‘No thanks.’
‘It’s not like you to turn down fun. Try some. This is happy dust, sugar bliss, cheap thrills – not so cheap, actually. No side-effects. This is unbelievably pure stuff. No? Oh well, have some wine then.’
You, not cocaine or alcohol, are the drug I crave. My body cries out to be touched by you, my legs have stayed long and slim for you, my breasts and buttocks have kept their shape because I knew that one day you would caress them again.
We hug, and I feel the sharp bones of your back and shoulders. You’re thin, and your skin is cool, unlike the rounded warmth of David. I feel the terrible continuity of loving you, the circle my emotions have been burning since I was fifteen. Whoever I was before I met you, that girl has long ago been incinerated. Whoever I am with David, I’m twice as alive when I’m with you.
We’re in each other’s arms again, intertwined as we walk down the dark corridor into the shadowy bedroom. The years melt as we fall on to the bed, and every nerve in my body responds to you. Afterwards we kiss, our mouths still hungry for the taste of each other.
We dress and go back into the cavernous front room where the Velvet Underground are still on the turntable and Nico croons huskily as you dance around the table looking remarkably foxy, slicing, weighing and measuring. Smoke, incense and light bulbs draped in red Indian cotton create a glowing mist that illuminates Hari and Nat, lying on their couches in comatose elegance.
‘We need to talk, Jenny. About money. Can’t have you slaving away in a shop, living in squalor.’
‘But I like it.’
‘Nonsense. Stick around and in the morning we’ll go to the Fizz.’
‘The what?’
‘Hari, move over and let Jenny sit down. No, children, Uncle Leo’s not giving you any more goodies yet.’
Already I’m seething with resentment at the way you boss us all. You make me feel like a skeleton clock, my organs transparent as you wind me up. I’m struck by your terrible energy as you suck the willpower out of the rest of us. I make a point of charming the boy next to me, which is no hardship as he’s extraordinarily handsome, with liquid black eyes and fine bones. ‘Where are you from, Hari?’
‘Kashmir.’
‘What on earth are you doing here?’
‘My father sent me to boarding-school here. I hated it, so I ran away and then I met Leo. I can’t go home now.’
‘His father’s the chief of police,’ you interrupt with a collector’s pride. ‘And Nat’s dad is a judge.’ You put your arm around her as she comes back into the room with a tray of coffee mugs. You roar with laughter and hand around pieces of blotting paper like sweets. I refuse. ‘But you have to try this, Jenny. It’s pure acid, 100 per cent. I know the guy whose lab it was made in. This is special; it’ll give you visions like you’ve never had before. That’s right, Hari, enjoy yourself. And you, too, Nat. Give it about half an hour to hit you. Jenny? Really? You’re missing something wonderful here.’
Nat and Hari guzzle the drugs eagerly, like stupid greedy children. And you’re their candy man, posing as a benevolent uncle, indulging them. You start on one of your monologues, your ‘arias’ as George used to call them. Standing in the middle of the room in your white suit, waving your arms and shouting above the rock music, you dominate us all.
‘This stuff is wonderful. Just a few drops on a piece of blotting paper and you’re in another world. The promised land. Paradis artificiel, much better than the real thing, take it from me. Can you see it? Nat? Hari? Are you getting there? I can see fountains and rainbows – ah! That music sounds so wonderful. You’re beautiful, Nat, and you, Hari, and me, am I beautiful? Not you, Jenny. You’re such a fucking misery sitting there. Why won’t you take anything? You’re no fun any more. Oh, this is such great stuff! I’d like to put it in the water supply, I’d like to spike all those boring old farts in the House of Lords and all those pompous old judges like your dad, Nat. Everything could be so wonderful, we could inherit the earth, you know that? What can you see, Hari?’
Hari’s beautiful face is glistening with sweat or perhaps tears. ‘My house,’ he says with difficulty. Nat can hardly speak. She sits very still, gazing at some private vision of heaven or hell. But you on acid are a verbal tornado. On and on you go, messianic and aggressively happy, sucking up all the oxygen in the room.
