May 1926, Davenport House, London
He spread out two lines on the poker table. Fuck them all. Fuck bloody Bettina with her moody eye-rolling face and boring sulks, and especially fuck Étienne, who was so judgemental and such a snob, which was indeed possible, a poor person being a snob, and in fact, they were the worst for it.
‘You first, good sir,’ he said to Jonathan.
Jonathan leaned over the table, his waxy red hair flopping forward and hanging over his face, and sniffed up the powder. Good old Jonathan, a man undergoing a nervous breakdown with such dignity, such class, his head held high as his spirits splatted to the floor like a disembowelment. Why couldn’t Bettina be more like her brother?
It was her birthday and he’d treated her to a surprise party. He’d spent a bomb, ordering the best French caterers, extra serving staff and an all-black jazz band fronted by a fat woman dressed up as a man, complete with a gold tux. He’d done all this for her and yet she’d spent half the night whingeing about her wisdom teeth and flirting with a man. A man! So he’d grabbed her by the arm and pulled her out into the garden.
‘You’re making me look like a fucking cuckold,’ he said.
‘I am not flirting with him,’ she said, lighting a cigarette.
‘You were pressing your leg up against his leg. I saw and so did everyone else.’
She looked at him steadily then did a slow, drunken blink. ‘Fine. I was flirting. But it’s not as though I want to do anything with him. I know, I’m pathetic.’
Bart sighed. Trude was playing her like a violin, it was true. But she wasn’t considering him in all this. He wanted to shake the silly child by the shoulders! It mattered what other people thought, it mattered a great deal. And he told her so.
‘I can’t make head nor tail of you,’ she said. ‘One minute you’re the great iconoclast – Bartholomew Dawes, free-thinker extraordinaire! And the next you’re fretting over what people think of you. You can’t have it both ways! Choose!’
‘You stop acting like such a spoiled, selfish little bitch!’ he yelled, some spit spraying her face.
‘Touched a nerve, have I?’ she said.
He grabbed her by the shoulders. ‘The world doesn’t revolve around you.’
She jerked her body, dislodging his grip. ‘Today it does,’ she said, turning and walking away.
And of course she’d gone straight to Étienne and got him on her side.
‘Quite the party,’ said Jonathan, sniffing. His eyes were bruised and hollow with sleep deprivation and Bart could see a tiny muscle spasming at his temple. ‘The singer was jolly marvellous. Fancy that, dressing as a man! How did you acquire her?’
Bart licked his finger and dabbed the powdered remnants, rubbing them into his gums. ‘Good stuff. Yummy. What was that?’
‘The singer. Where did you find her?’
‘France. She was doing some clubs in Paris. Étienne knew of her, he arranged things. They go crazy for that sort of thing there. Originally from Harlem, I think.’
‘I hear it’s rather wild over there?’
‘What, Paris or Harlem?’
‘Well … both, come to think of it.’
Bart nodded.
‘Bit much for me, I must confess,’ said Jonathan. ‘But then, things are very different now.’
‘Much better too,’ said Bart.
‘Seems like a queer sort of present for your wife’s birthday,’ said Jonathan, thoughtfully, his brandy glass poised an inch from his lips. ‘But then Bettina does go in for unusual things. Always liked to think of herself as a rebel.’ He took a slow swallow. Sniffed. Then he smiled. ‘You know, I just remembered something.’ The smile grew – it was a lovely, lazy smile. ‘How strange, I haven’t thought of it in years.’ He took a cigar from his breast pocket and bit off the end, spitting it into his hand and then idly fiddling with it between thumb and forefinger. ‘One Christmas, when we were very young, Bettina’s governess – Madame Choveaux, I think her name was, something like that, horrible rotten old French hag, she was …’
‘I remember her,’ said Bart. ‘Madame Choubert.’
‘Do you? Of course you do. Anyway, she’d had Bettina rehearsing “O Holy Night” en français. Wanted her to perform it for the family on Christmas Eve.’
Jonathan lit his cigar and leaned back against the bar, tapping his foot as if to music, though the room was silent. ‘It came to the time of the performance and Bettina was dressed as … well, frankly, I don’t know what the hell she was dressed as. She had on knickerbockers, bizarrely, and long woollen socks up to the knees. And she had this screaming argument with the governess just before coming out – we could all hear it from the drawing room. My father was most embarrassed – he had some shareholders over. Anyway. Madame Choveaux – Choubert, sorry – comes into the room, furious, and takes my mother to the side and tells her that Bettina is insisting on wearing one sock up and the other down. Just to be contrary. And Mother said … now what did she say?’
