‘… classic Oedipal conflict,’ he could just hear, ‘father figure wants to drive the “son” out of the family unit; the “son” wants to kill the father to gain access to the females.’ Leo was talking with complete authority, and didn’t seem too pissed, which meant that something might be salvaged from the evening.
‘But that’s insane,’ replied one of the cleverer young experts, a Map man called Cartwright. Andrew had been meaning to pal up with him for a while. ‘Isn’t it a chickenhawk? It doesn’t want to fuck the hens, it wants to eat them.’
‘You’re confusing your Foghorn Leghorn episodes …’
‘All very perplexing,’ resumed Oakley, and Andrew had to rapidly switch back. ‘I hardly had the chance to tell him that I’m a collector of the early Blyton stories, and of course they do very well at auction, before he launched into an extraordinary tirade about commerce being such a monstrous thing. Altogether a very peculiar performance and a very strange sort of person to bring along to a, to a … to bring along.’
‘Mmmmm,’ said Clerihew, who’d been waiting for an opportunity to contribute something. ‘I was rather wondering why you brought someone like that along. Unless, Andrew, oh, I’m sorry, is he your partner? I really wouldn’t have … if I’d known.’
‘Oh fuck off, Cuthbert. I brought him because Colin suggested we all bring someone, and Leo’s about the most amusing and intelligent person I know, and I thought it might be an interesting social experiment.’
There was a pause, just long enough for Andrew to realise what a serious mistake it had been to tell Clerihew to fuck off. Bound to add to the general view that he wasn’t a team player, but rather some kind of insane reckless maverick, the sort of person who would, in fact, bring a Noddy-obsessed anarcho-syndicalist LUNATIC to a sedate gathering of book experts and their decent, God-fearing, property-respecting, hatchet-faced, sensibly-knickered spouses.
‘Well, it, your experiment, doesn’t seem to be going very well at the moment, young man,’ said Dorothea Oakley, whose presence Andrew had managed, with some effort, to forget about. For no good reason that Andrew could see, this was treated by the assembled sycophants as a put-down of Wildean brilliance.
Looking for an escape route, Andrew saw Alice chatting in a corner with a slender, short-haired woman. ‘Excuse me, I must um just …’ he said, and pushed his way through the throng to them, wishing all the time he’d thought of something wittier than ‘I must um just’ to leave them with. He was only marginally cheered up by recalling his joke about never remembering the phrase esprit d’escalier until it was too late.
Alice saw him coming. He looked like one of the miraculously unhurt survivors of a train crash.
‘How’s it going?’ she said. ‘This is my friend Odette.’
‘I see you made the wise decision to bring someone normal and not a … well, a Leo.’
‘How do you know I’m not a Leo?’ said Odette, looking a little puzzled. ‘I mean, I’m not, I’m a Sagittarius, not that I believe any of that, but still. What are they supposed to be like, that you’re so sure I’m not one?’
Andrew and Alice exchanged smiles, which annoyed Odette. Andrew saw the annoyance and started babbling. ‘Oh God, no, it’s not the star thing. It’s my friend. He’s called Leo. The name, Leo. That’s what he’s called. I’m sure that whatever good things there are about Leos, the star sign Leos, then you’d have them. I mean you’ve got them. All of them. Fuck. Where’s that rent in the space-time continuum, when you need it?’
The babble, as he knew it would, made everything all right.
‘Leo’s the one I was telling you about,’ said Alice to Odette. ‘And this is Andrew, who we’ve already done to death.’ She smiled at him to show that this was intended as a compliment.
‘Leo sounds like a very interesting character,’ said Odette to Andrew, also smiling, her lips neatly together.
‘Yes. And sometimes interesting is exactly what you want.’
‘And sometimes not?’
‘Well no. I suppose sometimes what you want is interesting and safe, but Leo’s interesting and lethal. Looks like he might well be on his way to ruining my beautiful career. I blame myself.’
‘That’s big of you,’ laughed Alice, ‘given that it is entirely your fault for inviting him. Why don’t we extract him from the morass over there and let him loose on Odette. My bet is that she takes some of the wind out of his sails – she’s world class when it comes to deflating egos and seeing through people and all that sort of thing.’
