For a second he thought about launching himself into the throng, like a rock star body-surfing over the mosh pit. But no. This wasn’t that sort of crowd, whatever the coke was telling him. It was, in fact, quite a spectacle. From up here the initial impression was one of vibrant color and restless activity, unified yet complex. Like a section through a psychedelic beehive. The spirit of the beehive, the spirit of the beehive. Running swiftly down the stairs, he soon found the pattern breaking up into individual units. A young Bacchus, smacking, Andrew surmised, of Caravaggio, his head wreathed in vine leaves, a fake leopard (not, surely, a pajama case? Yes, surely a pajama case) over his shoulder, was talking to a plain woman with short hair, in a straight brown dress, her face made up to look ghastly and sunken. As he passed her she put her hands to her cheeks and opened her mouth in a silent, haunting scream. Andrew laughed so much he fell down the last three steps, tumbling into St. George. George good-naturedly caught Andrew and complimented him on the shark.
“Where’s the dragon?” asked Andrew.
“He’s lighting up outside.”
“Who are you by?”
“Ucello.”
“Bless you,” said Andrew and wheeled away, laughing at his own crappy joke.
He spied Tessa, looking—well, he wasn’t sure, but probably quite nice, as a Degas ballet dancer. He decided to go and talk to her, but before he reached her a large man in a strange, misshapen bull mask beat him to it, took her by the hand, and led her through to the ballroom, where a DJ dressed as a DJ was playing Abba records. Guernica, thought Andrew.
He found that he was holding two glasses of champagne. How had that happened? Not for long. One. Two. Where’s the man with the tray? Before he found him, Andrew became aware that the attention of the party had switched, with the weird togetherness of a flock of starlings wheeling through the evening sky, to the top of the stairs. A collective sigh, a lovely sound, came from them. And from Andrew also. He hadn’t needed this to show him that Alice was sublime, but now he felt he knew how the mortal heroes of ancient Greece must have felt when visited by the divine Aphrodite, or wise Athena, or rosy-fingered Dawn. Rosy-fingered what? he had time to think to himself, scornfully, before he felt himself drawn back up the stairs to meet Alice.
And yes, the dress was magnificent. It was difficult to say exactly which Klimt painting it was taken from. It had something of the iridescent intimacy of The Kiss, and more of the languor and sensuality of The Virgin. It suggested to some the flagrant sexuality of Danaë, ravished by gold. But whatever the particular work, all those there who witnessed it knew it was Klimt. Leaping headlong up the stairs to meet her, Andrew was with those who favored The Kiss, and he knew what he must do. He reached her. He gazed for a moment into her eyes. There were flowers in her hair, daisies, he thought, and small blue things. Why didn’t he know the names of flowers? Alice would teach him. He felt the eyes of the world upon him, but they acted not to restrain but to carry him higher. Her dress, dazzling in cobalt and crimson and gold, seemed to cover everything and yet reveal everything. He wanted to be inside it with her. He took the last step up to her and put his hand on her waist. His eyes were half closed. Yes, he was going to kiss her, to taste those lips, to breath her essence like cool incense.
And then her laughter; her uncontrollable laughter.
“That is just brilliant.”
“What?” He opened his eyes.
“That shark.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“And it’s really clever the way it sends up modern British art.”
“Yeah. Sends up modern British art. What?”
“How it’s all about having a fairly amusing idea, that you don’t need any skill or intellect to realize. Shoddy, shallow, empty. I love it!”
“Alice, you look completely amazing.”
“You know, I think I do. It was my mother’s dress. I mean my grandmother’s. She had it made to look like she was painted by Klimt. Do you think people will get it? I don’t want to have to go around explaining myself.”
This was another new Alice for Andrew. Young and gushing and silly and girly. It set up a charming tension with the ancient eroticism of the dress. He wanted so much to squeeze her.
