‘So to be exact,’ Tabitha said, trying to remain calm, ‘my brother is in debt but his businesses are no way in danger?’

  ‘Elegantly put.’

  ‘How can this be?’

  ‘Well, the bank will extend your brother’s overdrafts in order to secure payments on the loans, I’ve no doubt about that. My grandmother in Manitoba had an English oak dresser my mother always coveted.’

  Tabitha looked perplexed.

  ‘Bear with me,’ said Fairclough. ‘When we came to move it in the days after my grandmother’s passing – influenza, it was a bitter winter even by Manitoba standards – well, this dresser simply crumbled, just fell to pieces in our hands. What had seemed solid all those years was, at core, brittle as a wafer. It had been eaten clean through, you see, by powder-post beetles.’

  ‘And?’ asked Tabitha, sensing there was some connection to be made.

  ‘Well, the banks as the debt holders keep the smaller specialist firms afloat, but this means the bigger operations are unable to secure the necessary efficiencies. Now the Lancashire Cotton Corporation may differ with me on this, but in my opinion the whole textile industry is bored through with unsound finance. Because of a freeze on wages, agreed by the cotton operatives, the industry appears in good health but just you remember that dresser back in Manitoba.’

  ‘Are you suggesting my brother needs to do something?’

  ‘If the Japanese make incursions into China and India, over time, it is reasonable to assume that the industry would require a wholesale restructuring, amalgamation of the smaller firms, such as your brother’s, with larger outfits in the region. Though I doubt we’ll see that happen.’

  ‘What exactly is my brother to do?’

  ‘Oh, nothing,’ said Fairclough, ‘continue as he is, the size of his firm means he is neither a drawer in the dresser nor a powder-post beetle.’

  ‘What is he then?’

  There was a crackle of nested tobacco, cawing from the gulls out over the bay.

  ‘Perhaps he is an ornament on top of it, an objet d’art.’

  ‘I am very confused, Mr Monthugh.’

  ‘It’s a confusing business. The dresser is rotten, of that there is no doubt, but so long as it stays where it is, and no one attempts to move it, all will be well.’

  He uncrossed his feet, stood up, ran a hand through his thinning hair. His forehead had reddened in his time sitting beside Tabitha. He tapped out the scorched tobacco from his pipe onto the wall. Florence Chatterjee was coming back across the lawn, a jug of water in one hand. She raised it in greeting. Fairclough held his pipe up.

  ‘I think I might walk down to the cove before lunch, see if I can’t find those crabbers. Will you join me?’

  *

  After lunch, the waifs took over the picnic rug on the lawn, their long, angular bodies cast in full sun. One sat cross-legged, the other lay outstretched on her side. Their smocks stained white around their hems. They both looked very thin but something of the hardness in their faces disappeared close up.

  As Tabitha approached them the girl who was lying on her side said, ‘Oh, hello. I’m Inez and this is Carina.’ She made a trailing gesture with the back of her hand towards her companion.

  ‘How do you do, I’m Tabitha Wright. Are you twins?’

  ‘Oh, she’s not my sister,’ said Carina, tearing up a clump of grass and throwing it ineffectually at Inez, who lightly brushed a few blades from her bare legs. Tabitha could see now, their hair and matching smocks aside, they looked quite unalike. Inez was darker, Carina broad-faced, Slavic-looking almost.

  ‘You’ve been keeping to yourselves,’ Tabitha remarked, taking a seat on the rug.

  ‘We’re being held against our will,’ said Carina. She had a very husky voice, which made even speaking softly seem a great labour.

  ‘We are practically prisoners, woeful, isn’t it?’ said Inez, sitting up, shielding her eyes, and taking a good look at Tabitha.

  ‘I see,’ said Tabitha. ‘Have you been kidnapped?’ She considered for a moment the possibility of Valentin arriving with them and some vague story about their origins.

  ‘Oh no, we arrived of our own volition, more or less,’ said Inez.

  ‘And where is it you arrived from?’

  ‘Why, St Petersburg,’ said Inez as if it were the most obvious question in the world.

  ‘That is a long way,’ Tabitha said, unsure if she were being teased.

  ‘We were at the Imperial Ballet School. Do you know it?’ asked Carina.

  ‘I don’t think I do.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Inez at this.

