by Maggie Gee
(‘Would you really say I’ve, you know, made it, Lottie?’ Harold asks Lottie, tongue loosened by champagne. ‘If Headstone really want to publish it, and if they like it as much as they say – will you, you know, be proud of me?’ ‘Harold! I have always been proud of you.’)
‘But nobody is here,’ Ian mutters to himself, looking round the room and then down at his paper, where he’s sketching a mob of starving hyenas, jaws splayed wide for wine and food. So many of the city’s people weren’t there.
The builders’ labourers, the rat-catchers (though the rats are there, just beneath the floor, in the U-bends of the staff lavatories, and round by the bins, in a frenzy of activity, sniffing and whiffling at the wonderful plenty, the prawn heads, the chicken skins, the lambs’ feet, the creamy shell of cooling fat skimmed off the gravy); the door-to-door vendors of dish-cloths and oven gloves; the sanitary engineers, the plumbers; the bus conductors with their ticket-machines; the lice inspectors with their nit-combs; the primary schoolteachers (no one wants to be told things); the hospital auxiliaries, the midwives.
The babies: the future hasn’t come to the party.
The past isn’t here: the old, the dying.
The bin-men with their grinding lorries, unable to service their normal districts, the rubbish-bags bobbing away on the water, splitting and rotting into the future.
The illegal immigrants aren’t here, with their stuttering vehicles and singsong accents, their second-hand clothes, their makeshift lives.
The mini-cab drivers, with their long sad stories of study and exile, their cigs and their prayer-beads, their hopes for a future unutterably different in a decent country with jobs and money, their humbling knowledge that none of their passengers ever remembers their names or faces, their cab-drivers’ destiny of driving the ignorant to places beyond the ends of the earth – the mini-cab drivers were left at the door.
The cleaners, getting up every morning at four, to be at work at six, with their roughened hands; no one invited them to bring their knee-pads, no one wants to see their broken shoes; no one wants the cleaners to arrive till tomorrow, when the dregs of the party are vomited out.
The young offenders, hiding drugs in their anuses and crying at night because they miss their mothers, packed in four to a cell since the flood-waters entered the lower floors of the city prison – the young offenders haven’t been invited, though those wretched kids would like nothing more than a glimpse of Lil Missy M’s big mouth and booty; her picture is stuck to the walls of their cells, but no one has heard of them, nobody likes them, nobody wants them, none of them is here (but the drugs are at the Gala, in a thousand different stashes, in pockets, in cummerbunds, in bras, in purses, being sniffed and injected in the elegant toilets).
The has-beens aren’t here; the entertainers who would have been here a decade ago: the former beauties, the stand-up comedians now wobbling badly in the provinces, the It girls who lost whatever It was, the actors who never made it in Hesperica, the PR moguls who drank it away, the writers who didn’t win the Iceland Prize, the politicians who were voted out and ended up selling crooked time-shares –
Oh, and by the way, Mr Bliss isn’t here. The president! He hasn’t arrived yet; he is too important. He has orders to give to the military; decisions to make about what to tell the country. Bliss has equal billing at tonight’s Gala with Trinny the Tranny, the most famous female impersonator in the world! Yet Mrs Bliss waits for him anxiously: what Madam Kilda told her was most alarming, though some of the details are blurred with champagne – but Mr Bliss still isn’t here.
Actually, most of the world isn’t here.
May isn’t there. May has never been asked to balls or galas, nor expected to be.
She was thrilled, though, when Shirley and Elroy were invited. As May carries on her interminable voyage back from the Towers to the land of the living, she imagines her daughter, in the warm, in the light, dressed to the nines, with Elroy, and smiles: Shirley should have the good things of life. That’s how it is, for the young generation. Life must be better, warmer, brighter. The knowledge fortifies May against the night.
But Dirk – she thinks, with a sinking heart.
Dirk White could never get in to the Gala, though if he had, it might have satisfied something, a long ago need for fun and lightness, the years of hopeless birthday parties – (‘When you’ve got more friends, we’ll have more of a do.’) Dirk is outside on the street with his placard. Dirk is having a not-bad time, prophesying against the godless, shouting and screaming and blowing a whistle. But something, a small sharp painful something, is nipping at him, underneath all the noise, and the nips get ever sharper, more spiteful. It was Kilda he’d seen, he knows it was, driving up in a dirty great white limousine and poncing up the steps with an ugly little midget, all tarted up, not looking at him. Kilda, who’d once acted like she liked him. Kilda, who’d made out that she was his friend. A great fury picks Dirk up and lifts him; they always disappoint him; they always let him down; there is nothing worth having in life except anger.
