The taxi turned into a series of side streets off Maida Vale and eventually made a neat U-turn that seemed almost an automotive pirouette. The frenetic beat of a new wave rock group clattered past the gate of an enclosed courtyard: something Mews – the iron plaque on the brick wall was too rusted to decipher in the dark – but from the lights and noise it must be the right address. A number of expensive-looking cars – Lisette recognized a Rolls or two and at least one Ferrari – were among those crowded against the curb. They squeezed their way past them and made for the source of the revelry, a brick-fronted town-house of three or more storeys set at the back of the courtyard.
The door was opened by a girl in an abbreviated maid’s costume. She checked their invitation while a similarly clad girl took their coats, and a third invited them to select from an assortment of masks and indicated where they might change. Lisette and Danielle chose sequined domino masks that matched the dangling scarves they wore tied low across their brows.
Danielle withdrew an ebony cigarette holder from her bag and considered their reflections with approval. “Divinely decadent,” she drawled, gesturing with her black-lacquered nails. “All that time for my eyes, and just to cover them with a mask. Perhaps later – when it’s cock’s-crow and all unmask . . . Forward, darling.”
Lisette kept at her side, feeling a bit lost and out of place. When they passed before a light, it was evident that they wore nothing beneath the silk pyjamas, and Lisette was grateful for the strategic brocade. As they came upon others of the newly arriving guests, she decided there was no danger of outraging anyone’s modesty here. As Midge had promised, anything goes so long as it’s wild, and while their costumes might pass for street wear, many of the guests needed avail themselves of the changing rooms upstairs.
A muscular young man clad only in a leather loincloth and a sword belt with broadsword descended the stairs leading a buxom girl by a chain affixed to her wrists; aside from her manacles, she wore a few scraps of leather. A couple in punk rock gear spat at them in passing; the girl was wearing a set of panties with dangling razor blades for tassels and a pair of black latex tights that might have been spray paint. Two girls in vintage Christian Dior New Look evening gowns ogled the seminude swordsman from the landing above; Lisette noted their pronounced shoulders and Adam’s apples and felt a twinge of jealousy that hormones and surgery could let them show a better cleavage than she could.
A new wave group called the Needle was performing in a large first-floor room – Lisette supposed it was an actual ballroom, although the house’s original tenants would have considered tonight’s ball a danse macabre. Despite the fact that the decibel level was well past the threshold of pain, most of the guests were congregated here, with smaller, quieter parties gravitating into other rooms. Here, about half were dancing, the rest standing about trying to talk. Marijuana smoke was barely discernible within the harsh haze of British cigarettes.
“There’s Midge and Fiona,” Danielle shouted in Lisette’s ear. She waved energetically and steered a course through the dancers.
Midge was wearing an elaborate medieval gown – a heavily brocaded affair that ran from the floor to midway across her nipples. Her blonde hair was piled high in some sort of conical headpiece, complete with flowing scarf. Fiona waited upon her in a page boy’s costume.
“Are you just getting here?” Midge asked, running a deprecative glance down Lisette’s costume. “There’s champagne over on the sideboard. Wait, I’ll summon one of the cute little French maids.”
Lisette caught two glasses from a passing tray and presented one to Danielle. It was impossible to converse, but then she hadn’t anything to talk about with Midge, and Fiona was no more than a shadow.
“Where’s our hostess?” Danielle asked.
“Not down yet,” Midge managed to shout. “Beth always waits to make a grand entrance at her little do’s. You won’t miss her.”
“Speaking of entrances . . .” Lisette commented, nodding toward the couple who were just coming onto the dance floor. The woman wore a Nazi SS officer’s hat, jackboots, black trousers and braces across her bare chest. She was astride the back of her male companion, who wore a saddle and bridle in addition to a few other bits of leather harness.
“I can’t decide whether that’s kinky or just tacky,” Lisette said.
“Not like your little sorority teas back home, is it?” Midge smiled.
“Is there any coke about?” Danielle interposed quickly.
