Never Tell (7 page)

But one evening there was a folded note sealed with scarlet wax in my pigeonhole, my name in flowing black italics. For some reason, my fingers fumbled with the seal as I tried to open it.

‘X MARKS THE SPOT’ the note proclaimed, giving a time and an address, which later turned out to be one of the best streets in town, instructing me to ‘dress dangerously and bring something intoxicating’. I wasn’t exactly sure what the latter two meant – but I did as I was told, spending the last of my grant on a black velvet catsuit and the highest black heels I could find.

On the night in question I bought a bottle of Lambrusco for Dutch courage, and opened it in my room. I slicked my hair back, painted my eyes with kohl and my mouth with scarlet lipstick, splashing myself with Chanel No. 5 that I’d nicked from my mother. I was excited. Overexcited at the thought that I had an invitation into the elite.

And then I sat on my narrow bed and decided I couldn’t possibly go. I was terrified. I didn’t know anyone. They’d think I was an idiot; a country bumpkin. They’d laugh at me. I heard the other students on my floor come and go, the laughter of a Saturday night, music fading and increasing as doors opened and closed. Only I was alone, apparently. I reapplied my lipstick for the fifteenth time. I drank a bit more wine. I changed my mind, then changed it back again.

In the end I was there just before midnight, as instructed, clutching the Jack Daniel’s I’d bought because I’d read that Janis Joplin had drunk it, at the door of the tall town-house on Lawn Street. My belly squirmed with nerves. The lights were all out as I rang the doorbell and I thought for a horrid second they’d forgotten me – or perhaps it was all a nasty joke to get me stumbling around town in killer heels like a drunken fool.

The door opened a crack.

‘Password?’

‘Pardon?’ I said.

‘Password,’ the voice drawled impatiently.

‘I don’t know the—’ I began, and the door started to close.

‘No, wait.’ I had a flash of inspiration. ‘X?’

The door hovered – and then opened just wide enough to let me in.

‘That’ll do.’ Black-tipped fingernails grasped my arm, and pulled me through. The door slammed behind me. I was in.

I followed the tall girl called Lena, whose hair was now pink and who wore nothing but a bra and bondage trousers, down a white hallway into a very minimal room. The floorboards were painted black, the walls red, and there was no furniture at all apart from a red velvet divan, a black granite coffee table and long white curtains. It all looked like a stage-set, particularly as a hundred candles flickered and guttered in the breeze from the French windows. The room was terribly hot and music swelled from the expensive stereo in the corner, some kind of opera I didn’t recognise. A few people I didn’t know stood round the corners of the room, drinking, smoking, mostly silent. Everyone seemed to be wearing black and it was clear everyone was nervous, although there was a certain loucheness to most of them. They eyed me with feigned disinterest and chose to ignore me. Lena lit a chillum and handed it around.

James appeared, and I headed towards him gladly. He was wearing a dinner suit that rather drowned him, despite his stocky frame, and he too seemed on edge. His nervousness surprised me, and made my own heart thump more.

‘This is all a bit weird,’ I whispered. ‘What’s going on? Where’s Dalziel?’

‘He’ll be down in a minute.’ He eyed me warily. ‘You look nice.’

‘Nice?’

‘Good, I mean. Very good. You look like one of those girls in that Robert Palmer video.’

‘Do I?’ I was flattered. ‘Just need a guitar to get me going.’

‘You’ll need a bit more than that tonight,’ James said, producing a hip flask. ‘Drink?’

‘Thanks.’ I took a swig and choked. ‘God. What the hell’s that?’

‘Hell is right, you innocent,’ he scoffed. ‘Never tried the green fairy?’

‘Fairy liquid?’ I was confused.

‘Don’t be bloody stupid,’ he laughed. ‘Absinthe.’

I obviously looked blank.

‘All the French Impressionists drank it.’ He was impatient. ‘Toulouse-Lautrec lived on the stuff.’

‘Toulouse who?’

‘Painter. Very short man, Paris, turn of the century. Dancing girls? Fucking genius.’

‘Oh, I know.’ I was relieved. ‘Cancan dancers?’

