She peed, tugged, dissatisfied, at her hair, patted with her compact to dull the sweaty sheen on her skin, tried inexpertly to add solid mascara to her already spidery lashes. There was nothing fairytale about her appearance now, she mused. Unless you brought the Ugly Sisters into the equation.
The impatient knocking on the door had become too insistent to ignore; she emerged into the hallway, primed to apologise for her too-lengthy sojourn inside. But no one was looking at her.
The row of girls was gazing away from her towards the gaming room, where a commotion had sucked away the atmosphere from them. It took Vivi a couple of moments to adjust, and then, with the rest, she slowly followed the sound of clattering and sporadic exclamation, feeling the air grow suddenly chill. There was the sound of a strangulated horn, and Vivi observed that the hunting-horn-blowing competition, which Xander had told her about, must have started. But this horn was not being blown with any finesse; the air was expelled in gasps, as if someone was breathless, or laughing.
Vivi stopped in the entrance to the gaming room, behind a group of men, and gazed around her. On the opposite side of the huge room, someone had opened the french windows on to the front lawns so that stray snowflakes blew in at an acute angle. She wrapped her arms round herself, feeling her skin goosepimple. She realised she had trodden on someone's foot and stepped aside, glancing guiltily up at the man's face, ready to apologise. But he did not notice. He was staring straight ahead, his mouth partially open as if, in his alcoholic daze, he was not convinced of what he was seeing.
For there, wheeling between the roulette and blackj ack tables, was a huge grey horse, its nostrils flared and eyes rolling as it trod nervously back and forth, its hooves still covered in snow, surrounded by a sea of gleefully appalled faces. On its back was the palest girl Vivi had ever seen, her dress hoisted up to reveal long, alabaster legs, her feet still clad in sequined party slippers, long dark hair flowing behind her, one bare arm lifted as she steered the animal expertly in and out of the tables by its headcollar and lead rope, the other raising a brass horn to her lips. Vivi noted absently that, unlike her own already mottled arms, the other girl's did not give the slightest suggestion of cold.
'View halloa!' One of the pink-coated young men in the corner was blowing a horn of his own. Two others had climbed on to the tables for a better view.
'I don't bloody believe this.'
'Jump the roulette tables! We'll pull them all together!'
Vivi could see Alexander in the corner, laughing and raising a glass as if in mock salute. Beside him, several matronly chaperones were conferring anxiously, gesticulating towards the centre of the room.
'Can I be the fox? I'll let you catch me . . .'
'Ugh. God, that girl would do anything for attention.'
Athene Forster. Vivi recognised the dismissive tones of the girl in the queue for the lavatory. But, like the rest, she was captivated by the unlikely sight before them. Athene had pulled her horse to a halt and was bent low over his neck, entreating a group of young men in low, gravelly tones: 'Anyone got a drink, loves?'
There was a kind of knowledge in her voice, of things sadder and stranger than you would ever understand. A crack of grief that would be audible even at her happiest. A sea of glasses was proffered towards her, glinting under the thousand-watt brilliance of the crystal chandeliers. She dropped her horn, lifted a glass, and downed the contents in a single gulp to local applause. 'Now, which of you darlings is going to light me a cigarette? I dropped mine jumping out of the rose garden.'
'Athene, old girl, you don't fancy giving us a Lady Godiva, do you?'
There was a ripple of laughter. Which came to an abrupt stop. The band was silenced, and Vivi glanced behind her, following the sound of a whispered exclamation.
'What on earth do you think you're doing?' Lena Bloomberg had arrived in the centre of the room and stood, her emerald dress skimming her upright figure, squarely facing the wheeling horse, her hands, white-knuckled, planted on her hips. Her face was pink with suppressed fury, her eyes glittering as brightly as the sculptural rocks round her neck. Vivi's stomach clenched in anticipation.
'Did you hear me?'
Athene Forster didn't look remotely cowed. 'It's a hunt ball. Old Forester here was feeling a bit left out.'
Another ripple of laughter.
'You have no right--'
'As far as I can see, he's got more right than you to be here, Mrs Bloomberg. Mr B told me you don't even hunt.'
