Hardcastle spiked his rebellious fringe out of his eyes, but made no effort to prise the limpet away.
‘Take no notice of Marriott,’ he told Bubbles, with a flash of lopsided grin. ‘By the time I joined up they were running out of men. Another six months and they’d have made me a machine gun captain.’
‘Don’t be so damned modest, man,’ Marriott snorted. ‘It’s the same with his bookbinding commissions, y’know, Bubbs. All that inlaying of coloured leather, gold fillets, whose wossnames in enamelled porcelain you mount on the covers -’
‘Plaques.’
‘Plaques, thank you, and that’s without him encrusting the whole bloody thing with mother-of-pearl and those other wotnots.’
‘Cabochons.’
‘Cabochons, thank you, so don’t let him tell you different, Bubbs. They’re works of art he churns out.’
But Bubbles wasn’t interested in Hardcastle’s technical aptitude. Rich bankers are dandy when it comes to footing bills at the likes of Chanel or Van Cleef & Arpels, but the trouble is, they will spend so much time at the bank. Having given one beau the old heave-ho tonight, she was looking to plug the vacancy fast.
‘Why “Squiffy”, darling?’
With a glass of champagne permanently welded to one hand, even Biff could work out how she’d acquired her nickname.
‘Not what you think, Bubbles,’ Foxy laughed. ‘It’s from the way Teddy wore his cap at school, and damn if he don’t still wear his hat at that angle.’
On anyone else, Fizzy thought, it would come over rakish. On Teddy Hardcastle, the pitched brim lent a certain equanimity and she quietly damned ski-slope noses to eternal hellfire and sent lopsided smiles down the piste after them.
‘- so this exhibition tomorrow,’ Orville said. ‘Is everyone going?’
‘Are frogs waterproof?’ Foxy Fairfax retorted.
And as though a light had been switched on, the whole group became animated about Chilton Westlake’s new prodigy.
‘What’s the verdict on this, then?’ Kitty asked, unrolling one of the posters she’d designed to publicise the exhibition at their friend’s gallery. ‘Have I captured The Great Man, do you think?’
When Doc Frankenstein shot the first electrical bolt through his monster, it couldn’t have made so much of a jolt.
‘By Jove, Kitty.’ Biff was the first of the group to recover. ‘You’ve got the blighter off to a T.’
And how, Fizzy thought. Lank black hair, olive skin, stubbled chin, the slight sneer on his lips…dammit, this WAS Louis Boucard.
‘Just as well one can’t get scent off a poster,’ Biff added, wrinkling his prop forward’s nose.
‘He’s French, darling!’ Bubbles protested. ‘And an artiste, to boot. Parisians don’t think the way we do.’
What she meant, Fizzy reflected, was that soap and Louis Boucard were strangers, whereas booze and cocaine were blood brothers. She considered all the other attributes of this artistic genius – his gambling, his womanising, his debauching of young girls – and wondered exactly how well Kitty Gardener had known Louis Boucard to be able to produce such an intimate representation.
Indeed, how well every other member of the Set had known him, to recognise what they were seeing…
‘Can’t stand the fellow, as y’know, but I do feel his work has an affinity with Chevaillier,’ Catspaw Gordon remarked, emerging from his doldrums at last.
The Boucard effect, of course, Fizzy mused. The uncombed Parisian touched a nerve with everyone sooner or later, and her thoughts flashed back to that portrait in its gilt frame…
‘- pronounced Symbolist influence, certainly,’ Marriott was saying, ‘with a touch of the new Classicism overlaid with subtle early Cubist House elements and, hmm, maybe the merest smidgen of the draughtsmanship one sees in Migliorini -’
‘Tosh!’ Foxy Fairfax interjected. ‘Boucard’s a bounder and a cad who corrupts everything he touches! He’s a liar, a conman, a thief and a cheat, and by his admission, he trawls the gutters to paint -’ he adopted an exaggerated French whine ‘- prozzitutes et felons.’
‘Yes, darling, but there’s something so utterly exciting about the demi-monde, don’t you think?’ Bubbles shuddered delightedly. ‘I mean, all that naked flesh and loucheness? I find his work riveting. How about you, Squiffy?’
But before Teddy Hardcastle had a chance to venture his opinion on this blight on the moral and artistic landscape, Chilton Westlake, the gallery owner whose name the Set had adopted for their Friday night get-together, arrived wearing a mustard check suit, straw boater and a face like absolute thunder. He was also alone.
‘Have you seen these?’ His chubby fist pounded the newspapers in his hand. ‘Have you?’ He didn’t wait for an answer. ‘The Westlake Gallery is holding a exhibition of exciting new Parisian artist, Louis Boucard,’ he read.
‘Sounds just about top-hole to me.’ Orville explained. ‘You wanted a plug for the old show.’
‘Plug? PLUG?’
Chilton was in danger of testing medical science’s latest advance in cardiac technology.
‘I was supposed to be one doing the plugging here, matey. Instead, what happens? Boucard only gives me some cock-and-bull story about needing to borrow the key to the gallery to make a couple of last minute alterations, don’t he?’
‘Inviting the press for a sneak preview instead, I suppose?’
Trust Gloria to get there before anybody else.
‘Boucard’s bold style pushed the boundaries of art deco to a new dimension, says the London Bulletin’
Chilton tossed the paper on the floor and ground it with his spatted heel.
‘A greater whiff of decadence than a hundred Tamara de Lempickas, according to the Evening ruddy Witness, and I wouldn’t have minded him stealing a march on my show,’ he said, gulping down Marriott’s martini. ‘But get this.’
He hurled the paper at Foxy, who read aloud.
‘- Boucard has promised a work entitled “Revelation “ in addition to the paintings listed in the catalogue. A portrait, the likes of which, he claims, has never before been on public display in this country – a portrait so daring, so scandalous that he’s keeping it under velvet until the official opening. Even the gallery owner… Oh, I say, Chilton, is that right?’ Foxy goggled. ‘That even you have no idea of this picture’s content?’
Westlake glugged down Kitty’s drink and even managed to prise Bubbles’ bubbles out of her grasp.
‘Couldn’t be righter, old man. First I knew about this so-called “Revolution” was when I read about it in the bloody papers.’
His fat little hand lashed out to tip Catspaw’s, Biff’s and Teddy’s drinks down the hatch, his expression brightening only slightly when he noticed a stupendous pair of knees crossed elegantly on the soft leather banquette.
‘But the really galling thing,’ he wailed, ‘was that Boucard had the cheek to tap me for the fare back to the Gallery, and that’s not the first time he’s tapped me for a tenner, either!’
Fizzy’s martini was the last remaining casualty and Chilton Westlake was in no mood for taking prisoners.
‘I’ll kill the little bashtard,’ he said, his boater rolling under the table as he slid down the table. ‘Sho help me, I’ll shlit his dirty French throat and then I’ll pull his bloody gizzards through the hole.’
At that stage, of course, no one actually believed him.
Three p.m. on a Saturday afternoon and the Westlake Gallery resembled more a tin of sardines than a preview of an exhibition by a hitherto unknown artist. No invitation had been refused, placing something of a strain on the nosebags and drink trays, since Chilton invariably considered himself lucky if one third of his invites turned up to these dos, most often only a quarter (and those usually only relatives and friends). Today the place was packed to the gunwales and, despite bloodshot eyes and an aversion to bright lights, he wasn’t looking half as bad as Fizzy expected. That, she supposed, was because the gallery stood to make a mint from the sensational publicity and, to give Boucard his due, the Frenchman knew how to play the press.