theatrical make-up - we had turned her into a doll, a Coppelia. 'This is wretched.'
'There is absolutely nothing we can do, dear.' Diana strokes the linen of my arm. 'Where could we go?' She looks at me.
'They were shooting at civilians,' I tell Alice. 'It was a riot near the Mirov Palace. Clara and I were almost caught up in it, but it wasn't really dangerous.'
'What was Clara doing, letting you go out in that?' says Alice. 'Clara is a fool! Clara will get you killed. She looks for danger. She loves to be near death. It's the way she's made. You shouldn't go along with her silly schemes.'
'We were taking our usual stroll,' I say mildly, looking to Diana for an explanation. Diana gets up and goes into the other room to find her playing cards. Alice has pinched her cheeks together and juts her red lips at me. It is the expression she usually employs when she pretends to know somebody else's secret, or disbelieves a statement, or disapproves of an explanation. 'Don't do that,' I say. 'It makes you look ugly.' I will do almost anything to take that particular expression off her face. If you're frightened, then admit it. But you shouldn't try to turn your fear onto somebody else. Clara doesn't deserve that.' She is for the first time, however, thoroughly unreachable. She will not respond. The realisation gives me a physical shock. 'It isn't fair,' I add. But I am losing her. I can sense it. She needs me to give something which I do not have. I do not even know exactly what it is she wants. I would give it if I could. I hold back. Perhaps it is simply that she has used me up. Anything I say will be contrary to my interests. Alice is cold. 'You have changed,' she says. It is as if a judge has reached a verdict. 'You used to be so gay.' I am condemned and sentenced and still my crime is unknown to me. Diana returns. 'Shall we all go down to dinner tonight? she says. She seems innocent. Has she been speaking about me to Alice? Or against Clara? Nobody could do that unless Alice wanted it.
'Why not?' I reply. 'We'll have Horsemeat Surprise. Or perhaps tonight it will be Pouf-Pouf stew.' My joke falls flat. Alice cries: 'Oh, my God!' and begins to cry into her hands. Diana comforts her. Somehow I have compounded my crime.
'I'm very sorry,' I say.
'It isn't your fault.' Diana is grim. 'You'd better bring Clara here. This is getting out of proportion. At all costs we four must stick together.' Alice looks up. Snails seem to have crawled across her caked face. 'The pair of them are already against us. Can't you see that, Diana?' Lady Cromach puts on her dark dressing gown. 'I'll get Clara. You stay here with Ricky.' As soon as she has left Alice sniffs and stops crying. She glares at me. She goes to her dressing table and begins to wipe the cosmetics from her face. She has become much more skilled with her clothes and her make-up. 'We've got to get away from here, Ricky,' she says. 'We haven't been trying properly. We'll be like those Romans - those people in Pompei - still making love when the volcano went off. Diana and Clara must take their chances. You surely know of some means… ' I am again shocked, both by her disloyalty and her volte-face. Why has she suddenly forgiven me? I am disturbed, yet flattered she should choose me as her conspirator against the others. 'We've got to get to Paris, Ricky.' The traces of tears are nearly gone. She begins to work on her hair, brushing rapidly. She leans into the mirror. 'It would be pointless to take Clara with us. She has no breeding. Well, you can't expect it from a whore, I suppose.'
I am angry on Clara's behalf, yet to defend her would be to lose my child. Alice has fired her warning shot.
'What about Diana?' I ask.
'She's too unimaginative. You and I are the only ones with imagination, Ricky. It is our bond. Remember?' She turns with a lovely little smile. 'Twin souls?'
I laugh. I recognise her motives and her techniques but I can't resist them. She is my muse, my alter-ego, my creation. 'Let's at least behave decently.' I attempt to save something of my old standards. 'There's no need to condemn either of them just because we're tired of them. Let's just admit we want to get to Paris together.'
She is almost happy. She blows me a kiss from her reflection. 'All right. That's fair enough. What will you do?'
'I'll make enquiries. I know someone. There's a chance.'. This is empty reassurance, of course. She must hope. She must pin that hope on me. She has given me an ultimatum. To lose her would be to lose myself.
