I ran a bath and stripped. Lowering my jockey-pants, a razor-blade on the basin shelf caught my eye. I looked down and looked up again. There was my rig and there was the razor-blade. 'Come on, don't be wet, have it off,' my mind coaxed. 'Just lop it off, lop the bugger off. Go on. Go aarn.'
Tucking it between my legs, like a dog in disgrace, I got into the bath and lay back. The ceiling was slightly cracked in the corner. A house-proud spider worked on its translucent web. Eat a fly or something, I told it; be symbolic.
For goodness' sake, I had had only one real infection. The rest was temporary scares and growing neurosis about my private parts - parts (it bore pointing out) that had come to enjoy greater privacy over recent months. Now I looked at them only when I had to, and even then covertly, as if I were a queen and they were someone else's. Any spot or abrasion, even when I knew perfectly well it was a zip-scar or the remains of some tortured blackhead, meant going through the routine. It meant working it over. It meant waiting for the one-by-one elimination of my senses. It meant another trip to the local library, another afternoon browsing pinkly through medical dictionaries, ship's doctor's manuals.
Let it just try anything when I had a pee and Christ would I show it who was boss. I washed, got out, slipped a towel over my shoulder - had a pee. I couldn't tell whether it hurt or not. So I worked it over anyway, and good.
Normal procedure: I flicked it; slapped it; I garrotted it with both hands; a final searing chinese-burn - a last attempt to tempt out a drop of that most dreaded commodity, discharge. None was forthcoming. It looked at me as if bullied, picked-on. Cautiously at first, I applied a nailbrush to the helmet. I combed, with the rigour of an orphan matron, my pubic hairs. I swabbed my balls with after-shave. Perhaps a pipe-cleaner, steeped in Dettol ?
I experienced thrilling self-pity. 'What will that mind of yours get up to next?' I said, recognizing the self-congratulation behind this thought and the self-congratulation behind that recognition and the self-congratulation behind recognizing that recognition.
Steady on. What's so great about going mad ?
But even that was pretty arresting. Even that, come on now, was a pretty arresting thing for a nineteen-year-old boy to have thought.
'Yes. Very. One somehow gathers these responsibilities - or they seem to somehow gather on you. Because affection is a cumulative thing. People go on as if it were purely chemical. But it's not. How could it be ? You just do feel fond of people you've known for a long time.'
They get dependent on you and you start taking them for granted. And then maybe you think it's the safest thing. And you start worrying about how they're going to get on without you, and about you getting along without them.'
'But that's the trap. Worrying about being without them is a cop-out. And you mustn't let yourself get hustled into a false position.' My use of the split-infinitive and the hippie colouring of my speech were attributable in part to Rachel's hippie satchel - one of those tasselled, ropey-looking nosebags -which, or so she claimed, was made entirely from natural fibres and dyes (i.e. snot, hair, ear-muck). I had remarked on how nice it looked.
'Yes. That's the trouble.'
I felt the pre-pass flush come over me. After all, here she was, sitting on my bed and talking to me without any real sign of dislike. Over lunch at the Tea Centre, my sympathy vis-avis DeForest had been so discreet, my manner so genial, so ... right, my invitation to 'forget school', to 'live a little', so relaxed, so unpushy, that - here she was, sitting on my bed.
Fortunately, my room was in a state of red alert nowadays and Rachel's telephone call hadn't caught me with my pants down.
She had said matter-of-factly that she was fine and that DeForest wasn't going to be at school that day and that perhaps it would be 'a good thing' if we met for lunch and 'had a chat'. Her blandness had frightened me at first. I didn't like that 'chat'. There was something honestly all for the best about it. But I, as cool as you like, had not contacted her since Nanny Sunday; so the initiative was mine.
'Can I put the other side on ?'
She was referring to the Beatles record (late-middle period -between pretty-boy rock and bleared occult) which had just come to an end. This had seemed a safe choice, since to be against the Beatles (late-middle period) is to be against life.
