The Black Prince (Penguin Classics) (26 page)

‘Bradley, undress.’

‘Rachel,’ I said, ‘I am, as I say, moved. I am very grateful But I cannot make love to you. I don’t mean I don’t want to, I cannot. The machinery will not work.’

‘Do you always – have – difficulties?’

‘ “Always” has no force here. I haven’t been with a woman for many years. This privilege is unwonted and unexpected. And I cannot rise to it.’

‘Undress. I just want to hold you.’

I felt appallingly cool, still seeing myself. I took off my shoes and socks, my trousers, pants and tie. Some sort of self – protective instinct made me retain my shirt, but I let Rachel with hot trembling fingers undo the buttons. As I lay in her arms quite still and physically chilled, and her hands moved timidly about me, I saw above the haze of her hair through a gap in the curtains the leaves of a tree moving about in the breeze, and I felt that I was in hell.

‘You’re icy cold, Bradley. You look as if you’re going to cry. Don’t worry, my darling, it doesn’t matter.’

‘It does matter.’

‘It’ll be better next time.’

There won’t be a next time, I thought. And then I felt so overpoweringly sorry for Rachel that I really put my arms round her and drew her up against me. She gave an excited little sigh.

Then. ‘Rachel! Hey, where are you?’ Arnold’s voice below.

Like spirits of the damned pricked by the devil’s fork we bounded up. I began scrabbling for my clothes which had got into a tangle on the floor. They appeared to be plaited into each other. Rachel had pulled on her blouse and skirt with no underclothes. She leaned on me as my hands still plucked vainly at inside – out trousers and her breath tickled my ear. ‘I’ll take him down the garden.’ Then she was gone, closing the door behind her. I heard voices below.

Of course it took me many minutes to get dressed. My trousers seemed to be knotted up at the ends and something tore as I eventually drove my foot through. I put on my shoes without socks, began to take them off again, then changed my mind. My braces were a tangled ball. I stuffed my tie and socks and pants into my pockets. When at last I tiptoed to the window and peered through the slit in the curtain I saw Arnold and Rachel down at the bottom of the garden. Rachel had got her hand on Arnold’s shoulder and she was pointing to a plant. They looked pastoral.

I glided out and down the stairs and opened the front door. I pulled it to very softly after me but it would not close. I pulled it harder and it banged. I ran down the path and slipped upon some moss and came down with a crash. I staggered up and began to run away down the road.

At the end of the next road I was slowing down to a quick walk when, just as I rounded the corner, I cannoned straight into somebody. It was a girl dressed in a very short striped garment, she had bare legs and bare feet, she was Julian.

‘So sorry. Oh Bradley, how super. You’ve been visiting the parents. What a shame I missed you. Are you going to the station? May I walk along with you?’ She turned and we walked on together.

‘I thought you were at a pop festival,’ I said, breathless, frantic with emotion, but concealing it.

‘I couldn’t get on the train. At least I could have done if I didn’t mind being squashed, but I do, I’m a bit of a claustrophobe.’

‘So am I. Pop festivals are no places for us claustrophobes.’ I was speaking calmly, but now I was thinking: she will tell Arnold that she met me.

‘I suppose not. I’ve never been to one. Now you’re going to lecture me about drugs, aren’t you?’

‘No. Do you want a lecture?’

‘I wouldn’t mind one from you. But I’d rather it was on
Hamlet
. Bradley, do you think Gertrude was in league with Claudius to kill the king?’

‘No.’

‘Do you think she was having an affair with Claudius before her husband died?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘Too conventional,’ I said. ‘Not enough courage. It would have needed tremendous courage.’

‘Claudius could have persuaded her, he was very powerful.’

‘So was her husband.’

‘We only see him through Hamlet’s eyes.’

‘No. The ghost was a real ghost.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I just know.’

‘Then the king must have been an awful bore.’

‘That’s another point.’

‘I think some women have a nervous urge to commit adultery, especially when they reach a certain age.’

‘Possibly.’

‘Do you think the king and Claudius ever liked each other?’

