Now all the rooms of the house were open to inspection. Some shocked, some pleased: some seemed to stretch into infinity, some were small and closed. Some were inhabited by angels, some by demons, some by Una’s Happy Boys and Girls, eager to oblige. Though many said it was only what Una had put in the champagne and fruit cup, some hallucinogen, that gave to so many this common illusion: that they had entered some other world where they could be themselves, where what you wanted to see, you saw, and no one would censure you or would band together to deny the evidence of your eyes, or curb your enthusiasms or object to your horrors. Some who came in together, separated; others who came separately joined up with others; some, a few, stayed hand in hand throughout the evening.
Angela opened the front door to guests: she was dressed in flimsy nothingness: a kind of pinkish Salome veil which draped over breasts and buttocks in an idle attempt to conceal parts she did not understand needed concealing any more than she would have done at the age of five. Nudity now seemed ordinary enough: the body a mere adjunct to the self: not interesting. Humphrey had said he liked the veil – it gave her an opalescent look which muted her air of childlike confidence and bounce – and she liked to please Humphrey.
‘That kind of party! I see –’ said one or two guests; but what other kind could there be, when you thought about it? Given by Una, in a house with many rooms.
Sir Edwin and Anthea arrived first, having mistaken the time by half an hour. They stood on the step in stubborn fleshiness: indeed, they lumbered in. Anthea had had her baby a month or so ago; a little boy. She had not recovered her figure. Edwin had put on weight, as if to keep her company. Angela took their coats.
‘That girl will catch cold,’ said Anthea.
‘It’s warm enough in here,’ said Sir Edwin.
They accepted Una’s champagne, and whatever was in that champagne, and Angela led them to the Wardrobe Room. Here Edwin changed into a ball-gown, the kind an opera singer wears to sing Die Fledermaus. Anthea chose a dinner suit, with crimson velvet cummerbund. They made an excellent pair. Angela took them upstairs to the Horse Room: the walls of the staircase agitated and moved as they passed by. Something or somebody was trying to emerge, flesh out of plaster and carved and gilded wood. Whatever it was didn’t manage.
The walls of the Horse Room were stretched with blond hide, which could be made to vibrate and ripple when a switch was thrown. The major part of the room was occupied with a hologram of a fine black stallion covering a delicate white mare. Hay was piled upon the floor: a horse whip, a riding crop and a dildo were evident; a warm smell of horse shit and pungent urine, not altogether unpleasant, was wafted through the room by concealed fans. This room was Una’s favourite, and to Angela and Humphrey the least interesting, although the creation of the hologram had challenged their ingenuity.
Here Angela left them rolling around, as if they were companionable children, beneath the horses’ hooves, able at last to trust where in the real world only danger could be found. And a curious sight Angela found it: Edwin in his large-bosomed crimson opera gown, Anthea at home and elegant, but already only in cummerbund by the time Angela left.
‘Angelica,’ said Angel, ‘are you there?’
‘Only just,’ said Angelica. ‘I seem to have grown so old. Is something happening to time? Do leave me alone to sleep.’
‘I don’t mind,’ said Angel, ‘but I thought you might, so I woke you.’
‘You told me you’d be sleeping, too. You’re cheating,’ said Angelica, suspicious even in drowsiness.
‘I only woke for a minute,’ said Angel. ‘Honest. It was a shock. Your ex-husband’s turned up, with his new wife.’
‘None of that concerns me any more,’ said Angelica. ‘I’m sure I hope they can be happy. It seems profoundly unimportant.’
‘If it’s all right with you,’ said Angel, ‘it’s all right with me,’ and they both went to sleep again.
‘Don’t take too much of Una’s champagne,’ Humphrey warned Angela. ‘I don’t know what’s in it, but I imagine some mixture of truth-drug, mind enhancer and aphrodisiac.’
