'Come on, then,' he said, 'both of you.' He frowned and gestured towards the door encouragingly. 'His tart's here, too,' he added, as if they had arrived independently.
'You mean his mistress?'
Half after: right Charlie
A moment ago mother came in and asked me if I wanted any supper. I said no, of course, and added that I would appreciate not being disturbed again. That sort of thing can put you right off your stride. Now I have to lie on the bed for a few minutes and let the solitude gather round me once more.
I assumed that for all her social varnish Rachel must have been feeling rather overwhelmed, so I was relieved when we were hailed outside the kitchen door by an unkempt, hurriedly made-up Jenny. She was making a big tea. I introduced them, and Rachel immediately started to help, assembling trays, grilling toast, transferring milk and sugar into genteel containers.
'What does he think he's doing here?' I asked.
'Gosh,' said Jenny. 'Norman must be up there. Oh Charles, do go up.'
I wanted to know how long they'd be. Jenny said not long. I disappeared.
My father, arms folded and needly legs crossed, was at the far end of the room. To my right: a small blonde in white shirt and black velvet trouser-suit. To my left: Norman, back to the window, in brick-jawed relish of the uncomfortable silence.
Gordon Highway was startled but, all in all, quite pleased to see me. He stood up and held out an arm towards his tart. She was called Vanessa Arnold. I leaned down and shook her jewelled hand. Vanessa was a midget, and had a drawn, over-tanned face, but she wasn't unattractive.
'No, I don't believe we have met.' I sat down beside her.
'Yes, I was just telling Norman here,' said my father in a declamatory voice, 'Vanessa has just flown in from New York.
It's topping ninety there! It's hot, dirty, expensive, bad-tempered - the blacks are going crazy, everyone's striking, the students are restless again...' He laughed. 'What a God-awful country!'
He continued, exchanging the odd political or ecological platitude with Vanessa, until the deliverance of 'Ah, here we are.' The girls placed both trays on the drinks-table between the windows. I introduced Rachel, with some pride.
My father told Jenny and Rachel what he had just been telling Norman and Charles here. Rachel said she had been there the year before ... oh really? lot worse now what's going to happen mugging Nixon riots Central Park pollution even in the day-time.
Norm and I grimaced at each other. He hadn't spoken yet, I only once. The tea got round, then the toast, which my father refused. He wanted neither milk nor sugar. Was there a lemon? Jenny would run down, occupied as she was. No, Rachel would. Where were they kept ? She left the room.
'They aren't going to put up with it much longer,' Vanessa was saying. 'Nixon is up to here' (neck-high) 'in bullshit.' She blew on her tea. For someone who hated America so much she had a very mid-Atlantic accent. 'Soon the students and the Panthers are going to get together, and then ...' She shook her head.
There was a pause.
'And what do you think of this frightful situation,' said Norman in a pontifical voice. 'Charles, I mean what's it all coming to?'
Rachel broke the stillness. She bore a saucer on which lay a single slice of lemon.
'Ah, thank you so much.' My father held out his cup, a smile fossilized on his face.
'I'll tell you, Norman,' I said. 'I think it's got very little to do with the government. It's the people.'
'Ah, now what do you mean by "the people"?' my father queried. 'Aren't "the people" and the government, in effect, the same -'
'I'll tell you, Norman. Americans will always be hell no matter who's governing them. They're —'
'Okay, so you don't like Americans,' said Vanessa.
'No, I don't like Americans.'
Rachel sat down in a straight-backed chair to Norman's left.
'Ah, but why ? Has that got anything to do with the matter at hand?' My father lifted his cup, watching his weight and watching me.
