Chapter 16: Dance Macabre

Hitler had only got one ball. So had Gerard Braughn. One annual, polo club ball, that is. The night had come. I was putting on a big show this time, and from the back of a horse at that.

I carried on being pleasant to Redman. I have to say that, up to the day of the ball, he was very supportive and helpful, especially towards the end when he knew I was panicking. He also knew I was going to make a speech that included references to the Iraq War and he was quite prepared to facilitate that, or said he was. What I did not expect to happen and perhaps neither did he, was his reaction over the microphone after I did that. I did it in a very taciturn and friendly way, as you will see. I was not confrontational.

I did explain to him why I did not want to play polo. It was because I did not want to endanger the horse. I did try to avoid mentioning the fact that I also did not want a load of upper class twits knocking me off that horse at regular intervals to provide a slapstick ending to the film.

Before all that, though, it was the cocktail hour. I had to entertain. Now, I believe strongly that we caught them on the hop. None of this was happening in an environment that they had engineered. They got pissed. They were going to get drunk anyway, but this is the important thing about alcohol: it is a truth drug. Regardless how dangerous and debilitating it is, regardless of the violence it has caused, one of its positive things is that in a limited period of time, in a very hectic way, unlike more stable drugs like LSD, alcohol is still a truth serum. In vino veritas, as the Romans used to say. You suddenly lose any sense of having to hide what you really think, which can be a pain or it can be a revelation, depending on the setting and whom you are dealing with. They got drunk in our company and that, strangely, was the catalyst for everything we knew they believed but were not saying. It was like watching them destroy themselves without having to do a thing. I did not have to push any part of the brickwork or provoke it, or tickle the trout. It jumped out of the water and landed in our laps.

I was talking to them about the fading upper classes, and telling people that I support views that under certain circumstances would have them beheaded and they still liked me. You have to feel sorry for someone like that, otherwise I would have no compassion.

What they said when they were drunk is still a real blur to me. There were too many people at that party who had no interest in what anybody else had to say. I thought I was bad at dominating conversations and not letting other people speak, and I am appalling for it, but what I found at that party was that they were all doing it at the same time, so it was like the Biblical babble of Babel. As such, it was difficult to focus on any one conversation. At one point, though, Gerard's ex-wife approached me and to say it was like a scene out of the 1980s TV soap opera Dallas would be an understatement. What they have done, you see, is they have infected themselves with the stereotypes they have been feeding to the rest of us as a way of trying to get us to idolise them. Gerard's ex-wife was conventionally attractive, though anorexic, in satin and a fur wrap. She came oozing up to me and Kiran.

‘How gorgeous to meet you,' she said. 'It's so lovely and, well, I was married to him for quite some time and to be honest this is unexpected but what a gas, what a wheeze. Have you been enjoying yourselves?'

'Well, yes, we have thank you very much, it was a bit unexpected for us as well, but...'

And then, no gap for me to expand on anything at all.

'Well, I was married to him for years and basically I'd like to say he was a bad man.'

'Oh really?' I said, and she looked temporarily confused and a bit upset. And then she went on.

'But I couldn't possibly say that.'

Well, I thought, you just have! It is too late. The cameras were on us, everything. The perfect meeting.

'Oh you do look lovely dear,' she said to Kiran, and Kiran was just looking like she wanted to be sick. She was pleasant enough back, but she reacted to this woman in the same way as the first feminists I met at Thames Poly in 1984 reacted to other women in general.

'Well, I don't like him,' Kiran said, and again I think she said something to the effect that he thinks he's James Bond, and the fact that that male stereotype is not what Kiran is into was confusing to this woman.

'What have you found about his partner's life here?' she asked.

'To be quite frank, she hasn't got anything to do!' Kiran said to her, and to the other women who were gathering round. 'It must be very boring.'

Again, they found this puzzling.

'Well,' they said, 'She's got all that money...'

Then a few peripheral people came in, because, remember, there were a lot of people talking at once here.

'Some of us have been called in because we're new at polo,' they said, 'and we haven't got as much money as the normal people who practice here but we've been brought in for the sake of this film to advertise polo and make it look as though we can spread it among middle class people as well.'

'Oh,' I said, 'this is news to me. Is this part of Gerard's plan, is it?'

'Yeah,' they said. 'A lot of the people here haven't been to one of these parties either.'

There was one woman who was saying this to me and she was obviously fairly ferociously predatory, sexually, and drawn towards Skip and me for a bit of rough. Although she said she was middle class she was obviously worth a bob or two herself though certainly not on the level of her hosts.

'My mate here,' I said, 'has just painted a Pegasus outside. Do you know it? The winged horse?'

'You are joking!'

'No!' I said.

