‘Honestly,’ Vic said. ‘Look around. They’re still clapping. They loved you.’ He licked his lips.
‘I can’t look.’ Phyllis clenched her fists. ‘I was so nervous.’ She snatched her handbag from the table and sat down at the vacant seat, her back to the scene of her triumph. ‘So bloody nervous. Is that one for me?’
‘You deserve it,’ said Tony. The party resumed their places. ‘Doesn’t she, Vic?’
‘Was I really any good?’ Phyllis looked from one to the other, her garish eyes again childlike over the glass, the flutter of lashes too naïve. But she allowed herself to be persuaded. ‘Truly? I get positively sick. It is all right, isn’t it, Vic? You don’t mind?’
‘You were marvellous.’ Vic made himself smile. ‘Completely bowled me over. I’d no idea. And the voice. I mean, I hear it at home, but …’
‘My voice. I thought it was going to die on me. Did you hear that note in “Mexico Way”? I right muffed it, didn’t I?’
‘Never heard any such thing. It all sounded perfect.’
‘Really, Vic?’ She seemed winsome.
He smiled more genuinely, relieved, off guard. ‘Perfectly perfect.’
‘You hear what the engineer says. Another round, then, shall we?’ Tony clicked his fingers at a waiter.
Vic tried to insist. ‘Darling. I know this is boring of me …’
The atmosphere changed again in an instant. She was fierce. ‘Vic, I told you. My sister said she’d look in on him.’
‘It’s incredibly late.’
‘This is my night, my chance. For Christ’s sake. This is my kind of place, for once. Jack’ll be fast asleep. He’s not a baby any more, you know.’ Crossly she took out her compact and opened it. ‘Oh, my God. Just look at me. Frankie, you’ll come with me if I go and put things right?’
‘All the same, if Tony wouldn’t mind I do think we really should …’
Phyllis hit the table with her fist. ‘No!’ She shook her head, petulantly. ‘No! No! No!’
‘Darling, I …’
Tony was decisive. ‘You spoil that kid. Come on. Drink up. You’re a smart girl, Phylly, and if you weren’t married to drearyface here …’
‘Tony, really!’ Once more Phyllis appeared the innocent. ‘Whatever will you think of saying next?’ Colour spread from her cheekbones and up across her forehead – the streaked powder could do nothing to contain it. Where the shaken wave of hair had worked loose from its kirby-grip, a bright little gash on her temple was visible. Her hand sprang up to touch it. Newly glazed, it reopened. A spot of blood appeared like a red pearl and fell to the table. And another. ‘Christ!’ It was on her fingers.
Tony cooed in mock concern. ‘Now that’s a nasty one, isn’t it. How did you come by that, Phyllis?’
Her eyes flashed and she fumbled in her bag for a handkerchief, holding it up to the cut. ‘This? Walked into a door, didn’t I.’ A stain spread under her varnished nails and into the cloth.
‘A door, was it?’
‘Yes. A door. This evening, as I was changing. Just now, in the ladies’ room. Before I went on. I’ll have to …’
Tony leant across and touched her hair. ‘You’ll have to be more careful, won’t you, girl?’
She stood up and held out her other hand for Frances. ‘Coming, Frank? Quickly!’ Together they made their way off between the tables.
AT THE SIGHT of the wound he’d said nothing, done nothing. His fingers shaking, Vic lit another cigarette. The band thumped out a Latin number and the couples on the dance floor stalked each other.
Close to Phyllis there was always deceit, always pain, and he wore her chaos almost closer than his own skin; but the detail of the cut was more than anything he’d expected. Its implications stole over him like a dead faint. Tony had hit her, and she was protecting him.
The regular singer, a slight young man, was dapper in his white dinner jacket with a rose in his buttonhole; he sermonised from the stage, pinned by a searchlight:
Keep young and beautiful, it’s your duty to be beautiful,Keep young and beautiful, if you want to be loved.
Tony got up for the gents. ‘Might as well go for a drain-off myself. Don’t go away, will you.’
Vic dragged at his smoke. Despite her blushes, Phyllis wore the shiny little injury as an adornment. They were already lovers. She’d given this pimp what she always contrived to deny her husband, and Tony had taunted her with it, barefaced. They’d been carrying on here, right in front of him, knowing he was too simple to see – that even when he saw, he’d do nothing, nothing. He stubbed out his cigarette. His mouth was parched. He drank the glass in front of him too quickly. It tasted trite, bitter.
Then the others returned. The girls were quite natural, and they laughed, comparing make-up and quipping one to the other. Tony, seating himself once more, was bluff. ‘There, Vic. Told you not to go away.’ His eyes were clear, the sculpted lips a design on the fine skin.
A table next to them erupted with laughter. Someone was standing up on his chair, holding a champagne glass in his teeth to roars of encouragement. Phyllis turned round, clapping, and then smiled in Vic’s direction. ‘All right, Vic?’
He smiled back. ‘Fine.’
Another crackle of laughter went up. Through the din she mimed the words ‘Thanks’ and ‘Sorry’.
Soothed, he smiled again.
Tony set the next round up, and the next. Then Vic drank wilfully. He told himself he needed to lighten up. You’re a lucky bloke, Vic. You’ll want to hang on to a skirt like her. He was confused. He wanted to dissolve the fierce nag of not knowing, never quite seeing, and to drown all the other issues, the kid, the money, the war, the awful round of his futureless days. A man at a further table held a woman’s hand to his lips, nibbling the fingers; he thought of Clarice.
The club became a whirl of sensations. Noise and laughter from the tables reverberated almost visibly in the low vaults, like strips of newspaper hung out; and on the spotlit floor, bright couples wove in amongst each other. Bodies swayed, clasped, parted. A woman’s naked spine was crossed by a man’s hand and the crowd at the next table was trying to form itself into a conga dance. People were crying out, ‘Come on, then! Are you with us?’ To the frugg of the band they were a counter-chorus. Cut-glass accents aped in cockney a popular song:
Oh we ain’t got a barrel of money,Maybe we’re ragged and funny …
Jack would be fine, probably.
‘Vic!’ Phyllis was speaking to him.
Tony was insisting on something to her. He was shouting above the swirl of noise. ‘Vic here wants to make some money, Phyll. He told me.’
‘You’re not kidding me he does. It’s only my earnings keeping us, to tell the honest truth. If he won’t do it, I have to. Don’t I?’
‘Eh?’ Vic fought to concentrate. Frankie’s young eyes were contacting his. She really did have the look of Clarice Pike, the shape of the nose, something in the line of the chin. Tony and Phyllis were linked together. There was something between them, but who was he to police her friendships? In the marriage he’d been too rigid, even a little inhuman, unfaithful at the heart, and that was why Phyllis … He could see now. She was right. Of course she was right. No one’s life was really at stake. Truly he should try to be less of a bloody Nazi.
There was a twenty-pound note on the table.