Dark Dance (38 page)

In front of the table was Adamus.

To her horror, Rachaela saw that he too wore a tuxedo, a white shirt and black bow tie. He too had dressed himself as a figment of the farce. His face showed nothing and the eyes were as she recalled, dull lacquer pools without light or depth. But it was true, he was their puppet.

The Scarabae had made an aisle and Ruth walked down it and into the room.

The Scarabae moved in after her, taking up their places behind the betrothal pair, the man and the small woman-child.

Rachaela stood at the back of the room, looking across the heads of strong wire hair, and one helmed head, for Uncle Camillo had come in his armour. She and Adamus were the tallest in the room, which added to the sense of ridiculous beastliness.

Dorian unseamed his withered mouth.

‘The house has come together on this night, to oversee the promising of its two children, Adamus and Ruth, to one another. This is done in the spirit of an old tradition. It is done in pledge for the house of Scarabae, in the hope that it may continue and flourish with generations.’

Rachaela’s eyes dazzled from the candles. She could not follow what Dorian said, it was too distorted and nonsensical. And now he spoke in a foreign language, and after that in what was perhaps Latin.

Then Dorian put Ruth’s hand into the hand of Adamus and tied them together with a white silk ribbon, an old ribbon stained along its clarity with age.

‘Remember now, whatever comes, you are promised to each other before witnesses. You may take no other to you, but must keep faith until the hour of marriage and union. So are you bound.’

Ruth looked up into Adamus’s face.

She smiled, cunningly.

‘You must say now whether you are agreeable and will remain true to this binding. Ruth, answer first.’

‘I am agreeable and will remain true,’ said Ruth.

‘And Adamus.’

‘I am agreeable,’ Adamus said, ‘and will remain true.’

Dorian untied the white stained ribbon.

‘Though the tie is undone, the vow is not undone. Let all here witness this.’

I witness it,
Rachaela thought,
they will stay bound to one another. She will be taller when she marries him. It won’t look so perverse then. Or worse perhaps.

She thought:
What is he thinking? Is his mind a blank?

Adamus bent and kissed Ruth on the lips, lightly. She did not close her eyes, she kept them open and drank him in.

Cheta came forward in her brooch. She carried a small cake on a plate. Adamus broke it in half and Ruth ate one half and he the other.

Michael came up with a glass of red wine. They each took a mouthful from the glass.

‘Write your names in the book.’

Adamus dipped the pen and wrote, Ruth took the pen and wrote after him.

Has she put Ruth Day from force of habit?

But Dorian did not query the entry.

Adamus and Ruth, hand in hand, turned away from the table. Ruth gave Adamus the second rose; he put it in his buttonhole.

How terrifying they looked, like erroneous models on a wedding cake, the cold sheer bridegroom and his tiny sprite of a scarlet bride.

Anna stepped up to Ruth and gave her a small package.

Adamus released Ruth’s hand.

She undid the gift in her usual neat, greedy way.

A rhinestone locket—it surely could not be diamonds. Ruth held out the locket to Adamus, and he fastened it around her throat.

The others approached Ruth. They gave her gifts: earrings, and books, and lengths of material, ornaments and objects of coloured glass.

Only I have nothing to give.
Rachaela imagined herself as the thirteenth fairy godmother, stepping forward to present the gift of death.

Did she want Ruth dead in this moment? Was it really so bad, this idiotic ceremony and the little girl dressed like a bride?

The little girl piled the table with her trophies. Now and then she showed them to Adamus, the best trophy of all. He gravely assented.

Now Camillo was going forward. His present too was wrapped. Ruth tore off the wrapping eagerly. She was acquisitive. She ignored his figure in its armour.

Out of the wrapping came a strange metal-and-wood contraption.

Adamus said, ‘Be careful,’ and leaning forward took the thing away from her. It was a mousetrap.

Camillo giggled.

Anna said clearly, ‘Uncle Camillo is very naughty, Ruth. Don’t mind him.’

‘Uncle Camillo,’ said Ruth.

She looked at him with her jet stone eyes. Her face was pinched a little. He had tried to spoil the betrothal.

Anita came to Ruth and gave her an embroidered cushion of red flowers.

When the presentation was over, the Scarabae and their betrothed went into the dining room.

