Five evenings later, my diary says, the evening before her 'parents' were due back from France, Rachel ran down the stairs and into my room.
'Guess what ?' she said.
'What.' The Oxford University candidate was to be seen in T-shirt and khaki strides, his nasal blackheads hovering above the Evening Standard's entertainments guide. I was picking a film for us to see. A going-away treat.
'Jenny's going to have the baby!'
'Which baby?'
'Her baby.'
Of course, of course.
'Don't tell me,' I said. 'Norman wanted her to have an abortion. Am I wrong?'
'But now he says it's all right.'
That's why he was a murderer.'
'What?'
Naturally, them being girls both, Rachel had hardly set foot in the house before Jenny confided in her. She was three months pregnant, pregnant the day I arrived.
'Christ,' I said. 'In six months I'll be an uncle.'
'Isn't it wonderful.'
'Yeah. Why didn't you tell me?'
'She told me not to tell anybody.'
'I dare say, but why didn't you tell me?'
'None of my business.'
'Mm. Suppose they'll stay together now. Norman must have come to some kind of decision. Probably didn't want to get tied down. What changed his mind, do you know?'
'No idea. Jenny just rushed up and said he was going to let her have it.'
I reflected that Norman wouldn't have worded it quite so ambiguously, unless he had in fact followed up with a consolation head-butt. Well then. Kevin Entwistle was now poking chauvinistically at the reaches of my sister's womb, combing his hair, smoking fags, planning craps. I would have gone upstairs to offer congratulations, or something, but apparently they had gone out to dinner.
'Well I never. Dash my buttons. He must've decided that the time had come. Guilt, too, probably.'
(Wrong again, by the way. That wasn't why.)
When two couples are living together - no matter how fortuitously - and something like this happens to one of them, something epoch-making, it seems that the other couple is subject to a new kind of self-consciousness, a vague pressure to reinvestigate themselves. It seems also that there need be no logical connection between what has happened to one relationship and what the other couple feel necessary to do to theirs. This, at any rate, was how I rationalized my cumbrous misgivings and uncertainties as I sat next to Rachel in the damp cinema.
I'm fucked (I thought) if I'm going to tool into that bedroom tonight, bung on one of those feelthy heedeous condoms, and complete the hushed, devout routine. I was being at least fifty-per-cent sincere when, prior to The Pull, I said that enthusiasm and affection were enough, that French tricks were unimportant. But then again, then again ... No. Tonight, my lad, you are going to get laid. Selfishly. You're going to get gobbled for a kick-off. You gonna bugger her good. You gonna rip out her hair in fistfuls, fuck her like a javelin hurled across ice, zoom through the air, screaming. Then, whether she wants to or not, and especially if she does not want to, she is going to ... let me see...
Or was all this mere bear-trap credulity? The film, you understand, was Belle de Jour. Belle de Jour tells the story of a beautiful girl, married to a man so considerate and handsome and successful that she has no choice but to go off to a brothel in the afternoons, there to be fucked by twenty-stone Chinks, snaggle-toothed gangsters, and generally have a good time. Don't forget, also, that I had been reading a lot of American fiction, and that Norman had told me the other night about a girl who used to like gobbling him so much that they found it convenient to sleep one-up one-down, her feet on his pillow.
'Bunuel extends an imaginative sympathy that includes the messiness and arbitrariness of our ... unwanted desires,' I explained, as we made our way down the Bayswater Road. 'And why don't you go on the pill ?'
We walk on, our breaths smoky in the November night. This is a mute moot point, never before mentioned. Her hand squirms in mine.
'I don't like to feel —' Rachel hesitated, then went on - 'that my body's a sort of machine, that I'm a sort of machine...' Rachel hesitated, then went on - 'being programmed. Put those in me, and it'll have - ' Rachel hesitated, then went on - 'it'll have a designed effect.'
Ur? What can she mean? She talks as if she's filling in a form. 'What about me ?' I want to yodel. How do you think my body feels, wearing that sliver of bathroom? (It's unpractically pricey, too. A week after The Pull I had to lone up to Soho and buy a gross-pack of 'Sharpshooters' - economy dunkers - three of which I daily transfer to one of those plush Penex three-slots. Knowing, you see, how hurt she'd be if she thought I was fucking her on the cheap. Are there any limits to my sensitivity ?)
