Emily (7 page)

    ‘Mutton dressed as cutlet,’ said Rory to Marina under his breath. Even worse was to come. Following her into the room came Finn Maclean in a dinner jacket, with a sleek brunette.

    ‘Oh God,’ said Rory, ‘here comes the virgin surgeon. Diney,’ he added, turning to the daughter of the house, ‘what the hell is Doctor Finlay doing here?’

    ‘He was absolutely wonderful about Mummy’s ulcer,’ said Diney, her eyes shining.

    ‘Probably gave it to her in the first place,’ said Rory. ‘Well, I must say, I think he’s rather super myself,’ said Diney.

    ‘I’m surprised at you,’ said Rory, ‘one really shouldn’t know one’s doctor socially.’

    Finn came up to Coco.

    ‘How’s it feeling?’ he said.

    ‘Much better,’ said Coco.

    ‘May be, but there must be no dancing on it,’ he said firmly.

    ‘Who’s that with him?’ I whispered to Calen Macdonald.

    ‘I think she’s one of his nurses,’ said Calen.

    ‘She’s pretty,’ I said.

    ‘Not my type,’ said Calen, and started whispering sweet everythings into my ear. I, however, was much more interested in seeing how Rory and Finn reacted to each other.

    ‘Look, Rory,’ said Coco, ‘here’s Finn.’

    Rory, just lighting a cigarette, paused, eyeing Finn without any friendliness.

    Finn nodded coldly, ‘Hello, Rory,’ he said.

    ‘Good evening, Doctor,’ said Rory - he smiled but his eyes were cold, his face as pale as marble. There was an awkward pause.

    ‘Isn’t it nice Finn’s back for good,’ said Coco brightly to the assembled company.

    ‘Not for my good, he isn’t,’ said Rory.

    ‘This is Frances,’ said Finn, ignoring him and introducing the sleek brunette. ‘She works at the hospital.’

    ‘Oh, a staff outing,’ drawled Rory, ‘what fun. Did you come here by charabanc with a crate of beer, or is it part of the S.R.N. syllabus - a dazzling night of dancing and passion in the arms of Doctor Maclean?’

    ‘Only for very privileged nurses,’ said Frances, smiling at Finn.

    ‘I’m surprised you’ve been able to drag him away from delivering babies and darning up appendices,’ said Rory.

    Frances was obviously uncertain how to take Rory. ‘Dr. Maclean certainly doesn’t allow himself enough free time,’ she said warmly.

    ‘Quite so,’ said Rory, his eyes lighting up with malicious amusement. ‘He’s an example to us all. I gather that’s the reason your marriage came unstuck, Finn. I heard your ex-wife couldn’t cope with the short hours, or wasn’t your double bedside manner up to scratch? However,’ he smiled at Frances, ‘you seem to be consoling yourself very nicely.’

    I turned away in embarrassment; if only he wouldn’t be so poisonous. Rory grabbed my arm.

    ‘You haven’t met Emily, have you, Finn?’

    ‘Yes he has,’ I said quickly.’Oh?’ Rory raised an eyebrow.

    ‘We met at Coco’s one day,’ I said, ‘when Finn came to see her about her ankle.’ Rory held out his glass to a passing waiter to fill up.

    ‘Are you still trying to paint?’ Finn said.

    ‘He’s got an exhibition in London in April,’ I said hotly.

    ‘Doesn’t really need one,’ said Finn. ‘He’s been making an exhibition of himself for years,’ and taking Frances by the arm, crossed the room to talk to his host.

    ‘Scintillating as ever,’ said Rory, but his hand shook as he lit one cigarette from another.

    ‘Do you like dancing reels, Emily?’ said Marina.

    ‘If I have enough to drink,’ I said, draining my glass, ‘I reel automatically.’

    We went in to dinner.

    The leathery, sneering faces of ancestors looked down from the walls. The candlelight flickered on the gleaming panelling, the suits of armour, the long polished table with its shining silver and glasses, and on the pearly white shoulders of Marina.

    ‘I hope there’s a huge flower arrangement in front of me so I don’t have to sit staring at Doctor Maclean,’ said Rory.

    I was horrified to see that he and Marina were sitting next to each other on the opposite side of the table. I was next to Calen, who ran his fingers all over my bare back when he pushed my chair in. And now the bad news. On my other side was six feet four inches of Titian-haired disapproval - Finn Maclean.

    ‘Hello, Finn,’ said Calen, ‘how are things, have you met this steaming girl?’

    ‘Doctor Maclean isn’t one of my fans,’ I said.

