FIVE
Aware that it would soon grow cold, they swam back to the boat after only an hour on the beach and set sail for Nice. Once again they took it in turns to change back from their bathing suits into their clothes, and once again Carmen was the last – remaining for most of the voyage at the front of the boat, proffering her naked bust to the wind like the figurehead on the prow of an old clipper.
They were back at the Villa Golitsyn by six. Once in his room, Simon rinsed the salt water out of his bathing trunks, hung them over the bath, took a shower and changed. He came down again soon after eight to find Willy drinking by the sideboard in the drawing-room, making up for his relative abstemiousness earlier in the day by throwing one glass of wine after another down his throat.
‘I can’t stand that stupid bitch much longer,’ he said to Simon as he came in.
‘She’s not too bad,’ said Simon.
‘She gets on my nerves.’
‘Think of Charlie.’
‘How can he stand her? Those bloody great tits …’
‘Perhaps that’s what he always wanted.’
‘Impossible.’ Willy emptied another glass. ‘She must have some sort of hold over him.’
Simon shook his head. ‘He’s probably happy to have found a woman who accepts him as he is.’
‘I hate that kind of compromise,’ said Willy vehemently.
‘It’s probably the best he could do – in women.’
‘Then he should stick to men.’
Helen came down next, wearing black slacks and a white blouse, followed by Priss from the kitchen, where she had put the finishing touches to a supper prepared by Aisha. ‘We can eat whenever you’re ready,’ she said.
‘Priss,’ said Willy – his speech now slurred – ‘We’ve got to get rid of that woman. She’s got to go.’
‘Hush,’ said Priss.
‘If I see those bloody great udders once again, I’ll be sick,’ said Willy. ‘I swear it, I’ll chuck up.’
‘The weather’s turning,’ said Priss. ‘We won’t be sunbathing much more.’
‘Her voice,’ said Willy, putting his hand to his ears. ‘And her vacuous opinions. I can’t bear it.’
‘You must. For Charlie’s sake.’
‘He can’t like that cow.’
‘She may be the only girl he’ll ever get,’ said Priss.
‘You women are always the same,’ said Willy. ‘You think that marriage is paradise when it mostly turns out to be hell.’
Priss made no rejoinder. ‘Where are they, anyway?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know.’ Priss looked at her watch. ‘It’s quite late. Perhaps I’d better call them.’ She rose, went into the hall and shouted for Charlie and Carmen. Her soft voice could hardly have carried to the attic, but a few moments later, as the others made their way to the table, they appeared looking flushed and embarrassed.
‘Sorry to be late,’ said Charlie.
‘Been fucking?’ asked Willy.
‘Shut up, Will,’ said Priss.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked with mock innocence. ‘There’s nothing wrong with an engaged couple jumping the gun, is there, dear? After all, we did.’
‘That’s not what I meant,’ said Priss.
‘Oh, I see,’ he drawled. ‘You mean one shouldn’t talk about fucking at table.’
‘I’d rather you didn’t.’
‘Like crapping and pissing?’
‘Yes.’
‘What do you think?’ He turned to Carmen, who had just sat down at his right hand. ‘Do you think that fucking and crapping come into the same category?’
‘Oh no,’ said Carmen coyly. ‘I think it’s wonderful.’
‘Crapping?’
She laughed. ‘No. Fucking.’
‘So why not talk about it?’
‘I don’t mind.’
‘Well I do,’ said Priss irritably.
‘Priss is very odd,’ said Willy – still facing Carmen, and talking to her quietly as if no one else could hear their conversation. ‘On the one hand she says that copulation is like eating – the simple fulfilment of a natural appetite – and of course she’s not embarrassed to talk about food in bed; but on the other hand she is embarrassed, and think it’s bad taste, to talk about sex at table.
‘Well, they are kind of different,’ said Carmen.
‘Of course,’ said Willy. ‘The holes are at different ends of the body.’
Carmen laughed again, but with a little less certainty. ‘Sure,’ she said with affected irony. ‘That’s the only difference.’
