Girl's Guide to Kissing Frogs (21 page)

Conrad looked at me with an expression that was chilling. ‘No, Miss Savage. I mean the kind that change into human form when the sun dips below the horizon in order to bite your neck and drink your blood and which can only be killed by a stake hammered through the heart.’

His black eyes widened slightly and seemed to pierce as effectively as any stake. I felt he was penetrating my mind and seeing
into my thoughts. If so, he must have been disappointed, for they immediately struck tents and decamped. I pulled myself together and asked, ‘Do you believe there really are such things?’

‘Don’t be absurd, darling,’ said Evelyn. ‘Conrad is teasing us.’

‘Oh, but am I? If there can be a lump of rock and iron populated by humans, elephants and ants speeding through dark matter and dark energy in an ever-expanding universe, I see no particular difficulty with believing in vampires.’

It was a good answer, but for the purposes of polite conversation rather stumping. I would have liked to ask how anyone could tell that the universe was expanding, but Spendlove came in to announce Mrs Hinchingbrook and Mr Shinn.

‘Sybil,
darling!
’ Evelyn went to embrace a tall woman clad in flowing draperies in misty greens and browns. She had longish grey hair, also flowing, and a pale face with small features set close together.

‘Evelyn! So kind of you to include us in your little party. Basil is just changing out of his driving shoes. I’m sorry we’re a bit late but I
had
to finish a painting for my exhibition. I do hope you’ll come. It’s at the Old Mill in Hexham. Hardly the most exciting of venues, but it’s one up on that ghastly little craft shop in Gaythwaite—’

‘You must meet my other guests.’

Evelyn marched Sybil up to Conrad and Fritz. I missed the introductions because Basil Shinn came into the drawing room just then. I saw at once that he would not ‘do’ for Isobel. He had a curious high-stepping gait which drew attention immediately to his elegant brown and white co-respondent shoes. He was thin like his sister, but where she flowed he was angular. As befitted a man of books, his dress was carefully negligent and his white hair had been rinsed to an interesting shade of purple. Nature had saved him the trouble of dying his nose which was purple also.

‘A party!’ Basil clapped his hands, which looked a little blue.
‘Such heaven! How sweet of you to invite me! Sybil and I were getting just the teeniest bit fatigued with each other.’

Basil shook my hand without the smallest sign of interest, but appeared galvanized by Fritz and at once asked him where he had got his
delic
ious accent. Rafe was drawn into a painting conversation with Sybil and Evelyn darted out to check that Spendlove had remembered to build up the dining-room fire. That left Conrad and me.

‘What’s dark matter?’ I asked.

He looked at me with a question in his eyes. His hair was thick, black and shining and beautifully cut, coming into points just in front of his ears. ‘You are really interested?’

‘I’m not just being polite, if that’s what you mean.’

‘Well, please stop me if you find the explanation dull. You must first understand that objects in the universe can be seen with a telescope because they emit light waves.’ His skin was a marvellous shade of pale gold. ‘Or, in the case of a radio telescope, radio waves. Or their existence can be inferred by the effect they have on observable phenomena.’ His lower eyelids were full and curved, as though chiselled from marble by Michelangelo. ‘But there is a significant amount of matter, perhaps as much as ninety per cent, in the universe that we are unable to observe. This we call “dark”.’

I remembered that he had been reading the
New Scientist
on the train. I had a faint idea what he was talking about while his lips were actually moving – his upper lip was finely shaped, the lower was full and defined by a tuft of black hair beneath it which was separate from a short fringe of neatly trimmed beard on his jaw – but the difficulty was to keep hold of the information long enough to absorb it. He had marvellous cheekbones.

‘What do you mean by matter, exactly?’

Conrad must have realized then that he was talking to an idiot, but he did not allow this to register on his face or in his voice. ‘Matter is anything that takes up space. Atoms, molecules. You are matter.’

‘I’m afraid I’m awfully ignorant,’ I confessed humbly.

Conrad shrugged. ‘No one knows everything. Remember the first law of thermodynamics. Matter can neither be created nor destroyed.’

‘… neither created nor destroyed,’ I repeated.

He pushed back his cuff, held out his hand and spread his fingers, then turned it over so I could see there was nothing in it. Then he made a fist and opened his fingers in one rapid movement, like the opening and closing of a fan, to reveal a salted almond. ‘Matter,’ he repeated, ‘can neither be created –’ he folded up his fist again then showed me his empty palm – ‘nor destroyed. But it can be changed –’ again the fan-like dexterity – ‘from a gas to a liquid or from a liquid to a solid. Or in this case …’ He showed me a stuffed olive.

