by Rosie Thomas
She handed him her half-empty glass. ‘Hold this for me, would you? I’ve made a stupid stain on my frock.’ She had taken out a lace handkerchief and began to scrub at the wet mark.
He saw how her hands trembled. ‘I should congratulate you,’ he murmured.
Her head jerked up. She was fierce, ready to attack or defend, and she was so beautiful that he wanted to kiss her. He drank the remains of her cocktail instead, and dabbed his mouth with the back of his hand. Grace’s distaste showed in her glance, but it only made him feel even more affectionate approval. Grace was no milky girl. She was a survivor.
‘I wish you every happiness in the world,’ he mumbled, waving the now-empty glass. The last shot of alcohol seemed to have taken him over the edge. ‘I mean that. You deserve every happiness.’
Suddenly, confronting the lurching painter who had seemed to hold all her security in his grimy hands, Grace felt her fears dropping away. Pilgrim’s eyes were barely focusing. He was on the point of becoming hilariously drunk. He knew nothing, and evidently cared even less. He couldn’t give her away, and the magic circle never would. She was sure of that, even sure of Clio, after seeing her distress tonight. Clio loved Anthony, of course. She wouldn’t wish to see him hurt.
Relief and elation propelled her across to extricate the flattered nurse from Ruth’s attention. ‘Cressida should go back to the nursery now. She mustn’t be excited by too many people.’
At once, Anthony surrendered his daughter and she was swept away. Grace held up her arms. ‘I must go upstairs to change my frock. Look what a silly mess I’ve made. But I want you all to stay to supper. Yes, you absolutely must, I won’t hear you say anything about going anywhere else. We can forage in the kitchen and scratch some things together. It’ll be the greatest fun. Anthony, darling, what about some more drinks for the troops?’
They were all smiling, even Jake’s dour little girlfriend. Grace felt the winning effect of her own sparkle. She was in control, she could defend her redoubt, such as it was. As she passed by him she lightly kissed the top of Anthony’s head.
She was beguiling enough, Ruth thought. With her gaiety she wound up something inside you that made you want to laugh and joke and be frivolous. There was nothing wrong with that, if you had the time. She glanced at Clio. It was odd that Clio and Grace looked so alike, but were so different. It wasn’t that Clio wasn’t good company, and funny when she wanted to be, but Clio also had her thoughtful and responsible side. Clio understood that there was work to be done, but Ruth didn’t suppose that Lady Grace had ever done a stroke of work in her life.
Ruth didn’t make friends very easily, but she counted Clio as a friend now. She knew for example that Clio understood, without ever having referred to it, that Ruth did not feel at home in the muted luxury of this rose-pink and grey drawing room. She knew because when they came to South Audley Street Clio took the trouble to draw her into the talk and to give a clear lead through the maze of etiquette.
For a household that took pride in its informality, there was a surprising number of rules to be observed compared with, say, Gower Street. Grace would have insisted that there were no rules, that this was Liberty Hall, darling, but of course that was not the truth. If any one of her guests had made the wrong move with a table placing, or a servant’s attention, or any other move in the dance, then there would be a brief stare, and then the quick, fluent and well-mannered move to cover up the solecism.
Ruth was far too proud to risk making a mistake. She watched Clio carefully, and was grateful to her.
Ruth was supicious of Society. Not the cosy society of her parents and their friends, of quiet card evenings and fork suppers, and wedding and anniversary and bar mitzvah celebrations in their distant suburb, but this cocktail-drinking Society that was written about in the gossip pages of the newspapers and was governed by arcane laws that Ruth knew she would never understand. It was populated by diamond-brilliant creatures like Grace, and Clio and Julius and Jake seemed to move in and out of it at will, perfectly at ease.
It was odd, Ruth found herself thinking, that even though she felt awkward in it, and for all her sensible resolution not to care whether she did or not, she was still fascinated by this other world. She knew that it was part of Jake’s attraction for her. He had an air of ease and natural authority that made him quite unlike the eager, anxious and hard-working Jewish boys she had known before. She approved of Jake’s pacifism and his wartime work, and she believed that by listening to him talking and talking about them with them, she had helped him to overcome some of the terrible experiences of the field hospital. She was secretly proud that he refused to discuss those experiences with anyone but her. She approved of Jake’s dedication to medicine, too, and his cleverness, but she had fallen in love with his glamour.
