The Pregnant Widow

  “Dilkash? Listen. Have you read your letter yet?” Lily had a T-shirt over her head (its neck was snagged on a hairclip) and you could see her smothered lips saying, “But you didn’t even fuck Dilkash.”

  “Of course I didn’t.”

  “Well then. So you’re innocent of the worst thing. Sex once or twice and then not even a phone call. What does Nicholas say? Screwed and scrapped. Fucked and forgotten.”

  “… Of course I didn’t fuck Dilkash. Christ.” He lifted a hand to his brow. “The very idea. But I did—I did forget her. I did that part of it. I did do that.”

  “Well you needn’t look quite so stricken.”

  “It was Nicholas,” he said, “who introduced me to her. He had a holiday job at the Statesman and Dilkash was a temp. He said, Dilkash—so sweet. Come and meet Dilkash. She was in the—”

  “Why d’you think I want to hear about Dilkash? And after Dilkash we’ll have an hour on Doris and her pants. Tea or coffee? Are you coming down?”

  “In a while,” he said, and turned over, trying to ease the ache in his neck … Dilkash, Lily, was allowed to “meet” but she was forbidden to “mingle”—to be in public with a man who was not a relative. She was allowed to entertain me in her room, which she did most evenings (six thirty to nine) for almost two months. We feared no interruption, no, Lily, none, from her festively welcoming parents, the senior Khans, who watched TV and drank pop in the big sitting room upstairs. Anyway, at first, there was nothing to interrupt. We just sat and talked.

  You’re sad, she once said. You seem happy, but you’re sad.

  Do I? I had a—I had a confusing time with a girl. In the summer. She’s gone back up north. But I’m happy now.

  Are you? Good, then I’m happy too.

  Her older sister, bespectacled Perrin, sometimes knocked, Lily, and waited, and then looked in for a chat. But the one we had to watch out for was Pervez, her seven-year-old brother. Little Pervez, richly handsome, ever silent: he threw the door open, he came in and it was always a serious chore getting him out again; he would bunch himself up on the sofa with his arms tightly folded. Pervez hated me, Lily, and I hated him back; but it was impressive, Pervez’s frown, made redoubtable by his luxuriant eyebrows—the frown, the scowl (Keith would later think), of the rejectionist.

  There came a night—it was perhaps my twentieth visit … Her room was dark anyway, Lily (that sodden garden wall), and it darkened another shade as I reached out across a great distance and took her hand. For some time we sat there side by side, staring straight ahead, speechless, and full of emotion. And it was almost a deliverance when, without any warning at all, the door was wrenched open by Pervez.

  As she was seeing me out, Lily, and our hands again touched, I said,

  I could feel your heart beating.

  And she said, And I could feel yours.

  There was more, Lily. And this will be a good way of timing the night as it moves across Siberia. And Pakistan. There was not much more, Lily; but there was more.

  Now Keith climbed naked from the bed and resumed being happy. It was the day all boys love best. It was Saturday.

  3

  THE METAMORPHOSES

  Apart from the pitifully crippled clock on the wall above the open window, the castle kitchen, that morning, presented a scene of crystallised normality. Scheherazade with her vast bowl of cereal, Lily with her grapes and clementines, Gloria with her toast and marmalade. Until recently, Keith himself was starting the day with a cooked breakfast; but he feared the microbes in the gamey bacon, just as he feared H-bombs, ejaculatio praecox, revolution, dysentery, the man strolling in through the door with his knapsack on his back … As he leant into the fridge for a plain yoghurt, Scheherazade reached past him for the milk. There were no words or smiles or gestures, yet his eyes were somehow directed to the bottle of champagne half hidden by peaches and tomatoes on the lowest ledge.

  “Yesterday we swam the marathon,” she said. “Let’s have a lazy day today.”

  Scheherazade in nightdress and flip-flops. She filled her vast bowl yet again. The legs crossed, calf on shin; the innocence of the flip-flops. More constructive, at this stage, to think about the inner thighs, softer and moister than the outer … He left her there beneath the slow, creaking loop of the overhead fan. And we don’t quite trust the overhead fan, do we. Because it always seems to be unscrewing itself.

