by William Boyd
“Oh, art students,” Holland said nonchalantly. “Models, quelques putains.”
“Lord,” breathed Felix. The night before they had been to a show at the Criterion. Coming out into Shaftesbury Avenue Holland had pointed out, one by one, all the prostitutes wandering among the crowds of theatre-goers. They had counted more than three dozen by the time they reached the underground station at Piccadilly Circus. With an air of world-weary languor Holland told him about London’s more notorious thoroughfares: the Strand and New Oxford Street commanded the highest prices, Bloomsbury and Charing Cross were distinctly less reliable, and as you went further east price and quality dwindled away to desperation level.
“Shall we go?” Holland suggested. They rose and edged their way out through the mass of bodies. After the heat and press of the Café the night air outside was deliciously cool and fresh. A fine drizzle was falling. The blackout made it hard to distinguish anything and at first all Felix was aware of was the astonishing noise of London’s traffic.
A cab tout procured them a four-wheeler which took them down to the Embankment via Piccadilly Circus. The inside of the cab smelt of polish and old leather. Felix gazed out of the window—rubbing a face-sized porthole in the condensation—at the crowded streets.
The cab stopped outside a rather drab tenement in Cheyne Walk. Holland paid off the driver and Felix stood on the pavement outside a grocer’s shop. His cheeks felt hot and he held his face up to the cool spray of the drizzle, closing his eyes for a moment. His pulse seemed to be beating unreasonably fast and he wanted to make sure he was calm. He heard the clip-clop of horses’ hooves as the cab moved away. He felt himself swaying and opened his eyes again, before he lost his balance. Perhaps the three brandies and water in the Café Royal had been a mistake. He touched his cheeks and forehead with the back of his hands. Still hot.
“Where’s Amory’s flat?” he asked Holland, who was wiping drops of rain from his spectacle lenses.
“Two up,” he said. “Above the grocer’s.”
They went through the small door beside the shop. There were no lights on the stairs and there was a strong smell of apples and decaying vegetable rinds. They climbed up two flights. From behind a door they could hear the noise of conversation and what sounded like a guitar.
“Here we are,” Holland said, and made to knock at the door.
“Just a second, Philip,” Felix said, moving to the grimy landing window. “Over here.” Holland came over. “What does my cold sore look like?” Felix asked, presenting his face to whatever faint light managed to cheat the dirt and cobwebs on the window pane.
“It doesn’t look too bad, does it? Not too obvious?” To his joy the sore showed some signs of clearing up. A dark and crusty scab had formed. At least it didn’t look like some moist and repulsive canker even though the scab had been a dominating feature in the looking-glass earlier that evening.
“Hardly see it,” Holland said. Felix wasn’t sure if this referred to the absence of illumination or the insignificance of the sore, but was happy to stay with the ambiguity: he couldn’t afford to over-burden the frail raft of his confidence any further.
Holland knocked on the door. It was opened by a burly young man with a heavy pipe dragging down the corner of his mouth. “Ha ha,” he shouted over his shoulder. “Le petit frère has arrivayed.” Holland moved past him without a word, Felix bestowed a nervous half-smile.
Like the Café Royal the small sitting room of the flat was crowded with people in a fog of cigarette smoke. Felix noticed a dangerously sagging ceiling blackened at one end with old soot from the fire. One window gave on to a view of untidy back lots. The other overlooked the Embankment gardens and the Chelsea Jelly Factory across a glimmering stretch of the Thames. The room was dark (Felix breathed a sigh of relief), lit only by a few candles. In a corner on a wooden chair was a girl with a guitar, with a small audience sitting raptly at her feet. Other shadowy people perched on a horsehair settee or leant against the walls and spoke to each other in very loud voices. An open door revealed a room with two beds which was occupied by the overflow from the sitting room. On a gatelegged table—half open—in front of the Thames window was a cut glass punch-bowl, a basket of oranges, plates of nuts and a half-dozen straw-cupped flasks of Chianti. There was no sign of Amory.
Holland and Felix moved with some difficulty towards the table, stepping over legs, ducking between conversations.
“Chianti or punch?” Holland asked.