‘You don’t have complexes and neurosis about sex, do you?’ Willy asked.
‘I hope not,’ said Carmen.
‘It’s quite extraordinary that in this day and age’ – he pronounced those five words with exaggerated emphasis – ‘people’s sexual behaviour is still inhibited by the old-fashioned values of a superstitious age.’
‘Extraordinary,’ said Carmen.
‘“Where the bee sucks, there suck I,”’ said Willy. ‘That’s my motto.’
‘Mine too.’
‘And buggery,’ said Willy. ‘All our complexes about buggery stem from our overzealous nannies who to persuade us to sit on a potty taught us that shit was nasty and naughty …’
‘I didn’t have a nanny,’ said Carmen.
‘Lucky Charlie,’ said Willy.
‘It was the sort of people who did have nannies,’ said Simon, ‘who later turned out to be queer.’
‘Then my theory has a reverse validity,’ said Willy. ‘It was just because the nannies were so strict that the bum was made to seem sinful and exciting.’
‘That’s more like it,’ said Simon. ‘It explains why all those Cambridge spies were queer as well. They are irresistibly drawn by the excitement of doing what was forbidden.’
‘That’s nonsense too,’ said Priss, frowning, as if reluctant to be drawn into the conversation. ‘It was just that they all went to boys’ boarding schools and had nowhere else to go.’
‘But up the bums of the fourth-formers,’ said Willy. ‘Was that all it was, Carlo mio? I like to think it was something more.’
Charlie blushed.
‘Cut it out, Willy,’ said Simon.
‘Cut what out?’ asked Willy in a tone of sweet reason. ‘The past? Are we ashamed of our past?’
‘I’m not ashamed of anything,’ said Charlie.
‘Quite right,’ said Willy.
‘All the same, it’s a little tasteless,’ said Simon.
Tasteless?’ Again, the pose of innocence.
‘It’s not very nice for Carmen,’ said Priss.
‘But Carmen doesn’t mind, do you my dear?’ Willy turned to give Carmen an open, trusting smile.
She looked baffled. ‘Well, I guess not.’
‘There are such things as privacy and discretion,’ said Priss.
‘Pfui,’ said Willy. ‘Bourgeois hangups. Don’t you think so, Carmen?’
‘I guess I do.’
‘I’m so glad,’ said Willy. He raised his head and rolled his bloodshot eyes. His face had gone a mottled red and the pitch of his voice grew higher as he spoke. ‘What I like about you is your Californian candour. These English girls …’ – he waved his hands towards Priss and Helen – ‘are so inhibited. Priss knew about Charlie and me. She always knew, and she didn’t mind, but she never liked to talk about it …’
Carmen looked baffled. ‘About what?’
‘About Charlie and me,’ he repeated.
‘What about Charlie and you?’
‘Didn’t you know? We had an affair. We were lovers.’
She blushed. ‘Yes, well, I sort of knew that Charlie was gay – I mean, that he used to be.’
‘I seduced him,’ said Willy in a sweet, high-pitched hiss. ‘I was his first lover.’
Carmen now looked dark. ‘Sure, well, I don’t mind.’
‘And neither does Priss, do you dear?’
Priss did not answer. She
stood, picked up some plates, and went through the green baize door into the kitchen.
‘And neither does Charlie,’ said Willy. He too now got to his feet. He went to Charlie and – standing behind his chair – embraced him. ‘You remember, don’t you, Carlito mio? Lying on the scratchy bracken? The dead leaves tickling your little bum?’ He put his mouth to Charlie’s ear and said in an audible whisper: ‘Let’s do it again, Charlie. Let’s do it now. Come on … away from these ghastly women. Come on, come upstairs with me.’
Carmen sat dumbfounded.
‘Willy,’ said Charlie in a strange, choking voice. ‘Willy, please, cut it out.’
‘Come on, Carlito,’ Willy went on in the same coaxing, high-pitched whisper. ‘She won’t mind, that old bag of yours. She said so. She can watch us if she likes, if she feels left out …’
‘No, Willy,’ said Charlie – his voice still gurgling, not with anger but with an attempt to suppress tears.
