‘No, I cannot guess. Do you know?’
‘No. Do any other groupings suggest themselves? Perhaps we can cancel them out like an equation.’
‘What an immoral conversation,’ observed Lin, amused. ‘Let’s see, Miss Medenham and the poet, I think. They were in the library together, you said. I think they’d be a match. Tom Reynolds and his wife seem devoted. The Major . . . no. I don’t think any woman would find his bluster and bullying attractive.’
‘Miss Medenham seems to,’ said Phryne as the pair danced past, close together and talking.
‘True. An eccentric woman – I believe that novelists often are,’ said Lin. ‘Well, perhaps Miss Fletcher and Gerald. And maybe I am wrong about Miss Medenham – I think she fancies Jack Lucas.’
‘The woman fancies everyone. As you say, novelists. And Lucas is certainly good-looking. But very young.’
‘You prefer experience, perhaps?’ asked Lin, sliding a hand down the back of the velvet dress.
‘Infinitely,’ agreed Phryne, clasping his waist.
The gramophone whirled to a halt.
‘Check and mate,’ said the poet into the silence. ‘You are off your game, Doctor.’
‘Yes, Tadeusz, I don’t feel well. I think I’ll just sit here and play the gramophone.’ The spare figure reached out a long hand and picked up the next record. ‘Here’s a Charleston.’ He wound the machine up and placed the needle on the spinning wax platter.
‘There is something macabre about the gramophone,’ observed the poet. ‘It preserves the voices of the dead, as cherries are preserved in confiture.’
‘And are thus exalted,’ commented Phryne. ‘Jam is the highest state to which cherries can aspire. Good cherries become jam, and bad cherries become compost.’
The poet laughed.
‘Down on your heels, up on your toes, stay after school, learn how it goes, that’s the way to do the Varsity rag,’ sang the gramophone.
The Charleston was not a complicated dance. It merely required strong ankles and good balance. Phryne could dance the Charleston all night.
She found herself next to Gerald. Two steps forward, two steps back. He was singing along with the next record.
‘In olden days a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking, now heaven knows, anything goes.’
‘The world’s mad today and good’s bad today and black’s white today and wrong’s right today and most guys today that women prize today are just silly gigolos,’ sang Phryne.
‘Although I’m not a great romancer I know that you’re bound to answer when I propose,’ sang Gerald, staring into Phryne’s eyes.
‘Anything goes,’ she replied. He really was a very pretty boy.
The Doctor, perhaps influenced by Mrs Reynolds’ silent disapproval of modern dancing, put on a waltz. Gerald bowed and said, ‘May I have this dance?’ and Phryne smiled.
‘Shouldn’t you be dancing with Miss Fletcher?’ she asked, moving closer to him. He was slim and smelt of port and the hand taking hers was smooth and strong.
‘She doesn’t waltz. In any case, I don’t belong to her,’ he said, his arm encircling Phryne’s waist. ‘I would much rather belong to you.’
To the sugary strains of ‘The Blue Danube’, Phryne waltzed with Gerald. Lin Chung was dancing with Mrs Reynolds. Jack Lucas had left the room. Letty Luttrell had presumably gone to bed. Judith was sitting next to the Doctor and leafing through the records. The poet had abandoned his surrealist principles and had led out Mrs Fletcher, and Miss Medenham was hanging on to the Major with grim determination.
‘What does Miss Medenham see in the Major?’ she asked idly, noticing that Gerald Randall was a very good dancer.
‘God knows. Though I believe that she used to know him in Melbourne. She’s rather marvellous, isn’t she – so vivid.’
‘Yes. You dance very well.’
‘Only with you. You’re as light as the feathers in your hair.’
Phryne smiled and noticed that her partner, who was leading, was moving them unobtrusively towards the door into the little parlour. As they passed under the carved Gothic lintel, the record wound to a close, but Gerald did not release his hold.
‘Beautiful Phryne,’ said the young man very softly. ‘Most beautiful lady.’
‘Exceptionally decorative Gerald,’ she replied.
‘Let me come to your room tonight,’ he whispered. ‘Last time, we were interrupted.’
‘So we were,’ she agreed. ‘I’ll think about it,’ she temporised. ‘This is a strange gathering and I’m worried about what happened to Lina. I don’t know if I’m really in the mood, Gerald.’
‘I can change your mood,’ he said confidently.
‘Can you, indeed? Perhaps,’ she said. The music started again, a slow foxtrot, and Gerald gathered her close. There was little light in the small parlour, just a shaded pink lamp on one Victorian table. The bodies moved together, clung and slid, jade velvet against sable broadcloth.
Then they were no longer alone. Cynthia had manoeuvred the Major into the half-dark, her bright blond head leaning on his massive shoulder, and Gerald and Phryne slipped away, back into the general dance.
Before they parted, Phryne put her mouth to the young man’s ear and breathed, ‘Yes.’
Phryne captured Lin Chung three dances later and said quietly, ‘Dance us into the little parlour. I am very curious about Cynthia Medenham and the Major.’
‘Her attentions to him have been marked,’ he agreed, moving the pair of them towards the door and turning so that Phryne could see over his shoulder into the half-dark. The strange couple were still there, clasped close together. Miss Medenham was crushed in a strong embrace, and the Major was evidently much attracted. He lifted his head as Phryne and Lin Chung appeared, and glared.
Phryne smiled seraphically and nudged her partner back into the parlour. ‘Interesting,’ she commented.
‘Phryne, are you really going to seduce that boy?’ asked Lin Chung, sounding slightly offended.
‘Possibly. I am wondering why he is making such a dead-set siege of me,’ she replied.
‘One can carry investigation too far,’ he commented, avoiding Mrs Reynolds and the Doctor, who were deep in conversation, and swinging Phryne around the protruding edge of a large table against the wall.
‘Not if one seeks the truth,’ she said sententiously, and Lin Chung snorted.
‘Come, come, my Confucian. If it were not for your exaggerated sense of ethics I would be sleeping with you,’ she said. ‘One must suffer for one’s beliefs.’
‘You,’ said Lin Chung admiringly, surveying the dark head with the panache of feathers, ‘are a woman who could corrupt a monk.’
‘So I would, if he were a pretty monk who didn’t really think about his vows when he made them.’
Lin laughed.
Golden hair said to dark hair, ‘It’s no use. I’ll never be free.’
‘Yes you will,’ said dark hair to golden. ‘I’ll make you free.’
‘Kiss me again.’ There was a sound of mouths meeting, frantically, and hands slid under a white shirt and dark coat to find skin damp with desire.
Golden hair broke away from the embrace with a groan. ‘It’s immoral, it’s improper, we can’t do this. What would people say?’
‘Who cares what people say?’ asked dark hair flatly. ‘My love, my own love. Say it.’ They kissed again. ‘Say it, I want to hear the words.’
‘My . . . love,’ faltered golden hair. ‘My dear love, my own.’
The party wound down. Phryne found herself sitting next to the poet, looking through the family photograph albums.
‘The Edwardian Indian summer,’ he said in his accented voice. ‘Here is the whole house party. By the rabbits I deduce that they have been hunting.’
‘Gosh, Hinchcliff hasn’t changed, has he? Or his wife. And there’s Tom, looking every inch the Lord of the Manor, and Evelyn, she looks so young, and who’s that?’
