Girl's Guide to Kissing Frogs (51 page)

I ran into the courtyard and took the steps two at a time. I dreaded to find myself locked out, but the great iron ring turned under my hand.

‘Where have you been?’ Conrad stood back to let me in. ‘I was on the point of going out to see what had become of you.’

He surveyed me critically. ‘You seem to make a habit of impersonating
Die Schwarzen Buben
. In English
The Inky Boys
. It is a moral fable for children by Heinrich Hoffman. Three naughty little boys make fun of a blackamoor. Saint Nicholas is so angry with them that he dips them in his inkstand so they are as black as crows themselves.’

I caught sight of myself in the mirror. I was a figure of fun. I burst into tears.

‘You must not be so sensitive,’ said Conrad calmly, handing me his handkerchief.

‘It was horrible …
horrible!
’ I sobbed. ‘I can’t get it out of my mind. I think I’m going mad.’

‘I perceive this is something worse than wounded vanity. You had better sit down and I will fetch you a drink.’

The drawing room was warm, candlelight glittered on the gold leaf, and Siggy lay sleeping next to an open book on one of the divans. I sat down facing the great windows. Orlando and Fritz were still talking on the balcony, their profiles gilded by a storm lantern. Moths drifted around them like sparks of fire. Conrad put a glass in my hand and sat down opposite me. He crossed one leg over the other and folded his hands. ‘Well?’

‘I’ve just seen … someone’s thrown herself off the bridge …’ I put my hands over my face in a futile attempt to shut the image out. ‘I saw … it was … oh God! … terrifying!’

‘Take some brandy. It will give you courage.’

I was afraid it would make me sick, but I had no strength to argue so I sipped obediently. ‘She did it because of my father – at least … no … they’d been lovers but he’d ended it. He says she was mad. Do you think you have to be mad to … do that?’

‘Finish that glass.’

‘I don’t think I should. I’ve got to dance tomorrow.’

‘Drink it! I shall speak to Fritz.’

He went onto the balcony. I heard them talking in German.

Fritz exclaimed in a distressed voice, then nodded and said
‘
Jawohl!
’ several times. He stood up. ‘Please to come now,’ he said to Orlando. ‘I vill take you home.’

‘Ta ta, Marigold.’ Orlando took a second look at me. ‘Is that a mud pack on your face? I find it’s the only thing for my eczema. But it must be volcanic …’

Conrad took his arm and conducted him into the hall. The brandy had stopped me shivering but my body ached with tension. Siggy roused himself enough to climb onto my knee, which was comforting. I heard a murmur of voices before Conrad returned alone. ‘I want you to tell me everything that happened.’ He refilled my glass and poured one for himself.

‘I don’t know if I can bear to—’

‘Everything.’

I was unable to prevent myself from weeping again as I described what had taken place, but the more I talked the easier it became. ‘He tried to save her … honestly he did … that’s what he does for a living. Save people. I don’t know … perhaps I’ve been a bit unfair … I’ve always taken my mother’s side, you see.’

‘Isobel has told me he is a man misunderstood.’

‘It’s all very well for Isobel to stick up for him,’ I said rather fiercely. ‘I don’t suppose he’s ever chased her with a bread knife.’

‘With a bread knife? Really?’ Conrad filled my glass again which had become unaccountably empty. ‘So prosaic an instrument.’

‘I mustn’t have another glass. I’m beginning to feel most peculiar.’

‘Go on about your father.’

I did go on. In fact the whole sad story of our relationship came pouring out. I seemed unable to stop talking. The brandy tasted much less unpleasant now that my mouth and throat were numb. In fact I felt pretty numb all over. ‘So you see,’ I concluded, ‘he
was
to blame and he wasn’t … I hate him really … at least, most of the time I do … but now I feel sorry for him too … not as sorry as I feel for Vanessa, only
I didn’t know her and knowing someone is everything really, isn’t it?’

I dropped my head back to drain the last drops. When I sat up, Conrad had taken to swaying about and going in and out of focus.

‘Certainly it is.’ He filled my glass again.

