Vac (10 page)

Y
OU WERE BORN
in the West of England. You are a
peasant
girl. In the first world war your father, a lay saint, wired torpedoes and wept. In the second, a tall young Italian with a guitar and a premonition of death came for you. He wore the uniform of the British Army and married you. He was gentle and patient and impregnated you shortly before he went to convert the premonition into the reality and settle for ever in Normandy. He left a pregnant child, you, behind. By seventeen you were a mother, a widow and a private soldier. That’s when they took that dreadful photograph.

I haven’t got that photograph. I couldn’t live with that photograph.

Under the forage cap your eager, lovely, childish face
radiates
joy. Your prominent tooth adds an irresistible touch of charm. I used to devour it, raging silently at the loss of the seven years between when it was taken and when I met you.

I couldn’t live with the reproach of that lovely photograph.

A
HALO OF SWIFTS
ringed the block of flats. Flowering woodbine matted the waste ground opposite. The sky was ridged with pink and orange. The bullets of the last murderess to be hanged in Great Britain had chipped, some years before, the brickwork above my head. She had shot her faithless
boy-friend
where I now stood. Girls with faithless boy-friends trailed past me up the street. I sipped coarse Beaujolais.

Negro in an Aston Martin. You used to meet me here. Come down the hill after dressing—lovely and vital. Now there’s a band of green in the sky. Transparent green pool in Wales. You danced on the cliff. (That pink dress almost diaphanous. Outline of her pants. God, their bodies!)

Hello, friend. Come out and share the air. There is an atmosphere of subtle reproach. People are coming home from work. Another day of grim folly? I don’t know what you mean, friend. I think you intend the salutation to be
humorous
for there’s a faint smile or smirk on your face. You have the advantage of me, friend. You know my name and I can’t summon yours. Actually, friend, I don’t think we’ve ever exchanged a remark before, have we? If your face didn’t have those pustules, friend, you’d be a handsome lad. Not being handsome myself, I have perhaps an exaggerated regard for male looks. Another day of grim folly? It’s very obscure, friend. What exactly do you mean by edging up beside me on this summer eve when my wife is in the Levant and
remarking:
another day of grim folly? Kindly explain the import of that remark. I see. I see. Yesterday a member of the shadow cabinet referred to the government’s economic policy as grim folly. I’m nodding thoughtfully, friend. I’m not sure what
response
you anticipate. You find the remark funny? Or tragic?
You approve of the government’s economic policy? You
deprecate
it? You’re an economist yourself? You regard economics as a sick joke? I’ll tell you candidly, friend, I don’t know, in the sharpest possible definition, just what the government’s economic policy
is
! I believe in an informed electorate, friend, but sometimes wonder if it’s possible. No one can be an expert in every subject—and even experts differ.

We stand here, friend, you with bitter beer in your hand and I with Beaujolais. We watch the darling girls trail up the hill. The night before last, friend, I stood here as I stand now. Those same swifts were canonizing that same block of flats. There was a similar sunfall, flighty and thin, with bands of weird colour. My wife is in Turkey, friend. I stood here and thought: in the last ten days, since my wife went to the Levant, I have taken out five girls, two of them twice. I have taken them to restaurants and spooned expensive meals into them. I have taken them to public houses and poured precious spirits down them. I have escorted several back to my dingy quarters and infused poetic wisdom into them. For these efforts and this shameful expenditure—I barely contribute to my son’s upkeep, friend—I have indeed received token rewards. My lips have not been parched for want of female saliva. My fingers have not remained unmoistened by denser female secretions. And yet not a single one of these pampered girls, friend, not a single ungrateful one of them, has invited me in, friend. My questing part has remained exiled, friend. My homing organ has been barred from its natural goal. So I stood here and thought: pox on these local wenches!

(Observe that one, friend, with her black brassiere
glistening
through her lawn blouse. See the slim swell of her calves and the roundness of her bottom!)

Pox on these local wenches, I thought, who gulp a man’s grub and part not their legs unto him. I will go to Soho. Don’t misunderstand me, friend. I have paid girls before but my intention, the night before last, was other. I was in a mood of quiescence, of almost philosophic resignation. The girls of this
parish, I mused, have stopped screwing. I will go to Soho, not to see if I fare better in those notorious precincts, not in the hope that one or other of the places of resort will supply either a new or an old female friend who will do it with me—no, I will go to Soho both as a gesture of protest against the women of this leafy district—my wife’s gone to Turkey, friend—and as a simple pilgrimage to a beloved spot. Many a long week is it since I trod the stub-littered floor of The Heights of Quebec, since the seedy clamour of the Vesuvius Club engulfed me. I will go to Soho as a Moslem to Mecca. Perchance there I may encounter congenial company—male—to dine or carouse with.

