Peacock Emporium Read Free Page B

daydream kept being interrupted by slim, enigmatic Jean Shrimpton lookalikes, who tempted him away with knowing smiles and Sobranie cigarettes – so she had started a new one, in which, at the end of the evening, Douglas escorted her back to this huge bedroom, waited longingly at the open door, and then finally, tenderly, walked her over to the window, gazed at her moonlit face and—
    ‘Vee? Are you decent?’ Vivi jumped guiltily as Douglas rapped sharply on the door. ‘Thought we might nip downstairs early. I bumped into an old schoolfriend and he’s saving us a couple of glasses of champagne. Are you nearly done?’
    The pleasure of Douglas’s calling for her wrestled with her dismay at him already having found someone else to talk to. ‘Two secs,’ she shouted, layering mascara on her eyelashes, and praying that tonight would be the one on which he was forced to look at her differently. ‘I’ll be right there.’
    He looked perfect in black tie, of course. Unlike her father, whose stomach strained uncomfortably over his cummerbund like a wind-filled sail, Douglas simply looked taller and straighter, his shoulders square in the crisp dark cloth of his jacket, his skin thrillingly alive against the flat monochrome of his shirt. She thought he probably knew he looked handsome. When she’d told him so, jokingly, to hide the intensity of longing his appearance had provoked in her, he’d laughed gruffly and said he felt like a trussed-up fool. Then, as if embarrassed to have forgotten, he had complimented her too. ‘You scrub up pretty well, old girl,’ he said, putting his arm round her and giving her a brotherly squeeze. It wasn’t quite Prince Charming, but it was a touch. Vivi still felt it, radioactive on her bare skin.
    ‘Did you know we’re now officially snowed in?’
    Alexander, Douglas’s pale, freckled schoolfriend, had brought her another drink. It was her third glass of champagne, and the paralysis she had initially felt, when confronted by the sea of glamorous faces before her, had evaporated. ‘What?’ she said.
    He leant in so that she could hear him over the noise of the band. ‘The snow. It’s started again. Apparently no one’s going to get past the end of the drive until they bring more grit tomorrow.’ He, like many of the men, was wearing a red coat (‘Pink,’ he corrected her) and his aftershave was terribly strong, as if he hadn’t been sure how much to use.
    ‘Where will you stay?’ Vivi had a sudden picture of a thousand bodies camped on the ballroom floor.
    ‘Oh, I’m all right. I’m in the house, like you. Don’t know what the rest will do, though. Keep going all night, probably. Some of these chaps would have done that anyway.’
    Unlike Vivi, most of the people she could see around her looked as if they stayed up until dawn as a matter of course. They all seemed so confident and assured, uncowed by their grand surroundings. Their poise and chatter suggested there was nothing particularly special about being in this stately home, even though there was a fleet of minions whose only wish was to serve them food and drink, and that they were unaccompanied by chaperones on a night when boys and girls were likely to have to stay in the same house. The girls wore their dresses easily, with the insouciance of those for whom smart evening wear was as familiar as an overcoat.
    They didn’t look like extras from a Disney film. Among the tiaras and pearls there were heavily outlined eyes, cigarettes, the occasional Pucci skirt. And despite the incongruous elegance of the wedding-cake ballroom, the many swirling ballgrowns and evening dresses, it had not been long before the band had been persuaded to drop its playlist of traditional dances, and strike up something a little more modern – an instrumental version of ‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand’ had sent girls squealing on to the dance floor, shaking their elaborately coiffed heads and shimmying their hips, leaving the matrons on