  Keith sat alone at the stone table, where he unexpectedly succeeded in getting through an hour’s worth of The Mill on the Floss: the adorable, the irresistible Maggie Tulliver was being led astray by the foppish Stephen Guest. Maggie’s reputation—and so her life—was about to be destroyed. The two of them were alone on a punt together, floating down the river on the current, floating down the Floss …

  So, he asked huskily, drawing deep on his Disque Bleu, how was it for you?

  And Dilkash said, It was … Of course, I was a bit frightened at first.

  Of course. Only natural.

  That’s true.

  More frightened or less frightened than you expected?

  Oh, less.

  You’re eighteen. You couldn’t postpone it for ever. The next time it won’t seem such a big thing.

  That’s true. The next time. And thank you for being so gentle.

  What they were talking about, these two, was Dilkash’s first kiss—her first kiss ever. He had just administered it. Keith didn’t take her by surprise. They discussed the whole question beforehand … Her lips were the same colour as her skin, with the transition marked only by the change in texture. These lips did not part, and neither did his, as he kissed the flesh-hued mouth in the mouth-hued face.

  The next time, he began—

  But then the door was yanked open—by the implacable Pervez, who came and stood over them, satanically handsome, with folded arms. And there was no second kiss. He stopped calling. He never saw her again.

  Now Keith sneezed, yawned, and stretched. The frogs and their gurgle of satisfaction. The ratcheting cicadas with their ratcheted question and answer, trying to stutter it out—always the same answer, always the same question.

  Where was your father posted?”

  The girls were foraging in the kitchen. After the Old Testament of breakfast, the Mahabharata of lunch. The clock, once in a blue moon, ticked. Or tocked. Or clocked. Or clicked, or clucked, or clacked. Gloria said,

  “Cairo before the war. Then Lisbon. Then Helsinki. Then Reykjavik. Iceland.”

  How to sum up this particular diplomatic career? Keith, who welcomed the distraction, was searching his lexicon for the opposite of meteoric. He said neutrally (from now on he would confine his remarks to the self-evident—commonplaces, tautologies), “Heading north. Do you remember Lisbon?”

  “I was an infant in Lisbon. I remember Helsinki,” she said, and gave a genuine shiver. “Colder than Iceland. Cairo’s the part he talks about. Mm. The royal wedding.”

  “What royal wedding?” said Scheherazade. “Who between?”

  Gloria sat back in her chair. She said contentedly (Jorquil, in contrast to Timmy, was already racing to her arms, Dover, Paris, Monaco, Florence), “King Farouk’s sister, Fawzia, and the future Shah of Iran. Very unpopular in both countries. Because they’re different sects. And Fawzia’s mother stormed off—something about the dowry. The party lasted five weeks.”

  Keith watched as Gloria lowered her head beneath the table; it soon reappeared (the straw bag), and she placed before him his corrugated copy of Pride and Prejudice.

  “Thanks. I enjoyed that. And it’s not about marrying for money. Who told me it was? Was it you, Scheherazade?”

  “No. It was me.”

  “You? And aren’t you supposed to be good at this kind of thing? Reading books? You’re quite wrong. Elizabeth turns Darcy down flat the first time, remember. And her father forbids her to marry him if it’s just because he’s rich—really near the end too. I was aghast.”

  Pride and Prejudice, Keith could have said, had bu
t a single flaw: the absence, towards the close, of a forty-page sex scene. But of course he kept quiet and only waited. Every ten minutes the clock on the dresser managed another arthritic jolt. Which, he supposed, was relativity. Scheherazade said,

  “Anyway, it’s a happy ending.”

  “Yes,” said Gloria.

  “Except for that slag who fucks the dragoon,” said Lily.

  He took his mug of coffee up on to the battlements. It was half past three.

  You can start coming to the office again, said Nicholas on the phone. Dilkash has packed up her biros and her stencils and has gone on her way. After a month of staring at the phone. Pining. Pining its little heart out for her Keith.

  Keith listened philosophically. This was just the sort of thing Nicholas liked best.

  Aching. Yearning. Eating its little heart out. Poor Dilkash. Boffed and betrayed by her Keith. Dorked and disdained by her Keith.

  … Oh sure. Come on. I told you.

