White Ice

by Celia Brayfield

  Hardly knowing how her feelings were changing, she began to see an awkward little boy beneath the old intellectual tyrant of St Petersburg and the maternal care which she was quite unable to feel for her own son flowered in smoothing his path. She had a pleasant sense of being needed for the very qualities which he had always despised. Teasing him was a delicious game.

  ‘Your trouble,’ she lectured as he sat morosely on the beach one Sunday, ‘is that you can’t distinguish between what is trivial and what is frivolous.’ Half the company met on this little private cove on their rest day; it belonged to an American millionaire, who had retired after a lifetime of dealing in pig meat, intending to deal in beauty instead. For the sake of having two or three girl dancers to worship, he was happy to entertain their colleagues by the dozen.

  ‘They’re the same thing.’ Leo threw a pebble at the azure sea, then scraped up a small pile of sand, looking for more missiles.

  ‘They are not. That’s just the point. Frivolity is something to which one can devote one’s life. Triviality is death. Now, tell me! Baccarat, for instance – is it trivial or frivolous?’

  ‘This is too stupid, refuse to answer, Leo.’ Inna jammed her hat over her eyes with contempt and leaned back in her deckchair with her book at the end of her nose. But Leo, half lying on the sand, was looking lazily at Lydia under his eyelashes. Maturity had confirmed the hollow-cheeked, demonic cast of his face, but his eyelashes were still childishly long, thick and silky.

  ‘Baccarat? I think it’s frivolous. Especially when I lose.’

  ‘Correct. I award you one shell.’ A pink clam shell, as tiny as a baby’s fingernail, was deposited by his feet. ‘Now, eating strawberries? Trivial or frivolous?’

  ‘Little strawberries or big ones?’

  ‘Big.’

  ‘Big hot-house or big garden strawberries?’

  ‘Imagine us having this conversation in Petersburg!’ Tata was listening with her head on one side, an indulgent smile hovering around her little Cupid’s-bow mouth. Her King Charles spaniel panted in the shade under her deckchair.

  ‘That I can’t do,’ Inna replied. Her shoulders were hunched with annoyance and she looked like a crow. ‘It’s the kind of conversation people only have on the Riviera, thank God. There must be something in the water which makes people decadent.’

  Leo’s eyes met Lydia’s. ‘Hot-house or garden?’ he murmured.

  ‘Garden.’

  ‘Frivolous. But only if you eat them in the garden itself.’

  ‘Correct again.’ A minute mussel shell joined the clam. ‘Now, tell me – this is a hard one – romance, trivial or frivolous?’

  Now he avoided her eyes, drawing a face in the sand. The low sun of the afternoon was casting deep shadows, making vivid the sculptured musculature of his body. ‘Trivial.’

  ‘Correct again. I think you’ve been taking lessons.’ She awarded him the other half of the clam shell.

  ‘It’s obvious, surely,’ he announced in his characteristic voice of lofty omniscience, the same voice in which, three months earlier, he had spoken for the entire clientele of the Stray Dog in arguing that the departing Prime Minister was the only decent man in Russian politics and therefore his dismissal by the Tsar had been an inevitability. ‘Romance is only of value in life inasmuch as it can illuminate a person’s qualities, inspire great art, courage or loyalty. Of itself it has no value.’

  It was then that the notion of seducing him occurred to her. A piece of mischief to alleviate the tedium of this period of reculer pour mieux sauter, a challenge to her femininity, a practice for the task awaiting her in Paris, an appointment with destiny which she had, perhaps, avoided for too long – a dozen reasons popped up to promote the idea. She extended her bare foot idly and massaged his outstretched ankle. ‘I am really impressed, Leo. Your aptitude for this field of study is truly phenomenal.’

  ‘The credit belongs entirely to my tutor.’ How exotic her little foot now seemed, with its white skin and meticulously buffed nails. He had held it a thousand times while dancing, but now it was new and magically alluring. ‘Come on, ask me another one.’

  ‘All right then: decadence. Trivial or frivolous?’ She tickled his instep with the tip of her toe.