He will tell Bruno. Kilda will be finished. Crushed, humbled. Vengeance is mine.
(And why should she get in, a mere girl, a mere woman – a bit of a loony, who thinks she sees the future – while Dirk is left outside on his own?)
And Davey isn’t at the Gala either; ‘Mr Star-Lite’ isn’t there. Famous Davey, beautiful Davey, billed to introduce the stars; Davey Lucas, nicknamed ‘Luck’, just as his lucky mother once was. On every invitation his name is engraved, as large as the names of the stars, in gold. (When she saw the stiff card with its bevelled edges, Lottie shrieked ‘HAROLD! Davey’s really made it!’ and Harold smiled, he has a soft spot for Davey, but for a few hours he was a little low.)
Something’s up with Davey. He is ultra-reliable; that was one of the reasons for inviting him, because Davey claims to be a Straight Edger; Davey, in theory, doesn’t drink, or take drugs; such a great role model for all his young fans; yet Davey has cancelled. Davey isn’t here. Hundreds of young women will be disappointed.
Kylie Spheare is listening to her messages. ‘Fucking Straight Edgers,’ she snarls, furious. ‘Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck f-u-u-u-ck! I mean, fuck. Fucking, fucking astrologer …’ But she has other things to think about; the amplifiers have been giving problems; Vincenzo Da Vinci has been sick; there is total confusion among Bliss’s advisers as to whether or not he is going to make it. She runs her eye briefly down the guest-list. ‘Find Freddy Flatter, he’ll jump at it. He’s an old ham, he can do it standing on his head –’
‘Hope not,’ someone says, ‘his wig’ll fall off.’
‘Somebody should tell that little cunt Lucas he’s not as hot shit as he thinks,’ Kylie spits.
Shirley isn’t here, though May believes she is. Shirley has fallen asleep, accidentally, the thermometer still clutched in her hand, wearing a sick-stained dressing-gown, on the floor of Winston and Franklin’s bedroom. Her last thought is, ‘It’s much too high,’ before sleep comes to dissolve her worry.
The Gala speeds along its programmed groove. The crowd feels good; the crowd feels great. The rains are over; the flood’s going down; the city is back under control again. Spring has sprung, and they long to be happy. Hundreds of faces flush with alcohol; drink trickles through into their brains, their spines, at first a stimulus, later a quietus; thousands of blood-vessels circulate the alcohol that livers are too overloaded to deal with; dozens of brains start a pleasant short-circuit; laughs get louder, gestures wilder; on the fourth or fifth drink, speech slurs, eyes blur, but the drinkers are still feeling pretty terrific. Dozens of endangered species are eaten, flown in for the occasion from all round the world, plucked or skinned, pulped or tenderized, smoked or grilled, glazed or in paté, marinated, macerated, boned, done, their animal nature vaporized. Several hundred cards with contact details are whisked by slick digits from pocket to pocket; unmeant promises to call are lavished; married couples meet up and quarrel, because one o
f them has had too much fun; sexual assignations are requested, and granted; a couple has sex in a cupboard on a landing at the back of the tent where Madam Kilda is performing; a lot of white powder has drifted like fine silver snow on to the plains of polished parquet, but more has slip-slithered through mucous membranes; pupils are dilating, heart rhythms jitterbugging, coke-heads are pelting like anorexic greyhounds round silver race-tracks of lucid psychosis, higher, faster, now spinning off skywards … A fight has begun between the entourages of Woof Daddy Woof and the Three Bones; security’s summoned to the dressing-rooms, and Lil Missy M has a hissy fit, saying she won’t perform without her boyfriend, the road manager for Woof Daddy Woof; the police appear to reinforce security, thus missing messier things elsewhere – two journalists break each other’s noses in a brawl over a woman uninterested in either; three security guards rape a prostitute who had climbed on to the roof to look at the view (lucky for her she is a prostitute, because if she were not, they would have to push her off; as it is they know she won’t dare complain).
