The Last Houseparty (16 page)

“It is a king's toy,” said the Prince. “When the Americans have found our oil and Sorah is truly rich I will build a clock like that. I will send workmen to copy it.”

He sounded entirely serious about the proposal.

“You'll have to change one thing,” said Vincent. “I suppose I'd better warn you, by the way. After church tomorrow we all parade out here to have our photograph taken and watch the noon strike.”

“That's all right, old man. Shall I dress up again?'

“The problem is what happens when it strikes. You see, a Saracen and a c-crusader appear and fight and the Saracen is beaten. His head c-c-comes right off.”

The Prince's thoughts were evidently elsewhere. He took some moments to understand.

“No,” he said.

“'Fraid so.”

“This cannot be altered?”

“Don't think so. I daresay I might stop it happening, disconnect that part. Now I know where my uncle k-keeps the k-keys I c-could nip in some time tonight and … Actually, Solly, it wouldn't be very popular. My uncle's g-got a thing about the noon strike. If it fails, the Snailwood line will fail. Stupid, really. It fails at least a dozen times a year in any c-case.”

“No, not stupid, Vincent. I could, I suppose, absent myself from the photographing … No … I shall simply think of something to laugh it off. Thank you for warning me, old chap.”

The Prince's hand, which in a perfectly natural and unconscious gesture had closed on the hilt of the curved dagger at his belt, relaxed its hold.

“Now, one quick driving lesson, eh?” he said.

2

Professor Blech danced with both skill and gusto. As soon as the band, now huddled into a corner of the morning room, struck up the first notes of a foxtrot, before any of the after-dinner guests had arrived and while the other senior males were as yet barely half-way through their cigars, he was in the middle of the room with his wife, he beaming with pleasure, she expressionless but equally adept, sweeping across the as yet uncrowded floor in a series of manoeuvres so near to exhibition standard that the two or three younger couples who had been attracted by the music hesitated a while before joining in. When they did, the Blechs managed for a while to treat them as part of the performance, obstacles in the course to be overcome with maximum grace, until the crowd became too thick for one to be able to follow the movements of any individual couple.

As the evening progressed the strength of the Professor's personality expressed itself in the ease with which he found partners. It seemed that he marked each down during an earlier dance, choosing the prettiest but not necessarily the youngest women, provided they possessed a certain level of competence and then regardless of introductions asking for a dance, brushing aside objections, occasionally even persuading the partner whose name was already on the woman's card to stand down, and then bearing her away, pressing her to his chest and swinging her into the throng. Some of his partners looked put out, or at least startled by the intimacy of his embrace, but only for a few paces before, infected by his confidence in his skill as a dancer, discovering or rediscovering the exhilaration of performance at this level—the closeness being effectively sexless, an expression of the instant unity of movement—they forgot their qualms, forgot the social solecism, forgot his Jewishness, forgot even the sweat that beaded his brow by the end of each dance, and went all out to do their best for the fun of it. Gross, grinning, wholly self-centred, he yet spread pleasure, like Silenus, and not merely to his own partners. Indeed at the finish of one fast waltz the floor voluntarily cleared itself so that the Professor and Nancy Blaise could perform alone. The bandleader, infected also, raised the tempo and the couple whirled through the final bars with flamboyant, weightless precision. The other dancers clapped. Professor Blech padded his brow with a yellow handkerchief, his eyes already darting round to peer for his next sacrifice.

“That was better than a swim before breakfast,” said Miss Blaise, an image so perfectly appropriate to her persona that it raised a laugh.

“I need a breather,” she said to Vincent as she joined him by the wall. “Thank you for not minding me going off with the old buffer, but he is rather a treat, isn't he?”

“Much better than I'd have been. Shall we g-go and listen to the nightingales—they're said to be on form.”

“Over-rated birds, but let's. Can you find me a drink? Not fizz—orange if poss.”

“What an extraordinary old bean!” said Miss Blaise, still evidently obsessed by her encounter with Professor Blech as she and Vincent strolled out along the upper terraces. Dusk had become a succulent still night with a big moon. A double line of lanterns, each a single dimmish flame, marked the pathways between the rosebeds. The far lights would blink systematically out where some other pair of strollers, invisible despite the apparent brightness of the moon, moved past them.

