One assumes (if one must resort to ordered sanity) a complete knowledge in the reader, I repeat; and simply supplies a few twirls and flourishes—a cadenza in green—to ensure one’s personal fame. All diaries have been written for an audience. For the sake of posterity then, let me add a flower or two to Gracie’s public posy. Let me supply a few knobs, in all admitted vanity—which is humility.
There is the business of Clare, who, like Blake’s stranger, came and took her with a sigh. Knowing Clare, I can imagine pretty well the form that seduction took. Gin the foundation, romance the actual rubble, and a fine tight cement of flattery and tinsel. How often have I seen the same dreary hook baited for the sentimental miss. Poor fellow, he was unhappy. He was misunderstood. There had been a great tragedy in his life—the expression of which was intensified by the gin and balloons. He would not openly talk about it, even when pressed; but as Gracie once said, “You could see it writ all over him!” Oil say! Under his carefree jazzing, his glittering façade of smile and insinuation, you could see vague hints of this secret misery: like patches of damp on an otherwise white ceiling. Poor Clare! It was love that had done this thing to him. The hang of his blue-black head proclaimed it. Singing as he leaned over his partner, the tears would come into his eyes at the stark pathos of the words, the curdy weeping of the saxophones. “Love,” he sang softly, caressingly, “Love” (with a four-beat rest) “brings out the gipsy in me.” Everything pivoted about love. And Gracie (this is the suburban princess, remember) danced, staring away over his shoulder like a blind cat, knowing only that her breathing was quickened by the pressure of his hand on her backbone.
Sometimes in the spot dances he cupped her breast in his hand and pulled it with sentimental melancholia. The implication being that his own private tragedy made him a trifle abstracted—a remotely romantic playfellow on the lines of Jacques. For Clare even motley was ever so faintly tinged with a fetching misery. A modish melancholy was his evening wear. Gracie was enslaved and enchanted. Several times, a little tipsy after the ball, she allowed Clare to savage her (with sentiment—how else?) in the taxi which my bounty had provided. But all this was mild stuff: a routine performance that everyone expected of him in taxis. She experienced it sedately in the character of almost-a-wife, or married-but-not-churched. It was when he demanded slightly more that the vaguer mists dispersed and left her face to face with the spurious reality which they had manufactured. Here was lerv, after all. And to Gracie Love was the largest and most violent flower of Romance.
Clare, you see, felt after a bit that Gracie ought, by rights, to fall in love with him. It was his trade, was it not? And he ought to fall just a little in love with her—enough to reach the bedroom. This is what produced the mangy pantomime in which the part allotted to me was that of Sir Jasper Maltravers, Bart., who held the mortgage on Grace’s little property. My snarls were supposed to echo among their honeyings. It helped Clare no end to have a bona-fide villain for the piece, to set off his own gasconading flourishes. Unfortunately when the time came … but I anticipate.
On the question of loyalties Gracie was fairly strong. It would be unfair to take my money and forsake me for Clare. “Nao, nao. Play the game, I says to myself. Play the game. Gregory’s been a chum to you, I says, and don’t forget it.” This was nice of her. It was just this self-conscious pinch of honour that complicated the machinery of love enough to make the whole show interesting. When Clare beat the window ledge of the taxi with his fist and snarled that he could not do without her another second, she felt a little numbly afraid. Perhaps (she hardly dared to think it) he might do something rash. He might do himself in. And Clare, thoroughly piqued, worked himself up into a rage and began to be scathing. She was gutless, that’s what she was. She didn’t love him enough. Or did she? Then why wasn’t she prepared to forsake all for love? Wasting her life on a little shrimp like Gregory, with no more romance to him than a bulldog … etc. etc. Grace was very miserable. They comforted each other after these outbursts and she began to think that she must really be in love with him. They tried every recipe in the cookery book of emotion. One week Clare would grow a little morsel of honour on his own property, and swear that she must remain true to me, and not give their love another thought. And Grace, mutely nodding her head, would squeeze a few loyal tears from her eyes with difficulty and enjoyment. They emoted frequently together, these little fictions adding a real spice to it all.
