She rose late, later even than Jamie. By her bed she always had an enormous mug of water with a picture of the Queen of England on its webbed enamel surface. Before doing anything else Augusta drained her mug in one go. Then she got up and made herself coffee, quietly, with forbidding calm. She was always quiet and forbidding then, haughty too, almost regal—despite her startling pallor and her quivering hands. She looked especially quiet and forbidding if a man had stayed the night with her, and even more especially if the man hadn’t stayed the night with her before. Augusta’s men . . . Mary heard her clattering in late with them, and often saw them sneaking out in the morning—or sprinting out half-dressed, with Augusta appearing naked to shout them on their way. On such days she looked especially high-minded and dignified. She looked as if she were reassembling the bits of her that the previous day had dispersed—that disappointing and unworthy day, which just hadn’t been good enough for Augusta. Bad day, to fall so short like that.
Jamie had similar theories about Augusta. ‘She’s a fucking man, that girl—when it comes to men, anyway. I know she’s a tremendous sack-artist and everything. She says it’s good for her figure. But look at her eyes. She’s got . . . fucked-out eyes.’
After drinks and lunch, Augusta reliably started growing in beauty, and she didn’t stop growing all day.
‘You amaze me,’ Jamie would say to her conversationally. ‘You get up in the morning, you look like fucking shit. By the middle of the afternoon, you could be a virgin again.’
These were not riskless things to say to Augusta, who was justly famed for her touchiness and tantrums. Mary used to wonder how Augusta could be bothered to get as bothered as she frequently did. But it was no bother to Augusta, as Mary soon saw: her anger was part of something limitless inside her. There was plenty of Amy in Augusta all right. Oh, plenty, plenty. But by the time she started getting dressed for the evening, Augusta looked blindingly, unchallengeably good. She always went out, unless something had gone wrong. A car or a taxi or a man came, and Augusta walked off to present herself to the expectantly waiting night. And when something had gone wrong and she stayed in, she looked more dignified and forbidding than ever.
On such evenings Augusta would get drunk, talk a lot and laugh fiercely at her own jokes. Jamie jeered at her then, if he thought it was safe.
‘Boffed and betrayed again, eh Augusta? Dorked and dumped. I bet someone’s going to get it in the neck tomorrow. Whew! She’s a terror.’
And Augusta would laugh at that too. But Jamie never said anything in the mornings, when Augusta looked so high-minded. For instance, he never said anything that day when Augusta had a black eye and could be heard vomiting noisily in the bathroom. No one said anything, she looked so high-minded about it.
Mary would lie in bed at night in her small room at the end of the corridor, fielding the unwelcome thoughts that always came to her then. Jamie was right in a way: Augusta and Jo were like men. They had the power, the power of imposing, of imposing fear—they had formidability. Formidability! . . . How shameful, really, that when women tried to be free of men and strong in themselves, they just watched the way men were strong and copied that. Was there no second way to be strong, no female way? Mary was sure there must be. But perhaps not, or not any more, or not yet. Perhaps women would never be both strong and female. Perhaps women would never have the strength for that.
Where was pallid Alan now? He never had any, any formidability. Where was he, in heaven or in hell? If he was in heaven, he would perhaps be diving into a nebulous swimming-pool—but diving perfectly this time, with his legs taut and straight; or maybe he just lolled on a cloud all day, teasing his thick good hair. If it was hell that had him, then it would be a pale and humble one with fake flames like those on the Bothams’ golden fire, and all very quiet with not much going on. Most probably, though, Alan had simply stopped, stopped dead. His life had been subtracted, cancelled out. That was the most likely thing, Mary was afraid. She didn’t believe in life after death. She just believed in death.
* * *
She’ll get over it.
. . . Well, Mary seems to have fallen on her feet again, and without breaking. Of course, women love men who have lots of money, don’t they? Oh, come on. They do. If I were a woman I’d love them too. Why do you think men fritter their lives away trying to earn the stuff? Men used to vie for women with fists and clubs and teeth. Now they use money. That sounds like an improvement to me.
