Shrines of Gaiety

by Kate Atkinson

“Touch of stomach flu, I expect,” said Edith, striking an offhand note, although her stomach was heaving from the lingering smell of herring. She would never tell him the truth. She would solve her problem without him ever knowing about it. If she didn’t, she would never be free of him.

She knew her worth to him and it was not founded on vanity.

Now, however, she understood that “interesting” was the last thing one should look for in a lover.

Although they had been fond of Girton, they had left their alma mater without a backward glance. Orpheus could have sent them in to rescue Eurydice from Hades.

Men were not unwelcome, but women often partnered each other—something that was not unusual in the wider world either, as the war had taken so many men from the dance floor and never returned them. There were clubs, Betty and Shirley knew, perhaps more secretive, where women went purposely for this kind of thing (they had no objection—women should stick together in their opinion),

It was their job to establish that all was as it should be every evening, that everyone was in place, that there was a sufficient float in the coffers, and then all they had to do was to wind the clubs up and let them go. Like automata.

It never ceased to surprise the Cokers how willing nightclub patrons were to pitch in behind the scenes. For the novelty of it, rather than altruism. They loved a disaster.

Ramsay stared at him, speechless. There was a secret door into the store cupboard? And no one had seen fit to tell him about the trick with the bar? What else didn’t he know? He was supposed to be in charge, for heaven’s sake.

He had so much dope in his veins that he was beginning to separate into several Ramsays, different notes on a scale where he had been one harmonious chord. He must stop reaching for an image, it was making him want to vomit.

His mother was a living ledger. Everything had a price. If she could have pawned her children, she would have done. (No, only Kitty, she said.)

His heart was pulsing very hard in his chest, an overwrought mechanism about to fail. Perhaps Niven had been right about the funny stuff.

The next time the man—or any man—offered to take her for a spin, she might very well go along just to see what happened.

Opening salvos from the enemy—arson, abduction and a raid. All attempted, all failed.

Azzopardi was trying to frighten her, whereas Maddox was trying to destroy her—or rather he was trying to destroy her business, which was much the same thing as far as Nellie was concerned. Maddox wanted the clubs, but Azzopardi seemed to be playing some kind of game with her. Nellie didn’t like games, there was always the chance that you could lose.

Sometimes he wished he was Catholic, absolution must be a great comfort.

On some (many) days, the house in Ealing seemed more like a sanatorium, their relationship resembling that of doctor and patient rather than man and wife.

hadn’t it simply been weakness when confronted with beauty? Lottie was beautiful. If she had been plain, would he have been drawn to her? It was an awkward question, but asked only of himself. She was as opaque as opal and they remained hopelessly unknowable to each other.

Frobisher should perhaps have realized that Lottie was a woman who was resistant to salvage. She had risen and fallen like the tide, but she seemed to favour the ebb rather than the flow.

He was content to go along with Azzopardi’s belief that they were going to take over Nellie’s empire.

If Niven stepped away now he would not be privy to Azzopardi’s intentions. He could save his mother or he could betray her. He liked to think that he was undecided, but in his heart he knew that blood would win. It always did for the Cokers.

he did sometimes harbour doubts about butchery. He had seen too much of it in the war. Better for a man to hunt down a deer with a bow and arrow, he thought, but he was hopelessly trapped by civilization.

He was all performance—an effeminate man pretending he wasn’t. It hardly mattered to Niven. His own brother was in that particular camp and he loved him no less for it. Did he love Ramsay? “Love” seemed an odd word in the context of his family.

He was a hawk waiting to swoop on his prey, Niven thought. He didn’t seem to understand that Nellie was no one’s prey.

that only gave him money, it didn’t give him vengeance. He didn’t really want Nellie’s clubs, they were simply a forfeit. For what was owed to him, for what she had taken from him.

To Freda it felt like a gift, whether it was or not.

Had there ever really been an audition?, she wondered. If there had, it certainly had not been for a play. She was so stupid! No mouse ever scampered into a baited trap more blithely.

To her surprise, Freda’s thoughts strayed unexpectedly to, and then landed and settled on, Margaret Clitherow, a Catholic martyr in York who had been pressed to death—she

She would have preferred to have been smothered by a front door, any front door, than the elephantine bulk of Owen Varley.

Freda summoned every last shred of strength and snapped her teeth onto her offender’s fleshy jowls, like a dog. And like a dog she hung on, even though she was gagging with disgust.

The war had made people hedonistic, and yet you would have thought it would have had the opposite effect, that people would be relieved to embrace the calm sobriety of peace. Frobisher had never understood the pursuit of pleasure as an end in itself.

It seemed she was determined on disintegration.

He was so pretentious he set Ramsay’s teeth on edge. Distaste jostled with envy in Ramsay’s breast. The green of envy triumphed.

The thing was, no matter how much Ramsay denied it, he and Quinn were friends, albeit the kind of friends who didn’t like each other much.

She had, she admitted, inadvertently let in several members of the Hackney Huns who had capered past her, camouflaged in fancy dress as a Pierrot troupe. Some members of the Huns had lately adopted fancy dress to infiltrate the many costume and masquerade parties that seemed to happen every night in London.

The Huns were clever, they tended to mingle anonymously amongst party guests, quietly relieving them of their valuables.

There were not only many “souvenirs” left over, but also plenty of men who had been taught by the Army how to use them.

Maquillage, she murmured to the mirror, such a lovely word for concealment.

The Amethyst seemed to consist of little more than people enjoying themselves. Or perhaps that was Frobisher’s idea of iniquity.

Gwendolen was no drinker but she felt an evening with William Cobb might require a certain amount of leavening.

Gwendolen had no idea what was in their drinks but they tasted as harmless as elderflower cordial.

To her surprise, she found that Cobb seemed to have come to the same conclusion—she had been abandoned!

She supposed she should try to help. After all, if there was one thing she knew about, it was gunshot wounds.

Some people were complete in themselves, as if born from the earth or the ocean, like some of the gods. Which was not a compliment. The gods were ruthlessly indifferent to humanity.

There had been camaraderie between them as they dealt with the wounded man. They had both seen worse.

They recognized her for the nurse she had been, as she had recognized them for the soldiers they once were.

even nightclubs needed a day of rest. “I don’t see why,” Nellie grumbled. “If the British Museum can be open on a Sunday, why can’t we?”

The Cokers were all heathens, although Nellie fully intended to be given extreme unction at the end in the hope that it would wipe the slate clean of her many sins.

“All the perfumes of Arabia,” Shirley said. “Will not sweeten her little hand?” “Do you think Ma has blood on her hands?”

“Wouldn’t put it past her,” Betty said. “Murder?” Kitty repeated. “Wouldn’t put anything past her.” “Murder?” Kitty said again, and would have repeated the word indefinitely

She was covered in blood. I thought of Medea.” “Did you?” “Or any of the Greeks really. They always end up drenched in blood.”