‘There’s a theory that they were in love. Gertrude killed her husband because he was having a love affair with Claudius. Hamlet knew of course. No wonder he was neurotic. There are lots of veiled references to buggery. “A mildewed ear blasting his wholesome brother.” Ear is phallic and wholesome is a pun – ’

‘I say! Where can I read about it?’

‘I’m teasing you. They haven’t thought of that yet, even in Oxford.’

I was walking fast and Julian had to give a little run every now and then to keep up. She kept turning towards me as she did so, performing a sort of dance beside me. I looked down at her bare brown very dirty feet executing these hops, skips and jumps.

We had nearly reached the place where I had seen her in the twilight tearing up the love letters, when I had at first taken her for a boy. I said, ‘How is Mr Belling?’

‘Please, Bradley – ’

‘Sorry.’

‘No, you know you can say anything you like to me. All that’s over and done, thank God.’

‘Your balloon didn’t come sailing back to you? You didn’t wake up one morning and find it tied to your window?’

‘No!’

Her face, turning to mine, with the sun and shade dappling over it, looked very young, almost that of a child, with the anxious focused seriousness of the young. How very whole and unspoilt she seemed to me at that moment with her silly bare feet and her naïve preoccupations about her ‘set book’. And I felt a regret which was really a sort of shame before her. What had I just been doing and why? A man’s life should be simple and lived in the open. It is very much more rarely worth lying, even for hedonistic purposes, than is generally supposed in sophisticated circles. I felt entangled and ashamed, and frightened about it. At the same time, I felt a loving pity for Rachel, mingled with a memory of the smell of her warm plump body. Of course I would not abandon her in her need. Some formula must be available. But oh what infernally bad luck it was to have run into Julian. Could I conceivably ask her not to tell her father that she had met me? Could I think of some ingenious reason for this request which would not make me look unutterably shabby? I could not simply ask her and let her guess. The mean words would dirty me forever in her eyes. Yet was I not already soiled enough and did it really matter at all what Julian thought? It mattered very much more what Arnold knew.

At that moment Julian stopped outside the same shoe shop where I had parted from her on the previous occasion. ‘Oh I adore those boots, the purple ones, I do wish they weren’t so expensive!’

On impulse I said, ‘I’ll buy them for you.’ I wanted to gain a little time to think of a suitably plausible way of asking her to keep quiet.

‘Oh Bradley, you
can’t
, they’re
far
too much, how awfully kind of you but you
can’t
– ’

‘Why not ? It’s ages since I gave you a present. I used to when you were little. Come on, be brave.’

‘Oh Bradley, I’d love it, and you’re so kind, which is even better than the boots, but I can’t – ’

‘Why not?’

‘I haven’t any stockings. I can’t try them on with my feet like this.’

‘I see. I think incidentally that this barefoot cult is perfectly idiotic. Suppose you step on some glass?’

‘I know. I think it’s idiotic too, I won’t do it again, it was just for the festival, it’s terribly uncomfortable, my feet are hurting like anything already. Oh dear, what a shame though.’

‘Can’t you buy some stockings!’

‘There isn’t a shop near – ’

I had been fumbling in my pocket looking for my wallet. Suddenly as my hand emerged a pile of stuff fell out on to the pavement: my tie, underpants and socks. My face blazing with guilt, I swooped on them.

‘Oh look, what luck, I could wear your socks. It’s so warm, I don’t wonder you took them off. May I, would you mind?’

‘Of course you can – they were clean this morning – but they’re not exactly – ’

‘Oh nonsense, that really is conventional, not like not liking bare feet. Oh Bradley, I
do
want those boots, but it’s such a lot of money. Suppose I were to pay you back when I – ’

‘No. Stop arguing. Here are the socks.’

She put them on immediately, balancing on each foot and holding on to my sleeve. We went into the shop.

It was cool and dim inside. Not at all like the nightmare shop that haunted my sister and myself; and not at all like the remembered interior of the womb either. More like the temple of some old unpassionate rather ascetic cult. The tiers of white containers (perhaps containing relics or votive gifts), the quiet darkly clad acolytes, the lowered voices, the rows of seats for meditation, the oddly shaped stools. The shoe horns.

