RetroXotique

“Aren’t you ready yet?”

“Nearly, dear,” Zoe said in a matter-of-fact tone that concealed the insincerity of the last word. “We aren’t going to be late yet.”

She had not broken off looking in the mirror to speak; after all, Hamish was out of the room, and could not tell how little attention she might be paying. She was nearly finished, but she had to check on her hairdo. She gazed at her reflection while Shirley held up a mir­ror behind her head at various angles to show her the back.

Yes, it was sound. She carefully stood up from the dressing-table and went over to her own long mirror to admire her reflected image. It admired her in return, beautiful and smug. Here was another fine example of fashion throwing itself at her feet; no wonder she was pleased with herself. This was a first-class occasion, an expensive production of Ibsen’s Peer Gynt to which, for some reason Hamish and friend were invited; lots of rich and well-dressed people were to be there, and Zoe had to compete. She was sure that her husband would look as bad as ever, despite the enormous amount he spent on clothes every year; he could not help being old, fat and bald. She could do nothing about that, but she could impress people on her own account. And not just people: several other people from various banks were going to be there, as well as people from other fields that Hamish knew through his work, and others he did not know at all; and of all those people there was only one in whom Zoe was really interested. Noel was coming; and for Noel she had to be not just impressive, but heart-stopping.

For evenings, fashion dictated that skirts must be truly long; not just long as they were in the day, but floor-length. As with day clothes, they could be either very full or very narrow. Zoe had a few tight evening dresses, but considered that with such long skirts if they were narrow enough to be elegant they looked tarty. There were occasions when a long tight skirt was the thing to choose, but this was not one of them. Her dress was of silver satin, with a strapless bodice, very tight and tiny-waisted, cut in the fashionable princess line and hugging her hips to spread out smoothly from below them in a widening bell of fabric. It was supported from below by a series of stiff net petticoats, and even when she was stand­ing still it was several feet in diameter. The dress was for the most part plain and unadorned; Zoe did not like things to be overdecorated, as she considered the purpose a dress was to enhance her own looks rather than distract attention from defects. There was just one detail, to stop it being too boring. Down the right front, from the neckline to the hem, the silver material was relieved by a broad band of indigo satin, about three inches wide, and about every two inches this was crossed by a little bow of silver ribbon, tied and stitched down. The bows did not go quite down to the hem; they stopped a bit less than a foot short of it, and there the satin band was very finely pleated. It was not exactly her best dress, but it was the best one suitable for such circumstances. A few people had seen it before, which would normally have made her chary of re-using it; but she was certain Noel had not seen it, and from that point of view it was the best dress to show off her charms to him. She had backed it up with accessories designed to give her the right air of refinement and wealth: elbow-length tight silk gloves, in the same colour as the indigo band down her dress (they went with it), two bracelets each with six strands of pearls interspersed with gilded bars, and the necklace that went with them, a six-strand gold and pearl choker.

They were Victorian, and came to her from her mother; there was some romantic story about them, but she had never listened properly and now as she looked in the mirror could not remember it. Earlier in the day her trusted hairdresser had strained her hair back as tightly as she could bear it, and then pinned it firmly into position in a rock-hard fold at the back of her head before rubbing the whole with oil to make it stick together so that not a hair would fall out of place. This was the hairdo à la Marlene Dietrich: it gave one a headache, but it had the useful effect that it pulled back the forehead as well and ironed out the wrinkles. With the long gloves to cover up the ageing skin of her hands and arms, and beneath the dress an internal corset that left her within an ace of fainting if she had to climb steps, she was looking as young as she could manage. All she needed was to be with Noel, and the years would melt away. As long as Hamish was with her she felt ten years older, and feared she looked it too. As he started knocking on the door and shouting impatiently she took one last anxious glance at herself in the mirror before going to join him.

When she emerged she had arranged around her shoulders the stole that went with the dress: just a piece of silk in the same colour, a good seven feet long and two broad, which she was wearing around her shoulders and upper arms, crossing in front of her chest. Hamish looked at it, then put a hand out and tugged it away from her neck.

“Do you have to wear it like that?” he said. “What’s the point of choosing a dress like that if you’re just going to cover yourself up? Let’s see a bit more there.”

“Leave it alone,” Zoe said sternly, carefully putting it back into position. “I know what I’m doing.”

