A Countess Below Stairs (27 page)

‘To claim her at all events. I thought she might like some lemonade.’

Susie smiled and followed him. But she was destined to get no lemonade that night. Tom led her out of the ballroom, through the great hall, and into an ante-room where they could be alone.

‘Susie,’ said Tom, and she saw that he was in an unusually grim and serious mood. ‘How many times have I asked you to marry me?’

‘I think, seventeen,’ said Susie in her quiet, pedantic voice, looking up at him and wishing yet again that he wasn’t quite so handsome. ‘But it may only be sixteen; I’m not completely sure.’

Tom had found a silver ashtray and was picking it up, putting it down again…

‘You saw Rupert and Anna just now?’

‘Yes, I saw them. Can nothing be done? They are so completely right for one another.’

‘Nothing,’ said Tom savagely. ‘Muriel will never let him go. She’s after that title like a stampeding buffalo. And Rupert’ll never jilt her because he’s a gentleman and because of some idiot promise about Mersham that he made to George before he died.’ . Susie was silent and Tom stood looking down at her. Since the day he’d first seen her in her parents’ over-furnished drawing room, blinking like a plump owl through her spectacles and marking the pages of her book with a determined finger, he’d wanted ceaselessly to be with her. Hitherto, he’d been prepared to wait. Now, seeing what had happened to Rupert, he was prepared to wait no longer.

‘Susie, are you really going to ruin our happiness because of your parents’ wretched religious prejudices? Even though I’ve told you a hundred times that you can bring up our children in any way you like?’

Susie hesitated. She, too, had been badly shaken by seeing Rupert and Anna dance. ‘It’s not that. My parents aren’t so orthodox any more. They’d moan a little, but there’s no question of them disowning me or saying a kaddish over me. They’re far too kind and too concerned for my happiness.’

Tom stared at her, amazed. ‘But why, then, Susie? Why do you keep on saying no?’

Susie studied him carefully. ‘Tom, have you ever looked at me? At me? Not someone you’ve made up inside your head.’

She stepped forward so that the overhead light shone full on her face. The gypsy dress, as she well knew, was extremely unbecoming to her and she was flushed and mottled from the heat.

‘I’m plump now,’ she continued in her level, unemotional voice. ‘In ten years I’ll be fat, however much I diet. I have a hooked nose; most of the time I need glasses. My hair is frizzy and my ears—’

‘How dare you!’ Tom had seized her shoulders; he was shaking her, hurting her. The famous Byrne temper, scourge of his red-haired ancestors since Doomsday, blazed in his eyes. ‘How dare you talk to me like that! You are insulting me!’

‘What do you mean?’

‘How dare you suppose that I don’t know who you are or what you are? That I don’t understand what I see? Do you take me for some kind of besotted schoolboy? It is unspeakable! You could weigh as much as a hippopotamus and shave your head and wear a wig and it wouldn’t make any difference to me. I never said you were beautiful. I never thought it. I said that you were you.’

Susie loosened his hands. Then she smiled, that tender, wise smile that made nonsense of her ugliness and said, ‘Well, in that case we must just hope that our children don’t inherit your awful temper. Or my nose.’

‘Oi, Gewalt!’ said the Noble Spanish Lady, seeing their faces as they returned to the ballroom. ‘Look, Leo! It has happened! What shall I tell Moyshe and Rachel? And Cousin Steffi? You know she wanted Susie for her Isaac!’

‘To mind their own business,’ said that stout bullfighter, Leo Rabinovitch, hitching up his cummerbund. ‘That is what you shall tell Rachel and Moyshe, and Cousin Steffi also,’ - and went forward resignedly to greet his new son-in-law.

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The Duchess of Nettleford, helmeted and lightly daubed with woad, for she was nothing if not thorough, surveyed the dancers with an unusually benevolent eye. Things, it seemed, were going well for the girls. Like the Ancient British Queen she represented, she had led her troops into battle and she had conquered. Tom had opened the ball with Lawy and was quite clearly interested. Beatrice (an undoubted and very yellow daffodil), was dancing with a young subaltern whom Minna had led up to them. And Gwendolyn, too, was on the floor — almost literally, for the poor girl could never master the tango and the wooden clogs of that staunch Northumbrian heroine, Grace Darling, did not really help. Fortunately the good-looking sunburnt gentleman dressed as some kind of Greek who partnered her had seemed to be perfectly aware of the honour of standing up with the daughter of a duke. True, Hermione and Priscilla, clutching respectively the head of John the Baptist and an asp, were still sitting unclaimed beside her and there had been a disappointment about Tom Byrne’s younger brother. At thirteen he was too young, even for Beatrice, though in the old days when marriages had been sensibly arranged, no one would have bothered about nonsense like that. Still, on the whole, things were going well. As for that scandal at the beginning when some serving maid had turned out to be a countess or the other way round, the duchess had scarcely heeded it except to notice with pleasure how furious it had made the grocer’s daughter who had ensnared young Westerholme. ‘Ah, Lawy,’ said the duchess as Lavinia, looking complacent and freshly-caught, came up to her. ‘How’s it going, eh?’

