“Idina wants to see you before dinner, Beryl. She’s just down the hall, last door on the right.” He winked and went out again, and I gave Frank an exasperated look.
He shrugged and worked at the bone buttons on his pyjamas. I could tell he was drunk by the thick way he moved, and felt a flaring of old feelings, like a visiting ghost. Frank wasn’t at all like Jock, but I didn’t want to see him like this all the same. “You can’t really blame him,” he said.
“No? Maybe I’ll blame you instead then.”
“I see we’re feeling feisty.” He came round to where I stood and reached for me.
“Please, Frank.” I pulled away.
“It’s one dinner. We’ll leave tomorrow if you like.”
“Nobody works. I don’t know what on earth they do with their time.”
“If you have enough money you can play for ever, I suppose.”
“Work does more than pay your way.” My own intensity surprised me. “It gives you a reason to go on.”
“You do need a drink,” he said, turning to his mirror.
—
Idina’s bedroom was three times the size of ours, with a sprawling bed loaded down with silky furs. A great gilt mirror hung above it. I’d never seen such a thing.
“I’m in here,” Idina sang out from the bathroom. I found her there in an enormous jet-green onyx tub. She soaked in it up to her chin, the perfumed water leaking steam. “Those fit you perfectly.” She nodded at the pyjamas. “Do you like them?”
“They’re lovely, thank you.” I knew I sounded stiff from the way she eyed me and reached for her smooth black cigarette holder, lighting a match with damp fingers.
“You didn’t mind what I said earlier, about Frank?”
“It’s fine. I’m just tired.”
She drew in on the holder, and then blew out smoke in a cloud, never taking her eyes from me. “I wouldn’t want to be blonde,” she said, “but yours is lovely.”
“It’s horsehair.” I lifted up a strand and let it fall. “It won’t stay put no matter what I do.”
“Somehow the effect works.” She pulled on her cigarette again and then waved the smoke away. “Your eyes are good, too, like chips of blue glass.”
“Do I get to go through all of your features now?”
“I’m praising you, darling. You seem to like it when men look you over.”
“I don’t—unless it’s the right man.”
“Do tell,” she said with a laugh. “I’m starved for a little indiscretion.”
“Maybe you should get into town more.”
She laughed again, as if I weren’t being a perfect bitch, and then said, “Whom are you in love with?”
“No one.”
“Really? I thought it might be Finch Hatton.” She arched an eyebrow, waiting for my reaction. I would rather have died than give her one. “Don’t you think Karen is a little demanding for him? Poor Tania…how she sighs when he goes.”
“I didn’t know you two were even acquainted,” I said, feeling a need to defend Karen.
“But of course we are. I adore her. I just don’t think she’s the one to hold Denys. There’s nothing wild in her.”
“No one admires only wildness.” Somehow I couldn’t stand to hear Idina make Karen out to be so small. She was many things, but not that. “They have a great deal to talk about.”
“Do you think so? If you ask me, he’s too good at being a bachelor. Why choose one when you can have a dozen?”
“He probably can have dozens.” Heat tightened my throat. I hadn’t spoken of Denys in a long time, and never to a stranger. “But it doesn’t really cut both ways, does it?”
“Why not? Women can have plenty of lovers, too. Dozens upon dozens, as long as they’re clever and don’t crow about it.”
“But it never plays out that way. Someone always knows.”
“You’re not doing it right then,” she pronounced. With a swishing sound, she stood up. Slick water glazed her white-pink skin. Her perfect body was like art, or a carefully sculpted dish on a platter. She didn’t even reach for the towel but simply stood there and let me look at her, knowing I would feel awkward turning away.
I flushed, resenting her and the life she lived. If she was the model for discretion and polish, I wasn’t interested. “Maybe I don’t want to do it right,” I said.
Her eyes crinkled, but without any humour. “I don’t believe you, darling. Everyone always wants more. Why else are we here?”
—