‘Teutonic myths are closely tied to those of Old Norse. The gods Wotan and Odin correspond. The differences are subtle.’
‘I’m afraid I don’t know anything about them.’
‘The northern myths were attempts to make meaning of life. They were not revealed religions with divinely inspired scriptures, like the Bible, the Koran or the Jewish Torah. The gods themselves were mortal – destined to die in the last battle between good and evil at the end of the world, called Ragnarök. That is the same as Götterdämmerung in Teutonic myth. The gods not only observed the folly of men but also intervened to help them. Or to make things much, much worse.’
Conrad had resumed his observation of the nest while he was talking. He offered me the binoculars. ‘Would you like to look?’
I wanted to hear more about the gods but it seemed the tutorial was over. I took the binoculars and looked up into an unintelligible blur of branches and sky.
‘You adjust them by closing your right eye and turning this little wheel.’
His hand, thin with long fingers, so different from Rafe’s broad strong ones, fidgeted with something just beyond the end of my nose. A dark shape, which was probably a nest and something that was either a baby bird or a pine cone came into focus. It occurred to me then that, with that little lecture about Norse mythology, he had neatly sidestepped the question of why he had been on the train. He intended to keep me in the dark and I knew him well enough now to be sure it would be futile to press the point. And there were more urgent matters.
‘How did Sebastian find out where you lived?’
‘An article in one of the financial papers mentioned my purchase of Hindleep. Yesterday Sebastian sent his card from Alnwick to say that he would be obliged if I would see him. As he had gone to so much trouble, I sent Fritz down to the nearest telephone to call him and offer a bed for the night.’
I lowered the binoculars. ‘Then he wasn’t looking for me? Well, that’s a comfort, anyway!’
‘I would not be so sure of that. As soon as he arrived he mentioned your name. He appeared much gratified when I told him not only that I knew you but also that I was destined to see you that very evening. When I told him that the party was a celebration of your engagement to the son of the house, he seemed annoyed. But he kept his own counsel. Had I known he considered you to be engaged to him I should not have brought him to Shottestone. But how could I have guessed?’ Conrad’s expression was serious but I had the feeling he was observing my folly with godlike amusement.
I groaned. ‘It was the most awful piece of bad luck.’
‘Bad luck, you call it?’ Conrad smiled broadly. ‘Were we living in medieval times I should have said you were accursed. Indeed, though it has been a fixed principle of my life to espouse no religion, however tempting its promises and charming its wrappings, I think I must acknowledge the existence of the Nornor as a positive fact.’
‘Beastly old things!’ I said with feeling. ‘It was one of the worst moments of my entire life.’
Conrad held out his hand for the binoculars. ‘I am sorry.’ He did not look sorry at all. ‘But you have to admit there was a piquancy in the situation.’
‘I’m glad you thought it was funny,’ I began stiffly, but then honesty obliged me to add, ‘but it was a good thing you did.’
When Sebastian had announced in a carrying voice in Evelyn’s drawing room that I was engaged to be married to him, there had followed an appalled silence. I had looked from Sebastian’s Mephistophelian grin to Isobel’s shocked face and then to Rafe’s incredulous one, and hoped to be struck dead on the spot. Lady Pruefoy, standing nearby, had screamed like a peacock. Wherever I looked, I saw various degrees of disbelief, dismay and disgust on people’s faces. Then Conrad’s forehead had started to pucker, his eyebrows had lifted in the middle, he had pressed his lips together and made a snorting sound in his nose. Finally he had given way to outright laughter. This had been infectious, and other people had smiled and tittered, reassured to find it had all been a joke. Even Rafe had managed a twitch of his mouth, but I saw that he was fuming with rage. Only Sebastian remained perfectly calm. It was evidence of my former thraldom that when he looked at me and narrowed his eyes my stomach had hopped with fright.
Spendlove had brought a tray of drinks, providing a useful distraction. I had taken another glass but my hand shook so much I had been unable to get it safely to my lips. I heard mutterings and whisperings. ‘Perhaps he’s one of those new kissograms I’ve read about … a joke in questionable taste, I consider … I thought Germans weren’t supposed to have a sense of humour …’
Sebastian had seemed indifferent to the sensation he had caused. ‘How’s your foot?’
