Night of Triumph (6 page)

‘Are all these people
married
, d’you suppose? Or engaged?’ she asked him.

‘Oh, of course, Your Royal Highness. Just not to each other.’

Hugh’s sally got a gratifying, scandalised squeal from Margaret and an indulgent laugh from Elizabeth.

A little boy, lost, wandered into their path, blubbering and looking frantically round.

‘Dad? Dad! Where are you, Dad?’

Elizabeth instantly went down on one knee with a concerned frown, but before she could ask him anything, a man appeared out of nowhere, grasped the child under the armpits, put him on his
shoulders and capered away. Elizabeth couldn’t see how the boy reacted; she couldn’t be sure if this man actually was the father or not.

The unmistakable sound of a slapped face came from behind them.

‘There’s no need for that.’

‘Well. Sauce.’

‘You know what we agreed.’

‘I agreed to no such thing.’

‘Thief!’

The four of them whirled around again, to see two boys, one with a handbag under his arm running at full tilt in the direction of the Mall. A woman was giving ineffective chase, hobbled by heels
which would have made even walking difficult. Her beau, clearly incapable with drink, was merely waving his fist.

‘Oh lor,’ commented Peter, weakly.

‘Oh dear,’ agreed Hugh.

‘One hopes that this sort of thing is not going to be a feature of the evening.’

The crowd now became agitated at something. The mass rippled and parted. A figure was approaching; his presence was apparently not welcome, judging from the frowns, jeers and cat-calls. Someone
started humming Gilbert and Sullivan again. It was their policeman, minus his helmet, walking quickly and purposefully in their direction.

‘Corks!’ said Margaret quaintly, and then, for the second time, ‘Run!’

Mr Ware grinned. He had just thrown a firework, a penny banger, into a shopfront doorway and it had made an almighty loud noise. Everyone had jumped, especially the two swell
chaps in Guards uniforms he’d seen coming out of The Captain’s Cabin. They had stared at him; he had stared back and someone shouted ‘That’s got the festivities
started’ and there was a huge laugh.

The evening was back the way he wanted it. Mr Ware was grateful for the laugh. He liked a bit of a pat on the back, metaphorical or otherwise. He’d actually had the most awful row with his
wife before he’d left the flat – about their plans for the evening, and how exactly they were to get what he had decided they both wanted. There were rich pickings to be had, he told
her. She said it was too dangerous. Too dangerous! As if they hadn’t done dangerous things before now, and had dangerous things done to them!

At that moment, a very intoxicated Canadian in uniform literally attempted to pat him on the back, and Mr Ware instinctively pretended to be drunk too, slumping against him with a grin; he
allowed himself to be helped up, while the man’s girlfriends looked on, chattering and laughing.

‘Y’okay?’ the man laughed.

‘Oh, yes, sorry, sorry, thanks very much!’

‘B’bye now!’

‘Cheer-o!’

The Canadian sauntered away, a lady friend on each arm if you please, and Mr Ware ducked round the corner, removed the Canadian’s wallet from his inside jacket pocket and began to extract
the cash. Ten pounds and ten shillings! And a French letter. He put the money and the rest of the doings down into his trouser pocket. The wallet went flapping down into a dustbin, like a dead
bird.

You see? Windows of opportunity had to be scrambled through. Chances had to be grasped. But Mrs Ware, that shiftless and ungrateful slattern, did not see. She did not appreciate that this night
offered them a real chance. Their final chance. Tomorrow the party would be over, and it would be back to peacetime civvy street.

Well, they had agreed in the end. That is, he had told Mrs Ware she would get another fourpenny one if she gave him gip. Last time that happened was when she had made a fuss about him carrying
on at the Club. She didn’t half get one that night, but she’d been provoking and provoking, for all the world as if she wanted one. She got one that night, all right. Actually, it was
more like a sixpenny one. Just occasionally she’d got a ninepenny one, and on one occasion the full shilling. Whump.

Mr Ware felt for the bump in his belt, under his jacket, to check that what he’d stuffed down there was still in place. It was.