All I had had to do, really, was make the bed more thoroughly (sprinkling talc between the sheets), readjust the record stacks, and, as a last-minute thought, place two unfinished poems on the coffee-table, to be shyly gathered up when and if I got her in there.
I watched Rachel crouch in front of the gramophone. She was wearing a fawn crew-neck jersey, a tight (and quite short) pinstripe skirt, and brown knee-high boots. As she knelt her arse formed a ... whatever you like - an arse-shaped semicircle above the heels of her boots.
Rachel settled herself again on the bed and, with modest sways of the head and in a small but pleasing voice, began to sing along with the gnomic George Harrison: about the space between us all, about those persons who wilfully conceal themselves behind a wall of illusion, and so on.
I was still soggy with retrospective alarm about the miraculous escape I had had eighty minutes earlier. When I followed Rachel into the room the first thing I saw was a huge notice on the mantelpiece. The notice had this to say:
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DON'T LET HIM TOUCH YOU HE HAS GOT AN UNUSUALLY REVOLTING DISEASE
The notice was written on a small bottle of pills (pressed into my shaking hand twenty-four hours before). The notice was in code form; it said :
Flagyll. One to be taken four times daily.
I pocketed the pills while Rachel was looking at the copy of Encounter on my bed. Later I put them on the shelf in the bathroom, out of the reach of children.
Seconded by the boyish Paul McCartney Rachel now urged me to send her a postcard, drop her a line, stating my point of view and indicating precisely what I meant to say. Instead, I tried to read an Encounter article on the relationship between art and life. Rachel was leaning back on the bed. She fell silent. She looked out of the window. And she lit a cigarette, her first since we had got back, her first for an hour. I peered over the rim of my spectacles. Even supine Rachel seemed erect, reminiscent of early Jennifer. Her knees were hunched up so that I could see the opaque darker-brown tops of her tights and the elusive shadow above.
It was natural that I should pick up the improvised saucer-ashtray from the coffee-table and only polite to glide over and put it on the backless bedside chair. It seemed fair enough to stand by the window for a while, to be expected that I should drop the Encounter to the floor, totally credible to sit on the lower third of the bed, and quite on the cards when my left foot brushed against her boots. This was how it seemed to Rachel. To me, as always, the pass was a new and unexpected turn: dreamy and inevitable enough, but alien, altogether different from what had gone before.
Lovely Rita meter maid
Lovely Rita meter maid
sang Rachel. Then she stopped singing.
Do I speak ?
There was a warm, musty silence. The diagonal curls of smoke from her cigarette were spangled by a thousand grains of dust highlit by the shaft of autumn sun. The shaft of autumn sun struck through the recently dismembered tree in the front garden, squeezed between the railings, quartered itself against the window-frame, wormed its way into the room.
Rachel stubbed out her cigarette.
I squeezed her leathery ankle.
She turned towards me, exhaling smoke, smiling.
Her lips were smudged with some pasty brown substance, almost the colour of her skin. I stared at them, leaning over. Those diamond-hard, slightly crooked teeth. Those lurid gums. Did I dare offer up my grim stripe to that pristine orifice ?
The orifice was still smiling when I kissed it.
It yielded, but by no means voraciously, so mine kept its distance, varying the angle every few seconds. Rachel was still on her side. The manoeuvre had involved leaning over her legs and lower torso. I s
upported myself, with some effort, on a single quivering arm, positioned near the small of her back, with enough purchase to keep some distance between our bodies. With my free hand I did things like describing the outline of her hair against her face, stroked her jawline, let a finger hover above her right ear. But I could keep this up for only so long.
After a first kiss there are normally two things you can do. Either extricate your mouth, grin with it, and say something (necessarily) cinematic; or move on to the neck, throat and ears. My posture suggested the first, since I couldn't get at the rest of her face without falling backwards on to the floor or collapsing wheezily on top of her. But I preferred the second method, having, indeed, never tried the other. The kiss had been underway for better than thirty seconds now. I made it more positive, introducing tongue a quarter of an inch. Rachel's mouth widened the same distance. Right.
