A Company of Swans (18 page)

Harriet was impressed. "From a real cake, Marie-Claude?"

"No, idiot! It's an enormous wooden affair—generally pink and decorated with candles. Sometimes they release white doves at the same time, though then of course there are problems with the feathers and the excretion and so on. Sometimes there are men with trumpets who accompany the cake and a chef who plunges in the knife… and of course always balloons and streamers and a great deal of champagne."

"Will Vincent like it?" inquired Kirstin.

"It is precisely for Vincent that I am doing it," flashed Marie-Claude. But a pensive look spread for a moment over her heart-shaped face, for it was true that she had not precisely explained to Vincent the means she employed to increase their joint savings. Vincent himself was strait-laced and his family—notably his cousin Pierre under whom Vincent had trained—was positively gothic. Still, what could one do? It was necessary to be practical. "You won't mention it to anyone?" she pleaded. "The dinner begins very late; after the curtain goes down. No one at the theater need know."

"Of course not," Harriet was overawed. Thus, she was sure, had Messalina erupted in the last days of Imperial Rome. "Only, Marie-Claude, when you come out of the cake won't the gentlemen become overexcited and—you know?"

"Over-excitement is something I do not permit," said Marie-Claude, pushing away her egg with a moue of disgust. "I made this absolutely clear to Mr. Parker. I burst; I dance a little on the table; I sit for a moment in the lap of the Minister—and that is all."

"What will you wear?" asked Kirstin.

"Not very much," Marie-Claude admitted, "Mr. Parker insisted on this. But there is always my hair which covers most things, and I have a special garter with a large rosette in which my Tante Bertha's hatpin can be concealed. Not that it will be necessary, I assure you. The whole affair is strictly a matter of art—a kind of tableau vivant—and anyway, the Minister is old." She paused and fixed her enormous eyes on Harriet. "There is, however, a problem," she said, lowering her voice still further and glancing over her shoulder at the alcove where Dubrov and those of the principals who could face the Metropole dining room at breakfast were sitting. "I have to see Mr. Parker at eleven-thirty this morning to make the arrangements."

"But it's the costume rehearsal for The Nutcracker," said Harriet.

"Exactly. So you, Harriet, must be for me a mouse," said Marie-Claude.

"Oh, Marie-Claude, I couldn't," said Harriet, aghast. "I've never been a mouse; I don't know the steps or anything!"

"There are no steps," said Marie-Claude contemptuously. "One scampers and runs about and bites toy soldiers in the legs." She poured herself another cup of coffee and contemplated with gloom the bizarre events on which Tchaikovsky had wasted some of his loveliest music. And indeed it is not easy to see why little Clara is so delighted to get a nutcracker for Christmas nor why, almost at once, there is a battle between toy soldiers and some hitherto unsuspected mice.

"I'll help you, Harriet," offered Kirstin. A little taller than the others, she was doomed to be a soldier and smite the attacking rodents with a wooden sword. "And in any case the rehearsal will be chaos; everyone will be in hysterics long before lunch."

She spoke no less than the truth. The Nutcracker was the only ballet in which Simonova did not star, but in ceding the role of the Sugar Plum Fairy to Masha Repin, Simonova was by no means quitting the field. She was going to supervise rehearsals, she was going to put her experience at the service of the younger girl; she was going to help.

"Please, Harriet?" begged Marie-Claude, laying a pearl-tipped hand on Harriet's arm. "I would ask Olga, but she was sick in the night and the other Russian girls are such prigs."

Of such a request there could only be one outcome. Harriet might hate deceiving Monsieur Dubrov and be frightened of the consequences, but it was out of the question that she should refuse to help her friend. Thus two hours later, entirely enveloped (at a temperature of ninety-two degrees) in simulated fur, her face covered by a mask, she was on stage being a belligerent and really rather unpleasant mouse.

Rom came in the little Firefly, a sentimental gesture which almost doubled his traveling time, and tying up at his private jetty made his way along the quayside, acknowledging the salutations of his men who were trundling their black "biscuits" of rubber toward the lighters. He passed quickly through his warehouses and entered the chaotic office—with its maps, samples of cahuchu, telegraph machine and stained coffee-cups—from which his manager attended the needs of the Verney empire.

