'My name is Nicola. Not Nicky or' - her lips closed in a flat smile -'"Nick".'
'Right.'
'Say it.'
He said it.
Her eyes returned to the black fishnet shirt. She placed a finger on one of its wide central squares. 'This sort of stuff, she said thoughtfully, '— it should be on my legs. Not on your chest. Goodbye, Keith.'
'Yeah cheers.'
Nicola returned to the sitting-room and lit a cigarette. She heard him crash down the stairs — Keith, with the money in his mouth. For a minute or so she smoked intently, with dipped head, then moved to the tall window in the passage. She saw him, across the street, toppling in graphic difficulty over the open boot of his car. It was the right car: the murderer's car. With a boyish flinch Keith looked up into the evening sky, whose pale pink, as usual, managed to suggest the opposite of health, like the face of a pale drinker. Their eyes met slowly through the glass. Keith was about to essay some kind of acknowledgment, but instantly ducked into a fit of sneezing. The reports of these sneezes — quacked and splatty — travelled towards Nicola at the speed of sound: Keith's cur's sneezes. With his hand flat over his mouth he worked his way round the car and climbed in, and moved off softly down the dead-end street.
'Sneezes like a cur,' said Nicola to herself.
It was six o'clock. She yawned greedily, and went to the kitchen for champagne. Lying on the sofa, she sketched out the next few moves, or she turned up the dial, revealing the contours that were already there. Guy would call the day after next. She would arrange to meet him in the park. She would choose a cold day, so that she could wear her blond fur coat. Beneath that, at least, she would be able to keep some entertaining secrets. Her shoulders shook as she laughed, quietly. When she laughed, her whole body shook. Her whole body laughed.
In the popular books, when they tried to get you to imagine a black hole, they usually conjured a sample photon of light wandering near by, or (more popularly, and more phallically) an astronaut in a spaceship: a man in a rocket. Approaching the black hole, the traveller would encounter the accretion disc, circling matter bled from the neighbour star (and containing, perhaps, the wreckage of other men, other rockets); then, notionally, the Schwarzschild radius, marking the point at which the escape velocity equalled the velocity of light. This would be the event horizon, where spacetime collapsed, the turnstile to oblivion beyond which there was only one future, only one possible future. Now there can be no escape: during the instantaneous descent, all of eternity has passed on the outside. Caught in the imploding geometry, the man and his rocket enter the black hole.
Or look at it the other way. Nicola Six, considerably inconvenienced, is up there in her flying saucer, approaching the event horizon. She hasn't crossed it yet. But it's awfully close. She would need all her reverse thrust, every ounce, to throw her clear . . .
No, it doesn't work out. It doesn't work out because she's already there on the other side. All her life she's lived on the other side of the event horizon, treading gravity in slowing time. She's it. She's the naked singularity. She's beyond the black hole.
Every fifteen minutes the telephone rings. It's Ella from LA, it's Rhea from Rio, it's Merouka from Morocco. I have to break in over their hot cooings to tell them an unappetizing truth: I am not Mark Asprey. He's in New York. I give them my number. They hang up instantly, as if I'm some kind of breather.
Scented letters with lipstick imprints pile up on the mat. The girls, they come around the whole time: they practically picket the place. When I tell these pictures and visions, little duchesses, dazzlers and ponies de luxe that Mark Asprey isn't around — they're devastated. I have to reach out to steady them. The other morning an adorably flustered-looking creature called Anastasia was there on the stoop, hoping for a few minutes with Mark. When I broke it to her, I thought I might have to call an ambulance. No, not so good for a guy not so lucky in love, or in art, as I stand in the passage scratching my hair in thought, and look up to see the framed dream-queens and the inscriptions scribbled wildly across their throats. To my Apollo. Nobody does it quite like you. Oh I'm so completely yours . . .
Anastasia couldn't have been sweeter (I gave her a good hug and she stumbled off mouthing apologies, her face a mask of tears). But some of the other ones, some of the snazzier ones, look at me with incredulous distaste. Can I blame them, especially when I'm in mid-chapter, exhausted, exalted, quilted in guilt, and unshaven to the whites of my eyes? Yesterday evening there was an unusual telephone call. It was for me.
