by Rosie Thomas
‘Not bad.’ Oliver and Tom both nodded their approval.
‘I play with my father sometimes. Kim won’t, she thinks it’s frightfully unfeminine. Anyway, she’s no good.’
‘Helen?’ Oliver turned to her.
‘I’ve no idea what to do.’
‘Look. Like this.’
He guided her to the table and put the shiny cue into her hand. Then he lifted her arms into the position she had seen Pansy adopt so nonchalantly. His body bent over hers, heavy along the length of her back, and his hands closed over her own.
‘Brace your left hand like this. Then look along the cue …’ His face was against her hair. Helen struggled with herself, trying to ignore the effect of his closeness. But it was an impossible effort to breathe evenly, and her fingers felt like melting wax.
‘Relax,’ he murmured, and for a moment the flood of memories threatened to engulf everything else.
Dazed, she drew back her arm and stabbed the cue at the nearest ball. It spun sideways and the cue leapt and then juddered against the green cloth.
Helen dropped it as though it was red hot.
At once Oliver straightened up. Helen had to clench her fists to stop herself reaching after him. She turned her head away and so didn’t see him running his fingers over the baize. The other two leaned forward anxiously.
‘Okay,’ he said casually. ‘No damage. But I think you’d make a better spectator. Here, have a drink.’
He might have been talking to one of the anonymous figures who had waited on them at the table. Unseeingly Helen took the tumbler from him. Humiliation welled up inside her. Silently she turned away and groped to a hard leather seat against the wall. At least it was dark beyond the table.
‘Can you keep score?’ someone was asking. She looked up at the complicated mahogany board with its heavy brass sliding markers.
‘No.’
I wish I was at home, she thought helplessly. I can’t ride, or play billiards, or even make the right sort of conversation. It was a mistake to come.
‘I’ll do it.’ Tom stood over her and flicked the markers. His hand touched her shoulder, very gently, before he turned back to the game.
Helen drank some of the brandy. The spirit burned her throat, but it comforted her too and so she drank some more. In front of her, incomprehensible, the game went on.
She concentrated hard on not thinking, or not admitting Oliver to her mind at all. It was as if the central figure had been cut out of a canvas, leaving a background of unimportant detail and a gaping, tattered hole.
She had no idea how much later it was when the game finished and they dispersed.
At last Helen lay in the wide bed in the unfamiliar room. The deep silence was doubly oppressive because Pansy had not come back to her room next door. Helen twisted her head on the pillow, grateful that she had drunk enough of the brandy to blunt her consciousness a little. She shut out the reality of Montcalm, towering and stretching all round her. Instead she imagined herself going home. She made herself walk up the path to the front door, heard the exact sound of her key in the latch. There was the worn strip of rug protecting the hectically patterned carpet. It was three paces to the sitting room door, the high metal handle, then the door opening on to the three-piece suite, the photographs of her brother and herself in matching frames on the upright piano, and the Radio Times beside the china posy in the little china basket on the coffee table. Piece by familiar piece Helen took herself through the little house until at last she fell into an exhausted sleep. The last day of the year was very bright and clear. There had been a hard frost overnight and the park was white rimed under a pale blue sky.
When Helen found her way down to breakfast she was aware at once of an atmosphere of excitement. Even Maitland’s impassive face bore a tinge of animation. He was presiding at the sideboard over an array of silver chafing dishes, filled with the essentials of an English hunting breakfast. At the table, Lord Montcalm and his guests, as well as Oliver, were fuelling themselves for the day. Helen saw that there was kedgeree and kidneys beside the eggs and bacon but she shook her head at Maitland’s enquiry. The brandy of the night before had given her a slight, dry headache.
Tom was sitting a little apart, reading a newspaper. Helen slid into the chair next to his and he nodded briefly, then went on reading.
There was no sign of Lady Montcalm. Pansy appeared when everyone else had almost finished. She had protested that she had never hunted and only rode occasionally but she looked perfectly the part now in jodhpurs and an immaculate black jacket. Lord Montcalm himself took her plate and chose her breakfast for her.
