Before and After

by Lockington, Laura

  I glanced around the room, judging it to hold about two hundred people. The seating plan had been pinned to a large board just outside the door and there were still groups of men in dinner jackets, too proud to put on reading glasses, puzzling over the map.

  “Did you arrange the seating?” I whispered to Archie as he courteously pulled out my chair for me.

  “Yes, and damned difficult it was too. The departments don’t like being mixed up.” Archie said nervously, wiping his brow with the back of his hand.

  I smothered a smile. It was hardly the peace talks in Northern Ireland or a debate over the Gaza strip, was it? Table after table filled up with look a-like-clones. All the women had far too much make-up on and the men took on a hue of a flock of penguins jostling over a nest. I studied the menu card in front of my place setting and then slipped it in my bag for Bella. She’d appreciate knowing that the scallops were dived for, the beef was from Scotland and that the foie gras was undoubtedly from that particularly cruel region of France where they still eat ortolans with a napkin draped over their heads (ostensibly to savour the fumes, but in reality to hide their shame at capturing the tiny birds, keeping them in a black box, force feeding them grain and then drowning them in armagnac – really, the French are sometimes a petite peu much too much aren’t they?)

  Ours was unquestionably the top table, with everyone else below the salt. Sir George kept up a bluff good-natured banter with the men who came to pay court, but managed to keep a beady eye on his wife’s alcohol intake at the same time. He was not bad looking, I supposed, for one of those business men that usually run to fat and bad clothes. He had small neat features and carefully arranged dark hair in a style that was too young for him. Anthony obviously worked him quite hard, judging by the flat stomach, and the buffed skin that spoke of facials and perhaps the odd discreet flick of a surgeon’s knife. Or should that be the glance of the laser these days? I never know, not keeping up with such things. Luckily I have no need. But then I have a, well, I suppose you might call it a special arrangement. I assume not all of you are as fortunate as me. I studied Sir George as he meets-and-greets his employees, trying to gauge if he was just having a late fling with the divine Mr Rockminster, or if he was in fact one of those rather sad, late-middle-aged chaps who should never have got married. The pash felt for Featherstonehaugh in the lower fifth being the rule rather than the exception. It was hard to tell, but then I find most things about middle-aged public school boys hard to tell, don’t you?

  Lady Patricia suddenly lunged into conversation with me. She was one of those women who felt it her duty to overlay any silence with the sound of her own carrying voice. She leant across Archie and raised one finger to stab at my upper arm, saying, as one born into mistaking rudeness for flirtatiousness, “Old dress, isn’t it? Archie could have splashed out a bit for his second wife I think,”

  “Thank you,” I smiled confidingly, “So glad to know that vintage has not gone unappreciated by the cognoscenti amongst us. More of a plunge than a splash, but then Archie has such exquisite taste that the mere vulgarity of money is as nothing to him. I was a little worried, but he insisted that we get it at the auction. We bid by phone of course to New York and fairly snatched it from the hands of the Diana Vreeland Museum for Contemporary Costume. I’m sure you know it well, with your fashion expertise?”

  Lady Patricia tossed her copper curls and attempted a laugh. It was unfortunate that it sounded like a goose coughing and it prompted a waiter to pour her some water.

  Archie gave a spluttering cough himself and I slid my hand under the table to squeeze his upper leg in a show of solidarity, making him start with surprise. I had a fleeting moment of envy for Sylvia, probably enjoying a cosy bowl of pasta with Bella at this very moment. But then, she had tolerated Lady Pat before. I suppose, I could pull my weight. It was, as I had anticipated, going to be a long evening.

  Rule number Seventeen

  ‘Take great care in the distribution of recreational substances. On the whole, only take yourself to the bathroom for a pick me up. Other people can be rather trying under the influence and that can become tedious in the extreme. And never, ever mix business with pleasure.’

