by Angela Huth
This time, Frances’s journey brought her to Toby’s table, which previously she had resisted visiting. She slunk straight over to him, blowing kisses and smiles to others on the way.
‘Tobes . . .’
‘Everything all right?’
‘Think so, don’t you?’
Toby put a hand on her hip: public recognition, that’s what she wanted. That’s what she should have. The sequins grated his hand.
‘Wonderful. Fine. Marvellous dinner.’
‘Oh, Tobes. I’m in such a spin.’
At that moment, Ant Cellar’s rendering of You’re the Cream in my Coffee came to an end. Nothing followed. Suddenly, without music, the tent was left uneasy with the ruffle of voices. There was a surprised hesitation – why had the band stopped? Then the murmur settled back into place. People shifted. Coffee was stirred.
Frances peered anxiously through the arch. Far away on his podium, she saw that the handsome leader of the band was signalling to her: eyebrows raised, he made an encouraging movement with his baton. Time for dancing, he seemed to be saying. Why don’t you take the floor?
Frances put a hand on her husband’s shoulder. ‘Ant thinks we should start dancing,’ she said, and immediately regretted her mistake. Shouldn’t have mentioned Ant. Some small instinct told her Toby did not share her enthusiasm for him. But at least Toby was standing. Perhaps he hadn’t heard.
‘Good idea.’ He said it lightly. Frances could have no notion of the irritation that stabbed him. Why should that creep of a bandleader take it upon himself to orchestrate things? Besides, he had no intention of dancing.
‘Come on, then. Please. Just for once.’ Frances watched his face. ‘Just for once, Tobes,’ she pleaded.
Even as Toby stood rigid in his intention not to dance, he realised he could not humiliate his wife in public. It would have been indefensible to ruin her evening by refusing to dance with her merely to keep to a rule of a lifetime. He followed her to the empty floor with hands clenched hard as iron, face grimly pale. Cellar Music broke into The Nearness of You. Toby put an arm round Frances’s waist, aware of the eyes of their guests. She was trembling.
‘See if I can remember,’ he managed to say, smiling.
In the whoosh of sweet music, he felt himself unbend a little. His feet moved in some kind of instinctive pattern, steps he had learned at twelve years old. Their lone act lasted a very short time – signal for release from the tables. A dozen couples quickly joined them.
‘Thank you, Tobes.’ Frances leaned her cheek against his for a moment. He quickly drew back, with no wish to acknowledge her gratitude.
‘Where’s Fiona?’ he asked, letting go of her and leaving the floor.
‘I don’t know.’ Frances struggled to follow him. She didn’t care where Fiona was: all she knew was that for half a minute she had had the exquisite pleasure of dancing with her husband for the first time in fifteen years, and that was some kind of triumph whose implications she could think about later. Toby’s acquiescence, which must have cost him so much, gave her hope: from now on, no more parties, but better marriage. The object of her sudden happiness (the feeling of deep contentment, previously missing beneath the mere thrill of the party) had disappeared into the crowd. But Frances swung her long hair provocatively, smiling, knowing she was safe: newly bound to Toby, she could flirt with an easy conscience. She would be no one’s prey, just an exuberant hostess generous with her pleasure.
How quickly are moods transposed!
Almost at once, her smile was returned. Ralph, standing alone by the arch, held out his arms.
‘Dance with me,’ he said, ‘I want to be first in the queue.’
Frances inclined herself into his arms. She did not care whom she danced with now: dear Ralph was a good enough beginning. Funny how only months ago she would have longed for this invitation. Now, shuffling as skilfully as she could in the wretched dress, she felt nothing. Her eyes searched for Toby.
* * *
When Toby had left the table, Mary and Rosie bent towards each other just as Frances knew they would.
‘I think I’ll take myself off for a little potter,’ Rosie said. ‘Want to look around. Take it all in. It’s all so marvellous, marvellous.’
‘Very well. Shall I come with you?’
‘No, no. You go and find a nice corner on the terrace, where we can look down on it all, and I’ll join you later.’
