A Swans - Eva Ibbotson

“Will Vincent like it?” inquired Kirstin.

“It is precisely for Vincent that I am doing it,” flashed Marie-Claude. But a pensive look spread for a moment over her heart-shaped face, for it was true that she had not precisely explained to Vincent the means she employed to increase their joint savings. Vincent himself was strait-laced and his family—notably his cousin Pierre under whom Vincent had trained—was positively gothic. Still, what could one do? It was necessary to be practical. “You won’t mention it to anyone?” she pleaded. “The dinner begins very late; after the curtain goes down. No one at the theater need know.”

“Of course not,” Harriet was overawed. Thus, she was sure, had Messalina erupted in the last days of Imperial Rome. “Only, Marie-Claude, when you come out of the cake won’t the gentlemen become overexcited and—you know?”

“Overexcitement is something I do not permit,” said Marie-Claude, pushing away her egg with a moue of disgust. “I made this absolutely clear to Mr. Parker. I burst; I dance a little on the table; I sit for a moment in the lap of the Minister—and that is all.”

“What will you wear?” asked Kirstin.

“Not very much,” Marie-Claude admitted, “Mr. Parker insisted on this. But there is always my hair which covers most things, and I have a special garter with a large rosette in which my Tante Bertha’s hatpin can be concealed. Not that it will be necessary, I assure you. The whole affair is strictly a matter of art—a kind of tableau vivant —and anyway, the Minister is old.” She paused and fixed her enormous eyes on Harriet. “There is, however, a problem,” she said, lowering her voice still further and glancing over her shoulder at the alcove where Dubrov and those of the principals who could face the Metropole dining room at breakfast were sitting. “I have to see Mr. Parker at eleven-thirty this morning to make the arrangements.”

“But it’s the costume rehearsal for The Nutcracker ,” said Harriet.

“Exactly. So you, Harriet, must be for me a mouse,” said Marie-Claude.

“Oh, Marie-Claude, I couldn’t,” said Harriet, aghast. “I’ve never been a mouse; I don’t know the steps or anything!”

“There are no steps,” said Marie-Claude contemptuously. “One scampers and runs about and bites toy soldiers in the legs.” She poured herself another cup of coffee and contemplated with gloom the bizarre events on which Tchaikovsky had wasted some of his loveliest music. And indeed it is not easy to see why little Clara is so delighted to get a nutcracker for Christmas nor why, almost at once, there is a battle between toy soldiers and some hitherto unsuspected mice.

“I’ll help you, Harriet,” offered Kirstin. A little taller than the others, she was doomed to be a soldier and smite the attacking rodents with a wooden sword. “And in any case the rehearsal will be chaos; everyone will be in hysterics long before lunch.”

She spoke no less than the truth. The Nutcracker was the only ballet in which Simonova did not star, but in ceding the role of the Sugar Plum Fairy to Masha Repin, Simonova was by no means quitting the field. She was going to supervise rehearsals, she was going to put her experience at the service of the younger girl; she was going to help .

“ Please , Harriet?” begged Marie-Claude, laying a pearl-tipped hand on Harriet’s arm. “I would ask Olga, but she was sick in the night and the other Russian girls are such prigs.”

Of such a request there could only be one outcome. Harriet might hate deceiving Monsieur Dubrov and be frightened of the consequences, but it was out of the question that she should refuse to help her friend. Thus two hours later, entirely enveloped (at a temperature of ninety-two degrees) in simulated fur, her face covered by a mask, she was on stage being a belligerent and really rather unpleasant mouse.

Rom came in the little Firefly , a sentimental gesture which almost doubled his traveling time, and tying up at his private jetty made his way along the quayside, acknowledging the salutations of his men who were trundling their black “biscuits” of rubber toward the lighters. He passed quickly through his warehouses and entered the chaotic office—with its maps, samples of cahuchu , telegraph machine and stained coffee-cups—from which his manager attended the needs of the Verney empire.

“All is well, Coronel ?” asked Miguel, lifting his pince-nez and removing a pile of files from a chair for his employer. But the question was rhetorical. Miguel, rescued from schoolmastering, had served Verney since he first came to the Amazon and it was clear that this morning his master was very well indeed. Was this the moment, Miguel wondered, to put in a word for his nephew who was just out of school and looking for a job?

But Verney was in a hurry. “I have an appointment,” he said. “We’ll just do the most urgent things. I want the Pittsburg contract and the projection of the hardwood requirements for Bernard Fils in Marseilles. The rest can wait.”

Miguel nodded and produced the documents in an instant from the apparent confusion of his desk. “One of de Silva’s clerks came in this morning with a copy of the Ombidos report. He said you wanted to see it before the visit of the Minister.”

“That’s right.” Rom’s face was momentarily somber at the mention of Ombidos, that plague spot from which rumors of ill-treatment and butchery of the Indians continued to filter through. “I’ll take it home.”

Less than an hour later Verney left the office, crossed the narrow harbor-side road and climbed a steep flight of steps to enter, through a blue door in a high wall, the bougainvillea-covered Casa Branca .

It was the smallest of houses—a toy place high above the huddle of buildings that looked out over the river; a white box with blue shutters and a handkerchief of a terrace with a fig tree. An unlikely dwelling for a rubber baron, but it was the first home Rom had owned and he had kept it, finding it useful when he had to spend a night in the city. Carmen looked after the house; Pedro acted as chauffeur for the Cadillac he kept in a neighboring mews. No women came to the Casa Branca but it was here under the fig tree in the little courtyard suspended over the harbor that he had decided to give Harriet lunch. She would like the view; she would like Pedro and Carmen—and he did not want her exposed to the stares and nudges of the other diners in fashionable restaurants.

“A light meal, Carmen,” he said. “An avocado mousse, some fish… And the Frascati to drink.”

“Will you want the motor, Senhor ?”

“No.”

He went upstairs to shower and fifteen minutes later was letting himself into the Teatro Amazonas by a side door.

Dubrov, watching out front, turned and half rose as Rom slipped into a seat beside him.

“You should have told us you were coming,” he said, pushing a hand through his disheveled hair. “Simonova would have wished to welcome you herself.” (She would have wished to… but he had left the ballerina in her dressing room, screaming with rage at Masha Repin’s refusal to be coached.)

“I’ve come to take Harriet out to lunch,” said Rom in a low voice, fascinated by the antics on the stage. “If that’s convenient? When do you expect a break?”

“It shouldn’t be long now. There have been a few… difficulties.” So Mr. Verney was interested in Harriet? Flattering; very flattering. “It will do her good to get out,” said the impresario. “She works so hard.”

“She certainly seems to be dancing with great aplomb. It must be very hot under those pelts.”