'Look at this,' she said, and she lifted up her skirt and showed me and Skip her bottom. On one of the cheeks, covering part of the thigh was a winged horse.

'No!' I said. 'Come and have a look at this!'

So Skip and I took her outside and there was his picture.

'How's that then?' I said.

'That's fucking incredible!'

She was, momentarily, really taken, but Kiran was not impressed with her behaviour, mainly because she was all over us like a rash. Strangely, Skip did end up getting off with a very upper class woman later that night. He had not had any kind of physical communication on any level with a woman for over five years. He had gone into his Van Gogh phase though less self destructive. His art is his life now and it would not be fair on any woman to be a part of his singular course and to be honest I think Skip feels a lot of his past experiences should not have been had, that he really should not have been distracted, as an artist, by something that could only end tragically with him in the mental state he is in. So, we often laugh about it because he is quite comfortable with that and he should not be pressured into having a relationship, but an upper class woman threw herself at him in the early hours of the morning after we had locked everybody out of the mansion and basically it came about because she did not have a coat, they do not think, they did not have anywhere to go, they were outdoors and they do not think. They'd been given log cabins, but half of them were drunk and could not find where they were supposed to be and I was not organising it because we had been given no information and everybody got too drunk and it all got out of order and a lot of the guests were not being treated in the way that they had come to expect. So, here was this woman, freezing, so Skip took off his 1945 demob jacket, which was genuinely handed out to one of his relatives at the end of the Second World War, a massive, heavy jacket, far better made than a lot of the expensive stuff nowadays and he just put it on her.

'You should not be standing there, shivering,' he said. He put the jacket on her and she immediately fell in love with him. There was absolutely no question about it. She was very drunk, but it was the look of the man, with his goatee beard and the tooth missing and the fact that here was the loveable rogue, the real thing. He will not be a threat to you on any level, be it psychological or physical, unless, of course, he is defending his life against you, which could well happen, going out with an artist, you know, do you want to live a life or do you want to hide away? She just flung herself at him, stuck her tongue in his mouth, it was all going off. Then two suited gentlemen physically dragged her off him, gave him his coat back threw her in the back of a limo and fucked off with her, quick as a flash.

'I don't know where they came from,' Skip said to me. 'They looked like help, they didn't look like guests.'

Birds in a guilded cage. Well, the help need to keep their masters & mistresses out of mischief because they pay their wages. If she gave all her money to Skip they would be well pissed off, wouldn't they? Because they want it! They are like leeches.

"Did I do anything wrong last night?"

"Well, ma'am, I don't think we should discuss it."

"Do you really think so?"

She knows how naughty she had been but she is clearly drawn towards the underclasses because it is not thrilling enough living the life she is leading. Well, she is one of those people who can, with impunity, just blip around the planet.

I caught some of them discussing the annual party in Venice where they all wear masks. I am sure that some of the libertines were not particularly pleasant but, the masked ball in Venice, I thought, you can all, with impunity, all just go to a party there, and you think that is the best party there is? A load of fops wandering around to chamber music with feathers and bloody masks?

'I can tell you,' I said, 'you want to find the illegal, squat rave scene in Venice because I bet that's a party! And there is one of those set-ups in every city in the world, without exception.'

It probably would not be in Venice itself. It would probably be in Mestre. There is a 'real' city next to Venice, but then there always is. As Rotterdam is to Amsterdam. As Woolwich is to the West End. The satellite areas, down town, that is where the action is. Well, these people, they do not go down town. They do not even know there is a town. They live in a weird trans-global bubble, a bit like one of those horrific Science-Fiction stories where everyone is starving but you have got these super-beings in bubbles, skipping around the planet, going, "Oh, isn't it terrible, but there's nothing we can do about it really." Like Zardoz. They are actually stupider than the people who are having to kill one another to eat. When one of them is let in, he is shown to be the superior mind. Well, this experience for me was a little bit like being in the world of Zardoz. "Kill me, kill me, it's in vogue this season!" "Shoot me! No, me, I want to be shot! Let me die now!" You know, there is a scene in that film when poor old John Alderton, in their psychic war, is taken off certain higher levels of consciousness against his will... I should not have laughed at it, as he was obviously distressed but... "No, no, no, you can't..." I wondered whether Gerard Braughn would be feeling like that where he was, in our life, except that he was being offered higher states of consciousness, did he but know it.

As for the other people who were supposed to lend me a hand, well, because I had had such a successful week with her, the business lady did not see the sharp end of anything I said. I do not know what her thoughts were about the fact that Skip was not put in the auction in the end. It could be that I did not do what I was supposed to do at the polo club ball, so he was pleasantly ignored. I was supposed to do this, I was supposed to do that... I can tell you, I worked my arse off at that event. I did not have enough time to do everything and I think they were setting me up, because I do not believe Gerard does a goddamned thing. I think he has workers to do it all for him, organised by his PA, who did nothing for me apart from jolly me up. I did everything she suggested I do. Maybe she thought it was a cushy number for a week.

