White Ice

by Celia Brayfield

  ‘Aren’t those ladies taking an age to get their make-up off tonight?’ observed a freshly hatched intellectual of twenty or so to his much older companion, who grunted agreement through a plume of cigarette smoke from the depths of his beaver collar.

  At last the stage door opened and the musicians began to leave, pulling their coats tight against the cold. The dancers of the corps appeared, slender and humble, and the respectful horde parted to let them through. The public was waiting for the stars and if it took half the night they would stand in the snow until their idols appeared.

  ‘She’s coming, she’s coming!’ called a voice close to the door, whose owner had glimpsed the adored one in the hallway.

  ‘La Kusminskaya’s coming!’ The word passed from mouth to mouth down the wide street. From nowhere a chair appeared, a simple bentwood café chair which was passed above the heads of the crowd by a hundred strong hands and set down by the doorway.

  Orlov stood quietly aside, shaking visibly with vicarious pride in the demonstration. He was gratified almost to tears to see that Lydia, the object of this passion, was wearing the blue fox wrap which he had recently given her. Her face was a poem of sweetness in its soft frame, but in silence he promised her all the furs of the Arctic come the next day.

  She exclaimed on stepping outside into the crowd, who surged around like an angry sea to make a respectful space for her. Laughing, unaware of the Prince in the shadow of a pillar, she was installed on the chair amid ceaseless cheers and shouts of ‘Bravo!’ and shrieked with alarm as it was raised to shoulder height. Marie, with her sister and brother-in-law Paul, followed behind her like a bride’s train, carrying the bouquets and collecting more posies which were pressed on them from all sides.

  ‘Where is your carriage?’ the worshippers demanded.

  ‘You darling boys, I have no carriage!’

  ‘Nonsense!’ they shouted, thinking she was teasing. ‘Every ballerina has a carriage!’

  ‘But I’m not a ballerina yet, I’m only a première.’

  ‘Impossible!’

  Orlov was transfixed by the scene, but at his side General Ragosin barked, ‘Permit me, Mademoiselle!’ and stepped purposefully forward. The young men quietened at once and let him speak. ‘Permit me to offer you my carriage, Mademoiselle Kusminskaya. You can see it there, just at the side of the square.’

  Lydia was so breathless with elation that she could barely speak; with an effort she controlled herself sufficiently to accept his offer and the chair, swaying crazily, turned at once.

  ‘Are you quite safe, Mademoiselle?’ Ragosin inquired, raising his voice even more to quell the excitable crowd.

  ‘Of course she is!’ the students shouted at once. ‘She’s our goddess, nothing can harm her when we are present!’

  ‘Let the lady speak for herself!’ he commanded.

  ‘I’m sure it looks precarious up here and indeed it feels it, but I will put my trust in these dear gentlemen,’ she gasped, her eyes alight with a pure happiness which, Orlov later reflected, was quite unlike her response to him.

  ‘Hurrah for La Kusminskaya!’ cried a tall, blond youth who gripped the front leg of the chair in one huge hand and conducted the cheering with the other as she was carried across the square.

  ‘Your little one has a great instinct for the mob.’ The General was regarding Orlov with blatant envy. ‘She’ll get her promotion before long, even if there are more generals than ballerinas in this country.’

  ‘She’s not mine yet.’ Orlov liked to be precise.

  ‘Well, man, what in the world are you waiting for?’

  ‘Tomorrow morning, General.’

  Alexandrov and Paul called upon him early, swaggering a little with the memory of Lydia’s triumph still fresh. Only mildly intimidated by the splendour of the Orlov palace, they squared up to the Prince and his steward, a thick-set man of only middle age whose cropped hair, nevertheless, was already white.

  Their bravado was unnecessary, and in an hour they resumed their coats with brilliant smiles and brought back to Lydia the Prince’s offer to install her in a suitable house in the best part of town, furnished in every detail to her exact taste, with a household, carriages, horses – and, yes, an automobile if she had the fancy for one – a little white wood dacha in the country with a small park, and a positively lavish capital endowment to maintain the whole. Paul clutched a wheezing black pug puppy with blue leather collar studded with diamonds. Alexandrov concluded the recital of generosity with an invitation to accompany the Prince on his spring tour of France and Italy.

