and wore no tie. He was watching Colonel Dan about to throw a pair of dice against the wall. There was a huge pile of pound notes on the floor and as her eyes became accustomed to the gloom Victoria could see that there were other men there too, all holding wads of money.
‘Come on, baby,’ Colonel Dan yelled into the confines of his clenched fist before throwing the dice. ‘Snake eyes!’ he screamed as they came to rest. There was pandemonium all around, and Victoria was almost knocked off her feet as the Colonel stooped to pick up the dice and lost his balance to fall against her. ‘Oops, sorry, Ma’am.’
She found Jamie on the next floor. He was holding tightly to the bare upper arms of a brassy-looking girl in a shiny grey dress that was cut too low in the front and too tight across the bottom. ‘You’ve got to be sensible,’ Jamie was telling her. ‘There’s no sense in making a scene. These things happen, it’s the war.’
The girl’s eye make-up had smudged with her tears and there were streaks of black down her cheeks. ‘For Christ’s sake, spare me that,’ she said bitterly. ‘You bloody Yanks don’t have to tell me about the war. We were bombed out of my mum’s house years before Pearl bloody Harbor.’
She noticed Vince Madigan was wearing a short Ike jacket complete with a row of medals and silver wings. He too was trying to reason with the tearful girl. ‘Let me walk you to Market Hill…we’ll find a cab and get you home.’
The girl ignored him. To Jamie she said, ‘You think I’m drunk, don’t you?’
From downstairs there came some spirited rebel yells, and the piano struck up the resounding chords of ‘Dixie’. Suddenly Jamie noticed Victoria watching them. ‘Oh, Victoria!’ he said.
‘Oh, Victoria,’ parroted the girl. ‘Whatever have you done with poor Prince Albert?’ She gave a short bitter laugh.
Jamie let go of the girl and turned to Victoria, smiling as if in apology. ‘It’s one of Vince’s friends,’ he explained quietly. ‘She’s threatening to tear Vera to pieces.’ From downstairs came a chorus of joyful voices: ‘In Dixie land, I’ll take my stand, to live and dieeee in Dixie…’
Vince Madigan moved closer to the girl in the grey dress and began talking to her softly, in the manner prescribed for an excited horse. Now that the light was on her she looked no more than eighteen, younger perhaps. The desperate stare had gone now; she was just a sad child. She raised a large red hand to stifle a belch.
‘Or was it you who invited one girl too many?’ said Victoria coldly.
‘She’s not my type,’ said Jamie amiably.
Over Jamie’s shoulder Victoria saw Madigan take the girl in a tight embrace and caress her hungrily. Victoria turned to avoid Jamie’s kiss. ‘Not now,’ she said, ‘not here.’
‘I think I need a drink,’ Jamie said, standing back from her. ‘I’ve had about as much as I can take for one day.’
‘You have!’ said Victoria angrily.
‘I didn’t mean enough of you.’
‘Would you take me home?’
‘Wait just a few minutes more,’ said Jamie. ‘My buddy Charlie Stigg still might get here. I told you I’d invited him.’
‘Then I’ll go home alone,’ she said. Jamie took her arm. ‘You’d better help Captain Madigan,’ she said, pulling herself free. ‘I think his lady friend is about to vomit.’
The girl was holding on to the balustrade and bending forward to retch at the stair carpet.
Victoria pushed her way downstairs and found her coat where it had fallen to the floor under a mountain of khaki overcoats. She glimpsed Vera standing with MM to watch the men who had climbed on top of the piano. One of them, Earl Koenige, was waving the Confederate flag. ‘Look awaay, look awaay, look awaay, Dixie laand!’
She tried to catch Vera’s eye to tell her she was leaving, but Vera had eyes for no one but her newfound lieutenant. She was cuddling him tightly. That was the trouble with Vera; for her, men were just men, interchangeable commodities like silk stockings, pet canaries, or books from a library. Any man who would give her a good time was Mr Right for Vera. She wasn’t looking for a husband, she had one already.
Victoria had no trouble finding a taxi—they were arriving at the house in Jesus Lane every few minutes, bringing more and more people to the party.
She got back home just as the rain began. It was an old Victorian mansion, elaborate with neo-Gothic towers and stained-glass windows. Its dark shape behind the wind-tossed trees did little to raise her spirits as she hurried down the gravel path in the quickening rain. The house was cold and empty, but she closed the carved oak door behind her with a thankful sigh. Sometimes she almost envied Vera those histrionic sobs, lace handkerchief delicately applied to her face without smudging her make-up. Vera always seemed so completely revived afterwards—a release which tonight Victoria needed as never before. But still she didn’t cry.
She walked through the hall and up the grandiose staircase. She would go to the place where she always had to be when unhappy, her sanctum at the very top of the house. She passed the door of her parents’ bedroom and the storeroom that had once been her nursery. On the next floor, she passed the maid’s room, empty now that they no longer had living-in servants. She passed the locked door of her brother’s room and the doors of the toy cupboard, their pasted-on flower pictures now faded and falling.
From the top corridor window she looked down at the dark garden and the tennis court, covered for winter. She couldn’t get used to the emptiness of the house and found herself listening for her mother’s voice or her father’s clumsy cello playing.
Thankfully she went into her bedroom and closed the door behind her. Here at least she could be herself. A pretty row of dolls eyed her from the chest of drawers where they sat among her hairbrushes, but the balding teddy bear had fallen, and was sprawled, limbs asunder, on the floor. She picked him up before running a bath and undressing with the same studied care she gave to everything. She put her dress on its hanger and fitted trees in the battered yellow shoes before placing them in the rack.
‘A museum’ her mother called it derisively, but Victoria refused to let any of it go. She would keep it all—the butterfly collection in its frame on the wall, the doll’s house and her box of seabirds’ eggs. She ran her finger along the children’s books. Enid Blyton to Richmal Crompton, as well as her huge scrapbooks. She was determined to keep it all for ever, no matter how they teased her.
She switched on the electric fire, took off the rest of her clothes, and wiped off her make-up before getting into the hot bath. Sitting in the warm, scented water, the taste of bourbon on her tongue and too much cold cream on her face, she tried to remember everything he’d said to her, searching for implications of love or rejection. The wireless was playing sweet music, but suddenly it ended and the unmistakably accented voice of the American Forces Network announcer wished all listeners a happy Christmas and victorious New Year. ‘Go to hell,’ Victoria told him, and he played more Duke Ellington.
She was drying herself when the doorbell rang. Carol singers? Party-goers looking for another address? It rang again. She put on a dressing gown and ran downstairs. Immediately she noticed the envelope that had been pushed into the letter box. Caught by its corner, the envelope was addressed to a military box number and had been opened and emptied. She turned it over and found scribbled on the back, ‘I’m sorry, darling.
