'I've got something to say.' And already he was on the other side. 'It'll sound more dramatic than it really is, I expect. I think you've got something to say too.' Here he turned. Here, of course, he was about to introduce the gravamen that Nicola herself had recently stressed: the fact that Hope had, 'rather sordidly', taken a lover in Dink. But one look at the solar hatred in Hope's eyes and Guy thought: poor Dink! He's gone - he was never here. He's been unpersoned. He isn't even history. 'I mean, for quite a long time it seems to me there's been a need to.. .redefine our . . .All I'm proposing really is an adjustment. And I do think it's important, very important, vital, really, to be as honest as one can be. And I don't see why we can't just work this out like two reasonable human beings. With the minimum of disruptions all round. There's someone else.'
Guy experienced a certain amount of difficulty, as he checked into the hotel on the Bayswater Road. It was the fifth hotel he had tried. Although the injuries to his face would turn out to be mainly superficial, he must have cut an unreassuring (and unprosperous) figure at the reception desk, with his fat lip, swelling eye, and the dramatic lateral gash across his forehead. Then, too, the top five buttons of his steaming, rain-soaked shirt were missing; and all he had in the way of luggage was a plastic bag with a bit of wet Y-front hanging over the brim of it. But finally his osmium credit card prevailed.
In his room he cleaned himself up and called Nicola. There was no answer. He unpacked his belongings — two shirts and the few undergarments he had managed to pick up off the front lawn - and tried again. No answer: not even her disembodied voice, on the soft machine. He went out and plunged through the cabless streets, through the diagonal arrowshowers of reeking rain, through the desperate maelstroms of Queensway and Westbourne Grove: the inspired hordes of the poor. He splashed his way up the dead-end street and climbed her porch and rang her bell and then leaned on it. There was no answer. In the bright heat of the Black Cross he drank brandy, and talked to Dean and Fucker, who informed him that Keith was on the town up west with his sugarmummy, a dark bitch called Nick who gave him cash gifts and who, moreover to recommend her, could suck a lawnmower through thirty feet of garden hose. Guy heard them out with heavily rattled scepticism, and returned to her door, where he remained for the next two hours.
. . . On his way back to the hotel he went past Lansdowne Crescent. It seemed to him that the house, his house, was already unbearably lit, from within, like a house of death, a house where a child had chillingly died. On the other hand he found two drenched pairs of socks in the rosebed, and all his silk ties. He stopped in Queensway and purchased toiletries at the all-night chemist. Again he had some pleading to do at the reception desk before they delivered up his key. He called her, and went on calling, in between trips to the minibar. No answer. And there's nothing to be done when people can't be reached. When there is no answer, no answer.
Bright and early next morning (you got to be quick) Keith stood flapping his arms on the stone stairway to Windsor House.
Jesus, talk about a night out: dinner at the Pink Tuxedo, drinks in the Hilton, the special club with the models up on the ramp, and then back to her place for a couple of videos, to round the evening off. Keith spared a bitter thought for Guy, who had tarnished this last chapter with his incessant phoning. Still. Now Keith removed the souvenir menu from his inside pocket: he'd had faisán a la mode de champagne or some such nonsense. Refused the wine, mind, and stuck with lager. Can't go far wrong with lager. Lager's kegged. All the same, Keith wasn't fully convinced that rich food agreed with him; his suspicion rested on the five-hour visit he had made to the bathroom on his return. At such times you really felt the inconvenience of so compact an apartment. In that kind of spot, in that kind of groaning extremity, the last thing a man wants to hear is the wife and kid scuttling about and creating all night long.
A chauffeur-driven two-door saloon pulled up, followed by a van marked with the famed darts logo. Slightly dizzy from his first cigarette of the day enjoyed in an upright posture, Keith stepped forward to greet Tony de Taunton, executive producer, and Ned von Newton, the man with the mike himself. Shaking his head, Keith contemplated Ned von Newton, for a moment unable to believe his eyes. Ned von Newton. Mr Darts.
'A true honour,' said Keith. 'Listen, lads: slight change of plan.'
'We got the address right, didn't we Keith ?' asked Tony de Taunton, lifting his rippled face to the tower block, which burned in the low sun as if at every moment all its glass were being hammered out of the clear sky.
