Folly Du Jour (3 page)

He pressed down on his arm rests and the chair wobbled under him as he prepared to take action. A moment later he sank back in frustration. He never embarked on any course unless his strategy was clear, his tactics well worked out, the outcome predictable and in his favour; the reason he’d survived for so many years when others had not. And he was not about to abandon the careful habits of a professional lifetime on account of a stab of juvenile sympathy. George could foresee the result of any irruption of his into the box opposite. At the best, he’d be ejected by a hurriedly summoned bouncer; at the worst, he’d be trapped over there with the pair of them until the interval.

His conflict was cut short by an arresting fanfare of notes on a trumpet followed at once by a blaring blue jazz riff from the orchestra pit. He was aware of a simultaneous dimming of the electric house lights. The blonde girl across the way opened her mouth in anticipation and wriggled forward in her seat with the eagerness of a six-year-old at a pantomime. George sighed and came to a decision. In the seconds before the light faded, he did what he could. Oblivious of the hush descending on the crowd, he rose to his feet and slipped on his white gloves. He sought out and held the eye of his opposite number.

Imperious, imperial and impressive, over the width of the auditorium, Sir George Jardine delivered a command.

Chapter Two

Abandon target! Withdraw at once!

The soldier’s silent hand language flashed, eerily blue in the dimming house lights, across to the opposite box. Unmistakable to a man who had been a fellow officer. On the Frontier, grappling often in hand-to-hand combat with lethally savage tribesmen, officers had learned from their enemy that in close proximity you communicated in silence as they did or you got your head shot off. Would Somerton remember and respond? Or would the man summon up what vestiges of self-respect he still had, to affect ignorance or rejection of the old code? George calculated that he could not depend on touching any finer feeling, on awakening any sense of regimental pride across the void. No – ugly threat was the only weapon left in his armoury. To emphasize his point, he added a universally recognized gesture. He drew the forefinger of his left hand slowly across his throat.
Do as I say or else . . .

At that, Somerton threw back his head and laughed. Shaking with amusement and hardly able to keep his hands steady, in the moment before the last light went out, he returned the signal:
Message received and understood.

Bloody French audiences! George remembered they always took their time settling. But the musicians seemed to be well aware of this and mastering the situation. The trumpet solo had silenced most and there now followed, as the last mutterings faded, the last shuffling subsided, a clarinet performance which stunned George with its fluency. Not his style of music at all. Jazz. But he could see the point of it and had been made to listen to the quantities of recordings that had filtered through to Simla and Delhi along with the ubiquitous gramophone. It was one of his party tricks to discuss in an avuncular way the latest crazes with his young entourage. And this was an experience he would want to share with them on his return. What he was hearing, all his musical senses were telling him, was exceptional. He rummaged in his pocket and took out his cigar-lighter. A discreet flick of the flame over his programme gave him the name: Sidney Bechet. English? French? Could be either. Even American perhaps? He’d file the name away. The chap was an artist. Could take his place in the wind section of the Royal Philharmonic any day. Given the right material to play.

He was so absorbed by the music, leaning forward over the edge in an attempt to get a clearer view of the almost invisible soloist, he didn’t hear her enter. The presence of a stranger in his box was betrayed by a rush of remembered scent carried towards him on a sudden air current as the door opened quietly and closed again. The effect on George was instant. Memories had ambushed him before he could even turn his head.

The scent of an Indian garden at twilight . . . L’Heure Bleue he’d been informed when he’d dispatched some gauche young subaltern to make discreet enquiries. The aide had returned oozing information, parroting on about vanilla, iris and spices. George had been gratified and amused that the young man had been received with such voluble courtesy by the wearer. Amused but not surprised; she had always been able to charm . . . enslave wouldn’t be too strong a word . . . his impressionable young men.

The name said it all. The Twilight Hour. He didn’t need to listen to accounts of top-notes and bases. It spoke, for him, in a voice soft as velvet, of the swift, magical dark blue moment between sunset and starlight. But, intriguingly, it brought with it an undertow of something sinister . . . bitter almonds . . . the scent of death. George shivered. The scent of a woman long dead. A woman he had mourned for five years. Silently in his heart, never in his speech.

And here, in this gaudy box, in frenetic Paris, the scent seemed as out of place as he was himself. He whirled angrily to confront whoever had invaded his privacy and – idiotically – with a thought to challenge the invader for daring to wear a perfume which for him would forever be the essence of one woman: Alice.

‘Alice?’

