September (1990) (69 page)

"Very well, thank you, Hughie."

"Very good, very good," said Hughie. "You're awfully late. The rest of your party were all here an hour ago."

"I'm afraid we were unavoidably detained."

"Oh, well, no matter. The night's long enough. Now, sir"-with pleasantries over, he steadied his legs-"if you would just like to take your good lady to the front of the house, and drop her off there, you can come back here, and I'll be here, and I'll help you park the car over there" His torchbeam wavered haphazardly in the direction of the field, and he belched discreetly. "And see that you both enjoy yourselves, and have a rare time."

He stepped back. Edmund rolled up the window.

"I doubt that Hughie is going to last the evening."

"At least he's well centrally heated. He won't die of hypothermia."

The car moved forward to pull up at the front door behind a large Audi with a personalized number plate, disgorging its load of very young men and girls, all flushed and laughing from some extended and lavish dinner party. Virginia followed them up the steps while Edmund drove off to find Hughie again and park his car.

She entered the house and was assailed by light, warmth, music, the smell of flowers, greenery, wood
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smoke; the sound of voices, raised in greeting, laughter, and high-pitched conversation. As she slowly made her way up the stairs, she looked down over the bannisters at the carnival scene. People everywhere. Many she knew, and others strangers, come from all parts of the country especially for the occasion. A log fire blazed in the huge fireplace, and around this, young men in kilts and evening dress stood talking to each other, drinks in hand. Two of them were officers from the Relkirk barracks, flamboyant in their scarlet regimental mess-jackets.

From the dining-room, its doors festooned in draperies of deep-blue silk, came the powerful beat of the disco music. A steady flow of two-way traffic passed through these doors. Eager boys, their partners in tow, disappeared into the darkness, while others emerged, the young men as hot and sweaty as if they had jus
t c
ompleted a fast game of squash, while the girls, casual with assumed sophistication, raked their fingers through tousled hair, and reached for cigarettes. The lowered lights and the din were clearly engendering a certain sexual excitement.

On one of the sofas that guarded the entrance to the library sat old General Grant-Palmer, kilted, and with his knees indecently wide apart. He talked to a formidable lady with a huge bosom, whom Virginia did not recognize. Past them, others made their way through to the library, and so to the marquee at the front of the house. "Virginia!" Some man, spying her, called her name.

She waved, smiled, continued on up the stairs. She went into the bedroom that had the sign ladies on the door, shed her fur and laid it on top of the coats already piled on the bed. She went to the mirror to comb her hair. Behind her the bathroom door burst open and a girl appeared. She had hair pale as an aureole of dandelion fluff, and eyes blackened like a panda's. Virginia was about to tell her kindly that she'd inadvertently got her dress tucked up into her knickers, and then realized that she was wearing a puffball skirt. Wishing that Edmund were with her so that they could share the joke together, she did a quick turn to spin the creases out of her skirt, put her comb back in her bag, and went out of the room.

Edmund was waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs. He took her hand. "All right?"

"I've got something lovely and funny to tell you. Did you get the car parked?"

. "Hughie found a place for me. Come on, let's go and see what's going on."

She had seen it all before, the morning that she had delivered her flower vases, when the marquee stood empty and unfinished, and there had been workmen everywhere. Now all was transformed, and Verena's months of planning, agonizing, and sheer hard labou
r h
ad paid off. Corriehill, Virginia decided, might have been especially designed for just this occasion. From the library, the lead-out to the tent took in the stone garden steps. The urns that stood at the top and the bottom of these contained great masses of greenery and white chrysanthemums, and the lamps illuminating them swayed in the thin draught that blew beneath the enclosed awning.

At the top of the steps, a natural vantage spot, they paused to regard in some wonder and admiration the scene before them.