“Everyone will get it. Except the people who wouldn’t get it if you came as the Mona Lisa and carried round a big placard saying i’ve come as the mona lisa—that’s a painting by leonardo da vinci.” Somehow the thrill of seeing Alice like this had burnt off the false effervescence of the cocaine. He felt like some more authentic bubbles. “Let’s get some champagne. It’s fantastic stuff, yeasty and biscuity. Bet this is the last of the good stuff from the old days. Be Cava next year, I expect.”
“Snob.”
“Peasant.”
“Ha!”
“Not that you look much like a peasant. More like some queen in a fairy tale. Maybe even one of the evil-but-beautiful queens.”
“You should see what’s coming.”
“What do you mean?”
“I was in the loo with Ophelia. She’s really pulled out all the stops. No one’s going to remember me when they see her.”
Alice pouted. Andrew couldn’t make up his mind if it was a joke or if she really was annoyed. Either way, he liked it.
“What’s she come as?”
“You’ll have to wait and see.”
By now they were back in the crowd. Several people had already come up to them to admire and touch Alice’s dress. A Toulouse-Lautrec prostitute from Fine Arts made a half-joking suggestion about swapping over later on, thereby conjuring all kinds of wickedly enchanting images in Andrew’s mind, which he blinked away only with much effort. Whistler’s Mother was a bit sniffy, but Magritte’s pipe broke off briefly from telling people that he wasn’t a pipe to blow ecstatic smoke rings around her.
“I think I like parties,” said Alice. She’d decided it was time to tell Andrew. “Pity really; I don’t suppose they’ll have them—”
“Holy Mother of God!” said Andrew, and for the second time the entire party turned to gaze in wonder toward the sweep of the stairway.
Who else but Venus? And which Venus other than Botticelli’s, rising serenely from a scallop like a pearl coracle? No hint from Botticelli of her engendering: no place here for the scythed testicles of Chronos, or Uranus, or whoever it was, tossed to foam in the waves, which then gave forth this Venus. No hint of that barbarity, perhaps, but wasn’t there just the suggestion somewhere in all that serenity that this was going to be the world’s greatest fuck?
Too obvious now, thought Andrew. Why didn’t I guess? Alice was absolutely right about no one remembering what she wore after seeing this. The illusion of complete nakedness lasted only for a couple of seconds, but it imprinted itself on Andrew’s brain and was sufficient to induce a sudden dismaying surge of blood to his pelvis, resulting in what he swiftly calculated was three sevenths of an erection. But of course it was a miraculous, tight-fitting bodysuit in some diaphanous but opaque substance. Was she naked beneath it? Andrew had encountered invisible, seamless underwear before, but he believed that, beneath the gauze, true nakedness prevailed. He ticked off another seventh of turgidity. The wig provided at least some pretense at modesty: Ophelia’s black hair lay concealed beneath flowing red locks, with thick strands pinned across and covering her breasts and what Courbet called the Origin of the World.
Ophelia paused for a few moments at the top of the stairs, basking in the wonder, bathing in the arousal, glorying in the jealousy. How could she not have done so? It was simply her nature. As well suggest to a rose that this year it might be tactful not to bloom.
And yet that pause proved to be her downfall. She had emerged from the entrance to the right as the crowd looked. But the stairway divided, and another curve went to the left. From that door, quite as grand as the one to the right, there now came a bustle, a flurry, quite palpable before anything could be seen. And then the door opened and Venus was born for the second time that evening.
Again there was some kind of bodysuit in a flesh- or near flesh-colored material. But this was denser stuff, suggesting in its wrinkles and folds the tights of a nineteenth-century circus strongman. There was also a wig, although this one did not fall in endless waves and ringlets but sprang stoutly out, as wiry and fibrous as pubic hair. Each mammoth breast was covered by a comically huge scallop shell, made, Andrew thought, from papier-mâché. Another, even larger, covered the Origin of the World. Beneath her bodysuit Andrew could clearly make out the lines of a pair of giant knickers and, lower down, the ridges of surgical support bandages over her right knee and left ankle.