  ‘Inez here had a love affair with an Argentinian twice her age.’

  ‘It was not a love affair, we exchanged three letters,’ said Inez wearily.

  ‘The fourth was intercepted by Madame Geltzer.’

  ‘I see,’ said Tabitha. ‘And what led you to Cornwall?’

  ‘We are here awaiting the arrival of her father,’ said Carina.

  ‘Apparently we couldn’t be trusted in London,’ added Inez with a hint of bitterness.

  ‘And how did you become embroiled in all of this?’ Tabitha asked Carina.

  ‘I was acting as courier. I would collect the letters, you see, from the embassy where this fellow was an undersecretary.’

  ‘Very junior,’ Inez added for context.

  ‘There was a physician on the next street I was seeing for my hip, well, for my buttocks, iliac crest and sacroiliac joint.’

  ‘She was in as much trouble as I was.’ Inez gave a soft laugh, rolled onto her back.

  ‘I received a telegram from my father, telling me I wasn’t to leave Inez’s side.’

  ‘I think they feared I was about to disappear. I’m not sure where, I have no money to speak of,’ said Inez, herself now tearing up grass and throwing it up above her own face. She blew the fallen blades away then sat up.

  ‘You don’t happen to have a cigarette, do you?’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t.’

  ‘Liquor?’ Carina asked hopefully, closing one eye. Tabitha shook her head. Both girls looked disheartened. Inez peeled off her socks; her feet were bruised, the toes rimmed with dry blood.

  ‘And so how did you make your way here?’

  ‘Oh, the train of course,’ said Inez, whose interest in Tabitha had cooled.

  ‘It was a hoot, well, to begin with,’ said Carina.

  ‘We travelled first class to Riga, told them we were countesses, but the money ran out at Vilnius; by Warsaw we were travelling third.’

  ‘I’m surprised your father didn’t send someone to escort you?’

  ‘Well, I suppose he did.’

  ‘Yes, a governess and then a private detective.’

  ‘We tried to bribe her but she wouldn’t accept it.’

  ‘I offered her a very fetching brooch.’

  ‘In the end we had to lock her in her hotel room.’

  ‘The detective was trickier.’

  ‘It would be untrue to say we evaded him fully.’

  ‘Stern chap.’

  ‘Played a great deal of solitaire.’

  ‘Carried a blackjack, fearsome thing.’

  ‘Rode with us from Łódž to Prague, which meant we ate at least.’

  ‘We lost him in Prague then headed for Vienna.’

  ‘I’m not sure if you girls are having me on.’

  ‘It’s all perfectly true,’ said Carina.

  ‘I suppose one of us shall have to write an account of it one day,’ said Inez.

  ‘And the detective?’

  ‘Oh, he found us again in London, then he drove us all the way down here.’

  ‘Trains are apparently too easy to evade him on,’ said Carina.

  ‘And where is this detective now?’

  ‘He’s staying at a boarding house in the village.’

  ‘Calls in twice a day, to make sure we’ve not fled.’

  ‘Oh, I’m finished with fleeing,’ said Inez, lying on her back and bringing her bare feet stiffly together in the air.

  ‘You’re not here against your will too?’ asked Carina.

  ‘Oh no,’ said Tabitha, ‘not as far as I know.’

  ‘Is that other lady your sister?’

  ‘Yes, she is.’

  ‘And what does she do?’

  ‘She’s a painter.’

  ‘See,’ said Carina.

  ‘We thought as much.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I help to run a mission in Manchester.’

  ‘Is that in London?’ asked Carina.

  Inez shook her head. ‘Carina is an extremely graceful dancer, but she has nothing between her ears,’ she said in apology, then added, ‘That must be very rewarding.’

  ‘I enjoy it.’

  ‘Well, that’s what matters, isn’t it?’ said Inez.

  ‘And so how did you come to be in Miss Montana’s care?’

  ‘My father knows Miss Montana, the way one does,’ said Inez.

  ‘She’s been much more pleasant than we expected,’ said Carina brightly.

  ‘I’m not sure why our fathers thought we would be better off here than in London, unless he hoped we’d drown ourselves.’

  ‘And will you have to give up dancing?’ asked Tabitha.

  ‘Oh no,’ said Inez.

