Читать книгу Gone With the Windsors - Laurie Graham - Страница 44

Lunch with Pips, who had invited along Ethel Croker, as she put it, “to help us join up a few more dots in Minnehaha’s Chinese period.”

Ethel’s nice. Overdressed and hair an unhappy shade of brass, but very sweet and chatty. Ethel was in Panama, waiting for a transport to Hong Kong. When she joined the ship, they berthed her with Wally, and they became friends.

She said, “God knows, you needed a friend. It was hell in a sardine can. Heat and storms and doughboys fighting with knives. Five weeks of it.”

She and Wally both got Navy quarters on Kowloon when they arrived.

She said, “She did try with Win Spencer, you know? She really did. I don’t know why, because he was a bastard. If I’d been her, I’d have left him. But then he left her, added insult to injury. She went off the deep end a bit after that. Man crazy. And travel crazy. I went with her on a trip to Shanghai, to take her mind off Win, but I couldn’t keep pace with her. I was a married woman, you know? There was a lot of talk about Wally. Still, it’s all a long time ago now.”

Ethel’s made a good marriage with Boss Croker. They say he’s Mr. Frozen Fish.

She said, “It’d be nice to catch up with Wally again. He seems all right, the new husband? A bit serious, but he doesn’t look like a drinker. I’ll bet he doesn’t hit her.”

Poor Wally. No wonder she grabbed Ernest when he came along.

She’s still a man short for Tuesday’s dinner. Pips says the obvious solution is to drop a lone woman, the prime candidate being me. She predicts Wally will ask me to fall on my sword, but I shall absolutely refuse. Given my outlay on guest towels from Liberty, the very least I’m owed is dinner with the fabled Lady Furness. If the situation is desperate, I’ll suggest George Lightfoot. He seemed to me the kind of man who could fit in anywhere.