  Lydia, sitting upright at the breakfast table, turned so pale that her white wool gown seemed almost yellow. For an instant the two men thought she was going to refuse on an idiotic pretext. Marie thought she was going to faint and rushed to her side. Instead, she wordlessly held out her arms for the little dog, which settled on her lap and snuffled for crumbs.

  ‘Well?’ Alexandrov demanded at last. ‘What do you say?’

  ‘I can’t believe it.’ Her eyes were genuinely troubled. ‘It isn’t some kind of joke?’

  ‘No. It’s all written down and sealed.’

  ‘I can’t believe it.’ She abstractedly pulled the puppy away from her tea glass.

  ‘I don’t care whether you believe it, you fool – do you agree to it?’ Alexandrov was becoming irritated.

  ‘Oh, yes!’ And the conspirators embraced and sent out for champagne, telling each other that soon they would all be able to bathe in the stuff if they chose.

  With so high a price offered for her, Lydia had been assailed with terrible doubts about her ability to honour the bargain.

  ‘Oh, God, I wish I had a mother I could talk to,’ she confided to Marie as they crammed her few possessions into boxes and baskets the day before her departure for her new home. ‘What will he expect? Suppose I can’t bear it?’

  Tatiana, Marie’s sister, appeared with arms full of freshly laundered petticoats. ‘You’ll get used to it, every woman does,’ she assured her. ‘Of course it can be unpleasant at first – isn’t everything? But drink a lot of champagne and have a good warm bath afterwards and you’ll be fine. And when you get used to love you’ll adore it, I promise you. You’re the type, I can see it in your eyes.’

  ‘What about me? Am I made for love, can you see it in my eyes?’ Marie pulled playfully at her sister’s sleeve.

  ‘Oh, shut up! The way you’ve been carrying on with Basil you ought to be giving this lecture yourself!’

  ‘Mean to me, my big sister’s always so mean to me!’ The Guards officer, Basil Nikonov, had courted Marie energetically ever since the dinner at Cubat’s after the première of Les Pléiades.

  Lydia sat on the end of her narrow bed and enviously watched them teasing each other. Living with the affectionate sisters had made her painfully aware that she had never felt so easily intimate with anyone.

  ‘And it will improve your dancing …’ Tata continued with authority as she folded the garments.

  ‘No it won’t – she has a one hundred and eighty degree penchée already,’ riposted Marie, straining one of her own legs vainly towards her ear to demonstrate. ‘The Prince is going to have a really good time.’

  ‘How can you be so crude? You’ll frighten the poor child. The sooner Basil takes you off my hands the better, you’re getting quite impossible. But love will help you to be a better artist, little girl. When you understand what passion truly is – then you can really express it.’ Lydia nodded. ‘Look at her, the little rosebud, she hasn’t the faintest idea what I mean! Don’t worry, you’ll be fine. Until you get pregnant, then your troubles really begin. But there are things to do. We’ll go and see my Finnish woman who knows about plants and she’ll fix you up.’

  Orlov claimed his purchase as he did everything else, with elegance and restraint. He consulted the Maryinsky programme, to find a run of days in which Kusminskaya was not billed to dance, and called upon her with flowers and a gift, an evening purse o
f green gold with a diamond clasp. Marie and Basil were invited for familiar, amusing company. Upon the new porcelain dinner service, painted with pink convolvulus flowers and edged in turquoise and gold, the new footman and the new downstairs maid served a delicious light supper prepared by Denis, the new Swiss cook. A fine French champagne, for which Lydia had now acquired a taste, was brought up from the cellar.

  ‘Do you like your house? Are you happy?’ he asked her. She was the picture of a creature softened by luxury, curled in the corner of her new Empire sofa feeding the puppy with turkish delight, picking up each titbit with fastidious fingertips and flicking sugar specks off the white lace of her skirt. At once she understood his intention and her expression of alarm, although rapidly wiped away by one of forced sweetness, was so ridiculous that he half laughed, then kissed her sticky hand. ‘Forgive me, such a hackneyed question and so tactless. Don’t worry …’

  ‘I adore my house but – oh! it’s so annoying! How can a person be calm when everyone tells her not to worry?’ She tipped the pug awkwardly off her lap. They were briefly alone; a game of charades had been proposed and Basil and Marie were in the next room preparing their tableau.

