The Snow Globe (11 page)

When Daisy awoke, it was dark outside and her mother had gone. She lifted her hand to her still aching, newly bandaged head, then slowly rose to her feet and walked over to the wall-mounted mirror. In the dim light her face was exactly the same, apart from a shadow beneath her right eye. The white cotton bandanna lent her a look she would have welcomed years before, when she had pleaded with her nanny to bandage any small cut or bruise: to appear wounded and brave. Now she
was
wounded, and yet her real wound was not visible. How many seemingly healthy, perfect and whole people walked about with invisible gaping wounds? she wondered, moving away from the mirror and opening the door.

The thing to do was stay calm, she thought, walking down the long passageway. To control one's feelings—anger, rage, irritation. To be more like Mabel: smile . . . turn a blind eye . . . turn the other cheek as the Bible said, and for Mabel's sake more than anything
else. But how dare that trumped-up floozy push her way into
their
house at Christmas! Daisy stopped: Mabel had invited her.

Daisy could hear the voices, ever louder as she tiptoed across the hallway toward the bright light of the room. She paused outside the open doorway. Ahead of her, the three spaniels—Pippa, Ruby and Boy—lay sprawled out on the rug in front of the fire, snoring loudly amidst the chatter and chink of teacups. She moved her eye to the crack in the door: She could see Iris on the other side of the room by the gramophone, looking through records with Dosia and shimmying again, and love-struck Lily and Miles sitting in the window, and Howard, loitering in the middle of the room with Ben. She crouched down to see beneath the arrangement of winter foliage obscuring her view on the other side of the door, only to glimpse the skirted bottom half of three female figures seated together on the large sofa, two of which she knew belonged to her mother and Noonie. Quietly, carefully, she pushed the Chippendale chair along the polished floor nearer to the door, slipped off her shoes, climbed up onto its leather padded seat and moved her eye back to the crack . . .

“See anything interesting?”

Daisy jumped—almost but not quite losing her footing.

“Steady,” the voice whispered.

She turned. His dark hair was slicked back and he bore a striking resemblance to a young Valentino:
Every inch a Valentine,
she thought. He smiled up at her. “I'm Valentine.”

“Yes, I know who you are.”

She took hold of his hand, soft and warm, and stepped down from the chair. “I was actually trying to get a cobweb,” she said, glancing downward, putting on her shoes.

“Nasty things.”

She could detect amusement in his voice, and as she turned to push the chair back into place, he said, “Allow me.”

“I'm Daisy . . . Daisy Forbes.”

“Yes, I thought so,” he said, turning back to her and glancing to her bandaged head.

“I had a fall earlier.”

“And very nearly another just now.”

“If it's all the same with you, I'd rather you didn't mention any of this . . . to anyone.”

“Wouldn't dream of it. Forgotten already. Are you going to go in?”

She nodded, and he stepped aside to let her enter the room.

Noonie cried out, “Ah, and here she is, our wounded little soldier!”

Mabel quickly rose to her feet and rushed over. “Oh, darling, are you feeling quite better?”

Daisy nodded. As she did so, Valentine Vincent walked into the room—past her—and joined the others by the window. Then Mabel said, “Margot, here's my poor Daisy, who had such a horrid fall earlier.”

A woman in mauve rose from the sofa. “Dear Daisy . . .” She put down her teacup and came over to where Daisy stood with her mother. “I was so very sorry to hear about your accident. A moment of distraction, loss of concentration and, oh my goodness, what can happen.”

In the same way that her son was every inch his name, Mrs. Vincent was, to Daisy, every inch the actress. And there were many
inches of her. Tall, large boned and voluptuous—and with unfashionably large breasts, Daisy noted—she possessed a voice that was at once sure and deep, commanding and tremulous. Her face was made up, powdered and rouged, and her golden hair was piled up in that Edwardian way.

The actress turned to Mabel. “I myself had the most
horrendous
fall last winter at His Majesty's.”

For a moment Daisy thought she meant the palace and had a flash of Mrs. Vincent tumbling headfirst down a gilt staircase.

“My ankle gave way and I simply crashed down the theater steps and landed in a heap! Luckily nothing was broken. But my poor ankle has never been the same.”

Her eyes smiled as she spoke and her fingers moved in slow gesticulation as though describing a ballet—not a random fall, Daisy thought.

Mrs. Vincent turned to Daisy, glancing once more to her bandaged head, smiling and frowning at the same time, empathizing, Daisy thought. “Alas, old bones don't heal the way
gorgeous
young ones do,” she said.

She appeared to Daisy to be acutely conscious of every nuance and inflection, each pause and intake of breath; overly sincere in the way people a little in love with themselves were; possessed more by herself than by anyone else. Each and every utterance—from her own lips or someone else's—evoked a little smile, as though she knew and understood it
all
. Everything.

Mrs. Vincent turned. “Valentine, dear heart . . . Val, do come and say hello to poor Daisy. She's had the most
frightful
day.”

He moved easily across the room. He wore a dark blue velvet
jacket, white shirt and dark paisley-patterned cravat. “A pleasure to meet you,” he said, extending his hand for a second time.

Maybe it was the fire—they
were
standing directly in front of it—or maybe it was the effects of her fall or the awful situation they were all in now or the one in the hallway minutes earlier—but Daisy suddenly felt a tremendous heat and felt her face flush.

“My God, you look like a veteran from the war, darling,” Iris called over.