On the Saturday night in question Clare, very drunk, was more importunate, more fetching, more melancholy, more honourable, and more tragic than he had ever been before. He was furious with Gracie. The fact was that he had met a brewer’s daughter in the Paul Jones who had invited him to her Brighton villa for the weekend. Now if it had not been for the spurious love between him and Gracie he could have accepted: just popped his partner into the taxi and said good night. Gracie would have jogged home, while he could have taken the wheel of the sports car beside his little financial corner in Pale Ale. It was this Homeric LOVE that mucked everything up. Forced to accompany his Juliet home he was furious. Gracie must pay the damages. Accordingly he raised hell in the taxi and sent the mercury climbing. Grace was persuaded that they could neither of them live another day without crowning their passion. It became imperative to hand me my little piece of suffering.
I was sitting by the fire when Grace came in, tears in her eyes, sniffing mildly. Instinct kept me silent. I pretended to notice nothing. Sitting down in the chair opposite me she said, in a small, creaky voice: “I love ’im, Gregory. Ooo I love ’im.” If her eyes had been less alarmingly blind I might have laughed. Closing Gibbon demurely I switched off the wireless and asked for details, with the familiar sensation of freezing along my abdomen. It was no joke playing a part in Clare’s idiotic masque, I realized. So fair and foul a day I have not seen. She told the tale sadly enough. It was when she said, “He says I must go to ’im tonight or it’s finish to us,” that I became alarmed. Here was my cue. I could see what was expected of me. Either rage—I could kick her out—or calm husbandly understand. “If you think you love this man, Emily, I shall not stand in your way, but pray to God that this passing infatuation will pass and you be restored to me whole …”
Actually I said casually, “Do you want to go?” She didn’t really. She only wanted to imagine herself going. Ah! How good to break the tedium of domesticity with a few rows, scares, alarms. Yet my pride demanded an immediate vote of confidence. Silly, but perhaps pardonable. As for Grace, as you know, she was just Plasticine. I could have convinced her in half a minute of the false position she was in. She was simply waiting to see which was the stronger force, ready to be carried away by it. Numb as usual, and a little pleased that for once the elements had decided to break over her head. It was, she felt, in some curious, inexplicable way, tragic.…
Everything would have been perfect if it had not been for my pride. That half-second’s pause after I asked whether she really wanted to go was enough to outrage the professional husband in me. I knew of course that she hesitated simply because she did not know whether she wanted to go or not. She would never know. But to hang fire on a point like that … Obtusely I said, “Well you must go, of course, if that is the state of affairs.” This, you see, begins my perverse business of torturing myself. “Go on. Change your clothes and run along.” (Why did she not protest?) She sat there with her toes turned in and said nothing. I fiddled in a ladylike way with the fire to restore my nerve. Repeated, “Go on, Grace.” It was a delicious sensation, like standing on the edge of a cliff. Would she, after all, go? By God, she would pay for it if she did! “Get on with it,” I shouted angrily. “Hurry up and change.”
She got up slowly and sniffed her way into the bedroom, a little surprised, I imagine, that things were not turning out as she planned. She must have had a queer sensation of losing control over events. Here was Gregory, after all, acting right out of character. He was neither the jealous husband nor the understanding domestic pal. What was he?
She changed into my kimono with the parrots on it and returned to find me sitting in front of the fire, deep in Gibbon. I had taken the opportunity of putting on my skullcap. That, at any rate, gave me a superior monastic mien which always worried her a little; and whenever nervousness over a domestic or foreign crisis seized me, I immediately donned, as they say, my little skullcap. It gave me a sort of fancy-dress confidence in myself.
“Well,” I says to her I says with hearty monastic exuberance, “you’re ready, then?”
“Gregory,” she said suddenly, “it wouldn’t be fair of me. It wouldn’t be playing the gaime.”
I pooh-poohed this vigorously. “Fair, my dear Grace, what are you talking about?” Getting up I took her arm in order to call her bluff once and for all. I felt a little sick. We walked slowly to the front door of the flat together. She was puzzled by now—and a little afraid. Her arms were cold under the garish sleeves of my kimono. She hung back slightly, hoping I would prevent her from going at the last moment. Really, she began to realize that she didn’t want to go one little bit by now. At the door I released her arm and said: “Quietly, now. Don’t let Morgan or Charles see you, or we’ll have rumours. Good night.” I pushed her gently out, shut the door on her, and switched off the light. Outside the coloured panel of glass I could see her still standing, staring in at me, puzzled, unwilling to go. Then, hugging her cold hands in her armpits, she turned and vanished.