'Moved, innit. Why don't I lead the way in the Cavalier?’
We can't stop. She can't stop.
Oh the dolorology of my face, with pains moving into positions like sentries, like soldiers who hate my life. This nuked feeling, the kind of ache you get from a vaccination — when the syringe is six feet long. And not in the arm or the ass. In the head, the head. The pain can't stop.
Christ, even that prick of a wasp prospecting for dust on the glass of the half-open window ... It waddles up the pane, then drops and heavily hovers, then climbs again, and won't fly clear. Getting in and out of windows ought to be one of its main skills. What else is it any good at, apart from stinging people when it's scared? Just as the pigeon that Guy saw, that I saw, that we all see, faces a narrow repertoire of decisions: to go for pizza now, and risk becoming pizza itself, or flap uglily in the air for a second or two and go for the pizza then.
I find I have spent the last ten minutes looking out of the window, watching a twelve-year-old boy wearily stealing a car. While he accomplished this, a very old man limped by in running-shoes. It wasn't my car. It wasn't Mark's car, He phones me to say that he is coming over for a party on Guy Fawkes Night, or Bonfire Night as he calls it. He is full of praise for the Concorde. I'm not to worry - he'll find a warm bed elsewhere; but maybe we'll meet. After last night, I don't hate him any more. I can feel some new emotion waiting to form. What? Asprey asks if I enjoyed Crossbone Waters. I lied, and said I didn't. The book gave rise to some enjoyable scandal, he tells me: there's something about it among the magazines on his bathroom floor . . . This morning, Incarnacion came. Rather than sit around listening to her, rather than sit about listening to Incarnacion murdering the human experience, I went out. But I soon came back. Too many people denying themselves the pleasure, or sparing themselves the bother, of beating me up. When I see the fights I resolve to be incredibly polite to big young strong people. Incarnacion was in the study. She seemed to be looking at my notebook. Another thing. The toaster-like photocopier — I thought it didn't work, but there it was with its light on. It hummed warmly .. . Sometimes (I don't know) I take a knight's jump out of my head and I think I'm in a book written by somebody else.
The wasp is gone. But not out the window. I can hear it bumping into things. It'll be back. It will turn toward me. Insects and death always turn toward you. Gesture them away, and they turn toward you. All the awful things in the end turn toward you.
Now here's a revelation.
Dink doesn't do it. Lizzy boo told me. I wormed it out of her at Fatty's. I plied her with fudge sundaes and creme brulées until she finally came across. The food is sweet like chainstore romance, like happy-ever-after. The food is yuck. She hates what she's doing to herself but she can't stop, can't stop. (Nobody can. I can't.) Tears run down her cheek - sauce runs down her chin. We must have looked like the couple in the postcard joke. In the seaside café. Jack Sprat would eat no fat. Which is the cruel one?
Dink doesn't do it. Dink didn't do it to Lizzyboo and he hasn't done it to Hope either: so Hope's clean, more or less (though I won't use it. I don't need it). Dink'll roll around and everything, and neck and pet. You can see him in the nude if you really insist. But he doesn't do it. He fears for his tennis — his rollover backhands, his whorfing smashes. Dink hasn't come for thirteen years. And the hairy bastard is still only the world ninety-nine.
There's also the fatal-disease consideration. If Dink caught one of them, he'd s
top being the world ninety-nine. And start being the world five-and-a-half billion. Dink's smart. Dink's hip. He knows that dead men don't play tennis. That's how come he has this rule.
The poor sisters, surrounded by these dud males with these dud rules. Even masturbation is too many for them. Guy, Dink; and now I'm at it. Yes, I've quit too. Actually I have nothing against the activity. I always thought I'd babywalk into the bathroom with my pants around my ankles maybe just one more time. But recently, with these new lesions on my hands and everything, I've put all that behind me. I'm frightened of catching a venereal disease from myself. Is this a first? And why do I care?
Kath claims that Keith is cheerful around the house, when he's there. But not quite cheerful enough, evidently, to refrain from giving her a new bruise on her chin. All the women in the street suddenly seem black and blue and scarlet — violet eyes, crimson lip.,. Some of these cruelty instructions come from upstairs. Cruelty is being delegated.
