Chapter 1 #2
The lift boy gave him a wide-eyed, would-be innocent stare. “Musta misheard, mister. I was tellin’ the lady how me brother was laid off. Worked down on the waterfront, he did.”
It was obvious the man did not believe him. Daisy thought he might have pressed the issue if she had not been there. She did her best to look thoroughly respectable, and they reached the bottom with no further exchange. He strode off without a backward glance.
Stepping out, Daisy passed the untenanted reception desk and went on through to the lobby.
The floor was patterned in white, grey, black, and dried-blood-coloured marble, and grey marble lined the walls to waist height.
In every corner potted palms lurked unhappily, as de rigueur here as in London.
In this unlikely oasis, a fire flickered beneath a dark, ornately carved mantlepiece.
Against the wall on either side stood a stiff, uninviting bench of the same dark carved wood, with red and ivory striped upholstery.
The stripes reappeared on two armchairs and a small
sofa arranged in front of the fireplace around a low glasstopped table.
Matching stripes adorned the seats of the rather spindly wrought-iron chairs set out around several small, equally spindly tables.
Two of these pushed together were surrounded by a group of earnest-looking women and rather long-haired men.
Their clothes tended toward the flamboyant, the men with floppy, kaleidoscopic cravats in place of neckties, several of the women wearing corduroy trousers.
Daisy felt positively staid in her powder blue costume.
She had seen virtually identical gatherings in Chelsea—the London suburb, not the hotel—where she had lived before she married. They were discussing either the future course of serious literature or the malevolence of editors.
In Chelsea, such a group would have scorned afternoon tea as too bourgeois for words (their preferred drinks were beer or cheap sherry, depending on their pretensions), but here they all held teacups. In fact Daisy saw teapots on the tables, all occupied, on both sides of the lobby.
One young man sat on his own, on one of the stiff benches against the wall.
His teapot was perched on a side table, at an awkward height and distance, his cup and saucer balanced equally awkwardly in one hand, as if he wasn’t quite sure what to do with them.
He was soberly dressed in a dark, businesslike suit, his fair hair cropped short above studious horn-rimmed spectacles.
Three or four years younger than Daisy’s twenty-six, he appeared to be deliberately avoiding her eye.
Of course she would not have joined him even if invited, but she did wish she had someone to sit with.
She was a modern independent woman, she reminded herself. For years now she had looked after herself, having
concluded that absolutely anything was preferable to living with her mother in the Dower House, after her father died in the ’19 influenza pandemic.
Just because she was married now, had been married for a whole month, and her darling Alec was hundreds of miles away, it didn’t mean she could no longer take care of herself.
The only free place was the other bench, but as she resigned herself to it, a couple stood up to leave a table on the other side of the lobby, by the door to the little-used Ladies’ Sitting Room. Daisy was moving to take possession when a short, plump woman with untidy grey hair bustled up to her.
“Oh dear,” she said, “I do hope you don’t mind?” She looked up appealingly at Daisy over half-spectacles.
“Mind?” Daisy asked, bewildered.
The little lady waved the knitting she was carrying, a beautifully patterned baby’s jacket in pale yellow and white. The yellow and white yarn trailed behind her, Daisy noticed, back to the low table by the fire, on the far side of the lobby, where she had left her knitting bag.
“It’s my sister,” she confided. “Oh dear, so awkward, but she does like to know.”
“Know what?” Daisy asked cautiously.
“Oh dear, I’m muddling it as usual. My sister, Genevieve, insists on meeting everyone who comes to stay at the hotel. Do say you will?”
She looked a little reproachful when Daisy laughed, but brightened when Daisy said, “I’d be glad to. May I know your name?”
“Oh dear, I ought to have introduced myself first thing! I am Miss Cabot, Ernestine Cabot—Boston, you know—only a very junior branch.”
Why this obscure announcement should make Daisy think of fish she had no leisure to contemplate. Miss Cabot turned about, tangling her feet in her own yarn. She would have come to grief had not Kevin, playing truant from his lift, dashed over to prop her up.
“Happens reg’lar, once a week, like clockwork,” he murmured to Daisy.
Though no one else seemed to notice the minor imbroglio, the solitary young man must have been watching, for he also hurried to help. He stooped to unwind the wool, but Miss Cabot turned skittish.
“Oh dear … no, please … so kind, Mr. er-hm …”
“Lambert.”
“Mr … . I’m afraid … rather indelicate …”
Daisy gathered that female assistance would be appreciated. She disentangled the black lisle stocking-clad ankles while Miss Cabot twittered a series of oh dears above her.
Mr. Lambert offered a hand to help Daisy up, with an oddly assessing look as though he were comparing her face with some inner ideal. Wondering whether she passed muster, Daisy thanked him with a nod and a smile.
“You’re welcome, ma’am.” The words arrived with a whiff of Irish whiskey. Kevin’s business was apparently a going concern, and not all teapots contained tea.
Daisy collected the yarn where it hung down from Miss Cabot’s needles, intending to gather up the excess as she accompanied the old lady to meet her sister.
The length of yarn rose a foot or two from the floor just as the impatient man from the lift strode past in his purposeful way. It caught him across the shins.
He barged on, oblivious. The knitting flew from Miss
Cabot’s grasp and the knitting bag attached to the far end of the yarn flopped to the floor.
Lambert caught the man’s sleeve. “Say, look here, wait a minute!”
“You know something about it?” He turned eagerly. Daisy could have sworn his long nose twitched. “You’re willing to talk?”
His face bemused, Lambert blinked. “Talk? I can’t see there’s anything to talk about, buddy, except you might watch where you’re going.”
“Watch … ?” It was his turn to look blank; then he followed Lambert’s gesture to the yellow and white strands adorning his legs. Turning to Miss Cabot, he said sarcastically, “Ah, Madame Defarge strikes again.” His glance moved on to Daisy. “Another victim for Madame Guillotine, I see.”
His French pronunciation was rotten, Daisy noted, even as she wondered if the hackneyed reference to Dickens had any significance beyond its evident malice.
Miss Cabot bridled. “I’m sure I don’t know what you can mean.”
“I don’t suppose you do.” In an effort to disembarrass himself of the yarn, he stepped backwards. The wool clung to his tweeds. He bent down and snapped both strands. “Beware of entanglements with women, sonny,” he advised Lambert. “The only way out is a clean break.” And he strode on.
Lambert picked up the knitting, which had miraculously stayed on the needles. “Sorry, ma’am,” he said sheepishly, handing it to Miss Cabot. “Gee whiz, I guess there’s not much you can do about a guy like that.”
“Oh dear, I’m afraid manners are not what they were,” agreed Miss Cabot.
Stooping again, Lambert retrieved the two loose ends of yarn. Since he obviously had not the least notion what to do with them, Daisy relieved him of them and proceeded at Miss Cabot’s side, winding up the wool as they went.
Lambert moved ahead to pick up the knitting bag and replace it on the table. Any disposition to linger was firmly quashed by Miss Genevieve Cabot.
“Thank you, young man,” she said with a nod of unmistakable dismissal, and as he turned away, a trifle disconsolate, she added, “Not an interesting person.”
Mr. Lambert’s ears reddened.
“Guillotined,” thought Daisy, hoping she was not to meet the same fate.