by Rosie Thomas
In the blur again, she was packed into a car between Darcy and Chloe who were joking across her. They were pulling up outside Christ Church under the height of Tom Tower. As soon as they climbed out they were swallowed up in the stream of people passing through the crowded lodge. Darcy took her hand and she followed him miserably through into Tom Quad.
Helen drew in her breath. Wolsey’s College was transformed. The statue of Mercury and the fountain basin basked under a tented dome of laser light, ribbons of blue and green silver that fell away to the four corners of the great space. Facing them was a pavilion lined in the same green and blue and silver, and on the stage beneath it a medium-famous new wave band was already halfway through its set. The walls enclosed and amplified the insistent music, and there were couples dancing on the grass. White laser light playing on the fountain made it look as if it was frozen in silver.
The sky beyond the ribbon canopy of light was dark velvet blue.
Around her everyone in Darcy’s party was laughing and clapping. Helen had only the sour taste of apprehension in her mouth. The night was magical and beautiful, and panic was rising inside her. In a minute Tom would appear. Darcy was beside her, his arm heavy around her shoulders. He would see them both, and he would guess. It would be the worst, the cruellest way for him to know.
‘Like it?’ Oliver had come up behind her. ‘My light show?’ He was closer, steering her away from Darcy.
‘Very clever,’ she answered mechanically.
‘The committee thought it was right over the top. But the repugnant little man who owns the lights owes me a huge favour, so I thought I’d just make use of them. Darcy, I’m taking Helen to dance. D’you mind?’
‘Not a bit.’ Darcy was delighted with the success of his dinner. He was leading Chloe towards the dancing now. Dave Walker was laughing.
‘For an anachronism, he’s not a bad bloke at all,’ she heard him say. Then they were out of earshot. Oliver had rescued her, and the moment of panic was past. She followed him under the lights and past the fountain bowl. The huge carp, she thought irrelevantly, must be hiding under the lily pads from this explosion of noise and light.
They passed under an arch and climbed the wide curve of stone steps to the Hall. Helen listened to the hem of her dress swishing on the hollowed treads. It was quiet and dim under the recesses of the great arched roof. The long polished tables were being laid for the Ball supper, and a bar on the dais at the end was stocked with bottles.
A waiter in a white jacket called over his shoulder, ‘I’m sorry, sir, the Hall isn’t open yet.’ Then, seeing Oliver, ‘Oh, good evening, my lord.’
‘It’s okay, Joe,’ Oliver said. ‘We’re just looking for a drink and a quiet corner.’ He strolled away down the length of the Hall. Helen saw his assurance and the perfect fit of his green velvet coat across his shoulders. An unformed thought about the unfairness of hereditary privilege flicked through her head. Yet how different Darcy was from his brother.
‘Here.’ Oliver brought back a bottle and some glasses. ‘Let’s try to keep our spirits up. Fun at all costs.’ He was drinking determinedly hard, with none of the light-heartedness of his evening with Tom.
A flight of wooden stairs led up to the minstrels’ gallery at one end of the Hall. Helen guessed from the music cases and stands that there would be a string quartet up there playing through supper.
A beautiful night, she thought painfully, in exquisite surroundings filled with music and light and the faces of friends, and yet a cold, leaden weight pulling at her. She sat down heavily on the lowest wooden step with Oliver lounging beside her.
‘Here’s to the future.’ He tipped his glass and she was shocked by the bitterness in his face.
‘What will you do?’
‘Without the magic talisman of an Oxford degree, you mean?’
‘No, I didn’t mean that particularly.’
Oliver’s face set in disdainful lines. ‘Oh, it’s all been fixed up for me. It would be, of course. I’m to go into a bank.’
Helen coughed over her glass and Oliver smiled at her humourlessly. ‘D’you think I care what it is I’m supposed to be doing? It’s all very suitable. A small but highly influential City merchant bank, the kind of place that loves a lord amongst its minions. My father’s on the board, as it happens. They’ll find something harmless to occupy me. I shall invest in some natty chalk-striped gent’s suiting, and be swallowed up for ever.’
