by James Brodie
The music jarred abruptly to a halt as a group of adolescents dressed up as middle aged men in dinner jackets knocked over the amplification system with a bit of horseplay. No one had told them it wasn’t a fancy dress party. It temporarily broke the spell for me, so that by the time things got back underway with ‘Twisting the Night Away’ I had wandered outside into the hall and was leaning against the wall while I lit another cigarette. As I did so I noticed Pascale and Frank sitting together at the foot of the main stairs. They had somehow lost the rest of the crowd and were engaged in earnest conversation. I couldn’t catch what Frank was saying but he appeared to take it very seriously. He was frowning in concentration and emphasising certain points, I could tell by the undulation in his voice. Pascale was not doing much talking, but she was doing a lot of significant looking straight into the eyes and a great deal of sympathetic head nodding at critical junctures of Frank’s monologue. She had also slipped her arm round his shoulders and was fondling his chin and jaw and upper neck with a method that was impressive. She noticed me standing there but gave no flicker of recognition. I walked up to them and past them and up the stairs. I was curious on my own account to discover what Christopher was up to, I was sure it would be something unhealthy. I tried a closed door but it was locked. I heard a voice say, “There’s someone outside,” and footsteps coming towards the door. I ran silently up the corridor and round a corner before the door was opened. The same voice said “He’s gone, whoever he is,” and the door closed. From downstairs rose the monotonously familiar Bossa Nova beat of Stan Getz’s ‘Girl From Ipanema’.... ‘.. Tall and tanned and lean and lovely....’ Next to where I had flattened myself against the wall was another door, not locked. I turned the handle and stepped inside.
‘At Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree.’ There to me a wonderland was revealed. In a large room of the piano nobile a parallel party was warming up. Things up here were in a state of disarray, ties and other articles of clothing had been discarded and the process of letting go had reached a more advanced stage. There were plenty of young girls in the room and they had the goods. I normally only saw photos of them in the William Hickey column, or draped over cars at the Motor Show. There was a lot of pill-popping going on, bennies, uppers, French blues, purple hearts, were being freely passed around as if in some utopian dream of Aneurin Bevan. I sat down next to a girl with long blonde hair who gave me a handful. A guy with a bishop’s mitre and crozier was leaning up against the wall on the other side of the room. He looked well out of it. I pointed him out to the girl and asked why he was so attired. She told me he was the Bishop of Grantham. It seemed logical. The dream-like quality was enhanced by a gang of old guys, one of them the quizzical T.V. reporter, who were assisting one of the more ‘vivacious’ young things into the bottom half of a suit of armour. The ruling classes at play, it all seemed harmless enough. The girl who had given me the pills kept telling me that it was a beautiful party and that we were all wonderful people. She kept telling me that, with a profundity that made her a pain in the arse. I didn’t respond and after a while she started telling the girl on the other side of her. I stayed in that room for quite a while, I would have been bored if I hadn’t been getting stoned.... They succeeded in getting the girl into the suit of armour and tried walking her about without much success. A few couples, both hetero and homo started to enact hazy impressions of Weimar decadence and in a corner I saw a middle aged guy pull a Mars Bar out of his pocket and give a knowing wink to his chum. I wasn’t sure whether they had Mars Bars in Weimar Germany.
I became aware that the guy slumped in a stupor next to me was Forsythe. I looked around for Sandie but she wasn’t there. Wise girl, I thought and wondered whether I might get my hands on her. I decided against speaking to Forsythe and was about to make a discreet move to get away from him when his voice arrested me. His eyes were closed and he was lying in a drunken posture so this trick of co-ordinated speech was quite surprising, and quite disquieting.
“You’re letting me down..... You’re annoying Adrian.”
“Who’s Adrian?”
“Adrian remembers you even if you don’t remember him. He wants to pay you a visit. I told him you were working hard for us.... I hope I didn’t mislead him. He gets upset if he thinks he’s been misled.”
“Messengers always get blamed for bad news. It was wise of you not to upset him.”