Stop saying 'ah' like that every time you open your fucking mouth. I felt hot. I didn't think much. I said: 'Because they're violent. Because they only like extremes. Even the rural people, the old reactionaries in the farms, go out blowing niggers' heads off, roast a Jew or two, disembowel a Puerto Rican. Even the hippies are all eating and mass-murdering each other. The generations of T-bone steak and bully-beef, as if they're doing a genetics experiment on themselves. No wonder they're so violent, with bodies like theirs. It's like being permanently armed.' The room sighed. 'And I hate them because they're so big and sweaty. I hate their biceps and their tans and their perfect teeth and their clear eyes. I hate their—'
I was interrupted by Vanessa (abusively), her boyfriend (magisterially) and Rachel (with amused dismissiveness). I let them ride over me without protest. The tirade hadn't been contrived wholly for Rachel's benefit. I had, in fact, before even meeting DeForest, written a sonnet on this theme - of whose sestet the speech was, in part, a prose paraphrase. It had not seemed such limelit nonsense in verse form.
Jen finally took time out from serving tea and toast. She sat on the floor at her husband's feet. Norman, staring at me with curiosity and some affection, laid a palm the size of a violin on her head. Jenny frowned when she felt Norman's hand, but looked grateful. It was the first time I had seen them touch since the night of my arrival. Two and a half weeks.
The argument continued. I was unable to see how the three of them could have disagreed with me so fervently and yet go on disagreeing among themselves. Vanessa had decided that it would be more swinging partially to come round to my view (she blamed the system, and 'genocide-guilt'). Rachel was taking a conventional stand against 'this kind of generalization'. My father umpired. I listened for a few minutes, then went downstairs.
After some words with Valentine ('Fuck off and get Mum') and a new au pair ('Yes, I'm terribly sorry, would you mind waking her up, it is rather important - I do hope I'll see you next time I'm there'), I got mother. I let her scale the lurching rope-ladder first to consciousness, then to recognition, and, at last, to intelligibility.
'Er, no dear, yes. I wanted ... I wanted just to know how many people your father was bringing. There's Pat and Willie French, I know, but I wondered if they were bringing ... someone else. Because I shall then have to move Gita out of the green room and put Sebastian's things ...'
I looked for a connection. 'Who are Willie and - Pat, is it?'
'Willie French, the journalist, and his ... Patty Reynolds. She's a very old friend of mine. She...'
Reynolds. I put my hand over the receiver and shouted, 'Father?' The conversation above ceased, and then, more quietly, resumed. I listened. Mother was still lost in monologue when my father's head appeared over the banisters. I held up the telephone for him to see.
'I've got mother here. I think she wants to know whether you're bringing' - I waved my head - 'her, up for the weekend.'
He descended to the bathroom landing. 'Yes. You see ...' He began down the stairs towards me, 'Vanessa's sister is —'
'You are? Right. Yes, mother, Pat will be bringing her sister.'
'... oh. Well, I'll... there'll probably—'
'I'm sorry, mother, I can't talk just now ... Yes, I might come. No one will be using my room, will they ? I'll ring if I am. Bye now.'
My father stood half-way down the stairs. 'You will come, Charles, won't you. Old Sir Herbert is coming along and I think you should be there. He can —'
'Next time,' I said, 'next time, let her know, okay? There's enough room to sleep an army in that fucking house. Let her know. So she won't have to go through this pathetic charade to see if she can find a bed for your girl. Okay?'
'Oh, come on, Charles, pull yourself together. Your mother and myself have already discussed the matter. And nothing whatever is going to happen with my "girl" in "that fucking house". Do you understand me. Do you understand me?'
I turned away and then back again. He was managing
to look quite elegant and plausible, there on the stairs. I nodded.
'Charles, you're such a ...' he laughed, 'you're such a prude.'
I felt ashamed. All worked up and nowhere to go. I looked down at the telephone, breathing deeply.
'Come back upstairs.'
I went.
'Gordon,' said Vanessa, in an outraged voice, 'Rachel is Eliza Noyes's girl - Harry Seth-Smith's step-daughter.'
I followed my father into the room.
'Really,' he said, steering past Jenny's legs to the tea-tray where, with rock-like hands, he filled his cup. 'Well, in that case you must come this weekend also. Charles, why don't you bring Rachel ? I'm sure there'll be plenty of room.'
Rachel looked at me blankly.