  ‘You are anxious, my little love, you shouldn’t deny it. And what could be more natural …’

  All at once her breath seemed trapped in her chest and she felt she was going to cry. The thought that her timidity was unkind to him lived for a gnat’s span before she crushed it, but still she was conscious that she was not acting as she wished. This mistrusting, withholding creature was not the bold woman who last night enthralled a thousand men by her mere appearance. She turned to him. ‘You know I only want to please you.’

  ‘You are the loveliest thing I have ever seen.’ He spoke with complete gravity as if reciting a catechism. ‘Every movement you make, every word you speak is precious to me, every minute spent in your company is a delight.’ A nervous tremor in her throat, as slight as the shadow of a fish in water, caught his eye and he leaned forward, paused momentarily, and kissed it. His mouth was soft and warm, and she told herself it must surely be more pleasant than the wet nuzzling of the puppy. ‘Live for the moment, my darling, that is the real secret of happiness.’

  As the evening continued he made sure her glass was always filled; their companions were a pair of natural comedians and by midnight Lydia’s ribs were sore from laughing. Marie asked to leave early, since she had to dance the next day, and as Lydia followed them across the marble-floored floored hallway, admiring her own Chinese vases crammed with flowers from her own hot house, thinking of her pretty English-style bedroom, a mass of chintz and ruffles, she felt whole and complete for the first time in her life, and suddenly resolved to bestow herself on her lover with all the thoughtful generosity which he had shown to her. She dismissed the servants the instant the door closed, ran back to the salon and threw herself joyfully into Orlov’s arms.

  Inside the gauzy silk gown her body was a light, tensile thing; sinewy arms twined around his neck and she kicked away her satin slippers like a happy infant. She had been so long accustomed to manhandling by her partners that the embrace with which her lover lifted her seemed almost smothering in its carefulness.

  His touch was delicate, his fingers as light as breath on her skin. The white-painted bed waited for them, warm and fragrant, its rosy cover folded back over a little ocean of pillows foaming with lace. Lydia was so charmed with the beauty of it and so dizzy from the champagne that at first she hardly felt his caresses.

  Without haste, he kissed her lips, her neck, her ears, her throat, again and again in strict order. Passion dissolved her consciousness like a dream. Hairpins fell among the pillows, buttons evaded their loops, her stockings unrolled themselves and slipped from her toes.

  ‘I don’t need this now, do I?’ she inquired, smiling, emboldened by passion. She pulled off her chemise before he could answer then attempted to push his own coat off his shoulders. ‘And why are you wearing all these ridiculous things? I don’t believe you always go to bed in your boots.’

  As her body emerged from its fine wrappings he became lost in fascination, discovering warm, firm swells of muscle, fine blue veins, bones so prominent he could slide his fingers in the grooves between them. Her breasts were tiny, marble-white tear-drops welling below the brittle span of her collarbones. Apart from the fleshy peasant girls of his youth, Orlov had never touched a woman in good physical condition. His previous lovers seemed half dead in comparison to this vital, squirming creature who sighed from the depth of her being at each new touch.

  A residue of fear remained in her, enough to quicken her happiness as he held her waist, so that she strained eagerly against his hand, longing for its inevitable downward progress. Her thighs, narrow and blood-warmed, parted readily at his touch, inviting, rather than merely allowing, the exploration of her inner secrets. Now his decision to proceed slowly was joined by a mystical sense that this was a ceremony they could perform only once, and so he delayed, ignoring the acute demands of his own flesh, and touched each hidden part of her lingeringly with his fingertips.

  ‘Angel wings, it feels like angel wings,’ she whispered, half to herself, her head turning from side to side among the pillows. ‘I’m in heaven, darling, I can’t bear it, I can’t wait any more, I won’t care if it hurts me, only do it now, please, now, please …’ As he entered her he felt a brief spasm of her muscles, and then no more resistance, only the heat of her flesh around his, and her back arching in response to new instincts for pleasure, and ecstasy consuming him like a white fire.

  They soon slept, but within an hour Lydia roused herself and, accustomed throughout her life to obeying injunctions to her physical care and finding them well-founded, stirred the servants to help her bathe. Then she returned to bed, but woke early and began to discover that Tatiana was correct in all her predictions. Orlov was enchanted to be detained the whole day by an apt pupil who announced that she wished to master all the arts of love immediately.

