14
‘I think you’re very brave, Juliette, to have the party here,’ said Veronica as she peeled the layers of crumpled foil from a clutch of cocktail sausages, ‘considering everything.’
Veronica was wearing a maxi-dress fastened down the front by a long line of pea-sized buttons, the whole thing patterned with myriad forget-me-nots. Veronica’s tall, full figure was somewhat lost within this column of fabric, though a square neckline revealed the beginnings of a smooth, unblemished cleavage.
‘Brave?’ said Juliette, ‘Oh, you mean Bill. Him and Boris have met before.’
‘And?’
‘They’re not exactly best friends, but they tolerate each other.’
‘I still think it’s a funny thing to do,’ said Rita, who was busy with another foil-wrapped object, the loaf-shape of which puzzled Juliette and Veronica, ‘having your twenty-first birthday party at your ex-husband’s flat.’
The phrase ‘ex-husband’ still sounded odd to Juliette, even though Bill had been thus for nearly a year. But then she’d always felt odd referring to Bill as her husband anyway. She’d never felt properly married, being so young, and after that perfunctory ceremony in the Civic Centre with cheese sandwiches and sweet Spanish wine at Fernlight Avenue afterwards, then residence in a rented upstairs flat at Polperro Gardens, which had never seemed really theirs. Looking back on it now, on the evening of her twenty-first birthday, her marriage had seemed as ephemeral and as trivial as a passing teenage obsession with a pop group might seem – all-absorbing at the time, the reason for life itself, yet in hindsight a baffling, bewilderingly pointless act of misdirected devotion.
‘It was Graham’s idea,’ said Juliette, ‘Boris’s place is too small and the walls are too thin.’
‘Did he ask Bill first, we wonder,’ said Veronica, with a half wink to Rita.
Graham’s flat was over a lingerie shop on Windhover Hill Parade. It had one large living room which overlooked the High Street through two tall sash windows, the view partially obscured at the moment by roofers’ scaffolding. Being adjacent to the zebra crossing the room was lit by the endlessly repeated glow of a Belisha beacon, which in the evening cast the shadow of a cheeseplant huge on the back wall. ‘Free disco lighting,’ Graham had bragged when persuading Juliette to use the flat. Bill now lived there as a sort of sub-tenant, occupying a child-sized bedroom down one of the narrow, twisting passageways. He and Graham seemed to fit in well together, and with the flat. There was a loose, scuffed, bohemian atmosphere to the place. A grotesque work of art hung on one wall, halfway between a painting and a sculpture, in which a figure that could have been a First World War soldier in helmet and gas mask, rendered as a bas-relief in white plaster, loomed phantom-like from a black background. On another wall hung a gallery of Russian icons, Bill’s work. Juliette recognized some of the images that had hung on the walls at Polperro Gardens. Against the longest wall there was a long, soft, ripped couch. A record player with stereo speakers as big as fridges, which Graham never played above talking level, filled a corner. By the windows was an extended dining table, and it was on this that Juliette, Veronica Price and Rita Michaelangeli were arranging food and drinks for the party to come.
‘Have they gone to the same pub?’ said Veronica.
‘Who?’
‘Bill and Boris.’
‘Bill is in The Quiet Woman, naturally,’ said Juliette, ‘and Boris said he was going to The Red Lion with Scott and some others. They won’t meet until they’re here, by which time the party will be in full swing and they won’t even notice each other.’
Rita had unwrapped the mysterious object by this time, the result of a long and careful process, peeling away layer upon layer of foil, to reveal a rectangular cube of something that looked like not-quite-set plaster, with piped decorations along the edges, a row of sliced, stuffed olives along the top and whole hazelnuts at the corners.
‘Is that something you can eat?’ said Veronica, with genuine puzzlement.
‘Of course it’s something you can eat,’ Rita snapped, though her face remained serene.
‘What is it?’said Juliette who, with Veronica, was now bending down and peering closely at the object, as archaeologists examining a recently unearthed ivory casket.
‘It’s a sandwich gateau, and I spent all afternoon making it, so don’t take the piss.’
‘How did you make it?’ said Juliette.
‘You take a wholemeal loaf,’ Rita began, with the eagerness of someone who’d been waiting all day for this moment, ‘and then you slice it up. Then you make a white sauce and divide it into three. To one third you add salmon and cucumber, to another third you add cheese and chives and to the third third you add a dollop of Marmite. You spread these mixtures on alternating slices of the loaf, then you reassemble the whole thing, chill it, then coat it with a mixture of curd cheese and milk.
‘Really,’ said Veronica doubtfully, ‘that sounds absolutely . . .’
‘Disgusting,’ Juliette finished with a laugh.
‘It’s one of my mother’s recipes,’ said Rita, bewildered by her friends’ lack of gateau-enthusiasm, ‘we have it every time someone has a birthday . . .’
