She sat on the stool and I pinned some large sheets of cartridge paper to a board, put the board on the easel, and began to draw with conté sanguine. She looked at me and I looked at her and found myself understanding John William Waterhouse as I never had before. She’d been wrong to say that I’d stop seeing the Pre-Raphaelite nymph: his nymphs, his sirens, his tragic women of myth and story – they were each and every one a beckoning fair one; their beauty and their melancholy and their sadness beckoned the viewer to follow unquestioningly wherever they might lead him. ‘Come with us,’ said those lovely faces, those glances ardent and wistful. ‘Come with us to the heart of the mystery.’
All of the nymphs and sirens and tragic women came and went in Amaryllis’s face, and sometimes there flickered there that face all thin and pale and haggard that I’d seen when she pulled me into her dream. I made sketch after sketch, never trying for finish but searching in each for whatever I’d missed in the one before. The conté crayon, rasping and tapping the paper as it stroked, seemed guided not by me but by what I looked at – I simply held it lightly while it drew with unerring mastery. She took a five-minute rest every twenty minutes, then we continued.
As I tried to possess her with my eyes and my drawings I recognised that I was giving myself up to the idea of The One, the woman who would be all that I ever wanted, would satisfy all longing and all desire, would be the perfect companion and lover for ever. But of course there is no for ever for us mortals; time goes on without us. ‘Oh Galuppi, Baldassaro, this is very sad to find!’ I thought, trying to recall the Browning poem. But all that came to me was, ‘What of soul was left, I wonder, when the kissing had to stop?’ Little by little the afternoon slanted into evening but in the dusk I saw new things until the light and I had nothing more to give.
Amaryllis switched on a lamp and came to look at the drawings. There were twelve and she examined each one carefully. As she leant towards me I smelled her hair and closed my eyes. How could she smell so much like a country childhood? I kissed the top of her head. ‘You,’ she said. She put her hand on my neck, pulled my face to hers, and kissed me for a long time. She tasted like sunwarmed wild strawberries, the blue skies and the high kites of long ago. I hoped it was a hello kiss and not a goodbye one; I was always uncertain with her. ‘I’m hungry,’ she said.
So we ordered pizza. When the delivery man arrived on his motor scooter I was suddenly filled with pity for him that he had no Amaryllis. I tipped him £2.00 and he looked at me suspiciously, the dark face of the world indifferent to my happiness.
The drawing session had been thirsty work and the pepperoni cried out for Chianti which I happened to have a few bottles of. As we ate and drank it seemed to both of us that the evening was shaping nicely. I couldn’t remember a time when I had drawn so well or felt so good; I wondered if I’d ever draw that well and feel that good again. Happiness can be unsettling, like catching a baby that someone has thrown out of a window.
After the pizza we went to the sitting-room for video time. Amaryllis ranged the shelves, considering and rejecting various films until she settled on Notorious. ‘This is the one I want,’ she said. ‘Every time I watch it I’m so afraid that they won’t get away in the end.’
‘I’ve seen this film many times,’ I said, ‘and so far they’ve always made it; after all, the taxi’s right there ready to go – it isn’t as if they have to hang about waiting for a bus.’
She leant against me briefly. ‘I don’t take anything for granted any more.’ She shook her head. ‘Ingrid Bergman was so adorable in this one and now she’s dead of cancer.’
‘Cary Grant’s dead too, and Claude Rains; Alfred Hitchcock as well,’ I said. ‘It’s mainly a dead-people film but there’s a lot of life in it.’
‘Ghosts,’ said Amaryllis. ‘And yet sometimes when I’m watching this film I think it’s realer than I am.’
‘Feeling unreal is part of reality.’ I gave her a little hug, just with one arm, delicately. There was a bottle of grappa around so we had some of that to cut the pizza grease, then feeling well refreshed we settled down on the couch and arranged ourselves cosily to watch the film.
‘So many things were against her from the beginning,’ said Amaryllis. ‘She couldn’t help it that her father was a Nazi, and because she was loyal to the USA the American government used her as a spy. Fathers!’
‘You have father problems?’