Mind you, Jamie didn’t earn his money. He had it all along. It was always there, waiting to be his. The rich have special terrors, inhabiting the land where there is no need. Here things swim too slowly, and the rich have special terrors. It serves them right, but they do. Mary will have to watch herself here. Disaster will sneak up the other way.
Have you ever stayed in a place where you wanted someone who didn’t want you? Well don’t—never do. Get out. Don’t stay in a place where you want someone who doesn’t want you. Get out as quickly as you can and don’t come back. That’s all I can say. That’s all you can do.
* * *
One morning as she lay in bed Mary remembered how as someone young she had sat down and wept on the grey concrete of a school playground, had wept inconsolably, and with no one to console her.
She had been excluded from something—they wouldn’t let her join in, they wouldn’t let her join in and play. Everyone expected her to stop crying when playtime was over. She expected this too. But she didn’t stop. The tearing, the rending, it wouldn’t go away, ow, ow, it hurt, it hurt. She sat at her desk in class with her head in her hands and her shoulders shaking. The mistress was not unkind. She led her to the corner and stood her on a chair, opening a window to help her breathe. This didn’t stop the rending either. She stared out at the booming afternoon and listened to herself for a long time, as surprised as anyone by the depth and harshness of her sobs.
. . . Mary sat naked on the edge of her bed. She was crying again. No more of this, she thought. She couldn’t go on being alone. It wasn’t just Jamie—she knew what was wrong with Jamie. But only he could stop the rawness and the rending, the needing, the tearing eagerness. And everyone needed someone to make them feel halfway whole.
19 Opposite Number
Jamie didn’t do anything. Jamie didn’t do anything either. Anything. Of course, he used to do jobs, like the one he did for Michael Shane, but—
‘But I’m just fucking fuckin out,’ he said in his rocky voice. ‘I just don’t fuckin need it, man. Who needs it? I don’t.’
Jamie just read all day. Mary would sometimes pick up the books that he had finished or abandoned. They tended to be American, and about poor kids making good. Mary soon discovered that many of the things Jamie said—phrases, entire paragraphs, stoutly held view-points—and many of his mannerisms and stylish quirks of appearance were in fact stolen from the books he read. Was it all right to steal things from books and not give them back? Mary supposed it was, in this place anyway. Books didn’t seem to mind and, besides, everything was all right in this place.
Mary read too, but books were no help. She found herself reading for clues and not for anything else. ‘Nothing is so cheerless as the company of a woman who is not desired,’ she read somewhere. She tried not to be cheerless. But was she not desired? How did you tell? She read somewhere else: ‘A woman’s solitary thoughts are almost exclusively romantic’ . . . but men weren’t like that. But women weren’t like that, not any longer. She found a few cuboid paperbacks with pictures of women like Augusta on their covers and the word Love in their titles. Mary read them all. In these books the women who wanted men simply took all their clothes off and said things like ‘Make me’ or ‘Take me’ or, in one extraordinary case, ‘Fill me with your children’. Mary didn’t see herself saying that to Jamie, somehow. ‘Jamie? Fill me with your children.’ No, Mary didn’t see herself saying that. The women also dressed up in special ways: there was a lacy, minimal black outfit that had had the desired effect, had
told the right lies, to a man who had been behaving much as Jamie was behaving now; and sometimes the girls just turned up naked except for a fur coat. Then the men fucked the women, usually giving them a slap or two in the face on top of everything else. That wasn’t what Mary wanted. She had to admit, however, that the men and women seemed to have quite a good time when they did it, in their embarrassing and vaguely hateful way. But the men were all racing-drivers or business moguls or gangsters or film stars. And Jamie wasn’t like that. What was Jamie like? Was Jamie queer, perhaps, like Gavin? Mary didn’t think so.
And suddenly she realized: books were about the living world, the world of power, boredom and desire, the burning world. These books were just more candid about it than the others; but they all fawned and fed on the buyable present. What had she felt before? She felt that books were about the ideal world, where nothing was ideal but everything had ideality and the chance of moral spaciousness. And it wasn’t so. She ran her eyes along the shelves with mordant pride. Books weren’t special. Books were just like everything else.
