Richardson lowered his eyes in mock reverence, and a ripple of applause passed through the audience, before it began to break up. They may, to be fair, have thought that the whole thing was prepared in advance by the participants: after all, two such contrasting pairs as these Venuses and Sebastians could not, surely, be the product of chance?
It may have been to Ophelia’s credit that well before the conclusion of the performance she was bored. Bored and annoyed: if she wanted lectures on art history she could always go to a lecture on art history. As Richardson turned she looked over his shoulder into Clerihew’s eyes. And was that a look of sympathy she sent him? Or simply the fleeting absence of active hostility that had so often beguiled and misled her admirers?
But now her eyes acquired another look entirely. Surprise; shock; horror, all within a second.
Clerihew, his face twisted into rage, wrenched one of the arrows from his pink chest and launched himself at Richardson. The point was sharp, but the shaft was of flimsy balsa wood and as Clerihew thrust it into Richardson’s neck it broke in two. But now Clerihew was on Richardson’s back, screaming like a maniac:
‘My idea! My idea! Shaft you, SHAFT YOU, aaaaaaahhhhhhhhh, shaft you, you fucking shafter, you shafted me. AAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH.’
‘Get him off me,’ Richardson screamed in turn, twisting and writhing, and flapping ineffectually at the monster on his back.
Initially the crowd thought this was all part of the act, and laughed, albeit nervously. It was only when Clerihew managed to pry one of Richardson’s darts free and stab him with it several times in the shoulder, chest and neck area, drawing blood from the long, shallow wounds, that they realised that this was not a planned part of the evening’s entertainment. In the scramble, Clerihew’s loincloth came free, revealing his dimpled buttocks and hairless cleft. Gagging disgust was added to the gasps of astonishment, and shouts of encouragement.
Crumlish acted first. With surprising strength he pulled the now naked Clerihew bodily away. Richardson collapsed immediately on his face. Clerihew also fell to the ground, his passion spent. There was no need for the two burly porters, one dressed as Henry VIII, and one as some or other pope, to sit on him, but sit on him they did, until the police and the ambulance arrived.
‘Well, my pretty,’ said Crumlish to Ophelia, ‘I see a tray of unattended drinks. Perhaps we should go and attend them.’
She took his arm and they walked away.
TWENTY-SIX
The Mitre
The Mitre was half empty despite the Friday night. The Enderby’s lot were, of course, partying, or stabbing each other with arrows, and those other local workers who had been in had mostly moved on to brighter lights, or gone home to dimmer. The short walk from Enderby’s had been bitterly cold and Alice was glad to take Andrew’s proffered arm. There was the usual performance with Andrew’s spectacles misting up as they got into the pub, but that was soon settled and they found Leo and Odette sitting together at a quiet table by the wall. Alice took off her coat.
‘Well,’ said Leo, ‘I believe that may be the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.’ He kissed her. The dress drew every set of bleary eyes in the place. ‘You look like an Aztec goddess.’
‘Quite enough of that!’ said Odette, sharply. And then to Alice, ‘So, you found something to wear then?’
‘Mummy let me borrow it. Thanks for coming.’
Andrew got a round in. ‘Okay, princess,’ he said, setting down the four drinks, spilling a little of each with a tremor which almost certainly signified nothing, ‘what’s this all about then? You’ve whipped us all up into a frenzy of expectation, so it better be good.’
‘I’m flying to Mauritius tomorrow morning.’
‘What,’ said Odette, ‘on holiday?’
‘Great idea,’ said Andrew, enthusiastically, although he rather wished that she had thought about perhaps asking if he might want to … ‘Get away from this shit-hole for Christmas, come back in January with a suntan and a baby-lemur-skin handbag.’
It was Leo who realised that something more significant was afoot.
‘I don’t think that’s what she means,’ he said, looking closely at her.
‘What do you mean, not what she means?’ Something akin to awareness had dawned, but Andrew didn’t want to acknowledge it to himself.