‘No more, thank you. What ought I to do? About –’ I recalled her name with an effort – ‘Vanessa.’ Much to my surprise I hiccuped loudly. ‘Sorry.’

‘Nothing. Fritz has gone to the police. They will take care of everything. No doubt they will come here but you need not see them. You can say nothing that is useful.’

I blinked hard. The whole room seemed to be alight, the flames leaping up to the ceiling and then dwindling to pinpoints. ‘It’s so odd the way you keep coming very near and going very far away all the time.’ I giggled and then put the handkerchief, now as black as the Inky Boys, over my mouth. ‘What a ridiculous sound. Did I make that ridiculous sound?’

Conrad was smiling. ‘It was not I.’

‘Goodness! I thought I was laughing just then. But I’m never going to laugh again. I’m going to have to spend the rest of my life seeing her … hearing her …’

‘I don’t think so. It will do her no good and yourself harm. When my parents were killed, I thought I was bound to assume black garments and steep myself in woe for eternity. But the capacity for happiness that is in all of us renews itself so quickly it seems almost shocking.’

‘Oh, Conrad. I’m so sorry. I’d quite forgotten … forgotten … I’ve forgotten what I’d forgotten …’ As I struggled to remember, Siggy stirred in my lap, no doubt to remind me that I had stopped stroking him. ‘Do look at Siggy. Don’t you love it when he yawns and shows all his teeth?’

‘It is a delightful sight.’

‘He
is
a beautiful rabbit, isn’t he? Don’t you think he’s the most beautiful rabbit in all the world?’

‘Certainly. He looks perfectly charming.’

‘And you look perfectly charming, too. Do I look cherfectly parming?’ I was giggling hard now. It was undignified, which I deplored, but somehow I couldn’t help it.

‘Charming yes, but for perfection you need a cleaner face.’

‘I do like you, Conrad. So much.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Do you like me?’

‘Oh, very much.’

‘Really? As much as I like you?’

‘That I cannot answer, as I have no way of knowing your feelings.’

‘I like you as much as … as anybody in all the world. Better. Much better. Actually, I’m crazy about you!’

‘That is very nice for me.’ Conrad stood up. ‘Now I think you had better go to bed. Give me your glass and I will show you where Fritz has made your room.’

He seemed to tower above me. His face was so beautiful. He was like a god looking down from heaven. I tried to stand so I could put my arms round him, but my legs refused to obey my instructions.

‘I can’t get up. Do you think I’ve been paralysed?’ I began to roar with laughter. Siggy moved away, annoyed. ‘I’m never going to be able to dance again. Will you still like me if I can’t dance?’

‘It will make no difference. But you are not paralysed. Just drunk.’

‘Oh, no.’ I shook my head firmly. At least I thought I did but perhaps it was the room swinging from side to side. ‘I never get drunk. It’s bad for my body. Do you like my body?’

‘I like it very much. Now you must go to bed.’

‘And Siggy must come too. He always sleeps with me. Darling,
darling
Conrad, would you like to come as well?
Please
do. I love you so much. I want to lie in your arms and kiss your beautiful face.’

‘That is a delightful idea but it must be for another time. Let go of your glass, Marigold … let go …’

I wanted to protest that another time might never come, but miraculously I grew a delicious pair of soft downy swan’s wings and flapped slowly off over the lake and into oblivion.

A sadistic inquisitor was shining a brilliant light into my eyes. The sun beat through curtain-less windows filled with an unclouded delphinium sky. Something moved in the bed beside me. I put down my hand to find Siggy curled up beneath the bedclothes. He gave my questing hand a gentle nip to show I was disturbing him.

A piece of my life seemed to be missing. Only too quickly, like blows to the head, I remembered the bridge and Vanessa and my father. After that it was hazy. I had drunk a lot of brandy, which would explain why my temples were pounding and my tongue felt like a sun-bleached bone. Conrad and I had talked while I drank. I wished I could remember the conversation. I had no recollection of coming upstairs and getting into bed.

