It was crucial not to look back, not to notice the stares, or else one lost one’s nerve. One childhood Christmas, in that golden age before the war, a circus show had come to Salisbury and Howard had taken her and Miranda. She remembered watching a man walk a tightrope strung high above their heads, and being awed and desperate to know how he achieved this seemingly superhuman feat. He didn’t look down, Howard said afterwards, not once. That’s the secret.
She had never forgotten it.
‘“Hell is empty and all the devils are here”,’ Theo yelled above the noise as they went up the stairs. ‘It rather reminds me of Regents Park Zoo. I’m not sure whether it’s Aggie’s interior décor, or the reek of pheromones.’
‘Telephones?’ squealed Flick. She was a different person from the bruised, fragile creature who had picked at tea in Claridge’s a few hours earlier. The first cocktail of the day had revived her, like water on a parched plant, and each successive drink had made her stronger and more certain, dissolving her ennui and the existential doubts that beset her during the sober hours of the afternoon. Above the starched collar and black silk bow tie her elfin face was animated, the dark circles beneath her eyes disguised with face powder. She sparkled, once more the aristocratic beauty who so bewitched the newspapers and dominated their society columns.
Heat softened and smudged everything, so that the champagne was the only thing that was cold and sharp. The noise level was such that it was necessary to stare at the mouth of whoever one was talking to in order to have any hope of working out what they were saying, which seemed like a lot of effort for such banal conversation. Selina, drifting from one group to the next, knew that tomorrow she would have no recollection of most of what was said. Fingers brushed her slicked-back hair and tugged her bow tie undone, and the faces behind the lipsticked mouths talking at her slid out of focus as her glass was filled and filled again. She lost Flick and Theo, and going in search of them to suggest dinner she bumped into Harry Lonsdale, who caught hold of her waist and brushed his mouth across her bare nape. ‘Dressed like that you remind me of a boy I knew at school,’ he groaned. ‘God, the agony of first love.’
‘Poor Harry. Any idea where Flick is?’
‘Last seen powdering her nose upstairs. High as a kite, bless her.’
Selina wriggled out of his embrace to go and find her. It was a fine balance, a thin line between the state of exhilarating intoxication where reality was brighter and more beautiful and one felt magnificently invincible, and the tumble into oblivion. As she wove her way through the dancers and stepped over the legs of people sprawled on the floor, Selina thought of the tightrope walker again, and the ruthless focus and control that kept him steady. At the same circus there had been a trapeze artist: a dainty girl in a sequinned costume who had sailed through the air, twisting and spinning and turning somersaults, then releasing her hold on the trapeze and hanging suspended for a breathless moment before plunging downwards. Now, all these years later, Selina couldn’t remember what the girl had looked like, but when she thought of her it was always Flick she saw.
The champagne in her glass had turned warm and acidic. Going out onto the landing she tipped it into a vase of spiky gladioli and was heading for the stairs when she had the uncomfortable sensation of being watched. She looked round. Rupert Carew was standing a little distance away with Margot Atherton (which explained why she hadn’t been stalking Selina all evening).
Oh God, she should go and talk to him. Say hello. She had known him since she was a child, when he had often come to stay with Howard at Blackwood in the school holidays, seeming oddly adult even then, and too serious a companion for her laughing, teasing brother. He was one of those sorts who was good at everything, Howard had explained cheerfully; sport and music and schoolroom study – the kind of chap one wanted on one’s team. They had joined the army together in the autumn of 1914, straight from the OTC at Cambridge, and served together in France and Belgium. Rupert had been in the same push in which Howard was wounded. He had been with him in the shell hole at the end.
Selina didn’t want to think about the shell hole. Or the end.
At that moment there was a high-pitched whoop from the top of the stairs and Flick swung her leg over the banister and shot down. A cheer went up as Selina caught her, and Flick, playing to the crowd, kissed her extravagantly on the mouth.
When she looked again Rupert had gone.
4
The Thrill of the Chase
The spring night was chilly when they spilled out of the restaurant and piled into the sleek motorcar that Harry Lonsdale had secretly ‘borrowed’ from his father. As he drove, Harry peeled off his spectacles and handed them to Theo to polish, as if smeared lenses rather than cocktails and champagne were the reason he couldn’t see straight.
The motorcar’s canvas hood was folded down. Selina and Flick sat in the back, their legs awkwardly positioned around a crate of champagne they’d discovered tucked behind the front seats (‘Pa always keeps one in the car, for emergencies,’ Harry explained). Flick had also swiped an unfinished bottle of wine from dinner, and they passed this between them as they spun through the streets. At Admiralty Arch they discovered about thirty motorcars, circling like thoroughbreds waiting to go into the stalls. No one wanted to lose time having to restart their engines when the first clue was released, but passengers ran between the vehicles, fanning away the exhaust fumes as they exchanged greetings of lighthearted rivalry. Theo vaulted out of the passenger seat to be ready to collect the clue while Selina and Flick lit cigarettes for them all and assessed the competition.
‘Bother. There’s Georgie Stanhope, talking to Hillary,’ Harry said, crossly (they often teased him that his fearful competitiveness was a sign of his middle class roots). ‘What’s the betting she’s pumping him for information? She’s with Clarence Seaton too, who’s infuriatingly good at working out cryptic clues. He’ll be able to pay off his father’s death duties on treasure hunt winnings alone soon; we don’t stand a chance of beating them.’
‘Darling, who really cares about winning?’ Selina drawled, looking out into the blue London night. In spite of the relative warmth of her clothes she felt shivery; restless and keyed up, as if she was waiting for something more significant to start than another night-time treasure hunt (fun, but hardly momentous). Another motorcar swooped past them in a cacophony of hooting and, recognizing Lally Ross-Cunningham, she raised the bottle she was holding in salute. ‘I can’t think why she’s with Aubrey Hastings,’ she remarked. ‘See how desperate he is for us to notice his new motorcar. Oh look – the clues are being handed out. Are we ready for the off?’
She and Flick leaned into the front as Theo leapt back in, tearing open the envelope. Harry had his cigarette lighter at the ready to illuminate the page.
‘The banks of the River Irwell are an unlikely place to find the well-earned spoils of a kilted rebel,’ he read quickly, then repeated it more slowly, placing the emphasis on different words as Harry joined the procession of vehicles roaring under the archway.
‘Where are we going?’ Flick asked, gripping the back of Harry’s seat hard to avoid being flung out.