A Pack of Lies (12 page)

The girl stood, hands on hips, admiring her reflection. It took some time to dawn on her that behind her, in the brass-framed bed, a young man reclined on one elbow, reading a novel called
Silent Screaming
.

‘It’s my birthday,’ she said majestically. He looked up and wished her well of it, then returned to his book. ‘I can have anything I like,’ she bragged. ‘I think I’ll have this.’

Her parents bustled into the shop, breathlessly apologetic for the early hour, and they searched out their daughter. The mother gave a short shriek at the sight of MCC but then, since the young man himself seemed quite undisturbed — as if it were the most common occurrence in the world to sleep in an antique shop — she quickly felt sheepish and silly. ‘Now
that’s
not very practical is it, my dear?’ she said indulgently to her daughter when she heard about the idea of buying the mirror.

‘I want it. Buy it for me. You said I could choose.’

The girl’s father offered an embarrassed smile to Mrs
Povey, Ailsa and Uncle Clive. ‘Once she gets a thing into her head . . .’ he began to say uneasily.

‘I want it. It’s my birthday, isn’t it? It’s only a paltry mirror. I could ask for something much more expensive.’

‘Yes dear, but . . .’

‘I can have it, then?’

‘It’s so big, Angela darling.’

‘And so ugly,’ her mother whispered, not liking to offend the shopkeeper.

‘I think your mother’s right, you know . . .’ began Mrs Povey.

‘Now Audrey, shut it,’ snapped Uncle Clive. ‘It’s not for us to go poking in our oar.’ (He knew a sure sale when he saw one.)

‘Be sensible, Angela, sweetheart. You don’t want an ugly great thing like that, now do you?’ said the father brusquely, but his voice wavered and Ailsa could read in his grey, seamed face a thousand defeats at the hands of his spoilt daughter.

Angela clenched her fists and turned and beat on the foot of the big brass bed, so that the shop was filled with an eerie, hollow resonance, like tubular bells. ‘You’re cruel and mean and I want it!’

MCC turned over, propped his head on the other hand and went on reading, as if there were no-one but him in the shop. There was a sharp change in flesh colour where the suntan of his arm gave way to the white of his shoulders. He yawned silently. This threw Angela into paroxysms of vexation and, with one eye on the mirror to see the dramatic effect of her tantrum, she hurled herself across the foot of the bed and beat with her fists on the counterpane. MCC drew his legs up out of harm’s way and went on reading. The shop resounded with sobbing and shrieking and accusations and reproaches. ‘I want it! You never give me anything I really want! You’re mean and despicable and I hate you and you’ve ruined my birthday!’

‘What she needs is a good slap,’ muttered Uncle Clive, but broke off at the sight of the father’s wallet being pulled unwillingly out. ‘It’s up to folk how folk ruin their kids,’ he thought, and went searching for a price ticket behind the gilt mirror. Audrey Povey was bound to have priced it too low.

At the sight of her father’s wallet, Angela paused for breath. ‘Well, maybe if her heart’s set on it . . .’ said the poor father, humiliated and broken in spirit.

At that moment, MCC finished his book and shut it with a snap which made everyone jump. ‘Care to hear a background to the mirror?’ he asked.

‘Not now, lad,’ said Uncle Clive, rather too hastily.

Angela’s mother pursed her lips and eyes to keep back the tears of humiliation, and shook her head. She wanted only to get away as soon as possible.

‘I don’t see how it would help, MCC,’ said Ailsa.

MCC shrugged his white shoulders and leaned forward to ease his crumpled clothing out from under the sprawling Angela.

‘Well
I
want to hear it,’ said the sulky girl, sitting up and adjusting her pout in the mirror. ‘Where does it come from? Whose was it?’

MCC sat back in bed, his hands behind his head. ‘Let me tell you the story,’ he said.

* * *

Eustacia Dare stood so close to the mirror that her breath made a cloudy patch which obliterated her reflection. She wiped it away impatiently.

‘You’re so beautiful, Eustacia! Marry me or my life is at an end. I shall join the Foreign Legion and hurl my body on to the bayonets of arab tribesmen!’

Eustacia fluttered her eyelids and smiled an enigmatic smile, trying to keep the corners of her mouth from lifting, so as to look like the Mona Lisa.

‘You make a man mad with desire! You make life
sweet, but ah, too painful to bear! Won’t you ease my aching heart and say that I may lay my life at your feet, sweetest child of loveliness?’