On the table beside my bed was a charming blue and gold enamelled clock. I admired it sleepily for some time before noticing that it said a quarter to nine. I flung back the bedclothes and sprang up. Orlando was arriving at nine to begin work. Apart from the bed and the table the room was bare of furniture, but in one corner was my old suitcase which I had collected from Dumbola Lodge the day before. The skirt I had worn the previous evening was folded neatly over it.

‘And ze top of ze mornink to you,’ said Fritz as I ran, dressed in leotard, tights and legwarmers, into the kitchen. He was looking particularly cheerful, I thought. He had washed his hair and it lay in damp golden kiss curls across his marmoreal brow.

‘And to you,’ I returned, ‘but you’ve gone a bit off course. I’m not an expert in dialect but I’m practically certain that’s Irish.’

‘Is zat so?’ Fritz looked disappointed and amended his notebook.

‘I say, Fritz. You haven’t got such a thing as an aspirin, have you? I’ve got one hell of a hangover and I’ve got to start dancing in a minute. My head’s drumming like a restless native.’

‘Oh, dear you!’ he tutted. ‘I haf exact zing for it.
Bismarkhering
. Vun moment. I fetch from store.’

The
Bismarkhering
turned out to be strips of salted vinegary fish. I ate them to please Fritz though they were the last thing I felt like.

‘How feel you now?’ he asked sympathetically.

‘My mouth seems to have taken on all the characteristics of the desert we were taken to see when we were dancing in Chile. Apparently it’s the driest place on earth, just lava flows and salt basins.’

‘Ah, but you vill feel better in a vile. Haf tea. Trust Aunt Fritz.’ He looked up, colouring beautifully like a poppy opening to the sun. ‘Here is Orlando.’

Orlando ran gracefully down the stairs. He was wearing a sleeveless white unitard cut low enough in front to bare his nipples, which he had dusted with gold paint and drawn lipstick circles round, like the petals of a flower. The decoration was effective but I wondered if Fritz, for whose benefit this must have been intended, might not be a little alarmed by so much originality so early in the day. Fritz was shy and serious and intellectual and, I thought, probably inexperienced.

‘My dears, I must have the smallest cup of coffee to get my creative juices flowing. Golly’s house, though perfectly adapted
for a milkman, is the temperature of a refrigerator. Also, my mattress has been carved from rock. By morning I had shivered myself into an identity crisis. I kept thinking I was a pat of butter, beaded with iced water, lying on a marble shelf.’

‘Oh, zis is terrible!’ said Fritz. ‘Vy do you not say before?’

‘Nanny taught us it was bad manners to criticize one’s hostess.’ Orlando looked virtuous. ‘She was such a beast. My innocent little buttocks were frequently whipped raw.’

‘Buttocks?’ Fritz took out his notebook again. ‘Zat is little pieces of butter? As in hillocks?’

‘No, my dear.’ Orlando put his hand on my bottom. ‘This little seat of pleasure is buttocks.’

Camp innuendo was general currency among the gay members of the Company, so I was used to this sort of talk, but Fritz looked shocked. I hoped Orlando would see the wisdom of tempering his modus operandi. After he had fortified himself with coffee, we went up to the drawing room and Orlando taught class. Being the only student was forty times harder. There was not a centimetre of muscle he did not inspect or an angle of my body he did not criticize – but it was exactly what I needed.

Halfway through we were interrupted by the arrival of three large pieces of mirror, each six feet square, sanctioned by Conrad, ordered by Orlando and paid for by Golly. These were put in place on the section of wall that remained unpainted. When the workman left we continued the class but, now I could see myself, I was ten times as critical as Orlando. Dancers have a powerful love-hate relationship with their own image. Any perceived faults are galling and physical imperfections are a knife to the heart. But we are absorbed by and infatuated with our reflections. It is an extreme form of narcissism. By lunchtime we were tired and hot but the
Bismarkhering
had done its stuff and my head was clear. As the day remained unclouded, we ate on the balcony, a dish of pears, bacon and beans which was light yet restoring. Afterwards there were garnet-coloured cherries.

