Wise Children (18 page)

My boy and I held hands. We ran up the black oak staircase, everything in monochrome, moonlight, shadow, snow, past carved wreaths of bay and piles of fruit and big-bosomed women with garlands on their heads, until we found what we were looking for, the master bedroom – instantly recognisable by my father’s fetish, the cardboard crown once worn by Old Ranulph in
Lear
, under a glass case on the mantelpiece.

There was a log fire glowing away here, too, and the bedcover turned back, and a little draught came down the chimney gently agitating the stumpwork curtains on the fourposter so that Samson and Delilah, Judith and Holofernes, all the needlework men and women moved a little as we lay down as if those old lovers were greeting these ones who now were hastening to renew their acquaintance with one another.

I offed the false eyelashes, snitched a handful of the Lady A.’s cotton wool to wipe off my make-up. Tonight, this night of all nights, I wanted to look like myself, whoever that was.

‘I dye my hair,’ I said.

‘I know,’ he said.

To die for love runs in the family. My grandmother did it; so did my mother. And that night was the one time in all my life I thought that such a thing might be worth while. He took his time and I took mine. In the time we’d been apart, a little crown of golden hairs had sprung up around his nipples but not so that you’d notice, unless you were looking hard.

‘Nora,’ he said, as we lay wet and panting. ‘Nora . . . you’ve changed your perfume.’

I only had to speak, to say: ‘Not Nora, my darling, but Dora, who loves you only.’ And there would have been one more happy housewife behind some garden fence in Slough or Cheam, and a bellyful of kids. Those words that would have changed everything were on the tip of my tongue, would you believe; but there they stayed, because, at that very moment, my lover crinkled up his nose.

‘Can you smell burning?’

I pointed to the cosy logs. He shook his head.

‘Not that. . .’

Came a big red scream from down below:

‘FIRE!’

After that, pandemonium. Shouting, cries, screams. A crashing of smashing plates from overturned tables; clattering footsteps; and all the lutes went out of tune in unison when dropped in haste. And, yes; now I could hear the roar of the flames.

We were up and running for the door
toot sweet
, I can tell you, but the old oak felt warm and when we got it open a huge hot wind tossed us backwards, we saw the stairwell was alight already. The gargoyles on the beam ends sparked, glowed and blackened; there was a crash below as a ceiling gave way and in the middle of all the rest of the noise I could tell it fell on the grand piano because of one last jangled chord before it expired with a noise like an angel falling off its harp.

A long tongue of flame licked up the stairs, in through the bedroom door; up went the bed curtains behind us – flaming so soon after we got off the mattress that you might have thought the bed caught fire due to what we had got up to on it. I was stuck staring at my little sporran, tossed up and spinning round in the fierce winds that came with the fire, and then the fire snapped it up like a frog snaps a gnat. He gave me a big shove.

‘Quick.’

I snapped out of it sharpish and we made it to the window before the tapestries went up, which they did with a whoosh whilst we hand-over-handed it down the ivy, bringing down a deluge of snow with us. Only when we stood once more upon the lawn, chilled to the marrow, singed at the edges, half frozen cod, half barbecued spareribs, did I recall that the fire had got not only my ‘weird sister’ outfit but also his waiter’s monkey suit, so we both were ‘naked as nature intended’, to quote the title of another of the dubious vehicles of the Chance sisters’ declining years. I buried my blushes in his bosom. He stroked my hair. ‘Nora,’ he said tenderly. ‘Nora . . .’

So very tenderly the truth was on the tip of my tongue, again, but then, while Lynde Court blazed and the survivors of the party mopped and mowed upon the terrace, wringing their hands and making noise, and the clanging of the fireman’s bell announced the arrival of the engines, even in the midst of all this turmoil I felt the stirring of, ahem, his manhood and couldn’t resist. So we bundled off into the shrubbery and did it again on an uncomfortable carpet of twigs and dried earth under the cover of the rhododendrons which our enthusiasm whipped into a storm so they pelted down snow and more snow on us while all around, backwards and forwards, there passed a swift parade of running feet, churning the fall to slush. As far as ambience was concerned, it was from the sublime to the ridiculous, but needs must, it was urgent.

Surprise, surprise, we were quick about it, this time.

