twelve

FOR THE DINNER DANCE AT ORMISTON COURT I wore my black parachute silk evening dress. My mother had got hold of the stuff from some surplus store and dyed it. Her little local dressmaker ran it up. Alan loved me in black. When I was all made up and ready to go I did a twirl in the bedroom for him to admire me and he caught me by the waist and began to fumble with the buttons at the back. The frustration made him even more excited. I was afraid he’d tear the delicate fabric as he pulled at the bodice, feeling for my breasts, his fingers on my nipples. They hardened and of course I felt excited as he pushed me back on the bed. He plunged his hands under the skirts, finding my thighs and the suspenders he liked so much, and somehow his being so rough and laughing so aggressively made me half not want it. I began to tighten up, I was afraid my dress would be ruined, but he was determined, his erection would brook no refusal and he pushed hard into me, again and again, and his eyes were blind with something fiercer than pleasure.

I had to do my hair and my make-up all over again, and that made us late.

.........

The dance was in full swing. I looked about the ballroom as the swing band played a mechanical version of Blue Moon and saw Gwendolen and Radu at a table at the far end of the dance floor. We threaded our way through the tables to the lazy crooning brass and the brush-brush of the percussion.

It was the opposite of the Chelsea Arts Ball, my first ball ever with Alan. That had been chaotic, spontaneous and hilarious; the atmosphere at Ormiston Court was stilted. The faces of men and women alike looked bored and blasé or strained with desperate smiles designed to show the guests’ determination to enjoy themselves in spite of the post-war blues. Some of the dinner jackets and the svelte dresses, narrow columns in sombre colours, looked jaded too, as if they’d spent the war in mothballs. I could almost smell the camphor.

Radu bent his lustrous head over my hand and as he pulled out my chair his hand rested on my waist for a moment. ‘So lovely to see you,’ he murmured. Ever optimistic, I’d hoped the other members of their party might be exciting individuals from the film world. There was a stick-thin blonde in red who was trying to look like Veronica Lake with a waterfall of hair over one eye, but I didn’t think she was even a J Arthur Rank starlet, and if they’d invited her for Stanley I could have told them she wasn’t, would never be, his type. But perhaps he’d brought her along himself, to put Gwen’s nose out of joint – or to cut off his own nose to spite his face, as it were. The only other guests were Daphne and Reggie Constable, acquaintances of Gwen’s from Ormiston Court, a hard-faced couple who drank whisky and reminisced about their gay life before the war, along the Riviera and in Nice and ‘Monte’, varying the theme with grumbles about the government. ‘It’s worse this year than last,’ said Daphne. ‘Everyone’s spent their war gratuities and there’s more rationing now than there was in the war. You could understand it then, but now it’s just an insult. Nothing nice in the shops. And the crime wave!’

‘It’s not just the black market and men from the forces going AWOL. Crimes of violence are on the up,’ said Reggie grimly, as we ate our roast chicken (to be followed by trifle or scotch woodcock).

‘You live near where Neville Heath murdered that poor woman? I’d be terrified to leave the house!’ cried Veronica Lake.

‘And now those tarts –’ said Reggie.

I didn’t want to think about Neville Heath. I’d tried not to read about it in the papers at the time, tried not to think about the gruesome details of stabbed women and the rituals of capital punishment. An unwholesome atmosphere had surrounded the trial, the public drinking in the shocking facts and taking a macabre interest in the dapper murderer’s final hours; and all those black banner headlines about the hanging, and the crowd waiting outside the prison. Sleazy crimes in seedy hotels; it seemed to fit with the post-war mood. Still less did I want to think about the murdered prostitutes.

Alan looked fed up and I knew he too wanted to get away from all this talk of crime, because at any moment someone was going to mention Titus Mavor. And sure enough: ‘Have you heard? That artist chap – said in the papers the police are close to making an arrest.’ Reggie looked round at us all. Did he know we were all involved?

Radu stood up and took my hand. ‘Let’s dance.’

He danced well – much better than Alan. When Alan danced he clasped me to his chest and jogged from foot to foot, more or less on the spot. It was by far the least amorous feature of our marriage and I never felt swoony at all when I was dancing with my husband; it felt manly and comforting and comfortable. On the dance floor we were just good pals.

With Radu there was instant fluid harmony, our limbs in unison, and as he swung me round he pressed me close with his palm in the small of my back. It was a slow foxtrot, my favourite, and I rocked to and fro in his arms in a dream.

When he whispered in my ear, I almost lost my footing. I thought my heart would jump out of my parachute silk bodice. I swallowed. He held me a little closer. ‘You are not scared.’ It hovered between a question and a statement.

Scared of what? Of the erotic feeling that was melting me away? Or of the rumour of an imminent arrest?

I pulled myself together and chose the second. ‘He’s talking rubbish. There’s been nothing in the papers. I haven’t heard anything, have you?’ But I couldn’t help remembering how worried Colin had been just a few evenings ago. Alan had dismissed those fears as paranoia, but I wasn’t so sure.