It was astonishing. I had watched most carefully and neither the nut nor the olive could have been hidden between his fingers or up his sleeve. ‘How did you do that?’

Conrad shrugged. ‘The art of prestidigitation is the first thing any amateur magician learns.’

He opened his mouth and threw in both the almond and the olive.

‘Do you
really
believe in vampires?’

‘No.’ Then his cold, rather severe face broke into a charming smile and his black eyes lit with amusement.

‘Dame Gloria Beauwhistle,’ announced Spendlove.

‘A thousand apologies, Mrs Preston.’ Dame Gloria came into the room at a run. ‘I wish I had as many excuses for being late but the truth is I overslept. I do my best work after midnight and my desk faces an east window, so the pleasure of staying up to see the dawn is one I can rarely resist.’ She did not look like the sensitive aesthete Evelyn had led us to expect. She was a big woman dressed in a brown boiler suit, the sort of thing men wear in inspection pits in garages. I guessed her age was somewhere between sixty and seventy. She shook Evelyn’s hand energetically. ‘I woke at half-past twelve, threw myself into my
car and came straight here.’ It was evident that she had not stopped to brush her hair. It was cut short and stuck up in browny-grey tufts like a newly hatched bird’s. ‘Luckily Butterbank – that’s the name of my little cottage – is on a hill so I can always get the car to start. I just give it a push and then run like stink and … Conrad! But how extraordinary, I thought you’d gone back to Germany.’ Dame Gloria strode towards him in her large brown boots, her arms held wide. ‘What joy!’ They embraced each other. ‘This is a marvellous surprise!’ she said to Evelyn. ‘Why, only the other day Conrad was at Butter—’

‘Yes,’ Conrad interrupted her, ‘I did go to Germany. But as you see I have returned.’

If Evelyn was put out to discover that her chief lion was apparently the best of chums with her arch enemy, she hid it admirably. ‘What a coincidence! I’d no idea you had friends in Northumberland.’

Dame Gloria whacked him on the back making him cough. ‘Oh, Conrad and I go back a long way, don’t we?’

He smiled. ‘We certainly do.’

‘We met at Heidelberg when I was visiting professor of music. Conrad was a student then. All the girls had crushes on him.’ She poked him in the chest. ‘Remember the one who used to sleep in the corridor outside your room and bite the legs of the other girls? With yellow plaits and enormous tits.’ Dame Gloria chortled. ‘You certainly made the most of your educational opportunities.’

‘Conrad is engaged to marry my daughter.’ Evelyn’s smile was a little wintery.

‘Conrad? Engaged?’ Dame Gloria looked at him, astonished. ‘But you never said anything … that is, ah-ha—’ She looked confused as Conrad gave a slight shake of his head. ‘I wish you all the best, naturally … engaged!’ Her eye went round the room, paused for a moment on Sybil, then travelled on to me. ‘And is this the young lady?’ Dame Gloria bounced
on her toes and swung her arms out from her sides. ‘Do introduce me.’

‘My daughter hasn’t come down yet,’ said Evelyn. ‘This is Marigold Savage, a friend of the family. Marigold is a ballerina.’

I was not actually entitled to be called a ballerina, as this means not just any female dancer but an exceptional one, usually the leading dancer of a company. But it was not the moment to clear up this common misunderstanding.

Dame Gloria’s grasp made my bones crack. ‘Hello, dear. I don’t know as much about ballet as I should, considering Stravinsky’s my hero.
The Firebird
,
Petrushka
and
The Rite
of Spring
are works of genius as everyone knows, but there are others,
Apollon Musagète
for example,
Les Noces
and
Agon
—’

Evelyn moved her firmly onward. A sprinkling of erudition had its place at her lunch parties, but it should not be so cumbrous as to exclude the uninitiated. ‘As you know Conrad, I presume you also know Fritz?’

‘Fritz, dear old thing, how are you? How’s the dissertation on the similes of Catullus going?’

Fritz smiled shyly and submitted to having his shoulders clapped and his ears pulled. Before Dame Gloria could be introduced to Sybil and Basil, Isobel made her entrance. Her dress, of black and gold stripes, was eye-catching. It was sleeveless, with a puffball skirt that came down to the tops of gleaming patent-leather boots. Her hair was fastened into a tight chignon, with a black feather tucked into the topknot like a squaw’s headdress.

