Inigo was the first to leave. There were still many hours left of light, and he wanted to go home and paint. Then Doyle left too, dragging his sack, to drive back with Kranker and Nordeen. Lundgren and his Mohammed hitched a ride with Wax and Kalem. Barclay took a dip, put his arm around Mustapha, and came to sit by Robin while he dried off.
'Now, Robin,' he said, 'we've had our differences. But I like you, so I must give you some good advice. Stay clear of Patrick Wax. He's a nasty piece of work.'
'I think he's quite amusing, Peter-'
'Awful person. Phony. A thief. Everything out of his mouth is a lie. That absurd story about Bosie Douglas-and how he loves to say 'Lord Alfred Douglas'! I happen to know Bosie wasn't anywhere near Florence in thirty-eight. He was in London, sick with pneumonia. We were cousins, you see.'
'Yes, yes, but what difference does it make? Everyone lies in Tangier.'
'There are degrees, Robin. Degrees. People like Wax go in for homosexuality because of the social mobility involved. Wax would be a chimney sweep like his father if he hadn't gotten smart and become a pouf.'
'What are you saying? That he's not a pouf? That it's nothing but an act?'
'You said it-not me. But it's true. He's false, from A to Zed. He became gay just to get in with his betters, and because it allowed him to enter circles where it was easier to steal. Beware of him, Robin. He really shouldn't have been here. This was to be a chickenhawk and bumboy party. He didn't belong!'
He left then, abruptly, and Robin looked after him amazed: Barclay condemning Patrick Wax for pretending to be a homosexual because he couldn't condemn him for pretending to be a lord. Wax made no bones about his background. He loved to tell people he was a chimney sweep's son and played the role of imposter to the hilt. Now Barclay accused him of being a heterosexual in disguise. It was the most absurd thing Robin had ever heard.
Bainbridge and the poodle clipper were the last to go, and Robin was not displeased. Percy said he was working on a new invention, something extraordinary, a 'three-cornered kiss.'
'It will revolutionize group sex, bring coherence to carnality,' he said in his Australian whine. 'It's not an invention so much as a technique. I won't be able to patent it, but I do hope people give me credit. I want them always to refer to it as 'the Bainbridge kiss.' '
When they were gone Robin put on his shirt, then lay out in the dying sun. Herve was down by the sea washing the glasses and plates. Robin watched him, a silhouette against the Atlantic. The sea was smooth, a great expanse broken only by an oil tanker moving slowly out of the distance toward the Straits.
'Shall we take down the tent and drive back?' Herve asked. He'd packed the skewers and glasses in a basket.
'I don't know,' said Robin. 'Why don't we sleep out here tonight?'
Herve agreed, and so the two of them sat together on the sand waiting hours for the sun to set. Robin had taken in too much of it. He felt a fever rising to his forehead as if all the heat he'd absorbed in the afternoon was breaking out now in the cool of the dusk.
Later, feeling better, lying before the tent with Herve Beaumont by his side, Robin remembered that this was the night of the summer solstice, the shortest night of the longest day of the year. In three months the autumnal equinox would come, then the winter solstice and circles more of changing seasons after that. As he pondered these cosmic matters, the antics of the afternoon began to take on a new perspective in his thoughts.
He felt let down by his picnic, bitter and angry too. He didn't know why, since everyone had been nasty as he'd hoped, and he'd heard some good stories, even picked up some tidbits for his column. Perhaps it was the predictability of the nastiness that bothered him, the way they'd all tattled on one another, the foul perfume of their gossip and lies. It seemed more pathetic than amusing that Vincent Doyle lugged around his silverware. There was pathos in Barclay trying to make an Eton boy out of Mustapha, and in Inigo, a great artist, suffering over Pumpkin Pie. Bainbridge and his absurd inventions. Lundgren, the incompetent dentist. Kranker, so filled with bitterness and spite. He even felt sorry for Wax and his pretensions, his 'Florence of Arabia' act. They all seemed so absurd, cruel, self-deceiving fools mingling on the sand, specks on a speck in an indifferent universe, so flawed, so powerless in the face of the burning sun.
Should he leave Tangier? Would things be better for him somewhere else? He doubted it, and at the thought felt disgusted by his life. How pathetic he was, keeping so tight a grasp upon his column, like a clerk in a post office holding on to a tiny power.
Then he thought, how strange to lie here and feel metaphysical distress. He'd organized the picnic, orchestrated it for his amusement. It was just something he'd done to pass an empty afternoon.
But this day was the solstice, a mark on the calendar of life.
The Foster Knowles’ Entertain
Much later, when Lake looked back, he wondered if that wasn't the night when everything started to go wrong.
It began, innocently, with a dinner invitation from the Foster Knowles‘. Lake was not particularly keen about the Knowles‘-their sophomoric expressions and youth-culture mannerisms disgusted him no end. And the fact that other people in Tangier seemed to like them only added to his despair. They'd made friends on account of their jogging group and now were on the make, penetrating the society of the Mountain, even rating a tryout at Barclay's house for lunch.
Lake couldn't understand it. They were a pair of straw-haired bumpkins as far as he could see. Jackie Knowles and her gymnastics classes, Foster and his antipathy for meat-perhaps, he thought, it was their wholesomeness that was so attractive in this town where everyone else was either mad or queer. He didn't know, but it annoyed him all the same. The Knowles' were more popular than Janet and himself, though he was Consul General and Tangier was Foster's premier post.
Lake and his wife pulled up to the Knowles' building just as Willard and Katie Manchester were locking up their car. They all embraced on the street, then walked inside. There wasn't room in the elevator for the four of them, so Lake volunteered to take the stairs. By the third landing he was sorry-the Knowles' lived on the sixth floor. He was breathing hard and growing furious at his exhaustion when he heard Jackie greet the others at the apartment door.
'Hi!' she said. 'Where's the Consul?' Her shrill voice ricocheted to him on the stairs.
'He's climbing slowly,' Janet said. 'Dan's not much of an athlete, you know.'
'Well, good for him anyway. I think exercise is great!'
Lake swore as he assaulted the final flight. The evening, he knew, was going to be bad.
Foster greeted him. 'Hey, Dan!'
Lake didn't know what all the fuss was about, since they'd been working together the entire day.
'Helluva a climb, right? Better have a drink.' Jackie glided up and bussed his cheek. Foster handed him a scotch.
Fufu, the UN delegate from Uganda, was on the couch beside his wife. Lake always felt awkward around this man, since he didn't seem to have a first name. When one met him one called him 'Mr. Fufu,' and then just plain 'Fufu' when acquaintanceship became close. He had tribal marks, diagonal slashes cut into his cheeks, and was fond of giving lectures on the destiny of Africa, lectures which he'd enunciate with increasing volume as one tried to wriggle away. Lake shook hands and sat beside Mrs. Fufu, who reminded him of a picture on a package of pancake mix. Big, huge-breasted, full-cheeked, she sat next to her husband like a squaw.
Lake gulped half his drink, then listened to Katie Manchester holding forth across the room.
'Yes, dears, it's
Originally Lake had liked the Manchesters, but now he found them stultifying, garrulous fools. In the
