by Jane Arbor
‘How—“different”?’
‘Different from the run-of-the-mill cocktail crush or the dinner-and-nightclub thing, I gather. Open-air, because she wants us to give it in the grounds of the Casa, and different by way of keeping it in period with the place.’
Caustically Ruth wondered who was giving this party—Erle or Stella. Erle went on, ‘She took the idea from some Watteau paintings in one of the galleries—of the fetes champetres the French aristocracy used to lay on. All pastoral simplicity, the guests playing at being shepherds and shepherdesses and dressing the part. Sounds crazy, I agree, but the lady must have her way.’
Ruth said drily, ‘It’s novel, at least. But can you give it—the party—until the Fontes have left the Casa?’
‘Oh, we can’t wait for that. Parioli is leaving for rehearsals in less than a fortnight.’
‘Will you be going with her?’
‘Not with—I shall probably go over later. It depends. No, as Fonte is still technically in tenancy, I’ll have to get his permission to stage the thing next week. Would any day suit you?’
‘As far as I know. The idea is that we all go in costume?’
‘That’s it. Open-necked shirts, pantaloons, and humble forelocks for us men, and something fetching in the shepherdess-cum-milkmaid tradition for you. You can leave all the arrangements to me. We’ll choose Thursday week, if that suits you.’
Not much relishing the role of hostess to Stella as guest of honour, Ruth was nevertheless challenged to play it in authentic detail. To this end she studied the catalogues of such of the Rome galleries as contained paintings by Watteau, and visited them in turn.
In one of them she found what she wanted, a pastoral scene of the seventeenth century, where country boys and girls, whether the genuine article or play-acting aristocrats, were disporting themselves all over the canvas.
Some seemed to be playing a version of Kiss-in-the- ring; a group of seated girls were making daisy-chains; a few sheep grazed in the foreground and some couples were coyly flirting in the shade of some middle-distance trees. A pillared building mistily in the background was so characteristically Palladian that it might have been twin to the Casa Rienzi. Grudgingly Ruth acknowledged that Stella had been original in her choice both of setting and costume for her farewell party.
Ruth chose one of the dresses and memorised it faithfully—full panniers over a ballet-length petticoat, a cross-laced bodice with puff sleeves and a sunbonnet slung by its strings like a cape on the wearer’s back. In a shop she found some coarse striped material for the ballooning panniers and some flower-sprigged muslin for the under-petticoat and bodice. A children’s department produced a sunbonnet which was too small for her, but which she needn’t wear on her head. By trial and error and several hours of rough stitching she contrived a tolerable and quite becoming copy of the original.
When Erle called for her on the evening of the party he was informal in shapeless white trousers, a full-sleeved open shirt, and a gaudily patterned cummerbund, and they agreed they were as typical of a Watteau peasantry as the twentieth century could achieve.
With the passing of August the fierce heat had mellowed to a golden, windless warmth. As they drove out of the city, east towards Tivoli, the westering sun was on their backs, casting long shadows on the road ahead and dappling the shade of wayside trees. When the red ball finally dipped, it would be dark in less than an hour.
‘Are Cesare and Agnese coming?’ Ruth asked.
‘No. Fonte has had to go down to his place in Calabria for some days.’ Erle glanced at her. ‘I thought you’d know?’
She shook her head. ‘I haven’t seen him.’
‘And Agnese prefers to hold aloof from anything in the nature of whoopee. She wasn’t too willing for her brother to lend us the park, until I promised that the caterers should set up their marquees and barbecues and things as far from the house as possible. It seems she has an obsession about intruders and she sends Cesare on a police tour of the house and the stables every night after dark. The stables are empty, by the way. I had all the horses shipped to a livery stable in Tivoli for twenty-four hours, in case they took fright at the fireworks display that’s being laid on.’
‘It’s meant a lot of work for you,’ said Ruth.
‘Oh, I’ve only played major-domo. I’ve handed everything over to Rolli’s, the caterers, and they’ve done the lot.’ As Erle turned in at the gates of the Casa, he added, ‘I must have them warn people that the belvedere is out of bounds to us, as well as the house. Seems a pity, as it’s part of the Palladian scene, but I made that concession to Agnese too.’
