by A. P.
So glad you could make the voyage. You poor English with your currency regulations – it would depress me de manière folle. No shopping in Paris, no skiing in the winter – how do you manage, how do you manage?
We manage thanks to kind, hospitable friends like yourselves. My father slid these words in quickly, suppository fashion: too early yet to bring up the racehorse deal but no harm preparing the way. I had been embarrassed at the thought of hearing him struggle along in French, but really he spoke the language passably well. Which came as a relief because embarrassment would have weakened our position; with these creatures, whether vampires or just snooty fuddy-duddies looking down their Gallic noses at us, we needed to dominate for comfort.
Ah, Miqui, toujours le galant.
Etcetera, etceterbla. The evening got under way and proceeded on its stuffy and quite uneventful course. Eats of a dainty but slightly papier-mâché variety were carried around by white-gloved waiters. Among them I recognised some of the hunt-servants: they had fed the hounds, maybe the horses too, and now they were feeding us. Be thankful therefore for the gloves. My legs started tingling from standing on one spot, and my jaw began to have that achy feeling brought about by too much inane smiling. Talking might have helped to relax the muscles, but there was nobody friendly to talk to – except Christopher, and he was still giving me the pariah treatment. I had entered the room half paralysed by fear; I risked leaving it almost totally paralysed by boredom. (Leaving it, but when? When? Where had my father got to? Ah, there he was, talking to Christopher’s mum. He looked as despairing as I felt, why wasn’t he picking up my distress signals so we could bolt?)
Roland was present, as we had anticipated, wedged in a far corner with a couple of aldermen or suchlike, looking dutiful to the point of preppy, so I didn’t even have the worry of his whereabouts to keep me on edge. He’d given me another of those strange looks of his when he saw me – sweet, wistful, almost pitying – it made me think with a twinge of discomfort that I still hadn’t really figured him out at all. We were rivals. Rivals for Sabine, and I stood slap in his path. Last night I had thwarted him, outwitted him, and tonight with my reinforcements I would do worse: he ought to resent me, surely? But no, there he was, all smiles and solidarity. Devious beast. Slippery, reptilian hybrid or whatever you could call him. My father would settle him, though. It was enough to look from one to the other and compare their stances – Roland’s, poised, light, hesitant, rocking slightly from heel to toe; my father’s, confidently planted on the ground – to realise that, wherever a future conflict between the two might take place, there was no question who would emerge from it victorious. Creature of the night versus man of the world. No contest even: the man of the world would win, hands down, feet down.
Rap, rap, rap. Interruption – so welcome that it felt like rescue at the time – came at length from one of the halberdiers, who had mounted a kind of dais at the back of the gallery and was now banging the staff of his halberd on the floorboards, requesting silence in a booming voice.
Silence took some time coming. Nobody appeared willing to heed the command of a social inferior. After the surprise of the first spate of bangs everyone just shrugged and went on talking – that much louder to cover the din – and it was not until the Marquis himself stepped on to the dais and instigated a pleading action with a decidedly personal touch that gradually, starting with those nearest to him and then fanning out ripple-wise to the rest, quiet was established and his voice became audible.
My friends, he began, those few of you who can read my handwriting will already know why we are gathered here this evening, heh, heh, but it is my pleasure nonetheless to announce to you the reason with the due touch of ceremony that such news deserves. The more so because in the meantime another piece of good news, of a more private nature, has added itself to the first, giving us double cause for celebration. I will begin with this second announcement. Unfortunately, owing to the dictates of convalescence – by which I mean the dictates of our dear Doctor here, so punctilious, so rigoureux … (there followed a moment’s pause as the Marquis sought out and indicated a perspiring la Forge among the listeners, and waited for laughter that was not forthcoming). Unfortunately, he resumed, neither the charming young lady concerned, nor her equally enchanting mother, could be here tonight in person to share our joy, but they are here with us in spirit. My son Roland will be joining them shortly and will convey to them the félicitations, I am sure, of us all. Together with … (At this he held up his left hand and made a stroking gesture of his ring finger with the right, bringing from his audience, all except me, a chorus of dutiful Ahs.) Because, yes, indeed, my friends, you have guessed correctly, this is the announcement I have to make on behalf of myself and my wife and which makes us both so happy and proud: the betrothal of our son Roland to Mademoiselle Marie Sabine de la Cour d’Houanche.
I felt as if someone had ripped out my innards. Empty inside, and yet full of pain to come. The man was lying, he must be. They were cheating, all of them, they must be. Sabine would never have consented to an engagement – with no matter whom – without discussing her intention with me first. Or telling me about it, at the very least. In her right mind she would never have consented to an engagement, full stop. It was all a lie, a put-up job, there was not a word of truth in anything the Marquis said.
