The Sugared Game - K.J. Charles Page 0,4
a tiny nod.
He wasn’t sure where the facilities were, so he headed towards the back of the building. It was crowded, and very noisy. He weaved his way through the crowd, glanced around involuntarily as someone shrieked in his ear, and almost walked into one of the horribly-jacketed waiters. The man uttered a muffled curse and staggered back, grabbing at his salver to prevent the bottles on it from going flying.
“Sorry!” Will said. “I’m awfully sorry, that was my— Sir?”
The waiter’s eyes snapped to his. They stared at one another with horrified recognition.
“Good God,” the waiter said. “Darling? I mean, I beg your pardon, sir.”
“Don’t.” Will had no idea what else to say, because the man in front of him, weary-eyed in his garish coat, was Lieutenant Michael Beaumont, who he had served with in Flanders.
He’d been a friendly young soul when he arrived in the trenches in ’16, as naive as any other boy fresh from public school, but not too proud to learn from hardened men like Will, who was older by two years on paper and, by then, about two decades in experience. Beaumont had made a reasonable fist of things, and been a good fellow as brass went. But he was still an officer, a giver of orders, of a different class to the enlisted men. And here he was now, working as a waiter while Will drank champagne.
He wanted to say What happened?, but he could doubtless guess. Times were hard, jobs were scarce, land taxes and death duties had hit the upper classes to shattering effect. You heard stories of men getting into taxis driven by their old commanding officers, or going to a West End theatre for a night out and seeing them dancing on the stage. This was the first such encounter for Will, and he felt embarrassed on Beaumont’s behalf and his own.
Beaumont gave him a brief, awkward smile. “You look well.”
“Thanks. Yes. I, uh, I have my own business now.”
“Congratulations.”
Will scrabbled for something polite to say in return. “Have you been working here long?”
“A year or so. Needs must.”
“It’s rotten finding anything these days. I had a devil of a time before I got my shop.”
“You look prosperous enough.” Beaumont winced, as if he’d realised that sounded ungracious. “Which is jolly good. Look, I must dash, old chap—sir. The customers want their fizz.”
“Wait. Can you stop for a drink?”
“More than my job’s worth, I’m afraid. I can’t just stand around and chat.”
“How about lunch?”
Beaumont blinked. Will would have blinked in his position. He hadn’t been a how about lunch? sort of man back in the trenches; he’d have suggested a pint, if anything, but probably he wouldn’t even have thought of asking because Beaumont had been his superior. This was what mixing with the upper classes did to you.
“Well,” Beaumont said. “Yes, why not?”
They quickly fixed up a time, choosing dinner rather than lunch because of Beaumont’s peculiar schedule, and he went off with his silver salver laden with bottles. All champagne, Will noted, and the club charged thirty shillings for a bottle of the sweet, tinny stuff that couldn’t have cost them ten. Nice work if you could get it.
He made his way to the gentlemen’s facilities. The band had struck up again when he returned, and Maisie was dancing with a very youthful-looking man. Will didn’t feel quite like finding another girl; he was uncomfortable and self-conscious knowing his old officer was heaving trays around, pouring champagne for other people. He filled his glass and watched for a while, then decided to head up the stairs for a nosey around the balconies.
He went up at a leisurely sort of pace. The lower balcony was busy with chattering groups, except for a clear space between the staircase and the door of the office room. The tables up here were swanky marble-topped ones, heavier than the flimsy things downstairs, presumably in order that people didn’t move them around. Will carried on up to the higher balcony.
This was a lot less crowded, and a lot of the conversations up here seemed to happen with heads together. It looked to be where Maisie’s desperate characters gathered: there were some obvious tough customers, including a group in flash check suits talking louder than they needed to, much as if inviting other people to be annoyed by them.
Will took an empty table and sat down with his champagne to watch. The flash lot laughed raucously. A smarmy-looking bloke at the far end of the