Staff and guests mingled, behaving with various degrees of propriety. Some stood and stared, glassy-eyed: some found their pleasure in talk, in the excited exchange of ideas. Others slipped upstairs, singly, or coupled, with the Happy Boy, Girl or whatever of their choice. A few kept their own clothes; most made use of Wardrobe and Make-up; hardly anyone chose to remain in the gender in which they had first stood upon the doorstep of the refurbished Lodestar House.
Una was in a fine state of animation: she was riding Stephen White about the room, beating his patient shoulders with her fists. She wore a diamond tiara and a long white satin dress, hitched up to show scrawny but unashamed thighs.
‘Angel,’ murmured Angelica.
‘An hallucination. Take no notice,’ said Angel. ‘Angela’s doing fine.’
‘She is not,’ warned Ajax. ‘She has schizoid tendencies. Whorehouses preponderate in schizophrenic literature. For God’s sake, let me take some control of this body.’
But they’d drifted away, in their new unwary confidence; and Ajax was as helpless as Odysseus’ craft ever was, drifting between Scylla and Charybdis, hoping against hope.
Lambert, on his way to be pinioned and beaten, dressed in pink silk top and navy miniskirt, was loudly objecting to Una’s definition of gender as nature’s error. It could hardly be the case, he argued: if you gave a man oestrogen, the female hormone, he’d grow breasts and his voice would rise, and if you gave a woman testosterone, she’d grow a beard and develop a temper, this proving the physical base of gender division. Una leapt off Stephen’s ghostly back and called after him, ‘And what is wrong with a person who has a penis and breasts? What is wrong with one who has a vagina and a beard? The mind might well feel at home in such a body.’ She looked for Stephen, but he’d vanished.
Brian Moss and his wife were amongst the last to arrive. ‘Little Elsie clung and clung,’ said Oriole. ‘She didn’t want her parents going anywhere without her. You know how children are.’
Una raised her eyebrows. If she knew, she didn’t want to be reminded. Oriole’s hair was limp, her expression was strained and her eyes were small from lack of sleep. She wore a full-flowered skirt with an elasticated waist, a blouse, once, like herself, pretty, which also had been through many a badly sorted wash, and one reluctant string of chunky blue beads by way of party spirit.
Oriole looked around the Great Hall in some amazement: so different from the common scene of home: the measure of small achievement reckoned in fitted kitchens and CD sound. She preferred home. This place glittered in vulgar crimson and gold; over-the-top chandeliers hung from the ceilings; faded paintings – most of them bad – of men and women, sylphs and naiads, fauns and faeries, dryads and elves, in some form of intercourse or another, had clearly been brought from hidden basement stores, or attic cupboards and gathered here together. Fire and candlelight flickered on muted flesh-tones and intimate pastel moments. Erotica and strong colours, in art if not in life, did not go together: a general wanness pervaded all, yet added tone.
Oriole sighed. She had given up the study of art to marry and have children.
‘What sort of party is this?’ she asked. Her husband already drank from a full glass, but Oriole looked at the contents of hers suspiciously. ‘I don’t drink alcohol,’ she said. Nor would she drink from the fruit cup when a glass of that was offered.
‘That girl has no clothes on,’ Oriole observed as Angela flitted by. But there was no one to say it to, for Brian had gone and she knew nobody else, nor wanted to, so she sat on a yellow velvet brothel sofa and waited for him to come back. Congo and Wendy sat on either side of her: no longer old, nor young, but in their prime. Oriole put out her hand to free her skirt from where Congo sat upon it – and her hand passed through his leg. She touched Wendy’s piled brown hair and it had no substance. These happenings did not seem extraordinary.
‘It’s secondary smoking,’ she told them. ‘God knows what these dreadful people have in their cigarettes.’
‘All things pass,’ said Wendy.
‘All too soon,’ said Congo. ‘But I’m glad they did the place up.’
‘What about me?’ asked Oriole, but they were not interested. She looked at her watch. It had stopped.
