Spin Cycle (18 page)

CHAPTER 18

The Dalai Lama smiled and raised his hand in polite refusal as Rachel offered him some deep-fried alligator hors d’oeuvres from her tray. He then returned to his conversation with Posh Spice.

“My dear Mrs. Beckham,” Rachel heard him say as she moved away, “I must thank you. I am truly humbled by your insight. I have been the Dalai Lama for two thousand years and in all that time, I don’t think I have ever perceived enlightenment in quite that way before.”

Rachel watched the Dalai Lama bestow another beatific smile on Posh, give a brief nod and move on.

“Mr. Rickles,” she heard him cry a few seconds later. “This is both a pleasure and an honor. . . .”

As Rachel continued to wander through Otto and Xantia’s celebrity-packed living piazza with her tray, overhearing snippets of conversation, she realized she was the only person there she hadn’t heard of. She was in no doubt that if all the guests dropped dead at that moment, Parliament, the entire British media and the fashion and entertainment industries, not to mention The Ivy and the Priory hospital, would be forced to close.

Of all the guests invited to the lunch party, the only one Rachel had truly wanted to meet was Xantia’s niece Vanessa, but apparently she’d phoned at the last minute to say she was too busy preparing for the comedy contest to come.

“Such a conscientious girl,” Xantia had said in a way that made Rachel feel like an absolute wastrel.

It was gone three now and Rachel, like all the other waiters and waitresses who had been on their feet since the party began at midday, was starting to get a backache. The multicolored slipper socks, which they had all been forced to wear (the Marxes’ OP8 of the People factory having managed to rush them out just in time for the party), although comfortable, failed to offer the support of proper shoes.

Rachel was aware that Otto had spent much of the do standing by the Christmas tree (a ten-foot-high mass of tangled silver wires lit by hundreds of tiny tungsten lights) talking earnestly to Charles Saatchi. From the bored expression on Charles Saatchi’s face, Rachel assumed Otto was expounding his slipper sock theory. At one point they were interrupted by a call coming through on Otto’s mobile. If Otto’s slipper sock theory had failed to impress Charles Saatchi, the phone call surely made up for it.

“Kofi, Kofi . . . a pleasure as always,” Rachel had heard Otto gush. “Such a shame you couldn’t be here.” He covered up the mouthpiece. “I won’t be a minute, Charles—the secretary general of the United Nations is thinking of building a conservatory and wants to pick my brains.”

Xantia, on the other hand, had glided around in a lavender silk sari, her wrists loaded down with silver bangles, working the room like the social operator she was—cold-shouldering guests she considered to be of little use to her socially or professionally (Ainsley Harriot, Fern Britton, the archbishop of Canterbury) while assuming the kind of genuflectory demeanor before others (the Blairs, the Stings, the Amises) that would have done Uriah Heep proud.

* * * * *

Just as Rachel was heading back to the kitchen with her empty tray, Xantia came up to her and said that as it was well after three, people would be starting to leave soon and that Rachel should stay in the hall and be ready to retrieve coats from the master bed piazza.

Rachel had just deposited her tray in the kitchen and returned to the hall when the front doorbell went.

“Blimey, that can’t be Shelley already,” she muttered.

Rachel’s car had refused to start that morning because the battery was flat and she’d had to cadge a lift from Shelley.

“Tell you what,” Shelley had said as Rachel got out of the car. “I’ll pick you up if you like—but only if I can have a nose round the house.”

Deciding that with all the people milling round, Otto and Xantia were hardly likely to notice one more, Rachel agreed.

“You’re an hour early,” Rachel hissed as she opened the door.

“Yeah I know,” Shelley said, stepping inside. “But I wanted to take my time. You know, get a decent butchers . . .”

Rachel watched as Shelley’s eyes darted round the hall. “Oh my God,” she said slowly. “Is this stylish, or is this stylish?”

Rachel explained that the party hadn’t finished yet and asked her if she felt up to helping with the coats.

“That way I can show you upstairs.”

“Fine,” Shelley said vacantly, gazing up at the glass ceiling dome.

Eventually the first dozen or so people came into the hall and handed in their numbered coat tickets.

A few moments later, Shelley was following Rachel upstairs.

“Here, Rache,” she muttered, “did you see that last bloke who handed me a ticket?”

“Yeah—dark chap. What about him?”