  ‘Frivolous.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  He became aware of a pressing, sweet discomfort. At her touch he had become half erect and, loose as they were, his shorts felt constricting. Violently embarrassed, he curled up with his arms around his knees, hoping to hide the burgeoning contour of his penis. ‘Naturally.’ There was no breath in his lungs. He coughed, embarrassed. ‘Decadence is frivolous because it is only through the pursuit of decadence that art can be purified and renewed. Another question, please.’

  Unhurried, she perused her shell collection and awarded him a tiny white whelk. ‘Isn’t that pretty? It’s almost pretty enough to wear in a necklace, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s exquisite but if I get five questions right I want a special prize.’ Covertly he watched his wife, who was pretending not to listen. She too seemed different in the penetrating light of the Côte. Instead of the interesting, serious woman he had married, a woman he had imagined to have a mysterious centre of gravity, a lodestone of ancient wisdom directing her actions, he saw an insecure, posturing girl who greedily consumed the luxuries of the West with no appreciation of their true value.

  ‘The judges will have to confer.’ Lydia raised the silky flap of the pug dog’s ear and whispered, making the animal snort with surprise and jump to its feet. ‘What is the nature of this special prize?’

  ‘I will decide when I have won.’ She had an intuition it had come into his mind to ask for a kiss.

  ‘Fined one point for arrogance!’ Half the clam shell was snatched away. He tried to stop her, shouting, ‘Unfair! Cheat!’ and grabbing her wrist. She was unbalanced and they both fell sideways on to the sand, laughing and wrestling like children. The pug jumped indignantly aside. Inna sighed heavily.

  Lydia sat up and brushed sand from her Breton-striped bathing costume. ‘The judges are incapable of cheating. Please apologize and fetch us some lemonade or you will be fined all your points so far.’

  Obediently Leo rose and motioned the servant who waited attentively in the shade of a parasol to run errands for his master’s guests. Inna shut her book, placed it carefully in her chair and suggested to Tata that they should stroll along the shoreline. The lemonade arrived, was poured and drunk, and for a while Leo and Lydia listened without speaking to the shouts of the others and the yelps of the dogs splashing in the water. The tension, the mood of conspiracy which they had shared persisted but without the safety valve of Inna’s presence the pressure of their attraction was too much for comfort.

  A few days later, after half a dozen false alarms and delays, Diaghilev at last arrived. His train was due in the evening, but all day the company was on edge with excitement. In the morning, when Leo had the whole company for the final scene in Salome, he called upon them in the rehearsal room, appearing silently, as if by magic, in the comer by the piano. He was taller and broader than she recalled the old Chinchilla of St Petersburg, his hair receding, his smooth cheeks full and freshly shaved apart from his debonair moustache.

  ‘Mademoiselle La Kusminskaya, at last. Can you find it in your heart to forgive me?’ He greeted her first and kissed her hand. ‘You must wonder what kind of man could lure such a great and celebrated artist as yourself all the way from St Petersburg and then withhold his company so inexcusably. My problem is my schedule, I never seem to have enough hours for everything that has to be done. But here I am at last.’ He flapped his arms, his heavy brows raised with an appealing smile.

  Lydia responded with icy grace. After years of listening as Tata recounted the machinations of this man she evaluated his personality as three parts Lorenzo di Medici and one part two-year-old child; when manipulation failed to get him what he wanted, he threw a tantrum. Fortunately, she herself had some skill
in these areas. Her strategy with him was to attack at once, reserving the advantage of surprise. ‘Of course I am delighted to make your acquaintance properly at last,’ she assured him without sincerity, ‘and I hope your schedule will permit you now to clear up some of my little problems.’ Nothing in her manner suggested that her problems had been adequately represented by this description.

  ‘You shall have my entire devotion – tell me at once what I can do to secure your complete happiness?’

  ‘My complete happiness, Sergei Pavlovich, is sadly not in your gift. You could, however, repair some of the dreadful damage you have done to me.’

