July 1925
Captain John Markham was almost finished. Only the eyes remained to be painted in. The most important part, always.
In the studio photographs Lawrence was given, the eyes of the young men came only in shades of sepia and were often fixed at some point just past the camera, as if they were looking into the far distance towards the destination that awaited them (more distant even than France). It was his job to make them blue again, or green or hazel or chocolate-brown; luminous with life. It was in his power to enable them to look directly once more into the eyes of those who loved and missed and mourned them, and re-establish the bond that the war had broken. A tiny point of light here, a shadow there could entirely alter the mood of the face, and over the course of four years and countless portraits he had perfected the skill of distilling the essence of the man in the photograph, capturing his character in those painted eyes. It was the most delicate part of the process.
He studied the photograph clipped to the side of his easel, tilting it up to the light that filtered through the grimy skylight above. Over a stultifying tea in the parlour of their gloomy red brick villa in Guildford, Markham’s parents had told Lawrence of a studious boy who had excelled at mathematics and been head of his house in the minor public school he had attended (the name had meant nothing to Lawrence) before going up to Cambridge. He had not been much of a sportsman, but had enjoyed birdwatching and music and had been a good pianist. (His mother’s eyes – that English blue, Lawrence noted carefully, touched with grey – had moved to the upright piano behind the door when she’d said that, as if for a moment she could hear her boy playing again.) He had come away with the photograph, a down payment of five guineas on the commission, and an insight into John Markham’s quiet, diffident character. The light in his eyes would be gentle; no sparks of patriotic pride or the thrill of adventure – let’s get over there and show them, lads – that Lawrence often saw in his subjects.
He mixed china white with lamp black and added a touch of Prussian blue. In the second that his brush hovered over the canvas the slam of the front door downstairs reverberated up through the building like a gunshot, jolting his hand. Voices carried up the stairwell – Edith’s bark, and a familiar Welsh baritone, which got suddenly louder as the door at the bottom of the attic steps was pulled open.
‘Guess who I found on the doorstep,’ Edith said as she appeared at the top of the stairs. She was wearing a voluminous shepherd’s smock and red espadrilles and had a bundle of cloth and a plaster reproduction of the head of Michelangelo’s David clasped in her arms.
‘Goliath?’ Lawrence muttered. ‘John the Baptist?’
Edith glanced down at the head, almost as if she’d forgotten she was carrying it. ‘Oh – Berwick Street market. Couldn’t resist. I need a new subject now the Napiers are finished. No – chap from your lodgings. At least I hope that’s who he is, and I haven’t been taken for a fool again by someone to whom you owe money.’
‘He does owe me money, as a matter of fact. Rent day was Monday – two days ago. That’s partly why I’m here.’ Emerging from the stairwell, Sam looked around. ‘Jesus – this place is even more untidy than the flat.’
The studio took up the entire top floor of the house in Gower Street, where rooms had been knocked together and poky windows replaced with skylights to create one large, airy space. It was owned by Edith, and shared with a shifting population of painters, sculptors, students and artist’s models, who drifted in and out like stray cats, often sleeping on the divan in the corner (or posing for Edith on it). One thing they all had in common was a lack of domestic skill or interest and the space was cluttered with unwashed plates, smeared glasses, books, dead flowers, empty bottles, paint-encrusted brushes, and cups in which mould flourished in fascinating patterns on long-abandoned coffee.
‘I’ll pay you,’ Lawrence muttered, turning back to the easel to avoid Edith’s eye. He owed her rent on the studio too, though she was kind enough (and well-off enough – her wayward Bohemianism was built on privileged foundations) not to mention it very often.
‘You always say that, boyo. Sometimes you even get round to doing it,’ Sam said cheerfully, leaning against the table and folding his arms across the straining buttons of his shirt. He was bred for wielding a pick and hauling coal rather than bashing out words on a typewriter, and London life had softened him physically, if not in temperament. ‘Today’s your lucky day. I’m giving you the chance to write off the debt.’
Lawrence put down his brush with a sigh. ‘How?’
‘No need to sound so suspicious. Nothing illegal, nothing dangerous and you’d get to play with that fancy camera of yours. There’s a Miners’ Federation meeting tonight, speakers coming from all over to discuss strike action. Word has it that the police are going to start a bit of trouble, make it look like our fault. A tame photographer would be a useful thing to have on our side.’
