Eva Ibbotson - A Company of Swans

The sails were furled now. Under engine, the Amethyst came in quietly beside the jetty — and Harriet, drawing in breath, saw what Rom had seen only in his mind’s eye the day he first glimpsed Follina: a low pink-washed, colonnaded house at the end of an avenue of blossoming blue trees — and a garden whose scents and sense of sanctuary reached out like a benison to those who came.

‘The place has style,’ admitted Marie-Claude, emerging immaculate and ravishing from below. ‘But I hope we are not expected to walk to the house.’

They were not. Three cars and a number of carriages waited to take them the half-mile to Verney’s front door. Simonova, Maximov and Dubrov swept into the first of these; Kaufmann, the choleric conductor of the orchestra, got into the second; the others followed.

‘I shall walk,’ said Harriet.

‘In this heat?’ Even the easygoing Kirstin was shocked.

‘Do you wish to arrive entirely dissolved in perspiration?’ reproved Marie-Claude.

‘Please… I must,’ said Harriet, and they shrugged and climbed into one of the carriages and left her.

Rom surveyed his guests with an experienced air and was satisfied. Simonova, reclining on a couch on the terrace, was surrounded by admirers; the dancers and musicians wandered happily between the tables, helping themselves to iced fruit juice or champagne. Standing beside the statue of Aphrodite flanking the stone steps, Marie-Claude was regaling a group of dazed gentlemen with an account of the restaurant she was proposing to start with Vincent in the foothills above Nice. That this entrancing girl was bespoke and visibly virtuous had given Rom a pang of relief, a reaction he had not sought to explain or understand, preferring simply to enjoy the sight of de Silva, Harry Parker (who ran the Sports Club) and a host of others drinking thirstily at these forbidden waters.

During this hour before sundown, the house and the terrace were one. The lilting music from the Viennese trio he had installed in the salon wafted out through the French windows, the jasmine and wisteria climbing his walls laid their heavy, scented branches almost into the rooms themselves. The moment darkness fell he would relinquish his garden to the moths and night birds, close the windows and lead his guests to a dinner as formally served and elaborate as any banquet of state. But this present time was for wandering at will, for letting Follina work its spell, and he intervened only with the lightest of hands — introducing shy Mrs Bennett to the glamorous Maximov; removing the misanthropic conductor, Kaufmann, to the library with its collection of operatic scores.

Yet, though no one could have guessed it, Rom, as he wandered among his guests, was fighting down disappointment. He had been absolutely certain that he would recognise the swan who had sneezed so poignantly at the end of Act Two; it seemed to him that the serious little face with its troubled brown eyes was entirely distinctive, but he had been mistaken. A casual question to Dubrov when the girls arrived elicited the information that all members of the corps had come. ‘No one could miss such an honour,’ Dubrov had assured him, adding that he himself had personally counted heads as the girls came aboard the Amethyst. Therefore she must be in the group of Russians with their dark homesick faces, for she was not with Marie-Claude nor the pale-haired Swedish girl receiving, with evident indifference, the compliments of the Mayor. Well, people looked different without their make-up, he reflected, and shrugging off the matter as of no importance, paused by Simonova’s couch to add his homage to her circle of admirers.

‘Never!’ the ballerina was declaring, throwing out her long, thin hands. ‘Never, never, will I return to Russia! If they came to me crawling in the snow on their hands and knees all the way from Petersburg, I would not come!’

She fanned herself with the ends of her chiffon scarf, and looked at her host from under kohl-tipped lashes. What a man! If only she had not been committed to her art — and of course to Dubrov, though that was more easily arranged… One must go where there is fire , Fokine had once said to her and this devastating man with his deep grey eyes and that look of Tamburlaine the Great was certainly fire. But it was impossible: a night with such a man and one could hardly manage three fouettés , let alone thirty-two…

‘Ah, Madame, what a loss for my country,’ sighed Count Sternov.

‘It is a loss,’ agreed the ballerina complacently. ‘But it is one for which they must take the blame. And in any case soon I am going to retire.’ She waited for the groans, the horrified denials… and when they came, proceeded. ‘Dubrov and I are going to live in the country in absolute simplicity with goats and grow vegetables. I have a great longing,’ she said, spreading tapering fingers which had never touched anything rougher than Maximov’s silvered tights, ‘to get my hands into the earth.’

‘You must allow me to show you over the kitchen gardens,’ said Verney, concealing the smile that had flickered at the corners of his mouth.

‘Yes. Later,’ said Simonova. The plants she had seen on the way up to the house had seemed to her excessive, altogether too much there and looking in some cases as though they might contain insects, which were not in her scheme of things. And she leaned back more comfortably and allowed a servant to refill her glass with champagne.

But Marie-Claude now detached herself from the besotted gentlemen surrounding her and said something to Dubrov, who turned to his host.

‘Marie-Claude is a little concerned about our newest member of the corps. Apparently she decided to walk up from the jetty, but that was quite a time ago and she isn’t here yet.’

‘She is English,’ explained Marie-Claude, turning her incredible eyes on Rom and repressing a sigh. If things had been different… even without moustaches… But they were not and resolutely she continued, ‘And it is impossible to keep her inside. You know how it is: the fresh air, et tout ça. And naturally one would not wish her to be eaten by a boa constrictor.’

‘English!’ said Rom, amazed. ‘You have an English dancer?’ No wonder he had been unable to visualise her in St Petersburg or Kiev.

Dubrov nodded. ‘She only joined us just before we left, without any stage experience; she’s done very well. Last night was her debut.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Rom. ‘I’m sure she’s perfectly all right. But I shall send someone to fetch her.’

This, however, he did not do. Briefing Lorenzo and his assistants, he slipped silently away and made his way down the steps.

She was not on the main avenue, not on any of the terraces, not in the arboretum, not by the pond…

He continued to search, not anxious but a little puzzled. Then from behind the patch of native forest he heard the great Caruso’s voice.

‘Your tiny hand is frozen… is frozen… is frozen…’ sang the incomparable tenor, for the record — the first he had ever bought his Indians — was badly cracked.

Che gelida manina … a record valued even above the ‘Bell Song’ from Lakmé , but seldom played now owing to its fragile state. They had a visitor, then, and one they wanted to honour. With an eagerness which surprised him, Rom made his way between the trees.

The village was bathed in the last rays of the afternoon sun. Hammocks were strung between the dappled trees; a monkey scratched himself on a thatched roof… a small armadillo they had tamed rooted in a patch of canna lillies.

In the circle around the horn of the gramophone sat the women with their children, together with the few men too old to be busy in the plantations or helping at the house. Someone knowing them less well would have assumed that this was just the usual evening concert, but Rom — seeing the fruit set out on painted plates and the cassia juice in gourds on the low carved stool — knew they were welcoming a valued guest.