***chapter 25***

***Dancing***

The Army Reunion Dinner was as expected. At beautifully adorned tables, polite conversations were made and rich and vast arrays of food and drinks provided; snooty waiters and waitresses, considered the crème de la crème of their profession, hurried back and forth with dishes and drinks; military men, pinned on to their chests rows of glistening medals that shone ever brighter under the crystal chandeliers, were presented with awards and in turn gave speeches, long, short and occasionally incoherent (I'm afraid one or two of our distinguished guests imbibed a little too freely); and thunderous applause often threatened to bring down the roof.

Colonel Maddocks, being the debonairre gentleman that he was, and well used to such ceremonies, although he disliked the snobbishness of some of the uppercrust attendees, effortlessly charmed all, quite at his ease.

But he slipped quietly away the moment the orchestra struck up the first waltz.

He had met with (sometimes unpredictable) heads of state to discuss issues of national security; during the War had talked a young enemy soldier crazed with terror into laying down arms before he killed a group of civilians; as a boy of thirteen he had even once plunged into an ice cold river to rescue a sackful of mewing kittens. Bold and brave he may have been, but dancing made him feel shy, gawky and awkward. Even in his youth, prepared then to suffer almost any ignominy for the sake of the opposite sex, he would shuffle self-consciously, and, no matter what music played, keep his face grave, his back ramrod straight, his arms stiff, and clap his hands as though the whole point of clapping was to startle his dance partner.

Nowadays, regarding himself as far too old to be anything other than a confirmed bachelor and therefore having no particular wish to impress the opposite sex, he simply avoided dancing altogether. The pleasant strains of The Blue Danube echoed amid the distant voices as he stepped out into the quiet gardens, fired up a match and lit his pipe. At peace with the world, he puffed contentedly while strolling leisurely through the grounds, enjoying the solitude and the exquisite fragrances of night flowers that scented the air, stopping every now and then to admire some colourful array of blooms or feel the cooling breeze on his face. Once he fancied he heard the pitter-patter of footsteps, but after briefly scanning the shrubbery in vain for some nocturnal creature - for he had never outgrown his boyhood love of animals - thought of it no more.

The silver moon had been playing games for quite some time, darting in and out of the busy clouds, first casting light and shadow, then casting darkness and silence. Now it surrendered the game to be swallowed up behind a mass of grey cloud. After considering for a while whether or not it should, throwing down intermittent handfuls of drops as it pondered, the rain eventually made up its mind and began falling fast, and he hastened to the glass summer house, shaking off the raindrops, glad to have found shelter, before realising someone else was there.

A slim young woman in rose pink ball gown knelt on a bench, her hands cupped over her eyes, her face pressed to the glass. The rain muffled all other sound and, engrossed in peering intently out into the misty night towards the brightly lit building they had both chosen to exit, she was unaware of his presence until he coughed politely to announce it.

"Oh!" The girl exclaimed, swinging round. **She was in her mid to late twenties and seemed refreshingly unlike the many pretentious people he had met that night, totally unperturbed that her magnificent auburn hair was working its way loose from its tight, formal style. Her heels were kicked off and a nearby empty glass and chocolate-stained plate betrayed the fact she had brought food and drink to accompany her vigil.

"Ssh! I'm in hiding." Her eyes danced with merriment and a smile dimpled her cheeks. "Rodney, an old childhood friend of mine, is keen to dance with me, Mother and Father are keen for Rodney to dance with me, but I'm not keen to dance with Rodney! Elizabeth Fosberry, Brigadier Fosberry's daughter." Being a thoroughly modern miss of 1970, she was taken aback when, instead of shaking the proffered hand, Geoffrey gallantly stooped to kiss it.

"Enchanté, mademoiselle. Colonel Geoffrey Maddocks."

Their eyes met as he looked up again. And, as we have seen, Geoffrey was no novice to romance. He knew the instant he gazed into those heavenly blue eyes.

It was love at first sight.

Trapped in the small, draughty summerhouse by the rain lashing furiously down, thus they introduced themselves and confided in each other their reason for choosing to leave the luxury and warmth of a much grander residence, a little sheepishly to begin with, and then, gaining confidence, laughing easily together.