  Father Absolom was helping Maria pack her clothes and religious artefacts into a small tan fake leather suitcase, riddled with cracks and flaking bits of plastic. He was hindered in this depressing task by Maria constantly sobbing. He picked up an unidentified piece of ladies’ undergarments with distaste and flung it into the open maw of the case, which lay forlornly on the bed. Never having handled any form of women’s intimate clothing before, he felt at a loss with the whole proceedings. Maria clutched at his sleeves and, wracked with sobbing, asked him to unpin a particularly garish poster of the garden of Gethsemane from above her bed, along with a lurid plastic crucifix that had horribly realistic blood dripping from the crown of thorns. He sighed and wished that she wouldn’t make so much noise. It wouldn’t be possible for her to cry quite so loudly at the vicarage, and it put the dampners on his evening which involved a risqué video (direct from Amsterdam and guaranteed to arrive in a plain brown paper envelope which it always did, thank God) and a Chinese take away. His flock were sometimes so demanding. (Something that went with the territory of his calling, but that he’d never got used to and resented every time.)

  When Maria had insisted that he go into the room of the woman that she called the infidel, and see for himself that it was indeed a pagan household now, and one that she couldn’t possibly remain in, he’d felt foolish. The large yellow dog that was sleeping outside the door had growled slightly at him, and he had to step over its sleeping form, feeling distinctly nervous. Once inside, it had seemed a like a perfectly respectable bedroom to him, indeed other that a fleeting sense of envy for the obviously de luxe double bed he couldn’t see any problems. Admittedly he had been cold in there, but it was a chilly night and perhaps the heating wasn’t on, but Maria had shivered dramatically and demanded that he perform an exorcism. He had dismissed this out of hand as the ravings of an uneducated woman, but it was hard to deny that he’d felt a distinct tingling of fear at the pit of his stomach in the room and was happy to leave there.

  All of the house was cold, now he thought about it, but then with so many walls knocked down and being held up by what looked like extremely flimsy poles of steel, exposed wiring and pipes ready to trip the unwary, he supposed that it was no wonder.

  “I tell you father, she is a, a, I do not know the word in English but she is wrong, I tell you, wrong.” Maria brought his attention back to the matter in hand by dragging him over to a chest of drawers and pointing at a ball of silver foil balanced there.

  “See! That is what she does to my offerings, she has no soul that one. We must leave here at once! If only I could take the children!” Maria wailed loudly and dramatically in his ear.

  The sooner they left the better, he thought and he purposefully squashed the lid down on the case and with no little effort managed to force the tarnished metal clasps shut.

  “Come along, Maria. If you insist on leaving a perfectly good job in the middle of the night, let’s be off.”

  He helped Maria into her woollen coat and shouldered the case. Parting the flapping sheets of plastic they traversed the ground floor till they reached the front door. Maria ceremoniously left her house keys and a silver foil raven on a stacked pile of treated floorboards, along with a note baldly stating that she, Maria Kandinsky had gone to the priest’s house and would never return.

  As they stepped out into the cold night air, Maria felt a surge of hope return to her.

  “Father, she said, tugging at his arm, “You like dumplings? I will make you some tonight.”

  Father Absolom sighed, his tastes ran more towards Kung Po Chicken with egg fried rice, but he supposed dumplings would be nice for a change.

  Bella and Sylvia were just turning into the road as the priest and the peasant left it. They had enjoyed the attentions of the Italian wa
iters, waving phallic pepper mills above their food in an unnecessary way and were pleasantly full with too much spaghetti carbonara and wine. Sylvia tucked her daughter’s arm into her own and gave a small shiver of self congratulatory pleasure thinking about the ghastly evening with Sir George and Lady Pat that she’d managed to avoid. The unaccustomed company of Bella had proved to be much more enjoyable than the tedious company of Archie’s colleagues, although Sylvia was concerned that Bella, nursing a passion for the poetry of Lord Byron, seemed to be under the impression that he wrote with a felt tip feather. She really would have to tackle Archie soon on the subject of their daughter’s education. Things had changed so much from her own school days that she felt adrift in the chatter of Bella’s school gossip. What was IT anyway? Something to do with computers probably. Whatever it was it seemed that Bella hated it, almost as much as she loathed maths and geography. The only thing, of course, that Bella seemed to enjoy was domestic science. Sylvia suddenly had a gloomy picture of her daughter working behind the counter at a burger bar, slapping raw meat patties onto a griddle and shouting for more tomato ketchup. Archie simply must do something about Bella’s lack of application in the finer subjects, Sylvia decided to ask Flora to tackle him on the subject. She was so much more capable in these things than either herself or Archie. When mother and daughter reached the house they both cheerfully stepped over Maria’s parting offerings, assuming them to be bits and bobs left over from the builders.