“I fell,” Daisy said again, as matter-of-factly as she could muster, reaching up to the lopsided bandage once more.

As Mabel and Margot sat down, Howard came over to where Daisy and Valentine stood, closely followed by Ben, who tutted and grimaced and then said, “Poor old you”—more to the fireplace, it seemed, than to Daisy.

Iris was playing more of her new dance music on the gramophone, and when it suddenly became quite loud Howard called out, “Do turn that racket down. I can't hear myself think!” He was tense, Daisy could tell. And she wondered how it felt for him right at that moment, with his wife and mistress in the same room, all his lies and deceit safely under one roof, at Christmas.

He moved closer to her. “I thought you wanted to talk to me? Something about Stephen, you said . . .”

Daisy shook her head. “It doesn't matter.”

“You said it was important.”

“It's not . . . Not now.”

She moved away from him, toward Valentine Vincent. “So, Mr. Vincent . . . What do you do with your life?” she asked.

“Val, please,” he quickly replied, then, more hesitant, repeated,
“What do I do with my life . . . ?” He smiled, glanced downward. “Well, I'd like to say I'm a writer.”

“A writer? Then say it. Why not?”

“Why not, indeed. I must learn to. But until I find a publisher for my novel . . . well, I'm never sure of laying claim to that title.”

“Quite right, too,” said Howard, moving nearer. “After all, a doctor can't treat patients and call himself a doctor until he has qualified . . . Stands to reason a writer shouldn't call himself a writer until he's been properly published.”

“Properly?” Valentine repeated.

“Yes, a proper publisher and not one of those shabby outfits that takes money to print up any Tom, Dick or Harry's nine-hundred-page memoirs about . . . about pig farming in Yorkshire—or whatever!”

Daisy saw Ben nod emphatically. “I disagree,” she said without looking at her father. “If Valentine”—Val still seemed a little overfamiliar to her mind—“wishes to call himself a writer, which is precisely what he does and how he employs his time, then he should say it and be able to say it without anyone asking for . . . qualifications. We wouldn't ask a painter how many pictures he had sold in order to establish how worthy he was to call himself that, would we? A writer you are, Mr. Vincent, and, I'm sure, a very good one at that. Don't listen to my father . . . he's a philistine,” she added in a whisper loud enough for Howard to hear.

Valentine smiled at her. Howard feigned a laugh. And then Ben laughed too. But for some reason, and Daisy could not fathom why, Ben Gifford seemed different. He stood clutching his cup and saucer, smiling downward at the rug. He appeared gauche and awkward
and indifferent to her, and all of it—all of
him
—was beginning to irritate her. Looking at the two men standing next to each other, Daisy noticed only Ben's age and Valentine's youth, the mediocrity of one and the charisma of the other. He must be at least thirty, she thought, glancing again at Ben. And suddenly it seemed as though there might yet be some noble purpose to Mrs. Vincent's emergence in her life.

Like her, the woman had aged, Mabel thought, staring back at Margot and smiling. Her hair, softly tinted, still golden, was graying at her temples, and she was more lined than Mabel remembered, particularly around the mouth, which Mabel now studied as Margot spoke. She was happy for Margot to talk. Happy to sit back and watch and listen. And Margot liked to talk and clearly enjoyed the sound of her voice.

The actress sat bolt upright on the sofa next to Mabel, holding her cup and saucer on her lap. She was corseted, Mabel could tell, and the mauve ensemble with buttoned breast—her stiffness and lines—brought to mind an upholstered button-back chair. Rather like the one standing directly opposite them, thought Mabel, glancing to it.

“Do you think Howard's pleased I'm here?” Margot whispered, leaning closer to Mabel.

“I'm sure he's delighted.”

“I do hope so. When you wrote to me saying you wanted it to be a surprise for him, well, I did wonder . . . You see, I'm not sure he likes surprises.”

“Doesn't he?” asked Mabel, widening her eyes.

Margot laughed. “Well, of course, I wouldn't really know, but I somehow imagine he doesn't.” Her smile fell away. She lifted a hand to her hair, barely touching it, gently smoothing it, and looked over to where Howard stood with Daisy and the others. “I only ask because he's barely spoken to me . . . and I'm not altogether sure he was quite so pleased to see me when I first arrived,” she added, her voice trailing off.

“Oh, I think he was. It was just . . . as you say, a surprise. ”

The actress reached over and gripped Mabel's hand. “You're too sweet . . . And really, it's just heavenly to see you again, dear, dear Mabel. How long do you suppose it's been?”

“Six years,” Mabel replied, perhaps a little too quickly, she thought.

Margot gasped. “Six years . . . Heavens, it feels like six months to me. And you know you haven't changed? No, not one bit. You must tell me your secret, Mabel.”

A number of things came to Mabel's mind. She could have said,
Fresh air and life in the country
, she could have said,
Elizabeth Arden
, or she could have said,
Not being touched by a man in six years
.

Mabel said, “We've all aged, Margot. It's inevitable, I'm afraid.”

Margot's eyes fluttered. “Isn't it too depressing? And so different for men.”

Mabel shook her head. “They age, too.”

“But not in the same way, dear. It's all so much easier for them.”

Mabel was aware of Howard watching them, and as Margot went on, talking Mabel through her own exhausting beauty routine and offering to show her a cream she'd recently bought at vast
expense at Harrods, Mabel kept her smile firmly in place and made sure she appeared as though she were hanging on to Margot's every syllable.