“I thought he was just a world-beating bore,” said Miss Blaise. “And then he springs that on one!”

“I noticed he actually stopped talking to dance.”

“Never a word. Now where are these nightingales?”

“Down below. You'd probably hear them from here if it weren't for the band, but the best place is the trees round the Bloodstone.”

“Bloodstone?”

“Just a sort of stone slab. It used to have a statue on it, ages back, but Aunt C-Clara had it taken away because it hadn't any c-clothes on.”

“But why is it called that?”

“It isn't really. Only Harry and me. We used to play a weird g-game all over the g-garden, so lots of things have names. The Bloodstone was for sacrifices.”

“I know. We had a kingdom all along the sand-dunes at Brancaster. Do we have to go the whole way round the end?”

“There are some steps down the wall in a bit, but they're pretty steep and rough. I doubt if they're lit, either. C-can you manage in a long skirt?”

“If you take my drink. Here.”

Perhaps so as not to dissuade the nightingales from a performance worthy of Snailwood the gardeners had set only one lantern among the trees around the little lawn that held the Bloodstone. The birds were in full voice, two of them, stimulated by competition with each other and possibly with the fluting and wheedling of the band above. Miss Blaise took her orange juice from Vincent, sipped and settled the glass at the corner of the pedestal, leaning her back against the slab. Her dress, ice blue under the lights of the dance floor, took on in the moonlight the hue of a paler stone.

“Harry invited me here,” she said.

“Well, you see, Zena …”

“I suppose he asked you to take me off his hands.”

“Well …”

“I'm rather glad. I like Harry. He's fun. But I get the impression he expects a girl to be pretty forthcoming after a bit.”

“He's …”

“I don't want any of that. It's funny. Here I am, twenty-four, healthy, quite good to look at and so on. I don't think there's anything wrong with me, but I have every intention of dying a leathery old maid, and I shan't feel I've missed much. It's all right, Vince. I'm not warning you off because I think you have evil intentions. Tell me who you used to sacrifice on this stone.”

“Oh, I don't know. Imaginary enemies. It started the other way round—before the g-game g-got all c-complicated, I mean. When we were small we rescued people who were being sacrificed. There was a picture in a book of Iphigenia. We took the idea from that.”

“You leapt down from the trees waving your swords to rescue virgin princesses.”

“That sort of thing.”

“Poor things. How did you know they wanted to be rescued?”

“Because it was our g-game. We made it up.”

“But if it had been real you wouldn't have known, would you? Perhaps they liked being sacrificed. What a lovely way to go—under a moon like this, on a night like this, remembering you've had the best of your life already … Why aren't you wearing a sword with that uniform, Vince? You'll have to go and borrow Prince Solly's dagger. I'm sure he'd understand. He has that sort of look. It's time the stone had a real sacrifice.”

Vincent didn't answer at once. Miss Blaise stretched herself backwards, head up, throat bared, seeming to luxuriate in the chill of the moonbeams. Their voices had alarmed the nearer nightingales into silence. If Vincent had been Harry he might not have taken Miss Blaise's words at their face value, reckoning that her pose, together with the imagery of the dagger blade sliding into welcoming flesh, implied a challenge, if not a definite invitation. Harry, presumably, supposing he had been interested, would have advanced the play further by adopting the mask of priest, father and slayer, if only to see what happened next. Vincent's practicality took a more superficial form. Indeed, when he spoke it sounded as though he had given real thought to the mechanics of the thing.

“Not on, I'm afraid. Solly's nipped off.”

“Gone? Where?”

“Bullington. Show Dolly F-J what he looks like in his sheikh k-kit. He's talking of bringing her back here for a dance. If he does, that'll c-cause a real row between Dibbin and Zena. Don't tell anyone, but I've lent him my c-car.”

There was more to Vincent's betrayal of the Prince's mild confidence than a wish to change the conversation, though that was no doubt part of his motive. But he spoke with real relish, almost a sportsman's enthusiasm, of the prospect of a clash between Zena and Sir John. Miss Blaise was interested in another aspect of the affair. She stretched out a marble arm to yawn.

