Sacred Hunger - Barry Unsworth [172]
‘Outside on the grass?’ Erasmus laughed a little at the extravagance of it. ‘That’s an odd notion. Have you forgotten that there is a perfectly good ballroom inside the house?’
‘Yes, but don’t you see, it would be something different, it would be something to remember. People would remember my party for ever. Everyone dances in ballrooms.’
This, Erasmus felt, was precisely the point, but he merely smiled and shook his head, glancing indulgently at Mrs Wolpert. Better to say nothing, she would forget the idea soon – or so he hoped.
However, she was exalted now and took it into her head that he should see her new dress, the one she was to wear for the ball, and not merely see it, but see it on – a suggestion that her mother objected to immediately on grounds of propriety and some alarmed superstition. But Sarah insisted, demanded to be allowed, drawing herself up and raising her delicately moulded chin in the determined way she had when her mind was wholly set on something. In the end the mother gave in, as she generally did when the girl was wrought up in this way; she had learned to recognize the signs. And on this occasion she received no help from Erasmus, who remained silent, divided between his sense of correctness and the desire to view his love.
Sarah was away half an hour or more. When she returned, making an entry through the wide double-doors, Erasmus saw at once that she had done her hair differently, in a braid over the top of her head, and that she had added something to the natural glow of her cheeks. The dress was of silk, a soft apricot in colour, with narrow stripes in a darker shade and a vine pattern of flowers and leaves between, the skirt full, with a short train, and arranged over a hooped petticoat of cream-coloured quilted satin. High-heeled shoes with brocade straps completed the effect.
Sarah paraded before them for some time. She was flushed but serious, as befitted the occasion. For a while there was no sound in the room but the beguiling friction of silk. Having helped in the choice of material and seen the dress fitted at the dressmaker’s, Mrs Wolpert had not many words to say now. She was still far from approving the exhibition and wished it over quickly. Erasmus was silent for so long that in the end Sarah stopped and looked at him in a way that was imperious, yet somehow supplicating too. ‘You look beautiful,’ he said then. ‘It is a beautiful dress.’ His own voice sounded husky and strange to him, so great was the sincerity with which he delivered this verdict. He could hardly believe, even now, that this radiant creature would so soon be promised to him. But even as he spoke something changed in his expression. Another, even so young, even in the joy of possession, might have felt something akin to compassion for what had been patient and somehow helpless in the girl’s display, some quality of subjection in it, in the very vanity itself. But this was a reach of feeling quite beyond him. He had felt the joy – it had taken him by the throat. But below it an obscure feeling of offendedness had grown within him. Though she had looked at him and posed for him, he had begun to feel that this show was not for him only, he was sharing her with other spectators somewhere beyond the room. She was on stage again.
Displeasure at this did not last long, once he was able to assign it to weakness on Sarah’s part – her weaknesses he was confident he could deal with. By the time he took his leave he had quite recovered equanimity. Sarah, restored to her house costume of light blue lutestring, accompanied him to the end of the drive. Walking beside her, leading his horse, he felt unmixed happiness. At the gate they kissed and he held her close. He felt her press against him and the blood rose to his head and obscured his sight for some moments.
She had heard the change in his breathing. ‘My own love,’ she said.
‘Until Saturday then,’ he said. He watched her walk away, keeping his eyes fixed on her until the curve of the drive took her from his sight.
It was nearly