'Everything all right?' Redman said to me at one point in the midst of my highest level of stress at the ball.

'Well, no, actually,' I said, 'a strange thing has just happened.'

This was before he had turned rude. At this stage he was merely very hard to pin down. I would have thought he should have been with me all the time because he would have been with Gerard Braughn all the time. It was like Tom Brown's Schooldays again.

'The people on the table at the far end, by the stage, they are cold, mate,' I said. 'The heating is not adequate in here and they have complained bitterly.'

They had called me over.

'You're in charge here aren't you?'

'Do you not know the story of it?' I said.

'Frankly no, but we are freezing and this is appalling, we've paid money.'

'Okay,' I said, 'hang on, I'll sort it out.'

So I went up to Redman.

'I don't know who is responsible for the heating but can we help that table?'

'It's nothing to do with me,' he said.

'What the hell are you talking about?' I said. 'They are actually shivering over there, mate.'

These were his tribe, Establishment drones.

'Well,' he said, 'if you want to do something for them go and talk to that chap over there. He's the electrician.'

That was that. I was not sure who he meant, but I had a bloke vaguely in my mind who was walking about. Redman was not even concerned. He is sitting next to a top officer from Basra and some really rich people so the others, those who only have as much money as Gerard, they can go to hell because we are now getting a bit drunk and it is everyone for themselves. Well, I thought. This would not happen at a squat rave. Everyone would muck in and get involved and sort the problem out immediately. This lot would be a complete, useless, hysterical bloody mess if a fire broke out. No-one would be helping to save anybody. This would be a nightmare scenario. No wonder when your boats sink and your planes go down, it is like a cannibalistic frenzy.

I could not believe his lack of interest in a quite serious situation but then again they had not dressed adequately for a breeze. They do not wear coats, a lot of them. They get out of a limo, into the environment, back into the limo. Although the main arena of the polo club was in a warehouse-sized building, it had an open side that then had a marquee attached to it. It was under canvas that everyone was eating, so, quite apart from the fact that you were next to quite a draughty arena, you did have a good deal of cold air going in and around the marquee, and, being well acquainted with functions under canvas, I knew this was obviously ridiculous. If people are static, sitting and eating, and waiting a long time for their meal at that because there are so many of them, then you have to make sure they are warm. This was, after all, late September, not the height of summer.

I went over to the electrician.

'Can we do anything about it?'

'No,' he said.

'But it's going to be a reflection on the party. Do you want people going away, saying that?'

'Well,' he said, 'tough, isn't it?'

Then he walked off. I went back to Redman.

'I am not having this,' I said. 'I don't give a rat's arse who they are, but they are no better or worse than you. We need to move some heaters up there.'

He would do nothing. Suddenly I was stuck with a very menial job, and one I could not do on my own. Gerard Braughn would not have touched this. I managed to get a few interested people to help, including a famous black boxer {the only member of an ethnic minority at the ball other than Kiran & some of the caterers}. He looked concerned and we shifted an electric heater with an extension cable a bit further down the eating area. Of course, this meant that it was now really painfully close to where the boxer was sitting, so he was getting really hot, whereas they were barely warm enough.

'You can't sit with that heater right next to your chair, man,' I said, 'you'll overheat.'

'Don't worry,' he said. 'Obviously, I'm black. I'm used to it!'

I still cannot, even to this day, work out whether he was satirising their racist attitudes ("Surely a black man, even from England, can put up with excessive heat") or whether he was making light of a situation I had got into a bit of a panic about. Redman and his contingent even referred to the boxer as a 'coloured' in conversation, and that is a term that is frowned upon in Brixton these days. Even the most right-wing coppers try not to use that word in front of the brothers, and I could not believe I was hearing this in the middle of Yorkshire.

So, in the middle of getting all this done, I really did not have time to feed and water Landrover UK, but they did sit there expecting it. Apparently what Gerard does at these balls is he goes about flashing his money around.

"Have a drink, mate, do this, have this, have a pork pie," or whatever he does. "In fact, have fifty quid. There you are, look. I've just put fifty quid in your pocket!"

Well, I am sorry but his budget of a thousand pounds for everything, I realised, meant that he would probably have had more than a thousand pounds in his pocket for just this one evening. So, do not be fooled into thinking that this 'thousand' is all Gerard lives on in a week, certainly not the week of his annual ball. Anyway, we were not half-way through the evening. The worst was yet to come.