Collected Stories (59 page)

Our singularity made us both seem insubordinate, as if we were refusing to enter into the spirit of the evening, which was how, to my regret, I’d been as a young man – rebellion as affectation. Not that anyone seemed to notice. With the arrival of Princess Patricia in a long tie-dyed skirt and with flowers in her hair, the party became impossible to resist.

At Patricia’s entrance, I said to Alicia, ‘I didn’t realise we were attending a film premiere!’

After posing in the door until everyone became silent and took her in, she came to me, kissed me on the lips, patted my face, licked her lips, and refused to acknowledge Alicia.

‘Are we ready?’

She held my arm and pulled me along, telling the others to follow. It was clear: she wanted to go on the cruise because she wanted to show me off.

Patricia and I led what became a kind of procession through the village to the beach. The old men, sitting at café tables watching us pass, seemed not only to be from another era, but appeared to be another kind of species altogether.

On the beach, where other foreigners from the island were gathering, a band greeted us. In the distance, the yacht, the only bright thing in the dark ocean, glittered beneath the emerging stars. Despite Patricia’s attention, I was glad to be there.

Small boats carried us to the yacht. Patricia sat beside me, holding my hand. ‘I’ve been walking on air ever since our love-making. You were just what I needed.’ She kept leaning across me.

‘Patricia …’ I was going to tell her, coyly, that I didn’t want things to ‘move along’ too quickly. ‘I think we –’

She interrupted me. ‘You didn’t even get changed,’ she said. ‘Hold still, then. Let me put this in.’ She was fiddling with my ear. ‘Now we have matching ear-rings.’ She patted my face, sat back and looked at me.

I touched my ear. ‘Oh, yes,’ I said, perplexed. ‘I must have forgotten I’d had it pierced.’

‘There are several holes. What a funny boy you are,’ she said. ‘I’ve watched you dancing. You do it wonderfully. You must have trained somewhere.’

‘I did.’

‘Where?’ She went on, ‘Will you dance with me all night?’

‘Not all night, Patricia.’

She took my hand and slipped it between her thighs. ‘Most of it, then, darling boy.’

We were helped from the boat onto the yacht. The owner, Matte, an excitable young man, greeted us on deck.

‘Thank you, Patricia, for bringing your crew! You are all welcome!’ he said. He waved at the women following us. ‘Come along, girls! Let’s get down!’

As we looked around the boat, Strauss’s
Also sprach Zarathustra
in the von Karajan version began playing. I adore Richard Strauss, but am ready to admit how much great music has been turned into kitsch. Where is there to turn for something that sounds fresh today, except to the new or weird? You couldn’t turn Bartók’s quartets or Webern’s meditations into easy listening.

Oddly, though, the Strauss didn’t seem only sententious. Against the sea and sky, in this place, and taken by surprise – which, it seems to me, is often the best way to hear music; walking into a shop one Saturday morning and hearing Callas; tricked into amazement – it thrilled and uplifted me again.

This was what I, as a young man, would have wanted.

Food, drink and sexual possibility appeared to be limitless. Matte’s uniformed staff walked about with trays, some of which held sex toys and condoms. There was a disco and a band. Those people already there appeared to be British, American and European playboys, models, actors, singers, pleasure-seekers, indolent aristocrats. There were also people that even I recognised from the British newspapers, pop stars and their partners, and actors from soap operas. These were people with groovy sun glasses and ideal bodies – I guessed that different parts of their bodies were of different ages and materials – who made it clear they had seen all this before, and liked being looked at.

Alicia nudged me. ‘Someone’s staring at you.’

A young woman was indeed looking at me. I smiled, and received a timid wave.

‘As always, you’re popular,’ said Alicia. ‘Can I ask who it is?’

‘I don’t know. She looks like a movie star.’

‘You know movie stars?’

‘Of course not, but they all know me.’ I returned the woman’s wave. ‘Come on.’

We all strolled around. Patricia seemed to be doing a fine impression of Princess Margaret in her heyday. Alicia and I, at least, weren’t sure whether to resist or swoon at the sight of so much gold. Alicia said she liked the way English Londoners were sneery and hated to be credulous, whereas I now found that tedious. This time round I wanted to like things.

When, for a moment, Alicia went to fetch a drink, the ‘film star’ who’d waved earlier covered herself up and hurried over.

