Scandalous Risks (17 page)

VII

He set down his glass. He swept to the record-player. He plucked the needle from the groove. Then adapting the famous Shakespearean technique for grabbing the attention of a crowd he declaimed: ‘Friends! Revellers! Companions! Lend me your ears!’ And as soon as the raucous conversation ceased he declared: ‘It’s time to propose a toast. Norman – draw back the curtains! And Perry – turn off the lights!’

The curtains skimmed on their rails, the switches clicked – and there beyond the window towered the Cathedral, floodlit and fantastic, a miracle of light erupting from the darkness, a stone vision that stunned the eye. I was not unfamiliar with this extraordinary sight, but at that moment the drama of the occasion was such that I felt as if I were seeing the nocturnal Cathedral for the first time. Like everyone else in the room I gasped, and suddenly the Orgy seemed trivial. I was reminded of Platonic philosophy. I had thought that reality had lain in the room around me, but that had been merely the shadow of the substance, and I now saw that ultimate reality, eternal and unchanging, lay elsewhere, beyond the pane.

‘To Starbridge!’ said Christian, raising his glass. ‘And to the Cathedral!’

There was a reverent silence as we all drank to the vision before our eyes, and then Dinkie – or was it Emma-Louise? – no, it was Dinkie, I remember the American accent – said: Wouldn’t it be just wonderful to go up on that roof and dance in the light of the moon?’ and Katie’s brother Simon shouted: Whoopee!’ in the manner of John Peel calling ‘View halloo!’ but Robert Welbeck said more rationally: ‘How could we ever get in?’ Then Christian said to Norman: ‘Shall we nip down to the Deanery and filch the key from Father’s study?’ but Eddie interposed suddenly: ‘No need – I’ve got a key.’

Dinkie’s idle wish was at once brought out of the world of dreams and revealed as a practical possibility. Marina exclaimed gratefully to Eddie: ‘I’m so glad you came to my Orgy!’ and Michael Ashworth (who I had just realised was very drunk) carolled: ‘A canon in the hand is worth a bishop in the bush!’ but this clouded attempt at wit was greeted with howls from Dinkie and Emma-Louise, who pulled him down on the sofa and sat on him to keep him in order. Meanwhile Perry Palmer had switched on the lights again and Nick Darrow, who had been surreptitiously stuffing the last of the sausage-rolls into his pocket under cover of darkness, was saying politely to Marina: ‘I’m afraid I have to go now.’

‘But you can’t!’ wailed Marina. ‘I absolutely forbid it. Come up on the Cathedral roof and tell fortunes!’

‘Sorry, I’ve got to get home to my father.’ He thanked her formally for the party and turned away as if there was no more to be said. At once Marina started to wail again but when Christian said lightly: Where’s my hostess with the mostest?’ Nick was forgotten. I was just feeling grateful to Christian for preventing Marina from behaving like a spoilt child when I realised that Nick had paused by the door as if there was something he had forgotten. Then, very slowly, he turned to face me.

Around us everyone was shrieking and laughing again, but Nick and I seemed to be wrapped in a mysterious silence. Automatically we moved towards each other, and as we met in the centre of the room he said in a low, urgent voice: ‘Don’t go to the Cathedral.’

I stared, but before I could speak he had vanished, bolting from the room as if he had embarrassed himself.

So the Coterie’s ‘soothsayer-in-residence’ had been unable to resist delivering an enigmatic warning! Too radiant with Veuve Clicquot to be other than vastly entertained, I murmured indulgently: ‘Bless his little cotton socks!’ (a favourite idiotic phrase of the time) and prepared for the assault on the Cathedral.

VIII

‘I’ll have to run home and pick up the key,’ Eddie was saying to Christian, ‘but I’ll meet you all by the Dean’s door of the Cathedral in five minutes.’

‘Fine. I’ll whip these Goths and Vandals into something that resembles a civilised order.’

Eddie disappeared. Christian clapped his hands to recall everyone’s attention and said laconically: ‘Let’s keep the decibels low or the Constable of the Close will arrive frothing at the mouth. Are we ready?’

We weren’t. The girls had to cover up their bare shoulders to protect themselves from the May night and various people found they had to go to the lavatory, but finally we all streamed out of the house across Choristers’ Green and crossed the North Walk to the Cathedral churchyard.

I glanced at my watch. The time was almost eleven; Nick would only just have had time to escape from the Close before the Constable shut the gates for the night. I tried to picture my Talisman returning to his father, but I found I could not quite imagine the ancient St Darrow who lived in a wood on Communion wafers, and meanwhile we were all gliding and giggling across the sward, the girls’ dresses glinting and the men’s shirt-fronts gleaming in the darkness. Michael and Dinkie, prancing in front of the floodlights, began to jive silently together and vast shadows were cast on the huge walls ahead of us. In the distance the houses of the Close were almost all in darkness. The silence was profound.