“Ooh. Chianti please.” Felix felt his eyes stinging from the smoke. He lit a cigarette and took a gulp of wine. It tasted harsh and vinegary.
“Hey! Filippo!” came a great shout. Felix whirled round in alarm. He saw Holland being embraced by a large bearded man dressed entirely in black. Behind this person stood Amory. Entirely naked. The shock lasted a second or two until Felix realized she was wearing a skimpy dress of flesh-coloured tulle. Her brown hair was piled on top of her head in a complex fir-cone effect and secured by a thick jewel-studded ribbon. Her thin face was heavily powdered, her heavy-lidded eyes touched with kohl. Felix felt his legs tremble with desire, love and anticipation. The tulle dress hung from thin satiny straps revealing a large expanse of her hard chest. Her bosom was noticeable by its absence, but Felix didn’t care. It was those half closed eyes that drove him wild, as though the effort of keeping them open was proving too much for her.
The dark bearded fellow was still pounding Holland’s back and uttering cries of ‘Hey!’, ‘Wah!’ and ‘Yes!’ Amory brushed past him and refilled her glass with punch. She smiled at Felix.
“Hello,” she said. “Have you come with Philip?”
“Yes. I—,” Felix began but she had already turned away.
“Philip, I think it’s most rude of you not to introduce your friends. Oh do leave him alone, Pav.”
Holland broke away from Pav’s embrace. “This is Felix Cobb. But you’ve met him, Amory. And, Felix, this is Pavelienski something or other. The great artist. We all call him Pav.”
“Wahey!” exclaimed the great artist and punched Holland in the arm.
“Hello, Pav,” Felix said. He exhaled cigarette smoke in what he hoped was a firm, nonchalant-looking stream.
“Hello,” he said to Amory. “We met last summer once or twice.”
“Oh yes?” Amory said, pouring more Chianti into his glass. “We did?” She moved away, summoned by a distant conversation. Felix gulped more Chianti. Pav accepted one of his cigarettes. The artist had long black hair and a thick beard with spirals of grey in it. And all the more revolting for that, Felix added to himself uncharitably. He sensed he was in the presence of his rival. He gazed at the wine in his glass. A single hair floated on the surface. He wondered if it were one of Amory’s. He decided not to fish it out: he’d drink it down, digest this small particle of her being.
Pav made a sudden movement, a grab at Felix’s face and he flinched reflexively, his wine splashing over his sleeve, taking the hair with it.
Pav’s extended fingers were inches from Felix’s eyes, and the man was scrutinizing him intently. He turned his hand to and fro, as if he were unscrewing the lid from a large jar.
“You hef a spendid sroat,” he said in his heavily accented mid-European voice. “I am liking to draw it.”
Felix shot a glance at Holland, but he was staring at other people in the room.
“Oh,” Felix said, embarrassed. “Yes. Thank you very much.”
“Look, there’s Enid,” Holland said. “Come and meet her, Felix.”
Felix forced himself to be attentive. He had been speaking to Enid for the last half hour. He could safely say that the fabled morphineuse was one of the most boring people he’d ever met. Holland said she was twenty-eight but she looked at least a decade older. She was a small, broad woman with a great shelf of bosom and wild straw-dry black hair. She wore a jarring futurist dress and was draped with beads and jewels. Her face was haggard and her eyes were ringed with purple. Felix switched his a
ttention back to the monologue.
“…He’s got mumps, believe it or not.Yes, he’s got mumps. Terrible mumps. And he had a horrible discharging from one ear. Horrible. Eugh! One side of his face was all swollen from the mumps…”
Felix looked distractedly about the room. Where had Holland and Amory got to? The guitar player had quite a sing-song going—‘My Little Grey Home in the West’—and consequently only a near shout ensured that one’s half of the conversation was heard. Some of the guests actually had sketch books out and were drawing each other. Perhaps Pav would like to attempt his throat this evening, Felix thought scornfully. But these were artists, he reminded himself; they weren’t burdened with his self-consciousness.
“I must get some more wine,” he shouted at Enid, and swiftly weaved his way through the packed room to the table. There was no Chianti left so he moved on to the punch. He stood by one of the now opened windows and breathed in the night air. He leant against the wall and ran his fingers between his neck and his stiff collar. As far as he could make out only he and Holland were wearing evening dress.
