“The feller’s cut me out,” commented Gaymer with humorous solemnity. “The next one, then?”
“Didn’t you ask me to find your car after that?,” Eric enquired.
“’Better go somewhere where I am wanted,” muttered Gaymer. “No objection to my asking, was there? ’Hate to give offence, you know. Nod as good as a wink, you know. Pardon granted as soon as asked?”
As they drove back to Loring House, Amy thanked Eric for his intervention.
“I’m afraid Johnny’s rather deteriorated since the war,” she mused. “He was always rather wild, but he never used to be rowdy. There was quite an unpleasantness at Kathleen Knightrider’s last week; I believe she had to ask him to go... If he’d only drink less....”
When Eric arrived at Queen Anne’s Gate the following week, he found that Lady John had conscientiously assembled a novelist and war-poet to keep him in countenance; the “friends from America” were represented by Sir Matthew and Lady Woodstock, an attaché from the embassy, David O’Rane, his wife and Sir Matthew’s former secretary. After that she seemed to have surrendered to her new family by inviting the Duchess of Ross, Amy Loring and Phyllis Knightrider; and, when Eric entered the drawing-room, she cut short her welcome to tell the butler that Captain Gaymer had asked whether he might dine and to order another cover to be laid. The dinner promised to be peaceful and proved so dull that Eric had to invent an excuse for leaving early: he had now sketched the ground-plan of a new play and, though he could as yet feel no enthusiasm for it, he conscientiously tried to recover his old habit of regular work.
“If you’ll wait till half-past ten, we’ll drop you,” volunteered Gaymer. “Ivy and I are going to a dance of sorts, and I’ve chartered a taxi for the night.”
Eric remembered that it was raining, when he arrived, and decided that his vague distaste for Gaymer’s society was weaker than his dislike of wet pavements.
“It’s very good of you,” he answered. “A taxi for the night sounds luxurious.”
“Necessary,” answered Gaymer. “Can’t be bothered to fight for the beastly things or walk home at three in the morning. I can do without everything except personal comforts. This fellow’s been ticking up tuppences ever since Armistice Day; I suppose he’ll have to be paid some time... ’Wonder if Amy’d like a lift.”