‘Very well,’ Mary said, ‘but I shan’t expect you. You’ll be off dancing.’
Rosie stood. She refilled her glass from a bottle on the table. ‘Who on earth would want to dance with me? Ralphie’ll give me a little twirl, perhaps, and your nice son-in-law, if I’m lucky. But that’ll be it. Dancing days over.’
‘Nonsense!’
Rosie stood, sipping her wine, eyes on the dancers.
‘All this trouble Frances has gone to,’ she said. ‘Pity about the women. English women’s party dresses. . . .’
‘Some of them have tried quite hard.’
‘Most of them look as if they’re dressed for an afternoon’s dead-heading.’ Rosie sniffed, then smiled. ‘I say, you know who I can see? Dancing with Ursula? Mr Arkwright. Thomas Arkwright, my client you met on the beach. What a coincidence. He’s very rich, you know. Must be. Keeps buying and buying my pictures. Well, I’m off. Ralph said there’s a good vegetable garden. I’m off for a look at the fruit cages, my darling. See you later.’
Rosie moved away from the table, very upright, cooling herself with a small silk fan. Mary noticed that, with a slight inclination of her head, and a distant smile, her friend managed to swathe a path for herself through the crowds. People moved back from her as if she was a member of the royal family, someone for whom the way should automatically be cleared. Their eyes followed the small upright figure with curiosity.
Mary waited until she could see Rosie no longer, then pulled her shawl round her shoulders. There was no one left at the table. The bottles of wine were empty. She got up, moved towards the terrace, determined not to think about how Bill would have taken her arm, guided her through the narrow spaces, the scattered empty chairs. Instead, she hummed along with the band: lovely nostalgic tunes, words she would never forget. They ask me how I feel. . . . She pressed on, pushing through a clump of women whose glances were so brief it was as if they did not like what they saw – a single old lady on her own.
No-one moved out of her way, but in the end she reached her destination in a corner of the terrace.
* * *
Rachel, who had drunk three glasses of champagne before dinner, found herself sailing towards her table in an ungrounded fashion, the delights of the scene all a-tremble before her eyes. Once installed in her wicker chair, she drank two glasses of water, determined to drink no wine: the memory of the night at Oxford still stung in her mind. To counteract the effects of the champagne, she ate an unusual amount: two helpings of each delicious course, and enjoyed (in a way, she thought, that only other women do) thinking of all the imagination and care that must have gone into planning each perfect detail. (Hot rolls studded with olives were an inspiration.) Her old black dress was still comfortable by the end of dinner, and conversation with Toby’s brother, now peacefully petering out on both sides, had bobbed along quite easily. He was a taciturn Somerset farmer with a scientific approach. His answers to Rachel’s questions about the rotation of crops were of enormous length and seriousness. She was forced to concentrate so hard that the charming music, cooing from the other end of the marquee, became a mere backdrop, fragile as lace, to her attention.
Now the floor was crowded. Through the leaves and flowers of the trellis partition, Rachel watched jigsaw pieces of the dancers – the tiny movements that indicated politeness, boredom, pleasure. She saw that Thomas, dreadfully red in the face, was dancing with the woman who had been at Pruddle’s dinner: trust him to have secured the belle of the ball at an early stage. Rachel smiled to herself. Sometimes, she was quite proud of Thomas’s audacity
. He would never hesitate to ask an unknown woman to dance if she was beautiful and, curiously, he never seemed to be refused. These dances, in many years of Rachel’s experience of party-going with her husband, never lasted long, were rarely repeated, and there was never the slightest hint that, after the party was over, Thomas gave a moment’s thought to the girl who had obliged him with a waltz.
Frances, Rachel could not fail to notice, was wiggling, rather than dancing, a few feet from a tall, pale-looking man whose vacant look might have been a cover to embarrassment. The only mistake of the party, Rachel judged, was Frances’s ludicrous dress – a signal of availability, if ever there was one, but also a serious impediment to enjoyment. It was plain that poor Frances had difficulty with every step: perhaps hip wriggling was the only comfortable thing she could do. Rachel felt sorry for her, remembered her own mistake with the badly behaved gold skirt. She saw that Frances was swaying towards her, waving with one hand: the other, behind her back, was clasping her partner.
