Free Curtain Call by Anthony Quinn Page B

The street lamps were casting daubs of yolky light on the cafe window before she realised it had gone seven o’clock. Mr Astill noticed her glancing at his wristwatch.
    â€˜Well, you’ve turned down a cup of tea, and you’ve turned down my cigarettes. Will it be third time lucky if I ask you to dinner?’
    â€˜Oh, no, really –’
    â€˜Come on, Madeleine. You look half starved.’ He gave her a comical pleading look. ‘I mean, you wouldn’t want to hurt a chap’s feelings, now . . .’
    She replied, with a pained little smile, ‘I don’t want to hurt
anyone’s
feelings.’
    â€˜Well, then!’ he cried, giving the table a triumphant smack, as if the matter were decided. ‘On with that coat, and we’ll put our best foot forward.’
    She could think of no reason to decline. He was probably right about her looking starved – she had been skimping on meals of late, desperate to make economies. She could do with a proper feed. And the company was far from disagreeable; he was not quite as smooth as he pretended to be, which she liked. It wasn’t his cigarette case or the name-dropping that impressed her, but the endearing way he had conceded her right to tell him to ‘buzz off’. Out on the street he crooked his arm in invitation, and she took it. They walked a little way up High Holborn before he stopped at a car, dark green and open-topped with a huge gleaming grille that made it look important. He was hovering about it proprietorially, and she blinked.
    â€˜Is this –
yours
?’
    He laughed as he unlocked the passenger door. ‘What, you think I’m a car thief?’ Any lingering suspicion that he was just ‘talk’ fell away, and she hesitated again.
    â€˜Mr Astill, I’m not sure –’
    â€˜It’s Roddy, please. Hop in, would you? – that dinner’s not going to eat itself!’
    He drove them into Soho and parked in a side street with the air of someone who might have owned the place. They ate at an Italian restaurant where the staff all knew him, and with the veal saltimbocca they drank a heavy plum-coloured wine, very different from the sort she used to sip after her aunt’s bridge evenings. Mr Astill – Roddy – did most of the talking, which she didn’t mind, though by the end of the night her head was swimming (the second bottle had come and gone) and she felt a bit of a fool as she stumbled on the way out. She worried he might try to take advantage of her when they were back in the car, but he played fair, and drove her home to Camden. Before she got out of the car he asked her if she would join him for another dinner, this Saturday.
    Madeleine woke the next morning with a dry mouth, a crashing headache and a memory of having agreed to meet again. She ought to have said no, she wasn’t sure why, though by the time Saturday came round she found herself excited at the thought of being taken out. When he called for her he looked pleased by the effort she had made: she was wearing her one good dress, crêpe de Chine in navy with a cream trim, her other purchase (at a staff discount) from Diprose’s. It showed off her long legs, which she noticed him gazing at. This time he took her to a members’ club in Mayfair where they dined in the company of Roddy’s friends, most of them loud, good-looking types his own age, with a few older men he called – in a sly aside to her – ‘hangers-on’. She was astounded by their capacity for alcohol, the women as well as the men, and though she couldn’t keep up with that she joined them willingly enough in the dancing that followed at the next club. It was all very gay and exhilarating. Roddy, rarely straying from her side, made sure none of the younger chaps hogged her company, and once again drove her home through an unpeopled ash-grey dawn. ‘You can consider yourself one of the fast set