Get It Straight, Or Say Good Night

Buttons and Spoons

Harry deposited Louise on the front steps of the regal Adelphi Hotel. Lou watched the tail lights fade into the fog that slowly descended over the city. Thankfully Harry kept 'mum' on the happenings of the wedding reception and didn't ask questions nor inquire into Johns silent treatment of her half the night.

The Adelphi on Ranelagh Street was posh, so posh they kept on knocking it down and making it grander- Twice! It was torn down and another emerged from the rubble.

This building today was beautiful. Understated in that old worldly charm. Constructed in pale grey, almost white, Portland stone. Limestone born from the Tithonian stage of the Jurassic period, quarried on the Isle of Portland, Dorset, miles and miles away. Well then, she mused, I did retain something from history class. The seven storey's soared over her; Round-headed arch windows on the first level, the rest a rather boring rectangle in compare; although the fourth flowing into the fifth sat a stately central balcony with lovely columns either side, setting it off prettierly.

Adelphi was advertised as the "most luxurious hotel outside London". Lou chewed her lip, why was she even here, much too expensive for just sleep.... World leaders, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winnie Churchill have slept here and artistes, in town to appear at the Empire Theatre, used the Adelphi as their home away from home. Lou surely would be in the company of not only John but an abundance of spirits, and not just the stuff that was settled on Johns breathe.

Frank Sinatra, Laurel and Hardy, Judy Garland, Roy Rogers and his pretty horse Trigger set up camp within these walls. Well, Trigger didn't actually stay in the Hotel, he was boarded at stables down on Smithdown Lane, although the famous horse did make an appearance at the main entrance, rwhere she now hovered like a lost waif.

Columns, marble, and coffered arches. Pink marble pilasters, glazed screens, and French doors opening into fancy restaurants on it's sides. Lou stepped through the entrance of the deserted foyer and absentmindedly wondered if Jules Verne's novel description of the interior of the submarine really was similar to the Adelphi Hotel. Her and Professor Aronnax both eyeing the same... although his was fiction in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and hers, now uncomfortably, real.

John was inebriated at the dais.

Tiddly as they ate cake.

And by the time the music and dancing began he was full on plastered... and very, very vocal. He wasn't violent which could just as well have been the case, just his own caustic self turned up to the Nth degree.

Crying he was, into his specially purchased scotch to Paul, saying it was 'all over now'.... he would have 'no life' with a wife, grumbles emitted about having to 'miss out' on partying and the like.

Lou wouldn't, or even, couldn't contemplate, stopping John doing any of that nonsense and she had told him just as much. She had bloody put it in the deal they had signed for heavens sake!

Nonetheless the wedding gave him reason to moan and groan and oft he would turn her way and give her the evil eye over the rim of his tumbler, as he tossed another dram back.

Perhaps the earlier 'show' was his way to get thoroughly intoxicated to cope with the show now about to start... The now of course being her walking into their shared hotel room.

Lou and Paul had hatched a plan to get him out of the reception by means of John's stomach being a bit icky and that he needed 'a dose of paracetamol' and 'a good lay down'.

How many guests fell for the line Lou didn't know, but what else could they do in the circumstance.

........ Taking the stairs, trepidation took over her steps.