Night Shall Overtake Us by Kate Saunders

Author:Kate Saunders
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781446494394
Publisher: Random House

Eight

EXTRA!!!! EXTRA!!!

READ ALL ABOUT IT.

A PARTY TO CELEBRATE THE END OF

CIVILIZATION,

TO WHICH ALL

VORTICISTS

HEATHEN CLOWNS

GRAVE BOOTH ANIMALS

CYNICAL ATHLETES

AND NEUTRAL COUNTRIES

ARE INVITED

AT 16 TORRINGTON SQUARE,

4 AUGUST 1914.

NEWSPAPER HATS WILL BE WORN. ALCOHOL

WILL BE CONSUMED.

THIS ULTIMATUM TO TAKE EFFECT AT 9 P.M.

AFTER WHICH A STATE OF INTOXICATION WILL

EXIST IN EUROPE.

OVER THE DOOR of the studio, someone had tacked up the latest editions of the papers, with news of the invasion of Belgium and Britain’s ultimatum to the Kaiser, and painted across it: ‘Welcome to the Brink of the Vortex’.

Rory, Jenny and Francesca had to fight their way into the packed room. The babel of conversation almost drowned the din of two rival gramophones, pounding out different pieces of ragtime. Rory wore a scarlet gypsy blouse embroidered in green, and a loose skirt made even more shapeless by the wine bottles in her pockets. Jenny and Francesca were in evening dress. They all wore cocked hats made from that morning’s Daily Mail.

Francesca grabbed the back of Rory’s skirt. ‘Oh, I shouldn’t have come! I should have stayed with Eleanor!’ She was pink-cheeked and giggling because Rory had made her drink two glasses of wine before getting into the taxi.

The studio looked like a sea of bobbing paper boats. The more artistic souls had folded their newspaper hats into intricate fans and peacock-tails. One of the models was dressed entirely in a tabard of Late Extras.

‘Hello, girls.’ Tertius squeezed through the crush to meet them. ‘Glad you could come.’

Tertius and Quince were wearing chamber pots, covered with newspaper and adorned with papier-mâché German spikes. Tertius had painted a huge Kaiser Wilhelm moustache on his upper lip, and he left smears of burnt cork on the girls’ cheeks when he kissed them.

‘What an appallingly frivolous occasion,’ Jenny said, with mock severity.

‘We’ve decided it’s going to be an appallingly frivolous war,’ said Tertius. He put an arm around Francesca’s waist. ‘Don’t you run away and hide from us, aroon. I’ll take care of you.’

‘Oh, Tertius, promise you won’t leave me –’ Francesca was helpless with laughter. ‘I’m so frightened of that lady with no clothes on!’

Rory pushed her way to the corner where Aubrey Russell, in white tie and tails and incongruously drinking stout straight from the bottle, was holding forth to a group of homosexual friends.

‘It’s the triumph of the Philistines. Culture will simply perish overnight. You should have heard the overfed brutes at my club today – positively blaming the war on suffragettes and vorticists and striking workers, and drooling at the idea of slaughtering the lot, the fat fools –’ His face cleared as Rory embraced him. ‘My darling girl. What a horrendous blouse.’

‘Is Fingal here?’

‘I’m afraid so. I tried to make him stay at home, but he never listens to me.’ He pointed to the opposite corner where Fingal was entertaining three authentic, and very drunk, soldiers. ‘And now that he has found Thomas Atkins, I doubt if wild horses will drag him away.’

There was laughter from the group around him.

‘You’ll have to put him on a leash the minute the ultimatum expires at eleven o’clock,’ one man said.

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