After meandering aimlessly about for an hour or so, Mr Ware wheeled north, skipping off the pavement into the thronged street itself, where the crush of people was lighter. He walked up Lower
Regent Street in the direction of Piccadilly Circus. On the corner, a man was doing Find The Lady on an upturned cardboard box. Mr Ware recognised him, and exchanged a wink. The man threw a Queen,
an Ace and another Ace face down on the cardboard surface; the cards often overlapped. A crowd of people, all male, from old men to boys, had gathered. One relatively well-dressed man had evidently
been enticed to the front, and Mr Ware guessed that he would be the one of whom the card-player had great hopes. He wondered how many of the crowd were not stooges, and thought not many.

‘No money, no money, no money, just for fun, which d’you think?’ said the card-master, throwing the cards down once again.

Bashfully, the well-dressed man pointed to the card in the middle and it was turned up. The Queen. There was an instant ragged cheer – part of the purpose of this part of the trick, apart
from lulling the mark into a false sense of security, was to attract a bigger crowd.

‘Ooh, you’re good at this, come on, how about making it interesting? What about a ha’penny?’

To show he was a good sport, the man bet a halfpenny, and was successful again. There was another massive cheer, and the card-master, with a pantomime pout of astonishment at his
customer’s extraordinary, untrained skill at Finding The Lady, gave the man a penny and challenged him to have a real bet.

‘Go on! Be a sport! You can’t quit now! Give the poor feller a chance, sir,’ said the crowd who were bustling in behind him, physically preventing him from leaving. In the
distance, someone was singing ‘I’ve got a luverly bunch of coconuts.’

‘Come on. A quid.’

Intimidated, the man agreed to bet a pound. He swayed somewhat, and Mr Ware made a mental bet of his own – that the man had not been drinking at all, but felt constrained to explain away
to the crowd and to himself the imminent disaster on the grounds that he was drunk. He betted a pound, pointed to one of the cards and of course on this occasion it was an Ace.

‘Come on! Have another go! Get your money back.’

‘No, no.’ The man, thoroughly ashamed, tried to leave, was jostled back, and when he persisted, was jostled on his way by the spiteful, vengeful mob.

‘G’wan then. On your way.’ Instinctively, simply to partake of the fun, Mr Ware came forward and joined in the shoving of this unfortunate man, whose VE Night had now been
entirely spoiled. An apprentice draughtsman, who lived in Ipswich and was up in the capital just for the evening, he went back to Ipswich on the early train the next morning and never came to
London ever again.

Turning up into Great Windmill Street, Mr Ware found what he was looking for: the Butterfly Club. There was no sign or outward indication of any sort to the passer-by. To gain admission, Mr Ware
had to crouch down on his haunches and reach awkwardly through a row of rusty railings that ran alongside a tobacconist’s door and rap with his knuckle on a pane of glass. Presently, a figure
appeared down there, looking up expressionlessly at Mr Ware, and then vanished. Then a cellar door opened and this man walked up a shallow flight of rusty metal steps, and unbolted a square section
of mesh wire to allow access. Mr Ware followed him down through the door, and entered the premises. As he did so, through force of habit, he removed his wedding ring with some effort, and placed it
in his pocket.

It was a surprisingly large room in an L-shape, with a bar on one side, tables and chairs; Mr Ware walked on to look around the corner where there was a small stage, a piano and a microphone on
a stand. The stage was empty but not the bar, at which four or five men were standing, each wearing a boxy demob suit, smoking and without exception drinking gin. The one Mr Ware was looking for
was quite obvious, from the way he flinched with alarm at the sight of him. It was Colin Erskine-Jones.

‘Colin.’

Colin was actually sitting on a high stool which he now attempted to scramble off, perhaps to greet Mr Ware, perhaps to go to the lavatory, or perhaps to make a panicky escape. Mr Ware placed
himself squarely against Colin, preventing him from moving. Colin rearranged his features in such a way as to suggest he was pleased to see him.

‘My dear chap. My dear chap. Drink?’

‘I was going to order a gin and It, Colin.’

‘Do please let me get it,’ quavered Colin, as if there was any question of anything else. ‘What are you having? Oh yes, gin and It.’

Mr Ware nodded coolly and Colin made the order. Their drinks arrived. Colin offered Mr Ware a cigarette; this he took without a word of thanks, but rather as if it were a peace offering, which
he would accept in an opaque spirit of diplomacy, without being in any way deflected from his main purpose.

‘Now, Colin,’ said Mr Ware, crushing his cigarette wastefully in the ashtray after one single puff. ‘Do you have that money you owe me?’