Then I remembered Ghislaine’s smile that morning when speaking of the réception, and the announced pain flooded in with a whoosh, almost winding me with its violence. It was true without a doubt. Ghislaine knew and she was thrilled to bits about it, and she hadn’t dared tell me and no wonder. When could it have happened? When could this terrible thing have happened? Not today for sure – Roland hadn’t been to see Sabine yet. Yesterday then. Yesterday when she was a helpless doll. The doll had got engaged, not Sabine. The doll had been pressed into an engagement.
Around me everyone was clapping and making buzzing noises of congratulation. The footmen/huntsmen were whirling in, trays of champagne glasses held high above their heads. On his platform the Marquis was waving his hands around again, trying to indicate that he hadn’t yet finished what he had to say, but with scant success. The buzz grew and the glasses were grabbed and filled and raised and emptied and refilled. I stood there in misery, explanations and excuses flashing across my mind and then fizzling out like spent fireworks: I rejected all of them. Didn’t even deign to follow their course. Oh, I knew with my reason that Sabine was beyond blame, but who can reason on the rack? Whatever comforting slant I might attempt to put on it, the bare, unalterable fact remained: she had ultimately chosen him, Roland, in preference to me, and – far graver treachery in my view – had not so much as bothered to inform me of her choice. Indeed, she had done worse: that morning when I had kissed her, she had actually turned away in order to prevent me from reading the truth on her face, knowing as well as I did that her eyes could never lie, closed lids and all. Hence Roland’s pity – he could afford it.
I was so numbed, so stunned, the hurt of Sabine’s silence had cut so deep, that even when the room fell quiet enough again for the Marquis to be heard, the remainder of his words were lost to me. I could see, and I could hear, and to outward appearances I could still function, but inside me some vital mechanism of comprehension seemed to have jammed. It was like watching a movie in an unknown foreign language. (And who knows, maybe it was better that way too. A jab of anaesthetic given me by a merciful Nurse Chance.)
My main preoccupation anyway was keeping check on Roland’s movements – nothing else really mattered. Shortly, we had been informed, he would be setting out to join Sabine. How short was shortly? How much time did my father and I have in which to foil him? We must get to Sabine’s home before he did; it was no good arriving later, even five minutes’ delay might be fatal, even four, even one: she was so weak now she would hardly survive another bleeding. At present he was easy enough to monitor because the whole de Vibrey brood, daughters included, had now mounted the dais and were sta
nding there on either side of their parents, champagne glasses at the ready, clinking and drinking in unison like a row of mass-manoeuvred puppets. The toasts, that was it, this must be the moment of the toasts. But once he left the platform it would be hard to keep track of him in the confusion. He could easily slip away without my noticing, and then …
Oh, the follow-on was intolerable, unthinkable. The ring, the pledge, the promise … His strength, his swoop; her weakness, her surrender … Oh no. Oh no, it must be stopped, it must be stopped. I cast around urgently for my father only to realise, with a gush of relief, that he was standing right behind me and had in fact placed a protective hand on my shoulder which I, in my stupefied state, had failed to notice. I tugged at one of the fingers to attract his attention but he drummed it against mine reprovingly and made a hissing noise: he was listening to the Marquis’s speech with what was, for him, a fairly good forgery of rapt attention. I looked round and up at him a second time, examining him closer: his face was creased in a polite society smile, eyes faintly glazed over with tedium and the desire to hide it. His other hand, with a wine glass in it, went up and down in synchrony with all the others. Why, I wondered, when by inclination he was so detached and ironic, was he at bottom such a conformist? His heroes were Byron and Disraeli: perhaps that afforded a key. They too had been romantic about things like wealth and lineage, they too had been torn between contempt of public opinion and servitude to its laws. The genial cripple and the genial Jew: two stars so uncertain of their shine that they needed a reflecting surface, even though it was only the lid of an old tin can and they knew it. Was my father perhaps the same? Uncertain? Insecure despite all his apparent assurance?
Oh, I hate the way these smug old maxims always turn out to be true: Tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner. Does this mean I must forgive him everything? No, it means I must take a step further and recognise there’s nothing to forgive: things go as they will go.
The Marquis had finished proposing toasts now and was making a different set of gestures. Beckoning gestures, master-of-ceremony gestures, come-on-everybody-let’s-get-going gestures. Rather vulgar for an aristocrat, but then he was a vulgar man, title and all. At the rear of the dais one of the footmen was trafficking with a gramophone and a pile of records. I saw the Marquis point to him and then turn to his audience and shrug, hands spread in apology, as much as to say, Once upon a time we would have had a proper orchestra, even for a cocktail party, now all I can offer is this.
He mouthed a few short words, looking straight at my father, and from above my head my father nodded approval and mouthed them back. I know now what they were, which means I must have lip-read them and filed them away in my mind for later interpretation. They were in English: ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes’.
At the time, though, I don’t think I heard either them or the music they were set to, nor felt my father’s arms around me as he swung me to face him and swept me on to the dance floor in full view of all the onlookers. I’m not sure I even felt the puncture of his teeth as they sank deep into my neck, or heard the gentle apology-cum-warning that may or may not have preceded it, or the applause that followed – generally pretty raucous on such occasions, going by later experience. I’m not sure, I’m not sure. It sounds improbable, but my attention was still focused on Roland, on making sure I kept him in my sights.