‘I think that’s a bit harsh on Leo. Whatever else he is, he certainly isn’t a fraud. He … just, well, several things really. He says things for effect, but usually just so he can test them out. And he says things that other people only think. And although he spends all of his time upsetting people, he isn’t malicious. He reserves his real hatred for himself. I’ll go and get him.’
On his way back towards Leo, Andrew wondered if he’d reached his Marxist analysis of Trumpton yet. The Noddy/Foghorn-Leghorn/Trumpton/jelly baby material began life as a series of lectures Leo used to give to undergraduates to help explain the various interpretative approaches open to literary critics, but he’d found them to be useful ways of annoying the kind of people who ought to be annoyed, and amusing those who deserved amusing. Andrew was secretly relieved that he hadn’t come up with something worse so far this evening. Just as he reached the group, he noticed that Clerihew was among the onlookers. There seemed to have been some exchange between him and Leo. Clerihew had said something that had shut Leo up in mid-sentence. In his own way the roly-poly turd could be quite effective. It would be like him to make some veiled allusion to Ophelia’s earlier comments. Leo caught Andrew’s eye and threw him a wink. Oh dear, thought Andrew. Oh dear. Leo then moved a foot closer to Clerihew and said something quietly to him. The onlookers stopped laughing. Leo then swayed back, a movement exaggerated, Andrew could see, by a drunkenness which was approaching saturation point.
‘Clerihew, Clerihew,’ said Leo very loudly, and very clearly. ‘You really are as …’
At that instant Andrew knew what was coming, and it wasn’t funny and it wasn’t clever. About a month before, he and Leo had been discussing the difficulty in saying anything truly offensive. The various reproductive and excretory terms had been neutered by over-use. Even the dreaded C-word had been rendered relatively benign, although it still topped the tables.
‘What we need is a modifier. Something that uses what’s left of the shockability in cunt, but magnifies it.’
That, regrettably, had been Andrew.
‘Yes,’ replied Leo. ‘That’s it. We need a metaphor. As something as a something something cunt.’
Between the two of them they hit on a phrase that they were confident would a) offend ninety-five per cent of those who heard it; and b) was flexible enough to be used in a variety of different contexts. And what would it be now, wondered Andrew? As rank as? As fat as? As loose as? As flabby as?
‘You really are,’ said Leo, ‘as slack as an old whore’s cunt.’
Oh Lord. Andrew began to have an out of body experience, floating about three feet above himself before psychic gravity hauled him back in.
Yes, it was the ‘whore’s’ that did it, giving it a Jacobean, no, Restoration feel. At least their scientific approach to the subject was demonstrated to be the right one. Scanning the faces from Clerihew round to Pam, encompassing the full range of Enderby’s employees, and including, Andrew now saw, The Slayer herself, Andrew perceived everywhere that the phrase had done its work well. Shock was there, and now surely, the outrage would follow, led, the clever money predicted, by Clerihew, camping it up for all he was worth.
But what was this? Clerihew smiling. Sadly shaking his head. Walking away. And the others. Also walking away. And then Leo was alone in the middle of the crowded pub, surrounded by a penumbra of contempt.
Andrew sensed that The Slayer’s eyes were on him. He’d never met her but she’d c
ertainly seen him on her occasional commando raids into Books territory. If Andrew walked away he could probably, no, not probably, only possibly, get away with the debacle. If it had been probably, then perhaps his decision would have been different; but at possibly there was no contest. He went up to Leo, put an arm around his shoulders, put his fist against his cheek and rubbed it hard.
‘If I didn’t love you I’d kill you. Might kill you anyway. As it is there’s a top chick to meet.’
Leo looked at him blearily. ‘Have I misbehaved?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘How badly?’
‘You know that time when you spent the weekend with me up in Nottingham at my parents, and you got up drunk in the night and went for a piss, and then my dad put the light on because you were in their bedroom, splashing on the Axminster?’
‘That bad?’
‘Worse.’