E=mc2 is a nice equation. But what is the theodicy of uranium? Ferocious physics. And the everyday medium-sized Newtonian stuff, the deckchair and map-folding and meter-feeding physics of ordinary life: all that has it in for you too. Babies are finding out about physics the whole time (how they slip and stagger) in their school of hard knocks.
A new bruise also on the little ass with its precocious nobility of curve, and three new cigarette burns, again in a triangle. The left buttock said therefore; the right buttock says because. I try, but I can't see Keith doing this. His eyes lit by the cigarette's coal.
It must be like an addiction, and addiction I can understand — as I surf on the crest of something irresistible and unholy. The heavy calm the ungratified addict feels, awaking to the sound of the voice that says today will be the day: the day of indulgence and an end to struggle — pleasureday. And the morning will pass so sweetly, with sin so secure.
'Nor her choo.'
I moaned with fright: the baby was awake, and staring, and naked. From the floor came Clive's growl, ticking over in warning.
'Nor her choo.'
'What?' I said (I was astonished). 'No. Not hurt you. Not hurt you. No, of course not, my darling.'
Is there someone else coming in here I don't know about? A social worker like Nicola in disguise? A smiling uncle, like me, myself. Is it me? I rub my face. Outside, the hell, the torment, the murder of the low sun, and its cruel hilarity. I say nothing. Kath says nothing. And Kim can't tell me. Kim can't tell. And somebody can't stop.
The life isn't over, not quite. But the love life is. I might as well get the love stuff wrapped up. 'Please. My darling,' I said, ninety-some days ago now, elsewhere. 'Do this one big last thing for me. Do it, Missy. Not here. Christ, no. We'll take an attractive little condo somewhere — say in Palm Springs, or Aspen. Do it, Missy. I'll be the dream patient. I promise. Do this one big last thing for me.'
Even nature was telling me I'd lost, that love had lost. She was hating everything, herself, me, contemporary circumstances. The second and final act of love had taken place that morning, and I had heard or felt (I believed) the fateful pop or pang of conception. She was hating everything, but most of all she was hating nature, the trees in their postures of injury and recoil, the spongy froth along the shore, that log on the path in the shape of a seal tragically or just pathetically overturned in death. She had loved it here.
I hid in plain sight. I took the boat out on the water. At first, the sky looked like one of Darwin's warm little pools, sugary blue, where life would ineluctably form; but the pond itself was tired. It didn't have too long to go now, with the ocean smashing at the dunes to the east and getting yards closer every week. The oars slid through the surface tracery of dead waterskaters. I gave a shout as I saw that the clan of snapping-turtles was still in occupation, huddled up among the reeds. In their heyday, when they had discipline and esprit, they looked like the ranked helmets of Korean riot police. Now these survivalists wallowed loose and exhausted: soiled bowls in the soup kitchen. And myself the old kitchen stiff with his sleeves rolled up. For an hour the sky was Cape Cod true blue, with solid clouds grandly gleaming like statuary. After that, just heat, with the sun and the sky slowly turning the same colour.
Nothing much was said. Nature continued to do most of the talking. The LimoRover came for her at dusk. It was driven by one of Sick's sidekicks, Mirv Lensor, another kind of Washington wretch. 'Mirv Lensor: Expediter', said the card he flicked out of the window at me when I disobeyed orders and staggered out on to the drive — in preposterous defiance. Sheridan Sick has a ventilation system in his apartment which removes all nitrates from the air he and Missy breathe. The ageing process is thus measurably retarded. Time goes slower there, slower than it goes with me.
After she'd gone, night fell, and I worked on the fire. I spent the evening staring at the lamplit back window. It held me, it included me, it said everything: my reflected face, and then, a couple of millimetres beyond, the outer surface like a glass-bottomed boat, only deep-sea, heavy-water, with all kinds of terrible little creations out there, tendrilled, dumbbelled, gravity-warped; or like a preparation for the crazy scientist's microscope, disgraceful cultures in compound opposition, the ambitious maggot with its antennae rolling like radar sweeps, the gangly moth briefly clearing the decks with its continental wing-frenzy, the no-account midges, the haunchy ants and grimly ambling spiders, the occasional innocuous white butterfly fainting away from the glass, all of them seeking the atomic brightness, the nuclear sun of the lamp's bulb. And all the wrong things prosper.