‘Looking forward to the day, eh?’ he said. ‘Best kind of weather. I hope Thripp’s got you mounted properly.’
Oliver looked up. ‘She’s taking Madam Butterfly.’
‘Good, good.’
For once there was no sign of tension between father and son. Pansy sat down beside Oliver and they smiled at each other, the unmistakable intimate smile of recent lovers.
Helen stared down into her coffee, hating the corrosiveness of jealousy.
As soon as breakfast was over, everyone seemed to have a great deal to do. Helen aimlessly followed the bustle of people across the great hallway and under the dome. The low winter sun streamed through it, filling the space with misty light and gilding the voluptuous draperies and twining limbs of the painting. The main doors stood open and as she came level with them, Helen looked out at a sight that might almost have been another painting.
Against the winter-sharp landscape were horses, brown and white and chestnut, groomed until they shone. They wheeled and stamped with impatience, and when they snorted their breath plumed in front of them in the icy air. The riders were straight-backed women with their hair caught up in nets under bowler hats, and men in flaring red coats against white breeches. Their black peaked caps were pulled down over florid English faces.
Between the legs of the horses were milling hounds, brown and white and black, tongues lolling, keen with anxiety to be off.
For a moment Helen stood and took it all in, then she let herself be drawn closer, out into the thin sunlight. The air was full of crisp greetings, the jingle of stirrups and the creak of leather.
The excitement was almost tangible now.
Between the horses, Maitland passed to and fro with a heavy tray, handing up silver stirrup cups.
Around the wing of the house that hid the stable block came Jasper Thripp. He was leading two huge hunters. Behind him came a second groom with another pair, and behind them came a lad with a sleek little brown mare. As they came up to the steps, the Montcalm party emerged.
Helen was watching quietly on one side and suddenly she saw the resemblance between Oliver and his father. They stood together looking out over their land and she became aware of the identical shapes of their skulls under the silver and blond hair, and the same set of their heads on their shoulders. Then they pulled on the black top hats and the fleeting likeness was gone.
Jasper Thripp cupped his hands together and Lord Montcalm heaved himself from them into the saddle. Oliver swung unaided into the saddle of his huge chestnut. Jasper turned to beam toothlessly at Pansy. She accepted the same cupped-hand support as she mounted her mare.
‘Easy on her, miss,’ the old groom said. Pansy gathered the reins in her hands, then leaned forward to stroke the horse’s glossy neck and whisper encouragement. The mare pricked her ears forward, happy, expectant.
Lord Montcalm broke away from the mass of riders.
‘Morning, Master.’
The Master of the Montcalm Foxhounds was an impossibly upright figure with a brick-red face and a silvery moustache.
‘Morning, my lord.’
The stirrup cups had been replaced on Maitland’s tray. The babble of talk died away and even the restless hounds were still for a moment.
Then Lord Montcalm nodded to the Master and the Master raised his hand to the huntsman. The huntsman lifted the silver horn
that hung at his saddle and blew the insistent call. The notes shivered in the air and the hair prickled at the back of Helen’s neck. Then the horn fell again, the huntsman wheeled away and the hounds streamed after him in couples. The Master and Lord Montcalm followed side by side. The hunt began to move off with the jingle of harness and the impatient clopping of hooves.
Helen caught sight of Oliver. The vivid pink of his coat made his face look pale, more like the marble knight again. His face was intent under the black peak and his eyes were very blue. As he passed her, he flashed her a single, brilliant smile.
Then he was swallowed up again into the mass of riders and the colours, scarlet and white and rich brown, fanned out in front of her into the grey-green landscape.
Tom was standing beside her, and she turned to him with the breath catching in her throat.
‘It’s beautiful, isn’t it?’
His face was dark and almost foreign-looking after so many pink English complexions. When he answered, he was at his most sardonic.
‘Beautiful? Let’s hope the fox sees it like that.’