‘Here’s Eddie,’ breathed Marina, who was holding Christian’s hand. ‘Isn’t he a pet?’

‘I didn’t know orang-utans could be classified as pets,’ 1 said tartly, whereupon Robert Welbeck, the merchant banker who had been up at Oxford with Marina’s brother, linked his arm through mine, declared he worshipped glamour-girls who reminded him of Humphrey Bogart films and demanded to know why we had never met at a party in London.

‘We did,’ I said, ‘but you were too busy worshipping elsewhere to prostrate yourself at my feet.’

At that moment, which must have been eleven o’clock precisely, a time-switch flipped in the bowels of the Cathedral and all the floodlights went out.

Once again we gasped at the sight which met our eyes. The harsh glare of electricity was replaced by the soft glow of the moon. A delicate pale light bathed the ancient houses of the Close and conjured up images of the idyllic settings of countless fairy-tales, while the sward of the churchyard, shining eerily around us, suggested a magic garden full of lost echoes from the past. The black mountain of the Cathedral’s north wall seemed to vibrate as if it were part of a huge animal – in fact so strong was this impression of life that I actually touched the stones as if I expected them to pulse beneath my fingers but of course the wall was cool, dank and still.

‘What a sight!’ I heard Perry say in awe as he stood hand in hand with Katie Aysgarth, while Norman, quoting from Macaulay with the confidence of a Winchester scholar, murmured: ‘Such night in England ne’er had been, nor e’er again shall be." Michael then tried to croon Presley’s ‘Such a Night’ but his pal Don Latham managed to cuff him while the girls – Dinkie and Emma-Louise but not Holly, who was spellbound – hissed: ‘Shhh!’

‘No sacrilege, please, chaps,’ said Christian casually as Eddie unlocked the Dean’s door, and Marina whispered to him: ‘It’s a holy place, isn’t it?’

‘Well, what did you expect?’ I muttered, irritated by this banal chatter which was marring the Cathedral’s colossal vibes. ‘Brighton Pier on a bank holiday?’

‘Hang on a minute,’ Eddie was saying, opening the door and switching on his torch. ‘I have to turn off the alarm before it summons the entire Starbridge police force and all three fire engines.’ He disappeared but returned in less than a minute to announce: ‘All clear!’

Drunken but awe-struck we tiptoed into the huge dark interior beyond.

IX

‘I won’t switch on any lights,’ said Eddie, ‘or someone might see us and summon the Constable in panic, but I’ve brought two torches so if I lead the way —’

‘Marina and I will bring up the rear and provide extra light,’ said Christian. Well done, Eddie.’

We set off in a hushed crocodile, crossing the Cathedral to the door at the tip of the south transept; the stairs beyond led not only to the tower below the spire but to the roof of the nave. Vast columns rose around us and disappeared into blackness. Long windows languished in the moonlight. Eerily the echo of our footfalls rebounded from the invisible ceiling. No one spoke until Eddie said, opening the door: ‘I think I can risk the light on the stairs — the windows overlook the cloisters, not the Close,’ and he flicked on the switch.

It was curious how the arrival of artificial light made us all relax. We staggered up the twisting staircase, various people making idiotic remarks, but once I paused to look down on the moonlit quadrangle of the cloisters and when I saw the seat donated by Lady Mary Calthrop-Ponsonby, I yearned for my Mr Dean. In fact suddenly I was so overpowered by the wish that he could be with me that I had to lean for support against the wall.

‘Get a move on, Vinnie,’ said Katie’s brother Simon, addressing me as a horse as usual. I could have murdered him.

We reached the roof of the nave. I saw a dark velvet sky suffused with a pure white light. Below me the bishop’s palace, now the Choir School, rose in a flurry of Victorian gothic towers and turrets from its long garden, and beyond the silver gleam of the river the meadows, enchanted pastures, stretched to the distant mass of the hills. The sight was so beautiful that tears stung my eyes and again I found myself wishing with passion: if only he could be here!

Someone paused beside me. I looked up. It was Christian. ‘Incomparable, isn’t it?’ he said.

‘Stunning.’ The adjective seemed so inadequate that I wished I had remained silent.

‘You’re looking rather stunning yourself,’ Christian remarked idly. ‘In fact I’ve never seen you look better. Is the obvious explanation the true one?’

What’s the obvious explanation?’

‘Are you in love?’

‘Oh, good heavens!’ I said languidly, but then in a moment of bravado I cast aside the mask of nonchalance and retorted: ‘Well, as a matter of fact yes, I am — but not with you, I promise!’

‘And now, of course, I long to seduce you on the spot!’

Robert Welbeck, who had somehow become separated from me during the long haul up to the roof, chose that moment to lurch into us. ‘Venetia reminds me of Lauren Bacall,’ he said to Christian. ‘Venetia, any time you want me to play Humphrey Bogart —’

‘Sweet of you, darling,’ I said, ‘but I wouldn’t dream of stopping you running off to Casablanca with Ingrid Bergman.’

