‘I didn’t pull it off, honey, I put it on,’ Mummy said. Her saucer eyes stared at me in surprise. ‘I had Dilling tell them that Coco had infrared cameras hung all over the room that could see through paper bags.’ She paused. ‘The lucky thing is, there seem to have been enough towels. Now you go right on down there and enjoy yourself. I’ll send Austin and Gilmore down to you.’
‘In towels?’ I said. ‘You’re not going to be very popular with the Trade Mission. You must have soaked them all to the skin.’
‘I think it’ll have to be bathrobes,’ Mummy said. ‘Why not? They shouldn’t have gotten high in a well-bred lady’s drawing room, but if she’s prepared to overlook it, I don’t see why we shouldn’t show them quite a good time.’
There is a kind of dreadful fascination about Mummy. She has an attitude to life which would drive a phenobarbitone pill up the wall, never mind a civilised drifter like Daddy. But she has Personality too, with a capital P, which is what must have brought them originally together. Then she found that Daddy was nothing but personality, and I suppose that was it. Mummy disappeared, the music rose to a kind of frenzied crescendo, and I stepped down into the fray.
I think it was the most energetic dance I’ve ever been to. And that includes even Highland balls, where you have a houseparty and have to defend your virtue half the night after, as well as dance all the reels. I stepped down into that orgy, and someone got me by the hand and started jogging me up and down, and I got handed from bag to bag for ten solid minutes until the group finally let up, and we collapsed on the floor. My current bag had a beard which brushed up and down inside the paper all the time he was smooching: with no lips to smooch with, they all made great play with their hands, and it was their hard luck I had all my underwear on. The tennis pro brought me an icy Tom Collins, and I was still breathing hard and parrying his right backhand drive when the lights went up from near-total to mid-total darkness, and a lot of balloons came drifting around.
It was that gruesome game where you have to roll the balloon up and over your neighbour by using your head: one of the Group MC’d it, and there was a fair amount of slipping towels and tearing of bags. They next wanted to do the one where you pass the string down inside the back of your clothing, but after a bit they reckoned the fictitious cameras ruled that out and went back to frugging or whatever.
I was getting so used to recognising people by their birth marks that I hardly realised Austin had me in his grasp.
His hair was still brushed forward, but it was fluffy with drying, and he had on a rather nice bathrobe in pink. I guessed it was maybe one of Coco’s. His eyes had matching pink rims, and he looked very bemused. He said: ‘I guess I ought to apologise. Over getting plastered back there, I mean. Those guys can sure put back the Smirnoff. Mrs van Costa’s been most considerate . . .’ He stopped again and said simply: ‘I don’t get it.’
I explained. Coco’s vengeful scheme struck him as a great, great pity. Of course, artists were highly strung. They often couldn’t be judged by ordinary standards. But Coco’s behaviour, thought Austin, was unpardonable. But my stars, said Austin, wasn’t Mrs van Costa a sport?
That she was my mother, he had clearly no idea at all. I was agreeing she was dead groovy, considering, and inquiring about the health of Gilmore and the trade mission, when I suddenly saw, dancing together, two paper bags I knew. I stopped dead, treading heavily on Austin’s bare feet, for which he apologised like a gentleman. The last time I had seen those two paper bags, one had held my tomatoes and the other my Fantas. One was Janey. And the other was my brother Derek.
I don’t know what I was saying to Austin. Whatever it was, his grip kept getting tighter, until finally I had to give my mind to it and ask him questions about his boyhood in Connecticut, and things like that. He told me all about it, and we sat out and had a drink and he told me some more, and still Derek and Janey went on circling, very slowly, with their paper bags blowing in and out with their talking. I realised now where Janey must have gone in that quick drive before dinner. I further realised that whether she told Derek or not, she jolly well knew that it was a paper-bag party, or she wouldn’t have brought these two with her. I further wondered if Dilling had brought the towels in before or after they had both arrived. I was never so shocked in my life.
Then I thought, oh my Gawd, Mummy’s going to come in. And Derek’s going to recognise her.
I said: ‘Darling Austin, I’ve got to go out for a minute,’ and as he still clung, I said: ‘Darling Austin, I’ve got to go to the loo,’ and pulled away and ran out.