‘Talking of ex-husbands,’ said Juliette, who, having noticed a tremor in Rita’s lower lip, was anxious to draw the conversation away from the gateau, ‘Yours, Veronica, is in The Quiet Woman with mine. I could say you were equally brave . . .’
Veronica gave one of her head-back, open-mouthed, shimmering laughs.
‘Why on Earth should I be afraid of meeting Hugo?’
‘I’ve heard that he’ll be bringing his latest dolly bird with him.’
‘Has she got her parents’ permission?’ said Rita.
‘My dears,’ said Veronica, her voice still rich with laughter, ‘there is no person on Earth I could care less about meeting than that oafish, pot-bellied, strumpet-screwing lout of an ex-husband of mine, nor the latest sixth-form Lolita he’s bamboozled into bed.’
‘I think you should care,’ said Rita, ‘he needs taking down a peg or two, the way he treats women . . .’
Juliette caught the look that passed between Veronica and Rita, the intimate look of one-time adversaries now reconciled. The women who had once been rivals for the same man, and who now both despised him. Juliette felt momentarily envious. Was there a special closeness in friendships that form between former enemies?
‘I wouldn’t blame you Veronica,’ said Juliette, ‘if you wanted to attack him or anything. Do feel free, it’s my twenty-first after all.’
‘Do you think my tits show too much,’ said Rita whose top was a diaphanous, black satin blouse decorated with stars. It was tied at the back and kept in place by a single bow knot. The neckline was deep, the sleeves high and frilly.
‘If I was you I’d make sure I didn’t lift my elbows too high,’ said Veronica, peering in through the capacious sleeve.
‘And that knot looks a bit tempting,’ said Juliette, ‘I can just imagine someone pulling one of the strings as you walk past.’
‘Would it just undo?’
‘Yes,’ said Rita, who hadn’t considered the possibility before, ‘and if the knot undoes the whole top just collapses. I knew I should have put a bra on.’
‘Haven’t you got one on?’ said Veronica in wonder.
‘No,’ said Rita, proudly.
‘Very impressive, Rita. Neither have I, but you wouldn’t think I had, would you?’ She looked down at herself, then pulled her neckline forward and peeped in, giving a disappointed shrug.
‘How can you say that, Veronica,’ said Juliette, ‘you look like Mae West from here.’
‘Kind of you to say so, darling, kind of you to say so.’
‘I feel stupid being the only one wearing a bra. Shall I take it off?’
The others murmured negatives while Rita, suddenly self-conscious, began redoing the knot at the back of her blouse, double tying it, asking for safety pins, requesting that the other two tug at her redone knot to see if it would hold, then deciding that it was too tight and restricting her breathing. When finally the blouse seemed secure Juliette said ‘I’ll just go and see how my sausage goulash is doing,’ and skipped towards the kitchen.
‘I think I’ll get my Stilton mousse out of the fridge,’ said Veronica, following Juliette.
After some stirring of pots and adjusting of gas rings, the trio returned to the living room. Rita suggested it might be time to open a bottle of wine.
‘I suppose we could have some,’ said Veronica, ‘I hope everyone brings a bottle. Where did all these come from?’
‘Graham gets a discount at Angad’s,’ said Juliette, ‘him and Bill clubbed together and bought all this.’
‘Won’t last long,’ said Rita in a tone of grim prophecy, ‘not once Bill and that lot are back.’
‘They won’t get here for ages,’ said Juliette, selecting a bottle and applying a corkscrew, ‘they’ll be the last. We’ll have drunk it all by then . . .’
‘I’m not so sure, Juliette,’ said Veronica in a playful tone, ‘I think I see what’s going on here . . .’
‘What’s going on?’ The cork came out with a creak and a pop.
‘Graham persuading you to use the flat, then buying in all this booze, what does it look like to you, Rita?’
‘What?’ said Rita, who hadn’t been following the conversation.
‘It looks to me like Graham, sweet old thing, is trying to engineer some sort of reconciliation.’
‘Me and Bill?’ said Juliette, almost with disgust, ‘No, not a chance. Anyway, Boris will be here soon. Perhaps Graham’s trying to do something for you?’
‘With Hugo? You must be joking.’
There was general laughter.
‘Oh what a summer that was. What a silly, sultry summer,’ said Veronica.
She meant the summer of the year before, the drought summer, during which the two marriages, hers and Juliette’s, had effectively ended.
Thinking about such things inevitably led Veronica to her next question.
‘I’m presuming Janus will not be here.’
‘I hope not,’ said Juliette.
‘Does he know about it?’
‘No.’ Juliette said this with immediate certainty. Over the years she had become skilled at keeping things secret from Janus, ‘Anyway, he’s on permanent nightshift at the hospital . . .’
‘Hospital?’
‘Didn’t you know? He’s got a job at the East Edmonton Hospital, where we were all born . . .’