“That’s him. The one from that film we saw.”

“Which one? From which film?”

“Oh, you remember . . . in the end Richard E. Grant eats him. He’s married to that woman—you know, the one out of
E.R
. . . . with the hair.”

* * * * *

At one end of the master bed piazza two hanging racks on wheels stood loaded with coats.

“Right, come on,” Rachel said to Shelley. “Help me match the numbers on the coats to the tickets.”

But Shelley wasn’t listening. She was too busy standing in the middle of the piazza letting out one gasp of delight after another as she turned slowly through 360 degrees.

“God, Rache, this whole house is awesome. Just awesome.”

“Yeah I know,” Rachel said, as she began piling coats on the bed. “But I really could do with some help.”

By now, Shelley was stroking surfaces and opening drawers.

“Shelley, leave the drawers alone. If Xantia came up here and caught you snooping, she’d have a fit.”

But Shelley took no notice and continued to wander round the room.

Having given up all hope of Shelley helping her, Rachel got on with finding coats. As she stood by the hanging racks, getting more and more frustrated with a couple of tickets that appeared not to have partners, she was unaware of Shelley pulling open the milky opaque glass door of Xantia’s vast walk-in wardrobe and disappearing inside.

It was only when Rachel finally got all the coats together on the bed and looked round for Shelley to help her carry them downstairs that she realized her friend had vanished.

“OK, right, very funny,” she said good-humoredly. “Come on, stop playing games. Where are you? I really do need some help now.”

There was no answer.

“Shelley . . . hello.”

“I’m in here,” Shelley’s muffled voice came back.

“Where?”

“Here. In the wardrobe.”

“OK, come out then,” Rachel said.

“No, you come here. There’s something you just have to see.”

“Shelley, that’s Xantia’s wardrobe. I can’t go . . .”

“Just come,” Shelley commanded.

Rachel went over to the wardrobe and peered in through the open door. But there was no sign of her friend.

“All right,” Rachel said. “So where are you?”

“Over here.” Shelley’s voice was still faint. It sounded almost like it was coming from behind a wall. Rachel stepped into the wardrobe, which was lit from above by two spotlights. There were clothes rails on either side of her. Shelley’s voice seemed to be coming from beyond the rail on her right. Rachel pushed some clothes aside to make a gap, bent down and stepped through. All that met her was the side of the wardrobe.

“Shelley,” Rachel said, exceedingly confused by now. “Where on earth are you?”

“Here,” Shelley repeated.

“Where’s here? Narnia?”

Just as she said the word
Narnia,
the wardrobe side slid open. Suddenly Shelley was standing in front of her grinning.

Rachel yelped with shock, leaped backward, bumped her head on the hanging rail and fell onto the wardrobe floor.

“God, you scared me,” she panted as she sat rubbing her head and blinking. By now the partition, door or whatever it was had closed again. “Do you mind telling me what’s going on?”

“Get up. Get up,” Shelley said excitedly as she bent down and took her friend’s arm. “You have got to see this, Rache. It’ll freak you out.”

She helped her to her feet. “Now hold on to me and close your eyes.”

Rachel closed her eyes.

“Right, now,” Shelley said. “There’s a button here somewhere. . . . OK, got it.”

Rachel heard an electronic sliding sound.

“Now then,” Shelley said. “Mind the step.”

Rachel put her foot down, onto thick carpet.

“Now you can open your eyes.”

Rachel stood, gawking. She could actually feel her jaw dropping.

Shelley had led her into a brightly lit, windowless room about the size of her parents’ living room, she supposed. The floor was covered with the gaudiest of purple and gold swirly carpet. The walls were magnolia anaglyph. There was a York stone fireplace, a matching York stone–clad bar, a rose-pink velvet three-piece with fringes and tassels. In one corner, next to the largest and ugliest wide-screen TV Rachel had ever seen, was a wastepaper bin, also covered in pink velvet. On the imitation Chippendale coffee table stood a large glass bowl full of fruit, with a pair of filigree grape cutters on top. There were several nests of tables, identical to the coffee table, but smaller. On two of these stood gold and onyx lamps with rose-pink pleated shades. Hanging from the walls, between the bookcases packed with false books, were cheap Canaletto prints in heavy imitation gold frames.

“Oh my God,” Rachel said slowly. “Oh my God.”

“What is it?” Shelley asked. “Some kind of ironic joke?”