The man beside Vivi swore admiringly under his breath.
Mrs Bloomberg opened her mouth as if to speak, but Athene waved a hand at her casually. 'Oh, don't get into a bate. Me and Forester just thought we might make things a little more . . . authentic.' Athene reached down for another glass of champagne, and downed it with a deadly languor, then added, so quietly that only those closest to her could hear it, 'Unlike this house.'
'Get off-get off my husband's horse immediately! How dare you abuse our hospitality in this way?' Lena Bloomberg would have been an imposing figure at the best of times; her height and the air of authority bestowed by huge wealth had evidently left her unused to being crossed. Even though she had not moved since she had first spoken, the suggestion of controlled fury had vacuumed any residual mirth from the room. People were looking anxiously at each other now, wondering which of the two participants would crack first.
There was a painful silence.
It appeared to be Athene. She gazed at Mrs Bloomberg steadily for a short eternity, then leant back and began to turn the horse slowly back between the tables, pausing only to accept a cigarette.
The older woman's voice cut through the stilled room: 'I had been warned not to invite you, but I was assured by your parents that you had grown up a little. They were patently wrong, and I can promise you that as soon as this is over I shall let them know so in no uncertain terms.'
'Poor Forester,' Athene crooned, lying along the horse's neck. 'And he was so looking forward to a little poker.'
'Meanwhile, I do not want to see you for the remainder of the evening. You should think yourself lucky that the weather does not permit me to have you thrown out of here on your ear, young lady.' Mrs Bloomberg's icy tones followed Athene as she walked the horse back towards the french windows.
'Oh, don't worry about me, Mrs Bloomberg.' The girl turned her head with a lazy, charming smile. 'I've been turfed out of far classier establishments than this.' Then, with a kick of her jewelled slippers, she and the horse leapt over the small stone steps and cantered, nearly silently, into the snowy dark.
There was a loaded silence, and then, on the instructions of the rigid hostess, the band struck up again. Groups of people exclaimed at each other, pointing at the snowy hoofmarks on the polished floor, as the ball sputtered slowly back into life. The master of ceremonies announced that in five minutes the horn-blowing competition would take place in the Great Hall, and that, for those who were hungry, dinner was still being served in the dining room. Within minutes, all that was left of Athene's appearance was a ghostly imprint in the imaginations of those who had seen her - its edges already rubbed off by the prospect of the next piece of entertainment - and a few pools of melted snow on the floor.
Vivi was still staring at Douglas. Standing by the huge fireplace, his eyes had not left the now closed french windows, just as they had not left Athene Forster as she sat on her huge horse, a few feet from him. While those around him had been appalled, or shocked, giggling in nervous excitement, in Douglas Fairley-Hulme's expression there had been something else. Something still and rapt. Something that made Vivi fearful. 'Douglas?' she said, making her way over to him, trying not to slip on the wet floor.
He didn't appear to hear.
'Douglas? You promised me a dance.'
It was several seconds later that he noticed her. 'What? Oh, Vee. Yes. Right.' His eye was drawn once again to the doors. 'I - I've just got to get a drink first. I'll bring you a glass. Be right back.'
/> That was the point, Vivi realised afterwards, at which she had been forced to acknowledge that there was going to be no fairytale ending to her evening. Douglas hadn't returned with the drinks, and she had stood by the fireplace for almost forty minutes, a vague, glassy smile on her face, trying to look purposeful, rather than like someone who had been left on the side like a spare part. She hadn't wanted to move, initially, because there were so many people, and the house was so big, and she wasn't convinced Douglas would be able to find her again, once he remembered. But when she grasped that the group by the flower arrangement were remarking on her lonely sojourn, and the same waiter had been past three times, twice to offer drinks, and the third to ask if she was all right, she accepted Alexander's second offer to dance.
