I turned and looked at her. I knew she’d said it on purpose to shock me. But the shocking point to me was the implication that athletic prowess was the first prerequisite for a satisfactory sexual performance.
‘How many boys have you been to bed with, Georgie?’ I asked curiously. It was not a question I would ever even indirectly put to any woman of my own age, but somehow these kids not only didn’t seem to mind, they positively invited nosiness.
‘Oh, only three or four,’ she said airily.
‘Good Lord, don’t you even know which?’
She looked a trifle sheepish. ‘Well, it’s only two, actually.’ The sheepishness, I saw, was due, not to having exaggerated, but to having had only two, actually. ‘The first couple of boyfriends I had, when I was fifteen or so, didn’t seem to know the scene at all.’
‘Which frustrated you to the point of neurosis, no doubt.’
‘Sarky.’
‘Well, honestly! Fifteen!’
‘You’re way behind the times, Miss.’
‘Evidently.’ We arranged things in silence for a bit. I thought, how ironic that I was being prim and uptight about Georgie, this morning of all mornings. But now I was more intrigued than shocked. After all, fond as I was of her, she wasn’t my responsibility. I could afford to regard her in the impersonal light of sociological enquiry.
‘Do you mind if I ask what you mean by being good in bed?’
She looked at me with her eyebrows up so high they disappeared into her fringe.
‘Oh, you know,’ she said. ‘Making sure you get a bang too.’
‘And is that purely a muscular matter?’
She giggled, doubling over like a child, with her booted toes turned in.
‘Well, I mean, if they know how to do it, and go on long enough . . .’
‘And this one does?’
‘In a way. I mean, I nearly always come with him. The only thing is, I’ve begun to wonder lately if I’m not making it happen more myself.’
‘Eh?’
‘In my head, I mean. I make all sorts of things go on in my head, and I think that does the trick as much as what he’s doing downstairs.’ She polished a piece of glass slowly and thoughtfully. ‘Take last night, for instance. He was working away, puffing like a steam-engine, but I was upstairs in my head almost the whole time. And when the bang came, it was as if I popped down there to feel it and then straight away came up into my head again. And I wanted to push him off, as if he hadn’t any business being there, as if I’d rather be by myself.’
‘And is that called love, nowadays?’ I asked, remembering Andy’s dismissive remarks about his son’s crowd and their misnomers.
‘Oh, I don’t call it love,’ she said, sounding very definite. ‘Surely love must be something different. I mean, I wouldn’t get annoyed with him so often if I was in love, would I? I think of it as a kind of rehearsal.’ She ruminated a bit longer and then said, ‘Older men are more my type really. Like your gentleman. He turns me on much more than Dennis.’
‘You don’t reckon much to a difference of 30 years or so?’
‘I don’t think about that. I just get turned on when I look at him. He must be super, I should think.’ For a ghastly moment I thought she was going to ask me outright; I think she wanted to, but she caught my eye and stopped herself. ‘But I don’t suppose he’d get much out of it with someone my age. Men like that expect you to know all the tricks. But how can you ever learn them from kids like Dennis?’ She sighed heavily. ‘Maybe I could find an older man who’d take me on, like a professor, and teach me. I could go straight into the intermediate class,’ she added with another infectious giggle.
I couldn’t help joining in. ‘Oh Georgie,’ I said. ‘You are a one.’
‘So are you, Miss,’ she returned disconcertingly. What kind of a one did she have in mind, I wondered? How did I look in Georgie’s surprisingly unromantic, clear-seeing eyes? Middle-aged in body and attitudes, undoubtedly. And yet presumably not ‘past it’, her usual dismissal of most adult women over the age of 30 or so. I reflected for the hundredth time that morning on the rich sensations of the night, and felt myself blessed with youthfulness. Autumnal fruit I might be, but I felt fairly bursting with juice this morning, and longing to have Andy sink his teeth into me; I had a sudden vision of myself as an orange, changed it because of the bitter peel to an apple, but that was altogether too chilly and English, so eventually I let myself be a mango. (Peaches are good, they spill juice liberally and hotly into the mouth when bitten, but they’re too furry.) Mangos have a tough skin—symbol of resistance—but they are plump with exotic rich syrup, it runs down the chin, over the fingers; they need to be sucked, you cannot eat them daintily or with restraint. Of course, they’re a bit stringy in the middle . . .