‘I was born in Oxford, if you don’t mind,’ said Veronica.
‘He must have been there for about a year now . . .’
‘He’s not still living at home is he, not with your poor old mother and father?’
Juliette gave one of her despairing, eyes-to-heaven looks.
‘He is. Mum can’t bring herself to throw him out for some reason, you’d think after last summer – you heard what happened when they were on holiday?’
The two women nodded.
‘Mum says he’s turned over a new leaf since then, and he’s got this job at the hospital wheeling people around. He put himself on permanent nightshift, she says, so that he doesn’t have any opportunities to go out drinking. Mum says he’s got a girlfriend now, a nurse or something, though she’s never met her.’
‘So that’s why we never see him in the pub any more, I thought it was because he fell out with Bill.’
‘That as well. He doesn’t go out at all now, he sleeps all day at home, gets up in the evening, goes to work, comes home in the morning, goes to bed around midday, or early afternoon, and then wakes up to go to work at night, I think his shift starts at ten.’
‘Permanently?’
‘Permanently, for the last few months anyway.’
‘How can he stand it? I couldn’t stand it, could you Rita?’
‘No,’ said Rita.
‘At least it’s keeping him on the straight and narrow,’ said Juliette, ‘he only just escaped a spell in prison after that incident in Tewkesbury.’
‘Did the police never catch up with him?’
‘No. Luckily he’d given a false name at the camp site office – John Speke, mum said, and the police could never trace the motorbike, as far as they knew it was registered to a man in Cornwall who’d been dead for five years. We never did find out where that motorbike came from, or where it went for that matter.’
‘He has the luck of the devil, your brother, doesn’t he,’ said Veronica, ‘he just does what he wants and gets away with it . . .’
‘No one can get away with it for ever,’ said Rita, still the grim prophetess.
‘But if he really has turned over a new leaf . . .’ began Veronica.
‘And got a girlfriend,’ said Rita, ‘that would be a novelty . . .’
‘. . . things must be easier for your mum and dad,’ Veronica concluded.
‘It just worries me,’ said Juliette, ‘if he has to put himself on permanent nights to keep himself off the booze . . . it’s not the same thing as giving up drink is it? It’s more like building a dam to hold back a river. The water builds up and up behind the ramparts, then eventually it spills over. As for the girlfriend, I’ll believe it when I see it. More likely he’s off on one of his infatuations with someone who’s not interested in him. It’ll be Angelica all over again. And I’ve heard stories from people connected with the hospital, that he drinks on the job . . .’
‘No . . .’ came the amazed negatives from the two women.
‘. . . think what it must be like portering for a hospital through the night. There can’t be that much work. He spends hours sitting in the porters’ mess taking swigs of rum from his locker when no one’s looking. That’s what I’ve heard anyway. And I’m worried because now that he’s got a steady job, if he doesn’t get himself a place of his own now, he never will, and we’re all just waiting for his next drunken bust-up, whenever it comes, then it’ll be another night in the police cells, forgiven and forgotten the next day, and the cycle will start up all over again. Then they’ll have to evict him, but they won’t do it on their own, it’ll be down to me to push them through the courts and sort it out . . .’
‘Have you met Juliette’s mum and dad, Veronica?’ said Rita.
‘Of course I have,’ said Veronica.
‘They’re lovely aren’t they?’
‘They’re on a spending spree at the moment,’ said Juliette, ‘dad’s just retired and been given a huge lump sum, and mum’s come into an inheritance from one of my uncles who died last year. I can’t remember how much – several thousand. Anyway, they’re rich for the first time in their lives, and every day they go out shopping. They bought their first ever fridge last week. They’re having a new bathroom put in, and the house is just full of new stuff. Mum bought a fur coat, jewellery, they’ve bought statues, expensive cookware, tools, furniture, books . . .’
The two women laughed, then the three were quiet for a few moments.
‘This wine tastes like grass,’ said Juliette, putting her nose in the glass, then holding the glass against the light of a candle.
‘It just tastes like wine to me,’ said Rita.
They both waited for Veronica’s opinion of the wine, since she claimed to be knowledgeable on the subject, but it didn’t come.
Then there came a wheezy rattling noise from the landing.
‘The door,’ said Juliette.
‘Guests,’ said Veronica, with a trace of disappointment in her voice.
‘I’ll answer it,’ said Rita, her voice full of eagerness to be helpful. She left the room.
Juliette experienced an unusual surge of nervousness as she listened for the voices, and stood up to refill her glass.
‘That’s two bottles gone already,’ she said after refilling Veronica’s glass.
‘I’ll probably slow down after this one,’ Veronica said, ‘I’m already feeling giggly,’ and she gave a giggle, as if to prove it.
‘I expect you to get more than giggly tonight Veronica.’
‘I don’t think it would be a good idea. I feel this urge coming on to fling myself at people . . .’