“There was a short while ago. Try the library – that’s the room just down from where everyone’s changing.”
Lisette downed her champagne and grabbed a refill before following Danielle upstairs. A man in fish-net tights, motorcycle boots and a vest comprised mostly of chain and bits of Nazi medals caught at her arm and seemed to want to dance. Instead of a mask, he wore about a pound of eye shadow and black lipstick. She shouted an inaudible excuse, held a finger to her nostril and sniffed, and darted after Danielle.
“That was Eddie Teeth, lead singer for the Trepans, whom you just cut,” Danielle told her. “Why didn’t he grab me!”
“You’ll get your chance,” Lisette told her. “I think he’s following us.”
Danielle dragged her to a halt halfway up the stairs.
“Got toot right here, loves.” Eddie Teeth flipped the silver spoon and phial that dangled amidst the chains on his vest.
“Couldn’t take the noise in there any longer,” Lisette explained.
“Needle’s shit.” Eddie Teeth wrapped an arm about either waist and propelled them up the stairs. “You gashes sisters? I can dig incest.”
The library was pleasantly crowded – Lisette decided she didn’t want to be cornered with Eddie Teeth. A dozen or more guests stood about, sniffing and conversing energetically. Seated at a table, two of the ubiquitous maids busily cut lines onto mirrors and set them out for the guests, whose number remained more or less constant as people wandered in and left. A cigarette box offered tightly rolled joints.
“That’s Thai.” Eddie Teeth groped for a handful of the joints, stuck one in each girl’s mouth, the rest inside his vest. Danielle giggled and fitted hers to her cigarette holder. Unfastening a silver tube from his vest, he snorted two thick lines from one of the mirrors. “Toot your eyeballs out, loves,” he invited them.
One of the maids collected the mirror when they had finished and replaced it with another – a dozen lines of cocaine neatly arranged across its surface. Industriously she began to work a chunk of rock through a sifter to replenish the empty mirror. Lisette watched in fascination. This finally brought home to her the wealth this party represented: all the rest simply seemed to her like something out of a movie, but dealing out coke to more than a hundred guests was an extravagance she could relate to.
“Danielle Borland, isn’t it?”
A man dressed as Mephistopheles bowed before them. “Adrian Tregannet. We’ve met at one of Midge Vaughn’s parties, you may recall.”
Danielle stared at the face below the domino mask. “Oh, yes. Lisette, it’s Mephisto himself.”
“Then this is Miss Seyrig, the subject of your charcoal drawing that Beth so admires.” Mephisto caught Lisette’s hand and bent his lips to it. “Beth is so much looking forward to meeting you both.”
Lisette retrieved her hand. “Aren’t you the . . .”
“The rude fellow who accosted you in Kensington some days ago,” Tregannet finished apologetically. “Yes, I’m afraid so. But you really must forgive me for my forwardness. I actually did mistake you for a very dear friend of mine, you see. Won’t you let me make amends over a glass of champagne?”
“Certainly.” Lisette decided that she had had quite enough of Eddie Teeth, and Danielle was quite capable offending for herself if she grew tired of having her breasts squeezed by a famous pop star.
Tregannet quickly returned with two glasses of champagne. Lisette finished another two lines and smiled appreciatively as she accepted a glass. Dan
ielle was trying to shotgun Eddie Teeth through her cigarette holder, and Lisette thought it a good chance to slip away.
“Your roommate is tremendously talented,” Tregannet suggested. “Of course, she chose so charming a subject for her drawing.”
Slick as snake oil, Lisette thought, letting him take her arm. “How very nice of you to say so. However, I really feel a bit embarrassed to think that some stranger owns a portrait of me in my underwear.”
“Utterly chaste, my dear – as chaste as the Dark Rose of its title. Beth chose to hang it in her boudoir, so I hardly think it is on public display. I suspect from your garments in the drawing that you must share Beth’s appreciation for the dress and manners of this past century.”
