Read Online After the Cabaret by Hilary Bailey - Free Book Online Page A

you.”
    â€˜â€œAren’t you a bastard, Briggs?” Sally said. “Nanny Trot’s absolutely wonderful. I think it’s horrible to say things about a person’s nanny.” She turned to the young officer with whom she had arrived. “Pierre, sweetie, I’m desperate to get out of here. Shall we go to the French, darling?’ And they disappeared.
    â€˜â€œShe’s going to be such a nuisance,” Briggs said, and went straight upstairs to do his work.
    â€˜Not long after that I saw Pym and the Legionnaire staggering up the stairs together. Pym had his hand in the back of the Legionnaire’s trousers. I wondered how much work Briggs would get done. Briggs and I slept in the larger bedroom upstairs and Pym’s bedroom was at the end of the passageway. Julia had the room further along, between Pym’s and ours, opposite the bathroom, but that was all right. It was Pym and Pym’s boyfriends – pick-ups, really – who were the problem.
    â€˜I think that before war was declared the flat had beenrented to a young couple who kept it as a base for when they wanted to come to parties and other things in London, and it was consequently well decorated and furnished. As time went by, of course, standards declined.
    â€˜I went and sat down in a chair by the window. The WAAF who had cried had fallen asleep on the sofa. The other was searching in a cupboard for gramophone records. Then she started dancing with Hodd, the RAF officer. Sally and her French officer were still there – they had not gone out. The music stopped and I heard her saying to Charles Denham, who was standing by the fireplace, “No, Charles. It’s not Jonty Till. It’s his brother, Vernon. He and Gerda spent a weekend together in Scarborough – everybody knows.” She never had any tact.
    â€˜Meanwhile Pym had rolled downstairs, in a pair of jodhpurs, and was rummaging in a cupboard for a bottle. He straightened up, holding it. “Scarborough – funny place to go,” he remarked. “And, Charles, I hope we’re not going to hear of any more of those tired old suicide attempts of yours.”
    â€˜Charles crossed the room and tried to punch him on the nose, but only hit his cheek because Pym turned his head aside at the last moment. Charles tried again. A girl in a beret who had just come in screamed. Someone pulled Charles away. It wasn’t hard. Pym staggered off upstairs. Then everyone who was left woke up the WAAF and we all went off to the French pub.
    â€˜We rolled through the dark streets singing, “You stepped out of a drain. You looked quite insane. That’s why I loved you—”
    Bruno sat quiet for a moment. He cleared his throat and went on. ‘Then La Vie en Rose tried to open. There were more cellars behind it and these became useful later on during air-raids – we’d sit on the old empty casks Cora had kept there since Edward VII’s time, or on a carpet on the floor or in a set of dining chairs she had cleared out of the hotel in the twenties. It was quite luxurious compared with the tube stations or the cramped air-raid shelters in people’s gardens.
    â€˜You entered La Vie by going down the steps from the street into the basement. The main entrance of the hotel was next door. Once down there you banged on an unpleasant purple door with whatever you had in your hand, the women used to take off a shoe sometimes to hammer with. Then at some point someone would open up, Cora, perhaps, or Vi – or one of the band or a guest, even. One night young Hodd, a bit the worse for wear, was beating on the door crying out in an Irish accent, “Will you open up in there, for the love of God? What does a man have to do to get a drink round here?” Then the door opened and he was looking straight into the face of an air vice-marshal, who just said, “Thank God you’re not in uniform, Squadron Leader,”