‘Better … getting stronger … Rafe,’ I put my hand on his arm and tried to smile, though my lips were uncooperative, ‘Sebastian is director of the Lenoir Ballet—’
‘You’d better get back to classes straightaway,’ Sebastian interrupted. ‘You might manage the last few performances of Belle Rose in The Prince of the Pagodas if you get down to it and work every minute of the day.’
‘What about Sylvia Starkey?’
The nostrils of Sebastian’s blade-like nose became pinched. ‘I suppose Lizzie’s been gossiping.’ He had given me a look of sharp displeasure. ‘Sylvia’s as light as a young bullock. I can hear her land from the back of the auditorium.’
‘Look here, Sebastian.’ Golly had pushed her way into our circle. Several new stains had been added to her boiler suit in the interval since we had last met, mostly dark blue, possibly ink, and a yellow streak that might have been egg. ‘You’re just the chap I want to see. Oh, hello, Marigold, old thing. How are you? Conrad, dear boy, what a pleasure it is to see you … Hello Rafe, lovely party … Sebastian, I want to talk to you.’
I was not surprised that Sebastian and Golly knew each other. Sebastian made it his business to know everyone of importance in the arts world.
‘Hello, Golly.’ Sebastian leaned forward to embrace her, spotted the stains and changed his mind.
Golly clutched his sleeve. ‘When Conrad said you were coming I knew it was fate. I’m writing an opera ballet. If opera can be said to have a fault it’s that it’s too static. A lot of vast people standing about like monoliths, roaring their heads off. Well, my idea is to have masses of action and I’ve written two brilliant entr’actes for a corps de ballet.’ Her face assumed an expression of Machiavellian cunning. ‘Now, who would you recommend as choreographer?’
‘A choreographer? Well, now –’ Sebastian pretended to think – ‘there’s Hereward Boncasson … no, he’s past it. His Aux Anges was almost step for step the same as his Tourments de L’Enfer. Noah Cantrip? He’d be all right if you can wait five years. Too much opium’s made his mind costive, as well as his gut.’ He ran his hand over the silver streak in his hair that gave his appearance such distinction. ‘What about Abel Welsummer?’
Abel Welsummer was English Ballet’s choreographer.
‘Oh, I’ve already spoken to Miko. Their schedule is crammed full for the next two years. I couldn’t possibly wait that long. I want to put it on this autumn. I’ve already arranged financial backing – can’t you think of anyone else?’
‘Of course there’s Orlando Silverbridge.’
‘Orlando?’ Golly would never have made a career as an actor. Her inflection of surprise would have fooled no one. ‘Oh yes. And he’s your choreographer, isn’t he? I’ve just had a marvellous idea. What about the Lenoir Ballet Company for the entr’actes?’ I saw she meant to draw Sebastian into her web and bind him fast with silken threads, in the hope that the dazzling prospect of being involved in the creation of a new work by one of England’s foremost composers would make him her cat’s paw. Of course it would never work. If the LBC danced the entr’actes, Sebastian would see to it that he had the last word about everything to do with them, down to the colour of the sequins on the dresses of the back row of the corps. Golly’s round eyes attempted ingenuousness.
‘Orlando Silverbridge! That is an idea … I loved his Nerve Endings … but how’s your schedule? I heard on the grapevine that your Russian tour had been cancelled.’
Sebastian looked even haughtier than was natural to him. ‘We might be able, with some adjustments, to fit you in.’
Golly struck him a blow on the bicep that made him stagger. ‘Good man!’
She and Sebastian had moved away, engrossed in conversation, the party and my existence forgotten. Rafe had drawn me into the window embrasure. ‘What did that fellow mean by barging his way into this house and saying you were engaged to him?’ he asked in a low voice. ‘You’d better smile. People are looking.’ He bared his teeth.
‘Of course we aren’t! You’ve got to believe me! Sebastian’s a brute and a pig and I hate him! He’s not happy with the girl who’s dancing Belle Rose and he thinks I’d be better. So he’ll say anything to get me to come back to London.’
