Chapter 45: Villy - The Golden Hours

One wet morning, a narrow man in a very good overcoat came into the shop.

‘Philip Manavazian,’ he said politely, and asked for Hermione. Then looked at her again. ‘Are you Mrs Cazalet?’ he said.

She’d kept Cazalet, of course, for the children. There’s no need to make a parade of yourself with these things.

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘We corresponded, about some French topazes.’

‘Of course,’ she said.

‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘Viola Cazalet.’ Then laughed and seemed a little embarrassed. He looked at her again. She smiled politely, and looked back: pale sallow skin, good bones, silky white hair rather sleek for a man of his age, very brown eyes. Of course, eyes are either brown or not but there was something very about the brownness of his.

‘Madame,’ he said – his voice was not quite English. ‘This will sound absurd but are you – were you – Viola Rydal?’

She gave an actual shiver at the sound of this name from forty-five years ago. She’d hardly heard it in all that time! It always gave her pleasure to hear ‘Viola’ spoken in full – but the Rydal had not been hers for many decades. Who was this, who knew Viola Rydal?

‘Yes,’ she said, cautiously.

His face burst into smiles.

‘I saw you dance!’ he exclaimed. ‘It was my first visit to the ballet – at the Alhambra in Leicester Square, April 1919. Pétrouchka, the Ballets Russes. You played the triangle, in Act One. So gaily! You were one of the gypsy girls, in a red cap, then you were up on the balcony. With the bear. Or is the bear later? And the men did the most wonderful prisiadki . . .’

She couldn’t speak.

‘It is you?’ he said. ‘Good Lord!’ He paused. Looked at her. ‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘I was going to leave flowers at the stage door. But when I went round and you came out, in a coat with white fur, there was a group waiting for you. Your hair tied up, with a diamond arrow in it – I was too shy. Anyway, there was a man, you embraced him . . .’

‘My husband-to-be,’ she murmured.

‘And where is he now?’ He spoke in such a conversational tone that she thought nothing of it.

‘My husband that was?’ she said. ‘Long gone.’ And realised that he really was. The moment at poor Hugh’s funeral had been a sort of relief. Edward the husband had been over years ago, but Edward the memory, who had lurked and hung over her so much longer, had now . . . dissipated.

‘So I went about my life, and you no doubt went about yours,’ the man was saying, ‘but my word, I never forgot you!’

Well!

‘I remember my costume,’ she said. ‘All those tiers! It stank of mothballs and old talc. You’d think it hadn’t been out since nineteen thirteen.’

‘Just after the war,’ he said. ‘All of us so tired but so young. So much possibility!’

‘Yes!’ she said. It seemed almost impossible to her that she had ever had that life. Living on milk and dried fruit. Rehearsing, smoking, gambling, working, my God, we worked hard. Paris and Monte Carlo. Suddenly she remembered her green satin shoes, and tears came to her eyes.

She tried to remember how madly in love she had been with Edward, but nothing came to her. Not even resentment.

Would she, if she had stayed, have been a Karsavina, a Nijinska?

‘So long ago,’ he said. ‘I kept the programme.’

‘Fancy you remembering,’ she said. ‘You know, Massine and Diaghilev fought horribly.’

‘My whole life,’ he said, actually shaking his head. ‘And here you are. Look, it’s rather forward, but may I take you for lunch?’

Over stuffed cabbage and Tokai at the Gay Hussar, he said, ‘Miss Rydal, is that how you like to be addressed?’

Mrs Cazalet was just habit now, and officialdom. But she wasn’t Miss Rydal. Who was she now? ‘Well, you might as well call me Viola,’ she said. ‘As we’ve known each other so long.’

‘Viola. This is so strange and delightful that I feel I must invite you to the ballet. Something Russian perhaps?’

‘Мне бы этого хотелось,’ she said. ‘Mne bi etogo khotelos.’ One phrase she remembered: I would like that.

‘Ты говоришь по-русски!’ he cried, enchanted. ‘Ty govorish’ po russki!’

‘Not really,’ she said. ‘I learned for a little while. Tried to. I can’t really remember anything much. I wanted to learn enough to read Dostoievsky . . .’

‘You read Dostoievsky!’

‘Well, in English,’ she said. ‘Are you Russian?’ An exile, perhaps. A White Prince – oh, for goodness’ sake.

