“It’s growing on me. I have had rather a long and trying day. I was having a drink and then I was about to have a hot bath. Will you join me?”
“In which? The drink or the hot bath?”
She poured a whisky and handed it to him and then poured one for herself. Niven seemed like someone who liked a good malt. Her father had. “Both, if you wish,” she said.
“You are continually full of surprises, Miss Kelling.”
“But I must warn you—I am not a virgin.”
“As I said, full of surprises.”
“I’m not a librarian either.”
Surprise!
It took Gwendolen some moments to realize that it was the insistent ringing of the doorbell that had woken her. She opened her eyes to daylight and a splitting headache and a stale stomach. It appeared that she had drunk herself into oblivion the previous evening and must have retired, not very gracefully, to bed in a stupor. Before coming to London she drank so little she may as well have signed the pledge. She wondered what the Misses Tate, Rogerson and Shaw would make of such alcoholic debauchery. Their idea of giddy indulgence was the “small sherry” that was drunk after closing time in the Library on Christmas Eve.
Debauchery! Her memory was unpleasantly revived by the prompt of the doorbell ringing again. Niven, dear God. Where was he? Not in the bed she leapt out of. No sign of him at all, in fact. No one else had slept in her bed, no one had stayed to make tea for her or bring in a tray of breakfast. No one had sullied the pink with their sex. Gwendolen herself seemed similarly untouched.
She reached for her dressing gown, not her felted woollen one that had seen her through the war and its aftermath but a lovely silk peignoir, courtesy of Liberty’s. It was a partner for the nightgown beneath it, silk garments fit for a bridal trousseau. Gwendolen had no intention of ever honeymooning but she didn’t see why she shouldn’t have the trousseau.
She paused on her way to answer the door and considered that nightgown. She had no memory of donning it last night. Nor of removing the blue sailor dress she had been wearing for her outing with Frobisher. She glanced round the bedroom—the dress was hanging neatly over the back of a chair. She was fairly sure that in the extremis of inebriation she wouldn’t have bothered to fold her clothes. What had occurred between her and Niven? What had she told him, in vino veritas? Nothing about Frobisher, she hoped.
The doorbell rang insistently.
She was expecting, at worst, Kitty, or, at best, Niven （although perhaps that should be the other way round）， but it was neither, it was the mother of both.
“Did I wake you?” Nellie said. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to surprise you. I just had some bits and pieces of business to do with the club to go over with you. Are you all right, Miss Kelling? You seem rather flustered.”
* * *
—
Nellie returned to the Bentley, parked outside the Crystal Cup, and ruminated quietly in the back while Hawker waited patiently for instructions. Some days there was no point in rushing her.
Gwendolen Kelling, en déshabillé, a French term Nellie rather liked, although not one she had learnt in her convent school. It was thanks to Landor that she knew Niven had turned up at Gwendolen Kelling’s flat at midnight and had not left until three in the morning. Nellie didn’t need to guess what had gone on. But Niven, of all people, what was he playing at? First Maddox and Edith making an unlikely pairing and now Gwendolen Kelling and Niven. Were all her children betraying her, one by one?
Nellie liked to think that, thanks to Landor, she knew everything that Gwendolen Kelling did, everywhere she went. Yesterday, according to Landor, she had met with Frobisher in Paddington station. “The café,” he had reported.
“The Refreshment Rooms?” Nellie had met a man there once herself. You expected to be anonymous in a railway station but there was always someone.
They were planning a little outing in his car, Landor had said.
“It was Miss Kelling’s day off,” an imperturbable Nellie said. “I expect she felt like some fresh air.”
“They were very friendly,” Landor said. “Seemed close, seemed, you know…”
“I do,” Nellie said.
“Don’t know where Kelling and Frobisher went on their little outing, of course,” Landor said. “Would have to have a car of my own for that. Or borrow your Bentley.”
“In your dreams,” Nellie said.
“And then she comes back and spends the night with your boy.”