‘Dear God,’ said Bart, under his breath.
‘I just want you to be happy,’ continued Lucille. ‘And I want you to have babies, lots of babies. There are methods, dear. I know. There are ways around it. The man puts his spendings into a receptacle and the lady inserts it with a syringe. Even the royals have done it this way. Even the royals.’ She burped quietly. ‘Pardon me. And if it’s good enough for the royals… you see?’ She looked at Bettina with gushing, motherly love and stroked her cheek. ‘I’m so sorry for my evil words.’ There was a smear of mucus on her cheek. ‘Do you forgive me?’
Her true meaning, of course, being, ‘Will you tell your mother?’ And Bettina would not. She forced a smile and patted the woman on the back. ‘Perhaps you ought to lie down?’
Lucille nodded gratefully. Bettina pulled her shoes off (a hole in the foot of her stocking, a white toe poking out like a mushroom) and Bart fetched Monty’s smoking jacket from the rack on the wall, draping it over her. ‘Poor, poor Jonathan,’ said Lucille, closing her eyes. ‘Poor, sweet, sensitive boy.’
‘A sick bowl, perhaps?’ Bettina whispered to Bart.
Bart shook his head. ‘She’ll just pass out. I doubt she’ll remember any of this.’
‘I wish I didn’t have to.’
Bart shook his head, blowing out air from his cheeks.
Lucille curled her knees tighter to her chest and wriggled her head into the armrest. Eyes still closed, she raised a finger in the air. ‘Even the royals… I mean, it’s just a means to an end, it doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter, there’s nothing wrong with it, my lovely boy.’ Her mouth sagged open and almost immediately her breathing slowed and deepened.
Bettina looked at Bart. ‘Well.’
He shook his head slowly, darkly. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘I’ll laugh about it tomorrow. I almost want to laugh about it now. Just a bit shocked still.’
‘She was horrible to you. I’m so, so sorry, Betts.’
She waved her hand. ‘I can take it. I suppose. Anyway, she’s the one who’s come off the worst. I wonder who she tried it with? Not my mother, I hope.’
Bart grabbed his hair with both hands. ‘Nooo. Please don’t ever mention that again. Oh my God. I’m fucking mortified. I need a drink.’ He held out his hand and she took it. ‘You had her though. You shut her up. What a good sport you were!’ He squeezed her hand. ‘You absolutely had her.’
Chapter 14
July 1927, Davenport House, London
Her legs were up in the air, stockingless, and her skirt sunk down to her waist. Her shins were covered in soft blonde hair and her toenails needed cutting. One of them (on her big toe) was ingrown and the flesh around it looked pink and tender. He could see the scar on the bony ridge of her foot from when they’d been playing out in his mother’s garden as children and she’d put a garden fork through it. Her scream! At first he’d laughed, thinking she was messing about. And then all the blood. He’d vomited – it had bubbled up yellow and milky, spilling onto his pullover.
‘How long have I got to stay like this?’ she asked, planting her feet against the wall and padding them so they made soft slapping sounds.
‘Longer the better, I suppose,’ he said.
‘What do you think about when you – you know,’ she said.
He looked at her blankly.
‘You know. When you’re producing the stuff.’
‘Ah. I think of your toenails.’
She reached out to slap him, just missing. ‘Seriously, Meow, what do you think about?’
Meow – his new nickname.
Sobriety had undeniably turned him into a sourpuss. He moped around all day, glugging back-to-back cups of strong tea and trying to occupy his mind with books (he was on D. H. Lawrence at the moment and it was rotten rubbish). The nights were the hardest. Bettina and Étienne continued to drink, and why shouldn’t they? He’d sit with a script on his lap, moodily watching them larking around at the piano, singing songs with the lyrics dirtied up – he so used to enjoy a brandy while going over new scripts, the ritual of it, the crisp paper in his hands, the fire crackling, the brandy warming his belly. When Bettina troubled herself to speak to him he gave caustic replies. ‘Meow,’ Bettina said one time. She giggled to herself. ‘You know, I think I shall start to call you Bartholomeow. Meow for short.’ Bart fixed her with a filthy look. Returned to his script. Bastards. Fucking nitwits and bastards.
‘I don’t think about anything,’ he said now. ‘I have a few pictures that I like to look at.’ He had a whole book – wellworn, of course – full of photographs of various men sodomising each other. He kept it inside the locked wooden box alongside all his letters and drawings from Étienne.
‘Oooh. Nudey piccies? Can you show them to me?’
‘Never in a million years.’
‘Do they depict buggery?’
‘Mind your own business.’
‘Does it hurt? Buggery?’
‘Mind your own business.’
‘It must get awfully messy. Have you ever had an accident? You know—’
‘Why do you assume that I’m the buggeree?’
Étienne came into the room barefoot, wearing Bettina’s red satin dressing gown. ‘Pourquoi?’ he said, gesturing at her legs.
‘Keeps the little swimmers in the pool,’ she said. Then:
‘Etts? Are you the buggerer or the buggeree?’
‘Don’t tell her,’ said Bart.
Étienne smiled at him, dimples like speech marks. ‘Buggerer.’
‘Lies!’ said Bart.
‘We’re going to have to behave ourselves once the little one comes along,’ said Bettina, reaching for her cigarettes on the bedside table, her legs swaying heavily in the air. ‘No more cursing, no more naughty talk. You two will have to keep your hands to yourselves.’
‘That’s if he even sticks around,’ said Bart.
Étienne was in the midst of an existential crisis. That’s what he called it anyway. He didn’t understand what his place could be within the forthcoming family. ‘Who am I to this child? Why is the French artist tagging along always with this young couple? What does this French artist have to do with booties and cribs?’ And of course, he missed his garret. He missed Paris. His whoring too, probably. He had his own studio here, in the unused conservatory, but found it too sterile. ‘Stop being such a cliché,’ Bart would say to him. ‘If you’re truly an artist it doesn’t matter where you go to create art. You are in love with a romantic fallacy.’
‘I am in love with you, that is the problem,’ he’d shoot back.
Étienne stayed in one of the guest bedrooms two doors down from Bart’s and Bettina’s quarters (they had their own bedrooms, connected by a door). Bart and Étienne were constantly in and out of each other’s beds. Some nights, usually after smoking hashish, Étienne grew paranoid, cocking his head at imagined footsteps outside the door. He was convinced that Humphrey the butler was spying on them. ‘He thinks that we are living together as a ménage à trois, he is trying to catch us out.’ He talked of installing trip wires outside his door. He hated all this sneaking around. He hated the way Humphrey looked at him. He hated Humphrey. He hated himself for hating Humphrey – he’d of course entered Bart’s household bloated with ideals: he would befriend the servants and show them many kindnesses and treat them as equals, blah blah blah, but what the little twerp didn’t anticipate was that the servants didn’t want to be his friend. ‘They are people who want my money,’ Bart told him, ‘and I am a person who wants their service. It’s a simple transaction. We could all die tomorrow, me, you and Betts, and they wouldn’t shed a single tear.’