‘The thing is …’ I said.
‘Thought I was going to die of boredom back there,’ he said, weaving left and right across the pavement. ‘Worst thing of all having to turn up with one’s wife when one can’t stand her. You did all right, did you, sat next to her? She didn’t rip you to shreds?’
‘No. At least, not exactly.’ I paused. ‘She actually invited me on a trip with her painting circle tomorrow.’
Alec hooted. ‘Oh, she’s a devil, all right.’
I narrowed my eyes at him. ‘Why’s that? I might not go, you know.’
‘Oh, you should. Have a whale of a time, as long as you keep your wits about you.’ He laughed again, and I wasn’t in the least comforted.
At the bottom of the hill we crossed over the road,
walked past the entrance to the Snooks and carried on. The Majestic Hotel reared its wedding-cake façade beside us, and Alec roared good evening at the liveried doorman, clasping the man’s meaty hand before trotting up the steps to the revolving doors. I followed at a slower pace, fearful we might be thrown out, although the doorman, whose broad red face and veined nose betrayed his habits, merely beamed at Alec’s disappearing back.
In the large, chandelier-lit lobby of the Majestic, a nonagenarian with a handlebar moustache tinkled the piano and clumps of holidaymakers sat in huge enfolding chairs and pretended not to be falling asleep. Alec strode to the desk, leaned one elbow on its polished surface and said to the clerk, ‘We’re here to see Lord Hugh Mason-Chambers. He’s expecting us.’
‘Mr Bray and friend?’
Alec pointed to me and nodded heavily, like a dog.
‘Room Eighty-Two, sir. Top floor.’
As the lift ticked down to meet us, I said to Alec, ‘So what are we doing here, exactly?’
Alec put an arm round my shoulders. ‘Having fun, dear boy. Isn’t that what life’s all about?’
It seemed pointless to say that I’d been having fun before. I allowed Alec to lead me into the lift. ‘Is he really the tenth-richest man in England?’
‘God, no.’ Alec peered at himself in the mirrored walls that lined the contraption. My stomach churned as we ascended, and I realized I’d had more port than I’d intended.
‘Bump’s the youngest of the tribe. Hasn’t a bloody bean to call his own, except for the old man’s allowance,
and I tell you, it requires some financial jiggery-pokery to convince him it all goes on essential needs. This is the plan, y’see, with our little dummies under the arches. Goin’ to make us a fortune.’
‘What about Sampson?’ I said, as the lift jerked to a nausea-inducing halt on the eighth floor.
‘Duke of Cowray pays for him.’ Alec flicked my collar. ‘That’s the old man.’
Not Bump, then. ‘So you lied to Dr Feathers.’
Alec widened his eyes. ‘Me? Lie? I won’t have it, Carver. I bite my thumb at you, cuz.’ Which he did, as the lift doors opened. ‘See how well studied I am, eh, quoting the Bard? Come on.’
He dragged me along a parqueted corridor to a room and hammered on the door. ‘Let us in, you fool!’ he bellowed. ‘We’ve been waiting here for hours!’
The door was opened, not by Bump, but by a girl with a feather in her hair and so much make-up smeared on her face she made Clara Bray seem positively demure. She was holding a cocktail in one hand and peered at us short-sightedly, then leaned back into the room and said, ‘Oi! You got a coupla mates out here! Shall I let ’em in?’
There was an answering roar, and the girl stepped back, waving us through exaggeratedly. ‘You look like nice boys,’ she said, ‘or I wouldn’t bother, know what I mean?’
I entered the room gingerly. We were in a sort of anteroom, carpeted wall to wall, and through an open doorway we spied Bump spread out on a huge sofa, a girl draped on either side of him. They were all drinking the same cocktail, a bubbly concoction spiked with mint leaves. One of the girls, I noticed, was wearing just a petticoat.
‘There you are.’ Bump cast aside the girls and lumbered to his feet. ‘Thought you’d pansied out. Come in. Right. This is … sorry, I’ve forgotten their names. Anyway, they’re damned pretty, don’t you think?’
I hardly knew where to look. Alec, however, went straight to the sofa, sat down and said, indicating the cocktails, ‘How about you get me one of those? A man could die of thirst in here.’
Bump snapped his fingers at the girl who’d just let us in and was now hovering in the doorway. ‘You! Go and tell Sampson to knock us up a couple more of these things.’
The girl clipped two fingers to her head in a mock-salute and staggered off through yet another doorway.
Alec watched her go. ‘How many bloody rooms d’you have here, Mason?’
‘Whole bloody suite of ’em.’ Bump waved his arm. ‘Bedroom’s the size of a swimming pool.’ He winked at the girls on the sofa, whose bored expressions flipped back into simpers as he turned to them.