It's happening.
At last, late at night, the cries of the city are coming together and turning into something, with the eclipse so close now — the city is finally finding its voice, like the thud of a sullen heart, saying, 'No . .. No . . . No . . .' It can't stop. And a mile from my window someone else is listening. And she can't stop saying, 'Yes . . . Yes . . . Yes . . .'
I'm helpless against these forces. You can't stop them — the century says you can't stop them. I must become the tubercular toreador, whom Hemingway knew. The bull weighs half a ton. You let him have the strength.
Manolito, was it? Dead in the sawdust of Madrid.
Chapter 21: At the Speed of Love
g
uy got his night with Nicola. Guy Clinch reached the finals with Nicola Six. And got his night of love.
It happened, after a fashion, in its own way. The love force that swathes the planet, like weather, found a messenger or an agent, that night, in Guy, who had never felt so fully elemental. He didn't know that she was just a weatherwoman, with stick and chart. For him it was the real thing. He didn't know that it was just an ad.
First, though, she had to account for the asphyxiating vacuum of her absence: not just for that one night of rain, when Guy's house blew up in his face, but for the further thirty-six hours which she had selflessly devoted to Keith Talent and his needs. Helping her Keith. Oh, how she lived for others . . .
'I went', said Nicola, 'to visit my parents' graves. In Shropshire.'
Guy frowned. Nicola's men, and their vermicular frowns. 'I thought you said you knew nothing of your parents.'
'That', said Nicola, who had half-forgotten a lot of this early stuff by now, 'was a deliberate untruth. In fact long ago I bribed a nurse at the orphanage and she told me where they were buried.' She shrugged and looked away. 'It's not much, is it - just their graves?'
'. . . Poor mouse.'
'Goodness, the trains. Like Russia during the purges and the famines. I felt like Nadezhda Mandelstam. It's a pretty little cemetery, though. Tombstones. Yews.' If he had asked where she'd stayed, she might have hazarded, 'In a rude tavern.' But it didn't come up. After all, he was dreadfully pleased to see her. 'I should have told you, I know. I was in a strange state. Strangely inspired.'
'Well. You're back safe and sound.'
They were having a candle-lit supper on the floor of her sitting-room, in front of the open fire. Firelight and candlelight paid their c
ompliments to her full pink dress (in reply you could hear the whisper of petticoats, the faint gossip of gauze) and to the artless pink ribbons in her disorderly hair. How simple and sustaining: bread, cheese, tomatoes, a smooth but unpretentious vin de pays . . . Nicola had in fact peeled off the labels to disguise the thick claret she'd chosen, a Margaux of intensely fashionable vintage.
'This may sound fanciful,' she said wanly, 'but I felt I had to square it with them. You.'
Guy nodded and sipped, and sipped, and nodded. His palate, his tutored papillae, continued to savour the fruit, the flowers, the full body (stout, plummy, barrelly, tart) of the examined life, the life of thought and feeling so languidly combined. He was rich in understanding. He was also, by now, a rather poorly paramour: a sick man, in fact, and thoroughly distempered. The cold he had caught in the unwholesome rain soon developed into an arctic fever. Thrice he had called down to demand the complete replenishment of his minibar, on which he had depended for a diet of pretzels, cashew nuts, Swiss chocolate and every potable from brown ale to sweet sherry. Apart from bloodying his chewed fingertips on the telephone dial, he had been incapable of action, or of thought. In his dreams, when he wasn't escorting disfigured children through empty zoos, he was attracting many varieties of unwelcome attention, in moral nudity, and priapic disgrace . . . Now he was full of understanding, full of weakness — and what else? Such vigour as remained seemed to be packed into the logjam of his underpants. Visiting the bathroom soon after his arrival at Nicola's flat, he had been obliged to try a kind of handstand before eventually backing up to the toilet seat with his face almost brushing the carpet.