Later that day Mary went into the bathroom and locked the door behind her. Slowly, before the long mirror, she took off all her clothes. Standing back and shaking her hair, she gazed at the malleable slopes of her body . . . She looked posed, she looked awkward (by no means herself), but—yes, she looked good. Her solidly sculpted hair dropped down to the tips of her breasts, curving past the glowing throat. Were these breasts of hers good breasts? The shape and texture seemed pleasant enough—round and giving, without any sensation of fat—and there was something sore and meticulous about the nipples which she could imagine other people getting fond of. More or less exactly halfway between the shadowed undercurves of her breasts and the second line of hair lay the puckered and babyish eyelid of the navel, itself the central point of the shallow convexity that now flattened out on to the hinges of the hips, where the skin was weak, and tender veins were disclosed . . . And then came this other crucial point, whose role in life was so much-discussed, so much-in-the-news, so revered, so prized. Protected by hair and a protuberance of bone, it too was made up of flesh and resilience. Feeling decidedly uneasy now, Mary looked closer. Yes, this was new all right, this was more. The skin was pink, intimate pink. There were various other creaturely things going on down there. Frankly, it didn’t look too good down there to Mary. To tell you the truth, it looked pretty bad to Mary down there. But at least it wasn’t permanently on view, which was more than you could say for its opposite number. And then the gleaming thighs swept off along their true lines. It’s good, it’s good, she thought, it must be good: it’s all I’ve got. She slipped back into her clothes and unlocked the door. Jamie was walking past.
‘Hi, Mary,’ he said, and walked on.
What’s wrong with me? she thought.
Mary asked the other girls.
She asked Lily.
‘Nothing’s wrong with you,’ shouted Lily over Carlos’s steady wail. Carlos wasn’t crying, just testing the power and gurgliness of his screams. ‘Quiet, darling, there’s an angel. It seems that he’s just . . . he’s had all that. Oh Carlos, please stop it, please stop.’
It turned out that Lily and Jamie had been a couple, a long time ago.
‘Why did you stop being one?’ Mary asked.
‘I wanted a baby and he didn’t.’
‘Oh I see.’
She asked Jo.
‘What? With him? Yes, and if pigs had wings,’ said Jo. Jo was unstrapping an explorer’s outfit in favour of her tennis gear. ‘He’s just a little wanker, that’s all. Could you pass those gyms?’
It turned out that Jo and Jamie had been a couple, a long time ago.
‘Why did you stop being one?’ Mary asked.
‘Because he wasn’t man enough to work at it. We had a massive construction-job to do on our relationship, and he just wasn’t up to it.’
‘Oh I see.’
She asked Augusta.
‘Come in. Close the door. I’m glad you asked me about this. There are some things I think you ought to know,’ said Augusta.
For a long time they sat and talked on Augusta’s glossy bed. The conversation was maddeningly jangled because Augusta kept taunting and conciliating various men on her battered telephone. She hadn’t gone out much since the morning of the black eye. It was fading now through its spectrum of reds, but she still looked very high-minded about it. She drank vodka from a bottle dunked in a plastic bucket full of ice.
‘Basically,’ said Augusta, ‘he’s homosexual. And he’s impotent. Narcissists always are.’
‘Really?’ said Mary.
‘He hates women. He’s terrified of them.’
‘Then why does he have us all living here?’
‘To oppress us. To oppress us with his sneers. Answer that, would you. Find out who it is first. Mm—yes all right.’
‘. . . But he lets us do what we like,’ resumed Mary, ‘and gives us all the money we need.’
‘That’s how he oppresses us.’
‘But if he hates and fears us, why does he bother to oppress us?’
‘I’m telling you the truth Mary,’ said Augusta, with a glare of such baleful rectitude that Mary nodded quickly and turned away. ‘Of course I suppose you know he masturbates? Oh answer that, would you. Ask who it is . . . Oh all right.’
It turned out that Augusta and Jamie had been a couple, a long time ago.
