The Snow Ball (8 page)

‘O, none, I suppose’, he said ironically. ‘But I was thinking of the short run.’

‘Then we were bound to be out of step, as I can’t get my mind off the long run.’

‘Now that I’m not going to cuckold him, I feel you owe me some information about your husband. Or has he been dead for ten years, too?’

They were again leaning on the parapet, arm parallel with arm, cheek parallel with cheek; but not touching. Anna had let her clasped hands drop, from the wrists, below the level of the parapet, but not out of Don Giovanni’s sight. She was aware of his head turned ten degrees from the straight and of his gaze resting, consumingly, on her hands.

‘My husband—’, she began, but broke off. She
twisted her wedding ring a millimetre further round. ‘
Please
let’s remain anonymous.’

‘All right. But it restricts the conversation.’

‘It needn’t. Tell me what sort of person you are. In general terms.’

‘I don’t think in general terms.’

‘What things do you think about?’

‘Mozart and sex’, he said.

‘Nothing else?’

‘Nothing else in general terms. And you?’

‘Mozart, sex and death’, she said.

There was a pause. They both burst into laughter.

‘What made you come to this costume ball’, he presently asked,’ since you don’t usually go to them?’

‘To please Anne, I suppose. No. I’m fond enough of Anne to displease her if I want to. Because it was eighteenth-century, probably.’

‘Because of Mozart?’

‘I daresay. And you?’

‘O, I’ve never been
asked
to one before. But I
probably
wouldn’t have gone, for any other century.’

‘What’s the psychology of historical costume balls?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know. One’s childhood, I suppose’, he said. ‘Most things are. I really came’, he added, ‘because I wanted to see the house. I’ve never been here before.’

‘I came to see the house filled with
eighteenth-century
people. But of course they don’t, subtly, look right.’

‘It’s the faces’, he said.

‘Fake faces … You think they’ll pass, and then at the last minute they won’t. Just as mine won’t pass for seventeen.’

‘I don’t see why you should want it to’, he said.

‘You had the sense to hide yours. It’s easy to say that from behind a mask.’

‘Shall I take it off?’ He put his hand to it.

‘No’, she said quickly. He lowered his hand. ‘I might know you’, she said.

‘I promise you you don’t. At least, I don’t know you. You needn’t be afraid that I am actually your husband. Or your brother or your uncle.’

‘What an operatic world you must think I live in’, she said, ‘where to disguise the upper part of the face is to disguise all, and women are never surprised that the man they married as a baritone has turned into a tenor overnight, or even a soprano.’

‘Perhaps opera heroines are tone deaf.’

‘Well some singers, of course …’

‘When we next meet, I shan’t be in the mask. Shall you know me?’

‘We shan’t meet.’

‘How can you be sure?’

‘I can’t be sure. But the chances are about as small as the chances of committing incest by taking up with a masked stranger.’

‘The chances of that depend on the size of one’s family.’

She laughed. ‘And our meeting again depends on the size of the gathering. Don’t you see, it’s taken a really
big do, Tom-Tom’s net and Anne’s net both cast really wide, to bring us together
once
?
Do you like the house, by the way, now that you see it?’

‘I’d seen the outside. I knew it would be pretty. But actually, the inside—it’s pretty, but I’m
disappointed
. It doesn’t satisfy my historical sense. Is it too done up? Faked?’

‘Or not faked enough?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, since they’re rich, most of their pieces
are
eighteenth-century. So they look a bit battered.
Presumably
in the eighteenth century things didn’t
look
two hundred years old.’

‘Yes, maybe it’s that’, he said. He turned round, so that his back was to the parapet. ‘Surely you wouldn’t want to be seventeen again?’

‘Your mask doesn’t hide your train of thought’, Anna said.

‘That wasn’t my train of thought.’ He turned back towards the ballroom again, and lowered his head. The mask did not hide a slight blush either.

‘I don’t want to
be
seventeen’, Anna said, more gently, ‘only to be capable of passing for it.’