‘Leo’s right. I’ve planned this for a while. I tried to tell you, but somehow it never … worked out. I’m sorry.’
Andrew looked like a whipped dog, but Odette seemed, was, pleased. ‘So you’re going to do your research on …’
‘Island biodiversity. Land snails of the Indian Ocean.’
‘What made you decide?’
‘Well you know I’d held over my scholarship for a year, and time was running out. But more importantly, it was what I thought my dad wanted me to do. There was a dream I kept having, and I could never see his face, never quite capture him. But then it came to me that the way I would find him was not somehow inside myself, but out there, in the world, in the way the world is. Choose science, he was saying choose knowledge. It was there all the time, but the Dead … but Matija stopped me from seeing it. And now he isn’t there … here any more. My main concern was Mummy, but social services have been very good, and she’s having a home help every day. Anyway,’ she laughed, ‘I wasn’t any good at selling books, and even if I had been, it’s a pretty worthless sort of life.’
‘Thanks,’ said Andrew.
‘Oh Andrew, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that …’
‘You did. And it’s true. It is a pretty worthless existence. You can forget it for a while, but the truth of it always gets you in the end.’
For a moment Odette and Leo vanished from the pub, leaving the two of them alone.
‘You know you’re the only thing that’s kept me sane,’ she said.
‘Well. I didn’t do a very good job of that, did I, you nutter?’
‘I mean it. Meeting you, and getting to know you has been one of the most precious things in my life. I love you; I love you all.’
She took his hand, and Odette’s, and Odette took Leo’s, and Leo took Andrew’s, which made them both pull faces, even though this wasn’t the time, so they were all joined in a circle, formed around the glasses of beer and wine, and the rings of beer and wine on the table, and the ashtray, full with the ash and stubs of other smokers.
‘I know you’re doing the right thing,’ said Odette, ‘but I’ll miss you.’
‘How long are you … does it last?’ Andrew was fighting to keep the emotion out of his voice, but it sounded cracked and strained.
‘Three years. Perhaps longer.’
‘And tomorrow morning?’
‘Tomorrow, yes. Early. In fact I have to go soon. I haven’t packed yet, and I have to spend some time with Mummy.’
‘How is she about you going?’ It was, of course, Odette, who cared. It was always Odette who cared.
‘I think she understands. I mean understands that I’m going, and understands that I have to go. I’ve done what I can to make sure she’ll be okay. I think she may have more friends than I sometimes imagined. Perhaps some of her unhappiness was my fault, and she’ll be better when I’m not there. I don’t know.’
Andrew wasn’t listening to any of that. All he could hear was go soon go soon go soon. They weren’t holding hands any more.
‘What about us?’ he said.
Alice looked at him, a little puzzled. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, what about us? How will we … cope.’
Alice forced out a laugh. ‘Oh, they’ll find someone better than me at books. Maybe they’ll give you Ophelia to beat into shape.’
‘I don’t want Ophelia, even to beat. I want you.’ Suddenly his expression brightened. ‘What about your notice? Don’t you have to give them a month? It’s a law, or something.’
‘I’m still in my probation year. It’s a week for each side. And with the holiday coming … I left a note on
Oakley’s desk.’
‘Crumlish’s.’
‘Crumlish’s.’
Alice tried hard to keep the tone light, telling the extraordinary story of the day’s events at Enderby’s. Leo was worried about his friend, and didn’t say much, although he enjoyed the story. Andrew was largely silent. Finally, looking at Alice, he said:
‘Do you remember when we met in that park, the one with the wallabies and the bandstand and the flamingos?’
‘The ones who were bored with your conversation about plankton?’
‘You do remember. Do you ever go there?’
‘I haven’t been since I met you there.’
‘I go sometimes.’
‘I thought you hated parks. Hare-eyed clerks with the gitters.’
‘That’s the only one I like. Anyway, isn’t that what I am?’