The tall tent-poles had been transformed into veritable trees of barley sheaves, beech branches, and rowan bright with scarlet berries. High overhead hung four sparkling chandeliers. At the far end, a platform had been erected and strung with silver helium balloons, and on this sat Tom Drystone and his band, thumping out an eightsome reel, "The Soldiers' Dance." Tom with the accordion sat, as leader, in the middle, and around him were grouped the others. A pianist, two fiddlers, and a young boy with a drum set. In white jackets and tartan trews, they presented a fine sight, and Tom caught Virginia's eye and sent her a wink and a crack of his head. His long tumbler of beer stood brimming on the floor beside him.

The sets of dancers, some in eightsome, some in sixteensome, circled and swung, linking arms, changing partners, clapping hands and stamping feet in time to the hypnotic pulse of the music. In the middle of one set was a huge young man making a fine exhibition of himself. He looked strong enough to be a shot-putter or caber-tosser, but this evening was putting all his energy into his dancing. Kilt flying, arms held high over his massive shoulders, shirt bursting from his scarlet waistcoat, he was giving it his all, and his muscled legs flailed as he leaped, uttering manic cries, high off the floor.

"If he doesn't watch out," remarked Edmund, "he's going to do himself an injury."

"More likely kill off one of the girls."

But the girls loved him, they screamed with glee, were lifted off their feet, or spun like tops. Virginia half-expected to see one of them tossed, like a doll, high up into the roof of the tent.

Edmund nudged her. "Look at Noel."

Virginia followed his pointing finger, saw Noel, and dissolved into laughter. He stood, with a bemused expression on his handsome face, in the centre of one of the sets, having clearly lost his bearings and any idea of what he was meant to do next. Alexa, quite undeterred, and in a state of giggles, was trying to point him in the direction of his next partner, while she, in her turn, was being deliberately non-co-operative and wore a look of mock boredom.

They searched for the others. Found Vi, Conrad and Pandora, and Jeff and Lucilla, all dancing in a big sixteensome together. Vi's partner was a retired Law Lord from Edinburgh, about half her size and perhaps the only person in the room older than she was. Vi, so large and so stout, moved, when she danced, lightly as a feather, gracefully swinging from man to man and never a step out of beat. As they watched, she took her place in the ring again, and two other ladies moved to dance together in the centre. Vi looked up, over their heads, and caught sight of Edmund and Virginia, standing hand in hand at the head of the stone steps.

For an instant, her cheerful, flushed face clouded. She raised her brows in fearful question. In answer, Edmund held their clasped hands up, as if in triumph. She got the message. A smile lit her homely features. The tempo of the catchy music quickened, she and the old Judge linked arms to swing again, and Violet gave him such an almighty spin that he was nearly sent flying off his spindly legs.

At last the Grand Chain, a final turn,, a long chord from the band, and the eightsome reel was over. Applause for the musicians instantly broke out, clapping, cheering, and stamping. The dancers, hot, breathless, sweating, wanted more. There were noisy demands for an encore, another round.

But Violet had had enough. Excusing herself, she had abandoned her partner and was already on her way across the dance floor to where Edmund and Virginia waited.. They went down the stone steps to meet her, and Violet embraced her daughter-in-law.

"You're here at last. I've been so worried. Is everything all right?"

"Everything, Vi."

"Henry?"

"Safe and well."

Violet fixed her son with a beady stare.

"Edmund. You're not going to send him back?"

"With that look in your eye, I don't think I'd dare. No, we're going to keep him at home for a little while longer."

"Oh, thank heavens for that. You've come to your senses. And in more ways than one, if I'm not mistaken. I can tell, just by the look of the pair of you." She opened her bag, took out her handkerchief, mopped her beaded forehead. "I," she announced, "have now had enough. I shall take myself home."

"But, Vi," Edmund protested, "I haven't danced with you."

"Then you must be disappointed, because I'm on my way. I've had a splendid evening, a splendid dinner, and I've danced an eightsome reel. Done the hat trick. I'm enjoying myself thoroughly, and this is the moment to call it a day."

She was obdurate. "If you like," Edmund offered, "I'll fetch your car and bring it to the door."

