“So she barbers it.”
“Trims it.”
Correct, Scheherazade. The triangle is isosceles in shape. Unlike your undesigning equilateral (I assume)—or yours, Lily.
“A loincloth? But it’s not the front, is it.”
“No, it’s not the front. It’s the back. Billowing out of it like that.”
“It’s hardly more than a glorified wedgie, is it. The back. I know. A fig leaf.”
“A tailored fig leaf.”
“Yes. A very expensive fig leaf. A fig leaf is what it is.”
Correct, Lily. Who was it who said, And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked? That was in Eden, after the Fall; you didn’t need a fig leaf until after the Fall. And consider another observation (made two thousand years later): I never yet touched a fig leaf that didn’t turn into a price tag. Correct, Lily. That’s all correct.
Grazia, Adriano’s latest (and last), who was five foot ten, was blowing iridescent bubbles at him as he sprawled on his lounger, her mouth a thick pout behind the soapy monocle. Lily said,
“I see what you mean about Gloria’s tits.”
“Mm. She makes me feel sort of clumsy … Anyway, her arse is still enormous.”
“Mm. It’s still a farcical arse.”
And now Timmy was here. Timmy arrived, not on foot, but in a brace of taxis. And not with a knapsack on his back. He had with him an extended dynasty of monogrammed leather suitcases, plus his cello. His cello, like an encoffined Ruaa, with vast brood-bearing hips.
But it was a good entrance—Timmy’s. Long, slender, loose, vague, and somehow limply stylish—like a doodle from a talented hand …
Brrr. Mmm,” said Scheherazade, settling herself on the sofa. “Lovely fire.”
“Lovely fire,” said Keith.
Ah yes: Scheherazade. He bestirred himself. Sitting there before the flames with his wine glass, Keith gave up trying to parse his altered state. He gave that up, and went back to doing what he did when he had nothing better to do (a now-frequent state of affairs): he was cherishing the thirteen hours. The thirteen hours comprised his secret. Nothing much, in scale, compared to Gloria’s double life or parallel universe. How was it for her? The secret, as a distinguished student of the mind once put it, produces an immense enlargement. The secret offers, so to speak, the possibility of a second world alongside the manifest world. Keith said to Scheherazade,
“You know, in Dickens, when the good characters look in the fire, they see the faces of their loved ones. And the bad characters, they just see hell and doom.”
“What do you see?”
Keith swung his neck around, all the way, like Adriano in the Rolls Royce. Strangely, he and Scheherazade were in the room’s still centre: all were otherwise engaged, with the senior ladies away to one side, and Jorq and Timmy presiding over a noisy school of cards (a game called Loo, with much betting, raising, doubling, scooping).
“Neither,” he answered. “Something in between. Look, I’m sorry about what I said the other night. But don’t despise me for ever for it. I didn’t know you were religious.”
“I’m not.” And she too turned to see. The turret of her neck, the pink shirt, the tea-brown cardigan. “I’m not religious. I mean, I believe, in a way. But that’s all. I’m not like Timmy … And I don’t despise you. It’s me. It’s just me.”
Keith inclined his head.
“I discovered something about myself. I couldn’t—I couldn’t do it. All right, on holiday, a moment, an impulse. Maybe. But not with … premeditation. Bit feeble, isn’t it. But it seems I’m not the type.”
“There has to be love.”
“It goes beyond that. I’m just stuck. I think it’s to do with Dad dying when he did. I’m just stuck with what I’ve got.”
“And what do you see when you look in the fire?”
“It’s true. I sometimes see my father’s face.”
“Mm,” he said. Last month, last week, he would have been moved and honoured by such a confidence—from those lips, under those eyes and that level brow. Now he thought, So you’re not the type: well you should’ve done some premeditation about that. “It makes sense, I suppose.”
“It’s best, I think. Even if it means I’ll miss out on all the fun. Maybe when I’m more grown up I’ll be braver.”
This made his eyes widen; but he also had an unfamiliar, commissarial impulse, something like—Scheherazade, you belong to the old regime. You are not equipped for what is now to be. “Well, Timmy’s here. And I’ve got no complaints.”
“Good. Fine.”
