His head bent forward, towards her, as though for the executioner’s stroke, and he began very passionately to kiss the place where the beauty spot had been.
9
‘O GOD’, Anna said, pulled almost off balance by his embrace and also shaken by the violence of her desire to embrace him.
‘Is it all right?’ he said quickly, anxiously, through the darkness. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing’, she said promptly. ‘It’s all right. It’s just that I didn’t know I felt so—violently about it. Isn’t it awful’, she went on, ‘to be surprised by one’s own feelings, at my age. And my feelings go veering about.’ She put up her hand and stroked the side of his face, encountering the mask and taking care not to disturb it. ‘But I won’t be a bitch this time. I really won’t.’
‘That’s just as well’, he said. ‘Because this time …’
‘Yes, I know … No, if I hesitate now, it’s purely because of practical considerations.’
‘Yes, well, obviously, not here’, he said, casting a look round the gallery—more for illustration than in the hope of seeing much through the gloom. ‘Come to my flat.’
‘That’s not the only practical consideration.’
‘O’, he said impatiently, ‘I’ve got plenty.’
‘I don’t know’, she said, consideringly, ‘that we shall need plenty …’
The mask stopped responding to the fluctuations of his expression and remained stretched taut and stiff for a full moment, while he was shocked. Then he realised she had consented and she felt the mask crease—fold and collapse inwards—as he gave a great grin.
‘Come to my flat’, he repeated. ‘We’ll probably pick up a taxi. Anyway, it’s only a mile or two. It’s in——’
She put her hand across his mouth.
He kissed and then gently bit at her fingers.
‘Be careful’, she said. ‘Be anonymous.’
His hand removed her hand from his mouth.
‘Let me just say——’ he began, but instead of saying anything his mouth made its way violently into hers. Her hand placed his hand on her breast, and it violently grasped her.
‘O God’, Anna said again.
This time he made no comment, accepting it.
‘I’m just shameless’, she said. ‘I just want to take you to the nearest bed.’
‘Well, come there’, he answered.
He softly tugged open the door at the back of the gallery. Even the dim lighting from the corridor outside was enough to bite at her eyes. She shut them for a moment and groped her way through; felt for the banister and then for the three shallow steps leading down from the gallery. She heard him quietly shut the door behind them, almost wholly sealing off the French love song in the ballroom.
She opened her eyes and walked along the corridor.
He came hurrying after her, caught her up, and put his hand beneath her elbow. ‘Get your coat.’
‘No, listen’, she said, halting suddenly, so that he almost tumbled over her. Instead of retreating he remained huddled close against her. She turned towards him, and he was so close that she had to draw her head backwards before she could search for his eyes through the slits of his mask. ‘Listen’, she said. ‘I am an iconoclast.’
‘I know you are …’
‘Do you believe’, she asked, her voice betraying that she was almost suffocated by the excitement of her own mischief, even while she tried to phrase the idea as formally as possible in order to calm, or to arrange, the excitement, ‘that perfect bad taste is almost as hard to achieve as perfect good taste?’
‘Well I don’t know’, he said in a delaying voice, not so much in reluctance against her plan as in fear that it might involve a change in his. ‘I don’t know what you’re …’
She slipped her fingers round his wrist, just as she had when she made him tiptoe along the gallery. But this time she moved much more swiftly and easily. She reversed their direction. She led him back along the corridor; past the entrance to the gallery; along to the far end of the corridor: to the second staircase.
He came perfectly obediently and passively, just as he had tiptoeing along the gallery: but this time his hand was active. His wrist twisted and slithered inside her grip as though her grip was a handcuff, and his fingers flapped and bent upwards, trying to make contact with her hand and insinuate themselves into it.
She started up the stairs, drawing him, willing, behind her. With determination, she did not look back at him.
She made him almost run up the first flight.
He offered no protest.
The next flight she had to take more slowly herself.
Halfway up, she said, but still without looking back:
‘This was originally the servants’ staircase. It seems appropriate to our position in this house.’
He gave no answer, or only a ‘Mm’.
Speaking had made her out of breath. In her own deeper breathing she could not hear whether he was out of breath, too.
The staircase was badly lit, by only an occasional bulb on the landings. The whole house seemed empty and quiet. There was only the noise of their footsteps, the plain wood creaking beneath them, Anna’s breathing and from time to time a squelch, a sound almost of sap being bruised, when the high heels of Anna’s shoes actually dug into the naked surface of the wood.
Against her desire, Anna found that the higher she mounted, and the higher her excitement and hurry, the slower she had to go.
A few steps from the top, she paused altogether, altogether out of breath. She took the opportunity to slip off her shoes, which were making too much noise. Don Giovanni steadied her while she took them off; but she still would not look round at him.
Splinters in the surface of the wooden tread pulled at threads in the sole of her stockings.
She put her two shoes together and held them in one hand. Her other hand groped behind her, to resume Don Giovanni’s wrist. He thrust it at her.
She ran up the last few steps, and he followed her to the door of Anne’s bedroom.
Softly Anna opened the door. She groped round the jamb, found the light switch and put it on, knowing that the sudden brightness might affront their eyes but wanting Don Giovanni to see the room instantly and whole.
