At one o’clock in the morning, Miranda rang. Alice was alone in the kitchen reading.
‘Alice? Look, darling, can you come to my twenty-first birthday party? It’s in a week’s time, at Father’s cousin’s place, Martenby House, Waterloo Place. It’s a formal ball. Come at about ten. I’ll send you invitations. Bring Finola, she’ll absolutely adore it, and anyone else who wants to come.’
‘Well, of course we’ll come if you like, but what about your parents?’
‘Why on earth do you think I’m ringing up at this hour? Of course they don’t know. It’ll be a lovely surprise for them. But look, I want us to celebrate my independence on our own. Can I come to dinner with you on the 20th?’
‘Certainly. Oh, Miranda, it’s so wonderful to think you’ll be free!’
‘Yes, Alice,’ sighed Miranda, and she put down the receiver.’
*
Alice was looking at herself in the mirror. She had on an old dirty camisole and baggy cotton knickers. Her thin legs and arms protruded, naked and greyish, from her loose greyish clothes. She had used to be very slender; now she was as skinny as she had been when a child. What little flesh she had was no longer firm. Lines had begun to appear on her fine dry skin several years ago. Her hair had started to turn grey. She preferred the grey to the previous dull brown, so she did not dye her hair even though she was only thirty-three. Because her beautiful mouth was still that of a young woman, and because her narrow bright eyes and heavy eyebrows were just as they always had been, Alice could, on a good day, look ten years younger than she was. On a bad day she looked far older.
When Miranda had been living with her, Alice had made an effort about her appearance: She had made herself eat enough, although she usually wanted less food than she needed. She had cut her hair and washed and brushed it properly. She had worn tidy, almost fashionable, clothes. Three years ago she had reverted to her old habits: she had gone back to wearing the clothes she had had during the war, and had let her hair grow again.
In a heap on the bed there lay a bright yellow silk dress which Aunt Caitlin had had made for her in 1917. It was Alice’s only grand dress and she had planned to wear it to Miranda’s ball tonight. She had tried it on and quickly taken it off again. Her face, without rouge, had peered dry and white over the gleaming silk and, when she had hastily rubbed on some of Finola’s rouge, the rouge had stood out on her sharp cheekbones as two spots of red paint. She had nothing but the yellow to wear, unless she went in one of her summer frocks.
She tried on a blue gingham dress and realised that she must have been too old for the material and the colour and the cut several years ago. She bit her lip and stared at herself.
Anatole came in.
‘There’s a stain on this shirt-front,’ he said. ‘Have you got anything to remove it with? Oh, I thought you were going in that,’ he said, nodding at the yellow silk. ‘Do wear it. You always looked magnificent in it.’
‘I haven’t worn it for four years,’ said Alice. ‘And it looks terrible, really terrible now. And this looks awful too, and I’m so old, and I’ve nothing to wear and I can’t go, I really can’t!’
‘You are a chicken of thirty-three, and you have the figure and the mouth of an eighteen-year-old girl, and all that is wrong is that you are a little too thin. So stop talking nonsense, and don’t cry, my love.’ He reached up and patted her shoulder. ‘Go and ask Finola to lend you a dress, and do your face and all that. She’ll know what to do.’
‘Fin wouldn’t lend me one of her dresses!’ said Alice, staring. ‘And you can’t ask a pretty girl of her age to make an effort to improve an old hag’s appearance. She thinks middle age sets in at twenty-one, and it’s not worth bothering about your looks after that. And perhaps she’s right.’
‘Go and ask Finola. And I tell you that you are not old, and not even Fin thinks you are.’
‘Really? Do you think Fin would?’ said Alice, turning to him, and she looked very young indeed.
‘Of course she’d be glad to. Sometimes I think you’re afraid of her.’
‘I am that,’ muttered Alice suddenly, and she went out before he could reply.
She knocked on Finola’s door and Finola, rather surprised, asked her to come in. She laughed.
‘What’s funny?’ said Alice. ‘Oh, I know I look ridiculous!’
‘You look rather sweet — just unlike yourself. I say, I’m sorry, I wasn’t really making fun of you, you know,’ said Finola. ‘You look as though you’re in rather a bad way.’
