“I don’t think I’ve got a thing about it.”
“Oh and I have, have I? God, you can certainly drone on … It’s something a lot of girls do.”
“In my limited experience,” said Keith, giving a terrified thought to how the refinement would be greeted by, say, Lily, “it’s not something a lot of girls do.”
“Well that must be pure ignorance on their part. And they’re fools if they don’t know about it. They’re fools. You’re obsessed by this. All right. Ejaculate,” she said, with a full-circle roll of the eyes, “con—”
“Wait. Isn’t it ejacu-late? You say ejacu-lut.”
“That’s because it’s the noun, not the verb. You fool. I’m surrounded by fools …”
Which was quite possibly the case. But this was certain: Gloria was surrounded by Italians—and Italians of the provincial bourgeoisie. Keith was in Montale, at the casa signorile of the sindaco, or the mayoral mansion. It was a lunch for fifty or sixty. Oona had prevailed on them to make up a contingent (Prentiss and Jorquil were paired together about twenty Italians away). They had all just sat through two long speeches, one by a hoary dignitary (whose chin was the size of a medium-length beard), and one by a fat soldier in full uniform (whose oxbow moustache reached up to the whites of his eyes). Now, with great weariness, Gloria was saying,
“Ejaculate … contains many of the same ingredients as face cream. And I mean expensive face cream. Lipids, amino acids, and proteins that tighten the skin. It’s not a good moisturiser, which is why I wash it off after ten or fifteen minutes. But it’s a very good exfoliant. And what does exfoliant mean?”
“I’m not sure. De-leafing?”
“Wrong again. The walking dictionary is wrong again. An exfoliant is something that removes dead cells. Ejaculate is the secret of eternal youth.”
“I suppose that’s logical in a way.”
She said vindictively, “Now are you satisfied? … Oh, see that? Oh no. He’s having the fish.” And she rapped her palm on the cloth. “I give up. The stupid sod’s having the fish!”
Keith glanced out across the diagonal length of the table. Jorq was watching with an appreciative loll of the chin as the waiter spoon-forked a wedge of salmon on to his plate.
“I despair. He just doesn’t listen.”
Feeling a frown forming on his face, Keith said, “The fish. Why …?”
“Don’t you know anything? Fish makes ejaculate smell awful. There. You didn’t know that either, did you. Well then.”
“Christ. I remember. I’m sure the fish is perfectly fresh. But Keith and I are very happy with the lamb.”
“What are you banging on about now?”
“You planned that part of it too. The night before my birthday. You planned it.”
“Of course I planned it. Otherwise you’d have had the fish. Of course I planned it.”
He said, “Well, planning’s very important. You’ve shown me that.”
“Naturally you can’t control everything,” she said sleepily (and even more affectlessly than usual). “It’s a mistake to think you can. You know I get so furious, I get so furious when I go to a dinner party and they serve fish. And you’re not given a choice. It means all the men are hors de combat. In effect. And of course you can’t say anything. You just have to sit there and seethe. The presumption of it—it’s unbelievable. Don’t you think?”
“You make me see it in a new way. You often make me see things in a new way.”
“Lord Jesus meek and mild. He’s having seconds.”
Keith finished his glass of champagne and said, “I tell you what, Gloria, you ought to have a drop of this. Then we can go in that room over there.”
“… Yes. Yes, you’re well on your way. You’re well on your way to being a thoroughly repellent young man. With your fizzy new eyes.”
“Do you secretly work for the CIA or the KGB?”
“No.”
“Are you secretly from another planet?”
“No.”
“Are you secretly a boy?”
“No. I’m secretly a cock … In the future every girl will be like me. I’m just ahead of my time.”
“Every girl will be a cock?”
“Oh no. It’s given to very few,” she said, “to be a cock. Now shut up and eat your meat.”
He said, “The pool hut.”
“Shut up and eat your meat.”
Later, as he drank his coffee, he said,
“That was the best birthday present I ever had.” He spoke for about five minutes, ending, “It was unforgettably wonderful. Thank you.”
“Ah, a hint of appreciation at last … The pool hut, you say. Mm. It’d have to rain.”