‘Only holograms,’ said Oriole. ‘You’re nothing but holograms. You don’t frighten me.’
The six bedouins in white stood mid-hall and divested themselves of their clothes; folded them up on the rug: sashes, robes, undergarments. They stood gnarled and naked. Twelve little children applauded. The six masked women unveiled themselves, unclothed themselves, stood naked and beautiful, clustering, giggling, as if about to take a communal bath. The children applauded more. The men and women linked arms and performed a ring dance. Withered male scrotums bounced, nubile breasts likewise; children were enclosed. Then they disappeared as well.
‘Someone has a strange sense of fun,’ said Oriole to a man in fancy dress who now sat next to her. Congo and Wendy had gone. ‘It must be some kind of art show.’
Her new neighbour was dressed as an executioner. He carried an axe with an ornate handle. She tried it with her hand, expecting another hologram, but the blade was real. She cut her arm on the edge of the blade; blood oozed out of the flesh, in tiny little bubbles, which joined up to make a trickling stream. Maria was at her side in a minute, with tissues.
‘Have you seen my husband?’ Oriole asked Maria. ‘And I really need to call the babysitter to see if Elsie’s settled.’
‘Mothers!’ said Maria. ‘There’s no curing them. You’re a natural at the other world. You could earn yourself a good living as a medium.’
‘Oh no,’ said Oriole. ‘It’s Brian’s job to provide. I don’t believe in working mothers. Why have a baby if you don’t mean to look after it?’
Maria went; abruptly and rather rudely, Oriole thought. She winced as the executioner unmasked a monstrously long phallus and Tinkerbell swung down and sat herself upon it, squealing happily. The pirate leaned up against the wall, watching and smiling. He had his boots off, which seemed to be exposure enough for him. Bare toes curled gratefully in the air.
‘These people have no decency,’ said Oriole. Milk spurted from her breasts. ‘But I’m not breastfeeding,’ she said. ‘Where is Brian? He needs to be here.’
Ghostly figures moved up and down the stairs, carrying real-enough furniture. The faces of Tully and Sara appeared in ectoplasmic form, trapped in the ornate carvings on the staircase walls: how they stretched, writhing semi-stone arms to stop the profitable flight of possessions, but there was no stopping it. How Tully and Sara creaked and groaned.
‘Look at that!’ said Humphrey to Angela. She was eating the last of the strawberries from the fruit cup with her fingers; fingers so pale, you could hardly see them. Her mouth was splodged with strawberry juice more observable than her lips. ‘You can stop anything but not the dealers’ drive to make a fast buck.’
His hand was on her naked thigh. She kissed him; her all-but non-existent tongue in his half-existent mouth; she could feel but not see his now determined penis against her belly. And he was moving further from her as her belly was swelling too, pushing him away. She was doing it: she was the baby inside herself, growing. She did not like that but there was no stopping it. Even unborn, she could now remember, she had been insistent; so many of her in there determined to come to birth.
‘Angel,’ said Angelica, ‘what’s happening to us? This is dangerous.’
‘She’s all over the place,’ said Angel. ‘I’m frightened.’
‘She needs us to hook her into the world,’ said Angelica.
‘She’s lost her narrator,’ said Ajax. ‘Face it. Angelica, hello. Angel knows me well enough. Let me in. There’s almost no time left.’
‘Whoever you are,’ said Angelica, ‘if you can do something, do it.’
Humphrey led Angela upstairs. Her foot hardly touched the stair. Sara’s stony arms passed through her waist: Tully managed a cold rip with grey fingers into her more substantial buttocks. Angela squealed, and with the squealing solidified somewhat, as if in releasing sound she released the anti-substance that afflicted her. Humphrey, in anticipation, had returned properly to the flesh. He was dressed as once Lady Rice had so often known him dress – in a smooth grey suit which inhibited any movement other than formal.
