Surrender to Mr. X (16 page)

“You Hertz 111 girl,” said Lam, giving me a severe pinch as I lay there bound and helpless. “You trouble. You not 93.”

Thelemy
was overdue by three weeks and still Alden was nowhere near completion. Which you could see as the story of his life, but that was not a joke I was prepared to make. The bad mood went on for days: I was getting the blame now for failing to produce the required category of sound. My experiences were intense but not intense enough. Ray rashly said but only 1% of people could tell the difference between the excellent and the adequate, and that sent Alden into a sulk—a hissy fit, as Ray described it.

As if this was not bad enough, depression—which I know to be catching—moved in on Ray, like a weather front on a satellite chart. You feel it approaching. It was no more romps on the sofa for me but straight back to the intensity of work: he moaned on again about his erection problems—for which he blamed potency pills; they had “disturbed his energy harmonics”—and was back to the old humiliating premature ejaculate days. He could contribute nothing to Alden's sex sessions; he did not have the heart to pick up a paint brush.
The Blue Box
stood on its easel untouched. Ray took to his bed and would not have me near it. It occurred
to me that he was Bipolar One, a sorrier state to be in than mine. Bipolar Two can find its own resolution in everyday life—though this remedy could be drastic, as I had found out—but Bipolar One can do nothing when depression sweeps in. Ray had just to sit it out, and especially avoid answering the phone to Lady Daisy O, who kept wanting to come round and inspect
The Blue Box
, which, as she accurately pointed out, she had put up a down payment for. Snotty bourgeoise bitch, I thought. Joan was on Ray's side.

A
LDEN, NEVER ONE TO
stand idly by for long, took matters in hand, not so much the bull by the horns, as the cow by the udders. He took the initiative and invited Lady O round. Better for Ray to face her than to hide. If the worst came to the worst Daisy O would just have to change the date of the exhibition, though this would do nothing for Alden's cash flow problems at Arts-Intrinsick. The important thing was that pressure was taken off Ray.

I heard him confide in Lam that he did not think much of the Southgate crew.

They were amateurs. Renegades. They had advanced Ray too fast along the paths. Now Ray was suffering. He was using “the Will” when he had not necessarily built up the proper resources of power, and he was paying the price. As a result
The Blue Box
was suffering too. It was a disaster. I had the feeling I was somehow being blamed for this, too. But then men did that. When things go wrong they turn to the nearest woman
and blame her. My father would do it to my mother. He'd poke his nose out the door and say “it's cold,” as if it were her fault and she would automatically say “I'm sorry.” So I took not too much notice.

“You bad girl,” Lam said, poking me with his finger. “You 111 hertz girl. You try be 93.” He might or might not be an alien, might not have private parts like Barbie's friend Ken or Action Man, but his insensitivity was entirely male.

Alden wanted me to dress and act the secretary for his meeting with Daisy O. He did not want Ray upset any more than he was already. He wanted me to stand by and take notes. He supposed I could do that? He suddenly sounded doubtful. I said of course: I was secretary to the parent-teacher association at my nursery school and no-one had so far complained. With me present, Alden went on, Lady Daisy would be less likely to be abusive or nasty.

Loki whizzed me back to Little Venice, which seemed by now a strange and humdrum dwelling, piled high with frothy and thoughtless tat, ungraced by artistic aspiration, or any of the things which give meaning to life, and was the natural territory of someone far, far sillier than me.

I came back in the clothes I wore for the Olivier—navy knee-length skirt, court shoes, white blouse and a string of pearls—looking very much the secretary. A raised female voice came from Ray's studio, brisk, stern and displeased, but resigned, like a nanny talking to a
naughty child. Lady O had arrived early. Ray's voice in reply had an edge of whinging self-pity: Alden's, which interrupted and replaced it, was fluent, reassuring and phony.

“You brought me here to show me this?” Daisy O exclaimed. “He's barely started it!”