Of the many things Dodo suffered from (Dodo was a good example), narcissism would not be among them, Keith reflected, as he sat by the feminine fountain with Pansies on his lap. In all his adult life Lawrence never drew a breath without pain, and his lungs throttled him out of existence at the age of forty-four (last words: Look at him on the bed there!). The late poems in Pansies were about the opposite of narcissism, the end of narcissism—the human closing of it. Self-dissolution, and the feeling that his own flesh was no longer fit to be touched.
Lawrence was once handsome. Lawrence was once young. But to how many is it given, to stand naked before the mirror and say, with ardour, Oh, I love me. Oh I love me so—to how many?
Now Lily was asking if she could take the uniform off (and she also found fault with the blazing overhead light). The uniform, that of a French maid, was in many ways a success. But it left something to be desired. What? This. It didn’t matter, in the new world, whether Lily loved Keith Nearing. The thing that mattered was whether Lily loved Lily. And she didn’t—or not enough.
“Yeah go on then,” he said.
“You didn’t exert yourself, I notice,” said Lily, throwing the fluffy duster aside and plucking at the bow of her white apron. “You didn’t pretend to be a butler or a footman.”
“No,” he said. “I’m normal.”
Why are uniforms good?
Two reasons, said Gloria. It makes you less specific. I’m not Gloria Beautyman. I’m an air hostess. I’m a nurse. Nuns are best, but it’s a lot of effort and hopeless without the buckly shoes and the wimple.
“Lily. Let me tell you about Pansy. See if you think that’s normal. I want your legal opinion.” The expurgated Pansy, or the unexpurgated? He would see. “And in return,” he said, “you can tell me about your switch to cool pants. Who suggested it? Harry? Tom?”
What’s the other reason uniforms are good?
Well she’s supposed to be doing something else, isn’t she. She’s already being very bad just by talking to you. You’re keeping her from her work.
“No one suggested it,” said Lily in the dark. “I decided.”
“So you just thought, I know—I’ll switch to cool pants.”
Lily, during the sexual act (in her uptugged black skirt, her black stockings), did some sighing. Not high sighs, not low sighs—sighs at ground level. But now she was doing her sighing on the dungeon floor. She said,
“Well if you’re going to go to bed with people just for the hell of it … If you’re going to act like a man. You want to show you’ve thought it through. The pants send a signal.”
He said, “And the signal is—we’re coming off. Only uncool pants stay on.” And this wasn’t strictly true, he realised. Gloria herself had introduced him to a new technique: the retention of the lower undergarment during full intercourse. And Pansy also (in the unexpurgated version) contravened this rule. He said, “There’s the self-cosseting as well. A signal of self-love. That’s good.”
“Funny,” said Lily, “that Scheherazade had to be told about cool pants.”
“And didn’t just wisely decide on them. As you did, Lily. Pansy probably had to be told about cool pants—by Rita.”
“Was she pretty, Pansy?”
“Not conventionally. But sweet. Long brown hair and a sweet f
ace. Like a woodland creature.” And a powerful body, Lily. With long brown legs in the incredibly short dresses and skirts mandated by Rita. “And it was the most amazing moment, Lily. In this entire …” He meant the revolution or the sea change. “In this entire thing, it was the most amazing moment of all.”
Lily sighed and said, “Go on then.”
“Well. Arn took me round to their place. And on the third date, Lily, I helped Pansy undress. And as I scrolled down her pants—she arched her back and I scrolled them down, and guess what.”
“I knew it. She’s one who never had pubic hair.”
“No, Lily … The strange thing was—I could tell she didn’t want to. Even as she arched her back. She was going to. But she didn’t want to. No volition. No I-wish.”
“And she did? … Why?”
“She was—I don’t know. Going along with the spirit of the times.”
Lily said, “And you went through with it?”
“Of course I went through with it.” To be perfectly frank with you, Lily, I’d had a very bad run. Which was set to resume, with Dilkash and then Doris. “Okay. Far from ideal. But of course I went through with it.”
“And what was it like?”
