Hangover Square by Patrick Hamilton

bedroom, and he followed her in there. She sat in front of her mirror making up her mouth. He didn’t think it advisable to mention the fact that she was three-quarters of an hour late, and when she herself did so, with ‘I’m late – aren’t I?’ he passed it off with ‘Oh yes – I did look in’, and nothing more was said about it.
    She spoke to him, or rather answered him, fairly politely – but it was obvious that she was still in one of those moods when she couldn’t stand him at any price, and that she would let him know as much before the evening was finished.

Chapter Two
    She was wearing her navy blue coat and skirt over a scarlet silk blouse. She was, in fact, in her ‘best’ clothes and she was making herself up with more care than usual, certainly more than she usually showed when she went out with him.
    He knew, why this was – it was because he was taking her to Perrier’s. That was the lovely part about it – she was a wonderful little snob at heart. Although it was convenient for her to act this free-and-easy Earl’s Court life – irregular, unpunctual, self-consciously ‘broke’, unconventional – she really liked the other things, good clothes, ‘smart’ places and people, snob restaurants. She no doubt thought Perrier’s was ‘smart’. She wouldn’t be coming out with him, of course, unless he was taking her to Perrier’s. She had seen to that last night.
    He realized, in a resigned way, that this navy blue coat and skirt thing with the red blouse underneath, was the most heavenly thing he had ever seen her in. But then, of course, it wasn’t, either – there was that consolation. Everything she wore, at any time, was the most heavenly thing she could possibly be wearing. To make comparisons was like saying that daffodils in a wood were lovelier than roses in a garden, or that violets in the rain were lovelier than primroses in the evening… All the same, what she was wearing now still remained the most heavenly apparel she could have put on. She was daffodils and roses, and violets and primroses, in a wood, in a garden, in the rain, in the evening, all the time and in every mood or garb. He didn’t dare to look at her and think about it: he had to look at her without thinking about it. He could do that nowadays. It gave him a sort of vague backward look in the eyes.
    He believed she had had her hair done too. Freshly clean, dry and crisp, it came flowing away from her lovely, serene, yet bad-tempered forehead down low on to her neck behind, in simple, gracious, voluminous lines.
    Was this in honour of Perrier’s too?
    When she had finished making up, she went into the sitting-roomto change her shoes, and he followed her. He was always following her, like her shadow, like a dog. She offered him a drink: she had some gin and French, and she told him where to find the bottles and the glasses. He made up the drinks on the mantelpiece, and she went into the bedroom again. When she came out the drinks were ready, and she came and stood at the mantelpiece drinking them with him.
    He felt he ought to be very happy. He was getting his ten pounds’ worth all right, if only in being alone with her like this for a few minutes, if only in shutting out Peter and Mickey, if only in participating in her private life, for however brief a period, while others were not participating in it.
    But he was not happy because she was not paying the slightest attention to him; and he was not even now participating in her life. He noticed how every now and again she glanced at herself surreptitiously in the glass. She did not often look into the glass at herself like that, and it told him everything. It told him that this evening she had given him was for a definite purpose, and that purpose was, for some extraordinary reason, Perrier’s. He was of no more importance, had no more significance, than the taxi which would take them there.
    He sometimes marvelled at the way she never said ‘Thank you’