Dolly And The Cookie Bird - Dorothy Dunnett - Johnson Johnson 03 (11 page)

It was a conga. As soon as the sound came through, on six stereo speakers, my mother laid down her cigarette holder, and snapping her fingers, grabbed a swaying Austin by the hips. I got hold of Gilmore and, shunting, closed him up to Mummy. The Russians, after a little confusion and laughter, tacked on with Clem pushing behind, and clicking and swaying we stamped our way twice round the drawing room to the boom of Latin American hiccoughs, and out the door and down the hall to the shower room. Mummy snaked them right up to the showers and stepped back smartly, pulling me by the arm, and Clem turned the water on full. We closed the door on them quietly.

The butler Dilling was waiting outside in the passage, and Mummy gave him his orders. Then, with Clem on one side and me on the other, she returned and sat down in the drawing room. A moment later, Dilling ushered Coco in.

He was wearing a bathrobe and he was smiling, although his eyes glittered a bit. He said, “I’m rather busy, Geraldine sweetheart, but I got the silliest message from Dilling, so I came for a second.”

“It may have ben silly, but I hope it was also quite clear,” said my mother. “If there are going to be nude parties in this house, I prefer to throw them myself. Your main possessions are being packed and should be ready for you in the time it will take you to dress. You will then be driven into Ibiza where you may obtain a room in the hotel. Your flight back to New York will be arranged and paid for by me tomorrow, and the rest of your belongings sent after. As you would say perhaps, Coco,” she ended with eloquence, “poetry is life, but life is not all poetry.”

He was sitting down with his hands in his pockets, and he continued to sit while he called on every form of repulsive imagery in his repertoire to describe the appearance, habits, morals, and cultural pretensions of my mother. Clem started to get up at the beginning, but my mother shook her head and motioned him back. From time to time, Coco spat at him too. “Proud of knowing the daughter of the fifth Baron Forsey of bloody Pinner, aren’t you? Now you know what sort of stock she was bred from. An alcoholic goat, alias a penniless sponger, and an old bag who likes sleeping with poets.” He waved a hand. “Meet Geraldine Lady Forsey, Mr. Sainsbury.”

Clem was quite scarlet, with his jaw set like the ellipse on a turnip. But at this point he got up, said, “I beg your pardon,” to my mother, and took Coco Fairley by the neck and the seat of his bathrobe. I suppose he must have refereed worse matches. At any rate, he made light work of lifting Coco clean off his feet, which were kicking madly. Coco screeched, “You’ll be sorry. You don’t know what I saw the night the old man was killed!” and then his voice died away as Clem carried him out of the door and along to his room. Dilling went with them.

I didn’t think it was going to be possible to look at Mummy, but that did it. “Killed!” I repeated, and met her large, open eyes.

After a bit: “Don’t rely on it,” she said. “He was trying to bargain. I doubt if he knows anything about Forsey’s movements.” She always called him that, never Eric.

I said, “If he does, won’t he make trouble?”

“Not if he wants me to publish his poems,” said Mummy. “And on reflection, he will.”

“You’ll have to find a publisher first,” I said cattily. What I had seen of the stuff in the garden hadn’t impressed me overmuch.

“No, honey. A cement mixer,” said my mother. “That’s easy. It’s only the postage that’s killing.” She got up, and I could feel her looking me over. “You came out of that real well, She-she. You’re tough. You’re nearly as tough as I am. Maybe that’s a good thing,” said my mother. Then she took my arm. “Come along. Let’s put on a towel and join the real sophisticated people downstairs.”

I thought she was joking, but she wasn’t. We walked downstairs to that playroom with barely a stitch on but a white Turkish towel wrapped Mother Hubbard-like under the arms. With her good legs and flat shoulders Mummy looked incredibly elegant, but my hair was still up in loops anl I felt like a sugar in search of its Daddy. Not, you understand, that I wasn’t bursting to get down below.

Coco must have hired a small group from Palma, no doubt at Mummy’s expense, and there was a general impression from the noise that a turntable must be going as well. Apart from the music, the shrieking was quite something: enough to tell you that Coco must have imported pretty well all the playmates who have their reasons for lounging around the Mediterranean in the springtime: society, café society, artists, athletes, flower-people, and shady expatriates, to choose a few types from Janey’s circle at random. I must say I slowed down a bit as we got near to the playroom door, but Mummy just steamed on like a Monorail in a Harrington square, and I followed, right up to the playroom. Without hesitation, Mummy flung the doors open.

