Theirs Was The Kingdom (80 page)

“Well…” she gave a little chirrup of laughter, “I suppose after a time, months that is, you get out of the habit and have to work up an appetite when it’s served up to you? Is that so, soldier-boy?”

“Yes,” he murmured, “something like that, I imagine,” and wondered whether she had blundered on the truth, for the fact was he did not feel in the least erotic, only intensely curious about himself and her, with all manner of strange, detached thoughts running through his head. For it did seem odd that he should be closeted here in a clean, comfortable room, with an attractive young woman stripped down to her corset and drawers. Yet he found himself wondering what she earned, where she came from, how much she spent on those fashionable clothes, and the exact nature of the “arrangement” that existed between her, the unsmiling Miss Montcrieff, and Mr. Skilly downstairs, who seemed to combine the duties of rent-collector, janitor, and whoremaster of the house.

His three grown sisters, all interested in fashions, had familiarised him with the various items of her ensemble. He could tell that they were all run up from expensive materials and would not come cheaply. He wondered whether harlots of her class looked for some kind of discount from their costumier. The evening gown, with its straw-filled bustle sewn into the panels of the dress, had a long train and deep V-shaped decolletage, and might have been worn by a society hostess without occasioning much more than the lift of an eyebrow. Her under-dress, worn over the fine linen petticoats, was of Ottoman silk, and the drawers were a riotous affair, made of cambric velvet and crossbanded with cornflower blue ribbons sewn on to the nainsook frills, with a red silk rose stitched to the seam of each leg. The sheath-like corset, shaped in wide curves and stiffened, he would say, with strips of steel, pushed her fine breasts very high and swept over the buttocks in a way that was obviously designed to emphasise the bustle she had hung in the closet. She seemed just the slightest put out by his scrutiny and said, with a smile, “A penny for them, soldier-boy!” and he replied, mildly, “I was only thinking how elegantly you dress, Cecilia,” and she said, “But of course! How else would I get admitted to the promenade? The management doesn’t let anybody in there, I can tell you. They have their reputation to think of.”

“You mean the Empire is financially involved in what happens there?”

“Oh no,” she said, laughing, “I say, you
have
been out of the swim a long time, haven’t you? What I mean is, we girls
are
the Empire, and far more important to them than the turns they book, and these tableaux-vivants we watched tonight. I mean, it’s obvious, isn’t it? Rich gentlemen wouldn’t go there in such numbers if we didn’t, would they? You get far better stage turns at the Star and a dozen other places if you’re looking for straight entertainment. Mr. Skilly told Lucy—the girl above, the one with the regular—that last year the Empire shareholders drew eighty-three per cent on their investment, so naturally we’re vetted before we’re allowed to promenade. Why, even the police know that.”

He said, suddenly, “Come and sit on my knee, Cecilia. It’s years since I had a pretty girl on my knee.”

“You mean, just as I am?”

“Well, that’s up to you, Cecilia.”

“Then I’ll take off my corset if you don’t mind. It’s punishing me something cruel, I can tell you.”

She reached behind her and tweaked the top bow so that the corset bulged outward as on a spring, and her breasts, released from confinement, parted like a cleft pear, the resultant ripple giving him the first genuinely erotic impulse he had experienced in her company. She coiled herself on his knee, took his head in both hands, and kissed him on the mouth. “You
are
an odd one, soldier-boy. But nice. I wish there were more like you. Are you married, soldier-boy?”

“Good God, no,” he said, laughing. “Do I look as if I was?”

“No, you don’t,” she said, thoughtfully, “and I knew that before I asked really. Some girl is going to be lucky one day. Or maybe she isn’t because it would be awful seeing you go off to war every now and again and not showing up for months on end. How do you feel about me now?” she concluded, improbably.

“Comfortable,” he said, “and lucky, somehow. To have picked someone like you, I mean, for I can’t imagine there are two of you down at the Empire.”

“Oh, there’s all sorts,” she said, carelessly. “You’d be surprised, I can tell you. We’ve got to cater for a wide range and you never stop being surprised by the gentlemen.”

“Are you surprised by me?”

