currency, a pair of boots . . . ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I won’t go for a month.’
‘Promise,’ his mother said.
‘I promise.’
Ethel became calm. After a minute she powdered her face and looked more normal. She drank her tea.
Then she put her coat on, and she and Bernie left.
‘Right, I’m off too,’ said Millie.
‘Where are you going?’ Lloyd asked her.
‘The Gaiety.’
It was a music hall in the East End. ‘Do they let sixteen-year-olds in?’
She gave him an arch look. ‘Who’s sixteen? Not me. Anyway, Dave’s going and he’s only fifteen.’ She was speaking of their cousin David Williams, son of Uncle Billy and Aunt Mildred.
‘Well, enjoy yourselves.’
She went to the door and came back. ‘Just don’t get killed in Spain, you stupid sod.’ She put her arms around him and hugged him hard, then went out without saying any more.
When he heard the front door slam, he went to the phone.
He did not have to think to recall the number. He could see Daisy in his mind’s eye, turning as she left him, smiling winningly under the straw hat, saying: ‘Mayfair two four three four.’
He picked up the phone and dialled.
What was he going to say? ‘You told me to phone, so here I am.’ That was feeble. The truth? ‘I don’t admire you at all, but I can’t get you off my mind.’ He should invite her to something, but what? A Labour Party meeting?
A man answered. ‘This is Mrs Peshkov’s residence. Good evening.’ The deferential tone made Lloyd think he was a butler. No doubt Daisy’s mother had rented a London house complete with staff.
‘This is Lloyd Williams . . .’ He wanted to say something that would explain or justify his call, and he added the first thing that came to mind: ‘. . . of Emmanuel College.’ It meant nothing but he hoped it sounded impressive. ‘May I speak to Miss Daisy Peshkov?’
‘No, I’m sorry, Professor Williams,’ said the butler, assuming Lloyd must be a don. ‘They’ve all gone to the opera.’
Of course, Lloyd thought with disappointment. No socialite was home at this time of the evening, especially on a Saturday. ‘I remember,’ he lied. ‘She told me she was going, and I forgot. Covent Garden, isn’t it?’ He held his breath.
But the butler was not suspicious. ‘Yes, sir.
‘Thank you.’ Lloyd hung up.
He went to his room and changed. In the West End most people wore evening dress, even to go to the cinema. But what would he do when he got there? He could not afford a ticket to the opera, and anyway it would be over soon.
He took the Tube. The Royal Opera House was incongruously located next to Covent Garden, London’s wholesale fruit and vegetable market. The two institutions got along well because they kept different hours: the market opened for business at three or four o’clock in the morning, when London’s most determined revellers were beginning to head for home; and it closed before the matinee.
Lloyd walked past the shuttered stalls of the market and looked through glazed doors into the opera house. Its bright lobby was empty, and he could hear muffled Mozart. He stepped inside. Adopting a careless upper-class manner, he said to an attendant: ‘What time does the curtain come down?’
If he had been wearing his tweed suit he would probably have been told that it was none of his business, but the dinner jacket was the uniform of authority, and the attendant said: ‘In about five minutes, sir.’
Lloyd nodded curtly. To say ‘Thank you’ would have given him away.
He left the building and walked around the block. It was a moment of quiet. In the restaurants, people were ordering coffee; in the cinemas, the big feature was approaching its melodramatic climax. Everything would change soon, and the streets would be thronged with people shouting for taxis, heading to nightclubs, kissing goodbye at bus stops, and hurrying for the last train back to the suburbs.
He returned to the opera house and went inside. The orchestra was silent, and the audience was just beginning to emerge. Released from long imprisonment in their seats they were talking animatedly, praising the singers, criticizing the costumes, and making plans for late suppers.
He saw Daisy almost immediately.
She was wearing a lavender dress with a little cape of champagne-coloured mink over her bare shoulders, and she looked ravishing. She emerged from the auditorium at the head of a small clutch of people her own age. Lloyd was sorry to recognize Boy Fitzherbert beside her, and to see her laugh gaily at something he murmured to her as they stepped down the red-carpeted stairs. Behind her was the interesting German girl, Eva Rothmann, escorted by a tall young man in the kind of military evening dress known as a mess kit.
Eva recognized Lloyd and smiled, and he spoke to her in German. ‘Good evening, Fraulein Rothmann, I hope
