‘Perhaps you shouldn’t be quite so smug,’ Clerihew replied, with venom. ‘After all, if any names have been associated with the whole Audubon project, then they are yours and Alice’s. I was just brought in at a late stage, when, it seems to me, most of the damage had already been done.’
If Andrew looked for support from his colleagues, he looked in vain. They began to melt back to their own desks. Oakley remained the man in charge, and Clerihew was still his bulldog. The Audubon disaster might well mean heads had to roll and, if only for the time being, Oakley still held the axe.
Andrew looked, and was, betrayed.
‘You know what, Andrew,’ said Alice. ‘I don’t feel like the canteen today. I know it’s a bit early, but why don’t we go for a sandwich at Cranks.’
‘Christ, I’m still digesting one of their wholemeal scones I swallowed last week. Did I ever tell you that they use osmium, the heaviest element so far discovered, in their recipes?’
‘Yes, I think you might have mentioned it. But it’s not, by the way.’ They were in the lift by now.
‘Not what?’
‘The heaviest element.’
‘Really?’
‘Really.’
‘What is then?’
‘Gravitron.’
‘Gravitron! You made that up.’
‘Didn’t.’
‘Did.’
‘Airhead.’
‘Bimbo.’
They were out in the street, walking closely together, the sleeves of their winter coats touching.
‘I thought you never went to Cranks,’ said Andrew. ‘Because it was too near to where … near to …’
‘Where Matija Abdic was killed.’
‘Yes, there. I don’t think I’ve ever heard you use his name. His real name.’
‘It’s how I think of him now. And yes, it’s near where he was killed. But now I don’t mind so much.’
After a few moments Andrew said, ‘I still think osmium’s funnier. Gravitron just hasn’t got that smack of authenticity. Sounds like something Superman’s enemies use against him. You know, renders him sterile, or disarrays his coiffure.’
‘Don’t care. S’true.’
‘True shmoo. I’m not risking another scone. Don’t like the idea of them hunting in packs inside me. They communicate, you know.’
‘What, using electric currants?’
‘Is that supposed to be a …’
‘You could always jam the frequency.’
‘All right, all right, ha ha ha. Scones, currants, jam, I get it. Don’t you know that punning is for boys? Anyway, I think I’ll have some of their cheesecake instead. It’s what they use to isolate the core in nuclear submarines.’
They got back to the office at two thirty, but it was quite clear that no work was going to be done in Enderby’s that day. From the moment they entered the lobby, now richly decorated with tasteful baubles (some dating back to the very invention of Christmas in darkest Victorian times), ivy, and, of especial interest to Andrew, mistletoe, it was clear that, notwithstanding the shock of the Audubon mishap, from here on in it was going to be party party party.
Books was humming. The women were clustered together talking about what they’d be wearing; the men were joking and generally mucking about. Term was ending, and joy abounded. But not quite everywhere: Andrew could see Oakley pacing in his office, while Clerihew sat and watched. Clerihew looked more worried than ever, but Oakley had his cunning fox face on, which was perturbing.
‘I haven’t asked you yet what you’re going as tonight,’ said Alice. ‘You didn’t seem to bring anything in with you.’
It was true that while most people (including Alice herself) had arrived with large bags and boxes, Andrew had only his usual small rucksack.
‘Don’t want to give the game away just yet. But this year it’s nothing special. You wouldn’t believe the animosity you attract for winning the first prize. Everyone hates you. I’ve been there, done that. I thought just a token effort, this year. But what about you? You could do Joseph Wright of Derby’s Experiment with an air pump, I suppose. That’s science, after all.’
‘Is that the one with a long-haired man gassing a parrot, while his family all gather round, and the children crying and all that?’
‘Yes. It’s actually one of my favourite paintings.’
‘Bit hard to recreate on my own though.’
‘You could have teamed up: it’s what a lot of others are doing. But no, so not the Experiment with an air pump. What then?’
‘You’re being coy, and so will I.’