Eustacia risked a glance upwards through her lashes. Yes. Yes, it came off nicely. The rim of white which showed along the bottom lid added an air of doe-like fright to her eyes. If only her breath would not keep steaming up the glass.

‘Oh but surely! The Lady Alice with her cloak of mink and gloves of turquoise expects to be your wife! She is a lady far more befitting your rank and station in life, my lord!’ she whispered, and the girl reflected in the mirror looked oh so heartbreakingly demure and selfless.

‘No, no! I was a fool ever to think I cared for her! It is you! It has always been you, Eustacia Dare! If you will not have me, no-one shall. I shall live a bachelor for as long as my disappointed heart shall beat! Oh spare me my life! Tell me at least that I may hope!’

‘Poor man. Can I hurt you so terribly? My unschooled heart — oh yes, that was excellent, ‘my unschooled heart’ — cannot say whether or not I love you. Nay, perhaps only a kiss shall tell.’

‘You mean . . .? Can you really mean . . .? Is it possible that an angel should stoop down from heaven to kiss this worthless lump of clay?’

‘You may. In fact I desire it, Captain!’

Eustacia pursed her lips, closed her eyes and pressed her cheek and mouth in a lingering, rolling motion across the plate glass. Fortunate Captain — to taste a kiss bestowed by the fabulous Eustacia Dare. She thought perhaps he might be struck speechless at this point, and she stepped back from the mirror to admire the overall picture of herself in her party dress of white muslin.

‘Eustacia! Where is that girl? The guests will be arriving!’ A querulous voice climbed its way up through the rambling levels of the house and found her where she stood in her mother’s bedroom, placing her button-booted feet this way and that to find out the best effect.

She picked up the picture hat off the old-fashioned four-poster bed and tied the gauzy sashes under her chin. No. No, it was better off the back of her head, resting on her shoulders, with the curve of the brim surrounding her head like a halo and the white gauze pulled tight across her elegant throat. It looked nonchalant that way — as if she had just run in from the garden, not expecting guests. She pinched her cheekbones to bring a look of flushed health to the soft, pale skin then, putting on her long, white gloves, she went downstairs for her garden party. It was Eustacia’s birthday.

Coming from the dark house into the sunshine, she had to pause on the terrace and let her eyes adjust to the brightness. The guests were mostly arriving by foot — neighbours who found it just as pleasant on such a shiny day to walk across their lawns or across the park to reach the banker’s house. They were not yet mingling, but stood about in family knots, like clots of cream waiting to dissolve into coffee: the Arbuthnots and their son, Harry; Aunt Maxine and Cousin Gloria; those frightfully common people who were something to do with her father’s work; the widowed sisters and their appalling lodger, the Post Office clerk; various of Eustacia’s schoolfriends with their older and younger brothers. Eustacia craned her head this way and that trying to see between and beyond them to something, to someone else.

But there was no-one else. There was no uniform, no grey morning suit, no knee-high boots such as Rochester wore in
Jane Eyre
, no exquisite profile gilded with a beard, no dark tumble of Byronic curls breaking over the collar of a hunting jacket. Eustacia’s spirits sank. They were all people she knew, and those she did not know she felt that more than five minutes would be wasted on knowing them.

Her schoolfriends introduced their brothers. There was George-this and Gordon-that and Teddy Pickles
and Henry Block. Not one was past seventeen. Only William Bingwall was taller than her and then only because his body was so thin and narrow that he must have been put through the mangle as a baby. So thought Eustacia, cursing her friends for bothering to have such insignificant brothers.

‘Happy birthday, if I may say so!’ It was the Post Office clerk. ‘I thought you might . . .’ He thrust a bunch of flowers into her hands.

‘Oh. Yes,’ she said, and she thought, ‘What a paltry bunch of flowers. I don’t even like chrysanthemums. Lord! I do hope it doesn’t mean he’s in love with me. How dare he have the effrontery to even . . .’ But it did not seem as if the Post Office clerk were in love with Eustacia, because after shuffling his feet for a minute during which neither of them said anything, he shuffled away towards the refreshments and asked for a beer.

‘Do meet my brother, Nigel,’ said Mary.

‘Glorious day, isn’t it?’ said Nigel, sticking out a hand for her to shake. ‘Many happy returns, what!’

‘His teeth stick out and his jacket sleeves are too short,’ thought Eustacia, retrieving her hand as soon as possible. ‘What an odious boy.’