He parked the car and directed her to the marquee which was the ladies’ cloakroom, arranging to meet her again in the central marquee where they would welcome their guests.
They had arranged to arrive early, and for a little while Ruth had the cloakroom to herself. As she looked at the ranks of well-lighted mirrors and the sample bowls of powders and the perfumes and the tissues on each dressing-table, she wondered where, at this party, the seventeenth century was supposed to take over from the twentieth. Certainly not here. Nor, from what she had seen of the main marquee, with its specially laid dance-floor, the big supper-tent, and the palpably modern bar, anywhere much else.
As she went to meet Erle she was thinking that if it really had been her party, she would have tried to keep it in period. She would have held it in the daytime, on the greensward of the park. No carefully boarded walks between the marquees. No marquees, in fact. No massed banks of hothouse flowers. No electrically fired barbecues. No bar. If they danced, they would dance on the grass, dew-wet feet or not. They would cook over wood or charcoal, and they would drink the wine of the country from—
She was still deep in the fantasy of this when suddenly Erle was there, flicking a finger and thumb before her face, as before a sleepwalker’s.
She laughed self-consciously. ‘Sorry. I was miles away,’ she said.
‘Where?’
‘In another century.’
He cocked an eyebrow. ‘With Watteau and his nymphets? Deploring the compromise we’ve had to make?’
‘Thinking it’s a pity, perhaps. As a fete champetre it isn’t all that rustic, is it?’
‘Not so’s you’d notice. Especially considering those characters down yonder.’
She looked to where his nod indicated. At the far end of the marquee was a group of men with cameras slug on shoulders and wrists—unmistakably press photographers.
‘All this and the Press too. Did you have to invite them?’ she asked.
‘Of course. Stella’s privilege. When a prima donna appears at a farewell party, it ranks alongside a farewell performance and has to be honoured as such.’
Ruth glanced from her own costume to his. ‘I wonder why we bothered,’ she commented a little sourly.
He laughed. ‘So do I. But when I pointed out that the arrangements she was demanding weren’t exactly in period, Stella said, “Caro mio, my idea of fancy dress was only a gimmick for a bit of extra publicity. We don’t have to go slumming as well! ” Hence the decor and the amenities that friend Watteau wouldn’t recognise, you see.’
‘And Publicity is All, of course,’ Ruth murmured.
‘For the star names, yes. Without it and people like me, they wouldn’t become star names or stay that way for long. You shouldn’t knock publicity just because of the raw deal it handed out to you and me through no fault of our own.’ Erle took her hand and held it down by his side. ‘Time we were appearing as a welcoming host and hostess. Our guests are beginning to arrive,’ he said.
They came, at first in a trickle, then a stream, then in a flooding crowd. Though some of their ideas of period dress were odd, they had all entered into the spirit of the invitation. They were all carelessly ragamuffin according to some past age or other. And it had been a novel notion to get the party going, even Ruth allowed. Presently the glasses were clinking to a babel of voices, laughing, criticising costumes
, gossiping, flirting.
Like Ruth, Stella had done her period homework well. She was in a sunflower yellow smock, the skirt slashed into ragged petals, the bodice a mere crossover of black shawl. A flat-crowned straw hat, encircled with marguerites, was slung from her wrist by its ribbons, and her magnificent hair with its swathe of silver was in studied disarray. She came with Luigi Bernanos, whose name Ruth had first heard in Erle’s office and who had partnered Stella at Erle’s restaurant party for Cicely. As usual Stella was able to make an importance of her
arrival, the crowds parting for her as she came down the floor to Erle and Ruth. Her greeting for them was identical—a kiss on each of their cheeks for them both, with, for Erle, a murmured, ‘You make a very virile peasant, my friend!’ and for Ruth, ‘So charming of you to humour my little whim. We must all start equal, I thought’—which to Ruth sounded about as subtle a piece of condescension as she had ever heard.
