Rosie Thomas - Rosie Thomas 4-Book Collection - Other People’s Marriages, Every Woman Knows a Secret, If My Father Loved Me, A Simple Life

When she looked up he saw also that there were dark circles under her eyes and her face was small, and sharp- pointed.

Vicky took the plate and hoisted herself awkwardly upright, wincing as she did so. She began to eat, ravenously, even though she knew that after half a dozen mouthfuls the burning would begin under her breastbone. She was made more uncomfortable by Gordon looming impatiently above her.

‘We mustn’t be too late,’ she said. Alice had a cough and their sitter was only fifteen.

‘I don’t want to go yet,’ Gordon snapped. ‘We’ve only just got here.’ He swung away with his hands in his pockets, feeling immediately ashamed of his bad temper. But he often felt that his helplessly pregnant wife and his little daughters were like tender obstacles that he had to skirt around, day by day, walking softly lest somebody should start to cry. He loved them all, but they took so much of his care.

Darcy Clegg came to Vicky with a cushion for her back.

Later the dancing began in another room that extended sideways from the main part of the house. There was a woodblock floor in here, and tall windows in one of the gable ends that looked out across a swimming pool covered over for the winter. Andrew had hired a mobile disco, a boy with two turntables and a set of speakers who had set up some lights that made globs of colour revolve softly in the beamed recess of the roof. The young DJ quickly sized up his audience and opted for an opening medley of pounding sixties rock. The innocent exuberance of lights and music and jigging couples were suddenly so powerfully reminiscent of the student parties of fifteen years ago that Nina found herself laughing to see it. It also made her want to leap up and dance.

Gordon watched the dancers too. He was trying to identify exactly what it was that he wanted, on top of several glasses of champagne and a malt whisky he had swallowed quickly, in the kitchen, with Jimmy Rose. There was Cathy Clegg in some tiny stretchy tube of a skirt that showed off her thighs and small bottom, or Hannah, with her expanse of white breast and her habit of biting her cushiony bottom lip between her little white teeth. Darcy’s women, of course. Not either of those.

He did want a woman, Gordon recognized. In the hot, impatient way he had done when he was much younger. He had to be so careful with Vicky now. Her fugitive sleep, her cramps, her tiredness.

Gordon liked Stella Rose, Jimmy’s wife, who everyone called Star. He enjoyed dancing with her at the Grafton parties, and talking to her too. She had a quick, acerbic intelligence that challenged him and a tight-knit bony body that did the same. To single out Star also made some kind of retort to Jimmy, who was always whispering to and cuddling other men’s wives. But he did not feel drawn to Star tonight. She had been drinking hard, as she sometimes did, and he had last seen her in the kitchen, haranguing kindly Marcelle about something, with dark patches of smudged mascara under her eyes.

There were others, amongst the wider group, but Gordon did not move on to search for any of them. Instead, deliberately, he let his consideration circle back to the new woman in the look-at-me dress. He had met her briefly at the beginning of the evening, what seemed like many hours ago now. She had been polite, but slightly remote. He thought she was aloof, probably considering this party of the Frosts’ to be dully provincial. Then, a while later, she had slipped past in a knot of people and her exotic draperies had fluttered against him.

He noticed that she was standing on her own, apart, and apparently laughing to herself. One of the discs of revolving light, a blue one, passed slowly over her face and then over her hair. It turned a rich purple, like a light in a stained-glass window, and faded as soon as he had seen it. Gordon felt a tightening in his throat.

‘Would you like to dance?’

Nina, that was her name. It came to him, once he had asked her.

‘Thank you.’

She let him take her hand, quite easily and naturally, and lead her into the throng of people. They began to dance. He saw how she let herself be absorbed into the music, as if she was relieved to forget herself for a moment. Some of the stiffness faded out of her face, and left her looking merely pretty instead of taut and imperious.

‘Do the Frosts often give parties like this?’

‘Often. And always exactly like this.’

The flip of his fingers, she saw, acknowledged the combination of sophistication and hearty enthusiasm, champagne and student disco, fancy dress and cocktail frock, that she herself had found so beguiling. Nina had forgotten this man’s name, but she felt an upward beat of pure pleasure to find herself here, dancing, amongst these people who knew nothing about her.

Darcy was lounging in the doorway, observing the dancers, with Jimmy beside him. Jimmy had pulled off the red hood of his devil suit and had then raked his fingers through his hair so that it stood up on top of his head in a crest.

Jimmy murmured to his companion, ‘Who is La Belle Dame Sans Merci? Nobody will introduce me.’

Nina and Gordon were on the far side of the room, absorbed in their dance.

Mick Jagger sang out of the speakers, Pleased to meet you, hope you guessed my name … and all the couples in their thirties obligingly sang back, Whhoo hoo …

‘Perhaps she doesn’t want to meet the Devil,’ Darcy suavely answered. ‘But her name is Nina something, and she has bought the house in Dean’s Row where the Collinses used to live. She is a widow, apparently.’

‘La Belle Veuve, then,’ Jimmy said. And then he added with relish, ‘I smell trouble, oh yes I do.’

Nina had arranged for the car to come back for her at twelve-thirty, and she was ready for it when the time came.

Her dancing partner had been claimed by his rosy, pregnant wife. The little Irish devil man had made a surprising pair with the tall woman with the reflective face. Andrew and Janice had come to the door together, to see Nina off, and had stood shoulder to shoulder, smiling and waving.

In the taxi Nina leaned her head back and closed her eyes.

Two by two, the people swam up in her mind’s eye out of the swirl of the party. She could recall all the faces, not so many of the names. Somebody and somebody, somebody and somebody else. It seemed that everyone was half of a pair. The whole world was populated by handsome, smiling couples, and behind them, behind the secure doors of their houses, were the unseen but equally happy ranks of their children.

Nina’s loneliness descended on her again. It was like a gag, tearing the soft tissues of her mouth, stifling her.

‘Dean’s Row, miss,’ the driver called over his shoulder.

Inside her house, the silence felt thick enough to touch. Nina poured herself a last drink and took it upstairs to the drawing room. She stood at the window, without turning on the lights behind her. The floodlights that illuminated the west front were doused at midnight, but Nina felt the eternal presence of the saints and archangels in their niches more closely than if they had been visible.

She rolled her tumbler against the side of her face, letting the ice cool her cheek.

To her surprise, she realized that the pressure of her solitude had eased a little, as if the statues provided the company she needed. Or perhaps it was the party that had done it.

It was a good evening, and she had met interesting people. They were nothing like her London friends, these Grafton couples, but she was glad that she had met them.

‘And so, good night,’ Nina said dryly to the saints and archangels.

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