‘Very well, Mother,’ said Lavinia, smirking. Tom says he knows he can trust me to look after Ollie at the church.’

‘Ah, knows he can trust you, does he!’ The duchess was delighted.‘Did you…you know, give him a bit of a hint?’

Lavinia dropped her eyes. ‘Well, Mother … you know…’

‘Look, there’s Tom now,’ said Priscilla, pointing with her asp. ‘What’s he doing with that dumpy Jewish girl, do you suppose?’

‘He took her out just now,’ said Lavinia. ‘I expect she was feeling ill.’

The music stopped. With an alacrity that was proper but not quite pleasing, the Ladies Beatrice and Gwendolyn were returned by their partners to Boadicea’s side, and on the dais, Mr Bartorolli wiped his brow.

‘The Byrnes are very democratic, aren’t they,’ drawled Hermione. ‘Lady Byrne’s kissing that Jewish girl now.’

Lavinia, perfectly confident, waited. And her confidence was justified. Tom, his deep happiness assured, moved by his stepmother’s unforced pleasure on his behalf, had determined to do everything that was needed to make the ball a success. And what was needed, as Minna had just assured him, was for someone — anyone - to dance with the Nettleford girls.

So Tom, radiant with happiness, approached the Boadicean Camp and aware that he had already danced with the eldest and the worst of them, bowed before one who seemed to be dressed in a great many muslin nappies and to be nursing a papier mache head dipped in tomato juice.

But Hermione’s triumph was short-lived. They had scarcely circled the ballroom half a dozen times when th music stopped abruptly and was succeeded by a fanfare. And looking up at the dais, the dancers saw Lord Byrne standing beside Mr Bartorolli and holding up his hands. ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he said. ‘I have an announcement to make. An announcement which I know will give great pleasure to everybody present…’

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Anna stayed for a while in the garden, standing with her back to a great cedar as though thereby she could draw in some of its strength. She was as cold, as still, as stone.

Rupert had gone. She must live without him. It was done.

There were just a few things to do before she slipped away. Explain to the dowager that she was leaving, thank the Byrnes, say goodbye to Ollie … And after that, Mersham, to pick up her things and wait for the milk train to London. It was ten miles by road from Heslop to Mersham, but from her dawn rides on the mare she knew of a short cut across the fields which she would find even in the dark. By the time the other servants woke, she would be gone.

But first, Petya. She had promised him a dance. Back to the ballroom, then, whatever it cost…

He had been searching for her. ‘Ah, there you are, Annoushka,’ he said, beginning to talk excitedly in Russian. ‘You’ve missed such an exciting thing! Tom is engaged to marry Susie Rabinovitch and they stopped the orchestra and announced it and everyone clapped. And you know that girl dressed like a fish - only she’s not meant to be a fish, Hugh says - well, I was standing next to her and she sort of whooped when Lord Byrne announced it and went purple, just like in a book, and then she rushed out! Tom’s very happy and Susie’s really nice and there’s going to be lots and lots of champagne. And Lady Byrne’s going to ask you to stay here instead of Mersham - she says you’ve been there long enough as a guest and it’s her turn to have you, so do come, ‘Noushka, because they’re so nice and their horses are fabulous.’

‘Petya, I must go back to town,’ said Anna. ‘I’ve been away so long and it isn’t fair on Mama.’

‘Oh, no! We’d have such fun! There’s the wedding, too - you must stay for that!’

‘I can’t, love. Maybe I’ll come back,’ she lied, ‘but it’s Pinny’s birthday next week and you know I like to be there for that: she’s done so much for us. So now let’s have our dance and then I’ll slip away quietly. Listen, it’s a polka! We’ll show them!’