“Don’t fuck me about Marshall. If you don’t deliver soon on Bryant, people will be giving up their seats to you on buses....” Perhaps it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to find out Chris’s whereabouts. I got up and walked to a door in the corner, which I had only just noticed, on seeing a guy slip furtively through it while Forsythe was busy motivating me. Perhaps this was how Alice felt on the other side of the looking glass. I entered the cosier atmosphere of a smaller room, a bedroom. There were about ten blokes in it. A large double bed took up much of the room, it had brass rails at the head and foot and to these a girl was being tied, quite willingly. Her wrists had already been secured to the head-rails and she was now being arranged in a kneeling position so that her arse stuck up in the air facing the audience. Her skirt was off so that we were confronted by a pair of mauve panties. The hushed reverent nature of the proceedings gave the feel of a sacred ritual being performed in the small side chapel of a great cathedral, a very small side chapel - The Peruzzi in Santa Croce perhaps. As her companions went about their business of binding her she kept on her face a look of supreme patience that suggested she was practised in the exercise and knew just how much longer it would take. I knew the face, it was the Rank Starlet. By her side the Bishop of Grantham added dignity and authority to the occasion, he had hung her bra on his crozier. Another guy was preparing a gag to put over her mouth, a very sensible idea, I thought. When that was done another guy slipped her pants down to round her knees, it was my cabinet minister friend. Mitre and gown, sceptre and orb, bra and panties..... Church and State in perfect unison. The minister carried out the act with a perfect sense of ceremony; he could have been unveiling a plaque at a new public library. He stepped back and admired his handiwork, a beautiful pair of buttocks suspended in mid air. This was no spontaneous orgy, it was Masonic in its ritual and there seemed to be a long way to go before consummation, whatever form that would take. The holy atmosphere was broken by the sound of screams and shouts coming from down the corridor. I recognised Pauline’s voice. I was stoned on drink not drugs, stoned in a kind of way that makes you deeply philosophical, that opens the doors of perception, the way that makes it really evil for anyone in your company who is not stoned. I was not physically incapable, if anything the opposite. I was liberated to act spontaneously. On hearing the shouting I pushed past all the blokes in the room to the door.
“Hey, watch it,” someone said. The door was locked. It would have led to the hallway. I ploughed back through them again and through the adjacent room where the drugs scene was arriving at new levels of experience. Again I scattered autumn wasps in the final stages of expiration. I got to the door and found myself out in the corridor where I had hidden earlier in the night. I ran towards the shouting and screaming which was now incessant and coming from the room I had tried when I first came up the stairs. It was still locked but the screams came through it powerfully. People downstairs were looking up casually to see what was going on. I threw myself at the door but it was heavy and solid and I bounced off.
“What’s going on?” said a voice inside through the screams. I tried again without any luck, then I moved along to another door, this was unlocked. It led to an empty salon lit by a chandelier. From here the screaming came at me again, this time through a side door. I put my hand to it and burst into the room. They’d got her down on the floor, three blokes. She was kicking and fighting and her face was full of hate and fear and humiliation. Most of her clothes were off and her big tits were flopping down towards the carpet and then jumping back up as she moved in the struggle - It wasn’t a turn
on. The mascara and eye shadow she’d put on in the car had run with her tears down her face, her shoes were kicked off and lost and they’d got her skirt up. One guy was kneeling above her head holding her arms down, as best he could, above her elbows. There was a guy on each leg, stretching them outwards, and standing above her, his trousers now voluntarily removed, was our genial host. They turned and looked at me for a second, an unwelcoming glance but they would have ignored me if I’d said nothing and just watched. Then a sudden flash of light made me blink and I saw Christopher crouching on the edge of an armchair. He’d just taken a picture of Pauline stretched out. He started fiddling with the camera. I ran at him and kicked it out of his hands. It was hard edged and metallic and even though I was smashed I felt the pain in my foot.
“You arsehole... you fucking arsehole.” I put my face next to his and collected as much saliva as possible at the back of my throat and ejected it into his eyes and face. No one did anything so I picked up the camera and threw it at the window. On impact the flash attachment broke off and fell back inside, but the camera broke the glass and disappeared into the blackness. The guy who had been holding her arms got up to face me but as he did so I kicked him in the balls. He was an oldish guy and I like to think he was unused to violence. Certainly an expression of shock as well as pain came to his face as he sank back down to the floor. Pauline had started to kick and scream again and the guys holding her legs were now much more on the defensive and, being unsure of themselves, weren’t doing so well. But I hadn’t finished with Chris yet. I put my face next to his.
“You shitbag.” I bought my elbow down on his head and smacked him in the face with my other fist, by now I was almost berserk - A terrible sight to behold. To prove my irrational state I picked up a bottle and threw it into the centre of a large mirror in a rococo frame. I was making up for months of it, months of being fucked around, being made to hike across Richmond Park, being told I didn’t understand the wider implications, being part of a game where they never told you the rules. And now these stumbling aristocratic nonentities and geriatrics were paying the price, being visited by the full fury of an embittered opportunist. And what a beautifully ennobling cause I served. Pauline was up on her feet now, still screaming and lashing out, kicking and spitting. She went for me in her unselecting hatred and I got a deep scratch across my face before I ducked out of range.
“You silly cow,” I shouted. “... I’m on your side, let’s go.” By now there were noises coming from behind the locked door; we had attracted curiosity. For a second I had a wonderful vision of bashing the other two guys’ heads together and doing something pretty unpleasant to His Lordship, but I wasn’t so far gone not to have the sense to quit while I was still ahead. I grabbed Pauline by the arm and dragged her across the floor to the door. The key was in the lock. I opened it and we pushed our way quickly through a little throng, hesitant and deferential, aware that the great events of history are always destined to take place in their absence. Pauline was more clued up now about what was going on and I didn’t have to exert force to get her to run down the stairs and out of the house with me. As we ran across the gravel we were suddenly thrown into stark illumination by the headlights of a car.