Lawrence’s heart sank. He’d been dragged into photographing Sam’s political rallies before, and the results were as dull as the meetings themselves; a waste of film, which would probably end up costing twice the rent money he owed. He had tried to explain that it wasn’t his sort of photography, but as far as Sam was concerned one camera was much the same as another, and the same went for photographers.
‘Can’t you get someone from the newspaper?’
‘I’ve already tried – I know you’re a total prima donna about not dirtying your pretty artist’s hands on such ordinary stuff. Thing is, the chaps we use are all taken up chasing the toffs tonight. The end of the Season, isn’t it? The Bright Young People…’ – he said the words as if they tasted bitter on his tongue – ‘will all be out to play before they bugger off to Biarritz and Baden-bloody-Baden for the summer. There’s some big fancy party in Grosvenor Square, and that’s what the public want to see, apparently. The idle rich in their ridiculous costumes.’
While he’d been speaking, Edith had cleared a space in the clutter on the floor (piling most of it onto the sagging divan) and she was now kneeling in front of a linen sheet she had spread out. She looked up at Sam with an arch smile. ‘Not just the idle rich in their ridiculous costumes, Mr Evans.’ She looked down at the sheet. ‘I’ve left it rather late to make mine. Too busy faffing about putting the final touches on the portrait – I’ve never known anyone worse for interfering, but there we are. I certainly can’t accuse Josiah Napier of being miserly. He paid three times the going rate.’
Colour had crept into Sam’s florid cheeks, so they were almost as red as his hair. Wrong-footed, he gave a scornful snort. ‘Easy to be generous when you’re as rich as that, Miss Linde.’
‘I daresay…’ She leaned forward and began to sketch an outline on the sheet. ‘Easy to overlook the eccentric and disreputable lady artist who painted your daughters’ portrait and not invite her to the unveiling party too, but he didn’t, so for that reason I rather like Mr Napier.’
Lawrence could tell Sam was struggling to know which of his clearly defined headings to file Edith under. The shepherd’s smock made it hard to argue with the ‘eccentric’ bit, but Edith’s plummy voice made ‘disreputable’ something of a stretch. Sam Evans was a man’s man; a pint and pub and politics man, who thought women came in two varieties only, neither of which had any business having opinions. Clearing his throat he turned back to Lawrence.
‘So then boyo, you’ll come to the meeting? Not going to let me down on this, are you?’
‘Well, since he can’t be in two places at once it looks like he’ll have to let one of us down,’ Edith said mildly, not looking up from her sketching.
For a moment Lawrence was caught off-guard. She’d teasingly pleaded with him for weeks to go with her to the party, but he’d refused, in spite of the fact that Selina Lennox was likely to be there. Because Selina Lennox was likely to be there. It had taken him enough time to get her out of his head after the Royal Academy fiasco and he wasn’t going to humiliate himself again. But Edith, he realized, was throwing him a lifeline. A ready-made excuse.
‘What?’ Sam scowled. ‘You’re going to this posh bastard party?’
Edith dropped her pencil and rocked back on her heels, mustering a tremulous smile. ‘Of course, you don’t have to,’ she said bravely, the picture of dejected disappointment. ‘I’m sure I can go alone. It won’t be as much fun, but I daresay I’ll find someone to talk to.’
Lawrence had never realized she was such a good actress. She pitched it perfectly. Looking at Sam, he raised his shoulders in a gesture of helplessness.
‘Sorry, but I did promise.’
‘You kept bloody quiet about it,’ Sam growled. ‘Anyone would think you were ashamed of yourself, fraternizing with the enemy.’ He levered himself up from the table and stepped awkwardly over Edith’s sheet on the floor. ‘Oh well, I’d best let you get on with it then. Enjoy your evening. Miss Linde.’ He nodded at Edith, and shot Lawrence a narrow look, which suggested the things he would have said if it hadn’t been for the presence of a lady. ‘I won’t wait up, boyo.’
Lawrence waited until the heavy tread of his boots had died away on the stairs and the front door had slammed before turning to her.