  All right. Frenched and forsaken by her Keith. Snogged and set at nought by her Keith.

  Come on. Not even.

  All right. Pecked and repudiated by her Keith. Now you’ll have to answer to Pervez and all his cousins and uncles.

  … I loved her, but what was the point? Dilkash—so sweet …

  Keith stopped calling Dilkash, without explanation. He couldn’t find them—words both true and kind. Or not untrue and not unkind. So he stopped calling Dilkash. As they exchanged goodbyes, on the night of the kiss, she said, Well I’m glad it happened with someone nice. And that he wouldn’t ever forget. But even then he thought—Dilkash, oh no, no, you’ll have to find someone much, much nicer than me. To take you all the way to the modern. Imagine. Holding hands—with your heart climbing into your throat. The touch of lips on lips—and the cosmos wheeling on its axle-tree. Is it time, Dilkash, to move on to the next stage?

  No, I can’t be doing with these religious chicks, he told Nicholas on the phone. And before Dilkash I had that weird time with Pansy. Christ, I haven’t got it wet since the summer. You’ve seen how pale I am. Listen. This new chick has just moved into the flat, and I’m taking her out to dinner tonight. A single glance at her and you think, Yeah. She knows what the hell it’s all about. Little Doris.

  … Keith stood on the battlements, stiffly nodding his head yes, and then loosely shaking his head no. Yes, he stopped calling Dilkash, and no, he didn’t write. He left her staring at the phone, and wondering what was wrong with it—her first kiss. And that wasn’t very nice.

  Someone nice. Keith was nicer then than he was now, unquestionably. How nice would he be in September?

  So with all that out of the way (it was now a quarter to four), he went down to the pool and immersed himself unreservedly in the near-naked beauty of the wanted one—the every-inch beauty of the wanted one … Keith had long ago, oh, long, long ago worked out the best place to sit: behind Lily, and in some neglected and rundown corner of Scheherazade’s vision (and unmonitored, incidentally, by Gloria, who, with a spry yet censorious flourish, always turned and faced the other way).

  The feminine body seemed to be made of pairs. The hair with its parting, even the forehead and its two hemispheres; then eyes, nostrils, septum, lips, the chin with its dividing indentation, the doubled cords and hollows of the throat; then matching shoulders, breasts, arms, hips, labia, buttocks, thighs, knees, calves. Only the navel, then, was mono-form. And men were the same, except for the central anomaly. Men had all the same dittoes, but also this central question mark. A question mark that sometimes became an exclamation point; and then went back to being a question mark.

  Which reminded him. There was a good case for half an hour of vigorous incest: it might make Lily sleep so much the sounder. On the other hand, the business of detaching her from the group brought with it the danger of indelicacy—and he couldn’t have that. So he thought, Ah, fuck, I’ll just have a handjob. And he laconically took his leave.

  At six o’clock he climbed out of a hot bath, did ten press-ups, and stepped into a cold shower. He shaved, and brushed his teeth and tongue. He clipped and filed his nails, upper and nether. Maintaining a stern expression, he blow-dried and—with formidably steady fingers—tonged his pubic hair. He dressed in jeans still warm from the tumble drier, and a fresh white shirt. He was ready.

  There is an evening coming in, One never seen before … By six forty-five Keith was bent over the salon drinks table, where he smoothly sprinkled the pre-atomised Azium into Lily’s prosecco … Of course, he had lectured himself about not staring or even glancing at Scheherazade until later on, so he avoided her face (with a puzzling sense that there was something wrong with it—some evanescent blemish) and merely scanned the outward mould and form, the presentation: black velvet slippers, white dress (mid-thigh) with a loose cloth belt, no brassiere of course, and he could see the hip-high outline of what would almost certainly turn out to be her coolest … But it was different now. This was the birthday present (farcically undeserved) which he would soon unwrap, and these clothes were just packaging: it would all be coming off. Yes, the reptilian condition was upon him. There was only one possible future.

  And he acceded to it. Tonight, he said to himself, I will relieve, I will soothe and salve the desperation of Scheherazade—I will give Scheherazade hope! I am the Rain God, and this is now to be.

  At seven twenty, after a soundless approach, a man strolled in through the door with his knapsack on his back.