‘Here you are at last, darling.’ Evelyn’s tone was disapproving. She had strict ideas on what was convenable for lunch in the country and they did not include feathers, shiny gold or false eyelashes. ‘You must go without a drink. Our guests must be faint with hunger.’

I thought Isobel’s appearance was wonderfully dramatic, but
I saw by two little white dints above his eyebrows that Rafe also seemed to dislike it. Perhaps he thought she ought not to court Conrad’s approval so plainly. As for Conrad himself, he looked as inscrutable as Providence.

Lunch was a success, largely thanks to Dame Gloria – Golly, as she insisted we call her – who ignored all the rules and entertained the whole table with stories of people she had met and things she had seen. She told us about her grandfather who had been a milkman. Her happiest memories were of accompanying him on his rounds with horse and cart. Golly had round brown eyes and round nostrils in a broad, upturned nose. In fact she reminded me of a cow. I don’t mean this disrespectfully as I have always liked cows. Her real name, she explained, was Gloria Toot, but her agent had been afraid that Toot’s First Clarinet Concerto would excite ridicule.

Golly described picnicking during the saffron season in Kashmir on a sea of purple crocuses with not a fingerbreadth between them, of seeing a bearded lady being shot out of a cannon in Romania, of meeting Sophia Loren in a cloakroom at Bologna railway station. Basil, perhaps feeling that he was being outshone, told an amusing little story about diving into the sea to rescue a pretty young lady’s dog and being struck by cramp after only a few yards. He had been rescued and given mouth-to-mouth resuscitation by a burly fisherman. When he came to, he found the pretty young lady kneeling by his side in tears while the dog ran heartlessly up and down the strand barking at gulls. Evelyn was in for a big disappointment if she believed that there was a chance that Isobel might transfer her love from Conrad to Basil. I was quite certain that the kisses of the burly fisherman were more to his taste than the tears of the pretty young lady.

Golly was a hearty eater. She cut everything that was placed before her into bite-sized pieces, then shovelled it down with a spoon. She addressed Spendlove as ‘old boy’ and leaned back in her chair to ask his opinion on the subject being
discussed. Mindful of Evelyn’s sharp eye upon him, he replied each time, ‘I really couldn’t say, Madam,’ but I got the impression he rather liked being consulted by a dame of the British Empire.

After Golly had finished the last of the rhubarb tart, she leaned back in her chair, patted her stomach and gave several deep whooping belches like a ship steaming through the English Channel on a foggy day. Sybil and Basil exchanged shocked glances. Rafe confined his reaction to a lifted eyebrow. Conrad was looking at Isobel who was giggling. Evelyn affected deafness and summoned the cheese.

The only impediment to thorough enjoyment of a fascinating lunch was that, thanks to the blazing fire and two fan heaters, the temperature of the dining room was tropical. I saw Conrad and Fritz pulling at their shirt collars. By the pudding course I could bear it no longer and took off my fur-lined velvet jacket. I caught Evelyn’s eye. She looked surprised to see me at the lunch table with naked shoulders and a bodice embroidered with silver thread and liberally scattered with sequins. When Golly dipped her napkin into the water jug and mopped her forehead with it, Evelyn gave Spendlove orders to remove the heaters.

‘I must say, Mrs Preston, you’re a first-class cook!’ Golly threw herself back in her chair and undid the middle button of her boiler suit. ‘That was top-hole! Well, Conrad,’ she grinned across the table at him, exposing food-encrusted fangs, ‘I’m looking for a subject for my new opera. What do you say to a little jaunt somewhere to spark off a few ideas? China, perhaps? Or the Azores?’

‘I have no plans to leave Northumberland at present,’ said Conrad. ‘Yesterday I bought a house here. And I think it will take much of my time.’

‘Conrad!’ Isobel looked excited. ‘You didn’t tell me!’

Evelyn’s curiosity overrode her intention to be distant and unfriendly. ‘Surely you haven’t bought Shawcross Hall? Really,
Conrad, I think you should reconsider, the proportions are very bad—’

‘No,’ Conrad interrupted her, ‘I have not bought Shawcross Hall. But I doubt if you will think better of my choice. I have bought Hindleep House.’

‘You’re kidding! You
can’t
have! It’s madness!’ said Golly, Isobel and Rafe respectively.