Dorian (21 page)

‘And didja say there were two roads into this place?’ Coming from Campbell’s mouth, twisted with ill will, this sounded like an unpleasant insinuation, as if he were planning a murder and had lighted upon this as a good place to dump the victim.

Next to Campbell sat two highly disparate characters, yet they both sported dreadlocks and were discussing a region of common interest. One was Angela Brownrigg, another posh foal soused in privilege, who, in a misguided attempt to appear hip, had braided her lank yellow locks with multicoloured wooden beads. ‘Yes, I
love
Jamaica,’ she trilled, ‘although there’s hardly
anywhere
to stay in the Caribbean nowadays, so if you do open your hotel… Mr…?’

‘Bluejay,’ said her dour and heavyset neighbour, upon whom dreadlocks appeared far more convincing, ‘jus’ Bluejay.’

‘Bluejay, then – well,
tout le monde
will flock there, believe me. Mustique is
so
uncool now.’

‘I dunno no fucking Lamonde, but if ’e toot, well, thass easy done.’

‘And tell me,’ Angela said, persisting in her life at cross-purposes, ‘will you have an arboretum?’

A small head bobbed by Bluejay’s tracksuited shoulder. It was Phoebe, who cowered away from the lugubrious gaze of a whole monkfish which lay across her plate.

‘It’s not looking at you, Phoebe,’ said her nanny.

‘It
is
, Claire,’ the little girl protested, ‘even though its eyes are all dull and dead – it’s still looking at me!’ Holding it at arm’s length, she prodded the fish with her knife.

‘Well, you would’ve done better to have nursery supper this evening.’

‘But I wanted to see Daddy and Mummy’s guests.’

‘You’ve seen them now and it’s a schoolday tomorrow, so unless you’re going to try with the fish, it’s up to bed.’

‘You should’ve had a soufflé like me, Phoebe,’ Jane Narborough said. ‘It’s quite all right to think of all animals as your friends, y’know.
I
do.’

‘You can afford to, Jane,’ said Wotton; ‘you’ve a big enough establishment to maintain an ark-load on full board.’

‘You say that, Henry’ – she manifested the weary resignation of those who have to bear the awful burden of great wealth – ‘but truthfully, running costs at Narborough simply get higher and higher.’

‘Unlike that’ – he gestured at her soufflé – ‘which looks distinctly soggy. I’m sure even zero-rate inflation would be no compensation for a collapsed soufflé.’

‘C’mon, Phoebe.’ Claire rose up, a solid bulwark against all of this brittle persiflage. ‘It really
is
your bedtime now.’

‘Oh, all right,’ the little girl conceded, ‘but I want to kiss everyone goodnight first.’

Round she went, from her father to Hester to Dorian to Manuela to the Ferret to Gavin to Baz to Batface to Hall to Chloë to Campbell to Angela to Bluejay to Claire to Jane and back to her father. Round and round, kiss after kiss, the imprint of lewd lips, lascivious lips, leftover lips, pink-lipsticked lips, all on her white brow. Eventually Claire persuaded Phoebe to peel off and head upstairs, but the giddy rondo continued after she was gone, the mouths pouting and opening and closing, expelling smoke and babbles while the candles guttered; faster and faster until all there was was this sociable blur. Then, at last, the fateful wheel slowed down as the gravity of true night-time exerted itself.

It was way past everyone’s bedtime now. The candles had melted down to Gaudíesque finials. Plastic crates full of the rental ware were stacked in a barricade by the stairs. The hired men had long since departed. The dinner party had completely resolved itself into the two cliques that were at its core, and these had repelled each other, so that they ended up inhabiting either end of the long table. Around Batface were gathered David and Hester Hall, Jane Narborough and Gavin. Their talk was earnest, full of the names of people not personally known to them – Yeltsin, Gorbachev and Rajiv Gandhi – and referring to places they would be disinclined to visit, such as Moscow, Sarajevo and New Delhi.

At the other end of the table, grouped around Wotton, were the Ferret, Alan Campbell, Bluejay, Dorian and Baz. The latter – for reasons of self-preservation – was keeping an empty place between himself and the rest, but really the Urals would have done the job better. The chatter among this little posse was perverse, cynical and brittle, incorporating the names of people they knew only too intimately and referring to places where they would far rather be.

‘Have some more brandy, Baz,’ Dorian said provocatively, offering a slopping decanter. Whatever enthusiasm he’d evinced earlier in the evening for Baz’s sobriety seemed to have evaporated.

