Girl's Guide to Kissing Frogs (47 page)

Orlando looked at the cake, which was loaf-shaped and striped brown and yellow, resembling a giant bumblebee. ‘Usually sugar is death to my nervous system … I become insomniac and jittery … but perhaps I might risk—’

‘You vill not suffer ills from my
Mohnstriezel
.’ Fritz cut a slice and handed him a plate. ‘It is yeast sponge vith poppy seed and almond nuts and lemon peels. Wery, wery healzy.’

‘You’re certainly an advertisement for your own cooking.’ Orlando took a bite, then widened his eyes as though in ecstasy before running them appreciatively over Fritz. ‘Mmmm. Marvellous!’

He made it clear that he included Fritz’s curves, sheathed in
a cream silk shirt, cravat and checked knee britches, in the compliment. Fritz’s cheeks and forehead turned the colour of a damask rose. Excitement crackled between the two men. I was pleased by this turn of events. Orlando was inspired to do his best work when fired by love.

We drank tea with slices of lemon poured from a silver teapot shaped like a swan into cups enamelled in crimson and azure.

‘If you’ve finished stuffing yourselves, we’ll start.’ Golly gulped down her tea. ‘No thank you, Fritz.’ She gave him a reproachful look as he offered her a slice of
Mohnstriezel
. ‘Some of us have better things to do than indulge our coarser appetites.’

Unaware that she had lunched extensively at Shottestone within the last hour, Fritz looked a little hurt. Golly strode to the piano and placed several sheets of manuscript on the music stand, then pressed the button of a portable tape recorder. ‘From Kayoko’s first entrance, Conrad. Bar thirty-eight. Yuki, tenor, has been wandering about under the cherry trees singing of the mysterious visitation of a
tanuki
, in Japanese lore a racoon with magic, shape-shifting powers. The
tanuki
has prophesied a fateful meeting beneath the blossom, during which his heart will be possessed by an image of beauty.’

Conrad went to the piano. ‘The racoon’s heart?’

‘Don’t pretend to be dense. Yuki’s, of course. You might give us the preceding twenty bars from where the key changes from six flats to seven sharps and the time to thirteen hemi-demisemi quavers.’

Conrad grimaced. ‘You have made it too easy.’

Orlando brushed crumbs from his fingers and went to stand in front of the open window, one hand on his hip, the other extended above his head, while he considered. ‘Marigold, darling, we’ll just walk through a few ideas. Begin by folding yourself up as small as you can, as if you were no bigger than the head of an opium poppy.’

Conrad crouched over the piano, his brows a black V of intense concentration, while his flashing fingers produced a
violent cacophony of tinkling punctuated by crashes, as though a panic-stricken mouse were running up and down the keyboard and he was trying to hit it with a hammer.

I did my best to impersonate a tiny seed head, encumbered as I was by a flared woollen skirt and a thick jersey.

‘Now, skim, skim, skim to centre stage, now
glissade,
assemblé, bourrée and jeté
… let’s try an adagio
enchaînement
, as though you’re half this fellow’s imagination, half a visitation from a spirit world …’

Orlando got more and more excited thinking up things for me to do, and Golly from time to time said, ‘Yes!’ ‘Lovely!’ ‘Just right!’ or ‘Too expansive!’ ‘Too sexy!’ ‘Too European!’ And several times they argued furiously, which gave Conrad and me a chance to rest.

‘I want Kayoko to dance like a drifting petal, blown hither and thither by the wind!’ cried Golly. ‘Then as Yuki tries to take her in his arms she spins until her body is a blur, before melting into invisibility.’

‘You don’t want much,’ said Orlando crossly. ‘If she spins to a blur she’ll probably have to be carted straight to hospital and I can’t make her invisible. She could dodge behind a tree, perhaps. Besides, petals don’t melt. They go brown and rot. You mean a snowflake.’

‘I mean a petal.’ Golly put on her stubborn look, lower lip thrust out, eyes glaring. ‘And this one melts. There is nothing predictable about my opera—’

‘If it comes to that, cherry blossom in Japan is about as trite as it gets!’

