‘I will, darling. Oh, look – here they come.’ He wrapped an arm around her waist and smiled a dazzling smile. He really was a wonderful actor.
Tuna was dressed conservatively. For Tuna. She had on a cream floor-length dress belted at the waist, with bright red curly-toed Aladdin slippers. A decorative Christmas angel was perched amongst her frizzy explosion of hair – it peeked out, its little china face full of chubby malevolence. She was thin again. Ribs and cheekbones thin. She attributed it to the divorce, telling Bettina over the telephone that she’d only eaten apples and thin wedges of cheddar for six months: seriously, darling, nothing but apples and tiny little slices of mature cheddar; I’m not exaggerating, I could stomach nothing else – oh wait, I lie, I did once have a tiny canapé at a charity ball.
But there were rumours. Tuna was currently ‘seeing’ a writer who was known to smoke opium on a regular basis. Maybe she’d cultivated the habit for herself? Bettina didn’t believe a word of it – heartbroken women got thin all the time. Just as pampered, idle women got fat.
Tonight Tuna had brought along a tall Yorkshireman whose eyes were too close together – the supposed opium-guzzler. He apparently wrote literature too honest to be published.
She found them out in the garden, smoking hashish and discussing the situation in Germany. ‘It’s all just bluster,’ Tuna was saying. ‘Men with huge egos trying to see who can piss the farthest out of their tiny little cocks. Oh, hello, Betts. Lovely party.’
‘Don’t lie, you’re finding it boring.’
Tuna snatched a hand to her breast as if mortally wounded. ‘Such assumptions you make about me! I am not the woman of excess you think me to be, not any more.’ She nudged the writer. ‘Tell her, Nicholas.’
‘She is not the woman of excess you think her to be, not any more.’
‘Where’s Bart?’ said Tuna.
Bart was chatting to a gorgeous man called Ted who ran the picture house in Bethnal Green. Bettina had noted Bart’s hand on his shoulder – relaxed and chummy, the fingers touching his neck. ‘He’s making a damn fool of himself with the—’
The patio doors swung open and Bart came out. ‘Oh, there you are,’ he said, seeing Bettina. ‘Why make this big fuss about throwing a Christmas party if you’re just going to sneak away?’
‘I’ve been out here for literally one minute. Sir.’
‘Oh, don’t start. I’m not some authoritarian – why do you always have to make me look like—’ He pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘I’m sorry. I just fucking hate parties.’ He felt his breast pocket for his cigarettes. ‘Oh, blast it, I’ve left them in – Tuna, can I have one of—’ He noticed the joint in Nicholas’s hand. ‘Is that a – are you smoking a – Tuna, could you please tell him not to do that here?’
‘You might try telling him yourself,’ said Tuna. ‘He’s got ears.’
‘Sorry,’ said Nicholas. ‘I’ll put it out.’
Bart took Bettina by the arm and led her down the garden to a quiet spot near the rose beds.
Bettina shook her arm away. ‘I haven’t done anything!’
‘Exactly. Those two clowns smoke up out here and you don’t do anything! We’re not twenty any more. We’ve got children sleeping inside the house and—’
‘Hypocrite,’ she said.
‘I am not a hypocrite! Look at the size of our garden’ – he slashed an arm through the air – ‘and they choose to do it right by the doors?’
‘That’s not why you’re a hypocrite,’ she said.
‘Oh? So enlighten me.’
‘I know what you do on Tuesday nights. I know where you go.’
He put his hands on his hips. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Yes, you do. Yes, you bloody do. I know. So here you are, Mr High and Mighty, throwing a tantrum—’
‘I am not throwing a—’
‘Throwing a tantrum because a couple of adults at an adult party choose to partake in some light marijuana use. But oh! How corrupted our children will be by the terrible things happening five brick walls away as they sleep obliviously!’ She stabbed a finger at his chest. ‘And meanwhile, Mr High and Mighty, meanwhile, you’re sneaking off to the woods to—’
‘Don’t you—’
‘I know what you do! I don’t care that you do it. But if you ever got caught, it wouldn’t just be you in the firing line. Imagine little Monty going to school and all the other boys teasing him because they’ve heard his famous daddy got caught with strange men in the woods. “Your daddy’s a faggot! Your daddy’s a faggot!”’
His eyes flashed. Then narrowed. She knew that narrowing – it signified a turning-off of something vital in his control centre – a switch flicked. He chortled to himself, darkly. ‘Oh. Oh. You fat stupid whore. You manipulative cunt.’
‘What? What did you just call me?’
‘You heard me.’ He met her eyes, defiantly. But the defiance was unstable, wavering. It suddenly dropped away, slipped away, was displaced by a guilty, panicked look – she could remember that look from childhood; it was the switch being turned back on again – and he started pacing. ‘What? So you call me a faggot and—’
‘I did not call you a faggot. I said that’s what the other children would say if—’
‘See? You are manipulative! You call me that hateful slur under the pretence of—’
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘You cannot unsay what you just said to me. Ever.’
‘Oh for God’s sake, how can you—’
‘You cannot unsay it.’
He ran his hands through his hair. The balance of power had tipped and he knew it. He had done and said the worse thing. As usual.
‘Fine, so I shouldn’t have said those things, but—’
‘You cannot unsay it,’ she said, turning and walking back to the party. Victorious.
‘We wish you a merry Christmas, we wish you a merry Christmas…’
Oh, shut up, Bart thought. Just everyone, shut up.
Most of the guests had departed, but the biggest drunkards seemed unwilling to budge. They stood in a messy circle, their arms around each other’s shoulders, singing in loud, tone-deaf voices. Pink eyes, pink skin – everything pink. Bart grabbed a full whisky bottle and went to the study – blessedly empty – almost falling onto the sofa. He got up and put another log on the fire. Bettina was probably moaning about him to Tuna. Oh, her husband was such a hypocrite! Such a mean, acid-tongued bastard! And a horrible faggot to boot.
No. She had not called him a faggot. Directly. And she was right about the Tuesdays.
But guess what – he was right about something too.
She was manipulative. And fat.
He topped up his whisky, licking the rim to save the droplets dribbling down the glass. He wanted to go to bed. Strip down to his socks and pass out. And never wake up.
Actually, what he really wanted to do was find Ted and fuck him up his tight little arse.
No. That wasn’t true either. He wanted Ted to fuck him. No use pretending it was the other way around.
Tonight he’d read from Étienne’s copy of Rimbaud’s selected poems, remembering that first-ever night in the damp garret – how beautifully Étienne had read them. Licking his thumb to turn the grimy pages, a roll-up cigarette dropping its ash into the crevice of the book. Bart had laid his head on his shoulder and felt the vibrations coming from his chest as he read. Though perhaps he was imbuing this memory with some special significance – maybe, at the time, it hadn’t felt so special. Maybe his bowel had gurgled with held-in farts and he’d wanted badly to brush his teeth. He didn’t trust his memories.