Finola was quite ready and was putting away the various frocks which she had tried on and rejected.
‘Can you lend me a dress?’ said Alice. ‘Please, I look terrible in the yellow.’
‘That yellow!’ sighed Finola knowingly. ‘Everything of mine will be far too short for you, you know.’
‘I know.’
‘But you can if you like. What do you want?’ She indicated the frocks which were strewn round the room.
‘Just you choose something that won’t make me look a hundred and five,’ said Alice. ‘You know I don’t know anything about clothes.’
Finola paused and frowned a little at Alice, her small round mouth slightly open. Then she assumed the authority of a couturier. ‘You must have something with sleeves,’ she said firmly. ‘And not too bright.’
In the end Finola chose a dark green wool day-dress. It was too long for Finola, who had taken up the hem; with the hem let down again, it was almost long enough for Alice.
‘It isn’t a dancing dress, though, is it?’ said Alice.
‘No, but you look very nice in it, don’t you? And you carry off the awful things you usually wear without worrying at all, so why you can’t go to a dance in a short dress I don’t know. Besides, long dresses have only just come back. Three years ago everyone wore short.’
‘All right, Nanny.’
Finola blushed and murmured, ‘OK, I’ll do your face now.’
She sent Alice out of the room with trimmed, brushed hair and with her skin coated with foundation. Alice looked quite dazed as she walked downstairs. She ran her tongue gingerly round her red-greased lips, and wrinkled her face curiously to feel the foundation ease and crack. Finola watched her from the bend of the stairs. Anatole joined her.
‘If she carries on doing that, the lipstick will look like strawberry jam round her mouth,’ said Finola. She laughed a little.
They followed Alice downstairs. She was looking at herself in the hall mirror.
‘I’m sorry, Fin, but I’m going to take all this make-up off. I feel like a clown. No one will ever take me seriously.’
‘Oh, Alice, don’t be so stupid,’ said Finola.
Alice went up to the bathroom while Anatole and Finola joined Augustus, Liza, Jenny and her lover Edward in the kitchen for a drink before setting off for the ball.
‘Goodness,’ said Jenny, who wore a short poppy-red dress, ‘do you realise that, of all of us, Augustus is the only one who’s ever actually been to something like this?’
‘We’re all débutantes,’ said Liza. She was biting her nails.
‘You don’t look like one,’ said Finola. ‘You look like a period piece.’ Liza wore a high-necked white blouse and a long black skirt. Liza flushed and Finola looked away.
‘Then she can go as the Dowager Countess of Bramham,’ said Augustus. ‘Ah, Alice — have some gin.’
Alice gulped down some gin and they left the house. They all piled into a taxi for the drive to Waterloo Place, but they found, when they reached Martenby House, that they were not as late as they had feared, and had arrived with the throng. From the London mansion yellow light poured out through the windows and the open door into the street, and the chattering people basked under its beam. Almost everyone had arrived in a car; Finola could see only one other taxi amongst the rank of motors. She and Alice and Liza gazed at the men in their white ties and tails, at the women in long dresses cut very like Finola’s, at the big cars, the yellow light
and the wet shining street. The others walked on a little ahead.
‘Miranda darling,’ said a girl just in front of Jenny as they went into the hall, ‘it is so lovely to come to a proper dance. Is there lovely decadent unsocialist champagne too?’
‘There is indeed. I do like your dress, Tuffy,’ said Miranda. She, like Alice, was dressed in dark green. She was greeting the guests as they came in: her mother and father stood near her, and were also shaking hands. Miranda looked a little dazed.
‘Alice, Alice!’ she called, and her parents turned round at the sound of her voice, though Miranda knew several Alices. Miranda embraced Alice very tightly, almost as though she were afraid of losing her, so that Alice muttered, ‘There, there,’ and blushed, and patted her on the back. Miranda also gave a flushed, tearful welcome to the rest of the party from Bramham Gardens and bade them enjoy themselves.
