‘ – first on the right at the top of the stairs – ’
He thanked her.
All the way to the bathroom he seemed to be falling. He locked the door and dropped to the floor.
*
Time passed.
Slowly – reluctantly, it seemed to Moses – the nausea withdrew, the pistons ceased. He lifted his head. Marble surfaces. Gold fittings. Plants. In the centre of the room, a sunken bath. Roman-style. He reached over, turned on the taps. There was great wealth in their smooth tooled action, in the instant power they released. He listened to the crash of water on enamel as Chinese philosophers once listened to crickets. He drifted into calm stretches of contemplation. Mr and Mrs Wood must have extraordinary problems, he thought, to own a bathroom as magnificent as this. He would write a book one day. He would call it The Bath – A Definitive Study. Something serious like that. There would be glossy colour plates shot by you-know-who and an introduction written by somebody distinguished. He could already see the press reviews:
– It is not easy to find words to describe the joy, the delight, the passion which Mr Highness evokes – Publisher’s Weekly
– I was held spellbound. Mr Highness is clever, very clever, and immensely entertaining – Sunday Telegraph
– Memories came flooding back. Enthralling – Woman
– Exhibits a wonderfully dry sense of humour throughout – Times Literary Supplement.
Fame beckoned. Fan-mail. Royalties. He would have enough money to fly to America and look for another Highness. He might even appear on the Michael Parkinson show.
As he left the bathroom he heard a sigh of ecstasy and, turning round, saw Margaux and Mr de Light (his future publisher maybe!) breaking from a surreptitious drunken clinch.
‘My Raphael,’ Margaux murmured. ‘My priceless Raphael.’
‘Mein Kampf,’ whispered Mr de Light, erudite even in desire.
Moses didn’t know how long he had spent on the bathroom floor, but the party, he was glad to see, was obviously still in full swing.
Moses slipped across the landing and down the stairs. There had been a few departures, he learned. Violet de Light had stalked off in a huff. Christian Persson had gone to Heaven (he wanted to check out London nightlife). Phoebe and her tanned tennis-player had taken leave of the Woods (and the bushes) and sped off in a white Golf GTI convertible. Ronald had departed too, but only into unconsciousness. He lay in the garden, his face a mask of masochistic agony, the casualty of too much jealousy and vodka. Alcohol had also transformed the Very Reverend Cloth. He towered over Lottie von Weltraum, two fingers raised, the other two tucked into the palm of his hand, like the pope. He was telling her that he would like to talk to Derek about unnatural acts. But Derek was in the bathroom with Romeo, performing one. Moses knew. He had watched them go in together. Then, finally, he saw Gloria. She was standing in the Picasso alcove. Talking to Paul Newman. Moses walked over.
‘Hello, Gloria.’
‘Hello.’ Without actually moving at all, she seemed to shrink from him. Perhaps to fill the silence, she said, ‘Have you met Tarquin?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Where’ve you been? I’ve been looking for you everywhere.’
‘Is that what you were doing in the bathroom for an hour? Looking for me?’
Moses stared at her.
‘Are you all right now, Moses?’ Tarquin asked.
Moses swung round. ‘None of your business, Paul.’
The American smiled. ‘My name’s Tarquin.’
‘Well, you look like a Paul to me.’
Gloria pushed Moses away into the corner. ‘Why are you being so weird tonight?’
‘I’m not being weird. This is weird.’ He waved a hand in the air to indicate the room, the house, the party. ‘You’re from a different world, Gloria. I don’t know where I’m from, but I don’t think it’s somewhere like this. In fact, I know it isn’t.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
Moses pressed his fingers into his eyes. ‘I don’t know.’
Things had begun to drift away from him again. He was travelling backwards on a slow roller-coaster. Voices sounded distant and cramped, like voices on the telephone, and even his dislike for Paul Newman was being sucked back into a past that was vague, gelatinous, irrelevant.
He looked down at Gloria. Her eyebrows told him that it was time to go home.
‘I ought to be going,’ he murmured.
She nodded.
They found Mrs Wood adjusting her hair in the full-length mirror by the door.