The party got under way. Groups formed and reformed and moved on. People danced, adjourned to the bar and back again. Ruth now knew enough people in Erle’s circle to be welcomed by them, though the friendlier they were, her deceit of them weighed the more heavily. But she supposed Erle was right. She must carry it through now to the point—how distant might it be?—where her break with him could appear to be a considered decision on her part. If she could handle it well and then slip away, these good people needn’t ever know they had been duped. It would soon be forgotten; just one of those things that happened.
The reporters and photographers were busy, cornering ‘lions’ and probing for snippets of copy. One of them caught Ruth when she was alone, wanting to know the probable date of her wedding to Erle, and their plans after it. She dealt as vaguely as she could with his persistence. All their plans were fluid, depending on Erle’s commitments for the autumn, she told him.
‘And the venue for the honeymoon?’ he asked, unabashed.
‘Now would you really expect me to know that at this stage?’ she parried, and escaped.
Still alone, she wandered outside the circle of light and frenzied activity. In the distance across the park there was a single dim gleam of light to be seen. Leaving the party behind and going nearer to identify it, she saw it was from one lighted window in the Casa; all the rest of the building was in darkness. At the thought of Agnese alone there, Ruth experienced a fading of her rancour. She hadn’t ever wanted to make an enemy of Agnese. That had been Agnese’s overt choice, and since she was unlikely to make any conciliatory move, Ruth was tempted to make one herself. When Agnese and Cesare went away it would be too late.
Erle had said that the Casa was out of bounds to the party. But to one woman alone, on a peace mission? Ruth ignored the ban and went purposefully ahead.
When she reached the house she realised in sudden panic that she hadn’t rehearsed what she meant to say to Agnese; how she would deal with the rebuff she might very well invite. She stood irresolute under the colonnade of pillars, then decided she must play it by ear, and lifted the great knocker on the door.
There was no response from within the house. She knocked again, and was about to do so a third time when she checked. Silly of her to suppose that Agnese, obstructive to the invasion of the grounds and alone in the house, would answer the door at that time of night! Giving up, Ruth sent a last glance to the one lighted window, then turned to go back by the way she had come.
It led past the belvedere, dark behind its shielding tamarisk hedge. When Ruth had passed it before, all had been as silent there as at the house. But now on the far side of the hedge there was a rustle of movement which halted her, alert, listening and a little frightened.
A night animal running for cover from all the unwanted light and noise in the park? No. People. Moving on, she reached the free end of the hedge and looked round it. Two figures, a man’s and a woman’s, had approached the little retreat, the man already in the deep shadow of one of its porticos, but with his hand outstretched behind him, guiding the woman to join him. Of her, Ruth’s eyes, accustomed now to the darkness, had view enough before she too slipped into the shadows.
Stella! Her remarkable hair, the yellow of her peasant dress unmistakable. Stella, keeping rendezvous with someone. Who was he? But even without the glimpse of light shirt-cuff above that backward stretching hand, Ruth guessed. After Erle had made public the limits of the party area, only he was likely to have defied his own ban, in order to be alone with Stella, knowing that they would not be disturbed. The belvedere, as an illicit meeting-place for lovers, had come into its own.
Knowing she had no right to be hurt; that Erle had broken no given promise to her by philandering with Stella, Ruth turned away. By absurd comparison the crowds and the clamour of the party appeared to her as a refuge, and she was anxious to get back to it. There was a short cut through the stable yard and she took it—only to freeze in her tracks again as she realised she was not alone there either.
Behind the weak nimbus of a hand-torch a tall figure in black was moving from empty loosebox to loosebox, unbolting their half-doors, looking in, closing them again. Agnese! So that was why she hadn’t answered the door of the Casa. She must have been on her way down here—trusting no one, intent on doing Cesare’s nightly security patrol herself. As Ruth stood in the shadows, not caring much for the thought of Agnese’s reception of her if she revealed herself now, she saw the torch fade out; heard the ‘click, click’ of Agnese’s finger on the button and her exasperated ‘Ah—’ as she thrust the dead torch into a pocket of her jacket and reached for one of the oil storm-lanterns which Cesare kept for emergency lighting, hanging on a wall.