Andrew rapidly lost his four sevenths of an erection.
Pam did not see Ophelia standing opposite her. What she did see was the faces, gazing, rapt, up toward her. With her great, bubbling laugh she cavorted down the stairs, waving and mouthing hellos.
Ophelia. Andrew looked at Ophelia. Surely she must realize what had happened. Even before Pam’s appearance, Andrew had begun to think that Ophelia’s getup, for all its glory, was a huge, tasteless mistake. She was thrusting her beauty needlessly, humorlessly into your face. But would she now see that Pam had made her look ridiculous? Not only was her vanity cruelly exposed by Pam’s colossal good-natured joke, but somehow she had been dragged in as one half of a comedy double act. She was now Pam’s straightman, feeding her the lines and contaminated with the silliness of it all. She was absurd, absurd, absurd.
But her face betrayed none of this. She stared blankly down at Pam. She saw that no one now was looking at her. She pouted. She tutted. She came down the stairs. So yes, she had missed entirely the brilliance of Pam’s unintended deconstruction. And yet there was also a magnificence there, the glory of an ego raised to the stature of a goddess.
Alice and Andrew looked at each other. Their eyes shone with the glory of it all. She took his hand and squeezed it. They both said, “I hate Abba,” at exactly the same time, and went to dance.
The ballroom was crowded, but Andrew didn’t mind, as it forced them together. They were jostled by sunflowers and a clumsy Campbell’s soup can. Andrew threw some shapes, which made Alice laugh. He was relieved to find that she was a perfectly competent dancer, without excelling. He thought again how rare it was to find a girl who simply couldn’t dance in the way that so many men simply couldn’t dance; indeed, in the way that he couldn’t dance. He’d spent long hours agonizing whether the correct thing to do, if you can’t dance, is to dance or not to dance. He’d finally come down on the side of dancing, after concluding that it was better to garner the laughs and instant popularity than to preserve one’s cool.
Alice leaned over and shouted in his ear, “I need to talk to you. Can we go and sit down for a minute?”
“After this one. It’s the only really great song they ever did.”
“S.O.S.” was playing.
“What’s so good about it?”
“It’s the combination of the tragic lyric with the rousing exuberance of the music. What a fucking fantastic chorus.” He joined in, throwing more comically dramatic shapes, and getting the words hopelessly muddled. “If you hear me, baby, don’t you fear my, S-O-S.”
It stopped. “Dancing Queen” came on. “I hate this,” said Andrew vehemently. “Apart from ‘S.O.S.’ it’s all camp kitsch cack. Or is that cack camp kitsch. Either way, it’s shit. ‘When you’ve left,’ “ he said conversationally, “ ‘how could I possibly attempt to carry on?’ “
“What?” How could he . . . ?
“Fantastic lyric. Suicidal. But all the time with the best upbeat pop tune they ever wrote. It’s as if Hamlet were rewritten as a limerick. What did you want to say? But hang on, let me grab some more champagne before these posh fuckers swig it all.”
While he was gone, Alice found herself next to Ophelia, in her simulacrum of nakedness. Her features, beneath the fair wig, were still expressionless and perfect. Alice smiled at her, and a muscle or two twitched in Ophelia’s face. A smile returned? Or a sneer called back? Or simply boredom sending out a random ripple?
“Fun party,” said Alice.
“Really? You think so? Brave of you to hide your pain so well.”
“What pain?”
“No need to pretend with me, Alice. All girls together here. Did I say how sweet I thought your . . . thing looked?” She gestured dismissively at Alice’s dress.
Alice still looked perplexed.
“You’re hardly,” Ophelia continued, “the first girl to fail to hold on to Edward, you know.”
Oh, that. Alice laughed. She really couldn’t be bothered correcting Ophelia. In fact, she was sure that Ophelia knew the truth of the matter.
“I suppose,” said Alice, “that you’ll be . . . renewing your own interest in Edward. I’m sure it’s what your mother would want.” It was said without bitterness, for Alice found she felt none.