Crude man: he had no idea of strategy, he just wanted to look down her cleavage. There would be plenty of girls there who would be very pleased for him to do just that. Perhaps even his latest stationery-cupboard conquest would be there; yes, surely he would have arranged that. Zoe had grown to despise younger women, and never more than at fancy do’s like this one. They wore the lowest possible necklines, and they never ran the risk of covering anything up; they went around leaning forward and putting their shoulders back, so that men talked to their bosoms rather than their faces. Zoe had no time for such obvious tactics: a skilful woman husbanded (or wifed?) her resources. Come in wearing what is obviously a low-cut strapless dress, and they will want to inspect your chest; but keep it covered, and they will be frustrated, keep coming back. Her strategy was to gradu­ally lower the stole through the evening, so that to start with she would be modestly cov­ered up and come over to her peers as someone not out to put sexual appeal before dig­nity; as time went on she would expose more and more skin, and each time someone came to talk to her again there would be a little more reward. By the time she put her stole be­hind her waist and left everything she had on show, her audience would have seen so much of the younger women’s busts that they would have become inured to them, and her own long-awaited neckline would be a thing of surpassing interest. At least, that was the theory; and after several previous tries, it was to be applied seriously for the first time tonight, with Noel as the target.

Hamish arranged his arm for her to take it, and she did, thankful that there was so much material to keep their skins apart: shirt and dinner-jacket on his side, silk gloves on hers. They processed along the landing and down the broad staircase, then across the tiled hall to the front door. The house had very few rooms, but it was small in a very spacious way: a plot that might have made two houses in a poorer district now contained two floors of gra­cious living and a third of smaller spaces for servants. The day of town houses that looked like country mansions was over, but with a few hundred thousand pounds one could still live in considerable style.

Service, too, was harder to come by than in the good old days—which these two could hardly remember—but for special occasions it was worth paying more. The cook had been given a bonus especially to stay on and hold the door open, pretending she was a footman. Zoe thought this ridiculous, but Hamish felt he could not leave for a big occasion with con­fidence unless someone held the door for him. They passed out into the road, where they met the Rolls-Royce whose door was being similarly held by the chauffeur, and got in.

Travelling was not something Zoe enjoyed, unless it was by ship: it made her rumpled. This was one of the reasons she avoided pencil skirts in the evening: creases across your stomach were bad enough on a suit, but on a delicate, shiny material like silk or satin they were far worse, especially on a special occasion when everyone was looking. Even with a full skirt it was impossible to avoid some creases, and she often wished that as soon as she arrived at a party she could take her dress off and have it carefully pressed before she made an entrance. Really, sitting down was just inimical to fashionable clothes, and best avoided. It was much better when the party was somewhere she was staying; then she could get there walking, which might be tiring in high heels but preserved the dress. On one occasion she had taken advantage of this by wearing a pencil-skirted dress so tight that she could not sit down without bursting a seam: the effect had been impressive (unfortunately, it had also impressed Hamish) though she was not entirely sure it was right for her image. Once she had been at a party where some of the guests were models; they had turned up in a fleet of dresses with colossal skirts, at least six feet in diameter. Zoe had cross-questioned one of them on how she had managed to stuff herself into a car, even without her friends; she had learned to her amusement that the fashion-house had shipped them to the party in a lorry. A model could get away with that, but nobody else could. She just had to sit carefully, arra­nge her skirts so that they were as safe as possible from crushing, and hope that when she got there her beauty would not be fatally compromised.

She usually brooded about how she would be received, but she was concerned with such abstruse matters today because of Noel. She did not want anything to detract from her appearance; she wanted to be quite sure that, for him, she would be the only woman in the room. He would be the only man there for her, regardless of her husband; and to prevent Hamish becoming suspicious she would have to do some virtuoso pretending.

They arrived, and she swept into the foyer on Hamish’s arm. Where was Noel? They went over and talked to various of his friends; Zoe could see some of her own friends there also, but the rule was, Hamish chose where to go. Where was Noel?

Then she saw him. She had not recognised him with his back turned, dressed for the evening; all the men were dressed exactly alike, for the conventions of the time did not permit them any variation apart from a partially free choice of cuff-links. He had a young woman on his arm. Zoe’s lip curled briefly in distaste before she realised what it was doing and got her greeting face back into position. She didn’t like what she saw. It was torture. There was Noel, who for her seemed to be surrounded by a halo, by big pointing arrows: here he is, here’s my lover! To her partial eyes he seemed the only one in the room who was really doing justice to male evening dress; but his arm was polluted by the presence of a young tart. She wore a very low-cut evening dress of pale blue material, chiffon or something like it over a heavy foundation, with silver embroidery, and she was doing just what Zoe had imagined: walking around with her shoulders back, leaning for­ward, laughing exaggeratedly and generally looking as if her one aim was to pop out of her bodice. Her skirt was very tight over her thighs—Zoe immediately decided that it was too tight, though to be fair it was no tighter than the skirt of her own best suit—and from the knee spread out into a short pleated train. Examining it, Zoe did not see a dress that she might well have worn herself at another time: she saw a tart’s outfit, too tight, too low, and vastly overdone for this kind of occasion.

