chalk-white, her eyes through crying as red as a white rat’s. Slumped against the coach, slitty eyes gazing into space, Viking looked even whiter than she did. Of the whole lot, only the Steel Elf, who didn’t drink, looked beautiful, the violet shadows under her eyes increasing her look of fragility.
‘Where’s Cherub?’ intoned Knickers, checking his list.
‘It’s not his fort,’ piped up Noriko. ‘Poor Cherub’s lost all his crows.’
On cue, Cherub shot through the swing doors, holding a tambourine over his cock and totally naked except for his shoes.
Scuttling down the steps, he slid into the line-up just as George reached him. The players, despite hangovers, were in total hysterics — waiting for a blistering undressing down. But George’s eyes merely ran over Cherub for a second.
‘Shoes need cleaning, Wilson,’ he said coldly and moved on.
The next moment, Noriko had hurtled down therow and wrapped Cherub in her long pink cardigan.
George returned to the middle of the row, climbing back up three of the hotel steps so he could talk to his orchestra. In his haste to reach the gaol, he had put his dark blue poloshirt on inside out — lucky for him, thought Flora wistfully.
‘You’re all an absolute disgrace,’ he roared, then, like the turned-up corner of a page, a faint smile lifted his square face. ‘We’ll be in Toledo by ten o’clock. Beethoven
And he strode off towards the car-park.
‘He’s in a jovial mood,’ said Miss Parrott in surprise.
Out of masochistic yearning, Flora stationed herself in front of Hilary and the Steel Elf, but they both slept all the way to Toledo. A rowdy party carried on at the back of the coach, but they couldn’t persuade Flora to join them.
‘
Viking sat by himself. The sky clouded over as they drove into Toledo. Viking could see a red traffic-light reflected in the bus window like a setting sun. If only he could have turned back the clock twelve hours. He was in the kind of eruptive, jungle-cat mood where everyone avoided him.
But, as they surged into the hotel reception which was appropriately filled with glossy dark jungle plants, to collect their new keys from Knickers, Randy shouted ‘Lunch on Viking, everyone.’
‘I’m crashing out,’ Viking shot a warning glance in Flora’s direction.
‘Dom Perignon all round,’ went on Randy evilly.
A mocking Dixie put his arm round Flora’s shoulders.
‘You missed all the fun last night.’
‘Shot your face,’ howled Viking.
‘What
Flora didn’t believe Dixie at first. Then he waved a polaroid under her nose, and she flipped. All her pent-up misery over George going back to his wife and the thieving bloody randiness and fecklessness of men in general, poured out of her, as she screamed at all of them.
‘How could you do that to Abby, you bastards, BASTARDS. You swore you’d break her, and now you bloody well have.’
Locking herself in her room she threw herself down on the bed, sobbing her heart out, ignoring the bombardment on the door until they all got bored and wandered off. Then the telephone went. It was Viking.
‘It wasn’t like you think,’ he begged. ‘Please put in a good word to Abby.’
‘Oh, fuck off. I am just writing a stinking letter to St Patrick, telling him there was one utterly poisonous snake he didn’t drive out of Ireland. Haven’t you any idea either how this will hurt Marcus?’
The moment she slammed the telephone down, it rang again.
‘Fuck off, fuck off,’ shrieked Flora.
‘Is thut Room 854?’
‘How do I know?’
‘It’s George.’
‘Whadja want?’ She mustn’t start crying again.
‘You once said you wanted to go oop in an air balloon.’
‘I’ve got a headache.’
‘Fresh air’ll do you good — a car’ll pick you up at two o’clock.’
SIXTY
Remembering the coiffured, manicured Ruth, Flora decided two could play at that game. Systematically, she worked her way through the little bottles in her bathroom, washing her hair, then lying in a bubble bath, in a shower cap as transparent as her motives, as she scrubbed her body with a tiny oblong of soap. Then she rubbed in all the available moisturizer and gargled away all the pink mouthwash. She would have scrubbed her entrails if she could have got at them. She put on a dove-grey sundress, thrown out by her mother as being too young, and left her hair loose so it shone and swung like a copper bell. With a desperately trembling hand, she just managed to draw two thick lines round her eyes until they dominated her face like a bush baby’s, and painted her lips the glowing coral of japonica in spring. The gentle dove-grey was wonderfully becoming. Jumping with nerves, she went downstairs to find various members of the orchestra passed out on chairs and sofas in the foyer. The bar was propping up a green-faced Davie. Others were setting out on jaunts with guide books.
‘I’ve got to see something of Spain other than concert halls and ceilings,’ announced Nellie.
In a nearby booth, Randy’s big checked shoulders were hunched over the telephone as he called home for the first time in six days. The next moment he was crying so much he could hardly tell his wife he’d see her tomorrow.
‘What on earth’s the matter?’ asked Flora.
‘Kirsty put each of the children on to speak to me,’ sobbed Randy, ‘I miss them all so much.’
‘Then why play around so much, when you’ve got such a lovely family?’
‘I don’t know,’ Randy blew his nose, then caught sight of Flora. ‘God, you look sexy, come ’ere.’
But Flora had bounded away. Calm down, she kept telling herself, it’s daft to get so excited.
‘You car’s here, Mees Seymour,’ announced a hot-eyed chauffeur sweating in black uniform.
‘How d’you know it’s me?’ squeaked Flora.
‘I was told you was gorgeous with red ‘air.’
‘Oh goodness.’ Flora bolted down the steps.
But all her happiness drained away as inside the car she found Juno looking so bloody beautiful in a pale pink shirt and shorts, showing off tiny suntanned thighs half the width of Flora’s. It was no comfort that Juno was as cross to see her, or that they were soon joined by Simon (perhaps George was after him, too) and Hilary. Flora slumped in the back; she might as well have got drunk on Viking’s ill-gotten champagne with all those other bastards.
They drove past ploughed fields and rocks the colour of lobster bisque through beautiful white villages, up an avenue of yellowing, peeling plane trees to a ravishing castle about five miles out of town.
A crowd of people in light trousers and rather well-pressed shirts, dressed up with nattily tied silk scarves, were making a din on the terrace. On the unblemished and blatantly sprinkled lawn below, a panting Spaniard in blue dungarees was wrestling with a purple-and-emerald-green dragon’s skin spewing out of a vast basket.
‘What a lovely spot,’ said the Steel Elf.
George came straight up. The rings under his eyes were heavier than his eyebrows. He had turned his navy-blue polo shirt the right way round, but tucked into his white trousers, it showed he had completely lost his
