This story is the opening story of Tessa Hadley's first-ever novella 'The Party', due for release this November. The entire novella of three stories channels post-war Britain and its social going-ons, seen through the eyes and experiences of two sisters and a night out. It's a coming of age novella, I suppose.
This particular story is titled 'Vincent's Party', published in The New Yorker on June 23, 2024.
Set at the end of World War II, Moira and Evelyn are two sisters who are university students. Moira is studying art and fashion. Younger sister Evelyn is a French major. She's only two years younger than Moira. One night, they went to a party at a seedy pub called 'Steam Packet' near the docks in Bristol. Moira's friend Vincent invited them. Evelyn was stoked to be included; she had lied to their parents in order to come.
That was the difference between Moira and her, Evelyn thought. She would go for something striking and zany, which might work and might not, while Moira would never be so foolish as to take that risk. Evelyn veered between two extremes; either she spent hours dressing herself up extravagantly, or she slopped around at home in her oldest skirt and cardigan and slippers. Her scruffy self was her reading self. To give herself properly to a book she had to be crumpled and snug, oblivious of her appearance, scrunched up in an armchair with her shoes off and her legs tucked under her.
Malaya and the fall of the 'empire' were mentioned, but from this short story, I don't know how much of the historical background comes into play. It doesn't say that much beyond giving the timeline and society's films perspectives of the war that they didn't understand. There's a mention of a dead fiancé Cass (Moira's) who was deployed to Malaya as a policeman.
Of course the sisters met people, as they do at parties. They met some men and some boys and sat at a table with them drinking gin and orange and cider with blackcurrant. Moira didn't fancy hanging out with those two weaselly men Paul and Sinden, and went off to work the room. Evelyn run into her classmate Donald and danced with him. Paul and Sinden were really insistent on taking Moira and Evelyn home. Moira knew what they were up to and she wasn't having it. Then they snucked out of the party by the back door.
Evelyn made her way down the fire escape more cautiously than Moira, then hesitated at the bottom
“Throw me your bag,” Moira said. “What’s in it?”
“A dress I wore so that they couldn’t see me. And Mam’s umbrella.”
“She’ll be annoyed. It’s her whist drive tonight.”
“Oh, Moira, are you full of grief?”
“Just jump,” Moira said impatiently. “Trust me.”
And Evelyn jumped and she was all right. She was jubilant, landing in a crunch of gravel beside her sister, though the jolt shocked all thought out of her body for a moment, and her palms stung from the sharpness of the stones, down there in that filthy salty bitter underworld of dark.
This story in The New Yorker ends here, and presumably, the sisters got home safely. However, their entanglement with Paul and Sinden doesn't end here. In the novella, they're invited to another party, at a more proper and grander venue, at Paul's suburban mansion. Moira accepts. Thus begins a new phase of the sisters' lives. So there is a continuation — we'll have to wait till November to read it in the full novella.
I'm almost interested in checking it out. It's really like one of those nights at the parties we go to when we were the sisters' age. One night could change everything, some tragically so, some for the better, others for worse, and most of us just experienced all the drama. I want to know if Vincent is mentioned again in this novella.
In an interview with the magazine, the author said that the sexual overtones were probably not as pretty as the story made it to be. It's predatory, but then young men and women don't recognize the predatory intent till it's too late. Moira kinda did, and was uncomfortable, and as we would find out later in the new novella that she also drawn into the world Paul and Sinden live in, and the circles they move in.
At the party, Evelyn and Moira meet two men—Sinden and Paul—who clearly move in wealthier and more privileged circles than the sisters do. Sinden and Paul are, so to speak, slumming, but intrigued by the bohemian environment, and they make an effort to follow up with the girls. Is there more to their motivation than a fun flirtation?
A fun flirtation probably makes it sound prettier than it is. Privileged men have always had the freedom—much more novel to the girls in the story—to move between classes, and have the kinds of sexual experiences across class boundaries which might jeopardize a woman’s respectability, her reputation. When Sinden and Paul say they’re slumming it, there’s definitely a sexual undertone. I don’t know how interested Paul is, really. Mostly, he’s just drunk. But Sinden feels powerful, predatory, observant: it’s telling that he’s most fascinated by Josephine, who no doubt appears to him as a certain working-class archetype, more exciting—with her careless freedom and Red politics and her caustic indifference to his insults—than Moira and Evelyn, who are “nice girls” from a petit-bourgeois background.
The sisters, meanwhile, are half drawn in and half repelled by these two men who’ve strayed in from a different world. Perhaps this lingering equivocal attraction expresses a moment of transition; the cultural capital the men have is less potent than it might have been thirty years earlier, but the girls aren’t wholly free, or Moira at least isn’t wholly free, from the enchantment of the old class hierarchy. She’s prickly and defensive with them, and also intrigued and tempted.
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