'No, I don't want to scare you, Caroline, I promise. I only want to scare him.'
'But why? What's the point? What's the point of scaring people? They'll just be scared, that's all, they won't change. Why would that stop them loving each other? What has a gun got to do with that?'
Caroline waited a moment. 'Luke, you're not crazy and this is crazy-person behaviour. You're so far from crazy, you're the most—'
'Dull, conventional. Go on,' he said.
'No!'
'Yes. That's what I am.'
'No, you're not. You're gorgeous, OK? I've been completely mad about you since we were at university—I'm amazed you never guessed. Well, there—now you know.'
What was he supposed to say to this? Because, of course, he had known and he really didn't care. This irrelevance, couched in such significant words, only added to the sense of madness. He stood up as if he might shake it off and restore order, but Caroline jumped up with him. 'Luke!' she cried out, then she clapped a hand over her mouth.
An image came into his mind of what she must imagine he was about to do. He saw himself slowly take the gun out of his pocket and fire it—just once—into the air. Cracks forked across the mirrored ceiling and several fragments dropped. He saw the crowds parted, backed against the wall, the music turned off and everyone motionless, as if they were expecting to be in a photograph, waiting for the flash to go off.
How could he make both the sense of madness and this image of Caroline's disappear? He thought about running—the sound of running, the way his breath would be jarred out with each footfall. But he stood still.
And then, suddenly, with a mouthwatering scent of peaches and jasmine, Arianne walked up beside them. She said, 'Hey, Luke, I thought I spotted you. How funny you're here. Isn't it an amazing party? Did you like the falling stars? They were my idea.' Before he had answered her, which did not seem to be part of her objective, she turned to Caroline and leant over to kiss her on either cheek. 'Hi, we haven't met,' she said.
'Hello,' Caroline said, stuttering her name abruptly, less out of awkward loyalty to Luke than because of the stunning effect of the presence of this girl. To be next to her was like standing too close to the edge of a platform as an express train roared past: sheer force of personality, rattling your teeth.
'Caroline Selwyn? Why do I know your name? Are you on TV or something? Oh, God, are you incredibly famous?'
'No, I'm not.'
'Thank God for that. Oh, no, I know— Jamie reads your column in the Saturday Telegraph. Is that right?'
Caroline looked surprised. 'Um, yes. Yes, it is.'
The two girls stared at each other, and it occurred to Caroline that Arianne might think she was the new girlfriend. Luke Langford's new girlfriend—and after this amazing creature: it was delectable!
'Oh, wow, you're a really good writer' Arianne said. 'Jamie's always saying so. I'll have to read it too, now I've met you. Make me feel very important over my morning cappuccino to actually know the columnist.' Arianne smiled so beautifully—it was such a prime example of a smile—that it would have required great spiritual poverty not to return it.
'Oh. Well, thanks very much. I hope he keeps reading it,' Caroline said. She was wildly flattered, in spite of herself. She loved the thought of the words she edited meticulously late into the night, with an uncouth tub of ice-cream and a bag of nachos beside her, finding their way into such glamorous hands. Just to picture it: her spotty face in the byline photograph on this girl's breakfast table—by the natural yoghurt, the honeydew melon, the serene green tea!
Then she remembered that Luke had a real gun in his pocket and she watched, in paralysed agony, as Arianne turned to talk to him.
Luke's face was so pale now as to make the grey of his eyes appear lurid and fake. He seemed to have become thinner in the last few minutes—his cheekbones stood out sharply. He was clenching both fists and smiling tightly.
Arianne said, 'You look ... you look thinner, I think.'
'You look beautiful.'
'Oh, God—thank you. It's really just the necklace.'
Caroline said, 'It's an amazing present. I wish a boyfriend of mine would give me a present like that.'
'Yes, I'm so lucky,' Arianne said vaguely, as her fingers touched the little diamonds at her throat. 'I had absolutely no idea he was going to get me anything at all.'
Jamie appeared behind her. 'You showing off, baby?' he said, tousling her hair. 'Is she flaunting her jewels?'
Shamefaced, Arianne lowered herself so that he could drape his arm over her shoulder. Jamie laughed at her. 'You do what you like, sweetheart. I just want you to be happy.'