And, to my everlasting shame, it was only after he rolled off me and I sat up did I stop to think: ‘Oh, my God –
my sister
!’

Believe me, even then, when so much in love, I never, not for one moment, thought, if . . . she’s burned to a crisp . . . then . . . he’s mine for ever.

Not even for one second.

To tell the truth, I love her best and always have.

It was a proper raree show, out on the Great Lawn. All the former revellers were black with soot and the Lady A., in a scorched wig and a skeleton petticoat of black sticks and smoke, clutched one scrap to her bosom tight enough to choke her, although that scrap, being Imogen, was unconcerned, and slept, while the Lady A. wept and wailed and kept on calling for the other one, who’d made herself scarce, although I, for one, wouldn’t have put it past that Saskia to have torched the family seat out of some small pique such as not enough cream on her strawberries or having been sent to bed before the cabaret.

But of Nora I could see no trace and my heart sank.

Nor of Uncle Perry, neither, although, until his plane crashed in Amazonia and, weeks lengthening into months, then years, we were finally forced to acknowledge that he, too, owed a debt to mortality, Nor’ and I both privately thought he was indestructible.

Then I spotted Saskia. She, oblivious of her distracted mother, was tucked away under a rosebush, pigging it. She’d dragged out with her the entire carcass of the swan from the Great Hall. Its feathers were so blackened by the soot it looked more like an upstart crow but
that
didn’t put the little greedyguts off as she crouched, legs akimbo, disarticulating one by one its limbs and chewing off the meat with every appearance of enjoyment. Of course, later on, she made a career out of piggery. She’d half-inched a bowl of salad, too, but unaccountably left behind the haggis, no doubt upon discovering that it was hollow.

So there was Saskia. But Nora, not.

They say, if you get your leg cut off, you don’t notice it, at first, until you try to put your weight on it. Then you fall down. It was like that with me and Nora. The young man was flat on his back under the rhodies, panting heavily, lost to the world, and well might he sing out, ‘O, Mistress Mine, where are you roving?’ when he came to, for I took off in frantic search.

The fire had unleashed a kind of madness. A babble of agitated chorines cross-dressed in ruched knicks and hose had commandeered a crate of bubbly on their way out and now, pop! with a fusillade of small explosions, opened the bottles and hurled the contents into the fire, whinnying helplessly under the strain of their fruitless endeavours, while a row of chorus boys, in jester’s garb, lacking champagne, unfastened their flies and added their own liquid contributions to the great arcs of solid water directed by the stout fellows of the East Sussex Fire Brigade into the heart of the blaze, where enormous rainbows formed in the air above the jets.

The tenor and me weren’t the only ones who’d succumbed to nature, either. Nothing whets the appetite like a disaster. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Coriolanus stoutly buggering Banquo’s ghost under the pergola in the snowy rose-garden whilst, beside the snow-caked sundial, a gentleman who’d come as Cleopatra was orally pleasuring another dressed as Toby Belch. Not only that. I spied with my little eye an egg-shaped depression in a snowdrift on the parterre surmounted by the lead soubrette who was grinding away for dear life in the woman-on-top position and it turned out the moaning recipient of her favours was who else but my now definitively ex-lover, his cap was gone, but his bells were all tinkling, and he made her a star in her own right in his next production. Good for her. She said she saw him coming and tripped him up. Irish girl, from Derry. Staunch Republican, in those days. She’s a Dame of the British Empire, now.

So there was an orgiastic aspect to this night of disaster and all around the blazing mansion, lit by the red and flickering flames, milled the lamenting revellers in togas, kilts, tights, breeches, hooped skirts, winding sheets, mini-crinolines, like guests at a masquerade who’ve all gone suddenly to hell. It was a keen and icy night and the stars were sharp as needles.

I ran like one possessed from group to group of thwarted party-goers, searching for my lost limb, the best part of me, whom I’d so thoughtlessly forgotten – forgotten! – in the heat of passion. Then and there, although my nipples were still bruised with kisses, I thought, well, that’s it for passion, because, without Nora, life wasn’t worth living.

That’s sisters for you.