‘It seems a peculiar way to go about it. Are you telling me that there’s nothing between you and that man?’
‘Absolutely nothing! Since I left London he’s had two other girlfriends.’
‘So there was something? Not that I’ve any right to mind. What you did before we met is your own affair, of course. But I don’t like being made a fool of in front of the entire county.’
‘I really am most dreadfully sorry and I never loved him the least bit even when we were … going out together.’
Rafe’s expression grew stormy despite his stretched lips. ‘He doesn’t look to me the kind of man who’d be content with holding hands. Were you lovers? Keep smiling.’
I hesitated.
I had always intended to tell Rafe the truth but it had been impossible to find the right moment. Each day that passed seemed to make my confession more difficult. His pride was his tenderest part and naturally he would be annoyed to have been misled. And sometimes I thought my youth and supposed innocence were what he liked most about me.
‘Well?’
I opened my mouth to deny it.
‘Marigold!’ Evelyn waved an imperious hand. ‘Come and meet Lady Peckover.’
Rafe’s godmother, a gorgon in moiré and diamonds, cross-questioned me about my parents and grandparents and my prospects of inheritance and seemed to think very little of any of them, but I was grateful for the reprieve. For the rest of the party I talked and nodded and smiled while trying to decide what to say to Rafe when the guests had gone. I might admit that I had been under pressure to consent to some sort of relationship with Sebastian, which would account for the sham engagement, without actually confessing that I had cold-bloodedly traded my body umpteen times for the sake of my ambition.
I was only a little less anxious about what I was going to say to Sebastian. I knew that once I had convinced him I was giving up dancing for good, I would matter less to him than the poor legless tramp who played the mouth organ outside Piccadilly tube station, but Sebastian was not a man to take disappointment well. If he suspected that Rafe was jealous he might hint all sorts of dreadful things about me just to pay me out. I dreaded to see disillusion in Rafe’s candid blue eyes. By the end of the party I had decided one thing only. I was in a hole.
Fate – or the Nornor – had postponed the moment of truth. Just as people were starting to go, poor Kingsley had tripped over an umbrella and fallen, hurting his wrist. Rafe was deputed to take him to the hospital. The business was complicated by Kingsley thinking he was going to a regimental dinner and insisting that Spendlove fetch his medals. Rafe had driven away looking thoroughly unhappy. I had longed to comfort him.
Sebastian had been taken off by Conrad, but not before the former had kissed me and squeezed my earlobe so hard that I could not suppress a small scream.
At the time, though naturally sorry for Kingsley, I had been extremely thankful to have escaped my own personal Ragnarök, but I had woken that morning to the disagreeable realization that the evil hour had only been postponed.
‘What am I going to do about Sebastian?’ I asked Conrad with the kind of despair that does not hope for an answer.
Conrad withdrew his eyes from the nest and fixed them on me. ‘Are you going to marry him? Of the two suitors, I would advise Rafe as being most likely to grant his wife an easy moment or two in the ensuing years. Sebastian has a dangerous look in his eye. If he were a horse, I should take care not to find myself alone in the stable with him. But perhaps etiquette dictates, as with dinner engagements, that, having accepted the first, one ought to refuse the second, however superior its attractions.’
I could not expect him to sympathize. In my present predicament I must appear ridiculous.
‘You wouldn’t mock if you only knew. Of course I’m not going to marry Sebastian. I’d rather be torn to pieces by wild beasts. I’ve got to make him see he can’t go around telling people we’re engaged. I’m working this morning and this afternoon. It’ll have to be during my lunch hour. Do you know where he’ll be?’
‘With me at the Castle in Carlisle. Golly is taking Sebastian to lunch and I – at a considerable sacrifice of my own pleasure and convenience – have agreed to go with them. I am to be the … die Zugabe … how do you say “makeweight”, as in a boat?’
‘Buoyancy bags, do you mean?’
Conrad frowned. ‘Certainly not. I am to keep stable the negotiations. Golly is afraid of giving Sebastian too much power. The opera is her infant and she wishes to be in charge of its upbringing.’
