The Pregnant Widow

  And Impy and I stood there, unsmiling, while Violet lost herself in symphonic laughter … Soon afterwards she came into the garden with two glasses of fruit juice.

  Me: “Vi, listen. Don’t call Impy Impy.” Violet: “Why not? It’s better to make a joke of it, don’t you fink? Otherwise he’ll get a complex.”

  This being her sense of what it was to be modern. She was sixteen. You know, I often used to wish I had a girlfriend who looked exactly like our sister. An idea unavailable to you. Blonde, soft-eyed, white-toothed, wide-mouthed, her features and their soft transitions.

  Violet: “He likes being called Impy. He thinks it’s funny.” Me: “No. He says he likes it. He says he thinks it’s funny. When did you start calling him that?” Violet: “On the first night.” Me: “Jesus. What’s his real name?” Violet: “Feo.” Me: “Well call Impy Feo. I mean Theo.” Violet: “If you say so, Key.” Me: “I say so, Vi.”

  Why does she still have trouble with the th sound? Remember her transpositions? Ackitt for attic. Kobbers for because. Navilla ice cream.

  Me (thinking I had to spell it out): “Make a real effort, Vi, and call Impy Theo. You should build him up. Then you might find there’s no reason to call Theo Impy. Call Impy Theo.” Violet (quite wittily): “… Should I start calling Impy Sexy?” Me: “It’s too late for that. Call him Theo.” Violet: “Feo. All right, I’ll try.”

  And she was very good. During dinner that night, and all the next day, did you once hear her call Impy Impy? Me, I held out high hopes for Impy. Slender and tremulously Shelleyan, with vulnerable eyes. I could imagine him reading or even writing “Ozymandias.” I looked to Impy as a force for good. Then came Sunday afternoon.

  You: “What’s going on?” Me: “I’m not sure. Theo’s in tears upstairs.” You: “Yes, well some bloke, some shape, just knocked on the kitchen door. One of those guys who’s very fat but hasn’t got an arse. Vi said, See you, Impy, and off she went. What does Impy mean?”

  Oh Nicholas, my dear—I’d been hoping I wouldn’t have to tell you.

  Me: “So that’s why she calls him Impy.” You: “… All right, she’s young. But you’d think she’d want to keep that reasonably quiet.” Me: “I know. I mean, if it was the other way round.” You: “Exactly. Meet my new girlfriend. I call her Fridgy. Would you like to know why?” Me: “Impy’s worse than Fridgy. I mean, a girl can pretend not to be frigid. And a boy …” You: “I’m going to talk to her.” Me: “I already have. She just keeps saying how keen she is for him not to get a complex.” You: “And what does she say when you tell her the obvious?” Me: “She says, Well he is impotent.” You: “Yeah I bet he is.”

  And we agreed: no talent for it, no feel for it. So what does she want from it? What does she want from the modern?

  And now, one year on, what does Violet do? She rapes fruits—or she tries. I’ll ask Whittaker about this.

  Hear the sheep?

  Dear Nicholas, oh, brother, the girl here she … When she dives, she dives into her own reflection. When she swims, she kisses her own reflection. She works her way up and down the pool, with dipping face, kissing her own reflection.

  It’s hot at night. Hear the sheep, hear the dogs?

  Scheherazade was flat on her back in the garden—upper terrace. She held a book, interposed between her eyes and the evanescent sun. The book was about probability. Keith sat four or five yards away, at the stone table. He was reading Northanger Abbey. Several days had passed. Adriano was a good deal around.

  “Are you enjoying that?”

  “Oh yes,” he said.

  “Why, particularly?”

  “Well. It’s so … sane.” He yawned and, in a rare spasm of unself-consciousness or candour, he stretched, in his director’s chair, with pubic bone outthrust. “The beautiful intelligence,” he said. “And so sane. After Smollett and Sterne and all those other mad sods.” Keith couldn’t be doing with Sterne. He clapped Tristram Shandy shut on about page fifteen, when he came across the adjective hobby-horsical. But he forgave Smollett everything for his osmotic translation of Don Quixote. You see, he was still having these thoughts, for a little while longer. “No, I’m loving Jane.”

  “Isn’t it all about marrying for money?”