It was then I realised the party had sort of seeped out of the playroom and was infiltrating elsewhere. All the corners seemed to be full of people celebrating the fact that there were no cameras, and I was scarlet and wishing I had a paper bag on myself when I ran into Clem Sainsbury, in a bathrobe. He put two kind, brawny arms round me and said: ‘Hey. Don’t look as worried as that. If I can help, tell me. Do you want to go home?’
I said: ‘Oh, Clem, dear,’ and kissed him. To be for a second with someone who wasn’t on the make was so blissful. Not practical, but blissful all the same. I said: ‘I’m looking for Mrs van Costa.’
Clem grinned and kissed me back with some enthusiasm, for Clem. ‘I rather think she’s been trapped by the Bolshoi,’ he said. ‘They seem to credit her with a passion for congas. Isn’t Gilmore with you?’
‘I’ve got Austin,’ I said. ‘Gilmore and I have sort of developed some cracks in our relationship.’
‘Why? Did he try something?’ said Clem, with some interest.
I sighed. ‘Everybody tries something, idiot. Everyone but Clement Sainsbury, that is.’
Clem grinned. ‘I’m learning,’ he said. And gave me a proper, long distance kiss this time, with his hands squeezing my towel and my shoulder hard. I was still standing puffing and gasping and hanging on to my towel when the end of the conga suddenly appeared at the end of the corridor and began to snake towards us, giving tongue as it went.
The head of the Trade Mission led it. He was dressed in red-and-white floral underpants, which I’m damned sure never came out of GUM, and a towel draped like a toga over his shoulder and hips. He had an Easter lily over his ear and looked very, very happy. One of the Spanish dancers came next, also extremely high, with her chin tucked in, scowling, and one hand on Nureyev’s shoulder while the other held up her frilly skirts and shook them at intervals – no-one had tried to get her into a towel. There followed two more Russians in underpants, the Chinese Spanish-dancer, and Mummy. She had both arms round the waist of the Chinese under his bolero, and her hair was standing up in grey spikes, but she had lost none of her sangfroid: in fact, her high kicks were better than any of them. There was a large rose pinning up one corner of her towel.
‘Hi, honey,’ she said as they passed. The conga whipped round a corner.
‘Hey!’ I pelted after and caught up on the straight, trotting beside her. ‘I’ve got something to tell you.’
‘Well, hitch on behind,’ Mummy shouted. ‘If I let this lot go, the Lord knows where they’ll end.’
I caught her round the waist and conga’d. The guitarist, who’d been in the Gents, fell in behind and added a little tone to the hullabaloo. Tarara-RAra-ra, Tarara-RAra-ra, Tarara-RAra-RAra- RAra-RAra-ra. . .
I shrieked: ‘Derek’s here!’
‘Who’s Derek?’ said Mummy, hurtling round the next corner so that my feet practically left the carpet. ‘I do apologise, angel. We suffer from a little clutch judder on takeoff.’
‘My brother,’ I wailed into her ear.
‘Oh,’ said Mummy. Tarara-RAra-RA . . . ‘OK. Give me a paper bag, someone.’
I feel I have underrated my mother.
Five minutes later, the conga got into the playroom and caught sight of the bar. Ten minutes after that, the Trade Mission was hunkered down on the floor, its han
ds on its hips, the soles of its feet shooting backward and forward like pistons while everyone roared and hung on to everyone else, counting. After the four separate members collapsed, which they did fairly soon, they instantly got up and launched into backflips and Cossack yells and a kind of chorus of knee slapping and stamping. At the same time, the two Spanish dancers, whose hair was beginning to come down, were stalking to and fro, frowning, with their elbows inside out. Then they flung their arms up and began to writhe a bit, their fingers snaking and snapping while the Chinese stood close by with the guitarist, hissing like rattlesnakes and doing a sort of rhythmic flat clap, hesitating when there was a slight Russo-Spanish collision, which there was from time to time. The girls began kicking up their red satin shoes and roving round, knees bent, in circles, their arms stretched in reverse. Everyone was shouting and jumping. I was dying to know what Janey was saying.
