The Language Of Bees Part 13

A woman of my height, in male clothing but with scarlet lips and flowered waistcoat, was noticed even in that place. I surveyed the room, allowing the room to survey me, before shaking my head at the man and telling him, "My friend isn't here yet, why don't I sit at that table over there and wait for her?"

Had the table not been small and awkwardly situated behind a particularly raucous group, he might have had another suggestion, but in that mysterious osmosis that functions in a well-run cafe, in the thirty seconds I had stood there, the man had learnt of the coin I gave the porter, and merely bowed me forward. Either that or, as occurred to me much later, he recognised me as a one-time companion of Sherlock Holmes, and decided to give me leave.

I ordered a drink, drew out the ivory cigarette holder, frowned at the lack of a cigarette in my pockets, and leant over to borrow a smoke from one of the men at the raucous table. Less than three minutes after I had walked in, I had a cigarette in my hand and a chair at the crowded table; the waiter swept over in his floor-length white ap.r.o.n to place my c.o.c.ktail before me, and twenty perfect strangers clasped me to their Bohemian chests. the lack of a cigarette in my pockets, and leant over to borrow a smoke from one of the men at the raucous table. Less than three minutes after I had walked in, I had a cigarette in my hand and a chair at the crowded table; the waiter swept over in his floor-length white ap.r.o.n to place my c.o.c.ktail before me, and twenty perfect strangers clasped me to their Bohemian chests.

I had chosen the difficult little table with care, for the noisy group was clearly a.s.sembled around a Great Man, their numbers swelled by sycophants edging up at the far end. I was halfway down the length of the table, close enough to catch his eye if not his ear, but it didn't take long to figure out who he was.

Augustus John was that most unlikely of creatures, a prosperous Bohemian-one who had even been invited into the Royal Academy. Perhaps his nonconformist ways had even contributed to his success, for in an artist of the Twentieth Century, outrageousness and avant-garde avant-garde were to be desired-and a man who extolled the superiority of his friends the gipsies, who kept a household of two peasant-dressed wives and their a.s.sorted barefoot children while still collecting mistresses and befriending royalty, and who went around London looking like a Canadian trapper in a velvet cloak was the very definition of nonconformist. were to be desired-and a man who extolled the superiority of his friends the gipsies, who kept a household of two peasant-dressed wives and their a.s.sorted barefoot children while still collecting mistresses and befriending royalty, and who went around London looking like a Canadian trapper in a velvet cloak was the very definition of nonconformist.

He was also a fine painter, which helped matters considerably.

I let the conversation bounce around me for a while as I sat and smoked and nodded my response to opinions on politics and a scandal encompa.s.sing a print-maker and a violinist (this was a Bohemian scandal, and therefore involved money and bourgeois att.i.tudes rather than money and s.e.xual promiscuity) and the relative merits of Greece versus the south of France as cheap, warm spots conveniently strewn with decorative rustics where one might spend the winter painting.

When my gla.s.s was empty, I ordered drinks for half a dozen of my nearest table-mates. The noise level of the Cafe pounded like surf; the smoke grew so dense, the golden walls ceased to shine. The poet to my left fell asleep against my shoulder. I transferred his head to the table; the man across from us helped himself to the poet's half-empty gla.s.s. The two people beside him, who had been pretending their legs weren't brushing together under the table, could bear it no longer and left, five minutes apart and fooling no-one. A woman in a suit similar to the one I wore lingered at my shoulder for a time, trying to make conversation until it was clear I was not interested, when she went away in a huff. The Great Man at the head of the table spotted this little play, and caught my eyes after the lesbian had moved on. He winked; I shrugged; a few minutes later a sc.r.a.p of folded paper began to circulate down the table. It had a sketch on the front of an angular young androgyne in spectacles that could only be me. I unfolded it, and read: weren't brushing together under the table, could bear it no longer and left, five minutes apart and fooling no-one. A woman in a suit similar to the one I wore lingered at my shoulder for a time, trying to make conversation until it was clear I was not interested, when she went away in a huff. The Great Man at the head of the table spotted this little play, and caught my eyes after the lesbian had moved on. He winked; I shrugged; a few minutes later a sc.r.a.p of folded paper began to circulate down the table. It had a sketch on the front of an angular young androgyne in spectacles that could only be me. I unfolded it, and read: I could do something intriguing with a model like you. Interested?

