‘We must think of lots of things for you to do,’ said Evelyn. ‘We can’t have you getting bored. Besides the gardening and the rural council, I think you had better do some voluntary work. And some bridge classes would be a good idea. You’ll find it a great standby in the winter when the men are either shooting or hunting. But don’t play with the archdeacon if you can help it. He never pays.’
‘What an attractive little programme.’ Isobel did not trouble to keep the sarcasm from her voice. ‘Give her a silver-blonde wig, Mummy, and she’ll be able to stand in for you at a moment’s notice.’
Evelyn frowned at her daughter and gave the tiniest nod in the direction of Spendlove’s back. He was arranging the main course on the hotplate that stood on the side table so we could serve ourselves. When the Prestons were en famille, which of course these days included me, Evelyn liked mealtimes to be informal. This meant that Spendlove sat on a hard little chair in the hall while we ate, instead of standing to attention near the door.
‘We mustn’t forget,’ said Rafe as soon as Spendlove had left the room, ‘that Marigold’s been used to a very different kind of life. I think it would be unfair to plunge her into too much public service straightaway.’ I sent him a look of purest gratitude, quite forgetting for a moment that he was the chief agent of my suffering. ‘I’ve got my own plans for her.’ He stood up and went to the sideboard. ‘Oh, good, veal goulash. And braised leeks. Shall I give you some, Mother?’
She had fallen again into a brown study and had visibly to shake herself out of it. ‘Thank you, darling. Not too much rice.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Isobel sounded annoyed. ‘What are your plans for Marigold?’
‘She’s going to learn to ride.’
‘Oh, but I couldn’t!’ I felt dismayed. ‘I should hate it.’ As a child I had been allowed to ride Isobel’s pony, Mistletoe, and had got on quite well until Isobel had whacked him hard on the rump. He had tried to jump a hedge and I had fallen off and broken my collarbone. I had refused to mount him again. And once I began to dance seriously I avoided anything like riding, skating or skiing that might endanger my limbs. A dancer has enough injuries to contend with without risking more for recreation’s sake.
‘Nonsense!’ Rafe shot me a reproving glance as he put Evelyn’s plate in front of her. ‘You’re incredibly strong for your size and you’ve a good sense of balance. You’ll love it once you get confident.’ He returned to the sideboard. ‘Plenty of goulash for you, darling?’
‘Just rice and leeks, thank you,’ I said pettishly. I never ate veal on compassionate grounds, and besides it was infuriating to be treated in this high-handed way.
He looked over his shoulder to say, with the air of one conferring a tremendous boon, ‘I’ll let you all in on a little secret. This morning I went to look at a nice quiet little pony. She’ll be just right for Marigold. A dappled grey mare, fourteen hands. Pretty little thing and well schooled. The man who owns her is ringing me this afternoon to close the deal.’
I felt that everyone was looking at me to observe my rapturous reception of this unexpected and generous present. Isobel had had one of her violent changes of mood and was scowling at me as though hoping I’d be struck by lightning and fried to a heap of blackened crumbs. But it was not because of this that I felt both sad and angry. I should have liked a dear little pony to give apples and carrots to, so long as I did not have to ride her. But each caressing word and benevolent deed seemed like an attempt to bind me closer by ties that had more to do with dominance than love.
‘It’s … very kind of you.’
‘See what you’ve done with your wonderful surprise,’ said Isobel. ‘Marigold’s going to cry.’
‘A horse, did you say?’ Evelyn ceased to wool-gather. ‘What a good idea, darling.’ She smiled up at her son, then turned to me. ‘I shall give you a jar of the night cream I use. It will protect your face against cold winds.’
‘Don’t feel burdened, sweetheart.’ Rafe pressed my shoulder with one hand as with the other he put my plate before me. ‘I can assure you my motives for buying you a pony are quite selfish. A beautiful woman always looks her best on horseback.’
I saw with intense annoyance that he had given me a mountain of goulash.
‘How nice it will be for us,’ said Isobel, ‘to take you out on a leading rein.’
There was unmistakable irony in her voice. I wondered why she seemed to dislike the idea of my learning to ride quite as much as I did. Surely she didn’t imagine that I might outshine her as a horsewoman?