‘All the more reason’, said Juliette, applying the corkscrew to another bottle.
‘But there’s no point, there won’t be anyone worth flinging myself at, they’ll be either partnered already or they’ll be hopeless old drunks from The Quiet Woman and The Carpenters Arms, Bill and Hugo’s cronies, God what a dreary lot . . .’
‘You never know.’
Veronica shrugged, then knocked back the full glass of wine in her hand, holding it out to Juliette for a refill. They both chuckled.
It wasn’t unusual that the arrival of Boris in the room should have been so quiet – he was a quiet man, with the face of a blond, slightly thick-set Jesus and a mildness of manner that sometimes did work miracles in pacifying the volatile confrontations that sometimes erupted in the pubs where he drank. His dress sense and hairstyle was that of a beatnik or hippy, or more accurately something in between, a style he had developed in the mid 1960s, and had felt so comfortable with that he’d clung to it ever since – shoulder-length hair, a beard, emerald green woolly pullover, jeans, suede ankle boots, with no variation whatsoever. The stubborn sameness, the Belisha beacon repetitiveness of his dress sense was often remarked upon. He would answer that it meant a complete freedom from thinking about clothes. He had worn them to Rita’s birthday do at Chez Francoise and he had worn them to the Royal Opera House when he’d seen Don Giovanni with Juliette’s mum and dad. The only time he wore anything else was at work when he donned the green overalls of a GPO engineer (the same shade of green as his pullovers), to scale the telegraph poles, or descend the inspection pits of Windhover Hill’s telephone network.
‘Is it just you?’ said Juliette.
‘Aren’t I enough?’
‘Isn’t Boris good enough?’ sniggered Veronica.
‘I thought you’d be bringing people from The Red Lion.’
‘I’ve brought Scott,’ said Boris, turning and holding out a beckoning, stage-compere’s hand as Scott entered the room.
Scott was wearing a white suit over a pale blue roll-neck sweater. He had recently grown his hair almost to shoulder length, swept back so that it seemed to follow him around. In combination with his steel-rimmed glasses and square jaw-line it gave him a distinguished air. He could have been a visiting American academic, or film critic for the New York Times, rather than the dole office clerk he was, processing applicants for Supplementary Benefit at the Windhover Hill branch of the DHSS. In his spare time, however, he played a slightly out of tune clarinet with a trad jazz ensemble called The Blind Stompers at various pubs in the area.
‘Brought?’
‘I didn’t see any bottles in your hands.’
‘That’s because there weren’t any in them.’
‘I like those pretty candles,’ said Scott, grinning, ‘They’re really . . .’ he searched for the word, ‘. . . twinkly.’
The doorbell rattled again. Rita went to answer it.
‘Were we meant to bring anything?’
‘I’m just worried there won’t be enough drink.’
‘Christ those candles look bloody good,’ said Scott, ‘they knock me out. This is fantastic. Christ! . . .’ (he’d just noticed the bas-relief of the First World War soldier on the far wall) ‘this place is just spectacular.’ He gave Juliette a kiss on the cheek.
Rita re-entered the room with a new guest. It was a solitary woman, in her late forties. Her dark hair was bunched up as though she’d been lying on it. She was wearing jeans so loose they seemed about to fall down, a too large blue shirt clumsily buttoned.
She explained that she was from next door (‘above the butchers’’) and that she was looking for her husband, though she failed to explain why she thought he might be here.
‘Have a drink darling,’ said Scott, offering her a glass. She took it eagerly and spoke with a smoker’s deep rasp.
‘You’re a saint. I’d sooner have you for my husband, darling, than that old sod I married . . .’
As she spoke her story kept changing. She was not looking for her husband, she was trying to escape her husband. Then she said she’d come to the party by mistake, thinking she was in her own flat (‘it’s almost identical’), and that her husband was at home, ‘Straight through that bloody wall, darling.’
After two glasses of wine the woman, already drunk, slipped into incoherence and was ignored thereafter, a situation she seemed at ease with.
‘I saw your brother in The Red Lion,’ said Boris.
‘Janus?’
‘No, the little one. Julian.’
‘Julian was in The Red Lion?’
‘And he was with three grotesques.’
‘I don’t know. Schoolfriends, I suppose.’
‘Did you speak to him?’
‘Didn’t get a chance, they were thrown out for being under age. I got the impression they were trying to get themselves drunk enough for a party, which shouldn’t take them long.’
‘Why didn’t you go over and rescue them?’ said Veronica, ‘the poor little angels. You just abandoned them when you could have used your influence to save them.’
‘They’re not so little, unfortunately,’ said Juliette, genuinely perturbed by the fact of being outgrown by a much younger sibling.
‘Have you ever met Julian?’
‘Of course I have,’ said Veronica. ‘Such a sweet little pixie, a little leprechaun with curly hair and freckles and knobbly little knees, such a sweet little pixie . . .’
