There was a ripple of laughter. Which came to an abrupt stop. The band was silenced, and Vivi glanced behind her, following the sound of a whispered exclamation.
‘What on earth do you think you’re doing?’ Lena Bloomberg had arrived in the centre of the room and stood, her emerald dress skimming her upright figure, squarely facing the wheeling horse, her hands, white-knuckled, planted on her hips. Her face was pink with suppressed fury, her eyes glittering as brightly as the sculptural rocks round her neck. Vivi’s stomach clenched in anticipation.
‘Did you hear me?’
Athene Forster didn’t look remotely cowed. ‘It’s a hunt ball. Old Forester here was feeling a bit left out.’
Another ripple of laughter.
‘You have no right—’
‘As far as I can see, he’s got more right than you to be here, Mrs Bloomberg. Mr B told me you don’t even hunt.’
The man beside Vivi swore admiringly under his breath.
Mrs Bloomberg opened her mouth as if to speak, but Athene waved a hand at her casually. ‘Oh, don’t get into a bate. Me and Forester just thought we might make things a little more . . . authentic.’ Athene reached down for another glass of champagne, and downed it with a deadly languor, then added, so quietly that only those closest to her could hear it, ‘Unlike this house.’
‘Get off–get off my husband’s horse immediately! How dare you abuse our hospitality in this way?’ Lena Bloomberg would have been an imposing figure at the best of times; her height and the air of authority bestowed by huge wealth had evidently left her unused to being crossed. Even though she had not moved since she had first spoken, the suggestion of controlled fury had vacuumed any residual mirth from the room. People were looking anxiously at each other now, wondering which of the two participants would crack first.
There was a painful silence.
It appeared to be Athene. She gazed at Mrs Bloomberg steadily for a short eternity, then leant back and began to turn the horse slowly back between the tables, pausing only to accept a cigarette.
The older woman’s voice cut through the stilled room: ‘I had been warned not to invite you, but I was assured by your parents that you had grown up a little. They were patently wrong, and I can promise you that as soon as this is over I shall let them know so in no uncertain terms.’
‘Poor Forester,’ Athene crooned, lying along the horse’s neck. ‘And he was so looking forward to a little poker.’
‘Meanwhile, I do not want to see you for the remainder of the evening. You should think yourself lucky that the weather does not permit me to have you thrown out of here on your ear, young lady.’ Mrs Bloomberg’s icy tones followed Athene as she walked the horse back towards the french windows.
‘Oh, don’t worry about me, Mrs Bloomberg.’ The girl turned her head with a lazy, charming smile. ‘I’ve been turfed out of far classier establishments than this.’ Then, with a kick of her jewelled slippers, she and the horse leapt over the small stone steps and cantered, nearly silently, into the snowy dark.
There was a loaded silence, and then, on the instructions of the rigid hostess, the band struck up again. Groups of people exclaimed at each other, pointing at the snowy hoofmarks on the polished floor, as the ball sputtered slowly back into life. The master of ceremonies announced that in five minutes the horn-blowing competition would take place in the Great Hall, and that, for those who were hungry, dinner was still being served in the dining room. Within minutes, all that was left of Athene’s appearance was a ghostly imprint in the imaginations of those who had seen her – its edges already rubbed off by the prospect of the next piece of entertainment – and a few pools of melted snow on the floor.
Vivi was still staring at Douglas. Standing by the huge fireplace, his eyes had not left the now closed french windows, just as they had not left Athene Forster as she sat on her huge horse, a few feet from him. While those around him had been appalled, or shocked, giggling in nervous excitement, in Douglas Fairley-Hulme’s expression there had been something else. Something still and rapt. Something that made Vivi fearful. ‘Douglas?’ she said, making her way over to him, trying not to slip on the wet floor.
He didn’t appear to hear.
‘Douglas? You promised me a dance.’
It was several seconds later that he noticed her. ‘What? Oh, Vee. Yes. Right.’ His eye was drawn once again to the doors. ‘I – I’ve just got to get a drink first. I’ll bring you a glass. Be right back.’
That was the point, Vivi realised afterwards, at which she had been forced to acknowledge that there was going to be no fairytale ending to her evening. Douglas hadn’t returned with the drinks, and she had stood by the fireplace for almost forty minutes, a vague, glassy smile on her face, trying to look purposeful, rather than like someone who had been left on the side like a spare part. She hadn’t wanted to move, initially, because there were so many people, and the house was so big, and she wasn’t convinced Douglas would be able to find her again, once he remembered. But when she grasped that the group by the flower arrangement were remarking on her lonely sojourn, and the same waiter had been past three times, twice to offer drinks, and the third to ask if she was all right, she accepted Alexander’s second offer to dance.
At midnight, there had been a toast, and some strange, unofficial game involving a young man with a fox’s tail attached to his jacket who went hurtling through the house, hotly pursued by several of his pink-coated friends with hunting horns. One had slipped and fallen hard on the waxed floor, knocking himself unconscious by the main staircase. But another had poured the contents of a stirrup cup into his mouth, and he had come to, spluttering and gagging, got up and carried on the chase as if nothing had happened. At one o’clock Vivi, who was wishing she could go back to her room, said she would accompany Alexander to the blackjack table where, unexpectedly, he won seven pounds. In a fit of exuberance, he told her she should have the lot. The way he said that she was his ‘lucky charm’ made her feel a bit nauseous – that, or the amount of champagne she had drunk. At half past one she saw Mrs Bloomberg in animated discussion with her husband in what looked like his private office. Just visible was a pair of prostrate female legs, in shimmering oyster tights. Vivi recognised them as belonging to a red-haired girl she had seen earlier, being sick out of a window.
At two o’clock, as some unseen church-tower timepiece confirmed the hour, Vivi was forced to acknowledge that Douglas was not going to keep his promise, that she was not going to find herself held gently in his arms, that there was going to be no longed-for kiss at the end of the evening. Surrounded by the chaos around her, the girls shrieking, their faces now flushed and bleary, the boys sprawled drunkenly on sofas or, occasionally, brawling incompetently, all she wanted was to be alone in her room and cry without worrying over what anyone else thought of her.
‘Xander, I think I’m going to go to my room.’
His arm was slung casually round her waist and he was talking to one of his friends. He turned a surprised face towards her. ‘What?’
‘I’m really tired. I hope you don’t mind. I’ve had a perfectly lovely evening, thank you very much.’
‘You can’t go to bed now.’ He reeled backwards theatrically. ‘Party’s only just starting.’