Carmen’s wide eyes narrowed at last. ‘For God’s sake, Charlie,’ she shouted. ‘Get rid of this creep. Push him away.’ She stood and grabbed at Willy’s arm but Willy only hugged harder and buried his face in Charlie’s neck while Charlie merely held on to Willy’s wrists as if taking his pulse: he made no attempt to break his embrace.
Priss came back into the room. ‘What the hell’s going on?’ she said.
Willy raised his head. ‘Here she comes,’ he shouted triumphantly. ‘Here comes …’
He did not finish his sentence. He stopped. His eyes moved back into his skull, and then slowly like a collapsing chimney stack, he fell to the floor.
For a moment no one moved. They thought it was a further display of Willy’s tomfoolery – the exit line for an awkward scene; but then Simon and Charlie looked down and saw that he was helpless on the floor. He was not unconscious. His eyes were open and he tried to rise of his own accord, but he could not, so the two other men took hold of his arms and lifted him to his feet.
They carried him upstairs and laid him on the large four-poster bed. Then, while Charlie went down to see to the wounded feelings of his fiancée, Simon helped Priss remove the clothes from Willy’s emaciated body. It had now become difficult to tell whether he was conscious or not. Every now and then his eyes opened and he struggled feebly, as if humiliated to be treated in this way. Red blotches had appeared on his face, and when they covered him with sheets and blankets he tried to kick them off. Only when they left him uncovered would he lie still.
‘Would you ask Helen to make him some warm milk?’ Priss whispered to Simon as she sat by the bed holding Willy’s bony hand.
He went down and delivered this request to Helen, who sat alone in the large drawing-room. He followed her into the kitchen and watched as she cut open the cardboard container and emptied milk into a saucepan.
‘Where’s Charlie?’ he asked.
‘He took Carmen down to the town.’ She scratched her nose.
‘Was she upset by what Willy said?’
‘She was a bit. She was being very mean to Charlie.’
‘Willy wasn’t very nice to her.’
She stirred the milk with her finger. ‘With any luck she’ll go then.’
‘Don’t you like her?’
‘No.’
‘But you like Willy?’
‘Yes.’
‘Can he do no wrong?’
She looked up at him with open, empty eyes. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Is there nothing he might do which you wouldn’t like?’
‘Such as what?’
‘Make a pass …’
She blushed. ‘I wouldn’t mind.’
‘You’d let him?’
‘What?’
‘Sleep with you.’
‘He wouldn’t want to.’
‘Why not?’
‘I’m too young.’ She took the pan off the flame.
‘And he’s too old.’
‘Oh no.’ She poured the milk into a mug.
‘Are you in love with Willy?’
She nodded, quite casually, as if he had merely asked whether she was tired or hungry. Then she added: ‘But he doesn’t love me. He loves Priss.’
‘Perhaps he loves you both.’
‘I wish he did.’
‘You’d accept a ménage à trois?’
‘What’s that?’
‘A man living with two women, or a woman with two men.’
‘Yes.’ She looked down at the mug. ‘Do you think he’d like honey in this?’
‘Brandy, perhaps.’
She smiled.
‘He’s much older than you are.’
‘I know, but he’s special.’
Simon shrugged his shoulders. ‘I’m surprised that you find him attractive.’
She smiled to herself – a secret smile. ‘I certainly never thought I’d fall for someone like that.’
‘You’re looking for a father.’
‘That’s what Willy said.’
‘But he doesn’t mind the incestuous role?’
‘He said that all marriages are based on family relationships; that you always end up with your father or your brother or your mother or your sister …’
Simon laughed. ‘And what’s Priss? His mother?’
‘No. His sister.’
‘So there’s room for a mother and a daughter. A convenient philosophy for a man who wants three wives.’
She looked at the mug again. ‘I’d better take this up before it gets cold.’