Apparently not. Instead of saying, You'll get over it, or. Tough, or, Grow up; instead, I halt in front of a lamp-post at the foot of the square, stroke her cheeks with my hands, nuzzle her ear, and whisper:
'I think I understand.'
But that night.
Usually: I slid down over her dull body kissing her breasts, guts, hips, to lodge head between thighs and stir her with my tongue (by now a ham-bone of muscle), already in a contra so that when I loomed upwards my (well-dried) mouth and (nozzled) rig met their respective targets simultaneously.
But that night I station my loins next to her head, sending mine south, and crawl wheezily down the bed, my feet now pressed hard against the wall above the pillow for the necessary purchase. Splendid work. As my tongue lolls inside her I peek up. There it is, thrown in her face. But she takes it between index finger and thumb as though it were a sugar-lump. My eyes bulge as she ferries the foreskin primly back and forth. If you can slash in my bed (I thought) don't tell me you can't suck my cock. So I drive it into her cheek, practically up her nose, and Rachel takes it in her mouth and releases it almost at once. With a croak of disgust. Which says: Even worse than I thought.
And yet I was the one who felt ashamed, dirty, dog-like, in the wrong. To prove it there were tears on her face when I came up for air.
The scene is the main hall at Addison Tutors.
At the near end a group of male students from Rachel's school, in dinner-jackets, stand round drinking champagne and talking to one another. The cleaning lady, Mrs Dawkins -who, though fat and lower-class all right, is invariably in a bad mood and has never called me love - goes about filling their glasses and brushing down their tuxedoes. I am on a straight-backed chair in the middle of the room, predictably dishevelled, with a bottle of brown ale. Rachel is at the far end, on the raised dais. From her posture you would think she is wretchedly uncomfortable, or else deep in yoga meditation: propped up on a cushion against the wall, naked, holding both legs in the air, knees on breasts, cunt splayed. Beside her is a bowler hat, upturned.
I wander over. I nod at Rachel; she grins dead ahead and doesn't see me. I mount the dais and lean on the piano, a few yards away. In the bowler hat, I notice, are some coins: mostly coppers, the odd florin, a single fifty-pence piece. I pull on my beer, and wait.
Now, in twos and threes, Rachel's colleagues begin to detach themselves from the party. They stroll across the hall towards us and come to a halt before the dais. In dubious mutters they assess Rachel the spider-crab. A pair climb the steps; one of them, a small, red-haired young fellow, acknowledges me with a wink - which I return. Rachel beams in the direction of their waists. Then, still sipping champagne, they start to talk more confidentially. The ginger-boy prods her snatch with a patent-leathered foot; the other leans forward to examine her teeth and gums. They come to an agreement. Ginge places his glass on the window-sill, unwraps his cummerbund, folds it, puts it in his pocket, lowers his trousers, stoops, and keels forward on top of her.
I swig my beer.
He bobs away for a few seconds, then goes all weak and amorphous. He veers back, slightly off-balance, and composes his dress. The second boy, much taller and handsomer than his friend, goes through the same routine, but pauses, hand on chin, at the last
moment. He has a better idea. Reaching forward he gets a good grip on Rachel's ears and urges her mouth to greet the (massive) rig that cranes from between his shirt-tails. In this fashion, with twelve stiff-elbowed tugs, he has wanked into her head. Rachel murmurs her appreciation. They lob coins at the bowler, and move off. Others take the platform. The process is repeated.
Meanwhile, I pull on my beer, watch, look at the wall, hum popular tunes.
The final group approaches; it is rather drunker than the first, perhaps. At any rate, the young gentlemen stand becalmed in front of the dais. Suddenly one of them gasps, looks about in disbelief, and doubles up with a wail of laughter. Soon, of course, everyone joins in. They mill and sway, clutch helplessly at one another, hooting, braying, pointing.
Oh no. Not us, mate. You've got to be joking. You'd be lucky. With her? With that?
Rachel smiles, unblinking.
