Girl's Guide to Kissing Frogs (9 page)

The other guests were standing close to the fire in the drawing room. Evelyn was conspicuous because of her formidable chic. Her hair, cut short, was silvery white and had been for years. Though she was nearly sixty her skin was hardly lined and her figure was excellent. On Evelyn’s face, Isobel’s features, the slanting eyes, the Grecian nose and the slightly receding chin, had sharpened and refined further with age. She reminded me of a beautiful hawk. She wore a full-length black-velvet-flocked chiffon dress, beautifully cut with a wide satin belt fastened with a diamante clasp. The drawing room, with its panelled walls painted several shades of grey, was the perfect background for her. I would have liked to be invisible for a few minutes so I could glide about uninterrupted and reacquaint myself with the furniture and objects in this most elegant of rooms.

‘Marigold!’ Evelyn advanced with outstretched arms. ‘My poor wounded girl!’ She enfolded me briefly in
Après L’Ondée
, the scent she had always worn. ‘It’s been too long, darling. I don’t count that marvellous ballet. Such a crush and I was in a hurry. Too lovely, all those swans …’ There had not been so much as a cygnet in
The Firebird
but I knew better than to contradict her. She ran her eye quickly over my dress. ‘Hm.
Unusual. A good colour with your hair.’ Sheltering me with her arm as within a palisade, she turned back to her guests. ‘Everyone, this is Marigold Savage. I have known Marigold since she was a baby and I’m very proud of her. She is a prima ballerina.’

Most of the other guests looked blank but one man said, ‘Not really! Well, this is exciting!’ He stepped forward to shake my hand. He had pale wispy hair and a thin, lanky body. The only substantial thing about him was his enormous nose. ‘Duncan Vardy. I’m something of a balletomane. Marigold Savage.’ He wrinkled his nose as he thought, exposing a forest of nostril hair. ‘I can’t quite … which company are you with?’

‘The Lenoir Ballet Company,’ I said. ‘And I’m not a prima ballerina, I’m afraid, just a principal dancer.’

‘Jolly good.’ He laughed uncertainly.

‘Duncan is a writer,’ said Evelyn. ‘I’m reading his most fascinating book at the moment about …’ she paused, hardly perceptibly, ‘the Cosmic Visions of Volupsà.’

Evelyn liked to leaven the dough of hunting Tories with the yeast of artists and intellectuals.

‘Voluspà,’ corrected Duncan with an air of patience. He must have been used to people not quite grasping his subject. ‘Are you interested in Old Norse, Miss Savage?’

‘I’m sure I would be if I knew anything about it.’

Duncan’s pale eyes gleamed. ‘You have heard, I’m sure, of the Nornor.’ He sucked his lower lip and looked at me expectantly.

‘The gnaw-gnaw?’

‘Yes, the Fates of Scandinavian myth. They spin the threads of man’s destiny and when they decide that his end has come they cut the thread.’ Duncan made a snipping movement with two fingers in illustration. They are usually represented as harbingers of suffering and misfortune. They tend the Yggdrasil.’

‘Egg-drazzle?’

‘Ig.
Ig
. It’s an evergreen ash that connects heaven, earth and
hell. At its foot is a fountain of wonderful virtues. In the tree are an eagle, a squirrel and four stags. A dragon gnaws at its roots.’

‘Really!’ I tried to imagine it but there were too many components for a clear picture.

‘Marigold.’ A jolt ran through my nervous system as I felt a hand on my elbow. Rafe – my idol, my
prince lointain
, the top brick of my childhood chimney – stood beside me, holding a glass of champagne. ‘Come and sit by the fire and rest that leg. You can talk to her later, Duncan.’ He smiled down at me. ‘Look, she’s blue with cold.’

I smiled back. ‘I hope not literally.’

Rafe was taller even than I remembered him, perhaps six foot three inches, and his shoulders were proportionately broad.

‘Yes, your arms are the colour of forget-me-nots. It’s perfectly charming.’ He kept hold of my elbow and steered me over to the fireplace. Everyone was obliged to move out of the way because a person on crutches takes up a lot of room. ‘Here we are.’ He indicated a low stool before the fender, took the crutches from me and laid them on the rug before the hearth, thus securing the only two cubic metres of really warm air exclusively for us. I sat down gratefully. ‘Move up a bit. I don’t want to crush that pretty dress. Duncan’s terribly disappointed. You’ll have to be nice to him after dinner.’

‘I’m sure he isn’t.’

