On Beauty (13 page)

‘The girls hate Christian Von Asshole,' she said finally, teasingly, but let him rest his head on her bosom. ‘They won't go to anything he goes to. You know how they are. I can't do a thing about it.'

The bell rang. Howard sighed lustily.

‘Saved by the bell,' whispered Kiki. ‘Look, I'm going upstairs. I'm going to try to get the kids down. You answer that – and slow down on the drinks, OK? You gotta hold this whole shebang together.'

‘Mmm.'

Howard hurried to the door, but then turned just before he opened it. ‘Oh – Keeks –' His face was childish, apologetic, completely inadequate. It made Kiki suddenly despair. It was a face that placed them right alongside every other middle-aged couple on the block – the raging wife, the rueful husband. She thought:
How did we get to the same place as everybody else?

‘Keeks . . . Sorry, darling, just . . . I need to know if you invited them?'

‘Who?'

‘Who d'you think? The Kippses.'

‘Oh, right . . . Sure. I spoke to her. She was . . .' But it was impossible either to make a joke of Mrs Kipps or to give her to Howard in a nutshell, the way he liked people to be served to him. ‘I don't know if they'll come, but I invited them.'

And again with the bell. Kiki went off towards the stairs, leaving the present upon the little table under the mirror. Howard answered the door.

‘Hey.'

Tall, pleased with himself, pretty,
too
pretty like a conman, sleeveless, tattooed, languid, muscled, a basketball under his arm, black. Howard kept hold of the half-open door.

‘Can I help you?'

Carl had been smiling, now he stopped. He'd come from playing ball on Wellington's big, free, college court (you just walked right in and acted liked you belonged there); midway through the game Levi had called him and said the party was tonight. Strange date to pick for a party, but then each to their own. The brother had sounded kind of funny, like he was pissed about something, but he was definitely real adamant about Carl coming down here. Sent him the address, like, three times. Carl
could
have gone back home to change first, but that would have been an epic round trip. He'd figured that on a hot night like this, no one would care.

‘Hope so. I'm here for the party.'

Howard watched him put both hands either side of his ball so that the slender, powerful contours of his arms were outlined in the security light.

‘Right . . . this
is
a private party.'

‘Your man, Levi? I'm a friend of his.'

‘I see . . . um, look, well, he's . . .' said Howard, turning and pretending to seek his son in the hallway. ‘He's not about just now . . . But if you give me your name, I'll tell him you stopped by . . .'

Howard jerked back as the boy bounced his ball once, hard on the doorstep.

‘Look,' said Howard rudely, ‘I don't mean to be rude, but Levi shouldn't really have been inviting his . . . friends – this is really quite a small affair –'

‘Right. For
poet
poets.'

‘Excuse me?'

‘Shit, I don't know why I even came here – forget it,' said Carl. He was off immediately down the drive and out the gate, a proud, quick, bouncy walk.

‘Wait –' called Howard after him. He was gone.

Extraordinary, said Howard to himself, and closed the door. He went into the kitchen in search of wine. He heard the bell go again, and Monique answer, and people come in, and then more people right behind them. He poured his glass – the bell again – Erskine and his wife, Caroline. And then another crowd could be heard relieving themselves of their coats just as Howard thumped the cork back in the bottle. The house was filling up with people he was not related to by blood. Howard began to feel in the party mood. Soon enough he relaxed into his role of life and soul: pressing food upon his guests, pouring their drinks, talking up his reluctant, invisible children, correcting a quotation, weighing in on an argument, introducing people to each other twice or thrice over. During his many three-minute conversations he managed to be committed, curious, supportive, celebratory, laughing before you had finished your funny sentence, refilling your glass even as beaded bubbles still winked at the brim. If he caught you in the action of putting on or looking for your coat, you were treated to a lover's complaint; you pressed his hand, he pressed yours. You swayed together like sailors. One felt confident to tease him, slightly, about his Rembrandt, and he in turn said something irreverent about your Marxist past or your creative-writing class or your eleven-year-long study of Montaigne, and the goodwill was at such a pitch that you did not take it personally. You placed your coat back on the bed. Finally, when you again persisted with your talk of deadlines and morning starts and made it out of the front door, you closed it with the new and gratifying impression that not only did Howard Belsey not hate you – as you had always previously assumed – but, in fact, the man had long harboured a boundless admiration of you which only his natural English reserve had prevented him from expressing before this night.