“Hey Alex, you wildcat, what’s your game boy?”
I looked up blinking and pulled Pauline so that we moved out of the main glare of the lights. Frank was behind the wheel of a Bentley, next to him I saw Pascale’s impassive face.
“Nothing special Frank baby.... nothing special.”
“You young bastard! I bet you’re up to no good. Bruh-huh-huh.”
It didn’t greatly concern me whether or not he found it an amusing diversion from his blissful solitude with Pascale. Her opinion didn’t concern me either. I grabbed hold of Pauline and pulled her over to Chris’s car. I knew he kept a spare set of keys in the glove compartment, I just had to get into the car. I left her for a second and searched on the ground for a stone. Amazingly I couldn’t find one, couldn’t find a fucking stone in a fucking garden. I couldn’t believe it. …..Lights were going on in the house and I sensed an atmosphere of retribution in rapid preparation. In frustration I kicked at the side edging coping to a flowerbed and it deflected. I bent down and yanked it out of the ground with a hard tug. By now I could hear voices raised in anger inside. I brought the coping down hard against the quarter-light and the glass crumpled and shattered into a dense frosty spider’s web but still remained intact. I put my elbow to it and the glass fell into the car. I shoved my hand through the hole and cut it on a jagged edge of glass, but I could reach down and open the door. I reached across and opened the passenger door and told Pauline to get in. She stood there, she must have been in a state of shock by then. I got out of the car and ran round and bundled her in. She offered no resistance, it was like handling an alienated but co-operative sack of potatoes. I’d just got back inside the car when the Praetorian Guard of the party arrived on the portico. They’d taken their time, but of course it couldn’t have been an easy story to relate or comprehend, let alone act upon having comprehended. They didn’t know we were in the car of course so I felt safe as I fiddled and searched blind in the glove box. My hand closed on the keys and brought them out. Pauline had started to sob in great heaves, with long distance between sobs, as if they came from a long way down. I put the key in the ignition and pulled the choke. I had driven the car once before when Chris had been more pissed than me.... They were fanning out onto the drive now, a lot of them, some in dinner jackets, not knowing where to look. But I knew if I waited much longer they couldn’t help but see us. I turned the ignition, the engine gave a bleat of dissent and then died. They all looked up and the guy nearest to me pointed and started running towards us. I tried again and this time the engine caught. I pumped the gas hard and screamed out towards them in second gear. I turned the headlights on just as I saw a guy’s face loom up at the side window and disappear again. I’d fucked up the turn, running out of gravel and into flowerbed so I reversed at speed, smashing into a parked car. When I tried to go forward I could feel this terrible restraint, but then the bumpers uncoupled as they deformed under pressure and we roared off down the drive sending our pursuers dancing back, waving and shaking their fists, antagonistic night insects.
The gravel surged towards me in the cone of light and Pauline shivered and sobbed next to me. I reached behind me to feel for the blanket I knew was on the back seat; my hand didn’t make contact. I moved it about then turned to look. As I did so the car made explosive impact with something on the passenger wing. I instantly thought we’d been hit by an artillery shell fired at long range from the house. We were thrown forward and the car stalled. We’d hit a stone gatepost on the boundary of the estate. I jumped out. The wing was bashed badly, the headlight was broken and had gone out.... We were nearly a mile from the house now and there was no noise except for my swearing and Pauline’s crying. I started the car and reversed up and then turned right down a small meandering B road. I was going slowly now. I looked in the back and got hold of the blanket which had fallen on the floor between the seats. I gave it to Pauline but it remained the crumpled bundle that I put in her hands so as I drove I draped it over and round her with my free hand. She clutched at its edges and drew it across her. We drove slowly through a couple of villages - smug, well-heeled places with antique shops and delicatessens - essentials of life for the agricultural labourer. I fiddled with the radio but could get nothing. My watch had stopped and Chris never bothered to keep the car clock going, I’d no idea what time it was. I flipped to long wave and got a French station. We’d just gone through the second village when I saw the lights in front of us. At first I thought it was an oncoming car but then I realised it was stationary, then as we got up close I saw it was a police Wolsley with two policemen standing by it. They signalled me to pull over and I wound the window down as one of them came across and the other started walking round the car. He stopped when he saw the smashed wing and started examining it
.
“Good morning sir,” said the copper who had approached the window with the heavy sarcasm that is some coppers’ only mode of speech. I turned off the engine and we could all hear the voice of the singing female frog much clearer.
“Where are we off to then sir?”
“London.”
“Where have we been then sir?”
“Visiting friends.”
“This your wife is it sir?”
“No.”
The other copper finished looking at the wing and continued his walk. I heard an involuntary gasp as he saw the back bumper.