‘Don’t argue. A man knows these things. This is cosy, isn’t it? Can’t you feel envious eyes trained on our slowly thawing backs? You needn’t thank me – you’re just an excuse. I haven’t been home long enough to acclimatize myself to steaming breath, frozen lavatories and ice on the breakfast milk.’

‘I’m delighted to be of use to someone. Recently I’ve been nothing but a nuisance.’

I allowed myself to look full into his face. If he’d been an actor he would have got all the David Niven parts. He had
fair hair and blue eyes but this softness was contradicted by the masculinity of the high forehead, straight nose and firm chin. Running from his temple to his jawbone was a thin red scar. This added a singularity to his appearance, which might otherwise have been too conventionally handsome to be truly magnetic. My tastes had become more exotic since we had last met. But I enjoyed looking at the Phoebus Apollo of my girlhood.

‘A nuisance? I don’t believe you ever could be.’ Rafe smiled, making the scar crinkle attractively. A group of strangers finding themselves trapped in a lift or marooned on a desert island would have appointed him their leader without hesitation. ‘Well, Miss Marigold Savage.’ He smiled more broadly, showing strong white teeth, and a teasing light appeared in his eyes. He was more magnetic than I had first thought. ‘Evelyn tells me you’re becoming famous. I wonder if some day biographers will ask me about the carroty little thing I once knew who turned scarlet whenever she was spoken to.’

His voice was attractive too, light and good humoured. I imagined him, debonair in cricket flannels, acknowledging with a wave of his bat the cheers of the crowd as he made a century and won the match.

‘How unfair!’ I grinned to show I didn’t mind being teased. ‘By the time I was old enough to notice, you’d already gone through the stage of being gauche and gangling.’

How well he would look in the cockpit of a Spitfire, wiping the sweat from his eyes as he fired off round after round, singlehandedly saving a phalanx of crippled bombers …

‘Gauche, undoubtedly, but I deny that I was ever gangling. As a child I was short and fat. I didn’t grow until I was about twelve. And I ate lots of tuck to compensate for having my head pushed down the lavatory every day at prep school.’

‘You’ve made up for it since.’

‘You, on the other hand, have scarcely begun.’

‘Actually I’m quite big for a dancer.’

‘The others must be leprechauns. How did you break your leg?’

‘Foot. I landed too heavily. Nothing more than a stress fracture to begin with. But I went on dancing on it, that was the trouble.’

‘No doubt you had a good reason for what seems to the uninitiated like idiocy?’

I told Rafe about Miko Lubikoff, explaining as briefly as I could why it was so important.

‘Of course you want to be the best. I can understand that. When we’re told as children that it’s the taking part that counts, we all know that’s bunkum.’

‘Well, you have to be better than the others or you won’t get the good roles. But, actually, what you really yearn to do above all else is to express something beyond just a beautiful line or speed or technique. You want to try to reach some sort of ideal of artistic perfection. You never can, of course, but you have to try.’ Rafe was looking at me with a curious expression. I had the impression he wasn’t really listening to me, which was just as well because what I had just said probably sounded horribly pretentious to someone not in the ballet world. ‘What do
you
really yearn to do?’

‘Me? I don’t know that I’ve ever been ambitious, apart from silly ephemeral things like winning the boat race or beating the next chap at tennis. I’ve never had a great mission in life. I’m just a simple soldier. Or was. Now I suppose I’m a simple estate manager, a glorified farmer … Hello, Father.’ Rafe stood up as his father approached. ‘Like to sit here?’

Kingsley Preston had changed so much I hardly recognized him. I remembered him as a strong, upright man, wearing his years well. Now he stooped and his slack lower jaw meant that his mouth hung slightly open. The most disturbing change was his expression. Once sanguine and self-assured, this evening it was troubled. ‘No, my boy. No, thank you.’ His lips trembled as he spoke. ‘I prefer to roam.’

‘You remember Marigold, Father? Dr Savage’s daughter,’ Rafe added, seeing that Kingsley was looking vague.

‘Savage. Yes. Consulted him last week about my prostate. Daughter, you say?’ He glanced at me again as though baffled, then his expression cleared. ‘I remember! Went off to be a singer. Yes, a sweet little thing. How are you?’

‘Very well, thank you, sir. I’m sorry I can’t get up very easily … my leg …’

He pressed his hand on my shoulder. ‘Stay where you are, my dear. So you’ve been in the wars, eh? What happened?’

‘I’m a dancer actually. I landed clumsily.’