‘I can’t have any
more
because I haven’t had any at all,’ Baz replied.

‘You’re an awful prude now, aren’t you, Baz,’ said Wotton. ‘Since you’ve swapped one kind of needlework for another and become a Victorian miss, you can help me with Quilty.’

‘Quilty?’

‘It’s my AIDS quilt.’ He pulled a tattered bit of cloth about the size and shape of a bar-mat out of his pocket and waved it aloft.

‘What the fuck is that?’ Baz was genuinely distressed; the others were authentically indifferent.

‘Quilty. It’s a bar-mat with the names of everyone I would like to get AIDS sewn on to it. Everyone else has an AIDS quilt – why the hell shouldn’t I?’

‘Let me have a look, Henry…’ Wotton passed it to Dorian ‘… ooh, you’ve put
her
on, I didn’t know the little bitch was in such disfavour.’

‘Well, of all the people who gossip about me
she’s
the worst, because everything she says can be verified.’

Alan Campbell broke in on this badinage. ‘Let’s move round a place,’ he slurred; ‘my glass has got dregs in it and there’s a clean one over there.’ They all rose to move round a place, even Baz, who had no need of anything clean save his personal cordon sanitaire. ‘No, Bluejay,’ Campbell admonished the fake Rasta, ‘don’t take that spliff with ya, it goes to the man who takes yer place.’ He duly acquired it and began puffing expansively, his Adam’s apple bobbing up sharply from behind his cravat as he gulped down the smoke. Baz saw the lesions he’d suspected.

Dorian resumed. ‘And you’ve put
him
on, as well – mind you, there’s not much chance of him getting it, he hasn’t shot up in his life; he isn’t even a switch-hitter.’

Baz could stand it no longer. He raised his voice to get the attention of all of them. ‘A report this week says forty million people will have the virus by the end of the century, and heterosexual transmission is an established fact, so there’s every chance –’

‘Oh Baz,
must
you be so prosaic?’ Wotton cried.

‘Oh Henry, must you be so brainless?’

‘To live life with true artistry is to perform a successful brain-bypass operation – on yourself.’

‘Anyway, Baz,’ Dorian drawled, ‘what’s happened to
your
artistry? Surely you’d claim to be the only true artist among us, or has your clean-up campaign erased your talent as well as your sense of humour, hmm?’

But Baz didn’t get to reply immediately, because the Ferret piped up at this point in a strangled little disembodied voice, ‘So sorry, so sleepy, so very sleepy…‘ then slumped face down into some leftover
tarte Tatin
.

Wotton, who was sitting next to the Ferret, reached over and peeled back one of the little man’s eyelids. He released it and it rolled down like a roller blind. The sight was cartoonish in the extreme. ‘Give the Ferret some crack, will you Bluejay?’ Wotton said. ‘Best take him into the lavatory to do it; we don’t want to upset my wife and her ministerial friend.’

‘You payin’, Henry, so you call the shots, man,’ said the fundamentalist impostor, before adding ominously, ‘fe now.’ Then he did as he’d been requested, prising the Ferret from his chair, and manhandling him out of the room.

‘Well, Baz?’ Dorian queried again.

‘That’s part of the reason I’m in London, Dorian. The Walker Museum in St Paul is considering a retrospective of my work.’

‘St Paul?’ Wotton appeared to be considering the physical unlikeliness of a museum’s being lodged inside a saint.

‘Minneapolis’s twin city.’

‘Minneapolis?’ Wotton was still incredulous. ‘Do they
have
art there?’

‘Presumably they’ll have some when Baz’s retrospective is mounted’ – Dorian put himself in an unusual, speculative role – ‘or should one say “switched on” when referring to video installations?’

‘It could be a real springboard for me, Dorian,’ Baz said earnestly. ‘If there’s interest in the stuff I did in the past I can begin looking for a new gallery, finding a studio, working again…’

He paused. Bluejay and the Ferret had reappeared, the latter moving with the intense, studied calm of someone who has had an enormous hit of crack cocaine. The little man resumed his place and began to toy with the dessert he’d so recently head-butted. ‘Oh,’ he squeaked, regarding his spoon critically, ‘is that treacle?’

‘No,’ Wotton said witheringly, ‘I believe it’s some of that goo you use to stick down your hair.’

‘I miss your work, Baz,’ Dorian went on, ‘or is it simply that I dislike the untenanted space it used to occupy?’

‘What are you saying?!’ Baz was appalled. ‘Have you destroyed
Cathode Narcissus
?’

