Night of Triumph by Peter Bradshaw

couples once more.
    ‘Mm.’
    ‘One has nobody to kiss oneself.’
    ‘No.’
    ‘When are you next going to see your chap, Lil?’
    ‘Oh, I’m not sure.’
    ‘One feels that one is jolly well in danger of getting out of practice!’
    ‘Ha!’
    ‘One shouldn’t like to get out of practice.’
    ‘Rather not.’
    ‘Well, one jolly well isn’t going to be left out of things. One wants to be in practice, after all.’
    Before Elizabeth knew what was happening, Katharine moved around to stand in front of her and placed her hands on Elizabeth’s shoulders, as if positioning her for a photograph. Then she
placed her hands, gently but firmly as before, on Elizabeth’s hips, leaned in and kissed her on the mouth. Elizabeth felt Katharine’s forehead pressing against her spectacles; she could
smell Katharine’s pepperminty breath and the flicker of her tongue. She had a funny, fluttery feeling in her stomach. After a while, Katharine broke away, and keeping an arm around
Elizabeth’s waist she swung around to survey the scene once more.
    ‘Ah, Lil,’ she said dreamily, somehow addressing both her and those heedless couples that Elizabeth could now see everywhere. ‘What a night! What a pity neither of us has got
anyone to kiss. But there we are. One has to bear up. Ours is not to reason why, and so on. Don’t you think?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Well, there’s no point in hanging around here. The time is getting on. Let’s go and get a proper drink. What do you say?’
    ‘Well, I don’t know.’
    ‘Oh, go on,’ said Katharine, pushing out her lower lip in a pouty expression. ‘Be a pal.’

Seven
    What shall we do with the drunken sailor?
    What shall we do with the drunken sailor?
    What shall we do with the drunken sailor – early in the morning?
    Ooo-ay and UP she rises!
    Peter felt his body touch the ground, hard enough for his spine to be jarred on a discarded tin can, before the crowd, holding the tarpaulin on which he was being tossed,
wrenched it taut and hoisted it again so that he was hurled upwards. At ground level, he was able to glimpse Hugh’s smile, amused and alarmed in a ratio of three to one, and Margaret’s
fixed smirk.
    They had only been part of the conga line for a minute or so before the Princess had become very bored, and then fascinated by a crowd of men nearby who were throwing people up in the air,
really quite high, in what looked like some sort of cloth or blanket.
    ‘Oooh, look!’ she had shouted. ‘I want to have a turn!’ She detached herself from the line and so, quickly, did her two protectors, each assuming the other was keeping an
eye on Elizabeth.
    ‘Oh, let’s have a go!’ she had called to them, her eyes unnaturally bright with mischief and excitement. ‘Oh, do let’s!’
    She ran over and started talking to one of the men, who was just letting someone free from the tossing: a middle-aged woman, slightly tearful but forcing herself to laugh good-naturedly,
revealing that the thing was much more of an ordeal than she had anticipated. Margaret was showing every sign of wanting to be next.
    ‘Your Royal—’ said Hugh urgently, and corrected himself, ‘Your Roy— You real— You really shouldn’t do this, please. I’m sorry—’ Hugh
made a bland, ingratiatingly good-sport gesture to the crowd, who were inching closer. ‘I’m sorry, we really have to get on.
Please
.’
    Margaret turned to him, highly displeased. She put her hands on her hips and glanced past him – perhaps taking in, as Hugh now realised, Elizabeth’s continued attachment to the conga
line. How
would
they re-insert themselves into that conga line, come to think of it?
    There were cries of ‘Come on’ and ‘Be a sport’ from the men, all in civilian clothes. Some had shirts off; they had tied them around their waists like schoolboys,
standing there in their vests, and with a tiny, fastidious shudder, Hugh registered the prominence of their chest and armpit hair.
    ‘I think it