  ‘Don’t you think I’m made for it, darling? Just like I know I was made to dance. It was my destiny to love you, you know that?’ It was the height of the afternoon and the city outside cowered under a snowstorm, but in the bedroom the roses bloomed unblighted and the lovers restored their strength with cake and chocolate.

  ‘I don’t believe in your destiny nonsense,’ he answered in a vague tone, bewitched by the pretty greed with which she picked every crumb and poppy seed from her plate.

  ‘You don’t believe I was destined to kiss you – like this? And then like this …’

  ‘That’s your will, not your destiny. You’re doing it because you want to.’

  ‘Well, that’s true, but you wanted to kiss me for a long time and it wasn’t destined so you didn’t. You can’t argue with that, can you?’ She was sitting on his lap, wriggling provocatively, her wrap slipping from her shoulders, and he was in no mood to argue with anything.

  ‘No. And now it’s my will to kiss you like this …’ Her small pale nipple puckered at the touch.

  ‘You can’t do that – people don’t do that, do they?’

  ‘Yes, don’t you like it?’

  She sprawled thoughtfully in his arms and pretended to consider. ‘I suppose it’s quite agreeable …’

  ‘Oh, well, in that case I’ll stop. “Quite agreeable” really isn’t good enough. Only the best caresses are good enough for my precious one.’

  ‘Oh no! Don’t stop!’

  ‘Don’t stop! Don’t stop! You sound just like my old riding master.’

  ‘How complimentary! Thank you so much!’ She flounced away to the centre of the room, still holding half a sugared pastry, and the puppy bounded after her on his stumpy legs.

  ‘Forgive me! I didn’t mean it that way!’ As he rose to pursue her he saw himself for an instant from far away, a man of learning and respect chattering idiotic nonsense to a dancer, and noted how keen an edge abasement added to ordinary pleasure.

  There followed
a period in which they considered themselves madly in love. They were reclusive, saw no one, went nowhere and, apart from Lydia’s dancing commitments, stayed in her little house delighting in solitude à deux. As Tatiana foresaw, Lydia’s body was quick to display its new wisdom in a capacity for fiery languor which soon won her another major role, in Le Corsaire. Orlov filled her dressing room with orchids at every performance and gave her a pair of diamond bracelets.

  His custom was to leave for his annual tour of Europe in May, and for the sake of accompanying him before the end of the season Lydia pretended to injure her knee, and begged for a month’s leave from the ballet. The Director, undeceived but mindful of the influence of a man of Orlov’s breeding and stature, agreed.

  They boarded the train for Paris with so much luggage that an extra carriage was needed. The pug slept on the finest beds on the continent, while the lovers tried the effect of every sophisticated stimulus on their ardour. In Paris it was foie gras and Cartier, in Monte Carlo lobster and baccarat, in Venice they bought a mirror too big to be transported in a gondola, while Florence was afterwards remembered for the truffles and a new set of trunks to carry their purchases. In all these cities Lydia yawned through cathedrals, slept in the opera and dismissed the paintings of the great masters because they depicted only fat women, and Orlov was the more enchanted by her crassness and looked back to previous visits, when his pastimes had been reading or sketching the great classical ruins, as an arid waste.

  In September they returned to St Petersburg, arranged their treasures and agreed that their native country was a dreadfully backward and rough place and that they would travel every year. Lydia was aghast to discover that she had gained a great deal of weight, and resolved to order no new dresses until she had returned to her former slenderness.

  ‘Kchessinskaya does it every year, and so shall I,’ she announced, referring to the prima ballerina’s schedule of a summer of indulgence followed by weeks of diet and exercise before her first appearance on stage in the autumn. She began work, and found her body sluggish. She had her maid knit thick wool stockings to help her sweat. From the Finnish herbalist she bought a selection of evil-smelling laxatives, diuretics and potions to melt fat or suppress the appetite, then complained that they did not work and made her feel sick. The old witch, whose face was as brown and lined as polished oak, broke an egg into a bowl of water to look for omens, then examined her eyes and tongue, crossed her palms with twigs and burned them, and finally announced, ‘Not fat, Madame, you got child.’