At midnight, there had been a toast, and some strange, unofficial game involving a young man with a fox's tail attached to his jacket who went hurtling through the house, hotly pursued by several of his pink-coated friends with hunting horns. One had slipped and fallen hard on the waxed floor, knocking himself unconscious by the main staircase. But another had poured the contents of a stirrup cup into his mouth, and he had come to, spluttering and gagging, got up and carried on the chase as if nothing had happened. At one o'clock Vivi, who was wishing she could go back to her room, said she would accompany Alexander to the blackjack table where, unexpectedly, he won seven pounds. In a fit of exuberance, he told her she should have the lot. The way he said that she was his 'lucky charm' made her feel a bit nauseous - that, or the amount of champagne she had drunk. At half past one she saw Mrs Bloomberg in animated discussion with her husband in what looked like his private office. Just visible was a pair of prostrate female legs, in shimmering oyster tights. Vivi recognised them as belonging to a red-haired girl she had seen earlier, being sick out of a window.
At two o'clock, as some unseen church-tower timepiece confirmed the hour, Vivi was forced to acknowledge that Douglas was not going to keep his promise, that she was not going to find herself held gently in his arms, that there was going to be no longed-for kiss at the end of the evening. Surrounded by the chaos around her, the girls shrieking, their faces now flushed and bleary, the boys sprawled drunkenly on sofas or, occasionally, brawling incompetently, all she wanted was to be alone in her room and cry without worrying over what anyone else thought of her.
'Xander, I think I'm going to go to my room.'
His arm was slung casually round her waist and he was talking to one of his friends. He turned a surprised face towards her. 'What?'
'I'm really tired. I hope you don't mind. I've had a perfectly lovely evening, thank you very much.'
'You can't go to bed now.' He reeled backwards theatrically. 'Party's only just starting.'
His ears, she noted, were scarlet, and his eyelids had slid half-way down over his eyes. 'I'm sorry. You've been awfully kind. If you bump into him, would you mind telling Douglas I've - I've retired for the evening?'
A voice behind Alexander barked, 'Douglas? I don't think Douglas is going to be too bothered.' Several of the men exchanged glances and let off a rapid volley of laughter.
Something about their expressions left her unwilling to ask them to explain themselves. Or perhaps it was just that, having felt like everybody's naive, frumpy cousin all evening, she had no wish to reinforce that view of herself. She made her way out of the gaming room, her arms crossed miserably across her chest, no longer caring how she looked. The people around her were too drunk to pay any attention anyway. The band were having a break, sitting eating from a tray of canapes, their instruments propped against chairs, while Dusty Springfield sang over loudspeakers, a melancholy melody that made Vivi set her face against tears.
'Vivi, you can't go up yet.' Alexander was right behind her. He reached out a hand and pulled her round by her shoulder. The angle of his head on his neck told her everything she needed to know about how much he'd had to drink.
'I'm really sorry, Alexander. Honestly, I've had a super time. But I'm tired.'
'Come . . . come and have something to eat. They'll be doing kedgeree in the breakfast room soon.' He was holding her arm, his grip a little tighter than was comfortable. 'You know . . . you look very pretty in your . . . your dress.' His eyes were now fixed on her embonpoint, and alcohol had removed any trace of reticence from his gaze. 'Very nice,' he said. And then, just in case she had missed the point, 'Very, very nice.'
Vivi stood in an agony of indecision. To turn away from him now would be the height of impoliteness to someone who had made such an effort to entertain her. And yet the way he was staring at her chest was making her uneasy. 'Xander, perhaps we can meet for breakfast.'
He didn't seem to have heard her. 'The problem with skinny women,' he was saying, directly at her chest, 'and there're so many bloody skinny women, these days . . .'
'Xander?'
'. . . is that they have no breasts. No breasts to speak of.' As he spoke, he tentatively lifted a hand towards her. Except it wasn't her hand he was hoping to touch.
'Oh! You--' Vivi's upbringing had left her with no adequate response. She turned, and walked briskly from the room, one hand placed protectively over her bosom, ignoring the rather half-hearted entreaties behind her.
She had to find Douglas. She wouldn't be able to sleep until she did. She needed to reassure herself that, no matter how unreachable he had been this evening, once they had left this place he would be her Douglas again: kind, serious Douglas, who had mended punctures on her first bicycle and who, her dad said, was a 'thoroughly decent young man' and who had taken her to see Tom Jones twice at the cinema, even if they hadn't sat anywhere near the back row. She wanted to tell him how awful Alexander had been (and harboured a newly flourishing secret hope that this dastardly behaviour might be the spur for him to realise his true feelings).