    ‘Maybe not,’ said Calen, ‘but he’s tall enough to see right down your front, unless I rearrange that sash.

    That’s better, don’t want to give you blood pressure, do we Finn? Always get swollen heads, these quacks, think all the nurses and women patients are nuts about them.’

    I laughed, Finn didn’t.

    ‘It must be exciting, running your own hospital,’ I said to him. He was about to answer when someone shoved a steaming great soup ladle between us. ‘Great fun running your own hospital,’ I went on. Then it was his turn to help himself to soup.

    ‘What’s the disease people suffer most often from round here?’ I asked.

    ‘Verbal diarrhoea,’ muttered Calen.

    I was just warming to my subject, asking Finn all the right questions about the hospital and the operations he would perform there, when Calen lifted up the curtain of hair hanging over my left ear and whispered: ‘Christ, I want to take you to bed.’

    I started to laugh in mid-sentence, then blushed:

    ‘I’m awfully sorry,’ I said to Finn, ‘it’s just something Calen said.’

    Finn obviously thought we were too silly for words and turned his huge back on me and started talking to the girl on his right.

    Footmen moved round the table, the clatter of plates mingled with the clink of knives and glasses and the hum of various animated conversations. Lady Downleesh sat at the end of the table, a large imposing woman who must once have been handsome. Only Marina and Rory sat mutely side by side, talking little, eating less. They appeared to see and hear nothing of what was going on around them. Suddenly I felt panicky. They were probably playing footy-footy. I imagined their cloven hoofs entwined. Calen and Finn were temporarily occupied with other conversations. I dropped my napkin and dived under the table to retrieve it. It was very dark. Ihoped my eyes would soon become accustomed to it, but they didn’t; not enough carrots when I was a child I suppose. I couldn’t see which were Rory’s or Marina’s legs. I grabbed someone’s ankle, but it was much too fat for Marina’s and twitched convulsively - cheap thrill!!! All the same, I couldn’t stay here for ever exciting dowagers. I surfaced again.

    ‘Are you all right, Mrs. Balniel? said Lady Downleesh, looking somewhat startled.

    ‘Fine,’ I squeaked, ‘absolutely marvellous soup.’

    ‘Everyone’s waiting for you to finish yours,’ said Finn in an undertone.

    ‘Oh I have,’ I said, ‘I’ve got a tiny appetite, I never eat between males.’

    Finn didn’t laugh. Pompous old stuffed shirt. Everyone started to talk about fishing as the soup plates were moved.

    ‘You’re not a bit alike,’ I said, ‘you and Marina.’ He shot me a wary glance.

    ‘In what way?’

    ‘Well, she’s so wild and you’re so well controlled. I can’t see you as a medical student putting stuffed gorillas in college scarves down Matron’s bed.’

    He gave me one of those big on-off smiles he must use all the time for keeping people at a polite distance. ‘I was working too hard for that.’

    ‘Are all the people in this room your patients?’ I asked. ‘Must be funny to look round a table and know what every single woman looks like with her clothes off.’

    ‘Galen does anyway,’ said Finn. ‘What do you do with yourself all day?’

    ‘Not a lot, I’m not very good at housework. I read and grumble, sometimes I even bite my nails.’

    ‘You ought to get a job, give you something to do,’ he went on. ‘What did you do before you met Rory?’

    ‘Oh, I mistyped letters in several offices, and I did a bit of modelling when I got thin enough, and then I got engaged to an M.P. I don’t think I would have been much of an asset to him, and then Rory came along.’

    ‘It’s a full moon tonight,’ said a horse-faced blonde sitting opposite us. ‘I wonder if the ghost’ll walk tonight. Who’s sleeping in the west wing?’

    ‘The Frayns,’ said Diney Downleesh, lowering her voice, ‘and Rory and his new wife.’

    ‘What ghost?’ I whispered nervously to Calen.

    Calen laughed. ‘Oh, it’s nothing. There was a Downleesh younger son a couple of centuries ago, who fell in love with his elder brother’s wife. The wife evidently had a soft spot for him as well. One night, when her husband was away, she invited the younger brother into her bedroom. He was just hot-footing along the West Tower where she was sleeping (all tarted up in his white dressing-gown), when the husband came back, and picking a dirk off the wall, he stabbed him. The younger brother is supposed to stalk the passage when there’s a full moon, trying to avenge himself through all eternity for not getting his oats.’

    ‘How creepy,’ I said with a shiver.

    ‘I’ll take care of you,’ said Calen, putting his hand on my thigh and encountering bare flesh.

    ‘Christ,’ he said.