‘Edith…’
‘Now, don’t be cross. I was trying to help, that’s all. When I realized it was the same chap who made you take photographs for his Communist Worker article on low wages and didn’t pay you, I couldn’t sit here and say nothing. We artists need to eat just as much as miners do.’
‘He’s going to find out.’ Exasperation fought with gratitude. ‘I live with him, for Christ’s sake. He’s going to know I didn’t go to the party.’
‘Not necessarily.’ Edith beamed at him from under her sharp, square-cut fringe. Her severely bobbed hair had made Joan of Arc an obvious costume choice, though after fruitlessly scouring junk shops and antiques stalls for armour she had been forced to compromise with chain mail (knitted) and a linen tunic. ‘Not if you do go…’
‘Edith…’
‘I know, I know – you’ve said you don’t want to, but I really don’t understand why – you’re not usually such a stick in the mud. It’ll be a hoot. Free champagne and a ringside seat at the greatest show in town. Come on, Lawrence – where’s your spirit of adventure? How often does fate present ordinary folk like us with the chance to experience glamour and extravagance on this scale? It’ll be a feast for the senses, a glimpse into another world…’
‘Exactly.’ His voice was flat. ‘A world in which I don’t belong.’
There was a kind of relief in speaking aloud the truth that taunted him whenever his thoughts turned to Selina Lennox. It was good to put it out there, so that the harsh glare of reality could expose the preposterousness of those thoughts, make them wither like blighted fruit. It was all right for Edith. She might describe herself as ordinary, but that was only in comparison to those who commanded dukedoms or business empires. Everything was relative. There was only so far aspiration, ambition and artistic talent could take you, and from the damp, cramped streets of a small seaside town to the glitter of Grosvenor Square was pushing it.
But that was what he always did. Pushed too hard, too far. Overreached himself. Wanted too much. Bohemian Bloomsbury and the company of artists was more than he’d dared dream of in his father’s workshop in Hastings, but here he was, mesmerized by the memory of a girl who was so far beyond his reach she may as well be on the moon.
‘Don’t be so parochial,’ Edith snapped. ‘It’s very disappointing of you. These people are young, beautiful and rich, and you, my darling, can move amongst them as an equal on two of those counts – don’t undervalue the privilege of that. I don’t fit in on any, but I’m not going to let that spoil my fun. One thing I’ve learned is that one must grab at the chances life offers – taste the fruit, drink the wine.’ She sat back on her heels and fixed him with a stern look. ‘At the hour of one’s death there will be no solace in knowing that one has known one’s place or lived safely. Just ask the young man in front of you.’
Captain John Markham gazed out of the canvas with his blank, dead eyes, agreeing with her.
‘I haven’t got a costume…’
Edith grinned, sensing victory.
‘My dear, we are artists. This is not a problem … It is a pleasure.’
In the evening the clouds that had blanketed the sky all day grew blacker and heavier, turning the fading daylight purple. As the time of the party approached, as if to prove that there were some things that even filthy rich industrialists couldn’t buy, the heavens opened.
It was a deluge of biblical proportions. The doorman at Claridge’s, where Theo had taken a room in which they could dress in their borrowed finery, had held his vast umbrella over them as they hurried into a taxi to travel the short distance to the party. Grosvenor Square was jammed with vehicles – other taxicabs and smart cars, some of them driven by chauffeurs, some more erratically piloted by exotically dressed partygoers – all waiting to deposit their occupants as close to the front steps of the house as possible, where a canopy had been erected over the pavement. Theo lowered the window an inch and they heard music from the party, and the shriek of voices calling to each other from rain-stranded cars.
‘“Frame your mind to mirth and merriment,”’ sighed Theo, tugging at black satin cutting into his waist. ‘Dear God, this corset pinches. You’ve laced it far too tightly, Selina, you beast.’
‘It’s supposed to be tight – that’s rather the point of a corset,’ Selina replied, looking out of the window through sheets of rain. She was shivering, partly from the cool air on her bare skin and partly from a sort of jittery restlessness, which meant she had to clamp her teeth together to stop them chattering. Theo had ordered champagne while they were getting ready, and two glasses drunk too quickly had left her feeling both hyped-up and somehow achingly weary at the same time. The Napiers were famous for the originality of their parties, but she felt as if she could see every detail of the evening that stretched ahead, as if she had somehow lived it already, and the predictability of it all made her want to weep.
