Why couldn't Rachel be a little more specific about the type of person she was? Goodness knew; if she were a hippie I'd talk to her about her drug experiences, the zodiac, tarot cards. If she were left-wing I'd look miserable, hate Greece, and eat baked beans straight from the tin. If she were the sporty type I'd play her at... chess and backgammon and things. No, don't tell me she's the very girl to show me what egotistical folly it is to compartmentalize people in this sad way; don't tell me she's going to sort me out, take me on, supply the cognitio and comic resolution. I couldn't bear it.
Now I began to wash, laundering my orifices; they went all to hell if not scrupulously maintained. The works: from undergrowth nose to foamy navel - the works. Of course, I thought jovially, I know very well that my worries about this body conking out on me are pure anxiety (again, just something to take an interest in) - yes, quite - but knowing it was anxiety didn't make me feel less anxious.
With comb and fingertips I styled my pubic hairs. It was a good idea to spruce myself up for Rachel, the reason being that one honestly did never know. One night last July: at 10.5, in Belsize Park tube station, a girl was telling me to go away before she called the police; at 10.17 I was lying on the floor -between untouched cups of still quite hot tea - helping her off with her greasy panties. Admittedly the girl was quite hideous, had smelled unclothed of open wounds and graveyards, etc., but you still never knew. It was a theory of Geoffrey's that pretty girls liked sex more than rough ones. Take Gloria, whom I had seen only yesterday. What an excellent time I was having in London. Oxford seemed years away, like childhood.
I bundled myself up in some towels and ran on tiptoe to my room and crouched, shivering, in front of the fire: all things Dr Miller had told me to avoid doing. There was a bathroom next door that was at present too filthy to use. I could lick it out, I supposed, over the next week, which would be a good way also of paying back Jen and Norm.
I dried myself, showered in talc, and slipped into my most daring underpants. I looked down over concave chest, neat little stomach, prominent hip-bones, completely hairless legs -not half bad, I don't mind telling you. As I dressed I thought about the setting up of the room. I couldn't be as slapdash as I had been with Gloria. It was a hundred to one that I wouldn't get her even into the house, but all the same everything had to be ... just so. I assembled the relevant pads and folders, stroked my chin.
Not knowing her views on music I decided to play it safe; I stacked the records upright in two parallel rows; at the head of the first I put 2001: A Space Odyssey (can't be wrong); at the head of the second I put, after some thought, a selection of Dylan Thomas's verse, read by the poet. Kleenex well away from the bed: having them actually on the bedside chair was tantamount to a poster reading The big thing about me is that I wank a devil of a lot.' The coffee-table featured a couple of Shakespeare texts and a copy of Time Out - an intriguing dichotomy, perhaps, but I was afraid that, no, it wouldn't quite do. The texts were grimy and twisted after a year of A-Level doodling. I replaced them with the Thames and Hudson Blake (again, can't be wrong) and The Poetry of Meditation, in fact a scholarly American work on the Metaphysicals, although from the cover it could have been a collection of beatnik verse: Rachel could interpret it as she wished. Unfortunately the Time Out had a rangy, black-nippled girl on the c6ver. What instead ? Had I got time to run off and get a New Statesman? Not really. I looked round the room. Something incongruous, arresting. After a quarter of an hour I decided on a Jane Austen, the mellow Persuasion, face down, open towards the end, by my pillow. The little touch/That means so much.
At three thirty I was standing dressed in front of the mirror. Eyes narrowed, I scouted for spots. All clear. I'm not troubled by straight acne so much as by occasional sub-surface hugies, the ones that spend two days coming up and two weeks going down. An old favourite was the Cyclopean egg which put in regular appearances between my eyes, giving me a mono-browed mass-murderer's expression. But no big boys in town at the moment.
I put on, then took off, then put on again a red white-dotted scarf. Eventually I left it off: a bit obvious. Now, gazing dreamily at myself in the mirror ... Rachel would have to be out of her mind to throw up a chance like this: the medium-length, silky, thin brown hair, the ingenuous brown eyes, the narrow but wide mouth, and that jawline, really - its evenness and squareness, its cool Keatsian symmetry. I pressed my back teeth painfully together to accentuate it ... Hi there. Great, lover, and you ?