Helen sat up, horrified by the flatness of his voice. The idea of Oliver in a bank was ridiculous, shocking. Impulsively she put her arms around his shoulders, forcing him to look at her.
‘Oliver, for God’s sake. Can’t you think of anything else that you want out of your life?’
The memory of the intoxicating glimpse of power and freedom that Tom had given her came back, and sympathy for Oliver shook her as she realised that some flaw within him denied him the same happiness.
His brilliant blue eyes looked dull and the whites were unhealthily bloodshot, but there was a spark of real humour in them as they held hers.
‘Nothing at all,’ he murmured. ‘Helen, my love. You’re such a fighter yourself. Lack of fibre in other people really disturbs you, doesn’t it? You can’t fathom why I don’t pick myself up and become Prime Minister. For you, I could almost summon up the enthusiasm. You know, I like you very much.’ He picked up her hand and lightly kissed the knuckles. ‘You’re worth ten of tiresome little Pansy, if only I’d been awake enough to see it. In every respect, including the obvious one. I wish you were mine. But Hart will make you happy. Good luck to you.’ He drank again, defiantly.
‘And Darcy?’ Helen asked softly.
‘Don’t worry about Darcy. It will be a blow, but he’ll survive because he’s interested in survival. His anxious desire for it makes him timid. Whereas I don’t give a toss. That’s always been the difference between us. Don’t you see that?’
Yes, she saw it clearly enough. Helen felt the cold fingers of fear touching her. In the dim light of the arched Hall, Oliver was gauntly beautiful, but grimness clung around him like a pall.
‘Look at this place,’ he said, staring out at the carved panelling, the ranks of portraits and the arched windows where the intricate glass was blackened now by the night sky beyond. The waiters were lighting the candles down the lengths of the tables, and as the flames steadied the reflections from the polished tables made twin points of light.
‘It’s beautiful,’ Helen said. She was already aware of how much she would miss the privilege of living and working in buildings like these.
Oliver turned his head away. ‘You think so? I shall be glad to get away from it. It’s far too uncomfortably reminiscent of home.’
Helen seized gratefully on the laughter, however cynical it sounded in her ears. Oliver helped her to her feet and then spun her around in his arms so that the candlelight blurred in front of her eyes. In a flash, wild gaiety seemed to have replaced the grimness.
‘Dance with me,’ he begged. ‘Just one more time.’
‘As many times as you like,’ she promised him.
Tom Quad was a blaze of lights and colour. Couples were spilling off the oval of the dance floor and on to the grass under the ribbons of silver, green and blue. Oliver took her firmly in his arms and drew her into the crowd. For an instant she held herself stiff, and then she relaxed and let the music take hold. Her forehead sank against the velvet pile of Oliver’s shoulder and she felt the smooth satin facings under her fingers. For just a little while, she would go on dancing like this.
Then she would go in search of Darcy.
And somewhere here, under these interwoven ribbons of light, Tom was waiting for her. A sudden smile irradiated her face.
She shivered between the intense extremes of feeling.
As they danced, the eyes of other women flicked enviously over her. A girl in the arms of romantic Lord Oliver Mortimore, a girl in a white dress with a light flush over her cheekbones and a dazed s
mile. A lucky girl, so obviously lost in the magic of an evening.
Helen was blind to it all. In all the kaleidoscopic crowd there were only two faces that she could have had eyes for.
Oliver’s mouth moved against her hair. ‘Dreadful of me. I’m so caught up in my own enthralling whirl that I never asked you about your Schools. A formal First, I hope?’
Helen drew back a little, wanting to meet his eyes.
‘Whatever it is, I owe my degree to you.’
Oliver stopped dancing. ‘To me? Whatever do you mean?’
Helen began to say You gave me the money so that I could stay, didn’t you? Then, over Oliver’s shoulder and through a long tunnel of extraneous noise and movement, she saw Tom.