We sat down side by side and Julian asked for her size. The black – clad girl began to ease the purple boot on over Julian’s foot and my grey nylon sock. The high boot enveloped her leg and the zip fastener moved smoothly upward.

‘It fits beautifully. May I try the other?’ The other boot slid on.

Julian stood in front of the mirror and I looked at her reflection. The boots looked stunning on her. Above the knee there was a piece of bare thigh, only faintly brown, and then the blue and green and white striped hem of her brief dress.

Julian’s delight was literally indescribable. Her face dissolved and glowed, she quite unconsciously clapped her hands, she rushed back to me and shook me by the shoulders and then rushed back to the mirror. Her innocent pleasure would have moved me very much upon a better occasion. Why had I thought of her as an image of vanity? This delight of the young animal in itself was something pure. I could not help smiling.

‘Bradley, you do like them, they don’t look absurd?’

‘They look smashing.’

‘I’m so pleased, oh you are so sweet – Thank you so much!’

‘Thank you. Present – giving is a form of self – indulgence.’ I asked for the bill.

Julian, exclaiming, began to pull off the boots. Then, still wearing my socks which she had rolled down to the ankles, and gloating over her prize, she crossed one leg over the other. As I looked at the purple boots lying on the floor, and then at Julian’s feet and her legs, slightly browner below the knee and lightly furred with auburn hair, something very unexpected and extraordinary happened. The experience which I had sought in vain when I was holding Rachel naked in my arms came to me suddenly with a pang and a flurry : physical desire with its absurd, alarming, unmistakable symptoms, the anti – gravitational aspiration of the male organ, one of the oddest and most unnerving things in nature. I felt an embarrassment so intense that it transcended the concept altogether. I also felt a ridiculous un – classifiable sort of glee. At the same time, the simple pleasure which I might have had in buying the child a present was somehow released and for a moment I felt happy. I lifted my eyes. Julian was beaming her gratitude at me. I laughed, because of the physical sensation which her legs had inspired, and because she knew nothing about it. To conceal our transports may be painful sometimes, but it is also a privilege and may have its funny side. I laughed, and Julian in childish delight over her boots, laughed back.

‘No, I won’t wear them, it’s too hot,’ Julian was explaining to the sales girl. ‘Bradley, you are an angel. May I come and see you soon and we’ll talk about Shakespeare? I’m free any time – Monday, Tuesday – how about Tuesday morning at your place at eleven? Or whenever you like?’

‘All right, all right.’

‘And we’ll talk seriously and look at the text in detail?’

‘Yes, yes.’

‘Oh I am so pleased with the boots.’

When we parted company at the station and I looked into those purely coloured blue eyes I could not bring myself to dim her joy by asking her to lie, even though I had by then thought of a fairly ingenious cock and bull story.

It was not until later that I remembered that she had gone away still wearing my socks.

 

 

Somehow or other it was twelve noon. Returning eastward to my flat I felt a good deal more sober, and I soon regretted my ‘high – minded’ failure to silence Julian. Out of some ridiculous sense of dignity I had failed to take an absolutely essential precaution. When Julian blurted out about meeting me, what would Arnold guess, what would Rachel devise, what would she confess? Trying, and failing, to get the problem into focus I felt a guilty excited painful feeling not unlike sexual desire. Julian must be home by now. What was happening? Perhaps nothing. I felt an intense need to telephone Rachel at once, but knew that this would be profitless. ‘Knowing the worst’ would have to wait a while.

I had left Charlotte Street about nine – thirty. Now, with a sudden distressed anxiety about Priscilla, I let myself into the flat, and knew at once that something odd had happened. The door of Priscilla’s room was wide open. I rushed in. Priscilla was gone. Christian was lying on the bed reading a detective story.

‘Where’s Priscilla?’

‘Don’t take on, Brad. She’s back at my place.’

Christian had taken off her shoes, which were lying on the bed. Her trim pearly – silk legs were neatly crossed. Legs are ageless.

‘How dare you interfere!’

‘I didn’t, I just came to visit her, and she was so tearful and low and saying you were going to go away and leave her, so I said “Why not come back to me”, and she said she wanted to, so I sent her and Francis off in a taxi.’