A cab tout procured them a four-wheeler which took them down to the Embankment via Piccadilly Circus. The inside of the cab smelt of polish and old leather. Felix gazed out of the window — rubbing a face-sized porthole in the condensation — at the crowded streets.
The cab stopped outside a rather drab tenement in Cheyne Walk. Holland paid off the driver and Felix stood on the pavement outside a grocer’s shop. His cheeks felt hot and he held his face up to the cool spray of the drizzle, closing his eyes for a moment. His pulse seemed to be beating unreasonably fast and he wanted to make sure he was calm. He heard the clip-clop of horses’ hooves as the cab moved away. He felt himself swaying and opened his eyes again, before he lost his balance. Perhaps the three brandies and water in the Café Royal had been a mistake. He touched his cheeks and forehead with the back of his hands. Still hot.
“Where’s Amory’s flat?” he asked Holland, who was wiping drops of rain from his spectacle lenses.
“Two up,” he said. “Above the grocer’s.”
They went through the small door beside the shop. There were no lights on the stairs and there was a strong smell of apples and decaying vegetable rinds. They climbed up two flights. From behind a door they could hear the noise of conversation and what sounded like a guitar.
“Here we are,” Holland said, and made to knock at the door.
“Just a second, Philip,” Felix said, moving to the grimy landing window. “Over here.” Holland came over. “What does my cold sore look like?” Felix asked, presenting his face to whatever faint light managed to cheat the dirt and cobwebs on the window pane.
“It doesn’t look too bad, does it? Not too obvious?” To his joy the sore showed some signs of clearing up. A dark and crusty scab had formed. At least it didn’t look like some moist and repulsive canker even though the scab had been a dominating feature in the looking-glass earlier that evening.
“Hardly see it,” Holland said. Felix wasn’t sure if this referred to the absence of illumination or the insignificance of the sore, but was happy to stay with the ambiguity: he couldn’t afford to over-burden the frail raft of his confidence any further.
Holland knocked on the door. It was opened by a burly young man with a heavy pipe dragging down the corner of his mouth. “Ha ha,” he shouted over his shoulder. “Le petit frère has arrivayed.” Holland moved past him without a word, Felix bestowed a nervous half-smile.
Like the Café Royal the small sitting room of the flat was crowded with people in a fog of cigarette smoke. Felix noticed a dangerously sagging ceiling blackened at one end with old soot from the fire. One window gave on to a view of untidy back lots. The other overlooked the Embankment gardens and the Chelsea Jelly Factory across a glimmering stretch of the Thames. The room was dark (Felix breathed a sigh of relief), lit only by a few candles. In a corner on a wooden chair was a girl with a guitar, with a small audience sitting raptly at her feet. Other shadowy people perched on a horsehair settee or leant against the walls and spoke to each other in very loud voices. An open door revealed a room with two beds which was occupied by the overflow from the sitting room. On a gatelegged table — half open — in front of the Thames window was a cut glass punch-bowl, a basket of oranges, plates of nuts and a half-dozen straw-cupped flasks of Chianti. There was no sign of Amory.
Holland and Felix moved with some difficulty towards the table, stepping over legs, ducking between conversations.
“Chianti or punch?” Holland asked.
“Ooh. Chianti please.” Felix felt his eyes stinging from the smoke. He lit a cigarette and took a gulp of wine. It tasted harsh and vinegary.
“Hey! Filippo!” came a great shout. Felix whirled round in alarm. He saw Holland being embraced by a large bearded man dressed entirely in black. Behind this person stood Amory. Entirely naked. The shock lasted a second or two until Felix realized she was wearing a skimpy dress of flesh-coloured tulle. Her brown hair was piled on top of her head in a complex fir-cone effect and secured by a thick jewel-studded ribbon. Her thin face was heavily powdered, her heavy-lidded eyes touched with kohl. Felix felt his legs tremble with desire, love and anticipation. The tulle dress hung from thin satiny straps revealing a large expanse of her hard chest. Her bosom was noticeable by its absence, but Felix didn’t care. It was those half closed eyes that drove him wild, as though the effort of keeping them open was proving too much for her.
The dark bearded fellow was still pounding Holland’s back and uttering cries of ‘Hey!’, ‘Wah!’ and ‘Yes!’ Amory brushed past him and refilled her glass with punch. She smiled at Felix.
“Hello,” she said. “Have you come with Philip?”
“Yes. I—,” Felix began but she had already turned away.
“Philip, I think it’s most rude of you not to introduce your friends. Oh do leave him alone, Pav.”
Holland broke away from Pav’s embrace. “This is Felix Cobb. But you’ve met him, Amory. And, Felix, this is Pavelienski something or other. The great artist. We all call him Pav.”
“Wahey!” exclaimed the great artist and punched Holland in the arm.
“Hello, Pav,” Felix said. He exhaled cigarette smoke in what he hoped was a firm, nonchalant-looking stream.
“Hello,” he said to Amory. “We met last summer once or twice.”
“Oh yes?” Amory said, pouring more Chianti into his glass. “We did?” She moved away, summoned by a distant conversation. Felix gulped more Chianti. Pav accepted one of his cigarettes. The artist had long black hair and a thick beard with spirals of grey in it. And all the more revolting for that, Felix added to himself uncharitably. He sensed he was in the presence of his rival. He gazed at the wine in his glass. A single hair floated on the surface. He wondered if it were one of Amory’s. He decided not to fish it out: he’d drink it down, digest this small particle of her being.
Pav made a sudden movement, a grab at Felix’s face and he flinched reflexively, his wine splashing over his sleeve, taking the hair with it.
Pav’s extended fingers were inches from Felix’s eyes, and the man was scrutinizing him intently. He turned his hand to and fro, as if he were unscrewing the lid from a large jar.
“You hef a spendid sroat,” he said in his heavily accented mid-European voice. “I am liking to draw it.”
Felix shot a glance at Holland, but he was staring at other people in the room.
“Oh,” Felix said, embarrassed. “Yes. Thank you very much.”
“Look, there’s Enid,” Holland said. “Come and meet her, Felix.”
♦
Felix forced himself to be attentive. He had been speaking to Enid for the last half hour. He could safely say that the fabled morphineuse was one of the most boring people he’d ever met. Holland said she was twenty-eight but she looked at least a decade older. She was a small, broad woman with a great shelf of bosom and wild straw-dry black hair. She wore a jarring futurist dress and was draped with beads and jewels. Her face was haggard and her eyes were ringed with purple. Felix switched his attention back to the monologue.
“…He’s got mumps, believe it or not.Yes, he’s got mumps. Terrible mumps. And he had a horrible discharging from one ear. Horrible. Eugh! One side of his face was all swollen from the mumps…”
Felix looked distractedly about the room. Where had Holland and Amory got to? The guitar player had quite a sing-song going—‘My Little Grey Home in the West’—and consequently only a near shout ensured that one’s half of the conversation was heard. Some of the guests actually had sketch books out and were drawing each other. Perhaps Pav would like to attempt his throat this evening, Felix thought scornfully. But these were artists, he reminded himself; they weren’t burdened with his self-consciousness.