And who did she think she was, anyway?

Itching with menace, she remained with her husband making the same polite small-talk as ever with the guests Hamish had chosen to favour with her conversation. All the time, she was brooding on the offence Noel had committed, and speculating about who the tart might be. The other guests never suspected that there was anything on her mind—at most they might have noticed her looking away rather more than expected—but she was so clever and so practised at small-talk that she could carry on this kind of conversation with­out involving the higher centres of her brain at all. Sometimes this led to difficulties—once she had asked after the husband of a recently widowed woman when she was thinking of something else—but she was usually able to smooth over such messes.

Zoe wished there was some way she could manoeuvre Hamish into going to talk to Noel; but Hamish was a man who knew his own mind, pig-headed to use his wife’s expr­ession, and his idea of choosing conversation partners was largely defined by his own old school chums and those from whom he hoped to raise investments. When he had done the rounds of these, he led his adoring wife to the bar, and over drinks started them again. Before he had got round a second time, they were summoned to the auditorium. Zoe had occupied herself while Hamish was using her as a social prop with drinking the complimen­taries; and she had rather more than was good for her. She did not have enough to get careless, but she had enough to make her head feel rather different inside.

They sat down in the right box, the noise of conversation gradually faded as the noise of the orchestra tuning up rose, and eventually the curtain rose. Now, my mother tells me that Peer Gynt is the most engaging of Ibsen’s plays, but it did not appeal to Zoe somehow. Per­haps it was too fantastic for her practical mind; perhaps she was too occupied with thinking about the problem of Noel; perhaps the strain of covering up was getting to her. Certainly the stuff she had downed rather fast in the bar on an empty stomach had something to do with the fact that she began to find difficulty keeping her eyes open, and not long into the play they sagged altogether. The corset she was wearing underneath her evening dress kept her from sagging very far, but her head sank down as far as the broad and stiff necklace permitted it to do and still allow her to breathe. Every time her chin dropped too low she would begin to strangle, wake up and raise her head; but then it would go down again, and so she remained in an uneasy sleep, aware of the noise around her and vaguely of her sur­roundings, but events taking a wild and different course inside her head.

She found she was on the stage, which had grown larger until it was nearly the size of the auditorium. The uninteresting little people still crowded the stalls; but around her were her friends and her peers, the people now sitting in the boxes and dress circle. They milled about slowly, talking to one another, their words lost in music; it had the air, somewhat of a party. But she was standing clear, in the middle of the stage, with empty space around her, while the others congregated at the edges. She felt horribly visible, and she had a strong impression that everyone was looking at her.

Where was Noel? There he was, striding out of the crowd with a look of welcome on his face. Zoe felt her own lips creasing into a smile, and she moved towards him.

They noticed!

Faces turned to faces, and words were exchanged. A rumour was born, and it was slowly being passed from one guest to another. She could not hear it as speech, only as music, hushed and subtle at first, gradually growing faster and more urgent as the interest of the guests grew. It became a consuming passion, and they no longer bothered to be secre­tive. They turned to stare at her, and their faces betrayed their reactions: sometimes con­tempt, sometimes amusement, sometimes condemnation.

She turned to find Noel, but he was not there. She spun around in distress, and found that the others had retreated to the edges of the stage, leaving only the footlights exposed. A glance in that direction showed her that beyond their glare the entire audience was staring at her, waiting to see what she would do.

Her heart beat faster and faster; she felt a mounting panic. Suddenly something snapped, and she was running. She darted here and there, to different groups of friends, but none would have her: they drove her back with shouted words that she did not under­stand, their expressions hostile. She looked out at the audience again, but there was even more hostility there. These people were not her friends; they were the small folk she had despised ever since her marriage. She ran from one side of the stage to the other, trying to escape, but the people had linked arms, forming a human chain of interwoven men and women that she could not penetrate. They chanted their rejection of her, and she felt mounting fear.