Adriano and Conchita, like a little married couple, came to warm themselves, and for a moment there was silence.
What did Keith see when he looked in the fire? Fire, he thought, was the amorous element, neurotic, corrosive, devouring. Fire was the amorous element; and a fire of logs was an orgy—throw on another one and watch all the snakes, all the copperheads, as they arch and veer; then they came in over it, under it, round the back of it, with lips and fingertips, and spitting and licking with their serpent tongues.
Conchita was saying, “What’s Italian for fire?”
“Fuoco, incendio,” said Adriano, who, these days, wore a haggard look. “Inferno.”
And Keith sat on with his wine and his fire and his secret.
Gloria Beautyman was out of occultation—bodily, anyway.
Her fig leaf, down at the pool (there were in fact several fig leaves, silver, gold, pale platinum), introduced an erotic emphasis not yet explored by Scheherazade or by Lily or by Feliciana/Rachele/Claudia/Pia/Nerissa/Consolata/Grazia. This was looseness. As if the elastic of the waistband had been deliberately distressed. When she showered, under the hut’s eave, you felt that any second the flimsy sliver—the airy nothing—must surely slip to the floor. All you needed to do was stay around long enough. And when she dived, if you clambered to your feet in time, you could see it down there under the slippery fathom, the great wet whiteness, and then her hands reached back and tugged.
Jorquil would come staggering down in his crofter’s kit and cheer her on from the shadows (he himself never disrobed: after five minutes in the sun his face went the colour of an inner tube). And there was Timmy, suavely shoulderless, unconcernedly engrossed in his pamphlets and brochures (hunting, Pentecostalism). And there was Adriano, now unaccompanied (and somehow doubly solitary, as he applied himself to his new discipline: yoga). More unexpected was the steady presence of white-shirted, umber-skinned Amen. His dark glasses stared at you in the light.
Stared, occasionally perhaps, at Keith’s dark glasses: he had got hold of a spare pair of Lily’s, so he could contemplate—without inhibition and without blinking—the navel of Gloria Beautyman. This was the latest thing: Beautyman’s abdomen. It wasn’t concave, like Scheherazade’s, or a smooth continuation, like Lily’s. It was the central panel of Gloria’s design, a luxurious protuberance. The omphalos, as poets called it, representing the centre of the earth, like the soft swell of the Mediterranean Sea.
There was also a qualitative distinction in her. Gloria’s body was completed, entire, the final version. It was her colouring, he thought. Whereas with Lily, and even with Scheherazade, there was something feverish and unstable and open to change. Sudden blotches, alarums. What they were still in, she was already out of. Or was this just the candour of blondes?
And it was all perfectly manageable. For an hour or so he took pictures with his photographic memory, then it was up to the castle—with the omphalos alive in his head. There followed ninety seconds of practical narcissism, behind closed eyes. Which seemed to solve everything. Wanting Gloria wasn’t like wanting Scheherazade, in the old days: it came and went, but it didn’t accumulate. Love (he knew) made the world expand; this (whatever it was) reduced the world to a single point. The physical act with Gloria had produced nothing more than a primitive desire to repeat it. A desire more or less exactly balanced by a primitive fear.
The navel
, that shadowy hollow, was the site of Gloria’s last connection to her mother. It also marked the area, of course, where her own children would one day grow.
“Now how did you get wind of the maid’s room? … That’s where you were going to go with Scheherazade, wasn’t it. Until she lost her nerve.”
Gloria, poolside, was packing up her straw bag. All the others were climbing the garden path, in Indian file. She spoke unsmilingly, uncollusively. She said,
“Yes, I followed your blunderings with Scheherazade. I’m curious. What was this Dracula business?”
“She told you?”
“She just said she was worried about vampire bats, now, because you pretended to be Dracula. One night. Describe.”
He told her something about it. She stood up, shouldering her bag with a rustle, and he came on behind.
“You see, Keith, that’s why old-fashioned girls like the idea of ravishment. Not the reality, the idea. Because if they want to, and then enjoy it, it’s not their fault.”
“It’s not their fault?”
“No. It’s Bela Lugosi’s or Christopher Lee’s. Typical Scheherazade. So Dracula missed his chance,” said Gloria, “to suck her blood. And that’s a terrible shame.”