Bart waited, smiling. Jonathan did not usually tell stories or offer commentaries.
‘Oh, I remember. She said, “Tell her from me that if she continues to embarrass her father like this, then all of her presents shall be sent to the orphanage.” I was hanging on my mother’s hem like a monkey so I remember it well. I remember thinking how jolly well cruel that would be, to have one’s presents sent to the snots at the orphanage. I know most older brothers would wish it so, for their little sisters to be deprived of their stupid dollies and frocks, but of course, I was – and forgive me my conceit – a very kind older brother, and I loved her exceedingly. Well, my father came over at this point, demanding to know what all the fuss was about, and so Mother told him. And he laughed. He said to old Choubert, he said, “Oh, let her do what she wants with her socks! She can’t sing for toffee so it’s going to be a butcher’s job whichever way you try to package it.”’
They laughed. Jonathan’s teeth jutted out and his eyes half-closed. He looked like a little boy again.
‘Your father is funny, I’ll give him that,’ said Bart.
‘Oh yes. But mean with it. I haven’t told you the best part.’
‘Oh?’
‘Well, after all that fuss, when the governess went in to tell Bettina she could do what she liked with her socks, she apparently fixed the woman with the most belligerent face and pulled both her socks up.’
‘She didn’t.’
‘She jolly well did. You see what I mean? She just likes to be contrary. Mind you, you’re the same.’
‘How was her performance in the end?’
‘In the words of my father, “Like an asthmatic puppy being clubbed to death.”’
They roared out more laughter. Bart wrapped an arm around Jonathan’s shoulder and they turned, laughing into each other’s faces, their noses bumping. The laughter trailed off into a hoarse hee-hawing. Bart could see, through half-closed eyes, Jonathan’s great orange beard quivering.
‘My, you’re in a bright mood tonight,’ Bart said, wiping his eyes. ‘It’s good to see, really it is. Heartening.’
Jonathan patted his breast pocket with the vial in it. ‘This is top-notch stuff.’
‘Why don’t we just stay here all night and finish the lot off? To hell with the party.’
‘Oh, no,’ said Jonathan, with a frown. ‘Not on her birthday.’ He took the vial out of his pocket and stuffed it into Bart’s. ‘You have this. I don’t think I require any more.’
‘You’re sure?’
Jonathan nodded, sipping his brandy. ‘Have you argued?’
‘Indeed we have.’
‘Look. Forgive my forwardness, but I’ve noticed my sister getting a little chummy with that French pal of yours. I know it’s innocent, but I’d hate for the frog to get the wrong end of the stick.’
‘Oh, it’s completely innocent—’
‘I know it is, heavens I know it is. Listen, Bart.’ And here he turned to Bart and looked him imploringly in the eyes. ‘You are taking care of her, aren’t you?’
‘Of course I am!’
‘And relations are good?’ He raised his one hand up. ‘No details, please.’
‘Yes, relations are fabulous.’
‘Only, you’ve been married a fair while and she’s yet to, you know …’
‘That keen to be an uncle, are you?’
Jonathan’s lips went tight and colourless from between his ginger bristles. ‘Of course,’ he murmured. He turned his head away and puffed on his cigar. A long moment of silence. Struggling with some torturous melancholic thought or other – Jonathan was always getting like this. Finally he turned back, visibly brighter, and slapped Bart on the arm. ‘Anyway, it’s none of my business. Come on, let’s re-enter society. I wish to dance with my sister.’
‘Pull one of her stockings down, I dare you.’
He looked at Bart with exaggerated disapproval. ‘Don’t be rude, brother.’
Bart laughed. Brother. He liked that. He’d always wanted a brother.
His prosthetic hand was digging into her lower back but she would not – absolutely would not – acknowledge the discomfort. He held her hand and they swayed – the band was playing a slow song, a lovers’ song, the woman singer oozing out sugary words with eyes closed and head tilted back. Jonathan smiled awkwardly (did he ever smile any other way?), his bright pink lips twitching from out of his godawful beard. He had a contented air about him, an earthy sort of serenity. It reminded her of how he used to be, before the war; it wasn’t like he’d been born a jittering wreck.