She positively cut dead Teddy Pickles. For although, in five or six years, he might be reasonably well off and his face might not be too bad with a beard, Eustacia had long since written him off for having such a ridiculous name. ‘Eustacia Pickles.’ Ha! How could any man of sensitivity foist such a name on a wife? It showed up his parents for the peasants they were that they had not changed their family name to something more distinguished.

‘May I say that you look stunning in that dress,’ said a voice, and Eustacia turned, her hopes rising like a hot-air balloon.

‘Oh, it’s only you,’ she snapped. ‘Why didn’t Mater and Pater ask anybody half decent to my party.’ It was only dull, ordinary, spotty Harry Crabb.

‘Oh come on now! Don’t bear a grudge! Just ’cos I said your hair looked like nuts and bolts in ringlets — can’t you take a joke in good part, old thing?’

This was less than she deserved on her birthday. Eustacia felt tearful. She had raised her hopes so high, and once again she had been let down. This was
not
to be the party at which she met and captivated the man of her dreams. There was no-one here worth even bothering with. Their ordinariness was an insult in itself. She would not even ask these . . . these
dogs
to her wedding. They would spoil its picturesqueness. Why had she gone to such trouble to make herself look beautiful for this
hoi polloi
, these spotty, gawky, weedy, pigeon-chested boys and their unimportant relations. How long must she wait for Love to serve her her just deserts?

‘You’re not very attentive to your guests, my dear,’ said her mother. ‘Perhaps the young ones would like to dance. Cousin Herbert has brought his violin. Country dancing might be charming.’

‘Oh Mater! Country dancing! When are you going to realize: I’m
sixteen
! I ought to be dancing Viennese waltzes in ballrooms with officers and gentlemen by now, not cutting a caper like a rustic at a barn dance! How can a young woman be elegant thumping across the lawn with a lot of
children
. This is a horrid party. Everybody is horrid and dreary!’

Her mother watched her flounce away across the terrace and struggled against the rising suspicion that she had raised a daughter exceedingly pretty but not altogether agreeable.

Eustacia knew differently. She was dimly aware of being unpleasant and sulky. But Eustacia knew that as soon as a lover came along who was worthy of her, he would unveil the
true
Eustacia, the radiant, serene, bountiful and gracious Eustacia Dare. Her hidden store of wit would at last hold the world in raptures — ‘We never knew Eustacia had such a sparkling tongue!’ — her natural modesty would conquer all dislike. Oh yes, she
would be as nice as pie to people
then
— even Teddy Pickles with his ridiculous name, and Harry Crabb with his spots.

If ever the faintest doubt crept across her mind, and she suspected, even for a moment, that she was truly just as ordinary as the guests at her birthday party, she could always resort to the great mirror in her mother’s vast bedroom. The mirror (and a little imagination) would confirm that Eustacia Dare was destined to be adored.

Then he came.

He rented the house on the far side of the park for the summer — an author who wrote poetry and novels not to earn a living but to stave off the boredom of a wealthy existence. His name was de Courcy and he was thirty years old, with hair the colour of gunmetal and a beard tailored almost as immaculately as his coat. He rode a bay horse around the park every morning before breakfast, and there were rumours that women had died out of love for him.

No dying for Eustacia. The young man was invited to dinner by Mater, and had agreed to come. His goose was thoroughly cooked.

‘Oh I shall entrance him!’ she told the mirror as she dressed in her Spanish lace. ‘I shall carry my head
so
, and let my shawl drop off my shoulder once or twice, so that he may admire my skin.’ She practised this. ‘I shall say, “Mr de Courcy, sir, I have read your novels with the closest interest, but I feel that they are a little lacking in
passion
. Pray, have you ever been in love yourself?” — Oh, I shall hypnotize him! Should I allow him to kiss me tonight? No, “not until we are better acquainted” I think, though I shall perhaps
brush
against him a little as we ladies retire after dinner. Oh I shall captivate him! And when he is invited to balls in London by lonely dowagers and by his broken-hearted,
cast-off mistresses, he will take
me
and dance with
me
instead of them, until the dowagers and the mistresses die of envy and the orchestra simply swoons away with rapture! Let me see. What shall be our first dance? A waltz, naturally! so that whenever he hears a waltz in future, his arms will rise involuntarily at the memory of holding me in his embrace! “Eustacia, my life was empty before I found you! I thank my guardian angel that you came when you did and drew me back from the brink of despair! From henceforward all my poetry will be in praise of your eyes. Dance with me now to the music of my beating heart!” ’ And she stepped up to the gracious reflection of herself in the great, gilded mirror. All around her an arch of cupids blew triumphant horns.