‘We had better go to London, Marigold, to find shoes and some silk for the underskirt,’ said Evelyn. ‘We’ll stay at Brown’s. Shall we say Tuesday?’
‘I have to give my father time to find a replacement.’
‘Oh, very well. Let’s say the week after next.’
‘All right,’ I said slowly, ‘thank you.’
‘I don’t blame you for not being keen to be decked out in white like a sacrificial offering,’ said Isobel. She leaned across the table and said in a low voice so that only Rafe and I could hear, ‘And it isn’t as though you’re a virgin. I bet there’ve been plenty of others besides Rafe and that rather sinister Sebastian character.’
‘Isobel!’ Rafe’s voice cracked like the whip that had beaten poor Mistletoe’s rump.
‘Isobel, I wish you wouldn’t mutter,’ said Evelyn. ‘And you’re slouching. You should follow Marigold’s example. She carries herself so beautifully. Rafe darling, I think I’ll have just a spoonful more of the leeks.’
As he stood up I happened to catch his eye. He gave me a look of such anger that I felt as though I had been slapped. The blare of a car horn outside and the entrance of Golly saved me from having to think of something to say. ‘What ho, you lot!’ She looked like an Ancient Briton decorated with woad. ‘Sit down, you chaps.’ This to Rafe and Kingsley who had risen with her entry. ‘No ceremony. Waste of time. There you are, Marigold. I want to talk you. It’s very important—’
Evelyn stood up and advanced, hand extended. ‘Good afternoon, Dame Gloria. This is an unexpected pleasure. Do join us, won’t you?’
‘I suppose I may as well.’ Golly threw her hat, gloves and goggles onto the beautiful Chinese Chippendale commode, then plumped down heavily next to Isobel.
Evelyn must have pressed the bell beneath the table before getting up, for Spendlove came in at once. ‘Dame Gloria is joining us for lunch.’
‘What is it?’ asked Golly, leaning sideways to peer at her plate.
‘Veal goulash.’
‘Good-oh. Now, Marigold—’
‘A glass of wine, Dame Gloria?’ Evelyn interrupted. ‘Or perhaps just water as you are driving?’
‘Oh, wine, if you’ve got any. I always drive better when I’m tight. Not absolutely blotto, of course, just pleasantly oiled. It gives me the necessary confidence for things like four-wheel drifts. Now listen, Marigold—’
‘Will you have rice, Madam? And leeks?’ Spendlove had dashed back in with the necessary eating equipment and stood poised by the sideboard, panting heavily.
‘Heavy on the rice. Light on the leeks. I know veg are good for constipation but I can’t say I like them much.’ Golly picked up her knife and fork and held them upright like spears until Spendlove had put her plate in front of her, then tackled her lunch with gusto. ‘I say, this is good. Compliments to the cook.’
‘You’re too kind.’ Evelyn’s hauteur was quite wasted on Golly.
‘Yes, smashing!’ She looked up and down the table. ‘Any mustard?’
‘I shall ring for some.’
‘Oh, don’t bother that poor old thing. He looks as though he ought to be in a rest home. I’ll go myself if you’ll just tell me where the kitchen is.’
‘That won’t be necessary.’
Spendlove appeared once more and was sent away for the mustard. When he put it beside Golly’s plate she seized his hand and beamed up into his face. ‘Thanks. You’re a
trouper. Now go and put up those aching flippers. We can manage quite well by ourselves.’ Golly looked across the table at me. ‘Wait a minute while I shovel this down and then we’ll talk.’ We all tried to look anywhere but at Golly as she suited her actions to her words, rather messily.
‘That was very good.’ Golly rubbed her stomach and belched. ‘Now, my dear Marigold, this is my proposition. As usual we’re trying out The Fishcake – it isn’t really called that, just Conrad’s joke, but I haven’t been able to think of anything else – in the provinces first. Newcastle seems as good a place as any, given that I’m on the spot. I want you to take the part of Kayoko, the dumb heroine. If it goes down well in Newcastle, you’ll dance it when we go on tour and then in London at the Royal Opera House next year. What do you say?’
For a moment I was too astonished to speak.
‘Well, Marigold?’ Golly held onto her plate as Spendlove tried to remove it. ‘I’ll have some more. No veg.’