‘What’s up Miss? You sound as if you’re crying.’
‘I’m just quietly having hysterics,’ I replied, wiping my eyes. ‘Take no notice.’
‘Is it me that’s so funny?’
‘No, no, Georgie. It’s me. I was taking a leaf out of your book and having a fantasy in my head, and it got a bit out of hand.’
She stared at me, her funny little bird’s head cocked. ‘Fancy someone like you doing that!’ she said.
‘Someone my age, do you mean?’
‘Maybe I do.’ She worked for a few minutes and then said, ‘Nice, really. Makes you feel there’s not such a hurry-up.’
‘Georgie, darling, you’ve got buckets and buckets of time.’
‘Yes, well, that’s not the impression you get, is it?’
Jo rang, mid-morning.
‘Listen, duck. About this Israel project. Are you quite sure it’s off? Because by the weirdest coincidence, I’ve had some bumf through the post from the trade department at their Embassy about some stuff we might be very interested in. It’s hand-made silver jewellery, none of your musty old filigree, I’ve gone off that since I saw these photos. It’s dead modern and absolutely smashing. Gorgeous knuckle-duster rings and necklaces like horse-collars—I think we could do a bomb with them. What I was thinking was, if you were out there you could try and get some special stuff made, exclusive to us. I was thinking specifically of silver belts. Belts are coming back in a big way next season, and I’m gone on the idea of hand-wrought, real silver belts, unique designs, like an up-to-date version of those lovely Victorian chatelaine belts we used to pick up in junk-shops just after the war . . .’ She was chattering on at such a rate, as always when she was fired by a new idea, that I couldn’t get a word in for five minutes. Finally I fairly yelled, ‘Will you shut up a minute? I’ve got something to tell you.’
‘What?’
‘I don’t think I want to go to Israel now. Everything’s changed.’
After a long pause, during which I could almost hear Jo’s acute intuitive mechanism clicking away like a computer, she asked:
‘Overnight?’
‘Yes.’
‘Indeed, indeed, indeed? Well well well well well.’
‘Oh, all right! Enjoy yourself.’
‘My dear old duck, if you think I’m ragging you, you couldn’t be more wrong. I’m merely adjusting myself.’ Another pause. ‘Look, in a way I’ve been expecting this, but I still can’t quite fit it into the sweet complex pattern of our joint lives all in the twinkling of an eye. Give me a few hours to brood. Maybe I’ll end up by going to Sunny Israel and stopping a bullet, who knows? Wish you’d never mentioned the bloody place.’ I felt a little dismayed by the vehemence of her tone.
‘Well, I—’ I began.
‘No, no, no, take no notice of me. I’m all nigged this morning. The lousy kids have been getting on my wick. They won’t talk to each other, if you don’t mind . . . It’s Amanda’s doing. That a daughter of mine should be such a sore loser, really gets up my back.’
‘Oh, don’t let it upset you, Jo. It’s so natural.’
‘I know, I know. And it’s natural for me to want to hit her for it.’ Suddenly I could hear
muffled screams coming over the wire. ‘Oh Jesus! They’ve broken the silence now, all right. I’d better go and wrench them apart.’
We normally stayed open at lunchtime but today I decided to shut up shop and ‘have lunch with Andy’. I sent Georgie off with strict instructions not to come back in under an hour, exposed the ‘Closed’ side of our sign, and retreated with my sandwiches into the back office. Sharp at i, the phone rang.
‘Darling? Listen, I’m afraid something’s happened and I can’t make it tonight. Christ, I’m so furious! I’m so damn disappointed. I feel like a thwarted baby, I could drum my heels and scream.’
‘Me, too!’ I answered feelingly. The mango grew wrinkled and dried-up and suddenly a big black bird came swooping down and carried it off in his talons. ‘Andy.’
‘What, love?’
‘Nothing—only I do so want to see you, and I had a stupid little mental picture when you said you couldn’t come which scared me . . .’
