Judith by Nicholas Mosley

‘No.’
    He said ‘I will tell you a story about Louise and her chauffeur.’
    There were some buttons on the arm-rest of his seat. He pushed one or two and windows went up and down and eventually the one between the back compartment of the car and the front.
    Oliver said ‘Louise and her chauffeur were going over the Alps one day and Louise said – Stop the car I want to pee. Her chauffeur said – Yes madam the water is boiling.’
    I said ‘Yes that’s a very good story.’
    I thought – This is the style? You say things in a matter-of-fact voice, and assume people will know what you are meaning?
    We arrived at a large apartment block that overlooked the river. There were turrets and battlements and towers. Wewent up in a lift. On the first floor there were about thirty people gathered in a room like a mausoleum. There were busts and vases on marble pillars: books like plaques locating ashes went up to the tops of walls. Men in dinner-jackets stood holding plates; women wearing evening dresses with thin straps going over their shoulders sat straight-backed on the arms or edges of sofas. There was a buffet at one end of the room presided over by a man in Mozart-opera livery: a waitress in a black dress with a white ruff came round with drinks on a tray. Everything was very quiet, and orderly. I thought – Well, nothing is supposed to go on in the holy of holies, is it?
    The only other atmosphere I could remember like this was in a gambling casino I had once been to, where the enormously rich had succeeded in losing or winning thousands by doing absolutely nothing except slowing move their fingers every now and then like crabs.
    I thought – These are the people whom Desmond talks about who run the world? who let themselves be used for the conspiracy theory of history because this is what other people require of them?
    A woman in a dress the colour of a contraceptive diaphragm came up to talk to Oliver. Oliver introduced me: he had in fact learned my name. I thought – I have been an amateur in this; he is very professional.
    I went to a window and looked out. Across the river there was the floodlit power station with its four tall chimneys: I thought – It is like a dead horse, its feet up in the air.
    Then – Old gods and goddesses are preserved because they live in tombs which are quite airless?
    Oliver went on talking to his hostess. They were like people in a painting plotting beneath the high blank wall of a Venetian building.
    The man dressed like Figaro came up and offered me some food. Then a young man with dyed black hair and make-up stood by me and said ‘We were saying it was better when it had three.’
    I said ‘Three what?’
    He said ‘Chimneys.’
    I said ‘Do you know Oliver’s wife or his girlfriend?’
    The man was eating with a fork from a plate; he shovelled food in like a croupier. After a time he moved away. I thought – You mean, you are not allowed to ask a direct question?
    I tried to remember what I had heard about Oliver’s wife. She was enormously rich; she was an American; she had previously been married to a German prince. Or this might have been his girlfriend?
    Oliver came over to me. He said ‘All right, we can go now if you like.’
    I said ‘I quite like it here.’
    He said ‘Why?’
    I said ‘I’ve never been anywhere like this before.’
    Oliver was looking at me. I was looking out over the river. I thought – I have not got it wrong: you have to be honest?
    He said ‘Will you come home with me?’
    I said ‘No.’ Then – ‘You know I can’t!’
    He said ‘Why not?’
    I said ‘Because that’s what everyone does with you!’
    He lifted his head right up so that his neck seemed to stretch towards the ceiling. Then he smiled. I thought – Does his laughter ever come out: or does it just burn within