Flora Pagett determinedly advanced a shaking hand towards Alice. ‘Mrs Molloy, I’m so glad you’ve come. I should have sent you a proper invitation.’ She began the second sentence almost in a whisper, but finished it in a loud voice. Alice passed on to Thomas Pagett, whose eyes were now fixed on the wall opposite, and who bowed to her. His face was very white and his hands were behind his back. Once the whole party from Bramham Gardens had passed into the ballroom he held his hands still behind his back, and continued merely to nod at the guests, as he waited to attract Miranda’s attention. As soon as the last of the timely guests had arrived, Miranda went upstairs; her father, after awaiting her return at the foot of the stairs for five or ten minutes, retired to the smoking room with a few elderly friends.
At the door of the great room in which the dancing was to take place, the guests were announced. Finola heard her own name boomed out by the footman: ‘Miss Finola Molloy!’
She stood on the threshold and gazed into the crowd. It occurred to her that she could have had herself announced as Mademoiselle Brécu, Mademoiselle de Brécu.
She walked forward. She looked up at the blazing chandeliers and down at the parquet floor and avoided looking at the people’s faces. She clumsily made her way to a corner and sat down. When she furtively looked round her again, she saw not one really handsome young man. She looked down at her lap and saw for the first time the crude stitches in her tight, fashionable, pearl-grey silk dress. She felt tears come into her eyes as she looked at her dress and listened to the laughter of people who knew each other. She wrapped her arms about herself and shrank into the shade.
Finola spent about ten minutes sitting there. She caught sight of Jenny’s red dress in the crowd and hoped that Jenny would notice her. Jenny disappeared from Finola’s view.
Just after the dancing began, two middle-aged ladies came to sit near Finola. There were plenty of chairs, and many elderly women were standing, talking loudly and even dancing; but Finola now felt that she ought not to be seated. She dragged herself to her feet and looked up. She put a lively expression on her face so that she would not be taken for the shy child who had been crouching in the corner. Suddenly Finola saw a blond, tall, beautiful man standing near one of the windows, several yards away from her. She felt her cheeks grow red as she inched her way inconspicuously around the walls. When she was only a few feet away from the lovely young man someone said: ‘I say — care to dance?’ The speaker was a gangling boy, who had a pimple on his nose. He was breathing loudly.
‘Oh — oh, I never dance — oh, yes, all right,’ said Finola. She saw that the handsome man was talking to a very pretty girl. ‘I’d be glad to,’ she muttered, still blushing, and she and her new partner shuffled away from the wall without looking at each other. A little later Finola decided, as they attempted to dance, that he was really very plain; but she still wished that she had more bosom, and hoped that he could smell her new scent.
She saw Liza looking through the dancers with her pale grey eyes, a faint smile on her lips. Liza was sitting quite calmly by the wall and she appeared not to notice or care that a dowager who was talking to the woman sitting next to her wished for her seat and was glaring at her.
A little later, Finola passed Jenny on the dance floor. Jenny was dancing with a dark, stocky man who had bright black eyes and a slight French accent.
‘May I ask your name, mademoiselle? Or is it madame?’ he said to Jenny. ‘Mine, by the way, is Henri de Saint-Gaël.’
‘Jenny Brécu,’ she replied, ‘and I’m not married — not officially, that is.’
He laughed and continued in French. ‘You are a bohemian, then. Do you paint pictures or write novels, or do other bohemian things?’
‘No, I lecture on biochemistry at London University.’
‘I never thought I’d dance with a university don!’
‘I never thought I’d dance with an aristocrat.’
‘Touché, mademoiselle.’ He looked at her. ‘Was that contempt I saw in your face when you pronounced the word “aristocrat”?’ he teased. ‘Are you very, very Bolshie?’ He lingered proudly over the expression and Jenny laughed.
‘I’m a communist, but my life’s too comfortable for me to be very ardent, so you needn’t worry. And besides, Miranda was telling me that it’s quite the done thing to be rather to the Left nowadays.’
‘Ah, Miranda! She refuses to be fashionable in anything except her language and her dress. I believe that, before others followed her example, she herself was rather Bolshie?’
‘So I’ve heard,’ said Jenny. ‘Are you married?’
‘I am widowed,’ he replied, ‘a long time ago. In France, you know, one rarely marries for love; but, like Miranda, I like to be unconventional.’ He smiled.