    ‘My only pair of tights split,’ I said.

    Finn Maclean pretended not to notice. Calen filled my glass over and over again.

    Eventually we finished dinner and the ball began. The host and hostess stood at the edge of the long gallery welcoming latecomers. Every time the front door opened you could feel a blast of icy air from outside. It was terribly cold in these big houses. The only way to keep warm was to stand near one of the huge log firesthat were burning in each room, then two minutes later you were bright scarlet in the face. I could see exactly why Burns said his love was like a red, red rose.

    Rory came up to me. ‘What was Finn Maclean talking to you about?’ he said suspiciously.

    ‘He was stressing the importance of getting one’s teeth into something,’ I said.

    ‘If he got his teeth into me, I’d go straight off and have a rabies jab,’ said Rory.

    ‘On with the dance,’ I said. ‘Let Emily be unconfined.’

    ‘Come on, Rory,’ said Diney Downleesh, coming over to us, ‘we need two more people to make up an eightsome over there.’

    We couldn’t really refuse.

    Dum-diddy Dum-diddy Dum-diddy-diddy-diddy went the accordions. The men gave strange, unearthly wails, like a train not stopping at a station. We circled to the left, we circled to the right.

    ‘Wrong way,’ hissed Rory, as we swung into the grand chain. When it was my turn in the middle, I made an even worse hash of it, setting to all the wrong people and doing U-turns instead of figures of eight, and whooping a lot. ‘For Christ’s sake stop capering around like the White Heather Club,’ said Rory under his breath. ‘Women don’t put their hands up, or click their fingers, or whoop.’

    The next dance, thank God, was an ordinary one. I danced it with Buster, who squeezed me so hard, I thought I’d shoot out of my dress like toothpaste.

    ‘Why don’t any of them look as though they’re enjoying themselves?’ I said.

    ‘You can never tell until they fall on the floor,’ said Buster.

    On the other side of the room Marina was dancing with Hamish. She looked so glowingly beautiful and he so yellow and old and decayed I was suddenly reminded of Mary Queen of Scots dancing and dancing her ancient husband into his grave.

    The evening wore on. I wasn’t short of partners. I danced every dance.

    A piper came on, well primed with whisky, and assaulted our ear-drums for a couple of reels. My reputation as a reel-wrecker was growing. I messed up Hamilton House and then the Duke and Duchess of Perth, and then the Sixteensome. On the surface I must have appeared rather like a loose horse in the National, potentially dangerous, thoroughly enjoying myself and quite out of control. But through a haze of alcohol and misery I was aware of two things, Rory’s complete indifference to my behaviour and Finn Maclean’s disapproval. Both made me behave even worse.

    I danced a great deal with Calen. I came into my own when they stopped doing those silly reels.

    ‘Did your wife dance professionally?’ I heard a disapproving dowager say to Rory, as I came off the floor after a gruelling Charleston. Calen and I went into the drawing-room for yet another drink. I put my glass down on a gleaming walnut table. When I picked it up two minutes later, there was a large ring on the table.

    ‘Oh God,’ I said, ‘how awful.’

    ‘Looks better that way,’ said Calen, ‘looks more lived in somehow.’ He led me back on to the floor. The music was slow and dreamy now.

    ‘You are the promised breath of springtime,’ sang Calen laying his handsome face against mine. I snuggled up against him for a few laps round the floor, and then I escaped to the loo. Big-boned girls stood around talking about Harrods and their coming-out dances. Really, I thought as I gazed in the mirror, I look very loose indeed. Tight dress, loose morals, I suppose.

    I wandered along the long gallery so I could watch the people on the floor. A double line of dancers were engaged with serious faces in executing a reel. Marina and Rory faced one another, expressionless. God they danced beautifully. I was reminded of Lochinvar again: So stately his form and so lovely her face That never a hall such a galliard did grace…

    And the brides - maidens whispered, ‘T’were better by far To have matched our fair cousin with young Lochinvar.’

    Oh dear, I thought in misery. In this case young Lochinvar seems to have missed the boat, arriving too late and finding his love married to Hamish.

    The dance ended. The couples clapped and spilled out into the hall. If only Rory would come and look for me. But it looked as though I’d have to wait for Ladies Excuse Me before I had a chance to dance with him again.

    I heard footsteps behind me. I felt two hands go round my waist, I turned hopefully, but it was Calen.

    ‘I’ve got a bottle,’ he said, ‘Let’s go and drink it somewhere more secluded.’ He dropped a kiss on to my shoulder and led me downstairs along a long passage into a conservatory.