Gone! For a second I was so surprised that I could hardly believe it. She had actually gone. And in my kimono, too—the final cruel touch! Then I was in such a sudden panic and rage that I could have done anything. The names I called her! Enumerating all those sterling qualities in myself that she had spat upon by this outrageous act, I returned to the drawing room and poured myself out a stiff brandy. Someone must be made to pay for all this! Someone must pay! O.K. I sat down to the piano and begun to murder Beethoven.
That night Tarquin called. He had been sitting in the lounge reading the Criterion and waiting for Clare to get to bed safely. He wanted to know why they were so late. Had they got back yet? I told him bitterly, “No.” For a second I was profoundly shy; and then, rallying, I told him, “Yes,” with details. It was his turn to be profoundly shy. His distress accounted for a decanter of brandy. So abject he was, so miserable and hopeless, that I almost began to bless the event which was the cause of it all.
“It’s not that I’m jealous,” he said in one of his rambling attempts to excuse himself. “It isn’t that at all, as you know. Dammit, I’m not a greengrocer. I’ve read Petronius and I agree with every word. One must be free, don’t you think? Yes, I’ll take a small one. No—WOA! Don’t fill it up like that. Where was I? Yes, freedom. I don’t grudge him love, Gregory. I’m as modern as you are. I mean we’re not greengrocers, are we? We’ve read Petronius and we agree with every word. He must be free. It’s his spiritual love I want. Try and understand, Gregory, try and understand. You are so self-contained, you don’t feel these things. I’m more mystical. Try and imagine my loneliness. Since Mother’s death I’ve needed to be looked after. I’ve needed care. I want to be spiritually cherished, that’s it. Spiritually cherished. If only that bloody little gigolo would confide in me …”
(Think of Ion among the deep-water statuary, the hotels of the Greek waters, in the latitude of myth, dabbled by the delicate noses of fishes.) I say to myself, I do not care. I do not care. Let the liners go nosing southward, cutting her in slices. “O God, hear my prayer,” says Tarquin in private. “O Lord, hear my despair. O Lord …” He vomits green like a horse. The piano is playing. The books wink on the wall. Ion is a vase with many dancers. The myth precipitated in milky chalk at the bottom of a beaker. This is the isolation of hemlock. Ion! Ion! I am losing the thread.…
The rest you know.
Here Gregory ends.
Shadows in ink. The hotel with its blue shadows in snow. The convalescent blue of phthisis. Brother, I’ll be that strange composed fellow. In the darkness they hang out Japanese lanterns for the festivals. In the pandemonium of the ballroom the bunting sliding the floor in a long swoon of colour. Antiques gyrating forever, pictured by the mirrors in their gilt scrolls. The jazz band plugging away in the din; and in the barrage of drunkenness our hearts ticking over, squashed upon each other’s in pain. Darkness cut and blanched by the trembling spotlights, seeking the winners. You with the silver mouth and devil’s eyeteeth I could rive; press my arm into the arch of the backbone until the lean breastless body thawed and melted, pouring over me in a wave, like lighted oil on water. I locate this night dimly as the one where Lobo sat out in the rainy gardens, under a striped awning, making Miss Venable weep. Onward. Onward.
It is so silent here at night. This tomb of masonry hems us in, drives us in on ourselves. Ourselves! I am getting a little like Gregory, rolling the heavy chainshot of the ego about with him, prisoner. Here in these metal provinces, we are like dead cats bricked in the Wall of China. The winds turn aside from us in the dead land, the barren latitudes. I tell you the trams plough their furrows every day, but nothing springs from them. The blind men walk two by two at Catford.
Overhead in the darkness the noiseless rain is shining down over the counties. The pavements are thawing back to black asphalt. In this room the madness has set in, goading Lobo to finish the chart. Delicate, the dark gigolo clare treads the mushy street, cloaked and hatted, to a dancing engagement. The heavy signature of the mist glazes the dumb domes of the Crystal Palace: the final assured vulgar mark of Ruskin’s world on history. In Peru they hurry to early mass. The streets are baked. The peasants stand with their lice and sores and almonds in the church doorways. And his girl—ah! his hot little Latin world of little black men. If for a second he could reach her across the chart, across the bottle of ink, across the cockatoo on his pencil-box cigarettes, shopgirls, frost, wind, tram-lines, England—if he could only seize her and escape …
Black Latin Whore! We, sentimental, send our desires to you across the sea like many furling gulls. But after Dover imagination fails. The gulls waver, tremble, fall, are sponged out by the mists.…
In the saloon bar, Connie, the brewer’s widow, awaits Clare. (One of her frilled garters hangs over Lobo’s bed—a gravely humorous present from one libertine to another.)
