The Twilight Hour by Elizabeth Wilson Page A

present, to invite them to sit down, so of course I had to. Alan kicked my ankle under the table. Mavor slumped on the banquette next to me.
    Gwendolen wove her way back from the ladies between the tables. Mavor stared at her as she sat down at the opposite end of the table, next to Colin. A strange, unpleasant smile twitched his rubbery lips and he half rose in what seemed a parody of good manners. ‘Lovely to see you, Gwendolen.’ She smiled back, a tight, tense smile. His fat fingers spread over his girlfriend’s shoulder and stretched towards the highest button as if they were thinking of undoing it, but his eyes swivelled biliously towards me.
    â€˜So you’re the little girl hitched up with Alan Wentworth. Finally settled down, has he?’ I knew all about Alan’s colourful past, and it didn’t bother me, not at all. I ignored the leering innuendo. I took out a cigarette. His hand shook as he lit it. ‘And still knocking round with Comrade Harris,’ he continued, speaking to me, but of course it was meant for them. He was looking at them all the time. ‘Wentworth never quite took the plunge, did he, just hung about on the edge of the pool, not quite daring to jump in. But Colin Harris – my God, it’s so true what they say about converts. He’s worse than St Paul. And the funny thing is, his road to Damascus was the Nazi Soviet Pact. My Party right or wrong. Just when anyone with any sense was getting out, he took it as the great test, the supreme test of loyalty. Since then, of course, I’ve become a rotten element .’ He sagged against the red velvet bench and laughed, but the laugh turned into a bubbling, heaving cough. Spittle sprayed. His poached-egg eyes watered. ‘What’s your assessment of Comrade Stalin? Think he’s the people’s hero, eh?’ As his voice rose I could feel the sweat under my arms. This was horrible. Mavor leant towards me, but the words were directed towards Colin. His thicket of red curls fell over his sweating forehead. He had bad breath and bad teeth. And then he spoke directly to Colin. ‘How are the comrades these days, old chap?’ And he smiled with insulting insistence.
    â€˜We’re making advances,’ said Colin, tight-lipped.
    Titus snorted. ‘ Making advances ! Advances on what? You make it sound like a seduction; making advances on the great British people. Or is it a military campaign? Advancing over difficult terrain, what,’ he said in a Blimpish accent.
    Colin should have laughed it off, but of course he didn’t. He scowled. ‘Things are obviously more difficult than they were during the war. There’s so much anti-Soviet propaganda now – everyone’s forgotten who really won the war. The reason we’re sitting here, y’know, is the battle of Stalingrad. The Yanks seem to think they won the war, but it was the Soviet Union that saved us.’
    â€˜I thought it was the Battle of Britain,’ said Hugh rather sharply.
    â€˜If you take my advice, old man …’ Titus leaned forwards in a distinctly hostile way. I wondered if he was ever sober. ‘If you take my advice, your lot should shut up about the Soviet bloody Union. There’s a lot more going on in Russia than we get to hear about, and even if there wasn’t, the Soviet Union is the Soviet Union and England is England, it is a different animal ,’ he said, with a drunken wiseacre nod, ‘and old Comrade Stalin will do what he thinks is good for him and possibly them, like he did with the Nazi Soviet Pact. Or have we forgotten all about that?’
    Hugh leaned forward. ‘Let’s leave politics out of it, Titus.’
    But Titus wouldn’t be shifted. ‘That’s precisely the problem. You can’t separate art and politics. You’d agree with that I think, Colin. Art is always political. The comrades are very hot on that. Unfortunately, the result is