I remember putting my hand to my neck distractedly, and bringing it away smeared with blood, and looking at it for an instant in puzzlement, and then up at my father, and noticing that he too had blood on his face, and thinking nothing, nothing at all except, Well, so what; we can wash when we get to Sabine’s. I remember, too, out of the corner of my eye, seeing Christopher in much the same messy state shuffling around awkwardly with his mum in a kind of fractious foxtrot, and being grateful that at least we had company and were not the only couple to be cutting such a dismal figure in front of our grenouille hosts. Although, mind you, the Marquis, as he slid by with his youngest daughter in tow, didn’t look exactly all that pristine around the jaws himself.
Roland was dancing, not with his mother, as might have been expected for reasons of symmetry if nothing else, but with one of his elder sisters. My concentration still fixed on him almost exclusively, I saw him yawn and consult his watch behind his sister’s back. Then he whispered something to her, and the two of them loosened hands and drew apart, and I saw him dig into one of his pockets and extract from it a bunch of keys. The keys to the car. He was going. There was no time to lose: we must act immediately.
He’s leaving! I said to my father, shaking his hand in order to rouse him, and then, when this didn’t work, digging at his shins with my knee. Roland’s leaving! He’s making for Sabine’s. We’ve got to go. We’ve got to get there first, remember? Remember? You promised, remember?
My father’s face, in addition to the bloodstain, wore a faraway, bleary look when finally he glanced down at me. He seemed to be awaking from a reverie or sobering up after a soak. Instead of interrupting the dance he clasped me tighter and bent his head so that it was practically touching my ear. To his credit, I think I heard a break in his voice when he spoke.
Let him go, my darling, he said. Let him go to this Sabine you love so much, and let him do what he wants to her. Better him than you. Believe me, better him than you.
Yes, crazy though it sounds, it was not until my father spoke – these words that I actually could hear, as opposed to mere mouthings – that, slowly, slowly, as I shuffled around the floor to the dance music, trapped in his arms like the prisoner I now was, the truth came home to me.
Coda
I use the term ‘came home’ with irony but also with resignation. Because that is what that evening was about, you see, that is what we were celebrating: a coming-out in society that was at the same time a homecoming, a welcome to the fold.
Meaning that your rival won her in the end? (It is the voice of the man in the picture again, his image surfacing in my mind again after another interval of decades.) That beautiful girl you were both so fond of – you lost her, and he won?
I hesitate a moment before replying because this time he is only partly right. I lost Sabine, but Roland didn’t win her, not really, not for long. She died in May of the following year – of a haemorrhage resulting from a miscarriage, or so the official story went. I have difficulty believing it, but even if true, it makes no difference to the way I view her executioner: greedy parasite or ardent husband, he still bled her to death. I also heard talk that her end was unintentional – a foul-up by the leaders of the vampire community, who didn’t bother to brief Roland properly on his task before letting him loose on her: No bingeing, young man, just keep her out of the way till we’ve got things settled with the other girl – our new recruit. Surtout pas trop de zèle. But that doesn’t make any difference to the way I view things either: they wanted to split us, Sabine and me, and split us they did.
The man of the portrait listens sympathetically, smiling his gently ironic smile. And what about you, Viola? he asks, when I’ve finished. What happened to you?
I went on to become a doctor, I tell him, though my reasons for this choice of career were vague. It could have been because the profession, with its handy blood supply, provides a simple way of procuring nourishment for those of my kind, or it could have been that I felt (mistakenly, as it turned out) that it would continue to connect me somehow to Sabine. Oh, that Italian song, how sad its words are. The world that is; the world that could have been. My life as I live it now; my life as we could have lived it, Sabine and I together. When I think of my loss …
Your loss? The man of the portrait interrupts me, lifting a painted eyebrow that turns his ironic gaze to one of overt cynicism. Oh, come now, Viola, your relationship was far too conflictual, it never would have worked. Two young women bickering over the young men who come between them; two middle-aged women bickering over futilities; then two old women bickering over the shreds of their empty existence – that is the way it would h
ave been. You have conserved your dream intact. Be content with that.
Is a dream more precious, then, than reality? I ask.
The canvas smile only intensifies, as much as to say: You are the dream expert, Viola, you know the answer.
A Note on the Type
The text of this book is set in Linotype Sabon, named after the type founder, Jacques Sabon. It was designed by Jan Tschichold and jointly developed by Linotype, Monotype and Stempel, in response to a need for a typeface to be available in identical form for mechanical hot-metal composition and hand composition using foundry type.
Tschichold based his design for Sabon roman on a fount engraved by Garamond, and Sabon italic on a fount by Granjon. It was first used in 1966 and has proved an enduring modern classic.
