Timidly I put my hand on his arm but Rafe jerked away. He turned his back to me and leaned against the chimneypiece, staring into the fire.
Even as I was clambering into the little yellow car, I had misgivings.
‘Hold tight for the humpbacked bridge,’ yelled Golly above the rushing of the wind.
We took off from the top and sailed several feet through the air before landing with a teeth-jarring crash, which shot the water from the foot-well into my lap.
‘Oh, Golly,’ I cried, ‘I’m a very nervous passenger. Do you think you could go a fraction slower?’
‘Bloody ass!’ Golly sounded her horn and shook her fist at the fish-and-chip van which was being driven at a sedate pace on its allotted side of the road. ‘Don’t worry, my dear, I’m in just that state of intoxication when driving becomes an art form. Watch this handbrake turn!’
We reached the bottom of the hill on which Hindleep was built. I shut my eyes, feeling tears freeze on my cheeks, tears of grief and terror in equal proportion. As we screeched and squealed and roared our way up the precipitous road, I thought I was probably about to die and I found I had only one regret. I wanted to dance again, to hear a flood of music in my ears, spurring me to turn faster, leap higher, to become an indissoluble part of that exquisitely beautiful world of moonlight and death in which I was not myself but something much better, nearer to perfection, to the divine … There was a squeal from the brakes as we reached the bridge and I was almost garrotted by my seat belt. As we bounced over the potholes beneath the accusing eyes of the Virtues and the triumphant looks of the Vices, my past life flashed before my eyes: some of it glorious – the dancing bits, some of it reprehensible …
‘Marigold. Marigold!’
It was Conrad’s voice. I opened my eyes and unblocked my ears. His face and Golly’s were side by side, looking down at me. We were in the courtyard at Hindleep.
‘Thank the Lord,’ said Golly. ‘For a moment I thought I was going to have to find another Kayoko. I never saw anyone look so bloodless, almost corpse-like, did you, Conrad?’
‘Certainly she is pale. But being driven by you, Golly, is enough to make the bravest person ashen.’
‘Oh, rubbish! I’m a very careful driver. Is Orlando here?’
‘He has this moment arrived.’
‘I’m going to talk to him.’ Golly departed for the front door.
Conrad leaned inside the car and switched off the engine. ‘Come in and take the English panacea. Or you can have brandy.’
‘Thank you.’ I got out, grateful for his hand under my arm.
He gave me his handkerchief. I dried my stinging face, the effect of the wind on salty tears.
‘I must send to the haberdasher’s if you become a two-handkerchief-a-day girl.’
‘Oh, I won’t be. I was frightened, and Rafe and I have had a row. It’s all over. The engagement, I mean.’
We walked towards the steps that led up to the front door.
‘So you are distraught? Your heart is forever broken?’
‘Well, if I’m truthful, a part of me feels relieved. I’ve been afraid for some time it wasn’t going to be any good. In fact, even from the beginning I had doubts I refused to admit to myself. Why does one always make the same mistakes? I always think it’ll be better to go along with things rather than make a stand and upset everyone, but afterwards I find myself in an even worse mess. Now I’ve badly hurt someone I’m terribly fond of. I know he’ll be much happier with someone else, but I’ve wounded his pride and he’ll never forgive me. Oh dear, and Evelyn was enjoying organizing the wedding and now she’ll have to tell all her friends it’s off. And Isobel’s furious with me because I’ve hurt her beloved brother. Oh God, I feel terrible!’ I pressed his handkerchief to my eyes again. ‘I’ve known them all my life and always loved them really, even when relations were strained which they often were – but you can’t love people without feeling angry with them sometimes, can you? Now I feel quite sick with shame and pity and … the most desperate guilty longing to escape.’
‘That does sound uncomfortable, I must say.’
I paused on the top step and looked at Conrad to see if he was making fun of me. His black eyes were, as usual, difficult to read, but in general I thought the composition of his features might be intended to convey sympathy. Slowly he smiled and I was obscurely comforted, as though he possessed some mysterious power that could turn misfortune to good.