‘Not quite how I’d describe him,’ said Boris.
‘With a lovely little gap in his teeth . . .’
‘When did you meet him?’
‘At Juliette’s wedding.’
‘That was five years ago. He would have been ten.’
‘Well he can’t have changed all that much.’
‘Veronica, you’ve spent too long working in primary schools. You actually think children stop growing at the age of ten, when they leave your school, don’t you.’
‘Of course not.’
‘Because they change even more rapidly in the years immediately afterwards . . .’
‘I know, but I don’t believe Julian can have changed as much as you think.’
By now the doorbell was ringing every few minutes and the flat slowly filling with guests – Ryan and Ewan, two regulars from The Carpenters Arms, Mimi, fashion student at Ponders’ End Polytechnic, Callan and Rick, members of the Socialist Workers Party, Tipi, a tarot card reader from the Lee Valley, Bernadette and Geraldine, old schoolfriends of Juliette’s . . . There were many people Juliette didn’t recognize, or recognized only as faces that usually bobbed around in the background at The Quiet Woman or The Carpenters Arms. Juliette slowly gathered from overhearing the conversations of these people, that many had come to the party on the strength of a rumour that there was to be a confrontation between Bill and Boris, on the one hand, and Veronica and Hugo on the other. Some, it seemed, had even been press-ganged by Bill and Hugo as support should any such confrontation erupt.
The stock of alcohol accumulated. Bottles multiplied on the table, while the food remained mostly untouched. A keg of beer had appeared from somewhere, and a permanent queue was formed to fill plastic beakers at its tap. Juliette learned from Boris during a clumsy tango that the keg had been supplied by Bill, who’d rolled it all the way down Chapel Street from The Quiet Woman.
Bill was quiet, however, so subdued that Juliette didn’t notice him until late into the evening. She passed him on the way to the toilet. He was in the passageway talking with friends she didn’t recognize. He gave her a rather hangdog glance of acknowledgement as she passed by. His hair was shorter and he’d shaved off his beard, though the moustache survived. She noticed his shoes, low rise platforms in black. They looked expensive. Juliette could never feel respect for a man in platform shoes. Her infatuation with Michael Barratt, presenter of Nationwide, had ended the day a full-length camera angle revealed the height of his footwear.
Hugo was sprawled on the couch. The couch was so low that Hugo’s crossed knees seemed above the level of his own head. Beside him was a blotchy-skinned girl with a glossy mane of ginger hair. She was nestling into him, a plumpish hand fondly stroking his tightly T-shirted belly. Veronica, standing beside the food table with Rita, grappled with an urge to empty a glass of wine over the couple. Rita advised her that it was far better to ignore him completely, to appear happy in his absence, than to allow him the value of her attention.
‘But I just hate the way he’s sitting there. He’s always had that way of sitting. He spreads himself out. He oozes into furniture, not caring how much space he takes up. I really want to throw wine over him, Rita . . .’
‘Dance!’ shouted Rita. The music volume had increased as the party progressed – David Bowie, Billy Ocean, The Stylistics. Veronica only glimpsed Hugo through a thicket of dancers. Shouting had become the normal mode of conversation.
‘No, I want to throw wine over him.’
‘I think you should dance.’
‘I don’t want to dance while he’s in the room.’
‘Dance with me,’ said Rita, who was quite drunk by now, taking Veronica’s hands and pulling her into the centre of the room.
‘No,’ said Veronica, pulling her fingers out of Rita’s hands. ‘Look at him, he’s so bound up in his own little life – he’s pretending he hasn’t even noticed me.’
‘Just dance with me. Let’s dance together in front of him. Let’s do a sexy dance together, then he’ll have to notice you.’
‘I don’t think he’s pretending. I think he really has forgotten. The bastard. The fat bastard.’
Rita was dancing now, a squirmy, chest and hip-thrusting dance that Veronica had never seen her perform before, and found rather impressive.
‘Come on,’ said Rita to static Veronica, again taking her hands, ‘remind him what you’re made of.’
Again Rita produced the most startling undulations and gyrations, her bangles and beads jumping.
‘Rita, where did you learn . . .’ Veronica began, ‘No. I just haven’t got the right body to do things like that . . .’
‘Of course you have . . .’
‘He’s not even looking, Rita. And I’d be careful your tits don’t fall out . . .’
As if to show she didn’t care, Rita bent forward and shook her chest, offering Hugo, had he been looking, a long glimpse of barely controlled, swinging cleavage. The ginger-haired girl noticed, however, and responded by pushing her face into Hugo’s, eclipsing him with her bright hair, kissing him deeply. Now all that was visible of Hugo was his stomach, his legs, and his bristly hands, which rested flatly on his thighs.
‘The fat shit,’ said Veronica, ‘I would like to smash him up with a bottle.’
