The Edge of the Fall (29 page)

She told him about Petra, the little things she did, her habit of catching the lace at her bedclothes and playing with it. ‘She's really the sweetest kitten!' she said. ‘She has the kindest nature. Even Mrs Merling has come to love her.'

‘One day, I shall have to call on you to meet her.'

‘That would be marvellous,' she said. ‘I'm always free.' That was at Mary Graham's cocktail party. She stored up his words –
one day
– gathered them to her as she travelled home. Next day, she sat all afternoon in her pink gown, and he didn't come. She wondered if she had been too keen to invite him.

Three nights later, she attended the Moss ball – and he came straight to dance with her. He didn't mention the afternoons. She supposed he must have forgotten. He whirled her around, his hands close on her back. He had to dance with other girls, of course, but every time he did, he looked over at her.

And then, the next day, Arthur came down with a cold. He
sent a message down via Mrs Merling saying he was too ill to go to the balls, so she would have to remain at home while he recovered. She replied in a letter, telling him that she could easily go herself, ask Mrs Merling to accompany her as a chaperone (even though Mrs Merling never went out, as far as Louisa could tell). He wrote back that it was impossible – she would have to wait. So she did, pacing the rooms with Petra in her arms, willing him to recover. At night, she couldn't sleep, lying there sure she could hear Arthur moving around, leaving the room, even. She held Petra close, thought of Edward clasping her in his arms. But as the week drew on, all she could think of was how other girls might be coming close to him, smiling, touching his arm.

After two weeks, finally, when Arthur deemed himself fit to attend a ball, she walked in – and saw Edward talking to Miss Redesdale. He had forgotten her.

She gazed at him, willing him to look back at her, but he was absorbed in Jennifer, smiling at her, listening. Frederick was saying something into Louisa's ear, but she could barely hear. She could see only
him
and
her
, as if they were the only three in the room.

‘I have to do something!' she said to herself.

‘What did you say?' said the girl next to her. ‘What must you do?' She shook her head. This was a plan she would have to conjure for herself, tell only to Petra.

It took her a week to come up with her idea. She pondered what she might do late at night in bed, on lunch appointments with Arthur – and at a cocktail party, where she watched Edward and Jennifer, deep in conversation once more. ‘I have it!' she told Petra. There was a fancy-dress ball planned for two weeks' time. The theme was Under the Sea. She'd been looking forward to it eagerly – she'd been rather surprised, she had to admit, about how few fancy-dress balls there really were. When she'd read about the fun young things of London, she had thought there would be fancy-dress balls every night. But even though she'd been in London for nearly six months, there had only been two – one in which everyone had to pretend to be some kind of cake
(she'd worn pink) and one while Arthur had been ill, so they couldn't attend, where the theme was dressing like something to recall Africa.

She had to think of the most exciting possible costume – and Edward would notice only her, admire only her. For the next week, she plotted, demanding Mrs Merling accompany her to shops. Other girls could dress as fish or lobsters (Binky Smith said she was going to be a jellyfish). No one fell in love with a lobster, even Louisa knew that.

In one drapers' shop, she bought swathes of turquoise material, gold-tinged and edged with green and blue embroidery. She tried it against her face in the mirror in the shop, watching the light glitter off her eyes. She started practising the dress in the afternoon, Petra watching closely. She had the plans quite down to perfection, she thought. She would wear a usual gown to the party, the ordinary blue one that was already looking a little drab. Arthur would approve. He'd told her dressing up was unseemly for girls – hardly fair, since he was going as a shark. She'd tell him she agreed with him, and would merely wear a small fish brooch on the bosom of her gown. But under her shawl, she would carry the bundle of material – and slip off as early as she could to effect the transformation.

Petra licked her ear, nuzzled her cheek. ‘I'll tell you all about it,' she said.

As it happened, she barely had to wait at all to put her plan into motion. Only half an hour after arriving at the party, Arthur wandered off to the bar. She gathered her shawl and hurtled up to the ladies' cloakroom. There she shut herself in the WC and pulled off her gown, quickly as she could, then the most cumbersome underthings, gathered the sea-green material and swathed it around herself, pinning it with the brooches she'd borrowed from Mrs Merling. She tugged the material up over her shoulder and waited. Finally, the voices outside her cubicle discussed moving downstairs. She heard the door slam and the hubbub fade as they walked away, back to the ball. Then she came out, fluffing her hair at the mirror. She almost laughed as she came close. She
had swathed it around herself even better than she had in her own room – despite not being able to see herself in the mirror. The material was tight around her body; she was a blue-dressed girl, like a mermaid.

She crouched down to bundle up her dress and underthings in her shawl, piled them in a corner next to the sinks. Then she fluffed forward her hair, smiled one more time, and hurried through the bathroom door, holding up her costume.

She hesitated slightly at the door to the ballroom, hearing the noise of the party. Then she heard someone move towards the door. She couldn't turn back.
Hold your head high
, she said to herself.
Smile!
She waited for the person to leave the room – Billy Smiles, as it turned out, a man who had always wanted to dance with her, now dressed as a squid – and she sailed past him, walking quickly.

Keep smiling. Look up
. The other costumes were a joke – cardboard fish and lobster heads. She spotted Binky, wearing a giant pink hat, tentacles dropping into her face. No competition from, any of them. She couldn't see Jennifer or Edward.

No one noticed her at first, not really. Three people in orange with giant eyes perched on their heads (were they goldfish?) and two girls with large cardboard shells on their backs paid her no attention. She pushed past someone in blue puffy material – perhaps they were meant to be a wave – walked past some people in ordinary gowns who she supposed had forgotten the theme, or decided not to join in. Then she saw it: the place she wanted, a spot reasonably free of people. She thought she could see Jennifer Redesdale's head in the group nearby. Louisa jumped forward, stood there, smiled widely, shook out her long hair.

