Barbara Cleverly - Folly Du Jour

He was so absorbed by the music, leaning forward over the edge in an attempt to get a clearer view of the almost invisible soloist, he didn’t hear her enter. The presence of a stranger in his box was betrayed by a rush of remembered scent carried towards him on a sudden air current as the door opened quietly and closed again. The effect on George was instant. Memories had ambushed him before he could even turn his head.

The scent of an Indian garden at twilight. . L’Heure Bleue he’d been informed when he’d dispatched some gauche young subaltern to make discreet enquiries. The aide had returned oozing information, parroting on about vanilla, iris and spices. George had been gratified and amused that the young man had been received with such voluble courtesy by the wearer. Amused but not surprised; she had always been able to charm. . enslave wouldn’t be too strong a word. . his impressionable young men.

The name said it all. The Twilight Hour. He didn’t need to listen to accounts of top-notes and bases. It spoke, for him, in a voice soft as velvet, of the swift, magical dark blue moment between sunset and starlight. But, intriguingly, it brought with it an undertow of something sinister. . bitter almonds. . the scent of death. George shivered. The scent of a woman long dead. A woman he had mourned for five years. Silently in his heart, never in his speech.

And here, in this gaudy box, in frenetic Paris, the scent seemed as out of place as he was himself. He whirled angrily to confront whoever had invaded his privacy and — idiotically — with a thought to challenge the invader for daring to wear a perfume which for him would forever be the essence of one woman: Alice.

‘Alice?’

George’s voice was an indistinct croak expressing his disbelief, his raised hand not a greeting but an exorcism, an instinctive gesture of self-protection, as he peered through the gloom, focusing on the dark-clad figure standing by the door. An elegant gloved hand released the hood of the opera cloak allowing it to slide down on to her shoulders. He could just make out, with the aid of the remaining dim light from the orchestra pit, the sleek shape of a blonde head but the face was indistinguishable. Her finger went to her lips and he heard a whispered: ‘ Chut!

’ In a second, the woman had slid into the chair at his side and had grasped his hand in greeting. She leaned and whispered into his ear: ‘George! How wonderful to see you again! And how touching to find you still recognize me — and in the dark too! Alice? Am I then still Alice for you?’

‘Always were. Always will be. Alice,’ he mumbled, struggling for a measure of control. He hunted for and caught her hands in his, pressing them together, moving his grasp to encircle both her slim wrists in one of his great hands, his gnarled fingers closing in an iron and inescapable grip.

‘And, Alice Conyers, you’re under arrest.’

She laughed and winced but made no attempt to struggle. ‘Let’s enjoy the performance first, shall we? And. . who knows?. . perhaps I’ll surrender to you later, George?’

Her purring voice had always, for him, spoken with a teasing double entendre in every sentence. He had dismissed it as a delusion, the product of his own susceptibility, a fantasy sprung from overheated and hopeless senile lust. No one else had ever remarked on it. But the voice he was hearing again, the style, the breathed assumed intimacy — all this was telling him that it was indeed Alice he held in his grasp.

‘I do hope you’re prepared, George? This can be rather stimulating! The show, I mean! Elderly gents carted off, blue in the face and frothing at the mouth, every evening, I hear. Got your pills to hand, have you? Last will and testament in order? Perhaps you should tell me whom to ring just in case. .’ She broke off at the first twitch of the pearl-grey curtains. The lightly insolent tone was unmistakable and he remembered how he’d missed it. George swallowed painfully, unable to reply.

With a thousand questions to ask the woman at his side, a thousand things to tell her, he was reduced to silence by the swish of the curtains as they swung back revealing a brilliantly lit scene. George stared at the kaleidoscope of vivid colours filling the stage, a controlled explosion of fabrics and patterns. The set conjured up the interior of a sumptuous Parisian department store — or was it meant to be a boutique on the rue de la Paix? Silks, velvets, chiffons and furs hung draped about the stage, arranged with an artist’s eye for effect. After the minutes of darkness, the assault on the sense of sight was calculatedly overwhelming. Another surprise followed swiftly. Set here and there against the background colours, a number of dressmakers’ dummies — mannequins, they called them over here — gleamed pale, their pure, sculpted nakedness accentuated by the profusion of clothes behind them. At a teasing spiral of sound from the orchestra the figures came to life and began to parade about the stage.

They were actually moving about! Dancing! George could hardly believe his eyes. He released Alice’s wrists at once and cleared his throat in embarrassment. A scene of this nature could never have been staged in London. He tensed, wondering whether he should at once set an example and make noisily for the exit, tearing up his pro-gramme and tossing it into the audience like confetti in the time-honoured tradition, snorting his disapproval. Writing off the remainder of what promised to be a disastrous evening. Apparently catching and understanding his sudden uncertainty, his companion put a hand on his arm, gently restraining.

George watched on. Was it his imagination. . or. .? No. He had it right. The girls, without exception, were tall and lovely and — yes — one would expect that of chorus girls. Rumour had it that they were all shipped in from England. But this bunch were all blonde or titian-haired with alabaster-white skin. After the years of exposure to Indian-brown limbs, this degree of paleness struck him as exaggeratedly lewd. While he was pondering the reasons for this blatant piece of artistic stage management, the girls started on their routine.

To his bemusement the chorus-girl-mannequins were beginning to act out a scene of shopping. They were selecting garments held out for their inspection by a group of vendeuses whose sketchy notion of uniform appeared to be a pair of black satin gloves and a black bow tie. Their clients inspected the garments on offer and saucily began to put them on, layer by layer, tantalizingly and wittily not always in the expected order. It was a while before George realized what was going on and when he did he began to shake with suppressed guffaws.

Alice leaned close and whispered: ‘A striptease in reverse. They start naked and end up in fur coats. Different, you’d have to admit! You’re to think of this as an aperitif,’ she murmured.

The girls, fully clothed at last, eventually took a bow to laughter and applause and swayed off, flirtily trailing feather boas, silk trains and mink stoles, leaving the stage empty.

The lights went out at once and a backdrop descended. A single spotlight was switched on, illuminating in a narrow cone of blue light marbled with tobacco smoke, an area of stage front right. It picked out what appeared to be the contorted limbs and trunk of a tree. The drums took up a strong rhythm and a tenor saxophone began to weave in and out, offering a flirtatious challenge to the beat, tearing free to soar urgently upwards.

The shape on stage began to move.

George could have sworn that a boa constrictor was beginning to ripple its way down the trunk then he gasped as the tree straightened. A second light came on from a different angle, compelling his eye to refocus. He now saw a massive black male figure carrying on his back, not a boa, but a slim, lithe and shining black girl. George forgave himself for his failure to make sense out of the contorted figures: the girl was being carried upside-down and doing the splits. Her limbs were distinguishable from the man’s by their difference in colour — hers, by the alchemy of the blue-tinted spotlight, were the colour of Everton toffee, his gleamed, the darkest ebony. She twined about lasciviously, her body moving in rhythm with the pounding drumbeat, naked but for a pink flamingo feather placed between her legs.