‘Save your energy, Robert!’ advised Christian amused. ‘Venetia’s in love with someone else.’

‘Oh God, why am I always last past the post in the race for the glamour-girls?’

Perry Palmer said behind him: ‘Let me give you a lesson in racing! Venetia, when you’re next in London, have a drink with me at Albany and I’ll show you my very curious Japanese prints.’

‘Fabulous — name the day!’ I said promptly, and Christian laughed.

Marina, slinking up to our group, said with a commendably genuine affection: ‘What a
femme fatale
you are, Vinnie, luring these three gorgeous creatures into your net!’ I suppose that if one has absolute confidence in one’s ability to be the belle of every ball, one can afford to be generous, but I still admired Marina for not unsheathing her claws. My sister Arabella would have been scratching away furiously by that time.

In gratitude I said to Marina: ‘They’re all yours, Helen of Troy. I’m off to the other side of the roof to contemplate eternity.’ I felt quite faint with euphoria. I had been called a glamour-girl — twice — and openly acknowledged as a
femme
fatale.
My life
as a
social outcast was over. I had moved from the sidelines of life to the centre at last. I was madly in love. The world lay at my feet. I was in paradise.

At the west end of the roof I looked back and saw that Katie had joined the group I had abandoned. Christian was slipping his arm around her waist — and Marina perhaps found that too hard to watch; she was moving away, and although Perry held out his hand to her she ignored him. Robert Welbeck, in search of another glamour-girl, was prowling purposefully towards Dinkie, but Dinkie, in an unexpected twist, began to snog with the BBC’s Don Latham. Norman and man-eating Cynthia were already locked in a voracious marital embrace as Cynthia settled down to her customary picnic, and out of the corner of my eye I saw Simon the horse-lover jump on Emma-Louise with such gusto that I could almost hear him thinking: tally-ho! Meanwhile Robert, balked of Dinkie, had sensibly decided to settle for that nice girl Holly Carr, and Marina, as if to show Christian she could survive well enough without him, was marching towards me with her head held high. But when she passed the door which led to the stairs Michael ambushed her and she surrendered with relief. Trust Michael Ashworth, I reflected not unamused, to wind up smooching with the belle of the ball.

Drifting away from them I reached the north side of the Cathedral and paused to stare at the city beyond the walls of the Close. At that point I could no longer see my companions, who were all on the south side; the vaulted roof of the nave towered between us as I stood on the north walkway and leaned against the parapet. I sighed, savouring my solitude, and gazing over the city I prepared to abandon myself to the most delicious luxury of dreaming about the man I loved.

A footfall sounded behind me. My solitude shattered. Too late I realised I was trapped. Then as a shadow fell across the parapet beside me the dreaded voice said hoarsely: ‘Venetia!’ and Eddie Hoffenberg moved in for the kill.

X

‘Venetia, I must talk to you!’

‘Oh God, Eddie, not now!’

‘Yes, now, I must speak, I must — Venetia, you’re the most tremendous girl I’ve ever met but I’ve never dared say so because I know you think I’m so ugly and I know how your father hates Germans —’

‘Eddie, this is sheer masochism!’

‘No, it isn’t, it’s sheer courage at last! Venetia, as soon as I saw you tonight I thought you were so beautiful, so radiant, so heroic —’

‘
Heroic?
That makes me sound like a twenty-stone Wagnerian opera singer!’

‘I’m sorry, heroic’s the wrong word, I’m in such a state that my English has broken down —’

‘Well, run away and mend it.’

‘Venetia —’

‘I’m sorry, I know I’m being beastly, but I simply can’t cope —’

‘You don’t have to cope. Just say you’ll many me. Venetia, I adore you, I’m demented with passion, I dream of you night and day —’

I tried to run away. He grabbed me. I shrieked: ‘Let me go!’ and struggled violently, but his awful, flapping, great wet mouth descended on mine in a nightmare of revolting intimacy. I lashed out blindly with my foot. He recoiled with a yelp.

Slapping him I wrenched myself free and dashed around the roof. All the snoggers looked up startled as I crashed by. Flinging wide the door I shot down the stairs and hurtled into the shadowy splendour of the transept. Moonlight was now pouring into the nave. Great sobs tore at my throat but somehow I managed to blunder across the transept and grope my way through the darkness of the northern aisle to the Dean’s door. At last my fingers closed on the handle. I heaved the door open, I staggered outside — and I cannoned straight into a man who was about to enter the Cathedral.

But before I could even draw breath to scream he was grasping me reassuringly. ‘It’s all right!’ he said at high speed. ‘It’s all right, it’s all right — it’s only me!’

I cried: ‘Oh, Mr Dean!’ and with all my defences utterly destroyed I collapsed sobbing against his chest.