A church clock nearby struck midnight. James took another swig and pocketed the flask. ‘It’s time,’ he whispered reverently.

‘Time for what?’ I giggled nervously. ‘Are you going to turn into a pumpkin?’

‘Shh,’ James’s brown eyes were dilated in the candlelight. ‘He’s coming.’

The door opened slowly and Dalziel walked in. He looked ridiculously sophisticated in a tight-fitting black suit, a pristine white shirt, his blond hair sleek, his long bony face deathly pale apart from two spots of high colour on his cheeks, his eyes ringed with kohl. When he turned I saw he had attached to his back a pair of beautiful angel wings that looked like they were made from swan’s feathers. He really was quite unlike anyone I had ever met. Five or six beautiful boys and girls, all wearing black, all in varying states of undress, followed him into the room. He regarded us all, then turned off the music and, placing a cigarette in an ebony holder, lit it languidly. He was captivating to watch; I couldn’t tear my eyes away. We all waited.

‘Good evening, my lovelies. It’s wonderful to see you all here at the witching hour. Thank you for coming.’

We waited as he blew a perfect smoke-ring.

‘Now,’ we were treated to a smile, ‘if you could deliver your intoxicating materials for the good of one and all, that would be much appreciated.’

One by one we deposited our booty onto the table. James had a whole bottle of absinthe, but I noticed he kept the hip flask well hidden. I looked around for the beautiful peroxide girl who had always been with Dalziel before, but she wasn’t there. Lena put down a small plastic bag of white powder, another boy a couple of paper wraps, a tall girl a clump of straw-looking things, which I later discovered were magic mushrooms. More bottles and potions followed. Then Dalziel tipped a bottle of white pills into a small china bowl in the centre of the table.

‘One for all, and all for one,’ he murmured. ‘Never say my love is not shared between you.’

James pushed me forward and shyly I placed my Jack Daniel’s on the table.

Dalziel fixed me with a look. ‘Displaying a distinct lack of imagination there, my dear Rose.’ He inhaled through the ebony holder with wearied languor. ‘But as you are a Society X virgin, we will forgive your misdemeanour this time, although I might have to smack your bottom later.’

Low laughter rippled through the room and I flushed scarlet, staring at my feet.

‘Now,’ he looked around, ‘is that everyone?’

The room murmured assent. Dalziel whispered to Lena, who went to change the CD as he smiled slowly at us all. I had a sudden vision of us standing before him like lowly acolytes, mesmerised, a strange sense that we were all waiting to bask in his approval.

‘So. It is Commandments One and Seven we’ll be enjoying tonight. We’ve done Four most recently, we very definitely didn’t keep the Sabbath holy. It was most amusing, wasn’t it, Rose?’

I flushed under Dalziel’s scrutiny, nodding fervently, aware of the envy of some of the others. Lena shot me daggers.

‘Although the Bishop of Oxford clearly didn’t think so.’

‘No sense of humour, the bloody clergy,’ Lena was keen to join in. ‘Jesus in women’s underwear was fucking brilliant, I thought—’

‘Anyway,’ Dalziel cut her off, ‘tonight we will begin with Number One:
You shall have no other gods before
me.’ He cranked the music right up and unveiled a statue under a velvet cloth of a man with an enormous cock, festooned with a garland of thorns. ‘My dear friend Priapus. Let the party begin. Let us make darkness visible.’

Jimi Hendrix’s guitar screamed through the room and I felt a great surge of anticipation and, frankly, terror. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to be here any more but I couldn’t drag myself away. Dalziel must have sensed my fear; he came to me.

‘You look very beautiful, darling,’ he said quietly, and he ran a finger down my cheek. ‘Very curvy and delicious.’ He put a pill in his mouth and then he leaned down and kissed me. I felt his tongue and then I realised the pill was now in my own mouth. For a moment I was about to protest but he handed me a glass and murmured ‘Swallow. I always do.’

So I drank and swallowed. Then he leaned down again and kissed me properly, and I felt the lust lick through my body like forest fire, and I pressed myself into his tall form and held his snake hips and kissed him back. I couldn’t believe this was happening to me: my wildest dreams coming true. Dalziel wanted me.

