After the Party

by Cressida Connolly

  On her last evening, as she made her way up to bed, Phyllis saw a sliver of light at the bottom of her father’s bedroom door and knocked softly.

  ‘Hello, Daddy. Just come to say night-night,’ she said.

  ‘Thank you darling. It’s been lovely having you here. Very peaceful. I don’t imagine things will be so nice and quiet with Patricia next week. You know how she likes to rub Mrs Manville up the wrong way.’

  ‘She doesn’t mean any harm, she just wants you looked after properly.’

  ‘As long as Mummy is all right, that’s the thing. Nothing wrong with me that a few days in bed won’t sort out.’

  ‘No, of course not,’ said Phyllis. ‘Well, I’m off to bed, then. Anything you’d like, before I go?’

  ‘No, all’s well,’ he said.

  She wondered whether to go and give him a kiss and decided against it. Her father had never been one for displays of emotion.

  On her way home Phyllis was to spend a night in London with Hugh and then they would take the train down to Sussex together. He wanted her to join him at a dinner, to hob-nob with some of the London Party people. He hinted that the Old Man himself might be coming. Phyllis hoped he would appear. She was eager to see him again, now that she was so much more engaged with Party matters. If there was time in the morning she rather thought she might look for a new pair of shoes to wear for the Templetons’ ball, now only a couple of weeks away. Nina would then take her turn at the Grange, since she hadn’t been asked to the party. Patricia, on the other hand, had already devoted some energy to her dress for the night and had unearthed an ostrich feather fan that she planned to suspend from her waist with a rope of artificial pearls. They had both bought new evening gloves for the occasion.

  The French conversation Phyllis had been taking with Sarita had gone into abeyance since her father’s illness and had also been put off for the following week, because of getting the house ready for the ball. This Wednesday, with Phyllis back at Bosham, they had decided to invite Monsieur Hubert to start an hour early so that they would have a longer lesson, giving them the chance to discuss their Paris trip.

  ‘Je regrette que je suis comme le jeu de serpents et – comment on dit “ladders”?’ Phyllis ventured.

  ‘Echelles,’ said Monsieur Hubert.

  ‘Alors, comme le jeu des serpents et d’échelles, j’ai gagné un peu de Français quand j’étais en France, mais maintenant je tombe par les serpents encore.’

  Sarita was trying very hard to keep a straight face.

  ‘Il faut pratiquer. Qu’est-ce que vous avait fait, à Paris?’ asked Monsieur Hubert.

  Sarita was much better, able to speak fluently about the Parisian visit. Afterwards they lunched in the little morning room, since Fergus was away for the day. Sarita asked all about Phyllis’s father and Phyllis thanked her for the Muscat grapes she’d had sent to the Grange for him, from Harrods. After their coffee they went up to see the dress that Sarita had had made for the ball. By luck, it had arrived that very morning. It was palest mauve velvet, with hundreds of little pearl buttons down the back and a scooped neck, trimmed with ermine. With it was a little evening cape in ermine, lined with glossy silk a shade darker than the dress itself.

  ‘It’s the colour of a shadow, yes?’ said Sarita. ‘Like a shadow on the snow.’

  ‘What a clever idea,’ said Phyllis. ‘I’d never have thought of that. You’re going to look so beautiful.’

  10. Sussex, December 1938

  The stone-floored entrance hall had four enormous arrangements of white flowers on waist-high Doric pillars made of plaster, brought in by the London florist: one to either side of the main door, with a mirroring second pair flanking the way through into the large drawing room. Each of the four arrangements occupied several yards of air, the blooms appearing to soar upwards and then to cascade extravagantly down, like a burst of fireworks. The scent from the tuberoses and lilies was sticky, intoxicating; while white freesias, tucked in low, gave off a smell half citrus, half peppery.