‘Thank you for the wonderful party,’ Moses said. He took her hand in his, bent over it, and touched it with his lips. For one awful moment he thought he was going to be sick on it, but the spasm passed and he straightened up again, pale but undisgraced.
‘Lovely to meet you,’ she said. ‘I hope we’ll see you again.’
‘I like you,’ Moses said.
She smiled. ‘I like you too, Moses.’
‘I’ll see you out,’ Gloria said.
In the night air Moses felt better. ‘Did I really kiss your mother’s hand?’ he asked Gloria.
‘Only just,’ she said. ‘I mean, you nearly missed.’
They both began to laugh. Softly, privately, for different reasons.
Moses leaned back against the voluptuous white curve of the staircase. ‘You see, you never told me your parents lived in a spaceship.’
‘Moses, you’re very drunk.’
‘And you, Gloria, are very beautiful.’
‘Are you sure you can drive?’
‘I’ll be all right.’
‘Maybe I should call you a cab.’ She was trying very hard to be stern with him. ‘Do you want a cab?’
‘No, I’m all right. Really. My motor skills are unimpaired. Look.’ And very carefully, like someone mounting a butterfly, he leaned over and placed a kiss on Gloria’s lips.
It was nice, so he did it again. Doing it for longer didn’t seem to make it any less nice. Though this time it was a little less like someone mounting a butterfly, perhaps.
He ran down the stairs and his voice hovered in the air behind him.
‘Remember, you’re singing. Thursday.’
*
The posters had been up since the beginning of the week – bold black letters on a dayglo orange background: HOLLY WOOD. THE BUNKER. THURSDAY JUNE 26 10 PM – and by nine-thirty on Thursday night many of the tables had been taken. Moses sat in a dark corner and glanced across at Gloria. She was discussing something with her pianist. It was extraordinary how interesting she made the dance-floor seem just by standing on it. He had wanted to wish her luck again, but by the time he had ordered another brandy and returned to his table she was already up on stage. She had her usual band. Only the saxophonist, Malone, was new; he stood to one side, facing away from the audience, wearing a brown coat that buttoned all the way from his ankles to his throat. Gloria had chosen a shimmery pink dress this evening – to go with the building, she had told Moses earlier. She had backcombed her hair into a mass of spun black candy-floss. A fringe hid the time her eyebrows were telling. One hand on the microphone, she turned, said something to the guitarist. Moses’s heart did a swift drumroll. He still couldn’t adjust to the sight of her performing. This public Gloria was always an apparition out of nowhere for him, some exotic derivation of the girl he knew, smiled at, slept with. It made him dizzy to feel himself slipping into the objectivity he saw in other people’s eyes when they watched her sing.
But there she was, spotlit now, one hand shading her eyes.
‘I’m going blind up here,’ came her voice, husky, echoing above the hiss of the PA. ‘Could someone do something?’
The lights dimmed. The buzz of the audience cut out as if a plug had been pulled.
‘Thanks.’ A quick smile, and then simply, ‘My name’s Holly and this one’s for Moses – ’
It was one of those songs where the voice sets out alone and the instruments creep in afte
r a verse or two, discreetly, one by one, like people arriving late at a theatre. A brave way to open, Moses thought, still feeling the glow that her surprise dedication had given him. He had only heard her sing twice before, but it seemed to him that she was singing better than ever tonight. There was an edge to her voice, even when she softened it, that cut into the silence of the audience, left marks to prove it had been there. People would walk out talking about her.
As the first song faded into brushwork and random piano, applause flew towards the stage on great clattering wings. Moses suddenly imagined Gloria ducking, her hands thrown up around her ears. He was too preoccupied with this vision of his to clap. Or to notice that Elliot had slipped into the vacant seat beside him.
*
‘What’s up, Judas?’
Moses jumped. ‘Elliot. How long’ve you been there?’
‘Not long.’
‘Want a drink.’
‘I’ve got one.’
‘So what’s new?’ Moses had meant nothing by the question, but he watched it hook something big in Elliot.
Elliot’s head lifted. ‘Are you in any kind of trouble?’
Moses looked blank. ‘Not so far as I know.’
‘What I mean is, are you in any kind of trouble with the police?’
Moses grinned.