‘How funny to meet you here,’ she said, kissing me.

I kissed her back; I had to. But I was afraid she’d known me as ‘Mark’; perhaps we’d been ‘married’. I vowed that when I next saw Ralph I would put an end to his immortality.

‘Don’t you know me?’

I looked at her until a picture came into my mind. It was of an old woman in a wheelchair wearing a pink flannel night-gown. This woman and I had become Newbodies on the same day. We were, in a sense, the same age.

I said, ‘Good to see you. How are you enjoying it?’

‘I don’t know. Wherever I go, people try to touch or have me. If I don’t comply, they’re nasty. Still,’ she said, ‘I wouldn’t have men fighting over me if I were a pile of ash.’

‘Oh, I don’t know. What else will you do?’

‘I’ve got a record contract,’ she said. ‘And you?’

‘It’s strange, like being a ghost.’

She glanced around. ‘I know. Relax now. There are others here like us. Everyone else is so silly and blind.’

‘How many others like us?’

I looked at the faces and bodies behind her. How would I know who was who?

‘More than you think. We play tennis and we stay up late at cards, talking about our lives. We have plenty of time, you see. Like pop stars and royalty, we stick together.’

I thought of them, the beauties around a table together, like moving statues, an art work.

I said, ‘Soon, everyone in the world will know.’

‘Oh, yes, I think so. Does it matter? Come and talk to me later.’ She was looking down at her feet. ‘Do you love your body now?’

‘Why shouldn’t I?’

‘I’m a little too tall and my waist is too thick. My feet are big. Overall, I’m not comfortable.’

She left when Alicia rejoined me. ‘You say you don’t know that woman. Will you go with her now?’

‘Go where? I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘You can if you want,’ Alicia said. ‘There is time. We’ve set sail.’

‘Set sail for where?’

Alicia was laughing at me. ‘I don’t know. But I do know that setting sail is what boats tend to do. We’re on here until dawn.’

I ran to the side of the boat. We were already in motion. It hadn’t occurred to me that I wouldn’t be able to escape at any time. I considered jumping into the sea, but wasn’t convinced I could swim so far. Anyway, Patricia was beside me straight away. She seemed to be insisting that I stay beside her all night. Not only at her side, in fact, but within touching distance.

She was rubbing my shoulders. ‘I’ve never seen anything like you. I’ve never wanted anyone so much. I’d never have given myself permission to touch someone like you before.’ Her fist was somewhere in my head. ‘Where did you get that hair?’

I almost said, ‘I saw it in a fridge and bought it, along with everything else you like about me.’ I wondered whether that would matter. Now, at least, I knew something. The world is different for the beautiful. They’re desired, oh yes; other bodies are all over them. But they don’t necessarily like them.

‘Come and see this,’ Patricia said, without a glance at Alicia. ‘A young man will be interested.’

I followed her through the boat to a cabin door. She pushed it. The room within was almost completely dark.

I stepped in. It took a couple of minutes for my eyes to adjust. There must have been about thirty naked people in the room, with a greater proportion of men than women. In a corner, there were Goyaesque mounds of bodies, lost in one another. It was difficult to tell which limb belonged to which body. I wondered whether some of the limbs had become independent of selves, turning into creatures in their own right, arms dancing with legs, perhaps, and torsos alone. There was music, talking, and – a lonely noise – the sound of others’ pleasure.

Patricia tugged at my shirt. ‘Let’s join in.’

‘I’m feeling queasy,’ I said. ‘I’m not used to the … motion.’

‘Where are you going?’

I hurried through the rooms, corridors and decks of the boat, looking for somewhere she wouldn’t find me for a while. For ages I heard her calling my name.

I found a small cabin. Candles were burning; the music was North African. There were oriental cushions, wall hangings, rugs, a lot of velvet. The style amused me, reminding me of the 1960s.

I liked the boat. Why couldn’t I get work as a deckhand? But I was annoyed at having to leave the Centre, where I had expected to spend the rest of my time in this body. But I had got in too far with the people there. It was no longer restful. Whatever happened tonight, I would leave the island in the morning, taking the first boat wherever it went. I would go to another island and find a job in a bar or disco.

I heard footsteps. It wasn’t Patricia, but Matte, the owner of the yacht, in shorts, bright shirt and flip-flops.