‘This is so delightful,’ sighed Orlando, leaning back in his
chair and putting up his feet to rest on the parapet. He forgot for the moment to be flirtatious. ‘I should like to stay here forever. Being so high up you feel cut off from the horrid world with its hordes of people who are quite indifferent to ballet and those fucking ignorant, insensitive reviewers. Do look at that patch of sunlight on the water, like a scattering of yellow diamonds. All I ask God for is beauty. Poverty, insult and betrayal I can bear, but I dread Butterbank.’

‘Then it seems your prayers are answered.’ Conrad walked onto the balcony. ‘I have just returned from there. Golly has invited her librettist to stay. They have much work to do to change the setting for the opera from Japan to Alaska. As she has only one guest room, she asked me if I would offer you a bed. I said I would.’

While Orlando was expressing jubilant thanks, I examined my glass of iced tea with feigned interest. The moment I saw Conrad the conversation of the night before began to piece itself together in my mind. It grew more calamitous by the second. The brandy had acted as an emotional purgative. Not content with sobbing and beating my breast, I had poured out my life story and spread out my neuroses for his inspection like an unpalatable picnic. My face prickled with shame. There was worse. I had grown affectionate. Had I really said something about wanting him to come to bed with me? Feeling acutely miserable, I stared at a piece of boiled, sepia-coloured mint floating in my glass. How I wished it was deadly nightshade so I could gulp it down and put an end to my suffering.

‘
Aber, Conrad, wir haben keine Betten
,’ said Fritz in a low voice.

‘
Er kann mein Bett haben. Ich gehe zurück nach Deutschland
für ein paar Wochen
.’

‘
Wirklich? Aber warum
?
’ Then remembering his manners, for they were both in general punctilious about not speaking German in front of us monoglots he said, ‘Never mind. Ve talk later. Vill you eat zomezing?’

‘I had lunch with Golly.’ Conrad frowned. I could tell it had not been a good lunch.

‘I shall the dishes vash.’

‘And I shall help you.’ Orlando leaped onto his toes from a nearly prone position, his muscles rippling in a fine demonstration of tensile strength. ‘It’s the very least I can do.’

Conrad took the chair Orlando had vacated, poured himself a glass of wine and took a sip, looking thoroughly at ease with himself and the world. He met my eye and smiled.

I grasped the nettle. ‘I’m sorry about last night. I never normally drink so much. I must have bored and embarrassed you terribly. I’ve certainly embarrassed myself.’

‘I intended that you should be drunk. You were traumatized by what you had seen. Now, after a good night’s sleep, you feel better.’

Conrad spoke with an air of satisfaction. He could afford to be complacent. His behaviour had been as sober and dignified as an archbishop’s on Good Friday, while I had made a complete idiot of myself. But he was right about one thing. Last night Vanessa’s death had made life seem unbearably tragic and frightening. A long sleep and several hours of dancing had done much to remedy this. The image of her jumping from the bridge was deeply upsetting when it recurred, but I had to live with that. Now I felt more confident that I could. ‘Yes. Thank you. I do.’

Conrad made a gesture with his hand as though to wave away my disquiet. ‘Then that is all that matters.’

‘Well, not quite. I can’t exactly remember … but I think I said … I got carried away … you must think I’m a dreadful flirt.’ I laughed uneasily. ‘It was shocking of me to say … to suggest … whatever I did … of course I didn’t mean it.’

Conrad smiled more broadly and helped himself to a cherry. I could see he was amused by my mortification and I thought it very mean of him. ‘
Hu!
These are insipid. I wonder what did Goethe mean when he said one should ask children and birds
how cherries and strawberries taste? That one’s palate dulls as one gets older, or that children and birds get the first picking?’

He was being tactful, changing the subject. I was as anxious as he to bury the whole ghastly incident but I had to be clear about one thing. ‘You won’t tell Isobel, will you?’

He laughed, displaying his excellent teeth. ‘I shall have no opportunity. I leave today for Germany. I shall be away for some time.’

‘Oh.’ An extraordinarily disagreeable sensation, which I preferred not to analyse, made me speak more sharply than I might otherwise have done. ‘You needn’t think I’m in love with you or anything ridiculous like that.’