He was sitting on the stone coping of the fountain basin with the plume of frozen silver spray behind him. She took in the smoothness of his white tuxedo that set him apart at once, exotic in the black-suited crowds. There was a red rosebud in his buttonhole. As if he was meeting a stranger, she thought, and needing a signal that would draw her to him. Neither of us needs to do that ever again, she realised with sudden certainty. Tom was watching her, one eyebrow raised in a peak. The saturnine darkness of his face struck her afresh after Oliver’s high English colouring. She dropped her hands from Oliver’s arms. Love for Tom was overflowing inside her like a flood from a breached dam. Very slowly she was beginning to move to him.
‘There’s Tom.’
Oliver glanced briefly at her and then let her go.
‘Good luck,’ he said again, and then turned away. The dancers swallowed him up at once.
Helen crossed the few yards of polished floor that separated them and put out her hands. Tom lifted them briefly and looked down at her fingers. She saw the set of his skull on his shoulders, the dark hair falling across his forehead. He looked back at her face and the Viscountess’s ring caught a splash of light between them. They were both immediately aware that Darcy could be anywhere, watching, suddenly seeing them through painfully opened eyes.
‘I was on my way to find him,’ Helen said. Her voice caught in her throat. Tom smiled a little. He was as uncompromising and as certain as he always was. He was simply waiting for her, allowing her the freedom of her own choices.
‘You looked very pretty, dancing with Oliver.’ He stood up and drew her back on to the floor. ‘My turn now, I think.’
They moved together instinctively. Helen was vividly conscious of his white sleeve against her bare arm. Funny that they had never danced together before, she thought, and yet they were perfectly attuned. She looked up, through the lights, at the intense purple-blackness of the midsummer sky. Hanging over the pinnacles of Christ Church was the rising moon, almost full, pinky-gold and trailing fine wisps of cloud.
Tom followed her eyes.
‘Sad to be going?’ he asked gently.
‘Not exactly. I’m bewildered because I don’t know where I’m going to. I’m excited because of you, and because of you nothing else matters. Except Darcy. I’m sad for Darcy.’
Tom’s fingers tightened on her arms.
‘Do you want me to tell you where you are going? That you must come back to the States with me? Do you want me to decide for us?’
The rhythm between them was broken. They stopped and stood facing each other among the swirling dancers under the summer moon.
‘No,’ Helen said levelly. ‘That isn’t how it is between us, is it?’
Tom was looking at her as if she was the only person in the great golden quadrangle.
‘And I love you for it,’ he whispered.
With a final reverberating chord that hung on the motionless air the music stopped. Under the pavilion the sweating musicians bowed and grinned at the applause.
‘I’m going to find Darcy,’ Helen said. She was certain now, implacably certain, and it gave her the vital courage that she needed for Darcy.
Tom stepped back, hands in his pockets, detached once more.
‘I won’t be far away, if you need me.’
Helen began her search. He wasn’t among the crowds beginning to ebb out of Tom Quad in search of supper, nor was he already at the candelit tables. At last she found him under the pink and white ruched lining of the marquee in Canterbury Quad. Another, noisier band was playing here and the dancing was uninhibited.
Helen saw Pansy first. She had the rose-pink folds of her dress caught up in her fists like a little girl going paddling, and the ribbons amongst the silvery points of hair flew as she danced. The dipping hem of her dress showed pink silk stockings. Darcy was partnering her. He was jigging up and down, alternately frowning with concentration and then beaming with delight. He was flushed, and his hair looked darkened with sweat. Helen had never seen him drink more than a couple of pints of beer, but she thought that he looked tipsy now, jovially and intentionally so. A few steps away Chloe was dancing with Dave Walker, whose red bow tie had come undone to dangle in frayed points down his shirtfront. At one of the small tables that fringed the floor, Scot Scotney was sitting with a bottle at his elbow, watching, entertained in spite of himself.
Everyone having a good time, Helen realised with a dull pang.
Darcy saw her and immediately put a heavy arm around her shoulders.
‘Where have you been?’ he exclaimed. ‘We come to the Ball to celebrate our engagement and I don’t see you all evening.’
‘With Oliver, and Tom,’ Helen said quietly.
Pansy, Chloe and Dave were crowding around them. They were exhilarated, laughing and jostling.
‘Can’t think when I’ve ever had such a good time,’ Darcy was saying. ‘Perhaps Oliver’s got the right idea after all.’
