Dead Babies (25 page)

"Foci."

"Fuck you too," he said, shrugging.

: "All the foci of human memory. Obliterate it all. Entirely. Then we could really start over."

Throughout the morning Giles's anesthetized ears had fastened on and absorbed only the odd word or phrase— "bridge . . . gumboot ... I'd give my eyeteeth ... to crown it all ... cap in hand . . . that's the drill . . . wisdom . . ." At Roxeanne's last words, however, he decided he could no longer remain silent. He sat up straight and said, "But what would happen— But what would happen to modern—"

Before Giles could stutter out the word
dentistry,
Andy was saying, "What's going on here? Hey! What's going on— there's no more lush! Come
on,
what's going
on
around here."

At length, Giles held out his cupboard keys.

"Christ, Giles," Andy said earnestly, "what kind of stunt was that to try and pull."

"Gin for me, Andy, actually," said Giles.

As Andy dashed from the room, Roxeanne turned to Quentin. Her voice was drained and plaintive. "What's the
time?"
she asked achingly.

"How much more
day
is there," Lucy said.

Quentin looked at his watch, a guilty host. It had stopped. "Not long," he said. "Not long."

Alcoholic inebriation had well passed the stage at which it might responsibly be explained away as extreme drunkenness. Even the relatively teetotal Celia had consumed well over a liter of brandy-orientated champagne cocktail. And yet the Appleseeders still seemed quite opinionatedly game. Their blood pressures and body temperatures were dropping, finding the time for various drugs to catch up to their stretched metabolisms. Whitehead, for example, felt that his torso might be a shipment of jumping beans, Diana and Celia alike believed that they were on the brink of grave hormonal upsets, Marvell burped with unusual volume and candor, and Lucy was under the impression that she was a ghost or a dead body. All about them, cellular and glandular negotiations raged.

Marvell gazed at his watch. "Oh-kay," he said. "Everybody all right? We should be out the other side of this thing pretty soon. Just wander around a bit and do what feels best to do. Any more of that cocktail . . . ?"

The air in the room rolled. People began to fall through doorways.

43: CrueL BODY

All morning there had been talk between Andy and Skip of a game of badminton. Noticing that Skip's mouth was white-crumbed with dehydration, Andy malevolently challenged him to an immediate match.

"Now it's not a fuckin' American game," Andy briefed Skip as they extracted net and posts from the hall trunk. "So don't try kicking it or heading it or running around with it or any crap like that. You just"—he motioned with his racket— "whap it over the net with this, is all. Okay? And watch it, cos I'm fucking good."

Diana went upstairs to view the game from her bedroom window. She did this partly because she felt too ill to tolerate company, and partly because the confusion of her feelings for Andy had not yet abated the pleasure of watching him move about when he thought her eyes weren't on him. She lit a cigarette, resting her elbows on the wooden windowsill. The game began.

Andy won a few quick points by variously fair and foul means, penalizing Skip for "technical" misdemeanors, mis-positioning him to receive serve, capriciously amending the rules; but Skip had caught on fast and was moreover proving stubborn about the more audacious contradictions in Andy's scoring system. At 6-6, Andy was no longer master of his good temper, and when little Keith staggered out to admire the contest, Andy suggested that he fuck off again, menacing the craven Whitehead with his raised racket.

To Diana, Andy and Skip seemed equally strong and skilless, equally powerful and uncoordinated. Stripped to the waist, Andy looked marginally the more impressive, with his thick hair flapping and the glisten of sweat on his tanned back and glossy shoulders. Further, he had a habit of shouting
Yeah!
whenever he made a good shot and hooting sarcastically whenever Skip coerced him into a bad one. For all his clamorous bulk, though, Andy looked about seventeen. Skip, bespectacled, in T-shirt and khaki shorts, was far more composed, his mouth set resolutely throughout. And his body was hard and metallic by comparison, as if operated on tight cords—a sharp and unfriendly body, a cruel body.

"Johnny," said Diana.

:
After a long, noisy rally, in which several reverses appeared to take place, Andy snapped his racket over his knee and stalked back toward the house, watched by a blankfaced Skip. Diana peered down as Andy's head bobbed out of sight. She smiled unpleasantly, until her eyes returned to the center of the lawn, where they were met by the American's.

44: wars and
SHIT

"I can't believe I'm hearing this babies," said Marvell. "What are you, a fuckin' flower child?"

Giles did not reply.

"Listen," said Andy. "Listen," he said, flexing his shoulders as if about to lift some formidably heavy object. "Man has
always
been violent. It's only for a few years that we ever thought he might not be-—and he was still having fuckin' wars and shit, Vietnam and that. Violence is innate, so it's sort of felt selfhood, realized livingness, it's expressing life in its full creative force—it's sort of creative to do it."

Giles frowned. "But what if you just went up to some poor old lady in the street and knocked out her, got her right in the . . ."

"Christ, hippie," said Andy, "what a crappy example. That's more like torture or something."

Giles frowned. "But isn't what you want . . . anarchy? I mean, what would become of law and policemen and fire engines and denti—"

"Yeah, well, you need all that too," said Andy, folding his arms. "But if I took you outside now and smacked the shit out of you, don't tell me you'd go running to the village pig, now, would you?" Andy leaned forward warningly.

Giles swallowed. "No, I promise, Andy."

