Gorsky

by Vesna Goldsworthy

  We made odd dining companions. I was wearing what passes for my Sunday best. He was dressed like a roofer on his way home from a day’s shift, but gaggles of Notting Hill girls drinking their first cocktails of the day looked at him rather than me. His public school ruddiness and his posh baritone were impossible to disguise.

  I half listened to his insights into Russian politics, told for the benefit of surrounding tables rather than for mine, becoming alert only when Natalia’s name was mentioned. This part of his ramblings, although much quieter, was worth paying attention to because he was surprisingly frank. They had been married for just over seven years. Natalia had abandoned her studies of art history in St Petersburg to come to Britain with him. Summerscale was urging her to continue. She was, it seems, reluctant. He was offering to open a small gallery to keep her entertained. She would get very enthusiastic, then relent. She used to be so full of energy when he first knew her, so unafraid. It was as though all she had ever wanted was to go West, he said, but now that she was here, she couldn’t quite figure out who she was supposed to be.

  It felt as though he was asking for some piece of advice I couldn’t give. We sat in silence for a while.

  ‘I have an appointment, Nick, old boy.’ Summerscale eventually looked at his watch. ‘Why don’t you come with me? I’ll drive you back afterwards. It will only take a minute and you’ll enjoy seeing old Mahdi.’

  We cut through the no man’s land of boarded-up shops and scruffy B&Bs in the shadow of the Westway. The grey concrete of Trellick Tower reminded me of my parents’ block of flats. We turned into a residential street lined with late-Victorian dwellings in different states of disrepair and neglect. Their frontages sprouted satellite dishes like giant mushrooms, and TV sets blared through open windows in a cacophony of languages. Summerscale rang at the door of an unremarkable terraced house. There were footsteps inside and we felt, for what seemed like minutes, an eye examining us through the keyhole. A chubby little Maghrebian man finally opened the door. He was wearing a tracksuit almost identical to Summerscale’s, and over it a long bournous with a pointed hood drooping halfway down his stout back.

  ‘Mr Sumicale,’ he said, looking at me, ‘I expected you an hour ago.’

  ‘Nick. A friend,’ said Summerscale. ‘Mahmoud Allaoui, my accountant.’

  We shook hands. The suggestion that Summerscale’s accountant would look like this, and live in a house like this, was preposterous, but I let it pass.

  ‘Hey, Mahdi, I know. I am sorry.’ Summerscale patted the ‘accountant’ on the shoulder.

  A woman appeared in the lobby behind the man. She raised her right hand and showed four fingers then two, before Allaoui had time to turn. A brunette in her late thirties, she was dressed in a tight silk dress printed with irises positioned so that the blue flowers opened around her ample breasts like huge hands supporting their milky volume, while the green stems were gathered in a bouquet around her plump waist. Her skin was like porcelain and she showed acres of it. I couldn’t take my eyes off her chest.

  Allaoui frowned and pushed her through one of the side doors. She gave a little yelp but stayed out of sight. He made no attempt to explain her presence. He took a padded envelope from a deep pocket in his cloak and handed it to Summerscale.

  As we weaved our way back to Chelsea in a Land Rover, which he described as ‘his little car’, Summerscale started talking about Natalia again. Alongside the idea of the gallery he had suggested staging a one-off exhibition of Russian art in aid of Siberian orphanages, hoping that it would give her a taste for that kind of activity. He talked of it all as though I was already fully up to date. I wondered if she had misled him about me in some way, to create an impression that she was doing something concrete about her gallery or her exhibition.

  ‘The art loan is not a problem. We spoke to the Americans and the Russians and even to the Swiss. It’s the space we’re after at the moment. Each installation requires a room of its own, more or less, and she doesn’t want just any old warehouse. She goes on about the “poetics of space” as if we hadn’t had enough of old Gery Feng-Shuiing The Laurels to death. It may all come to nothing but I’d like Nat to keep herself busy. You know what they say: the devil finds work for idle hands.’