I sat on the edge of the armchair, torn between horror and fascination. Bump resumed his position between the two girls.
‘Now, where was I?’ he said, holding out his arms along the sofa back, allowing a female to fold herself into him. ‘What d’you think, Bray? Sampson doesn’t even know this backwater, and look at the beauties he’s picked.’
The girls giggled with dead eyes. Not a single one could be described as beautiful, but I supposed Bump was attempting to be chivalrous. The one wearing more than a petticoat shuffled over to where Alec was sitting.
‘Hello, sweetie,’ she said. ‘What’s your name then?’
‘Don’t tell ’em!’ commanded Bump. ‘No names, no pack drill, what?’
The girl stuck her tongue out at him. ‘You’re full of it, ain’tcha, Oscar Wilde?’
‘Calling me a fairy, you strumpet?’ Bump turned away from her in rather an affected way. ‘I shall talk to you, little flower,’ he mumbled, stroking the neck of the petticoat-clad girl.
The girl with the feather in her hair came back into the room. ‘Ta-da!’ she said, holding a tray of drinks, which rattled dangerously as she weaved her way towards us. She bent towards Alec, who took one with a mumble of thanks, and then made her way towards me. ‘Here y’are, darling.’
I took it and sipped. It was extremely strong. I should go, I thought. The whole situation was so immoral I could barely take it in. And yet my rear appeared to be rooted to the armchair, even when the girl with the feather sat on the arm of it, her perfume drifting in and out of my lungs.
‘You got a special friend, sweetheart?’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised, good-looking man like you.’
I coughed. ‘I’m … um … yes,’ I said, hoping that would encourage her to leave me alone, and then hoping that it wouldn’t. ‘That is, I’m, um … well, she’s called Lizzie.’ I wished immediately I hadn’t told the girl her name.
‘Sounds lovely.’ She put her lips near my ear. ‘Bet she don’t put out for you though, eh?’
I swallowed my drink with difficulty. ‘Um … I’d rather not … rather not say,’ I said weakly. The girl laughed and tickled my ear. ‘Wh-what about you?’ I asked. ‘I mean, are you married, or – er … ?’
The girl laughed out loud. Recovering herself, she said, ‘No, darling, I ain’t. No time for a beau, know what I mean? And all these handsome men about, seems a shame to tie yourself to one of ’em, don’t it?’
This last was shot across the room to the other two girls. The one who was talking to Bump looked up. ‘I reckon I got the handsomest here,’ she said, stroking Bump’s face.
‘Stop talking, you.’ Bump stood up and held out his hand. ‘Come with me.’
She squealed with delight and allowed him to pull her to her feet. She trotted after him towards the bedroom, waving goodbye at the others, and I thought all of a sudden, and quite unbidden, about Clara Bray, and if this had been her life before she’d married my cousin. Everybody knew what third-rate actresses were like, and Alec had confirmed it. Yet I couldn’t quite square it somehow, these brazen girls with their harsh voices and tipsy manners, and Mrs Bray at her dining table in a lozenge of morning sunshine, shaking the newspaper and pouring coffee.
I looked at Alec. He had his eyes closed and was sprawled on the sofa. The girl beside him watched for a while, then shrugged and stretched herself out on the spot recently vacated by the other two. From across the room, I heard two sets of rhythmic snores.
The girl on the arm of my chair laughed. ‘Listen to the pair of ’em,’ she said. ‘Like a soddin’ express train, eh?’
‘He’s …’ I hiccuped. I looked at my glass and realized it was empty. ‘He’s a married man.’
‘I see,’ said the girl disinterestedly, and then, in a flurry of excitement, turned to me. ‘Listen, is that the one I think it is?’
I looked up at her. Her perfume was giving me a headache. ‘I’m sorry?’
‘You know, what all the scandal was about all that time ago.’ She peered at him. ‘The fat feller, your mate, he mentioned something and I thought,
Hang on a minute, I’m sure it’s him
. I mean, I know he was all like, what’s the word, exonerated and that, but anyway, is it him?’
‘I … er … I …’ I found it hard to answer her at this point because she was rubbing her hand up and down my inner thigh. I wondered if she would be beautiful without the make-up and the heavy perfume.
‘Dreadful,’ she said thoughtfully, still moving her hand. ‘That poor, poor girl. I mean, I know it was nothing to do with him, but still. That poor girl.’
‘I don’t know wh—’ I began, but was forced to stop because she lunged at me, planting her lips upon mine and putting her tongue in my mouth.
