‘It’s going into the laundry anyway,’ he said, disengaging himself and picking up a book that was lying by their bed.
By now Nina and Blanchard seemed to have accepted that Alistair and Laura would come over to their table at some point during the evening. Alistair had done most of the work of making them accept their company; he was happy to dance and flirt with Nina, while Laura still felt she faced an uphill struggle to get Blanchard to notice her. But Nina seemed languid that evening, and almost as taciturn as Ingrid, and Alistair went wandering off to the other side of the room to gossip with a journalist he knew. Nina had said the previous week that she would soon be going to visit Sybil in Derbyshire, Laura remembered, but when Laura asked her about the visit, Nina looked vague.
Blanchard, too, seemed distracted, and Laura thought suddenly, as she was drinking her second cocktail, that she was going to give up after that evening and give Stefan back that bug. What was the point of trying to make headway with Nina or Blanchard, or to pretend that she was this girl who wanted to get drunk and dance with people who didn’t even like her much? Just then she noticed that Nina was looking at her with an oddly glassy stare, and she asked if she was all right. Nina nodded, but Laura saw how her gaze wavered even when her head stilled. Nina got up, saying she was going to powder her nose, and Laura got up too. Blanchard asked why girls always went to pee together, and Victor laughed and made some smutty innuendo. As they walked through the room, Laura felt Nina’s hand suddenly on her elbow, a tight pressure. ‘Feeling a bit tired,’ was all Nina said when Laura turned to look at her. They went into the ladies’ powder room; it was large, with little peach-coloured armchairs and a maid whose job it was to lay out the linen towels by the peach basins. It smelt of shit and tuberose perfume. Laura, feeling nauseous, sat down by a basin as Nina went into one of the lavatories. The door was locked. There was silence. Laura was pleating the silk of her dress in her fingers. The silence lengthened. Another woman, middle-aged and respectable in green crepe, came, urinated and left.
‘Nina, my sweet,’ Laura called out, ‘are you all right?’ There was no answer, so she knocked at the lavatory door. Again, no answer. Laura turned around and saw the maid still folding linen towels. ‘My friend is in there – I’m not sure she is all right.’ Why did she have to spell it out? Surely it was obvious that something was wrong. The maid tried the door and knocked too, and then shook her head and left the room. Laura was still knocking and calling when she came back with a key that opened the door from their side. The maid had not said a word. Laura pushed open the door, but something was keeping it closed, and the something was Nina’s foot. Nina had slipped off the lavatory and was on the floor, unconscious. There was vomit on her grey velvet dress. Her underpants were around her calves, her dress rucked up. The maid was pulling up Nina’s underpants and straightening her dress, and Laura was wetting a handkerchief and putting it to Nina’s face, calling her name. ‘I’ll get the doctor,’ said the maid. Nina opened her eyes and gazed at Laura with the same glassy stare as before.
‘Not their doctor,’ she said clearly, ‘my doctor.’
‘I’ll get you to a room,’ Laura said. ‘Blanchard’s room?’
‘Yes, let’s go to Chéri’s room, and he can call my doctor. Ugh,’ and Nina shuddered, turned and vomited again into the lavatory. Laura asked her if she could stand, and then supported her into the corridor and to the elevator, where Nina leant heavily against Laura, so that Laura could smell her tainted breath. She felt repulsed by her. Nina had a key to Blanchard’s room in her purse, but her hands were so shaky that Laura had to open the door and then usher her in. Clearly, the room had been used just before Nina and Blanchard had come down to the ballroom – it was a mess. The bedding was a swirl of linen, there was discarded underwear on the floor, and a bottle of brandy and other things – pill bottles, medicine bottles – on the table by the bed. Nina picked up one of the bottles and shook it, but it was empty. She fell clumsily onto the bed and Laura attempted to straighten it around her.
‘Are you going to throw up again?’ Laura asked, when Nina sat up restlessly.
‘I need Chéri – I need my doctor.’