Conrad leaned across the table and, before I had any idea what he intended, took possession of my hand. ‘Listen to me, Marigold, there is something I want very much to—’

He released my hand as Fritz came onto the balcony. ‘Excuse me please. Two policemen vish to speak vith you.’

‘All right. Keep them in the hall. I’ll come.’

‘You won’t tell them anything about my father?’ I whispered back, suddenly alarmed.

Conrad pulled a face of exasperation. ‘
Dummkopf!
What do you think?’

I was left to my own thoughts for five minutes, and very uncomfortable they were, until Orlando came up to resume work. For three hours we slaved nonstop. At five Golly arrived with the librettist, a small man with a bald pointed head, a large grey moustache and a fiery temper. His expression when he was not shouting with rage was lugubrious. His name was Joseph Stern, which seemed to suit him.

‘Good afternoon,’ he said when we were introduced. ‘How are you to be made to look like an Eskimo I’d like to know? They’re brown-skinned, dark-eyed and black-haired with flat faces.’

‘Don’t be such a grouch,’ said Golly. ‘It would have been just as hard to make her look Japanese. Anyway, it’s practically a
tradition in opera that all princesses of fabulous beauty should be played by fat middle-aged women with teeth like cowcatchers. And it’ll be the designer’s problem, not yours.’

‘I need to be able to visualize the action to produce my best work,’ Mr Stern complained. ‘How are we to produce the effect of mutilated hands?’

‘What’s that?’ said Orlando.

‘It’s the legend of Sedna, the goddess of the sea. During the storm her father throws her into the water to save himself, but she clings to the side so her father chops off her fingers with his hatchet. Dramatic, don’t you think? I’ve been writing screams all morning.’

‘Is it
too
much to ask,’ Orlando spoke with heavy sarcasm, ‘if at some point soon we might have a moratorium on last-minute alterations to the plot?’

A row broke out during which I went downstairs to help Fritz peel potatoes. That was the last time I had anything like a grasp of the story of
Ilina and the Scarlet Riband
, for there were so many more excisions and additions that I gave up attempting to follow it. It didn’t matter. I knew who Ilina was and how she felt. Orlando and I resumed dancing, while Golly and Mr Stern fought it out. It was not until we sat down for supper that I discovered Conrad had left for Germany without saying goodbye.

Some days after Rafe’s departure I received a postcard.
Darling,
Good journey but have arrived to find chaos. George is pretty
much bed-bound and Billa is arthritic means she can only walk
with sticks so there’s a lot to see to since the staff are either
mad or drunk. Plus ça change … I miss you terribly, my sweet.
Fondest love, Rafe. P.S. Could not speak to E. because she’s
gone to Austria with her old – in both senses of the word –
boyfriend
!

A few days later I had a card from Isobel.
Darling Marigold,
You would adore this place, so romantic and broken down
.

Buckets and rat-traps in every room. Thirty miles to the next
house of any size, so no society but our own. Bliss. We exercise
the horses every day. Fabulous scenery. George yells all day
long for whisky. Billa says he has made her life hell with booze
and beastliness (?!). Too Wuthering Heights. Love Isobel. P.S.
The picture on the front of this makes me think of you
. I turned the card over to see a photograph of a Highland calf covered in long red hair.

The next day I received a letter from my father.
Marigold.
I’ve bought a partnership in a practice in Wimpole Street and
I’m leaving this evening for London. Dumbola Lodge is on the
market and Flagstaffe’s, the estate agent, will handle everything.
He needs your front door key ASAP. I’ve put the furniture into
store. You can haggle over it with your mother and Kate. I don’t
want any reminders of twenty-five wasted years of bucolic
boredom. As to what happened the other day, the less said the
better. I shall come back for the inquest on the 24th. Fortunately,
I know the coroner pretty well. I’ve given him the letter V.T.
left me and he agrees it’s clear evidence of an unsound mind.
My new address and telephone number are below. Do NOT
(underlined three times), pass these on to anyone. If Marcia
Dane asks, say I’ve gone to the Outer Hebrides. Tom
.