Spendlove looked agonized. ‘I regret, Madam, there is no more. An unpardonable oversight—’
‘Oh, no, that’s all right.’ She gave up her plate. ‘You didn’t know I was coming. I’ll have some pud instead. Come on, girl. You’d better say yes or I’ll think you the most ungrateful creature this side of China. Or should I say Japan?’
I tried to think what the consequences of this offer might be. A new Beauwhistle work would command the attention of the world. It offered its principals international stardom. But I was far from the obvious choice.
‘It’s so kind of you to think of me, Golly. But I don’t have a big enough profile—’
‘I know. That’s what I told myself. But because you were there when I thought it all up, I’ve always seen you in the part. I didn’t realize that straightaway. I thought any old ballerina would do. But it’s no good, when I think of Kayoko I see you and only you. So will you do it? It’ll mean busting a gut. Several probably. We plan to start rehearsals in six weeks. Orlando Silverbridge is coming to stay at Butterbank so we can thrash out the choreography before then. Fritz is meeting his train this afternoon. We’re definitely using the LBC for the corps so you’ll be working with people you know.’ Golly took up her pudding fork and slipped it down inside her collar to scratch between her shoulder blades. ‘It’s this damned psoriasis. I always get an attack when I’m staging an opera. Nerves, you know.’
Spendlove placed an apple dumpling before her.
‘You’d be a fool not to grab this chance with both hands.’ Golly poured a generous swoosh of cream over the golden pastry, collected the drips from the spout with a blue finger and licked it. She plunged her spoon into the steaming apple and brought out a fudge-like mixture of sultanas and sugar. ‘It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity. Oh, this is good! I must congratulate the creator of this magnum opus.’
‘I know.’ I registered a goatee of cream on Golly’s chin before returning my eyes to my dumpling. ‘But I haven’t danced for nearly three months. It’ll take me more than six weeks just to get back into shape. I’m afraid it isn’t possible.’
‘Of course it isn’t,’ said Rafe fiercely. ‘I suppose I’m entitled to have an opinion?’
‘Besides,’ said Evelyn, ‘there’s the wedding. You’d be fagged to death dancing in every hole-in-corner theatre of England and be barely able to drag yourself up the aisle. The idea is ridiculous.’
‘Oh no, dear,’ Golly said thickly, displaying a mixture of half-masticated cream and sultanas. ‘Nothing hole-in-corner about it. We’re talking to the Met and La Scala.’
I felt frantic as conflicting ideas whirled in my head. If, as was likely, my dancing failed to reach the heights of sublimity worthy of such an artistically significant premiere, I would have let Golly down and the singers and the LBC and everyone else concerned with the production. Didelot would make mincemeat of me and my career would be as good as over. I felt sick as I imagined what my own disappointment would be. And I owed it to Rafe and Evelyn to take their wishes into account. The decision, probably the most important of my life, could not be taken on the spur of the moment. I needed at least twenty-four hours of cool reflection to reach a sensible verdict that would be fair to everyone, including myself.
‘Well?’ asked Golly.
‘I’ll do it.’
38
‘Hang on to your hat!’ screamed Golly above the snarl of the exhaust as the little yellow car shot away from the front door of Shottestone.
I wasn’t wearing a hat, an oversight I soon regretted. Golly liked to drive with the windscreen folded down because the rush of air on her face made it more exciting. We flew down the drive with the needle quivering on forty. When we came to the road she applied the brakes with a sharp stamp of her foot, so I was almost cut in half by my seat belt, which was made of two pieces of rope knotted across my chest. I drew up my knees to keep my feet out of the several pints of water, presumably the morning’s rain, which sloshed around in the passenger foot-well.
Behind us we left a slough of despond. When I had told Golly that I would dance the role of Kayoko, Golly had clapped her hands together and said, ‘That’s my girl!’
Evelyn had said in a voice like a glass shard, ‘Marigold, I don’t think you’ve given this matter proper thought. You already have a full programme of commitments.’
Rafe’s face had been as white as the napkin he threw down. ‘Marigold, come into the hall, would you, for a moment?’ Then he had walked out.
‘You may as well go and dance since you’re obviously too selfish to be any good to him,’ Isobel had said. ‘It’ll serve you right if you break your sodding foot again.’