‘You dance very well,’ she said.
‘I do not.’
‘Oh, shut up. Do you have one positive opinion about yourself?’
He thought about it, sniffing. ‘I have attractive feet.’
‘That’s it? That’s all you can come up with?’
‘Yes.’
She laughed. ‘You’re such a – right, I’m going to list your positive attributes right now.’
‘Please don’t,’ he said.
‘You’re kind, honourable, brave—’
‘Please stop,’ he said. ‘I’m quite serious.’ And he was – she could see it in his eyes.
‘Self-loathing is very boring,’ she said.
‘That’s more like it. I’m boring.’
She kicked his shin and he let out a yelp.
‘How have you not outgrown kicking?’ he said, laughing. ‘Always kicking me, you were. You kicking me, Tuna pinching me—’
‘Oh, she was a one for pinching.’
‘Here – do you remember that time you kicked me in the privates because I told Father on you for – now, what had you done?’
‘I used profane language. I said, “Bugger me, it’s cold.” Don’t pull that face!’
‘What face?’
‘It’s only a word, Jonathan.’
‘Yes, but you were seven.’
‘It was Bart’s fault. He told me to say it.’
The song ended. Couples extracted themselves from each other, glancing around with bleary embarrassment as if surprised to find they were not the only people in the room. The singer announced an intermission. Jonathan was still holding onto her, his prosthetic hand now poking her in the kidney.
‘I might go soon,’ he said.
She opened her mouth to protest. Closed it – it was enough that he’d danced with her. More than enough. ‘Thank you for finally dancing with me, brother.’
‘It was a pleasure.’ He sniffed, his chin tilted up, and smiled at her – it was a bittersweet smile. ‘I want you to be happy. Are you happy?’
‘I am.’
He nodded. ‘That’s what matters. Being happy. That’s the whole point.’ He sniffed again, twice.
‘Blow your nose, would you?’
He let her go and pulled a hanky from his breast pocket. Gave her cheek a kiss and abruptly walked away, the hanky clamped over his nose.
The band was still playing, minus their transvestite singer and lead trumpet player. The partygoers were dancing like lunatics, drunk and stumbling with big grins on their faces. Tuna was whooping and spinning round and round with the very same twerp Bettina had been flirting with earlier, she a whirling blur of peacock feathers and red sequins and he a sweaty, gurning nonsense.
He couldn’t see Bettina. She was probably upstairs having a histrionic crying fit over Trude. Good.
No. He wasn’t being fair. He wasn’t. They’d argued, that was all. They’d get over it. ‘Never go to bed on an argument,’ his mother had told him. Not that she’d ever followed her own advice – she and his father would often go weeks without speaking to each other, turning every mealtime into an excruciating ordeal – averted glances, cutlery wielded with stiff wrists, jumpy footmen and maids, all this playing out to a soundtrack of soup-sipping and his father’s adenoidal mouth-breathing.
He dodged past the dancers and made it out into the dining room, where people were helping themselves to food from the huge table and waiters in white jackets looked on with exasperation. Hashish smoke hung thick in the air. He saw Bettina and Étienne huddled together on the floor in the corner of the room. Bettina’s lipstick was smeared across her cheek and her untapped cigarette ash was an inch long and ready to drop at any second. Étienne was wearing her tiara. They looked up and saw him and their faces clouded thunderously. Bart stopped mid-step. Étienne shook his head ever so slightly. A warning.
Bart swiped at a bowl of potato salad; it hurtled to the floor and smashed, off-white gloop splattering the parquet. Everyone turned to look, their cheeks bulging with food, his food that he’d paid for, well piss on them, piss on the lot of them.
He made his way to the back garden, passing Jonathan on the way and saying, ‘She’s in the dining room with her frog prince’ in a tone so acidic that Jonathan’s eyes shuddered. He stepped outside into the blessed cool darkness. It was a long, thin garden with various trees (the names of which he had no interest in finding out) lining a strip down the middle. He walked, his hands stuffed into his trouser pockets, the thudding, brassy sound of the band gradually fading. He was jealous, that was the thing. But how petty and misguided. The alternative – Bettina and Étienne hating each other – would be much worse. A small wood surrounded the garden in a horseshoe – the remains of a much larger forest, long since cut down and replaced with grand houses and ornate gardens. Bettina had fallen in love with this house on the strength of this poxy smear of woodland; it reminded her of the woods between their houses and the beach back in Brighton. He would’ve preferred somewhere in Chelsea or Knightsbridge. But what Bettina wanted, Bettina got.