Her eyes were affronted. For a moment she could not understand the heavings, the upheaval, in the oval white bed. She had illuminated the back of a neck, ochre coloured; with difficulty she recognised that she had lately been looking at it illuminated by a spotlight; but now its voice was spluttering and its huge body was straining in an effort to roll over sideways, to roll off, like a seal trying to roll off a rock; and, as it did manage to heave a little up and roll a little to one side, it revealed another head on the pillow, face up, a startled face, the face of its wife, the face which had been beneath …
Anna brushed the light out, jammed the door shut, snatched with her free hand at Don Giovanni and ran back to the top of the stairs and then down the first flight.
From behind the closed door above her she faintly heard the frightened, creaking ‘Caw caw caw’ of the kitten.
Don Giovanni followed her.
She tumbled her way down the next flight, not caring whether she missed a step, took two steps at a time, bumped the newel of the banisters in hurling herself round …
She stopped, and the noise of her hurry stopped, perhaps two thirds of the way down, only because she had let one of her shoes tumble out of her hand. It somersaulted to a couple of steps below where she had stopped, and rested there. She lacked the energy for the precise movements of going the further two steps, bending down and retrieving it.
Don Giovanni came down the stairs behind her. He hesitated; passed her; descended and picked up the shoe. He handed it back, and she took it.
He mounted a step.
He stood face to face with her, one step below her.
‘O my dear, how grotesque’, she said.
She bent her head towards his chest and burst into tears ther
e.
10
‘YOU see’, Anna said. ‘I just can’t be perfect.’
They sat down side by side on the stairs. No one came. The house was still silent.
‘I over-reached myself’, she said. ‘I thought I could carry off something that was beyond me.’
She looked down at his handkerchief between her hands. She had been surprised to see the ordinary twentieth-century handkerchief coming out of his eighteenth-century pocket. She gave it back to him. He stretched his silken leg out, down the steps, in order to get the handkerchief to the mouth of his pocket.
‘I’ve made the front of your costume damp’, Anna said, glancing at it.
He gave a deprecating move of the head.
‘She has a perfect right’, Anna said. ‘Her own husband.’ She added: ‘Her own house. Her own party.’
‘Yes.’
‘How can I feel betrayed?’
‘One’s feelings aren’t always logical.’
‘It’s her bed.’
She put her forefinger on the pouch of flesh just below her eye. She did not want to rub the eye, for fear of blurring the mascara; so she depressed the flesh into a waterspout, a gargoyle, through which to channel off the remaining tears, which were already cool.
‘It may be rather comic’, she said. ‘Though it is grotesque as well Especially if you knew what he calls her in bed.’ Then: ‘Have I ruined my mascara?’
He twisted to face her and scrutinised the underneath of her eyes.
‘It’s run a bit’, he said.
He stretched his leg out again, got at the handkerchief again and offered it to her.
She made it into a fingerstall, licked the tip, touched it to her eyes and said:
‘Guide me.’
He did so.
‘That’s all we can do about it’, she said, stopping his finger; and he put his handkerchief away again. ‘You’ll have to take me as I am. I’ve left my make-up case up there.’
‘Up there?’
‘Up there’, she said wryly. ‘On the dressing table, I think. Or the bed.’
‘I hope they moved it’, he said.
‘I’m sorry you didn’t see the kitten.’
‘I heard it, I think.’
‘I hope they moved that.’
‘You’re very tired’, he said. ‘Come to my flat. You needn’t be seduced.’
‘I want to be.’
But neither of them moved from the stairs.
‘I expect you’re too tired’, Anna said. ‘I’ve made you run up and down the stairs. For nothing. The servants’ stairs are always more steep, because nobody cared about them.’
‘Get your coat.’
This time they did stand up.
11
SHE found him waiting for her, his back turned to where she must appear from, in the hall. No one else was there.
He had put on an ordinary black topcoat over his costume, and the fact that no trousers emerged from beneath its hem was farcical.
‘My dear’, she said going up behind him, ‘you look like a bishop.’
‘You’re giving a perfectly respectable adventure an air of scandal’, he replied.
In his coat he looked larger—which put it in Anna’s mind to take his arm, cling to it, and chatter to him.
The sedan chair which she had seen carried bodily into the ballroom now stood empty, unlit, in a corner of the hall, a large egg that had hatched.
‘Perhaps it’ll be snowing’, Anna said.
‘Wouldn’t that be perfect?’
He opened the front door for her.
‘No’, she said. ‘It isn’t snowing.’
As he stepped through the shallow portico of the house, his hand went up to his face and he tilted his head, beginning to slip it out of the mask.
‘Stop’, Anna said.
He stopped: both what he was doing, and walking:
‘Don’t be absurd’, he said. ‘I can’t walk through the street in a mask.’
‘If you take it off, I’m not coming.’
‘That’s sheerest blackmail. I can’t stop a cab with a mask on. The man’ll think it’s a hold-up.’
‘I’ll stop the cab.’
‘O don’t——’
‘Then he’ll only think you’re drunk. You can tell him where to go through the partition.’