When I heard the sound, the subtle crepitation, that 3,000 miles makes, I thought it might be Missy Harter, or Janit, or at any rate Barbro. It was Slizard.
I like him personally and everything, but calls from Dr Slizard fail to set my pulse racing. He wants me to go and see some people in a research institute south of the river.
'How's America?'
'Crazy like an X-ray laser,' he said.
Slizard admits that the visit isn't really necessary, but he wants me to go along. 'Send me the pills,' I said. But I also said I'd think about it.
'Tell me, Auxiliadora,' I began, 'how long have you worked for the Clinches - for Hope and Guy?'
Auxiliadora was great. She gave me, while she worked, at least three chapters' worth of stuff in about fifteen minutes. A good cleaner Auxi may well have been, but she was certainly a sensational gossip: look how she smears and bespatters. She read their letters and eavesdropped on their telephone calls; she went through trashcan and laundry basket alike with the same forensic professionalism. Interesting sidelights on Lizzyboo. Fine material on Marma-duke. I listened, seated boldly at Mark Asprey's desk — not his working desk in the study but his writing desk in the living-room (where, I imagined, he tackled his lovemail). I was recuperating from Chapter 5. Heavy stuff, some of it. I can already hear Missy Harter telling me that America won't want to know all this (particularly if we're looking at a pub-date in say late spring, when the crisis, and the year of behaving strangely, will both be over, one way or another). But Nicola is heavy stuff. Nicola is heavy. I guess I could tone it down, if there's time. But tone it down to what? I guess I could 'make something up', as I believe the expression goes. Spanking or whatever. Her on top. Lovebites. But I can't make anything up. It just isn't in me. Man, am I a reliable narrator ... I was sitting at the desk, as, with equal flair, Auxi cleaned the flat and dished the dirt, and making notes with a casual doodling action (and warmly looking forward to the domestic haven, the blameless hearth of Chapter 6), when there was a light rattle of keys, a slam of the door- and another woman strode furiously into the room.
She was Spanish too. Her name was Incarnacion. And she was Mark Asprey's cleaning-lady. She told me this in English, and said something of the same to Auxiliadora in a volley of oath-crammed Andalucian. I quickly located Mark's welcome note: sure enough there was a P.S. about his Spanish 'treasure', who was holidaying in her native Granada but would shortly return.
It was all very embarrassing. In fact it was all very frightening. I haven't been so scared for weeks. I took Auxi to the door, and apologized and paid her off. Then I went and hid in the study. When Incarnacion flushed me out I moved back into the sitting-room to find the large walnut table — previously bare but for a bowl of potpourri — infested with new gongs and cups and obelisks (dug up by Incarnacion from some bottomless trophy chest) and about a dozen photographs of Mark Asprey, making acceptance speeches, being fawned over by starlets, or in frowning conversation with deferential fellow bigbrains . . . He looks like Prince Andrew. Maybe he is Prince Andrew: the Prince as a bachelor, before he got so stout, on Fergie's cooking. The grinning eyes squeezed by the fleshiness of the cheeks. The inordinate avidity of the teeth.
Dinner tonight at Lansdowne Crescent. Lizzyboo will be there. On the way over I'm due to stop in at the dead-end street: cocktails with Nicola Six.
As against that, I'm close to despair about getting into Keith's place. I have just this one idea, and it'
s a long shot: Kim, the kid. The little girl.
Keith's house is not a home. (And it's not a house either.) It's somewhere for the wife and child, and somewhere to flop, until Keith comes good on the ponies or the darts. Though often lost in praise of his dog Clive, he never mentions his girl Kim, except when he's especially drunk. Then it's / think the world of that little girl and That little girl means the world to me. But if prompted, or goaded, he will deign to denounce Kath's idleness and lack of stamina, when it comes to the kid.
'I mean,' he said to me in the Black Cross, or it may have been the Golgotha, his drinking club (the Golgotha is open twenty-four hours
a day. But so is the Black Cross), 'what she expect? Moaning on.
Baby this. Baby that. Can't sleep. Babies is what skirt does’
'It can be very hard, Keith,' I cautioned. 'I've looked after children - babies. They worship their mothers but they torture them too. They torture them with the sleep weapon.'
