KDBookOnline
Share Us
“What is it?” I asked.
“It’s an ancient incantation,” Harry told me.
Still none of the faces around the table was showing even a hint of a smile. I flicked through the pages. I cleared my throat, ran a dry tongue over my lips, and began to read. Around the table people shifted and settled in their seats. After a while, as I chanted by candlelight those syllables I could enunciate but did not understand, I began to sink into something of a trance, everyone else in the room seeming to grow further away the more absorbed I grew in my task.
Ta ta ra ke re ko re.
Harry indicated to me with a gesture that I should raise the platter above my head, continuing to read the pages on the table in front of me. I did so, feeling increasingly ridiculous.
When I first heard the sound, I told myself I was imagining things. That it was nerves, exacerbated by the whiskey and cocaine. Then I heard it again. A scratching noise, above my head. I tried to ignore it, but then the weight of the platter shifted. It must have been my imagination, I told myself, my aching arms twitching. Then from above me there came a low, quiet mewl. I stopped reading for a second. There was another mewl, louder this time, distinctly animal in origin.
“Jesus fucking Christ.”
The kitten, eyes open, clearly very much alive, leapt from the platter and attached itself to the front of my shirt. I could feel its claws puncturing my skin through the cotton, scratching my chest. I could see them hooking into and shredding the satin of my lapels. It seemed to be heading for my face. With a yelp I jumped backward, sending the silverware clattering to the floor, knocking my chair over with the backs of my knees. The kitten jumped, skittered along the table, gave a little cry, and zipped off.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” I said again, looking up at everyone. Wondering if they had seen what I had just seen. It was only then that they all burst out laughing, with a laughter that was all the more raucous for having been bottled up so long.
“Ra ra fa so la ti do,” said Hugo.
“Ta ta ra ke re ko re,” chuckled Benjy. “Bit rusty on your pronunciation there, I have to say.”
“Your fucking face!” said Freddie.
Arno cornered the kitten, scooped it up, and began stroking it.
“It wasn’t dead?” I said. The entire room was howling with laughter.
“Did you actually think you had developed magical powers, Lambert? That the ritual was working? My God, you did, didn’t you?” Freddie hooted.
“It was fucking sedated, wasn’t it, you vet student cunt,” I hissed, my heart still pounding. “You absolute...”
“Just a little ketamine,” said Freddie. “A perfectly harmless tranquilizer. Let me know if you ever want to try some yourself...”
Toby Gough asked if it was time to get pissed yet. Hugo passed me a glass of red wine and Arno eyed it jealously as I gulped, so fast it stung my nostrils. Ivo poured me another. Eric Lam had the kitten in his arms now and was petting it.
Harry patted me on the back and handed me a gold signet ring and a key. “You’ve earned those,” he told me.
On the far side of the room, I could hear Freddie doing an impression of me, and laughing.
Ga ba ka, baba ka. Ka ka ra ra phee ko ko.
They had always loved a practical joke, the Willoughbys. Oh yes, the Willoughbys had always loved a prank.
JULIETTE’S JOURNAL, PARIS, 1937
Second Entry
Sunday, 21st November—The task of the artist, Oskar once told me, is to abolish coincidence.
Well, here is a coincidence to puzzle over.
There was an English-language newspaper—the Times—in the café last night. When Oskar and the others sat down, he noticed it on the table and pocketed it to bring home for me. And there it was, on page seven. A picture of Longhurst, from the back lawn, my parents standing on the terrace. My heart stopped. Then with great relief I saw the headline was something about a charity fete. I could just imagine it. My mother spinning the tombola, my father bellowing the numbers. The story was nothing to do with me. I was not mentioned at all. Thank God for that.
I have always suspected that the most upsetting aspect of my disappearance, as far as my parents were concerned, would be the prospect of the newspapers picking up the story. A professional embarrassment for my father, a social one for my mother. Another scandal on top of all the tragedies and horrors of the past few years. As time passed, I wondered how they were explaining to their friends, their circle, my prolonged absence, my nonappearance at family events. Were they still keeping up the pretense that I was in London? Was I now one of those topics which people learned to avoid by how icily my parents reacted when it was brought up? As ever with my parents, it was easier to imagine what they might be saying to other people than what they might actually be feeling themselves.
It was not until later that another thought struck me. Mostly, when you see a Times in Paris, it is the day before yesterday’s. How did a London newspaper find its way into that particular café, onto Oskar and his friends’ usual table, to catch Oskar’s eye, the very same day it was published, on the exact anniversary of when he and I first arrived in Paris?
Perhaps, Oskar suggests, it was a practical joke. But whose? I keep asking him. He shrugs. One of his friends’? Perhaps. I can imagine how pleased some of them would be with themselves for having discovered who my family is, how wealthy, how prominent. How funny they might find it. That the strange, solemn little English girl with her camera around her neck, who can make a single cassis last a whole evening, and who would rather walk an hour than pay for a taxi, has a politician father who collects Egyptian antiquities and a grandfather who was one of the richest men in England.