After the Cabaret by Hilary Bailey Page B

never suggested this. His own room was, he felt, too dismal for this proud man, this man of good taste, to visit.
    Outside the pub Bruno said to Greg, ‘Next time I’ll tell you about Sally’s engagement.’

Chapter 18
    Wandering among the stalls at Covent Garden Bruno muttered, ‘Well, there’s nothing here. Everything – even the area – fake. It’s attractive, though, but of course it’s a film set. Do you like it?’ he asked.
    â€˜Well, I do,’ said Greg. ‘But I’m an American. It looks real to me.’ He gazed at the arcades and across the piazza to an old building.
    â€˜It’s thinking back, I suppose, to London as it was then, black, covered in soot and, of course, in nineteen forty full of bomb-sites covered in rubble and people walking to work through broken water mains and piles of bricks, carrying gas masks. Well, they took out the gas masks and used the boxes for carrying sandwiches and makeup most of the time. This area was no pretty sight then,’ he said, reminiscently. ‘Too close to the river, I think. And there was something a little raffish about it, perhaps.’
    â€˜Strange at night, in the darkness,’ Greg said.
    â€˜Yes,’ Bruno said, obviously remembering.
    â€˜Sally’s marriage?’ prompted Greg.
    They found a bench and sat down. ‘It wasn’t a marriage,’ Bruno said, ‘just an engagement that should not have happened, I suppose. Sally was rather lonely, in some ways. Theo Fitzpatrick having played his part, allegedly, in Norway was now said to be being a hero elsewhere – there were stories about that later, but never mind. So Sally began a whirlwind affair with the brave flier Ralph Hodd. He was brave, there was no doubt of that. He flew in Spitfires throughout the battle of Britain. He’d survived, but he’d seen two-thirds of his squadron killed. When Sally came into his life it was like a blessing – he fell head over heels in love.
    â€˜It took three weeks in all, and then Sally and he left for Hodd Hall, the family home, in Northumberland. Cold as a tomb, Briggs said. He’d been there. But he was delighted to see her go. He gave a huge party the night she left.
    â€˜It wasn’t to be, of course,’ Bruno said with a sardonic grin. ‘Could you imagine Sally as the lady of Hodd, presiding over a gloomy mansion in the far north – no, it was impossible.
    â€˜I was sorry for Ralph Hodd during the time he spent with Sally at Pontifex Street. Although he was a well-born landowner they treated him as badly as me – because he was straightforward and the Pontifex Street residents were tricky. He was no more than intelligent – perhaps less – and they, in their way, were brilliant. He was a flier, they were desk-bound. He was open, they were like icebergs, nine-tenths below the surface.
    â€˜Ralph Hodd was only twenty-four. When he finisheduniversity he took over at Hodd from his father, who had been a sick man since he had been gassed in the Great War. Then the second war started and Ralph joined the RAF as a pilot. Then came a year of constant demands on nerve and stamina. It didn’t show on the surface, except sometimes in his eyes. He was quite conventional and would say things like, “These working classes are the salt of the earth,” meaning his ground crew.
    â€˜One evening he came downstairs into La Vie with Sally to find two young soldiers having an argument. Suddenly one picked up a bottle and hit the other over the head with it. He stood there with blood running down his face. Hodd said, “Crikey!” What sort of word is that? It goes with buns and ginger beer. I don’t know – and I don’t know what Sally saw in him. Of course, after that he dashed in and helped with the injuries, tried to sort out the quarrel.’
    â€˜Perhaps that was what she liked,’ Greg suggested.
    â€˜Well,