Thwaites, the heavy steamed pudding was eaten.

Miss Steele was the first to rise and leave, stealing from the room with her Life of Katherine Parr under her arm.

Coffee was served in the Lounge upstairs. The others followed Miss Steele one by one, their chairs squeaking on the parquet oilcloth as they rose, and squeaking again as they were self-consciously replaced under the tables.

6

She couldn’t stand it, she decided on the stairs. Tonight she simply couldn’t and wouldn’t stand it any more. All the same she would go into the Lounge for coffee. Why should she be done out of her coffee? She wondered whether the Americans, whom she had left behind in the dining-room, would be coming up into the Lounge. She could talk about America. She knew quite a lot about America, from what she had read, and from what her brother had told her. Perhaps, if she talked to them, she could eradicate or compensate for the stupidity and rudeness of Mr. Thwaites. Perhaps they were lonely in a foreign country, as lonely as she was in her own.

The Lounge was the same shape and size as the dining-room, but here Mrs. Payne, abandoning pink, had struck out whole-heartedly into brown, and made something of a hit. The wall-paper was of mottled brown, with a frieze of autumn leaves above the picture-rail: the carpet was brown: the lamps were shaded with mottled parchment of a brown tinge: and the large settee and two large armchairs were upholstered in brown leather. Cunningly slung over the arms of the armchairs were ash-trays attached to brown leather straps fringed at the ends. The room was heated by a big, bright, hot gas-fire.

Here, for two hours or more every evening, the guests of the Rosamund Tea Rooms sat in each other’s company until they were giddy – giddy with the heat, the stillness, the desultory conversation, the silent noises – the rattling of re-read newspapers, the page-turning of the book-reader, the clicking of the knitter, the puffing of the pipe-smoker, the indefatigable scratching of the letter-writer, the sounds of breathing, of restless shifting, of yawning – as the chromium-plated clock ticked out the tardy minutes. Finally they went to their bedrooms in a state of almost complete stupefaction, of gas-fire drunkenness – reeling, as it were, after an orgy of ennui.

Mr. Thwaites was, of course, noisy to begin with, but in due course the atmosphere went even to his head, and silenced his tongue.

As Miss Roach came in he was settling down in his armchair with a book and taking out his reading-spectacles from a case. Mrs. Barratt, getting her knitting ready, asked him what he was reading.

‘This?’ said Mr. Thwaites in a slightly shamefaced way. ‘Oh – only something I picked up at the library. What is known, in vulgar parlance, as a “thriller” or “blood-curdler”, I believe. It serves pour passer le temps.’

Miss Roach went over to warm herself at the fire, and Mr. Thwaites went on.

‘It may not be Dickens or Thackeray,’ said Mr. Thwaites, puffing at his spectacles and wiping them with his silk handkerchief, ‘mas il serve pour passer le temps.’ (Mr. Thwaites frequently adopted, among his many other roles, that of the linguist.)

Sheila now entered with the coffee-tray, but there was no sign of the Americans. Mr. Thwaites took it through again.

‘I’m not going to say it’s Dickens,’ said Mr. Thwaites, ‘and I’m not going to say it’s Thackeray. I’m not even going to say it’s Sir Walter Scott. But we’ve got to pass the time somehow.’

The Americans clearly were not coming up, and tonight she couldn’t stand it another minute. She left the room, strolling out with the casual air of one who leaves it for a moment.