Well, friend, that’s what I did. All the prizes which fortune can bestow on a London motorist were mine that evening. Through set after set of beckoning green lights sailed my
rotting
convertible and I. Neither the Camden Town bypass nor the approaches to Cambridge Circus were clogged with traffic. No sooner had I veered sharp left into Soho than the true Yukon of a driver, a parking place, yawned on my right. Nor was this the limit of my good luck. When, a few minutes later, I shouldered my way into The Heights of Quebec, a single glance told me that my journey had not been in vain. The bar-room was mellow with familiar faces. There in the far corner loomed big Ralph Petrie. His recent motor accident had left him with an ivory complexion and I
observed
that he looked a shade like one of Dr. Frankenstein’s early failures. Mike Wynn, actor and thief, was piping away to a sulky group on the opposite side of the room. I spied others: acid, honest May, the Black Mountain, once an idolized pugilist, Ralph Greenberg, inventor of neo-Rococo prose, and many more. Inevitably my heart swelled and I edged through the throng to Ralph Petrie’s side.

Then I talked with Ralph Petrie. I confronted this amiable, well-bred man and we exchanged remarks on different topics. When he inquired about my wife, whom I knew he admired, I told him that she was in the Levant. I explained the situation dispassionately as a development in human affairs and Ralph
accepted it soberly. There was no hint, friend, of
breast-beating.
Civilized discourse between old friends, who
understand
the difficulty of things, is a tonic, friend. What happens at sea? Iron islands have been loose on the oceans for a
century
. Veering out of harbour through brown vapour they may collide. The iron blade of a bow may gash the hull of another ship. Vessels grind on to shoals, friend, and panic meets salt water. All this costs money, friend, and big Ralph Petrie’s reputable company had long insured those from whom disaster takes no more than property. But there is more to the globe than land and sea, friend. Have we not colonized the air? It was Ralph’s bold plan to extend the protective mantle of his company to the shells of aluminium that pierce the clouds. Special problems there. A physical encounter between two whistling jets, possibly showering a city with destruction, might liquidate lives and property worth millions. No reasonable premium could bear the whole potential strain. So, Ralph’s plan was—

But the conversions of capital are beyond me, friend. It was enough that I was taking whisky with an esteemed and kindly friend, friend. Friend, the early evening was mellow! I left Ralph Petrie in order to exchange sounds with others. I knew these faces. Here were those strange panels of sensing organs in familiar arrangements. An olfactory probe, two light receptors, a bone-fringed orifice for the intake of organic substances and two flaring sensors for sound—all grouped into a comrade. Into flaring sensors I discharged strands of wry wit. My own received signals of ancient amity. What’s better than a pubful of chums?

At about 9 p.m., friend—did I mention that my wife’s gone away?—I said to Big Ralph Petrie:

I had returned to this pal, friend, after circling amongst others and I now suggested to him that we dine together. Friend, I was saddened, and a rueful nod expressed this
condition,
when Big Ralph Petrie declined. Beyond the rim of the
boiling city, he explained, his wife and dutiful babes attended him. Before another sixth of the notched dial had been swept by the relentless hand, a serpent of coaches would glide out from the hub of London and Ralph himself, mounted on a pulse of electricity, would hurtle towards his suburban home. As I say, friend—I don’t think you’ve met my wife?—this saddened me.

Ralph gulped down the last of his carbonated whisky, grasped up his black briefcase, and raised parting palm to
reinforce
the amiable smile on his face. I bade Ralph farewell and watched him amble out into reeking Soho. Friend, I then turned and scanned the bar-room. I was using my light
receptors,
friend, to locate another agreeable companion with whom to demolish Cypriot stew. Friend, there was none there! It was a considerable shock, friend. A very few minutes hence, or so it seemed to my impetuous recollection, the place had teemed with genial beings. Not one was left!

