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Authors: Dorothy Dunnett
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of.’
I had got it in before Johnson came back. I saw him as I spoke, threading his way between tables. The music ended at the same time and Pavlova and her partner began to return.
‘Poor Bart,’ said Brady and grinned. ‘He had it public enough as it was, without the cops interfering. Listen, don’t you dance?’
‘No. The place of science,’ I said, ‘is to observe.’
In the end, we were a party of eight for the cabaret, for Krishtof Bey and his three friends insisted on our joining them, and Brady stayed stuck like surgical tape to Lady Edgecombe, Johnson and myself. We walked together out of the light of the restaurant, across the hall and down the dim-lit stairs to the Conch Club. I was not feeling cheerful, and the general inebriated levity of the large crowd accompanying us into almost pitch darkness did nothing to make my mood less gloomy. It came to me that I was probably the only entirely sober person in the room. Then Johnson’s hand gripped my arm lightly, and I realized that I was not. We found a large round table with a red mat, and sat at it.
The cabaret at the Bamboo Conch Club, although paid for by the Ascot, is chosen and run entirely by the chief drummer, Leviticus, whose solo turn on the Congo drums is the subject of most of their publicity. Inside, the architect has tried to give the impression of a native hut, with a wickerwork lining dimly lit by fake torches burning luridly red on the walls. The roof, as I pointed out to Johnson, was low, dodecahedral and wooden, thus increasing both the noise and the fire risk. Round tables like our own pressed against each other without order between the low stage and the doors and an ultraviolet light, placed strategically overhead, made Wallace Brady’s teeth glitter and turned Lady Edgecombe’s tall gin and tonic into a sugar-frosted tumbler of silver. I ordered a jug of fruit squash, and Johnson, surprisingly, a magnum of champagne. Krishtof Bey had whisky and water.
I was listening to him attempting to explain to a waiter, against the uproar of conversation and the near tinkling of a small piano, that he wished an admixture of water, not carbonated liquid or ice, when someone slammed me on the back and said, ‘Blimey, it’s Dr MacRannoch! Hullo, Doctor! How are you, Doctor? I didn’t expect to run across you in these parts, I must say. How’s the chop and rummage trade?’
It was Sergeant Trotter. Sergeant Rodney Trotter, who had been in the Monarch Lounge when Edgecombe took ill. He was lightly intoxicated, with a blood-alcohol level, I estimated, of 120 milligrams to the hundred, or so.
I said, ‘Sergeant Trotter. Let me introduce Johnson Johnson, the portrait-painter. And this is Lady Edgecombe, whose husband was taken ill in New York. Lady Edgecombe, the Sergeant here was most helpful both in the airport and on the flight the following morning.”
Denise Edgecombe gave the Sergeant her hand with strictly moderate warmth, but Johnson edged a free chair one-handed beside him and lifted his bottle out of the ice bucket. ‘A glass of champagne. Sergeant?’
It was not my place to point out the effect of this upon an unknown quantity of iced beer. He accepted and sat down, grinning, next to Brady as all the lights except the ultraviolet one went out.
There is no nobler sound, to my mind, than a march of massed pipes and drums playing Tail Toddle. I learned to pipe, as a girl, back in Scotland. Trained on this, the aural senses could withstand, as they were now called upon to do, a full percussion group of drums and marimba, trumpets, saxophone, piano and electric organ. The resulting cacophony, in quick tempo, made speech quite impossible and even, as I saw glancing around me, acted as a mild anaesthetic. Under the assault, the faces of Lady Edgecombe, Trotter and Krishtof Bey’s companions displayed a type of ultraviolet-lit stupor. Krishtof Bey himself merely showed pleasure, and Johnson, a glass in one hand, was drumming on
I had got it in before Johnson came back. I saw him as I spoke, threading his way between tables. The music ended at the same time and Pavlova and her partner began to return.
‘Poor Bart,’ said Brady and grinned. ‘He had it public enough as it was, without the cops interfering. Listen, don’t you dance?’
‘No. The place of science,’ I said, ‘is to observe.’
In the end, we were a party of eight for the cabaret, for Krishtof Bey and his three friends insisted on our joining them, and Brady stayed stuck like surgical tape to Lady Edgecombe, Johnson and myself. We walked together out of the light of the restaurant, across the hall and down the dim-lit stairs to the Conch Club. I was not feeling cheerful, and the general inebriated levity of the large crowd accompanying us into almost pitch darkness did nothing to make my mood less gloomy. It came to me that I was probably the only entirely sober person in the room. Then Johnson’s hand gripped my arm lightly, and I realized that I was not. We found a large round table with a red mat, and sat at it.
The cabaret at the Bamboo Conch Club, although paid for by the Ascot, is chosen and run entirely by the chief drummer, Leviticus, whose solo turn on the Congo drums is the subject of most of their publicity. Inside, the architect has tried to give the impression of a native hut, with a wickerwork lining dimly lit by fake torches burning luridly red on the walls. The roof, as I pointed out to Johnson, was low, dodecahedral and wooden, thus increasing both the noise and the fire risk. Round tables like our own pressed against each other without order between the low stage and the doors and an ultraviolet light, placed strategically overhead, made Wallace Brady’s teeth glitter and turned Lady Edgecombe’s tall gin and tonic into a sugar-frosted tumbler of silver. I ordered a jug of fruit squash, and Johnson, surprisingly, a magnum of champagne. Krishtof Bey had whisky and water.
I was listening to him attempting to explain to a waiter, against the uproar of conversation and the near tinkling of a small piano, that he wished an admixture of water, not carbonated liquid or ice, when someone slammed me on the back and said, ‘Blimey, it’s Dr MacRannoch! Hullo, Doctor! How are you, Doctor? I didn’t expect to run across you in these parts, I must say. How’s the chop and rummage trade?’
It was Sergeant Trotter. Sergeant Rodney Trotter, who had been in the Monarch Lounge when Edgecombe took ill. He was lightly intoxicated, with a blood-alcohol level, I estimated, of 120 milligrams to the hundred, or so.
I said, ‘Sergeant Trotter. Let me introduce Johnson Johnson, the portrait-painter. And this is Lady Edgecombe, whose husband was taken ill in New York. Lady Edgecombe, the Sergeant here was most helpful both in the airport and on the flight the following morning.”
Denise Edgecombe gave the Sergeant her hand with strictly moderate warmth, but Johnson edged a free chair one-handed beside him and lifted his bottle out of the ice bucket. ‘A glass of champagne. Sergeant?’
It was not my place to point out the effect of this upon an unknown quantity of iced beer. He accepted and sat down, grinning, next to Brady as all the lights except the ultraviolet one went out.
There is no nobler sound, to my mind, than a march of massed pipes and drums playing Tail Toddle. I learned to pipe, as a girl, back in Scotland. Trained on this, the aural senses could withstand, as they were now called upon to do, a full percussion group of drums and marimba, trumpets, saxophone, piano and electric organ. The resulting cacophony, in quick tempo, made speech quite impossible and even, as I saw glancing around me, acted as a mild anaesthetic. Under the assault, the faces of Lady Edgecombe, Trotter and Krishtof Bey’s companions displayed a type of ultraviolet-lit stupor. Krishtof Bey himself merely showed pleasure, and Johnson, a glass in one hand, was drumming on
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