She didn’t answer that. ‘And Cary Grant,’ she said, ‘why did he have to be so cold when you could see she was ready to fall in love with him right from the start? She was so vulnerable!’
The Chianti and the grappa and the smell of Amaryllis’s hair were making me drowsy and contented. ‘I was thinking about how they get from one scene to the next,’ I said. ‘There’s no long drive to the airport, no queuing-up to check in. Right away they’re in a plane and they look out of the window and there’s Rio. Cut to an aerial view of a broad avenue and next they’re in a restaurant. Think of all the time and energy they’ve saved! No wonder they can deal with danger better than the rest of us.’
‘It’s the in-between moments that I miss,’ said Amaryllis, fitting herself into the crook of my arm and snuggling comfortably against me. ‘We’ll never know if their hands touched on the way to the airport or if they exchanged a look that had their whole future in it: no words, just a destiny-look that made her not give up on him no matter what happened.’
Previous viewings notwithstanding, the two of us couldn’t breathe easily until Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman got into the taxi that took them to safety. We both liked Claude Rains and felt sorry for him but he had to play the part Ben Hecht wrote for him – it was just his rotten luck that as a villain who’d blotted his copybook with the other Nazis he wasn’t likely to survive the closing frames of the film.
By then it was about quarter to two and we both felt as if sleep might come soon after we closed our eyes. ‘Wait,’ said Amaryllis, ‘before we go to bed I want to look at the moon.’
‘Is there one tonight?’
‘There must be – I feel moony, I feel a full moon looking down. Can we see it from the balcony?’
‘Depends on whether it’s rising or setting.’
I followed her up to the studio and we went out on to the balcony. There it was, a full moon riding low in a pale sky over the common, so sharp and clear that I could almost see the craters. I felt moony too, felt the pull of it and the surge of the spring tide. ‘Yes!’ said Amaryllis, smacking the balustrade with her hand, and we went down to the bedroom floor again.
‘May I use your toothbrush?’ she said.
‘It would be my pleasure.’ I had new spare toothbrushes but I didn’t want to pass up any kind of intimacy. I gave her a T-shirt to sleep in.
‘This one doesn’t say anything,’ she said.
‘Maybe it’ll have something to say tomorrow morning.’ I remembered, then, that I hadn’t put fresh sheets on the bed and I was going to do it but she stopped me.
‘That’s OK,’ she said. ‘Your smell will help me into your dream. As soon as you’re ready I’ll show you a way to get started.’
When I’d organised the couch in the studio where I’d spend the night she came and sat beside me on it. We were both wearing only T-shirts and knickers and her left leg was touching my right leg. ‘Probably,’ she said, ‘it’ll help if you use a focusing device.’
‘Such as what?’ The hairs on her leg were golden in the lamplight.
‘You know how to make a Möbius strip?’
‘Yes.’
‘Make one, not too big, with a slider.’
I got what I needed, then I returned and put my right leg back where it had been. I took a sheet of A4 yellow paper and cut a lengthwise strip about a quarter-inch wide. On this I put a paper slider like a movable belt loop which I marked with a red X. I gave the long strip a twist and taped the ends together to make a Möbius strip on which the slider could move freely.
‘Right,’ she s
aid. ‘The thing is to move your head out of its ordinary busy-busy mode and make a clear space for things to happen in. I’ll go to my bed now and you lie down here. Look at the Möbius strip while you go around it with the slider. You’re going to be pulling me into your dream so you should have me in your mind’s eye while you’re sliding the Möbius. Easy does it, just float with it, OK?’
‘OK.’
‘You’re going to do it, I can feel it in you.’ She kissed me with what was unmistakably a destiny kiss. ‘See you in your dream,’ she whispered.
‘What if one of us is still awake while the other one’s asleep?’
‘If we’re tuned in right that won’t happen. Trust me, I’m a weirdo.’
She left me to it then. I slid my Möbius while I let her face come to me. I saw her half-turned away from me, saw the sweet curve of her cheek and held it lightly in my mind’s eye while I looked fixedly at the red X on the Möbius slider. I moved it around the twist and watched it change sides while the curve of her cheek stayed with me. Around it went. And again. And again. I closed my eyes, seeing her face more and more clearly as the slider moved round the twist. ‘Amaryllis!’ I said. ‘Balsamic! Finsey-Obay!’
