either an enemy or an escape route. Tonight she appeared to be dressed as a Regency courtesan, rather than a great-lady-from-times-gone-by, like every other woman there. Indeed, she was more or the less the only person in the ballroom, who would patently not have figured on the guest list of the real Duchess of Richmond. She walked up to us and we were introduced.
‘Lucy’s been telling me all the dos and don’ts for getting on in London.’ She spoke with a breathy urgency, the voice of one determined to make every human interchange register. I could see at once that despite her flashing frequent smiles, designed no doubt to suggest a spirit of girlish, flirtatious fun and displaying thereby a set of admirably white, if rather large, teeth, Terry Vitkov took herself tremendously seriously.
‘I don’t think I’ve covered them all, have I?’ said Lucy laconically.
Our companion was already training her searching gaze on the other guests. ‘Which one is Viscount Summersby?’ she asked.
Lucy checked the ballroom. ‘Over there. With the blonde girl in green, next to the big looking glass.’
Terry sought him out. Her shoulders sagged. ‘Why do they always have to look like the man from Pest Control?’ She sighed. ‘Who’s that one?’ A tall and handsome young man flashed her a smile as he passed.
‘Don’t bother. No money. No prospects.’ Lucy clearly understood her companion’s priorities. ‘Of course, he’s clever and he’s headed for the City. He may make something of himself.’
But Terry shook her head. ‘That takes twenty years and by the time they’ve got there they’re ready to trade you in for a younger model. No. I want some money from the outset.’
I nodded, sagely. ‘But not Lord Summersby.’
She smiled. ‘Not until I know I can’t get something better.’ What made this amusing, of course, was that she meant it.
We had been moving slowly in a rather sloppy presentation line and by now had nearly reached our hosts, who stood, all four together, posed against a rich curtain erected as a kind of screen for the purpose. The Grand Duke cut a melancholy figure. He was a slight and pasty-looking creature anyway, especially when placed at the side of his massive spouse and, in truth, I do not believe I ever heard him say an interesting sentence. He wore his elaborate costume, which I took to be that of the Duke of Richmond, with an air of surprise, as if he had been put into it while under sedation. Perhaps he was. His son, dressed as an officer of the guard, stared straight ahead stiffly. He could have been posing for an early daguerreotype, when you had to keep your head still for four or five minutes until it was done. His bland, mottled face exuded an air of bored and generalised geniality.
The daughter, Dagmar, technically of course the Star of the Night, looked frightened and if anything a little drab. She was a tiny creature, literally no more than five feet tall and, while one is always being told that Queen Victoria was four foot eleven and managed to run an Empire, still for most of us it is very, very small and means you spend your whole life looking up. Standing there in the shadow of her mother, to paraphrase Noel Coward, she looked like the Grand Duchess’s lunch. Dagmar wasn’t what you would call plain, even if her sallow mini-face was hard to define or at least to categorise. She wasn’t exactly pretty either, but her large eyes were arresting and she had a soft, moist, trembling mouth, usually half open and quivering and seeming to suggest she was always on the verge of tears, which, in a way, touched your heart. But she never appeared to have any idea of how to present herself. Her hair, for instance, was very dark and straight and, with imagination, it might have been effective. But it just hung there, as if it had been washed in a hurry and left to dry. I really did think something might have been made of her on the night of her own ball, but as usual nobody had tried. The dress was from the correct period but it was dull, and only faintly enlivened with a thin blue sash beneath her modest bosom. To be honest, she looked as if she had taken five minutes to get ready for a game of tennis, and so fragile that one good, strong puff of wind would carry her out of the window and down Park Lane in an instant.
Which could not be said of her mother. I cannot be sure, to this day, whether the Grand Duchess was intending to impersonate the original Duchess of Richmond. It would seem logical, given the wording of the invitation, but the costume she had chosen was more suitable for a great empress, Catherine the Great maybe, or Maria Teresa, or any other absolute female monarch. Acres of chiffon blew softly this way and that, while a river, a torrent, of purple velvet, embroidered in thick, gold thread, cascaded from her more than ample shoulders to the floor and lay there in massive hillocks and dunes, its ermine trim forming a kind of plinth to set off the huge, majestic figure above. Her bosom, like a rock shelf beneath the sea, was ablaze with diamonds and a sparkling crown-like tiara rose from her lightly sweating brow. I suppose the display was all that remained of the Moravian crown jewels, either that or they had been rented from the Barnum Brothers for the night. This was a scene-stealing one-woman show and none of the others got a look in, least of all the wretched Dagmar who, knowing her mother, must have expected something of the sort. At any rate, while the crowds spun, buzzing, round her mama, she didn’t seem unduly put out, unlike the Grand Duke and the Crown Prince who both looked as if they were aching to go home. We were announced.
‘Good evening, Ma’am.’ I bowed and she accepted my obeisance gracefully. I moved on to her husband. ‘Your Royal Highness.’ I bowed again. He nodded vacantly, his mind probably on some long-ago Court reception in dark and dusty Olomouc. Leaving him to dream alone, I passed into the body of the room. Looking back, I think that evening was when I first understood what I have now come to recognise all around me,
Into this category one could squarely place the last Grand Duke of Moravia. There was something in his aimless and depressive grace that told of his awareness of the truth. ‘Don’t blame me,’ he seemed to be saying. ‘I understand this is absurd. I know you have no reason to bow and scrape before me, that the game is over, that the band has played, but I have to go through the forms, don’t you know? I have to look as if I take it seriously or I would be letting other people down.’ This was the text permanently hovering in the air above him. Of course, the same group boasts a nastier version. ‘It may be over,’ they flash from their pitiless eyes, ‘but it isn’t quite over for me!’ and they toss their heads and prey on their rich, social-climbing acolytes and sell the last of their mother’s jewels, that the show may struggle on for a few more years at least.
But the other category in this group is different from these and, as a type, is largely undetected by the general public. These men and women also have the status that pertains to them from the old system and they enjoy it. They like the rank and the history that supports them. They are glad to be seen as part of the inner circle of