Beside her, Flick wriggled irritably. ‘How on earth did women endure wearing corsets every day? I simply can’t breathe.’
‘My mother still wears them,’ Theo said, raising his flounced skirt to take out the silver hipflask he’d tucked under his garter. ‘I’m beginning to understand why she’s always in such a vile temper.’
He handed the flask to Selina, who took it and swigged. ‘I rather like it. At least it keeps my ridiculous chest in check. Oh God, I promised my mother I wouldn’t get tight. Don’t let me, will you? Less than a week to the wedding and the atmosphere at home can only be described as fraught.’
‘All the more reason why you absolutely need to be tight,’ Theo said, sounding horrified at the idea of a sober evening. ‘Parents simply don’t have the first idea, do they?’
‘I have plenty of happy dust, darling,’ Flick said vaguely, rubbing a porthole on the steamed-up window with one gloved finger. ‘High isn’t the same as tight, is it? Oh look – how thrilling – ’ She pointed to a row of four green sports cars, parked haphazardly alongside each other at the edge of the Square. ‘This is where the Bentley Boys live, isn’t it? I do hope they’ll be at the party. If not, maybe we should knock on their door and introduce ourselves. I wonder why we don’t know them?’
‘Because we only ever meet the same people,’ Selina said and her laugh jangled with despair. ‘Different parties, different costumes, but the same old crowd. People like us.’
The Season had passed in a blur of cocktails and jazz and late night stumbles through dark streets. She had been to the Henley Regatta and Royal Ascot, though cried off the Chelsea Flower Show and the Eton and Harrow match at Lord’s (pleading tiredness; more acceptable than the truth, which was that she was bored and frustrated and simply couldn’t be bothered). She had attended debutante dances and sat through numerous plays and musical revues, all of which blended confusingly into each other. She had danced and smiled and made the smallest of talk. She had been pleasant to Rupert Carew whenever the occasion unavoidably demanded it. And all the time she had been aware of that growing restlessness. A sort of hunger. A sense of floating above herself, watching. Searching.
The taxi drew up behind a silver Rolls Royce, out of which Georgie Stanhope was emerging, shrieking as she tried to hold trailing bits of muslin from her Botticelli robe out of the puddles. ‘At least the rain has foiled the photographers,’ Theo said, swiping Flick’s compact (‘careful darling, that’s rather good stuff’) and peering into its tiny mirror. He pressed his painted lips together and brushed a flake of mascara from his cheek, then snapped it shut again, striking a dramatic pose. ‘My dears, are we ready for our entrance?’
Josiah Napier was a pragmatic man as well as a rich one. He wasn’t foolish enough to expose his own immaculate home in Carlton House Terrace to a plague of careless partygoers, and so the Grosvenor Square house had been hired, with staff, for the evening, and decorated in keeping with the theme. Empty frames had been hung on the walls around the entrance hall and up the sweeping staircase, and suspended on long wires from the ceiling. This created the impression that the figures that thronged the space in flowing Pre-Raphaelite dresses, Renaissance drapes and Renoir frills had been brought to life by some enchantment, and stepped down into the real world.
They joined the tide of people flowing upstairs. ‘It’s like Campaign Headquarters in the Peninsular War,’ murmured Theo, looking over the banisters. ‘I must be the only male who hasn’t come as the Duke of Wellington.’ They followed the scent of Mitsouko to where Lally and Harry stood at the gallery rail, overlooking the hall. Lally was a striking Klimt in a long evening coat of shimmering gold and jewel-like embroidery and Harry sported an impressive false moustache as the Laughing Cavalier.
‘I don’t feel much like laughing,’ he moaned, sliding his fingers beneath his flounced lace collar and pulling it away from his neck. ‘Far too bloody hot. I intend to start shedding layers as soon as things get going properly. I assume we were ordered to get here so bloody early because the Napiers are planning some stunt in there.’ He nodded to a set of grand double doors, firmly closed, and rolled his eyes. ‘I prepare to be thrilled.’