"All is well, Coronel?" asked Miguel, lifting his pince-nez and removing a pile of files from a chair for his employer. But the question was rhetorical. Miguel, rescued from schoolmastering, had served Verney since he first came to the Amazon and it was clear that this morning his master was very well indeed. Was this the moment, Miguel wondered, to put in a word for his nephew who was just out of school and looking for a job?

But Verney was in a hurry. "I have an appointment," he said. "We'll just do the most urgent things. I want the Pittsburg contract and the projection of the hardwood requirements for Bernard Fils in Marseilles. The rest can wait."

Miguel nodded and produced the documents in an instant from the apparent confusion of his desk. "One of de Silva's clerks came in this morning with a copy of the Ombidos report. He said you wanted to see it before the visit of the Minister."

"That's right." Rom's face was momentarily somber at the mention of Ombidos, that plague spot from which rumors of ill-treatment and butchery of the Indians continued to filter through. "I'll take it home."

Less than an hour later Verney left the office, crossed the narrow harbor-side road and climbed a steep flight of steps to enter, through a blue door in a high wall, the bougainvillea-covered Casa Branca.

It was the smallest of houses—a toy place high above the huddle of buildings that looked out over the river; a white box with blue shutters and a handkerchief of a terrace with a fig tree. An unlikely dwelling for a rubber baron, but it was the first home Rom had owned and he had kept it, finding it useful when he had to spend a night in the city. Carmen looked after the house; Pedro acted as chauffeur for the Cadillac he kept in a neighboring mews. No women came to the Casa Branca but it was here under the fig tree in the little courtyard suspended over the harbor that he had decided to give Harriet lunch. She would like the view; she would like Pedro and Carmen—and he did not want her exposed to the stares and nudges of the other diners in fashionable restaurants.

"A light meal, Carmen," he said. "An avocado mousse, some fish… And the Frascati to drink."

"Will you want the motor, Senhor?"

"No."

He went upstairs to shower and fifteen minutes later was letting himself into the Teatro Amazonas by a side door.

Dubrov, watching out front, turned and half rose as Rom slipped into a seat beside him.

"You should have told us you were coming," he said, pushing a hand through his disheveled hair. "Simonova would have wished to welcome you herself." (She would have wished to… but he had left the ballerina in her dressing room, screaming with rage at Masha Repin's refusal to be coached.)

"I've come to take Harriet out to lunch," said Rom in a low voice, fascinated by the antics on the stage. "If that's convenient? When do you expect a break?"

"It shouldn't be long now. There have been a few… difficulties." So Mr. Verney was interested in Harriet? Flattering; very flattering. "It will do her good to get out," said the impresario. "She works so hard."

"She certainly seems to be dancing with great aplomb. It must be very hot under those pelts."

Dubrov smiled tolerantly. Mr. Verney was a man of formidable intelligence, but no connoisseur of the ballet. "Harriet is not dancing at the moment. Later you will see her; she is a snowflake."

"Really? I could have sworn she was that one on the right, just coming out from behind the Christmas tree. With the tattered ear."

Dubrov shook a decisive head. "That's Marie-Claude. It's a crime to put a girl like that into a mask, but there!"

Somewhat to Dubrov's surprise, Simonova greeted the news of Harriet's luncheon engagement with satisfaction.

"It will annoy Masha," she said simply. "Did you notice the sheep's eyes she made at Verney yesterday?"

Dubrov nodded. Masha Repin had certainly made efforts to attract Verney's attention, but so had virtually every other woman who was there. Still, anything that distracted Simonova from Masha Repin's arrogance, her inability to take the advice which she, Simonova, had taken so gladly, so willingly from Kchessinskaya, from Legat—from absolutely everyone who was kind enough to help her—was all to the good.

It was not only Simonova who watched Harriet go with a feeling of pleasure at her good fortune. Lobotsky, the character dancer, patted her shoulder; the asm wished her luck; even Maximov deigned to smile at her. Only Kirstin was disquieted. Harriet looked nice—even the absent Marie-Claude could not have complained about her blue skirt and white blouse—but to expose to the gods a face of such unalloyed expectation and happiness seemed to the gentle Swede to be little short of madness.