'I saw Harry only the other week. He does regular work for us, very old friend of mine. Do come.'
Rachel shrugged in my direction.
I had had no intention of going. 'Can you?' I asked.
'Well, Mummy might —'
'Nonsense,' said my father. 'I shall ring her myself this evening. Charles, have you started at the Tutors yet?'
'Yes. Beginning of last week.'
'Good man.'
I took Rachel to a French film, La Rupture, as an oblique way of indicating to her how good in bed I was going to turn out to be.
I realized that there were plenty of sound, indeed urgent, reasons for hating French films: the impression the directors gave that the shoddier and less co-ordinated their products were, the more like life, and therefore the better, they were; that habit of lapsing into statement whenever suggestion got too difficult or ambiguous. And my critical sense told me that the English-American tradition of exploratory narrative had obvious strengths. Yet I preferred the more rickety and personal conventions of French - and, occasionally, Eyetie -cinema: the more radical attitude to experience, the scrutiny of the small detail and the single moment.
I said as much to Rachel, I told Rachel so, as we walked up to Notting Hill Gate. She agreed.
At one point Rachel took my hand. (Relax, I told myself; you don't have to do all this. She just fancies you.) She said, 'What happened when you called your father out of the room ?'
'Nothing much.'
'Do you get on with him ? You seemed, I don't know, frightfully tense.'
Rather flattering. I said: 'It's funny. I hate him all right, but it doesn't feel like hatred. Even at home. If I was sitting in the kitchen reading, and he came through the room, I'd look up and think, Oh, there he goes, I hate him, and return quite happily to my book. I'm not sure what it is.'
Rachel said that - hold your hats - she had 'given up' hating her father long ago. I didn't explain.
Owing to the mendacity of the girl who answered the telephone there, we arrived at the cinema just in time to catch the last hour and a quarter of the B feature. The B feature was called Nudist Eden.
It was grisly. The film presented itself as a documentary, just taking a look round a real nudist camp. The narrator gave facts and figures, interviewed satisfied customers. The camera patrolled the grounds, examined the facilities. Grubby colour, low-budget incompetence; it had a nightmare quality: you can't tell whether you're going mad or whether everyone else is going mad; you stare round the cinema to check your bearings; you expect the audience to make some gesture of spontaneous protest. What was more, the producers could afford only middle-aged actors and actresses.
I shifted in my seat as the camera inexpertly focused on a parade of oldster genitals. The men had pricks like hand-rolled cigarettes, balls like prunes. The women did not differ significantly in this area, as far as I could see. Caved-in bums, deflated breasts - these were to be seen everywhere: by the pool, round the camp-fire (a scene scored by an ill-synchronized Deep River Boys number to which the nudists attempted helplessly to mime), in the chalets, at the canteen, and so on.
I began to feel distinct alarm, what with Rachel being so posh, when the camera lingered for a full half-minute on the naked body of a seven-year-old girl. High-spiritedly she was arching herself backwards, to reveal (i) that little girls in nudist camps are healthy and can do the crab, and (ii) her cunt, in order to sate the more recondite predilections of certain cineastes - one of whom, a mackintoshed compost-heap, was sitting immobile, like a toadstool, not even wanking, in a wide circle of unoccupied seats.
The time came to say something. After a most cunning scene, in which, for three minutes, a dangerously overweight couple were to be viewed jumping up and down on a trampoline, I turned to Rachel and said - unanxious, empirical, resigned - 'That's motion pictures.'
Rachel started laughing, quite loudly, shoulders hunched, right hand cupped over her nose. 'I love this sort of thing,' she whispered. 'How much of it will there be? Have we missed much?'
'Not much,' I said. I grabbed a kiss. 'There'll be plenty more.'
I gazed at Rachel's profile. Goodness me, I really did like her. A novel turn in our relationship. What had it been up until then ? It didn't seem like affection, far less desire: rather a kind of gruelling, nine-to-five inevitability.
As it turned out, the nude film was a delight and La Rupture left us cold.