On my way upstairs for some tea the telephone rang. It was Geoffrey.
'Hello,' I said, pleased. 'I was going to ring you tonight.'
'Mm..." There was a five-second pause. 'I wouldn't have been in.'
'Are you okay?' Another pause.
'I want to come round. I'm Mandied. I can't make it back to the Park.'
A drugged distress-call ?
'Where are you now, Geoffrey?'
'Er, hang on, I'll look around. Yeah ... South Ken tube. But look I don't want to come round just yet. I've got a ... scene I'm trying ... to get together but I can't get it... on cos there's all this ... scene...'
'What the fuck are you talking about?' I inquired. 'Look, you can come round now and wait here while I go out to tea. Or what? Do you think it would be slightly more underground to turn up later? Say around seven ?'
'Cooler,' he said, still rather guardedly.
'Or later still. About eight. Or nine?'
'Cooler.'
'Look, why don't you come round when you like?'
Silence, then a mumbled 'yeah', then more silence, then a lethargic click.
He rang back five minutes later to say that he had a couple of girls with him.
I thought for a moment. 'Fine. Bring them round and I'll try and screw the one that's not yours. Have you got any incredible drugs with you?'
'Yeah, some.'
'Bring them round too. I've got to rush. I'll probably be in from about seven or someone else'll be here. But listen: if my bedroom door's locked, don't try and get in, okay?'
'Creaming?'
'Could be.'
I allowed only eight minutes to get there. Holding my hair in place with my hands, I ran out of the house and down the steep square to the main road. Geoffrey was bringing more girls. It hardly seemed to matter what happened now.
Rachel was alone in the kitchen, emptying ashtrays into a postbox-shaped rubbish bin the colour of baby's crap. I said in a robotic voice:
'Christ I'm sorry about that I had no idea it was your party and I wondered whether you might possibly let me make it up to you and will you come to a film with me next Wednesday. God, I'm so sorry about that, I really am.'
'Don't worry about it.'
I waited, but she said nothing more. 'Shall I at least ring you,' I said, 'or what ? ... Not ring you.'
Rachel smiled. 'One of the two anyway. Yes, all right. It's 773 4417. Will you be able to remember that?'
'Do you want a hand,' I gushed, 'there's quite a lot of —'
'No, honestly, I'll manage.'
Rachel came over to the table on which I was vulnerably half sitting and started to pack unused wine glasses into a cardboard box. I got that make-or-break, do-or-die feeling, the feeling not only that I must stake my claim but also that claims must be staked, the feeling not only that I must act but that actions must be put through - or some flushed confusion of these that made me stand up, and reach out, trance-like, towards her.
'Oh, come on,' she said.
I backed into the passage. '373 1417! Great party! See you soon!'
A quarter of an hour with directory inquiries and I rang her the next Tuesday. I had beside me: a typed-out shooting script, a photograph of Audrey Hepburn, an empty quarter of gin, and Geoffrey. Geoffrey, electrified on cut-price death-pills, nodded his head at me throughout.
Two nights later we saw a film about the ups and downs of some Icelandic subsistence farmers. Of course, I had visited the cinema the previous afternoon and had rehearsed an amusing commentary to b
e whispered at Rachel in the dark. But the atmosphere was wrong and I stayed quiet.
Having cashed my penultimate traveller's cheque I was big with taxis and cinema seats. Dropped her off and didn't try to kiss her goodnight, almost laughing out loud when she asked if I'd like to come in for coffee. 'Not tonight,' I said haughtily. (Moreover, her parents were there.) The evening cost six pounds. By the weekend I was back in Oxford, anyway.
Rachel's tutorial establishment was one of those dreary pastel Regency houses so popular in this part of London. With my back to the two papier-mache pillars guarding the double-doored entrance, I practised smiles and hellos. I didn't feel dramatic enough, ought really to have lodged a milk-bottle down my trousers before coming out. Although I had crawled the last 150 yards, as if I were an expert on pavements and were studying this one, there was still three minutes to go.