With the party due to begin at five, the girls started to get ready from three thirty, giggling their way in excited groups to the ladies, from whence they did not return. Alice was in the midst of them, laughing and pushing with the others, which charmed and delighted Andrew. It really did seem as though her burden had been shed. At four, Oakley emerged from his office, with Clerihew in attendance, carrying a bottle of cheap Spanish red wine.
‘Quite enough slaving for one day,’ he said, unnecessarily. ‘Time we all got in the party mood. Open up please, Cedric, and let’s er party.’
Clerihew then made a meal of opening the bottle, and handing out paper cups to the ten or so men standing around, a group made up of three Toffs, three Swots, an Oik and two porters.
‘Can’t wait to see what the girls come back in,’ Oakley continued, trying to make conversation. ‘Lovely peacocks that they er are.’
‘I think you’ll find that the peacocks – the colourful ones – are the boys. The lady peacocks, I mean peahens, are brown.’
‘Thanks for that piece of pedantry, Cedric,’ replied Oakley, clearly annoyed. Another two bottles of what one of the toffs described, audibly, as ‘rank Diego juice’, appeared and were consumed primarily by the porters and Andrew. The others were discriminating enough to know that they were about to have something very much better at the party proper.
Andrew spent the time chatting with the porters and Cartwright the Map man, who he still hadn’t really got to know, and who proved to be a little dull when you got him off his home ground of maps, and very dull when he stuck to it. Still, nice enough fellow and he laughed at your jokes, which was all you could hope for, ultimately. Andrew had always got on well with the porters or at least the younger ones. The older porters tended to look on any expert not wearing pinstripes as having somehow let them all down. They were the upholders of the ancient traditions: stay at your station, keep your eye on the Fuzzy-Wuzzies, worship the Queen, officers know best, anything other than cheese and pickle on your sandwich means you’re a Bolshevik, child-molesting bum-bandit. But the younger ones were okay as long as you kept to sport and girls, and what a cunt Oakley was, which Andrew was always happy to do.
Eventually, after most of the drinkers had gone themselves to dress for the party, Oakley found his way round to Andrew.
‘I wonder if we perhaps might ah have a little, you know.’
‘Sure. Want to glory in this morning’s triumph.’ Andrew was already a little drunk.
‘Well, that is actually. What I want to talk about, I mean.’
Oakley was sounding, as he often did when under pressure or stressed, as if his language chip had been damaged. Andrew noticed that one of the wings of his moustache was slightly shorter than the other. A practical joke, perhaps, from a barber, annoyed by years of tipless snipping? Or maybe Mrs Oakley did him in the bath, along with his earand-nose bristles. And overcome, perhaps, by passion she’d climbed in with him and worked the cheap bubble bath into an ecstasy of foaming froth with her powerful abdominal flexing before she’d properly finished the job. Andrew shuddered.
‘Could have happened to anyone. Fucking up completely like that. My sympathy is entirely with you. Bleed for you, in fact.’
‘I’m not entirely blind to irony, you know.’
‘Shouldn’t that be deaf? And anyway, that wasn’t irony. That was sarcasm.’
Oakley did an elabo
rate ‘I’ll ignore that’ shrug. ‘I’m sure you’ll appreciate that what happened could hardly be lain at my, in any way attributed to … However, the events and circumstances could, I think, and if I were you then I would be forced to agree with my analysis on this, be said to stem from, if not originate in, er with, Alice.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Despite the gobbledegook, Andrew had a fair idea.
‘Look, I’ll be quite clear on this. There are two reports which I could write about the unfortunate events of this morning. Could write and have, in actuality, done so. The first sets out how it was the romantic entanglement of Alice with Lynden that ultimately undermined and led to the abortive failure of the sale. The unprofessional conduct, the leading-on and fickle rejection of, spurning and so forth, that all of us saw undergoing. I have, of course, sought and found corroboration of these facts from the testimony of witnesses closely involved.’
No need, thought Andrew, to wonder who they might be.