The chanting rose to a shout, and she spun round to see Hamish behind her. He advan­ced, more purpose in his flabby face than she had ever seen. She backed away, backed away, until suddenly her back was to something hard and she could go no further. What had happened to Noel? Why wasn’t he defending her? Her peers shouted accusingly again and again; she could not make out the words, but she was sure they were some evil to her. Hamish reached out as she craned her neck back to get as far away from him as she could; his hands spread, now they were on her throat, now pressing into her windpipe…

With one especially loud shout they woke her up, and she jumped in her seat. She found she had been lying back with her head flopped backwards; she would have been half-strangled in that position anyway even without the broad stiff choker. She put her head up slowly, enjoying the relaxation of her throat, but noticing that she still felt exhausted and faint. The nightmare had tired her almost as much as real exertion, and there was no room for that in this dress; if she had fainted in her sleep, what on earth would have become of her? She blinked, focusing, noticing again the incomprehensible action on the stage; then turned to look at Hamish. He was staring at her with frank curiosity: now he leant over so that he could talk without being overheard.

“You woke with a terrible start,” he said. “Anything wrong?”

“No, not really,” Zoe replied quietly, massaging her neck as best she could through the pearls. “That music they were playing just now got into my head while I was sleeping, and it gave me the most horrible dream.”

“Not surprising: it was Hall of the Mountain King, you know. Well, you’re all right now, dear. Do try to stay awake, though. I know it’s dark in here, but someone’s sure to notice. It’s very bad form to look bored.”

Zoe tried to think of a cutting reply to this, but couldn’t. She shifted slightly in her seat, for her behind felt as if it was developing incipient bed-sores, and settled down to follow the course of the story as best she could. She preferred Shakespeare for a diversion, and it was not long before she gave up trying to enjoy it and settled down to counting the minutes left before the interval. That made the time pass extremely slowly; but she found the face of her gold-and-diamond best evening watch more interesting than the action on the stage.

There came the interval, and as the lights went up Zoe with a great sense of relief lifted her aching backside from the red velvet chair and made off. Hamish was a little slower off the mark and at first seemed rather disturbed that she should be leaving without him, but when she called over her shoulder that she was going to the ladies’ room he let her.

Zoe did go to the Ladies’, but it was mainly a pretext; though she did need the toilet, she wanted to get separated from her husband so that she would have a chance to do some talking on her own. If she was with Hamish, she got towed around to speak to whoever he happened to have in mind; on her own, she could exercise some choice as long as he did­n’t decide to call her over, and she had already chosen who she wanted to talk to. When she got into the lounge she drifted elegantly along exchanging words with this and that guest, always keeping her eye on a certain man and waiting until he was free for her to make her move. She wanted most of all for him to let go of the elbow of that objectionable young woman, but the signs were that she was a fixture: so she just waited until they were talking to nobody else to make her strike.

She glided up to them and smiled condescendingly. “Noel! How lovely to see you!”

It would not have been etiquette, or safe, to admit by a greeting how they felt for each other. Noel replied with a conventional “Yes, of course, Zoe! I saw you with Hamish earlier on, but I didn’t get a chance to speak to you…” but the glance they briefly exchanged seemed to carry an electric charge. After that they would have to be careful not to give anything away, but Zoe could feel a tingling in her body, and she knew Noel was feeling the same.

Then her gaze strayed to the tart by his side, and the feeling ebbed away. What in God’s name was he doing with her? The younger woman looked back, her expression showing a dawning awareness of what Zoe was thinking; and sensing the unwanted contact, Noel cut across it, saying “Oh, I’m sorry, I should have introduced you. Zoe, this is Lois Percey. Lois, this is Zoe Conway, my employer’s…”

“We’ve met,” the younger woman said, putting out a white-gloved hand. Zoe extended a glove of her own, and rather frostily they shook hands.

She was rather surprised, though, to think that she could have met this girl before. Where on earth could that have happened. “We’ve met, have we? When?”

“Lots of times. I’m Katie Percey’s daughter.”

Realisation dawned. Yes, this was the same girl she had seen many times over the past few years, growing older and older, now unrecognisable with her long blonde hair up and her figure on show. She had always slightly liked Lois, who seemed well-brought-up enough, though of course the children of one’s old school friends would tend to have something familiar about them. Now suddenly she found she hated her—and the anger with Noel redoubled. For a moment she saw nothing but red; she could not go on speaking to them, not until she could make clear to Noel exactly how she felt. She smiled winningly, and said “My goodness me, Lois, you have grown up. Last time I looked you were still quite a child. I haven’t seen you for, what, two years…? We must talk later, but really I have to catch up with Hamish. Enjoy the play.” And she left.

The second half of the play passed almost more slowly than the first, but this time there was no falling asleep. Zoe was itchy with the desire to tear a strip off Noel, and rather than slumping immobile in her seat she fidgeted constantly. Things got worse when she finally managed to identify which of many heads in the dark dress circle belonged to her lover; from then on she spent all her time watching him instead of the stage. Every time he turned towards the blonde head next to his own, she stiffened and wished she could hear what was passing between them. This was definitely Not Good Enough, and when once she had the chance she would explain to Noel exactly where he had gone wrong.

