James. Tiny gray drops of water on our jackets, and the smell of autumn—leaves, the wet earth, smoke from a cottage chimney. I thought the rest of my life would be like that. The way my father had lived—he was already dead, killed in the Great War. The house, the horses, gun dogs, turf burning in the fireplaces. I imagined James often there. We thought it would go on forever. Now I tell myself there could be moments of it again, if we were lucky.... That’s what I hang onto when it all seems...”
“Yes,” Daisy said softly, stroking his hand.
“Very Granchester I know,” he said smiling, “but at least we had the grace to know we were happy. And now there’s you.”
They lay quietly together for a while. Daisy’s body now relaxed, as she thought that she and Patrick were not strangers after all. When she had hurriedly changed out of her evening dress at the hotel she had put on, instead of her brassiere, a slip that was slightly gathered under her breasts. The fine, flimsy silk—Valerie had been very firm about the quality of what she called “lingerie” necessary for the weekend—although perhaps less intimate than the touch of skin on skin, was, it seemed to Daisy, sensuous in a sophisticated way. Patrick was running the tips of his fingers so lightly over her nipples that she could not be sure what was the pressure of his fingers, the weight of the silk, or her own aroused imagination. She felt her body move against his and an involuntary low moan escaped her lips.
“Yes,” he said, “it’s going to be wonderful.”
The other people in the station had become silent, except for a small group singing sentimental songs at the far end of the platform; even they were singing in lower voices and in a manner that suggested they were winding down. Behind Patrick’s raised shoulder, the woman with the small children slept soundly, beyond them the lighted entrance to the platform.
Daisy heard the drunken laughter before the man and woman came through the archway behind her. She heard them hesitate as though deciding in which direction to go and a loud, not humorous, laugh suggested that the man had taken advantage of the pause to take what Daisy’s family, lacking an adequate word in the vocabulary of their own class, called “a liberty.”
She tensed, fearing they would come in their direction and, after a moment, they did. The woman stumbled over something in the dim light and laughed.
“Pardon,” she said to the unseen object, and laughed again.
The man spoke a few words in a language Daisy did not recognize. The couple did not, as Daisy feared they would, stop next to her and Patrick. But they did not go to the far end of the platform where three men and a woman sat smoking and talking quietly. Instead, the man steered the woman, unsteady on her high heels, into a white tiled corner where the platform became a few feet narrower. Leaning his body toward hers, he trapped her with his weight, and Daisy saw his hand, pale against the woman’s black skirt, run down her thigh, his fingers catching and pulling the material up.
“Polish sailor,” Patrick said, “and, although perhaps I’m unfair to her, a tart. Time to turn over.”
Daisy wriggled herself around to face him. She was relieved not to have to witness whatever brutish moment was now being enacted; at the same time, since she had never consciously seen a tart before, she would not have minded, had Patrick not been present, taking a closer look.
“It’s said Polish sailors bite girls’ nipples off,” he said.
“No!”
“Probably not, but it’s a prevalent and widespread belief. I’ve never met with any firsthand evidence or known anyone who has.”
“That doesn’t prove anything—you probably just don’t move in the right circles.”
“I imagine it’s something made up by Cockney men to keep their women faithful while they’re away at the war.”
“Or tarts whose business is off because of the drop in wartime morals.”
Patrick laughed.
“Maybe,” he said. “It’s been a long day. We should try to get a little sleep.”
Daisy was tired but overexcited; she was not sure that she could sleep. Nevertheless, she sat up a little and carefully unhooked her precious stockings from her suspender belt, rolling each up, tucking it into its own thicker top to make a more protected package, and put them into the pocket of her jacket. After a moment she unhooked her suspender belt, which, no longer attached to her stockings, felt ridiculous. If Patrick were to run his hand up her thigh, she did not want him to encounter a lump of metal and rubber dangling on the end of an elastic suspender; that eventuality seeming more worrisome than his hand making the transition from her bare leg to inside her knickers.
She lay down again and snuggled beside him in a way suggesting sleep rather than an invitation to further intimacy. It had been a long day and Daisy wanted a little time to think about it. The train journey, the hotel, the theater, dinner at the Ritz—all were jumbled into one dreamlike image. Anticipation, awkwardness, childish excitement at sophistication and elegance, longing, love, and fear all seemed part of one continuous experience, an experience so intense she was unlikely fully to feel it until she had time to think about it later.