To the right of the doorway was a dimly lit, curtainless classroom with male students in it. They stared broodingly at the road. I knew the kind of punks that went to this kind of place. Cuntish public-school drop-outs, dropped out for being too thick, having long hair or dirty boaters, unseaming new boys in multiple buggery, getting caught too many times with an impermissible number of hockey sticks up their bums. Would they all run out now and debag me, shouting 'Let's teach the little squit some manners'? Hobo-like I wandered back and forth. One of the boys was asleep, his head on the desk, pillowed by a twisted copy of the Financial Times. As I watched, there was a stir in the classroom; a cruel-faced bearded man in a pinstripe suit strode into camera. He approached his student from behind, loomed above him for a few seconds, then lustily rapped his crown with what looked like a spectacles-case. This set off a chain-reaction of twitches and snorts; the puffy young gentleman awoke blinking to the world. Loud reproaches could be heard from the pinstripe man; excuses were mouthed by the other. Teach the little turd for being so rich and lazy and for eating and drinking himself sick at lunch. Teach the fat, mindless —
The doors opened. A tall ginger-haired boy in green tweed moved gracefully down the steps. He looked at me as if I were a gang of skinheads: not with fear (because the fellows are quite tractable really) but with disapproval. Behind him at a trot came two Ian tern-jawed girls, calling 'Jamie ... Jamie.' Jamie swivelled elegantly.
'Angelica, I'm not going to the Imbenkment. Gregory shall have to take you.'
'But Gregory's in Scotland,' one said.
'I can't help thet.' The ginger boy disappeared into an old-fashioned sports-car.
The students were pouring out steadily now. Each and every one of them was shouting. 'Casper, yah, Ormonde Gate, not possibly, super, Freddie, five o'clock, rather, tea?, Bubble, later, race you there, beast, at Oswald's.' Double-parked Alfa Romeos, Morgans and MGs jostled and revved; those on foot moved up the slope towards Notting Hill. Where was Rachel ? Ashamed to join me in front of all these bright young people ? Had I got the place wrong? Apart from the catnapper, who I was pleased to see had been detained, there seemed to be no one left inside.
Rachel, again, was in a party of four, two boys and another girl. Make a run for it, I thought, as they came down the steps chatting contrapuntally. One of the boys and the other girl broke off in a pair. Rachel and the other boy approached me. I recognized him. Although now in sports-jacket and twills, the white-suited nance at the party. Rachel was smiling. She said:
'DeForest, this is Charles ... Byway?' She laughed. 'I'm sorry...'
'Highway, please.' I laughed, too.
'Highway. Charles, this is DeForest Hoeniger.'
'Great to meet you, Charles,' said Deforest, breathing heavily through his nose. He was American. You could tell that at once, because, in common with every American over eight and under twenty-five, he looked like a middle-aged American sports-writer: freckled pinhead, cropped salt-and-pepper hair.
The American ? Obviously.
'How do you do,' I said, hands shaking, shaking hands.
'We thought we'd have tea at the Tea Centre,' said Rachel.
I nodded lively assent to this imaginative plan. We stepped into file: tall Deforest in the middle, Rachel on the inside, me short-arsing around on the curb, one foot in the gutter, dodging trees.
The other couple had come to a halt a few yards ahead in order to go through the motions of mutual arousal. The boy, who had diagonal hair and a long pocked face, had wrested from the girl some article - a book, a letter - which she would fain recover. He stood facing her, holding whatever it was behind him with both hands; she pawed infatuatedly at his elbows.
'Come on, you two,' said Deforest, 'tea-time.' He stepped into the road and turned to face the four of us grouped uncertainly on the pavement. Then, Deforest opened and got into a huge red Jaguar. Doors were unlocked for our benefit.
'Jesus,' I whispered.
Rachel turned to me as she stepped forward. I smiled in schoolboy wonder and closed the door after her. The others piled into the back and I wanted to close the door after, or on, them too. I got in, causing them both to shove up as if I were a suitcase.
'All aboard?' said Deforest, pulling away down the hill and round, going way too many places way too fast to do a three-point turn and go up it like everyone else.
How had I let myself get into this situation? Rachel sat erectly in front of me, her hair bright and aromatic to my peeled senses.
'No, I just love these English cars,' Deforest was telling Rachel, who nodded. She clearly loved them too.
