A Swans - Eva Ibbotson

Dubrov smiled tolerantly. Mr. Verney was a man of formidable intelligence, but no connoisseur of the ballet. “Harriet is not dancing at the moment. Later you will see her; she is a snowflake.”

“Really? I could have sworn she was that one on the right, just coming out from behind the Christmas tree. With the tattered ear.”

Dubrov shook a decisive head. “That’s Marie-Claude. It’s a crime to put a girl like that into a mask, but there!”

Somewhat to Dubrov’s surprise, Simonova greeted the news of Harriet’s luncheon engagement with satisfaction.

“It will annoy Masha,” she said simply. “Did you notice the sheep’s eyes she made at Verney yesterday?”

Dubrov nodded. Masha Repin had certainly made efforts to attract Verney’s attention, but so had virtually every other woman who was there. Still, anything that distracted Simonova from Masha Repin’s arrogance, her inability to take the advice which she, Simonova, had taken so gladly, so willingly from Kchessinskaya, from Legat—from absolutely everyone who was kind enough to help her—was all to the good.

It was not only Simonova who watched Harriet go with a feeling of pleasure at her good fortune. Lobotsky, the character dancer, patted her shoulder; the asm wished her luck; even Maximov deigned to smile at her. Only Kirstin was disquieted. Harriet looked nice—even the absent Marie-Claude could not have complained about her blue skirt and white blouse—but to expose to the gods a face of such unalloyed expectation and happiness seemed to the gentle Swede to be little short of madness.

Rom was right. Harriet liked the Casa Branca .

“Oh, the view!” she said. “They always say something beautiful is breathtaking, but it ought to be breath giving , oughtn’t it?”

They had lunch in the shade of the fig tree and beneath them the life of the river unfolded for their delight. Rom had wined and dined innumerable women, flicking his fingers at servile waiters, but now he found himself watching over Harriet as if she was a child in his keeping, concerned lest even the smallest of bones should scratch her delicate throat; buttering her roll.

“Tell me, were you a mouse just now?” he asked. “A mouse with a tattered ear?”

She looked up, flushing. “Yes, I was.”

Rom nodded. “I thought you were. Dubrov swore it was Marie-Claude, but I knew it was you.”

She put down her fork. “How? I was completely covered with a mask. How could you know?”

“I knew ,” said Rom. He let the words stand deliberately ringed in silence… but not for long. She must remain untroubled by anything for which she was not yet ready. “Were you covering up for Marie-Claude?”

Harriet nodded. “But please don’t mention it to Monsieur Dubrov. She had to go away on business—for Vincent and the restaurant.”

“Ah, yes… the famous Vincent. Have you met him?”

“No, but I have seen his photograph. A lot of photographs!”

“And?” said Rom. “Is he a match for your ravishing friend?”

“Well, it’s strange. I mean, it’s absolutely clear that she adores him. And of course he does have a very large mustache, which is important to her—all his family are famous for their mustaches—and photographs don’t tell you very much about people, do they? I think it must be his personality.”

“A strong man, then?”

“Very practical and Marie-Claude likes that. She gets very annoyed with people like Romeo. He should have got a chicken feather, she thinks, and laid it on Juliet’s lips to see if she was breathing, not rushed about and killed himself.”

“Vincent is a chicken-feather man, then?”

“Very much so, I understand.” Harriet hesitated. “I can see Marie-Claude’s point. When I read about love in Cambridge—and I used to read a lot because my Aunt Louisa let me do my homework in the public library to save the gas—I got very discouraged. It seemed to me that as soon as you loved anyone very much, you were inevitably doomed. You know… Heloise and Abelard, Tristan and Isolde… To love in moderation was all right, but when it became excessive… total… you were punished. And yet it must be right, surely, to give everything? To hold nothing back? That must be what one wants to do?”

“Yes, one wants to do just that. And I assure you that there are plenty of people who have loved truly and found their Avalon or their Hesperides and set up house there and tended their crops and lit their fires. Only who cares for them? Who writes about the valley with no earthquake, the river that is not in flood?”

He smiled at her, the gray eyes serene and comforting, and led her on to talk not of home which he knew would give her pain, but of Cambridge itself, that incomparable city. And if he had doubted his feelings, those doubts would have been banished by the greed with which he longed to share her childhood and her memories.

Carmen brought coffee and a bowl of fruit which Rom studied attentively before picking a golden-pink pomegranate which he placed not on Harriet’s plate, but into her obediently cupped hands. “Are you willing to take the risk?” he asked. “They’re dangerous things, pomegranates.”

She caught the allusion instantly, as he had known she would.

“Oh yes,” she said. “It would be no punishment to have to remain here in this place. Or to return. Not for five months or fifty.”

She was silent, thinking of Persephone who had eaten her pomegranate in Hades, carried there by cruel Pluto, king of the underworld. Had she minded going back into darkness, compelled to return for as many months as she had eaten seeds, while the world in her absence turned to winter? Or had Pluto looked a little like the man who faced her? Dark-visaged; sardonic; a few silver threads in the ink-black hair. In which case she must have wished she had eaten more seeds… And smiling, Harriet picked up the silver fruit knife.

But Rom now had decided that it was time for her to speak, for he had not forgotten that this was a meal with a purpose and, sensing that she might find it difficult to begin, he prompted her.

“Tell me now, Harriet. Tell me why you stayed behind after the party. What was it you wanted to speak to me about?”

She put down the knife again, her face suddenly somber. Increasingly it seemed impertinent to mention his past life. He must have contacts in every country in the world and certainly in England. If he had wanted to keep in touch with the place that had been his home, nothing could have been easier. And to give herself strength she summoned up again the image of the red-haired child in the maze, bewildered by the disaster that had struck his house.

“It was Stavely,” said Harriet in a low voice. “It was Stavely that I wanted to talk about.”

“Stavely!”

The effect was extraordinary. The comradeship, the warmth that had been between them vanished in an instant. The dark, exotic face became blank, shuttered. But it was too late now to withdraw.

“Forgive me—but you did live there, didn’t you, as a child?”

“Yes. I lived there for the first nineteen years of my life.”

She nodded. “I knew. Even before you named the manatee. When you stepped out of the trees, I knew.”

He could make no sense of this and sat tracing the pattern of the tablecloth with one finger. From Stavely, where Henry and Isobel presumably dwelt in connubial bliss, there could come nothing that one way or another could fail to cause him pain.

“I don’t know if you’ve heard,” said Harriet, forcing herself to go on, “but things are very bad there.”

“No, I had not. In what way?”

“Well, the house is… unkempt… ill-cared-for; there are hardly any servants except horrible Mr. Grunthorpe. And the garden—oh, the garden is heartbreaking. Such lovely plants and everything overgrown and neglected.”