  Marmaduke stirred uneasily in his sleep and woke. The house was completely empty now and so he did what he always did when this was the case. He padded down the stairs and lifted his leg over the far pedestal of the piano that was pushed into the hallway. He then flip flopped back up the stairs, a pleased but guilty lop sided grin on his muzzle and settled down to wait outside Flora’s door again, dreaming of salt beef.

  Hundreds of miles away Hal was gently being sick. Not from the motions of the boat. He had somehow accommodated that into the rhythm of his daily life now but from the hideous quantity of tequila that he’d drunk earlier. He groaned to himself and rolled over as best he could, in his narrow bunk. Every time he closed his eyes he could see Flora Tate trying on fur coats. It was an image that he somehow knew, even at the tender age of nineteen when we all think we are immortal, would never leave him. It would forever haunt him. Perhaps he might even think about it on his dying day, which might well be tonight if he couldn’t stop throwing up.

  Not that far away, in London, Victoria Langley was lying on a sofa, gazing with love at the rows of new shoes and boots propped against her skirting boards. She had a cream phone, a glass of white wine and an overflowing ashtray on the floor beside her and she had spent most of the evening calling various friends to tell them of her encounter with the redoubtable Flora Tate. Her friends were as incredulous as she had been. Yes, a complete stranger, no, she hadn’t wanted anything from her, yes she had paid cash, yes, it was bloody weird, but great, no?

  Pair after pair of gorgeous footwear was lined up against the walls like soldiers on parade. The smell of new leather had permeated the room and she breathed in deeply, savouring and cherishing the smell of money. Tomorrow she would wear the black boots to go shopping in, and she would talk to the man who sold her sweet grapes and perfumed apples from a stall at the weekend market. He would offer her a bite of a scarlet apple to taste before she bought any and tomorrow, for once, she would accept. She simply must find Flora and thank her. It was the least she could do. Flora seemed so in charge, so in control… there were quite a few things that Victoria was pretty sure that Flora could help her out with. She looked the sort of woman who could sort out the world if necessary, Victoria thought admiringly. She felt the stirrings of what used to be called a pash coming on. She hadn’t felt like this since the upper fourth when she’d had such a crush on Susie Gatton that her mother had removed her from school before any lasting damage had been done. Although the year of therapy and counselling had helped with all of that of course.

  She slumped in her chair and twirled some hair around and around with the first two fingers of her right hand and allowed herself to dwell dreamily on the past delights of Susie, whose face seemed to merge with Flora’s.

  Jack the gardener was fast asleep. He’d had his normal Friday supper of fish pie and frozen peas, watched a gardening programme on BBC 2, where young women with no bras enthusiastically extolled the dubious charms of water features and then ponderously stomped up the wooden hill to Bedfordshire. He dreamt that Maria Kandinsky made him a garden full of silver foil flowers that Flora Tate watered with vinegar. It disturbed him so much that he woke up in the middle of the night coughing. It took him a full fifteen minutes to find his cough medicine from Boots and then he resumed his heavy snoring.

  How many other people had me in their minds that night? We shall never know I suppose.

  Meanwhile I was suffering from the company of people who used the word summer as a verb. As in, “Oh yah, we’ll be summering in Tuscany again next year. It was so wonderful for Jonquil to collect fresh figs from the garden, a real education.” Or, “Where will you summer next year? Oh, St Kitts again? Super.”