‘I’m Armenian,’ he said. ‘I live in Paris mostly; I travel a lot. I’m a single man. A widower.’

Good Lord, he’s very to the point!

‘I must tell you, I still want to take that diamond arrow out of your hair.’

She almost gasped.

Suddenly, the thought of Edward and his little moustache, night after night. The thought of, oh God, Lorenzo. The sordidity.

‘I won’t,’ he said. ‘Of course. But I want you to know that I want to.’

She had no idea how to respond. She had absolutely assumed that all that sort of thing was over.

Good Lord.

She gave a bright little smile and wondered whether to do something with her fork. So awkward! In the end she didn’t.

‘I’ve shocked you,’ he said. ‘I apologise. Let’s save it up for later. I’m being peremptory.’

He’s made me complicit, she thought. It warmed her.

‘Though actually it has been nearly fifty years,’ he said. ‘So perhaps not so peremptory.’

Her eyes skittered. She had never known anyway what to say when men were interested – couldn’t even tell if they were interested or not. No idea how to flirt, or charm, or even why one might want to. His chin was narrow, his cheekbones wide. The kind of face they call catlike. But kinder-looking and more amused than any cat.

‘After lunch,’ he said, ‘when I have delivered you back to your duties, I’ll walk up to Covent Garden and see what is on.’

She breathed again. ‘Do you know what, I think they have Firebird and The Rite of Spring at the moment.’

‘No! It’s as if they knew we were coming,’ he said. ‘You have children?’

‘Four,’ she said. ‘Grown-up.’ That will put him off, she thought. Men like him take up with thirty-five-year-olds.

‘So you are a respectable woman, done wrong by an inadequate man, and leading your own life now.’

For a moment her pride rose up to object to being defined by this person who’d only just met her. But actually –

‘Yes,’ she said, her eyebrows arching, her forehead furrowing a little.

She asked him, over baked cheesecake, which clung to her teeth rather and made her hope he didn’t notice, what his business was with Hermione.

Smiling, he opened his jacket, and took from the inner pocket a silken package, which he unrolled across the table. Inside lay – oh! A little gold disc, ornamented and delicately studded. She peered at it. ‘What is this?’ she asked, reaching her finger out.

‘An Etruscan earring,’ he said. ‘Sadly we have only the one, but we can make it into a pendant without damaging it.’

‘You’re a jeweller?’

‘Sadly not,’ he said. ‘I don’t have the skills. I’m a dealer. Originally an archaeologist. But all I wanted to do was to find shiny things, rescue them and put them on living people.’

She looked at his hands. An oval carnelian, set in a gold signet ring.

‘What’s the engraving?’ she said, and he spread his fingers for her to look.

‘A pomegranate!’ she cried. She didn’t touch his hand.

‘Beauty, love and eternal life,’ he said.

‘Did you find it?’ she said. ‘The ring, I mean. Of course, beauty, love and eternal life would be a bit more complicated.’

‘I did,’ he said.

‘It’s too fairy tale.’

‘No,’ he said, ‘it’s exactly fairy tale enough.’

She looked up, and found him smiling at her.

Men have not done right by me, she thought. Think nothing of this. Probably this is just what he is like.

Actually, she didn’t know what to think.

‘Did you have lunch with Philip?’ Hermione wondered.

‘Should I not?’ Villy said, and paused in anticipation of the cascade of detrimental information, his many wives, his notorious infidelities, his bankruptcy, Hermione’s liaison with him in the forties . . .

‘No, I’m delighted,’ Hermione said. ‘He’s such a sweet man. Terribly knowledgeable. And actually rather shy.’

‘Shy!’ said Villy.

‘Was he not shy with you?’

‘Not at all,’ said Villy. ‘He was . . . um . . . well, if I hadn’t liked him, I’d’ve thought him rather smarmy.’

‘No!’ Hermione said. ‘You’re just not used to foreigners with manners. He was crazy about his wife. She was French, quite dull but don’t say I said so. She died five years ago and everybody has been trying to marry him, or marry him off, because he’s got a clean record, love-wise, and is pleasantly rich.’

She was giving Villy a look.

‘You could do worse,’ she said. ‘Much worse, actually.’

‘At my age,’ said Villy. ‘Really, Hermione.’