Death of a Unicorn

Around midnight I was hiding from Mark Babington and trying to get squiffy. Hiding wasn’t too difficult because Fenella was having her dance on the cheap and her uncle’s house, just north of Hyde Park, wasn’t really big enough for the crush they’d invited. Girls who were actually longing for their next partner to find them weren’t having much luck. But for the same reason getting squiffy was difficult—the caterers only released fresh supplies of champagne every half-hour and you couldn’t always get to where the bottles were in time for a first glass, even. Mark had insisted on checking my card to see that I’d got his dances down right, so he must have known I wasn’t keen, but that didn’t put him off. He was used to having his own way. He told people that he was going to make a lot of money before he was forty and then go into politics. He was the reason why Mummy had made me wear the necklace that night.

By now he had me cornered. I was in a sort of enlarged alcove off one of the sitting-out areas. Round a pillar I saw him push through a gang of that year’s debs and speak to Selina. She pointed her fan towards my alcove. It was between dances, and a rumour was on that another ration of champagne was being got ready, so there were a lot of people milling to and fro between us. I was screwing myself up for a row—I could feel the blotchy look beginning to come—when I noticed a crystal door handle on one of the painted panels of the alcove. Probably locked. Probably only a cupboard anyway.

It was a magic door, a black slot for me to vanish through. Beyond it I found a dark passage leading back to the top of the stairs, but roped off that end to keep people out. I was already slipping off that way, intending to go and hide in the cloakroom for a bit—the utter last resort, really—when from behind me I heard a cork pop. Aha, I thought, they’re opening the next half-dozen botts. I’ll get some at source and then I can refuse to dance with Mark till I’ve finished it, in case someone pinches it. Saved!

A small, dark-panelled room, with bookcases. Fenella’s uncle’s study. Men playing bridge. The one facing me frowned as I came through the door, and the one who’d had his back to me at a side table turned and walked over, holding a bottle with froth bulging from the mouth. He was the one who’d spoken to me at the foot of the stairs.

‘Dotards only, I’m afraid, Lady Margaret,’ he said.

‘Oh, please,’ I said. ‘Can I hide for a couple of minutes? And may I have a drink?’,

Instantly—he didn’t seem to think about it—he went to the door and closed a little brass catch above the handle, then came back and filled my glass. It was far nicer champagne than they’d been giving us outside.

‘Thank you so much,’ I said: ‘Do go back to your bridge. I won’t stay more than five minutes and I won’t tell anyone else.’

He produced his terrific smile, on purpose, for my benefit.

‘My partner is in six diamonds in a lay-down two-way squeeze,’ he said. ‘He will take an absurd time to think it out and then get it wrong. I prefer not to watch.’

‘I don’t play,’ I said. ‘Ought I to learn?’

‘Have yourself taught by a professional. Or don’t start. How do you occupy the daylight hours, Lady Margaret? Work on your novel?’

I thought he wanted me to be impressed by his knowing my name, but it wasn’t difficult, once he’d recognised the sapphires.

‘I sell lampshades.’

‘For Mrs Darling in Beauchamp Place?’

‘They should have made her into lampshades herself.’

He raised his eyebrows a millimetre. I thought I was getting used to him. He liked to seem to know everything, my name, the sort of shop someone like me might have a job in, and so on. And he liked to make the smallest possible gestures and still get his meaning across. It was a way of showing how powerful he was, inside. The eyebrow-raising meant that I’d got something wrong, though nobody who’d worked for Mrs Darling for five minutes could possibly have a good word to say for her. But before I could ask I heard a click and squeak from the door, then a distinct thud, then Mark’s voice calling my name.

‘Obstinate?’ said the man.

‘Pretty.’

He smiled a different smile, thinning his lips so that I half expected a toad-tongue to flicker across them. He pointed to a place where a bookcase jutted from the inner wall. I slid over and tucked myself out of sight. Just like playing sardines at Cheadle. It struck me that I’d been hiding from Mark—versions of Mark—practically since I could walk, behind nursery curtains, in empty servants’ rooms along the bare top corridors, in cellars and stable lofts, and now at London dances.

I heard the bolt click and the hinges whimper, and shut my eyes to strain for the voices. Mark’s, angry, my name in a question. Man’s flat murmur. Mark angrier still . . .