  ‘Damage?’ His sideways glance at the listening dancers all around told Lydia that he appreciated the gravity of the offence she had taken. ‘I am deeply grieved to hear of it and of course we will put things right at once but – is this a propitious moment?’ He indicated the rest of the company.

  ‘Yes. It may not be a propitious place however.’

  ‘Very well – Leo, is there somewhere we can talk?’

  The building had a shaded terrace on its landward side and it was here, with the cicadas shrilling incessantly in the hot, resinous air, that she flew into a rage, accusing him of all kinds of treachery and double-dealing. Salome was her role, created for – no created by herself, with Leo, and never to be danced by anyone else. How dare he propose that she should share it with another dancer, let alone one so thoroughly unsuitable as Inna, and, to add insult to injury, allow her to find this out from Grigoriev? And her billing was absurdly inadequate, and incorrect, and her Black Swan costume was hideous, and as for expecting her to stay in the Hotel whateveritwas, in Paris, instead of the Ritz – well, she had never been so shocked in her life.

  ‘I must apologize, most sincerely,’ he answered calmly at once. ‘Madame Volinska assured me that the role was one she had danced many times at the Maryinsky and of course I had no reason to disbelieve her. I take your point about her style, but of course she is one of the most loyal members of the Ballets Russes, and I wanted to reward her. I’m sure you appreciate how difficult it was for me to find good dancers in the early days.’

  ‘With Petersburg echoing to stories like this, you cannot be surprised. People told me that you were like Lord Byron – mad, bad and dangerous to know. I told them I didn’t believe it, that you were a sincere, cultured and courageous man who believed in your mission to bring the arts of Russia to the West – now, of course, I’m calling myself fifty different kinds of fool for being so gullible. I have told my maid to be ready to pack up this afternoon if necessary …’

  She saw that she had succeeded in convincing him it would be less trouble to placate her than not. He did not make the mistake of trying to belittle any of her concerns. Instead, he took both her hands in his and said, ‘Mea culpa, Madame, Mea maxima culpa. I should have been here to make sure that things were properly arranged. You have beaten me up and wiped the floor with me, and I thoroughly deserved it. Give me a day, two days, and let me put all this right immediately.’

  ‘Very well, Monsieur Diaghilev, two days.’

  ‘Satisfy my concern on another point, if you are not too furious with me – this marvellous new variation we have inserted in Salome, are you happy with it?’

  ‘Why yes, we are both very excited about it. Was I not in the middle of it when you came into the rehearsal room just now? Then you’ve seen it for yourself – it will cause a riot, I suspect. Everything Leo does is extraordinary as I’m sure you know, but this goes beyond everything he has created before.’

  ‘It’s not too difficult?’

  She realized that he was trying to unsettle her by simultaneously smothering her with flattery and sowing seeds of doubt. ‘Monsieur Diaghilev, those words are not in my vocabulary. If the ballet requires it, I do it, however difficult. Yes, it is testing, there are a lot of attitudes on one point which have to be held a long time, but I believe we will alternate with the opéra in Paris so I expect there will be time for my feet to get used to it.’

  ‘Excellent. You will come to me, of course, if you are concerned about anything, however small? I want you to take Paris by storm, you know that?’

  ‘That is my own intention also.’

  ‘And Paris has expectations. Our first season was a miracle. People had never seen dance like it, or dancers like ours, or a mise en scène which combined magnificent music and decor by the very greatest artists. Everywhere we went we spread a sacred fire. Everything dazzling, intoxicating, enchanting, seductive and brilliant was on the stage. The record of that season is written in letters of gold and so far we have repeated the success every year. But people are hungry, they always want something new …’ She realized that he was talking half to himself, to reassure himself about the reception ahead.

  ‘Salome never failed to get an ovation in Petersburg,’ she reminded him in a level, confident voice. ‘People believe that Volinsky is a greater choreographer than Fokine. I think you have every reason to anticipate another triumph, Monsieur.’

  They parted amicably, each with the satisfaction of knowing that they were worthy adversaries, and true to his word Diaghilev came to her villa on the evening of the second day, with Grigoriev in attendance. She entertained them on the terrace while the setting sun threw a nimbus of orange over the black edge of the hill.