  ‘Inez intends to write to Fokine at the Ballets Russes, once all this has blown over.’

  ‘Yes, dear Mikhail Mikhaylovich,’ said Inez, ‘he’s been trying to get me out of my pointe shoes since I turned sixteen.’ She tore a flap of dead skin from the ball of her heel, bit it between her eyeteeth, then tossed it onto the lawn. ‘He prefers one to dance without, you see, he is exceedingly modern.’

  ‘We saw his Daphnis et Chloé in Paris last summer with Papa,’ said Carina proudly.

  ‘Karsavina danced it like a pig in slippers,’ Inez said. ‘She may have made a good goatherd but never the shepherdess. One day dear Mikhail Mikhaylovich will realise this.’

  ‘And when will your father be here?’ asked Tabitha.

  ‘Oh, any day now, I expect. He’s sailing from New York.’

  ‘Yes, and then –’ Carina ostentatiously slit her throat with her index finger.

  A biplane flew overhead across the bay. Johannes, who was drying off at the long wall, shielded his eyes with both hands and kicked Eliana’s deckchair. Carina and Tabitha looked up. Inez seemed entirely unbothered by the appearance of the aircraft.

  ‘Perhaps it’s your Argie,’ said Carina, throwing another handful of grass.

  ‘Yes, how did your Argentinian friend take you having to leave?’ asked Tabitha.

  ‘He was going to teach you to tango, wasn’t he?’said Carina.

  ‘Alas, now I shall never know how.’ She rolled over in a swoon, the pale underside of her forearm draped lightly across her brow.

  ‘I have one more question if I may.’

  ‘Go ahead,’ said Carina like a bored duchess.

  ‘Why is it you are dressed as you are? It’s been a great subject of debate. Dr Chatterjee for example thought you were from the convalescent home in Truro and that your short hair perhaps signified a recent dose of measles.’

  ‘Yuck,’ said Inez while Carina inspected her arms as if mention of the illness might have given rise to an infection.

  ‘Oh, we lost our luggage in Paris, a few days after giving that detective the slip.’

  ‘Small price for an afternoon’s freedom,’ said Inez.

  ‘We bought these in Pigalle.’

  ‘Miss Montana offered to buy us new clothes.’

  ‘Sweet of her, but we like these, don’t we?’ said Inez.

  Carina nodded.

  ‘And your hair?’

  ‘We did that in Vienna. Inez thought we could sell it – at that point we were thinking of going on the lam, we weren’t quite sure how one went about it, so we hacked it off with a knife there at the station and wandered into the old town.’

  ‘What do you make of the troll?’ Inez asked Tabitha.

  ‘Chap with the goatee beard,’ said Carina.

  ‘Mr Stock.’

  ‘Carina had a good look around his room.’

  ‘Well, I was interested.’

  ‘Tell Miss Wright what else you saw.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Carina, ‘I saw the Indian chap making love to the Fräulein.’

  ‘Dr Chatterjee?’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  ‘We’d run out of tobacco, you see,’ said Inez, ‘so I sent Carina here on a little reconnoitre.’

  ‘Trickier than you might imagine,’ said Carina. ‘Must have been midnight, perhaps a little after. First, I tried the troll.’

  ‘Mr Stock,’ said Inez.

  ‘Over in the stables, had all these lamps hung around, offered me a glass of schnapps, didn’t like the look of him, said no thank you very much, then I took a quick recce around the bedrooms, you were all still downstairs.’

  ‘No luck,’ said Inez.

  ‘Then I remembered the Fräulein had been smoking before supper in the deckchairs.’

  ‘So I sent her off to have a look.’

  ‘He was reading to her, from a blue notebook.’

  ‘Down towards the cove.’

  ‘Saying something about how the words of his heart will be carried by the murmurings of a swan or perhaps it was the murmurings of a song.’

  ‘He was clearly wooing her, you see,’ said Inez as if this might be lost on Tabitha.

  ‘Then he leaned in and kissed her on the throat,’ said Carina.

  ‘Very romantical,’ said Inez.

  ‘Thought it ill-mannered to linger.’

  ‘Shame as the Fräulein had a whole box of Fanchez, which are absolutely first rate.’

  ‘Are you quite sure it was Dr Chatterjee?’