‘You are not very old. It is an inalienable trouble of youth that one is carried helplessly along by a tide of action and reaction. Eventually, after some floundering, one gets the idea that it may be better to take charge of one’s own boat and to pull for shore. At that moment is maturity. I remember very well the days when I was ruled entirely by my immediate passions – or worse, somebody else’s.’
‘I can’t imagine that. You seem so … controlled isn’t the right word … self-aware. And you’re so reserved. I never know what you’re thinking.’
‘Do you not?’ The smile remained but became a little more inscrutable, his eyes watchful.
‘I do know you’re often secretly laughing when you look most solemn. And you pretend to be irresponsible – like jumping off the balcony, and conceited sometimes, but perhaps that’s put on too.’ I had a sudden insight. ‘Aha! I see! You’re afraid of showing your feelings. That’s the real reason you didn’t want to be a concert pianist – nothing to do with not having the right temperament. It’s because to play well – just like dancing – you have to show everything you feel inside with a sort of searing, soul-baring intimacy.’
‘Autsch! That sounds agonizing. And when, you tautologous woman, does anyone feel outside? Your difficulty,’ he let go of my arm to pull a strand of my hair across my face as though to shut me up, ‘is that your imagination has been stimulated by fear. You need to be calmed by food and drink before you become frenzied.’
He stood aside to let me pass before him into the hall, his expression sardonic, but I was certain I had stumbled on the key to his character. This discovery went a little way to restoring my confidence, which had been badly bruised by my failure to make anything but a hideous mess – un joli fouillis, as Madame would have said – of all my relationships. Conrad had a marvellous talent for putting things into perspective. Though the quarrel with Rafe had left me sore and wretched, yet I found I was not entirely without hope for the future.
‘Come on, Marigold.’ Golly rushed into the hall, seized my arm and dragged me towards the drawing room. ‘Let’s get on with it.’
Orlando, who had been draped with sinuous elegance across one of the divans, got up to plant a light kiss on both my cheeks. Despite being racked by neuroses, narcotics and starvation diets, he was still beautiful in a weak light. His greenish-blonde hair, which hung like damp seaweed across his high knobbly forehead, and his slanting green eyes gave him the appearance of a reasonably youthful merman. He must have been forty or forty-five, but still took classes daily and often taught them, so he was terrifically fit. His arms felt like runner beans, quite stringy with little bulges of muscle along their lengths. ‘My darling,’ he said in fluting tones, ‘what an experience … that bridge … my vertigo … the journey … an overheated train … a small vomiting child: only the thought of seeing you kept me from turning back a hundred times.’
I was certain he hadn’t given me a single thought the entire way, but I was used to his specious charm and actually quite liked it. Among the bullies, prima donnas, grabbers, braggers and sex maniacs of the ballet, Orlando’s flowery, confidential manner made a refreshing change.
‘Ach, Marigold!’ Fritz was, as usual, carrying a tray. ‘I haf for you some cake you vill like.’
‘What fettle, Fritz?’ I kissed his soft pink and white cheek. His eyes were almost violet in the gathering gloom as the rain clouds bloomed. Though there was a good fire burning, one of the huge windows that led onto the balcony was open and the air was rich with leafy smells from the forest
below.
Fritz returned my kiss with plump ruby lips. ‘Aah’s champion.’
Orlando looked at the cake, which was loaf-shaped and striped brown and yellow, resembling a giant bumblebee. ‘Usually sugar is death to my nervous system … I become insomniac and jittery … but perhaps I might risk—’
‘You vill not suffer ills from my Mohnstriezel.’ Fritz cut a slice and handed him a plate. ‘It is yeast sponge vith poppy seed and almond nuts and lemon peels. Wery, wery healzy.’
‘You’re certainly an advertisement for your own cooking.’ Orlando took a bite, then widened his eyes as though in ecstasy before running them appreciatively over Fritz. ‘Mmmm. Marvellous!’
He made it clear that he included Fritz’s curves, sheathed in a cream silk shirt, cravat and checked knee britches, in the compliment. Fritz’s cheeks and forehead turned the colour of a damask rose. Excitement crackled between the two men. I was pleased by this turn of events. Orlando was inspired to do his best work when fired by love.