I was crying so much I could hardly see straight so I blundered right into Melchior, still in his hose and doublet, but black with soot all over, and gave myself a big bruise on the hip because he was pushing, pulling, grunting, heaving at a big carved chair with arms that ended up in lions’ heads. He’d salvaged it from the blaze, somehow or other, and now he was dragging it into a commanding position in the very middle of the lawn, a place that offered a front-stalls view of the fiery finale of the house he’d planned to be so famous in. ‘Give us a hand,’ he said.

When we’d got the armchair where he wanted it, down he plumped.

‘Champagne!’ he called and, marvellous to relate, a waiter popped up like a conjuring trick with a silver ice-bucket on a sterling salver. I wiped off my face with the back of my hand.

‘Dora?’ he said. ‘Or is it Nora? Come and take a glass of wine with the prince in exile, dear child.’

I stepped closer. He cracked me an enchanting smile. Not the sign of a tear. I gaped. Never seen such sang-froid as Melchior’s before.

‘I must say, you’re taking it very well, sir,’ I said. (We always called him ‘sir’ to his face.)

‘Can’t a man enjoy a glass of wine at his own fireside?’

The waiter poured one for me, so I took it. We clinked.

‘You’ve lost your eyebrows,’ he remarked.

‘Worse than that,’ I said, and sobbed. ‘I’ve lost my sister.’

‘I’ve lost,’ he said, ‘my crown.’

From the way he said it, I knew the loss of a natural daughter weighed less heavy on his heart than the loss of the old Hazard heirloom I’d just seen in his bedroom. For a weak moment, there, my unreconstructed daughter’s heart wished I could have saved it for him but, though my front was toasty warm due to the flames of Lynde Court, my backside was bitter cold and so were my spirits.

‘My crown, my foolish crown, my paper crown of a king of shreds and patches,’ he lamented. ‘The crown my father wore as Lear – to have survived so many deaths, so much heartbreak, so many travels . . . and now, gone up in smoke! Oh, my dear girl, we mummers are such simple folk . . . superstitious as little children. The fire was welcome to take everything, the frills and furbelows, the toys and gewgaws, the oil paintings, the cloisonné, the Elizabethan oak . . . but, oh, my crown! That cardboard crown, with the gold paint peeling off. Do you know, can you guess, my dear, how much it meant to me? More than wealth, or fame, or women, or children . . .’

I’d better believe that, what he said about children. I was amazed to see him so much moved, and on account of what? A flimsy bit of make-believe. A nothing.

‘What shall I do without my crown? Othello’s occupation gone!’

He began to cry. The tears ran down his sooty cheeks like chalk down a blackboard but, and this was the funny thing, although my own tear ducts remained untickled, my palms itched and prickled like anything and I knew the only way to ease the irritation was to clap them together. Just as I was about to give the old fraud a big hand, couldn’t help it, the waiter, who was hovering by, as struck with this performance as I was, caught hold of my arm, spilling my champagne.

‘Look!’

A miracle.

Out of the heart of the blaze, through the very portals of flame that now upheld what had been the lintel of the front door of Ye Old Lynde Court, came, vaguely at first and yet his outlines growing every instant more distinct, an enormous figure.

The currents of the heat distorted his shape and size; he looked as big as the burning house, or bigger, and flames lapped and licked around him until it looked as if he were wearing fire. Something was shining; for one dreadful minute, I thought that he was dead and it was his haloed ghost approaching but, as he left the fire behind him, I saw what it was he’d got on his head.

In his arms, a girl.

‘Oh!’ went I; and, ‘Ah!’ went Melchior.

Who else could that girl be but Nora? And what else could that shining something be but a battered old crown of gilded cardboard, cocked at a rakish angle, unsinged, unmarked by fire, sootless, as Peregrine was himself and as was Peregrine’s burden.

We tried to run to meet them but found we could not, found we bounced back upon an invisible barrier of air so hot it made the hairs upon my forearms sizzle. Peregrine walked firmly towards us, leaving black footprints behind him on the lawn. He walked out of the fire, smiling at Melchior, offering up to Melchior his safe, sleeping child.

That tenor had found something to cover up his nakedness, a cashmere coat, property, it turned out, of the Hollywood producer whose cigar, abandoned on the edge of the dining table while he danced with Nora, had fallen to the floor, there to smoulder away unnoticed on the stone flags until the hem of the white tablecloth began to smoulder, too.