‘Darcy, can we go somewhere quiet?’ Helen pleaded. He was deaf to the urgency in her voice. Instead he took her hands and whirled her on to the dance floor. ‘Quiet? At a ball? Dance with me first. We haven’t danced together since Montcalm. New Year’s Eve, remember? I couldn’t believe my luck. I still can’t, Helen.’ He kissed her cheek, and Helen felt as if he was twisting a knife between her ribs. Then she saw Chloe looking curiously at her and forced a bright smile. As his arms came round her and he dragged her into the dance she thought that Darcy was like a huge, affectionate dog. How different from Tom’s aloof coolness, with the heat beneath.
The evening drew her on into its bright, frivolous, utterly inapposite tangle. The others seemed to dance inexhaustibly. When she begged to be allowed to sit down, she was passed inexorably from Dave Walker’s clutches to Scot’s taut grip. She found his stiff-lipped Glaswegian incomprehensible against the roar of the music. When he smiled at her only one half of his face moved, the pucker of scar tissue keeping the other immobile. ‘Ye don’t look sae happy for a gairrl just engaged,’ he told her, and she turned her head away from him.
At last they had apparently danced enough …
‘Supper,’ somebody said, and ‘Much more champagne,’ someone else added. She found herself being drawn out into the moonlight again. The moon was high overhead now, and the colour of beaten silver. Darcy was holding her hand, leading her up the hollowed steps again and into the Hall. Candlelight shone into amused faces all round her, and on pretty, festive food that she couldn’t have imagined eating. There was indeed a string quartet, playing Beethoven into the dim arch of space above the clatter, and calling out, and clinking of glasses. Then immediately, it seemed, they were off again. Helen was hopelessly letting herself be carried along with the evening’s tide instead of trying to swim against it. Darcy was not to be deflected from his determined enjoyment, and she knew his stubbornness. Wearily, she decided that she was incapable of judging now whether the moment was tactful or cruelly ill-timed.
The evening was interminable, and there were hours to endure yet. There would be more dancing, and then breakfast among the pools of candlewax at the long tables, and then emergence into the incongruous bright daylight and the roar of work-bound traffic.
Helen followed the cheerful babble down the steps again,
her heavy feet making her lag behind. She saw the hem of Pansy’s dress whisk out through the arch and away under the lacings of laser light.
A hand caught her arm, so suddenly and sharply that she almost cried out. A green velvet sleeve, and then Oliver’s hollow, glittering smile hanging over her. His fingers dug into her flesh.
‘Let’s round off the evening by going on the river.’
‘No.’ Helen answered instinctively.
‘Come with me,’ Oliver said. ‘I want you to.’
‘Not the river,’ she persisted. She looked sidelong at Oliver and saw that his eyes seemed to have sunk back into their sockets. They were remote, expressionless. He was pulling her outside, away across the festivity of Tom Quad. His insistence and the vice-like grip on her arm made her think suddenly of the Ancient Mariner. The idea was fanciful but she shivered in her thin dress. She looked quickly around for Darcy, for Chloe and Dave, or even Scot Scotney, but there wasn’t one familiar face amongst the revellers.
Oliver was walking so quickly that she almost stumbled behind him. They reached Tom Tower and the stewards in the porter’s lodge stood back respectfully to let them pass. The night beyond looked pitch black and empty as the lights closed behind them.
‘Wait …’ she said, but he was deaf to her. They were almost out into the street when someone stepped in front of them.
A white jacket, and a rosebud against the lapel. Tom. Thank God. Helen felt her irrational fear subside. I won’t be far away he’d said, hadn’t he?
‘Oliver wants to go on the river,’ she gasped at him, breathless with relief. Tom took one look at Oliver’s face and the diamond-hard eyes in the deep sockets.
‘Why not?’ he said calmly. ‘We’ll all go. Where’s your wrap?’
The black velvet cloak appeared and she was hustled off between them into the night. The black Jaguar sat at the kerb directly opposite. Oliver swung himself into it and smiled at them, his teeth showing in white points.
‘A last romantic glide along the water and under the willows,’ he murmured. ‘Just the three of us.’