“So you see you’ve landed here,” surmised Elodie contentedly, swabbing her sourdough bread through swirls of lentil gravy and swallowing some rough red, at the same time plumbing newfound depths by concluding that Mandy’s philosophising was almost as if she were channelling Ruuku. It was hilarious, and, as the Sous-chef de cuisine hurried back to her duties, Elodie waited in eager expectation for dessert.

* * *

Alma Martyr’s performance began toned down enough, admittedly not in the Swank Theatre, as originally intended, but for right-sizing reasons, on a podium, in a cramped, somewhat cluttered, ‘transitional’ Ristorante Swank.

“Hmm, this is nothing like her raunchy gigs,” sussed a now mulled Elodie, “with no well-hung strobe lighting or semi-naked men,” she cackled, licking from her spoon the remnants of her Almond Cream and Chocolate Bavarois, which she had refused point blank to swap with Mark Sharpe’s Sour Cherry Syrup Cake.

Now, banging and scraping her chair, like the rest of the onlookers, towards a better view of the platform on which Alma sat alone at a piano, she compared it to last year, when Alma’s Wild Woman tour of Asia was banned in several South East Asian communities, gaining her plenty of notoriety, huge recording sales and sky-rocketing box-office returns.

Tonight Alma was wearing a purple dress of velvet music crotchets on see-through lace, modestly in contrast, thought Elodie, to the usual scant lingerie, that she would no doubt don for tomorrow night’s sell-out Private Parts concert, at the Myocum Feel Fest, near Byron Bay. Alma tinkled at the keys, whispering huskily into her pop star headset microphone attachment.

“I have no idea how the rumour got around,” she said, tantalisingly eyeing Sandy John, while rippling her fingers through a Blues arpeggio introduction, then vaulting into her first number of the night, a cover song of an old Elvis classic: Kissin’ Cousins.

The crowd went wild, and in response to humungous applause, she announced that she was HOT, asking if anyone had a hanky. Mark leapt up, according to strict instructions, and gave the diva a crisp new white bandana, with which she mopped the cleavage of her breasts, giving him back this purificator, which he clasped to his lips and returned to his pants, standing with his legs spaced at least half a metre, and braving the escalating roar of the crowd.

Now this was a hard act to follow, and having invited Mark next to sing with her, she bonked fervently on the keyboard as he methodically strummed at a party piece, prearranged by Olga Klim as appropriate for the restless onlookers, whose interest quickly wilted.

Alma smiled and, sussing their uneasiness, grimaced from the piano at Jean-Claude, giving him several spasmic nods. At first he grinned in return, then finally, to Alma’s delight, jumped to attention, and joining them on an already overcrowded stage, intermittently interrupted their cover version of Something Stupid, with spontaneous toots and swirls from his sax, as if he were shocked or amazed.

It was a rescue response by Jean-Claude to Alma’s cry-for-help, and entertaining to everyone except the lead guitarist, who was glowering, so much so that when Jean-Claude put his arm around Alma and kissed her cheek, the hero became a target for a Mark Sharpe pre-emptive military strike.

“Tone it down,” he said.

“What’s up, Dude?” said the satisfied saxophonist.

“You’re driving me nuts!” shouted Mark, and raised his arm to clout Jean-Claude’s ear, but was halted mid-air by Sandy John, leaping up from in front of the podium and nabbing Mark’s limb, inadvertently toppling him over a music stand.

“You’re being obstreperous, mate” railed Mark from the floor to Jean-Claude, and in fierce wrath rose to fight on.

“Calm down,” said Sandy John, the single momentary mitigating force, until an adversary from the audience launched a projectile of bread crust into the breach.

“No, give us a show,” the troublemaker called.

“Yeah,” said another, fuelled by cheap house wine and lentils, “Give us a barney!”

“Yeah, a barney,” said the crowd, “We want a barney!”

“We want our money’s worth,” added an elderly posh lady’s voice, and the bellicose audience rogered, pelting the tiny stage and each other with leftovers from plates and bowls, even from the doggy bags beneath their tables, so that the planned and projected performance, spruiked by Doctor Klim as “warm and simmering” erupted into a war zone.

Elodie, accustomed by now to Alma Martyr’s staged scenarios and set-ups, did not flinch, but remained one of the innocent bystanders, witness to a noble Maid-of-Orléans-like Alma, surrounded in a veritable triumviral protective human shield by Mark Sharpe, Sandy John and Jean-Claude. Indifferent by now even to flashing cameras, Elodie, caught with her colleagues in the crossfire, could only think of Mark’s amazing command of the English language.

“Obstreperous?” She quizzed, gently shaking out her hair, “I wonder what that really means?” And continued to harrow slender fingers through each strand, removing the occasional sticky scraps of sour cherry syrup cake.

# # #

See also: Synopsis and Structure of my new Book Belle Isle Please feel free to leave a reader’s comment on it!

The second link is The Carol of the Birds, which looks at what one commentator calls a “heavenly indeed” section of the final chapter.

The third link is Belle Isle at the Hotel Urban, which repeats in the description of the hotel itself the physical, mental and spiritual descriptions of Sandy John through the previous chapters.