  “I think that must be a myth. This heroine says that marrying for money is the wickedest thing in existence. Catherine. And she’s only sixteen. Isabella Thorpe wants to marry for money. Isabella’s great. She’s the bitch.”

  “Gloria Beautyman was supposed to come today. But she’s had a relapse.”

  “Another glass of champagne.”

  “No, she’s still recovering from the first one. She’s not faking it either. Jorq’s got her in the Harley Street Clinic. She lacks a chemical. Diogenes. It’s obviously not diogenes. But something that sounds nearly the same as diogenes.”

  “Mm. Like the Eskimos. Like the Red Indians. One shot of whisky and that was it. All they could do was hang around the forts. There was a kind of sub-tribe of them. Known as the Hang Around the Forts.”

  “That’s all we do, isn’t it. Hang around the forts.”

  Scheherazade was referring to their recent outing—from one castle to another castle, from Jorquil’s castle to Adriano’s castle. Keith said,

  “And you, are you enjoying yours? What is it?”

  “It’s about probability. Quite. The paradoxes. Or do I just mean the surprises? It’s fascinating in its way. But a bit low on human interest.” Scheherazade herself now yawned hungrily. “Time for a shower, I think.”

  She stood. “Ow,” she said, and for a moment she examined her upturned foot. “Trod on a burr. Adriano’s coming to dinner again. With a hamper. Meals on Wheels. Do you mind him?”

  “Mind him?”

  “Well he can be a bit much. And you … Sometimes I think you mind him.”

  Keith felt it for the first time: the flooding need for passionate speech, for poetry, for avowals, for tears of tenderness—for confession, above all. It was official, it was authorised. He was painfully in love with Scheherazade. But these abstract adorations were part of his history, and by now he felt he could manage them. He cleared his throat and said, “He is a bit much. But I don’t mind him.”

  She looked up towards the shoulder of the field, where the three horses grazed. “Lily tells me you hate flies.”

  “This is true.”

  “In Africa,” she said in profile, “all day you’re looking at these poor black faces. They have flies on their cheeks and their lips. Even in their eyes. And they don’t brush them away. Just used to them, I suppose. Human beings get used to them. But horses never do. See their tails.”

  And of course he watched as she turned and moved off—the mannish khaki shorts, the mannish white shirt only half tucked in, the tall walk. Her shirt was damp and there were grass halms on her shoulder blades. Grass halms gleamed in her hair. He sat back. The frogs, massed in the wet ground between the walled flowerbeds, gurgled and comfortably grunted. It came to his ears as a stupor of self-satisfaction—like a clutch of fat old men reviewing a lifetime of probity and profit. The frogs in their shallow swamp, in their stupor.

  The yellow birds laughed in the garish tenement of the elm. Higher up, the crows, with famished and bitter faces, faces half carved away (he thought of the black knights on the chessboard). Higher still, the Homeric strivers of the upper air, dense and solid as magnets, and in formation, like the blade of a spear, aimed at a land far beyond the horizon.

  Twenty pages passed. Odd how a watched sky seems changeless; but then a paragraph later that swordfish has disappeared, to be replaced by the British Isles (an arrangement surprisingly popular with Italian clouds) … Lily now sat silently opposite. Public Order and Human Dignity lay unopened on her lap. She sighed. He sighed back. The two of them, Keith realised, were diffusing a dingy and neglected air. On top of everything else, they were experiencing the demotion that a settled couple will tend to feel when there are romantic awakenings near by. Lily said frowsily, br />
  “She’s still toying with the idea.”

  Keith said even more frowsily, “It’s grotesque.”

  “… Tom Thumb wants to take her to a bullfight in Barcelona. In his helicopter.”

  “No, Lily, you mean his aeroplane.”

  “Not his aeroplane. His helicopter. Tom Thumb’s got a helicopter.”

  “A helicopter. That would be certain death. As you well know.”

  “… If you could stretch him out he’d be very attractive.”

  “But you can’t stretch him out. And besides. He’s not just a midget. He’s a ridiculous midget. I can’t think why we don’t all just laugh him off the property.”

  “Come on. He’s got a lovely little face. And he’s charismatic. It’s impossible to take your eyes off him, don’t you find? When he’s diving or on the exercise bar.”