‘Oh, my sweet, I’m so sorry! It’s that wretched son of mine. You know that woman I told you about, who lives in the same house and keeps an eye on him? Well, she rang me up just now and said she hasn’t seen him for over three weeks. Instead of being grateful to her, I gave her a rocket for not calling me before. Is it possible I still care about him enough to be as panic-stricken as I suddenly am? So much so that I’d even ditch you?’
I tried to make a feeble joke. ‘Whatever Chris’s cult may say to the contrary, blood is thicker than water.’
‘Neatly put, my love . . . Oh God, do you suppose he’s drowned himself during one of his ritual immersions?’
‘Oh, come on. Surely you’d have heard if anything serious had happened.’
‘I doubt it very much. It would be utterly out of character for him to carry the least shred of identification.’
‘Mug-shots?’ I suggested tentatively. ‘You said he’d been in jail.’
‘But you don’t think he gives his real name?’
‘Perhaps he’s just trying to protect you.’
He gave a hollow laugh. ‘No, dear. Such a thought would never cross his mind.’
‘Well, so what are you going to do?’
‘A bit of private investigating, initially. I know some of the places he frequents. If I don’t get any leads, I suppose I’ll have to go to the police.’
‘If I were you, I’d go to them first. He’s probably doing another of his spots of “time”.’
‘You seem to think it’s all a bit of fun and games,’ he said with a sudden sharpness which alarmed me.
‘Of course I don’t! I just feel absolutely certain, somehow, that nothing has happened to him. After all, why should it? He’s probably taken off somewhere. All the kids do it these days. Maybe he’s on the guru-trail to India, or cattleboating off to Cuba . . . Some place where there’s more water, perhaps,’ I added inspirationally. But he took this the wrong way too.
‘I see you can’t take him seriously even when you’re trying to.’
‘Oh Lord, I’m sorry—’
‘Not that I blame you. He’s quite bizarre, no doubt about that. Perhaps you’re right, and flippancy and puns are the only mature reaction.’
‘Darling—’
‘I’m clearly schizoid about him. Not to be wondered at, I suppose.’ After a pause, he added soberly, ‘He really was a most lovely little boy. I’ll show you photos.’
I was silent. Something in his tone as he said this last deprived me of the insulated status of an outsider, for I too was a compulsive child-snapper; I had albums and boxes of snaps of David from babyhood upward, and could all too easily imagine how I would feel, comparing those untrammelled baby likenesses to something grown wild-haired and shallow-minded, grubby-footed and foul-mouthed, slack-willed and dead-eyed like the young men (and girls) who had begun to accumulate in the village cafés, or whom I encountered slouching down Tottenham Court Road or strumming guitars, very badly, in stuffy station waiting-rooms—lost, adrift, disenchanted with everything, or perhaps all too enchanted, long beyond arm’s reach of real life, or so it seemed to me. To see that sort of shadow engulf your child must be a sort of hell on earth, especially if he blames you for it, or you are forced to blame yourself. The only recourse might well be a cynical indifference, strongly enough feigned to convince, first and foremost, yourself. But the love that would underlie it—that would take some killing. Andy, clearly, had not even made a convincing first assault on his.
He finally roused himself on the other end of the line.
‘Darling, this won’t do. I’m depressing you. Look, I’ll ring you tonight. Forgive me if I go now? My heart really isn’t in anything just this minute except finding out where he is. Does that sound inexcusable, under the present circumstances? Ours, I mean.’
‘No. Do, please, forget about everything else for the moment until your mind’s at rest.’
‘Thank you.’
He hung up.
The eight-years difference again. Eight years ago I would certainly have wept, and without really knowing why—because he had ‘failed’ me, because I had ‘failed’ him; out of exasperation, out of frustration, out of physical emptiness. Now I sat dry-eyed and ate my sandwiches because I knew I’d be hungry later, during work, if I didn’t; but I felt very grim, and every now and then as I was chewing I would clench my teeth against something very like a sharp pain.
