She doesn’t seem to notice how hot it’s become in here and how difficult it is to breathe.
She takes my hand. ‘I want you to meet Dirk. I’ve told him how clever you are.’
I’m being led through the crowd. Bodies simply part. Dirk and Eugene are chatting to colleagues beneath the jaws of a dinosaur that looks ready to eat them. We wait and listen. Every one of Dirk’s utterances is a statement of personal principle: opinionated, loud and dogmatic. There’s a lull. Julianne fills it.
‘Dirk, this is Joe, my husband. Joe this is Dirk Cresswell.’
He has a fearsome grip; a finger crushing, show-me-the-whites-of-your-eyes sort of handshake. I try to match it. He smiles.
‘Do you work in finance, Joe?’ he asks.
I shake my head.
‘Very wise. What do you do? Oh, that’s right, I remember Jules mentioning that you were a shrink.’
I glance towards Julianne. Eugene Franklin has asked her something and she’s no longer listening.
Dirk suddenly turns his back to me. Not completely. A shoulder.
Others in the circle are more interesting or easier to impress. I feel like a footman, standing cap in hand, waiting to be dismissed.
A waiter passes with a tray of canapes. Dirk comments on the foie gras, which isn’t bad, he says, but he’s had better at a little restaurant in Montparnasse, a favourite of Hemingway’s.
‘It tastes pretty good if you come from Somerset,’ I say.
‘Yes,’ answers Dirk. ‘Thankfully, we’re not all from Somerset.’
It gets a laugh. I want to put a kink in his perfectly straight nose with my fist. He carries on talking about Paris in a voice full of privilege and bravado that cuts right through me and reminds me of everything I hate about bullies.
I drift away looking for another drink. I meet up with Flip again, who introduces me to her boyfriend, who’s a dealer.
‘Shares, not drugs,’ he says.
I wonder how many times he’s used that line.
By now I’ve passed from the tipsy state to being grimly drunk. I shouldn’t be drinking at all, but every time I contemplate switching to mineral water, I find another champagne flute in my hand.
Just before midnight I go looking for Julianne. I’m drunk. I want to leave. She’s not on the dance floor or beneath the dinosaur. I walk up the staircase and peer into dark corners. It’s crazy, I know, but I keep expecting to find her with Dirk’s tongue in her mouth and his hands in her dress. Surprisingly, I don’t feel angry or bitter. This is the materialisation of a certainty that has been with me for weeks.
I walk outside the main doors. There she is, backed up against a stone pillar. Dirk is in front of her with one hand braced against the stone cutting off her escape.
He spies me approaching. ‘Speak of the devil. Having a good time?’
‘Yes, thank you.’ I turn to Julianne. ‘Where have you been?’
‘I was looking for you. Dirk thought he saw you coming outside.’
‘No.’
Dirk’s hand slips down, touching her shoulder.
‘Please take your hand off her,’ I say, unable to recognise my own voice.
Julianne’s eyes go wide.
Dirk grins. ‘You seem to have the wrong end of the stick, my friend.’
Julianne tries to laugh it off. ‘Come on, Joe, I think it’s time to go. I’ll get my coat.’
She ducks under his arm. Dirk looks at me with a mixture of pity and triumph.
‘Too much champagne, my friend. It happens to the best of us.’
‘I’m not your friend. Don’t touch my wife again.’
‘My apologies,’ he says. ‘I’m a very tactile person.’ He holds up his hands as though producing the evidence. ‘Sorry if there’s been a misunderstanding.’
‘There is no misunderstanding,’ I reply. ‘I know what you’re doing. So does everyone else here. You want to sleep with my wife. Maybe you already have. And then you’ll swagger off and brag about it to your clubster mates on golfing weekends to the Algarve or shooting weekends in Scotland.
‘You’re “Mr Hole in One”. You’re “Dead-Eye Dirk”. You flirt with other men’s wives and then take them to dinner at Sketch and back to a little boutique hotel in London which has matching robes and an oversized bath with a spa.
‘You try to impress them by name-dropping- first names only of course: Nigella and Charles, Madonna and Guy, Victoria and Davidbecause you think it’s going to make you more attractive to these women, but underneath that sun-bed tan and sixty-quid haircut you’re an overpaid glorified salesman, who can’t even sell himself.’
A crowd is being sucked inwards, unable to resist a playground fight where someone has taken on the school bully. Julianne comes rushing back, pushing through onlookers, knowing something terrible is afoot. She says my name. She begs me to shut up and tugs at my arm, but it’s too late.
‘You see, I know your type, Dirk. I know your shabby superior smile and condescending attitude towards waiters and tradesmen and shopgirls. You use sarcasm and overweening formality to gloss over the fact that you have no real influence or power.
‘So you try to make up for this by taking away what other men have. You tell yourself it’s the challenge that excites you; the chase, but the truth is you can’t hold onto a woman for more than a few weeks because pretty quickly they work out that you’re a pretentious, stuck-up, self-centred bastard and then you’re fucked.’
‘Please, Joe, don’t say any more. Please shut up.’
‘I notice things, Dirk, little details about people. Take you, for example. Your fingernails are flat and yellowing. It’s a sign of an iron deficiency. Maybe your kidneys aren’t working properly. If I were you I’d go easy on the Viagra for a while until I got myself checked out.’
52
By the time I reach the hotel room Julianne has locked herself in the bathroom. I tap on the door.
‘Go away.’
‘Please open up.’
‘No.’
I press my ear to a wooden panel and imagine I hear the faint silky slithering of her gown. She might be kneeling, pressing her ear against the door, opposite mine.
‘Why do you do it, Joe? Whenever I’m happy you do something to mess it up.’
I take a deep breath. ‘I found a receipt from Italy. You threw it away.’
She doesn’t respond.
‘It was for room service. Breakfast. Champagne, bacon, eggs, pancakes… more food than you could ever eat.’
‘You went through my receipts?’
‘I found it.’
‘You went through the rubbish- spying on me.’
‘I wasn’t spying. I know what you normally have for breakfast. Fresh fruit. Yoghurt. Bircher muesli…’
My certainty and loneliness are now so intense they seem perfectly matched. I’m drunk. I’m trembling. I’m remembering the events of the night.
‘I saw the way Dirk looked at you. He couldn’t keep his hands off you. And I heard the snide comments and the whispers. Everyone in that room thinks he’s sleeping with you.’
‘And you do too! You think I’m fucking Dirk. You think I ordered breakfast after we fucked all night?’
She hasn’t denied it yet. She hasn’t explained.
‘Why didn’t you tell me about the dress?’
‘He only gave it to me yesterday.’
‘Was the lingerie also a bonus… a present from him?’
