The Club(21)

Picture a nightclub, he had told her. If you’re on the outside, queueing to try to get in, all you can see is a bunch of people having what appears to be a good time. And then you get inside. And for a while you think you’ve made it. And then you realize that in the club there is a VIP area, behind another velvet rope that, actually, is where all the really exciting people are. And maybe you manage to get in there, eventually. And you get a drink, and you see who’s around, and you feel pretty pleased with yourself. And then you realize there is another velvet rope, and another door, and beyond that there is a VVIP area and your name’s not on the list. And even if you manage to get in there you realize . . .

‘You get the point,’ he had concluded, with a wave of his hand.

She had got the point. It was also a pretty accurate explanation of how Home worked, except the velvet ropes were invisible. Most civilians had never even heard of it. Few who had would ever dream of applying. Most who did wouldn’t be accepted. Those few who were would not imagine for a moment that they’d be invited to a launch party. None of those excited guests who would be arriving later this morning would suspect there had been a dinner the night before. And that was what Ned had been telling them all, Jackson and Keith and Freddie and Kurt, with varying degrees of subtlety, all evening. That they had made it. That this was it. Right now. They were past the last velvet rope, they were in that final room, the one that people spend their whole lives, their whole careers trying to reach, that people sacrifice everything, marriages, friendships, sanity, trying to get into.

For the past twenty minutes Keith had been explaining to Jackson Crane his philosophy of art, and how this was reflected in his own creative practice.

‘I would say I don’t really have a medium, you know? Painting, photography, poetry, sculpture – I’ve mastered them all. It’s not for me to call myself a Renaissance man, but . . .’ He shrugged. ‘It has been said. Really if I had to say what my art was about, though, it’s a celebration of the female form but also a rumination on the gaze. That’s why I only use the body, not the head, so they’re not looking back at you – there’s a purity there, you know? In the looking. Power in anonymity. I want to confront the viewer – but I’m posing questions. The viewer has to answer those questions themselves . . .’

Jackson Crane, his head on a cushion, drink still in his hand, appeared to be briefly resting his eyes.

Ned, standing by the fire, one elbow on the mantelpiece, the buttons on his shirt straining slightly to reveal little tufts of grey chest hair, was telling the story of how he’d first heard about this island, how he’d fallen in love with the idea of buying it. Freddie – Annie knew how thrilled and surprised he must be, to find himself in this company, to be able to tell people he was here – was sitting bolt upright in his chair, nodding along.

‘Wow,’ he kept saying. ‘Golly.’

Kurt, having wandered around the library and inspected some of the decorative books, was now perched on the end of one of the couches, listening to Ned, occasionally asking a question about how old something was.

Down at the far end of the library, a grandfather clock let out a whirr and a creak, gathered itself and then clanked flatly twice.

‘This house itself is 1723,’ Ned continued. ‘Modelled on Chiswick House, but without the dome, built by the family who used to own the whole place.’

‘One family owned an entire island?’ asked Freddie. ‘Wow.’

‘Yep – although from 1941 to 1991 half of it was leased to the Ministry of Defence. You should have seen the state of it when we first came down. The Boathouse really was a boathouse – a shed full of rotten hulls and broken oars. This place was half boarded up. I think the Bouchers – spelled B-o-u-c-h-e-r, pronounced Butcher, this is all Boucher’s Island, officially – lived in about three rooms. It was freezing, obviously. Damp. Holes in the roof. They showed us all these pictures of when it was a hospital in the First World War, of costume balls on the lawn in the twenties – and the wife served us incredibly strong gin and tonics, half gin, half tonic, the flat supermarket stuff, no lemon, no ice. Adam wandered off to find a loo at one point and I wasn’t sure he was ever going to find his way back. And then we had a drive around the island in their old Range Rover. Only one road, back then, of course. Deer crashing around in the woods. Crows starting. Now this is something that might interest you, actually, Kurt, if history’s your thing . . .’

As Ned took Kurt out of the room for a moment, Annie briskly suggested something to perk them all up a little.

‘None for me, thanks,’ announced Keith, who nevertheless swung himself up into a sitting position, as did Jackson Crane. Freddie eagerly pulled in his armchair closer to the table.

‘Wouldn’t want everyone falling asleep now, would we?’ observed Annie, producing a clutch of short silver straws from her handbag, a little glass vial and matt gold Home membership card.

By the time Kurt and Ned returned, the atmosphere had livened up considerably. Annie had called over the waiter – he had remembered something important to do at the far end of the room at around the time the silver straws had come out, and remained there discreetly until summoned back – to order another round of drinks. Freddie was telling the same meandering story about himself for the second time in short succession, Keith was smirking, Jackson chortling loudly well before the punchline.