Rom was right. Harriet liked the Casa Branca.

"Oh, the view!" she said. "They always say something beautiful is breathtaking, but it ought to be breathgiving, oughtn't it?"

They had lunch in the shade of the fig tree and beneath them the life of the river unfolded for their delight. Rom had wined and dined innumerable women, flicking his fingers at servile waiters, but now he found himself watching over Harriet as if she was a child in his keeping, concerned lest even the smallest of bones should scratch her delicate throat; buttering her roll.

"Tell me, were you a mouse just now?" he asked. "A mouse with a tattered ear?"

She looked up, flushing. "Yes, I was."

Rom nodded. "I thought you were. Dubrov swore it was Marie-Claude, but I knew it was you."

She put down her fork. "How? I was completely covered with a mask. How could you know?"

"I knew," said Rom. He let the words stand deliberately ringed in silence… but not for long. She must remain untroubled by anything for which she was not yet ready. "Were you covering up for Marie-Claude?"

Harriet nodded. "But please don't mention it to Monsieur Dubrov. She had to go away on business—for Vincent and the restaurant."

"Ah, yes… the famous Vincent. Have you met him?"

"No, but I have seen his photograph. A lot of photographs!"

"And?" said Rom. "Is he a match for your ravishing friend?"

"Well, it's strange. I mean, it's absolutely clear that she adores him. And of course he does have a very large mustache, which is important to her—all his family are famous for their mustaches—and photographs don't tell you very much about people, do they? I think it must be his personality."

"A strong man, then?"

"Very practical and Marie-Claude likes that. She gets very annoyed with people like Romeo. He should have got a chicken feather, she thinks, and laid it on Juliet's lips to see if she was breathing, not rushed about and killed himself."

"Vincent is a chicken-feather man, then?"

"Very much so, I understand." Harriet hesitated. "I can see Marie-Claude's point. When I read about love in Cambridge—and I used to read a lot because my Aunt Louisa let me do my homework in the public library to save the gas—I got very discouraged. It seemed to me that as soon as you loved anyone very much, you were inevitably doomed. You know… Heloise and Abelard, Tristan and Isolde… To love in moderation was all right, but when it became excessive… total… you were punished. And yet it must be right, surely, to give everything? To hold nothing back? That must be what one wants to do?"

"Yes, one wants to do just that. And I assure you that there are plenty of people who have loved truly and found their Avalon or their Hesperides and set up house there and tended their crops and lit their fires. Only who cares for them? Who writes about the valley with no earthquake, the river that is not in flood?"

He smiled at her, the gray eyes serene and comforting, and led her on to talk not of home which he knew would give her pain, but of Cambridge itself, that incomparable city. And if he had doubted his feelings, those doubts would have been banished by the greed with which he longed to share her childhood and her memories.

Carmen brought coffee and a bowl of fruit which Rom studied attentively before picking a golden-pink pomegranate which he placed not on Harriet's plate, but into her obediently cupped hands. "Are you willing to take the risk?" he asked. "They're dangerous things, pomegranates."

She caught the allusion instantly, as he had known she would.

"Oh yes," she said. "It would be no punishment to have to remain here in this place. Or to return. Not for five months or fifty."

She was silent, thinking of Persephone who had eaten her pomegranate in Hades, carried there by cruel Pluto, king of the underworld. Had she minded going back into darkness, compelled to return for as many months as she had eaten seeds, while the world in her absence turned to winter? Or had Pluto looked a little like the man who faced her? Dark-visaged; sardonic; a few silver threads in the ink-black hair. In which case she must have wished she had eaten more seeds… And smiling, Harriet picked up the silver fruit knife.

But Rom now had decided that it was time for her to speak, for he had not forgotten that this was a meal with a purpose and, sensing that she might find it difficult to begin, he prompted her.

"Tell me now, Harriet. Tell me why you stayed behind after the party. What was it you wanted to speak to me about?"

She put down the knife again, her face suddenly somber. Increasingly it seemed impertinent to mention his past life. He must have contacts in every country in the world and certainly in England. If he had wanted to keep in touch with the place that had been his home, nothing could have been easier. And to give herself strength she summoned up again the image of the red-haired child in the maze, bewildered by the disaster that had struck his house.