She tasted warm and wet and of tobacco. Her kiss was nothing like Lizzie’s experimental manoeuvre; this was professionally done. My head spun. I was drunk – I was aware of this, and aware of her hand travelling across the surface of my trousers, and of the cheap scent of her, and, somewhere far distant, the sound of snoring, and, beyond even that, a steady grunting accompanied by high-pitched squeals, and I thought of the pigs on my grandfather’s estate farm rushing for their food, and then all thoughts of any kind receded in importance right the way to a very small spot at the back of my brain.
There was a confusion of limbs, and the girl clambered on top of me. I heard my glass hitting the carpet and the crackle of ice cubes spilling out. She released my tongue
and nibbled at my ear, then undid the top button of my shirt. Her hand was still scrabbling about over my groin and I set my jaw, tried to control myself, to think grim, miserable thoughts, but then her fingers were curling round the buttons below my waist and, with a sudden burst amidst shouts and other noises, it was all over, quite, quite suddenly.
‘Oh.’ The girl looked down, then back into my face, a smile on her lips. ‘You was having a great time, wasn’t you?’
‘I … I … I’m terribly sorry.’ My face was burning. My trousers were sodden. Now my thoughts truly were miserable. From across the room the pairs of snores still emerged, and from the bedroom the grunts and squeals, and as a whole they appeared to mock me.
‘You ain’t got nothing to apologize for, sweetheart.’ She kissed my forehead. ‘My fault for getting you all excited too quickly. I don’t know my own power sometimes.’ She dimpled a smile.
I thought I might burst into tears, and struggled to contain them. ‘I’m so awfully embarrassed,’ I whispered. ‘This is all … I mean, I would never do this sort of thing usually.’
She shook her head, eyes wide. ‘Promise I won’t tell a soul,’ she said. ‘Anyhow, means I still left you pure and unsullied, eh?’ She winked.
I hardly knew what to say to that, but she lifted my chin with her hand and said, ‘Or we can wait and try again in a bit.’
‘No, no.’ I struggled to sit upright. She removed herself from my lap and returned to the armchair as I did myself up again. ‘Thank you. But no.’
She shrugged. ‘Your fat mate’s paid for us for the whole evening. Ain’t no skin off my nose.’ Then she turned back and stared at my groin. ‘Can’t see a thing, sweetheart. You’ll be just fine.’
I looked down. We were in dim light, but I felt the liquid drenching my underclothes all the same, and wondered how on earth I would get home. This was my punishment, anyhow, for being so utterly wicked. ‘I am sorry,’ I whispered. ‘I have used you in such a vile way, I …’
‘Oh, shut up, darling.’ She leaned away from me, beside the armchair, and returned with a silver bag from which she pulled a cigarette and a lighter. She offered me one, but I shook my head. ‘Your sweetheart – you said she was Lizzie, right?’ she asked as she lit her cigarette.
‘Yes.’ Blackmail, extortion. I wondered how I could tell her I was completely broke. I trembled.
‘Then who’s Lara?’
I blinked. ‘Lara?’
‘Ain’t that what you was saying? Just now. Lara or Clara. Something like that.’
‘No, no,’ I said, thinking quickly. ‘It was C-Cara … Caravaggio. The … the quality of light in his work is ever so … moving.’
She tapped the ash into my now empty glass. ‘Killed a man, didn’t he?’ she said. ‘Funny, ain’t it, to have all that beauty inside you, and all that violence too.’
I felt nauseous. ‘I have to go.’
I left her just like that, without even a farewell, and lurched towards the anteroom. Even from here, I could hear the crescendo of noises as Bump reached the peak
of his personal mountain, and the cry as he fell off the end of it. I opened the door and stumbled into the corridor, walking blindly along until I found the staircase, thinking I could hardly bear to see myself in the mirrored brightness of the lift.
The eight flights offered me a steady rhythm within which my brain bobbed a little more comfortably than it had before, but as I reached the lower floors the lights flared more harshly and I was suddenly aware of the awful state of my appearance. On the first floor I removed my tailcoat, folded it in front of myself to hide the damp stain on my trousers, and took the rest of the stairs like a fugitive.
The lobby was quiet now: the nonagenarian had packed himself off to bed, and the concierge on the desk was nodding asleep over a book. He looked up when I came down and I forced myself to keep a steady pace, smiling goodbye, even lifting a hand, and emerging into the cool night air with a sense of blessed relief.
I met nobody on the walk back to Castaway. The events of the evening continued to swirl about my head. Thank goodness Alec had been asleep as I’d called his wife’s name; what had I been thinking of? A moment of madness, no doubt. I would have to blow out the trip tomorrow; I could hardly face her. Then I thought that I would have to go, or else she would suspect something was up.