A Stairs - Eva Ibbotson

They surged forward to greet their host and hostess, embracing everybody in their path, seizing glasses of champagne from the passing footmen — and the temperature of the party soared. Then La Slavina paused, threw out an arm, and let out a high and enchantingly modulated scream.

‘Mon Dieu! C’est la petite Grazinsky!’

‘You look charming. Countess,’ said Lapin approvingly. ‘But not, I think, the cap. One wishes only to suggest a costume.’ He unpinned Anna’s cap, tossed it away, plucked a white poppy from an urn and tucked it unerringly into her hair.

‘Ah, but it is magnificent to see you, ma chere,’ said La Slavina, hugging Anna. ‘And look, there is the little brother also!’ She turned to Lady Byrne. ‘You have no idea how good the Grazinskys have been to us in Petersburg! Such benefactors, such hospitality! Of course they always loved the ballet. Do you remember. Countess, when you ran away ? You were seven years old and all the police in Petersburg were searching — such, a scandal! And where was she?’ she enquired of the bystanders. ‘In Theatre Street, in the ballet school, trying to audition for a place!’

‘And when she tried to sell her rubies to pay for Diaghilev’s first tour of Europe?’ said the choreographer. ‘Do you remember? All by herself she went to see old Oppenheim in the Morskaya! Often and often he has told the story: how there comes this little girl whose head is not over his desk and brings up her arm with in it her shoe bag and out falls this necklace which has been insured for fifty thousand roubles!’

‘You have lost everything, I have heard?’ said La Slavina in a low, sympathetic voice.

Anna shrugged. ‘We’re all right.’

‘Ah, you have courage. And a fine brother!’ She pinched Petya’s cheek. ‘But tell me,’ her voice, this time, dropped half an octave, her splendid boudoir eyes became veiled in a profound and personal nostalgia. ‘What has happened to your so beautiful Cousin Sergei? I have heard that he was safe, but no one has seen him in London and the Baroness Rakov is dé solée.’

‘He is working in the north, somewhere,’ said Anna cautiously.

‘As a chauffeur, I have heard! Est-ce-que c’est possible ?’

They had collected, inevitably, a crowd - and among its members were the Nettlefords, who had closed ranks after the dreadful news of Tom’s engagement and were conveying a stunned Lavinia to the supper room.

La Slavina threw out an arm to include the company. ‘Ah, if you could see the prince! Never, never have I seen a man so ‘andsome. And fearless, too. Do you remember, Lapin, when he won the St Catherine Cup on that unbroken horse of Dolgoruky’s? But all the Chirkovskys were like that. It was Sergei’s father who gave me my first diamonds. I was still in Cechetti’s class at—’ She broke off to say with her enchanting smile: ‘I beg your pardon, mademoiselle.’

But the fault had not been the ballerina’s. A tall and avid-looking girl covered in scales had cannoned into her, en route for the open French window through which she now vanished. There was a short pause, then with assorted exclamations of fury, four more girls in an extraordinary collection of clothes raced after her, one of them dropping, as she did so, a rubber asp.

‘Drdle!’ said La Slavina, raising her eyebrows. Then she tucked her arm through Anna’s and led her entourage towards the supper room.

- - - -*

Anxious to avoid the servants’ hall, with its backbiting and gossip, Sergei had spent the evening in The King’s Head down in the village. Now he was smoking a quiet cigarette in the paddock which adjoined the stableyard until he should be summoned to take the Lady Lavinia and her fellow bridesmaid back to Mersham.

‘Sergei! Sergei! Where are you?’

‘Here, my lady.’

The Lady Lavinia, in full tilt, careered round the corner of the stables and panted up to him. Her scales caught the moonlight; an even fiercer glitter lit up her eyes.

‘Do you wish to leave early, my lady? The car is ready.’

‘No, no Sergei! The night is young!’ She came closer. ‘But I’m very cross with you, Sergei! Very, very cross,’ said Lavinia, waggling a bony finger in his face.

Tm sorry to hear this, my lady.’

‘Very cross indeed! You’ve been a naughty boy, Sergei! A very naughty boy.’

Sergei looked round for a way of escape, but short of simply leaping the fence and racing away across the paddock there was nothing he could do.

‘Why didn’t you tell us your real name?’ said Lavinia, now fixing his arm in a vice-like grip.

‘But I did, my lady.’

‘No, you didn’t! Not all of it!’

‘I’m afraid I don’t understand.’

‘Oh, naughty, naughty 1 .’ said Lavinia, entranced by her proximity to this devastating man. ‘What about the prince, hey? Prince Sergei Chirkovsky. You didn’t tell us that!’

‘I did not think it was important, my lady.’

‘Not important! Ooh, you are a funny man!’ She edged even closer, her shoulder digging into his side. ‘Don’t you see, it means you can take your place in society if you wish? That is if …’ She glanced up at him, her thin eyelashes fibrillating in the silver light, ‘if you had someone to support you and—’

‘Lawy! Lawy! Where are you?’

The pack was closing in. Furious at Lavinia’s head-on start, her sisters had rushed off down the terrace steps in hot pursuit. Unfortunately, Salome’s ankle bangle had caught in the turned-up spike of Cleopatra’s golden sandal, eliminating the Ladies Hermione and Priscilla who rolled down the remaining steps in a vituperative and flaying tangle. But Gwendolyn, and the headless daffodil that now was Beatrice, had reached the stableyard.

‘Ah, there you are! You’ve found him. You’re a crafty one, Lavvy! Just as soon as you found out he was a prince you came running after him. Don’t take any notice, Sergei; it’s just cupboard love.’

‘It’s because Tom got away,’ said Beatrice who had perfected spite to a degree remarkable even for a Nettleford.

‘So now she wants to be a princess, don’t you Lawy?’

But Sergei had now had enough. His accent very pronounced, he bowed and said: ‘Ladies, I have two things to say to you. Firstly, as from this moment I resign absolutely my post as chauffeur to your family and you may tell the duke and duchess this. Secondly, I am engaged to be married.’

And before the girls could recover themselves, he had vaulted over the five-bar gate and vanished into the trees at the far side of the paddock.

- - - -*

After the arrival of the Russians, no one could doubt that the ball was a triumph. But at its heart was not Muriel Hardwicke, stiff and disapproving in her elaborate dress: at its heart, her escape cut off, was Anna. Anna dancing a tango with Lapin, Anna drinking champagne with Mr Bartorolli, Anna and Vladimir demonstrating a polonaise … Anna besieged by partners and never, not for one minute, looking at Rupert who never, for one minute, looked at her.

‘That girl seems determined to make an exhibition of herself,’ said Muriel, frigidly executing a two-step in the arms of her fiance. ‘I hope you don’t expect me to have her back at Mersham after this?’

Rupert did not answer. Anna had paused at the end of her dance to thank her partner and straighten the flower in her tumbled hair. Caught off his guard for an instant, Rupert gazed at her just as her control, too, snapped and she raised her eyes, brilliant with fatigue and excitement, to his.

And at that moment it became clear to him with an absolute and bunding certainty that he could not live without her and that he must break his engagement even if it meant disgrace and ruin - and that he must break it that very night.