‘Andrew, I’m sorry. It was that girl. Ophelia. She was so close, I mean soooooo close to being my absolute personal ideal … I mean the Platonic perfect form. And then. I know I should be used to it by now, but Jeeeesus. Andy, I’m in no tit fate. What did I say? Fit state to meet people stuff. Jus’ gonna go home. There’s always some totty I can …’
Alice came to meet them. ‘Oh dear, Leo, you don’t look very well. I’m sorry I missed the fireworks over there. I’m sure you were being very funny. They’ll all be talking about Andrew’s brilliant friend tomorrow in the office.’ Alice completely missed the for God’s sake cut it hand signals Andrew was giving her.
Leo twisted, without violence, away from Andrew and came close beside Alice.
‘There something important to tell you. This man here is reality. The real. The world. Your robber-baron down in the country, he’s just a trashy fantasy, a bit of Walter Scott whimsy. And,’ he said, coming closer still, ‘your boy, your boy, he’s art. Nothing but art.’ He spat the word out as if it were poison. ‘And you know what Plato said about Art? Art is a lie.’
He staggered away towards the door. Andrew was about to follow him when he saw Alice’s face.
‘What’s wrong? What did he say?’
‘You told him. You told him about … you told him about it. Who else did you tell? Ophelia? Clerihew?’
‘Oh Christ. No, nobody. Look I had to tell Leo. He’s my best friend. I needed to …’
Alice was crying. Odette appeared. They murmured together for a while, with Andrew looking on, helplessly.
‘I’m putting her in a taxi,’ said Odette to Andrew.
Andrew’s ears were ringing. Was this the worst night of his life? How could it all have gone so wrong? He looked around. At least no one was paying any attention to this latest fiasco, unless you counted Clerihew, who never missed anything, and Andrew had no intention of counting Clerihew. He went back to the bar. To his surprise he found that Ophelia was there. She smiled at him pleasantly.
‘I wasn’t expecting much from this evening, but I’ve rather enjoyed myself,’ she said.
‘Yeah, me too.’
It was all Ophelia’s fault, the whole nightmarish, fuckedup, catalogue of dis … no, not a catalogue, this was more impressive; this was like one of those great eighteenth-century compendiums, with teams of scholars working for years, or just one solitary madman devoting his life to the project. An Encyclopédie of disasters; Johnson’s Dictionary of … But still, her fault or not, she had a minute smudge of lipstick on her teeth, something he’d never seen on her before, a blemish. It made his balls hum with electric desire.
Outside, Odette found a taxi. Alice forbade her to share it.
‘No, no,’ she sobbed, ‘it’s the wrong way. Please, I need to do this alone.’
Odette understood. It was still quite early and there were plenty of cabs around. As she waited she saw something hunched over the gutter across the street. She crossed.
‘Are you okay,’ she said to Leo. He looked up at her through his fingers.
‘Do I look okay?’ he said with effort.
‘Why don’t I put you in a taxi,’ Odette replied, matter-of-factly. ‘It’s what I’m doing today. Which way do you go?’
‘Notre Dame. It’s not on the tube.’
TWELVE
Country Pleasures, Suck’d on Childishley
The journey was now almost familiar to Alice: the train slowly rattling through grey skies, the ragged lines of hedgerows swelling onto scrubby copses; the occasional flash of strutting pheasant; the cows staring like voyeurs; the scarecrows scaring no crows; the horse in a field of thistles, breaking into a frantic gallop; the Asian family across the aisle, sharing out samosas and poppadoms and Mars bars.
She was still angry and upset at Andrew’s betrayal. For all his protestations, she was sure that he and Leo must have been laughing about her; after all, it’s what they did about everything. On the Monday following the Friday drink, she’d played it cool, determined that he should not know how much she had been hurt by the affair, but equally determined to withdraw from the relative intimacy of their relations. She’d been scrupulously polite when they met, but said ‘no thanks’ to the offer of tea.
