Martha had woken up with a real migraine this time. It always happened if she drank, and she couldn’t even remember how many drinks they’d had. It was hot. Gin and tonic in the middle of the day.
They’d sat in Daisy’s kitchen at the table. The blinds were drawn to keep out the sun. It was private and removed; the world retreated from view. Martha felt that Arnold Buch would have approved of Daisy Cavallo, and if anyone would understand Arnold, Daisy would. She was a bohemian. She didn’t have a tidy house. She drank gin and tonic in the middle of the day. Her fingers were decorated with rings and red nail polish. Martha felt she could show Daisy her hidden self, show who she could have been if life had gone differently. She began to explain about Arnold Buch. And as she began to open up, the understanding smiles that drifted across Daisy’s face encouraged further disclosure.
Martha had only seen Arnold Buch play piano once. In the large room at Mary Galmotte’s party. At first he had simply leaned over and with one hand played a few notes, his ear turned just slightly towards it. Then as if the sound had caressed him, his body followed, and he succumbed, seating himself on the stool. He held himself quite erect over the piano, rocking slightly, as he finished the last bit of his cigarette and squashed it down into his glass. He put both hands gently on the keys and then curled over them like a dying flower stem, as if he and the piano were drawn to embrace or secretly converse. The notes rang out without any hesitancy. People turned and smiled faintly—some floated over and leaned on the piano. What he played was slow and sad and lingering. Some people wouldn’t have appreciated it at all, not at a party. It fanned out through the room like a shaft of light, a glancing shadow of wistfulness, as the talking hushed down a little and for a moment everyone seemed disorientated.
Mary Galmotte sashayed over. This wouldn’t do. She pouted attractively and put her arm around Arnold, leaning into him and saying, ‘Darling, I never knew you could play. A man of hidden talents, I should have guessed. It’s marvellous, but play something more upbeat, it’s a party for godsake, not a funeral. Then everyone could dance.’
Daisy was amused. ‘Did Arnold oblige her with a boogie-woogie?’ she asked.
Arnold was not the obliging type. He lifted his hands. The sad slow music stopped. He looked at Mary; his brows arched, either in mock amusement or plain disdain, and the sudden ensuing quiet accentuated its glimmer of cruelty. Mary Galmotte reddened but gathered herself. Arnold responded with a resounding bark of laughter. It was very uncomfortable; it seemed that the whole room was waiting, but it lasted only a moment before Arnold leaned away from the piano with a mannered tilt of his head, as if he was in fact considering Mary Galmotte’s request, which of course he wasn’t. He stood up and grinned at Mary, his expression having recovered its distant wilting smile.
He said, ‘Well, Mary, you’re right of course. Put a record on.’
Martha had only just met Arnold Buch, but she had already sensed in him something hidden and grand, something almost old-fashioned. It was a time when hats were being thrown off, gloves discarded, bread came already sliced, people were protesting, Martin Luther King had marched, women wanted equality and people wanted to boogie. In a few years, a man would walk on the moon. But Arnold seemed impervious to all this, he had a timeless dignity, an almost regal demeanour which Mary had offended. What it showed both frightened and intrigued Martha. But she was ready for danger, even wanting it. Here was an opportunity to crack open the heart of life and to get at whatever it was that lay beneath. There she was, slowly getting drunk in Mary Galmotte’s white house, in Imogen Ashton’s green silk dress, with two men, neither of whom she had ever met before and each of whom stirred something in her. She felt like a crude version of Cinderella in her borrowed finery, and she gave herself to the night’s atmosphere, thinking that it was a game that would end. In fact it was the looming inevitability of its end that hurled her into it. Martha knew that Mary Galmotte would never have done what Martha did that night, but Mary didn’t have to. Mary belonged there, in her elegant white house, throwing parties, waiting to trap a respectable, wealthy husband.
And then it was also because of Mike, who had impressed her with his unaffected gallantry, with the flash of his boyish smile as he appeared at the bottom of the staircase. He was an innocent. She trusted him immediately, and once he had relaxed into himself, he was alluring in his way. He leaned back, arm across the window ledge, and opened himself to the whole of the room’s possibility. Whereas Arnold Buch sat straight up with one leg crossed over the other and jiggering. He looked at Martha with such brazen intensity that her heart scuttled for cover. His complexity excited her as much as Mike’s straightforward masculinity drew her to him. She moved between them like a cat, performing a version of herself she hadn’t yet encountered. The emerald dress transformed her, entitled her. And those two men saw her only as she was perched on that window seat, by the piano, radiant with stolen confidence and champagne giddiness.
