William Boyd - Stars and bars

In the room the champagne and sandwiches had been delivered. They had a glass of champagne. They kissed. He pulled her through into the bedroom and they fell on the bed. Irene propped her head on a hand and looked down into his face.

“Has it been a bad week? Really that bad?”

“The worst ever.”

“Poor Henderson.”

“Let’s not talk about it.”

“But I want to hear everything.”

“Later.”

“Well at least it’s all over now.”

Henderson swallowed. Was this the moment to tell her? But Irene ducked forward and kissed his forehead. He shut his eyes. Then he felt her lips on his left eyelid. Her dark mouth closed hot over the socket. The tense tip of her tongue massaged the eyeball through the lid. Technicolour photomatic explosions seemed to brighten the inside of his skull. His left side erupted in goose-pimples.

“Stop it, please,” he said weakly. She pulled back and he opened his eyes. Her face was blurry through warm pink tears.

“What’s that?” he said. “Where did you learn that? It’s appalling.”

“I like to feel your eyeball squirm beneath my tongue. It sort of throbs.”

“But I can’t see any more. It hurts.”

“It’s designed to stimulate me , dummy.”

He unbuttoned her dress at the neck and pushed it back to reveal one breast, pale and flat with its small immaculate nipple, milk-chocolate brown. He pressed his weeping eye against it. He felt his nausea and indigestion dissolve into relief. At last, he thought, at last.

He got up and took off his tie and shirt. He kicked off his shoes with pantomimic abandon, removed his socks and trousers. Irene lay on the bed and watched him with a smile. He eased off his increasingly taut underpants.

“Well, hello there,” Irene said.

He slid onto the bed to join her. He found it pleasantly erotic to be naked while she was clothed. Methodically he undid more buttons to expose both breasts. He bent his head.

“Let’s stay here tomorrow,” Irene murmured. “This hotel is fun.” She kissed his crown.

Henderson sat up. “Ah,” he said slowly. “I was going to tell you. There’s been a hitch. I’ve got to go back.” Blankly, he watched himself detumesce — the organ showed uncanny prescience, he thought.

“What? To New York?”

“No. Luxora Beach.”

“Bastard,” she said with chilling matter-of-factness, doing up her buttons. “But you needed a quick fuck, just the same.”

“Listen, it wasn’t like that, honestly,” he pleaded. “I’ve only just found out. Everything has suddenly gone horribly wrong. Nothing but disasters.” He launched into a garbled desperate narrative about Gage, the picture, Beeby. The arrival of Sereno and Gint, Freeborn’s man-oeuvrings, Gage’s second thoughts, Bryant’s shocking betrothal to Duane…

“And who the shit is Bryant?”

“ Oh Christ …Ah, she’s a girl…”

“You can’t help it, can you? You sad fuck.”

“She’s only fourteen. She’s not a friend. Jesus.” He shut his eyes and pulled the coverlet around him.

“So what are you doing with a fourteen-year-old girl?”

“She’s the daughter of…Thomas Beeby. I promised him I’d—”

“Bullshit, Henderson. You prick. You English prick.”

Why, he thought wildly, should the adjective make the noun more pejorative?

There was a knock at the door.

“Bloody hell!” Henderson swore. He jumped off the bed and grabbed his dressing gown. But Irene had already gone to the door. He heard a voice. A woman’s voice.

“Oh. I’m sorry. Is this…is this 35?”

Henderson fought furiously with an inside-out sleeve.

“That’s what it says on the door,” Irene replied coldly.

Then he heard a wail, a keening, distressed cry. Christ, who can it be, he thought? Bryant? Cora? Melissa? Shanda? Fearfully, he peered through the crack at the door jamb. He saw Irene, her arms folded sternly across her chest, confronting a young blonde woman in military uniform with corporal’s stripes on her sleeves. She was sobbing fiercely into her cupped hands. A WAF or WAC, he thought: what ghastly new nemesis is this? Then the woman looked up and screamed in his direction.

“ Alvin, you bastard! I never want to see you again! ” She turned and ran down the corridor.

Alvin? Just a moment. His spearing hand finally engaged the stubborn sleeve. He sprang to the door.

“What fucking game is this, Alvin?” Irene demanded.

Just at that moment the door opposite was thrown open and a harassed General Dunklebanger appeared, zipping up his flies. He looked disbelievingly down the long corridor at the fleeing WAC.

“Mary?” he said looking piteously back at Henderson and Irene. “Was that Mary?”

“I think there’s been—” Henderson began, but he was interrupted by a bellow of primeval grief from the general, who set off thundering down the passageway after his beloved. Henderson took a few futile paces after him. He saw the general arrive at the lift doors just as they closed in his face. He darted to and fro — there were three lifts serving the thirty-fifth floor — pressing buttons frantically. Eventually another lift arrived and he leapt in. Henderson shook his head in astonishment. A few other guests had emerged from their rooms to see what the fuss was. Henderson realized he was in his dressing gown. He returned to his own door. It was locked. Oh Christ no. He tapped softly on it with his finger tips.

“Irene,” he whispered. “Open up. I can explain everything.” He looked over his shoulder and smiled reassuringly at the curious guests.

“ Irene ,” he hissed. “For God’s sake open up! ” He rapped again.

He had to wait a full ten minutes. He passed the time whistling quietly to himself, pacing unconcernedly to and fro in a tight oval, affecting profound interest in the pattern and texture of the corridor carpet for minutes at a time. Finally the door opened and Irene stepped out. She had her case in her hand.

“I’m getting out,” she said. “You stay in the madhouse with the crazies. Goodbye.”

She walked purposefully away. Henderson dithered for a moment.

“Irene, wait,” he called.

Further down the passage a man’s head popped out of a doorway.

“For God’s sake, will you people please party in your rooms?” he demanded of Irene.

She said something to him in reply that caused him to start back in shock.

Henderson ran back inside and started to pull on his clothes. There was nothing to be gained by pursuing her in his dressing gown. He felt an ascending panic stirring within him. Irene’s tone had been so uncompromisingly final. She couldn’t leave, he told himself: she had to hear him out. Given his predicament, anyone would understand. She couldn’t abandon him like this. He clawed on his jacket and trousers. He pulled on his left sock and found his left shoe in a corner. He looked around the room for his other shoe and sock. He found the sock, but not the shoe, such had been the frivolity with which he had disrobed.

“Oh God , please,” he prayed out loud, peering under the bed. He saw it: at the back in the middle, flush against the skirting board. He tried to reach it but his fingers were inches short. He struggled mightily to shift the bed but, for some unknown reason, it appeared to be bolted in place. In his mind’s eye, he saw Irene being paddled across the atrium lake. There was nothing for it. He ran awkwardly out of the room and sprinted like a club-footed athlete down the passage to the lifts. He pressed the descend button. Obligingly, one lift was already ascending rapidly to his floor. 33, 34, 35, bing!

The door opened. For an instant he saw General Dunklebanger leaning despairingly against the lift side.