‘Isobel! I will not have such language at the lunch table!’
‘Oh, fuck off, Mummy! It’s a piece of mahogany, not a delicately nurtured maiden.’
I went to join Rafe in the hall. He was pacing the stone flags, his hands clasped behind his back. He came up to put his face close to mine. ‘What the hell do you mean by saying you’ll take the part? I thought the whole point of you giving up those jobs was so we could spend more time together. You’re completely irresponsible!’
The contempt in his eyes emboldened me to say, with an assumption of calm, ‘That’s not true. I gave them up because you thought my lowly employment reflected badly on you.’
‘Naturally you’d rather believe that.’ His tone was scornful. ‘You twist everything to suit your own ideas.’
‘Do I?’ I was genuinely surprised. ‘But then … doesn’t everyone? Am I particularly dishonest?’
‘Yes, dishonest is a good word for what you are! You slept with that shit Lenoir and you told Isobel, didn’t you! But you couldn’t own up to me! Yes! Dishonest and deceitful and …’ He stopped. His mouth was working as though a string was tied to one corner and someone was jerking it rhythmically. ‘God knows, I’ve asked little enough in return for being prepared to share my life with you.’
‘I’m so sorry … I did sleep with Sebastian but I didn’t tell Isobel I had. She was just guessing … unless Conrad told her …’
‘Conrad knows you were Lenoir’s mistress?’ His face became suffused with blood. I was about to protest that mistress was too elevated a description, but realized this would hardly improve his opinion of me. ‘You told my sister’s fiancé about your sordid little affair? A man you’ve exchanged barely half a dozen sentences with?’
As though a torch had suddenly been turned on in the labyrinthine obscurity that was my subconscious, I admitted to myself that I had been guilty of more than forgetfulness in failing to tell Rafe about the early morning conversations in the hermit’s grotto. I had known that he, in common with most men, would dislike the idea of the girl he was engaged to marry breakfasting in highly romantic surroundings with someone else, particularly when that someone was handsome, clever and fascinating. Impossible to explain that my relationship with Conrad was based on nothing more than my liking to hear him talk and his pleasure in telling me how hopelessly ignorant and naïve I
was. Who in this cynical, mistrustful world would have believed it?
‘You told him but you let me go on in ignorance, you little—’ Rafe pressed his lips together until his mouth turned white, either to suppress the jerking or to stifle a dreadful insult. ‘You’ve made me look a complete fool! I shall never be able to forgive you!’
‘I’m so sorry! I wanted to tell you about Sebastian, truly I did. But it was never the right moment and it seemed to matter so much to you! I didn’t mind that you’d had affairs before we met.’
‘It’s quite different for a man.’
‘How is it different?’
He snorted. ‘Don’t be disingenuous. You know perfectly well that a man can make love to a woman without it meaning anything to him at all. Whereas a woman is always emotionally involved—’
I started to feel angry myself. ‘Frankly I don’t think heartless, mindless bonking is very attractive in either sex. I’m ashamed of my affair with Sebastian because I hated him and I only wanted to get good parts, but I refuse to admit it was worse than you sleeping with girls you didn’t care tuppence about, just because they were willing.’
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about! You’re heartless, ungrateful, vain, promiscuous …!’
Though I stood perfectly still as the insults broke over my head like waves, I seemed in my mind to take a huge bound away from him. Despite my attachment to my juvenile dream of love and my abiding affection for his family, I understood that he and I were not the same kinds of people and that we could never be a help to one another. We could not protect each other from loneliness or fear nor add substantially to each other’s happiness. We could not share worlds of ideas and imagination. Anger was replaced by remorse.
‘Please … Rafe darling,’ I said when he paused for breath, ‘don’t let’s go on torturing each other. I’m sorry, so sorry … it would never have worked – our marriage – but I’ll always be so fond of you—’
‘What blood and thunder have we here!’ Golly was pulling on her coat as she came into the hall. ‘Tristan and Isolde on a wet day at an out-of-season funfair. Cheer up you two! Tragedy purges the emotions. Come along, Marigold. I’ll take you up to Hindleep to see Orlando. Toodle-oo, Rafe. Splendid lunch.’
Girl's Guide to Kissing Frogs Page 46