Conrad and I went to sit by the fire. We watched the rain pelting the terrace with bursting drops the size of marbles, while Golly and Orlando shouted and shook their fists in what Conrad said was an entertaining synergy between man and nature. Siggy, heavy with grass and cake crumbs, sat on my knee. I was not at all perturbed by the quarrelling, as that kind of thing went on all the time at the LBC. An artistic vision is nothing less
than a divine revelation to its conceiver and any attempt to tamper with its perfection is bound to be resented.

By suppertime we had sketched out the first dance sequence. Orlando was trembling with exhaustion, convinced he had a temperature and was possibly coming down with a chill. Conrad and I were in not much better condition. Though I had not danced ‘full out’, every centimetre of my body had been punished and was complaining about it. I kept a smile on my face and forbore to massage any part of me in case anyone should think I wasn’t up to it. At least my left foot had responded to my instructions and hurt as much or as little as the right one. But that afternoon I had danced in bare feet. It might be different when I went up on
pointe
.

When Isobel, who was expected for supper, did not appear, I felt it necessary to apologize to Conrad.

‘I’m afraid it’s because she’s angry with me. Or she doesn’t want to leave Rafe on his own.’

‘Do not worry. She had the choice whether to come or not. And she would not have liked to find us too fatigued to entertain her.’

Supper was restorative, a goose stuffed with apples and prunes followed by souffléd pancakes filled with jam and sprinkled with icing sugar. I exercised great restraint and only ate half mine. Golly lit a pipe and blew tarry smoke all over me, which was a helpful appetite suppressant. She had lost her voice with so much shouting, and Orlando said he was too enervated to talk, so it was a peaceful evening.

I left Siggy in his warm basket in the kitchen and put on my coat to be driven home by Fritz. I kissed Golly and Orlando goodnight, but when I approached Conrad he put up a warning hand.

‘I am certain that being a sentimental Englishwoman you have been kissing that rabbit and I have no desire to contract a plague.’

‘Surely not?’ Orlando looked alarmed. ‘Isn’t that a mediaeval disease?’

‘By no means. It no longer kills whole cities, but each year on average there are some two thousand cases reported. It can never be eradicated because the bacillus lives on healthy rodents and it is spread by ticks and fleas.’

Orlando covered his mouth with his mauve lace scarf and looked at Conrad with large, fearful eyes. ‘What are the symptoms?’

Conrad smiled chillingly. ‘Fevers, headaches, swollen glands.’

Orlando shuddered. ‘Golly, take me home immediately, if you will be so good. I must go straight to bed with a hot-water bottle.’

‘Don’t own such a thing,’ she croaked. ‘Unhealthy to be too warm. Saps one’s vitality. I like a good breeze through the house, don’t believe in central heating.’ Orlando’s expression changed from alarmed to appalled. Golly grabbed his arm and hissed, ‘Come on, you poor old stretcher case, let’s get the wind in our hair.’

As I got into the passenger seat of the comfortable Bentley, I caught a glimpse of Orlando beside Golly in the little yellow car, his mouth open in a scream as they scorched out of the courtyard towards the bridge, her headlamps sweeping the dramatic façade of Hindleep like searchlights.

‘A beautiful night,’ said Fritz as we wound down the hill. ‘Stars among ze clouds and ze moon trying to out itself.’

‘Lovely,’ I said, keeping my eyes tightly closed.

‘You haf Orlando known long time?’

‘For about five years, but never particularly well.’

‘Ah. But vat a woyage it might be to discover his insides! He is a genius!’

All the way to Dumbola Lodge I did my best to answer Fritz’s questions about Orlando. He dropped me at the door and drove away in a state of giddy infatuation. I let myself in quietly, hoping to slip upstairs, but the study door was open and a band of light fell across the hall. I started to tiptoe towards the stairs, leaping in fright as the longcase clock began
to chime. A figure appeared in the doorway, the light behind him turning the tips of his red hair to fire and throwing his face into shadow.

‘Where the hell have you been?’

‘It’s so kind of you to let me stay.’

Conrad, Fritz and I were having a leisurely breakfast of fried eggs, toast and coffee at Hindleep. I looked longingly at the homemade apricot jam, glistening copper-coloured hemispheres floating in amber syrup, but now I was a dancer again I had to eat like one. A brand-new Aga, installed during the time of plenty, took the chill from the morning mist that crept in through the open French windows. Siggy was hopping about on the terrace in the company of a pair of blackbirds who were eating the crumbs Fritz had thrown out for them.