At nine thirty, Howard decided it was time to give a little speech in the garden to the assembled company. This was well received.
By ten, the intoxication of all this bon vivant business had reached Howard's petite ears, which were quite red with joy. It seemed to him an especially successful little party. In truth it was a typical Wellington affair: always threatening to fill up but never quite doing so. The Black Studies Department's graduate crowd were out in force, mostly because Erskine was well loved by them and they were, anyway, by the far the most socialized people at Wellington, priding themselves on their reputation for being the closest replicas on campus to normal human beings. Along with large talk they had small talk; they had a Black Music Library in their department; they knew, and could speak eloquently of, the latest trash television. They were invited to all the parties and came to all of them too. But the English Department was less well represented tonight: only Claire, that Marxist Joe, Smith and a few female Cult of Claire groupies who, Howard was amused to see, were throwing themselves at Warren, one after another, like lemmings. Warren had clearly joined the list of things of which Claire approved – therefore they wanted him. A circle of strange young anthropologists Howard didn't think he knew remained in the kitchen all night, hovering by the food, fearful of going anywhere where there was not an abundance of props – glasses, bottles, canapés – with which to fiddle. Howard left them to it and adjourned to the garden. He walked the rim of the pool, happily holding on to his empty glass, as the summer moon passed behind blushing clouds and all about rose the agreeable animal sound of outdoor conversation.

‘Strange date for it, though,' he heard somebody say. And then the usual response: ‘Oh, I think it's a wonderful date for a party. You know it's their
actual
anniversary, so . . . And if we don't reclaim the day, you know . . . then it's like
they've
won. It's a reclaiming, absolutely.' This was the most popular conversation of the night. Howard had had it himself at least four times since the clock struck ten and the wine really kicked in. Before that no one liked to mention it.

Every twenty seconds or so, Howard admired a pair of feet as they thrust up through the skin of the water; the curved back that
followed, and then the slim brown form in the water doing another speedy, almost silent lap. Levi had evidently decided that if he must stay at this party, he might as well get a work-out. Howard could not figure out exactly how long Levi'd been in the pool, but, as his own speech had ended and the applause faded, everyone had noticed at the same time that there was a lone swimmer, and then almost everyone had asked their neighbour whether they recalled Cheever's story. Academics lack range.

‘I should have brought my swimsuit,' Howard had overhead Claire Malcolm saying loudly to somebody.

‘And would you have swum if you had?' came the sensible reply.

Without any great urgency, Howard was now looking for Erskine. He wanted Erskine's opinion on his earlier speech. He sat down on the pretty bench Kiki had installed under their apple tree and looked out on to his party. The wide backs and solid calves of women he didn't know surrounded him. Friends of Kiki from the hospital, talking among themselves. Nurses, thought Howard definitively,
not
sexy. And how had his speech gone down with women like this, non-academic, solid, opinionated, Kiki supporters – for that matter, how had it gone down with everyone? It had not been an easy speech to give. It was, in effect, three speeches. One for those who knew, one for those who didn't know, and one for Kiki, to whom it was addressed and who both did and didn't know. The people who didn't know had smiled and whooped and clapped as Howard touched upon the rewards of love; they sighed sweetly when he expanded on the joys of marrying your best friend, also the difficulties. Encouraged by this moonlit attention, Howard had strayed from his prepared script. He segued into Aristotle's praise of friendship, and from there to some aperçus of his own. He spoke of how friendship expands tolerance. He spoke of the fecklessness of Rembrandt and the forgiveness of his wife, Saskia. This was close to the knuckle, but none of it seemed to be greeted with any undue attention by the majority of his audience. Fewer people knew than he had feared. Kiki had not, after all, told the whole world of what he had done, and tonight he was more grateful for this fact than ever. Speech concluded, the applause had settled
snug around him like a comfort blanket. He had hugged the two American children available to him hard around their shoulders, and felt no resistance. So that's how it was. His infidelity had not ended everything, after all. It had been self-pity to think that, and self-aggrandizement. Life went on. Jerome showed him that first, by having his own romantic cataclysm so soon after Howard's – the world does not stop for you. At first, he had thought otherwise. At first he had despaired. Nothing like this had ever happened to him before – he had no idea what to do, which move to make. Later on, when he retold the story to Erskine – a veteran of marital infidelity – his friend had gifted him with some belated, obvious advice:
Deny everything
. This was Erskine's long-term policy, and he claimed it had never failed him. But Howard had been discovered and confronted in the oldest way – a condom in the pocket of his suit – and she had stood before him holding it between her fingers, alive with a pure contempt he had found almost impossible to bear. He had many choices before him that day, but the truth had simply not been one of them, not if he wanted to retain any semblance of the life he loved. And now he felt vindicated: he had made the right decision. He had not told the truth. Instead he said what he felt he must in order to enable all of this to continue: these friends, these colleagues, this family, this woman. God knows, even the story he ended up giving – a one-night stand with a stranger – had caused terrible damage. It broke that splendid circle of Kiki's love, within which he had existed for so long, a love (and it was to Howard's credit that he knew this) that had enabled everything else. How much worse would it have been had he told the truth? It would only have packed misery upon misery. As it stood, a few of his closest friendships had been imperilled: those people Kiki had spoken to were disappointed in him and had told him so. A year later, this party was the test of their respect for him, and now, realizing that he had passed the test, Howard had to restrain himself from crying with relief before each new person who was kind to him. He had made a silly mistake – this was the consensus – and should be allowed (for who among middle-aged academics would dare to throw the first stone?) to remain in possession of that
unusual thing, a happy and passionate marriage. How they had loved each other! Everybody thinks they're in love at twenty, of course; but Howard Belsey had really still been in love at forty – embarrassing but true. He never really got over her
face
. It gave him so much pleasure. Erskine often joked that only a man who had such pleasure at home could be the kind of theorist Howard was, so against pleasure in his work. Erskine himself was on his second marriage. Almost all the men Howard knew were already divorced, had begun again with new women; they told him things like ‘you get to the end of a woman', as if their wives had been pieces of string. Is that what happened? Had he finally got to the end of Kiki?

