Unconditional surrender by Evelyn Waugh Read Free Book Online Page A

aren’t going to the police or anything but I’ve got to refund the money – £250. It doesn’t sound much but I haven’t got it. So this afternoon I’ve been hawking furs around. They say no one’s buying them either, though I should have thought it’s just what everyone will want with winter coming on and no coal.’
    ‘I always envied your furs,’ said Kerstie.
    ‘Yours for £250.’
    ‘What’s the best offer you got?’
    ‘Believe it or not, £75.’
    ‘I happen to have a little money in the bank at the moment,’ said Kerstie thoughtfully. ‘I could go a bit higher than that.’
    ‘I need three times as much.’
    ‘You must have some other things left.’
    ‘All I possess in the world is downstairs in your hall.’
    ‘Let’s go through it, Virginia. You always had so many things. I’m sure we can find something. There’s that cigarette case you’re using now.’
    ‘It’s badly knocked about.’
    ‘But it was good once.’
    ‘Mr Troy, Cannes, 1936.’
    ‘I’m sure we can find enough to make up £250.’
    ‘Oh Kerstie, you are a comfort to a girl.’
    So the two of them, who had ‘come out’ the same year and led such different lives, the one so prodigal, the other so circumspect and sparing, spread out Virginia’s possessions over the grubby sofa and spent all that evening like gypsy hucksters examining and pricing those few surviving trophies of a decade of desirable womanhood, and in the end went off to bed comforted, each in her way, and contented with their traffic.
     
     
4
    GUY felt that he had been given a birthday present; the first for how many years? The card that had come popping out of the Electronic Personnel Selector bearing his name, like a ‘fortune’ from a seaside slot-machine, like a fortune indeed in a more real sense – the luck of the draw in a lottery or sweepstake – brought an unfamiliar stir of exhilaration, such as he had felt in his first days in the Halberdiers, in his first minutes on enemy soil at Dakar; a sense of liberation such as he had felt when he had handed over Apthorpe’s legacy to Chatty Corner and when he broke his long silence in the hospital in Alexandria. These had been the memorable occasions of his army life; all had been during the first two years of war; of late he had ceased to look for a renewal. Now there was hope. There was still a place for him somewhere outside the futile routine of HOO HQ.
    He came off duty at six and, at the Transit Camp, on an impulse, did what he had seldom done lately, changed into blue patrols. He then took the tube railway, where the refugees were already making up their beds, to Green Park Station and walked under the arcade of the Ritz towards St James’s Street and Bellamy’s. American soldiers leant against the walls every few paces hugging their drabs, and an American soldier of another kind greeted him in the front hall of the club.
    ‘Good evening, Loot.’
    ‘Are you going to Everard Spruce’s party?’
    ‘Haven’t been asked. Don’t know him really. I thought you were expected at the Glenobans’.’
    ‘I shall visit them later. First I am taking dinner with Ralph Brompton. But I thought I should look in on Everard on the way.’
    He returned to his task of letter writing at the table opposite Job’s box, which Guy had never before seen used.
    In the back hall Guy found Arthur Box-Bender.
    ‘Just slipped away from the House for a breather. Everything is going merrily on the eastern front.’
    ‘Merrily?’
    ‘Wait for the nine o’clock news. You’ll hear something then. Uncle Joe’s fairly got them on the run. I shouldn’t much care to be one of his prisoners.’
    By a natural connexion of thought Guy asked: ‘Have you heard from Tony?’
    Gloom descended on Box-Bender. ‘Yes, as a matter of fact, last week. He’s still got that tom-fool idea in his head about being a monk. He’ll snap out of it, I’m sure, as soon as he gets back to normal life, but it’s worrying. Angela