Which is something I’d never suspect of our hostess, judging from this party, Lisette considered. “I’m quite looking forward to meeting her. I assume then that Ms. is a bit too modern for one of such quiet tastes. Is it Miss or Mrs Garrington?”
“Ah, I hadn’t meant to suggest an impression of a genteel dowager. Beth is entirely of your generation – a few years older than yourself, perhaps. Although I find Ms. too suggestive of American slang, I’m sure Beth would not object. However, there’s no occasion for such formality here.”
“You seem to know her well, Mr Tregannet.”
“It is an old family. I know her aunt, Julia Weatherford, quite well through our mutual interest in the occult. Perhaps you, too . . .?”
“Not really; Danielle is the one you should chat with about that. My field is art. I’m over here on fellowship at London University.” She watched Danielle and Eddie Teeth toddle off for the ballroom and jealously decided that Danielle’s taste in her acquaintances left much to be desired. “Could I have some more champagne?”
“To be sure. I won’t be a moment.”
Lisette snorted a few more lines while she waited. A young man dressed as an Edwardian dandy offered her his snuffbox and gravely demonstrated its use. Lisette was struggling with a sneezing fit when Tregannet returned.
“You needn’t have gone to all the bother,” she told him. “These little French maids are dashing about with trays of champagne.”
“But those glasses have lost the proper chill,” Tregannet explained. “To your very good health.”
“Cheers.” Lisette felt lightheaded, and promised herself to go easy for a while. “Does Beth live here with her aunt, then?”
“Her aunt lives on the Continent; I don’t believe she’s visited London for several years. Beth moved in about ten years ago. Theirs is not a large family, but they are not without wealth, as you can observe. They travel a great deal as well, and it’s fortunate that Beth happened to be in London during your stay here. Incidently, just how long will you be staying in London?”
“About a year is all.” Lisette finished her champagne. “Then it’s back to my dear, dull family in San Francisco.”
“Then there’s no one here in London . . .?”
“Decidedly not, Mr Tregannet. And now if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll find the ladies’.”
Cocaine might well be the champagne of drugs, but cocaine and champagne didn’t seem to mix well, Lisette mused, turning the bathroom over to the next frantic guest. Her head felt really buzzy, and she thought she might do better if she found a bedroom somewhere and lay down for a moment. But then she’d most likely wake up and find some man on top of her, judging from this lot. She decided she’d lay off the champagne and have just a line or two to shake off the feeling of having been sandbagged.
The crowd in the study had changed during her absence. Just now it was dominated by a group of guests dressed in costumes from The Rocky Horror Show, now closing out its long run at the Comedy Theatre in Piccadilly. Lisette had grown bored with the fad the film version had generated in the States, and pushed her way past the group as they vigorously danced the Time Warp and bellowed out songs from the show.
‘“Give yourself over to absolute pleasure,”’ someone sang in her ear as she industriously snorted a line from the mirror. ‘“Erotic nightmares beyond any measure,”’ the song continued.
Lisette finished a second line, and decided she had had enough. She straightened from the table and broke for the doorway. The tall transvestite dressed as Frankie barred her way with a dramatic gesture, singing ardently: ‘“Don’t dream it – be it!”’
Lisette blew him a kiss and ducked around him. She wished she could find a quiet place to collect her thoughts. Maybe she should find Danielle first – if she could handle the ballroom that long.
The dance floor was far more crowded than when they’d come in. At least all these jostling bodies seemed to absorb some of the decibels from the blaring banks of amplifiers and speakers. Lisette looked in vain for Danielle amidst the dancers, succeeding only in getting champagne sloshed on her back. She caught sight of Midge, recognizable above the mob by her conical medieval headdress, and pushed her way toward her.
Midge was being fed caviar on bits of toast by Fiona while she talked with an older woman who looked like the pictures Lisette had seen of Marlene Dietrich dressed in men’s formal evening wear.
“Have you seen Danielle?” Lisette asked her.
“Why, not recently, darling,” Midge smiled, licking caviar from her lips with the tip of her tongue. “I believe she and that rock singer were headed upstairs for a bit more privacy. I’m sure she’ll come collect you once they’re finished.”