She smiled at him, then turned back to Caroline, who, she knew perfectly well, would be the only girl in the room self-effacing enough to grant her an opportunity to boast. 'You can see it if you like,' she said. 'It's Victorian. The clasp's a bit tricky so you might have to help. Here, I'll turn round and you can take it off'
'Oh, sure, OK. No problem,' Caroline said. 'I'd completely love to see it.'
Jamie grinned at Luke. 'Women.' He shook his head, but there was little life in the sarcasm. 'So,' he paused for a sip of his cocktail—it was something pale orange in a martini glass, 'so, Arianne pointed you out to me. You had a brief thing before she met me, she said. You're not press, right? Are you?'
'No.'
'I didn't think so. What do you do, Luke?'
'I'm an account ... I'm in advertising.'
'Right. Got it. You're a creative?'
'No, I—'
'Oh, OK, no, I get it. You're one of the guys who ... What do you call it?'
'An account manager.'
'Jeeze. Sounds like a bank manager.'
'It's not. And you're a soap actor?'
'For now. I have a Hollywood film coming up.' Jamie smiled and took another sip of his drink. 'So, I'm wondering something, Luke—'
Arianne squealed. 'Oh, my God, you're so right! It does actually work fantastically as a bracelet. Do you think you could do that in the day, you know, with jeans and a sweatshirt or whatever? Or is it just too, like, HELLO, DIAMONDS?' She was talking to a campy, high-fashion gay man, who had joined her and Caroline.
Jamie observed them for a moment and then continued, 'Yeah ... So, Luke, I'm wondering how you managed to get in, man.'
'Through the door,' Luke said. He could feel his mouth attempting to twitch out a smile and all the while he thought: Shoot him in the heart. He thought: This man is the thief of happiness.
Jamie was laughing. 'Through the door. Oh, that's very funny. You're very funny. Do you have a light?'
Luke took the lighter out of his pocket and flicked up the flame in front of Jamie's cigarette. Jamie leant towards it. 'Boom,' he said, widening his eyes. He puffed out smoke as he moved back. 'Oh, look, I don't mean to be a wanker. I'm actually a decent bloke, mate, I really am.'
Shoot him in the heart, Luke thought. In the heart. His fingers tensed round the gun.
'But it's, like, you follow her,' Jamie said. 'I mean, why do you do that?'
'I don't.'
'Come on, now. You sit on your own in the clubs she goes to, mate. I've seen you myself. We've all seen you. We make bets. In fact, I've won three hundred quid tonight. I said you'd find a way. I've got fucking faith in you, man.' He pointed at Luke with his head tilted affectionately on one side, then he lowered his arm. 'Look, you have two choices. One is that I can get Steve on the door to throw you out. Now, I'm totally happy for you to go with this option because it'll get more coverage: "Gatecrasher thrown out of exclusive new club, Lapis-Lazuli".You get the idea. That's a lot of free publicity, so you should definitely feel free to go with that option.' Then he put his hand on Luke's shoulder. 'Or,' he said, 'or you can just leave. OK? Because I don't want to fuck you up any more than you obviously are already. Shit—you need to get some self-respect, mate. No woman is going to want you like this. You're good-looking. Be a man, yeah?'
Luke stared at the tanned face,
the polished teeth through the fierce smile, the smooth black hair. This was a man. Jamie Turnbull was telling him how to be a man.
'OK,' Arianne said, 'finished the tedious girly stuff.' She smiled up at Jamie, who kissed her forehead. When he had his arm round her she looked calm, rather than angry or insatiable. Without those qualities, she appeared to be—happy. A little less sexy, perhaps, but happy. She glanced at Luke and he saw a brief burst of genuine pity in her eyes. Then Jamie lifted her off the ground and she giggled like a child as he tickled her ribs and swung her long legs out to one side, then the other. 'Put me down!' she said.
'Now, why would I do that? Give me eight hundred good reasons and I'll think it over.'
The giggling and the tickling and the swinging went on and on. Luke watched it as helplessly as a man in his pyjamas before a blazing building. At last two other friends came up to say hello to Jamie and he was forced to put Arianne down and greet them. One of them was a man in a showgirl costume with gold feathers on his head and bright red stiletto boots.