Nat mumbles something, a rapt expression on her shiny face. She can’t articulate properly, and I go over to the couch where she’s lying to hear what she’s trying to say. ‘Actions speak louder than words, Leo,’ she finally manages to enunciate with a kind of depraved primness. Hari nods as if a great truth had been uttered and you seize Nat’s thin, pale hands.
‘Oh Nat, you’re so right! You understand. I knew you would. You want action? Pretty soon, I can’t tell you when exactly, there’s going to be so much action: all the dams in the world are going to burst, you know that? And there’ll be floods and earthquakes and a great war with a thousand bombs and the rivers will rise and the sun will get hotter and hotter. So beautiful. I love wars. Jenny and I had a great war, didn’t we?’
Your voice rants on and on. I sleep fitfully, curled up on the sofa, and wake feeling stiff and cold. It’s nearly dawn. I go to the window and push aside the dark-red velvet curtains. Yes, the Cromwell Road is grey rather than black. I wonder what the Fizz is. Some kind of nightclub that opens during the day? You’ve always had this capacity to turn night into day, to find the best reasons for doing the worst things.
Looking out at the street I suddenly think of David, who will be getting up, shaving, perhaps writing me another love letter. I’m deceiving him already, and that makes me feel old and cynical. I feel like a plastic daffodil contemplating two exquisite wild flowers as I watch Nat and Hari sprawl with natural grace, exhausted by the chemicals they’ve assaulted their bodies with and mesmerized by you, who are still talking. I’d like to get them away from you. If I had any money I’d set up a home for lost souls.
You interrupt your own monologue to look at me sharply. ‘Nat and Hari are charming and far less demanding than you. They’re perfectly all right. Having the time of their lives. Aren’t you?’
Hari nods, stands up and is sick into a pot containing a dead plant. Nat sits on her couch weeping and bewildered. ‘Bedtime!’ You clap your hands. ‘Sleep it off, and I’ll bring you back some more goodies tonight. Nat, I’m going out with Jenny. Be back at about lunchtime.’ You kiss Nat on the brow in an odd priestly gesture and turn back to me. ‘Come on, Jenny, I’ll take you to the Fizz. This way.’
Where the red velvet curtains hung over the window a few minutes ago there is a dark tunnel, glowing with fire. Your shadow is cast on the wall, and I watch my own merge with it as you pull me after you into the underworld that sucks us in. A warm wind pushes us forward. I’m gliding with your arms around me as if we’re skating on fire instead of ice. The wind sighs, or perhaps that is groaning I can hear, from the grotesque faces that line the walls of the phosphorescent tunnel.
Suddenly we’re standing in a high-ceilinged, panelled room with crimson carpets and blazing chandeliers. The contrast with the darkness we have just come from is so dazzling that I blink. Groups of men and women stand talking and laughing, sipping drinks from trays held by footmen in wigs and breeches. My first thought is that they must be actors because all of them, even the footmen, are startlingly good-looking and overdressed, in historical costumes that make me feel drab in my short white dress. They must be shooting a film here; perhaps that’s why the lights are so bright. You skip from group to group, looking animated and relaxed; you seem to know everyone in the room. Baffled, I take a glass of champagne from a tray, a very good Bollinger. The dry, nutty, chilled wine hits my nose like sea spray as I wander around the room listening to snatches of conversation.
‘Darling! Haven’t seen you since the Somme.’
‘No, it was Paris, the Commune. Don’t you remember?’
‘You look gorgeous. Who did your face?’
Nobody looks old or poor or sick or tired. Cosmopolitan, too, I observe, listening to scraps of French and Italian and German. The champagne is wonderfully potent. Warmth and benevolence flood me, relaxing my face into a party beam as I eavesdrop.
‘I’ve been meaning to ask you, are you going short on your railway shares?’
‘I was just trying to decide. Let’s go and ask old Hudson; he’s standing over there. Used to be the Napoleon of railways, but now I believe he’s the Attila the Hun of washing machines. Tom says the South Sea’s the thing to invest in. They’re trading now. Go short just before the bubble bursts. Go long on cocaine futures and you’ll make enough to live on for another hundred years.’