Conrad poured himself another cup of coffee. ‘Not especially kind.’ He was holding a book in front of his face to indicate that he was not in the mood for conversation. It was dark green, much worn, and sticking out of the pages were pieces of paper covered with Conrad’s writing. The title alone –
Treatise on the
Emendation of the Intellect
by Benedict de Spinoza – was enough to crush me with a sense of my own ignorance. He looked at me over the top of it. ‘We were hardly in a position to refuse.’

‘You might have told me to go away. Or driven me to the nearest hotel.’

‘As to the first, what sort of man refuses shelter to a young woman boltered with blood and mud and palpitating with fear,
who knocks on his door in the middle of the night? As to the second, we were in our dressing gowns and it would have been inconvenient, to say the least.’

Considering how exhausted Conrad must have been after his
tour de force
of piano playing, I thought he had been remarkably good humoured when I returned to Hindleep after midnight, unannounced and uninvited. I had certainly been a good deal upset. The friendly daytime wood of purling waters and leafy glades was altogether unlike its night-time persona of bogs, impenetrable thickets, screeches, howls and sinister black shapes. The rain had fallen in vicious spurts, brambles and thorn bushes had torn at my limbs and every step of the way I had imagined my father’s hand hovering just inches from my shoulder, the knife blade and his spectacles flashing in dribbles of moonlight.

My appearance had been undeniably repulsive. In wiping raindrops from my eyes I had smeared blood from scratched hands over my forehead, cheeks and chin. Fritz and Conrad had taken it in turns to pump enough water from the spring so I could have a bath. There were no spare bedrooms in a habitable state, so I had slept in great comfort on one of the divans by the fire. It had been nearly two o’clock before any of us could close our eyes.

‘Vat time your father go out so ve fetch ze closes and ze toozbrush?’ asked Fritz.

‘Let’s wait until half-past nine to be sure.’

The idea of meeting my father again terrified me. When he had demanded to know where the hell I had been, I had answered with as much calm dignity as I could muster that I had spent the evening at Hindleep and was now going to bed. I had tried to walk past him, but he had beaten me to the foot of the stairs, gripping the banister knob with one hand and putting the other against the wall to bar my path.

‘What sort of time do you call this?’

‘I call it eleven o’clock.’

‘Exactly. I’ve been home since six and I’ve had nothing to eat.’

‘I didn’t know you wanted me to make supper for you. I never have before.’

‘Because your mother’s always done it.’ He smiled unpleasantly. ‘Now she’s romancing a syphilitic gypsy she hasn’t time.’

‘Couldn’t you have had baked beans or something?’

He sighed as though weary, and dropped his hands to crack his fingers. ‘I’ve spent a large part of today at the hospital trying to repair the sickly bodies of the brutish, the ignorant and the villainous. And though tomorrow’s Sunday, I’m on call because Chatterji has had some sort of nervous breakdown. I can’t get a locum until Wednesday, but that won’t stop the lumpenproletariat sticking foreign objects in their orifices and having lumpenproletariat babies. You, I can safely assume, have done nothing that might by the greatest stretch of imagination be called useful. Besides, there aren’t any baked beans. I found half a loaf of stale bread, a piece of brick-hard cheese and a tin of palm hearts, whatever they may be.’

Dimpsie and I had eaten the larder bare but we had not managed to find a use for the latter.

‘I didn’t realize you expected me to be your housekeeper.’

‘You live here, don’t you? Surely even you, self-absorbed and narcissistic though you’ve always been, can appreciate that some contribution is due?’

I considered returning insult for insult. There were plenty that his recent behaviour merited, but I was as tired as I ever remembered being and my mind seemed to drop into bottom gear. The telephone began to ring.

‘Answer it.’ He jerked his thumb at the softly warbling instrument. ‘Say I’m out on a call. Write down the name, number and any coherent symptoms.’

I picked up the receiver. ‘Dr Savage’s residence.’

‘Who’s that?’ The voice was female, middle-class, crisp.

‘This is Dr Savage’s receptionist.’

‘Oh yes – his daughter. I remember. I want to speak to him.’

‘He’s out on a call. If you’ll give me your name and number I’ll get him to—’

‘This is Marcia Dane speaking. He’s there, isn’t he? Tell him he’s got to speak to me.’