Close neighbours in England, Elizabeth and Rodney had been firm friends from infancy until they grew up and went their separate ways. They had lost touch until accidentally meeting again tonight and their old friendship immediately rekindled ("But not in the way Mother and Father and even Rodney seem to want us to be!" Elizabeth sighed. "Heavens, I just had to escape before I was smothered. I know it was childish, but I suppose I am…" She glanced at the chocolate-stained plate and smiled.)

Geoffrey told of his total inability to dance, relating a tale of how, as a teenager, he tripped over his own feet and crashed into his girlfriend, who stumbled into a couple dancing nearby, and who, in turn, knocked against someone else until half the dancers "fell like ninepins", he recollected, chuckling. He hadn't mentioned or even thought about the incident for decades, but somehow it seemed natural to chat as if they had known each other for years. Elizabeth, with a flash of mischief in her wide blue eyes, suddenly announced she had an idea and she leapt up from the wooden seating area. Beautiful though Strauss and other classical composers were, one had much more choice nowadays and the freedom to dance exactly how one wished, she claimed as, to his astonishment, she produced a record player and several LPs.

"I noticed this earlier. There's a whole collection of British songs as well as French. I'm going to teach you the latest dance trends, Geoffrey!" Glancing quickly round for a socket, she had plugged in the record player, slipped a large vinyl record out of its colourful sleeve and placed it on the turntable before the colonel even had time to protest - that is, had he wanted to; having never met anyone quite like Elizabeth he was finding it an extremely interesting experience. "Now follow my moves…"

Greatly amused, he did as she suggested, and to a medley of British chart hits they danced at arms' length around the summerhouse, she swinging arms, hands, legs, head, waist or hips at what seemed like totally random moments, and he following her lead, although he strongly suspected only half Elizabeth's dance moves were genuine and the other half she invented on the spot, particularly the facial expressions. (Geoffrey remarked, in one of their many pauses to catch breath, that he never heard of dance moves involving facial expressions before and Elizabeth, with tears of laughter streaming down her cheeks, replied, oh, hadn't he? why, how very strange!) He wondered what the other partygoers would think should any happen outside, but he was enjoying himself far too much to care. Fortunately or unfortunately, nobody did venture outdoors in that torrential rain or Colonel Maddocks' reputation as being a staid, stiff upper-lip gentleman who rarely cracked a smile could well have been destroyed forever. Which might or might not have been a bad thing.

It was only sheer exhaustion and a stitch in Geoffrey's side that finally ended the dance lesson. Then they sat for quite a while to recover, and just when they thought themselves ready to return to the hall, one or both would burst into helpless laughter, which meant they had to catch their breath all over again.

"That was fab!" Elizabeth grinned.

"Fab," Geoffrey agreed, trying the unfamiliar word on his tongue. Thanks to his lively companion, he had added some half dozen fashionable phrases to his vocabulary tonight and certainly he hadn't laughed as much since he was a child. Being heir to the Maddocks fortune and title, it was unthinkable to sully the great family name and from a very young age he had learnt to become the serious man he was expected to be.

Some years before, deciding he would follow his heart and work caring for animals and that the only way to do this was to rid himself of the enormous millstone the responsibilities of wealth, property and titles brought, he announced his intention to bypass the inheritance that would be his at thirty years of age in favour of his younger brother Arthur. But all did not go according to plan. A second world war broke out and it was six years later that Arthur could finally be appointed Lord Maddocks. Like all four Maddocks brothers, Geoffrey had of course been involved in the War, but his genius and diplomacy had proved particularly invaluable and when he was asked to continue in his post representing Britain overseas he realised he could do much good and so put his own dreams aside.

After many, many years of dry, dusty conferences and meeting with heads of state, of military men and endless ceremonies, of laws and speeches, Elizabeth came along like a breath of fresh air, reminding him of how he too had once been young and free. They were kindred spirits, almost able to read each other's mind. When the rain eventually stopped, the waltz music began to slow and the lessening of voices and increasing noise of traffic indicated the celebrations were drawing to a close, an exchange of glances, a quizzical raise of eyebrows from Geoffrey and an answering smile and small sigh from Elizabeth was enough to agree, without speech being necessary, that perhaps it was time to return and explain their long absence…