And they did. But when it was over and Anna, under cover of the supper break, tried to gain the double doors, she was suddenly arrested - for sweeping into the ballroom, still laughing at Hawkins’ efforts at pronouncing their names - there came the Ballets Russes!

They came in costumes borrowed from Firebird and Sheherezade and all the other costumes immediately looked drab and uninteresting. They came as guests, not performers, but all eyes were instantly fixed on them, such was their vitality, their ‘otherness’. There was La Slavina, darling of the Maryinsky for two decades and still, in her forties, a woman from whom it was almost impossible to avert one’s eyes. There was the ineffably stylish designer, Lapin, with drooping eyes and a white streak in his jet-black hair. There was the silent and beautiful Vladimir on whom the mantle of Nijinsky seemed likely to foil, a choreographer with a bald and yellow skull, a pale, tragic-looking girl straight out of a ‘blue’ Picasso…

They surged forward to greet their host and hostess, embracing everybody in their path, seizing glasses of champagne from the passing footmen — and the temperature of the party soared. Then La Slavina paused, threw out an arm, and let out a high and enchantingly modulated scream.

‘Mon Dieu! C’est la petite Grazinsky!’

‘You look charming. Countess,’ said Lapin approvingly. ‘But not, I think, the cap. One wishes only to suggest a costume.’ He unpinned Anna’s cap, tossed it away, plucked a white poppy from an urn and tucked it unerringly into her hair.

‘Ah, but it is magnificent to see you, ma chere,’ said La Slavina, hugging Anna. ‘And look, there is the little brother also!’ She turned to Lady Byrne. ‘You have no idea how good the Grazinskys have been to us in Petersburg! Such benefactors, such hospitality! Of course they always loved the ballet. Do you remember. Countess, when you ran away ? You were seven years old and all the police in Petersburg were searching — such, a scandal! And where was she?’ she enquired of the bystanders. ‘In Theatre Street, in the ballet school, trying to audition for a place!’

‘And when she tried to sell her rubies to pay for Diaghilev’s first tour of Europe?’ said the choreographer. ‘Do you remember? All by herself she went to see old Oppenheim in the Morskaya! Often and often he has told the story: how there comes this little girl whose head is not over his desk and brings up her arm with in it her shoe bag and out falls this necklace which has been insured for fifty thousand roubles!’

‘You have lost everything, I have heard?’ said La Slavina in a low, sympathetic voice.

Anna shrugged. ‘We’re all right.’

‘Ah, you have courage. And a fine brother!’ She pinched Petya’s cheek. ‘But tell me,’ her voice, this time, dropped half an octave, her splendid boudoir eyes became veiled in a profound and personal nostalgia. ‘What has happened to your so beautiful Cousin Sergei? I have heard that he was safe, but no one has seen him in London and the Baroness Rakov is désolée.’

‘He is working in the north, somewhere,’ said Anna cautiously.

‘As a chauffeur, I have heard! Est-ce-que c’est possible?’

They had collected, inevitably, a crowd - and among its members were the Nettlefords, who had closed ranks after the dreadful news of Tom’s engagement and were conveying a stunned Lavinia to the supper room.

La Slavina threw out an arm to include the company. ‘Ah, if you could see the prince! Never, never have I seen a man so ‘andsome. And fearless, too. Do you remember, Lapin, when he won the St Catherine Cup on that unbroken horse of Dolgoruky’s? But all the Chirkovskys were like that. It was Sergei’s father who gave me my first diamonds. I was still in Cechetti’s class at—’ She broke off to say with her enchanting smile: ‘I beg your pardon, mademoiselle.’

But the fault had not been the ballerina’s. A tall and avid-looking girl covered in scales had cannoned into her, en route for the open French window through which she now vanished. There was a short pause, then with assorted exclamations of fury, four more girls in an extraordinary collection of clothes raced after her, one of them dropping, as she did so, a rubber asp.

‘Drdle!’ said La Slavina, raising her eyebrows. Then she tucked her arm through Anna’s and led her entourage towards the supper room.

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Anxious to avoid the servants’ hall, with its backbiting and gossip, Sergei had spent the evening in The King’s Head down in the village. Now he was smoking a quiet cigarette in the paddock which adjoined the stableyard until he should be summoned to take the Lady Lavinia and her fellow bridesmaid back to Mersham.

‘Sergei! Sergei! Where are you?’

‘Here, my lady.’

The Lady Lavinia, in full tilt, careered round the corner of the stables and panted up to him. Her scales caught the moonlight; an even fiercer glitter lit up her eyes.