The train from Wales to London had been crowded and hot; Daisy stood in the corridor much of the way, her underwear becoming warm and damp and her hair and clothing absorbing the smell of tobacco and the gritty stale air of the railway carriage. Patrick, on the platform at Paddington, had seemed, for a moment, a stranger, barely identifiable in the sea of anonymous uniforms. Then his arms around her and his reassuring, although not yet quite familiar, smell made her feel safe and, best of all, not alone.
Then, again alone at the hotel, Daisy struggled to seem nonchalant as Patrick registered for them both. Once in the room, that nonchalance dropped and, her silence and tentative smile begging for reassurance, she became awkward and silent. Patrick’s demeanor Daisy might, in the circumstances, have hesitated to describe as breezy, but she would have been hard put to come up with a better word. She understood that it was the approach to life that was supposed to win the war for England; even so, she would have been grateful if he could have dropped the almost brittle pretense that nothing remarkable or out of the ordinary was taking place. For the first time in her life Daisy felt a drink might help.
A drink did help. So did the theater; Patrick had bought tickets to a show rather than a play. An escapist bit of wartime froth, the early, wartime curtain, as well as the content and the audience full of uniforms, emphasized how temporary was the moment of frivolity. At intermission in the bar, there were not only British uniforms, but also those of the Free French and of the listless and frustrated Canadian airmen who had been languishing in their camps in the English countryside. Daisy had been told all London theaters were full, although she suspected the audiences for the Shakespeare, Wilde, Shaw, and Congreve productions were less raucous at intermission. Daisy found herself moved by the singers of patriotic and sentimental songs and, moments later, laughing at a low comic, then dazzled by the glamour of the chorus girls behind the footlights.
Afterward, walking along Shaftesbury Avenue surrounded by the overexcited, pleasure-seeking crowds of Londoners and the servicemen and -women, all with the sense that every moment remaining to them should be made to count for something and the feeling that all rules were suspended, Daisy thought this was an evening she and Patrick would, in later life, recall as a strange and almost unreal night—a moment of gaiety and respite in the middle of the war.
Every taxi on Shaftesbury Avenue was full; they were to dine at the Ritz, not too far to walk. They passed a series of London landmarks, each significant and symbolic—although not clearly visible in the growing darkness—to the elated Daisy. Piccadilly Circus, Eros protectively boarded up for “the duration”; the Royal Academy, showing an exhibition of firefighters’ art. On the other side of Piccadilly, Fortnum & Mason, quiet, elegant, and expensive, inside the shelves stocked with sauces, relishes, and chutneys—the accompaniments to food rather than food itself.
Then the Ritz, another institution Daisy had encountered in novels but never before seen. Any hotel grander than a boardinghouse had, since childhood, seemed to Daisy full of potential for drama and romance; the transient nature of such an establishment speeding up events and outcome, editing from time those long periods of uninterrupted boredom that largely comprise childhood. The transience suggested action, and if the stay turned out to be merely recreational, that in itself suggested a life unwilling to remain trapped in one location and with the resources to ensure that didn’t happen. Those resources, Daisy imagined, were primarily financial, but wealth combined with a spirit of adventure or at least a need and desire for change. Daisy felt this way about every Grand Hotel facing a rainy promenade on the south coast of England, so she was slightly surprised to enter the Ritz and tread the carpet between the marble, palms, and uniformed staff of the hotel without witnessing any acts of passion or intrigue. The dining room was, however, all she could have wished. High velvet curtains hid the blackout shades on the windows overlooking St. James’s Park, and inside, the uniforms and the sounds of diners determined to have a good time produced what seemed an almost tangible sense of excitement.
Patrick ordered a bottle of red wine. The name of the wine was not familiar to Daisy, but even she knew from the taste that it was old and good. Wine was now increasingly hard to come by, although George, Rosemary’s husband, used every evening of his leave to descend to the cellar and bring up a bottle of claret and, every other evening, one of port.
The wine Patrick had ordered was, Daisy knew, expensive and more so now that even the Ritz was bound by the new rationing rules with limits to the price of a meal. The piece of meat on her plate was no larger than it would have been had she and Patrick eaten dinner at one of the new British restaurants, although the vegetables were less pedestrian, better cooked, and presented in a more ornate manner.
“If you were at Aberneth Farm this evening you would probably be eating a better meal,” Patrick said.
This statement was unanswerable unless Daisy was prepared to tie herself up in a longish and boring response. Was she supposed to deny the food at Aberneth Farm was better, although less interesting, than that at the Ritz? To reassure him that this weekend was not, for her, primarily about food?
She did not speak; instead she raised her glass to her lips, sipped her wine, and looked provocatively—she hoped—at him. Valerie would have been proud of her. But now what? Or was the ball firmly in Patrick’s court?
