‘We’ll need skis to get out of this place soon.’
Vivi found herself moving accommodatingly sideways as several conversations continued around her. She was starting to feel discomfited by the way Xander’s hand had ‘accidentally’ brushed her behind several times.
‘Anyone seen Douglas?’
‘Chatting to some blonde in the picture gallery. I gave him a wet willie as I went past.’ He mimed licking his finger and sticking it into his neighbour’s ear.
‘Another dance, Vivi?’ Alexander held out a hand, and made to lead her back on to the dance floor.
‘I – I think I’ll wait this one out.’ She put a hand to her hair, and realised, with dismay, that her curls no longer felt smooth and round, but had collapsed in stiff fronds.
‘Come and have a go on the tables, then,’ he said, and offered his arm instead. ‘Be my lucky charm.’
‘Can I meet you in there? I really need to – to powder my nose.’
A chattering queue was snaking out of the downstairs bathroom, and Vivi, standing alone as the chatter and noise ebbed and flowed around her, found that by the time she’d reached its head she genuinely needed to go. She was rather discomfited when suddenly, with ‘Vivi! Darling! It’s Isabel. Izzy? From Mrs de Montfort’s? Don’t you look fab!’, the now limited space between her and the lavatory door was filled.
The girl, whom Vivi only vaguely remembered (this might have been as much to do with the amount of champagne she had drunk as genuine lack of recognition) wheeled in front of her, inelegantly hoicking up her long pink skirt with one hand, and planted a kiss just behind Vivi’s ear. ‘Darling, I couldn’t just nip in front of you, could I? I’m absolutely dying. Going to disgrace myself if I . . . Marvellous.’ As the door swung open in front of them, Isabel vanished inside, and Vivi found herself crossing her legs, her bladder’s thwarted sense of anticipation turning a vague need into an uncomfortably urgent one.
‘Bloody cow,’ said a voice from behind her. Vivi flushed guiltily, imagining this to be directed at her. ‘She and that Forster girl have been completely monopolising Toby Duckworth and the Horseguards all night. Margaret B-W’s terribly upset.’
‘Athene Forster doesn’t even like Toby Duckworth. She just fools around because she knows he’s got a pash for her.’
‘Him and half the bloody Kensington barracks.’
‘I don’t know how they can’t see through her.’
‘They certainly get to see enough of her.’ There was a ripple of laughter through the queue and Vivi plucked up the courage to glance behind her.
‘Her parents hardly speak to her, I’m told.’
‘Are you surprised? She’s getting quite a reputation.’
‘You know the rumour is that she . . .’
The voices behind her dropped to a murmur, and Vivi turned back to the door lest she was thought to be eavesdropping. She tried, unsuccessfully, not to think about her bladder. Then she tried, even less successfully, not to think about where Douglas might be. She was worried that he might be getting the wrong impression of her relationship with Alexander. And she was disappointed by how much less fun the ball was than she had anticipated. She had hardly seen Douglas, and when she had, he had seemed like some unreachable stranger, not like her Douglas at all.
‘Are you going in?’ The girl behind her was gesturing at the open door. Isabel must have vacated it without a word to her. Feeling cross and stupid, Vivi stepped into the lavatory, then swore as the hem of her skirt flushed dark with the unidentified watery slick on the marble floor.
She peed, tugged, dissatisfied, at her hair, patted with her compact to dull the sweaty sheen on her skin, tried inexpertly to add solid mascara to her already spidery lashes. There was nothing fairytale about her appearance now, she mused. Unless you brought the Ugly Sisters into the equation.
The impatient knocking on the door had become too insistent to ignore; she emerged into the hallway, primed to apologise for her too-lengthy sojourn inside. But no one was looking at her.
The row of girls was gazing away from her towards the gaming room, where a commotion had sucked away the atmosphere from them. It took Vivi a couple of moments to adjust, and then, with the rest, she slowly followed the sound of clattering and sporadic exclamation, feeling the air grow suddenly chill. There was the sound of a strangulated horn, and Vivi observed that the hunting-horn-blowing competition, which Xander had told her about, must have started. But this horn was not being blown with any finesse; the air was expelled in gasps, as if someone was breathless, or laughing.
Vivi stopped in the entrance to the gaming room, behind a group of men, and gazed around her. On the opposite side of the huge room, someone had opened the french windows on to the front lawns so that stray snowflakes blew in at an acute angle. She wrapped her arms round herself, feeling her skin goosepimple. She realised she had trodden on someone’s foot and stepped aside, glancing guiltily up at the man’s face, ready to apologise. But he did not notice. He was staring straight ahead, his mouth partially open as if, in his alcoholic daze, he was not convinced of what he was seeing.
For there, wheeling between the roulette and blackj ack tables, was a huge grey horse, its nostrils flared and eyes rolling as it trod nervously back and forth, its hooves still covered in snow, surrounded by a sea of gleefully appalled faces. On its back was the palest girl Vivi had ever seen, her dress hoisted up to reveal long, alabaster legs, her feet still clad in sequined party slippers, long dark hair flowing behind her, one bare arm lifted as she steered the animal expertly in and out of the tables by its headcollar and lead rope, the other raising a brass horn to her lips. Vivi noted absently that, unlike her own already mottled arms, the other girl’s did not give the slightest suggestion of cold.
‘View halloa!’ One of the pink-coated young men in the corner was blowing a horn of his own. Two others had climbed on to the tables for a better view.
‘I don’t bloody believe this.’
‘Jump the roulette tables! We’ll pull them all together!’
Vivi could see Alexander in the corner, laughing and raising a glass as if in mock salute. Beside him, several matronly chaperones were conferring anxiously, gesticulating towards the centre of the room.
‘Can I be the fox? I’ll let you catch me . . .’
‘Ugh. God, that girl would do anything for attention.’
Athene Forster. Vivi recognised the dismissive tones of the girl in the queue for the lavatory. But, like the rest, she was captivated by the unlikely sight before them. Athene had pulled her horse to a halt and was bent low over his neck, entreating a group of young men in low, gravelly tones: ‘Anyone got a drink, loves?’
There was a kind of knowledge in her voice, of things sadder and stranger than you would ever understand. A crack of grief that would be audible even at her happiest. A sea of glasses was proffered towards her, glinting under the thousand-watt brilliance of the crystal chandeliers. She dropped her horn, lifted a glass, and downed the contents in a single gulp to local applause. ‘Now, which of you darlings is going to light me a cigarette? I dropped mine jumping out of the rose garden.’
‘Athene, old girl, you don’t fancy giving us a Lady Godiva, do you?’