“And who shall go with you?” asked Madame.
“I will go alone,” said Alvina, “unless you will come, Madame.”
“Alas no, I can’t. I can’t come. Will you really go alone?”
“Yes, I want to go to the women’s shops,” said Alvina.
“You want to! All right then! And you will come home at tea-time, yes?”
As soon as Alvina had gone out Ciccio put away his mandoline and lit a cigarette. Then after a while he hailed Geoffrey, and the two young men sallied forth. Alvina, emerging from a draper’s shop in Rotherhampton Broadway, found them loitering on the pavement outside. And they strolled along with her. So she went into a shop that sold ladies’ underwear, leaving them on the pavement. She stayed as long as she could. But there they were when she came out. They had endless lounging patience.
“I thought you would be gone on,” she said.
“No hurry,” said Ciccio, and he took away her parcels from her, as if he had a right. She wished he wouldn’t tilt the flap of his black hat over one eye, and she wished there wasn’t quite so much waist-line in the cut of his coat, and that he didn’t smoke cigarettes against the end of his nose in the street. But wishing wouldn’t alter him. He strayed alongside as if he half belonged, and half didn’t—most irritating.
She wasted as much time as possible in the shops, then they took the tram home again. Ciccio paid the three fares, laying his hand restrainingly on Gigi’s hand, when Gigi’s hand sought pence in his trouser pocket, and throwing his arm over his friend’s shoulder, in affectionate but vulgar triumph, when the fares were paid. Alvina was on her high horse.
They tried to talk to her, they tried to ingratiate themselves—but she wasn’t having any. She talked with icy pleasantness. And so the tea-time passed, and the time after tea. The performance went rather mechanically, at the theatre, and the supper at home, with bottled beer and boiled ham, was a conventionally cheerful affair. Even Madame was a little afraid of Alvina this evening.