All the nurses had.
And yet he had chosen her. It was the right choice; Ruth had not been brought up to underestimate herself and she had no quavering fears that she was in some way not good enough for Jake. She was hopelessly in love, and was satisfied by his devotion in return. She intended to marry him. They would make a valuable life together.
It was quite simple, as Ruth believed most things to be if they were properly handled. The clear certainty of her future made her dark face shine. From across the room where he was talking to Anthony Brock, Jake looked at her admiringly.
Grace was back again. She had exchanged her grey for peacock-blue, and now there was a peacock’s feather in a bandeau around her head. The feather dipped and nodded as she moved around the circle.
Ruth smoothed the folds of her good dress over her lap. She knew that if she tried to wear a feather in her own hair she would look like a Red Indian, and the knowledge made her reluctantly the more admiring of Grace.
Grace was saying gaily, ‘I have been down to talk to Cook and she says there is more than enough dinner for all of us. She will certainly give warning tomorrow, but for tonight we are safe. Shall we move downstairs?’
With the smallest of gestures she indicated that Anthony was to offer Ruth his arm down to dinner, and that Julius was to take Jeannie. She held out her own hand to Pilgrim, and left Clio to Jake. Max Erdmann brought up the rear, alone. They all followed Grace in their ordered file, even Jeannie, as meek as Victorian children.
The dining room was decorated in chalk-white and black. A suite of starkly black-and-white modern architectural photographs hung on the walls. The only colour was provided by heavy wicker baskets filled with hothouse flowers, scented and luxurious in late November. Anthony and Grace took opposite ends of the table and disposed their guests between them. Pilgrim and Max seized their glasses of Anthony’s good claret as soon as they were filled, and Ruth took covert note of the files of knives and forks laid out in front of her.
Grace surveyed her table. ‘Clio,’ she began. ‘What have you been doing all this age? How are things at Depths?’
‘Fathom.’
‘Fathom.’
‘Stimulating,’ Clio smiled. ‘Hard work, of course.’
‘You are only saying so for my benefit,’ Max interrupted. He leant across to Grace. ‘Miss Hirsh has nothing to do but lunch with her admirers from amongst our contributors and to take telephone calls from the remainder who have not been able to achieve a luncheon. When there is a letter to be typed, I ask very politely, to make sure I am not treading on the toes of a love-sick Georgian poet or a swooning Vorticist.’
‘Max,’ Clio protested.
Grace’s expression of polite interest never wavered.
‘Quite true,’ Pilgrim boomed. ‘When did I see you in the Fitz, Clio? Wednesday or Thursday? You were surrounded by adoring men of letters, all weeping tears of frustration into their halves of bitter. No time even to speak to poor old Pilgrim.’
‘You exaggerate, Pilgrim, as usual. I was talking to one poor man who can’t get his work published, and another who has a wife and two children in Fulham. And I always have time to speak to you.’
Under the table, o
ut of sight, Grace’s fingers pleated and repleated the hem of her napkin.
Jeannie cocked her head towards Clio, as if estimating the level of threat in what she said. Then she seemed to shrug it off, and leant closer to Julius. Her hand rested on his arm, and she put her red mouth to his ear, whispering.
‘There are two poems by Mr Eliot in the new issue,’ Clio primly told Grace.
‘They are profoundly brilliant’, and ‘They are unmitigated balls’, Max and Pilgrim said simultaneously. A fist-thumping argument broke out at once, with Clio in the thick of it. Grace watched them, her expression still unreadable.
What a crew, Ruth thought. There was no need to worry about her own demeanour this evening. No one would remark on it if she danced on the table. She turned back with relief to her conversation with Anthony. They had been talking about the miners’ strike. To her surprise, Anthony was agreeing that the miners had a just cause.
Daringly she asked, ‘Why do you hope to stand as a Conservative?’