‘Really? Thanks so much. I’ll see if I can catch the pasts market before they close.’
‘Lucrezia? You don’t look a day older. How’s the family?’
‘Dead, most of them. So careless. Cesare was always such a sceptic, he refused to believe in either place. When I told him about my little deal he sneered, and six months later he was dead. Have a drink. We’ll toast him.’
‘No thanks.’
‘Oh, but you don’t think – I wouldn’t dream of it. I work for charities now.’
‘Jenny!’ I look around, startled, as a tall man in a gold dressing-gown embroidered with green dragons hugs me.
‘Binkie? But you –’
‘Bought it, as they used to say. No, actually I sold it centuries ago. Always a good idea to disappear in a war. It’s expected. I’m not Binkie any more. Rather dated, don’t you think? I’m Pete now. Did you get the little present I left you?’
‘Yes! I never had the chance to thank you. Leo invested it for me, and it kept me going until last year. I’m so glad you’re still alive.’
‘How could I not be? Aren’t these parties marvellous?’
‘This is the first one I’ve been to.’
‘Really? It’s your first time back? How touching. You must be the youngest person in the room. Why you can’t be more than seventy, practically an infant. Still with Leo, I see.’
‘Well, not exactly. You’re still very handsome. It sounds corny but you really don’t look a day older. You were the first lord I slept with, I remember. I was quite bowled over.’
‘None of that nonsense now. It’s all supposed to be classless, although I have my doubts. I’m investing in pop music, so if you’ve got any money left over I’ll look after it for you.’
‘Binkie – I mean Pete – what are they all talking about? What’s all this about bubbles and railway shares?’
‘Oh, you mean the pasts market? Just something Leo and I cooked up over dinner a few years ago. You know about selling futures of course? Soya-bean futures can be quite profitable, for example, but you have to wait years to get your money back, and it’s not awfully entertaining. So we developed this idea of using history as a kind of yellow pages, browsing through it for financial opportunities. It takes quite a bit of skill. You have to identify the time and the place exactly – for instance, the week when the East India Company started to make vast profits in Calcutta or the exact moment to invest in the Medici bank in Florence. It’s fascinating and extremely lucrative. Why don’t you join me in a flutter on the gladiators in Rome in the second century AD? Let me explain how it works …’ But, as always when people start talking to me about finance, I yawn uncontrollably and don’t really listen to what he’s saying. I stare at the back of a familiar head, waiting for the face to turn towards me.
‘Assunta!’
‘Cara signora!’ As we hug, her jewellery scratches me. Her old black dress has been replaced by a magnificent green velvet gown that makes me feel dowdy.
‘Assunta, you should have told me. I feel such a fool …’
You rush up. ‘Thanks so much, Assunta, darling. You did a great job.’
‘You mean you paid her to spy on me?’
‘What an unpleasant word. I couldn’t let you just disappear, could I? Assunta’s an old friend from Savonarola’s Florence. She had some gambling debts with the Fizz so she worked them off by looking after you and sending me monthly reports.’
I want to talk to Assunta and the man who used to be Binkie, but you have taken me over again. ‘Come on, Jenny, we’ll open an account for you. Down those spiral stairs is where they keep the contracts. The pasts market is on the floor below. I’m just about to make some money on the 1903 Derby. As soon as my winnings come through I’ll go halves with you.’
‘But I don’t understand. Why are you giving me money?’
‘My obligations are quite clear. Why don’t you just look at your contract? You’re so scatty.’
‘Yes, I suppose I am. But what is this place? And why do you call it the Fizz? Because of all the champagne?’
‘Of course not. It’s the Banca Metafisica. Did you never come across the Bank of the Holy Spirit in Italy? One of the big banks nearly bought the Fizz a few years ago, but we managed to keep our independence.’
‘Our? Do you mean it belongs to you?’
‘We’re all directors. This is our annual meeting.’
‘So you’re not just a fiendish drug dealer but a bank manager as well?’
