Free Night of Triumph by Peter Bradshaw

to the ground. A wave of bodies surged drunkenly from somewhere behind and to the right of her.
    Elizabeth screamed. She locked her elbows into her ribcage, clenched her fists in such a way as to bring her tensed wrists to her cheeks, and brought her knees up, in an awful parody of the
song. She thought she might be trampled half to death and many people stumbled over her, falling over themselves, and causing other people to fall over.
    No one offered to help her up, and no one asked if she was all right. They just kept jumping and stumbling over her: a continuous Becher’s Brook, scrambling and flailing overhead.
Elizabeth was able to get herself up on her elbows, and had rescued her bogus spectacles, resettling them on her nose. She shuffled along the ground on elbows and knees, and found herself
relatively in the clear, but when she tried to stand up, to her intense mortification and disgust, Elizabeth felt faint, and might easily have fallen back down again.
    ‘I say, are you all right?’
    There was a hand – actually, three or four fingertips – on her shoulder. Elizabeth looked up.
    An alert, amused young woman was looking down at her. She was wearing an unflattering, closely fitting chocolate brown suit, sensible brown shoes, and – even in this first instant,
Elizabeth could see this – rather too much makeup, which gave her kindly face a waxen look. Elizabeth did not reply at first, and nothing in her upbringing had schooled her in how to respond
to an unsolicited remark from a member of the public who was addressing her on the assumption of equal terms.
    ‘Are you all right?’ the woman repeated, and then said, with an indulgent chuckle, ‘One over the eight, is it? Well, we’re all at it, tonight!’
    Elizabeth was now stung, and rapidly got up.
    ‘I certainly am not drunk!’ she said hotly.
    Untroubled by her irritation, the woman continued in the same vein. She had perhaps heard the same declaration from drunks many times before.
    ‘Oh, all right then, all right. Let’s get you straightened out.’ With the stiffened, flattened palm of her hand, the woman then brushed the dirt off Elizabeth’s uniform;
about the grass stains, she could do nothing.
    ‘Is that everything?’ she asked, squinting at the fabric in the gloom. ‘I’m afraid I’ve gone and left my glasses at home, so I can’t quite see.’
    ‘Yes, I think that’s everything,’ said Elizabeth evenly. ‘Thank you.’
    Neither said anything for a moment, and although a gaggle of people near them were now doing a ‘hands, knees, and boomps-a-daisy’ dance that left them sprawled and giggling on the
ground, while one of them twanged on a banjo, the dense centre of the crowd seemed to have passed elsewhere. It was relatively quiet.
    ‘My name’s Katharine, by the way.’ Katharine stuck her hand directly out. Elizabeth shook it politely, wondering whether to give her real first name.
    ‘And you are ...?’
    ‘Lil,’ said Elizabeth, fudging the issue.
    ‘Right-o. What do you think of all this, then?’
    ‘Remarkable.’
    ‘Where are you stationed?’
    ‘Windsor. And you – civvy street, I suppose?’
    ‘Rather. I work in St James’s. Well, actually in Whitehall. I’m a secretary to – well, I shouldn’t say.’ Katharine looked a little flirtatious.
‘I’m actually secretary to some highups. I really shouldn’t say.’
    It occurred to Elizabeth to have some mild sport with this woman and her ‘highups’.
    ‘Really?’ she prompted, affecting wide-eyed admiration. ‘Who? Who d’you mean?’
    ‘Well, I work in
Downing Street
. And sometimes I take dictation from ...’
    ‘Gosh,’ said Elizabeth, ‘you don’t mean ...?’
    ‘I do!’ said Katharine. ‘Mr
Morrison!
He’s awfully nice.’
    ‘Jolly good,’ said Elizabeth, already feeling ashamed to have secretly mocked.
    ‘I say,’ Katharine then said, ‘I’m awfully sorry for saying you were tight. It’s absolutely plain that you aren’t.