Page 22 of Blueprints, Battlelines and Ballrooms
‘I wanted to explain.Why I left you last night.’She lowered herself into the leather.
A bellicose laugh rose from the table of gents, and the rest of the group soon joined in.Johannes bent across the table so he could hear her better.
‘When I was with George, I was very much in love.But sometimes he… he wandered.And I know he still cared about me.I just couldn’t be what he needed.’
Sharp indignity stabbed him in the stomach.‘I wouldn’t do that to you,’ he snapped, the gin making him churlish.
‘You say that now.’Florence ran her fingers over the table edge.‘But you would.And I wouldn’t blame you.Because sometimes, I…’
Shouts flooded across from the group, louder than before.Someone burst into song, and a few beats later, all of them were joining in, as loud and raucous as the supports at one of Elliot’s football matches.Johannes beckoned Matteo over.‘Whoarethese men?’he asked.
‘A dining club,’ Matteo said, his voice slightly raised against the noise.‘When they reserved tables, they called themselves one name, and now they’re referring to themselves by a completely different one.Bullerdon?Bullerton?’
‘Buller…’ The word struck an anvil of dread in him as he sought to form the name more completely.‘Bullingdon?’
‘That’s the one.Call themselves Bullers.All men from Oxford.’
‘Bullingdon?Men from…’ Johannes dropped his glass as he rose from his chair.‘Get them out.We need to get them out—’
Did the tinkling laugh or the crack of glass come first?The first note of destruction and the pure merriment the man took from delivering it blended so seamlessly into one that Johannes would never be able to split them later.The group went from raucous to a frenzied storm in a breath, from singing some song to chanting it so loudly that it smothered the crash of plates and the crack of wood as chairs and tables were upended.The few remaining guests screamed, and Matteo ushered them to safety as they dashed from the room.
A bottle sailed up and collided with the chandelier, the crystal whining with pain as it fragmented and shattered.Three men climbed onto a table, still singing.One kicked at plates, another guzzled from a champagne bottle, a thin line of liquid trailing over his chin and dribbling onto his coat.He let the last few drops land on his outstretched tongue like a gluttonous oaf in a novel or play, then hurled the bottle with a careless swipe.It crashed against the windows, shattering glass and bending the frame.
‘Not the windows!’Johannes pleaded—and groaned at his own stupidity.A man who stood on the table smirked, bent low to swipe a teacup, then spun it in his hands like it was a cricket ball.With a deft arch and roll of his arm, he lobbed the cup at the glass.The calls and shouts and caterwauling bounced off every wall, and between the cacophonous echoes came a bleating, mocking,not the windows, not the windows.With each taut, they lobbed something else at the glass: a cup, a champagne flute, a bottle.Anger butchered his breath, and Johannes clenched his fists, taking a menacing step towards them.
Matteo grasped his arm and pulled back hard.‘Sir, you can’t.They’re lords and the sons of lords.’
‘They’re destroying everything!’he cried.
‘And if you wallop even one of them, they’ll destroy you.No good will come of it.’
Johannes pinched his eyes shut as a man raised a chair, then swung it high in the air.He turned away, his mouth thick with anger and bile, wrapped an arm around Florence, and pulled her into the lobby.
‘Call the police,’ she said.‘I’ll tell them what we saw.Why aren’t you stopping them?’
‘I can’t.’Another crack and a crash.Johannes sank onto the bottom step of the staff staircase.‘They won’t get here in time.’
‘Don’t you know their names?Can’t they arrest them?’
‘They could.But they won’t.There are two sets of rules here.One for us.And one for men like that.’
Florence sat beside him.A few loud cheers erupted from the dining room before morphing into the same song they had started with, some bawdy tune full of bad rhymes and innuendo.One by one, the men filed out of the dining room and stumbled into the street, hollering and leaping over one another as they left.
Johannes couldn’t summon the dignity to raise his head.Instead, he watched their shiny toes and blackened heels parade past him as hate, useless and bitter, writhed in his stomach.One paused before him.Bank of England notes fluttered to the floor.
‘Sorry about the damage, old chap,’ the voice above the notes said.‘Sometimes we get a bit carried away.This should cover things.’A hundred pounds.A hundred and fifty.Two hundred.Far more than what the damage and the meal were worth, yet also wholly inadequate.
His breath stuck in his throat.Johannes rose to his feet, his fists clenching and unclenching by his sides.
‘I know this one.His father’s a judge,’ Matteo mumbled to him.
All he could imagine was levelling his elbow and straightening his arm to send the pathetic lump of flesh before him into the wall.The slightest flinch told him the other man was imagining it, too.
If he’d been a bolder man, a man with a name, he might have done exactly that.
But he was only Johannes Hempel, son of a man from the streets, with a family name that had money and clout, but none of the right connections.He crouched and grasped at the notes.‘Don’t come back here,’ he muttered, blinking back tears as sharp as glass.
The voice laughed.‘We won’t,’ he said, and the last of the shining heels strode out the door and into the street.
