Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh

Author:Evelyn Waugh
Language: zho
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
ISBN: 9780316926119
Publisher: 译林出版社
Published: 1930-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

VIII

TWO nights later Adam and Nina took Ginger to the party in the captive dirigible. It was not a really good evening. The long drive in Ginger’s car to the degraded suburb where the airship was moored chilled and depressed them, dissipating the gaiety which had flickered rather spasmodically over Ginger’s dinner.

The airship seemed to fill the whole field, tethered a few feet from the ground by innumerable cables over which they stumbled painfully on the way to the steps. These had been covered by a socially minded caterer with a strip of red carpet.

Inside the saloons were narrow and hot, communicating to each other by spiral staircases and metal alleys. There were protrusions at every corner, and Miss Runcible had made herself a mass of bruises in the first half hour. There was a band and a bar and all the same faces. It was the first time that a party was given in an airship.

Adam went aloft to a kind of terrace. Acres of inflated silk blotted out the sky, stirring just perceptibly in the breeze. The lights of other cars arriving lit up the uneven grass. A few louts had collected round the gates to jeer. There were two people making love to each other near him on the terrace, reclining on cushions. There was also a young woman he did not know, holding one of the stays and breathing heavily; evidently she felt unwell. One of the lovers lit a cigar and Adam observed that they were Mary Mouse and the Maharajah of Pukkapore.

Presently Nina joined him. “It seems such a waste,” she said, thinking of Mary and the Maharajah, “that two very rich people like that should fall in love with each other.”

“Nina,” said Adam, “let’s get married soon, don’t you think?”

“Yes, it’s a bore not being married.”

The young woman who felt ill passed by them, walking shakily, to try and find her coat and her young man to take her home.

“... I don’t know if it sounds absurd,” said Adam, “but I do feel that a marriage ought to go on—for quite a long time, I mean. D’you feel that too, at all?”

“Yes, it’s one of the things about a marriage!”

“I’m glad you feel that. I didn’t quite know if you did. Otherwise it’s all rather bogus, isn’t it?”

“I think you ought to go and see papa again,” said Nina. “It’s never any good writing. Go and tell him that you’ve got a job and are terribly rich and that we’re going to be married before Christmas!”

“All right. I’ll do that.”

“. . . D’you remember last month we arranged for you to go and see him the first time? . . . just like this ... it was at Archie Schwert’s party . . .”

“Oh, Nina, what a lot of parties.”

(. . . Masked parties, Savage parties, Victorian parties, Greek parties, Wild West parties, Russian parties, Circus parties, parties where one had to dress as somebody else, almost naked parties in St. John’s Wood,

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