‘He’s gorgeous!’
‘For heaven’s sake, Rodie, what can you be thinking of? Breaking into Buckingham Palace? Burgling a courtier’s office? Defacing royal property? Are you mad?’
‘You look quite handsome when you get angry. Give us a kiss.’
‘I should never have introduced you!’
‘Darling,’ said Rodie. ‘He’s lovely. He’s single. And,’ she added, waving her arm at the serried ranks of uniforms pressed against the bar, ‘he’s not like any of those. He’s a painter, an artist – just think of those eyes!’
‘You burgled Buckingham Palace. If they find out, it’s Holloway for you – three years minimum.’
‘Does he know it was me?’
Hardacre stared at her in disbelief. ‘Know? Know? How many burglars do you think Guy’s met? Let me be more specific – how many female burglars do you think he’s met? Female burglars who said within ten minutes of meeting him, “I think I’m going to marry you”?’
Rodie was pleased with this. She turned to Claudia, but despite the urgent word of warning, her friend was extravagantly waggling her eyebrows at a captain in the Life Guards. He stared back, bewildered.
‘Pay attention,’ said Rupe sternly, ‘because this is embarrassing for me. Guy has one of the most sensitive jobs in the country, and your damn-fool high jinks could land him in terrible trouble. And what about me? What’s he going to think of me for introducing you?’
‘It was a piece of cake, Rupe. I didn’t even have to go over the palace wall, just walked in when they weren’t looking. You know there are half a dozen gates into that place, they don’t all have a guardsman with fixed bayonet standin’ around. And, honestly, the locks on those royal doors! They should be ashamed of themselves!’
‘Did you take anything?’
Rodie looked indignant. ‘Take anything? Why would I do that?’
‘Because, my dear, you just burgled your way into the greatest treasure-house in the country. It would be against your religion to come away empty-handed.’
‘I did it for love.’
‘You did it for the hell of it. You’re a terrible show-off.’
There was a pause and then Claudia rose from her seat. ‘I think I’ll go and try my luck anyway,’ she said absently.
Her fingers were itching to get inside those soldiers’ pockets.
‘Golden days, Guy.’
He nodded vaguely – no point in revisiting the past, it was gone. In Paris they’d been close but that was long ago, the memories now were coated with dust.
‘Strange to see you dressed like this,’ she said, tilting her head. ‘With your hair short and shoes on your feet. Clean fingernails, too – I hardly recognise you these days.’
‘Goes with the job,’ he said, shrugging his shoulders. ‘Just like the other did. It won’t always be like this.’
‘How is the job?’ The American was trying to get her old friend to talk. ‘The new apartment? What’s fresh down at the Palace?’
They were sitting in semi-darkness across the other side of Piccadilly in the Berkeley Hotel. Their glasses were empty, the conversation hushed. The terrible onslaught from above had ceased but the relief that they were still alive had yet to register.
‘On the whole, I’d rather be in Palm Beach,’ said Foxy Gwynne jokily. ‘The service is a little more attentive there. And no planes flying overhead after dark – on the orders of the Governor.’
Guy managed a laugh, and they turned to watch the waiters self-consciously slinking back to their duties. The air-raid sirens had an irritating habit of interrupting the cocktail hour, but while the staff followed orders and disappeared down to their bunker, idiots like Guy Harford and Foxy Gwynne would sit it out, eking out their drinks, hoping the all-clear would come soon.
Across the sprawling bar of The Berkeley there were a few other such couples, battle-hardened by a year of aerial attack and determined to ignore the bombers, or maybe just ready to die. The so-called spirit of the Blitz was not always what it appeared.
‘You know I always thought you’d stay on there, in Montparnasse,’ Foxy said, urging him to talk. ‘You were stuck on Nina, admit.’
‘She preferred Lydia. And anyway, it was you I wanted.’
‘Sorry, Guy, that was never a possibility.’
‘It might have been. When I painted your portrait.’
‘Pas du tout, I just eyed you that way so the picture would be interesting.’
She looked at him differently from the way he looked at her. What he saw was a vision untouched by war, a light bob of her head tossing away the fear as if it were a fly in summer; the merest irritant. She was every artist’s dream of the perfect model.
She, in turn, saw a changed man. Gone were the baggy linen shirts, the long hair, the paint-splattered fingernails, the languid drawl. In their place was a man in standard courtier kit of black jacket and waistcoat, striped trousers – though his tie was, she thought, set deliberately awry and with a clumsy knot even a sailor couldn’t have invented. Despite this, he looked smooth, urbane, organised.
With a vague air of apology their waiter wafted over to pour fresh cocktails. They’d ordered them an hour ago but Hitler had intervened.
‘How are the wedding plans?’ Guy didn’t care much, but he didn’t want to talk about the past.
‘Beginning of December. I won’t send you an invitation.’
‘I may be in foreign parts by then, anyway.’
‘Not with that dodgy heart of yours, darling. And anyway, I thought you’d had enough of abroad.’
‘You can never tell.’ He was always irritated when people reminded him of his infirmity, and especially if they mentioned the disaster in Africa. He shifted in his chair as if preparing to go.
Foxy laid a hand on his sleeve. ‘Not yet. There was something you were going to tell me.’ She settled comfortably back in her chair as if there wasn’t a war on. She was dressed in Schiaparelli, a faint green silk which looked almost white in the low light, accentuating the glorious red crown of her hair. A waft of something tantalising hung in the air.
‘It’s Edgar Brampton. He shot himself.’
‘Ed? I can’t believe it, Guy – why on earth? Where?’
‘In his office. Well, our office really.’
‘In the Palace? In Buckingham Palace?’
Guy shrugged. ‘I daresay if it comes to an inquest, which I very much doubt, he’ll have been found elsewhere. At home, perhaps. Or in a wood somewhere.’
‘This is ghastly, Guy!’
‘Yes, a dreadful shock – terrible. All I can say is I’m glad I wasn’t the one who had to tell Adelaide.’
She nodded. ‘It would have been awful for you, she’s such an old friend.’
‘I wonder how she’ll take it. Heaven knows why she married him, not her type at all.’
‘Wait a minute,’ said Foxy, suddenly grasping the significance of what he’d just told her. ‘What do you mean, he’ll have been found elsewhere?’
Guy shrugged. ‘A slight rearrangement is felt necessary.’