‘Oh,
that
– your little home movie of me shaking my tush. No… I’ve still got that.’

‘Good, because I need to take some photographs of it; it’s gonna be the centrepiece of the show.’

‘I’m not sure…’ Dorian said this with some thoughtfulness ‘… if that will be possible, Baz.’

‘Why?’ Baz pleaded. Everyone around the table stiffened; none of them liked pleading. They’d all done a great deal of pleading in their time and they all knew how undignified it could get. ‘Surely you won’t deny me this opportunity?’ he continued squeakily.

‘No, it’s only that the thing’s packed away in boxes in my attic. It’ll be a fucking drag getting it all out.’

‘I can do that! I don’t mind doing that! Jesus, Dorian, that’s a ludicrous reason – I need to see it! I need to photograph it!’

‘And I,’ Wotton said with magisterial unconcern, ‘need a hit. Pass me your stem, Bluejay.’

‘Wha’ ’bout yer old lady, Henry?’

‘Oh, she’s still pinned down in the Balkans. Just fill it up in your hand and pass it over, man – she’ll think I’m smoking a glass cigar.’ Bluejay performed the fiddly little task and passed a three-inch length of Pyrex tubing across to Wotton, who put the stem casually to his lips and ignited it with a lighter. He exhaled, and a big cloud of crack smoke boiled across the table.

After disappearing for some seconds inside this thundercloud of derangement, Dorian emerged with a change of heart: ‘All right then, Baz, what the fuck. You can come and see it now.’

‘Now?’

‘Yeah, now – any objection?’

‘It’s late –’

‘I don’t think
any
sleep will make a beauty of you now, Baz,’ Dorian snorted. ‘Besides, where’re you staying? I can run you back.’

‘Well, actually, Batface has very kindly offered me a bed.’

‘Bring your bag, then – you can crash at my place.’

‘Your place?’

‘Oh, come now, Baz.’ Wotton sought to still this irritating vacillation. ‘First you want to see the thing, then you don’t.
I
think Dorian is making you a very handsome offer indeed – why are you making such a bloody fuss?’

Baz looked around the table at the shining, bleary eyes of Wotton and his remaining partners in health crime. Why was he prevaricating? This was a very dangerous place for him indeed, he knew that – could Dorian’s be any worse? True, Dorian had a nasty streak in him, but at least he wasn’t an addict like Henry. Baz made up his mind. ‘OK then, let’s split. I’ll get my bag.’

Baz left the room and Dorian made the valedictory round, as urbane and unruffled as when he’d arrived. In truth, the group at the other end of the table weren’t so much in the Balkans as in their cups, and Batface merely slurred a farewell, while the others waved him off. By the time Baz returned, everyone at the table had already accommodated to his loss, assuming that Dorian had done the necessary parting for them both. Baz hovered for a few instants, half-hoping that Wotton or Batface would take notice of him – call him back, even, and ask him to rejoin the party. But they seemed not to heed him at all, and after a while he put on his coat and headed up the stairs after Dorian. The last thing he saw, before the long room, lit by the dying candles, disappeared from view below him, was that the Ferret had fallen asleep again, and Wotton – with Bluejay’s assistance – was forcing him to smoke a joint while in the depths of unconsciousness.

12

Once they were in the street Baz wanted to make conversation, the way normal people do when they leave a dinner party, but Dorian was having none of this. He tucked Baz into the supine passenger seat of his MG sports car, while he busied himself removing the canvas top and stashing it away. In the immediate vicinity the night-time city was quiescent, but over towards the King’s Road, Baz could hear the rev and bray and hooray of wealthy fun. He felt tired, so very tired. He’d had no time for his routines today, his meditation, his infusions. He didn’t place much faith in any of these procedures singly; it was the combination that let him know that he was looking after himself, that he cared about Baz. And what could this signify, this spontaneous decision to stay at Dorian’s? Nothing good. Nothing
healthy
. Baz’s life was now one of sobriety, of sticking to the straight and narrow. Now, for the first time in five years, he found himself cannoning on to the cold hard shoulder of existence.

This wasn’t even a metaphor, because when Dorian flung himself down in the driver’s seat and goaded the little car until it bucked, then flew off down the road, Baz discovered that by comparison with his protégé, Wotton was a considerate and careful driver. As the little skateboard of a car skidded around the first corner, Baz reached behind to check that his bag was shoved down tightly behind the seat; as they screeched to a halt at the next junction he fumbled to tighten his seat belt. For fuck’s sake, Dorian, he shouted above the wind, slow down!