Daisy O was an heiress from a Silicon Valley family. She had married an English peer and now entertained herself shooting grouse and buying art, in which she was genuinely interested. She was a connoisseur, unlike Matilda Weiss, who, as Alden explained to me, saw art as way of buying influence and showing off. I had Googled Daisy and found 182,000 references. (Alden clocked up 98,000, Ray 726,000, having lately gone on the syllabus of a leading art school.) Daisy was certainly not interested in her appearance, any more than is the Queen of England. She was very tall, around 6ft, and slouched, and her fair hair was scraped back savagely from her face and held by a rubber band. She had no time for frivolities. Her shoes were flat, her elasticised skirt did nothing for her figure, bunching round her waist as it did. She wore a white shirt splodged with great yellow chrysanthemums. I thought she had buttoned it up wrongly until I realized it was purposefully asymmetrical. I had seen one like it in Liberty's recently—by a Japanese designer—and thought I had never seen anything so hideous, and wondered who on earth would spend £3,750 on such grotesquerie. Now I knew.

Yet Lady Daisy was not without allure, in her natural, healthy, big-boned, energetic way. I always knew when someone who came into the Olivier was from California. They brought sunshine and confidence with them, even though as now, they might be in a fury.

I found a newspaper article on Google which told me more. That Lady O was opening up the lower half of her London residence—one of those huge dull houses near Belgrave Square near where Lady Thatcher lived—as a non profit-making gallery. It was to be called the En Garde, and be open to the public from mid-September. The design firm Arts-Intrinsick had won the commission to refurbish in a highly competitive market. “Arts Patronage Devolves To Private Hands As Government Provision Fails,” went the headlines. “The New Face Of The Arts: Saatchi Mark Two—But All Proceeds To Charity” ran below. Centerpiece of the opening exhibition was to be a commissioned piece,
The Blue Box
, by up-and-coming artist Ray Franchi. Another feature of the opening would be a first performance of
Thelemy
—
The Murmur of Eternity
by noted composer Alden X. Readers who were listeners to Radio 3 might already have heard his striking piece in the Minimalist Maelstrom. I had been promoted to an eternal murmur, I was happy to discover, rescued from the
Silence of the Senses
.

Lady Daisy was busy counting squares. She told Ray there were twenty-nine left undone.

She had to have his guarantee that the work would be completed in the next three to four weeks. Let him not try telling her this timing was intentional, she knew perfectly well it was not.

“Of course it's not intentional,” said Ray. “My brain just won't currently do the translations.”

Lady O said she had been working with artists too long not to know when they were having her on, screw the translations, Ray had her over a barrel and wanted more money, was that it?

Alden said he bitterly resented her attitude and not to use that language, please. It upset Ray.

Daisy said Alden was another one, she supposed she'd find now the music had run into a creative block and magically wouldn't be ready unless she handed out some more funds. He'd played the disability card once too often.

“Disability real,” said Lam. “Disability no card.”

“Tell that creep of yours to shut the fuck up. Get him out of here. And her too,” she said, looking at me. “What is said in here is confidential. I don't want her taking notes.”

Lam stayed where he was. I took my cue from him and went on busily writing. Alden attended to his touch pad and barely audible music came out of the walls. Daisy didn't seem to notice at first.

“Just get on with it,” she said, literally stamping her big flat foot at Ray, “and hurry the fuck up.” I've stamped my foot in my time, but it makes an impatient
little tapping sound with heels: Lady O's just made a dull thud.

“My integrity?” he pleaded.

“I won't tell you where you can put it,” she said. “Fuck integrity. What about my gallery? What about my fucking integrity?” Which was more or less what Alden had said to Ray many a time, but it was different when a woman said it.

“Bad language,” said Lam. “Bad.”

Daisy told Lam that if he had issues with direct language, she had no objection to him stuffing himself right up his own ass if he had one, and told Alden that since the parquet floor was rising she had already arranged for it to be re-laid by someone competent, and that she hoped he was looking forward to getting the bill. Alden's music was louder now. It seemed to confuse her. She looked this way and that.

Daisy said she had half a mind to ship
The Blue Box
out then and there as she was perfectly entitled to do, and hire some hack art restorer just to fill in the squares. But even as she spoke in her flat, nasal tones, her voice faltered. The midday sun shone straight down from the skylight and for once the whole ensemble was without shadows. Seen like this it had what I can only describe as a kind of thickened density: it stared straight out, not just reflecting back from the universe into itself, but inwards, down and down into its own soul: a gateway of sympathetic magic between macrocosm and microcosm. Awesome.