“Straightforward.” And then we lay there for about three hours, Lily. And listened to Rita putting Arn through it next door. “Straightforward.”
“What you did. That’s something like a breach of trust. In my legal opinion. You should have talked to her … I’m surprised you were able.”
“Oh fuck off, Lily. Talked to her?” Trying to get girls to do the next thing—that’s taken up half my life. “I wasn’t going to tell Pansy to put her pants on.”
“It was sort of rape, in a way.”
“No.” This accusation had of course already been levelled at him. By the superego: by the voice of conscience, and culture—by the voices of the fathers and the presences of the mothers. “No. I suppose I was just poncing off the spirit of the times. That’s all.”
“And you went on going round there.”
“Yeah. For months.” I was in a situation. And to be completely honest, Lily, I reckoned I could plate my way out of it. I thought, I’ll go down on Pansy a lot—and plate my way out of it. “I tried everything. I wrote her letters. I gave her presents.” I tried to plate my way out of it. “And I told her I loved her. Which was true.”
“Yeah. Slag for love … Maybe she liked you. She was just very shy and undemonstrative. Maybe she wanted to, really.”
“That’s kind, Lily. And I’d like to think it’s true.” But it wasn’t, and Pansy proved it. That addendum, for now, Keith shelved. He lit a cigarette and said, “In Montale in the nightclub I asked Rita what happened to Pansy. My great hope was that she’d turned out to be gay. But the Dog said—scathingly, mind. Scathingly. The Dog said she was back up north and going to get married to her first love.”
“So you and her … So it wasn’t really in her nature. That’s awful in a way, isn’t it.”
“Yes.”
“People doing it when it’s not in their nature. When they don’t want to. It’s worse, isn’t it, than people not doing it when they do. Want to. Somehow.”
“Yes.”
“Silly name, Pansy.”
“No it’s not. It’s just the name of a flower. Like your name.”
“… Hush now.”
… When he was a child—nine, ten, eleven, twelve—every night, every single night, he put himself to sleep with fantasies of rescue. In these vivid, eager thoughts, it wasn’t little girls he rescued but grown women: huge dancers and movie stars. And always two at a time. He waited in his rowing boat by the pier of the island fortress. Through the creaking and trickling he would make out the sound of their hurrying high heels on the lowered drawbridge, and then he would be helping them aboard—Bea in her ball gown, Lola in her leotard, and Keith in his school blazer and shorts. They fussed over him, and perhaps stroked his hair (no more), as he faithfully oared them to sanctuary.
Violet herself never appeared in these imaginings, but he always knew that she was the source of them—that she was the innocent captive, the wronged prisoner. The thoughts and feelings that had given him his aspirations of rescue he now cancelled. They were bitter to him.
He had been trying to enter it, for hours he had been trying to enter it, the world of dreams and death, from which all human energy comes. Around five he heard light-fingered rain as it dotted the thick glass.
Timmy, in a soiled silver dressing gown, sat unaccompanied at the kitchen table; he was doing the moron crossword in an old Herald Tribune. Gloria, in white T-shirt and her red cords, stood at the kitchen sink … As usual, Keith was amazed to see Timmy—Timmy going about his business on the ground floor. Why wasn’t he always upstairs with Scheherazade? The same applied to Jorquil. Why wasn’t he always upstairs with Gloria? But no. These two did other things. They even went out for long drives together, if you can credit it, in Jorquil’s Jaguar, prospecting for churches and cheeses …
Keith wanted to ask Timmy a question. This may sound funny, Timmy. But can you think of anything religious about the pool hut? Because Keith knew that this was the theme he needed. Now he came up behind Gloria and threw on both the taps. The weather, all by itself, was nearly noisy enough. He said,
“Look out there, Gloria. Brown sleet. And Jorq’ll be gone all afternoon.”
She glanced over her shoulder. Like Keith struggling with Mornings in Mexico or Twilight in Italy, Timmy was twisting around and scratching his hair.
“It’s my last day. Please. Meet me in the pool hut. Please.”
Gloria said politely, “What, to suck you off, I suppose.” With high efficiency she went on sloshing out glasses, Edinburgh-style perhaps (palm cupped over rim). “I know. There’ll be a brief smooch, and then I’ll feel these two hands on my shoulders. I know.”