  The exercise bar was a fixture that Keith had barely noticed until now. He’d assumed it was some kind of towel rack. These days, Adriano was always twirling and snorting around on the exercise bar. Lily said,

  “You can’t look away.”

  “That’s true.” He lit a cigarette. “That’s true. But only because you’re so sure he’s about to fuck himself up—you know, he’s making me feel very left-wing.”

  “That’s not what you were saying last night.”

  “True.” Last night he was saying that every upper-class prick should model himself on Adriano. It would mean eternal peace in the class war. All that trouble and expense Adriano went to, in search of fresh damage—why bother to string up Adriano? Just give him a rope, and show him a tree or a lamp post. “Yeah. But he’s still walking, isn’t he, Tom Thumb. That’s the trouble. He’s not Tom Thumb. Or Mighty Mouse or Atom Ant. He’s Tom in Tom and Jerry. He’s got nine lives. He keeps recovering.”

  Several pages passed.

  “You’re upset about Violet.”

  “Why should I be upset about Violet? Violet’s all right. She doesn’t date football teams or anything like that. Let’s not talk about Violet.”

  Several pages passed.

  “… The impression he gives of deserving it all—that’s what I can’t bear. You’d think that being four foot ten,” Keith went on, “would teach the little bastard a bit of humility. Oh no, not Tom Thumb.”

  “God, you really don’t like him, do you.”

  Keith confirmed that this was the case. Lily said,

  “Come on, he’s sweet. Don’t be chippy.”

  “And I hated his fucking castle. With an ancient footman behind every chair. With an old pez in a dragoon outfit standing behind your chair and hating your guts.”

  “And all that yelling down the length of the table. Still. What about the starlets?”

  In Adriano’s open-plan piano nobile (an area about the size of a London postal district) they were led to a deep sideboard on which were ranked a couple of dozen framed photographs: Adriano, seated or recumbent, with a succession of able-bodied beauties in various opulent or exotic settings. Keith now said,

  “That didn’t mean anything. All he ever does is loll around with rich wasters. He’s bound to be quite near a girl every now and then. Someone takes a photograph. So what.”

  “Then where does he get his confidence from? And come on. He is confident. And he has a reputation.”

  “Mm … Frailty, thy name is woman, Lily—it’s the money and the title. And the bullshit charm … I hate the way he’s always kissing her on the hand and the arms and the shoulder. Scheherazade.”

  “You’re not seeing it straight. He’s actually very tentative. He talks a lot, and he’s Italian, he’s tactile, but he hasn’t even made a pass. They’re never alone. You’re not seeing things clearly. You don’t always, you know.”

  “Putting olive oil on her back …”

  After a pause, Lily said, “All is explained. How predictable. Mm. I see it. You’re painfully in love with Scheherazade.”

  “You sometimes amaze me,” he said, “by how wrong you get things.”

  “Then it’s just class resentment. Pure and simple.”

  “What’s the matter with class resentment?”

  In fact it was not that painful, it was not yet all that painful. And he was often thinking, You have Lily. You’re safe with Lily … He was certainly disquietened by what had started going wrong with him in bed. Not only one-time students of psychology might notice the coincidence: Keith was worried about his sister, and his sister was what Lily had seemed to become. But the meaning of the connection, if any, eluded him. And he still looked at Lily ten times a day and felt grateful and surprised, gratefully surprised.

  “She’s trying to drum up some charity work in the village. She says doing good makes you high, and she misses it.”

  “There you are. Still a saint.” He tossed Northanger Abbey on to the table and said, “Uh, Lily, listen. I think you should go topless at the pool … Why not?”

  “Why not? Why d’you think? How’d you like to sit there with your cock out? Next to Tom Thumb—with his cock out. Anyway. Why?”

  Actually he had several reasons. But he said, “You’re nicely made up there. They’re shapely and elegant.”

  “You mean they’re small.”

  “Size doesn’t matter. And Adriano’s cock’s all bullshit.”

  “Yes size does. That’s what it comes down to. She said it might be all right if he was just four inches taller.”

  Four inches? he thought. That’s still only five foot two. He said, “Being five foot two, or six foot two, wouldn’t stop him being ridiculous. How can you bear him? You like social realism.”