George’s voice was an indistinct croak expressing his disbelief, his raised hand not a greeting but an exorcism, an instinctive gesture of self-protection, as he peered through the gloom, focusing on the dark-clad figure standing by the door. An elegant gloved hand released the hood of the opera cloak allowing it to slide down on to her shoulders. He could just make out, with the aid of the remaining dim light from the orchestra pit, the sleek shape of a blonde head but the face was indistinguishable. Her finger went to her lips and he heard a whispered: ‘
Chut!

’ In a second, the woman had slid into the chair at his side and had grasped his hand in greeting. She leaned and whispered into his ear: ‘George! How wonderful to see you again! And how touching to find you still recognize me – and in the dark too! Alice? Am I then still Alice for you?’

‘Always were. Always will be. Alice,’ he mumbled, struggling for a measure of control. He hunted for and caught her hands in his, pressing them together, moving his grasp to encircle both her slim wrists in one of his great hands, his gnarled fingers closing in an iron and inescapable grip.

‘And, Alice Conyers, you’re under arrest.’

Chapter Three

She laughed and winced but made no attempt to struggle. ‘Let’s enjoy the performance first, shall we? And . . . who knows? . . . perhaps I’ll surrender to you later, George?’

Her purring voice had always, for him, spoken with a teasing double entendre in every sentence. He had dismissed it as a delusion, the product of his own susceptibility, a fantasy sprung from overheated and hopeless senile lust. No one else had ever remarked on it. But the voice he was hearing again, the style, the breathed assumed intimacy – all this was telling him that it was indeed Alice he held in his grasp.

‘I do hope you’re prepared, George? This can be rather stimulating! The show, I mean! Elderly gents carted off, blue in the face and frothing at the mouth, every evening, I hear. Got your pills to hand, have you? Last will and testament in order? Perhaps you should tell me whom to ring just in case . . .’ She broke off at the first twitch of the pearl-grey curtains. The lightly insolent tone was unmistakable and he remembered how he’d missed it. George swallowed painfully, unable to reply.

With a thousand questions to ask the woman at his side, a thousand things to tell her, he was reduced to silence by the swish of the curtains as they swung back revealing a brilliantly lit scene. George stared at the kaleidoscope of vivid colours filling the stage, a controlled explosion of fabrics and patterns. The set conjured up the interior of a sumptuous Parisian department store – or was it meant to be a boutique on the rue de la Paix? Silks, velvets, chiffons and furs hung draped about the stage, arranged with an artist’s eye for effect. After the minutes of darkness, the assault on the sense of sight was calculatedly overwhelming. Another surprise followed swiftly. Set here and there against the background colours, a number of dressmakers’ dummies – mannequins, they called them over here – gleamed pale, their pure, sculpted nakedness accentuated by the profusion of clothes behind them. At a teasing spiral of sound from the orchestra the figures came to life and began to parade about the stage.

They were actually moving about! Dancing! George could hardly believe his eyes. He released Alice’s wrists at once and cleared his throat in embarrassment. A scene of this nature could never have been staged in London. He tensed, wondering whether he should at once set an example and make noisily for the exit, tearing up his pro-gramme and tossing it into the audience like confetti in the time-honoured tradition, snorting his disapproval. Writing off the remainder of what promised to be a disastrous evening. Apparently catching and understanding his sudden uncertainty, his companion put a hand on his arm, gently restraining.

George watched on. Was it his imagination . . . or . . .? No. He had it right. The girls, without exception, were tall and lovely and – yes – one would expect that of chorus girls. Rumour had it that they were all shipped in from England. But this bunch were all blonde or titian-haired with alabaster-white skin. After the years of exposure to Indian-brown limbs, this degree of paleness struck him as exaggeratedly lewd. While he was pondering the reasons for this blatant piece of artistic stage management, the girls started on their routine.

To his bemusement the chorus-girl-mannequins were beginning to act out a scene of shopping. They were selecting garments held out for their inspection by a group of
vendeuses
whose sketchy notion of uniform appeared to be a pair of black satin gloves and a black bow tie. Their clients inspected the garments on offer and saucily began to put them on, layer by layer, tantalizingly and wittily not always in the expected order. It was a while before George realized what was going on and when he did he began to shake with suppressed guffaws.

Alice leaned close and whispered: ‘A striptease in reverse. They start naked and end up in fur coats. Different, you’d have to admit! You’re to think of this as an aperitif,’ she murmured.

The girls, fully clothed at last, eventually took a bow to laughter and applause and swayed off, flirtily trailing feather boas, silk trains and mink stoles, leaving the stage empty.