We drank tea with slices of lemon poured from a silver teapot shaped like a swan into cups enamelled in crimson and azure.
‘If you’ve finished stuffing yourselves, we’ll start.’ Golly gulped down her tea. ‘No thank you, Fritz.’ She gave him a reproachful look as he offered her a slice of Mohnstriezel. ‘Some of us have better things to do than indulge our coarser appetites.’
Unaware that she had lunched extensively at Shottestone within the last hour, Fritz looked a little hurt. Golly strode to the piano and placed several sheets of manuscript on the music stand, then pressed the button of a portable tape recorder. ‘From Kayoko’s first entrance, Conrad. Bar thirty-eight. Yuki, tenor, has been wandering about under the cherry trees singing of the mysterious visitation of a tanuki, in Japanese lore a racoon with magic, shape-shifting powers. The tanuki has prophesied a fateful meeting beneath the blossom, during which his heart will be possessed by an image of beauty.’
Conrad went to the piano. ‘The racoon’s heart?’
‘Don’t pretend to be dense. Yuki’s, of course. You might give us the preceding twenty bars from where the key changes from six flats to seven sharps and the time to thirteen hemi-demisemi quavers.’
Conrad grimaced. ‘You have made it too easy.’
Orlando brushed crumbs from his fingers and went to stand in front of the open window, one hand on his hip, the other extended above his head, while he considered. ‘Marigold, darling, we’ll just walk through a few ideas. Begin by folding yourself up as small as you can, as if you were no bigger than the head of an opium poppy.’
Conrad crouched over the piano, his brows a black V of intense concentration, while his flashing fingers produced a violent cacophony of tinkling punctuated by crashes, as though a panic-stricken mouse were running up and down the keyboard and he was trying to hit it with a hammer.
I did my best to impersonate a tiny seed head, encumbered as I was by a flared woollen skirt and a thick jersey.
‘Now, skim, skim, skim to centre stage, now glissade, assemblé, bourrée and jeté … let’s try an adagio enchaînement, as though you’re half this fellow’s imagination, half a visitation from a spirit world …’
Orlando got more and more excited thinking up things for me to do, and Golly from time to time said, ‘Yes!’ ‘Lovely!’ ‘Just right!’ or ‘Too expansive!’ ‘Too sexy!’ ‘Too European!’ And several times they argued furiously, which gave Conrad and me a chance to rest.
‘I want Kayoko to dance like a drifting petal, blown hither and thither by the wind!’ cried Golly. ‘Then as Yuki tries to take her in his arms she spins until her body is a blur, before melting into invisibility.’
‘You don’t want much,’ said Orlando crossly. ‘If she spins to a blur she’ll probably have to be carted straight to hospital and I can’t make her invisible. She could dodge behind a tree, perhaps. Besides, petals don’t melt. They go brown and rot. You mean a snowflake.’
‘I mean a petal.’ Golly put on her stubborn look, lower lip thrust out, eyes glaring. ‘And this one melts. There is nothing predictable about my opera—’
‘If it comes to that, cherry blossom in Japan is about as trite as it gets!’
Conrad and I went to sit by the fire. We watched the rain pelting the terrace with bursting drops the size of marbles, while Golly and Orlando shouted and shook their fists in what Conrad said was an entertaining synergy between man and nature. Siggy, heavy with grass and cake crumbs, sat on my knee. I was not at all perturbed by the quarrelling, as that kind of thing went on all the time at the LBC. An artistic vision is nothing less than a divine revelation to its conceiver and any attempt to tamper with its perfection is bound to be resented.
By suppertime we had sketched out the first dance sequence. Orlando was trembling with exhaustion, convinced he had a temperature and was possibly coming down with a chill. Conrad and I were in not much better condition. Though I had not danced ‘full out’, every centimetre of my body had been punished and was complaining about it. I kept a smile on my face and forbore to massage any part of me in case anyone should think I wasn’t up to it. At least my left foot had responded to my instructions and hurt as much or as little as the right one. But that afternoon I had danced in bare feet. It might be different when I went up on pointe.
When Isobel, who was expected for supper, did not appear, I felt it necessary to apologize to Conrad.