Lally leaned over and kissed his cheek indulgently. ‘Poor baby. Overtiredness has made you grumpy. Don’t worry – any day now you’ll be let out to pasture on a grouse moor, dressed in your tweeds and clutching a gun.’
It was a reminder that the hectic rhythm they’d all grown accustomed to over the past weeks was about to change when the Season ended and London emptied. ‘Rather you than me,’ Theo said with a shudder. ‘I shall be in Italy, replete with red wine and Renaissance art…’
The conversation turned to plans for the summer. Flick was being dispatched to the continent to stay with her glamorous and rather louche godmother (or godless-mother, as she called her) in Cap Ferrat. Lally was joining a group heading to the Isle of Wight for Cowes week, and Harry and Selina would both be going to Scotland for the shooting – in different parties, and with very different attitudes. Selina had tried not to think about it, but being forced to confront it now made despair weigh her down like damp Highland plaid. She and Miranda had little in common, but their low-level combat usually provided a diversion of sorts. This year, with Miranda on her honeymoon, she wouldn’t even have that to pass the time. The pulse of restlessness quickened.
Draining her glass, she looked around for a waiter to supply another one. The crush behind them was building, the noise level rising to drown out the insipid band. ‘I say, Selina, your sister is quite the centre of attention,’ Lally remarked, looking over the gallery rail into the hallway below. ‘Splendid frock, but look – her chap can’t get anywhere near her with that skirt. Poor thing.’
They all crowded along the rail to look down. Josiah Napier was there, dressed as Holbein’s Henry VIII, his booming Yorkshire voice rising above everyone else’s. Miranda and Lionel had come as the sour-faced couple from the Gainsborough painting, and the wide panniers of her blue satin skirt created a space around her that automatically made her the focus of attention. Lionel hovered uncertainly, looking surprisingly dashing in his waisted coat and knee britches, though the effect was somewhat marred when he removed his hat to reveal the thinning hair on his crown. After the barbed comments in Maison D’Or, Selina was pleased to see that Miranda’s bosom, viewed from above, looked surprisingly fulsome. She fished the cherry out of her glass.
‘Bet you sixpence I can get this down the front of my sister’s dress…’
They all leaned forward to watch as she took aim, but just as the cherry left her hand another figure moved into view directly below the balcony and looked up.
Time stalled. The cherry completed its arc in slow motion, taking an age to make its inevitable contact with Rupert Carew’s forehead.
‘Oh God, oh God—’
They all drew back sharply, clutching at each other, snorts of barely stifled laughter ringing out over the hallway. Selina was torn between horror and hilarity. ‘Oh God, why did it have to be him?’ she gasped when she’d stopped laughing enough to speak. ‘I suppose I’ll have to go and apologize. My life won’t be worth living once Miranda tells Mama if I don’t.’
The band came to the end of the number with a flourish of strings, and then – quietly at first, but building in a rapid crescendo – a drum beat grabbed everyone’s attention. The clamour of voices dropped away as people looked round to see what was happening.
‘Too late,’ Flick whispered, clutching her arm. ‘You can’t go now.’
The double doors swung open. A cheer went up as people recognized the figure that stepped through them as JC Carmelo, leader of the best Negro jazz band in London. He held his hands up in a fruitless attempt to quell the noise, and in the end simply yelled above it.
‘Ladies and gentlemen – nymphs and goddesses, generals and dancing girls.’ He flashed a grin at Theo, Flick and Selina. ‘Allow me to welcome you all here this evening, and to introduce your beautiful hostesses, the Misses Eva and Lucille Napier!’
‘Oh, for pity’s sake,’ groaned Theo as a vast gilded frame containing a portrait of the Napiers was rolled forward on a specially constructed trolley. The people on the first floor gallery stepped aside to clear a path while those in the hall below pressed back and craned their necks to see what was happening. In the ballroom JC’s band launched into ‘Five Foot Two and Eyes of Blue’ in a triumphant blast of trumpets.
‘Don’t tell me – yes, I thought so,’ Theo sighed as the surface of the portrait was suddenly rent apart and the Napier sisters burst through, throwing their arms wide and simpering madly as they jumped down and began to dance a skilled Charleston, beckoning their guests into the ballroom.