Luke's fingers let go of the gun and it swung freely in his blazer pocket, knocking against his leg, like a pendulum. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Caroline. There she cowered, hating him, fearing him. He said her name and, reluctantly, she raised her eyes. She looked nauseous with terror.
'Caroline?' he said, as if he was not sure she had really acknowledged him behind the fog of terror.
'What, Luke?'
'It's not a real gun.'
'What?'
'It's a joke gun,' he said.
For a moment there was only shock, then every feature of her face wrinkled up in abject disgust. 'This was—what? Your idea of a joke? This was a joke gun? I mean, what?'
He had never been gaped at like that before. Never in his life. It was the kind of look you gave to people who shouted at themselves on the street, people who bit their own hands, people who spat and screamed at dustbins. He felt the various glossy layers between himself and these lost souls begin to dissolve. Off they came: class, education, wealth, schooling, blazer, loafers, cufflinks.
Just then, there was another huge shower of stars. He gazed up and watched them fall—into his hair, onto his eyelids; they slid weighdessly across his face. He could hear Arianne laughing with excitement. Waiters in white gold shirts were taking champagne cocktails around on trays. It was hard to see for a moment, through the strobe light and the tumbling stars.
'Caroline?' he said desperately. He reached out for her wrist and caught it. 'I—I've given you the wrong impression of myself.'
She laughed bitterly into his face. 'Oh, my God, Luke, that is just such a—such a weird way of putting it.' She tugged her wrist free, and as she did so he flinched and looked at her as if she had walked up and silently shot him in the stomach.
He said, 'Yes. No, I see what you mean.'
Then he turned away and she watched him slowly josde out through the last snowfall of stars and the bouncing, golden crowd.
Chapter 23
Mila had thought the banging sound was in her dream, but gradually she realized it was coming from the annexe door. She called out sleepily, 'Goran?'
There was no reply. Right away she sat bolt upright and snatched the sheet up against her throat. She was afraid that they had been discovered, that she or Goran had been loud and the people had come over from the big house. They would be sent back to Kosovo—their whole journey was wasted—and there would be nothing but fighting and Albanians hating them for the rest of her life. There would be no joy, just evil graffiti on all the ruined beauty of her childhood; just foreign soldiers with their blank, impartial faces, queuing beside you at the market with their guns.
'Goran?' she said again, pleadingly, her voice weak with fear.
'No, it's Luke,' came the answer.
'Oh, Luke!' she cried out. And suddenly she felt that abundance of vitality, of joyous good health that only comes after a lucky escape. She thanked God as she hurried about the room, looking for her clothes. Hanging on the old hat-stand, she found her T-shirt and her long cotton skirt and pulled them on quickly, knocking over the children's globe beside the pile of tennis rackets. The globe lay, spinning on the floor for a moment and she muttered in irritation as she picked it up and set it back on its stand. 'I am just one minute, Luke,' she called nervously. 'Very sorry.'
Luke pressed his ear to the door so that he could hear
everything Mila was doing: she went into the shower room, water ran briefly, she came out, a metal hanger was knocked clanging on to the floor, then the camp bed was shifted and the two halves were folded and locked together. At last he heard her footsteps coming to the door.
Her hair was all fluffed up from brushing. She was slightly hysterical. 'I'm sorry I am long time. I sleep,' she explained. 'Luke, you know Goran is drive in cab now?'
'Yes,' he said.
She gazed at him, puzzled at first, and then, with a plummeting acknowledgement of her own capacity for self-delusion, it occurred to her that Luke was going to throw them out of the annexe himself. Why not? Goran had been so rude when Luke came round early the morning before—it had been unforgivable to make her tell him to go away. She and Goran had been arguing anyway, but after that she had been too angry to speak to him. She had hissed at him what an idiot he was to show disrespect to Luke in that way—that Luke had virtually saved their lives, where the hell would they be without him?—and then she had locked herself in the shower room until he gave up on tapping at the door like a little brother. He took ages to go away - he just kept telling her to 'relax', asking her, 'Why do you care so much, Mila? Just relax!