Then the Chinese suddenly hopped into action. He really was dolly, with a long yellow face, loads of black hair and sideburns, and his chins crammed right down into his white frilly shirt. He stood doing nothing, just scowling, and I could have screamed with suspense. Then he began very slowly to do a zapateado, kicking his boots, first on one side, then the other, his fingertips in his bosom and his mouth down round about the second last frill. In his underpants. He was fantastic. It was utterly fabulous. The girls were whirling around with their chests out, their beads all lassoing their Maidenforms, and their surplus frills hooked up like curtains, and from time to time, he would break off and stalk round beside one of them, his elbows bent inside out too. The Russians were still doing backflips and not looking very much where they were going, stopping occasionally to cock an elbow and charge up and down sideways, one brawny arm stabbing the ceiling. They gave tongue to intermittent, very loud shouts. Then they got tired of that and made back for the girls.
I never could find anyone who remembered very clearly what occurred after that. The gorgeous Chinese was on one knee by that time, handing a distraught girl in a circle around him, and the guitarist was singing flamenco, very mournfully, in long, minor rises and falls, and short, soulful runs. He had his eyes shut. Possibly the flamenco irritated the Cossacks, or maybe the vodka simply came to the boil. Anyway, one minute the red-and-white underpants were spinning like wheels round the room, arms flipping over and over, like four crazy propellors, and the next, the girls were both on the floor, in a wallow of frillies, and the Chinese, also in a wallow of frillies, was trying to throw the attaché over his shoulder. An earring flew past my ear, and I saw Mummy’s mouth open. She ripped the rose off her towel and bowled it straight at the electric portable organ, and Basilio y su Conjunto, cottoning on, struck up the conga. God knows how they knew what to play, for it went out with crinolines, but there was a sort of struggling and heaving and suddenly everyone was attached to everyone else in one long, semi-nude snake and kicking all round the playroom. They went right through the house again too, in and out of the showers, and through the wreck of the drawing room, nicking all the rest of the Smirnoff.
Finally, with paper bags and balloons bursting all over the place, they staggered out into the garden. I was stuck somewhere in the middle with Clem and Austin, and almost got the breath squeezed flat out of me. The torque was frantic. It was the hardest-pressed conga I’ve ever been part of, and if you saw the number of towels left behind on the floor of the playroom, you wouldn’t take long to guess why.
Outside, the fountains were still playing and the aluminium flickered under the trees. Pebbles, let into the gravel at intervals, said, to dream is an orgasm. Most of the conga tripped on ‘orgasm’, but none of them was in a state to dig it but Mummy, who turned round and said: ‘That was rather a nice one of Coco’s. The theme is developed in those plastic bulrushes, dream no more lightly.’
The bulrushes were on the other side of the fancy lake, under the trees. Basilio y su Conjunto, just behind, changed the tune and the conga gave a convulsive shudder and began twining in and out of small arbours, leaping. Someone had put a towel round a very nude statue and was saying anxiously: ‘You must go in and get warm.’
‘Coco always did take such trouble,’ Mummy said wistfully. ‘The words are all written up the stems. Dream no more lightly. Eff and make poetry tonight.’
‘What and make poetry?’ I said. The band had stopped. Clem, his arms crossed in front of me, was nibbling the back of my neck.
My mother turned. ‘F—’ she said impatiently, into the sudden abatement. I said: ‘Oh,’ and Clem lifted his head and said: ‘Something’s happened.’
All at once everyone was running towards the far side of the fountains. I ran, too, with Austin on one side and Clem on the other. I didn’t see what happened to Mummy.
The paper bags were all round the bulrushes. Among them, floating like Moses but without benefit of basket, was the fully-dressed figure of Coco, with three plastic bulrushes clutched in his dead hand. I had a good look at them. They read: No more poetry.
SEVEN
Austin and Gil took me home. I wondered whether I ought to stay with Mummy, but when I looked for her, I found her in the study, telephoning the Consulado de EE UU with Clem standing by her, and Clem told me to push off. I didn’t see Derek and Janey. But by then people had started to melt, walking fast round the side of the house with their clothes in bundles under their arms. We saw the gleam of cars, where we had missed them when we first arrived, discreetly tucked under the trees. The party must already have started when Gil, Austin, and I first arrived. Clever Coco. I wondered how many towels Mummy was going to lose, and then if she would lose something more than her towels.