He looked at me consideringly. You don't need much empathic talent to tell what Keith's thinking. He doesn't do that much thinking in the first place. The very difficulty, the disuse of the muscles, writes headlines on his forehead. Keith, and his tabloid face. Shock. Horror. You just read his flickers and frowns. Now it was something like What would a bloke look after babies for? He said, 'Yeah but it's not like real work as such. Half the time you just bung them in their -in that pen thing. Why was you looking after kids?'
Two years ago I lost my brother.' This was true. Also unforgive-able. David. I'm sorry. I owe you one. It's this writing business. 'Oh yes. They had a two-year-old and another one just arrived. I was with them through all that.'
Keith's face said, Sad, that. Happens. Say no more.
But I did say more. I said, 'All Kath needs is a couple of hours a day with the baby off her hands. It would transform her. I'd be glad to do it. Guy employs male nurses,' I threw out. 'Take her to the park. I love kids.'
Well he didn't much like the idea, clearly. (He started talking about darts.) No, I thought - you've lost this one. Babies, infants, little human beings: they're a skirt thing. The only blokes who love babies are transvestites, hormone-cases, sex-maniacs. For Keith this was all very turbulent ground. The child-molester — the nonce, the short eyes — was the lowest of the low, and Keith had come across that sort before. In prison. He talked freely about prison. In prison Keith had gotten his chance to beat up child-molesters; and he had taken it. In prison as elsewhere, everyone needs someone to look down on, someone categorically worse. The serial grannyslayer got his go on the exercise bike, the copycat sniper had his extra sausage on Sunday mornings, but the short eyes . .. Suddenly Keith told me why: the hidden reason, beneath all the visible reasons. Keith didn't say it; yet it was written on his brow. The prisoner hated the child-molester, not just because he needed somebody to look down on, not only out of base sentimentality either, but because it was the one place left for his parental feelings. So when you striped the short eyes with your smuggled razor you were just showing the lads what a good father you were.
I was grateful to Keith for the insight. That's right, I remember now: we were in Hosni's, the Muslim café where Keith sometimes briefly recuperates from the Golgotha and the Black Cross. Just then, one of the pub semi-regulars passed our table. He leaned over and said to me:
'Here. I know what you are. A four-wheel Sherman.'
An explanation was effortfully supplied. Four-wheel = four-wheel skid = yid. Sherman = Sherman tank = yank.
'Jesus,' said Keith. 'Jesus,' he added, with an iconoclast's weariness. 'I hate that crap. "Your almonds don't half pen." Jesus. You ever going to stop with that stuff? You ever going to stop?'
Most of Mark Asprey's apartment quite likes me. But some of it hates me. The lightbulbs hate me. They pop out every fifteen minutes. 1 fetch and carry. The mirrors hate me.
The bits of Mark Asprey's apartment that hate me most are the pipes. They groan and scream at me. Sometimes at night. I've even considered the truly desperate recourse of having Keith come in and look at them. Or at least listen to them.
After its latest storm, after its latest fit or tantrum or mad-act, the sky is blameless and aloof, all sweetness and light, making the macadam dully shine. Sheets and pillows in the wide bed of the sky.
Still no word from Missy Harter.
Chapter 6: The Doors of Deception
i
n his dream Guy Clinch edged closer to the bare body of a softly faceless woman. For a moment of dream time she turned into a thirteen-year-old baby, smiling, crooning, then once more became a woman without a face. Not even a baby face. This wasn't a sex dream. It was a love dream, a dream of love. He edged towards an oozing yes . . .
In actuality, in real life, Guy Clinch was edging towards a rather different proposition. Inches from his touch lay Hope in her dressing-gown, unblinkingly wakeful, and far from faceless: the healthy oval and its long brown eyes. Inches from his head, on the innumerable pillows, crouched Marmaduke, his hands joined and raised. As Guy entered the warmth-field of his wife's body, Marmaduke's twinned fists thumped down into his open face.
'Ow!' said Guy. The flesh fled in rivulets. He looked up in time to see the blurred arrival of Marmaduke's next punch. 'Ow!' he said. Unplayfully he sat up and wrestled Marmaduke to the floor.
'Take him,' said Hope in a tranced voice.
'Was he very bad?'
'And quick with breakfast.'