  A tall blaze in the vast hall fireplace added to the sense of occasion. Phyllis and Hugh had been asked for dinner before the party along with other close friends of the Templetons. Some of them, having come from London, were staying at the house. Four round tables, each set with ten places, had been arranged in the smaller drawing room, so as to keep the dining room clear. There the long table and its many leaves had been taken down, and all the chairs and side tables removed and the rugs lifted so as to clear the floor for dancing, later. The Templetons were expecting more than two hundred guests. They’d had fifty more than that at their last ball without crowding, but that had been a fine summer’s evening and people had spilled out on to the lawns. On this occasion Fergus had insisted that anything less than a hundred and sixty wasn’t a proper party; the more people you invited, the more fun they were likely to have, was his view. Sarita protested mildly: there had been a lot of talk about where the coats would go. In the end it was decided to put them in the morning room, ticketed. A couple of girls would oversee the operation and hanging rails of the kind found in shop storerooms were procured for the purpose. Fergus hadn’t been happy about this – it was a private party after all, not the cloakroom of a railway hotel – but at this time of year everyone, but everyone, wore an overcoat and all the men’s were heavy dark tweed and all the women’s were heavy dark fur, so short of getting people to spend hours fishing about for their own coats at two and three in the morning, no other solution for their retrieval had presented itself.

  ‘Do look,’ said Patricia, coming to stand by her sister at one of the pillars. ‘How many different kinds of flowers can you count? I can see freesias and gardenia and these trailing bits are jasmine and that other wonderful smell, what do you think it is? Oh look, and stephanotis, that must be the scent. Wherever did she get them from, do you imagine? They can’t have been grown in England, surely, not even in a hot-house. They must have cost the earth.’

  ‘I think she said she’d had them brought down in a van from Moyses Stevens.’

  ‘I ask you,’ said Patricia.

  ‘I hope I don’t look as if I’m wearing a nightie, do I?’ Phyllis said. She was dressed in a pale duck-egg blue silk dress, with a white silk ribbon threaded around the neckline and a wide belt of white petersham, fastened with a jade and diamanté clip. It was an old dress and she felt now that it was rather too young for her, but she’d replaced the original turquoise ribbon and belt with white and worn her pearls, to fit in with the party’s theme. Sarita had insisted on loaning her an ermine tippet, to keep her shoulders warm.

  ‘No, darling, you look lovely. That dress has always suited you so well,’ said Patricia. ‘What about me, do I look silly? God knows who dreamed up white, it’s impossible not to turn out like some ghastly Miss Havisham.’

  Venetia Gordon-Canning waved from across the hall and after leaving her coat made her way straight in the sisters’ direction.

  ‘Don’t tell a soul, but it’s rabbit,’ she announced, holding up the corners of her evening stole. ‘They just take little pinches of the fur and dye it darker, to look like ermine. Clever, isn’t it? You’d never guess.’

  ‘Most effective,’ said Patricia. Venetia pulled a comic hoity-toity face at Phyllis while Patricia scanned the room. No one spoke for a moment while a waiter glided up with a salver of champagne, ready poured into tulip glasses.

  ‘Is Andrew with you? I didn’t see him come in,’ said Patricia.

  ‘Oh, he’s here somewhere,’ said Venetia. ‘Quite honestly I couldn’t wait to give him the slip. I’m hoping to have some fun once the dancing gets going, and he can get a bit huffy. Husbands can be the most frightful bore, can’t they?’

  Phyllis laughed, but Patricia made no sign of acknowledgement. ‘What did you have for the dinner?’ asked Patricia.

  ‘Partridge and bread sauce and then some sort of thing with meringues. Then cheese.’

  ‘No first course?’

  ‘Oh ye
s, I’d forgotten. A fish mousse and melba toast. All white, you see. Then they had lots of little silver dishes with white mints and sugared almonds with the coffee.’

  ‘I’m not sure that I’d find white food very appetizing,’ said Patricia.