Great strength was called for to lower my body down to just above hers, so that I could bring in the support of my right elbow (crooked for this purpose) to take the pressure off my left arm. In one movement I shifted my nine stone on to said elbow, slid my legs over Rachel's to the other side of the bed thereby settling in beside her, withdrew my mouth, and lay my head on her chest.
I listened to the fizz of cashmere and the crumpling of (more or less) empty brassiere. My knees came up to rest against Rachel's, keeping a good six inches between her skirt and my groin. I lay there still.
As hoped, Rachel's left hand came up and stroked my hair. Smirking at the wallpaper, I stayed in position for a quarter of a minute and laid an arm across her waist. Then I looked meekly up at her. She was gazing at the ceiling, deep in some maternal fantasy perhaps ? I doubted it.
Tactically, this was less than ideal. Too wistful, and this gives time for regret. I brought my face to within an inch of hers, having crunched my back teeth together. I kissed her again, far more emphatically this time, paying special attention to the corners of her mouth and to the points at which her teeth and gums met - both very sensitive areas. Meanwhile, I 'did' her left ear with the index finger of my right hand. If 'done' skilfully this can cause the subject to become ga-ga with arousal. The thing is hardly to touch the ear, to touch it as lightly as possible consistent with touching it at all. The nearer you get to not touching it the better. (I knew because I had had it 'done' to me, in the St Giles bus shelter, by a wonderful waitress. I had almost fainted, but I was seventeen then.)
Rachel responded tolerably well. Her tongue, as yet, was held in abeyance. However, she was jostling her lips a fair amount and made some of the right noises. When I pressed a corduroy kneecap against the point where hers met, though, her legs could not be said to have leapt apart. Nor, to be honest, did she have so much as one finger up my bum.
Just as well.
With my left hand I was making swirling motions on Rachel's stomach, outside her jersey, not touching her breasts but coming mischievously near them sometimes. Thus I maintained a tripartite sexual application in contrapuntal patterns. This sort of thing: insert tongue, remove finger from ear; withdraw tongue, stroke neck, trail pinkie of left hand along narrow gash between her jersey and skirt (tastefully avoiding navel); kiss and semi-lick throat and neck, 'do' ear, and place hand unemphatically on knee; stop 'doing' ear and stroke hairline, bring mouth towards hers and hand up her leg at similar speeds; with mouth almost there, hold her gaze for long second while hand takes off at aeroplane trajectory from the runway of her thigh and lands ... on her stomach again just as mouths meet. That sort of thing.
While doing this I thought how lucky I was to be out of action. In Dr Thorpe's queer words: 'Don't go sticking it up any pretty ladies for a bit, now will you? Come back next Monday, all right? and we'll take another peep at it.' Lucky because there was no chance of me getting 'worked up', of getting carried away, I believed was the phrase ? ? ? There was no danger of me thinking about anyone's pleasure but Rachel's. I made polite groans, naturally, but with the professional sincerity of the wine-taster as opposed to the candid slavering of the alcoholic.
My rig, of course, wouldn't know. And yet, to give it its due, that organ had behaved immaculately the day before. As I stood beside Thorpe's white-sheeted chaise-longue, about as relaxed as a drainpipe, trousers frilling my shins, baggy but spotless Y-fronts midway down trembling thighs: as Thorpe cruised towards me, as he reached out his manicured hand, head down, saying 'Well let's just take a look at the old codger then, shall we?' I was convinced he'd set off some awful glandular button, that my prick would spring to life joyfully in his fingers, that he would lift up his face to mine in eager recognition. But it couldn't have been better. I had wanted to buy it a bag of sweets or something afterwards.
Now. I completed a really very complicated set of manoeuvres. It featured, among other things, the worrying of her hip-bone with my elbow, stroking her eyelashes, and kissing her ears with dry-tongued care. I did some talking, too -shameless flattery most of it, but circumstantial and disinterested, which, I find, makes it far less embarrassing, since during their delivery compliments are borne and only in retrospect are they enjoyed.