Abruptly he pulled away, grabbed the pink-haired girl and pulled her over to us.

‘Rose, meet Lena,’ and I smiled, and my legs felt a bit trembly in my very high heels, higher than I’d ever worn, and I went to shake her hand but Dalziel said, ‘Don’t be silly. Kiss her.’ I hesitated because I really didn’t like girls, not in that way, but Lena wasn’t so reserved; she leaned in and kissed me, and I just thought her mouth was very soft where a man’s is normally harder and there was no stubble, only soft skin, but it wasn’t so bad. I was starting to feel very strange, like the whole room was moving away and I was growing very tiny and then big again and then Lena was putting her hand on my breast and I pulled away because I felt a bit sick.

‘Don’t worry,’ Dalziel grinned; he’d been watching us lazily, ‘you’re just coming up. You’ll be fine in a sec.’

I stumbled to the French windows to breathe in the cold autumn air and after a moment or two the music started to overwhelm me. It had changed from Hendrix to something tribal, the beat of the drums pulsing through my veins, and I was beginning to feel like I was flying. I was ecstatic, in fact I was surely about to lift off the ground like a bird. The music was inside me, and outside me and then James was there and he held me and we danced and he got nearer and I pushed myself against him and I never wanted to let go.

‘This is amazing.’ I smiled and smiled, feeling my limbs were like liquid and so strange. I tried to articulate it but I couldn’t. ‘I’ve never felt like this before,’ I shouted over the music.

‘No, well,’ he smiled back, ‘you’ve probably never taken Ecstasy before, have you?’

‘God, no. Is that what it is?’ I forgot even to feel fear; I just felt amazed.

‘It is indeed. It’s gonna break down society’s barriers.’ His eyes were slightly glazed. ‘We will all love each other for ever and indiscriminately.’

And I felt decadent and cool and amazing, and then James was kissing me and I felt so odd, like I actually loved him and I kind of wanted to say that to him but I didn’t, I just kept kissing him. The music had changed to banging house and I wanted to dance now. The beat was in me, I was the beat and I was dancing now, writhing and turning, and I felt like everyone was watching me.

And then Dalziel was talking, far more dishevelled than earlier, his jacket was off and his shirt was unbuttoned, flowing loose from his trousers, exposing his smooth chest, his ribs that jutted out. He stood on the small table and he was asking for quiet and people were complaining, ‘Don’t turn the music off’ but he said it was time, time to do the seventh thing.

I didn’t know what he meant and I didn’t care.

A girl was led in wearing a strapless black dress, very fitted around her voluptuous curves. She was short, elegant, olive-skinned, with almond-shaped eyes, long dark hair in a French plait, a year or two older than us, perhaps. She was beautiful in a soft, rounded way. I smiled at her, but she ignored me, and I realised after a second that she was not quite here with us. Her eyes were unfocused and she stumbled slightly. At first glance she looked quite beatific but the longer I looked at her, the more it became apparent that she was in some kind of trance.

Lena stepped forward and blindfolded the girl, who appeared to acquiesce willingly, staggering slightly in her stilettos, a red satin scarf tied around her eyes. Lena ran her hands down the girl, slowly across her breasts, a lascivious smile spreading across Lena’s face. The music was put back on and the girl was led to the divan, her hands held before her as if in supplication or prayer. I wanted to dance again and I grabbed James’s hand, but he was distracted, I could feel that he was waiting for something. He watched Dalziel, who had a spray-can in his hand. In his great looping script he wrote on the wall. I thought that was quite amazing, writing on his own wall.

‘You shall not commit adultery,’
he scrawled, and then he turned triumphantly to us. ‘This is Huriyyah. She is the lover of someone I know well,’ he proclaimed, ‘very well indeed’. He looked around at his minions, challenge in his eyes. ‘And I have –’ he paused momentarily – ‘I have, let us say,
persuaded
her to help my fallen angels celebrate tonight. So – who will be the lucky taker?’

I was thoroughly confused.