At last the acting came to an end. Zoe’s soul ached to run down the corridor as soon as the curtains had closed, but she was as attentive as ever to matters of form. She stopped where she was, and clapped, though in the dark she did not think it necessary to alter the grim look on her face; and when the ovation became a standing one she too rose, and went on applauding while the curtains swished open and closed again and again, though by that time she was quite sick of the performers and could quite cheerfully have strangled the lot of them.

Finally it was done, the lights went up, and she just had time to make her face tranquil and gently pleased again before Hamish took her arm. With the appropriate dignity, the loving husband and wife left their box and headed for the big private room at the back where a party was even now starting for those who had subscribed to the fund which had paid for this run of the play.

As they moved down the corridor, Zoe allowed her stole to slip down until it was wrapped around her upper arms; then changed her mind and dropped it altogether, so that it was looped inside the crook of each elbow and ran only around the back of her waist. Hamish looked across at her and grinned, but she took no notice. This was not for his benefit. Strategy and management were all very well, but now it was all-out war. Time to let Noel see clearly what he was denying himself.

The doors were standing open: from them came a flood of yellow light and cheerful noise, people talking and laughing. Some of the cast members were there already, still in their costumes, and the subscribers and distinguished guests were trickling steadily in, with the exception of a few drunkards who had not been able to get past the bar without a few quick ones to steady their nerves.

Zoe scanned the room instantly, and made sure that Noel was not there yet. She began trying out plans in her head, manoeuvres to get him on his own and give him the dressing-down he so richly deserved without attracting suspicion. Fortunately, at this late stage in the evening, it was not the done thing for married couples to stick together. Shaking off Hamish was easy; but Noel and Lois Percey, when they eventually appeared, were under no such duress to come apart.

Zoe prowled around the room like a great cat, smiling dangerously and talking to people, waiting for her opportunity, always keeping the tail of her eye on the couple that should not have been together. A long time passed, or so it seemed, before she had a chance to get at them; but at last Noel was held up by a group of guests in whom Lois evi­dently had only a passing interest. After exchanging a few token words with them, she moved on; and Zoe began stalking her quarry. She knew parties from decades of experi­ence, and she could judge merely from the expressions on faces how long the conversation was going to last. When Noel smiled and broke away she quickly made an excuse to her current partner, and glided after him.

She did not allow herself to hurry visibly, but she caught him inside ten feet. “Hello, Noel,” she said, smiling calmly. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Noel glanced around uneasily. Zoe still had her winsome expression, and she had spo­ken too softly for anyone else to hear, but he was still alarmed by her words. “Zoe, don’t embarrass me in front of—”

“Embarrass you? Don’t you know you embarrassed me? Smile, or they’ll think some­thing’s wrong.” She looked penetratingly into his face until he jacked the corners of his mouth into a position she felt appropriate; then they began a steady saunter to an unoccu­pied corner. “Why did you bring that girl here?”

“I couldn’t come on my own, could I? The invitation said ‘…and friend’, and if I’d come alone I would have looked as if I was fishing. People would have been suspicious. Your husband particularly.”

Zoe had thought of this herself, but her emotional reaction was unchanged, and in any case she had a further grievance. “Don’t you think you could have been a bit more tactful in your choice? That girl there’s a daughter of someone I was at school with! Are you trying to make me feel old?”

The smile was gone from Noel’s face again, forgotten; and, truth be told, even Zoe’s was starting to slip. He was thinking that perhaps from Lois Percey there would be more aggra­vation, even if it meant months of patient work before reaching the same stage he had with Zoe. At the moment Zoe seemed merely petty and troublesome, and there was a very good reply to what she had just said. “Trying to make you feel old? Do I need to try?”

Zoe’s smile disappeared altogether: her mouth had fallen open, and there was no more room for it. Her head was spinning, and she clapped a hand to her tightly corseted stomach. That was going too far, it was an unfair blow, it was… Shaking her head, partly to clear it, she said in disbelief “I don’t know why I bother with you, sometimes.”

Noel had spoken in the heat of the moment, and now regretted it. His motives were im­pure, and he knew that with an unmarried young woman in this day and age he would only get into her bed if she was of dubious virtue and probably of the lower classes. He had had enough of that; he wanted someone of his own standing, and Zoe was ideal apart from her age. If he didn’t want to lose that, he had to act fast, before things fell apart. Smiling secretly, he said “You do know why, really.” And very gently he reached out and brushed his hand across her skirt, just below her waist.