“Midge, you’re a cunt,” Lisette told her through her sweetest smile. She turned away and made for the doorway, trying not to ruin her exit by staggering. Screw Danielle – she needed to have some fresh air.
A crowd had gathered at the foot of the stairway, and she had to push through the doorway to escape the ballroom. Behind her, the Needle mercifully took a break. “She’s coming down!” Lisette heard someone whisper breathlessly. The inchoate babel of the party fell to a sudden lull that made Lisette shiver.
At the top of the stairway stood a tall woman, enveloped in a black velvet cloak from her throat to her ankles. Her blonde hair was piled high in a complex variation of the once-fashionable French twist. Strings of garnets entwined in her hair and edged the close-fitting black mask that covered the upper half of her face. For a hushed interval she stood there, gazing imperiously down upon her guests.
Adrian Tregannet leapt to the foot of the stairway. He signed to a pair of maids, who stepped forward to either side of their mistress.
“Milords and miladies!” he announced with a sweeping bow. “Let us pay honor to our bewitching mistress whose feast we celebrate tonight! I give you the lamia who haunted Adam’s dreams – Lilith!”
The maids smoothly swept the cloak from their mistress’ shoulders. From the multitude at her feet came an audible intake of breath. Beth Garrington was attired in a strapless corselette of gleaming black leather, laced tightly about her waist. The rest of her costume consisted only of knee-length, stiletto-heeled tight boots, above-the-elbow gloves, and a spiked collar around her throat – all of black leather that contrasted starkly against her white skin and blonde hair. At first Lisette thought she wore a bull-whip coiled about her body as well, but then the coils moved, and she realized that it was an enormous black snake.
“Lilith!” came the shout, chanted in a tone of awe. “Lilith!”
Acknowledging their worship with a sinuous gesture, Beth Garrington descended the staircase. The serpent coiled from gloved arm to gloved arm, entwining her cinched waist; its eyes considered the revellers imperturbably. Champagne glasses lifted in a toast to Lilith, and the chattering voice of the party once more began to fill the house.
Tregannet touched Beth’s elbow as she greeted her guests at the foot of the stairway. He whispered into her ear, and she smiled graciously and moved away with him.
Lisette clung to the staircase newel, watching them approach. Her head was spinning, and she desperately needed to lie down in some fresh air, but she couldn’t trust her legs to carry her outside. Sh
e stared into the eyes of the serpent, hypnotized by its flickering tongue.
The room seemed to surge in and out of focus. The masks of the guests seemed to leer and gloat with the awareness of some secret jest; the dancers in their fantastic costumes became a grotesque horde of satyrs and wanton demons, writhing about the ballroom in some witches’ sabbat of obscene mass copulation. As in a nightmare, Lisette willed her legs to turn and run, realized that her body was no longer obedient to her will.
“Beth, here’s someone you’ve been dying to meet,” Lisette heard Tregannet say. “Beth Garrington, allow me to present Lisette Seyrig.”
The lips beneath the black mask curved in a pleasurable smile. Lisette gazed into the eyes behind the mask, and discovered that she could no longer feel her body. She thought she heard Danielle cry out her name.
The eyes remained in her vision long after she slid down the newel and collapsed upon the floor.
IX
The Catherine Wheel was a pub on Kensington Church Street. They served good pub lunches there, and Lisette liked to stop in before walking down Holland Street for her sessions with Dr Magnus. Since today was her final such session, it seemed appropriate that they should end the evening here.
“While I dislike repeating myself,” Dr Magnus spoke earnestly. “I really do think we should continue.”
Lisette drew on a cigarette and shook her head decisively. “No way, Dr Magnus. My nerves are shot to hell. I mean, look – when I freak out at a costume party and have to be carted home to bed by my roommate! It was like when I was a kid and got hold of some bad acid: the whole world was some bizarre and sinister freak show for weeks. Once I got my head back on, I said: No more acid.”
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