“So this is where they come,” Rachel whispered to herself, turning her nose up at a plate of stale pizza crusts on the velvet arm of a chair and a discarded Pizza Hut box on the floor next to it.

“What do you mean, ‘where they come’?”

“Here. The deep pan pizza piazza.”

Shelley gave her a bewildered look. Rachel started to wander round the room gasping, just as Shelley had a few minutes ago in the bed piazza. Occasionally she would stop to pick up a filigree photograph tree or run her fingers over a china King Charles spaniel.

“Rache,” Shelley said with a puzzled frown, sitting herself down on the pink velvet pouffe, “come on, you still haven’t told me. What is this place?”

Rachel finally turned to look at her. “I’m not sure,” she said. She explained about Otto and Xantia’s disappearing act and how she would clean the house, certain that they were out, only to have them appear from nowhere.

“When I challenged Xantia about it, she just said they’d been in the office all the time and I’d missed them. I mean how can you clean a small office and miss two people sitting there? But she was so adamant. I tell you, I was beginning to think I was going mad. At least now I know what’s been going on.”

Suddenly Rachel heard footsteps. She swung round. Standing in the doorway, wide-eyed with shock, was Xantia.

“Ah,” she said, swallowing hard. “So . . . you and your friend have discovered our, um . . . our little secret.”

Rachel couldn’t help noticing how spectacularly her crimson face was clashing with her purple sari.

“Er, no. Yes,” Rachel sputtered in shocked confusion. “I mean, it’s very amusing, very witty.”

“It is?” Xantia asked doubtfully.

“Yes. Very ironic.”

Xantia gave a puzzled frown. Then almost at once her face brightened. “Oh yes, it is, isn’t it? . . . it’s . . . a project Otto and I have been working on in secret for months.” Her voice was shaking. She paused, clearly trying to construct the rest of her story. “It’s . . . it’s a monument to the aesthetic illiteracy of lower-middle-class, middle-aged suburban existence. The . . . er . . . the Tate Modern commissioned it. Of course we didn’t want the press finding out about it until it was ready to be unveiled, so we decided to create our vision here. In the new year all the furniture and ornaments will be moved to the gallery and we will reassemble our opus.”

She smiled an awkward smile.

Rachel nodded.

“Look, Xantia,” she said, “we really didn’t mean to intrude like this. My friend Shelley discovered the room by accident.”

“Yes,” Shelley piped up. “It was all my fault. It had nothing to do with Rachel. I was looking through your wardrobe. I know it was wrong. I’m truly, truly sorry. . . . Then I accidentally pressed the button, the partition slid back and . . .”

Just then they heard Otto’s voice coming from the bed piazza. “Rachel,” he called. “Where are you? I’ve got a hundred people downstairs waiting for their coats.”

“Otto, darling,” Xantia called. “We’re in here.”

Otto came into the room, took one look at Rachel and Shelley and visibly blanched.

“So I see,” he said softly.

“It would seem,” Xantia continued, “that Rachel and her friend have been doing some exploring.”

“Good God,” he hissed, “what are we going to do? I mean, if the press get hold of this, we’ll be fin—”

“Oh, do be quiet, dahling,” Xantia cut across him with a nervous giggle. “The press will be delighted by our ironic tableau, except we don’t want them to hear about it just yet. And I’m sure Rachel won’t say anything to anyone about our project.”

Otto looked at Xantia and frowned. “Project?” he said. “What project?”

“You know, Otto,” she said. “
This
project. The room. I’ve just been explaining to Rachel how it’s about to go on display at the Tate Modern.”

“Oh,” he said. “Right. No. I’m sure they won’t say anything.”

“No, no, of course we won’t. I promise. Why would we? And we really are sorry, Xantia—about being here. It won’t happen again.”

“No, it won’t,” Xantia said, a distinct quiver still in her voice. “Rachel, you invited a friend here today without my permission. If that wasn’t enough, the pair of you have been snooping and going through my things. I’m just not sure I can trust you anymore. I’m sorry, but I think you should leave.”

“What? You mean you’re sacking me?”

Xantia nodded.

“But,” Rachel pleaded. “I didn’t mean . . .”

“I think you should go.”

“Xantia, please,” Shelley said. “It was my fault, not Rachel’s.”

Xantia didn’t say anything. She simply stared at the floor.