If Arnold Buch hadn’t played the piano and Mary Galmotte hadn’t offended him, they would have stayed the whole night there, but Arnold’s mood was turned. The party soured under his scrutiny, became a mere parade, a spectacle. They were separate from it and better than it. Suddenly Martha felt she had to impress Arnold, she had to prove she was better than the others. He said he was going to drive to the ocean—who wanted to come? Martha rose instantly. She glanced at Mike. She knew he would come too, but she wanted to make sure.
Daisy seemed delighted by the story. She interrupted. Which one, she wanted to know, had Martha fancied?
Martha hadn’t known then, but now she thought she couldn’t have liked one without the other. She wouldn’t have trusted Arnold without Mike and wouldn’t have found Mike interesting enough on his own. Arnold was fascinating in a way that Mike wasn’t. He was unpredictable, his intelligence was disarming, but she glimpsed a coldness, and she bounced right back towards Mike who was there, warm and waiting.
‘Was Arnold Buch handsome?’ Daisy wanted more.
He probably was to some but not to Martha. He was tall but all head, as if his body was just there to carry it around. Except when they had played pool. He was surprisingly good at that. It was the only time he looked to her like a man and not an intellectual. Mike had exactly what Arnold lacked; he was alive in his body.
It was hard to know who was leading the whole thing. Arnold at first because of the car, but afterwards it seemed to be all of them leading and following at once. Perhaps Arnold always was, but he let them think they were too. He was clever enough to do that. He drove like a madman, nearly hit a cat. A good omen, he claimed. He sang a lot, telling them to sing along. Songs like ‘Don’t Let the Sun Catch You Crying’. He liked those melancholy songs. Mike didn’t sing, he still didn’t sing. They drove for nearly two hours. They were all drunk. The ocean appeared, and the moon hung like a huge pearl above it, and they went straight to the beach, took off their shoes. Mike ran and jumped at the shoreline; Arnold plunged forward, still talking. Moonlight rippled over the sea. They took off their clothes and went swimming. Martha was drunk enough to feel porous and blank, guided by senses, lying between sea and air. Either they were playing at being completely free of any future or past, or for that moment they really were. They stayed up till dawn, watched the orb of sun peep over the horizon while they shivered in a huddle beneath the suit coats. Martha buried her wet feet in the sand.
Afterwards they went to the Continental Hotel. Arnold stopped the car, leaned over the back seat, grinning.
‘Two of us should book the room. Martha, who will you take with you? Do you want to be Martha Buch or Martha Bloom?’
He had laughed at this. Either to hide or accentuate the discomfort that this question raised. He didn’t give Martha time to reply; he said that it was far more beautiful to bloom than to buck. He ushered her and Mike in together, as if they were his underlings or accomplices, pieces in his game.
‘Mr and Mrs Bloom,’ he said and bowed.
The hotel was old and grand, a sandstone building with verandas all around and a view of the bay. They smuggled Arnold up the back stairs. Mike had the key and pushed open the door, already with a proprietary air. The room had languished through winters and decades; its furniture was elderly and polite. There was a pale-yellow bedspread, an armchair and a dressing table with a round mirror. They all edged in. The intimacy of the room made Martha uncomfortable and she went to the window and yanked it open. The early morning flooded in. The air smelt of the sea, and the baker’s truck shuffled past below. Arnold hauled the armchair across the room. He faced it to the window, sank down, hoisted his legs up on a padded stool and closed his eyes.
‘I’m taking a nap,’ he said.
Mike had already lain himself flat down on the bed, perhaps too exhausted to care, or perhaps because he was Mr Bloom. Martha didn’t know. She peeled back the bedspread and curled, careful as a cat, on her side. Mike’s body shifted closer to hers. Like that they slept until the late afternoon. And then Arnold roused them with his singing, his frenzied eyes, holding aloft a bottle of champagne. The night began again.
‘How did it end?’ Daisy asked.
End? Martha threw her hands over her eyes. The end always came with you. ‘I thought you would have guessed. That hotel. It was where I conceived Tilly.’
Daisy leaned closer.
‘Yes,’ Martha lied. At the last moment she lied. ‘With Mr Bloom.’