When they reached the landing, Geenie said, ‘This is my room. And that’s Ellen’s. Your father sleeps in there, but he has his own room, too. And that one will be yours.’
‘Aren’t there any other rooms?’ asked Diana.
‘Only downstairs.’
‘Hasn’t your mother got an awful lot of money?’
‘I think so, yes.’
‘Then why hasn’t she got a bigger house?’
The question had never occurred to Geenie, who’d lived in all sorts of houses, big and small, all over Europe. She’d presumed that most houses in the English countryside were cottages, which meant they were small.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Does she like it here?’
‘Not much.’
‘Do you like it?’
Geenie didn’t know the answer until the word came out of her mouth. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I like it.’
. . . .
George had chosen the glazed chintz curtains with the peacock pattern and the eiderdown in matching greens and blues for her bedroom. Ellen had brought her old French furniture from their house in Paris. But Geenie herself had chosen the picture on the wall above her bed. It was an illustration from one of Jimmy’s favourite books: Jack the Giant Killer. It showed the moment when Jack came upon the three princesses imprisoned by the giant, each one hanging from the ceiling by her own hair. Jimmy had always taken great pleasure in reading this scene aloud to Geenie, particularly the part about the ladies being kept for many days without food in order to encourage them to feed upon the flesh of their murdered husbands.
The two girls looked at the picture. The princesses looked quite happy to be hung up by their hair. Great swirls of it twirled and curled around metal hooks, as though the princesses’ bondage were merely a matter of hair-styling. Their dainty shoes pointed downwards, like ballerinas’ feet. George had some postcards on the wall of his writer’s studio of the Soviet People Enjoying a Healthy Lifestyle, which he’d brought back from Russia. They all wore gym knickers and little cotton vests with belts and pointed their feet downwards in a manner similar to these princesses.
‘That one looks like you,’ said Diana, pointing to the fair-haired princess at the front of the picture. ‘A helpless blonde.’
Geenie didn’t say anything, but she’d always thought the blonde princess was a bit like her. Her face was round and her lips made a little red cross. Her nose was a mere line down the centre of her face – quite unlike Ellen’s dog-nose, as Jimmy had once called it. She swung from her hook with grace and charm, unruffled by her fate. She was the only princess who looked the least bit impressed by Jack’s appearance. A handbag dangled from her fingertips. Geenie made a silent vow to get one like it, with a jewelled clasp and the thinnest of straps.
‘Do you think Jack marries one of them?’ asked Diana.
‘No,’ said Geenie. ‘It says in the story that he gives them their liberty then continues on his journey into Wales.’
‘Perhaps they didn’t want to marry him.’
‘Why not?’ said Geenie. ‘He rescued them, didn’t he?’
‘They could have got off those hooks easily enough by themselves. All they had to do was untangle their hair. Or cut it off.’
‘Maybe they didn’t want to cut their hair. When my mother cut her hair off Jimmy cried.’
Diana shrugged. ‘Let’s dress up,’ she said.
Geenie pulled the dressing-up things from the bottom of her wardrobe, where she kept them in a tangled heap. Plunging her wrists into the twists of fabric on the floor, she wrenched each item from the muddle. There was a long sable coat with gathered cuffs (once Jimmy’s); a brocade waistcoat with tortoiseshell buttons; a blue French sailor’s jacket; a slightly squashed hat made entirely of kittiwake feathers; and a long white nightie trimmed with pink lace. There was a short silk dress with a dropped waist, turquoise blue in the bodice, green in the skirt; a huge corset, camomile-lotion pink, which had once belonged to Geenie’s grandmother; a pair of silk stockings, laddered; a fez; and an ivory fan showing scenes from Venice. There was a white Egyptian robe with gold trim and boxy neck, in the Tutankhamen style, which Ellen had bought on her honeymoon. There was a red and white checked Arab headdress; an electric blue feather boa; and a huge hooped petti-coat, which had been Ellen’s when she was a little girl in New York. And there was a pair of jade Turkish slippers, studded with glass and turned up at the end like gondolas (which Geenie was forbidden to wear, in case she tripped over them on the stairs), and a matching long jade necklace.
Diana picked the necklace from the top of the pile. ‘I’ll have this,’ she said. She ran the beads across her face, rubbing each one on her cheek.
‘Then you’ll have to wear the slippers.’
‘Why?’
‘Because they match.’
Diana frowned. ‘I want to wear the white thing, though.’
‘But that’s Egyptian. It’s what I wear when I’m being Cleopatra. And the beads aren’t Egyptian.’ Geenie twisted the feather boa around her neck. It was hot and scratchy against her skin.
‘Show me, then,’ said Diana. ‘Show me your favourite outfit.’
Geenie thought for a moment. The corset was one of her favourites, but she didn’t think that she should tell Diana that.
Just as she was reaching into the pile of clothes to find something more suitable, Diana caught her elbow. ‘Tell you what!’ she said, ‘Let me guess what it is.’
‘You won’t guess.’
‘I will.’ Her eyes flashed and she clasped her hands together. ‘I will guess.’
‘Go on, then,’ said Geenie, straightening up.
Diana’s hand hovered over the bundle of silk and cotton, feathers and lace. ‘Let’s see. It’s a process of deduction, like in a detective story.’
‘I don’t like those.’
‘Nor do I. But my mother loves them. Dorothy Sayers.’
‘My mother loves Dostoyevsky.’
Diana pulled out the ripped silk stockings. Pulling one taut over her face, she breathed heavily and leant close to Geenie. ‘Now I’m a robber.’
‘That’s not my favourite.’
‘I know that.’
Diana dropped the stocking and picked up the brocade waistcoat. ‘It’s not this.’
‘No.’
Diana held out the white nightie with the pink lace. ‘Or this.’
‘Of course not.’
Diana heaved the sable coat from the heap and hung it from her head, like a hooded cape. ‘This smells,’ she said, ‘like a dead animal.’
‘That’s because it is a dead animal,’ said Geenie, throwing herself back on her bed and stretching her arms above her head. ‘It was Jimmy’s.’
‘Who’s Jimmy?’
‘He lived with us for ages after my father left. I don’t remember my father, but I remember everything about Jimmy. He was a true bohemian.’
Diana peered out from her dark cave of fur. ‘My Aunt Laura’s one of them. But my father’s a Communist.’
The girls looked at one another.
‘What does that mean?’ asked Geenie.
‘He thinks the working classes should be – equal with us. Or like us. Something like that. He went to Russia a couple of years ago.’
‘What for?’
‘To see how they do communism there. He said the ballet was very good, and everything was clean and the people were happy.’
‘Did you go with him?’
‘No.’
Diana sat on the bed beside Geenie and let the coat drop to her shoulders. ‘Did Jimmy really wear this?’
‘He wore it on car journeys. He drove from our house in Paris to Nice in one go.’
‘Did you go with him?’
Geenie shook her head.
‘Where is he now?’
Geenie sat up. ‘He’s dead.’
Diana pulled the fur coat tighter around her and said nothing.
After a while, Geenie said, ‘Can I wear it now?’ and Diana shrugged the coat from her own shoulders and placed it around Geenie’s. Then she stood back and frowned, as if concentrating very hard. ‘It suits you,’ she said, nodding.
Geenie wrapped the coat tightly around herself and smiled.