“What's that noise?” she asked. “Are there insects in this room?”

She seemed really distressed. I wished Alden would turn the hum off. It had been added to and enhanced in complexity since last I heard it. Now I knew it was so personal to me, I didn't want it shared amongst strangers. Ray crossed over to her and took her hand, which was brave of him. He was half her scale: puny. I felt defensive of him. It was the sheer force of creativity which denatured him: carried some of his strength away as it washed through him. He sacrificed himself for us.

“Look in to my eyes,” he said, “I so want you to be pleased with me.”

I saw Daisy's face soften, and grow trusting. He told her how much she had done for the Arts in this country and the corners of her mouth turned up a little and she actually looked pleased.

“We in the avant-garde have so much to be grateful to you for,” Ray said. “We in the Thelemic movement are so proud to have you with us. Be sure your support is important to us.”

Your call is important to us—the voice was artificially soothing, ingenuous: Daisy might as well be through to a call-center. I started to giggle, out of sheer nervousness, but Alden darted me such a look I shut up. I was not forgotten: I was part of a plan.

“Let yourself be guided by me,” Ray said. “And Alden too. We are part of the way, the truth, and the light.
Come with us on that path. Trust us. You can close your eyes now.”

And Daisy actually did, and stood there swaying, a great big beautiful puppet, and half of me wanted to shake her awake and save her and half didn't, because I wanted her to get what she deserved.

I knew who she reminded me of now—my best friend Jude, who fucked my father in the greenhouse when I was off being interviewed to get into Oxford. Was that person me? Wasn't I now Joan, the girl with the body but no brain? The music was louder and confusing me too. Ray turned to me and said, “Isn't she lovely, Joan. Don't you think so?” And I nodded. I did.

Alden gave Lady Daisy a little pinch as she stood there, looking bemused but kindly in her asymmetrical blouse with its ugly flowers, and I thought if only she took it off she'd look much better. She was smiling at me now as if I wasn't a bug to be trodden on, after all. Alden could pinch her all he liked; it was me she took notice of. I appreciated that.

“We're all going downstairs now,” said Alden, and we all trooped down to the mirror room and sat in a semi circle on our Philip Starck chairs. I noticed I had no clothes on, though everyone else was wearing theirs. It was like one of those anxiety dreams, when you suddenly find yourself naked and exposed in the street, only I knew wasn't going to wake up for quite a while. The music was louder down here. Lam had an ordinary digital camcorder out, a hand-held thing,
because problems with the Lukas bed had temporarily crashed the whole computer recording system, and he “wanted to get on with it.”

“Don't get too fond of Daisy, Joan,” said Alden, “because she's been very, very bad. She needs to be punished.” And I thought of my friend Jude, and I thought yes, indeed Daisy does. And poor Ray was looking quite pale and exhausted and I knew Daisy had drained the strength out of him, which was very bad, for the Arts, for the world, for everyone. And I knew it was up to me to right the balance.

“Daisy very rude,” said Lam. “Not good girl.”

“Daisy,” said Alden. “Something very bad has happened.” And he went into a long spiel about how Daisy's brother had been kidnapped by terrorists in Argentina and the only way for Daisy to save his life was to have sex with the colonel. Daisy was no fool and asked many questions but Alden had an answer to everything. Even when he told her the colonel was a woman she accepted that. Indeed, she seemed rather relieved. I hadn't realized, either, that I had joined the terrorists and was now their colonel. But it all made perfect sense.

Daisy whimpered in a corner, semi-clothed. I had ripped off her chrysanthemum blouse and tugged off her hair-band and she now looked a great deal better: she had really nice big breasts which was why I reckoned she stooped: it wasn't her height. She was a beautifully-proportioned bronzed giantess with big
pink nipples from California who didn't know how to behave: who had looked at me as if I was an insect and reminded me of Jude and had to be taught a lesson. I chose from a selection of whips, rubber-thonged, designed to redden but leave few marks. Or so they said. I had not been a dominatrix before. I could see you could get a taste for it. I put aside the rubber whip and chose one with plaited leather tassels.