“I bet he's hoping for more than a dance with Dolly,” she said.

“I expect so.”

“I think it's disgusting,” said Miss Blaise, sitting suddenly up. “Dash it, he's a black man.”

“Not very.”

“Quite enough. And you lent him your car! What about her husband?”

“He's an ass. He deserves everything he g-g-gets. I c-couldn't really have said no when Solly asked for the car, but if it meant dishing Johnson I'd have done it anyway. Besides, Dolly knows how to look after herself.”

“Doesn't she!” said Miss Blaise, twisting sideways and pulling one leg up under her chin to hug it to her. “I shouldn't have said that about him being a black man. It's stupid how much one minds … and she's so jolly white … I don't much care for her really … you can be pretty ruthless, Vince, can't you? Why do you hate Zena so? I'd have thought she was a rather lively kind of aunt to have, especially after what I've heard about old Lady Snailwood.”

“Aunt C-Clara? She did make everyone's life hell, I suppose, but … I don't know. She belonged. She was part of the place. But Zena …”

“Doesn't belong? She makes a pretty good attempt.”

“You're absolutely wrong. She's changed the rules. Everything's different. Not just her not belonging—it belongs to her. We belong to her.”

Miss Blaise nodded, apparently fully understanding and even sympathising with the energy of Vincent's denunciation, the heavy, forceful manner in which he got the words out. Perhaps her expressed view that the best of life was over once childhood was over helped her share his sense of a poisoned world. She expressed herself, at least, in the imagery of the nursery.

“Like the new young queen who's really a witch,” she said. “You'll need a specially strong magic to get rid of her. Perhaps you ought to have sacrificed me when you had the chance—that might have done it. But it's too late now. They'll be starting on the reels any sec, and that's always the best part. Let's go and make sure we get into a decent eight.”

Restless with unreleased energies she swung herself off the stone and took his arm, but as they moved up the clearing another couple, mere shadows, entered from the path on the left, evidently having come the long way round.

“What's happened to the nightingales?” said Mrs Dubigny's voice. “You promised me flocks.”

“'Fraid we've scared them by talking,” said Vincent. “They'll start up again in half a mo.”

“Vince,” said Harry. “When you go up, have a word with Charles Archer …”

“Sh,” said Mrs Dubigny. “Nightingales first.”

“He's out on the terrace by the Duke of Cats,” whispered Harry. “He's got a notion. See what you think. All right, my darling. Hush, world, so that Joan can listen to nightingales.”

The two pairs drifted apart. Vincent took Miss Blaise's glass again so that she could hold her skirt to climb the tricky stairway. They went up, perforce, single file. Harry and Mrs Dubigny stood waiting by the Bloodstone. Further down the slope a third nightingale had not interrupted its singing, and now stimulated the first two to break out again. The lovers waited, listening, in the moonlight and then, Harry leading the way to push the lower branches aside, moved into invisibility beneath the trees.

“I do hope I'm not dragging you away from some delightful girl,” said Sir Charles, the irony in his voice predominating over the solicitude.

“Not at all, sir. I'm supposed to be one of Zena's spares,” said Vincent.

“But I've just seen you emerge from the darkness with the beautiful Miss Blaise.”

“That's all right, sir. She g-gets all the partners she can manage.”

“I am not surprised. A classic type. I had a cousin in much the same mould. Every young man in London broke his heart over her for about three months—their first love, always, of course. Then they went off and married someone else. My cousin became a hospital matron and died of overwork in 'seventeen.”

Sir Charles had had placed for him a few chairs and a table at the eastern end of the front terrace, just beside the stone lion. A decanter, siphon and cigar box waited by his glass. He sat, as always, bolt upright, giving no impression of repose.

“Take a seat, Vincent,” he said. “Got a drink? I shall not keep you long from the festivities. You know, the old maniac who built this place must be praised still for certain effects. I have sat here a score of times. I appreciate the somewhat factitious romance of it all—the river, the lights on the garden, the sound of revelry by night beneath the frowning battlements. This time I have noticed a small extra point. You see that window up there, towards the top of the further tower? With just the faintest of lights in it?”