‘Oh,’ said Jenny simply. He looked almost disappointed, for she changed the subject completely.
Alice and Anatole were dancing together. Alice had twice danced with someone else, but Anatole had been leaning against the panelled doors, watching, glowering as though he hated dancing, with his twisted leg hidden behind his straight one.
‘I didn’t know you could dance,’ said Alice, as he pushed her legs into the right steps with his knee.
‘Oh yes, if I’d been a little taller, just a little of course, I could have been a lounge lizard,’ he laughed. ‘If you play the piano in a night club you tend to learn how a dance goes,’ he added and shook his head.
‘My love,’ said Alice.
He smiled and said, ‘Do you mind if I don’t stretch up to your shoulder but put my hand on your elbow instead?’
They danced in silence for a while, holding each other quite tightly as Anatole guided them around the other couples.
‘We’ve been married fourteen years,’ said Alice, ‘and we’ve never danced together before.’
‘Good heavens,’ said Anatole. ‘I have heard a sentimental remark from the lips of Alice Molloy!’ They both laughed and held each other even more closely, as they had not done amongst their own friends for ten years.
Someone tapped on Alice’s shoulder as she was looking down into Anatole’s face.
‘You make an awfully pretty couple,’ said Miranda, ‘but I loathe dancing myself. Won’t you come upstairs and meet a few of my friends?’
‘We haven’t met any of your friends before,’ said Anatole.
‘I know,’ said Miranda, raising her eyebrows, ‘that’s why I want you to come now.’
‘Let’s go,’ said Alice, and after a moment Anatole followed Alice and Miranda.
Miranda and her friends were occupying a small sitting room on the second floor.
‘Sweet of Aunt Helena to give us her retreat,’ she remarked as they went upstairs. ‘I decorated it for her, you know. I mean I didn’t just choose the stuff, I was pasting paper and all that. I was paid one and six an hour,’ she said. ‘I’ve tasted real life.’ She gave her old twisted smile.
‘I’ve heard that a lot of Bright Young Things are taking jobs nowadays,’ said Anatole.
‘Oh yes,’ said Miranda. ‘Running restaurants for one’s friends, and being a mannequin, and
that sort of thing. Such fun. No real reason why it should assuage one’s conscience about the unemployed, but it seems to.’
The room was decorated in silver-grey and cream, and filled with delicate, painted, late-eighteenth-century furniture. There were dark colours and bright colours in the rugs which covered the plain polished floorboards.
‘It’s beautiful,’ said Alice.
‘Let me introduce Alice Molloy and Anatole Brécu,’ said Miranda to her interested friends, as Alice and Anatole stood just inside the doorway. ‘The truth about my disappearance,’ she continued as she guided her exhibits to the sofa, ‘is that I ran away from school deliberately and lived with these two for two years.’
One or two people’s faces fell. It had been rumoured that Miranda, who was famous for her amorous disposition, had been a white slave, a child prostitute, and had rather enjoyed it.
‘So why have you decided to spill the beans at last, old thing?’ said Tuffy, whose face had fallen.
‘Because I’m twenty-one, and able to introduce them to you.’
‘I still don’t see why you wouldn’t tell us before.’
‘Darling, it’s not very exciting information, is it? Not nearly as exciting as the enigma of my disappearance. And my respected father naturally wished my association with the bohemian world to remain a secret. I’m celebrating my twenty-first birthday by breaking trust and telling you.’
‘Can I gossip?’ said Tuffy.
‘Not yet,’ said Miranda.
‘You’re an artist, aren’t you, Miss Molloy?’ said a young man called Toto Howard.
‘I paint,’ muttered Alice. She hated being addressed as ‘Miss Molloy’ now that Mr Tuskin was dead.
‘Yes,’ said Toto, ‘you paint rather erotic pictures of young girls, don’t you?’
‘I hope so,’ said Alice. She blushed under his sophisticated gaze, though she was not embarrassed.
Anatole picked up her hand and squeezed it, as he usually did when she was getting irritated.
‘Yes, Toto darling, I had a lesbian love affair with Alice when I was her model,’ said Miranda, smiling. She watched him blush.
Privileged Children Page 20