  ‘Oh yes, quite sure,’ replied Carina.

  ‘Keep it to yourself, I would,’ said Inez, ‘her chap seems a bit of a hothead, and it wouldn’t do to cause a scene.’

  *

  That evening in the dining room Valentin and Johannes were playing a game which involved one of them slapping the back of the other’s hands, as hard as they possibly could, until they missed and the privilege defaulted to the opponent.

  Valentin’s hands were webbed with fat bottle-green veins. Johannes’s tapered with almond-shaped nails, cuticles oiled and pushed into supple crescents. As the guests arrived for supper the pair reluctantly desisted, the backs of both men’s hands glowing a scalded red.

  ‘Tabitha, you go there,’ Bessie said, pointing to the head of the table. ‘I didn’t see you this afternoon?’

  ‘Oh, no, I took a bicycle ride,’ said Tabitha. ‘Where are the girls?’

  ‘Our waifs were collected earlier. I saw you talking with them. Do not believe a single word they tell you.’

  ‘Well, the arguments are simple,’ said Siddhartha Chatterjee. His teeth were stained with red wine. ‘It is against God’s will, it will destroy the home, and women cannot handle the responsibility because they lack any knowledge beyond the domestic sphere.’

  ‘You can’t possibly believe that,’ said Tabitha.

  ‘It’s not a case of if I believe it or not, the silent majority need to be convinced.’

  Siddhartha glanced at Bessie to ensure she was still enjoying seeing Tabitha provoked.

  ‘Oh, enough talky-talky,’ she said, snapping her hand like a long-billled bird. She looked over the candlelit scene, the empty wine bottles, the improvised ashtrays, the piles of fish bones. ‘We need music.’

  Fairclough was dancing with Tabitha, who moved rather stiffly. She had been pushed into his arms by Eloise who was dancing with Siddhartha Chatterjee, Florence with Johannes, while Eliana Althoff was waiting for Valentin to finish smoking a cheroot.

  ‘You know, I thought you were very restrained back there,’ Fairclough said, leaning towards Tabitha. ‘History on your side and all that. Taxation without representation is, well, tyranny.’

  Bessie changed the record, hurling the disc across the room.

  ‘May I?’ said Valentin, cutting in on Fairclough. The music started again. The smell of cognac was very strong on his breath. Tabitha had to turn her head away. Valentin pulled her towards him as she struggled to maintain distance between them. He had taken off his shoes and was dancing barefoot. She felt the weight of his head on her chest.

  ‘Really, Mr Stock.’

  Valentin looked up at her, his face was huge and far too close, and before she knew it he was attempting to kiss her. Tabitha gave him hard shove below the shoulders with both hands. He staggered backwards, landing with a loud thump on the floor.

  *

  Tabitha woke with a headache and an extreme sensitivity to the light. It was pouring through the curtains at a quite unaccountable rate. She rolled onto her side and suddenly felt violently sick. She realised, with alarm, she was not wearing her nightdress. What was the last thing she could remember? There was a waltz she had reluctantly joined, Eloise as her partner. Bessie with a tennis umpire’s megaphone, barking at the guests. A cocktail, streams of whisky, chartreuse, something bright blue, a colour which couldn’t possibly occur in nature. Then toasts: Rabindranath Tagore, the Kaiser, Papposilenus; and when it had been Florence Chatterjee’s turn to suggest someone she had hesitated and Bessie had called her a ‘dumb bitch’. When Tabitha had attempted to leave, Eloise had grabbed her elbow, saying, ‘Oh no you don’t,’ her mouth a slash of red. More dancing, the sofas pushed to the walls, a reel of some sort. She remembered Siddhartha Chatterjee crashing into a bookcase and Johannes grabbing Florence by the waist.

  Tabitha heard breathing, a half-snore. It continued for a few seconds, the snuffle shortening until it stopped. She felt the blood draining from her face. A mosaic of memories began slowly to surface. There had been a game of sardines, started then abandoned, which was how they found themselves in his room …

  ‘Well, this is very.’

  ‘Yes, well, very,’ said Fairclough.

  From downstairs there came an almighty clatter, breaking glass, and then the light metallic sound of a tray spinning to a stop on the stone floor. Out in the garden someone was shouting, ‘Put that down at once.’