‘I’m afraid it’s because she’s angry with me. Or she doesn’t want to leave Rafe on his own.’
‘Do not worry. She had the choice whether to come or not. And she would not have liked to find us too fatigued to entertain her.’
Supper was restorative, a goose stuffed with apples and prunes followed by souffléd pancakes filled with jam and sprinkled with icing sugar. I exercised great restraint and only ate half mine. Golly lit a pipe and blew tarry smoke all over me, which was a helpful appetite suppressant. She had lost her voice with so much shouting, and Orlando said he was too enervated to talk, so it was a peaceful evening.
I left Siggy in his warm basket in the kitchen and put on my coat to be driven home by Fritz. I kissed Golly and Orlando goodnight, but when I approached Conrad he put up a warning hand.
‘I am certain that being a sentimental Englishwoman you have been kissing that rabbit and I have no desire to contract a plague.’
‘Surely not?’ Orlando looked alarmed. ‘Isn’t that a mediaeval disease?’
‘By no means. It no longer kills whole cities, but each year on average there are some two thousand cases reported. It can never be eradicated because the bacillus lives on healthy rodents and it is spread by ticks and fleas.’
Orlando covered his mouth with his mauve lace scarf and looked at Conrad with large, fearful eyes. ‘What are the symptoms?’
Conrad smiled chillingly. ‘Fevers, headaches, swollen glands.’
Orlando shuddered. ‘Golly, take me home immediately, if you will be so good. I must go straight to bed with a hot-water bottle.’
‘Don’t own such a thing,’ she croaked. ‘Unhealthy to be too warm. Saps one’s vitality. I like a good breeze through the house, don’t believe in central heating.’ Orlando’s expression changed from alarmed to appalled. Golly grabbed his arm and hissed, ‘Come on, you poor old stretcher case, let’s get the wind in our hair.’
As I got into the passenger seat of the comfortable Bentley, I caught a glimpse of Orlando beside Golly in the little yellow car, his mouth open in a scream as they scorched out of the courtyard towards the bridge, her headlamps sweeping the dramatic façade of Hindleep like searchlights.
‘A beautiful night,’ said Fritz as we wound down the hill. ‘Stars among ze clouds and ze moon trying to out itself.’
‘Lovely,’ I said, keeping my eyes tightly closed.
‘You haf Orlando known long time?’
‘For about five years, but never particularly well.’
‘Ah. But vat a woyage it might be to discover his insides! He is a geniu
s!’
All the way to Dumbola Lodge I did my best to answer Fritz’s questions about Orlando. He dropped me at the door and drove away in a state of giddy infatuation. I let myself in quietly, hoping to slip upstairs, but the study door was open and a band of light fell across the hall. I started to tiptoe towards the stairs, leaping in fright as the longcase clock began to chime. A figure appeared in the doorway, the light behind him turning the tips of his red hair to fire and throwing his face into shadow.
‘Where the hell have you been?’
39
‘It’s so kind of you to let me stay.’
Conrad, Fritz and I were having a leisurely breakfast of fried eggs, toast and coffee at Hindleep. I looked longingly at the homemade apricot jam, glistening copper-coloured hemispheres floating in amber syrup, but now I was a dancer again I had to eat like one. A brand-new Aga, installed during the time of plenty, took the chill from the morning mist that crept in through the open French windows. Siggy was hopping about on the terrace in the company of a pair of blackbirds who were eating the crumbs Fritz had thrown out for them.
Conrad poured himself another cup of coffee. ‘Not especially kind.’ He was holding a book in front of his face to indicate that he was not in the mood for conversation. It was dark green, much worn, and sticking out of the pages were pieces of paper covered with Conrad’s writing. The title alone – Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect by Benedict de Spinoza – was enough to crush me with a sense of my own ignorance. He looked at me over the top of it. ‘We were hardly in a position to refuse.’
‘You might have told me to go away. Or driven me to the nearest hotel.’
‘As to the first, what sort of man refuses shelter to a young woman boltered with blood and mud and palpitating with fear, who knocks on his door in the middle of the night? As to the second, we were in our dressing gowns and it would have been inconvenient, to say the least.’
Girl's Guide to Kissing Frogs Page 47
