Night of Triumph Read Online Free Page B

Sternly resolving to leave
this place, and worrying that both their uniforms were going to get stained in some way, Peter marched back up the stairs and into the crush by the bar. ‘Jerusalem’ was now being played
on the piano, to a storm of whistling. He mambo-ed back round to their table, to discover the very same man again, seated with his back to him, and in intimate conversation with Hugh.
    ‘Ah, Peter,’ said Hugh cheerily, ‘this is Colin Erskine-Jones. A capital fellow I’ve just met.’
    Colin turned and rose to shake Peter’s hand. His manner had changed, perceptibly. The ingratiating manner had been removed; in its place was a smooth condescension.
    ‘We’ve not been introduced,’ he said, ambiguously.
    ‘How do you do?’ said Peter.
    Without replying directly to this, Colin turned back to Hugh.
    ‘Well, war work, you know,’ he said, evidently in answer to a previous question. ‘I actually volunteered for the ARP.’
    ‘Really?’ It was unusual for Hugh to appear surprised at anything, and Peter noted it.
    ‘Oh yes. Really.’
    ‘Clearing bomb damage and so forth?’
    ‘Quite. Some of the chaps used to come straight from the regular jobs, work all night, and then go back to the office the next day with never a wink of sleep.’
    ‘Marvellous. But wasn’t it frightfully dangerous?’
    ‘Oh, yes. But rewarding.’
    Colin accompanied this last remark with an enigmatic smile, that both men found supercilious.
    ‘Can I get you another?’
    ‘Oh now, Hugh, surely we have to push on, rather?’
    The extraordinary honour that had been conferred on them by this evening’s ‘chaperoning’ duty, and the necessity of not making a mess of things, pressed on Peter’s
mind.
    ‘Oh, Peter, don’t be a wet blanket. We’re in no great rush.’
    ‘It’s already twenty past.’
    ‘So you
do
have the time.’
    Simply to get away from Colin, Peter glumly volunteered to get three gins, threaded his way back to the bar, and made a fat and grimy tube with his coins while waiting to be served. A thin man
with a pink face – the colouring was, on closer inspection, caused by a widespread latticework of infinitesimally fine broken veins – listened to his order with a lizardly flick of his
eyes in Peter’s direction and then, without making any effort to pour out the drinks, resumed his conversation.
    ‘We mustn’t let our guard down. We mustn’t just slack off.’
    ‘Oh no.’
    ‘No.’
    ‘We have to continue the battle in the Far East. The Japanese.’
    ‘It makes my blood boil to think how they treated our chaps.’
    ‘We wouldn’t have treated
them
like that.’
    ‘Ah well, it’ll soon come. Victory in Japan. And then this will all be over.’
    ‘Victory in Japan ...’ murmured someone into his Guinness.
    ‘Victory in Japan,’ said someone else, raising his glass, as if proposing a toast.
    ‘Ah, yes. It’s a good life, you know, as long as you don’t weaken.’
    This was an unfortunate moment for Peter to feel slightly dizzy, and to slump against the bar. He should have had something more to eat before he came out. A good life if you didn’t
weaken? What on earth did that mean? In what sense did being strong make it a good life? How?
    ‘Shall I carry the gins for you?’ said the pink-faced man suddenly, and his open contempt, and that of his fellows, made Peter pull himself together and refuse the request. He still
did not quite understand that his uniform was triggering conversations about the war everywhere within earshot.
    Peter returned to his table, to find a girl on Hugh’s knee, talking to an older woman. Colin was in tears, having apparently broached the subject of what on earth he was going to do in
peacetime. It was a melancholy theme, and Peter was to discover that a good deal of that night’s merry-making was being indulged in all over London to avoid thinking about it.
    ‘The wine business is in an awful state, old chap.’ Colin had been a wine importer