  I did not expect to become Summerscale’s drinking buddy after that outing, but he had different ideas. Some days later, he stopped at Fynch’s to invite me to one of those pretentious new restaurants in Soho where the food costs a hundred pounds a head and the cheapest bottle of wine twice as much. I assumed that I was part of some renewed matchmaking plot involving Gery, but it was the prospect of Natalia’s presence that made me put on my best suit.

  The restaurant was heaving. It took a moment to see Summerscale at a table, flanked by two women.

  ‘Nick, old boy, how good of you to join us,’ he said as I took my seat. I am sure I was right in detecting a trace of mockery in his voice. The women – the brunette we saw at Allaoui’s and someone looking very much like her but with more make-up – beamed at me. In their cheerful tight dresses, with their elaborate hairdos and carefully manicured nails, they looked like a couple of secretaries on an evening out with their patrician boss. I could begin to imagine why Summerscale was taking the wife of his so-called accountant out to an expensive dinner, but I was curious to find out what I and the other woman had to do with it.

  Summerscale introduced them as Janice and Sal. ‘Mrs Allaoui,’ Janice added with a hint of mischief. She proffered her hand at a slight angle as though she was half-expecting me to kiss it. They explained that they were sisters and shrieked with joy when I was unable to guess which one was the elder. There was a five-year gap. Mrs Allaoui asked me to guess her age. I mentioned a number in the low thirties.

  ‘Wrong! Wrong! You are almost a decade out, Nicky love,’ she laughed.

  There was a look at the back of her eyes that suggested she wasn’t convinced by my flattery but that she was mistaken as to its aims. She was clearly used to being desired by men, used to lustful preambles.

  They were two of the most cheerfully vulgar creatures I have ever had the luck to meet, but they knew a great deal about food and wine. They analysed and admired each plateful and shrieked with delight over each fancy culinary trick: sprinklings of golden caviar, oysters suspended in sea water en gelée, baskets woven out of rare herbs containing mouthfuls of cheese coated in slivers of white truffle. They recognised touches they had seen on Masterchef and in the pages of glossy magazines, and they sniffed and slurped their wine like two cocker spaniels. Every now and then Janice would lift a forkful to Summerscale’s mouth, pursing her lips like a mother moving her child on to solid food. He relished the attention and shot a quick wink in my direction each time he took a mouthful. I was too baffled by the spectacle to be outraged.

  Whenever the sommelier uncorked a new bottle, it was Janice who tried it. She raised the glass high in the air to inspect the colour against the light, then buried her nose deep inside the rim and finally took a sip and mulled it in her purple-coloured mouth. And all the while, her right hand tinkled and jingled with bracelets, while her left, decorated with several large rings, rested high on Summerscale’s thigh. Her sister leaned towards me, hitching up the pink straps of her bra and smiling coquettishly. I pretended not to notice.

  Amid such merriment we finished a third bottle and opened a fourth. Although he had invited me, I felt I should at least offer to share the bill, yet even a half of it was probably getting close to my monthly wage. Summerscale and the women laughed more and more loudly, although you wouldn’t have noticed it. The whole restaurant was generating a lecherous cacophony, which reverberated from its bare floors and walls.

  Janice and Summerscale became more openly tactile. Under the table, she caressed his leg with her plump little foot. She latched onto each of his repartees as though it was the funniest thing anyone had ever said. If you took class out of the equation, this brash and almost hysterically cheerful Englishwoman looked mor
e like Summerscale’s wife while Natalia could be his young mistress.

  I was beginning to feel quite morose. Sal was looking restless.

  ‘Our Tommy bought Janice a little flat in Covent Garden, the cutest little flat. A place for all of us to have a little fun.’ She pressed my hand close to her breast. Under the silk of her dress, I could feel the padded cup of her bra caving in under my knuckles.

  ‘I am going to disappear for a moment,’ Summerscale interrupted. ‘Look after the ladies, Nick, will you?’

  The moment he left, Sal and Janice engaged in a quick whispering exchange. Then Janice turned to me and said, ‘So how do you know our Tom, then, Nicky darling?’

  Before I had any time to answer, she said, ‘Look at him, here he comes, quick as a flash, my sweet boy.’