"That would be kind. I'll go upstairs and rescue my coat." She kissed Virginia again. "We have so much to talk about, but this is neither the time nor the place.

But I am so happy for you both. Good night, my dear. Enjoy yourselves."

"Good night, Vi."

Edmund, after some searching, finally ran Pandora to earth in the drawing-room, where a long bar had been set up down one side of the room, and sofas and chairs disposed in convenient conversational groups. Here, it was comparatively quiet, although impossible to escape totally from the pervasive beat of music from both marquee and disco. Standing in the door, he saw that a number of Verena's guests had chosen to sit out a dance or two, take a breather and have a drink. Very young girls sat on the floor ... a good position for gazing up into the eyes of attendant young men. One of them had already caught Edmund's attention, for she wore the smallest black sequin dress he had ever seen in his life, its minimal skirt barely concealing her crotch. Inquiring as to her identity, he had been told she was an old school friend of Katy's, which was hard to believe. The provocative sequins and the endless black silk legs didn't seem to go with hockey sticks.

He spied Pandora at last, tucked into the corner of the sofa near the fire, and deep in conversation with some man. Edmund picked his way across the floor towards them, and she sensed his coming and turned, her head at his approach.

"Edmund."

"Come and dance."

"Oh, darling, I'm exhausted. I've been leaping up and down like a yo-ycr."

"The disco, then. They're playing 'Lady in Red.' "

"Heavenly tune. Edmund, you know Robert Bramwell, don't you? Yes, of course you do, because he's one of the guns in your syndicate. Silly me."

"Sorry, Robert. You don't mind if I steal her away?"

"No, of course not . . ." He had some difficulty in heaving himself out of the sofa, being both well-buil
t a
nd portly. "... Anyway, it's time I went in search of my wife. Said I'd do something called Hamilton House with her. Don't know how the hell to do it, but suppose I'd better report for duty. . . ."

"Such a lovely drink . . ." Pandora thanked him vaguely.

"A pleasure."

They watched him go. Across the crowded room, out through the door. Then Edmund, shamelessly, took his place.

"Oh, darling, you are naughty. I thought you wanted to dance."

"Poor chap. It probably took much sneaky manoeuvring to get you to himself, and now I've spoilt it all."

"You haven't spoiled it for me. You haven't got a drink."

"I'm laying off for the moment. I've already consumed far too much this evening."

"Poor darling, you've had such a horrid time. How is Henry?"

"Considering what he's been through, in great shape."

"Terribly brave to run away from school. Terribly brave, actually, to run anywhere."

"You did."

"Oh, darling, are we back to that? I thought we'd stopped talking about that."

"I'm sorry."

"Sorry for talking about it?"

"No. Sorry for everything that happened. For the way I behaved. I never explained to you, and I suppose it's too late to start explaining now."

"Yes," she told him, "I think it is a little late."

"You've never forgiven me?"

"Oh, Edmund, I don't forgive people. I'm not good enough to forgive people. 'Forgive' is a non-word in my vocabulary. How could I forgive, when during th
e c
ourse of my life I have made so many people desperately unhappy?"

"That's not the point."

"If you want to talk about it, let's be objective. You said you would write, be in touch, love me for ever, and you didn't do any of those things. It wasn't like you to break your word, and I could never understand ..."

"If I had written it would have been to tell you that my promises were empty and I was backing out. And I left it too long, and when I finally plucked up the nerve, it was too late. ... So I took the easy way out."

"That was the bad bit. I thought you never took the easy way out of anything. I thought I knew you so well, and that was why I loved you so much. And I couldn't believe that you didn't love me. I wanted you. So stupid. But all my life, everything I'd wanted I'd been allowed to have, I'd been given. To be denied anything I wanted was a new and cruel experience. And I wouldn't accept it. I couldn't believe that some miracle wouldn't happen, and everything that you'd done-going to London, and marrying Caroline, and having Alexa:
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couldn't be magically absolved, dissolved, swept under the carpet. So stupid. But then, I was only eighteen, and I never had much brain."