Underneath, it gave an address. I looked up to see his eyes on me, and I'm afraid I blushed, just a little, before gamely raising my gla.s.s to him.

"Sastimos!" I called down the table, which made his bushy eyebrows rise. I called down the table, which made his bushy eyebrows rise.

"Sastimos! Droboi tumay, Romalay." His return of my Romany greeting was perhaps a test, and I summoned a memory of Holmes' long-ago tutorials in the language. His return of my Romany greeting was perhaps a test, and I summoned a memory of Holmes' long-ago tutorials in the language.

"Nais tukah," I replied politely. I replied politely.

"Anday savay vitsah?" he asked, which was a little more complicated, both the language and the question of what group of Roma I belonged to. But the noise and the crowd covered any errors I made, and before he could order me down the table to him I made a show of folding the paper and slipping it into my pocket, as if to say that we would continue the conversation at another time. he asked, which was a little more complicated, both the language and the question of what group of Roma I belonged to. But the noise and the crowd covered any errors I made, and before he could order me down the table to him I made a show of folding the paper and slipping it into my pocket, as if to say that we would continue the conversation at another time.

(I had, in fact, no intention of doing so, but as it turned out, I did go to see John at another time, and he did end up doing a small portrait. That is one piece that Holmes values without question.) By ten-forty, the peak of the evening was reached, and the revellers began to move on to other late-night venues. A lavender-clad playwright stood up and announced that he thought he would go to a party he'd heard of in Brompton, and he departed with a woman on each arm. Two married couples across from me shook hands all around and then they, too, left, although it seemed to me that each went out of the door with the other's spouse. Eventually, Augustus John rose and made his way out, looking irritated at the half a dozen admirers who drifted after him. The sleeping poet snorted awake, dashed down the contents of the nearest gla.s.s, and staggered off in the direction of the entrance. When the waiter returned, I ordered another drink, although my gla.s.s was still half full, and asked the two people next to me if they'd like another. They would. party he'd heard of in Brompton, and he departed with a woman on each arm. Two married couples across from me shook hands all around and then they, too, left, although it seemed to me that each went out of the door with the other's spouse. Eventually, Augustus John rose and made his way out, looking irritated at the half a dozen admirers who drifted after him. The sleeping poet snorted awake, dashed down the contents of the nearest gla.s.s, and staggered off in the direction of the entrance. When the waiter returned, I ordered another drink, although my gla.s.s was still half full, and asked the two people next to me if they'd like another. They would.

"That was Augustus John, wasn't it?" I asked the woman, a thin, brown creature with untidy fringes and mismatched clothing.

"You must be new in town, if you don't know him." She had an appealing voice, low and just beginning to roughen with the cigarettes she smoked.

"I've been away for a while, in America," I told her, although John had been a fixture in the Cafe Royal for years.

She asked me about America, I made up some stories about the art world there, about which I knew next to nothing, then asked about John again.

"I wonder if he might know where a friend of mine is, another artist. I should have asked him before he left."

"Who are you looking for?"

"Damian Adler."

"Sorry, don't know him."

"Yes, you do," piped up the man at her side. "Painter chap, French or something, his wife knows Crowley."

"Oh, right-him. I haven't seen him for a while, though."

"Aleister Crowley, do you mean?" I asked the man-a writer, as I recalled. Yet another writer.

"That's the chap."

The woman interrupted. "Except it wasn't Crowley, was it, Ronnie?"

"It was, though," he a.s.serted.

"No, they were talking about him, but I don't think she knew him."

"But why should I-oh, you're right, it was Betty who was talking about him, to her."

I wasn't sure I was following this fairly drunken conversation. "You mean Mrs Adler was talking to someone else about Aleister Crowley?"

"Betty May. Crowley killed her husband."

"Betty May's husband?" This was sounding familiar, although not the name May.

"Raoul Loveday. Took a first at Oxford, fell into Crowley's circle, died of drugs or something down in Crowley's monastery in Italy or Greece or someplace."

"Sicily," I said automatically. I remembered this, from the newspapers a year or more ago. "So Yolanda Adler was talking to Betty Loveday, here?"

"Being lectured by her, more like," the woman said. "Poor Betty, she's terrified of Crowley, any time she comes across someone interested in him she feels she has to save them from him."