‘And,’ he continued, ‘I am quite prepared to see that this was compounded by the administrative oversight in not pursuing more actively the administrative norms and procedures, albeit that the administrators involved could hardly be expected to anticipate that a lovers’ tiff would jeopardise the fulfilment of the arrangements.’
So, Alice was to be stitched up for the mess. Andrew supposed that she presented an easier target than he did.
‘You said you’d written two reports,’ he said, hollowly.
‘Two, yes. The second sets out a slightly different emphasis, and one which, frankly, disguises any errors committed by your colleague or colleagues unnamed, by which I mean Alice. It stresses the strenuous efforts undertaken by the Books management team to gain the usual guarantees and contractual arrangements from the vendor, and his continual prevarication. The delicacy of the issue is also greatly stressed, his highly strung temperament and so forth. But great potential gains also to be taken into account. No one directly responsible for the mental breakdown or erratic behaviour of the vendor. And I would be prepared to bear upon my shoulders the responsibility for any errors of minor judgement committed by my staff. That’s simply the kind of manager that I am. It, the enterprise, was a brave gamble that, in the final analysis, did not come off. We are risk-takers here, and occasionally those who live by the … will also perish by it. After all, who would not rather be, if you’ll allow me a classical allusion, Ganymede flying too near the sun than er someone else altogether who didn’t try in the first place. Getting near the sun, or, for that matter, airborne in the sky at all.’
‘It was Icarus who flew too near the sun. Ganymede was a shepherd boy taken up by an eagle to be royally fucked by Zeus. I believe I know the feeling.’
Oakley ignored the comment. ‘The advantages to this route are not only that Alice will be exonerated, at least in the main part, when the issue is considered, but, others might also benefit.’
‘Yeah, you.’
‘Not only, or even particularly, me. Of course this, second, interpretation of the events requires a degree of unanimity from those involved, directly or indirectly. And you know that the panel will shortly adjourn to decide, at long last, I may say, on the replacement for Mr Crumlish. There are already front runners for that position. Team players. Safe pairs of hands. I have to say that at the moment, you are not necessarily seen as such. Talented, naturally. But not a team player. However, I will be writing reports for those who wish to put themselves forward for the post from within Books, and should you see fit to come into agreement with the line I propose, then any qualms I might have entertained about your team-playing capabilities would be shelved, if not refuted. And with a good report from me, or at least in the absence of a report highlighting your weaknesses, then you’ll be on a level playing field with the other candidates and your … flair might well show itself to good effect before the panel.’
So, there it was. Back up Oakley and save Alice and do himself a favour all at the same time. Everyone’s a winner. So why did it make him feel sick to his stomach? For a moment he considered a flamboyant gesture, but it wasn’t fair to be flamboyant with someone else’s life. And anyway, he’d always had a streak of pragmatism. There was simply nothing to be gained from rejecting Oakley’s suggestion. Oakley had the ear of the Americans. And wasn’t there just enough truth in the allegation that Alice’s shenanigans with Lynden had had something to do with his withdrawal to convince the neutrals? Something in him almost admired the way that Oakley had pulled this one out of the fire and he made a mental note to remember that being an arse didn’t necessarily make you an idiot. He didn’t say anything, but the slump in his shoulders was all Oakley needed to see to tell him that he had won his victory.
‘Good, good. Now we can all really enjoy ourselves tonight.’
‘What are you going as?’ said Andrew. He tried to convince himself that he was just making conversation to tear himself away from the unpleasantness of the necessary choice he had made, but deep down he knew that he had simply become another lick-spittle.
Clerihew, the only other person still in the room, looked over and smiled at him, a smile of complicity and fellowship.
TWENTY-FOUR
The Last Party
The tears that Alice had shed the night before were unlike any others that had fallen from her eyes with such unnerving regularity over the past year. These weren’t tears of sorrow or sadness, nor tears of desperation or hopelessness. She wasn’t crying over the love that she had lost, or the loss of her love.
No.
