She sat down next to him.
‘Are you all right?’ she said.
She touched his arm. An afterthought.
He didn’t look at her.
She tightened her grip on his arm. ‘What’s wrong, Moses?’
‘Nothing,’ he said.
His arm felt pressurised. He moved it away from her.
‘You were having a better time over there,’ he said. ‘Maybe you’d better go back.’
He wanted her to understand this simple unreasonable jealousy of his, but when he lifted his eyes to meet hers, he saw that she had taken a different turning somewhere. Suddenly they were miles apart and travelling in opposite directions.
‘Is that what you want?’ she said.
He shrugged.
She got up and walked away.
He didn’t watch her go.
Herr and Frau von Weltraum, the German astrologers, took her place on the settee.
‘Do you, by any chance, speak German?’ Hermann asked, pushing his spectacles a little higher on his inquisitive pink nose.
‘Nein,’ Moses said.
Hermann found this tremendously funny, and turned to relate it to his wife. His wife leaned forwards so as to smile at the humorous Englishman.
But the humorous Englishman had left.
*
Out on the patio Moses almost tripped over Ronald the journalist. Ronald lay against the wall, legs splayed, hair plastered over his forehead.
‘What are you doing down there?’ Moses asked.
‘Drinking.’
‘What are you drinking?’
A bottle rose into the air. Moonlight silvered the transparent glass. ‘Vodka. Have some.’
‘Thank you.’ Moses swallowed a mouthful and handed the bottle back.
‘I’m Ronald,’ Ronald said. ‘Who are you?’
‘Moses.’
‘Christ.’
‘Yeah, I know.’ Moses studied the journalist with some curiosity. ‘So what are you really doing out here?’
Ronald mauled his face with his free hand. ‘I’m pissed off. Bloody pissed off.’
He had been looking for Phoebe, he explained. You know, Phoebe. The girl with the incredible tits. He had looked all over the house. No dice. So he tried the garden, didn’t he. He was just crossing the lawn when he heard this moan. Coming from the shrubbery, it was. He got down on his hands and knees and crawled the last few yards. And there she was, kneeling in the bushes, her dress pushed down to her waist, her fat breasts erotically tattooed in light and shade. Bloody marvellous sight. Except she wasn’t alone, of course. How did he know? He saw this pair of hands appear on her shoulders, didn’t he. He watched them sort of slide downwards until they were — oh Christ –
‘Prince Oleander,’ Moses said. ‘Giving her another tennis lesson.’
The journalist’s head slumped on to his chest. Then he lifted the bottle to his mouth and swallowed twice, fiercely. He had watched, he told Moses. He hadn’t wanted to. He just had to. He had watched them fucking in the shrubbery. Shuddering rubbery fucking in the shrubbery. He had watched them for ever. Well, until Phoebe started coming, anyway. That he couldn’t take. So he had dragged himself back to the patio and hit the bottle. He wanted to get shit-faced. Best way to be.
‘Are they still out there?’ Moses asked, cocking an ear.
‘I don’t know. Don’t fucking care. Thought I was in with a chance, you see. But I don’t come from Calibloodyfornia, do I.’
The vodka bottle lunged at Moses again. He shook his head this time.
‘Californication,’ Ronald said. He laughed bitterly.
Moses climbed to his feet. ‘Thanks for the drink.’
‘You going?’
Moses nodded. ‘Got to find someone.’
‘Fucking women,’ Ronald said.
*
The day was catching up on Moses. Moving back indoors, shaky now, a little brittle too, he suddenly understood that the setting for the party, though extravagant and dreamlike, was at the same time perfectly stable. Cushioned on the surface, rock-solid underneath. Everything running along preordained and well-oiled lines. Crossing the living area, he saw the discreet glances of shared amusement that passed between Mr and Mrs Wood, he saw their confidence in each other, the strength of their attachment. They could invite strangers, frauds, drunks, vicars, tarts — all potential spanners in the works — to their parties, they could mix them together like some giant human cocktail, they could flirt with other people’s chaos because they knew it would never happen to them. The spanners in the works might make a pleasant tinkling sound, but they would never damage the machinery. How could he, Moses, match a performance like theirs?
As was happening more and more these days (ever since the arrival of the suitcase, in fact), Moses’s thoughts turned to his own background, setting against this brilliant suburban machinery, against this concentration of dazzle, a darkness illuminated only by a few photos in an old album and a dress that he had given to Gloria (who probably had hundreds more upstairs), and a sudden panic washed over him, the feeling that he had been squandering valuable time, that he should have been buying torches, lighting fires, calling electricians, anything to lift the darkness a little, to reveal his machinery.
Where was his machinery? Perhaps he had been the spanner in those particular works. Too big a spanner. Perhaps that explained everything.
Perhaps.
But he wanted to know.
*
Somebody had turned up the volume of the conversation. Fred Astaire was trying to make himself heard with his own version of the Cole Porter classic ‘Anything Goes’. How apt, Moses thought. Unable to find Gloria, he ended up in a lamplit corner next to Paul Newman. Next to Paul Newman stood the awful Margaux.
‘Moses!’ she cried. ‘Moses with no x! Come and talk to us!’
Moses groaned inside.
‘Have you two met?’ Margaux asked.
‘I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure,’ Paul Newman said.
I don’t believe you ever will, you bastard, Moses thought. The American had a pleasant transatlantic drawl and, for a moment, Moses wished he had brought Vince along. He would have enjoyed watching Vince toss a glass of champagne in that pleasant American face.
‘This is Moses,’ Margaux was saying. ‘Moses, this is Tarquin.’
Tarquin? Jesus.
‘Have you seen Gloria?’ Moses asked.
Neither of them had. Not recently, anyway.
‘It’s very important.’ He looked round, as much to avoid further conversation as anything else.
Ronald stumbled past, ash on his tie, flies undone. He had stuck the vodka bottle in his trouser pocket. It swung against his hip like a six-gun with no bullets in the chamber. Phoebe and Prince Oleander still hadn’t reappeared. They were probably still fucking in the shrubbery (one day my prince will come). Violet de Light, who had seen her husband stroking Margaux’s hand on the patio, had captured Romeo and was pawing him in a desperate last-ditch attempt to arouse her husband’s jealousy. Raphael de Light, the publisher, knew Romeo was gay. He wriggled with amusement in the kitchen doorway. John Dream was quietly taking his leave of Heather who, turning back into the room, caught Moses’s roving eye and came towards him.