She's not pretty enough and she wets the bed.
Their laughter is replaced by my own.
'Charles, Charles, Charles,' Rachel was saying. 'Wake up.'
I did.
'... What sort of dream ?'
I lay on my back. The reality of the ceiling closed in. My voice was hoarse.
'Walking down a long, tree-lined path. At night. Above my head the stars were arranged in ... unfamiliar constellations. Pebbles glistened under my feet. I saw your shape in the distance but... when I tried to move towards you..."
'Neville Bellamy here. I reng Mrs Tauber yesterday, heard you've been unwell. How are you ?'
All right.
'Yes? I gathered it was a touch of esthma. No? It was ... the... ?'
Yes.
'Ah, the body, the body! One wishes one didn't hev one, no ? Yug yug yug. Life would be so blissfully simple. Better off without it. Do you not agree? Do you not feel this?'
I do not. (The argument has plenty to recommend it; but then the brain would have nothing to cerebrate about.)
'No? Perhaps not... mm. Charles! Your papers! How were they?'
Okay.
'Grend. And your interview?'
Monday.
'So soon. Well in that case you must certainly come over for a drink, pick up some pointers ... hev-a-chet?'
'Oh. Well.' I couldn't help feeling flattered.
'If you're fully recovered. Why not tomorrow? Usual time?'
'Look, ah, let me think. Shall I see how I feel and give you a ring if I'm not coming?'
'Perfect. You hev my number. Goodbye now.'
As Mr Bellamy put down the telephone and picked up his cock, I hurried into the kitchen.
Then what?'
Jenny placed a stack of handkerchiefs on the table.
There you are.' She sat down and began to shake her head. 'Well. He said he'd already booked me into the London Clinic and that it was all fixed up. So then I said...' She stopped shaking her head in order to stare into space for a while. 'Well, anyway, there was the most ghastly scene and he seemed to have his mind made up.'
'Was that the night I asked if Rachel could come and stay?'
'I ... think so. Then, when your friend - Geoffrey ? - came and that little boy had been sick all over the lavatory seat in our bathroom, Norman just came in while I was clearing it up and said that he would cancel the London Clinic and that he wanted more time to think about it.'
Then what?'
'On Wednesday, when Rachel came upstairs to the drawing-room to say goodbye, he said afterwards that it was all right, he didn't mind.' She stretched her arms above her head. 'And that's what happened.'
She looked radiantly happy and so on, but I wanted details. (Not that I wasn't sufficiently embarrassed by what she had told me so far. However, I had made a policy decision about all this and my Jenny pad was not up to date.)
'Why did he change his mind?'
She seemed delighted. 'I don't know!'
'Why didn't he want you to in the first place?' I pressed on. 'Just didn't want to get tied down with kids yet, or what?'
'No. He said straightway that I could adopt one ... or two ... if I liked.' Jenny frowned, as if the point were occurring to her for the first time. 'I think,' she said, with deliberation, 'I think he was scared something might happen to me.'
'Mm.'
(Correct, by the way. But not quite how she meant it.)
'When's Rachel coming to stay again?'
'Oh. Soon.'
I had figured that I would probably have to cry a bit and was in fact reddening my eyes with my knuckles when Rachel came into the room. She looked more spruce than ever, in the doorway holding her cuboid vanity-case, and dark-spectacled to indicate her own grief. But, even as I was planning the initial burying-of-head-in-hands - my tonsils swelled and my tears gathered, unasked for.
Rachel had to lie on the bed comforting me for fifteen minutes before I would let her leave.
Absurd, really, because all week I had been looking forward to it. Read a book, have a wank, pick my nose, be smelly and alone. When I rang her later that night - Harry answered, his bad manners whetted by a fortnight in Paris - and Rachel did the crying: I felt, well, nothing much, nothing to write home about.