‘The whole business is quite absurd’, he said, taking her arm and propelling her forward, but protestingly. ‘Do you realise I don’t even know what to call you?’
‘You can call me Anna. I’ll allow you to drop the Donna.’
‘Of course Anna might be your real name.’
‘It might.’
There was nothing to shew it ever had snowed except a particularly glittering, anvil-hard patch at the centre of each paving stone, which might indicate that a few flakes had settled, melted and then frozen again.
Certainly the air was freezing. That was apparent from the clear frosty look of the light from the street lamps, which seemed suspended like icy lemons in the bare branches of the trees that lined the pavement. Cars were parked thickly, along the whole cul-de-sac, up the slight, slightly twisted, asphalted hill by which the cul-de-sac turned into the main road. Under the street lamps the car tops gleamed with frost.
‘I’m not so inquisitive’, Anna said. ‘For all I know, it was your wife who arrived at the ball in a sedan chair. Her name might even be Elvira.’
‘I guarantee’, he said, with an appearance of cunning, ‘that no wife of mine is at that ball.’
‘No, I didn’t think you’d ever been married’, Anna said.
‘I’m not very good at this game, am I?’
‘You’re improving.’
‘I don’t think my heart’s in it. I wish I knew about your husband.’
‘He’s alive and well. I heard from him for Christmas.’
‘Then you don’t live with him?’
‘Perhaps I’ve been a little unfair’, Anna said. ‘I promise you, he’s not even in this country.’
He looked down at her: gratified. ‘And do you suppose’, he asked, happily resuming the game, ‘that my name is Giovanni?’
‘It seems unlikely.’
‘John, then?’
‘Sheer statistics would favour that in any case.’
‘Had you considered’, he cunningly put it, ‘that it might be Donald?’
She did consider it. ‘No’, she said at last, ‘I don’t think you’re Scottish. Even though your present appearance might mislead people into supposing that you’re wearing a kilt.’
She noticed as they passed that the dark green door of one of the cars parked on the little hill, near the top of the cul-de-sac, bore, painted on it, like fake armorial bearings, the little rebus—a tree in blossom—whereby Rudy was accustomed, on his writing paper, his book plate, his table napkin rings, to pun on the name Blumenbaum.
Edward had protested against leaving the light on, saying it hurt his eyes. But Ruth said that to write up her diary by the light of the street lamp alone might hurt her eyes permanently.
She started the entry on a fresh page, so that Edward could not read what had gone before.
Watching over her shoulder, he said:
‘It wasn’t about a gorilla.’
‘It was. Didn’t you hear her keep singing “Un gorille”?’
‘It can’t have been. Or the word must have some slang meaning. I was sure it was about politics.’
When he heard voices and footsteps approach, he flicked off the light switch and pulled Ruth down to kneel on the floor of the car.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Someone’s coming.’
‘Well what does it matter? We aren’t stealing anything.’
‘Keep your head down.’
Nonetheless Ruth raised it enough to look through the window.
‘It’s Anna’, she said. ‘She’s going home with that man.’
Edward tumbled over to Ruth’s side of the car, in time to watch the
two figures walking away, up the hill, into the main road.
‘I thought she must be quite experienced’, he said. ‘Unless he’s her husband?’
‘No. She’s divorced’, Ruth said.
She sat up on the seat again, re-arranged the rug over her lap and resumed her diary. She did not bother to put on the light again. The street lamp did give enough illumination for her to write, in large capitals:
‘ANNA K. IS A WHORE’.
‘Can’t you see?’ Don Giovanni whispered to Anna in the cab. ‘He is worried about the mask.’
‘Then set his mind at rest.’
‘How?’
‘Kiss me.’
‘Let’s just snuggle under the rug and be cosy for a bit’, Edward said, sliding far down on the seat.
To Ruth his remark seemed so uncharacteristic of him that she felt on guard. It was even uncharacteristic of him not to want the light on. He was not a person who preferred half-dark.
Now that he was suddenly unaggressive she paradoxically felt more strained in relation to him. She sat rather stiff and high up against the back of the car, riding the rear seat like an old-fashioned bicycle, trying to resist the insinuating downward tendency of his warm snuggly body beneath the rug.
Her eyes rested on the light switch, as though she was putting it on by thought. It was high on the side wall, between the doors, at the dividing point between the front and the back of the car. It was well in front of her, rather to her left and, in the high, rigid car, quite out of her reach. But by fixing her eyes on it she seemed to anchor her body against being drawn deeper into the soft slippery nest Edward was making of the back of the car.
Her mind was really on something else; but her thoughts seemed to be enquiring why the light switches in cars could not be of the ordinary pattern but consisted of a little square-sided stick of brownish plastic, and what motoring purpose it could serve to make the end of the stick grooved, like the milling—but wider—on coins.
Don Giovanni poured a handful of silver into her hand so that she could pay the driver while he opened the front door of the block of flats.
The driver must have turned round during the journey and seen them occupied in kissing: even so Anna thought him relieved to be quit of them. His relief bounced like a spring in his voice as he called, loudly so that it would reach the man standing on the steps:
The Snow Ball Page 10