Helen was stung, but she answered mildly. ‘I don’t care for that aspect of it either. But can’t you appreciate it just as a spectacle?’
Tom stared after the riders. The rising clip-clop of hooves came sharply back to them on the clear air. There was no sign of Pansy on her little mare.
‘Not really.’ Then he shrugged dismissively and with an attempt at good humour said, ‘You can keep the country. Too much grass. Give me billboards, cab drivers, newsvendors. Neon. I’m a city person.’
Helen saw that he too felt excluded from Pansy and Oliver’s closeness, and she understood that he was as out of place here at Montcalm as she was herself. But because he was confident he could dismiss it, the whole impressive structure, as not of interest to him.
‘I’m going to do some reading,’ he called back over his shoulder as he went up the steps.
All day, Montcalm was a hive of activity. Men in green overalls were putting up lights, and armies of caterers were unloading from Harrods vans. A large Christmas tree was put up and decorated in the entrance hall under the dome.
Helen wandered through one pair of double doors from the hall and was rewarded with a vista of state rooms along the main façade of the house. Here, there was a dining room, hung with dark tapestries, where a man in a green apron was putting the polished silver candelabra out on the long table. Beyond that were formal rooms with brocade sofas, bow-fronted cabinets and rows of heavy pictures. At the end was the long salon that was to be the ballroom. Two men were at work on the floor with electric polishers, and there were musical instruments in cases in one of the corners. A girl in a smock was arranging spikes of holly, evergreens and glittering silver balls on tall stands.
Evidently the Montcalm Ball was to be a grand occasion.
Later Helen put on her coat and wellingtons and walked down the driveway to the lodge and the turnstile at the gates. Then she wandered for a long time along the high-hedged muddy lanes. The clear air was invigorating and restored some of her calm equilibrium. She even found it in herself to laugh a little at the way Montcalm obliterated her. But she wouldn’t think about Oliver. The black hole still brooded in the middle of the canvas.
At the farthest point of her walk she was overtaken by a stream of mud-splashed cars, and then a string of children on ponies. When she rounded the next corner she saw cars and a knot of people at a gateway, and stopped with them to watch.
Across the skyline came a quick river of colour. The hounds were running and behind them was a flying column of horsemen, poised for a moment against the light before they plunged over the brow of the hill and down a long slope towards the watchers. A sharp gust of wind carried the confused thud of hooves on hard ground and suddenly a rising cadence from the silver horn. Helen shivered a little. Then the sound was wafted away again, the hounds veered and streamed out of sight in a fold of the hillside. In a moment the landscape was empty again.
Helen turned away and began to walk back to Montcalm.
She was lying in the bath when Pansy tapped on the door. Her face was glowing and her eyes shone.
‘Good day?’
Pansy perched on the edge of the bath. ‘Wonderful. It was wildly exciting. We had one marvellous gallop, right across about fifteen fields. The hedges were huge, but Madam Butterfly sailed over them …’
‘Pansy. You sound exactly like dinner last night.’
‘But now I know why they all go on about it. Oliver was hugely reckless. He flung himself over everything as if he was daring anyone else to follow him. Hardly anyone did.’ There was a note of amused surprise rather than affection in her voice. ‘Oh dear. D’you think I’ll turn into a hunting bore? I’d better go and put on something frilly and Kim-like at once, to counteract myself. What are you going to wear?’
Helen’s face fell. She owned only one long dress. She had bought it a year before, to wear to a dance with her first lover, and at the time she had been perfectly satisfied with it. But this evening when she had shaken out the limp blue crepe folds she had seen at once that it wouldn’t do. The fabric hung badly and had an unattractive sheen, and there was a pulled thread in the bodice. But she knew that she would have to wear it, and the prospect depressed her unreasonably.
Pansy, watching, picked up Helen’s sponge and squeezed it absent-mindedly. ‘Helen, it would be very boring of you to be prickly about this. But I brought two dresses with me, and I’m sure that subconsciously I put one in because I’ve always thought it would look better on you.’ She dropped the sponge back into the bathwater. ‘Look, I’ll go and get it.’