“Well, so far,” she said, “but there’s time enough yet, isn’t there? I realised straight off why you were shy but my experience is it soons wears off. It’s beginning to already, isn’t it?”

“I believe it is,” he said, gaily. “Kiss me again to make sure.”

Her second kiss was more amorous and she nibbled his lips in a way that told him her naïveté was almost certainly counterfeit, and she knew her business extremely well. He squeezed her bottom and she said, approvingly, “
That’s
the spirit!” But when he tried to explore below the tight waistband, she said, laughing, “Here, you don’t have to wrestle, love,” and tweaked the tape so that he could prospect her in comfort, at the same time letting her hand pass lightly over his crutch and saying, “Well there! You got nothing to worry about, have you?”

He realised with relief that he had not and suddenly he felt very glad that he had accepted Bonzo’s invitation; even more so that he had found an amiable creature like Cecilia, who combined humour with a tolerance and understanding he would not have looked for in a girl of her profession.

They cuddled there for what seemed to him a long interval, more like a couple of long-separated lovers in a cornfield than a man sporting with a hired drab in a house of drabs. The swift rattle of a market cart passing over the setts below seemed to recollect to a full sense of her duty and she said, slipping off his knee, “Here now, this won’t do, soldier-boy. Let’s go to bed, shall we?” and without waiting for his assent she began to pull off her drawers.

Then, as always with him, an outside agency stepped in, this time even more decisively than in Malta, Cork, and Cyprus, where he was whisked away to a troopship at what always seemed to him a moment’s notice. She had one leg free, and was stooping to ease the frills of the other over her stockinged feet, when there was a sudden outcry from the room immediately above, swelling, in a matter of seconds, to an uproar that could not possibly be ignored, for it included a woman’s screams, a man’s full-throated shouts, any number of heavy thumps, and finally the crash of glass. Glass was still tinkling when he heard the rush of hurrying feet on the stairs and, a moment later, renewed outcry, as though a whole group of people were up there engaged in breaking up the furniture. The woman’s yells continued, so that the entire house seemed to erupt and Cecilia shouted, above the cacophony, “It’s Lucy and her regular again! He must be murdering her!” She darted across the room and out of the door, with Alex in hot pursuit, just as the noise above shifted its centre from immediately above to the head of a flight of stairs rising steeply from the landing outside.

There was a relatively good light out here and glancing up Alex saw a trio of figures struggling together in confusion just beyond the top stair. Cecilia, now stark naked apart from her black stockings, headed up into the scrimmage, but before he could mount more than two stairs the banister rail parted with a long, splintering crack and the wedge of people descended in concert, bumping and rolling one upon the other, and giving him no opportunity to retreat and avoid making five of the group. All together, a confused mass of threshing arms and legs, they rolled on to the landing outside Cecilia’s open door where Alex, the last to be involved, was the first on his feet, having jarred his shoulder on the post of what was left of the banisters. For a few seconds he was dazed by the impact, but then, darting forward with some idea of extricating Cecilia, he saw a grizzled head emerge from the mass of bodies and then a brown mottled fist, grasping about a foot of a broken walking cane, with a silver dragon’s head as its handle.

He recognised face and walking cane in the same moment. Both belonged to Colonel Corcoran, alias Bejasus, alias Fwat-Fwat and Vorwarts. The old boy’s mouth was open in a sustained roar of rage, or pain, or terror, directed at whatever monster figured in his current bout of delirium tremens and his rust-red whiskers stood out, giving him the appearance of a wild man at a fair. Above the gasps and moans of a middle-aged pot-bellied man (Mr. Skilly, he assumed) and the muffled screams of Lucy, whose evening dress had bundled level with her chin, so that her bustle was acting as a kind of gag, he could hear the steady spate of oaths for which Colonel Corcoran was famous throughout half the garrison towns of the Empire, interspersed with volleys of his favourite expletive, “
Bejasus
,” that had won him his most popular nickname. Alone among them he seemed uninjured, for as Alex watched, too amazed to help, he fought his way free, striking out with the butt end of his staff. He was in full evening rig, but in the struggle above, or the tumble downstairs, the pearl buttons had been stripped from his waistcoat and his ruffled shirt, ripped across the front, exposed a mat of red hair that covered his chest.

