“Uh … Not well, but yeah. What’s his name — Mory Kanté?”
“We are a-wooing Mory Kanté’s backing singers.”
“Riiiiiight. And doesn’t Mory Kanté need them tonight?”
“They did a big gig last night in Geneva, but tonight they’re free and they’ve never learned to ski — lack of snow in Algeria, I presume — so they’ve all come to Sainte-Agnès for two or three days to learn.”
I find this story semi-plausible, more semi than plausible, but before I can voice my skepticism Chetwynd-Pitt rocks up. “It’s the season of lurrrve back at chez CP. There’s a still a slab of Gruyère in the fridge for you to impregnate, Lamb, so you won’t feel left out.”
Southern Comfort, cocaine, and horniness turns my old friend Chetwynd-Pitt into an A1 shithead and compels me to retaliate: “I don’t want to shit in your baguette, Rufus, but hasn’t it occurred to you you’re pulling a trio of tarts? They have that air of paid sex about them. I’m only asking.”
“You may be better at cheating at cards than us but tonight you’ve failed to pull.” Chetwynd-Pitt pokes my chest and I imagine ripping off the offending index finger. “We’ve got three dusky maidens zero-to-gagging for it in less than sixty minutes, so Lamb decides we’re paying them. Well, actually, no, they’re discerning women, so you’d better put your earplugs in: Shandy’s a screamer, I can tell.”
I can’t let that pass: “I don’t fucking cheat at cards.”
“Oh, I believe you do fucking cheat at cards, Scholarship Boy.”
“Take your finger off my chest, Gaylord Chetwynd-Pitt, and prove it.”
“Oh, you’re too fucking clever to leave proof, but year in, year out, you’ve fleeced your friends for thousands. Intestinal parasite.”
“If you’re so sure I cheat, Rufus, why do you play me?”
“I won’t again, and in-fucking-fact, Lamb, why don’t—”
“Guys, guys,” says Fitz the stoned peacemaker, “this isn’t you; it’s Colombian snort or whatevertheshit it was that Günter sold you. C’mon, c’mon, c’mon! Switzerland! New Year’s Eve! Shandy’s into lovers, not fighters. Kiss and make up.”
“Cheat-boy can kiss my fat one,” mutters Chetwynd-Pitt, pushing past me. “Get our coats, Fitz. Tell the girls it’s afterparty time.”
The door to the Gents swings behind us. “He didn’t mean it,” said Fitzsimmons, apologetically.
I hope not. For several reasons, I hope not.
I STAY ON the dance floor for DJ Aslanski’s remix of Damon MacNish’s mid-eighties anthem “Exocets for Breakfast,” but Chetwynd-Pitt’s parting shot has disfigured my night by shaking my faith in the whole Marcus Anyder project. I created Anyder not only as fake account holder to own and obscure my ill-gotten gains, but to be a better, sharper, truer version of Hugo Lamb. But if a privileged clot like Chetwynd-Pitt can see through me so easily, I’m not as clever and Anyder isn’t as hidden as I’ve believed up until now. And even if I am a master dissembler, so what? So what if I join a City firm in eight months, and stab and bluff my way to a phone-number income within two years? So what if I own a Maserati convertible, a villa in the Cyclades, and a yacht in Poole harbor by the turn of the century? So what if Marcus Anyder builds his own empire of stocks, properties, portfolios? Empires die, like all of us dancers in the strobe-lit dark. See how the light needs shadows. Look: Wrinkles spread like mildew over our peachy sheen; beat-by-beat-by-beat-by-beat-by-beat-by-beat, varicose veins worm through plucked calves; torsos and breasts fatten and sag; behold Brigadier Philby, French kissing with Mrs. Bolitho; as last year’s song hurtles into next year’s song and the year after that, and the dancers’ hairstyles frost, wither, and fall in irradiated tufts; cancer spatters inside this tarry lung, in that aging pancreas, in this aching bollock; DNA frays like wool, and down we tumble; a fall on the stairs, a heart attack, a stroke; not dancing but twitching. This is Club Walpurgis. They knew it in the Middle Ages. Life is a terminal illness.
PAST THE QUEUE for the gorilla-man’s crêperie on the plaza, under lights strung between the spiky pines, through air shimmering with bells and cold as mountain streams, my feet know the way, and it’s not back to family Chetwynd-Pitt’s Swiss chalet. I take off my gloves to light a cigarette. My watch says 23:58. All Praise the God of Perfect Timing. After giving way to a police 4×4—its snow chains clink, sleigh-bell-like — I walk down the narrow alley to Le Croc and peer in through the round window at the scrum of natives, visitors, and shady in-betweeners; Monique’s fixing drinks but Holly’s not in eyeshot. I go in anyway, and ease myself through flesh, jackets, smoke, chatter, clatter, and phrases of Herbie Hancock’s Maiden Voyage. No sooner do I reach the bar than Günter turns down the volume and clambers onto a stool, whirling a soccer rattle for attention. Our host points at the large clock with the handle of a tennis racket: Less than twenty seconds remain of the old year. “Mesdames et messieurs, Herr und Herren, ladies and gentlemen, signore e signori — le countdown, s’il vous-plaît …” I’m allergic to choruses so I abstain, but as the unified clientele reaches five I feel her eyes pulling mine down from the clock and we watch each other like kids playing a game where the first one to smile loses. A lunatic cheering breaks out, and I lose the game. Holly pours a measure of Kilmagoon over a single cube of ice and slides it my way. “What mystery object did you forget this time?”
I tell her, “Happy New Year.”
New Year’s Day, 1992
THIS MORNING I WAKE in my garret at Chetwynd-Pitt’s, knowing that the phone in the lounge, two floors down, will ring in sixty seconds and that the caller will be my father, with bad news. Obviously it won’t; obviously it’s the dregs of a dream — otherwise I’d have powers of precognition, which I don’t. Obviously. What if Dad’s calling about Penhaligon? What if Penhaligon blabbed in his suicide note, and an officer from Truro has spoken to Dad? Obviously this is postcocaine paranoia, but just in case, just in case, I get up, slip into the Turkish dressing gown, and go down to the sunken lounge where the phone sits silent, and will stay silent, obviously. Miles Davis’s In a Silent Way dribbles out of Chetwynd-Pitt’s room, no doubt to beef up his wigga credentials. The lounge is empty of bodies but full of debris: wineglasses, ashtrays, food wrappers, and a pair of silk boxer shorts over the Boer War rifle. When I got home last night, the Three Musketeers and their backing singers were frolicky and high, so I went straight to bed.
Perching on the back of the sofa, I watch the phone.
09:36, says the clock. 08:36 in the U.K.
Dad’s peering over his glasses at the number I left.
+36 for Switzerland; the area code; the chalet’s number …
Yes, I’ll say, Jonny did play cards from time to time.
Just a bunch of friends. Relaxation, after a long week.
Absolute tops was fifty pounds a sitting, though. Beer money.
How much? Thousands? I’ll laugh, once, in disbelief.
That’s not relaxation, Dad. That’s lunacy. I mean …
He must have fallen in with another bunch altogether.
09:37. The molded plastic phone sits innocuously.
If it doesn’t ring by 09:40, I’ve been scaring myself …