He was surprised to find the bench at the end of the garden peopled; the transvestite singer and the lead trumpeter were sitting together, smoking; the woman with her wide legs spread, like a man, and the trumpeter like a woman, primly, one long, skinny leg crossed over the other. He was pale as driftwood, with a narrow pale head and a pencil moustache.
‘What are you doing out here?’ he asked, standing over them.
The woman lifted her cigarette. ‘We’re on break.’
‘I’m not paying you to sit out here and smoke.’
They cast languid side glances at each other, and then, sighing, they stood up, she smoothing down her gold tux, he arching his back to get the crackles out of his joints.
‘No, wait.’ Bart took his hands out of his pockets and lifted them in apology. ‘You’ve every right to a break, you’ve both performed terrifically. I’ve argued with my wife and I’m in a rancid mood. Please, sit back down. I’m sorry.’
They sat back down.
‘Your wife, that the birthday girl?’ said the woman, taking off her top hat and scratching her scalp – her hair was tethered tightly to her head in tiny plaits.
Bart nodded. ‘The one and only. Mind if I sit with you?’
A shrug. ‘It’s your bench.’
He sat and took out his cigarettes. The man lit a match for him, his hands steady and strong-looking (Bart’s own hands were buzzing like engines), the nails immaculate but the fingers nicotine-stained. He leaned back, looking up into a sky disappointingly starless.
‘Nice place you got here,’ said the man. His voice was musical, light and possibly a little educated (it was hard to tell with Americans). And fruity. The man was of course a fruit – Bart would bet his life on it.
‘Thank you. It brings me much happiness and I am deeply fulfilled. That was sarcasm. Do you Yanks understand sarcasm?’
Blank-eyed, the man shook his head. ‘Our culture is dumb and inferior to yours, mister. All we know is apple pie.’ He grinned with all his teeth showing. He had high cheekbones and a nose that looked like it’d been broken a couple of times. Accompanying the thin moustache was a tuft of hair growing just under his bottom lip. ‘Do you have apple pie over here?’
‘We do. We eat it with fresh cream, it’s delicious.’ He drew out that last word – deelishhusss. ‘Do you like our food? English food, I mean?’
‘Not particularly,’ said the man. ‘French cuisine’s my favourite.’
‘May I ask what you were doing in France?’
He turned to face Bart, his eyes gleaming. ‘She’ – he stabbed a thumb in the direction of the woman – ‘brought us to France. And I’ll tell you why.’
‘George,’ said the woman, a warning in her tone. ‘I know you ain’t gonna say what I think you’re gonna say.’
George smiled naughtily. ‘She came to Paris—’
‘You’re gonna get yourself fired, fool—’
‘She came to Paris with the sole intention of eating Josephine Baker’s pussy.’
The whites of her eyes popped. ‘George!’ She clouted him around the head. He shrank away from her, leaning into Bart and laughing. ‘That is ten shades of inappropriate!’ she said. ‘I am sorry, sir. He’s got a problem with his mouth.’ She hit him again. ‘That ain’t no way to speak to your employer, fool.’ Back to Bart. ‘I’m real sorry.’ George was still cowering from her, his body shaking with wicked giggles – Bart could smell the pomade in his hair.
‘It’s fine,’ he said, flapping a hand. ‘I mean, who wouldn’t want to eat Josephine Baker’s pussy? One gets the added bonus of a free banana for dessert.’
She laughed, her neck vibrating, and he joined in, pleased with himself. Because she’d been expecting him to behave in a certain way. And look at him. Just look at him.
‘Did you achieve your objective?’
‘No. We friends.’ She gave George a withering look. ‘That ain’t the reason I went to France. I only said that as a joke. A J-O-K-E. Paris is a good place to be right now.’
‘Better than Harlem?’ asked Bart.
‘They both got their charms.’ She opened her coat and rummaged in her inside pocket, bringing out a paper napkin. Inside were three medallions of herb-dotted pork piled on top of each other.
‘Oh, come now,’ said Bart. ‘You don’t need to be eating out of a napkin out here. Go inside and sit at a table.’
‘Naw, I’m good, thanks,’ said the woman. ‘I don’t like too many people watching me eat.’ She started to nibble on the meat, daintily. ‘So why’d you argue with your wife?’