'Come on, you little devil.' He picked up Marmaduke, who embraced the opportunity to sink his teeth gum-deep into Guy's neck. Guy gasped and began the business of trying to force open Marmaduke's jaws.
Hope said, 'He needs changing. He seems to have eaten most of his nappy again.'
'Loaded or unloaded?'
'Unloaded. Hold his nose. He'll give up in a couple of minutes.'
Guy pinched the sticky nostrils. Marmaduke's teeth tightened their grip. The seconds ticked by. Finally he released his mouthful, sideways, for greater tear, and sneezed twice into his father's face. Holding the screaming child out in front of him like a rugby ball or a bag of plutonium, Guy hurried towards the adjoining bathroom. This left Marmaduke with only one option for the time being - the reverse kick to the groin - which he now duly attempted. Guy put him face down on the far corner of the bathroom carpet. He managed to shut and bolt the door and crouch on the lavatory seat before Marmaduke was up and at him again . . . There were two reasons why Guy favoured the seated position: first, because it helped accommodate the unenlargeable erection he always woke up with; and secondly because Marmaduke, while feigning babyish absorption in the flush handle, had once smacked the seat down on him with incredible suddenness and force, dealing Guy a glancing blow that had none the less empurpled his helmet for a month and a half. As Guy used lavatory paper to staunch the flow of blood from his neck, Marmaduke paced yelling round the room looking for good things to smash.
'Milt,' said Marmaduke. Toce. Milt. Toce. Milt! Toce! Milt! Toce! Milt! Toce!'
'Coming!' sang Guy.
Milk toast, thought Guy. An American dish, served with honey or syrup. Hope likes that, and so does Lizzyboo. Hello, something missing: the strainer.
Marmaduke paused and spitefully watched his weaving father, the man with two pairs of hands. Toce,' he said, in an altogether more menacing tone. Toce daddy. Daddy. Toce daddy. Daddy toce.'
'Yes yes.' He stood there, skilfully buttering toast as Marmaduke clawed at his bare legs. Then the moment came and Marmaduke sprang for the knife. After a fierce struggle beneath the table Guy disarmed him and climbed to his feet, holding his nose where Marmaduke had bitten it. The knife again. He adored all knives. A calling, but for which occupation ? Friends and relatives, on their rare and foreshortened visits, always said that Marmaduke, when he grew up, would join the army. Not even Guy's ancient father, a brigadier in World War II, had seemed to draw much comfort from this prospect.
Now he crouched smiling and offered up a piece of toast to Marmadu
ke's drooling mouth.
'Good Lord,' he murmured.
Guy had often suggested that they get specialist advice about Marmaduke's eating. After all, they were getting specialist advice about everything else he did. The child had of course been to several celebrated dieticians, and had been placed on regimes designed to quench him of vigour. The most recent one, said the doctor in his teak-panelled consulting rooms, would have reduced an Olympic sprinter to helpless enervation within a matter of days. It hadn't worked on Marmaduke, whose natural taste, incidentally, was for chips and hamburgers and monosodium glutamate and any kind of junk . . . Guy had seen greedy infants before - but nothing like this. The famished desperation, the neck-ricking bolts and snaps, the coruscating saliva. Halfway through his fifth brick of honey, butter and bronzed wholemeal Marmaduke released a dense mouthful and ground it into the tiles with a booteed foot: a sign of temporary satiation. Guy stuck a bottle in him and carried the child upstairs at arm's length. He locked him into the bedroom, then returned for the tray.
Hope lay back on her barge of pillows. This was more like how things were supposed to be: the tea tray, the telephone, the wallet of mail. The weekend skeleton staff had arrived and were amusing Marmaduke in the nursery above; only faintly could you hear his screams and theirs, and the occasional sickening impact. Guy lay on the sofa, reading the papers. Hope ran her glance cruelly over one gold-trimmed invitation after another. She said,
'I saw Melissa Barnaby yesterday. Out back.'
'Oh yes?' said Guy. Lady Barnaby: good, sad Lady Barnaby, with her milky eyes. She babysat for Marmaduke in the old days, once or twice. No. Once. The telephone call to the restaurant, just as the cocktails were arriving .. .
'She was looking rather well. She said she felt ten years younger. She's found this marvellous young man. He's fixed up the house. And now she's off to Yugoslavia for a week.'