‘Damn, blast and bloody hell!’ I said with considerable energy.
‘Is it as bad as that?’
‘Worse. I don’t know you well enough to use the sort of language that might come anywhere near to expressing my true feelings.’
Conrad put the binoculars into their leather case and slung them round his neck before saying, ‘We shall have returned to Hindleep by six o’clock. You could come and meet Sebastian then. I can arrange for you to be alone.’
‘Thank you, that’s so kind, but Rafe’s picking me up at six. We’re going out for dinner. He’ll have been in Carlisle all day sitting on the bench.’
Conrad looked surprised. ‘All day? What makes this bench so peculiarly attractive?’
‘I mean it’s his day for being a magistrate. You know, like a judge.’
‘Ah, der Richterstand. I understand.’
‘I’ve got to be able to tell him that it’s all finished between me and Sebastian … you see, Rafe doesn’t know …’ I felt myself blush. ‘… I didn’t tell him that Sebastian and I … oh, it’s such a mess.’ I hugged myself and clapped my hands against my arms because the sweat was cooling on my skin and though it was sunny the air was still bitterly cold. ‘Sebastian wanted to stop me joining English Ballet. He didn’t ask me to marry him … he just assumed I’d be only too delighted.’
Conrad looked sceptical. ‘He seems to have more than his fair share of audacity. Do you tell me that when he made this announcement he was no more to you than the man on the Clapham omnibus?’
I blushed harder. ‘Well, we had been … I was his girlfriend … of course I went to bed with him … Sebastian runs the LBC like a dictatorship … what else could I do?’
‘Ah.’ Conrad lifted his eyebrows. ‘Indeed. What else could you do?’
I was perfectly alive to the sarcasm in his voice, but my pride was already in the dust. ‘Sebastian’s incapable of loving anybody. He’s hard and cold and cruel and the very idea of being married to him makes me feel horribly sick.’
‘In that case,’ to my relief Conrad smiled suddenly and looked perfectly human and friendly, ‘if I were you I should send etiquette to the devil and favour the second engagement.’
‘I know you’re not taking any of this seriously. But when I tell Sebastian I’m giving up dancing to marry Rafe he’s bound to want revenge. He might tell Rafe about our affair … you see I had to … I wanted to dance more than anything in the world … oh dear,’ I shivered hard.
‘I think I do see.’ In the bright ear
ly light, Conrad’s large eyes were blacker than coal or soot or ink or anything black is usually compared with. For a moment he looked thoughtful. Then he said, ‘I want to show you something.’
‘What?’
‘Come and see.’
My curiosity grew as we walked in single file along a path that petered out in a tangled thicket. When Conrad dropped onto his hands and knees and began to crawl through the undergrowth I remembered that there were doubts about his sanity. The tunnel seemed to go on for a long time and I could see little but the soles of Conrad’s shoes as he crawled ahead of me. My legs were bare except for my practice tights and the ground was covered with prickly twigs and pine needles. I was sure that Conrad was as sane as anyone – if anything, saner … it was probably I who was going mad, driven to lunacy by the impossibility of reconciling the needs of those I loved … I thought of Sebastian … and hated … My incoherent train of thought tailed off as I grew conscious of a sound not unlike London traffic in the rush hour. After another ten metres or so, the tunnel ended in a glittering arc and the volume increased to a roar like a jet engine’s slipstream.
I scrambled into the light and found myself kneeling on a lip of rock. Ahead of me was a sheer drop to the valley floor. We were probably directly under Hindleep now, but it was hidden by a projection of land above. The sound of crashing water was close and I could see droplets flying outwards and flashing in the sun’s rays. I heard Conrad’s voice raised above the din.
‘Come to your left. Be careful! The ground is slippery.’
I inched my way along a ledge less than a metre wide. When I was on my own two feet I had no fear of heights. I rounded a shoulder of rock and saw Conrad standing about five paces away. The water fell in a torrent so close to him that droplets sparkled on his coat.
‘Quick!’ he commanded. ‘I am in danger of drowning!’
Girl's Guide to Kissing Frogs Page 34