He thought of picking up a glass and throwing it at the upside-down bottles behind the bar, someone’s leftover slice of lemon flying through the air, glass splintering into the ashtrays and the ice-bucket, all that extra for them to clear up afterwards. He thought of walking away without another word, leaving the woman to make her peace with the pair behind the bar. Ridiculous they were, ridiculous not to have an aspirin somewhere.
‘It was brilliant, your theatre-bar idea,’ she said as they passed through the foyer. The audience’s laughter reached them, a single ripple, quietening at once. The box office was closed, a board propped up against its ornate brass bars. Outside, the posters for the play they hadn’t seen wildly proclaimed its virtues.
‘Well,’ he said, though without finality; uncertain, as in other ways he had seemed to be.
Yet surely she hadn’t been mistaken; surely he must have known also, and as soon as she had. She imagined him with one of his many cameras, skulking about the little streets of Hoxton. There was no reason why a photographer shouldn’t have an artistic temperament, which would account for his nerviness or whatever it was.
‘I don’t suppose,’ he said, ‘you’d have an aspirin?’
He had a toothache. She searched her handbag, for she sometimes had paracetamol.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, still rummaging.
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘It’s bad?’
He said he would survive. ‘I’ll try the Gents in L’Etape. Sometimes there’s a vending machine in a Gents.’
They fell into step. It wasn’t why he’d suggested L’Etape, he said. ‘It’s just that I felt it would be nice,’ he said. ‘A regretful dinner.’
When they came to a corner, he pointed up a narrower, less crowded street than the one they’d walked along. ‘It’s there,’ he said. ‘That blue light.’
Feeling sorry for him, she changed her mind.
The hat-check girl brought paracetamol to their table, since there wasn’t a vending machine in the Gents. Jeffrey thanked her, indicating with a gesture that he would tip her later. At a white grand piano a pianist in a plum-coloured jacket reached out occasionally for a concoction in a tall lemonade glass, not ceasing to play his Scott Joplin medley. A young French waiter brought menus and rolls. He made a recommendation but his English was incomprehensible. Jeffrey asked him to repeat what he’d said, but it was hopeless. Typical, that was, Jeffrey thought, ordering lamb, with peas and polenta.
‘I’m sorry about your toothache,’ she said.
‘It’ll go.’
The place was not quite full. Several tables, too close to the piano, were still unoccupied. Someone applauded when the pianist began a showy variation of ‘Mountain Greenery’. He threw his head about as he played, blond hair flopping.
‘Shall I order the wine?’ Jeffrey offered. ‘D’you mind?’ He never said beforehand that he intended not to pay. Better just to let it happen, he always thought.
‘No, of course I don’t mind,’ she said.
‘That’s kind of you.’ He felt better than he had all evening, in spite of the nagging in his lower jaw and that, he knew, would lessen when the paracetamol got going. It was always much better when they said yes to a regretful dinner, when the disappointment began to slip away. ‘We’ll have the Lamothe Bergeron,’ he ordered. ‘The ’95.’
She was aware that a woman at a distant table, in a corner where there were potted plants, kept glancing at her. The woman was with two men and another woman. She seemed faintly familiar; so did one of the men.
‘
‘Thank you.’
She liked the restaurant, the thirties’ style, the pale blue lighting, the white grand piano, the aproned waiters. She liked her escalope when she tasted it, and the heavily buttered spinach, the little out-of-season new potatoes. She liked the wine.
‘Not bad, this place,’ her companion said. ‘What d’you think?’
‘It’s lovely.’
They talked more easily than they had in the theatre bar and it was the theatre bar they spoke about, since it was their common ground. Odd, they’d agreed, that old barman had been; odd, too, that ‘barmaid’ should still be a common expression, implying in this case someone much younger, the word hanging on from another age.
‘Oh, really . . .’ she began when a second bottle of wine was suggested, and then she thought why not? They talked about the Bryanston Square Bureau, which was common ground too.
‘They muddle things up,’ he said. ‘They muddle people up. They get them wrong, with all their little boxes and their questionnaires.’
‘Yes, perhaps they do.’
The woman who’d kept glancing across the restaurant was listening to one of the men, who appeared to be telling a story. There was laughter when he finished. The second man lit a cigarette.
‘Heavens!’ Evelyn exclaimed, although she hadn’t meant to.