Keith listened, but no inner voice counselled him. Where was it, that inner voice? Where did it come from? Was it the id (the that: the part of the mind that dealt with instinctive impulses and primary processes)? “I just want to kiss you here,” he said, and touched her midriff with his fingertips. “Once. You can come dressed up as Eve.”
“… Now that’s an interesting question. How do you dress up as Eve?”
“Eve after the Fall, Gloria. In your fig leaf.”
“Well. Terrifying weather, I admit. And it’s not even white any more, is it. Dirty snow. Now let’s think … I’ll fly down there in my swimsuit and you can fuck me on the bench—get some towels laid out. Then I’ll plunge in and fly back up. And Keith?”
“Yeah?”
“Speed will be of the essence. Ten thrusts, and that’s all. Ten? Am I insane? No. Five. No, four. And for God’s sake—be down there early and get ready. And hope the weather doesn’t clear. Half past two. Let’s synchronise our watches … Oh and Keith?”
“Yeah?”
“Which fig leaf?”
He told her the gold, and looked on as she walked away; then, weak with unreality, he poured himself a mug of coffee and stood over Timmy for a moment—the moron crossword, the virgin squares.
“Heinz,” said Keith.
“I beg your pardon?”
“One across. Big name in baked beans.”
“What?”
“Heinz,” said Keith, who, in his time, had eaten a great many baked beans. “Beanz Means Heinz.”
“Spelt? … Good. Aha! Five down. Alphabet’s twenty-sixth. Three letters beginning with zed … No, but that’s a trick question, Keith. You see, this is an American newspaper. And that’s a trick question. It looks simple, but it’s not.”
Keith’s watch was quite normally going about its business. The hands said five to ten. Reasonably soon, then, it would be time to start getting ready in the pool hut.
“It’s fiendish,” said Timmy. “Here. One down. Pluto’s realm. What are they on about? Four letters. Beginning with aitch.”
He drew up a chair and said gently, “Let me
help you with that.”
Adriano was alone in one of the stiff, still anterooms.
And Keith, pacing past, might have hurried straight on; but he was caught and held by it—the vision of deliquescence. Adriano quietly weeping, like a child, with his face in his soaked hands; behind him, the window, and the wet hailstones splatting the leaded glass, and then the shivering diagonals of their tails; and beyond that, the third echelon, the bamboo curtain of soiled snow. The tears were creeping out through Adriano’s bunched knuckles and even dripping on to his thighs. Who would have thought that the count had so many tears in him? Keith said his name and sat at his side on the low settee. Fairly soon it would be time to start getting ready in the pool hut.
After a moment Adriano looked up vaguely. There were his eyes, the lashes matted and dotted with droplets. “I—I laid it all before her,” he said.
“No good?”
Hesitantly Adriano reached out a moist hand for Keith’s cigarette; he puffed, he drew in, he coughed. And Keith wanted to put his arms around him—and even felt the urge to gather him on to his lap. Only the day before Keith had seen Adriano up on the high bar. Putting aside, for now, the frozen severities of his yoga, Adriano climbed the steel scaffold, where he folded himself tight, and whirled. And Keith thought of the large fly he had recently dispatched, and how it seemed to disappear into the maelstrom of its own death.
“I am not an innocent,” said Adriano, and gave a long rippling sniff. “It may surprise you to hear, Quiche, that I have known well over a thousand women. Oh yes. A handicap, in such matters, may turn out to be no handicap at all. And great wealth helps, of course. I do try very hard, you know.”
Keith was sceptical, but he wondered whether Adriano had had time to keep a list. “I’m sure you do, Adriano.”
“Oh, I am not an innocent … At first, with Scheherazade, my concern was purely carnal. ‘Love’ was merely the trusted stratagem. Our visit to Luchino and Tybalt in Rome seemed to have its usual effect. Oh, I make no apologies. A very stubborn case, Scheherazade. Then Rita, and the necessary change of tactic. A slender hope—but worth trying, I thought. Oh, I make no apologies.”