‘Because the Conservatives are the only party who can achieve anything now. The Liberals are finished.’
The conversation eddied on.
They were all drinking steadily, even Julius and Clio.
Grace felt that she was adrift, even though she was sitting at the head of her own table, surrounded by the presents from her marriage in a room that she had designed herself and with her husband opposite her.
Sometimes, like now, when she looked at Anthony, she could hardly convince herself that she knew him at all. He was a pleasant stranger, surely, not her husband and Cressida’s father?
Grace frightened herself by almost letting out a wild laugh. She lifted her napkin, the hem ribbed with pleat marks, and dabbed her mouth.
That alarming moment was past, at least. Pilgrim didn’t know, couldn’t know, and the secret was safe. All she had to do was to live with it, day by day. She could do that. She was sitting here now, wasn’t she, with Pilgrim and Anthony at the same table?
Pilgrim had spilt red wine on his necktie. He was waving his hands about, big heavy hands with uncleaned fingernails.
Part of her recoiled from him, with fear as well as distaste. But there was another part of herself, unburied, that remembered the afternoons in the studio with the rain needling the glass roof and the lazy hissing of the gas fire. She had stretched herself out on the divan, comfortable in the fetid warmth, relishing the freedom of nakedness. And then Pilgrim had covered her, prickling with hair and smelling of French tobacco and garlic. She had not recoiled then.
Grace stared at the tablecloth, not trusting herself to look anywhere else.
She didn’t think that she would recoil now, in the same place. What Pilgrim had done was so different from Anthony’s gentlemanly approach from his dressing room and into her bed.
‘Grace?’
It was Anthony’s voice. She looked up, and realized that she had forgotten to signal for the removal of the plates.
‘Isn’t this fun?’ she heard her own bright voice responding.
It was not just Pilgrim who attracted her; in a sense it was not even Pilgrim, but his milieu. It was grubby and sluttish and immediate, governed by appetites and their gratification.
Not like mine, Grace thought. What governs me, apart from fear of losing face?
It was Clio who had achieved the life she wanted for herself. Grace watched her as she sparred with Max and Jake. She looked happy and animated.
The taste of jealousy was becoming familiar in Grace’s mouth.
Jeannie was growing soulful in drink. She rested her head against Julius’s shoulder and tears made tracks in the black paint around her eyes. There were red lipstick marks on Julius’s cheek. Max Erdmann was blinking like an owl and Pilgrim had taken to refilling his own glass in the intervals in his monologue. He was a good talker when he was drunk. Anthony and Jake were listening and laughing.
Grace knew that she should have brought the evening to an end. But some perverse instinct possessed her. She wanted to wring some satisfaction for herself out of the party; she wanted to stake her claim on these people who slipped away from her like beads of mercury. While they were here they were at least partly hers, even if she couldn’t stop them rolling together and agglomerating, little silver beads into bigger ones.
She didn’t want them to go noisily into the night without her. She didn’t want them to go and leave her alone with her husband.
‘Upstairs!’ she called out. ‘Let’s go upstairs and dance.’
‘It’s getting late,’ Anthony murmured, although everyone else seemed to want to dance.
Grace kissed him on the nose. ‘Darling, don’t be stuffy.’
There was a big pile of shiny black records beside the gramophone in the drawing room. She picked one out and Jake and Julius rolled back the rug.
Anthony came to claim her and Max Erdmann almost fell over in his rush to Clio. Jake and Ruth moved together and Pilgrim turned his attention to the whisky decanter. Jeannie lay at full stretch on a sofa and tried to pull Julius down beside her. Grace and Anthony tangoed past and Grace saw that Julius was blushing like a schoolboy. She slipped away from Anthony and went to rescue him.
‘Dance with me, Julius, won’t you?’ Gratefully he took her in his arms.
They danced in silence. They were both reminded of the lessons of their childhood, when they had been one of the pairs of children circling under a teacher’s scrutiny in the ballroom of somebody’s London house. Julius had always been the better dancer. He had listened to the music, serious-faced, when Grace wanted to run away and hide behind the chairs. He bent his head close to hers now.
‘Don’t be unhappy,’ he said softly.