‘I’m serious.’ Elliot moved his shoulders inside his jacket. He tipped some brandy into his mouth, swallowed, and bared his teeth. ‘Last Saturday I had a visitor. It was right after you drove off in your car. He wanted to know if you lived here. He knew your name.’
‘Who was he?’
‘I don’t know. He was a big bastard. Wore one of those old check jackets that look like a dog’s thrown up on it. I reckon he was a copper. Plainclothes.’
‘What makes you think that?’
Elliot leaned back, pushed his empty glass around on the table. ‘You get to recognise the smell. Something about them. And that bloke, I smelt it on him right away.’
‘So what did you tell him?’
‘I didn’t tell him nothing. I told him to fuck off. Then he hit me.’
Moses’s eyes opened wide. ‘What d’you mean he hit you?’
‘He fucking hit me. Right in the guts. Took me by surprise, didn’t he.’
Elliot drained his glass.
Moses was up to the bar and back again with two brandies like a man on elastic.
‘That was the other thing,’ Elliot said. ‘The way he hit me, right? One, blokes like that, they don’t go around hitting people, not unless something’s really getting on their tits. Two, he knew how to hit. I mean, he had a punch. There was muscle under that jacket. Technique too. He was a copper all right. No question.’
Elliot turned towards the stage. He registered no emotion or feeling of any kind. His mind had travelled somewhere else. It had left his face vacant, the bolts drawn, the power switched off at the mains. He was looking at Gloria, but he wasn’t seeing her at all.
After a minute or two Moses said, ‘So you don’t know what this bloke wanted?’
‘He wanted you,’ Elliot said, without taking his eyes off the stage.
‘It could’ve been a mistake. Why would anyone want me?’
Elliot touched his solar plexus. ‘It didn’t feel like a mistake.’
‘You didn’t tell him anything, though?’
‘No,’ and now Elliot turned back to look at Moses, ‘but he knew.’
Fear flickered down through Moses’s body. He swallowed the rest of his brandy. ‘I wonder what he wants,’ he said.
Elliot lit a Dunhill, tapped it on the edge of the ashtray. ‘Me and Ridley, we went after him, but we lost him in the park. He just vanished.’ He leaned his elbows on the table, held his cigarette close to his mouth as he talked. ‘I tried to trace him, asked around, made a few phone-calls, but nobody knows anything. He just vanished, like he was never there. Real thin air job.’
He finished his drink and stood up. ‘All I wanted to say was, watch yourself, all right? I don’t know who that bloke was, but he was a tough old sod and he had something on you.’ His hand moved across his stomach again like someone exploring a painful memory. ‘If he turns up again I’m going to get Ridley to sort him out.’
Moses nodded. ‘Thanks, Elliot. And thanks for telling me.’
As Elliot slipped away into the crowd, Gloria said, ‘Thank you,’ and slotted the microphone back on to its stand. She stepped down off the stage and walked over. She took one of Moses’s cigarettes. He lit it for her.
‘Well?’ she said. ‘How was I?’
‘Brilliant. You’re singing better than ever tonight.’
She eyed him curiously. ‘Are you OK, Moses?’
‘Yeah.’ He hoisted himself a little higher in his chair and assembled a smile for her. ‘Yeah, I’m fine. I was just thinking, that’s all.’
‘Did you hear Malone? Isn’t he great?’
‘I was too busy listening to you.’
Gloria laughed. ‘Moses, you’re a terrible liar.’
‘I was,’ Moses said. ‘Honestly.’
She touched his shoulder, then his cheek, and slipped away with a rustle of pink silk. She had to talk to the band. Letting his eyes drift beyond her, Moses noticed the clandestine figure of Jackson standing by the bar. Jackson seemed to be talking to Louise. Moses stood up, walked over.
‘Jackson,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know you were here.’
Jackson looked startled then shifty. He pulled his jacket in towards his body like a bird folding its wings. ‘I was just talking to Louise.’
‘I can see that.’ Moses turned to Louise. She was wearing a black T-shirt, black ski-pants with silver ankle-zips and black patent-leather pumps. It might have been The Bunker’s uniform. ‘I hear you’re going away.’