Beside him was the door into the bedroom. Some people were standing just inside it having a heated discussion. The singers were now giving a full throated rendition of ‘Give Me Your Smile’ and it was some time before Felix realized that the two speakers were Amory and Holland and that they were talking about him.
“…he’s not coming to the Calf,” he heard Amory insist.
“He has to,” Holland asserted plaintively. “I told him he could.”
“Well you jolly well should have told me first. I’ve got a table for sixteen. Where’s he going to sit, for Heaven’s sake?”
“He can squeeze in,” Holland said. “I can’t tell him to go away.”
“Oh God! You and your wretched friends!”
Felix told himself he’d misheard the last remark. He launched himself off the wall and made straight for the punch bowl. The final chorus of ‘Give Me Your Smile’ was in full swing. Under such noisy conditions it wasn’t surprising that your ears would play tricks on you, he reasoned. Anyway, he thought, as he drained a glass of punch, hostesses always panicked about seating arrangements, numbers and that sort of thing.
By the time they arrived at the Golden Calf, as he’d heard the night club referred to, Felix was—he recognized—fairly seriously drunk. Unsteadily he handed over his coat, scarf and gloves in the tiny vestibule. He aimed himself at, and cautiously descended, three or four steps and looked about him. The dark cellar was filled with round tables at which people were eating late suppers. Waiters weaved to and fro with trays of food, ice buckets and bottles. At one end was a small dance floor in front of a low stage on which sat an immaculately turned-out nigger band. The ceiling was supported by huge white wooden caryatids carved in the shape of hawks, cats and serpents, with details—a tongue, a beak, eyes or scales—picked out in scarlet. The clientele, though it contained many uniformed men, seemed raffishly elegant and lively. The atmosphere, to Felix’s befuddled mind, oozed licence and vice.
Amory was greeted by a cadaverous-looking woman in a black fur coat, loosened to reveal pale shoulders and décolleté. The group was led through the cluttered tables to a pink alcove, a cabinet particulier, in which was set a large round table. Felix had been staring fascinatedly at the orchestra—he’d never seen so many negroes grouped together before—and was the last to arrive. No place had been set for him and he stood smiling foolishly while one waiter fetched an extra chair and another set a new place between Enid and a young man in khaki uniform whom Felix had not met. He sat down. Amory and Pav were across the wide table from him. His arrival had caused everyone to be squeezed uncomfortably together.
“Hello,” said Enid, her plump arm squashed against his side. “I don’t think we’ve met. What do you think of this coon music? I adore it.”
Felix looked wistfully across the table at Amory. Hairy Pav was whispering in her ear and she laughed at whatever it was he was saying, throwing her head back and exposing her long throat. Now there was a splendid throat. He’d give anything to cover it in kisses, Felix thought, the pain of his impotence suddenly spearing through his chest. He shut his eyes and immediately his head began to spin. He opened them and seized the glass of Moselle that he had just been poured, as if it were some crucial hand-hold. Waiters were arriving with food. Felix realized that he was by now dangerously drunk. A plate of prawn sandwiches was deposited in front of him. The faint fishy smell wafting up made his stomach heave. He plugged his mouth with his napkin, leapt to his feet and raced to the cloakroom.
Felix offered up a silent prayer to the inventor of the tango, as he and Amory glided jerkily about the dance floor. His hand was pressed into the small of her back. From time to time the movements of the dance obliged him to lean up against her or roll his pelvic area across hers. He thanked God also for providing him with the foresight to learn the hideously complicated steps the summer before.
Amory was slightly taller than him and looked fixedly over his right shoulder as they danced. Every now and then a soft collision or clumsily executed turn would cause their eyes to meet and she would flash him an automatic smile. Felix’s spine was humming like a tuning fork with ecstatic love and adoration, but it was clear to him that Amory wasn’t enjoying herself as much as he was.
They bumped into Holland and Enid.
“Feeling better?” Holland called.