‘Fucking hell, Andrew,’ said Leo, ‘don’t be such a tit. From what Alice has been saying you are the Man, when it comes to the world of smelly old books. Sans Oakley and with Clerihew marginalised, aren’t you on the way to a glittering career?’
It was true. Promotion was beckoning. He didn’t care.
And soon, after another drink (Leo brought over a bottle of champagne, to celebrate, but most of the glasses remained half full), it was time for Alice to go. Odette and Leo had a table at the River Café, and they asked Andrew to join them. He shook his head and turned to Alice:
‘Can I see you home? We could walk.’
‘Not in those shoes,’ said Odette, her laugh forced.
‘I think I should get a taxi.’
‘Can I ride with you?’
After a pause: ‘Yes.’
Before the two couples split to find taxis there was a teletubbies style group hug. Odette cried; Alice cried. Andrew didn’t cry, yet. But his knuckles were white, and he gripped Leo’s shoulder so hard his friend had to twist away.
Andrew and Alice didn’t speak in the taxi. Nor, despite the shiny vinyl of the seats, did they slide comfortably together. Andrew felt sick to his soul. They reached St John’s Wood. Andrew was paralysed.
‘I’m here,’ said Alice. ‘I’d say come up, but with Mummy there … it would be awkward.’
Andrew still could not move or speak. Alice leaned over and kissed him gently on the lips. She then quickly pulled away, opened the door, and fled into the night. The contact was too brief for either to feel the hot salt tears of the other.
TWENTY-SEVEN
A Death at Heathrow
Alice knew that she had caused Andrew pain. And she knew that leaving him was the most difficult part of her decision. She knew that he loved her, and she knew that she felt strongly attracted to him. She didn’t suffer the agony of love she had felt for Matija, nor experience the intense sexual excitement and passion she had sometimes felt welling inside her for Lynden. What she felt for Andrew was a kind of joy, a lightness, a sense of harmony and rightness. Did that deserve less than the pain and the passion to be called love? Well, if it did, she couldn’t let herself use the word. She knew that she had to go. She could not stay even for … even for love.
Kitty was waiting for her when she came in.
‘How was my dress?’ she asked.
‘Everybody loved it. I think it was the best costume there.’
‘That’s nice. Now take it off before you ruin it, and then come and sit beside me and tell me all about your evening.’
Alice told her. She made it sound as grand and as glorious as she could, and Kitty’s eyes shone with pleasure. And then, close together on the sofa, they watched a late film.
* * *
As the door to the taxi closed, Andrew came to life. He wiped the tears away with his sleeve and pounded the seat, until the cabbie said, ‘Steady on, son.’ His mind knew a turmoil he had never experienced before: the churning, grinding horror of love lost, of love lost forever. ‘I can’t live without her,’ he said to himself, and was shocked at the implication of the words.
Andrew had always prided himself in his superficiality. ‘Depth is an illusion,’ he would say to anyone who would listen, ‘surface is everything.’ It was only a way of saying that what counted, what contributed to meaning, was what people said, how they behaved, those things which changed the fabric of the world. Invisible movement beneath the surface was, he contended, not movement at all. All talk of depth was myth or metaphor, ultimately traceable from Christian thought back through the Neoplatonists to Plato himself, and the invention of the soul, the inner being.
But now he could only think of this dreadful thing that had happened in terms of depth. He had been fissured, pierced to the soul, as much and as deeply as any St Sebastian. He could not shrug off this pain as a passing shower through which he would emerge to dry in the sun of new experiences. He was soaked to the skin, and through the skin to the soul, and now he would never dry out.
