guests, dressed in formal attire, but not black tie, turn and look at Tom and Dante. Their eyes do not linger for long. Dante feels his chest tighten and his leather trousers set like concrete around his legs. 'Come on, let's find Eliot,' he says to Tom, who is making eyes at the food and drink.
Dante steers himself through the centre of the crowd, which is predominately male and middle-aged. He looks around for Eliot, ever anxious to avoid the occasional pair of curious eyes that turns toward him. After he passes through the main body of the gathering, he checks the seats lined against the walls by the small round tables at the head of the room, where people sit and eat. Tom is no longer behind him, lured away, no doubt, by the promise of food. Then he sees Janice, from the School of Divinity, on his left, and he smiles at her. The smile is not returned. She twists her pale neck and whispers into the ear of the man on her right, his face distinguished by a long jaw. He immediately looks up at Dante, and stares right at him, his face unmoving, the intensity of his look only broken when he turns to mutter into Janice's ear.
She keeps her haughty face turned to Dante and continues to watch him as he back-pedals through the crowd. He knocks against a man clad in tweed, wearing a bow tie. He apologises, then flees to find Tom.
And as far as he can see, Eliot is not here. Maybe he is late, he hopes, holding back any paranoid musings about being stood up. The only eyes upon him are those of Janice and the tall, long-jawed man, now joined by a squat bald man in a three-piece suit. They have followed him through the crowd and seem content to hang back and stare.
Dante turns his back on them; there is no law against assisting Eliot and he's been invited to the party by a member of staff. He can think of nothing, besides his inappropriate clothes, capable of provoking such a reaction from three strangers. What is it in their eyes: disapproval or apprehension?
Before he can take another step toward the distant shape of Tom's sleek head, a hand falls on his shoulder from behind. Dante swivels about to find himself staring into the face of the fat man who previously stood with Janice and long-jaw. 'Hello there, I'm Arthur Spencer. Hebdomidar of the university. I hear you've been asked to attend to some important work. With Eliot. Eliot Coldwell.' The voice is pleasant and the large bald head gleams like an opaque marble. Confused, Dante accepts the hand, which is pudgy, pink and hairless. He shakes it gently, as if a firm handshake will bruise the man's scrubbed paw. But at least the eyes are friendly: small, blue, and enclosed by pink-rimmed eyelids and gingery lashes, the skin resembling uncooked pastry as they close and then tremble after a blink.
'Not exactly,' he replies, but likes the sound of what the man has suggested. 'I don't really know what my role will be. To help with research and things, I guess. While I put some of his ideas to my own music. Oh, sorry. I'm Dante. Up from the Midlands.'
'Well, I am afraid you will get little from him tonight, Dante. Eliot has failed to appear. It's a dreadful shame, you know,' he adds, with a gentle shake of his head, expressing pity as if Eliot were ill. 'But wait here and I shall get you a drink.' Arthur Spencer bustles to the refreshment table, pausing once to greet another member of the faculty congregation.
There is no way around it: Eliot has failed to show. It is a 'dreadful shame', the man said. What is he to make of this? What does he actually know about Eliot, beside the stories in Banquet and a handful of letters reiterating the individual's need for a purposeful vocation? Eliot loaded him down with books after a strained and sometimes spiky first meeting, and now he's been tailed since arriving at the party.
Arthur Spencer returns, holding two glasses of white wine, mincing his way on small nimble feet between elbows and heads thrown back to laugh at punchlines Dante has not heard and does not expect to understand even if he did. Arthur offers the glass. 'There you are, sir.'
'Cheers.' Despite his dismay, there is something he wants to like about the Hebdomidar.