She continued to recite as he loitered in the hall. No one was about. Everyone was gathered somewhere else, in the drawing-room or in the bedrooms, sitting round wireless sets, tuning in to some special programme. Then one wireless, and another, roared forth louder by far than usual from the upper floors; others tuned in to the chorus, justified in the din by the voice of Winston Churchill. Joanna ceased. The wirelesses spoke forth their simultaneous Sinaitic predictions of what fate would befall the freedom-loving electorate should it vote for Labour in the forthcoming elections. The wirelesses suddenly started to reason humbly:
We shall have Civil Servants …
The wirelesses changed their tones, they roared:
No longer civil …
Then they were sad and slow:
No longer …
. . .
Nicholas imagined Joanna standing by her bed, put out of business as it were, but listening, drawing it into her bloodstream. As in a dream of his own that depicted a dream of hers, he thought of Joanna in this immovable attitude, given up to the cadences of the wireless as if it did not matter what was producing them, the politician or herself. She was a proclaiming statue in his mind.
A girl in a long evening dress slid in the doorway, furtively. Her hair fell round her shoulders in a brown curl. Through the bemused mind of the loitering, listening man went the fact of a girl slipping furtively into the hall; she had a meaning, even if she had no meaningful intention.
She was Pauline Fox. She was returning from a taxi-ride round the park at the price of eight shillings. She had got into the taxi and told the driver to drive round, round anywhere, just drive. On such occasions the taxi-drivers suspected at first that she was driving out to pick up a man, then as the taxi circled the park and threepences ticked up on the meter, the drivers suspected she was mad, or even, perhaps, one of those foreign royalties still exiled in London: and they concluded one or the other when she ordered them back to the door to which she had summoned them by carefully pre-arranged booking. It was dinner with Jack Buchanan which Pauline held as an immovable idea to be established as fact at the May of Teck Club. In the day-time she worked in an office and was normal. It was dinner with Jack Buchanan that prevented her from dining with any other man, and caused her to wait in the hall for half an hour after the other members had gone to the dining-room, and to return surreptitiously half an hour later when nobody, or few, were about.
At times, when Pauline had been seen returning with in so short a time, she behaved quite convincingly.
‘Goodness, back already, Pauline ! I thought you’d gone out to dinner —‘
‘Oh! Don’t talk to me. We’ve had a row.’ Pauline, with one hand holding a handkerchief to her eye, and the other lifting the hem of her dress, would run sobbing up the stairs to her room.
‘She must have had a row with Jack Buchanan again. Funny she never brings Jack Buchanan here.’
‘Do you believe it?’
‘What?’
‘That she goes out with Jack Buchanan?’
‘Well, I’ve wondered.’
Pauline looked furtive, and Nicholas cheerfully said to her, ‘Where have
She came and gazed into his face and said, ‘I’ve been to dinner with Jack Buchanan.’
‘You’ve missed Churchill’s speech.’
‘I know.’
‘Did Jack Buchanan get rid of you the moment you had finished your dinner?’
‘Yes. He did. We had a row.’
She shook back her shining hair. For this evening, she had managed to borrow the Schiaparelli dress. It was made of taffeta, with small side panniers stuck out with cleverly curved pads over the hips. It was coloured dark blue, green, orange and white in a floral pattern as from the Pacific Islands.
He said, ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a gorgeous dress.’
‘Schiaparelli,’ she said.
He said, ‘Is it the one you swap amongst yourselves?’
‘Who told you that?’
‘You look beautiful,’ he replied.
She picked up the rustling skirt and floated away up the staircase.
Oh, girls of slender means!
The election speech having come to an end, everybody’s wireless was turned off for a space, as if in reverence to what had just passed through the air.
He approached the office door which stood open. The office was still empty. The warden came up behind him, having deserted her post for the duration of the speech.
‘I’m still waiting for Miss Redwood.’
‘I’ll ring her again. No doubt she’s been listening to the speech.’
Selina came down presently. Poise is perfect balance, an equanimity of body and mind. Down the staircase she