  Lily said, “He’s very fit. And she’s read somewhere that it’s quite different. With someone who’s very fit. And you know what a noodle Timmy is. I told her, Small men try harder. Imagine how hard you’d try if you were four foot ten. He wants to take her to St. Moritz. Not for the snow. Obviously. Mountaineering … Close your eyes for a second and imagine how hard he’d try.”

  Keith disguised a soft groan in an exhalation of Disque Bleu. His squashy white packet carried no health warning. The fact that smoking was bad for human beings: this was now widely suspected. But he didn’t mind. Typically, I think, in this regard, Keith was still young enough to assume, in certain moods, that he wouldn’t live that long anyway … He closed his eyes for a second and saw Adriano—brutally shod, with alpenstock and alpenhorn, with pitons and eye bolts—readying himself to conquer the south face of Scheherazade. He glanced down at the flattened outline in the grass, where her shape had lain.

  “Well tell her not to do anything hasty,” he said, picking up his book again. “She shouldn’t let herself down. It’s really Timmy I’m thinking of.”

  So far, the new rhythm of the weather was answering quite accurately to his inner state. For four or five days the air would steadily thicken and congeal. And the storms—the storms, with their African vociferousness, were timed for his insomnias. He was making friends with hours he barely knew, the one called Three, the one called Four. They racked him, these storms, but he was left with a cleaner morning. Then the days began again to thicken, building to another war in heaven.

  I don’t know what you’re complaining about, Lily was on record as saying. You still sit up half the night playing cards with her. I saw you that once—down on your knees together. I thought you were getting married. Plighting your troth.

  When we kneel, we’re the same height. Why’s that?

  Because her legs are a foot longer than yours from the knee down. What d’you play anyway? said Lily, who hated all games (and all sports). Old Maid?

  No, they played Pope Joan, they played Black Maria and Fan-Tan and Stud Poker. And now (better, much better), on the rug in the gunroom (the rug was a sprawled tiger), kneeling opposite one another, they played Racing Demon … Racing Demon was a kind of interactive Patience. As card games went, it was almost a contact sport. There was a lot of snatching and taunting and laughing and, almost always, a shimmer of hysteria
towards the end. He wanted to play the games called Skin and Cheat. Is that what he wanted? He wanted to play Hearts. Hearts: that, perhaps, was the trouble.

  Did they mean anything, those smiles and glances? Did they mean anything, those exhibitions, in the shared bathroom, those exhibitions of riveting disarray? Keith read, and sighed, and wished he was a yellow bird. Because it would have horrified him beyond computation—to take her undesigning friendliness and smear it with his hands, his lips.

  Keith grew up in cities, in small coastal cities—Cornwall, Wales. Cornwall, where the island dips its toe into the English Channel; Wales, with its arms reaching out to embrace the Irish Sea. The only birds he knew well were city pigeons. When they took to the air at all (and it was invariably a last resort), they flew for fear.

  Here in Italy the black cornacchie flew for hunger, the high magneti flew for destiny, and the yellow canarini flew for joy. When the wind came, the dervish tramontana, the yellow birds neither rode the gusts nor fought them; they didn’t fly, they didn’t float, they just hung.

  The castle received other male visitors during this anxious time. There was an unforgivably young and handsome army major called Marcello, who seemed much taken with Scheherazade; but he was instantly fingered by Whittaker (Why can’t hets tell? he said. Marcello’s unusually gay). There was an eloquent and erudite apparition by the pool, Vincenzo, who seemed much taken with Scheherazade; but he talked a lot about church restoration, and when he sat down to lunch he was wearing a dog collar. Adriano’s only departure from gridiron stereotype was his mild anti-clericalism (I think people who worship should worship alone). So did this constitute the historic opportunity? It was occurring to Keith that he was the only secular heterosexual in the entire region who was over four foot ten.

  He had never been unfaithful to Lily. He had never been unfaithful to anyone. I think it is important to remember that Keith, at this stage (and for the very short-term future), was a principled young man. With girls, his transgressions, his known wrongs, were so far derisory in number. There was his commonplace negligence (a sin of omission) in his dealings with Dilkash. There was the far more complicated felony (a sin of commission, this time, and often repeated) in his dealings with Pansy—Pansy, acolyte of Rita. He thought about them hourly, the two girls, the two wrongs.