Bart sighed. ‘Because she’s a child.’
She nodded. ‘Been there. Usually with men though. Men be the most childish children of all. This is nice. I don’t like English food. But this is tasty.’
‘Well, it’s French actually,’ said Bart.
George lit a fresh cigarette and breathed out the smoke with a tilted chin and just-parted lips – he knew he was being watched.
‘So,’ said Bart to George. ‘Do you have a man friend at the moment?’
The woman’s brow arched and the pork paused just short of her lips.
‘I have lots of friends who are men,’ said George, coolly.
Bart crossed one leg over the other and leaned back. Rakishly. He felt very rakish all of a sudden. ‘Let’s not bounce this ball back and forth. Do you have a fella?’
‘I do not,’ said George.
‘Good,’ said Bart.
The woman stood up abruptly, her knees cracking. ‘I think I’ll go back inside, leave you both to it.’ She bowed, doffing her top hat to Bart. ‘Evening.’ Her eyes zipped to George’s, wordlessly communicating something to him – a warning perhaps, or an encouragement; she had a good poker face, it was hard to tell – and then she was walking pigeon-toed back to the house, eating as she went.
‘So,’ said Bart.
‘So,’ said George.
They laughed with awkwardness, a lovely fizzing awkwardness.
‘You play the trumpet.’
‘I do.’
‘What else?’
‘I write poetry. You?’
‘I’m an actor, darling.’
George grinned. ‘Of course you’re an actor. Ever been in a moving picture?’
Bart shook his head. ‘The stage.’
A great cracking sound went off somewhere in the near-distance – a firework, possibly – and both turned to look. The sky was clear. Bart glanced at the strained cord in George’s neck – he had a thing about necks. Necks, armpits and the dip in the back just above the buttocks.
He took Jonathan’s vial out of his pocket. ‘Want some?’
George held up his hand. ‘Hell no. That shit’ll put you in the ground.’
‘It’s not opium, if that’s what you’re thinking.’
George shrugged. ‘Even so. Same applies.’
‘Mind if I partake?’
‘It’s a free country. Supposedly.’
Bart tapped some powder onto the back of his hand and snorted it up, George watching with a show of nonchalance crossing over into boredom. He put the vial back in his pocket. Glanced back up at the house. ‘Just to be clear so as to avoid any embarrassment,’ he said to George, ‘I am about to suck you off. Yes?’
George did a taken-aback laugh, his hand flying involuntarily to the side of his face. ‘Uh … wow. Wow.’ He composed himself, leaning back and looking down at Bart through his lashes, a nervous smirk twisting his mouth. ‘Like I said, it’s a free country.’
‘We’re actually a pair of hypocrites if you stop to think about it,’ said Bettina, passing Étienne the jazz joint (as he kept calling it).
‘Non. No. I don’t think so.’
They were lying on Bettina’s bed, the door closed to all the chaos outside.
‘Bart, he takes these nasty powders, these stimulations – stimu … I don’t know the English for it,’ continued Étienne. ‘They magnify anger and fear. Which are the same things, I think. They bring out his negative qualities. But this’ – he lifted the joint, upsetting its creamy trail of smoke – ‘this is not like that. And it is medicine for your teeth.’
Her wisdom teeth were coming through – earlier, it had felt like every molar in the back of her mouth was screaming; an awful, tinfoil screaming. ‘It’s worked, too,’ she said.
Footsteps going past the door, outside. They froze, their ears cocked. The footsteps faded. Someone looking for the bathroom, perhaps. Or snooping. Or looking for a spare room to smooch in. Snooping. Smooching. Such silly words.
Bettina let her head tilt back and sighed. ‘I feel bad.’
‘Don’t feel bad. Why?’
‘He put this party on for me. And here I am, hiding from him.’
Étienne exhaled smoke from his nose, his facial muscles taut. ‘He must learn that he cannot get away with this behaviour. Or it will get worse. I know men like this. They always have indulgent mothers. “You are a special little king,” these mothers say, “and you can do whatever you want.” And so the little king does whatever he wants. And you know what I am going to say next?’
‘The rich ones are the worst?’
‘Très bien!’