The lights went out at once and a backdrop descended. A single spotlight was switched on, illuminating in a narrow cone of blue light marbled with tobacco smoke, an area of stage front right. It picked out what appeared to be the contorted limbs and trunk of a tree. The drums took up a strong rhythm and a tenor saxophone began to weave in and out, offering a flirtatious challenge to the beat, tearing free to soar urgently upwards.

The shape on stage began to move.

George could have sworn that a boa constrictor was beginning to ripple its way down the trunk then he gasped as the tree straightened. A second light came on from a different angle, compelling his eye to refocus. He now saw a massive black male figure carrying on his back, not a boa, but a slim, lithe and shining black girl. George forgave himself for his failure to make sense out of the contorted figures: the girl was being carried upside-down and doing the splits. Her limbs were distinguishable from the man’s by their difference in colour – hers, by the alchemy of the blue-tinted spotlight, were the colour of Everton toffee, his gleamed, the darkest ebony. She twined about lasciviously, her body moving in rhythm with the pounding drumbeat, naked but for a pink flamingo feather placed between her legs.

The athletic undulations continued as the spotlight followed the black giant to centre stage. Once he’d mastered his astonishment, George decided that what he was seeing was a pas de deux of the highest artistic quality. Yes, that was how he would express it. But he wondered how on earth he could ever convey the shattering erotic charge of the performance and decided never to attempt it. The relentless sound of the drums, the stimulation of the dance and the overriding pressure of the enigmatic presence by his side were beginning to have an effect on George. He ran a finger around his starched collar, harrumphed into his handkerchief and breathed deeply, longing for a lung-ful of fresh air – anything to dispel this overheated soup of tobacco, perspiration and siren scents.

On stage, the dancing pair were writhing to a climax. The giant, at the last, determined to rid himself of his unbearable tormentor, plucked the girl from his back, holding her by the waist in one great hand, and spun her to the floor. He, in turn, collapsed, twitching rhythmically.

‘Thank God for that! Know how you’re feeling, mate!’ George thought and knew that every man in the audience was experiencing the same sensation. He watched, with a smile, for any sign of Alice’s predicted rush for medical attention for the elderly but saw none. To enthusiastic applause and shouts the lights went out, allowing the pair to go offstage, and the curtains swished closed again.

‘Would you like me to loosen your stays, Sir George?’ Alice asked demurely. ‘No? Well, tell me – what do you make of her, the toast of Paris? The Black Venus? La belle Josephine?’

‘Miss Baker lives up to her reputation,’ he said, ever the diplomat. ‘A remarkable performance. I’m glad to have seen it.’

‘And you’re lucky to have seen it. This was the first act she impressed the Parisian public with when she arrived here two years ago. Her admirers have pressed her to repeat it for some time and at last they’ve persuaded her partner – that was a dancer called Joe Alex – to perform with her again. The order of performance, for various reasons, has been changed this evening, you’ll find. Word got out, which is why the theatre is packed tonight.’

‘Is she to reappear?’ he asked, trying for a casual tone. ‘Or have we seen all of Miss Baker that is to be seen?’

‘She’ll be back. Once more in this half – doing her banana dance – and then again in the second. We’re to hear her singing. She has a pleasant voice and an entertaining French accent. Now, George, why don’t you sit back and enjoy the rest of the acts?’

George could well have directed the same question at her, he thought. He felt he could have better entered into the spirit of the entertainment had his disturbing companion herself been at ease. But she was not. He hadn’t been so distracted by the spectacle that he’d failed to notice the tremble of her hand, the bitten lower lip, the anxious glances around the auditorium. Troubling signs in a woman he had always observed to be fearless and totally confident. And if Alice Conyers had no fear of the influential Sir George Jardine with his powers to effect her arrest for deception, embezzlement and murder, culminating in repatriation and an ignominious death on an English gallows, then whom
did
she fear? He concluded that there must be, lurking somewhere in this luxuriously decadent space – in her perception at least – someone of an utterly terrifying character.

He followed her gaze. Her eyes, under lowered lashes, were quartering the theatre like a hunter. George sighed with frustration. This refurbished and enlarged theatre now housed, on a good night, up to two thousand souls. And of those, all but two were strangers to him. He wondered how many were known to Alice. And in what dubious capacity? Everything he knew of the woman’s past suggested that her associations were likely to be of a criminal nature, after all. And he’d never been aware of a leopard that could change its spots. Good Lord! Could it be that the woman might actually be thinking herself safer in
his
custody than running loose in Paris? That the grip of his improvised handcuffs about her wrists was not threatening but welcome?