“Fine,” Felix answered airily, hoping no trace of his vomit lingered on his breath. In fact he did feel better. Infinitely more so. He wondered if Holland knew how stupid he appeared with his ridiculous little beaver. He looked like a bargee, dancing with that ludicrous woman. This novel sense of superiority elated him and he whirled Amory around with more gusto, exerting extra pressure with his hand on her back, bringing his face entrancingly close to hers.
“Shall we sit down?” Amory said into his ear, the warm breeze of her words causing that side of this body to erupt in goose pimples. He allowed his fingers to touch her elbow as he ‘guided’ her to the table, which was deserted, all the other guests being fully employed on the dance floor.
The pink lamp cast a glowing rubescent light, softening Amory’s hard features, which had reminded him forcibly—he now banished the uncharitable thought from his mind—of one of the more predatory caryatids supporting the cueing. They sat down beside each other. Felix poured out two glasses of wine. He had long ago exceeded his limit but the zenith of confidence to which the alcohol had driven him made this prudent observation seem laughably unimportant. He took out his cigarette case. It was electro-plated nickel-silver, one of the more useful product of the family enterprise in Wolverhampton.
“Will you smoke?” he asked. A waiter approached with matches and lit their cigarettes. Felix gazed at Amory and ordered one half of his mouth to turn up in an intimate smile.
“This has been a marvellous evening,” he said, lowering his voice.
“Can you see who Pav is dancing with?” Amory snorted thin smoke streams from her nostrils.
Felix leant forward, supporting his chin with one hand, allowing the other—with his cigarette—to rest on the chair back behind him, exactly like the man in the de Reske poster, he calculated.
“You have a charming…ah, pied a tem,” he said.
“What?” Amory’s cigarette was tapped sharply. Ash fell obediently into the marble ashtray.
“Pied a… your flat. It’s charming.” Felix allowed smoke to coil and wreath from his mouth.
No reply. Her fingernails marshalled breadcrumbs on the pink damask table cloth.
“I’ve been looking forward to this evening for a long time.” Felix’s hand left his chin and disappeared beneath the table.
“Honestly! Where can that man have gone to?”
Felix glanced down at the slim length of tulle-clad thigh inches away from his own. He felt a sudden breathless—almost insupportable—excitement take hold of him. His hand descended on Amory’s knee.
/> “Oh Amory,” he said, more feebly than he’d intended.
“Oh for God’s sake!” She got to her feet with tired exasperation. “You silly, boring little boy!”
When he got outside into the street the first thing Felix did was actually punch himself in the face. He made a fist and struck himself a blow in the face, such was his self-loathing and bitter frustration. It wasn’t particularly hard, but it caused him surprising pain.
“Bloody hell!” he swore. He followed this up with some of Cyril’s richer vocabulary. He felt disgusted with himself. He looked down at his clenched and trembling fist and was surprised to see one white knuckle spotted with blood. Exploring fingers soon established that his cold sore was now scabless. He laughed scornfully, but silently into the night sky. That effectively removed any chance of rejoining the party. He dabbed at his weeping sore with his handkerchief, printing it with red polka-dots, as he wandered miserably off down the dark street.
Amory had stalked away from the table, presumably in search of Pav. Felix had remained immobile, head hanging, for a few seconds, his hand resting forlornly on Amory’s abandoned seat until the faint sensation of warmth that rose from her imprint in the recently vacated cushion died away. Felix tried to get his burning cheeks and the funfair of emotions that jangled in his body under control. This partially achieved, his one thought had been to flee, and without further deliberation he strode out of the night club, pausing only to collect his things from the cloakroom.
Now as he walked down the road he sardonically vilified himself, his puny lovemaking, his grossly inflated sense of his own worth. He called himself an ignorant schoolboy, a naïve conceited fool, a scrofulous impostor. How could he hope to attract anyone with this huge scab perched on his bottom lip? He walked on unheedingly, going through the night’s scenes again with punitive disregard for his badly damaged self-esteem. His self-laceration halted, however, when he looked about him and realized he was lost. Where was he? How long had he been aimlessly walking? He turned a corner. Fitzrovia? Bloomsbury? Night workers were hosing the streets down. Other gangs of men shovelled the dirt and horse shit into glutinous, yard-wide mud pies.