‘You’re turning me into a Bolshevik.’ She twisted around onto her back and started picking a spot on her chin. Bart hadn’t even been that awful tonight – she had indeed been flirting publicly with a man, and that was indeed inconsiderate of her. But his grabbing her roughly and shouting into her face, well, she couldn’t forgive that. Because last month, at a similar kind of party, Bart had slapped her. She couldn’t even remember why; they’d both been so very drunk. But she could remember the slap, the clean, perfect smack; the jolting, mortifying shock of it; and his snarling, proud face, just like her father’s.
She’d slapped him back, repeatedly, crazed, her hands flying out at his face and head. And in an ideal world, that would be the end of it – he erred and she punished. But he’d hit her first, and he was a man. She hated him viciously for it. A whole week of leaving rooms when he entered them and taking all her meals in the garden, and he was repentant of course, full of hand-wringing self-loathing. He slipped a letter under her door admitting his recent narcotic use. ‘It wasn’t me, Betts. I would never do something like that, not the real me.’ How boring. How predictable.
But she’d forgiven him, or at least tried to, because he promised to stop using the cocaine. And then this afternoon, he’d come practically skipping out of the bathroom, sniffing like a bloodhound, his eyes sprung open and a frenetic energy about him.
Étienne passed back the joint with a lazy arm. She propped herself up on her pillow and had a small puff. Her mouth was horribly dry. She tapped Étienne’s shoulder. ‘Look at this.’ She tucked her lips in, upper and lower, and they remained stuck there, showing all her teeth and gums.
He dropped his head back onto the bed, laughing. ‘That is gruesome! Oh, why would you—’
She tapped his shoulder again. ‘Etts. Look.’ He raised his head, eyes pink and puffy. She stuck out her tongue and wiggled it.
‘Stop it!’He shook his head weakly, his body racked with painful laughter. ‘You make yourself ugly. Why?’
She smirked and unstuck her lips. ‘I need a drink. My mouth is so dry. Shall we return to the fray?’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t want to see him.’
‘Well, nor do I, frankly. Or bloody Trude. But we can’t stay up here all night. God, my mouth is so dry.’ She smacked his shoulder. ‘Hey. Let’s sneak down to the buffet and collect all the grub we can carry as well as a lovely big bottle of ice-cold bubbly. And bring them back up here.’
He opened his eyes. ‘Now you have mentioned food.’
He pushed himself to an upright position with huge effort. ‘Let’s go.’
*
The band had stopped playing, except for one man, a bald honky-tonk player with a lumpy nose and a sheen of sweat on his conker of a head. He was hunched over the piano playing slow mournful tunes with slow mournful hands, his eyes closed. Couples danced crotch to crotch and hands were creeping towards buttocks. Bettina noticed what looked like vomit in the potted money tree. Dear God.
They passed the games room and Bettina’s heart sped up. Bart was probably in there sniffing and fidgeting and thinking himself a small god. Étienne poked his head in, then clamped a hand to his mouth to hold in laughter. He pulled her to the doorway. The black drag king was playing strip poker with Cousin Tuna and several of Bart’s stage chums from the Pygmalion show. Tuna was in a salmon-pink petticoat, one stocking on, one off, her frizzy red hair like a burning bush. The drag king was in only a pair of trousers, and her great fatheaded breasts hung to the tabletop, the purplish nipples grazing the surface. She looked up at Bettina. ‘Wanna join us, birthday girl?’
‘I want food,’ said Bettina dumbly, and carried on down the hall. Étienne was hanging on her arm, laughing. ‘They were enormous,’ she said.
‘They were beautiful! I would like to do this to them.’ He buried his face in Bettina’s cleavage and jiggled his face back and forth.
‘You’re off your head!’ she said, pushing him away. He stumbled backwards and tripped, landing on his back, legs kicking the air like an unfortunate beetle. He curled up into a ball – now a woodlouse – and giggled uncontrollably.
Trude appeared in the hall. Her lipstick was smeared around her maw and a false eyelash stuck to her cheek. ‘It’s the birthday girl!’ she said, spreading her arms wide and sashaying over with slinking hips and wobbling arm flesh. She clung onto Bettina’s neck and breathed hot ethanol fumes into her face. ‘Darling! What a perfect riot! What sheer debauch’ry! You scandalous little slag, I love it. Love, love, love it.’ Her skin was hot. Bettina placed a hand on her waist, spreading her fingers and squeezing. ‘Thanks for coming,’ she said. Coming. Thanks for coming. She smiled down into the woman’s car wreck of a face. Coming. Trude, coming. Teeth bared, thighs spread wide—
‘Let’s go,’ said Étienne, touching her elbow. And then, in a whisper: ‘Don’t get sucked in.’
