A Wreath for Rivera

“Floor Show,” she read, “(i) A New Way with Old Tunes. (2) Skelton. (3) Sandra. (4) Hot Guy.”

At the extreme end of the group of chairs, and a little isolated, was the paraphernalia of a dance-band tympanist — drums, rattles, a tambourine, cymbals, a wire whisk and coconut shells. Carlisle gingerly touched a pedal with her foot and jumped nervously when a pair of cymbals clashed. “It would be fun,” she thought, “to sit down and have a whack at everything. What can Uncle George be like in action!”

She looked round. Her coming-out ball had been here; her parents had borrowed the house for it. Utterly remote those years before the war! Carlisle repeopled the hollow room and felt again the curious fresh gaiety of that night. She felt the cord of her programme grow flossy under the nervous pressure of her gloved fingers. She saw the names written there and read them again in the choked print of casualty lists. The cross against the supper dances had been for Edward. “I don’t approve,” he had said, guiding her with precision, and speaking so lightly that, as usual, she doubted his intention. “We’ve no business to do ourselves as well as all this.”

“Well, if you’re not having fun — ”

“But I am. I am.” And he had started one of their novelettes: “In the magnificent ballroom at Duke’s Gate, the London house of Lord Pastern and Bagott, amid the strains of music and the scent of hot-house blooms — ” And she had cut in: “Young Edward Manx swept his cousin into the vortex of the dance.”

“Lovely,” she thought.

Lovely it had been. They had had the last dance together and she had been tired yet buoyant, moving without conscious volition; really floating, she thought. “Good night, good night, it’s been perfect.” Later, as the clocks struck four, up the stairs to bed, light-headed with fatigue, drugged with gratitude to all the world for her complete happiness.

“How young,” thought Carlisle, looking at the walls and floor of the ballroom, “and how remote. The Spectre of the Rose,” she thought, and a phrase of music ended her recollections on a sigh.

There had been no real sequel. More balls, with the dances planned beforehand, an affair or two and letters from Edward, who was doing special articles in Russia. And then the war.

She turned away and recrossed the landing to the drawing-room.

It was still unoccupied. “If I don’t talk to somebody soon,” Carlisle thought, “I shall get a black dog on my back.” She found a collection of illustrated papers and turned them over, thinking how strange it was that photographs of people eating, dancing, or looking at something that did not appear in the picture should command attention.

“Lady Dartmoor and Mr. Jeremy Thringle enjoyed a joke at the opening night of Fewer and Dearer.” “Miss Penelope Santon-Clarke takes a serious view of the situation at Sandown. With her, intent on his racing card, is Captain Anthony Barr-Barr.”

“At the Tarmac: Miss Félicité de Suze in earnest conversation with Mr. Edward Manx.”

“I don’t wonder,” thought Carlisle, “that Aunt Cécile thinks it would be a good match,” and put the paper away from her. Another magazine lay in her lap: a glossy publication with a cover illustration depicting a hilltop liberally endowed with flowers and a young man and woman of remarkable physique gazing with every expression of delight and well-being at something indistinguishable in an extremely blue sky. The title Harmony was streamlined across the top of the cover.

Carlisle turned the pages. Here was Edward’s monthly review of the shows. Much too good, it was, mordant and penetrating, for a freak publication like this. He had told her they paid very well. Here, an article on genetics by “The Harmony Consultant,” here something a bit overemotional about Famine Relief, which Carlisle, an expert in her way, skimmed through with disapproval. Next an article, “Radiant Living,” which she passed by with a shudder. Then a two-page article headed “Crime Pays,” which proved to be a highly flavoured but extremely outspoken and well-informed article on the drug racket. Two Latin-American business firms with extensive connections in Great Britain were boldly named. An editorial note truculently courted information backed by full protection. It also invited a libel action and promised a further article. Next came a serial by a Big Name and then, on the centre double-page with a banner headline:

THE HELPING HAND

Ask G.P.F. About It

(Guide, Philosopher, Friend)