When she came back she was carrying a mass of Zandra Rhodes silk chiffon. The dress was a dazzle of squiggles, pleats and drifting tatters, witty and clever in sharp greens and lemons like a child’s paintbox. Helen knew that she wasn’t going to be able to say no.
‘Yes?’ said Pansy.
‘Yes.’
‘Good girl. I’ll be back later to check you out. Don’t go down without me.’
Pansy was almost out of the room before she stopped, and without turning round said something else, in such a low voice that Helen had to strain to hear her. ‘Do you mind very much about me and Oliver?’
In the silence that followed a tap dripped insistently.
‘No,’ Helen said. ‘I mind about being jealous. I mind about missing him so much. And wishing pointlessly that he was mine. But I can see that it was never very likely that he would be mine, for more than a little while. So it wouldn’t do any good to mind specifically about Oliver and you. I’ve tried not to, except right at the very beginning.’
Pansy was still looking away.
‘You know, it isn’t very important. It’s nice, and I like him, but it doesn’t mean much. But I’ve never had women friends before, not women like you, and Chloe. Proper people, not appendages to men. Do you see? I admire you both, especially you, and I don’t want to cut myself off from you just because of Oliver.’
Helen had never heard Pansy say anything in such a serious voice.
‘You admire me?’ she repeated, nonplussed.
‘Yes. Do you remember that day when you said goodbye to Oliver and me, outside Follies? You were so clear-cut, and definite. I thought you were being brave, too.’
Helen smiled a little. ‘It didn’t feel at all like that.’
‘But that was how it seemed, and that’s what matters. Helen, I’d like us to go on being friends. What’s happened to us both with Oliver won’t get in the way of that, will it?’
Helen could barely understand. Oliver had meant so much to her, and then Pansy had come along and scooped him away. Yet here she was dismissing him as casually as if he was a temporarily interesting acquaintance who would have lost his appeal by next week. Dismissing him in favour of Helen herself. She appreciated the irony of that, but a faint sick feeling of apprehension gripped her at the same time.
She was certain that Oliver
didn’t feel so casually about Pansy.
Mixed with the apprehensiveness was a twingle of guilt. She liked Pansy. Helen looked up at the lovely face, uncharacteristically anxious now, and smiled as convincingly as she could.
‘No. He won’t get in the way,’ she said.
She had never thought of Pansy as a friend but, in spite of the odd relationship they found themselves in, perhaps she could try.
Helen stepped into the Zandra Rhodes dress. The chiffon slid erotically over her bare skin and as she turned to Pansy the dipping points of fabric drifted behind her.
Pansy whistled. ‘Tu es ravissante.’
Helen had let Pansy make up her face and do her hair. Her black curls were caught up on one side of her head and fell on the other in a shiny mass. Pansy had shadowed the huge grey eyes to make them look even bigger, and added colour to Helen’s cheeks and mouth.
It was a deft transformation.
Helen was a glowing, gipsyish figure without a trace of the sadness that had marked her for so long.
‘How do you feel?’
Helen spun round again to make the chiffon float.
‘Extrovert.’
‘Quick.’ Pansy smoothed the blue moiré silk ruffles of her own dress and caught up the billowing skirt. ‘Let’s get you downstairs before the mood evaporates.’
Lord and Lady Montcalm were giving a big dinner party before the Ball. Most of the guests were assembled in front of the fire in Lady Montcalm’s drawing room. When she came in with Pansy, Helen faltered. There were too many unknown faces, men in white ties and black tailcoats and women with heavily powdered faces and old-fashioned jewellery.
Then she felt Pansy drawing her forward, and saw that not all the eyes were fixed on Pansy. Some were on Helen, and there was admiration in them too. Helen lifted her chin and sailed forward. The first person to greet her was Oliver, who bent over her and murmured, ‘What a surprising girl you are.’