I found myself alone, friend, solitary as I had been before I quit this very spot we occupy at this moment. It seemed a poor reward for my initiative. Friend, I began to feel ghastly. This is the truth, friend. I began to feel like so much dung. You see, my wife was a long way away. More than that, friend, we were separated. It was a temporary arrangement, of course. A month, perhaps a year, and we would be reunited again. I was quite certain of that, friend, but in the meantime she had reached Turkey and in Turkey there happened to be a Turk she knew—

I had also been having trouble with the local girls, friend. Two of them had intimated that it was pathetic for an ageing creep like me to be fumbling wistfully at their clothing and all of them had repulsed me unappeased. I had thereupon twitched my mantle blue and headed for Soho. It had been my intention, friend, to enjoy dignified masculine revelry with a few choice boozers. And suddenly the bar-room was bare! Friend, dung, had it but consciousness, would have revelled
in a conviction of sensational popularity as compared to the bleak and icy feeling of rejection that now swept over me.

Friend, I hastened from that bar. I sprinted up the road and mounted two flights of stairs. I pushed through a padded door into a club much frequented by those of muddled sexual
persuasion.
(By others too, friend, by others too.) I gazed avidly about and saw—an apathetic pianist and a lady on a bar-stool. Before the latter could greet me, I smartly withdrew and
redescended
the stairs. There in that garish hall, perfumed with cookery from some infernal kitchen below, I stood for long minutes, friend. It was true. It was irremediable. It was
appalling
. I was alone!

Friend, the aspect of things changes. The earth is a sunny garden and you and I and all our teeming brethren are children of light, a little wanton and frivolous at times, but of divine aspect. The earth is a black and raucous desert peopled by vagrant predators. The ecstatic cry of the exalted modulates into the shrill wail of the afflicted. Friend, I felt low that evening. Yes, you stand beside me here, sipping your infusion of hops, uncomfortable at the protracted silence
between
us. Ah, friend, were my lips really moulding these words and my breath propelling them, I fancy an ironic quirk would form in the corner of your boyish mouth. Here am I, with ludicrous pretension, equating a dull evening in Soho with cosmic despair. But, friend, it is how things seem that counts.

Friend, I dined alone. I walked into a cheap, quick-food house which I had never entered before. I ordered a steak with chips and I waited at a table for it to be grilled. I then
collected
it and with it a small carafe of wine. The steak was of very fair quality, friend, though the wine was rancid. And, as I have mentioned, I consumed this meal alone. While
consuming
it, friend, the notion several times assailed me that there was little convincing reason why I should not pass the greater part of my life, and with certainty the latter part of it, alone. Why should I not? When I had achieved what few men gain, and many seek, that is devotion, tenderness, loyalty and love,
my whim had been to blight these treasures and cast them away. I deserved to be alone. This evening was but a preview of bitter years ahead.

Friend, I felt an impulse to taste spirits. I left the eating house and toiled back along the tawdry glitter of Old Compton Street. I entered once more The Heights of Quebec. I ordered whisky and gazed about. The place was now more populous and I again saw faces I recognized. I might have approached one of these and fallen to talk. Friend, I no longer wanted to. I stood and sipped my whisky and across my own face there passed, at frequent intervals, faint twitching movements.

Friend, I then owned, though I had never bought, a
turquoise
green convertible car. Before migrant cancer throttled his bowels my martial uncle nudged this vehicle about. His death robbing it of a pilot, and my aunt’s inexplicably
surviving
tendency to spoil what had once been the infant light of her life inhibiting its sale, the car had come to me. I now entered this jaunty conveyance and steamed away to Chelsea.

From pub to pub sailed my greasy convertible and I. Night flamed through the city. Under sallow lights wafted girlish forms. The pubs spawned customers. Alcohol seethed in human brains. Lithe adolescents homed on erotic targets. Words droned through smoke. I lurched out of a tavern in Chelsea and chugged away to Notting Hill.

Friend, ghosts began to harry me! My God. My God. They flicked their filmy lashes at me from every street and pub. Blinding memories of joy and companionship flared up and seared the bloated, self-indulgent thing I had become. Oh God. My God.

The last pub closed. The last trickle of dilute Scotch reached my quaking stomach. I put down my glass, and, moving amongst wholesome people, piloted the leprous husk of my being out into the night. Rain spattered my brow.
Methodically
—I can hold my drink, friend—I levered up the roof of my bilious car, secured it and coursed slowly away towards home.