Étienne came at her and hugged her tight. ‘I like you, wifey, we will be good friends.’ His words hot and boozy on her neck.
Bettina smiled unnaturally. ‘Yes, yes, I’m sure we shall be.’
‘For the love of God!’
Bettina’s eyes shimmered mercury-like in the dark. Next door a headboard was going thud-thud-thud against a wall. She sat up, pushing out an acidic red wine burp. She wasn’t going to picture what they were doing. She wasn’t going to picture what they were doing. How disgusting. She lay back down and pulled the covers over her face. Ghastly. We really are a degenerative breed, she thought. But especially them. She needed to urinate. She really oughtn’t to have done it. Married him. And now she was doomed to this – perverts next door, slamming each other into the headboard, rutting, hands all over each other’s… Horrid. She couldn’t believe she’d seen Bart’s cock. Never in a million years had she ever imagined… And why on earth was she calling it a cock? What was happening to her? It was Bart, it was. Filling her mind with smut. She really needed to urinate. Oh God.
She pulled the covers down and climbed out of bed, and maybe her subconscious was driving her with nasty little pitchforks, because she climbed out on the right side, the adjoining door side. Fidgeting her feet into her slippers, she tiptoed across the carpet, and there were those pitchforks again, poking at her hip, because suddenly she was veering off towards the adjoining door and pressing her ear to the lacquered wood, and why would she do a thing like that?
Thud, thud, thud.
‘Whore. You whore.’
A slap. ‘Oof.’ Another slap. ‘Ugh. Harder.’
Thudthudthudthudthud.
‘Heavens.’ Bettina walked in a hot daze to the bathroom and sat on the toilet. Her urine came out scalding. She wiped herself. Wiped again. Flushed. Washed her hands and walked out. Passed the mirror, did not look at it.
Chapter 12
May 1926, Davenport House, London
He spread out two lines on the poker table. Fuck them all. Fuck bloody Bettina with her moody eye-rolling face and boring sulks, and especially fuck Étienne, who was so judgemental and such a snob, which was indeed possible, a poor person being a snob, and in fact, they were the worst for it.
‘You first, good sir,’ he said to Jonathan.
Jonathan leaned over the table, his waxy red hair flopping forward and hanging over his face, and sniffed up the powder. Good old Jonathan, a man undergoing a nervous breakdown with such dignity, such class, his head held high as his spirits splatted to the floor like a disembowelment. Why couldn’t Bettina be more like her brother?
It was her birthday and he’d treated her to a surprise party. He’d spent a bomb, ordering the best French caterers, extra serving staff and an all-black jazz band fronted by a fat woman dressed up as a man, complete with a gold tux. He’d done all this for her and yet she’d spent half the night whingeing about her wisdom teeth and flirting with a man. A man! So he’d grabbed her by the arm and pulled her out into the garden.
‘You’re making me look like a fucking cuckold,’ he said.
‘I am not flirting with him,’ she said, lighting a cigarette.
‘You were pressing your leg up against his leg. I saw and so did everyone else.’
She looked at him steadily then did a slow, drunken blink. ‘Fine. I was flirting. But it’s not as though I want to do anything with him. I know, I’m pathetic.’
Bart sighed. Trude was playing her like a violin, it was true. But she wasn’t considering him in all this. He wanted to shake the silly child by the shoulders! It mattered what other people thought, it mattered a great deal. And he told her so.
‘I can’t make head nor tail of you,’ she said. ‘One minute you’re the great iconoclast – Bartholomew Dawes, free-thinker extraordinaire! And the next you’re fretting over what people think of you. You can’t have it both ways! Choose!’
‘You stop acting like such a spoiled, selfish little bitch!’ he yelled, some spit spraying her face.
‘Touched a nerve, have I?’ she said.
He grabbed her by the shoulders. ‘The world doesn’t revolve around you.’
She jerked her body, dislodging his grip. ‘Today it does,’ she said, turning and walking away.
And of course she’d gone straight to Étienne and got him on her side.
‘Quite the party,’ said Jonathan, sniffing. His eyes were bruised and hollow with sleep deprivation and Bart could see a tiny muscle spasming at his temple. ‘The singer was jolly marvellous. Fancy that, dressing as a man! How did you acquire her?’
Bart licked his finger and dabbed the powdered remnants, rubbing them into his gums. ‘Good stuff. Yummy. What was that?’
‘The singer. Where did you find her?’
‘France. She was doing some clubs in Paris. Étienne knew of her, he arranged things. They go crazy for that sort of thing there. Originally from Harlem, I think.’
‘I hear it’s rather wild over there?’
‘What, Paris or Harlem?’
‘Well… both, come to think of it.’
Bart nodded.
‘Bit much for me, I must confess,’ said Jonathan. ‘But then, things are very different now.’
‘Much better too,’ said Bart.
‘Seems like a queer sort of present for your wife’s birthday,’ said Jonathan, thoughtfully, his brandy glass poised an inch from his lips. ‘But then Bettina does go in for unusual things. Always liked to think of herself as a rebel.’ He took a slow swallow. Sniffed. Then he smiled. ‘You know, I just remembered something.’ The smile grew – it was a lovely, lazy smile. ‘How strange, I haven’t thought of it in years.’ He took a cigar from his breast pocket and bit off the end, spitting it into his hand and then idly fiddling with it between thumb and forefinger. ‘One Christmas, when we were very young, Bettina’s governess – Madame Choveaux, I think her name was, something like that, horrible rotten old French hag, she was…’
‘I remember her,’ said Bart. ‘Madame Choubert.’
‘Do you? Of course you do. Anyway, she’d had Bettina rehearsing “O Holy Night” en français. Wanted her to perform it for the family on Christmas Eve.’
Jonathan lit his cigar and leaned back against the bar, tapping his foot as if to music, though the room was silent. ‘It came to the time of the performance and Bettina was dressed as… well, frankly, I don’t know what the hell she was dressed as. She had on knickerbockers, bizarrely, and long woollen socks up to the knees. And she had this screaming argument with the governess just before coming out – we could all hear it from the drawing room. My father was most embarrassed – he had some shareholders over. Anyway. Madame Choveaux – Choubert, sorry – comes into the room, furious, and takes my mother to the side and tells her that Bettina is insisting on wearing one sock up and the other down. Just to be contrary. And Mother said… now what did she say?’
Bart waited, smiling. Jonathan did not usually tell stories or offer commentaries.
‘Oh, I remember. She said, “Tell her from me that if she continues to embarrass her father like this, then all of her presents shall be sent to the orphanage.” I was hanging on my mother’s hem like a monkey so I remember it well. I remember thinking how jolly well cruel that would be, to have one’s presents sent to the snots at the orphanage. I know most older brothers would wish it so, for their little sisters to be deprived of their stupid dollies and frocks, but of course, I was – and forgive me my conceit – a very kind older brother, and I loved her exceedingly. Well, my father came over at this point, demanding to know what all the fuss was about, and so Mother told him. And he laughed. He said to old Choubert, he said, “Oh, let her do what she wants with her socks! She can’t sing for toffee so it’s going to be a butcher’s job whichever way you try to package it.”’