Connie possesses thighs like milk churns. Her mouth is an old comb full of many sawn-off teeth. Her laughter sets the froth dancing in her moustache. Dancing with Clare she sweats like a sentimental seal under the armpits, pants, moans, a little sentimental when the word love arrives in the tunes. Offer her a beer and she will sit up and bark like a sea lion. You could balance a glass on her nose as she sits there militarily, her behind overlapping the swivel stool. She sits down on her vulva. Watch her now. So. The circular head of the bar stool is applied to her bottom, penetrates the soft swathes of blubber, disappears. Infinite subterranean shuffling. One imagines the warm endless penetration of the padded stool in her viscera. “Jesus, she’s well sprung,” says Perez. Then the springs tighten. Giggling, she is sitting up there on her own neck. Her eyebrows perform gigantic arcs across the night. She is gay ha ha. The tank is full of ha ha. She loves the warm herded smell of males in the saloon, wet overcoats and whiskers, rich smell of steam and underclothes and armpits. She has been married twice. Bar-room gallantries. “Oh, do ’ave another glass of beer, miss.” And the shrill draughts of piss from the urinal which comes in at the swing doors. Men, men, men—how she loves the warm smell of herded males! She could take a man in each arm and slobber on him with that wet mouth of hers. She could slip a thick finger in their flies and tickle them. But Clare? He excites that superficial side of her which wants Romance. Oh! the sleek lateral waves in his hair. Oh! the delicate Levantine manners (how painfully acquired by post and study). Clare sucks little purple cachous that his breath, when he blows it on her, may be nothing less than royal honeydew. All the perfumes of Arabia cannot rinse the gin from it, however. He dances gravely with her, lea
ning on her whizzing exuberant tits with a sort of locomotive paralysis. Thumping, her great thighs propel them. Vast effort, as if they were dancing under water: spurning the floor, the walls, the band, the rotating glass dome which shivers splinters of prismatic light across the dancers. Gin brings out the pussy in her. Gin, and Clare’s hoarse crooning. He knows the words to all the tunes. His hand is palm outward on her spine, a genteel Edwardianism.
Connie’s eyes are glazed. For the last hour or so she has been diminishing, become steadily more diminutive and pussycat. In the interval, downing her beer, she has become a child of twelve again. “Hair down to here,” she yelps, striking her arse, “but me mother took it all off. The dirty old sow.” Dancing again, her intimacies are outrageous—even here. She has shrunk up on his breast like a wee girl now, like a bird nestling on his necktie. She peeks up at him with a panting smile, her little lascivious bud of lips pursed up. She can feel it stirring down there, like a live thing. The tight rod he has in his trousers now. She is diminishing, melting down, thawing. Ah! she is such a thumping, swollen, fourteen-stone, weeny little thing!
In the lobby she puts her hand on him. “You’ve got it,” she says nervously, as if he might be playing a trick on her. There might be nothing in there. “You’ve got it, haven’t you, ducky? Oo I can’t wait.”
Afterwards he will have to take her home and undress her, layer by layer. She will lie, like the Indian Ocean waiting for him—one vast anticipating grin, above and below!
Shadows in ink, and the strange composure of syllables. The quilt lies heavier on my bones than any six-foot earth. I am living out hours which no chronology allows for. Which no clock marks. If I say I love you I am using an idiom too soiled to express this cataclysm of nerves, this cataract of white flesh and gristle which opens new eyes inside me. I am opened suddenly like the valve of a flower, sticky, priapic: the snowdrop or the anemone brushing the warm flanks of Lesbos. A daemonic pansy opening to the sun, stifled in its own pollen. The delicate shoots are growing from my throat. From the exquisite pores of the membrane the soft vagina of the rose, with the torpedo hanging in it. The furred lisping torpedo of the bee. O God.