“I’ve got no complaints. You were wonderful … A shame why?”
“A terrible shame.” She paused on the slope and turned to him with quiet earnestness. “That thing boys do with girls with big tits. Huh-hm. When they fuck the tits.”
“… Do they?”
“Ooh, I bet they do. You know, I can manage that if I squeeze them together. Though of course you’d have to watch out for my cross.”
Keith waited for a voice to instruct him. None came, but he said, “You could show me. In the maid’s room. When Jorq goes for one of his drives.”
“I’ve reconnoitred the maid’s room. Await my instructions. Quiet now.”
“You know, Gloria, you’re old-fashioned. Futuristic, too, but old-fashioned. Living off men. You could be a great dancer.”
“… Now you’ve read a lot of books, but do you know Little Pink Ballerina? Little Pink Ballerina prays to be able to whirl, twirl, and leap, like a fairy princess, graceful as a feather floating through the air. I’ll never be a dancer. My arse is too big. I just can’t get it all in a tutu. Quiet now.”
“Or a painter. Your drawing’s phenomenal.”
“There’s something—unclean about drawing. Quiet now.”
“You’ve got a secret. Isn’t that true?”
She paused. “… Lily told me she hates dancing. She hates it when she has to dance. What does that tell you about her nature?”
“I don’t know. What?”
“Well. I’m sure your sex life was in need of some gingering up. But I’ve noticed that Lily has an ill-used look about her in the mornings. Don’t take her out of her nature. Don’t do that. Quiet now.”
He stayed and let her move ahead. So he could watch her go: two different women joined at the waist.
Flowers: Lily didn’t know a lot about many of them, but she did know a lot about some. And she said you could tell that autumn had come to Italy—when the cyclamens bloomed in the shade. Having none of the frankness of the primrose (its second cousin), the cyclamen hid its stigma in purple folds. Garden wisdom—in the shape of Eugenio—maintained that the wild swine loved the cyclamen for the acridity of its roots. The flower’s scent was chilled: an icy fragrance. It smelled of all the seasons, but the autumn was its time.
“The summer’s going,” said Lily. “You can feel it in the air.”
Yes. The aftermath of autumn. The silence of September.
They walked on.
•
Now Lily was packing. Having sketched it out, in note form, she had begun her first draft. She folded T-shirts, folded T-shirts …
“I’ve worked it out,” he said.
“Worked what out?”
“Timmy’s a ninny. The count’s a cunt. And Jorq’s a joke.”
“And Keith’s a kid,” she said (uncharacteristically, he felt). “And a kook.”
“Yeah. By your lights, Lily, you’re the only person here who’s not insane. Of our age. Adriano’s nuts, understandably enough, and everyone else’s religious. Or not an atheist. To you that qualifies as nuts.”
“Whittaker’s not nuts.”
This was all she’d say … Packing, Keith thought, was Lily’s art form. In fact it was the only art form that she didn’t privately disapprove of. Her finished suitcase was a finished jigsaw; she brought the same precision to bear on a picnic basket; even her beach bag looked like a Japanese garden. This was her nature.
“Autumn’s here, Lily. Time to get back to some real people.”
“Who’re they?”
“Ordinary people.” Yes. Ordinary people like Kenrik and Rita and Dilkash and Pansy. Ordinary people like Violet. “Normal.”
“Why aren’t you normal any more? Your new stunts. The dressing-up and pretending.”
“But normal’s changing, Lily. Soon all that will be normal. In the future,” he said (he was actually plagiarising Gloria), “sex will be play, Lily. A play of surfaces and sensations. Anyway. Summer’s over. The project’s over.”
“And have you read it at last?”
“What?”
“The English novel. You didn’t give Hardy much of a go. Though of course you liked that slag in Jude.”
“Arabella. A mere female animal.”
“And I’ll never forgive you for Rosamond Vincy,” she said (picking up on their discussion of her favourite novel—Middlemarch). “There’s the lovely Dorothea, and you lust after that grasping bitch Rosamond Vincy. Who ruins Lydgate. Slags and villains. That’s all you like now—slags and villains.”