  Summerscale was brimming with newfound energy.

  He had already paid the bill, in spite of my insisting on sharing it, and we were walking towards Covent Garden. The two sisters were hanging on Summerscale’s arms and teetering on the high heels of their strappy sandals, while their pedicured toes shone white and plump in the glare of the streetlights, like rows of tiny new potatoes. Summerscale looked as if he was enjoying the walk.

  It was Sal, by now the drunker of the two women, who leaned towards me. She was so close that her tongue touched my earlobe as she spoke. Her breath was a mixture of alcoholic mist and some sweet powdery scent that was not altogether unpleasant.

  ‘How do you know our Tommy, then, Nick, my love?’ Sal repeated her sister’s question.

  ‘I am a friend of—’

  ‘What a jolly place that was,’ Summerscale said, cutting me off. ‘We must do it more often.’

  ‘Oh, the ice-maiden,’ Janice laughed. ‘Are you from Siberia too, then, Nicky dear?’

  She seemed to find the notion hilarious.

  ‘Shut up, Janice.’ Summerscale pushed her quite forcefully. She teetered, stunned out of her drunkenness for a moment, but not enough to make me think this was the first time. A dark shadow flitted over our little group. I felt the drink seep out of me.

  ‘Tommy,’ Janice said, her voice sweet and pleading. ‘Mum doesn’t mean it, Tommy.’

  That Janice Allaoui was Summerscale’s mistress, there was no doubt. They looked disappointed for a moment when I bid my farewell at the top of St Martin’s Lane and refused a nightcap. Sal planted a sloppy kiss on my earlobe, whispering something about another time, but seemed contented enough to hang on Summerscale’s left arm while Jan clasped the right.

  ‘Leaving me to look after both girls, you schmuck,’ he said; then, switching to Russian: ‘I guessed that much, you limp Serbian dick. It’s my wife you dream of shafting, no?’

  He did not look angry at all. He looked like someone who would cope without me. The women laughed although they had no idea what he was saying. As they went, tottering, on their way to his bachelor pad, Sal turned towards me and threw me one last drunken wink.

  The night air was bracing. It was well after midnight, yet London was anything but asleep. Buses were full of people, windows were lit, many of the shops were still open. The town smelled of grilled meat, pickles, beer, vomit and piss. The whole bloody place was the image of Janice and Sal, I thought as I sobered up: disgusting in theory, and yet somehow at ease with its own lust. Somehow not unpleasant at all.

  In one of the Mayfair art galleries, a party was in full swing. A tall thin girl held a martini glass with a plump olive floating in it. She beckoned me inside. Her eyes shone darkly on a wide, heart-shaped face. I hesitated for a moment but went on my way.

  Arab boys drove slowly up and down Knightsbridge in their expensive cars, on the prowl for good times. On Brompton Road Harrods looked like the mirage of a cruise liner outlined in fairy lights. In South Kensington, the streets slowly grew quieter, and the air started to smell of garden compost and flowers.

  The silhouette of Gorsky’s palace, still incomplete and uninhabited but already almost as imposing as St Paul’s Cathedral, came into view. I had nearly gone past when I noticed Gorsky’s distinctive limousine waiting. One of his bodyguards stepped out and held open the kerb-side door. Gorsky emerged from the building site, flanked by two other guards. Without noticing me he stepped into the car. He raised the hem of his expensive coat. As his long lean thighs swung into the seat, just below the rim of his jacket I noticed the white fringes of a prayer shawl.

  4

  The thick envelope lined with silver tissue contained an elaborately embossed invitation. My name was written using archaic phonetic spelling: Nicholas Kimowitch Esq. I knew about the Serpentine summer parties only from photographs in colour supplements. Some of Fynch’s customers, those whose names graced the list of donors on the walls of big museums, occasionally talked about them. I recognised these men and women in photographs captioned with quadruple-barrelled names, wearing family jewels and holding champagne flutes, or standing uncomfortably next to celebrities du jour, models, starlets, duchesses, and assorted mistresses of oligarchs, rock stars and Hollywood moguls.