Had Rachel planned the whole thing ? Perhaps I should have given her more time on the telephone. Was DeForest in on it? Christ. 'DeForest, darling, there's this tiresome little shit who keeps on ringing me up and has finally bullied me into having tea with him; I thought the only half-way civilized thing to do was to jolly well take the hopeless little bugger—'
The Tea Centre was a sort of genteel workman's caff, done up in 'thirties, U.S. coffee-shop style; there were several circular tables surrounded by knee-high mushroom chairs and some booths at the back. With me in the rear we headed for the far corner. The girls got in first, followed by their beaux. The booth sat four. I looked round: the queer pixie's poofs were tacked to the ground; there were no movable chairs.
And there wasn't any room for me. Rachel and DeForest were talking scones, the other couple were writhing about still, now seemingly poised for a session of fully robed soixante-neuf. My head was like an electric blanket. I couldn't see Rachel because fucking DeForest's spiky insect head was between us. In a voice that didn't carry I said, 'Going out now, to make a call.'
No one reacted. They had the wide world spinning round within their heads. They hadn't heard.
Outside, I walked reflexively across the road to the line of telephone boxes opposite the tube entrance. I stopped to look in a shop window. Why hadn't I just flashed in, told them to move up? It was my hesitation that had done it. They had all wanted me to stay. No, there wasn't any room, nothing I could have done but get out. Get out. I started home.
'Charles. Hang on.'
I turned. Rachel had come to a halt on the island half-way across the road. She waited, still looking at me, while a stream of traffic passed between us.
How hackneyed of her, I thought emptily.
The lights changed. She paused; she walked towards me, hands in pockets, head tilted slightly. She reached the pavement and stopped a few feet away.
'Charles, come back.'
'I'm not coming back.'
She came forward two steps and stood with her feet together.
'I'm sorry. Are you all right?'
Tm fine.'
'I've got to go back.'
'Suppose so.'
'Are you cold?' she asked.
I was. I had been feeling far too vain to wear an overcoat. I was shivering.
'A little.'
She bit her lip. She came closer and held my hand for a few seconds.
'Will you ring me?'
'You bet.'
'Goodbye then.'
'Goodbye.' br />
At Campden Hill Square another tea-party was in progress. It consisted of Geoffrey, two strangely dressed girls - a small one, swathed in a floral curtain, and a big one, got up as a cowboy, complete with holsters - and Jenny. No Norm. A scene of almost pastoral spontaneity followed. I felt rather light-headed and, steamy though the kitchen was, I didn't appear to be getting any warmer. Furthermore, I was still vibrant from an intense Consciousness-of-Being attack, having had a highly soulful walk from the Gate.
When the tea was made I popped upstairs for a hawk. On the way back Geoffrey intercepted me; we stole into the sitting-room.
'Which one d'you fancy?' he breathed.
'I hardly know. Haven't taken them in yet.'
'Do you like Anastasia?'
'Anastasia?' This could not be. 'What's her real name?' I implored.
'Jean.'
'Oh. The short-arse? Yeah, she's all right. Boring dress.'
'Mm. Good body, though.'
'Have you fucked her?'
'Sort of. She's not as good as Sue.'
'Have you fucked Sue?'
'Sort of. She's got better tits.'
'What do you mean, "sort of'?'
'We had this vague Troy.'
'No. Christ how sexy. What was it like?'
'Yeah, they're dikes, too. It was okay, except I couldn't get a proper rise. Too Mandied.'
'Why doesn't that sort of thing ever happen to me?'
Geoffrey swayed on his pegs. 'Because you're a country bumpkin and I'm a city slicker.'
We talked drugs. Geoffrey had dropped two Mandrax; there was also some hash, but this was of only minor interest to the bronchitic narrator. I got a Mandrax off him to take later. My chest was telling me not to get any ideas about sleeping tonight.
That evening Mr and Mrs Entwistle laid on their very first row. It opened modestly enough. Geoffrey and I were back in the kitchen, helping to clear up. Door slams full force, missing-link footsteps, Norman's head bulges hugely into the room; seeing no one else, its albino eyes fix on Jenny. We froze, as in a television advertisement. Then he was gone, and Jenny, scooping up cigarettes and lighter, had gone after him.