Coco had drowned while under the influence of a lethal dose of cocaine, according to a paper bag who claimed to be qualified. But if anyone in that household had good reason to have it in for Coco, it was certainly Mummy. I wondered if I were the only former pupil of St T’s to have cause to suspect my mother and my brother of murder, each within the same twenty-four hours, and lay back thinking while Austin fondled my polythene.
Then I made up my mind, and collected his hand idly, and said: ‘I’m leaving on Monday.’
Gil, who was driving, said nothing at all, the rat. Austin brought his damp, white, Virgul arm closer around me and said: ‘I guess you’ve had a real fright. Those boys and girls don’t mean any harm, you know. Anyone dealing with the creative arts gets out of line a little bit, sometimes. It’s the price they pay for their talent.’
I shifted my head off his shoulder.
I said: ‘Austin, honestly, it’s no news to me. I’m just bored.’
‘Bored?’ said Austin. He gave a perplexed sort of grin. ‘You sure must be expecting some excitement in London.’
‘It’s the only place I’ve a return ticket for,’ I said. ‘Likewise, goodbye to the real Spanish dancing. I must say, I’m sad about that.’
Austin said: ‘If you had an older relative with you, I’d sure ask her permission to take you with me to Seville.’
My better nature staged a brief battle and won.
‘I don’t need an older relative,’ I said. ‘People don’t get chaperoned any more, you know, Austin. You just get up and go.’
‘Some people get up and go sooner than others,’ said Gil, still staring at the roadway in front of him. He drew in, and a Rolls- Royce bearing the Soviet flag swept ahead. You couldn’t see who was inside, or if they had any clothes on.
Austin said: ‘You mean you would come?’
I said: ‘I don’t see why not. Tomorrow, or whenever you want it. If Mr Lloyd doesn’t mind,’ I added quickly.
Gilmore said, sarcastically: ‘I’m sure he won’t mind in a good charitable cause. Are you going to marry her, Mandleberg?’
I could have killed him.
Austin gave an unnerved smile and said: ‘It’s a little early for that.’
‘Not for Sarah, it isn’t,’ said
Gilmore. ‘Better make up your mind now. Or you’ll see a lot more of Seville than you ever expected to.’
‘I already,’ said Austin, ‘know Seville extremely well. I have a gallery there. And in Gibraltar. And my only purpose in taking Miss Cassells there is to show her a good time and enable her to see a little of that glorious city. I shall make it clear to Mr Lloyd that my intentions are purely platonic.’
I didn’t hear what Gilmore said, but I know he jammed on the Cooper’s brakes so that I fell off Austin’s lap. An old Seat, which had been dogging us, hooting, passed us asthmatically, drew in, and groaned to a stop. The driver’s door opened and Johnson got out and came over, followed by Derek and Janey. Derek was white with emotion.
‘Hello,’ said Johnson. ‘Their Maserati conked out. I hear it’s been quite a party.’
Gilmore said: ‘How did you hear?’
‘Clem phoned the Club Nautico,’ Johnson said. ‘I drove over as fast as I could, but everyone was dressed by the time I got there. All I could find out was that Coco Fairley seems to have drowned himself at a party for eight or ten people, who went through three-hundred quids’ worth of booze and used fifty-three dirty bath towels. What happened? Did the Trade Mission liquidate him for the ideological corruption of Portland cement?’
‘Don’t be an ass,’ said Janey, soothingly, and she wasn’t being soothing to Johnson. She sat on the Cooper’s window, steadying herself with a hand on Derek’s shirt.
‘He’d had a row,’ I said, ‘with Mrs van Costa. She told him to get out just before. Why ask? Clem must have told you.’
‘Clem,’ said Johnson, ‘was on the long-distance telephone to New York, London, and Paris, and also, if it matters, to Birmingham, to get a new screw for the heads. Mrs van Costa was otherwise engaged. Derek says she’s your mother.’