His wild prancings, and the ineffectual blows he delivered, seemed to steady the others somewhat for they began to sort themselves out, massaging various parts of their anatomy that had come into contact with the treads or the splintered stair rail on the way down. Skilly rose to his knees, his oaths entering into competition with the Colonel’s, but he was at a grave disadvantage for his high-crowned bowler hat was wedged tightly over his ears; until he could free himself he was all but blinded.

It was the most bizarre scene imaginable. Lucy, still unable to win clear of the press, waved her legs in the air as though making despairing signals for help. Cecilia emerged backwards, bent in an arc so that her broad bottom offered a splendid target to the enraged Bejasus, who dropped his near-useless walking stick and fetched her a tremendous slap that rang through the general din like the report of a Martini-Henry discharged in a canyon.

At that moment, when Alex had sufficiently recovered to grab Bejasus by the shoulders and haul him clear, there was a loud knocking on the front door and Lucy, sitting up and clawing the bustle from her face, shouted, “It’s the police! Go down, Skilly. Go on down!” To Alex’s amazement, Skilly scrambled to his feet and went off down the stairs at a stumbling run, both hands still raised in an attempt to free himself of his bowler. Then, mercifully, the Colonel stopped bellowing and hitting out, and seemed suddenly bemused, as though unable to get his bearings. Alex, steadying him against the splintered stair rail, shouted “I’ll see to him… he’s my colonel… nobody’s hurt, are they?” But Alex was aware, as he said this, of the rumble of voices below. A moment later an enormous police constable appeared on the stairs, with Skilly at his heels, and Alex saw that the janitor had at last rid himself of his hat and was revealed as a florid man of about fifty, with cheeks as pendulous as a bloodhound’s and a blue, watery eye that surveyed the scene with exasperated bewilderment.

He said, apologetically, “Touch o’ D. T. s officer, same as las’ time. ’Armless, mindjew. Better get a keb, ’adn’t we?” And the policeman, who seemed excessively calm in the circumstances, agreed that this would be a good idea but added, very mildly, that this kind of thing wouldn’t do at all twice in a few days, that somebody might have been injured in such a mêlée, and that it had better be kept from his sergeant with whom he had a point in a few moments.

Alex said nervously, “I know him, officer, and I know where he lives. Let me take him home. He’ll be safe enough with me, I assure you!” The policeman said, gravely, that he would be safe with anybody now so that Alex, turning towards Cecilia’s room, saw that the Colonel was slumped against the skirting-board and fast asleep.

“Takes ’em that way, usually,” the policeman went on, speaking more like a sympathetic doctor than an officer charged with keeping the peace. “In fits and starts, that is. That two-headed gorilla that was after him ’as been caught by the keepers. But he’ll really have to start watering it more or he’ll be a goner before he knows it. Best to get something on, miss.” This to Cecilia, who was regarding the damaged stair rail with dismay and massaging her crimson bottom.

Skilly said, wearily, “Get yourself a drink, Lucy. You too, Cis. The young gentleman’ll see to His Nibs so there’s no call to worry. Would you give us a hand dahn with the old boy, officer? Can’t manage him on me own.” The policeman nodded, saying, “I’ll take his shoulders and as soon as we’re on street level pop across to the cab rank and this young gentleman will take over. I’d like the colonel clear o’ my beat before the sergeant shows up.”

Between them they lifted Bejasus and began a clumsy descent of the stairs, while Alex, glad to be out of it so cheaply, went back into Cecilia’s room for his boots. He was lacing them when she reappeared, wearing a kimono bright as a Nile sunset. She said, “You really do know him, don’t you? You didn’t just say that to get us off the hook, for you needn’t bother wi’ P. C. Capley. He’s on the landlord’s payroll.”

“Ah, so I gathered,” Alex said, grinning, but then, recollecting that he had given her nothing, and that Bonzo had paid for her champagne and supper, he took out his purse, saying, “I suppose your friend will settle up with you, Cecilia, but I’d like to show what a pleasant evening I’ve had. Will you take this?” and shyly he offered a sovereign.