She was crying, her face screwed up into a bitter conch of anguish, because she couldn’t think of anything to wear to the party, and the knowledge that she was upset by something so trivial did not help at all. The problem was that this just so wasn’t her thing. There were two reasonable illustrated histories of art in the flat and she spent an hour going through them, convinced that she would find something. But no: everything seemed either too outlandish or too dull and, more to the point, unachievable, given her limited resources of time and money.
‘Stupid, stupid girl,’ said Odette, into Alice’s ear. ‘If you’d asked me a week ago I might have been able to think of something. But for tomorrow? Are you mad? Have you tried calling Jodie? She knows more about this sort of thing than we do.’
So Alice called Jodie. They hadn’t spoken for weeks and so Alice had to put up with all kinds of gush before they got to the point.
‘Based on art? What a silly idea. Shame you’ve got arms.’
‘What?’
‘Venus de Milo, darling.’
‘Please, be serious.’
‘Mona Lisa?’
‘No. There’ll be hundreds of those.’
‘Have you got anything eighteenth-century looking? You could go as something by Reynolds or one of those French artists who painted little girls on swings. Fragonard, was it, or Boucher?’
‘I haven’t got anything eighteenth century. How would I have anything eighteenth century? Have you? Could I borrow?’
‘No, sorry.’
Alice had to put up with two more minutes of pleasantries before she could go and get stuck in to her cry. But she did manage to tell Jodie about her plans.
There was a knock at the bedroom door. Kitty came in without waiting for an answer. She wore the look of someone scraping old vegetables from the back of the fridge.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ she asked, accusingly.
Alice told her.
Kitty’s face changed. ‘What a simply wonderful idea,’ she said. Alice looked up from her forearms, stained with smudgy black. She saw that Kitty was smiling. Smiling in a way that Alice had never, she honestly thought, seen before. Not the pinched, forced smile that she remembered Kitty firing at her father whenever he said or thought the wrong thing. Not the half-mad smile she would use when recounting some mythical adventure, or crazed plan. This was a full, broad grin that dragged in the thin white skin around her eyes. Despite the unaccustomed crin
kling, she looked younger and softer and, for as long as it lasted, sane.
‘I have exactly the thing.’
‘What do you mean?’ Alice couldn’t bring herself to hope. The idea surely couldn’t be practical, real, could it?
‘Wait just where you are. No, don’t do that. Go and splash some water on your face first. You look like you’ve been ravished.’
Alice went half sulkily, half hopefully, to the bathroom and stared at herself in the mirror, as she waited for the water to run hot. Something about the face that gazed back at her caught her attention and rather than the usual quick look to make sure there wasn’t a bird’s nest on the back of her head, or the brief scientific check as she raced around her mouth with the good-value lipstick she always bought from Boots (stocking up whenever they had a three-for-two offer), this became a long, appraising, attentive gaze. How many times had she done that in her life? Not more than three. And never before had she liked what she had found. Now she took in her eyes and her hair and her nose and her lips and her cheeks and her neck and she saw that they were good, as eyes and hair and nose and lips and cheeks and necks went. Perhaps better than good. And that was despite the redness and the smudges from the recent tears. And she could also see that there was a unity about them all, a pulling-in-the-same-direction that further added to the effect. But she could never see, because it required a fonder gaze than she would ever manage, that there was something special, over and above these routine facts of facial geometry and harmony, that transfigured her, the thing that Andrew had once, happily, thought of as the ghost in her machine.
Notwithstanding such intangible spectral presences, the discovery that she was pretty delighted her. She had known that she must not be unattractive because of the attention that she had received from Lynden and Andrew, but that knowledge was both negative, in that it simply ruled out actual ugliness, and remote from her, in that it was an intuition about how others perceived her. Now she saw and felt it for herself. All of the factors that had made vanity impossible for her all through her life were still in place: she couldn’t and wouldn’t shrug off her history. But now she could see the truth of herself. And who could resist the thrill of pleasure upon such a realisation?
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