'I just want to be on our own again,' she says. 'In Paris. Or Vienna. Wherever you think. But we can't stay here, Ricky. There are too many dangers. Too many awful memories. I want to start afresh. I want to be your wife, as you promised.'
I am enormously elated as she embraces me; I have had a last-minute reprieve. But there are conditions. We hear Clara and Diana coming back. She whispers: 'Get us away.' And she continues with her toilet. 'She's much better now,' I say. 'It was the shooting and the heat. We're all relaxing again.' I laugh. I look at the two women I intend to deceive. They seem merely pleased emotions have settled. I see no reason to feel guilt. It will simply be Alice and me again. We shall finish where we began. Nobody will have lost. There have been no bargains made. But I am already lost; I refuse to consider what I will receive in place of love; or what I shall win to replace the pain and the beauty of worshipping a woman rather than a child. I shall become a coward. The future threatens me and I refuse to acknowledge it. The moment is all that matters. I might have ended my days with affectionate memories and all I shall actually have will be a litany of petty revenges and self-pity. I will come to deceive all women as wilfully as I now plan to deceive myself. I will exploit their romance as mine was exploited. I know all this but I am compelled to continue. Alice has begun to sing that old familiar parting song; finding faults, compiling lists of supposed slights so that she might justify her next decision. And what she can turn against these two friends she can as easily turn against me. I am in that state of disbelief which can sometimes last for days or weeks before the fact of disaffection is accepted. I look away. When shall I be struck? In Paris? Before or after we are married? I will suffer that particular indignity. I will listen to lies about what we have done and distortions of the facts of our life together. I will not leave. I will not, as I should, let her sing that song alone. But all this knowledge is swamped by the tiniest hope that she will change: that what I see is not the truth.
Alexandra. You must not leave me. You must not change. From the triumph of eyes freshly-adult she will one day mock my misery. She will refuse the role which it will have suited her to play, which will no longer be useful to her. She will change her ambitions, but not her nature. I shall be hardly peripheral to her consideration when not long ago I should have been central. From a citadel of lace and velvet she will look down on a wretch. Now she flashes me a private smile. They are getting changed. They are chatting amongst themselves. They prepare themselves for the dinner. Then Clara and Diana leave me alone with Alice again. 'I must have your guarantee,' I tell her. 'I must know you will not betray me.' She hugs me. She kisses me warmly. 'How could I betray you, darling Ricky? You are my master!' I hold her to me, not daring to look at her face for fear I will see the deception too clearly. 'It's wrong to do this to Clara and Diana,' I say. She pulls away from me. 'That's stupid. What do we owe them?' I sit on the chair, my shoulders stooped. She offers me something in her gloved hand, palm outstretched as if to a pet. It is a little pill of opium. Wonderingly, I take it. She turns away. 'You know, Ricky, that I have no conception of your ideas of morality sometimes. We see things so differently. I don't plan to do any harm to either Diana or Clara. Do you think that?'
'No'
'I love them both. They are wonderful. But you and I have something special. What purpose would be served in blurting everything out? It can only cause trouble - and pain to others.'
'I should have thought that we owed them -'
She comes to kneel beside me. 'We owe them nothing. That is our freedom.'
I listen to her as a disciple might listen to a holy man; striving to perceive the wisdom, the new attitude, the truth of what she says.
'They're not like Poliakoff,' she says. 'They won't hurt us.'
'We ought to tell them.'
'What's the point?'
As I rise to my feet my legs are trembling. I cannot fathom the changes which have taken place in her strange, dreaming, greedy brain. I am as much at a loss for an explanation as if I attempted to analyse the perceptions and nature of a household pet. Like a pet she is able to take on the colour of any master; to be obedient and passive for as long as it suits her, to respond to whatever desires or signals one might display. But now I disguise my desires, for fear of losing her. Have I therefore lost her to someone who offers her clearer signals? To someone who represents what she calls 'freedom'? At dinner I look suspiciously around the table, at the Russians, at Count Stefanik, at Caroline Vacarescu, even at honest Egon Wilke, chewing his food with as much