‘What money?’ asked Colin in a quiet voice. The other men at the bar began to move away, to the tables, or to the exit.

‘Half of what you got from selling the doings, Colin, the doings which I allowed you to procure from Bruton Street. That was a goldmine, Bruton Street, wasn’t it? You must admit
that.’

‘Not quite as good as all that, old chap ...’

‘I think there must have been some
earrings
Colin, in fact I think you’re wearing one of them now ...’

With a circular swipe of his right hand, Mr Ware brought in the nails of his forefinger and thumb and pincered Colin’s left earlobe with them, pulling the side of his head down towards the
bar. The barman turned his back and busied himself washing out a glass.

‘Ah-ah-ah-ah,’ said Colin, suppressing his pain and fear, and trying to make this the kind of ‘steady on’ reproach one might use with a wayward child or puppy.

‘
Wearing
them ...’

‘Ah ...’

‘Oh no! My mistake. You’re not.’

He released Colin’s now red-hot ear.

‘Just my mistake. Whoops! Ha! Just my joke.’ Mr Ware now considered it expedient to clown around a little. ‘Just my joke, Colin, you’re all right. Another gin? Another
gin!’

They got more drinks, and this time the cigarettes were on Mr Ware. Resentful and emboldened, Colin now ventured a note of complaint. ‘There really wasn’t that much there, you know.
Nothing much. Really nothing. Furniture’s no bloody use at all.’

‘Well, how about the cigarette case?’

‘Tried selling that to a chap earlier today. Nothing doing. I say, are you
sure
it’s solid silver? Shouldn’t it have a hallmark? Mightn’t it be just
plate?’

But Mr Ware was now distracted by another matter entirely. A large woman with fierce blonde hair had come up behind him with an exaggerated hip-rolling gait, knees slightly bent. She gave Colin
a wink and then playfully pounced on Mr Ware, putting claw-like hands over his eyes, and then whisked him round. From his wide, immediate grin, it was clear that Mr Ware did not at all mind this
assault. He knew who this was from the beginning.

‘Darling!’ she croaked.

‘My own one!’ he replied smoothly, placing his cigarette in the ashtray.

The woman took Mr Ware’s head in both hands and placed his face in her cleavage. To Colin, it seemed as though he was there for quite some time, making tiny mewing sounds. Some of the
customers who had nervously left the bar a few minutes ago were beginning to return, to make fresh orders and stay at the bar.

At last, Mr Ware was freed. He wore the expression of a man who had been gazing at a sunset until the moment of nightfall.

‘How are you, dearest?’

‘Oh, I’m all right, you know,’ he said, with a kind of post-coital tenderness.

The woman looked over at Colin. ‘I look forward to seeing your act tonight, ducks,’ she said, and added, ‘Tonight is special.’

‘It is special.’ Both men agreed.

‘It’s a wonderful moment in our history,’ she said. ‘And Christ, loves, what a blessed relief not to have rationing any more.’

They both nodded.

‘Mind you. We have to think about our boys out in the Far East. The job isn’t over yet,’ she said sternly. ‘Out there, our boys battle on. We must never forget that.
Never.’

They nodded again, and Colin was slightly relieved that there was someone of whom Mr Ware might be very slightly afraid.

‘When I think about the Japanese ...’ said Ginnie, her voice quietening and decelerating. There was a moment’s quiet.

‘Anyway,’ said Mr Ware, ‘we’re all really looking forward to the party tonight.’

‘Jolly good!’

‘And talking of which,’ said Mr Ware, ‘I wonder if young Colin and I could be permitted to pop behind the bar, down the stairs, and have a look at the various important things
we have stored there?’

‘Oh yes, oh yes, my dear,’ said Ginnie genially. ‘You bowl along. We have to make sure everything’s present and correct, don’t we?’

Ray, behind the bar, opened up the flap and Mr Ware motioned for Colin to come through and then lead the way round past the wall of drinks and spirit measures, and through a door at the other
side. This passageway was very dark, lit only by a glimmer of light from an office at the far end. Colin knew the way; so did Mr Ware. There was no reason for them not to walk two abreast down this
passageway and make conversation while they did so. But somehow Colin was made to walk ahead with Mr Ware behind, as if under arrest.

Turning right, Colin and Mr Ware found another door, which could only be fully opened after shoving and kicking some obstructions on the floor out of the way, and Colin reached around and turned
on a light switch.