‘Rachel! We’ve not spoken a word. I want you to meet Ralph Cotterman. Ralphie, this is Rachel Arkwright, very old friend. . . .’ She wafted away.
Rachel stood up. The man she was left with looked reluctant to begin. But he smiled politely.
‘I sat near your husband at dinner, I think. He buys a lot of my mother’s pictures.
‘That’s right.’
‘Would you like to dance?’
‘Why not?’
In the old days, when she enjoyed parties, Rachel always loved this moment – this stepping on to the floor with a new man wondering what, if anything, would happen. She bunched up her black skirt, pushed a bit of stray hair from her eyes. Everything was clear now: champagne effects waned, spirits rising. She stepped through the archway, felt the slide of parquet under her shoe, the intoxicating cocoon of the scent of lilies and jasmine. She turned to Ralph Cotterman, found herself secured in his stiff, sad arms. She hoped he could dance, because nothing else was going to happen.
Ralph, looking down on Rachel’s tawny hair, arm comfortable round her sturdy waist, saw his partner as a sweet, old-fashioned creature. She had the wistful look of a woman who is happily married but for whom something indefinable is still missing. As they moved at a stately pace around the floor, it occurred to him she was the sort of woman he would have liked to sit in a summerhouse with, reading books in amiable silence, sipping Lapsang, distant wood pigeons ruffling the silence – the kind of dotty fanciful thing he had never experienced, but still hoped for with some magical girl who might then become his wife. But no such thing would ever come about because of Ursula’s existence. While he loved her, there was no hope of loving anyone else: that was the brutal fact.
Nonetheless, this Rachel lady danced very nimbly. He liked the feel of the thick warm flesh round her ribs, and her apparent lack of worry at his lack of conversation. They shuffled round through the whole of Blue Moon, nicely in time but politely distant. There was no spark to lift them further: together they made the shell of a sad, pointless husk: two people linked only by good manners.
‘I see your husband’s dancing with Ursula Knox,’ said Ralph at last.
‘So he is.’
She did not seem much interested. Ralph’s plans, uninterrupted by the movements of his dull body, spun on: he must dance with his mother next, perhaps give dear old Mary a go. Then he would be free for Ursula any time she was free for him. Cellar Music moved into a Charleston. Ralph led Rachel towards the terrace.
‘Time to find my mother,’ he muttered. ‘Goodness knows what she’s up to. Thanks very much.’
He was off, knowing that Thomas and Ursula were also making for the terrace, so Rachel would not be stranded. The evening was far too young to ask Ursula for his first dance. He had managed to avoid talking to her at dinner, and did not wish to be near her just yet. It was an opportune moment to do his duty by his mother.
* * *
Thomas, completely preoccupied by the thought of finding Rosie, was making a feeble attempt to behave normally. He had moved beside Ursula Knox as soon as dinner was over, and managed to talk to her in a perfectly sane way about their mutual friend, Pruddle. They had then had an agreeable dance. She was of the lively, flinging about school of movement which he chose to watch from a shuffling distance rather than join, having little faith in the stamina of his strained shirt and trousers. And now it was time for the obligatory go with Rachel. Once that was out of the way, he would be at liberty to go in search of Rosie with a free conscience. He found his wife standing at the bottom step of the terrace glancing vaguely about her, unexpectant. She looked rather handsome, he thought, in a disorderly sort of way. For a moment he remembered the first time he saw her at a Commem Ball at Magdalen, Oxford’s Zuleika of her year. She had been standing among battered lupins pulling on a velvet glove.
‘Care for a quick twirl, old thing?’
Rachel smiled at her husband, straightened his bow tie with a wifely tweak. ‘Please.’