Humphrey opened room after room, searching for the one which felt right. Angela looked cautiously over his suited shoulder: little by little she was gaining substance; if anyone were to photograph her now, there’d be no doubt but that she was there.
In the Flower Room, Angela saw a naked Susan panting and rolling on petals with a partly clothed Rosamund. And in the Scout Room, Brian Moss engaged lovingly with two young male cross-dressers. She saw Clive turn towards her a face made brilliant and lovely with make-up; he stretched out his arms to her but Humphrey quickly closed the door. In the Computer Room old Gerald Catterwall was tenderly embracing Una in her prime. Angela longed for empty rooms and, in longing, found them: or perhaps it was just that the drug was wearing off. The next door Humphrey tried revealed, once open, a cheap hotel room, serviceable and clean: a narrow bed, white-sheeted, greyblanketed; dark, shiny veneered wardrobes; a tray with kettle, powdered coffee, wrapped biscuits, cups; trouser press: the opposite end from The Claremont. Horrible, but what other people had.
‘This will do,’ said Humphrey. ‘If everyone else can, surely you and I will manage?’
Angela stood, undecided, in the doorway.
‘Go in,’ said Angel, Angelica and Ajax in unison. ‘For God’s sake!’
And Angelica’s legs took them in, and to the bed, and Humphrey.
Oriole sat weeping on the yellow velvet sofa in the Great Hall.
‘Brian had no business bringing me to a place like this,’ she said. ‘We so seldom go out. I was really looking forward to it, and now we’re here he dumps me. I haven’t even got money for a taxi home. I’m not well. I need to go home and take an aspirin. Everything seems so foggy in this revolting place.’
A couple were coming down the stairs: they looked real enough, and happy, and together. The man wore a grey suit; the girl, who was perhaps the sister of the one she’d seen earlier, flitting about with no clothes. But this one seemed reputable and pleasant enough, in jeans and T-shirt.
‘You’re Brian Moss’s wife,’ the young woman said to Oriole. ‘Is there anything I can do? I used to work for him once. I guess I owe you a favour.’
‘If you owe me a favour,’ said Oriole Moss, ‘then lend me the money for a taxi home.’
‘Let’s take her home,’ said Humphrey. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
The three of them left unobserved: pushing past a middle-aged couple on the step, who stood there with a young girl, perhaps sixteen. She’d been crying, but spoke formally, firmly and politely.
‘Mother will be inside,’ the girl was saying. ‘I’ll be all right. Thank you for seeing me home, Miss Ruck.’
And then the three from the past were gone, except the girl’s voice still lingered –
‘If that’s what a party is, it’s loathsome!’, but it might have been Oriole speaking; neither Humphrey nor Angela could be sure.
Humphrey and Angela booked in at The Claremont for the night. They had nowhere else to go.
‘Welcome back, Lady Rice,’ said the Commissionaire, but Angela didn’t hear him. Humphrey did, but said nothing. In the elevator she said to Humphrey, ‘Call me Angelica: Angela’s much too singleminded a name. It never suited me.’
‘You’re Edwin’s wife,’ he said, as she lay in foam in the marble bath. ‘Of course. That’s who you are. His ex-wife, I should say. I heard he married again.’
‘Forget all that,’ she said. ‘I’m no one’s daughter, no one’s wife. I am myself, started again.
‘Edwin’s ex-wife,’ she said. ‘Myself at last.’
That night, as new lovers will, they told each other their life histories. In the morning Angelica woke and listened for the voices in her head but there were none that she could define, let alone name: just an agreeable kind of buzzy awareness, laid in layers, interleaved with the possibility of future, and she found herself reborn.
She looked out the window of The Claremont and saw Ram and the Volvo. He was looking up at her.
‘Look!’ she said to Humphrey, ‘there’s the man with all my luggage, back again.’
But Humphrey was asleep. She looked at him closely and saw he was much too old for her. She went to the window and waved. Ram waved back, and beckoned. She nodded and dressed and went down to him.
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