'I suppose they do.'
The door opened and April swept in. 'What's the noise about?' she said. 'Edward, have you been breaking my china?'
'I'm sorry, April. I'll pay for it.'
Micky said to April: 'I was just explaining to Edward that he can still come here after he's married.'
'Good God, I should hope so,' April said. 'If no married men came here I'd have to close the place.' She turned toward the doorway and called out: 'Sid! Fetch a broom.'
Edward was calming down rapidly, to Micky's relief. Micky said: 'When we're first married, we should probably spend a few evenings at home, and give the occasional dinner party. But after a while we'll go right back to normal.'
Edward frowned. 'Don't wives mind that?'
Micky shrugged. 'Who cares whether they mind? What can a wife do?'
'If she's discontented I suppose she can bother her husband.'
Micky realized that Edward was taking his mother as a typical wife. Fortunately few women were as strong-willed or as clever as Augusta. 'The trick is not to be too good to them,' Micky said, speaking from observation of married cronies at the Cowes Club. 'If you're good to a wife she'll want you to stay with her. Treat her roughly and she'll be only too glad to see you go off to your club in the evening and leave her in peace.'
Muriel put her arms around Edward's neck. 'It'll be just the same when you're married, Edward, I promise,' she said. 'I'll suck your cock while you watch Micky fuck Lily, just the way you like.'
'Will you?' he said with a foolish grin.
'Course I will.'
'So nothing will change, really,' he said, looking at Micky.
'Oh, yes,' said Micky. 'One thing will change. You'll be a partner in the bank.'
Chapter TWO
APRIL
Section 1
THE MUSIC HALL was as hot as a Turkish bath. The air smelled of beer, shellfish and unwashed people. Onstage a young woman dressed in elaborate rags stood in front of a painted backdrop of a pub. She was holding a doll, to represent a newborn baby, and singing about how she had been seduced and abandoned. The audience, sitting on benches at long trestle-tables, linked arms and joined in the chorus:
And all it took was a little drop of gin!
Hugh sang at the top of his voice. He was feeling good. He had eaten a pint of winkles and drunk several glasses of warm, malty beer, and he was pressed up against Nora Dempster, a pleasant person to be squashed by. She had a soft, plump body and a beguiling smile, and she had probably saved his life.
After his visit to Kingsbridge Manor he had fallen into the pit of a black depression. Seeing Maisie had raised old ghosts, and since she rejected him again the ghosts had haunted him without respite.
He had been able to live through the daytime, for at work there were challenges and problems to take his mind off his grief: he was busy organizing the joint enterprise with Madler and Bell, which the Pilasters partners had finally approved. And he was soon to become a partner himself, something he had dreamed of. But in the evenings he had no enthusiasm for anything. He was invited to a great many parties, balls and dinners, for he was a member of the Marlborough Set by virtue of his friendship with Solly, and he often went, but if Maisie was not there he was bored and if she was he was miserable. So most evenings he sat in his rooms thinking about her, or walked the streets hoping against all likelihood to bump into her.
It was on the street that he had met Nora. He had gone to Peter Robinson's in Oxford Street--a shop that had once been a linen draper's but was now called a 'department store'--to get a present for his sister Dotty: he planned to take the train to Folkestone immediately afterwards. But he was so miserable that he did not know how he was going to face his family, and a kind of paralysis of choice made him incapable of selecting a gift. He came out empty-handed as it was getting dark, and Nora literally bumped into him. She stumbled and he caught her in his arms.
He would never forget how it had felt to hold her. Even though she was wrapped up, her body was soft and yielding, and she smelled warm and scented. For a moment the cold, dark London street vanished and he was in a closed world of sudden delight. Then she dropped her purchase, a pottery vase, and it smashed on the pavement. She gave a cry of dismay and looked as if she might burst into tears. Hugh naturally insisted on buying a replacement.
She was a year or two younger than he, twenty-four or twenty-five. She had a pretty round face with sandy-blond curls poking out from a bonnet, and her clothes were cheap but pleasing: a pink wool dress embroidered with flowers and worn over a bustle, and a tight-fitting French-navy velvet jacket trimmed with rabbit fur. She spoke with a broad cockney drawl.
While they were buying the replacement vase he told her, by way of conversation, that he could not decide what to give his sister. Nora suggested a colorful umbrella, and then she insisted on helping him choose it.
Finally he took her home in a hansom. She told him she lived with her father, a traveling salesman of patent medicines. Her mother was dead. The neighborhood where she lived was rather less respectable than he had guessed, poor working class rather than middle class.
He assumed he would never see her again, and all day Sunday at Folkestone he brooded about Maisie as always. On Monday at the bank he got a note from Nora, thanking him for his kindness: her handwriting was small, neat and girlish, he noticed before screwing the note up into a ball and dropping it into the wastepaper basket.
Next day he stepped out of the bank at midday, on his way to a coffeehouse for a plate of lamb cutlets, and saw her walking along the street toward him. At first he did not recognize her, but simply thought what a nice face she had; then she smiled at him and he remembered. He doffed his hat and she stopped to talk. She worked as an assistant to a corset maker, she told him with a blush, and she was on her way back to the shop after visiting a client. A sudden impulse made him ask her to go dancing with him that night.
She said she would like to go but she did not have a respectable hat, so he took her to a milliner's shop and bought her one, and that settled the matter.
Much of their romance was conducted while shopping. She had never owned much and she took unashamed delight in Hugh's affluence. For his part he enjoyed buying her gloves, shoes, a coat, bracelets, and anything else she wanted. His sister, with all the wisdom of her twelve years, had announced that Nora only liked him for his money. He had laughed and said: 'But who would love me for my looks?'
Maisie did not disappear from his mind--indeed, he still thought of her every day--but the memories no longer plunged him into despair. He had something to look forward to now, his next rendezvous with Nora. In a few weeks she gave him back his joie de vivre.
On one of their shopping expeditions they met Maisie in a furrier's store in Bond Street. Feeling rather bashful, Hugh introduced the two women. Nora was bowled over to meet Mrs. Solomon Greenbourne. Maisie invited them to tea at the Piccadilly house. That evening Hugh saw Maisie again at a ball, and to his surprise Maisie was quite ungracious about Nora. 'I'm sony, but I don't like her,' Maisie had said. 'She strikes me as a hard-hearted grasping woman and I don't believe she loves you one bit. For God's sake don't marry