I thought I might faint but I didn’t. My head went… wide – that’s the only way I can describe it. Immensities of space all around me. Then it went long – space far, far in front of me, dwindling to a point, and far, far behind me to another vanishing point. My stomach started to go somewhere and I stayed with it on a rollercoaster ride, dizzily swooping and twisting, up and over and around while being pulled inside out and passing through myself and the manyness that constituted me: faces I’d long forgotten, voices I’d never hear again, sighs of love and groans of regret; streets of night and day under moons, under lamps, under rain and longing. Then I was back in the wide space and things quieted down enough for me to go to the bathroom and vomit.
I came back exhausted, fell asleep and found myself on the Finsey-Obay bus, climbing the stairs to the upper deck behind Amaryllis. This time she was wearing only a T-shirt, no knickers.
She turned and smiled down at me. ‘Get a good glim?’ she said.
‘Lovely. Much appreciated. Are you Scottish?’
‘Not if you take your time. Speaking of glims, I don’t think we should use the d-word any more.’
‘The d-word?’ My mind was not entirely on what she was saying.
‘You know – what we’re in now; what happens when you’re asleep and you have rapid eye movement.’
‘Oh, you mean…’
‘Best not to say that word any more, it can make you wake up too soon. Let’s call this a glim, which is what it is, really: a glimpse of this and that. OK?’
‘Sometimes glim means lamp.’
‘Well, lamps throw light on things, don’t they. Anyhow, well done you, this is the first time you’ve done the glim and pulled me. I noticed that it took you a while. Was it hard for you?’
‘Piece of cake. I’ll probably get into it faster next time.’
‘That’s the ticket. I think I should tell you that Amaryllis is also the name of the family of herbs that belladonna belongs to – deadly nightshade.’
‘Is that a warning?’
‘Would a warning discourage you?’
‘No. If the going gets tough I can always throw up.’
‘You’re a stayer, that’s good.’
By now we’d gone far beyond the level of any ordinary upper deck; the spiral stairs we were on seemed to have no upper limit in this bamboo and paper tower; the bus moved silently ahead, and as we climbed the wind rippled the paper and our shadows rose and fell in the fluttering light of candles that swung in a bamboo chandelier. The candles and bamboo had a Christmas smell. So frail, that bus! I kept expecting it to fall over and burn.
‘Is there someone behind you?’ said Amaryllis.
I turned and looked, and there was Hastings trying to see around me so he could look up Amaryllis’s T-shirt. I put my foot in his face and shoved. He fell with a tremendous amount of thumping and bumping, and only then did I see that his fall had knocked four or five others off the stairs. The thumping and bumping continued for a long time, then there was silence.
‘You’re a take-charge guy, Peter,’ said Amaryllis. ‘I like that.’
‘Thanks, but when I pushed that bloke off the stairs he took quite a few others with him. I hope they weren’t hurt.’
‘Don’t worry about it – if they were here they were up to no good.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘From experience; I’ve gone this route before.’
‘What about the one right behind me? What was he doing here?’
‘Hey, remember whose glim this is. No knickers was your idea and so was Hastings.’
‘Oh, you know him, do you?’
‘We’ve gone out a few times.’
‘I’m surprised you didn’t pick him for a companion on your night journeys, or did he outlive his glimfulness so you moved on to me?’
‘I think the bus is stopping,’ she said. ‘You’re a good glimmer – I’ve never been able to do that. Let’s get off while we can.’ She came back down the stairs, putting a hand on my shoulder and sending waves of warmth down the whole length of me.
When we got off the bus it was very dim and foggy but I was able to make out the marquee of the Brass Hotel. There was nothing else in sight, nothing at all around it – just the Brass Hotel shining like a beacon. The doorman was a bull-necked Prussian sort; he looked like Erich von Stroheim. He tipped his brass hat to Amaryllis and said good evening while ignoring me. She returned his greeting and went to the reception desk. ‘Room 318,’ she said. Without a word the brassy woman gave her the key.
