The Girl from the Paradise Ballroom (17 page)

On the evening of her birthday party Olivia sat before the glass examining her face for signs of age. She had the sense that thousands of women had done this over the years, and thousands would do it in the future, tracing the creased circlets about their necks, eyeing the first silver threads at their temples. She felt a flicker of pity for those vain battalions of women. Beauty is our currency, she thought, how would we—how will we—live without it?

The costume she was wearing had been designed by Dickie. It was green, to give her the air of a mermaid, with a fishtail hem and a slit skirt so that she could dance. Dickie loved watching Olivia dance; he said that it reminded him of Katya. Downstairs, the Bedford Square house and garden had been transformed. The hallway had been hung with swathes of colored silk, like a caliph's tent, while outside there were red and gold Chinese lanterns swaying upon the trees. They could be glimpsed through the windows, as though out of doors the tales of the Arabian nights were slowly, enticingly unfolding. Olivia could hear the musicians tuning their instruments, jagged runs and swells rising up the stairs. And there is a surprise, Dickie had said. No, I won't tell you. It's a secret.

Olivia reached for her vast powder puff. She looked paler than ever tonight, her skin white and luminous. And it is two months, one week and four days, she thought, since my husband last made love to me.

In the beginning Olivia had not noticed Bernard's waning enthusiasm for sex. She was too worried about her own body, waiting to see if this month she would bleed. Little by little, though, she realized that her husband had altered. When he made love to her he went about it briskly, no longer kissing her breasts or running his tongue along her thigh, no longer gasping
I love you
as he reached orgasm. Then he began to avoid her. He would stay out late, not returning until one, two in the morning when he could be sure that she was asleep. Even when he was at home he would sit till midnight reading or preparing papers for one of his committees, frowning by lamplight over his desk. You go to bed, my darling, he would say, when Olivia knocked on the door. I'll be with you in a minute or two. Ten minutes at the most.

Olivia touched one of the silver hairs at her temple. It seemed coarser than the rest, as though it had achieved strength by sacrificing color. She knew she ought to speak to Bernard but she had no idea how to do it. When she tried, her mind went blank, and underneath that blankness was a terrible fear. What would she find, if she lifted the stone slab of Bernard's indifference?

Just as she thought this the door opened and Bernard came in. Dickie had designed his costume too: Neptune, to accompany Olivia's mermaid. He wore a pair of wide Turkish trousers, which like Olivia's were encrusted with sequins to resemble fish scales, and a loose robe of green gauze. It revealed half his chest, his hair fair and curling like the golden fleece. On his head there was a verdigris coronet, in which he looked handsome but sheepish.

“I've left my trident on the landing,” he said, with a smile. “We should go downstairs. People have started arriving. Dickie and my mother are holding the fort.”

Olivia sprayed perfume along the arc of her throat. It was a spicy, rather masculine perfume that Dickie had helped her to choose. Bernard had never told her whether he liked it or not.

“Your mother's here already, then?”

“Yes. I asked her to come early, in case we needed her to play hostess.” Bernard watched as she rose from the brocaded stool. “You look beautiful.”

“It isn't very comfortable,” said Olivia. “And I'm cold.”

“Well, pride must suffer pain. You'll soon get warm downstairs.” Bernard hitched up his green gauze robe and took her hand. “Besides, it's authentic. Mermaids are meant to be cold-blooded, aren't they? That's why they find it so easy to lure men to their doom.”

“Just as I lured you,” said Olivia. She said it teasingly, before she could stop herself. Bernard did not hear, though, or else he decided to take no notice of the remark, because he turned his head aside, tucked her arm beneath his and led her toward the stairs.

In the drawing
room Dickie was holding court. He had dressed himself as a Persian caliph, in a grandiose outfit filched from an ancient production of James Elroy Flecker's
Hassan
. It smelled strongly of mothballs when you got close to him. On the mosaic table before him was a hookah, the water bubbling as he drew upon the pipe. The costumes of the party guests were less coherent. Some wore Harlequin and Columbine outfits, others Venetian masks. Most of the women had made a token gesture to the party's theme, with marabou on their frocks or silken turbans wound about their heads, but several of the men had made no effort at all, and wore their accustomed evening dress, or rumpled corduroys. Beside the piano a cluster of musicians was playing “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.”

“Perfect,” said Dickie, when he saw Olivia and Bernard. Bernard had collected his trident—verdigris like his coronet, wound with a green satin ribbon to resemble seaweed—and was brandishing it with his free hand. “Who says that the things you imagine cannot be achieved? I am not disappointed in you
at all
.”

“What is my surprise?” Olivia said. “I'm longing to know.”

Dickie patted her cold hand fondly. “Possess your soul in patience, my sweet. It won't be much longer. Bernard, come and talk to Charles Connor. My friend from the BBC.”

Olivia, left alone, looked around the room. It might have been her party, but she scarcely knew anybody, and those she did know she did not much like. She had a sudden desire to see Jeanie strut through the door, with her cheap scent and her crimped hair, flagrantly eyeing up the men. That would rattle them, thought Olivia with bleak glee. A photographer was prowling the room, his flashbulbs popping at unexpected moments. In the corner she could see Konrad Fischer in eighteenth-century knee breeches, talking to a man from one of Bernard's refugee associations. Beside him Penelope Rodway was pirouetting happily, a cigarette in one hand, a glass of champagne in the other. She wore a gold lamé gown that revealed her crumpled cleavage. She was supposed to be Cleopatra, but she had turned up her nose at the heavy horsehair wig Dickie had provided. Don't be ridiculous, she had said, I'm not going to put on that smelly old thing. Not when I've spent a fortune at the hairdresser's.

