‘Will you be playing, ma’am?’ asked a croupier.
‘I’ll watch for now,’ I replied. I hadn’t seen so much money in the world.
‘Place your bets, ladies and gentlemen.’ Even calling people ‘ladies and gentlemen’ would have been brave outside this house. I spent a while wandering around, watching the games, attempting to discreetly engage one or two of the young women in conversation as a ploy to comprehend who exactly was here, and who might be the one I was looking for – but they were as clueless about the other guests as I was, and I suspected that they had, in fact, been hired for the evening. I received some aggressive attention from the Soviet officers, but pretended not to notice.
As I was taking another glass of wine, someone whispered in my ear, ‘Have you come out without your purse?’ I looked around to see a man at my side wearing a white mask that covered all but his mouth, making him look a little like he had been in some sort of terrible accident.
‘Yes, silly of me.’
‘Oh, dear. Well, here.’ He reached inside his jacket, pulled out a fist of paper and dropped it on a silver tray carried by a butler, who carefully flicked through, then measured out a stack of chips that my new friend indicated were to go into my hand.
‘That’s very generous of you,’ I said.
‘Jeremy. And you are?’
‘Lorelei.’
‘Well, off you go, Lorelei. Place your bet.’
I took some of the chips and placed them on the table. I recalled the line from the play that I had repeated over and over again to learn her voice. ‘Five pounds on red,’ I said.
‘Bravo,’ called my new friend. The wheel spun and the ball clattered through the numbers. A man in an evening suit and a woman in white, with a withering purple flower in her hair, were at the table. Two more men slipped in behind me to watch. ‘Now keep your nerve.’ I did my best. The ball fell into a red slot and I felt a thrill. ‘Well done.’ He patted me on the back.
‘And now, all my winnings on black.’
One of the men behind me placed his chips in the black square too. We won. The third time I went for a column of numbers, and in the next moment I had sixty pounds in my grasp. The man and woman at the table had lost all they had.
‘I’ll take that,’ said Jeremy, reaching for my pile of chips.
‘You can have your stake back. The rest is my luck,’ I said, passing him a few tokens.
He grinned and pulled his hands away. ‘Quite right. Come this way, Lorelei, let’s see how your luck holds at vingt-et-un.’ But the table that he took me to was full. He mulled something over for a moment. ‘On second thoughts, let’s go outside,’ he said.
‘And what do we find out there?’ I thought it useful to get the feel of the occasion before I pursued my true task.
‘Oh, just a different crowd.’ We passed out of a side door into the night, and he put his arm around my back to ward off the chill as we trudged towards some sort of low building made of Greek columns. There were lights shining, and, when the breeze blew towards us, I could catch a word or two from low voices. ‘The pavilion,’ Jeremy said.
‘Which is?’
‘A little outdoor home from home. Come and join the real party, Lorelei.’
‘That sounds marvellous.’
‘Oh, it is. They’re Parasites all. Don’t tell NatSec.’ Inside the pavilion, what had once been classical and austere stone architecture had been transformed by satin oriental cushions and velvet drapes to keep out the cold. An old wind-up gramophone was playing jazz.
A group of people sat on cushions and wicker chairs surrounded by hot braziers. Niches in the walls showed the stumps of recessed busts that had recently been chiselled away. More history turned to dust.
‘Here we are,’ Jeremy said. He stooped at a table to pick up a fruit that I didn’t even recognize – it was like an apple, but with soft flesh like a peach. He bit in and chewed a mouthful before throwing the rest aside; it skidded across the marble flagstones, leaving a trail of seeds and flesh. ‘Grapes?’ he asked, picking up a bunch.
‘No, thank you.’
‘Up to you.’ He dropped them again, and I couldn’t help but think that there was something awful about it all – absurd and impossible, that this could be happening, when outside the walls there were so many parents cutting slices of bread in half to share with their children. The scene was no different to a thousand that had taken place in country houses before the War, but still it struck me as wrong that it should continue to exist in a nation where such disparity was supposed to have been swept away. Privilege would always be with us, I supposed, yet it made my skin prickle that its beneficiaries should be so blasé about it.
‘Jeremy,’ a voice called over. I saw a man in his forties who looked to have been very handsome a few years ago, but those years had taken a toll in hollow cheeks and bags under bloodshot eyes. He was slumped on a wicker chaise-longue.
‘Let’s introduce you,’ Jeremy said, taking me over. The man had his double-breasted jacket open as he leaned back against the armrest. ‘This is Adam.’
Adam gazed at me. ‘I had to beg for the wine,’ he moaned. ‘Shortages, apparently. Russians taking it all. Oh, how Socialist of them. Well, it doesn’t matter now.’ He was slurring his words and sounded utterly wretched.
‘He’s been like this all the time, recently,’ Jeremy muttered. ‘Very boring. You can look after him for a bit.’ He walked away towards a table full of glasses and decanters.
‘I’m Adam Cutter,’ he said, more to himself than to me, holding out his hand.
‘Lorelei Cawson.’ I shook his hand and began to lift off my mask as the others had.
‘Lorelei?’ He seemed to wake from a dream. ‘Oh, Lorelei, I didn’t recognize you.’ My fingers froze on my mask. ‘Why didn’t you reply?’
‘Reply to what?’ Tense, I tried to keep her voice in my mind, the way her vowels rounded and her consonants were like beats on a tight drum. I let the mask slip back into place.
‘To my… note.’ He lifted his head from the armrest, but the effort seemed too much and it fell back. ‘Nick’s heard that you’re selling him out.’
I thought of the handwritten words on the invitation that had been sent to Lorelei. Presumably it referred to the medicines but how?
I sat beside Adam and put my hand on his leg sympathetically. ‘You think I’m doing that?’
‘Of course you are. Of course you are. To your friend up there.’ He pointed towards the house.
So she had been betraying Nick to someone – and that person was here. ‘Where is he?’
‘Oh, where he always is now. The card room, making everyone think he owns the place, not me.’ He closed his eyes and shook his head at the last words, then his eyes flicked open and his head burst up from the armrest. He stayed there searching what he could see of my face before slowly sinking back. I guessed that he was going to pass out any minute.