He said nothing and smiled. His smile was not only affectionate but amused. He was, perhaps, smiling at her schoolgirlish attempt at flirtation. Daisy opened her mouth to say something to divert him, then closed it for want of inspiration. She could think of nothing to say that would not make her feel more foolish. After a moment, Patrick spoke.
“Daisy,” he said, “are you—” He broke off as his attention was drawn to a disturbance—what Daisy’s father would have called a rumpus—at a table two away from the one at which they were sitting.
“You bastard.” The woman’s voice was loud, angry, upper class, and, it seemed to Daisy, most likely drunken.
A section of the dining room, eight or ten tables surrounding the couple, became quiet, although no one looked directly at them. Daisy, without turning her head, could see them over Patrick’s shoulder. The couple at the table between, somewhat elderly, who had been paying their bill in a leisurely way, now rose, in an unhurried but purposeful manner. With their departure, Daisy had an uninterrupted view of the quarreling pair.
Everyone within earshot listened; the man was now speaking in a low tone to his companion. Daisy could not hear what he was saying, but she could see him run a placatory hand down the woman’s arm. She was one of the few diners with an uninterrupted view of the drama; no one else turned his head an inch in that direction. Daisy wondered if anyone else had the intensely embarrassing sense of being in some way—although she didn’t know either of the parties involved and presumably, as a firsttime diner at the Ritz, had even less connection with them than any of her neighbors—responsible for the behavior of the glamorous but uninhibited couple. The British diners probably, she thought, felt as she did, although perhaps the Blitz, bombs, death, grief, physical proximity with blood and fear, the camaraderie of patriotism and rationing had diminished the English sense of each man being an island. Or, probably, not.
“Don’t touch me. Take your hands off me, you—you unspeakable cad.” Daisy could see the woman withdraw her hand—lovely red nails and a big diamond ring—from that of the man, who was wearing a uniform with a fairly impressive strip of ribbons on it. Quite a lot more than Patrick’s, anyway.
The man, older than his companion and, it seemed, considerably less embarrassed than was Daisy, laughed. The woman, who appeared to be maddened beyond words, opened her mouth once or twice and closed it again. Her manicured hand was now on the bodice of her dress, elegant and sophisticated against the gathered crepe de Chine. The color of her nails and that of the dress—crimson, but soft, as though a touch of blue had been used to dilute the intensity of the color and make it more, but less obviously, dramatic—did not match but, instead, blended and complemented each other.
“What’s happening?” Patrick asked.
Before Daisy could answer, the woman pushed her chair back violently and stood up. A waiter, who had been discreetly eyeing the table, stepped forward, swiftly and deferentially, to help with her chair, and found himself close enough to be splashed by the contents of the almost full glass of red wine that she threw in the man’s face.
Half the dining room was now silent, heads were turning and even those at the farther end of the room, who could neither hear nor see the source of the drama, became quieter. An elderly woman, presumably deaf and unaware of both the sudden silence and the volume of her own voice, continued to confide in her companion some details of the trouble she was having with a new a set of dentures. After a moment, she, too, fell silent.
The woman in the crimson dress, ignoring the waiter, snatched her evening bag from the table, turned abruptly, and seemingly unaware of the eyes of the entire room on her, strode toward the door. She met Daisy’s horrified eye as she came abreast with their table, but Daisy knew herself unseen. Then she paused, and for a moment—Daisy registered the possibility with a jolt of fear in her stomach—it seemed she might speak, or appeal, to her or Patrick. Then she turned and, as abruptly as she had left the table, returned to it. A waiter was mopping the apparently unperturbed officer with a napkin. He had dealt with the wine on the man’s hair and face and was now attempting to blot the front of his uniform. At the woman’s return, the waiter shifted himself almost imperceptibly away although his face remained expressionless. The officer rose an inch or two from his chair.
“My dear—” he started, but stopped as the woman, combining scorn with speed, swept her cigarette case—shagreen and silver, Daisy noticed, impressed and a little envious—from the table, turned again, and apparently unembarrassed, head held high, left the dining room.
Her former companion watched her for a moment, then waved away the waiter holding the wine-stained napkin. He caught the eye of the headwaiter, hovering at a discreet distance, and nodded. Then, thoughtfully, he lifted and drained his own glass; the other diners, recognizing the show was over, began again to murmur and then to talk.