  ‘I love Melba toast,’ said Venetia. ‘It’s one of those things that’s much better than it’s got any right to be.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’ agreed Phyllis, smiling.

  Their hostess had never looked lovelier. In her hair she wore a simple diamond tiara; a matching pair of long earrings trembled between her ear-lobes and her neck like tiny waterfalls. At dinner the gleam from the candles glanced off the diamonds, making small white polka dots of light dance on the damask tablecloth in front of her whenever she moved her head. Phyllis was touched to have been put at Sarita’s table for dinner. On her right was a much older Italian gentleman, whose name she failed to register; on her left was the ubiquitous Pea-Brain, whose nonsense always made him the easiest of dining companions.

  ‘Phyllis,’ he said, pulling her chair out for her to sit. ‘You look especially ravishing tonight, if I may say so. A man’s heart could shatter at the sight of you.’

  ‘Now, now,’ said Phyllis. ‘There’s no need to take it that far.’

  Pea-Brain grinned.

  Phyllis leant in close to his ear and whispered. ‘Do you know the name of the fellow on my other side? I didn’t catch it, quite.’

  ‘Haven’t the foggiest. The Count of Monte Cristo, I daresay,’ said Pea-Brain. ‘But look, you’re in luck, he hasn’t pocketed his place-card. It’s just there, just by the wine glasses, do you see? You can crib off that.’

  As it turned out, the gentleman was indeed some sort of Count. During Sarita’s youth he had been Italy’s ambassador to Brazil, where he had become friends with her family. Later he had been posted to Paris, where he had again coincided with Sarita, during her first marriage. He was now retired and resident in London.

  ‘Do you not miss your own country?’ asked Phyllis. ‘I know when we were overseas I used to long to get home. I even missed things I don’t like, like tapioca.’

  ‘Home becomes internal when you have been abroad as long as we have,’ he said, with a certain mournful politesse. ‘In any case it is not possible for us to return at present. My wife’s family are not welcome in Italy and I must be at my wife’s side. Perhaps one day. London is very congenial; we have been fortunate to find friends here in England. We walk every day in the park.’

  ‘How nice,’ said Phyllis. ‘Do you have a dog?’

  ‘We do not,’ said the Count.

  A silence began to settle between them. ‘Is your wife musical?’ asked Phyllis.

  The Count smiled ruefully, whether at the limitations of her conversation or of his own responses she could not determine. ‘She is fond of the ballet, but no: music is not especially important. Her family are academics.’

  ‘Oh dear, I fear I made a bit of a bish, talking to the Count,’ Phyllis murmured to Pea-Brain, after the first course was cleared, when it was time to turn to her other side. ‘All I could think of were the most stupidly obvious things to do with Italy, like opera and gondolas. He was terribly sophisticated – even seemed to speak much better English than I do. He must have thought I was very silly.’

  ‘No one could possibly think you anything other than delightful,’ said Pea-Brain. ‘Anyway, he was probably so mesmerized by your shape in that dress that he didn’t hear a word.’

  Phyllis giggled, a result of the champagne she’d been drinking before dinner and the wine since. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. He’s about a hundred.’

  ‘What makes you think men grow out of such things?’ asked Pea-Brain.

  Once all the after-dinner guests had arrived, the dancing began. Phyllis took a turn with Greville and another with Hugh: Pea-Brain disappeared into the throng almost at once, despite having spent half of dinner begging her to dance with him. Andrew Gordon-Canning was a very rigid and silent dance partner who spent the whole tune looking over Phyllis’s head, presumably in the hope of finding his wife, who was nowhere to be seen. Hugh, on the other hand, was a surprisingly good dancer; or at least, it was surprising to Phyllis how fluid and smiling he looked, when she sat out a dance and watched him twirl across the floor with their hostess. Presently Hugh came away from the music and suggested that they go in search of a glass of something. In the hall they found Greville and Patricia and a small circle of their friends, all very animated.