They merged into the crowd of dancers. Thomas leaned heavily on Rachel’s shoulder as if she was a familiar mantelpiece. His eyes swilled back and forth in search of Rosie. Rachel looked at other husbands and wives dancing lustrelessly together, alone in their preoccupations. Like them, she and Thomas did not bother to speak. Perhaps it was a common habit of married life to save snippets of observation for the journey home.
Home! Rachel closed her eyes. She longed to be in bed at home.
Their single turn round the floor complete, Thomas said he would go to the bar, fetch drinks. Rachel sensed his impatience to be off. She called after him not to bother with anything for her, doubting his intention of returning now his duty dance was over. What to do next? All she wanted was to sit and look, undisturbed. Not have to talk. But even as she started to climb the stone steps she felt a tap on her shoulder. She turned.
‘We sat next to each other at St Crispin’s some time ago, you may remember.’
Rachel looked up into Martin Knox’s handsome face and blushed like a child.
‘Oh, we did, yes. Of course I remember.’ Earlier, through her champagne haze, Rachel had seen a distant glimpse of Martin, and had determined to avoid him. How could she have been so careless?
‘Dance?’ he asked.
No, not for anything in the world. It would remind me of stupid fantasies concerning punts and picnic lunches and innocent possibilities. . . .
‘Love to,’ she said.
Tea for Two was playing now.
They moved so easily together that after a while Rachel supposed Martin could not feel the heat of her embarrassment, or guess at the spinning of her shame.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said at last, ‘about that evening.’
‘Sorry? Why?’ He seemed genuinely puzzled.
‘I was experimenting. It went wrong.’
‘I wasn’t aware -’
‘And then I was dressed all wrong for Oxford. That awful skirt bouncing about all over you. . . .’ Did he remember the untoward brushing of their hands?
‘Oh, that. All unimportant.’ Martin smiled, friendly. ‘To be honest, I got the impression there was something on your mind that I couldn’t possibly guess at. Whatever it was got in the way of your enjoying the evening. But I could have been wrong.’
‘No,’ said Rachel. ‘You were right. Thank you for being so . . .’
She felt herself blushing once more. There was a pricking behind her eyes: the kind of self-scorning tears that fill the chasm left by a quickly destroyed fantasy. Martin’s kindness made her wretched. She was sick of polite dances – Ralph, Thomas, now him. How many more partners would make her their duty before the evening was over?
‘I must find Ursula,’ Martin was saying as they regained the terrace. ‘Thank you so much.’
‘Of course. Thank you.’
Rachel managed a smile of complete understanding. He must find his wife because only towards her were his singular love and energy directed. What, as a wife, must that be like?<
br />
Rachel set off once more for the empty chair. From this vantage point she saw that Martin had quickly found the only woman he wished to be with, and that they danced brilliantly together. Ursula would spin away – white frills and black pom-pom buttons bobbing – only to be recaptured for a moment, clasped as closely as two people can be on a dance floor. As for Thomas, he was nowhere to be seen. Rachel looked at her watch: eleven-thirty. But the hours that had to be endured suddenly did not depress her: she was blessed with an idea.
* * *
Toby found Fiona in the library. She was drinking a carton of orange juice, watching a film on television.
‘Been looking for you everywhere,’ said Toby. ‘You all right?’
‘Fine. D’you think I can get Ant Cellar’s autograph?’
‘Don’t see why not, when he has a break.’
‘I think he’s amazing. Are you enjoying yourself, Papa?’
‘It’s a wonderful party,’ Toby said. ‘Be back later.’
‘Don’t bother about me. I’ll just wait around for Ant.’
Toby left the room and went upstairs.
* * *
‘I can’t remember,’ whispered Ursula, during one of the moments she came close to Martin, ‘what it’s like to go to a party without a husband.’
‘Mutual safety.’
‘Better than that.’
She flitted away, making funny, limpid clown movements that made Martin smile. Ain’t She Sweet, the band was playing. They whooshed together again.
‘Saw you dancing with Thomas Arkwright’s wife.’
‘She seems a bit sad.’
