‘Do you want me to have a look at it?’ asks Wilke. ‘It is all right now,’ she says. ‘Go back to bed.’ She kisses him on the cheek as he turns obediently about. He is quite as loyal to her, I suspect, as ‘Mister’. They are a strange pair of children. ‘I thought the Bulgarians had arrived,’ he says, almost to himself, ‘and had set us on fire.’
‘Could Chagani have some word?’ I ask Captain Mencken. Behind his smoked glasses he is inscrutable. ‘Hardly!’ he says. ‘A man like that? It would take much more than a day for Holzhammer to break through into the city. It was rubbish. He was drunk as a pig. Drunk as a pig.’ I have sweat and grime all over my face. I go up to Clara’s room to bathe. A maid fills the tub for me. We are gasping from the heat. ‘Don’t touch the radiators,’ warns Clara. ‘I have already burned myself.’ She displays a red spot on the back of her hand. On her mirror she has laid out two thick lines of cocaine. ‘Have one of those,’ she says. ‘It will spoil my appetite for dinner,’ I tell her. ‘Then have both,’ she says with a laugh. She is wearing her Broderie Anglaise negligee. Her white body, with its firm breasts and big nipples, is beaded with perspiration. She sprays at herself with a cologne-bottle. ‘Ugh! Who could have expected this? That Chagani is mad. I’ve always said so. He hates the human race. He’ll burn us down, yet.’
‘Wilke thought the Bulgarians had arrived.’
‘He’s not the only one. We’re all on edge, Ricky, dear.’
After my bath I go to see my other ladies. They usually prefer to be together until mid-afternoon when they like to receive me. This arrangement suits Clara. She has her naps while I am away. Alice and Diana come to embrace me. They could almost be brother and sister. Twins. ‘Oh, those guns again,’ says Lady Cromach. ‘My nerves! Did you hear them?’
‘Nothing to worry about.’
‘Why do men always say that to women and children?’ Diana shakes her head and leads me towards the bedroom. ‘And you seem so pleased with yourselves when you do it!’
‘Aha. Perhaps we’re talking to ourselves.’
‘Perhaps you are, my dear.’ Diana kisses me again. ‘There is a child in all of us sometimes, who cries and must be comforted.’
Alice follows behind us. She has her hands together on her stomach. Diana and I stretch ourselves on the bed but Alice continues to stand. ‘We’ve got to leave,’ she says. Our Alice is drawing attention to herself. She is looking a little fatter and, as a result, even lovelier than usual. Her skin’s lustre reminds me of pink pearls in the deep sea, still enlivened by the movement of the waters. Her hands press against glass. Behind the glass are shutters, nailed with boards on the outside, and only a few bars of yellow light shed by the houses opposite, enter through the gaps. Within the brothel we live almost entirely by artificial light. There is no more gas. Oil and candles are in short supply. She wears one of Clara’s grey silk dressing-gowns and the remains of last night’s theatrical make-up—we had turned her into a doll, a Coppelia. ‘This is wretched.’
‘There is absolutely nothing we can do, dear.’ Diana strokes the linen of my arm. ‘Where could we go?’ She looks at me.
‘They were shooting at civilians,’ I tell Alice. ‘It was a riot near the Mirov Palace. Clara and I were almost caught up in it, but it wasn’t really dangerous.’
‘What was Clara doing, letting you go out in that?’ says Alice. ‘Clara is a fool! Clara will get you killed. She looks for danger. She loves to be near death. It’s the way she’s made. You shouldn’t go along with her silly schemes.’
‘We were taking our usual stroll,’ I say mildly, looking to Diana for an explanation. Diana gets up and goes into the other room to find her playing cards. Alice has pinched her cheeks together and juts her red lips at me. It is the expression she usually employs when she pretends to know somebody else’s secret, or disbelieves a statement, or disapproves of an explanation. ‘Don’t do that,’ I say. ‘It makes you look ugly.’ I will do almost anything to take that particular expression off her face. If you’re frightened, then admit it. But you shouldn’t try to turn your fear onto somebody else. Clara doesn’t deserve that.’ She is for the first time, however, thoroughly unreachable. She will not respond. The realisation gives me a physical shock. ‘It isn’t fair,’ I add. But I am losing her. I can sense it. She needs me to give something which I do not have. I do not even know exactly what it is she wants. I would give it if I could. I hold back. Perhaps it is simply that she has used me up. Anything I say will be contrary to my interests. Alice is cold. ‘You have changed,’ she says. It is as if a judge has reached a verdict. ‘You used to be so gay.’ I am condemned and sentenced and still my crime is unknown to me. Diana returns. ‘Shall we all go down to dinner tonight? she says. She seems innocent. Has she been speaking about me to Alice? Or against Clara? Nobody could do that unless Alice wanted it.
‘Why not?’ I reply. ‘We’ll have Horsemeat Surprise. Or perhaps tonight it will be Pouf-Pouf stew.’ My joke falls flat. Alice cries: ‘Oh, my God!’ and begins to cry into her hands. Diana comforts her. Somehow I have compounded my crime.
‘I’m very sorry,’ I say.
‘It isn’t your fault.’ Diana is grim. ‘You’d better bring Clara here. This is getting out of proportion. At all costs we four must stick together.’ Alice looks up. Snails seem to have crawled across her caked face. ‘The pair of them are already against us. Can’t you see that, Diana?’ Lady Cromach puts on her dark dressing gown. ‘I’ll get Clara. You stay here with Ricky.’ As soon as she has left Alice sniffs and stops crying. She glares at me. She goes to her dressing table and begins to wipe the cosmetics from her face. She has become much more skilled with her clothes and her make-up. ‘We’ve got to get away from here, Ricky,’ she says. ‘We haven’t been trying properly. We’ll be like those Romans—those people in Pompei—still making love when the volcano went off. Diana and Clara must take their chances. You surely know of some means… ’ I am again shocked, both by her disloyalty and her volte-face. Why has she suddenly forgiven me? I am disturbed, yet flattered she should choose me as her conspirator against the others. ‘We’ve got to get to Paris, Ricky.’ The traces of tears are nearly gone. She begins to work on her hair, brushing rapidly. She leans into the mirror. ‘It would be pointless to take Clara with us. She has no breeding. Well, you can’t expect it from a whore, I suppose.’
I am angry on Clara’s behalf, yet to defend her would be to lose my child. Alice has fired her warning shot.
‘What about Diana?’ I ask.
‘She’s too unimaginative. You and I are the only ones with imagination, Ricky. It is our bond. Remember?’ She turns with a lovely little smile. ‘Twin souls?’
I laugh. I recognise her motives and her techniques but I can’t resist them. She is my muse, my alter-ego, my creation. ‘Let’s at least behave decently.’ I attempt to save something of my old standards. ‘There’s no need to condemn either of them just because we’re tired of them. Let’s just admit we want to get to Paris together.’
She is almost happy. She blows me a kiss from her reflection. ‘All right. That’s fair enough. What will you do?’
‘I’ll make enquiries. I know someone. There’s a chance.’. This is empty reassurance, of course. She must hope. She must pin that hope on me. She has given me an ultimatum. To lose her would be to lose myself.
‘I just want to be on our own again,’ she says. ‘In Paris. Or Vienna. Wherever you think. But we can’t stay here, Ricky. There are too many dangers. Too many awful memories. I want to start afresh. I want to be your wife, as you promised.’