Was this to be my eternal pattern? One-night love-stands, with my partner then whisked away by a malignant, punitive, anti-sex fate in the morning? Thus with Terry; our long-awaited, utterly misperformed night of so-called love had ended with him putting me onto a French inter-village bus the next morning with a peck on the cheek and averted eyes. Toby . . . and a preposterous press-party the following day which sundered us, as it turned out, for weeks. Pietro, if he counted . . . but he was meant to be a one-nighter. And now this. Christ, what bloody lousy stinking luck I had, to be sure!
Childishness. I wasn’t thinking of Chris at all, except to curse him, or even of Andy’s poor, plagued paternity. Nor of a father for David. Nor of anyone but me. But then sex is such an ego-rouser when it’s over. Nothing makes you more conscious of your own body’s unique importance, your self as the centre of the universe. Only the presence of the giver of sex counter-balances this in any way at all.
Quite abruptly, perhaps because Andy and all that attended upon him were suddenly too much for me, Toby was back. I knew it before it was quite clear in my mind, because my hand had reached out to turn on the radio. Every impulse towards the news media these days had its roots in concern for Toby and Rachel.
But now, perhaps not oddly, the simple gesture had undertones. I held the knob tensely, the rest of my body slumping with a sudden weary acceptance. This was what I had feared last night. Before, it had been my right to love and care about Toby. Now, concern for him could only seem like unfaithfulness to Andy.
Anyway I’d missed the news, so the ambivalence of listening was obviated. It was Jo who, phoning again a few minutes later, told me that things appeared to be calming down a bit over there.
‘Everyone seems to be holding fire. It’ll probably blow over. Hell, surely the Americans won’t let anything dire happen? Their Sixth Fleet is bobbing about there, and I’m dead sure the Admiral must have at least a grandma in the Bronx who’d sit shiva for him if he let the Arabs get away with anything. Oh, do go!’
‘Jo, you don’t understand.’
‘Well, no, possibly not, in view of the fact that you’ve never actually poured out your heart to me on the subject of this mythical yid of yours. But have you stopped to consider that one look at him now, after all these years of separate development, may scotch the affair for good and all? In which case you could settle down with Andy with an easy heart. It isn’t easy now, is it, Jane? Come on, be honest.’
I admitted it was accursedly uneasy.
‘And the principal obstacle is sitting over there in Sunny Israel amid all that silver jewellery and olive-wood
and leather . . . Did I tell you about their leather?’ And she was off on another shpeel. My mind wandered. Pressure from all sides upon me to go. Even the tides of war drew back, robbing me of another impediment.
‘Have you talked to David?’ I interrupted.
‘Yes. Well, he talked to me, as a matter of fact. It’s odd, but he seems to actually want you to go now.’
‘Odd’s the word—don’t you think?’
‘He’s growing up. Realising you’ve got your own life to live.’
‘At age seven? Allow me to doubt it.’
‘He’s on the verge of eight, and he’s extremely mature for his age.’
‘No, he’s not.’
‘Intelligent, then.’
‘That’s something else again.’
‘Well, what do you think’s the explanation?’
‘I’m still wondering. All occasions are conspiring together just a little too patly for my entire liking.’
‘If you imply by that that we’re all part of a plot to drive you off into the wilderness, you’re crazy. True, I wouldn’t have re-opened the subject if David hadn’t let me know he’d reconsidered . . .’
‘Look. You want me to go. David inexplicably wants me to go. Even Andy thinks it would be a good idea . . .’
‘Does he indeed! Well, isn’t that extremely interesting. Knowing the object of the exercise, I assume?’
‘Of course.’
‘A remarkable gentleman. Go on.’
‘—And I’ve just been thinking that if and when I let Toby’s mother-in-law know that I’m dallying with the idea, she’ll join the team as well. She’ll want me to bring Rachel back from the jaws of hell single-handed. I wonder,’ I added on an afterthought, ‘what John would think?’
‘Ah, your witch-doctor.’ Jo always called him that, and oddly it never struck me as being an inappropriate soubriquet for him. ‘That’s quite an idea. Why not have him consult the entrails for you? I know you reckon plenty to his native wisdom, if that’s not a racialist expression these days. Let him be the deciding factor.’
‘I don’t know about that. But I think I might as well talk to him about it. He might have a new angle on the whole business.’