The Rachel Papers (28 page)

Suki wore a summer dress of flame-coloured cotton and the summer dress turned out to have a low-cut front. Now if Suki bent forward, which she kept on having to do, and if I simultaneously craned my neck, which I kept on doing, I got to see the lion's share of her hard high brown little breasts and -once - a flash of dark nipple. I sat with a decoy paperback on the window-sill for over an hour. And, as she became more flustered, and sweat surfaced on her forehead and shoulders, and she more frequently palmed the hair from her eyes: to me her movements seemed slower, quieter, and to have less and less to do with filling teapots and lifting kettles and being down there. The flabby blue flame from the gas-ring heat-hazed over her, came shimmering up the outside wall, and breathed thick air into my open mouth. Then her body began to squirm and writhe; I couldn't focus on her, but she was all that was there.

As the party began to end, and Suki went to join the last of the hags, I fell back from the window, dropped the paperback, and swayed about the room actually wringing my hands. I wondered how I had ever played Scrabble, or read a book, or combed my hair, or brushed my teeth, or eaten a meal, when -it was all so clear now - Suki's face was what it was, and her breasts were what they were. I melted on to my bed and lay there trembling, until, with no climax, I started to feel very cold instead of very hot and the voices of the women, at first inaudible, seemed to hail me from the garden.

I was sweaty and feverish the next day and decided to spend it in bed. (Besides, how could I face Suki?) Everyone thought it was the bronch returning, but I knew it wasn't. No. Queer meets right girl, and never looks back.

Up on my knees I can now see from the light in the sitting-room the little patch of grey where the grass never fully recovered after that swirling, gaseous afternoon. I close the window with an air of self-conscious finality. I think I know how things will turn out. Passing mother's room in the thin passage I hear her call 'Gordon ?', but I hesitate, shrug, walk on, and make no noise, having decided to stick to the story.

The night before last, the night before I came up to Oxford for my interview, was the night of my life - an appropriate bas-relief to this my solitary denouement.

The four of us had tea together that afternoon. I was being fussed over in a rather agreeable way: Jen said she'd get up and cook me a 'proper breakfast', Norman offered to drive me to Paddington the next morning, Rachel stressed time and time again that my interview would be a mere formality. Later, she and I popped downstairs and went to bed for half an hour, with something of our former cheekiness. I thought it might possibly be my last teenage fuck, so: our skin was as smooth as mushroom, our breath imperceptible, our demands unsophisticated, our orgasms coinstantaneous. And when I pulled off the condom and swaddled it in tissue at the bottom of the wastepaper basket, there was no rancour, no sense of being put upon. We dressed in equable silence. I felt strong, walking her down the square in the pale Sunday light.

However, seven o'clock and I was at my desk. A final run through the Interview Folder: sixty foolscap pages of notes and hints, arranged in sections -
Accents, Avoiding Detailed Discussion, Dress, The Female Don -
and sub-heads - 'Blinking', 'Entrances', 'Leg-crossing', 'Flattery, indirect', etc. But I couldn't gather much concentration. At this stage my exam performance either seemed so brilliant as virtually to replace the texts themselves, rendering all previous literary criticism defunct; or else I was at the window, on the look-out for the white-coated male nurses (whom the University had alerted) equipped with chloroform and a net. On my arrival, would I simply be lured into the college lavatories and beaten up by the proctors? Or would I be met at the station by the Vice-Chancellor and Mayor, driven through the town in an open car, waving at the crowds, laughing as I brushed the confetti and streamers from my hair
... ?

'Hel
lo
?' said a busy female voice, 'what number do you want, please?"

'Uh, Western 2814.'

'And your number is... ?'

I gave it. 'What's up?" I asked. 'Having problems with the bill?'

The subscriber has asked us to intercept all calls on this line.'

'What's been the trouble? Perverts?'

The girl laughed and her voice relaxed. 'I'm not sure, really. I think just someone's been ringing at all hours of the day and night, then hangs up. And from call-boxes and leaving the receiver off the hook.'

'Maddening. Well, I think they'll talk to me.'

'One moment.'

' ... Gordon Highway speaking.'

'Father? It's Charles.'

'Charles. What can I do for you?'

Nothing much, as it happened. I had rung to see if he had winkled any information out of Sir Herbert. No luck. My father was reduced, not of course to saying, but to disguising the fact that he was saying, that Herbie knew bugger-all about it and besides he had forgotten to ask him.

'Ah,' I said. 'I tried home, by the way - thought you'd be there.'

'No no. I'm not coming into the office next week so I intended to go up tomorrow. Perhaps I can give you a lift?'

'No, it's all right.'

'Yes. Sorry I couldn't... wait - hang on. Vanessa would like a word.'

'Hey,' said Vanessa, 'what's your college?'

I told her.

'Right. They've elected a new guy.'

'What sort of new guy?'

'I don't know anything about him. Except that he's shit-hot.'

With featherlight fingertips I skimmed the pages of my Interview Folder. After three-quarters of an hour I had memorized Sonorous
Generalizations, Portent but no Content,
and the paragraph on 'Inarticulate sincerity'. I then turned to
Appearance Change Midway.
It ended :

17. Enter without glasses on: put them on a) if don over 50,
b)
if don wearing glasses.

18. Jacket unbuttoned: if old turd, do up
middle
one on way in.

19. Hair over ears: if old turd, smooth behind ears on entry?

A footnote referred me to
Accents, 7
. There I read:

Adapt slowly. If wildly out (posh v. regional), cough at beginning of second sentence and say 'Sorry, I'm a bit nervous' in voice identical to don's.