The room quietened. She could feel it almost before she heard it: the voices dimmed. They were staring at her. People were turning, looking. She heard someone gasp, felt the hiss of whispers.

‘Why!' said one woman loudly. ‘She's practically naked!'
No I'm not!
Louisa wanted to cry.
I'm just a mermaid!

A group of barnacles were whispering. Binky was openly staring. Mrs Callendar, in blue, with seaweed swathed around her, was clutching the arm of the woman beside her. Arthur – thankfully
– was nowhere to be seen. She smiled again. She just had to keep smiling. They'd see that the costume was beautiful.

Then it was almost as if the sea itself parted. Edward, dressed as a sailor, was walking towards her, through the people. He pushed past Jennifer Redesdale, didn't notice her. Louisa smiled wider. He came towards her, holding out his hand. Three steps, two, one – and his hand was on hers.

‘I'm from the sea,' she said. She'd meant to say
the sea loves sailors
(or squids or whales or whatever he had come as). But when it came to it, she couldn't, blushed and the words wouldn't come out, she got confused. She gazed at him.

A voice came from the crowd. ‘Edward!'

It was Jennifer, red-faced in a dress decorated with sand. She was staring, mouth open.

The rest of the crowd were silent, watching. Louisa held his hand. She felt it slip down, away from her. She gazed at him. She felt him pull away, his reluctance. And then he stepped forward to her. ‘Come,' he said. ‘Let us dance.'

She followed after him, her hand back in his.

They stood at the dance floor waiting for the next turn to begin. She could feel his hipbone, close on hers.

Frederick le Touche came towards her. She felt his breath on her ear. ‘You should watch out,' he said. ‘Did you mean to make an enemy in Jennifer Redesdale?'

‘I just wanted to look pretty.'

‘Well, this isn't the nursery school play any more. You've just made yourself a rather powerful rival.' Then the music began and Edward whirled her away.

TWENTY

London, April 1920

Louisa

Edward left the ball after an hour or so of dancing. He clutched her hand passionately and said he had business – so by the time Arthur came back from drinking with his friends at the bar, she'd changed into her underthings and dull blue gown. But Billy Smiles had told him about it and so she had fifteen minutes of him stomping about the Merlings' parlour, complaining. ‘Your antics are ridiculous!' he shouted. ‘I didn't bring you here to make an exhibition of yourself!'

‘It wasn't an exhibition. It was just a beautiful costume.'

‘You can be such a child.'

She let Arthur's words drift over her. The important thing was that Edward had seen her, clasped her hand.

She waited for a note from him, holding Petra close. Her mind ran on the ball, how he captured her in his arms.

Three mornings after the ball, the Merlings were planning a shopping trip. She'd said she had a headache so strong that every step, sound – even a drop of dust – would only aggravate it. She'd heard them slam the door and dropped back into bed. The maids were out on their morning errands.
Solitude!
Pure solitude, where she could lie back in her bed and indulge pleasant dreams about Edward. She huddled under the covers in her nightdress, wrapped her arms around herself, pondered on how Edward's kiss might be.

She was just imagining that she had allowed him to briefly touch her neck when there was the sound of the bell. It was the time that the postman came. Edward might have sent a letter. She
swung her legs out of bed, not stopping for her slippers, hurried downstairs. The Merlings' man, Jamieson, was standing by the door, holding out a package. ‘It's for you, miss,' he said. ‘No sender.'

She took it into her arms. It felt heavy. Perhaps, she thought, Mrs Merling had ordered something from the draper's for her. She thanked him and carried the package back to their rooms, holding it close. The handwriting on the front was strange and spiky, a long line under the word Deerhurst, a sharp triangle over the ‘M' of Miss. She closed their parlour door behind her and took the thing to the sofa. Carefully, not wanting to tear the gauzy stuff inside, she began to open the paper, stripping off the layers, crinkling the cheaper wrapping that lay behind.

Then she came across newspaper. That was a surprise. She had never received material through the post wrapped in newspaper before. She doubted anyone Mrs Merling used would lack for wrapping material. She plucked at the newspaper – obviously the lowest sort. And, moreover, there was rather a strange smell coming from the package, something quite rotten. Perhaps, she thought, it was a mix-up and she'd ended up with something meant for Mr Merling, back in the Cotswolds. They'd received a box of cigars for him once. She continued to pull the newspaper off the parcel, even more layers of it, so she was practically sitting in a pool of paper.

She tugged off the last layer. Now it was a brown-paper parcel. It wasn't material, she knew that much. It was wet and cold. She knew, really, that she should put it aside now, not look at it, but she carried on tearing off paper. Then the thing fell into her hands and she screamed, threw it to the floor. It was a fish, a great fish, red slashes where eyes should have been.

She crouched on her heels, looking at the thing, wet and bloody on the carpet, gazing at the tail, the fins, anything so as not to look at the bloody eyeless face. She gazed while the horror built up in her, until she found the strength to pull open the window, tug up the thing. She tried to heave it out, but it fell back against her, bloody on her skirt. She screamed as it hit her feet.

Jamieson was beside her. ‘It's a fish,' he said, holding the
wrapping in his arms. ‘Were you expecting a fish?' Blood dripped off the end and on to the Merlings' pale carpet.

She gazed at him. ‘No,' she whispered. ‘I wasn't expecting anything.'

‘Well, I wonder if the kitchens might like it.' He held it up and more blood dropped on the carpet. ‘It doesn't look very fresh to me, though.'