‘Do you suppose we’ve seen it all now?’ Lally said faintly. ‘Do say we have. Do say parties simply cannot get more vulgar than this…’
‘Too, too ridiculous,’ Flick beamed, ‘but thank goodness there’s a decent band after all. Come on – let’s dance!’
She grabbed Selina’s wrist and began to pull her towards the ballroom, where lights blazed and trumpets screeched. Selina looked over her shoulder, down into the hall below. She was thinking of Rupert. She should find him, apologize quickly, to limit the damage, but something in the crowd caught her eye and drove him instantly from her head.
She stopped, jerking her hand from Flick’s, her eyes raking the press of people coming up the stairs to recapture the glimpse of dark hair, the slash of a cheekbone …
Him.
It was different from the hundred other times she’d found herself chasing some elusive glimpse of a dark-haired stranger. This time there was no uncertainty. Her body recognized him while her mind was still trying to catch up, and she could feel her heartbeat at the base of her throat; too fast, too hard. She was suddenly very hot; lightheaded, so that the air seemed to liquefy for a moment and swirl around her. She grasped the gallery rail, searching for him again.
People were still surging up the staircase, a bizarre procession of saints and soldiers, courtiers and courtesans. Noise rose up around her – discordant jazz and shrieking, over-excited voices. The effect of the cocktails seemed to hit her in a rush, making everything seem too bright, too fluid, just a little out of sync. Suddenly Miranda loomed in front of her, Margot beside her, arranging her ridiculous wide skirts like a natural bridesmaid.
‘Oh look – my insufferable sister.’
Her tone was light but Selina knew her well enough to feel the grit beneath it and see the daggers in her blue gaze, even through the haze of cocktails and adrenaline.
‘I was just – ’ Her eyes slid past her sister, searching.
‘Waiting to apologize, I hope,’ Miranda hissed. ‘Honestly, Selina, grown-ups don’t find your schoolroom japes in the slightest bit amusing.’
Beside her Margot tilted her head, regarding Selina archly.
‘Is something wrong?’
No.
Yes.
Both.
Because he was there, coming up the stairs. As the people around him moved she could see that his chest was bare and his skin had been painted with swirls of deep indigo and Catherine wheel stars in silver and gold. Van Gogh, she thought dazedly. He was a starry night made flesh.
‘Selina?’ Miranda’s voice was sharp. ‘Selina?’
‘Oh—’ she was breathless. ‘No. No, nothing’s wrong.’
He was looking at her.
Straight at her.
‘Good.’ Miranda seized her hand, her fingernails pressing crescents of pain into her skin. ‘Here’s Rupert now so you can say sorry.’
‘Ye Gods, it’s hot,’ Edith grumbled above the music, looking round the seething ballroom. ‘You don’t know how fortunate you are to be so unfettered by clothing. Chain mail really isn’t the most practical choice for parties.’
‘Just as well you didn’t find a suit of armour.’
‘Good Lord, yes – can you imagine? Though…’ she dropped her voice and leaned closer. ‘I’m beginning to get the impression you might be in need of one as things get going. My dear, you’re creating quite a stir. Such looks…’
Lawrence looked. Two girls in powdered Rococo wigs and plunging dresses (Marie Antoinette? Madame de Pompadour?) were staring at him with open interest, whispering behind their hands.
‘Admiring your artwork.’ His eyes slid past them.
‘Admiring the canvas,’ Edith corrected, swiping two glasses from a passing waiter. ‘Almost as blatantly as those naughty Napiers did. I have a feeling that’s Pamela Fitzsimmons, though it’s hard to tell with the wig. If it is, you’re being ogled by the most sought-after deb of the Season.’
He couldn’t have cared less. Selina Lennox was standing at the opposite side of the room, with a tall man in a red cutaway military coat festooned with gold braid. There were a dozen Duke of Wellingtons at the party, but this was the same one that had moved in on her before Lawrence could reach her at the top of the stairs. She had her back half turned, but he could tell from the rigid set of her shoulders that she was tense. Was that a good sign or a bad one? It had been impossible to tell what she was thinking earlier, when their eyes had met. All he knew was that she remembered him.
That was something, at least.