It was easier to search now, the crowds having thinned into small, usually sedentary gatherings, the groups of people becoming less amorphous and now cemented into jaded huddles. The older guests had departed for their rooms, some dragging protesting charges in their wake, and outside at least one tractor could be heard trying to clear a path away from the house. He was not in the gaming room, or in the main ballroom, the adjoining corridor, underneath the grand staircase, or drinking with the pink coats in the Reynard bar. No one noticed her now, the late hour and alcohol consumption having rendered her invisible. But it seemed to have rendered him invisible too; she had wondered several times, in her exhausted state, whether, just as he expressed his dislike for such pompous, class-ridden occasions, he might have crept home after all. Vivi sniffed unhappily, realising that she had never asked him the whereabouts of his room. So wrapped up had she been in her own private fantasy, the prospect of having him escort her to her own room, that she had never considered she might need to know where his was. I'll find him, she decided. I'll find Mrs Bloomberg and she'll tell me. Or I'll just knock on every door in the other wing until someone can find him for me.
She went past the main stairs, stepping over the seated couples propped against banisters, listening to the distant sound of squealing girls as the band gamely struck up again. Weary now, she passed rows of ancestral portraits, their colours unmellowed by age, their gilt frames suspiciously bright. Under her feet the plush red carpet now bore the imprint of carelessly stubbed cigarettes and the odd discarded napkin. Outside the kitchens, from which now emanated the smell of baking bread, she passed Isabel, laughing helplessly on the shoulder of an attentive young man. She didn't seem to recognise Vivi now.
It was several feet beyond there that the corridor came to an end. Vivi glanced up at the heavy oak door, checked behind her to make sure that no one could see her and let out a huge yawn. She bent down to remove her shoes, several hours after they had first begun to pinch. She would put them back on when she found him.
It was as she raised her head that she heard it: a scuffling sound, the odd grunt, as if someone had fallen down drunk outside and was trying to raise themselves. S
he stared at the door from behind which the noise had come, and saw it was just ajar, a sliver of Arctic breeze slipping down the side of the corridor. Vivi, shoeless, crept towards it, holding one arm across herself against the encroaching cold, not knowing why she didn't just call out to see if they were all right. She paused, then opened it, silently, and peered round at the side of the house.
She thought initially that the woman must have fallen down because he seemed to be supporting her, trying to prop her up against the wall. She wondered if she should offer to help. Then, her senses dulled by tiredness, or shock, she grasped in swift, successive jolts that the rhythmic sounds she had heard were emerging from these people. That the woman's long pale legs were not limp, the useless limbs of a drunk, but wrapped tautly round him, like some kind of serpent. As Vivi's eyes adjusted to the dark, and the distance, she recognised, with a start, the woman's long dark hair, falling chaotically over her face, the lone, sequined slipper, upon which stray flakes of snow were settling.
Vivi was simultaneously repulsed and transfixed, staring for several seconds before she grasped, with a flood of shame, what she had been witnessing. She stood, her back against the half-opened door, that sound echoing grotesquely in her ears, jarring against the thumping of her heart.
She had meant to move, but the longer she stood there the more paralysed she became, stuck to the door's roughened surface, even though her arms were mottling in the night air, and her teeth chattering. Instead of escaping, she leant against the cool of the oak door and felt her legs disappear from under her: she had understood that while the tones were those she had never heard before, this man's voice was not. That the back of the man's head, his pink-tinged ears, the sharp edge where his hair met his collar were familiar to her: as familiar as they had been twelve years ago, when she had first fallen in love with them.
Three
She might not have made Deb of the Year (and now she was 'respectable' no one discussed why that might have been) but there were few observers of society who doubted that the nuptials of Athene Forster, variously described as so-called Last Deb, It Girl, or, among some of the less forgiving society matrons, something rather less complimentary, and Douglas Fairley-Hulme, son of the Suffolk farming Fairley-Hulmes, could be hailed as the Wedding of the Year.