  It was very like being bored by the company of small children, in the sense that the talk literally bored through you, leaving no room for any interior train of thought. I was squished between Archie and Sir George and had in front of me a plate of ‘roasted hand dived scallops with a fresh pea puree, tomato confit and mint- infused veloute’. I managed to disrobe the scallops of their redundant goo and they were, I have to admit very good. Lady Patricia made no pretence about enjoying her food, she merely pushed everything to one side and helped herself to more wine. The others at the table were favoured clients who seemed quite happy to be there in what they considered to be superior company. Sir George held forth on subjects of safe topics, mostly related to house prices – the eternal topic of the conversationally challenged – and managed to imply that he was making a fortune just by staying put, but generously giving out the tip that property was worth snapping up in some of the inner industrial spaces.

  Latino-looking waiters were swooping professionally between the round tables, pouring wine, removing plates and conducting the never ending business of catering to diners en masse. It felt as though we’d been here hours. But I find that time is relative. I once spent happy years in a grey stone house on the heartbreakingly beautiful Cornish moors, and that felt like weeks. I glanced over at Lady Pat just in time to see her swig back a full glass of a rather sour red wine, the red spider veins on her nose and cheeks were shining through her make up and she was undoubtedly quite, quite drunk. Not drunk enough to fall over or tip out of her chair, but drunk enough to be belligerently outspoken about anything that caught her fancy.

  “Food. Horrible, isn’t it?” She enquired to the bemusement of the assembled company.

  I discreetly re-filled her glass, hoping that with enough booze inside her, she’d do us all a favour and pass out somewhere. I saw Archie was fumbling in his pockets, no doubt looking for the notes he’d made for his speech. I stifled a yawn in advance. Still, a few minutes of Archie muttering thanks to all and sundry could be foreshortened by dear Weasel’s contribution to the evening. He didn’t know it, but those very notes were at this moment being ferried from the wastepaper basket in our suite, into the communal waste bin at the back of the hotel, and thence on-to who knows where? A barge up the Thames, perhaps, to a landfill site, or to some brand new red-brick incinerator, against which the locals had waved banners and signed petitions. Or maybe these notes would find their way to a genuine paper recycle unit where eventually they would end up as pages of the right wing broadsheet that Archie read every day.

  He checked his pockets with increasing agitation, till he finally gave up. He pushed his chair back from the table and excused himself with a rueful look, “Sorry everyone, I left something in my room, do excuse me, I shan’t be a moment.”

  I pushed my chair back too. “Yes dar
ling, of course, what a good idea! Do excuse us, as my husband said, we shan’t be a moment. Or I may be lucky and we shall be longer!” I smiled lasciviously at the assembled company and caught hold of Archie arm and pulled him away from the table before the shocked and daunted expression on his face gave him away. He looked like Harrison Ford with a migraine.

  “Flora, what are you doing?” He hissed at me, “People will think –“

  ”People can think whatever they like, and besides I was losing the will to live sitting there. Honestly Archie, I think you’re simply marvellous dealing with Sir George and the hennaed lady all this time. How do you do it? A break before the speeches will do us good. Besides I’m assuming that you’re looking for your speech? Yes, I thought so, well perhaps I can help you find it.”

  Heads turned as we left the dining room, and yet most eyes were transfixed on the fluid flirting panels of vintage chiffon that twirled and didn’t quite conceal my shape beneath it. I held my head high and kept my spine straight as I languidly placed a hand on Archie’s shoulder, letting him lead the way upstairs. As horrified as he might have been, Archie still walked with a slight swagger as he must have perfected as a teenager, walking away from the prettiest girl in the school after his first kiss, behind a tree at the end of the playing fields. It was as if he could suddenly taste the unfamiliar and exciting tang of cherry lip gloss transferred to his own mouth.

  I made no pretence about even looking for the missing speech in the room, but concentrated on the matter in hand.

  I pulled from my purse a laminated card and started to chop two lines of Kevin’s finest cocaine. I’d chosen the glass topped dressing table as a suitable surface, and as I smoothed away any remaining lumps from the white powder I rolled a fifty pound note up, ready for Archie to snort the devil’s dancing dust. Archie was running from room to room in ever-decreasing circles, looking frantically for his notes. He practically skidded to a halt in front of me once he saw what I was doing.