He seemed to have finished the champagne Edith had handed him without tasting it; posh people drank out of ridiculously small glasses. His gaze moved impatiently around the room and his mind raced ahead, calculating how he might approach her. If he should approach her.
‘Do you know her?’
Edith’s voice – dry and slightly mocking – interrupted his thoughts.
‘Who?’
‘The Toulouse-Lautrec girl you can’t stop looking at. The one you exchanged a rather electrifying eye-meet with as we came up the stairs.’
‘Yes.’ There was no point in lying. ‘Her name’s Selina Lennox.’
‘I know that. I must say I’m surprised you do, though.’
The statement hid a question, which he chose not to answer. ‘Who’s he?’
‘The Duke of Wellington, I imagine – like every other chap here. Criminally predictable.’
Lawrence dragged his eyes away from the back of Selina’s neck and gave Edith a grudging smile. ‘Very funny. Who is he really?’
‘Rupert Carew.’ Edith leaned on her sword and plucked at the neck of her chain mail vest, fanning cooler air against her skin. ‘Second son of the Earl of Ashbourne. Big family pile in Lincolnshire, I think – King’s Aston. Ruby mines in Burma.’
‘No one important then. Good.’
She grinned. ‘Anything else you’d like to know?’
‘Thanks. I think I’ve got the picture.’
‘Quite a crowd, isn’t it?’ Edith squinted into the melee on the dancefloor. ‘Good heavens, is that little Bunny Hargreaves? Over there, in the angel wings? Her people are neighbours of ours in Sussex – her coming out portrait was my first commission. Dearest, I’m going to say hello, and I suggest you do the same with the lovely Miss Lennox. Carew has monopolized her for far too long.’
Lawrence watched her launch herself into the chaos of flailing limbs, brandishing her sword like a gentleman’s walking cane. She made it sound simple. But then perhaps it was to people of her class: start with hello, and five minutes later you’ve discovered you’re second cousins on your mother’s side and your brothers rowed together at Oxford. His connection with Selina Lennox extended only as far as a dead cat and a cigarette shared in a scrubby communal garden. Not exactly Debrett. Hello was really all he had.
In the midst of the crowd on the dancefloor Edith was talking animatedly to a rather lumpen girl dressed as a Renaissance angel with a pair of impressive feathered wings. He had to admit the costumes were incredible. No detail had been spared, which he supposed was what happened when you had infinite resources of time, money and professional help. As well as the proliferation of Iron Dukes, Pre-Raphaelites were predictably popular, but he could also see an inventive Picasso and Vermeer’s pearl-wearing girl, who was furtively inhaling cocaine from a silver salver.
Jesus – if he had his camera he could be a rich man by morning. Newspaper editors would climb over each other to be first in line for this kind of look behind the closed doors of Mayfair. Gainsborough’s Mr and Mrs Andrews were stranded at the side of the room, the woman’s wide satin skirt making dancing impossible. Her face was sour as she watched the other two dancers from Selina’s Toulouse-Lautrec trio improvise a stylish can-can/Charleston cross-over, amid much amused and admiring attention.
Lawrence watched them too. Flick Fanshawe was the darling of the press; the girl the newspapers always focused on, because her collection of attributes – fashionably delicate beauty, vast personal fortune, attitude of total self-absorbed indifference – made her a perfect figurehead for the Bright Young People. Theo Osborne, with his flamboyant homosexuality and eccentric, extravagant clothing, also claimed a large number of more disapproving column inches, carefully framed by gleeful newspaper editors to provoke disgust and outrage in the common working man. Watching him now Lawrence felt neither of those things. Just a kick of sharp, old-fashioned jealousy at his glamorous insouciance, and the fact that he was Selina’s friend.
Inevitably, his eyes went back to her. She was still talking to Carew, and an earnest, colourless Pre-Raphaelite with curtains of long hair. Impatience swelled inside him. He had thought obsessively about seeing her again, but hadn’t got beyond that; hadn’t considered the eventuality of seeing her but not being able to reach her. Why didn’t she turn round? Did she know he was there? Was she wishing he would leave?
The possibility skewered him with anguish. He couldn’t stay where he was anyway, standing on his own like the last wallflower. The Season’s most sought-after deb was looking at him again, in a way that suggested she was about to come over. Edith was right – even without a shirt it was boiling; he was in danger of sweating off her masterpiece. He began to thread his way through the crowd towards the door in search of air. And more alcohol.