‘I think that’s a mistaken wish’, he muttered. After gazing down on the ball for a minute he said: ‘All preoccupation with history is preoccupation with one’s own past. The unanswerable question:– what was it like to live then? But of course living in 1787 wasn’t
like
anything, any more than being seventeen was, or being seven. They were just living and being.’

‘All the same. Twentieth-century faces
are
different
.’

‘Yes, they give the show away.’ He looked at her sideways. ‘You blame the faces for being
twentieth-centur
y, and the furniture for not being.’

‘Why shouldn’t I? Life isn’t arranged
moralistically
. It isn’t
fair.’

‘No. It’s certainly not that.’

‘Actually, the prettiest room in this house is almost completely fake’, Anna said. “Anne’s bedroom.’

‘O. Well naturally I haven’t seen that.’

‘No more than I’ve seen the office where Tom-Tom works. Though I suppose I
could
see that, if I wanted to.’

‘No reason why you should want to. There’s
nothing
pretty in Tom-Tom’s office.’

‘There’s nothing ugly in Anne’s bedroom … Even so, you mightn’t like the effect. You might say it was tart’s rococo. It isn’t’, she corrected. ‘I feel
disloyal
for even suggesting it …’ She corrected
herself
again: ‘No, I don’t. It
is
tart’s rococo. But I adore it.’

‘You make it sound very enticing’, he said.

‘It is. Like sugar. Like peppermint creams.’

‘Funny thing’, Edward said, coming in close enough to Ruth to talk to her but still panting from the strenuous steps he had been performing on his own, ‘when I was dancing with whatshername—
that
woman
—someone up in that gallery place threw down a lot of peppermint creams.’

His head alluded illustratively up to the gallery. Ruth’s gaze followed his gesture.

‘She’s up there now’, Ruth said.

‘Who is?’

‘Anna. With a man.’

He turned to look, and then went on dancing. ‘I can’t understand how anyone would
want
to spend the evening just watching other people dance.’

‘I expect Anna’s too old to do much dancing’, said Ruth.

‘O I don’t know’, Edward said. ‘Look at the way your father’s been hopping around like a grasshopper all night.’

‘Yes, but Daddy isn’t
like
an old person. Mummy hasn’t danced much. And only with Daddy.’

‘I expect Anna whatsit went up there to cuddle her man’, Edward said. ‘But it’s a damn silly place to choose. They can’t have sex up there with everyone looking.’

He had danced Ruth down towards the end of the ballroom, near the gallery. He looked up, waited his chance and caught Anna’s eye. He threw her a kiss.

She waved back.

‘Who’s that?’ Don Giovanni asked.

‘I don’t know his real name. For tonight he’s Casanova.’

‘What a young Casanova.’

‘The girl, whose real name I
do
know, is Cherubino.’

‘The funny thing is, although she’s so dark and he’s so fair, they look alike.’

‘It’s their common youth.’

‘And of course they’re dressed alike. One black, one white.’

‘The fair one in black, and the dark one in white.’

‘They look almost like brother and sister’, said Don Giovanni, watching them dance back into the crowd and lose themselves. ‘Or I suppose I should say brother and brother.’

‘Your mind runs on incest’, said Anna.

‘Anne, dearie. Lovely dress. Lamé, isn’t it?’

‘Rudy, dear friend.’

‘Lovely party, too, dear.’

‘I’m so glad if you’re enjoying it.’

‘O we are. You do know Myra, don’t you?’

‘Yes of course. We’ve often met’—and never found anything to say.

Anne and Myra smiled at one another and
prolonged
the smiles. Rudy seemed unable to break the silence of his wife. Anne considered putting the obvious question who Myra was, but it was answered before put by the obvious fact that she was nothing—nothing except Myra. Her costume was simply one of Myra’s usual evening dresses—one of Myra’s usual evening gowns: draped dove-grey crêpe, chosen for
its inability to make any noise, even if you violently shook it, which Myra would never do—or encourage anyone else to do: chosen at great cost to make as nearly as possible the effect of not being there and yet remaining at the furthest possible remove from
leaving
Myra naked. At last Anne said to her:

‘Ruth looks sweet as Cherubino’
and at the same moment Rudy said to Anne:

‘Spare me a dance, Anne dear?’