Two spots of colour showed beneath Grace’s white face-powder. ‘I’m not in the least unhappy. I’m having the very best time.’
She would have repeated her protestation but her attention was diverted. Jeannie had staggered to her feet and in doing so had caught at a spindly tripod table placed beside the sofa. The table overbalanced and a fluted glass vase smashed on the parquet floor.
‘Steady,’ Anthony said, catching at her elbow.
Jeannie rounded on him. She frowned in the attempt to focus. Then she shook his hand off and tossed her head, almost falling again.
‘Bourgeoisie,’ she yelled at the room. ‘Bloody silver salvers and decanters and napkin rings. How d’ye do and old boy and kiss my backside. Think I’m not good enough, don’t you?’
‘I don’t think anything,’ Anthony murmured.
Jeannie was gathering her strength. She swung her fist and connected with Anthony’s cheekbone. There was a sharp smacking sound. Anthony hardly flinched but he stared at her, his face turning a dull red. Ruth left Jake and went to put her arm around Jeannie’s waist.
‘Stop it,’ she said clearly. ‘Stop it now, there’s a good girl.’
With a sigh, Pilgrim put his glass down. ‘Jeannie. It’s time to go home.’
He could hardly walk straight, but he went to support her other side. They leant on to Ruth like a house of cards about to topple. Jeannie gave a sidelong, cunning smile and then pointed.
‘Julius can take me home. Lives just across the passage. Lovely. Convenient.’
‘We’ll go together, all of us,’ Julius said. He looked around with a touch of desperation. ‘Clio will see you to bed.’
‘Don’t want Clio.’
Embarrassment galvanized them all into a rush of activity. Pilgrim and Jeannie were half carried, half hurried down the stairs. Taxis were hailed and Jeannie was levered into one with Clio and Julius. Jake and Ruth took charge of Pilgrim and Max. Once the cabs had turned the corner Grace and Anthony went inside and trailed slowly back up the stairs to the disordered drawing room.
Grace stood with her arms hanging at her side. With the toe of her shoe she poked at the broken glass on the floor. There was a knuckle mark on Anthony’s cheekbone.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said flatly.
He wa
s going to touch her, but she held up her hand, fending him off. Their eyes met in silence. There was the chance to commiserate with each other about their evening and then to laugh about it, but Grace would not take it. She wouldn’t put herself on Anthony’s side against Pilgrim and his friends. They both knew that the refusal was significant.
‘There’s nothing to be sorry about,’ Anthony said at length. He bent down and began to pick up the tiny fragments of glass.
‘Violet can do that in the morning,’ she told him, but he ignored her. Grace left him and went upstairs to her bedroom.
Clio sat in front of the gas fire in the sitting room at Gower Street. The wine she had drunk had made her feel dazed and thirsty but not at all sleepy. She had made a pot of tea and put on the Chinese silk robe that she had bought in imitation of Grace’s, although she never felt as dashing in it as Grace looked in hers. Now she was trying to read the manuscript of a long story that Max had passed on to her for an opinion. It was about a pig and a monkey, and was probably clever and allegorical, but the significance of it evaded her tonight.
She shuffled the typed pages together and let them lie in her lap. Max would want her comments, but she knew from experience that he wouldn’t be looking for them tomorrow morning. Max wouldn’t appear in the Doughty Street office until after lunch, and then he would spend most of the afternoon groaning and resting his head in his hands. In peaceful solitude she would open and arrange the post, answer the telephone and chat to anyone who called in person. She liked being on her own at Fathom, and the illusion of being in charge.
It was only an illusion, of course. Max was far too careful of his paper baby to give her any real, threatening responsibility.
Clio stared at the opening paragraph again. She was beginning to form the heretical opinion that Max’s latest enthusiasm was for several thousand words of pretentious nonsense. She twitched the end of the plait that hung over her shoulder and laid it over her top lip, moustache-fashion, as she had done as a schoolgirl concentrating over an essay.
She heard the front door open and close downstairs. Jake was passing the solicitors’ offices that occupied the ground floor. He had been to take Ruth back to the nurses’ hostel.