Furthermore, as Mr Bellamy said, I had the asthma to think of. This affliction seemed to collaborate with the other spanners in my respiratory works. It opened up new dimensions to my coughing fits. I would get a tug in the solar-plexus (quite pleasant, actually) and a kind of hollow pressure at the back of my throat (again, not unsexy) which nevertheless I had to lose, and the only way to lose it was to go on coughing: each rasp softened my diaphragm and chipped away at the emptiness in my lungs until I was left with a drunken, emotional, husky resonance deep in the chest and there appeared to be no need to cough any more. One particularly illustrious fit ended when a huge, wriggling blob of gilbert leapt from my mouth and smacked solidly against the bathroom wall - better than five feet away. I focused my eyes; it was enormous; it looked like - what are they called ? bolasses ? - the weighted lassoos employed by South American cowpokes. Soon, I thought, soon, just by coughing in the direction of their legs, I'd be able to trip up old ladies in the street.
It also enriched the texture of my phlegm: I whoofed up goo pretzels, fried slugs, pixie's nylons. And it wouldn't let me sleep and it made me feel old and it left me gasping on the stairs and it cemented my nostrils so that I had to breathe through my mouth, like a yob.
There were good things, too, of course. Some serious work remained to be done, mostly in the form of track-covering - I had referred (abusively) to countless writers I had barely even heard of, let alone read - and there was ample time to percolate anxiety about my interview. The addition of various rhetorical trills to the Letter to My Father gave occasional light relief.
Further, Rachel came to see me every day. She brought presents, a mag or some fruit (bananas and grapes only, after she noticed the apples browning in their dish). She brought me the library books I asked for. She looked marvellously independent and she didn't stay too long. The poems almost wrote themselves.
We talked a lot about the times we'd have when I was well and my interview was out of the way. For I was entering a national under-21 short-story competition, sponsored by one of the colour magazines. With the prize-money we might just have a few days in Paris ourselves.
Twenty to: the dog days
There goes the last of the plonk - and a very nice drop of wine, too. But I'm afraid it hasn't quite done the trick.
My father is alone in the sitting-room, a typescript and a glass of soda water before him.
'Hi,' I said. 'Just thought I'd have ... a small whisky.'
'Hi.' He looks up as if trying to catch my eye across a room full of people. 'Why not have one with me?'
'Oh. Well I've got one more thing to write, actually. But how long are you going to be up?'
'Thirty, forty minutes.'
'Then I might well come down later. Valentine's away, isn't he?'
My father cocks his head. 'Yes.'
'Only
there's something I want to dig out of his room.'
'Ah. Well then. Hope to see you some time after twelve.'
Valentine's room used to be my room. We switched when I was fifteen. You think I resisted the change ? Not at all. I welcomed it. Attics seemed more thoughtful and fair-minded places to be, then. I kneel on the window-seat in the dark and admit the thrillingly cold air. I think about my formative heterosexual experience. It won't take a minute.
Highway's first para-bronchitic summer.
Mother was going through a menopausal introspection-jag, so, by way of therapy, my father persuaded her to throw a tea-party - on the lawn, one Saturday - to make some local friends. After all. Jenny was there to help, and so was ... Suki, a friend of hers from Sussex who had come to stay. Suki had a special effect on me at once. I had just finished The Mill on the Floss and was achingly in love with Maggie Tulliver (the sexiest heroine in fiction), whose gypsyish, magical good looks Suki seemed to me to share. Moreover, a girl with a name like Suki - the adolescent thought - would do anything; there was nothing a girl with a name like that wouldn't do.
Mother supervised the preparations in frothy hysteria. Us boys were confined to our rooms for being in the way. 'Who's she invited, for Christ's sake,' my elder brother grumbled, 'Marie Antoinette?' I watched from my window. To ensure a constant flow of hot water a three-point gas-ring was set up outside the dining-room, directly beneath. And a table: cakes like sand-castles, damp strata of bread and ham, crushed-fly biscuits, greying boiled eggs in a marble pyramid.
At four o'clock rowdy hags had grouped on the lawn; some, panting like dogs, formed a tea-queue; others sat on deck-chairs and looked at a pile of gardening tools as if it were a cinema screen. As late as four fifteen, mother flaked out: either the party had aggravated her sense of intraspecific alienation, or her tranqs, all day neutralized by adrenalin, had hit her together in one clammy punch. Someone helped her to her room. Jenny was left to handle the hags. The tea and hot water dispensing fell to Suki.