“Oh, that is quite the wrong idea,” she was saying to a solemn young man in a Fair Isle sweater. “I don't care what the fashion is, there is no place for politics in poetry. It makes everything so ugly. Give me Keats or Shelley any day.”

“But Shelley was a revolutionary, you know,” the solemn young man broke in. “A democrat at a time when democracy was as maligned as Bolshevism is today…”

Penelope's eyes glazed over; in a moment she would look around for someone else to talk to. Olivia, afraid it might be her, ducked from the room with a vague unhappy plan of going into the garden. She had reached the top of the stairs when she saw Antonio Trombetta ascending. There was a bright, deliberate expression on his face. It was the expression of one who has to give pleasure at all times, who does not dare show sullenness or boredom; Olivia recognized it from her own reflection.

“Your costume is very beautiful, Mrs. Rodway,” he said, looking at her gravely.

“Thank you,” Olivia said, and then, on impulse: “You are right, it is beautiful but—well, I worked as a dressmaker when I was a girl. All I can think of is how sewing sequins hurts your fingers. So much pricking and scratching. Mine feel sore just to look at this dress.”

A smile crossed Antonio's mouth. “It is like that after a day selling sweets in our kiosk. Sometimes I think I will never get the smell of coins from my hands.”

“Olivia?” It was Dickie, plump and splendid in his Persian robes. “You're the guest of honor, you can't run off like that.” He positioned her by the balcony, pooling her green mermaid's train at her feet. Then he glanced at Herr Fischer, who flicked aside the tails of his blue brocade coat and sat at the piano.

“Antonio?” said Dickie. “Where are you? 'Tis time, descend, be stone no more, approach.”

Antonio stood in the glossy curve of the piano. He tilted his head toward Olivia; then, as Herr Fischer struck up the rich opening chords, he squared his shoulders to sing.

“
Oh, she doth teach the torches to burn bright…
” The moment he opened his lips the air in the room seemed to alter. It resonated with his voice, and with the sudden rapt attention of his listeners. Olivia looked for Bernard. Surely he should be at her side for this performance, her devoted husband? He was on the far side of the room, though, next to Penelope, who murmured in his ear from time to time. He did not turn his eyes in her direction at all.

“Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear…”

At the piano Herr Fischer played a fading tremolo, and the song ended. There was a moment of silence before the applause began. The photographer's flashbulb burst pale and fierce as lightning, capturing Antonio. Then he and Herr Fischer were engulfed by a surge of people: Bernard, Penelope, Charles the BBC man.

“That was your surprise.” Dickie's round face glowed with the heat of the room. “Herr Fischer composed it, of course, but I chose the text.”

“Oh,” said Olivia, “I thought it might have been Bernard.”

Dickie pouted, caught between duty to his nephew and the urge to claim credit. “Well, I chose it
for
Bernard.
Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight!
We've been rehearsing it for days. Over in Chelsea, so you did not find out. You did like it, darling, didn't you?”

“It was wonderful,” said Olivia, who realized that she had hardly listened to the song. She had been too busy watching Bernard, waiting to see if he would look at her.

“Listen, my angel, I have to buttonhole Charles Connor. I'm hoping he'll find a nice little spot on the radio for our musical friends.” Dickie kissed Olivia on the cheek. “You enjoy your party, darling.”

For the next
hour or two Olivia drifted like a green-clad ghost about her own house, trying not to drink too much, dipping in and out of conversations she did not understand, or which did not amend themselves to include her. It was nearly midnight when Dickie came bustling toward her once more. The band had begun Ravel's
Bolero,
played as a tango.

“Olivia, my sweet, you have to dance, you haven't danced all evening.”

“But I can't interrupt Bernard. He hates it when I interrupt him.”

Bernard, clutching his incongruous gauze robe, was surrounded by a group of eager, talkative young men. He was holding forth on the threat facing Poland from Hitler's lust for
Lebensraum
.

“Really, darling. By what law are you obliged to dance with your husband? Look, Antonio's still here. He'll dance with you, won't you, Antonio?”

Antonio had been a huge success at the party. All evening he had been surrounded by women, flirting, gazing, making excuses to touch his arm or squeeze his hand. What better way to demonstrate her own status, thought Olivia, than by dancing with him now?

“I do not know the tango very well,” said Antonio rather anxiously, as he took her arm.

“Don't worry.” Olivia gave his fingers a reassuring pinch. “I'll make sure you don't look foolish.”

In the center of the room she placed his palm upon her waist and threw back her head. At once the glorious skill of it returned to her, the way you could hint with your body, controlling the dance by a touch here, a twist there. “Good,” she murmured. “Now turn and look me in the eyes.
Good.
”

The floor had cleared. Everyone in the room was watching, Olivia knew, even Bernard. Especially Bernard. She curled her fingers about the nape of Antonio's neck. She could feel the place where his hair began, warm and soft.