Howard spotted her by the pool now, crouching next to Erskine, both of them talking to Levi, who held himself up in the water with his strong folded arms upon the concrete. They were all laughing. Sadness sidled up to Howard. It was so strange to him, this decision of Kiki's not to pursue him for every detail of his betrayal. He admired the strength of her continued emotional willpower, but he didn't understand it. Had it been Howard, no force on earth could have stopped him knowing the name, the face, the whole history of touches. Sexually, he had always been an intensely jealous man. When he met Kiki she had been a woman of only male friends, hundreds of them (or so it had seemed to Howard), mostly ex-lovers. Just hearing their names, even now,
thirty years later
, plunged Howard into a blue funk. They saw none of these men socially with any regularity, and that had been Howard's doing. He had bullied, threatened and frozen them all out. And this was despite the fact that Kiki had always claimed (and he had always believed her) that love started with him.

Now he put his hand over his empty glass to decline some wine Monique was trying to give him. ‘Monique. Good party? Have you seen Zora?'

‘Zora?'

‘Yes, Zora.'

‘I don't see 'er. Before I see, not now.'

‘Everything going OK? Enough wine and so on?'

‘Enough of everything. Too much.'

A few minutes later, by the doors into the kitchen, Howard spotted his unsubtle daughter hovering by a trio of philosophy graduates. He hurried over to effect her entry into this circle. He could do this kind of thing, at least. They stood leaning against each other, father and daughter: Howard feeling the alcohol and wanting to say something sentimental to her; Zora oblivious. She was focused on the conversation between the grads.

‘And of course he was the great white hope.'

‘Right. Great things were expected.'

‘He was the darling of that department. At twenty-two or whatever.'

‘Maybe that was the problem.'

‘Right.
Right
.'

‘He was offered a Rhodes – didn't take it up.'

‘But he's doing nothing now, right?'

‘Nope. I don't even think he's attached to anywhere at the moment. I heard he had a baby – so who knows. I think he's in Detroit.'

‘Which is where he came from . . . Just one of these brilliant but totally unprepared kids.'

‘No guidance.'

‘None.'

It was a very average piece of
Schadenfreude
, but Howard saw how Zora was compelled by it. She had the strangest ideas about academics – she found it extraordinary that they should be capable of gossip or venal thoughts. She was hopelessly naive about them. She had not noticed, for example, the fact that philosophy graduate number two was involved in a study of her chest, out on messy display this evening in an unreliable gypsy top. So it was Zora whom Howard sent to the door when the bell went; Zora who opened the door to the family Kipps. The penny did not drop immediately. Here was a tall, imperious black man, in his late fifties, with a pug dog's distended eyes. To his right, his taller, equally dignified son; on the other side, his gallingly pretty daughter. Before conversation, Zora waded around in the visual information: the
strangely Victorian get-up of the older man – the waistcoat, the pocket-handkerchief – and again that searing glimpse of the girl, the instantaneous recognition (on both sides) of her physical superiority. Now they moved in a triangle behind Zora through the hallway as she babbled about coats and drinks and her own parents, neither of whom, for the moment, could be found. Howard had vanished.