Out of the corner of her eye Selina saw him move. Panic spiralled through her.
She had been aware of him all the time she had been standing there. Her back was towards him but some sort of shivering sixth sense had made her conscious of his eyes on her. The minutes had stretched. She had apologized to Rupert for the cherry incident, but then felt duty bound to stay and talk to him, and to Margot who hovered at his elbow. While she appeared fascinated by every word he spoke, Selina was struggling to focus on anything other than how to extract herself. It required constant effort to keep from looking round. Rupert, watching her (always watching) was obviously aware of her agitation as her gaze flitted over the dancefloor, her body twitching instinctively to the pulse of the music.
‘You still like dancing,’ he remarked. A statement rather than a question, and a reference to the times he had come to Blackwood with Howard and she had insisted that they roll back the rug in the billiard room after dinner and dance to ragtime on the gramophone. Somehow the reminder felt like a rebuke.
‘Yes.’ It was evident that he still didn’t. She remembered those evenings, and her vague irritation at his presence. He never joined in as Howard two-stepped her around the room. Carew’s got two left feet, he used to laugh. Just as well – one wouldn’t want a chap to be too good at everything …
At a loss for anything else to say, she risked a quick look round. That was when she saw it: a flicker of blue at the corner of her eye. Turning her head she saw him disappear through the wide double doors that led out onto the gallery. Margot was fanning herself with her dance card, complaining about the heat. Selina seized her chance.
‘Beastly, isn’t it? I simply must go and get some air…’ She stepped backwards. ‘This corset…’
She turned and pushed her way quickly through the dancers to the door, not looking back, not caring what they might think or say about her once she’d gone. It was no less crowded out on the gallery: people had spilled out of the ballroom to talk and laugh and dance there too. Selina slipped through them, taking care not to catch anyone’s eye, not wanting to be waylaid. She heard someone call her name but didn’t look round.
He was there, ahead of her, walking away down the corridor, where the crowd thinned out by the dining room and the stairs to the upper floors.
‘Lawrence.’
She didn’t raise her voice – she didn’t dare – but he must have heard because he stopped. Turned.
It was the most extraordinary feeling, going towards him. After the long weeks of thinking about him, imagining him, it was hard to believe that it was real and he was there, looking back at her. She felt the blood rush to her cheeks and throb in her temples, at the base of her throat. Her mouth spread into a smile.
‘Hello.’
She was breathless, as if she’d sprinted through the streets to catch up with him, instead of just crossing a room choked with people. She stopped, a little distance from where he stood.
‘Hello.’
‘It really is you. I…’ She shook her head a little, still smiling. ‘I had to check.’
A lie. She had known, without doubt.
‘It really is.’ His smile was guarded. ‘I came with a friend. She painted the portrait. Of Eva and Lucille.’
Selina nodded. She didn’t care who he’d come with or why. Explanations were wasting precious time, and she was afraid that any moment someone she knew would appear and try to drag her back to dance, or talk to her about inane, unimportant things, not realizing that they were interrupting the moment for which she had been waiting for weeks. A lifetime. Around them the party was getting more raucous. One of the Napiers had climbed up to sit in one of the empty frames that hung from the ceiling high over the gallery, while the group of people watching whooped. There was a muffled explosion as someone on the balcony uncorked a shaken champagne bottle and sprayed it over people in the hall below. Selina winced.
‘It’s very noisy—’
‘And very hot—’
‘And very full of people I don’t want to talk to.’
Their eyes were locked together, searching, questioning. Her heart was beating so hard she was sure he must see it, pulsing beneath her corset. She felt like she had the summer when Howard had taught her to jump into the lake from the rope swing – how much she’d wanted to do it, but how terrified she’d been. How much courage it had taken to let go.
‘We could go somewhere—’ Her voice had dried to a croak. ‘Away from here…’
‘Could we?’ His eyes searched hers. ‘Where?’
‘Who cares? We do it all the time – life’s too short for dull parties. We can be back before the end. No one will notice.’
‘I’ll go upstairs and borrow some coats, then let’s get out of here.’