There had been no dinner earlier, now the table was laden like a medieval feast, with pies and roasts, chickens and joints gained no doubt from the supermarket in the village.

The candles filled this room too, and the roses fumed.

Ruth sat at one end of the table, Adamus at the other. Rachaela found herself seated between Stephan and Dorian. A place had been laid for Camillo, but he had absented himself. There were more women than men, and they filled Adamus’s end of the table.

Selections were taken from the ready-carved joints and from the pies and dishes of vegetables.

The Scarabae ate with good appetite. Rachaela glanced to see what Adamus did, but he was eating too. She had never seen the phenomenon before. He ate slowly and indifferently, yet the food vanished from his plate. And Ruth ate carnally.

Repelled, Rachaela picked at her dish. She would not celebrate by eating.

Would there be speeches and an old champagne? Wine was served, and no one got up to speak. Yet it was the betrothal banquet. What did Ruth expect as its end? Now and then her eyes would go to Adamus. Her eyes were gluttonous. She anticipated something, and there would be nothing. Perhaps it had not been made clear to her. This was the climax of the night.

When Adamus rose, Ruth looked up expectantly.

‘Good night,’ Adamus said. ‘Good night, Anna. Good night, Ruth.’

‘Must you go so early?’ Anna said.

‘I’ve stayed two hours,’ he said.

Anna bowed her head, and Adamus left the table of the fairytale feast and walked out of the room.

Ruth half got to her feet.

‘Shall I—’

‘No, Ruth. Stay and finish your supper.’

Ruth sank back with a peculiar glimmer in her eyes. She forked up her chicken, but some of the vibrancy had gone from her.

The meal went on for a long time.

Rachaela was heartily sick of it, longing to escape as he had, but knowing she must stay, to watch.

Finally the fruits and sweetmeats had been picked bare to stones and crusts. The company rose.

Ruth poised like a scarlet mayfly.

‘Am I to go up now?’

‘No,’ said Anna. ‘It’s very late. I’m sure that soon you’ll want to sleep.’

Ruth’s face was heavy, shadows under the eyes.

‘No.’

‘You don’t feel it yet, but you will. After all this excitement.’

‘And the dress,’ said Alice, ‘the dress must be taken off and put back on its dummy.’

‘I want to keep the dress,’ said Ruth. ‘I want to wear it.’

‘Oh no, no. Whoever heard of such a thing? Such dresses are kept only for the special day, You wouldn’t want to spoil the lovely dress?’ AUce fluttered in astonishment.

Ruth looked at Alice and abruptly radiated a beam of pure hatred.

Of course, she had been baulked. No Adamus, and now no dress. They were stripping her role from her. Another child would have thrown a tantrum, but this child had learned early that to make a fuss gained nothing.

Whatever else, Alice cringed before Ruth’s eyes. She turned to Peter and besought him, ‘It’s always been done. She doesn’t know. Do you remember when Jessica tore her dress and it had to be stitched as she wore it, sewn on around her, and then cut again to get it off.’

Peter nodded.

Ruth said, ‘It’s only an old dress.’

She shocked them. They were used to seeing her as a child but receiving the replies of a responsive adult. They did not know what to do.

Rachaela said, ‘All good things come to an end.’

Ruth glanced at Rachaela. She had never looked for anything good from Rachaela, and so did not hate her for providing nothing good.

Everyone left the table, and some of the old women took Ruth away to denude her of her finery.

It was three in the morning.

In the drawing room Rachaela approached Anna.

‘You should have reassured Ruth. She’ll see him tomorrow, for the usual piano lesson.’

Anna embroidered a peacock.

‘But she won’t, Rachaela. He won’t be teaching her any more. Jack has repaired and re-tuned the piano in the music room. Ruth can practise there.’

‘So he’s tired of the novelty already,’ said Rachaela. A warm pain lit up the centre of her body.

‘He doesn’t communicate easily,’ said Anna, as she had once said before. The last weeks have been something of a strain for him.’

‘You used him to seduce her,’ Rachaela said, ‘not literally perhaps, but fundamentally all the same.’

‘Ruth will have to be patient.’

‘For three years? Ruth is eleven. Three years will seem a very long time.’

‘Ruth is Scarabae.’