‘Mar-cia D-ane,’ I said slowly for my father’s benefit, pretending I was writing it down. ‘Is it an emergency?’ I turned to look at him. He shook his head emphatically.

‘Yes, it
is
a bloody emergency!’ Marcia’s voice became loud and angry. ‘I want to speak to him
now!
’

‘If you’d like to tell me what’s wrong I could perhaps make you a priority—’

‘What’s wrong is that he’s a cold-hearted
monster!
I’ve given him everything –
everything!
– and now he thinks he’s going to walk away because he’s bored.
Bored!
He’s taken what he wanted and now he discards me like an old glove.’ I could not help thinking of Conrad then. ‘He’s a shit of the first water!’

‘In that case,’ I said sweetly as she paused to draw breath, ‘you must be two of a kind. I’ll tell him the old glove rang, shall I?’

This was not at all nice of me, but she had made Dimpsie so unhappy. From the other end came a sound as though the receiver had bounced on its rest.

I gave Tom my most despising stare. ‘I take it if Vanessa Trumball calls you don’t want to speak to her either?’

He shrugged. ‘I doubt if Vanessa’s capable of making a phone call. And you needn’t glare at me like that. She was unstable long before I had anything to do with her.’

‘Then perhaps you ought to have left her alone.’

‘Women are masochists. They find it exciting to be treated badly. It was what she wanted. After all, you’ve engaged yourself to that stuffed shirt who’s going to put a collar and lead on you and try to turn you into his mother. How masochistic is that?’

I congratulated myself for recognizing that the introduction
of Rafe to the conversation was a diversionary tactic. ‘Do you always give people what they want? Your wife, for example?’

‘What business is it of yours?’

‘It’s my business because I love her. Anything that wounds her, wounds me.’

I could hardly believe that for once I was managing to keep my emotions at a steady simmer rather than a rolling boil. Usually I lost my temper immediately and threw away the argument. It was annoying to be interrupted by another discreet trill from the telephone.

‘Answer it. If it’s Marcia again, just put the receiver down.’

‘Hello? Dr Savage’s residence.’

‘Marigold!’ I recognized the voice immediately. ‘Where the hell have you been?’

‘Hello, Isobel. I’ve been at Hindleep. We expected you.’ I turned to look at Tom but he had gone.

‘Well, I call that pretty damn cool! Rafe says you’ve broken off your engagement. He’s miserable, poor darling. Absolutely wretched. And he’s got one of his heads. Naturally you’ve been out enjoying yourself. I’m surprised you didn’t throw a party.’

‘But it was as much Rafe’s decision as mine to break it off. In fact he was much angrier with me than I was with him. It’s terribly upsetting for everyone, I do realize—’

‘What a
fool
you are!’

‘Look, it’s late and I’m shattered. Can’t we talk about it tomorrow?’

‘I want to talk about it now.’

I sat down in my father’s armchair and waited.

‘Are you there? Marigold?’

‘Yes. I’m here. What do you want to say?’

‘You
know
Rafe’s been ill … depressed. But you seem to think it’s all just a game … don’t you realize, you stupid girl, that you may be responsible for driving him over the edge?’

It was the third time that day that I had had to listen to harsh criticism of my intelligence and behaviour. But I stifled
my resentment, reminding myself that she felt about Rafe as a mother hen feels about its only chick, and that this was one of her most likeable traits. Besides, though I had tried to dismiss them, my father’s taunts had, as usual, burned themselves into my brain like a pokerwork motto. Why, disliking him as I did, should it matter what he thought of me? Probably it was something best left in the turbid deeps of my subconscious. But if I really was a self-centred narcissist, I no doubt deserved the reproaches that these days rained upon me from all sides.

‘You didn’t see him just after he left the hospital,’ Isobel continued. ‘When he first came home he couldn’t eat … he had a permanent migraine. No one else knows this, but several times he actually cried.’

I understood from the quivering intensity in her voice that in Isobel’s world men only cried when absolutely at the limit of endurance, as when standing in the dawn light before a firing squad and perhaps not even then. In my world men wept like babies because they had been given an unflattering wig to wear.

‘If he gets into that state again I’ll blame
you
. Everyone will blame you. They’ll all hate you and I’ll hate you more than anyone. You shouldn’t have said you’d dance in Golly’s ridiculous opera. You’re supposed to be getting married, not prancing about on stage so people can say how clever you are.’