Whatever punishment she had in store for him, however, soon paled in comparison with the general office reaction to the Friday happenings. One or two of the younger people came up and slapped him on the back, congratulating him on livening up what had promised to be a very dull evening. Andrew looked embarrassed, stammering something about not expecting his friend to go quite so far over the top. And then at ten-thirty Oakley appeared and asked him to step into his office. Alice, and everyone else, could hear the barking through the opaque plate glass. Andrew emerged entirely drained of colour. The tail of his shirt was, not untypically, flapping slightly from his trousers, which gave the unfortunate impression that he’d been to see the headmaster for a thrashing, lending a certain amount of comedy to the affair.
Alice didn’t feel inclined to offer any sympathy, despite the injustice of it: could Andrew really be blamed because Leo had skied so far off-piste? To her surprise Ophelia came over to commiserate, although after a couple of minutes it became clear that it was in such a way as to bring home the enormity of the offence (‘yes, I know, they’ll probably remember this for ever, you know what they’re like’).
The whole thing was capped by Clerihew. He marched up to Andrew, thrust out his hand, and said, ‘No hard feelings, old man, let’s shake and forget it.’
Andrew, startled, didn’t quite know what to do. After four seconds of dithering, he took Clerihew’s hand, but somehow the impression was given that he had yet again acted in a mean-spirited way. Alice looked towards Oakley’s office and saw him standing at the door, watching.
By Wednesday Alice had forgiven him enough to ask about Leo.
‘Oh, I haven’t seen or heard from him. Don’t blame him. Think I might punch him if he did show up. Not really. What did you make of him?’
‘I actually rather liked him. Can’t say he was particularly comfortable company, but he was … interesting.’
‘I, er, thought your friend, Odette, was very, um, nice. Did she enjoy herself?’
Alice knew that what he meant was, did she mention me? She hadn’t forgiven him enough to massage his ego.
‘She was having quite a good time until it all blew up. I think the fun went out of it for her when Leo left.’
‘Oh.’
‘But I haven’t spoken to her either, since.’
She arrived in the station at five minutes past five. It wasn’t Edward who met her, but Grace, her features as impenetrable as ever.
‘Mr Lynden’s busy with his guests,’ she said, as she put Alice’s bag (which she’d almost wrestled from her hand, pulling and twisting aggressively) in the back of her little Fiat. Somehow the term ‘guests’ was intended, Alice thought, to exclude her.
Alice knew, of course, that there would be other people there, but not how many or who they were. She questioned Grace, but received only cryptic answers. ‘Enough to make work,’ sh
e said. ‘Others like him, of his kind. Had to get the chef from the Wheatsheaf, and two girls from the village. More trouble than they’re worth.’ With the last comment she looked away from the road and straight at Alice for a good two seconds. Alice looked back at her, studying her face. It was difficult to estimate her age: forty, perhaps? There was some grey in her tightly pulled-back hair, but no more than a few strands. It was a severe face, but not unattractive. She felt it was a face that had swallowed humiliations and slights, and had hardened itself against the world.
The driveway was crowded with cars – a brace of pristine, unrustic Range Rovers; a sleek BMW estate, two different, but equally menacing sports cars, and a people-carrier, looking pleased with itself, and with life in general.
Grace led her in and pointed towards laughter, rooms away. Alice, her heart in her mouth, picked her way carefully towards the sound. When she finally found the right door, it opened into a room dazzlingly bright with sunshine and glamour – even the drinks, carried on a heavy silver tray by one of Grace’s unfortunate girls, were brilliantly and strangely coloured. There were at least ten people there, scattered about on the low chairs, or standing in small groups. She managed to take in a confident-looking teenage girl, three smartly dressed women in their thirties, two floppy-haired young men, and two more who could have been in their forties, before Lynden caught sight of her. He was standing talking to an older woman, who seemed strangely out of place here. Instead of the expensive casual rightness of the clothes and hair all around, she was dressed with an uncomfortable formality, in an awkward tweed suit and clumping shoes. Alice could hear her braying voice quite clearly.
‘Damned good fortune to turn up just when there was a show on. Offie didn’t want to come, of course, but I insisted. Not seen her dear old second cuz for donkey’s. Nice for you to have a bit of young blood about the place. Cheer you up. You always were a misery guts. Mother’s side, of course.’
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