Elroy has come to the Gala alone, finding every one of his girlfriends was out. He feels virtuous that he didn’t bring a woman. He stands by a window where the crowd is thinner to telephone Shirley and tell her he loves her; but he looks a little pensive when he flips off the phone. Biting his lip, he stares out into the darkness, where part of him registers a woman is screaming, an unearthly sound blowing down from the roof-top which must be part of the entertainment … Shirley said Winston was fine, but was she just being noble? And she sounded sleepy; he’d woken her up. Elroy wishes he hadn’t phoned. For a second he wonders if he should go home, but it’s not even twelve, the night is young, and the Bengal tigers will soon be performing. Shirley wouldn’t want him to miss the tigers. Elroy can’t hear the screams any more. He beckons a waiter: more champagne.
Rhuksana and Mohammed aren’t at the party. Mohammed wasn’t at work today. Helena Harp had rung; he had missed a big meeting; he would not talk to her; he did not care.
Now Rhuksana is taking a phone-call from Loya. She stands there shaking with the phone in her hand, looking through the doorway into their bedroom. She cannot breathe, she cannot think. Her ears are ringing; the world has turned red. Perhaps this is what dying is. Mohammed is praying, as he has been for days, since the news came through about the burning of the library. His dear dark head is prone on the floor. Such pain as this she cannot bear to give him, for it is his mother on the phone, sobbing, ringing to tell them his sister’s been shot through the head in a ricochet from a soldier’s bullet, walking through the streets in search of bread, his beloved sister, the pearl of his heart, and everything precious dissolves in blood.
The One Way protesters outside Government Palace have sloshed the front steps with scarlet paint while the guards were distracted, peering in through the doors at Lola and Gracie, half-naked and gorgeous, skanking to the music of Baby Nana, surrounded by an ice-storm of flashing paparazzi (Lottie and Harold look across with a smile and say doesn’t that girl remind them of Lola? – though thank God she’d never wear quite so little); Gerda is sitting on Angela’s lap, watching the beautiful big girls dancing while her mother spoon-feeds her wild-raspberry ice-cream; they are both, for once, completely happy. The kitchen staff are still working full tilt, their arms and hands flying like demented knitters as they try to keep pace with the mouths of the guests, their appetites doubled by drugs and alcohol; the party-goers want to keep on climbing, they want to be bigger, higher, more, they need the pleasure rush to come faster…
But quite soon, most of the dancers will tire. Most of them start to feel gravity tugging, a twinge of fatigue, a sour dottle of glut, their eyelids beginning to granulate in the yellowing stare of the chandeliers; their cheek-muscles drag, their jaw-bones sag …
The night can’t be over, at only half-past midnight. Where is the president, Mr Bliss?
You must understand, he’s been awfully busy.
There’s a fuss going on, by the main doors. People in dark coats; the night has swirled in, surrounded by police, lights, cameras. Ah. At last, Mr Bliss is here! (‘Keep Berta away from him,’ the word goes out. Berta Bliss, his wife, has spent more than half an hour in the tent of Kilda the Clairvoyant; and emerged very tired and emotional, clutching an empty bottle of fizz.)
He’s a little late for people’s full attention. People are slumped together on the dance-floor; sitting in corners, wound around each other; crouched in toilets, reviving themselves. Freddy Flatter is both drunk and nervous; he had let himself relax, at the end of his gig, and the quiff of his toupee has slumped on to his forehead; he tries to hold it up with his limp left hand as he introduces Bliss with his be-jewelled right; he hopes that this looks more coquettish than desperate, but as he leaves the stage, with a debonaire snicker, he trips on the mike wire, and the thing falls off, lying on the floor like a lost bit of wild-life.
Mr Bliss doesn’t notice the thinness of his audience. He’s used, after all, to performing to parliament. And he is surrounded by his own people, his gleaming place-men, smiling and nodding. They are salt of the earth; they understand him. He begins quite blandly; he celebrates ‘our history’ (meaning twenty-five years of the tourist industry); he says how successful the city is, how people flock here from all over the world (he’s referring to tourists, not refugees); and then he moves on to the momentous present. History, he says, is in the making. Mr Bliss’s lieutenants clap and whistle when he talks of ‘deep conviction’, of ‘decisive moments’, of ‘necessary resolve’. ‘No precipitate action’ (they exchange veiled glances), but ‘we shall prevail’ because ‘our cause is just’.