“Yeah, well I couldn’t be doing with Hardy. I bow to his poetry. But I couldn’t be doing with his fiction.”
No, he couldn’t be doing with Thomas Hardy’s fiction—with Tess, with Bathsheba. It sometimes seemed to Keith that the English novel, at least in its first two or three centuries, asked only one question. Will she fall? Will she fall, this woman? What’ll they write about, he wondered, when all women fall? Well, there’ll be new ways of falling …
“I couldn’t be doing with him. No, on to Lawrence. No. Give me DHL.”
“But you’re always writhing around when you read him.”
“It’s true,” he said and sat up. “He’s nuts, but he’s also a genius. So he’s very turbulent. The fucks in Lawrence—they’re more like fights. Anyway. This one’s not much cop.”
She said, “Women in Hysterical Sex.”
“That’s not a proper one. Hysterical Sex Among the Haystacks. That’s a proper one.”
“What shall we do with Adriano?”
“Tom Thumb?”
“No. Not the count. The rat.” She held up the sheet of thick white paper. “Junglebum’s Adriano.”
He felt himself alerted. Keith hadn’t called Adriano Tom Thumb in a while; and Lily hadn’t called Gloria Junglebum either. Their duolect, like everything else, was growing old. He said,
“Let me have a last look … Mind you, in his later stuff he gets very anti-box.”
“Anti-women?”
“Yeah, but also anti-box.” And pro-arse. “Mellors calls Connie’s box her beak. And then he stops being normal.”
“… That hurts.”
“You tried it with Gordon, and it hurt. But Gordon’s got a big cock, Lily, like all other boys. It wouldn’t hurt with me. Okay. Forget it. But why can’t you get the whole thing in your mouth?”
“Christ, I told you.”
“Ah. The retch reflex.” This was actually Gloria’s name for it. That’s the challenge now facing womankind, she said. Rising above the retch reflex. “Just make yourself mistress of the retch reflex, Lily, and we’ll—”
“What’s in it for me?”
“Ask not what—”
“Oh shut up, you little shit. You used to say you hoped to be normal in bed. Yo
u said it’s like being sane. Sanity is being normal.”
“That’s true—I did use to say that.” He did use to say that. Freud, after all, wrote that sexual oddities were private religions. “Up to you, Lily. And I don’t like it if you don’t like it.”
“Well I don’t like it.”
“Fine … I suppose we just chuck this out. She can certainly draw.”
“Junglebum? Weird, isn’t it. All that ladylike stuff. And now in her sex-shop fig leaf.”
“Mm. It’s Jorq. He’s vain about her.”
“Well he must’ve brought a whole trunkful of those slinky black dresses. And the slit skirts and the satin tops with her tits pushed up around her chin. And she looks the part, doesn’t she.”
Another of Gloria’s qualities: you gazed at her now, and always wondered what was happening on the other side of her clothes. Lily said,
“My mother has a name for the type who dresses like that. Cocktail waitress.”
“… Come and lie down for a bit,” he said. “With that sarong. And the halter top on the chair there.” Her eyes went heavenward. “And that hat,” he added.
When it was over he pronounced the usual sentence: subject, verb, object. And she gave no answer. His eyes went to the window—half banked with mist and soil in the low yellow sun.
Lily said, “That’s what Tom Thumb’s telling Scheherazade.”
“Love again? He can’t be. With Timmy here?”
“He’s dead serious. Not flowery any more. She thinks Adriano’s going to declare himself.”
Keith said indifferently, “The count? Are you sure you don’t mean the rat? Yeah, what if the rat declared itself, Lily? I mean to you. You’d have to say yes. Or you’d hurt its feelings.”
“Very funny. You little shit. She’s worried. She’s worried Adriano’s going to do something rash.”
Left alone, he contemplated Gloria’s drawing of Adriano the rat. Everyone agreed. Hand followed eye with uncanny facility: the weak pomp of the chest, the cylindrical ribbing of the tail. There was the rat; but you had to say that she had missed its this-ness. Gloria’s Adriano looked far more dignified—looked far less disgraceful—than the thing in the pet-shop window. Gloria’s Adriano had been promoted in the chain of being. Gloria’s rat was a dog.