‘Really? That’s too bad. Rotten luck. So the singing didn’t work out, then? Never mind. I’d rather watch a pretty girl dance than hear her sing any day. Well, well, little Miss Savage.’ He smiled, seeming genuinely pleased to see me. ‘So you’ve come back to play with Isobel.’

I laughed, assuming this to be a joke, and Kingsley looked gratified. ‘Sweet little thing. You must have another glass of champagne, my dear.’ His eyes became glassy and he dropped his chin, muttering into his chest, ‘I’d better go and pee. It takes some doing getting through dinner these days.’ He shuffled away.

‘He’s changed, hasn’t he?’ said Rafe, turning his head to look anxiously after his father. ‘But then … so have we all.’

‘Isobel hasn’t.’

‘No. She’s still the same. Just as … headstrong.’

I wondered what he meant but, before I could think of a tactful way of asking him, dinner was announced.

‘Hello, Spendlove.’ I gave my hand to the butler, who was waiting in the hall to direct guests to lavatories if they required them. He had been employed at Shottestone since before I was born.

‘Miss Marigold! I heard you was coming. You’re looking bonny. Apart from the leg, that is.’

‘Thank you. How are you?’

‘A bit of bother with me teeth and I don’t see so well as I
did, but we must expect that.’ His upper lids drooped heavily, bloodhound-like, obscuring most of his eyes; his nose was heavily veined. Evelyn had once forbidden him to drink any more whisky, but he had been so miserable, weeping over the breakfast table and into the silver polish, that she had been forced to withdraw the prohibition. ‘Me feet are the trouble. The doctor says it’s gout. If there’s time you might think of popping down to the kitchen to have a word with Mrs Capstick.’

‘Of course I will. I’d love to see her again. How is she?’

‘Her stomick’s playing up still but you don’t hear her grumble. Better go in, Miss Marigold, or I’ll get a ticking off for keeping you hanging about in the cold.’

I glanced up at the stairs, remembered coming down them in my first grown-up party dress, seeing Rafe standing by the front door kissing a girl called Olive Fincham, running upstairs again to cry, my whole evening spoiled.

The dining room looked just the same. It was dark red with lots of Georgian silver and mahogany. Isobel and I were sitting opposite each other, two places down from Evelyn.

‘Would you say grace, Archdeacon?’ said Evelyn.

The man on my left began an oration in Latin. His voice had a peculiar muffled boom, as though he kept it locked in a chamber inside his chest. The dining room had previously been hallowed ground, only ventured upon for Isobel’s birthday parties. Mrs Capstick had made magical cakes. Had Rafe attended these occasions? I glanced up and found that he was looking at me. Next to him was a woman in mustard crepe with a crumpled corsage of pink silk roses. She saw me return his smile and looked affronted.

Grace over, I gave my attention to the man on my right. He had a pale rhubarb complexion, bulging dark eyes, a bald head and a prominent nose emerging from long stiff whiskers, the nearest thing I had ever seen to a prawn in evening dress. I saw from his place card that his name was Sir Ibbertson Darkly. He told me he had worked for the MOD (I had no idea what this
was but he made it sound important) until his retirement. He was now an amateur historian (by implication rather brilliant). He told me about his career, his dead wife’s saintliness, his children, his tastes in music, literature, painting and dogs. He was collecting material for the definitive book about Hadrian’s Wall. Whenever I tried to say anything, he interrupted with more tales from the Darkly family chronicles.

‘Gibbon,’ I put in as he paused to swallow his last forkful of mushroom soufflé, ‘says that we should not estimate the greatness of Rome solely by the rapidity and extent of its conquests. Do you agree?’

I knew this sentence by heart because it came at the beginning of Chapter Two and I must have read it at least four hundred times in an attempt to get to grips with the beastly thing. I must admit I was pleased with the way it came out trippingly on my tongue, as though I knew what I was talking about. The amateur historian turned to look at me, his prawn eyes wide with shock, as though I had said that I intended to lie naked on the table and make love with every man present.

‘My dear young lady,’ he began, ‘how … what … Gibbon, you say … well, now … it may be so …’ He stared into his empty ramekin and was silent.

For my first attempt at intelligent conversation, this was a disappointing result. Evelyn, who had been toying with her soufflé until the last guest finished, put down her fork and two girls in black and white uniforms, who must have been hired for the occasion, appeared like magic to whisk away our plates. I remembered the bell under the table near Evelyn’s foot. Isobel had once hidden beneath the tablecloth during a lunch party and pressed it at random, occasioning much confusion until we gave ourselves away by laughing.