‘So you keep saying.’

‘It is a fact.’

Rachaela turned and went out of the room. The first thread had been pulled from the scarlet tracery. Now all the rotten fabric might come undone.

Rachaela the witness watched Ruth the betrothed.

The days grew very hot and the shut house was like an oven, burning colours coming in from its windows, an airless bath of dyes.

The Scarabae went to ground in their dyed rooms, lying in their chairs, hunted by their enemy the sun.

Ruth was on the heath a lot, and sometimes down by the sea, for she had at some moment discovered the steps to the beach. Rachaela watched her gathering treasures from the water’s edge, paddling in the waves, or seated under the standing stone drawing intently. Once or twice the great black cat was with her, sleeping by her side. Ruth showed a passion for the cat, predictable and unique. On one occasion she had garlanded its neck with daisies. She was like a lost maenad. The troop of bacchantes had moved on and left her behind.

At night, occasionally, Ruth played the piano in the music room.

She played angrily and with a quantity of wrong notes.

On most evenings after dinner she deserted those Scarabae in the drawing room, and went away to her bedroom presumably to paint or read. Did Anna give her books? She had left all her own behind.

The tempo of Ruth’s life was wrong. She had been accustomed to a routine which she herself might break, in truancy. But now there was no routine but idleness, and nowhere to play truant from or to.

The house had perhaps been enough at first, but then she had had Adamus. Now Adamus was denied her, and the house, not seen through his gleam, palled.

Rachaela watched this happen, she watched Ruth change. A stillness was coming over her. She was growing bored.

One night Ruth said to Anna, ‘Can I go to the town?’

‘The town? Oh, it’s a very long way.’

Familiar conversation.

This time Stephan interposed. ‘There’s nothing in the town.’

‘Shops,’ said Ruth.

‘There are shops now in the village.’

‘She can go with Cheta and Carlo.’

‘The walk’s too long,’ said Ruth. She was a child of buses and streets. She did not appear to want the wilds of the heath, empty of gravestones, burger bars and Woolworth’s.

‘Can I go to the cinema?’ said Ruth.

Rachaela had sometimes taken her, and sometimes perhaps she had got in by herself.

It’s too far, Ruth,’ said Anna, ‘too far for you to go-‘

Ruth looked at Rachaela, but Rachaela did not help her.

‘There’s nothing to do here,’ said Ruth.

‘You have your drawing and your music,’ said Anna, ‘and Alice was teaching you how to knit.’

Ruth was silent. She stared at Anna a long time, but Anna went on placidly with her embroidering, and Stephan stared into the space where the fire had been in winter.

Rachaela could suggest to Anna that she and Ruth take a hire car into the town, but Anna would refuse that, predicting that Rachaela would kidnap the child.

At some time some plan would have to be made, for Ruth was turning now, away from them. After all Ruth might have to make the night-walk across the heath.

How long before all the new toys paled? Surely already.

And the Scarabae had altered too. They no longer came to dinner in droves, but only in ones or twos, or only Anna and Stephan came. They no longer gazed on Ruth so intently. To the Scarabae-mind, Ruth had been fixed. She was safe and sound. The betrothal had set her in the precious mould, and now, although she was the apple of their eye, they were free to forget her. They looked at her, when they troubled to, in a fond pleased manner. But she was no longer the star about which they grouped.

Ruth had lost her princess status, now she was only a child in a house.

And the prince, he was gone too.

Had Ruth tried the tower door? Had she located the second door below the annexe and tried that too, to no avail? Had she written him some childish note and torn it up?

Rachaela followed Ruth.

She followed her along the winding corridors, past the furnaces of windows which did not open and which boiled the heat with ruby panes and scalding blue, so that to have their reflected lights touch one was to be scorched.

She waited at doorways, while Ruth moved around black burning rooms, thick with the honey-like smell of heated damp.

She observed Ruth try to force, as she had done, the locked doors. And watched her enter the room-worlds of the Scarabae: Alice in her sitting chamber; Eric carving a mask in a chamber whose garnet-petal window was screened by a milky blind. And Ruth held wool for Alice, and she attended while Eric carved. And later she came upon Peter and Dorian in the morning room under the vineyard Jezebel; even the green looked volcanic, and they were playing chess.