After the Armistice Ball

Prologue

Lustre. That was what had been missing and was suddenly back. The Esslemonts’ Armistice Ball was lustrous in a way feared to have disappeared for ever; and for once, as Daisy Esslemont observed, the emphasis was not on lust. Husbands were recently demobbed and there was none of the usual marital ennui, so in spite of the glitter a strange wholesomeness prevailed.

The ladies dazzled. Young and old, their hair shone with setting lotion or twinkled with ornaments; lips glowed red if maquillage had been ventured upon, cheeks glowed pink if not; frocks sparkled or gleamed with the bristle of sequins or the stately drape of satin. The ladies, though, were not uncontested. Men, usually no more than a backdrop to their wives, were resplendent that night since no man without a dress uniform in which to strut around would have dared show his face. The epaulettes and medals from the Boer campaign and the one or two surviving costumes from the Crimea lent a faint air of light opera along with their whiff of camphor and outdid, somewhat impertinently the young men felt, the lesser peacockery of more recent heroes.

So everyone glistened. And they laughed and the music was sprightly and even the smell was different. In the heat of the ballroom, the ladies’ sweat and sweet talcum mixed with the spice of cigar-breath and drove away sourness, the reek of worry, which was all there had been for five chill years.

Then there were the jewels. Out from the safes, home from the banks, tipped from their velvet bags, came the jewels. Tiaras, brooches, bracelets and bangles, clusters, half-hoops and solitaires. The rubies, the emeralds, the sapphires, the diamonds, the diamonds, the diamonds.

The Duffy diamonds, almost forgotten, newly mesmerizing, raised a round of applause as Lena Duffy shed her wrap; people jostled to the banisters to look down at them and cheer, enchanted. Then Lena’s simpering and swishing about made the onlookers turn away, murmuring that she might, she really might, have let one or other of her daughters have a look in instead of hoarding it all to herself still. Silly to have two pretty girls in pearls and their ageing mama stooping under the weight of the family jewels.

Later, when a footman came round at supper to make the collection for widows and orphans, she took off her bracelets and dangled them over the hat, laughing, before snatching them away again in whitened fists and fastening them back around her arms. Silas Esslemont frowned until the younger Duffy girl, twinkling at him, brought a smile back to his face. After all, if one were honest, what was being celebrated here was things going back to how they were before when one owed no sombre piety to life and cruel little jokes gave it savour. It was half the joy of this evening, if one were honest, that only those whose loved ones had returned were here; that the others, of whom there were so many, could be forgotten and that just for tonight glee could bubble up and over unchecked.