He comes to a climax, and looks down, modestly. He’s done his best, as he always does. Now he waits for the guaranteed tide of applause. He doesn’t hear it, but he still looks up with the engaging grin that says he is pleased, the reward he habitually gives his audience, telling them he likes them all, personally. It is true, alas. Bliss loves and needs them. ‘Look, guys, I’m happy to answer questions.’ He knows the answers to the ones that are coming.
But he isn’t prepared for the red-headed child who suddenly rushes down the room towards him, evading his bodyguards, escaping her mother, so he has to smile sweetly and answer her question, though kids are always unpredictable: ‘I’m Gerda,’ she says, as clear as a bell, into the microphone a reporter has given her. ‘Mr Bliss, why have you got your clothes on?’
He laughs, as amiably as he can, a politician enjoying children. His red shirt had been carefully chosen. ‘Wouldn’t I look funny if I came to a party without any clothes on? You’ve got a very pretty dress, Gerda.’
He grins at the cameras, ready to move on. But then, to his horror, the wretched child, who must have been put up to it by one of his enemies, informs the room, ‘My friend Ian is a famous painter. He says you’re the Emperor with No Clothes.’
Her red hair glints as the room sniffs blood.
At four a.m., when all the humans have gone, the last waft of pink boa and flicker of snakeskin, and the last of the kitchen-staff, trying to close the bins, which bulge open, gleaming, in the stormy moonlight – at four a.m., before the cleaners arrive, before the sun comes up, though the sky has begun to have a pinkish tinge, an uneasy, flesh-coloured, nauseous underbelly – there is a sudden wave of smell on the air: an acrid, musky, urinous smell, a smell like a swipe from the rough paw of a bear.
And then they arrive, sprinting through the water, seen only by terrified, fleeing rodents, twenty, thirty, a hundred foxes, a tide of muscle and bone and bite, shoulder to shoulder, brush to brush, a brazen army of invading red dogs, snapping and sniffing and straddling the dustbins with their strenuous paws and strong narrow bodies, rooting up the lids, the moonlight catching the coarse silver hairs on their strong hind-quarters and the smudge of dark fur down their whipcord spines. Their nostrils flare at the scent of meat, fat and roast skin and split marrow-bone, all the glorious detritus of the human banquet; and out in the
open, as the moon starts to fade and the sun heaves up behind dreary cloud, the foxes drip spittle and truffle and gorge, and, sated, spat and gavotte with each other, nip each other’s necks, bare teeth in greeting. Time for the foxes to have their Gala.
Then they melt sinuously away. Most of the foxes are leaving the city.
Fourteen
Professor Sharp has tried all the official channels, but Mr Bliss doesn’t want the population alarmed. He has serious issues for them to think about: national security: patriotic duty; protecting freedom; pre-empting the enemy. A meteoroid would upstage him totally. The government refuses to issue any warnings. If there’s to be alarm, Mr Bliss means to cause it. And the media are surfeited with cosmic disasters; the weekend newspapers have all run ‘exclusives’ about tomorrow’s End of the World Spectacular: radio and TV news already have Davey Lucas booked for the morning. When Professor Sharp, not half so well known (though infinitely better qualified) with a boring voice and a skin problem, rings up and says there is an cometoid coming, they say they will ring him back, and laugh.
Now Sharp and his colleagues think laterally.
When the first news about the cometoid reached him from the Observatory – Professor Sharp himself, ringing urgently – Davey was cockahoop to be called by the man who so recently dismissed him as a charlatan, in the thick of the outcry at the weekend. He didn’t really listen to the content of the call. Obviously Sharp wanted to get himself on TV. Davey cut in and said he was too busy to talk, he would try to get back to the professor tomorrow.
He was, in fact, busy; he was choosing shirts; the blue was his favourite, but poor for TV; he had been warned that Bliss would be wearing red, to project a positive, optimistic image, and most colours seemed to clash with it. He was starting to think he would fall back on white: white, white, white delight: he had taken just a little of his white powder, just enough to keep dancing above the gulf that very occasionally opened beneath him, way beneath him, he was rising, rising … The performer’s adrenalin is already in him, a net of wired nerves winding slowly higher, he has left the foothills, he will soon be flying –