It was perfectly obvious why she cared so much! Relax? How could she, when they were beggars, nobodies, who had to guard what little they had with their lives or they would end up in one of those bunk-bed boarding-houses with cockroaches and thieves. Did he have a relaxing solution to that? After half an hour or so she came out of the shower room to find Goran in a dead sleep of physical exhaustion. His hand still gripped the unopened beer Luke had passed her through the doorway. She eased the bottle out of his fingers and, as she did so, she thought about how it had been those very hands that had sold all her jewellery to an Albanian woman. She had cried and cried when he did that.
'But we agreed. It's for our bus fares. Our future! Goran had told her, stroking her hair. 'It's worth so much more than a few rings and necklaces, little one.You're too beautiful to need jewellery, anyway.'
He snored a little on the sofa and her mouth curled in disgust. She longed for her pretty things. All other girls had pretty things, but not her. And now, to top it all, Goran had been unforgivably rude to Luke, the one source of comfort and beauty in their lives.
And now here Luke was, about to throw them out. She could see that he wanted to come in and she let him pass, remaining in the doorway, utterly stiff with despair. She looked out into the garden for a second or two at the place where Luke had been standing. The temperature had dropped a little and it felt as though it was going to rain. For a second or two, she missed her mother desperately.
Why had she come to this country to work like a slave, anyhow? To be spat at by those angry pink faces at the port with their weird signs and their chanting? Had it been her life's ambition to scrub and clean luxurious houses, to be tortured by the sight of other women's beautiful clothes, by other women's unused kitchens? Why had she ever listened to Goran? She could have gone somewhere else, on her own, somewhere life was much easier ...
She heard Luke's shoe scuff the floor and knew she must turn round. She closed her eyes tightly, and, with the little energy she had left in her tired body, she decided to work a miracle. Mila had been born with a natural talent for optimism. She was deeply grateful for it: it was all that had got her and her brothers through a childhood punctuated by air strikes and bombs, and by doubt in what the adults were doing. She summoned it up in a kind of prayer, or perhaps it was a spell, really, since it was not on God but on her own body that s
he called for help.
The familiar sensation spread through her: hope. Perhaps, she told herself, Luke was not going to throw them out, but merely wanted to make sure they had not damaged anything. Immediately, the thought took hold - just as hope always did, no matter how bad things were; it was like a desert plant. Yes, she told herself, of course that was it! Goran was so big and clumsy - he ate in such a disgusting, dog-like way—she was not surprised if someone as elegant as Luke was simply concerned for his family property.
Luke stood beside the old pink sofa, running his fingers over a few of his county sports medals, which were piled on the table.
He noticed Mila smiling at him and watched her shut the door. He said, 'What happened yesterday? You didn't want me to come in. Were you having an argument?'
Mila was confused. Luke always spoke so quickly. It infuriated her that she needed Goran to translate.
'You and Goran?' he prompted. He shook his fist for anger. 'Yesterday? When I came with the beer?'
She knew the word 'beer' and immediately she understood. OK, so he was offended, she told herself. But she would stay calm because she would simply apologize and Luke would forget all about it. That was what was going to happen. She laughed tensely. 'Oh, I am understand. Argument is fight of words, yes? Yes, it is argument. Please I am sorry, Luke. Very sorry. Goran also is very sorry.'
'Forget it,' Luke said. He was not sure why he had mentioned it.
'Please, Luke. He speak bad to you. I know this. Please.'
'Look, I said it's OK. Forget it.'
Mila thought her heart might break with gratitude. 'Thank you.' She blushed, and then she said passionately, 'Goran is angry man sometimes. He is stupid man.'
Luke was shocked by this assertion. He was used to seeing Mila tease Goran, but fundamentally she always seemed rather afraid and obedient. Goran only had to tell her to stop joking around and open his beer and she did. It amazed Luke. He had often wondered if women were simply more respectful where they came from - if Serbian women, unlike English ones, thought men had a purpose, a real place in society—or if Mila's respect for him was due to some special power of Goran's. Luke would mull this over as they shared an early-morning beer, while he tried to banish his latest memory of Arianne: her bright shape whisked past obliviously to a table, or flickering by in a cab, or waving at him in a strobe flash from a crowded dance-floor.
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