  He showed her the new posters for Salome, Scheherazade and Joseph with her name as large – indeed, given the exotic pseudo-Arabic style of lettering perhaps even larger – than that of Karsavina. ‘And Madame Volinska understands the position, I think. Salome is yours alone. So, we have had a proper Russian falling out, sobs and storms and shouting the place down – can we be reconciled now?’

  He opened his arms wide and she kissed him on both cheeks, aware that the peculiar electric charm of the man, about which she had heard so much, was now directed at her. The combination of his coarse body, massive as might befit an industrialist or a banker, his eloquent expressions and the insinuating eyes of an odalisque was quite mesmeric.

  ‘Inna’s position is based on jealousy,’ she told him, suddenly anxious to be frank. ‘Leonid Sergeyevich courted me before he married her, and she feels unable to trust me now.’

  ‘Ah yes, well that would explain a great deal. What a pity you did not marry him, then you would both have belonged to me. Leonid Sergeyevich is a genius, no question about that. I love to see a man like that, on the eve of a stupendous success, when there is still something almost maidenly about him. He has no awareness of his gifts. But tell me, Mademoiselle …’

  ‘Lydia, please. We can’t be formal after everything we’ve been through together.’

  ‘Lydia, you’re too kind. I am most anxious for your opinion – the other Leo, Leo the younger, little Massine from Moscow. What do you think of him?’

  ‘Such a good-looking boy – and for someone so young he is remarkable,’ she told him. ‘He is intelligent, he learns quickly, his technique is sound and he’s very funny, the comedy parts suit him. Some of his ideas are a little strange …’

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘He likes everything at a slower tempo – the pianist is always complaining. But they are different in Moscow; I think he finds the new repertoire something of a challenge.’

  ‘Unlike you, to whom it seems to be second nature.’ She nodded over the rim of her champagne glass, wondering if he was sincere. It was difficult to know. She felt that he was at least asking her opinion from genuine concern to develop his new protege as fully as possible. ‘He is rather provincial, but we’ll soon put an end to that. When we play Milan shall I send him to study with Cecchetti?’

  ‘Perhaps – but I think the old Italian style is overrated. It’s no help when you have to learn Volinsky’s choreography. Massine could take some pas de deux classes though.’

  ‘Very delicately put – eh, Serioza?’ The company manager looked uncomfortable. ‘You mean he’s been hauling you around like a carcase and you’re positively black and
blue – am I right?’

  ‘No, no, not as bad as that – he’s only a boy, he needs to fill out, build himself up a bit …’

  ‘More pas de deux work and into the gymnasium tomorrow! Thank you, my dear. You’ll have a new partner by the time we get to Paris. Ah, how charming it is here! What an exquisitely arranged house this is. Has His Highness brought any of his famous collection from Petersburg?’

  ‘No, but he bought some Roman glass and a few sculptures for the house last year. Would you care to see them?’

  It was a pretext to explore the whole villa. Diaghilev admired everything he saw so fulsomely that she was inspired; the prospect of receiving similar praise from many people suddenly seemed irresistible.

  ‘Nikolai and I had always planned to throw a big party when the villa was finished, but he’s stuck in Paris and I would so love to give a reception here just before the season begins – everyone has been so marvellously kind to us, we’ve been feted everywhere.’

  ‘What a generous thought,’ he responded at once, obviously considering the value of her Orlov connections on the Côte, ‘and I am sure that, since you are surely as magnificent a hostess as you are an artist, it will be the social event of the season. When His Highness hears of it he will only wish he had not been so devoted to counting guns in Paris.’

  ‘No doubt – and will your secretary help with the invitation list? I know all our Russian friends, of course, but I’m not sure who we should ask among the friends of the Ballets Russes.’ How much did Sergei Pavlovich really know? Tata would have said ‘everything’, and since he undoubtedly extracted every shred of gossip from that sweet, open soul, Lydia considered that he certainly knew all the secrets she had entrusted to her friend.