‘Whadde say?’ slurred Trude.
‘Nothing,’ said Bettina. ‘Thanks for coming.’ And she gripped Trude by the face and kissed her hard, forcing her tongue into her mouth. She pulled away and Trude was staring up at her, mouth slack and eyes glazed.
‘Bettina. Oh my—’
‘Good night and thanks for coming.’ She grabbed Trude by the shoulders, spun her around, slapped her rear and shoved her lurching down the hall. ‘That’ll show her,’ she said to Étienne, taking his arm and turning in the opposite direction. ‘The awful tease.’
‘Bien joué,’ he said.
‘I can’t believe I just did that.’
‘I think she liked it.’
‘Oh, she did. But it won’t come to anything. She likes to keep people dangling. She’s very insecure, you know.’
‘It’s very sad. You deserve a good fuck.’
‘I do! I’m in the prime of my life and it’s my birthday, Etts. My birthday! How depressing.’
‘You know what is almost as good as having sex?’ he said, wrapping an arm around her. ‘Eating cake. Let’s go and eat cake. And if you ask me nicely, I will rub your feet.’
The valet, Darlton, rushed through the door, almost crashing into them, his eyes huge with panic. Bettina disentangled herself from Étienne.
‘Where’s Mister Dawes?’ said Darlton.
‘I don’t know. What do you want him for?’
‘There’s been an incident, Mrs Dawes.’ He straightened his shoulders and breathed deeply. His face was the hue of rice pudding. ‘Something terrible has happened.’
‘What? What’s happened?’
‘I need to find Mister Dawes.’
‘Tell me!’
‘Someone’s shot themselves in the wood. A man. Someone from this party.’
‘What? Who?’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t know, Mrs Dawes. I need to find—’
She pushed past him, slamming open the door. The pianist had stopped playing and now sat on the stool with wide-open legs and a slumped back, a cigarette pinched between thumb and forefinger. A group of men she didn’t recognise were murmuring together with solemn faces. One of them had blood up his white shirt. ‘Who was it?’ she asked the blood-streaked man, a feeling like muddy centipedes in her stomach.
‘Do you know where your husband is?’
‘Goddammit!’ she yelled. ‘I’m the woman of this house, not some – some hysterical silly girl! You can bloody well talk to me.’
‘Tell her,’ said Étienne.
‘And who are you?’
‘Never mind who he is. I’m here and this is my house and I demand an explanation. Who was it?’
The blood was a sickening bright red against the starched white of the shirt. Quite a sickening bright red.
The man looked up, relieved, because suddenly Bart was there, rushing in with wide eyes, his shirt tails hanging out of his trousers – yes, the husband was here, the big man. What a joke.
‘Who was it?’ he asked the bloody man. ‘I heard a bang earlier. I thought it was a firework. Was it a gunshot? Who was it?’
The bloody man glanced at Bettina.
‘Oh for God’s sake!’ she shouted. ‘I’m not going to swoon to the floor!’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. It was loaded, that sorry. He took Bart by the arm and led him away from the group.
Bettina stared at Étienne, her hands spread in a gesture of furious bewilderment. ‘I can’t believe this.’ She started to cry – how humiliating! I’m the woman of this house, not some hysterical silly girl – and look at her: behaving exactly like a hysterical silly girl. The men looked down at the floor. She watched the bloody man whispering to Bart through a blur of tears. She turned around and looked at the partygoers, still in their clusters. ‘You can all go now!’ she yelled. ‘Party’s over.’
‘They might need to be questioned by the police,’ said one of the men.
She stared at his moustache. It was trim and blond with one solitary ginger hair growing long and wiry just at the edge of his lip. How had he neglected to notice it? How on earth could a sane person not notice it? She wanted to hit him. Her stomach was crawling. Centipedes and beetles and soil-crumbed worms.
‘Bettina, darling.’ It was Bart. Touching her arm gently, his voice soft. She couldn’t take her eyes away from that stupid ginger hair. ‘Sweetheart, come with me.’ He was pulling on her arm. She closed her eyes and let herself be led. Bart wrapped his arm around her waist. He was shivering.
They walked up the stairs together, arm in arm.
‘It was Jonathan, wasn’t it?’ she said.