SIX
Simon waited alone in the living-room for Helen to come down again. The admission she had just made – that she loved the decrepit drunk lying in bed upstairs – left him bemused; but he was equally stupefied by his own reactions to the bizarre intrigues of his hostess at the Villa Golitsyn, for instead of feeling disgusted by her schemes to revive her husband with the young flesh of this English schoolgirl, he found that it only fed his obsession. He had recovered from the smarting of his hurt pride to find that the somewhat old-fashioned English woman he had loved before had now taken on the tints of a Transylvanian countess who bathes in the blood of virgins by the light of the full moon.
Despite his obsession with Priss, he still felt some sort of responsibility for Helen, but he realized now that if she was to move into Willy’s bed, then Priss was more likely to come to his, and his avuncular concern for another man’s daughter was no match for his cold passion for his friend’s wife. He had indeed reached that raging stage of love when all his desires and aspirations were contained in her single person; when delirious pleasure and total despair depended upon her inclinations. Cold by nature, and grudging of his emotions, he sensed that this might be his last chance to come out of the prison in which his emotional parsimony had placed him. All his other affections – for his children or for his friends – were largely forgotten; or if remembered, were dim and feebly felt. He could cash them all in if in doing so he could purchase Priss.
He heard footsteps in the hall and Priss, not Helen, came into the room.
‘He’s asleep,’ she said. ‘Helen says that she’ll stay with him. I’m going out to find Charlie and Carmen.’
‘I’ll come with you.’
They walked down the steps into the dark, Priss going first and holding her hands in front of her face to protect it from the sharp low-growing leaves of the palm trees. They walked down the Boulevard in silence, past the entrance of Les Grands Cèdres and under the bridge to the two cafés at the corner. Because it was now cold, no one sat on the tables outside. They went into the first one and then the second, searching fruitlessly for Charlie and Carmen. They then walked on down the Avenue de la Californie towards Magnan.
‘Will is such a bore,’ said Priss, shivering from the cold. ‘I don’t just mean the drinking, which is tiresome enough but all that play-acting which tramples over people’s feelings.’
‘It’s a little cruel.’
‘We can all take it, because we know him, but Carmen … well, the trouble
is that Americans don’t understand irony, so they certainly can’t see the point of someone like Will, who is almost all irony.’
‘I find it hard enough to judge when he means what he says and when he doesn’t,’ said Simon.
‘I only wish he did mean what he said,’ said Priss. ‘I’d far rather he went to bed with Charlie than felt so guilty about that kind of thing.’
‘What kind of thing?’
‘Oh, you know …’ She squeezed between a building and a car that had been parked on the pavement.
‘He seems to have led a blameless life since he married you,’ said Simon.
‘He reads the Bible – I told you, didn’t I? – and that can make you feel guilty about anything.’
The café at Magnan was filled with students from the university. There was no sign of Charlie and Carmen.
‘Let’s have a drink anyway,’ said Priss, sitting down at an empty table. ‘They must have gone right into town.’
‘I’m sure they’ll sort things out,’ said Simon.
She frowned. ‘I think I could convince Carmen better than Charlie that it was all a charade because Charlie, well, he is still half in love with Will, and if Will really wanted to go to bed with him, I daresay that Charlie wouldn’t say no.’
‘Why do you call him Will?’ asked Simon, ‘when everyone else calls him Willy?’
‘He was always Will at home,’ said Priss, brushing a strand of hair away from her face. ‘He was only called Willy by the friends he made at school.’
‘You knew him as long ago as that?’
‘Yes.’ She frowned as if irritated. ‘I told you, didn’t I? I was the girl next door.’
‘If you hadn’t known him for quite so long,’ said Simon, ‘you might find it easier to conceive of life with someone else.’
There must have been something sad in his tone of voice, because Priss laid her hand on his and her frown changed to a smile. ‘If I saw him settled,’ she said, ‘happy, that is, with Helen or someone like Helen, then I’d come to you, if you still wanted me.’
‘I’ll wait,’ said Simon, looking down at the heavy ashtray on the small table, and at her brown hand on his.
‘You know how I feel about Will,’ she said. ‘That won’t change, but it doesn’t matter, does it? Because you love him too.’