conversations. I dropped my napkin and dived under the table to retrieve it. It was very dark. I hoped my eyes would soon become accustomed to it, but they didn’t; not enough carrots when I was a child I suppose. I couldn’t see which were Rory’s or Marina’s legs. I grabbed someone’s ankle, but it was much too fat for Marina’s and twitched convulsively — cheap thrill!!! All the same, I couldn’t stay here for ever exciting dowagers. I surfaced again.
‘Are you all right, Mrs Balniel?’ said Lady Downleesh, looking somewhat startled.
‘Fine,’ I squeaked, ‘absolutely marvellous soup.’
‘Everyone’s waiting for you to finish yours,’ said Finn in an undertone.
‘Oh I have,’ I said, ‘I’ve got a tiny appetite, I never eat between males.’
Finn didn’t laugh. Pompous old stuffed shirt.
Everyone started to talk about fishing as the soup plates were moved.
‘You’re not a bit alike,’ I said, ‘you and Marina.’
He shot me a wary glance.
‘In what way?’
‘Well, she’s so wild and you’re so well controlled. I can’t see you as a medical student putting stuffed gorillas in college scarves down Matron’s bed.’
He gave me one of those big on-off smiles he must use all the time for keeping people at a polite distance.
‘I was working too hard for that.’
‘Are all the people in this room your patients?’ I asked. ‘Must be funny to look round a table and know what every single woman looks like with her clothes off.’
‘Calen does anyway,’ said Finn. ‘What do you do with yourself all day?’
‘Not a lot, I’m not very good at housework. I read and grumble, sometimes I even bite my nails.’
‘You ought to get a job, give you something to do,’ he went on. ‘What did you do before you met Rory?’
‘Oh, I mistyped letters in several offices, and I did a bit of modelling when I got thin enough, and then I got engaged to an M.P. I don’t think I would have been much of an asset to him, and then Rory came along.’
‘It’s a full moon tonight,’ said a horse-faced blonde sitting opposite us. ‘I wonder if the ghost’ll walk tonight. Who’s sleeping in the west wing?’
‘The Frayns,’ said Diney Downleesh, lowering her voice, ‘and Rory and his new wife.’
‘What ghost?’ I whispered nervously to Calen.
Calen laughed. ‘Oh, it’s nothing. There was a Downleesh younger son a couple of centuries ago, who fell in love with his elder brother’s wife. The wife evidently had a soft spot for him as well. One night, when her husband was away, she invited the younger brother into her bedroom. He was just hot-footing along the West Tower where she was sleeping (all tarted up in his white dressing-gown), when the husband came back, and picking a dirk off the wall, he stabbed him. The younger brother is supposed to stalk the passage when there’s a full moon, trying to avenge himself through all eternity for not getting his oats.’
‘How creepy,’ I said with a shiver.
‘I’ll take care of you,’ said Calen, putting his hand on my thigh and encountering bare flesh.
‘Christ,’ he said.
‘My only pair of tights split,’ I said.
Finn Maclean pretended not to notice. Calen filled my glass over and over again.
Eventually we finished dinner and the ball began. The host and hostess stood at the edge of the long gallery welcoming latecomers. Every time the front door opened you could feel a blast of icy air from outside. It was terribly cold in these big houses. The only way to keep warm was to stand near one of the huge log fires that were burning in each room, then two minutes later you were bright scarlet in the face. I could see exactly why Burns said his love was like a red, red rose.
Rory came up to me. ‘What was Finn Maclean talking to you about?’ he said suspiciously.
‘He was stressing the importance of getting one’s teeth into something,’ I said.
‘If he got his teeth into me, I’d go straight off and have a rabies jab,’ said Rory.
‘On with the dance,’ I said. ‘Let Emily be unconfined.’
‘Come on, Rory,’ said Diney Downleesh, coming over to us, ‘we need two more people to make up an eightsome over there.’
We couldn’t really refuse.
Dum-diddy Dum-diddy Dum-diddy-diddy-diddy went the accordions. The men gave strange, unearthly wails, like a train not stopping at a station. We circled to the left, we circled to the right.
‘Wrong way,’ hissed Rory, as we swung into the grand chain. When it was my turn in the middle, I made an even worse hash of it, setting to all the wrong people and doing U-turns instead of figures of eight, and whooping a lot. ‘For Christ’s sake stop capering around like the White Heather Club,’ said Rory under his breath. ‘Women don’t put their hands up, or click their fingers, or whoop.’
The next dance, thank God, was an ordinary one. I danced it with Buster, who squeezed me so hard, I thought I’d shoot out of my dress like toothpaste.
‘Why don’t any of them look as though they’re enjoying themselves?’ I said.
‘You can never tell until they fall on the floor,’ said Buster.
On the other side of the room Marina was dancing with Hamish. She looked so glowingly beautiful and he so yellow and old and decayed I was suddenly reminded of Mary Queen of Scots dancing and dancing her ancient husband into the grave.
The evening wore on. I wasn’t short of partners. I danced every dance.
A piper came on, well primed with whisky, and assaulted our ear-drums for a couple of reels. My reputation as a reel-wrecker was growing. I messed up Hamilton House and then the Duke and Duchess of Perth, and then the Sixteensome. On the surface I must have appeared rather like a loose horse in the National, potentially dangerous, thoroughly enjoying myself and quite out of control. But through a haze of alcohol and misery I was aware of two things, Rory’s complete indifference to my behaviour and Finn Maclean’s disapproval. Both made me behave even worse.
I danced a great deal with Calen. I came into my own when they stopped doing those silly reels.
‘Did your wife dance professionally?’ I heard a disapproving dowager say to Rory, as I came off the floor after a gruelling Charleston. Calen and I went into the drawing-room for yet another drink. I put my glass down on a gleaming walnut table. When I picked it up two minutes later, there was a large ring on the table.
‘Oh God,’ I said, ‘how awful.’
‘Looks better that way,’ said Calen, ‘looks more lived in somehow.’ He led me back on to the floor. The music was slow and dreamy now.
‘You are the promised breath of springtime,’ sang Calen laying his handsome face against mine. I snuggled up against him for a few laps round the floor, and then I escaped to the loo. Big-boned girls stood around talking about Harrods and their coming-out dances. Really, I thought as I gazed in the mirror, I look very loose indeed. Tight dress, loose morals, I suppose.
I wandered along the long gallery so I could watch the people on the floor. A double line of dancers were engaged with serious faces in executing a reel. Marina and Rory faced one another, expressionless. God they danced beautifully. I was reminded of Lochinvar again:
So stately his form and so lovely her face
That never a hall such a galliard did grace…
And the bride’s maidens whispered, ‘T’were better by far
To have matched our fair cousin with young Lochinvar.
Oh dear, I thought in misery. In this case young Lochinvar seems to have missed the boat, arriving too late and finding his love married to Hamish.
The dance ended. The couples clapped and spilled out into the hall. If only Rory would come and look for me. But it looked as though I’d have to wait for a Ladies’ Excuse Me before I had a chance to dance with him again.
I heard footsteps behind me. I felt two hands go round my waist, I turned hopefully, but it was Calen.
‘I’ve got a bottle,’ he said, ‘let’s go and drink it somewhere more secluded.’ He dropped a kiss on to my