"And Yolanda was interested in Crowley?"

"Yes. Or maybe not Crowley directly." She blinked in owlish concentration.

"Someone like Crowley?" I persisted.

"Or was it that someone she knew was interested in Crowley, and she was looking into how much trouble he was? Sorry, I really don't remember, it was a while ago. I'm Alice Wright, by the way. And this is Ronnie Sutcliffe." I shook her hand-bashed, sc.r.a.ped, and calloused-and his, considerably softer.

"Mary Russell," I said, introducing myself to her for the second time that night. "You're a sculptress, aren't you?"

She beamed. "You've heard of me?"

I hadn't the heart to admit that her hands had told me her avocation. "Oh, yes. But forgive me, Ronnie, I can't place where-"

"Ronnie's a writer. He's going to change the face of literature in this century, taking it well past Lawrence."

"D. H.," Ronnie clarified, looking smug.

I nodded solemnly, and gave way to an unkind impulse. "Are you published yet?"

"The publishing world is run by Philistines and capitalists," he growled. "But I had several poems published while I was still up at Cambridge."

"I look forward to seeing your work," I a.s.sured him.

Alice remembered what we had been talking about. "Why are you looking for her, anyway?"

"For Yolanda? I'm more trying to find her husband, Damian. He's an old friend, known him for years, and as I said, I'm recently back in town. I was hoping to see him."

The arch smile Alice gave indicated that she had read all the wrong meaning into my desire to see Damian Adler, but I caught back the impulse to set her straight: If it made her think me a denizen of the artistic underworld, so much the better. I shrugged, as if to admit that she was right.

The Cafe was being tidied for the night, the chairs arranged around the marble tabletops, gla.s.ses polished and set back on the shelves. The remaining seven members of our party were one of three tables still occupied, and we would soon be politely expected to depart.

Fortunately, before I could come up with a reason to attach myself to them, my two new friends claimed me instead.

"Would you like to go on for a drink?" Alice asked.

"The Fitzroy?" Ronnie suggested.

"I'm running a little low on funds," I told them, "but I'd be happy to-"

"Why not pop on home?" Alice interrupted, before they could find themselves paying for the rest of the evening. "Someone left a couple of bottles there, and Bunny won't have finished them off."

Having encountered such a wide variety of human relations that evening, I should have been willing to bet that Bunny was not, in fact, a large rabbit. However, since there might be more information to be had from the two, I agreed readily.

Outside on the street, we all three blinked under the impact of fresh air. After a moment, a man came out of the Cafe and pressed an object into my hand-the bag containing the skirt and blouse that I had put on in Suss.e.x many long hours before. I thanked him, but he vanished before I could find a coin for him, and I joined my two companions as they turned up Regent Street, braced together against the sway of the pavement. My own feet meandered uncertainly, but once my ears stopped ringing and the stinging sensation in my eyes cleared, I discovered that it was a very pleasant evening. vanished before I could find a coin for him, and I joined my two companions as they turned up Regent Street, braced together against the sway of the pavement. My own feet meandered uncertainly, but once my ears stopped ringing and the stinging sensation in my eyes cleared, I discovered that it was a very pleasant evening.

Alice talked at me over her shoulder, in tones that reached those in the buildings around us as well. She was a modern sculptress, she said, providing a woman's perspective to the most male bastion of all the arts. Her main problem, apart from the disinclination of the art world to treat women seriously, was finding a studio large enough to contain her vision. When we reached their home and studio, half a mile away in Soho, I saw what she meant.

The garret she worked in, four sagging flights up from street level, was intended to house servants, not to support a ton and a half of sc.r.a.p iron. I started to follow the two inside, then spotted the object in the middle of the floor and stopped dead. Surely it was my imagination that put such a dip to the floorboards?

"I call it 'Freedom,'" Alice told me with pride. The sculpture appeared to have some vague representational basis, but whether the extremities were the arms of a number of women strewing chicken feed, or the legs of war horses, I could not tell.

"It's autobiographical," Ronnie added. "Where's the corkscrew?" Since he was pawing through a drawer at the question, I thought he was not asking about a component of the sculpture.

"Bunny was using it this morning to score the pots before she put them in the kiln."

Lord, a kiln as well? "Are there people underneath us?" I asked.

"Just Bunny, and she won't hear us," Alice a.s.sured me, which hadn't at all been what I was asking.