‘Why did you stop being one?’ Mary asked.
‘Over one stupid little fight! Can you believe it? I went to see him every day for three weeks at the clinic, and when he came out he said’—and here she let her mouth go floppy and lugubrious—, ‘“I’m fuckin fucking out”. Can you believe it? Answer that. Ask . . . No! Oh all right.’
‘. . . Oh I see,’ said Mary.
‘From the first moment I saw him,’ said Augusta, snapping a finger, ‘I knew he’d lost his nerve. Like all men he’s basically a pornographer. What do they know? What do they feel? I mean really feel? Nothing! Oh, they’re just—Who?’ Augusta reached out high-mindedly for the receiver and then whispered into it for a very long time.
For a while they talked about other things. They talked about the large farm in which Augusta would one day dwell, and the eight or nine children she would raise there.
Much later, Augusta said, ‘I knew you . . . before.’
‘Really?’ said Mary.
‘What was your name . . .?’
‘Was it Amy?’
‘Yes.’
Mary wasn’t too alarmed. Perhaps Augusta was two girls too. After all, Jamie had told Mary that Augusta wasn’t Augusta’s real name either. Augusta’s real name was Janice.
‘We talked all night, and then we had scrambled eggs. You were strange.’
‘I don’t remember,’ said Mary.
‘Well I was quite drunk myself. But I’ll always remember something you said. I’ve forgotten it now.’
‘I see.’
‘You were doing some strange things. With heavy men and ethnic guys and things like that. Then you’d ring up your parents.’
‘What?’
‘When you were with these ethnic guys.’
‘Why?’
‘Because you hated them.’
‘Who?’
‘Your parents. But really you had this one guy. This strange guy. For years and years. You said you’d never leave him. You . . . I liked you more then.’
‘Did you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘Yes. You were more . . . real.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. I remember now what you said. You said you loved him so much you wouldn’t mind if he killed you. Something like that. I’ll never forget that.’
Augusta received two more telephone calls and finished the vodka. They talked about other things. They talked for a long time about the poems that Augusta very occasionally wrote late at night when she was especially drunk.
Mary walked thro
ugh into the sitting-room. Augusta had fallen asleep in an unlikely posture and couldn’t be moved. Jamie was asleep too, in front of the blankly buzzing television, with a book on his lap.
‘Oh, man,’ he said when Mary woke him.
‘Are you all right?’
‘Well I wouldn’t go that far. Oh, man,’ he said, slowly rubbing his face with his hands. ‘Whew. Well I’ll—whoops. I’ll just—ah! My . . . ow. Holy shit. Well I’ll, I’ll . . . Night!’
Mary watched him wheel and stumble from the room.
What’s wrong with him? she thought.
* * *
Try this.
Policemen look suspicious to normal murderers. To the mature paedophile, a child’s incurious glance is a leer of predatory salacity. In more or less the same way, live people are as good as dead to active necrophiles.
It is often extra affectionate to leave people you care about alone. Anyone who has ever walked into a lamppost knows that all speeds above nought miles per hour are really pretty fast, thanks.
Some people look at the sunset and can see only blood in the vampiric sky. And when at evening they see an airborne crucifix bearing down on them from the west, they just sigh and are thankful that another plane has escaped from hell.
If you don’t feel a little mad sometimes, then I think you must be out of your mind. All clichés are true. No one knows what to do. Everything depends on your point of view.
* * *
‘I’m depressed,’ said Jamie the next morning.
Mary believed him. He was also cruelly hungover. He had drunk too much the night before. Mary speculated that people would never drink that much unless they were quite drunk already. Gulping tightly, and with the occasional twitch of his damp white cheeks, Jamie picked up a book and started to read. Mary watched him. After a few minutes Jamie laughed out loud. The laughter went to his head, and it hurt.
‘Ow,’ he said. ‘God, that’s really funny. God that’s so good.’ He reread the passage and began laughing again. ‘Ow,’ he said.
‘Let me see,’ said Mary. She went over and sat on the arm of his chair.