  ‘Shall you mind if I steal Hugh for a dance or two?’ Patricia asked her sister. ‘Only Greville’s had enough for the time being and I so love it.’

  ‘Of course not, darling,’ said Phyllis. ‘I was going to sit out for a bit in any case, catch my breath.’

  It occurred to her that the small sitting room would have been cleared of tables by now and would provide a comfortable sanctuary in which to find a seat. There she found Sarita and a group of the less boisterous of the Templetons’ friends, talking. The Count and his wife were among them, as well as a woman with a long face like a melancholy fox terrier. Phyllis felt rather unsteady. As a rule she wasn’t much of a drinker, but she had had wine with dinner and then two glasses of the delicious pudding wine – it was like cough linctus, only nicer – and she’d lost count of how many glasses of champagne since. All of a sudden, seated in the warm room, she felt terribly hot and urgently queasy. She smiled vaguely in Sarita’s direction and made her way out into the hall and on to the steps outside the house.

  The sharp night air was refreshing. The sky was clear and dark and full of stars, but Phyllis reeled a little when she looked up, which made her aware how tipsy she was. A frost had not yet formed, but the tang of frost was already in the air. If she breathed through her nose and kept her gaze level she would be all right, but it felt important to be cold. The best thing in the world would be something cool directly against her skin. Cold could forestall the nausea and bring her back from the sense of tilting. If she could only press her face against something smooth and cool, that would solve everything. She half thought of lying down there and then on the stone steps, but someone might see her, or trip over her. Instead she made her way down the steps and across the gravel in the direction of the old stable-yard, where the cars had been parked for the evening. She could see the outlines of the vehicles, standing in lines on the hard ground. Some of the guests had brought drivers, but no one seemed to be about: on such a cold night they had surely come inside to smoke and wait it out in the warm until they were called to take people home. At first Phyllis thought she must find their own car, but it occurred to her that this wasn’t necessary. Any one of the vehicles would serve, all she had to do was drape her shoulders across the cold metal of a car bonnet, to cool her cheeks and her forehead. Then she would feel better.

  She had enough composure to realize that she would make an absurd figure if she were seen, and so she stepped gingerly past first one and then two rows of cars, further into the darkness. Here. But the car was too tall to incline against: she would have to kneel on the grass, and the damp might mark her frock. She decided instead to step up on to the front fender, so that she could bend from the waist on to the soothing surface of the chilled metal. It took a few moments to manoeuvre herself. The cold of it was far colder than she’d anticipated and made her gasp a little, like walking into sea-water. As the coolness spread across her arms, she laid first one cheek and then the other against the car. She hummed a little, half under her breath. The strange cold compress was working, she was beginning to feel less giddy and the nausea was evaporating. She didn’t want to overdo it and catch cold, but she knew she wasn’t yet steady enough to go back into the gaiety and heat of the party.

  Phyllis had no sense of how long she had been upended there when she heard the sound of a woman’s laughter. At first she supposed the person must be laughing at her expense – she must look like a madwoman after all – and she jolted upright in an attempt to recover some dignity, rearranging
her dress. She looked around her, but couldn’t see anyone. She stood very still. Now she heard a man’s voice, a low rumble, before the woman’s laughter came again. She knew that laugh well. Venetia. Now Phyllis felt sober and alert. The male voice was indistinct, but whatever he was saying must evidently have been very funny, as peals of laughter punctuated the low tones again and again. Then there was silence. Perhaps the two were now making their way back towards the house? Phyllis hesitated to take the same course herself, lest she run into them, for she was sure that the man with Venetia was not her husband. The return of sobriety made her aware now of how cold she had become, out here in the night with no coat, and she began to shiver quite violently. All at once a noise came, a kind of deep moan, answered in turn by a high, breathy sound like a contralto practising a downward scale. These were not sounds meant for other ears. Phyllis didn’t want to hear. She slipped away into the enfolding darkness, towards the welcoming lights of the house.