‘That isn’t why …’ I stopped, knowing it was useless to try to explain why one might want to dance to someone who had never felt the least inclination. ‘It isn’t only the dancing. I’m terribly fond of Rafe but we aren’t enough alike to be happy living together. This isn’t our first row. We started disagreeing almost from the beginning only I so wanted to make it work … I’ve always thought he was so marvellous and I was flattered when he asked me and I wanted to help …’

‘I don’t believe that. I suppose it was the money. Or did you fancy being mistress of Shottestone?’ Her voice became yet more sneering. ‘Quite a step up for the local doctor’s daughter, wasn’t it?’ I screwed up my eyes tightly and gritted my teeth to prevent
myself from crying out in protest. ‘But you’re not prepared to give anything in exchange. You want to have your cake and eat it, you bloody selfish bitch! He’s much too good for you!’

‘Yes,’ I felt tears of tiredness and mortification sting my eyes, ‘I’m sure he is.’

‘Is that all you can say? What about everything my family’s done for you? Don’t you think you owe Mummy something?’

A horrible smell of burning milk drifted into the study. My father had resorted to self-catering in his hour of need.

‘I’ll always be grateful to Evelyn, but that doesn’t mean it would be right to marry Rafe. I don’t fit his ideas of what a wife should be. He wants someone who can strike awe into the hearts of the lower orders and put the screws on bolshie committee members and shine all the other women down. I’m not up to it.’

‘Mummy can teach you. And you bloody well
owe
it to her. You talk about being grateful, but it’s time you knew exactly how fucking much she’s done for you.’

‘What d’you mean?’

Isobel laughed scornfully. ‘I tried to make Tom tell you ages ago but he said he’d promised Mummy he wouldn’t. Well, I promised too but I don’t
care
. When Miss Fisher said you ought to go to Brackenbury House, your father said he’d no intention of bankrupting himself for the sake of an adolescent craze. Mummy tried every argument she could think of to get him to change his mind, but he wouldn’t so she decided she’d pay for you to go. I overheard her arguing with Daddy about it, that’s how I knew. He thought it was an unnecessary expense but it was her money, all those vulgar cotton mills. She said she couldn’t bear to see talent go to waste and as far as she was concerned it was the same as giving money to orphans in Africa only much more likely to get a result. She made me swear that I’d never tell you because it would put you under such an obligation. Mummy’s a silly snobbish cow most of the time, but she has her finer moments. And she’s always loved you.’ Isobel paused
as though expecting me to say something but I was dumbstruck. Isobel’s voice buzzed in my ear like a furious wasp. ‘Now you know, perhaps you’ll feel differently about wrecking Rafe’s happiness for the sake of your pathetic little ego.’

I registered the loathing patent in Isobel’s voice but for once I was indifferent. Evelyn had paid for me to go to ballet school. I repeated the words to myself two or three times in an attempt to make proper sense of them. The burden of guilt I had carried because my parents had gone without quite modest comforts so that I might become a dancer rolled from my shoulders. Throughout my seven years of training I had been uncomfortably aware that my fees had been responsible for the inadequate food and heating, the ancient Hillman my father drove, the black moods when bills came, the lack of holidays, the fact that each year the already shabby house grew shabbier. And I could only guess how much my sister Kate had suffered, believing herself to be the less favoured child. It would not be an exaggeration to say that her envy had destroyed our relationship. I had accepted her hostility as my due. Now I felt liberated. But only for a moment.

‘Marigold? Why don’t you say something? Come on, you must have suspected!’

I had nothing to say. I had never for a moment had even an inkling of the truth. Evelyn was responsible for me being who and what I was, a dancer first and last – of that I was sure now – and she had done it out of simple generosity. There had been no calculation in it, no hope of repayment, just a desire to help me realize my ambition. Now, like Christian, I was compelled to take up my burden once more, but the load had shifted. It was some slight relief to know that the Prestons had not needed to make any material sacrifices to support my career. But one’s parents are to a greater or lesser extent obliged to put their hands in their pockets for their children. Evelyn had chosen to do so out of the goodness of her heart and my debt therefore was doubled, quadrupled, tenfold – a hundredfold.