Shrines of Gaiety

by Kate Atkinson

It was not so much the Cokers themselves Frobisher feared on Gwendolen’s behalf, it was that she might succumb to the temptations they offered.

It is ‘Mrs. Coker’ always. She likes the formalities. Quite a stickler for them, in fact.”

Frobisher wondered what it must feel like to tread so lightly in the world.

This was what happened, he realized with regret, when you were badly schooled in the art of small talk.

“No! I never flatter if I can help it,”

That had been their agreement, she said. Frobisher objected that he had no memory of any such agreement, and she said, “You must have a terrible memory, then.” So not flattery but coercion.

You give every impression of working for yourself.”

it was Lady Macbeth who said that, wasn’t it? And she was hardly a woman you should take advice from about the fairer sex.

A woman in her sixth decade, dressed in everyday drab, is more invisible than a librarian.

determined on upsetting the happy balance that existed between law-keepers and law-breakers.

The man was a dolt and Nellie felt sure that she could use him to turn the tables on Maddox. And the added bonus was that he actually was reporting back on Frobisher’s doings. What fools Maddox and his disciple were.

It was a surprisingly good word, Nellie thought. She was arranging.

The man popped up everywhere. She frowned at him. He was truly terrible at camouflage.

You could pick up a mercenary on any street corner in London, they were the dregs left behind by war, but Landor was special. He had no fear.

If the Pierrot hadn’t given up Maddox’s involvement under torture, you might almost think that Frobisher had somehow manipulated the entire fracas in order to introduce Gwendolen into their sphere.

Setting off back to Hanover Terrace, Nellie found herself quite buoyed up by all this deception. It was toothsome stuff.

Edith was not dead, of course. It would have been unfortunate, Nellie thought, to have fought so hard to save her eldest daughter only to have her taken away on account of greed.

It seemed that Edith had come down to the kitchen, looking for yet more food, at which point, the doctor reported, her blood pressure had dropped (“the stress on her stomach”) and she had fainted at the foot of the kitchen stairs, giving every indication that she had fallen down the staircase and broken her neck. The diagnosis of gluttony was a relief.

She could go for a walk along the promenade, venture out along the Pier and push Maud off the end, return her to the water.

She watched as Maud gathered her dripping silks and climbed in next to her. She would ruin the Bentley’s leather seats, Nellie thought.

Children were obligation enough without the added burden of friendship.

Reward and punishment, the stones on which Nellie had built both business and family.

“Well, you know we’re grateful for you taking Phyllis in,” Agnes said. “God knows what would have happened to her otherwise. Joined the police force, probably.”

Azzopardi wasn’t after her clubs, she understood now. He was after revenge.

Although he had proved himself an enormous asset—there were no limits to the depths he was prepared to go to—unfortunately, Maddox was beginning to suspect that he might also be a huge liability.

Oakes was becoming over-familiar, in Maddox’s opinion. He worried that the sergeant was starting to act on his own rather than following orders.

The crises were small (No face powder in the Ladies’!) and frequent (Champagne stocks running low! The club’s patrons drank an inordinate amount of champagne) and were as nothing compared to the challenge of trying to keep a dying man alive.

It seemed to amuse him how intent Gwendolen was on running an efficient ship.

It seemed wrong somehow to keep these ill-gotten gains, she had no need of money, and so yesterday she had returned to Regent Street for the first time since the “handbag incident,” as she now thought of it, and had quietly handed the money to the blind cornetist.

Gwendolen found herself shrinking from that word. It implied calumny. Treachery, even. And yet he was right, wasn’t he?

Was she really worth harpooning? She had corrupted Bow Street, he said. She corrupted everyone she came into contact with.

At a stretch, she could almost see Frobisher inside the tumbledown thatch, but she could not get Niven through the door. Or even the garden gate. She must stop comparing them, she chided herself. Frobisher never came out best, when really he should.

“Let’s not dwell on lives not lived, it won’t do any more.

this, she reminded herself, was a man who found Edward Thomas “elegiac” and possessed a dog called Pierrot, so perhaps was not the dry stick she kept taking him for.

They were all of them full of strength and youth, just as their doomed predecessors had once been. War was a foul thing. It should be sent back to hell where it had come from and never let out again.

Gwendolen was reminded somewhat incongruously of being in a Quaker meeting—she had attended them several times in York on her return from the war in an attempt to find solace or meaning, but had found neither.

I’m none of those things, Freda thought. I’m a girl.

in fact she need never go hungry again if she worked at the Amethyst because there was a little side room where the dance hostesses went when it was quiet (which was never) or when they couldn’t go on any longer without collapsing from exhaustion. A table was laid out with ham and cheese and cream crackers and jugs of water and a big pot of tea.

And yet, for all she knew, Florence might have already returned home, simply caught a train and gone back to York, no longer interested in London or Freda. The thought cheered Freda. All would be forgiven by the Ingrams, even the loss of the pearls and the little bluebird, and Florence would take up her life where she had left off.

Freda had quite convinced herself of this future for Florence and was already feeling annoyed with her for not having found a way to tell Freda that she was safely back in the bosom of her family.

“She’ll be feasted on in the Sphinx,” Betty said. “Like a lamb in a pack of wolves,” Shirley said. (Not a lamb, a girl.)

“I’m writing a novel,” he told her, as if that was something to crow about,

A chill ran though Freda. She couldn’t imagine Florence as a drug fiend. But then nor could she have imagined Florence disappearing into thin air.

It seemed Vanda was no longer in Grantham.

Joan had different gentleman friends from Vanda because she had what she referred to as “specialities.”

still maintaining her role as the protector of Freda’s innocence, not knowing that it had already been violated.

And if he got his skates on, he could do it first and everyone would think that Quinn’s novel was just a copycat—or an homage, which would be even better, really.

Ramsay envied Niven his certainty—he had Passchendaele at his back to give credence to his simmering outrage, whereas Ramsay had only a Swiss sanatorium and a burning desire to be acknowledged on a wider stage. Or any stage at all.

Strychnine, he imagined. Or arsenic. Cyanide, perhaps. They were all attractive words.

Quinn remained unruffled. It was difficult to insult him, he seemed to take everything as a compliment.