“Who cares what she wants? No. What on earth would I be interested in Edward now for?”
“Well, I presume for the same reasons you were interested in him before.”
“Just how stupid are you? Why would I want Edward without the Audubon money? Do you think I want to spend my life working out ways to pay for things?”
Alice couldn’t help but laugh again. “Is that really the only thing you were interested in?” There was something delightful in Ophelia’s wickedness now that it could not touch Alice herself.
“Look, Edward is a sweet enough guy, when he isn’t moping, but frankly there’s no money left in his estate. Not a penny. Six million pounds’ worth of birdy book would have changed all that. I’m sorry, but I have a market value, and now he can’t meet it.”
“You really are some bitch, aren’t you,” said Alice, with a smile.
Now it was Ophelia who was laughing, with her hand to her mouth. “So, Goody Two-shoes knows a dirty word. Look, I’m just honest. We all want the same things: a decent fuck in a decent bed in a decent house. Can’t see you getting any of those from your boyfriend.”
Before Alice had the chance to ask what she meant by that, Ophelia’s face contorted in rage. Pamela was back. She had been following Ophelia around the party, throwing a heavy arm around her shoulders at every opportunity and shrieking, “Could be sisters, couldn’t we!” and no amount of unsisterly disdain could shake her off. Ophelia made to run for it, but Alice delayed her with a touch to her arm.
“What will happen to Edward?”
“Oh, he’ll be all right. After all, he’s got that village-idiot woman.”
“You know about Grace?”
“Is that her name? Yes, I suppose it is. Of course I know about Grace. Doesn’t everybody?” And with that she pulled roughly away.
ANDREW RETURNED with refreshments.
“Having a nice chat with Ophelia?” he asked, and then, “Christ, look who’s coming. And what is that?”
Alice looked to where Andrew was pointing. Oakley was pushing his way toward them. As far as she could see he was dressed as usual. It was only when he reached them that she noticed that he was wearing a tie with a picture of Constable’s Hay Wain on it. But behind him she saw the second funniest thing she’d seen all day. Clerihew was following his leader. He had on a sort of loincloth and nothing else. Nothing else, except for several arrows stuck on with Scotch tape and now drooping forlornly. With his plump frame, moist and pink, and his round tortoiseshell spectacles, he looked—well, like a fat little man with arrows Scotch-taped to him.
“Nice tie,” said Andrew, before Oakley opened his mouth.
“Ah, yes, well, one likes to make an effort. Important to. Dorothea made the purchase in the National Gallery shop. Where it is. The painting. Turner’s—ah, Constable. His wagon.”
“And you, Cedric,” continued Andrew, shocking everyone by getting Clerihew’s name right. “Really excellent. All that work. Did you apply the arrows yourself? Such craftsmanship. I think
what best illustrates the quality of the thinking that went into it is that the very same idea occurred to our TV-star art pundit, Dr. Terry Richardson.”
“What?” said Clerihew, looking alarmed. “Where?”
“Just over there, discussing classical mythology with our Ophelia. Strange how this has turned into an evening of doppelgängers. It’s like being in one of the Tales of Hoffmann.”
Alice looked with Clerihew. And there, across the room, stood Ophelia, talking intimately with the gorgeous Terence Richardson. They would have made a striking couple, even if they had not been dressed as they were. His sculptured torso cried out to be pierced by arrows, and his darts had been made, by some clever engineering, to stand proud and erect. He looked much more relaxed than Ophelia, who was once again being plagued by Pam, who loomed over her, messily eating a Scotch egg. Ophelia tried to ignore Pam, as she fingered one of Richardson’s arrows. Alice thought, for a moment, that she was going to suck it.
“Good God!” said Clerihew. “I wonder if . . . I should never have told her about my costume. She’s obviously . . . I must have words.” And with that he started to forge his way to the Venuses and the other Saint Sebastian, wincing two or three times as a jostle jagged one of his arrows into a soft part.
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