介绍:
Chapter 9
ON TWO occasions within half an hour, Cecilia stepped out of her bedroom, caught sight of herself in the gilt-frame mirror at the top of the stairs and, immediately dissatisfied, returned to her wardrobe to reconsider. Her first resort was a black crêpe de chine dress which, according to the dressing table mirror, bestowed by means of clever cutting a certain severity of form. Its air of invulnerability was heightened by the darkness of her eyes. Rather than offset the effect with a string of pearls, she reached in a moment’s inspiration for a necklace of pure jet. The lipstick’s bow had been perfect at first application. Various tilts of the head to catch perspectives in triptych reassured her that her face was not too long, or not this evening. She was expected in the kitchen on behalf of her mother, and Leon was waiting for her, she knew, in the drawing room. Still, she found time, as she was about to leave, to return to the dressing table and apply her perfume to the points of her elbows, a playful touch in accord with her mood as she closed the door of her bedroom behind her.
But the public gaze of the stairway mirror as she hurried toward it revealed a woman on her way to a funeral, an austere, joyless woman moreover, whose black carapace had affinities with some form of matchbox-dwelling insect. A stag beetle! It was her future self, at eighty-five, in widow’s weeds. She did not linger—she turned on her heel, which was also black, and returned to her room.
She was skeptical, because she knew the tricks the mind could play. At the same time, her mind was—in every sense—where she was to spend the evening, and she had to be at ease with herself. She stepped out of the black crêpe dress where it fell to the floor, and stood in her heels and underwear, surveying the possibilities on the wardrobe racks, mindful of the passing minutes. She hated the thought of appearing austere. Relaxed was how she wanted to feel, and, at the same time, self-contained. Above all, she wanted to look as though she had not given the matter a moment’s thought, and that would take time. Downstairs the knot of impatience would be tightening in the kitchen, while the minutes she was planning to spend alone with her brother were running out. Soon her mother would appear and want to discuss the table placings, Paul Marshall would come down from his room and be in need of company, and then Robbie would be at the door. How was she to think straight?
She ran a hand along the few feet of personal history, her brief chronicle of taste. Here were the flapper dresses of her teenage years, ludicrous, limp, sexless things they looked now, and though one bore wine stains and another a burn hole from her first cigarette, she could not bring herself to turn them out. Here was a dress with the first timid hint of shoulder pads, and others followed more assertively, muscular older sisters throwing off the boyish years, rediscovering waistlines and curves, dropping their hemlines with self-sufficient disregard for the hopes of men. Her latest and best piece, bought to celebrate the end of finals, before she knew about her miserable third, was the figure-hugging dark green bias-cut backless evening gown with a halter neck. Too dressy to have its first outing at home. She ran her hand further back and brought out a moiré silk dress with a pleated bodice and scalloped hem—a safe choice since the pink was muted and musty enough for evening wear. The triple mirror thought so too. She changed her shoes, swapped her jet for the pearls, retouched her makeup, rearranged her hair, applied a little perfume to the base of her throat, more of which was now exposed, and was back out in the corridor in less than fifteen minutes.
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