Daisy, a little flushed, was explaining what had happened, behind him, to Patrick, interrupting herself to comment on subsequent events as they took place: “—then she went back and snatched her cigarette case—now he’s paying the bill—without so much as looking at him. Who do you think she is? What did he do? He’s standing up and taking a cigar out of a case and—he’s—oh—”
“An altogether nicer type of girl—where do you find them?”
To Daisy’s horror, the man was now standing beside their table, looking—as were, she felt, most of the other diners—at Daisy, and speaking to Patrick. Daisy, helpless and now scarlet, looked at Patrick; she would have been on firmer ground had she not so obviously been talking about the incident just before the man she was describing paused at their table.
Patrick looked over his shoulder at the new arrival; Daisy noticed, with respect and relief, that he was holding up rather better than she was. But, before he could speak, the officer continued. “Mind if I join you? There should be some wine left—” And, drawing a chair one-handed from a neighboring unoccupied table, he sat down, rather heavily, with them.
Even as completely out of her depth as Daisy now was, she noticed with amusement the flicker of desperation on the face of the headwaiter, now moving toward them, and his qualified relief as Patrick smiled.
“I should have known,” he said. “Daisy, this is Major Sir Ambrose Sweeney, M.C., my neighbor in Ireland and a desperate character. Ambrose, this is my fiancée, Daisy Creed.”
Ambrose Sweeney, without taking his eyes off Daisy, gestured with one outstretched arm, and a waiter brought the unfinished bottle of wine from the other table. Daisy assumed the service at the Ritz, already excellent, would now become nervously instantaneous.
“Fiancée?” he said. “My congratulations. Has she met your family yet?”
“Ambrose! You don’t feel you’ve caused enough trouble tonight?”
“You’re right,” Ambrose said, and turned to Daisy. “They’re perfectly all right once they get to know you. In the meantime, push a chest of drawers across the door each night when you go to bed.”
Daisy laughed and relaxed. Ambrose had not been the maker, although he might have—probably had—been the cause, of the scene, and his presence at the table made her own evening easier. It dispelled or at least postponed the, however exciting, however eagerly awaited, awkward moment when she and Patrick had to acknowledge the reason they were in London. That they had traveled here to anticipate their honeymoon. Although Daisy had become aware of Ambrose Sweeney’s existence not more than five minutes before, she was pretty sure he understood what was going on; that he was at least as aware of their silent drama as he was of the more visible one in which he had just taken part.
“Daisy’s a Land Girl in Wales—on my cousin Rosemary’s farm.”
Ambrose looked at her with interest.
“George ever get any joy with those grouse he tried to introduce on his moor?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Daisy said. It was the first she had heard of grouse at Aberneth Farm.
“Didn’t think so. Told him it wouldn’t work. Grouse won’t breed if they’re nervous.” He paused for a moment thoughtfully. “Unlike humans.” Another pause. “Whole family pretty highly strung,” he said, his gesture indicating the table where he had dined with his erstwhile companion. “Mother was a Chatfield—you know what that means—this unfortunate girl is the daughter of the old boy who put most of his money into Russian bonds in 1915. Enough to make anyone touchy.”
“Touchy?” Daisy asked, both amused and hoping for further comment on the scene they had just witnessed.
“You can see she’s overbred—beautiful and hysterical—like an Afghan hound.”
Patrick and Ambrose exchanged banter, the subject of their conversation moving back and forth between regimental matters, friends in common, horses, and sport. The men spoke lightly and, it seemed, freely of their military duties, but it was in a uniformly self-deprecatory manner; had a German spy been concealed beneath their table, he would have come away with nothing to interest him—unless, of course, he cared about the population of foxes in Tipperary and West Waterford.
Although Daisy contributed little to the conversation, she was not excluded. Both of the men addressed an occasional observation in her direction and from time to time would appeal to her with a rhetorical question.
Eventually, Ambrose straightened his back, glanced at his watch, and remarked, “Evening’s still young, might as well drop in at the old Kit Kat. Don’t suppose—no, of course not.” And he was gone.
“The old Kit Kat?” Daisy asked.
“Generic term for any club he might drop into after dinner. Covers most of Soho and the Guards Club.”
Patrick called for the bill. He paid it in a less casual manner than Ambrose had his. Daisy, watching him, was sure the tip was neither too little nor too much; she was also sure that the Ritz was not where he usually ate his dinner in London, and it was not a place they would frequent after they were married.
Moments later they were on Piccadilly and, shortly thereafter, in a taxi on their way back to the hotel. There Patrick had taken a bath, embraced Daisy, and instead of making love to her had taken her to the air-raid shelter where she was now falling asleep.