‘I said director. They were so pleased with the work I did during the war that they promoted me. It’s solved my money problems, and I must say I enjoy the work. My current assignment is to expand the narcotics trade in London. In a few years coke will be very big business indeed. There are certain obvious advantages to having immortals on the board; it gives the bank a healthy continuity and stability. I was going to ask you to join us, but you’re still astonishingly ignorant, Jenny. I do hope that when you’ve been around for a few more centuries you’ll develop a proper respect for the purity and beauty of money.’
You take my arm and walk through a door hidden in the panelling, down a shabby corridor into a bank that seems quite ordinary. There’s nothing metaphysical about the chequebook the clerk hands me. I withdraw twenty-five pounds – three weeks’ wages – from my new account. It’s only lunchtime, but my head’s spinning. While you’re wheeling and dealing I walk out of the bank, which turns out to be in High Street Kensington, only one block away from the shop where I should have started work at nine o’clock this morning.
I come back to my room, lie on my bed, shut my eyes and try to digest the last twelve hours: drugs, you, money, you, alcohol, you. Already day feels like night, and I have the best possible reasons to abandon David, my job and my room: this little patch of normality I was so proud of. I’ve been intending to phone the shop to explain my absence and David to apologize for standing him up at lunch. The phone’s on the landing a few yards away, but the Herculean effort required to get to it is beyond me as I fall asleep to the lullaby of the clattering trains.
When I wake up my room is dark. But the darkness isn’t empty; it crackles with energy and conflict. Instead of waking up gradually I jump to my feet, my instincts on guard as if there’s a fire. Then I see you silhouetted against the window.
‘How did you get in?’
‘What a stickler you are for detail.’
‘I hope you don’t think that money gives you any rights over me.’
‘Of course not. Don’t you want me any more, Jenny?’ You’re beside me now, and I’m shivering with pleasure as our mouths lock and we fall on to the bed.
‘Quite a faithful old couple really.’
‘Faithful! Old! Leo, your elbows are like knives.’
‘Stop wriggling. Your skin smells the same, your hair’s so alive. I wish I could give every woman in the world eternal youth.’
‘You would, too. And then you’d fuck them all.’
‘Yes, but I’d always come back to you. And you’d come back to me. We’d have to.’
‘I don’t have to do anything.’
‘How petulant you are and how ungrateful. Do you realize you’ve never once tha
nked me for giving you the most precious gift there is, something everybody wants?’
‘Quite a few other people do have it, judging by that party this morning.’
‘Only a few thousand. Plucked from all the billions who’ve withered and shrivelled and died.’
‘Well, what do you expect me to do? Grovel?’
‘Just love me with grace, since you must love me.’
‘This isn’t …’ Whatever it is, sex between us is intense and wild.
In the morning I catch sight of a white square that has been pushed under my door and find a letter from David, hand-delivered, so he must have come looking for me during the night. I tear open the envelope:
Jenny,
I waited in the pub for you for three hours, then I couldn’t stand it any more. I couldn’t go back to work, I just walked and walked all over Holland Park and Kensington Gardens phoning you every half hour. I went to your shop but nobody knew where you were. I thought you must have had an accident, I imagined you run over by a lorry or lying with your throat cut or drowned in the Thames. Have you ever loved anyone enough to imagine their death a thousand times? No, I bet you haven’t and you never will. It’s much worse than dying yourself.
This evening I went around to see Barry. He was going to help you become a model, do you remember? I asked him to help me find you and he roared with laughter and said you’d turn up. I could tell he thought I was a fool to worry about you. He said, ‘Look, Romeo, why don’t you just go around to her house. If she’s out, wait for her to come back.’ So I came and rang your bell again and again until an old woman in a dressing-gown and curlers let me in. I rushed up to your door and banged on it and then I heard you both.
I don’t know who he is and I don’t want to know. I’m not jealous if that’s what you think. I just wish I’d never met you and I never want to see you again and I hope he has some horrible disease and you catch it. I’ve been sitting outside your door all night, I’m cold and stiff, I’m going now and never coming back. I’d commit suicide if I thought it would make you feel bad but Annette and Muriel and my mother were right about you. You’re so tough you wouldn’t care.
Loving Mephistopeles Page 12