He stopped the taxi in the middle of nowhere. He wanted to walk. He thought he could probably find his way back to the flat in Crouch End. And if he couldn’t, so what? As he walked he found that he was doing something he hadn’t done for twenty years: he prayed. Please God, he said, make her change her mind. Make her not want to go. Make the plane not work. Make Mauritius have a volcano go off, or a revolution, so nobody can go there. But what if he was praying to the wrong god? There were so many. He briefly nodded towards Allah and Jehovah, before going on a whistle-stop tour of world religions, pacing them out with his quick steps. Did Buddha count as a god? Could you pray to him? He tried. Confucius? Softly softly catchee monkey. Probably more to it than that. And which was the best of the Hindu gods? The one with an elephant’s head? He always had a soft spot for the one with an elephant’s head. Looked sort of friendly. Unlike Baal, who was one of the hard bastards. And Quetzalcoatl, the Plumed Serpent, who feasted on the hearts of human sacrifices. And then there were the big-toothed war gods of Polynesia. You wanted those on your team. Help me, he prayed, prayed to all of them, get together and make this all right. You can do it, you know you can.
He was in Archway, still miles from home.
She wasn’t going to stay. There weren’t any volcanoes on Mauritius. Just beautiful beaches, and lots of those fascinating snails. How could Alice not prefer that to stinky old England, and stinky old him? If he were her, then he’d … go.
Go.
GO!
Madness.
What about the wonderful career at Enderby’s opened up for him by the new regime? Oakley gone; the hard-nosed Americans gone. But what had Alice said about it? ‘A pretty worthless sort of life.’ Did it make any difference now just because the English toffs had turfed out the foreign Johnnies? And wasn’t there something unpleasant about the way Brooksbank had described the Americans and the Japanese? Something bordering on the racist? Was it really any better to be governed by idiotic snobs, even if their manners and their suits were perfect, rather than the ruthless slash-and-burn merchants of the dollar-yen axis?
No, not really any better. His dad had been right about the Farquars and the Percys.
But what could he do if he followed Alice? Was there a university in Mauritius? Of course, there must be. There were universities everywhere. Fucking Salford had one, for Christ’s sake. What language did they teach in? Mauritian? Was that a language? No, surely it was French. His French was trés bien. Or was it trés bon? And even if there wasn’t a position for him at the Ancien Universitaire de Mauritius, then surely he could teach English as a foreign language, or get a job picking coconuts.
The plans whirled through his brain and, when he reached his flat at three in the morning, he was more awake than he’d ever been in his life. He hadn’t used his passport for two years, and it felt as if it took him that long to find it. Finally, there it was, under the sheet of lemon-coloured wallpaper that lined his sock drawer, along with an old tube pass, twenty quid, and an emergency condom, now sadly passed its use-by date.
What was the weather like in Mauritius? Hot, surely. But was it Mauritian w
inter now, or summer? Hang on, equator. It was always summer. Probably the rainy season, though. So, put on his light summer suit, and bring an umbrella. Why didn’t he get it cleaned before putting it away in September? Surely to fuck those couldn’t be sweat marks under his arms? How did he manage to sweat right through his suit? But wait, getting ahead. If he was to catch Alice’s plane, he had to find out when it left, and if there were any seats. You could get tickets at the airport, couldn’t you? They always did in films. Cost more though. Fuck it. Not everyday you sacrifice everything to chase a snail expert to Mauritius.
It took him half an hour to track down the right number and get a sensible reply. Eight forty-five. London Heathrow. Air France. Had to be it.
It was five-thirty by the time he’d finished packing. Travel light, he thought. Boost the local economy by buying what he needed out there. He wrote a letter to work, resigning on the grounds, in draft one, of mental turmoil, in draft two, of repetitive strain injury, in draft three, of neurasthenia, and in draft four, of melancholia. He then started again, and asked for a month’s special leave to attend a sick relative. No point burning all of his boats. Just a canoe, and a broken bit of wood to use as an oar. In case it all went wrong.
How the hell did you get to Heathrow? He found a map and traced his way with his finger. Fuck, M25. He hated the M25. He had memories of going all the way round London twice trying to find the right place to get off. He washed his face and brushed his teeth, wearing his summer suit, getting toothpaste stains down the front. He wiped it with a facecloth, knowing that the white smear would appear again later on, when the wet patch dried. Didn’t care. Hair. Brush, pull, tear.
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