It was like a testing shed for jet engines. The sound came out of a reeling, light-spattered darkness made by dozens of revolving glass lights hung all over the ceiling, which threw heaving, sequin-shaped splashes over the dancers, who were going up and down like ships’ pistons. There was a group at one end dressed in boots, white tights, and ponchos, and a lot of sharp shouts and castanet clacking and rolling of r’s at the other end from a small party of three Spanish dancers and a guitarist who were deep in a performance. The Spanish women wore high combs and skin-tight décolleté dresses, with loads of frills bouncing along after. It reminded me of the caterpillar on the beach. I noticed that the male Spanish dancer, who also wore frills, was a Chinese.

Everyone else was headless in obscure hoods over which the lights slid in a Hammer-films way. Everyone else was also dressed, as we were, in a natty white towel, fastened under the armpits. No one had seen us come in.

Mother, smiling, was fitting another damned cheroot into her holder. I said, “How the hell did you pull that one off?”

“I didn’t pull it off, honey; I put it on,” Mummy said. Her saucer eyes stared at me in surprise. “I had Dilling tell them that Coco had infrared cameras hung all over the room
that could see through paper bags
.” She paused. “The lucky thing is, there seem to have been enough towels. Now you go right on down there and enjoy yourself. I’ll send Austin and Gilmore down to you.”

“In towels?” I said. “You’re not going to be very popular with the Trade Mission. You must have soaked them all to the skin.”

“I think it’ll have to be bathrobes,” Mummy said. “Why not? They shouldn’t have gotten high in a well-bred lady’s drawing room, but if she’s prepared to overlook it, I don’t see why we shouldn’t show them quite a good time.”

There is a kind of dreadful fascination about Mummy. She has an attitude to life which would drive a phenobarbitone pill up the wall, never mind a civilized drifter like Daddy. But she has Personality too, with a capital P, which is what must have brought them originally together. Then she found that Daddy was nothing
but
personality, and I suppose that was it. Mummy disappeared, the music rose to a kind of frenzied crescendo, and I stepped down into the fray.

I think it was the most energetic dance I’ve ever been to. And that includes even Highland balls, where you have a houseparty and have to defend your virtue half the night after, as well as dance all the reels. I stepped down into that orgy, and someone got me by the hand and started jogging me up and down, and I got handed from bag to bag for ten solid minutes until the group finally let up, and we collapsed on the floor. My current bag had a beard which brushed up and down inside the paper all the time he was smooching: with no lips to smooch with, they all made great play with their hands, and it was their hard luck I had all my underwear on. The tennis pro brought me an icy Tom Collins, and I was still breathing hard and parrying his right backhand drive when the lights went up from near-total to mid-total darkness, and a lot of balloons came drifting around.

It was that gruesome game where you have to roll the balloon up and over your neighbor by using your head: one of the Group MC’d it, and there was a fair amount of slipping towels and tearing of bags. They next wanted to do the one where you pass the string down inside the back of your clothing, but after a bit they reckoned the fictitious cameras ruled that out and went back to frugging or whatever.

I was getting so used to recognizing people by their birth marks that I hardly realized Austin had me in his grasp.

His hair was still brushed forward, but it was fluffy with drying, and he had on a rather nice bathrobe in pink. I guessed it was maybe one of Coco’s. His eyes had matching pink rims, and he looked very bemused. He said, “I guess I ought to apologize. Over getting plastered back there, I mean. Those guys can sure put back the Smirnoff. Mrs. van Costa’s been most considerate…” He stopped again and said simply, “I don’t get it.”

I explained. Coco’s vengeful scheme struck him as a great, great pity. Of course, artists were highly strung. They often couldn’t be judged by ordinary standards. But Coco’s behavior, thought Austin, was unpardonable. But my stars, said Austin, wasn’t Mrs. van Costa a sport?

That she was my mother, he had clearly no idea at all. I was agreeing she was dead groovy, considering, and inquiring about the health of Gilmore and the trade mission, when I suddenly saw, dancing together, two paper bags I knew. I stopped dead, treading heavily on Austin’s bare feet, for which he apologized like a gentleman. The last time I had seen those two paper bags, one had held my tomatoes and the other my Fantas. One was Janey. And the other was my brother Derek.

I don’t know what I was saying to Austin. Whatever it was, his grip kept getting tighter, until finally I had to give my mind to it and ask him questions about his boyhood in Connecticut, and things like that. He told me all about it, and we sat out and had a drink and he told me some more, and still Derek and Janey went on circling, very slowly, with their paper bags blowing in and out with their talking. I realized now where Janey must have gone in that quick drive before dinner. I further realized that whether she told Derek or not, she jolly well knew that it was a paper-bag party, or she wouldn’t have brought these two with her. I further wondered if Dilling had brought the towels in before or after they had both arrived. I was never so shocked in my life.