"How ..." I stopped, at a loss for words.

"How am I going to get it out? The back wall is merely brick and tin, I'll invite a bunch of friends over to bash out a hole and help lower it down." She seemed proud that she had already solved that problem.

"Honestly, are there people living below? Because I really don't think the floorboards are st.u.r.dy enough to support your ... vision."

This struck the two as funny, and they began to giggle. Ronnie set off across the room, aiming for a bottle that sat on a long, high work-table, only to have his...o...b..t pulled towards the monumental piece of art-no, the dip in the boards had not been my imagination.

"We're the only ones here, us and Bunny," Alice finally answered. "She owns the building, in fact, although her father is taking her to court to force her to sell it to cover some bills. But if the old man succeeds, we've told him he'll have to knock it down with us inside."

It didn't look to me as if he'd have to wait for the end of a court case to see the demolition of the building, but I was relieved that there were no families sleeping beneath us.

"I'm not altogether certain I don't own the building," Ronnie said, addressing the bottle with whose cork he had begun to wrestle.

"The law is so patriarchal," Alice commented to me.

"Er," I said.

"The husband has rights to his wife's possessions," she explained.

"So, Ronnie is married to Bunny?"

"Bunny isn't her name, of course," Alice said blithely. "We called her that after she proved so enthusiastic about-"

"Alice!" Ronnie chided.

She giggled again, and finished the sentence. "-about reproducing. Three children in four years indicates a certain enthusiasm, don't you think? But yes, she and Ronnie and I are married. Does that shock you?"

I was not about to confess to any shock at the doctrines of free love, but I did go back to my initial concern with renewed urgency.

"Are the children living here?"

"Not at the moment. Bunny's mother wouldn't have it, and came to take them away."

I breathed more easily; at least I didn't have the safety of innocents on my hands.

Ronnie cursed at the bottle; Alice propped her elbows on the high table to observe his struggles. I followed gingerly, keeping to the very edges of the room. The cork had come apart, so Ronnie jammed the remnants inside with a carving tool, then picked up the nearest gla.s.s, which bore both lipstick and food around its rim. He splashed some wine and cork bits into the gla.s.s and set it down in front of me. I raised it gingerly to the vicinity of my lips-although, from the raw smell rising out of the gla.s.s, any contamination would be well and truly sterilised. which bore both lipstick and food around its rim. He splashed some wine and cork bits into the gla.s.s and set it down in front of me. I raised it gingerly to the vicinity of my lips-although, from the raw smell rising out of the gla.s.s, any contamination would be well and truly sterilised.

"When did you meet the Adlers?" I asked bluntly. It had been a long day, and I figured these two were in no condition to require subtlety.

"The winter sometime."

"It was at the Epsteins' Christmas party, remember?" Ronnie said.

"Jacob Epstein gave a Christmas Christmas party?" I asked. party?" I asked.

"It wasn't so much a Christmas party as a party at Christmas," Alice explained helpfully. "His wife gave it to show that she wasn't still angry at Kathleen. You know Jacob's wife, Margaret? She took a shot at one of Jacob's lovers last year, when she found out Kathleen was pregnant, although she'd been perfectly willing to raise the little girl he had by someone else five or six years before. She's usually perfectly content to let Jacob's lovers live with them, but for some reason she took against Kathleen. Anyway, that's settled now."

Heavens, my life was dull. "So that was when you met Damian and Yolanda?"

"Yolanda wasn't there, was she, Ronnie?"

"Wasn't she?"

"No, I remember because Damian couldn't come out with us to the country after the party, he had to be home because Yolanda would murder him if she heard he'd left the child by itself. It must have been when they first got here-that's right, there was some nonsense about finding a nanny. Children are so tedious, aren't they? Why can't one just leave them to their own devices?"

"Was Yolanda away, then?"

"Something religious, wasn't it?" he said, remembering.

"Probably," she agreed.

"I do remember now. You wanted him to come along because you hoped you could get him into bed."

Alice laughed and shot me a glance; I braced myself for further naughtiness. "Really, it was Ronnie who wanted to have a fling with him, and was hoping I'd join in. I would have, too." naughtiness. "Really, it was Ronnie who wanted to have a fling with him, and was hoping I'd join in. I would have, too."

"I don't blame you," I said evenly. "Damian is very attractive."