‘O I’d love to, Rudy, but I mustn’t. You haven’t seen Anna, have you?’

‘Anna? I had a dance with her earlier. We were cut in on.’

‘I
must
find her. I want to make sure she’s all right. I did such an awful thing to her.’

‘I can’t believe that’, Rudy said. ‘I thought you two were as thick as thieves.’

‘O my dear’, said Anne, ‘you make me feel all the more remorseful. I must find her. I left her ententacled. By a sort of octopus. He always reminds me of an octopus. He
bulges
so. Well my dear, I know I bulge myself. I may remind people of an octopus myself. But he’s so hungry. I’m afraid he may have eaten her …’

Anne oozed away from them; and when she had gone Myra said, in a soft, worried and completely serious voice:

‘O Rudy. How
awful
for Anna.’

‘Was it a peppermint cream’, Ruth abruptly asked Edward, ‘that she was
feeding
you? I mean,
practically
from her own mouth?’

‘Were you there? I thought you were doing your diary.’

‘I came back.’

‘O.’

‘Did you actually
eat
it?’ Ruth said. ‘How
could
you?’

‘Well of course I ate it. What the hell else would I do with a peppermint cream?’

‘Casanova was at the first performance of
Don
Giovanni.
The real Casanova, I mean. Did you know that?’

‘Yes, actually’, Anna replied, without much emphasis. ‘The first performance was on the
twenty-ninth
of October, 1787.’

‘Good God. How did you remember that?’

‘Well, you can remember, too. The year, anyway.’

‘Can I? Anyway, how do you know I can?’

‘Because you said living in 1787 wouldn’t be
like
anything.’

‘Did I? I didn’t really notice I did. I mean, I didn’t pick on the year consciously. But, anyway, I’ve just been going through the reference books. You must have it all in your head.’

‘It isn’t really miraculous’, Anna said. ‘For one thing, I once did some research on
Don
Giovanni
——’

‘Did you publish it?’ he interrupted quickly. ‘I’ll read it.’

‘It’s under my maiden name.’

‘That doesn’t impress
me
as an obstacle. You’re forgetting I don’t even know your married name. And
were
you a maiden when you published it?’

‘It
is
a long time ago, but not so long as that.’

‘When——’

‘And for another thing’, Anna said, ‘I have the sort of mind that remembers numbers.’

‘Some numbers, like your age, you seem unable to forget.’

‘You’re quite right’, she said, turning her head and looking at him for a moment. ‘It isn’t a gift. I mean, it’s not enviable.’

‘But you have other gifts. For example, you’re musical.’

‘Fairly’, she said. ‘Nothing exceptional.’

‘I think I’d better not say what I think your other gifts are. I might make you angry.’

‘O then don’t’, Anna said. After a pause, she added: ‘Actually, I
have
one other gift, which you don’t know about.’

‘Are you going to demonstrate it to me?’

‘I can’t, with so many people here. I don’t’, she added, ‘mean
that
.’

But he laughed—with pleasure.

‘You haven’t seen Anna, have you?’

‘Not for ages’, said Lady Hamilton. ‘She’s been
disappearing
all night.’

‘O dear. Excuse me, dear.’

‘Anne!’ Lady Hamilton ran after her. ‘I’ve been looking for
you.
I want to thank you.’

‘You’re not leaving?’

‘I must. I’m dropping with exhaustion.’

‘Stay for the cabaret. It’ll be quite soon.’

‘
Dropping.
With
exhaustion.’

‘O dear. How sad’, said Anne.

‘Good night. I hope you find Anna’, Lady
Hamilton
said, reading where Anne’s thoughts really were.

‘Where did they get the chandeliers?’ Don
Giovanni
asked.

‘Anne got them. From an eighteenth-century house in Dublin, that was being sold up.’

There were three chandeliers. They marched straight down the middle of the pretty stuccoed
ceiling
, dividing the ballroom into three calm,
magnificent
bays. They were not illuminated, because Anne had refused to spoil them by having them wired; but the electric lights struck sparks from them.

‘I often wish I was big enough to wear them’, Anna said.

‘You’d be a monster. You’d need three ears.’