Pantheon

Chapter Ten

London, later that same day

He checked himself in the mirror and was pleased with what he saw. He had never worn ‘white tie’ before and feared he would look like a two-bit Fred Astaire, but he found the whole get-up flattered him immensely. Back home no one outside Hollywood ever dressed like this, but these Brits knew what they were doing. Any man who wasn’t a cripple could look suave and dashing wearing tails.

He looked again at his invitation, printed on a card so stiff you could use it as a drinks tray. Dinner at the Russian Tea Room in South Kensington, 7.30 pm for 8 pm. And there was his own name, rendered in fancy, curly script, as if he were a regular earl or viscount.

Of course the invitation omitted the crucial information, about the host. Sure, there was a name of an individual, but that didn’t reveal the full picture. Keeping it vague was smart, given the nature of the gathering. And also exciting.

He checked his shoes: clean without being mirror-clean. One thing he was beginning to understand about these Brits: no time for those who tried too hard. ‘Amateur’ was an insult back home in the States, but here it was a compliment. An English gentleman gave the appearance that he regarded everything as a game. Anyone who was in earnest was automatically a bore.

Why, he asked himself again, had they invited him? The obvious answer was Anna. She had made him her… what was he exactly? An escort, a protege, a plaything? If that last was it, then he did not object. It was a privilege to be toyed with by such a woman. She was at least ten years older than him, far from beautiful, her features uneven, her nose positively crooked. But she was sexy. Her manner oozed sin and smoke. She made even the most mundane task a seduction; the way her fingers caressed the length of her cigarette-holder when lighting up, why, he had to look away. She would glance up, notice his embarrassment and rock her head back with lascivious laughter, showing her throat, her lips parted. The dresses she wore, the way the satin moved around her hips and ass, the cloud of perfume that hovered over her, carrying the whiff of afternoon sex…

So Anna was the obvious explanation. She would only have had to mention his name to her husband and that would have been enough. It wouldn’t be like that back home in the States of course. No husband could tolerate such behaviour in a wife, it would be too humiliating: most would give her a good beating. And the way she conducted herself in public, they would be quite within their rights. But this, Taylor Hastings was coming to realize, nine months to the day after he had arrived in London, was not the States. This was Europe. Different, more decadent standards applied.

Here it was quite possible to believe an adulterous wife would introduce her cuckolded husband to her lover and that, far from punishing the affair, the husband would regard the association as a recommendation. ‘Come on in, Taylor, old boy. I hear you’re engaged in bit of hanky-panky with my better half. Well, good for you, old chap. Only a thoroughly good egg would do that.’ Nine months in and he hoped he was getting the hang of how these guys spoke. The old lingo.

He stepped beyond the porch and into Cadogan Square. Still light, there was the smell of summer rain. Only a July shower, it had left the city smelling fresh rather than damp, as if it had been cleansed. He hailed a cab and asked for Fifty Harrington Road, Kensington, his voice further betraying his good mood.

‘What you got to be so cheerful about?’ the driver asked. ‘Don’t you know there’s a war on?’

Hastings mumbled something, the sound rather than the words doing the work of apology. The last thing he wanted was to get drawn into a mindless conversation with some British prole. He wanted to stay with this train of thought. He was enjoying the ride.

His dalliance with Anna — or, rather, her dalliance with him — only went so far as an explanation for tonight’s invitation. He knew the summons had not come solely on account of his sparkling dinner table wit and the quality of his conversation over brandy. (Less comfortably, he knew that Anna’s interest in him did not solely draw on the appeal of a former college football player in his twenties whose physique represented hard granite to her husband’s wrinkled prune.) He was young, no denying that. But he was not naive. He knew that he was expected at the Russian Tea Room because of his job.

Or rather his place of work. He had not yet confided the details of his duties to this circle, though he half-feared he had given Anna enough clues over the course of four months of pillow talk for her to have worked it out. Half-feared and half-hoped. The desire to impress her, especially when he knew that his reward might be some new and previously unimaginable delight in bed, was too hard to resist. Anyway she had sworn she would say nothing to her husband. ‘My lips are sealed,’ she had said, licking them as she said it, then rolling over as if to offer herself up to him.

Could he believe her? Did it matter? He stepped out of the taxi, the door held open for him by a doorman, successfully avoiding the small puddle that had collected just in front of the sidewalk, and swept inside, his head up and his shoulders back, handing his hat and coat to the second man inside. He announced the name of his host with pleasure, gratified by the nod of recognition the name prompted. He let himself be led up the staircase, noting the portraits of assorted Russian aristocrats, most of whom he guessed had lost their heads to the Bolsheviks, then followed as the butler turned and headed down one thickly-carpeted corridor and through a heavy door.

On the other side stood what he estimated were two dozen gentlemen dressed, as he was, in white tie, around a table laden with silver, china and crystal, apparently set for a feast. He wondered what his censorious cab driver would make of this little scene, where there was not a ration book in sight. Don’t you know there’s a war on?

He checked his watch, worried that he had arrived too late. But his host, standing at the head of the table moved fast to dispel any anxiety. ‘Ah, Hastings, perfect timing. We’re just about to drink a toast. Come on someone, give the man a glass! That’s it. All right then.’ He raised his flute of champagne, so that it caught the light from the candles and even the glow of his white hair. ‘To the Right Club!’

The other twenty-odd men, each standing behind his chair at the table, echoed the words back, full and hearty. None heartier or more enthusiastic than the young American in their midst who felt the uniquely delicious joy of the man who had arrived. He could hear his own voice in among the chorus as he too chanted, ‘To the Right Club!’