  Keith had the coronary anyway. But it was only Whittaker, with the heavy mail.

  “I am here,” he said, “and I bring the world.”

  They were in the dining room, now, and Keith’s watch already said seven thirty. This was surprising. In fact, something entirely new seemed to be the matter with time. He glanced again at his wrist. It was twenty to eight. The barbed second hand scurried across the dial like a fleeing insect; even the minute hand looked to be making resolute headway; and, yes, the hour hand itself was perceptibly towing itself northward, heading for night.

  “I’m like Atlas,” said Whittaker, in his fawn scarf, his horn-rims. “Or maybe I’ll settle for Frankie Avalon. I have the whole world in my hands.”

  The world. And there it was, the mailbag, the convict-woven burlap of the mailbag. And all the Lifes and Times, the Spectators, the Listeners, the Encounters …

  Keith eyed it, the world. The world was all very well, the world was all very fine and large, but what did it want with the castle in Campania, with Keith and Scheherazade? On top of this, Lily now handed him a thick brown packet, saying,

  “For you.”

  And while he attended to his local concerns (the staples, the cardboard zipper), they all started reading about it—about the planet earth … In retrospect, so long as you weren’t Charles de Gaulle or Gypsy Rose Lee or Jimi Hendrix or Paul Celan or Janis Joplin or E. M. Forster or Vera Brittain or Bertrand Russell, 1970 was a fairly mild year—so long as you weren’t Cambodian, or Peruvian, or Rhodesian, or Biafran, or Ugandan …

  “Mm,” said Gloria, who sat with her spiked crown inclined over a Herald Tribune. “They’ve passed the Equal Pay Act. But it won’t come in for years. girls’ pay.”

  Whittaker said, “Nixon’s telling us it’s now or never with the environment. America must—I quote—pay its debt to the past by reclaiming the purity of its air, its waters. And then he goes and dumps sixty tons of nerve gas off the coast of Florida.”

  “And the pitiful helpless giant is expanding the war,” said Scheherazade quietly. “Why?”

  “And the PLO are claiming they killed the seven Jews in the old folks’ home in Munich.”

  “There. They’ve banned cigarette ads,” said Lily. “What d’you say to that?”

  She meant Keith, who was of course smoking. But he wasn’t talking. He had so far said nothing at all, not a syllable, not a phoneme. He was surer than ever about the sanctity of his vow of silence. But he had some shop to get through, now, and he said, with a parched ras
p that turned every head,

  “The date might be awkward.” And he explained.

  Although he was yet to start his third year at university, Keith (rather unattractively, some may feel) had written to the Literary Supplement earlier in the summer and asked to be given a book to review—on trial. As a consequence, he had before him a heap of grey fluff and a loaf-sized monograph called Antinomianism in D. H. Lawrence by Marvin M. Meadowbrook (Rhode Island University Press). The stipulated length was a thousand words and the deadline was four days away. Lily said,

  “Ring them up and tell them it’s impossible.”

  “I can’t do that. You’ve got to try. You’ve got to at least try.”

  “A mere student,” said Gloria, “and already you’re trolling for work. Oh, very ambitious.”

  “That’s what we’re all meant to be, isn’t it?” said Scheherazade, as she stood and then entered the long corridor.

  Keith looked up. Scheherazade entered the long corridor, which was aflame with sunset. The heavens themselves colluded with him, and he saw the last wake of light, cruciform, and burning through the cusp and join of her thighs and arse. And you could see the outward pressure of her tits, too, even from behind. Lily said,

  “Do you know what uh, antinomianism means?”

  “What? No. But I will when I’ve … when I’ve read eight hundred pages on it.”

  Lily’s nostrils encouragingly broadened, and her gripped jaw gave a shudder. She said, as if leadenly working her way through a list, “You’ve read all the Italy stuff. And the poems. What else’ve you read?”

  “Lawrence? Let me think … I read a third of Sons and Lovers. And the bit that says cunt in Lady Chatterley.”

  “Tsuh,” said Gloria.

  “… Say tsuh again, Gloria. Go on. It’s like the tick of a watch. And I’m not swearing. That was just a quote from a pioneering writer.”