‘Holiday with my parents.’ Louise wrinkled her short nose. ‘Still, free sun, I suppose.’
‘Can’t be bad,’ said Moses, who had never been abroad in his life.
‘You don’t know my parents.’ Louise had an infectious chuckle, and Moses caught it. ‘I was just telling Jackson. I’m having a beach party. Two weeks’ time. You going to come?’
‘Love to. Where?’
‘Ask Gloria. She’s got the details.’
‘Oh Christ,’ Jackson said. ‘Look who it is.’
Moses turned to see Eddie steering his magnesium smile through the smoke.
Louise muttered, ‘I ought to be getting back to work.’
Jackson dipped his head into his pint, but his eyes clung to Louise as she disappeared behind a pillar. This startled Moses. He had seen Jackson look at clouds that way before, but never women. But now Eddie had arrived and was slapping Jackson on the back. Jackson’s beer slopped over.
‘Thank you, Eddie,’ Jackson said.
‘Jackson,’ Eddie said, ‘I thought you never drank.’
Jackson twisted his head to one side and smiled craftily, looking more than ever like a bird, the kind that steals jewellery. ‘Sometimes I go wild,’ he said.
They sat at Moses’s table in the corner. Eddie’s new lover had a sleeping eye that made anything she said seem ironic. But were these fringed white cowboy boots of hers ironic? Moses doubted it somehow. He wondered what number she was. 1,000? 1,500? Eddie was just saying that he’d had a pretty hectic week. Maybe 2,000, then. The girl laughed, unaware of the significance of Eddie’s remark.
In the meantime Gloria had climbed back on stage.
‘Me again.’ She held the mike in one hand and a glass of white wine in the other. ‘Thanks for all your help this afternoon, Ridley. This one’s for you.’
Moses glanced round, but he couldn’t see the big man anywhere. Still, it was a nice gesture. Word would get back, and somewhere in that gigantic construction of muscle and bone, somewhere in that mobile pain-dispenser, there had to be a heart, a tattooed heart, no doubt, but a heart none the less.
He had been trying not to think about what Elliot had said, but the anonymous policeman ke
pt bursting into his head regardless, as if his head was a house that was staging a party and all his usual thoughts were guests and the policeman was a policeman. ‘It’s a raid,’ came a calm voice. ‘Great party,’ his thoughts said, ‘really great, but I’m afraid we’ve got to be going now.’ And, reaching for their coats, they all filed out at the same time, left him alone in the house. Alone with the policeman …
‘ –and Malone on tenor sax – ’
Gloria was introducing the band. If he didn’t listen to the saxophone this time, she’d murder him.
He only had to wait until halfway through the next song, then Malone unleashed a sixty-second solo, and played with such raw soaring power, assembled such an intricate structure of notes, that listening to him was like being led through some extraordinary abandoned mansion. It was as if Malone somehow knew of Moses’s anxiety and was building a house specially for him, a different kind of house, a house where policemen would never appear at the door. The saxophone scaled the façade, dropped into an upstairs room, tiptoed across the landing, opened a door with rusty hinges, tripped, stumbled to the edge of a parapet, peered over, stepped sharply back, ran down flight after flight of stairs, through ballrooms peopled by the ghosts of dancers, through echoing cloisters and claustrophobic passageways, past windows with vistas and hushed rooms no longer used, tore through curtained doorways and out, finally, into the open air, paused to breathe the air, ran on through gardens with peacocks and fountains, along spacious landscaped avenues, past sudden explosions of plants from South America, and back down a sweeping gravel drive to the road where Gloria was waiting with the rest of the song.
‘Malone,’ she said, over the applause. ‘We just borrowed him for the night. I wish he didn’t have to go back – ’
‘Renew him,’ Moses shouted. ‘Renew him.’
Malone bowed majestically in his cylindrical brown coat.
Five minutes later Moses pushed his way through the crowd to buy another round of drinks. He swayed from side to side, collided with some people, rebounded off others, but he always did that when he was drunk, he meant nothing by it, so he was surprised when he heard somebody swear at him, surprised enough to turn and catch a glimpse of an unidentifiable object flying towards him at great speed.
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