Then I thought, oh my Gawd, Mummy’s going to come in. And Derek’s going to recognize her. I said, “Darling Austin, I’ve got to go out for a minute,” and as he still clung, I said, “Darling Austin, I’ve got to go to the
loo
,” and pulled away and ran out.

It was then I realized the party had sort of seeped out of the playroom and was infiltrating elsewhere. All the corners seemed to be full of people celebrating the fact that there were no cameras, and I was scarlet and wishing I had a paper bag on myself when I ran into Clem Sainsbury, in a bathrobe. He put two, kind, brawny arms round me and said, “Hey. Don’t look as worried as that. If I can help, tell me. Do you want to go home?”

I said, “Oh, Clem, dear,” and kissed him. To be for a second with someone who wasn’t on the make was so blissful. Not practical, but blissful all the same. I said, “I’m looking for Mrs. van Costa.”

Clem grinned and kissed me back with some enthusiasm, for Clem. “I rather think she’s been trapped by the Bolshoi,” he said. “They seem to credit her with a passion for congas… Isn’t Gilmore with you?”

“I’ve got Austin,” I said. “Gilmore and I have sort of developed some cracks in our relationship.”

“Why? Did he try something?” said Clem, with some interest.

I sighed. “Everybody
tries
something, idiot. Everyone but Clement Sainsbury, that is.”

Clem grinned. “I’m learning,” he said. And gave me a proper, long-distance kiss this time, with his hands squeezing my towel and my shoulder hard. I was still standing puffing and gasping and hanging on to my towel when the end of the conga suddenly appeared at the end of the corridor and began to snake toward us, giving tongue as it went.

The head of the Trade Mission led it. He was dressed in red-and-white floral underpants, which I’m damned sure never came out of G.U.M., and a towel draped like a toga over his shoulder and hips. He had an Easter lily over his ear and looked very, very happy. One of the Spanish dancers came next, also extremely high, with her chin tucked in, scowling, and one hand on Nureyev’s shoulder while the other held up her frilly skirts and shook them at intervals—no one had tried to get her into a towel. There followed two more Russians in underpants, the Chinese Spanish-dancer, and Mummy. She had both arms round the waist of the Chinese under his bolero, and her hair was standing up in gray spikes, but she had lost none of her sangfroid: in fact her high kicks were better than any of them. There was a large rose pinning up one corner of her towel. “Hi, honey,” she said as they passed. The conga whipped round a corner.

“Hey!” I pelted after and caught up on the straight, trotting beside her. “I’ve got something to tell you.”

“Well, hitch on behind,” Mummy shouted. “If I let this lot go, the Lord knows where they’ll end.”

I caught her round the waist and conga’d. The guitarist, who’d been in the Gents, fell in behind and added a little tone to the hullabaloo. Tara-ra-RAra-ra, Tarara-RAra-ra, Tarara-RAra-RAra-RAra-RAra-ra…

I shrieked: “Derek’s here!”

“Who’s Derek?” said Mummy, hurtling round the next corner so that my feet practically left the carpet. “I do apologize, angel. We suffer from a little clutch judder on takeoff.”

“My brother,” I wailed into her ear.

“Oh,” said Mummy. Tarara-RAra-Ra… “O.K. Give me a paper bag, someone.”

I feel I have underrated my mother.

Five minutes later, the conga got into the playroom and caught sight of the bar. Ten minutes after that, the Trade Mission was hunkered down on the floor, its hands on its hips, the soles of its feet shooting backward and forward like pistons while everyone roared and hung on to everyone else, counting. After the four separate members collapsed, which they did fairly soon, they instantly got up and launched into backflips and Cossack yells and a kind of chorus of knee slapping and stamping. At the same time, the two Spanish dancers, whose hair was beginning to come down, were stalking to and fro, frowning, with their elbows inside out. Then they flung their arms up and began to writhe a bit, their fingers snaking and snapping while the Chinese stood close by with the guitarist, hissing like rattlesnakes and doing a sort of rhythmic flat clap, hesitating when there was a slight Russo-Spanish collision, which there was from time to time. The girls began kicking up their red satin shoes and roving round, knees bent, in circles, their arms stretched in reverse. Everyone was shouting and jumping. I was dying to know what Janey was saying.