‘Why don’t we snog?’ said Rita, offering her mouth to Veronica, who declined bending to meet it.
‘Don’t be stupid, Rita. I think we’d be debasing ourselves to do something like that. Why should we have to flaunt ourselves just to gain the attention of a clapped-out old berk like Hugo?’
‘Because it would be fun?’ said Rita, still pouting hopefully.
‘The only fun for me would be in ending his life. Hand me a bottle, Rita, I’m going to brain the sod.’
Rita was about to hunt for an empty wine bottle, intrigued to see whether Veronica was serious, when she was distracted by faces at the window.
‘There’s someone at the window,’ she said.
‘But we’re on the first floor.’
The figures outside were knocking on the glass, pressing their faces up against the pane.
‘Who is it?’
‘I don’t know. Does this window open?’
The figures were gesturing at the window catches, miming the lifting of the sash.
‘Do you think we should let them in, Rita?’ Veronica said as she tried opening the window. She had to clear away books, lighted candles and bottles to make enough space. ‘They might be gate-crashers wanting to cause trouble. Do you recognize them? It’s difficult to tell, the way they’re pressing their faces against the glass.’
The two women had to pull together to open the window. A blast of cold night air came into the room, then the giggly, youthful voices of those outside, then the people themselves. They seemed to float into the room as though they had been hovering, weightless, outside, but once in the room they became heavy and cumbersome, falling to their knees and rolling about, as though unused to the effects of gravity.
‘There’s so many of them,’ laughed Veronica, as each successive body floated in and fell on the floor.
‘There’s scaffolding outside,’ said Rita, ‘they’ve climbed up the scaffolding.’
‘That explains the levitation,’ said Veronica thoughtfully.
‘You’re Julian, aren’t you,’ said Rita, bending down to speak to the giggling brother of Juliette, who was still on the floor.
‘Yeah,’ said Julian, sitting up and quietening.
‘Julian?’ said Veronica, amazed, ‘it can’t be, he’s too long.’
‘Who are these people?’ said Veronica, indicating the three others who also, after initially raucous bursts of giggling, had become disappointingly quiet.
‘This is O’Flaherty,’ said Julian, suddenly rather formal, indicating the first boy who was holding a half-bottle of whisky, three-quarters full, ‘and this is O’Hogarty and this is O’Malley.’
The three looked uncomfortable and awkward, shifting from foot to foot, wiping their noses with their hands, scratching their ears. They were dressed in clumsy attempts at adult garb, jackets and shirts obviously borrowed from their fathers and older brothers, and which fitted them badly. O’Hogarty was wearing his father’s golf-club blazer and cravat. Their hair was combed and greased into side or centre partings, again in a bizarre parody of grown-up styles.
‘Have they got first names?’ said Rita. Julian seemed surprised that she should be interested.
‘Yeah, er, Kieran, Seamus and Marcus.’
‘Which is which?’
‘The one with braces on his teeth is Marcus. The one with big teeth but no braces is called Kieran, and the one with green teeth and spots is called Seamus.’
‘You’ve all got spots,’ said Rita.
‘Not on our teeth,’ said Marcus.
‘Show me your teeth,’ said Veronica to O’Flaherty, who seemed to be shaking, a constant tremor enlivening an otherwise pasty and static face. Veronica, sensing fear as she approached, did something no one was expecting, she put her arms around his neck and kissed him, a little jab at first, then a single, longer, open-mouthed kiss. O’Flaherty’s big white hands wavered in shock for a moment, then looked as if they would dare to settle on Veronica’s rump, but instead came to rest on her waist.
‘Would you like something to eat?’ Rita said to Julian.
‘Yeah,’ said Julian, unable to take his eyes off Veronica and O’Flaherty’s clinch, only half-hearing Rita’s invitation.
‘I think you should have something to eat, you look like a boy who needs to eat.’
‘I do,’ said Julian, perplexed and fascinated by what was happening before his eyes, ‘desperately.’
Veronica had now moved on to O’Hogarty, who met Veronica’s lips with a ridiculous and grotesque pouting of his own. It was clear Veronica was working her way through the boys in turn, bestowing deep, adventurous kisses on each, and Julian was worried, being last in line, that he would miss his turn if he followed Rita to the food.
All evening they had been eyeing girls from a safe distance, daring occasionally to approach, only to be sent away with withering sneers and disdainful titters. And all the time the best chance of female contact had been here, at his sister’s party, with her older friends.
‘There’s some sandwich gateau left,’ said Rita, tugging at Julian’s sleeve, pointing to a solid, white slab on the table, untouched. ‘Come and have some of my sandwich gateau, please.’