‘Do you come here often?’ I said.
She turned her face to me and there were tears in her eyes. ‘Please, Peter,’ she said very softly, ‘be kind.’ Several uncredited extras waited for the lift with us, and with them my uncle, Stanley Diggs, whom I hadn’t seen since I was a boy. He had the look of an unaccompanied husband. Where was Aunt Florence? I wondered. No one paid any attention to Amaryllis’s casual attire. We watched the indicator as the lift descended; the doors opened, more uncredited extras came out, and with them Lenore. She was wearing something black and slinky and she looked right through me and passed on without a word. I couldn’t believe I was seeing her. Right behind her came the old woman in her black-cat outfit. Raising her right hand, she made a circle with thumb and second finger and peeped at me through it, then shook her head and moved on.
‘What is this,’ I said, ‘old home week?’
‘What?’ said Amaryllis.
‘Sorry, I often mutter to myself’
‘You seem a million miles away,’ she said, ‘and I need you to be with me.’ She took my hand and leant against me. ‘I know all this seems strange to you but are we in it together?’
I was trying to pay attention but my mind was busy with Uncle Stanley and Lenore and the old woman. What were they doing at the Brass Hotel? I stole a glance at Uncle Stanley but he was studiously avoiding eye contact.
‘Are we?’ said Amaryllis.
‘Are we what?’
‘In it together?’
‘In what, Amaryllis? What is it that we’re in?’
‘Whatever it is. Do you always have to know what’s happening?’
I thought about that for a moment with the warmth of her pressing against me. ‘I guess not. And yes, we’re in it together.’ Who else is in it with us? I wondered.
‘This is such a nice one, Peter,’ she said, moving her face towards mine. I realised suddenly that she no longer looked like the thin and haggard dream self I had seen the first time; she now looked the same as in the unglim.
‘Nice what?’ I said.
‘What it is.’ She stopped my mouth with hers and kissed me as if her life depended on it. She tasted as I remembered: sunwarmed wild strawberries, the blue skies and the high kites of childhood.
When we left the lift at the third floor Uncle Stanley got out too. He still hadn’t given any sign of recognition which wasn’t surprising really – the last time he saw me I was still in short trousers. He was just behind us in the corridor and stopped at 317, the room next to ours.
In 318 the brass-coloured curtains and chair and bedspread had brass threads in the fabric. There was a brass TV, and on the brass walls were framed prints of brass doorknobs, locks, keys, and other brassmongery. The whole room leant towards me brazenly. The bed was brass but the mattress wasn’t. Amaryllis bounced on it a couple of times, then she said, ‘See if there’s anybody outside our door.’
I opened the door and looked out. I saw no one but the door of 317 clicked as it was closed from the inside. When I turned, Amaryllis’s T-shirt was coming off over her head. As I’d half-noted in the bus, there was surprisingly more to her than there was in clothes. As I got my things off I saw crumpled words on the T-shirt that lay on the floor. ‘What does it say?’ I said.
‘Unnatural practices yes,’ she murmured, and fitted her nakedness to mine. Through the brass walls from 317 came the sounds of laughter and rhythmical bedsprings.
14
Memory’s Arrow
Time’s arrow, we are told, is a one-way thing. I’ve certainly never found any way to roll it back so that I could change my actions and the consequences of them. Memory’s arrow, like the needle of a compass too close to a lodestone, spins in all directions. And lodestones are more frequent than pot-holes on the streets of Used-To-Be. Regret, some of them are called; Shame, Sorrow, and Stupidity: I have many to choose from. Some of the lodestones, of course, are called Pleasure or even Happiness but as Memory’s arrow spins it points more often in other directions.
This is a warning: bear in mind as you read my story that I am not an uninvolved author constructing a narrative; no, indeed. I’m in this not only up to my neck but over my head and I’m telling it my way. As people, when they become friends, take a little while to open up, so I too have some reserve, some reticence – in short, don’t expect me to spill my guts all at once. If you want to stay with me, fine; if not, go with God. Or whatever you go with when you go.