I chewed on my lip ... There must be a common denominator somewhere. Of course! Dons were all queer, weren't they? Perhaps I should just take a chance - leave my clothes in a neat pile outside the door, and go in naked. Or go in wearing transparent trousers and no pants ? Or at least go in with my prick dangling out between my fly-buttons. At least. Or—

I heard the telephone ringing. Jen and Norm had gone out to dinner so I put the Folder down and trotted upstairs to answer it. Rachel, possibly.

It was not Rachel. It was Gloria.

'Christ. How are you?' I said.

Gloria wasn't too bad. In fact, she was at a call-box just round the corner and was wondering if she could pop in for half an hour or so. Could she?

'Okay. Yes, by all means. See you in a minute then.'

I stood in the passage, winding my watch for something to do.

'And I got so
bored.
Tel [Terry] wouldn't leave me alone. He wouldn't leave me out of his sight, went spare if I so much as talked to another guy. I mean, you like that at first but it gets on your bloody nerves after a bit.' Gloria gave a scandalized laugh, a hand raised to cover her small, untidy teeth.

'You poor thing. So what did you do then?'

Gloria scrutinized her gin. 'I towed him. Straight.'

'What did he say to that?'

'He belted me. And he said I was a slag. That was it.'

I gave a speech, in idiomatic lower-middle, on the mischiev-ousness of sexual jealousy in all its forms. (Half-way through, Gloria took off her leather jerkin, her eyes intently on mine, to reveal a snug purple T-shirt, which I suppose clashed rather with her tiny brown suede shorts. Although she was obviously wearing panties she was just as obviously not wearing tights, or a bra.) As the speech was about to end, the telephone rang again.

'... unless you've got your heart
set
on having a bad time. Don't go away.'

I trotted upstairs.

Call-box pips. Terry ? No, Rachel.

'Charles ? Oh Charles, you'll never guess what's happened.'

'Well?'

'Mummy's found
out
. She found out about Paris.'

'How?'

'She came to see Nanny - and it all came out.'

'How?'

'Oh I don't
know...'
She seemed about to cry, but went on wanderingly. 'Mummy came round, saw how small Nanny's room was, asked where I slept... I don't know.'

'I see. Where are you now?'

'Nanny's. Mummy threw me out of the house.'

'You'd better come round.'

'Right. I'll have to stay here for a while,' she said in a brisk voice, 'because Nanny is in a bit of a state. She thinks it's all her fault and —'

' — Well it
is
all her —'

'What's the time now? Look, I'll be there about nine. All right?'

As I swung my way downstairs I stopped dead for a moment, thinking.

Gloria had taken off her shoes and was lying on the bed. I sat on the edge of it.

'You're so nice to talk to, Charles. You always cheer me up.'

It was eight three precisely.

Eight five.
Intricate tangle of bodies. Gloria's fingers were jogging my belt-buckle. Mine trembled between suede and moist cotton. Swampy kisses.

Eight fifteen.
Gloria moved clear and pulled at her T-shirt. Blankly I started undoing buttons. Then I stopped undoing them. But Gloria freed her dear little shorts; they fell to the floor and she stepped out of them. Those wonderfully un-subtle, unliterary big breasts. Gloria smiled.

'I'm not on the pill, Charles.'

'Not you too - I mean, not to worry, I've...'

I hesitated again, and felt a shudder of sobriety. Gloria looped her thumbs in the band of her panties. And her panties bulged extraordinarily - as if housing a whole cock, if not two.

'I have some contraceptives,' I said.

Eight twenty-five.
After some neck-ricking soixante-neuf and a short period inside her unsheathed, I clawed at the little pink holder and took its final trojan. — Not to worry, because this is my equivalent of a flash cigarette-case; the real supply is elsewhere.

Eight thirty-five.
'Yes, it was great for me as well,' I said, truthfully. 'No thanks, I'm trying to give them up. Gloria, the thing is that my sister and her husband are coming back soon. You've never spoken to Norman, have you? No. Well, you see, he's a very puritanical type - stiff-upper-lip, and all that. Very strict upbringing. Anyway, he might —' 'Oh, about five, ten to nine.' 'Oh, that's fine. No panic, really. But he might get in a sweat. You know these posh types. Can't relax about anything. And also I've got my interview tomorrow.' 'At Leeds Polytechnic.'

'I've got to get back, too. I'm glad I could see you for this long.'

'So was I.'

The contraceptive joined its (slightly) heavier twin.

Eight forty-five.
Gloria giggled as she worked the T-shirt over her smudged breasts. And I giggled, too, to stop myself crapping all over the floor with anxiety.

Eight fifty-five.
'Goodbye, my sweet. I'll ring you tomorrow.'

Thanks for being so nice.'

I hurried her out of the front door.

'Me?
You were the one who was so nice,' I said.

She giggled a second time, and ran down the path.

Draped flaccid over the banisters I treated myself to ten seconds of uninterrupted heavy breathing. Then I was downstairs like a whippet, talc-ing sheets and genitals, checking the pillow for make-up and the dog-ends for lipstick, roping tissues into the wastepaper basket two-handed and sending Gloria's glass beneath the bed with the side of my foot. I thanked the Lord I had slept with Rachel that afternoon: hence oyster smell and churned blankets. Gargling Dettol in the bathroom I looked for post-coital spots. My face was a raspberry purée. I immersed it in a basinful of cold water. If Rachel said anything I'd just have to stutter that I had been terribly worried about everything.

'Do I? No, it's ... I've j-j-just been terribly worried about everything. What eck-eck-exactly did your m-mother say?'

'God, it's all so difficult to believe, I know. But you mustn't worry, love. It's not your fault.'

'I feel responsible.'

'Rubbish. My idea in the first place ... It was awful, though. She just came into my room and said, quite calmly, "I know you haven't been staying at Nanny's. Would you please tell me where you have been staying, or shall I call the police?" '