But Julian held his ground. Thankfully Veronica hadn’t spent long in O’Malley’s arms, and was now making her way towards him. But when she arrived, he felt a sudden pang of distaste for that mouth that had so recently been in contact with those of his friends, for the tongue that had dwelt amongst the cavities and corrective apparatus of O’Malley’s teeth, that had steered past the protruding incisors of O’Hogarty, that had probed between the downy, encrusted lips of O’Flaherty, and he was amazed to find that when that tongue arrived in his own mouth, it tasted as pure and as clean and as sweet as a piece of scrubbed fruit.
Veronica kissed Julian longer than the other three, mainly because Julian yielded to her more, whereas the others had bitten back their desires out of strong, catholic fears. But when his own tongue, having waltzed in the cosy ballroom of their joined mouths long enough, broke free to explore Veronica’s mouth, those hard, complicated teeth against which his own softly scraped, the tough, polished satin of her gums, he sensed a shift in the balance of their embrace, and after a few minutes Veronica produced a series of politely pleading whimpers to indicate she was having difficulty breathing. Julian withdrew.
Veronica’s face filled his vision.
‘Did you bring any drink with you?’
‘O’Flaherty’s got a half-bottle of whisky,’ said Julian. Veronica glimpsed at O’Flaherty, who was being pulled by Rita towards her sandwich gateau.
‘It’s half-empty,’ said Veronica.
‘It’s a cold night,’ said Julian.
Veronica laughed, throwing back her head, revealing a plump, white oesophagus. Julian took his chance and bit it, softly. He felt the vibration of her laughter, the little hive of her voicebox against his lips. He moved further down her neck, licked her clavicles, her shoulders. Was she really allowing him this? Was she very drunk? Had she not noticed what he was doing?
‘You can’t come in without a bottle,’ Veronica said, then blurted out laughter. She collapsed in a mock swoon on a nearby chair bringing Julian down with her, their embrace remained unbroken.
Their kissing had been a cause for amusement amongst the other guests, and for a while they’d been the party’s centre of attention, those who knew Veronica barely able to believe her footlooseness. But after a while interest dwindled and their continued contact was soon only under the observation of Juliette, who cast concerned glances in their direction every now and then.
Veronica had adopted the role of adored empress reclining on a burnished throne, eyes closed, head tilted back, the expression on her face betokening tiredness rather than ecstasy, Julian a besotted page kneeling beside her, his head rooting about in her neck and upper shoulders, daring, every now and then, to dip to the square décolletage of her dress, as though testing the waters of a pool. If he went too far in this direction Veronica would gently pull him away, though not to a distance which would discourage Julian from trying again, going a little further each time, millimetre by millimetre further into her skin.
There was a black, crocheted shawl draped on the back of the chair. Julian took this and folded it around Veronica’s shoulders. It acted as a hide to conceal his activity from Juliette and anyone else. He folded himself into it. Caught himself in it. He had the sense of being engulfed. The party seemed to evaporate around him, to be replaced by Veronica, who had somehow taken on the proportions of the room they inhabited, so that instead of hearing Billy Ocean he heard Veronica’s blood dancing through her heart, he heard the air coming and going from her nostrils, he heard the buzzing in her neck when she laughed, and instead of furnishings there were shoulders, a neck, ears, collar bones, all now damp with his slowly evaporating spittle. Now and then he managed to reach with fingertips inside her dress, a fascinating softness that seemed to go on for ever.
If he caught glimpses of anything beyond Veronica they were shadows. A cheese plant coming and going in the light of a Belisha beacon, a soldier from the trenches fossilised on a wall. Suddenly Veronica seemed to wake and gasp, ‘My God. I haven’t given Juliette her present.’
‘Where is it?’ said Julian, taking his face from her cleavage.
‘I’ve hidden it in Bill’s bedroom. I’d better get it now before I forget . . .’
She stirred from her chair, and Julian stirred from her. He looked round and saw his friends, O’Malley, O’Flaherty and O’Hogarty over by the food table. They were tucking enthusiastically into Rita’s sandwich gateau. Rita was serving it up for them, on white paper plates. Julian had the impression of witnessing something underhand, the way the boys were so enthusiastically chomping on the food, the way some of the curd cheese was smeared around their lips, the way Julian caught glimpses of their open mouths, the cud of marmite and tinned salmon within, the sediments of chewed bread caught on O’Malley’s braces, and Rita in the middle, the knife in her hand, waiting for the empty plates to refill.
O’Hogarty suddenly glanced in Julian’s direction, gestured to him to come over.
‘It’s lovely stuff,’ he said, a shrapnel of unswallowed gateau jumping from his mouth, ‘come and have some . . .’
Julian nodded, but was following Veronica by now, entangling himself as best he could in her spidery shawl, taking a moment to consider the ridiculousness of O’Hogarty’s invitation. Hadn’t he noticed that he’d spent the best part of the last hour snogging a twenty-seven-year-old divorcee, that he was closer to having sex than he’d ever been in his life, far closer than those three were ever likely to come in the next half decade? Did he really think he should disengage himself for the sake of an ugly concoction of curd cheese and marmite? ‘He had made the wrong friends,’ Julian thought to himself, as he trailed after Veronica, out of the room and down the passageway. ‘They were holding him back . . .’
