Page 394 - tender-is-the-night

was fragile, tubercular—it was incredible that such narrow
shoulders, such puny arms could bear aloft the pennon of
decadence, last ensign of the fading empire. Her resem-
blance was rather to one of John Held’s flat-chested flappers
than to the hierarchy of tall languid blondes who had posed
for painters and novelists since before the war.
Golding approached, fighting down the resonance of
his huge bulk, which transmitted his will as through a gar-
gantuan amplifier, and Nicole, still reluctant, yielded to his
reiterated points: that the Margin was starting for Cannes
immediately after dinner; that they could always pack in
some caviare and champagne, even though they had dined;
that in any case Dick was now on the phone, telling their
chauffeur in Nice to drive their car back to Cannes and
leave it in front of the Café des Alliées where the Divers
could retrieve it.
They moved into the dining salon and Dick was placed
next to Lady Sibly-Biers. Nicole saw that his usually ruddy
face was drained of blood; he talked in a dogmatic voice, of
which only snatches reached Nicole:
‘... It’s all right for you English, you’re doing a dance of
death... . Sepoys in the ruined fort, I mean Sepoys at the
gate and gaiety in the fort and all that. The green hat, the
crushed hat, no future.’
Lady Caroline answered him in short sentences spot-
ted with the terminal ‘What?’ the double-edged ‘Quite!’ the
depressing ‘Cheerio!’ that always had a connotation of im-
minent peril, but Dick appeared oblivious to the warning
signals. Suddenly he made a particularly vehement pro-

394 Tender is the Night