She set it on the floor of the shed adjoining the looseboxes, took matches from her pocket, crouched to open the talc door guarding the lantern’s wick, struck a match—and with an awkward movement of arm or body knocked the lantern over. Kneeling low now, with her free hand she reached to retrieve it. Between the fingers of the other hand the lighted match was still alive, burning down its stick to the point where, nearly spent, she flung it from her with another sharp ‘Ah’ of annoyance.
But on the floor the tiny dying flame took new life, flared, licked greedily and surely along some path which might have been laid to feed it. Spilt oil from the lantern when it keeled over! Ruth had time to think before the flame spread, on and wider and back to Agnese, now on hands and knees, beating wildly to quell it. It caught at her skirts—she must be kneeling in oil—and as Ruth reached her, throwing her flat beneath the weight of her own body, explosion cracked ... and cracked again. Within a foot of their prone bodies, from a shapeless bundle leaning against a wall, new flames spurted and grew. The bundle itself detonated and suddenly fell apart, blazing. And then somebody else was there, straddle-legged for balance, a bucket in either hand.
Water for the bundle, dry sand for the path of oil and for their two prostrate figures. Another bucket each of the same and Erle—Erle?—was helping them to their feet.
An arm supporting each of them, he looked down at Ruth first.
‘Ruth—my love, my love—what gives?’ he murmured, stabbing her through with a heady delight which as quickly turned to pain.
Putting on an act, even here and now! He must have made a habit of this public claiming of her, for how could he possibly think Agnese, in these circumstances, could care how amorous or close their relationship was?
What was more, there was no longer any wonder in her mind as to how he came to be there. From the distance of the belvedere no one could have mistaken the menace of that first explosion, whatever its cause. And he had been at the belvedere. With Stella. Hadn’t he?
CHAPTER NINE
Erle’s question went unanswered, for at that moment Agnese sagged and would have fallen but for his support. He released Ruth in order to hold her upright. ‘Had the fire reached either of you?’ he asked.
Ruth said, ‘Not me. It was just catching at Agnese’s skirt, and all I could think of to do was to throw myself on top of her to try to q
uench it.’ She looked across at Agnese. ‘I’m sorry. I must have hurt you,’ she said.
Agnese tried to draw herself up and free of Erle’s hold. ‘No, no, it was foolish of me and careless,’ she said grudgingly. ‘I tried to light the lantern and knocked it over. I did not know anyone was near.’
‘Lucky for you that Ruth was, though she shouldn’t have been,’ said Erle. ‘And may I ask why you were out here yourself, signora?’
‘I wanted to make sure that all was safe.’
‘After I had promised you I would patrol the whole place myself? Anyway, even if you didn’t trust me, why an oil lantern? Why not bring a torch to light you around?’
‘I had one. I have it.’ She touched her pocket. ‘But it failed, and the lantern would have served if—’
‘If you hadn’t knocked it over and spilt oil among this sort of fire hazard.’ Erle kicked at the scattered debris from the canted bundle. ‘Fireworks, no less.’
‘Fireworks?’ Ruth echoed, peering down. ‘Then that was the explosion and the smaller ones which followed! I couldn’t think what—But what were fireworks doing here?’
‘That I don’t know. But I will, before the night’s out,’ Erle promised grimly. He broke off as Agnese began to shake uncontrollably. ‘Shock,’ he said briefly, and as Ruth nodded agreement he told Agnese, ‘I’m going to get you back to the house. Carry you there, in fact, for warmth and brandy and bed.’
Momentarily she managed to stiffen. ‘That’s not necessary nor—seemly, signore. I can walk—’
But, a hand under her knees and an arm round her shoulders, he was already balancing her considerable weight as easily as if she had been a child. ‘My torch,’ he said to Ruth. ‘I threw it down when I dived for the fire-buckets. On that sack over there—will you bring it along?’
They set out, skirting the tamarisk hedge when they came to it without Erle’s throwing the belvedere a glance. At the explosion which had alerted him to danger, he must have sent Stella back to the party for safety, Ruth decided. He knew the place would be empty now. In her hand she weighed the big torch she was carrying for him and wondered that he should have brought it with him. She would have expected them to prefer the anonymity of the darkness.