Round the corner from the kitchen, the passage led directly to the lavatory at the far end. The door to the lavatory was open and the light was on. Spotlit in tungsten yellow was a middle-aged woman, standing awkwardly with her trousers round her ankles. It was the husband-seeking woman from next door. Her loose blue shirt was not long enough to conceal her dark, hispid loins, nor did she seem bothered by the fact, glancing lazily at the couple as she wiped herself.
Julian wasn’t quite sure if Veronica was aware that he was following her, even though he had a hand entangled in her shawl, and was trailing behind her like a reluctant lapdog all the way down the corridor, but he convinced himself that he was being led on, and so he followed her into Bill’s bedroom. She turned the light on. It was strangely like a temple inside, there was a sense that the space was composed of countless tiny objects, little pots full of pens, Egyptian anubi, statuettes of indecipherable provenance, small booklets on ancient pottery, miniatures of spirit, a bottle of Tia Maria, trinkets, baubles. There was a three-foot high Airfix model of a Saturn V on the floor, a mobile from the ceiling composed of intrarotating suns. A violin was propped on a chair.
Bill’s bed was a single bed, an arabesque counterpane was filled with peacock eye cushions. Veronica was bending down to get something from under the bed. When she straightened up Julian began tickling her ribs so that she fell on to the bed in a sea of giggles, and he rolled on top of her, kissing her now with a more desperate sense of urgency, which soon dampened Veronica’s laughter.
‘No, Julian,’ she said quietly and without emphasis, as Julian began working at the pea-sized buttons on the front of her dress. There was a button every centimetre it seemed, ‘I really don’t think we should, not here . . .’
‘Where then?’
‘Nowhere, Julian. You’re forgetting yourself. I’m forgetting myself.’
Another button yielded, another centimetre of skin revealed.
The door opened. Veronica sat up, pushing Julian aside. She put her hand to her breast, concealing what was no more than a little dip in the straight cut of her dress.
Bill entered the room. He looked serious, a little worried. He was not alone. Hugo followed, then Juliette.
‘Checking up on me are you darling?’ said Veronica to Hugo.
Hugo was silent. Bill answered.
‘I was going to show Hugo some drawings . . .’
‘What are you doing in here Veronica?’ called Juliette from behind the two men.
‘You’re all checking up on me, I only came in here to get you your present, sweetheart,’ said Veronica. She was still having trouble with the buttons on her dress. Then she bent down to pick up the parcel she’d hidden under the bed.
Suddenly Julian lurched forward, taking Veronica by the shoulders and smothering them with drooling kisses.
‘Get off me you twit,’ said Veronica, elbowing Julian as she lifted the enormous parcel, ‘I mean “twit” in a nice way – Juliette, this is for you . . .’
Julian bawled something incoherently and fell on the floor, at the feet of Bill. He then began dragging himself up Bill’s legs as though he was climbing a rope.
‘It isn’t right,’ said Bill, still serious, ‘it’s just not right . . .’
‘What’s not?’ said Veronica.
Juliette was unwrapping the present, it was about as big as a suitcase and very light.
‘A suitcase,’ said Juliette, having unwrapped the present, ‘how. . . nice.’
‘It’s not right Julian being drunk like this, it’s just not right,’ said Bill again. Julian was burbling and warbling incoherently, having fallen back on the floor.
‘Do you know you could be arrested for corrupting a minor?’ said Hugo.
‘Dearest, there isn’t a miner within two hundred miles of this room.’
The silence following this remark changed Veronica’s tone.
‘You’re looking at these buttons – there are only three undone, how long have we been in here – Juliette, you saw us going out of the room, we’ve been in here about thirty seconds . . .’
‘Julian,’ his sister called from behind the men, ‘I’ll get Boris to take you home.’
‘Is he going to be sick?’ a more distant voice said.
‘Veronica has agreed to be my wife,’ Julian called from the floor, where he was writhing gently.
‘This is utterly ridiculous,’ said Veronica standing up, having finished fastening her buttons, ‘Juliette, you’re being stupid, the boy’s just drunk. And as for you,’ she turned to Hugo, ‘I don’t know how you can dare take that stern moral attitude with me when you sit on that couch with a schoolgirl oozing all over your big fat belly.’
‘Michelle is thirty-three,’ said Hugo quietly.
Boris entered, hoisted the now barely conscious Julian onto his shoulders in a fireman’s lift and carried him out of the room.
‘Goodbye my darling sweet gorgeous wife-to-be,’ said Julian, his head dangling upside down, ‘I look forward to our many happy years of marriage together. Our children will play cellos and feed us raspberries when we’re old . . .’