'You know, you're looking straight at me and I can still see the whites of your eyes all round your pupils. Look at mine. The brown always joins the edge at some point. But yours are amazing. I suppose that's why they're so striking - the first thing I noticed about you. Why do you ever wear sunglasses?'
And again:
'What's this stuff on your lips ? It doesn't taste like make-up. It's difficult to tell where your lips stop and your face starts. Your skin's such an absurd colour, like damp sand; very nice.'
Rachel, for her part, said at one point: 'You've got such sweet breath. Not sickly.' She laughed. 'Just sweet.'
Although utterly inexplicable, this was true enough, often pointed out to me by girls ('cucumber and peppermint' is the best description I've ever screwed out of them). That tasty liquefying gook in my lungs? Rachel's remark impressed me deeply all the same. I wished I could, so to speak, come off duty, surrender to this experience as something related not to the past nor to Deforest nor to trichomonas nor to the future. But I had to get her first, then there would be time.
To signal this promise, I abandoned the tactile skirmishes. I lifted both hands to her face, held it with my palms resting flat against her cheeks, and kissed her lightly on the lips. Sometimes, in this sort of situation, in a sexual context, girls look sad when they are not sad. This was how Rachel looked: frowning, beautiful, clear-eyed, pained.
We had been at it for thirteen minutes. I knew because the record had come to an end (I timed it later, for the books: four tracks' worth). But the record didn't go on to automatic reject like any normal record; those cheeky Beatles had indented the final groove, so that it went
Cussy Anny hople - wan
Cussy Anny hople - wan
ad infinitum, until you could be bothered to go and lift up the needle. (Geoffrey said it was 'I'll fuck you like a superman' backwards. 1 had never checked.)
Pretended not to notice for half a minute or so. Then: 'Oh, Christ.' 1 let my body go limp and swivelled over. I sat facing away from Rachel. The record had been hardly more than a murmur, intended to drown the muffled snorting and wincing of the pass. Without it, the room seemed hollow.
Tour jacket's awfully creased,' said Rachel, as if from a great distance.
1 bunched a fistful of the material in my hand. It was creased. I stared at the rug. 'Where is DeForest, anyhow?' I thought this would sound more powerful with my back to her.
'Oxford. Getting interviewed.'
'Oh really?' I said in a tight voice. Why wasn't I getting interviewed? 'When's he coming back?'
Tomorrow. But then he's going shooting in Northamptonshire.'
'Shooting ? What do you mean ?'
'Hunting. You know, with guns.'
'Oh. He does all that, does he?' Elitism and butchery. Ought to be some milage there.
'Not really.' I heard her stifle a yawn. 'A friend invited
him for the weekend.'
She stressed 'weekend' on the first syllable. DeForest's influence. I turned, smiling.
That means you can come to a film tonight. La Rupture is on at the Classic.'
She closed her eyes and nodded, seemingly in regret. I stole a worried kiss.
Suddenly there was clamour from the direction of the stairs, as if a victorious Cup Final team were running down them. Rachel and I had only just enough time to sit up and look startled and guilty before the door swung open. Norman's beachball head loomed over us. It ignored Rachel.
'Come on. Upstairs. Your dad's here.'
'What? Here?'
'Yeah, come on.' He turned to leave.
'Look, Norman, slow down,' I said. 'Can't you tell him I'm ill or something, or out? What the hell's he doing here, anyway?' I was making little allowance for Rachel's presence, having explained to her that my sister had gone and married, quite unaccountably, this mad cockney - perfectly harmless, something of a character, totally off his head of course, don't be alarmed by anything he says or does, and so on.
'No, you've got to come up. Jenny said. She thinks I'll nut him or something unless you're there. This Rachel?' He looked her up and down in insolent appraisal.
'Yes. Rachel, this is Norman.'
'Hi,' said Rachel chirpily. She had sat up, arms wrapped round her knees.
'Tsuh.' Norman threw his eyebrows and head back with disgust or envy - I couldn't tell which. Nor could I tell how anyone could be so offensive and give so little offence.