She changed her mind for a minute there.’ The boy looked dazed, a little rueful, perhaps. ‘But Dalziel soon sorted her out.’
‘What do you mean?’ I looked around for my coat. ‘What does that mean?’
‘He sorted her some more smack. She was OK in the end. Could have been ugly, though, couldn’t it?’
‘Ugly?’ I intoned stupidly. I wanted to leave now.
‘Yeah. Less adultery. More like …’ He glanced round nervously.
‘More like what?’ James prompted.
‘You know what I mean. More like rape. Specially with bloody Brian.’
‘Brian?’
‘Azazel. The goat-demon. Very apt. He gets out of control, that boy. Dalziel wants to watch that.’ The boy zipped his trousers up. ‘That’s the trouble with oiks.’
I thought of the girl, all floppy and blank, and I winced. I thought of my little room in the halls of residence and all my things there, even the green lampshade from home, and I wanted to be there now.
‘Do you think she’s all right?’ I asked the boy, and he shrugged.
‘Happy as Larry last time I saw her. Once she’d stopped crying and the new smack kicked in.’
I grabbed James’s hand. ‘Can we go?’ I asked him. ‘Please. Now.’
We left.
‘God, I’m freezing,’ I said out in the street. ‘I can’t warm up.’
James put his arm round me, and we went back to my room and I stripped off and put on my pyjamas, socks, my warmest jumper, but still I was freezing. He held me as we listened to Massive Attack and got into my single bed, drinking tea and talking into the dawn. We didn’t mention Huriyyah but I knew we were both thinking of her. And somehow, James never left.
In the cold light of day I didn’t feel so proud of my behaviour, in fact I felt ashamed.
‘So that was Society X?’ I asked James as we walked into Brown’s coffee-shop the next day.
‘Yes, it was. Just for the privileged few,’ he said – which apparently included me now. James explained that it was Dalziel’s brainchild, his pet project. Was I a pet? I saw myself out in the garden half-dressed; I kept thinking of the girl’s vacant face and her eyes that were so glazed and unseeing. I didn’t understand what had got into me. Apart from James, and illegal substances, of course. I felt strange. Somehow different – and older.
It was all about breaking the Ten Commandments apparently, James explained, hence X, the Roman numeral for ten. Dalziel was writing a dissertation on it for his theology module, James said, and he apparently wanted to prove that you can have free will and choice and still live in the confines of civilised life but outside organised religion. It all sounded very peculiar to me – far more about decadence and doing exactly what you liked than any aspect of religion. And although there was a part of me that was hugely flattered by Dalziel’s attentions, the truth was, last night was beginning to feel more than a little sordid. I had enjoyed the Ecstasy at the time but it scared me too; how consumed I felt whilst I was on it. Society X felt dangerous and exciting, but also out of my league entirely. Over the next few weeks, it began to feel nasty and puerile too.
I made a few enquiries about Huriyyah but no one seemed to know her. I scanned the newspapers, but I never heard anything about her. I started to forget: I busied myself with my new life at Oxford. My father sent me money for a push-bike and I marched against the Kosovan conflict.
I found that I was enjoying my lectures. I finally shook Moira and met Jen and Liz, who were more like me: we became inseparable. I got on with my work. And James and I were sort of dating; he was sweet and seemed keen, and I found that I liked sex, I liked it a lot – it was liberating. But I was worried by Society X and the lure it had for him. I tried to fight the feelings that were emerging for him, his big brown eyes, his funny smile, his protective air. I would not go to any of the X meets that he asked me to, and this annoyed him though he tried to hide it. I could see the attraction but it repelled me too. I was not that kind of girl. I felt very grown-up when I made this decision.
I read a lot of Hardy and I thought of Jude’s words: ‘this city of light and lore’. I worked hard and started to embrace the fact that I was part of this ancient institution. Some of the confidence of the kids there rubbed off on me; I became less shy and slowly I began to inhabit my own style. Occasionally I felt confined – the tourists in their cagoules and with their big maps, snapping us through the railings, like animals in the zoo – but mostly I just felt proud to be here.
I still found myself looking for Dalziel when I was out, but it wasn’t with the same desperation of those first few weeks, and I was uncomfortable with the memory of Huriyyah, who
I never saw again. I resigned myself to the fact that the party was an amazing experience, but a one-off. I told myself that if she had been in any way unhappy about it, she would have come forward by now and I was content to leave it at that.
Chapter Four GLOUCESTERSHIRE, MARCH 2008
As we rounded the bend in the long snaking drive, the floodlit manor house finally came into view between the great oak trees.
‘Christ.’ James stopped the car and, for a moment, we simply stared in awe.
For all my doubts about the Cotswolds, my own butter-coloured house was undeniably beautiful, the stone warm and inviting, a much-loved well-lived-in home. The great mansion that stood before us was not in the least inviting; majestic maybe, but somehow unsettling. Its dark stone spoke of antique grandeur rather than home and hearth. Gargoyles screeched wordlessly from the roof as we neared, the huge front door lit by flaming torches on either side, a line of expensive-looking cars parked neatly on the right.
‘I like the flames. Nice idea for the club,’ James said, driving up to the gatehouse, where a man with a clipboard stepped from the shadows.
James had only agreed to come because he thought there might be something in it for him. He always had an eye on the main chance, my loving husband, and I’d understood in the last few days that although the record label was still doing well, and his properties in New York and Europe were still ticking over nicely, the London club had just lost a major investor, meaning its relaunch was hanging in the balance. James was on the prowl for more backing, and fast.
At the top of the huge stone stairs we were handed champagne and shown through the dark-panelled hall, hung with tapestries of archers and deer, into a great drawing room, humming with polite conversation, the décor a peculiar clash of Gothic splendour and Arabic glamour. Small tables inlaid with gold sat between a leather three-piece suite and huge marble ashtrays festooned the antique sideboards, whilst the mantelpiece groaned with expensively framed photographs of family, a few of a grinning polo team and a huge white yacht in glittering blue seas.
The walls were hung with exquisite art that looked like it would be wasted on the majority of the guests, a mixture of portly middle-aged men and impeccable women with skinny ankles and expensive hair who basked in the heat of a great log fire.
‘Fuck,’ James muttered, downing his drink in two gulps. ‘Wake me up when the