  I was familiar with some of the pavilions designed to grace the lawn by the Serpentine Gallery through the summer months. These transitory architectural follies were opened with grand events of which this was one, but I had usually experienced them later, among the tourists, sipping a glass of lemonade under a shaded roof or staring at them slantwise from the nearby deckchairs which normally accommodate dozens of burkaed women spending their summers and sometimes Ramadan away from the blaze and public austerities of the Gulf.

  Folly was indeed an apt name for the edifice that rose from the grassy field that year. It was by far the largest and probably the most expensive pavilion ever, and it was designed by the same Chinese woman who had recently completed a new dining area for the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and whose name was on the hoardings that shielded Gorsky’s building site. Her pavilion looked like a cross between a Russian monastery and a flying saucer. Exquisite layers of red, brown and ochre tiles covered its walls. Its onion domes shone above the treetops like a Byzantine Camelot, soaring towards the night sky in luscious aquamarine, emblazoned with huge golden stars.

  Russian money was rumoured to be behind it all: the pavilion, the party and the invitations. Although it was difficult to guess anything from the name of the upmarket PR agency which handled the RSVPs, I assumed that the money must be Gorsky’s, the pavilion an outrider for his own Camelot a verst or two to the south.

  You could hear the sounds of laughter and jazz rising into the night sky even before you crossed Kensington Gore, and you could smell a mixture of expensive musky scents and rare flowers long before you handed over your invitation and progressed through the X-rays and layers of security. The British needed protecting from any number of species of terrorist who hated them only marginally less – or more, depending on the cause – than the Americans and the Israelis; the Russians needed protecting from themselves; and the celebrities from lunatics who brooded darkly on the internet devising one-off celebrity bids of their own. Expensive cars with liveried drivers lined the perimeter, and the bodyguards not allowed inside rested in them, on call, talking to each other, or playing with their hi-tech tablets. Once you were in, you instantly realised that you were in, perhaps for the first time in your entire wretched life.

  Dozens of waiting staff flitted among the guests, beautiful boys and girls dressed in identical black and white costumes designed by the architect herself to look vaguely Asiatic and tailored more expensively than those worn by guests at an upscale English wedding party. Some carried magnums of white and pink champagne; others held trays with colourful cocktails and fresh juices; or crystal glasses filled with iced tea, with exotic flowers slowly opening at the bottom. Yet others appeared with flat lacquered boards bearing tiny thimbles of spirits and liqueurs I did not even begin to recognise.

  ‘Château d’Yquem,’ shouted Christopher Fynch against the noise, while glancing down at the glasses of dessert wine he was holding in eac
h hand. ‘Someone told me there were several dozen cases of 1947 and 1959, the great vintages.’

  A young woman wearing a dress made of silver thread as fine as spider silk tripped and fell into a boat-load of black and albino caviar which was rocking gently in a cradle carved out of a single enormous block of ice. She sat up and carefully removed beads of roe from her cleavage. Two men rushed to help her get up, but when they saw that she was happy to stay there, they started licking the tiny eggs off her outstretched palms. Camera flashes sparkled in the mist of the outdoor refrigeration that enveloped the scene. An orchestra played Shostakovich’s Waltz No. 2 somewhere in the background.

  High above us, London stars twinkled faintly and planes continued to fly west towards Heathrow in a steady, stately procession. Everything around me, even that girl’s fall, was harmoniously orchestrated, beautiful to look at, yet the cumulative effect was melancholy, as though some unquenchable thirst lurked at the heart of it all.

  Had I known who le tout Londres was, I would no doubt have been able to confirm that it was there. I recognised a number of men and women, all looking slightly and unsettlingly different from their more familiar avatars of the printed page and television screen: the new priesthood of tight-lipped directors of big art galleries looking like illustrations from Foxe’s Book of Martyrs – notwithstanding their expensive dinner jackets and bow ties; famous journalists and writers flushed from too much champagne; captains of industry; politicians; actors; models; and all of them talking, laughing, shaking hands, exchanging contact details, pursing their lips for air kisses, looking for more tempting prey and moving on, always moving on.