‘What the fuck are you doing in here?’

‘Am I in the wrong place?’ I got up. ‘You forgot to set aside a quiet room. It was chaotic and I needed to get away.’

He walked right up to me and stared into my eyes. ‘Always ask first.’

I said, ‘If I had a room, it’d be like this. The mid-sixties has always been one of my favourite periods.’

‘Right. Want a glass of wine now?’

‘If that’s okay. We were introduced, but in case you’ve forgotten, the name’s Leo.’

He said, ‘Matte. Why would someone your age be interested in the sixties?’

‘Must be something to do with my parents. And you?’

He was fixing drinks for both of us. ‘Those days people knew how to have a laugh.’ Cept I was the wrong age.’

His manner of speaking gave me the impression that English wasn’t his first language, but it was impossible to tell where he was from. I’d have been inclined to say, if asked, ‘from nowhere’.

‘Was this your father’s boat?’

His body stiffened. ‘Why the hell should it be?’

‘I’m asking, is it a family possession?’

He said, ‘I hate it when people suggest I haven’t worked, that I’m only a rich playboy. I do play at things – I play at being a playboy – but it’s a vacation, not a vocation.’

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘You wouldn’t be the first to think of me as a fool. I’ll get out.’

He came after me and pulled me back roughly. ‘Wait right here. You have to stay now.’

‘Why?’

‘I recognise you from somewhere.’

‘How could we have met? I’m neither a teacher nor student, only a cleaner at the Centre on the island.’

‘Ever been a builder?’

‘No.’

‘Coach driver?’

‘Nope.’

‘I have seen you,’ he continued, screwing up his eyes. ‘It’s not your face that I particularly recognise.’ He walked round me then, as if I were a sculpture. ‘It’ll come back to me.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘I might look like a hairy idiot but I’ve got perfect vision and an excellent memory.’

He was making me nervous, more nervous, even, than Patricia. He chopped out some generous lines of coke and offered me one.

‘Thanks,’ I said.

He was snorting one himself when there was a knock on the door. It was one of his Thai staff. Matte went to him and then, to my surprise, turned to me.

‘I’m being told that someone called Patricia is looking for you.’

‘Oh, Christ.’

Matte laughed, and said to the man, ‘He can’t be found anywhere at the moment. He’s indisposed.’ He shut the door. ‘She’s after you, eh? Wants your body.’

‘Maybe I should appreciate her appreciation more. There’ll be a time when no one will want to jump my old bones.’

‘The one thing I’ve never wanted is to get old, to see your own skin blotted and withered.’

‘Why is that?’

‘I’m from a big family. As a kid, I hated grandmothers, aunts, old men and women kissing me. Their lips, mouths, breath over me – makes me nearly lose me lunch to think of it.’

I said, ‘I remember my grandmother’s cheeks and hands, her cardigan, her smell, with nothing but love. She had learned things, which made me feel safe. Anyhow, you haven’t been old yet. How do you know you won’t like it?’

‘I haven’t died yet. Or visited Northampton. I just know they won’t agree with me.’

He kept looking at me as though there was something he wanted to know or ask me.

I said, ‘I’ll only be here a minute. All I want to do is relax.’

‘You do that. I’ve got a party to run.’

‘Right.’

Somewhat self-consciously, I turned to look out at the dark sea, hoping that when I turned back he’d be gone. I heard him lock the door. Before I could speak, I was hit, and lost my bearings.

Instinctively, I imagined Matte had struck me from behind, smashing his fist onto the back of my head with some strength. That was how it felt. But he had encircled my neck with his arm, kicked my legs away and forced me to my knees. I thought: now he’s going to shoot me in the back of the head. During this I recalled, incorrectly I hope, a line from Webster: ‘Of all the deaths, a violent one is best.’

‘What are you doing?’

‘Leo, shut it! If you keep still I won’t damage you.’

‘Keep still for what?’

He was searching in my hair, not unlike the way I would grab my kids and examine their heads for nits. I said, ‘I never had you down for a madman.’

‘’Scuse me,’ he said, relaxing his grip. ‘I found the mark.’

‘Mark?’

‘Didn’t you know? I guess they like to believe it’s all seamless. You can get up now. How old are you really? No need to pretend. I am nearly eighty. A good age in a man, don’t you think?’