"Well, then."

Those conversations.

"Hey . . . uh, Trip or Flap or whatever the fuck your name is—"

"Skip," said Skip.

"Skip. Check.
You
like fighting and fucking up animals and smashing things up and stuff, don't you?"

"Sure. Makes you feel good.”

"Check. Marvell, am I wrong?"

"No, you're not wrong," said Marvell.

"Check. Fuckin' check." Andy sat back and turned haughtily to Giles. "Okay?"

Giles was a worried man. This sort of talk was all very much in accord with his occasional anxieties about the house, with the air of unreason and casual menace that struck him at odd moments of sobriety: he didn't know—unpredictable shadows on the stairs, pockets of sourceless, murmured conversation, the feeling you got that no one was really alive there, the sense it gave of being
suspended.
Giles remembered his terrified awe when he had overheard a speed-racked Andy soliloquize one night about how he was going to slay Mr. and Mrs. Tuckle . . . "Then I'm going to get this fuckin' great meat cleaver," Andy had droned to himself, "and stuff all these ants and stuff up her snatch. And pull out her teeth with pliers. And staple up her lips. 'Ain't no use you beefing about it Mr. Tuckle. Take a seat, sir, please, whilst I make with the meathooks.'" Shudder shudder shudder. Giles had crept back to his room and hadn't come out of it again for five days.

"Andy," he said. "If you do decide to hit me, don't hit me in the face, please. All right? Anywhere, but not in the face. I'll pay you not to . . ."

Andy leaned forward and tousled Giles's hair. "Don't worry, chickenshit," he said. "It's not your turn yet."

"Thank you, Andy," said Giles, getting up to leave.

"Hey. Andy."

"Yeah, what do you want, Rip?"

"Skip," said Skip.

"Check," said Andy.

"Why—how come you didn't want me to go kick that heifer?"

"What heifer?"

"The heifer yesterday."

"Oh, the cow. Cos ... it was all fucked up—and it had attacked us, so you ought to treat it with respeck."

"I wanted to go fuck it up some more."

"Well, I didn't want you to, see?"

"I wanted to kill it."

Andy gave Skip a hard look. "Well, you'd expect that from someone whose dad killed his mum.”

: "Pardon me?"

In the same tone Andy said, "You'd expect that from someone whose father killed his mother."

The scene changed like a film cut. Andy was carpeted on his back and Skip straddled his chest, hands white on Andy's throat.

"Aw
—
get him
—/"

Providentially Quentin was mulling over some Rousseau in the smaller sitting room when he heard the struggle. He raced through the dividing doors. With Marvell's aid he peeled Skip from Andy's thrashing figure and flattened him on the sofa.

"What'd he
say!
What'd he
say!"
bawled Skip as Marvell ran to the dining alcove. He returned, fumbling with a hypodermic.

"Jesus," said Marvell. He eased the needle into Skip's flapping arm. "The
fuck,
Andy."

"What'd he say," moaned Skip, tears welling from his closed eyes, "what'd he
say."

"I'd better lay an amnesiac on him too," said Marvell through his teeth. Skip's consciousness died from the room.

"What on earth happened?" asked Quentin.

Marvell explained while Andy climbed to his feet. He saw with relief that no one else was present. Moodily he dusted himself down.

"Now all we fuckin' need," Marvell was saying, "is for him to find the letter."

"The letter?"

"The one from his fuckin' father. It's in our room. I told you about it. It'd wreck his head to see it now."

"Ah yes, I remember. Give it to me," said Quentin, "for safekeeping. I'll return it before you leave. How fascinating. Tell me—"

As they conferred Andy moved over to the sofa, his back to the others. He leaned a palm on Skip's forehead, in the manner of one feeling its temperature. "Hope he's okay," he muttered. Andy's voice shook slightly when he said this be-cause he was pinching Skip's damaged ear with all his might. "He'll pull through," said Andy, wiping a bloody thumbnail on Skip's khaki shirt. "I think he'll pull through okay.”

45: THE BILLET-DOUX

Meanwhile, little Keith was sobbing loudly in the joyful solitude of the back passage. Following this treat, his legs now shooting out in all directions, Whitehead regained his cubicle where, with tweezers, chisel, and light hammer, he prised and chipped the blazing shoes from his feet. He sat back against the wall and let out a quiet roar of suppressed pain. Black blood ran down his shins.

Next to Whitehead on the floor lay the sex letter, the
billet-doux,
that he had composed for the delight of Lucy Littlejohn. Keith picked it up and surveyed it without embarrassment. It had, after all, none of the flaws common to such missives; it was not heated, rarefied, florid, or imprecise. On the contrary, it was a pedestrian—indeed, in style almost bureaucratic—synopsis of his present plight, with the rider that he would kill himself if Lucy did not alleviate it by sleeping with him. It began
Dear Lucy
and it ended Yours
sincerely.

"'. . .
the sum of nineteen pounds and seventy pence. It is imperative,'" Keith read out loud, " 'that you notify me of your decision within the next twenty-four hours. Thank you. Yours sincerely, Keith (Whitehead).'

"That'll get her going," he said, hobbling to his knees. "Oh yes, those brackets will get her going." He knelt against the bed and joined his hands in an informal attitude of prayer. "It's confidence wins today's girls," he snuffled.