‘No …’ But he didn’t sound too certain. His little half smile disturbed me and when he muttered: ‘But I wasn’t talking about that. I meant you are not scared of me.’ Just then the foxtrot ended with a plangent wail from the saxophone. I started to walk back to our table, but his hand was round my waist. ‘No, no, I can’t let you go yet.’ And as if at his will the first chord of a tango drew a long breath, paused, then marched out its strutting syncopations.

‘I can’t dance the tango.’

‘With me you can dance anything.’ He pressed his body against me and bent me backwards and I felt his erection. It was excruciating – too much – unnerving – what would the other couples think to see us locked together so tightly – and yet I’d inwardly wholly surrendered. Towards the end he gradually relaxed his hold, but I only came to my senses when the music finally stopped. Thankfully there was an intermission and we returned to the table. Radu pulled my chair back for me, but said not another word.

Alan could be jealous and possessive, but he hadn’t noticed anything – he seemed to be deep in conversation with Stanley. Gwendolen was looking away, across to the other side of the restaurant. She stood up: ‘I need the powder room, what about you?’

As she walked away a man approached her. He was tallish and untidy-looking in spite of his dinner jacket, one of those men who would always look crumpled, his black tie askew, his grey hair rough, hardly brushed, let alone Brylcreemed, his glasses not quite straight. He stood in Gwendolen’s path and I heard him say: ‘Excuse me, but is it – are you …?’ And there was a look on his face I couldn’t pin down, but it must just be that he’d recognised her from the film. I thought it was rather bad form of him to accost her like that, but Gwendolen stopped on the edge of the dance floor, and now they seemed to be having a conversation. As I watched them they made for the bar. No one else had noticed. Alan, Radu and Stan were in a little huddle and the Monte Carlo couple and Veronica Lake were having another moan about rationing. I stood up and strolled over to the bar myself and stood near Gwen and the stranger. I was trying to overhear them – I don’t know why, but I felt very curious – and if they noticed me I’d be able simply to join them, but in the meantime I preferred to eavesdrop. Perhaps the tall stranger was an old flame of Gwendolen’s. That would be interesting; her life before Radu was so mysterious.

‘You look just the same, but …’ The band struck up again and I lost the next bit. Then I caught another fragment of the conversation. ‘… you see we heard – or thought, anyway, it must have …’ Gwendolen was nodding, her expression was still, serious, sad perhaps and yet blank in a way. I heard her say something about the Blitz, but then the barman asked for my order, and at the same moment Stanley appeared at my side: ‘Who’s the geezer with Gwenny?’

So he had noticed after all. I shrugged. ‘No idea.’

‘Let’s join them,’ he said.

Gwendolen must have become aware of us because, rather abruptly it seemed, she held out her hand to the stranger and turned away from him. ‘Stanley, angel,’ she said, ‘I’m feeling a little unwell, I think I should probably go upstairs to the flat for a while.’ They walked off and I was left on my own with the stranger.

‘You’re a friend of hers?’

‘Yes. Well, sort of.’

‘She’s Gwendolen Grey, a film actress, she said?’

‘That’s right. You haven’t seen House of Shadows?’

He shook his head. ‘Incredible. I’d never have thought it. You know, when I saw her …’ He shook his head, bewildered. ‘Well, a lot of things happened in the war, I suppose. I’m glad she’s doing so well. Have you known her long?’ He fumbled in an inside pocket and drew out a cigarette case, took out a cigarette and tapped it on the lid. He forgot to offer me one. He seemed quite distracted.

‘No, not long.’

‘You see …’ I could tell he wanted to ask more, but as he drew in a lungful of smoke he shook his head. ‘I’m sorry – never mind – best to let sleeping dogs lie.’

.........

There was an odd follow-up to this encounter. We visited Ormiston Court again the following weekend. Gwendolen again led me away to her bedroom: ‘Let’s leave the men to do their talking.’

It was so warm and rosy and soft in there with the wall lighting and the satin. I sat on a tapestry boudoir sofa. She smiled nervously. ‘Well – so – I met someone I used to know at that dinner dance. You saw him, didn’t you?’

I nodded.

‘The thing is, he’d like to see me again, but I really don’t want to, well, now that Radu and I … I mean, it’s quite impossible.’

I wasn’t sure I wanted to be in her confidence. These woman-to-woman conversations were very sophisticated and grown up, but Gwen always made me feel just a little uneasy.

‘I’ve written him a letter.’ And she drew it from under the cushion. ‘I wonder – would you mind posting it on your way home? I – I think I may be coming down with flu or something. I don’t want to venture out into the cold. And the sooner he gets it, the better.’

I wondered why I was everyone’s little postman, but I meekly took the envelope and put it in the pocket of my tweed jacket. ‘Was that what you wanted to show me?’

She smiled. ‘Radu got me some lovely boxes of soap when he was in New York. I thought you might like one.’

This time I accepted without a protest. I didn’t want to upset her, didn’t want her to lose her temper again. And soap was different from lingerie, anyway.