A Swans - Eva Ibbotson

But Harriet was lost in remembrance, her hairbrush dangling from her hand.

“I’m Henry St. John Verney Brandon,” Henry had said to her, turning his small face upward, trusting her with that all-important thing: his name. And another image… the unpleasant Mr. Grunthome with his liver-spotted pate and rapacious hands, droning on beside the Van Dyck portrait of Henrietta Verney who had brought her beauty and her fortune to the house of Brandon.

It didn’t have to mean anything—the name was not uncommon. Yet if Henry’s “secret boy” was some distant connection of the family brought up for some reason at Stavely… ? If against all odds she had found him and could plead Henry’s case, what happiness that would be!

No, I’m being absurd, thought Harriet; it’s merely coincidence. But she found herself suddenly looking forward to the evening ahead and—relinquishing the hairbrush to Marie-Claude—submitted with docility to having two side plaits swept onto the crown of her head and wearing the rest loose down her back to reveal what both the other girls regarded as tolerable: her ears.

Though she knew her host was rich, the first sight of the Amethyst waiting at the docks in the afternoon sunshine to take the cast to Follina, took her aback—not on account of the schooner’s size, but because of her beauty. She was surprised too to find that a second boat was waiting to convey to the party not only the members of the orchestra but also the technical staff, who were so often forgotten.

“Very nice,” said Simonova condescendingly, walking up the gangway in trailing orange chiffon and accepting as her due the attentions of Verney’s staff, for had she not spent many summers on the Black Sea in a similar yacht owned by the Grand Duke Michael? She exclaimed ecstatically at the beauty of the river scene and firmly went below, followed by the other principals and most of the corps , to recline in the luxurious cabins with their bowls of fruit, boxes of chocolates and magazines.

“You of course will stay on deck and completely disarrange your toilette while we travel?” suggested Marie-Claude and Harriet, grinning at her friend, admitted that this was so. So she hung over the rails, watching the changing patterns of the islands which lay like jagged ribbons across the smooth, leaf-stained water, until they turned from the dark Negro into her tributary, the Maura.

“Oh,” she exclaimed, “it is so light !” And the boatman standing near her with a rope coiled ready in, his hand nodded and smiled, understanding not her words but her tone.

The sails were furled now. Under engine, the Antethyst 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, reclined 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 recognize 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 honor,” 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 makeup, 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 gray 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 tapered 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.