Later; at the bus-stop, I quizzed Rachel about the weekend. She was evasive, pointing out that even if my father did ring it might still be difficult.
'Mummy's really neurotic about things like this. Maybe because of Daddy. She was so young then, and I think she thinks the same will, you know, happen to me.'
I sighed.
Rachel's hand writhed in mine. 'But if you came up and met them to sort of reassure her... ?' She pinched the loose skin on my knuckles.
'Okay,' I said. 'Yeah, I'll do that. Tomorrow? What, just come up for dinner, or a drink or something. Yes, I'll do that. I'm quite good at all that.'
' ... although Eden, then, is the "goal" of all human life, it remains strictly an imaginative goal, not a social construct, even as a possibility. The argument applies also to the literary Utopias, which are not the dreary fascist states popularizers try to extrapolate from them, but, rather, analogies of the well-tempered mind: rigidly disciplined, highly selective as regards art, and so on. Thus, Blake, like Milton, [hesitate] saw the hidden world, the animal world in which we are condemned to live, as the inevitable complement to man's imagination. Man was never meant to escape death, jealousy, pain, libido -what Wordsworth calls 'the human heart by which we live', [perplexed three-second silence] Perhaps this is why Blake paints the created Adam with a serpent already coiled round his thigh.'
So ended my short, derivative, Roget-roughaged essay, complete with stage-directions.
'Ye-es,' said Mr Bellamy. 'Which Utopias did you have in mind?'
'Mm. Plato. More. Butler.'
He thought about this. 'And Bacon, of course. Sherry? ... or gin.'
'Gin, please.'
'Pink one?'
'Probably,' seemed a safe answer.
The church clock across the road struck six. Mr Bellamy chuckled as he made the drinks. 'Beng on time,' he said. 'Yes, "utopia" in feet means "nowhere", and Erewhon is an ene-grem of the same word. Yes, I liked thet. One of the more stylish essays I've heard for some time. Better, I should say, than most undergraduate essays.'
I found this unsurprising.
'You do seem to have read a great deal, I must say.'
'One of the advantages of being a delicate child.'
His brow puckered in genial inquiry.
'No.' I shrugged. 'I spent a lot of time in bed with illness. I read a lot then. Even dictionaries.'
Mr Bellamy rocked on his heels before the marble chimney-piece. He had so many hairs sticking out of his nose that I was unconvinced, after nearly an hour in his company, that they weren't a moustache. He sounded about fifty - he went on as if he were fifty - but he couldn't have been more than thirty-five. I assumed he had a private income. How else could he sit about drinking gin, girdled by bound books, in a Hamilton Terrace drawing-room, pretending to teach English and wishing he wer
e an Oxford don with real live queer undergraduates to bore?
'Most imprissive. I think they'll snep you up. More gin.'
He was a short-arsed little bastard - about five-five. Hirsute brown jacket, knobbled face, rusty Brillo-pad hair. Being posh and rich and unhurried, he managed to get away with it, though what he did with it then was open to doubt. He had virtually no sexual presence, didn't look as if he could be bothered even to masturbate.
Bellamy returned with my glass. He reached out to his left and put a book in my hand.
'Perry-dice Lost, second edish'n. It's ... viny lovely, isn't it/ he said tremulously. 'Yes, I believe a distant encestor of mine wrote a Utopia novel. Looking Beckwards, it was called. I've never rid it.'
'Really. It's a lovely edition,' I said, handing back the Milton.
'No. I should like you to hev it.'
I began shaking my head and saying things.
'Uh-uh-uh.' He held up his hand. 'I insist.
'Read it,' he said, 'It's rather good.'
It was light enough to risk the walk to Kilburn. Thirty-ones were capricious buses; even so, I wasn't due at Rachel's until seven forty-five. There might be some time to kill. Underneath a still bright sky, Maida Vale was reassuringly well-lit against the incipient dusk.
I had been to Kilburn once before, when Geoffrey made me come with him to investigate a second-hand guitar shop. Again, it looked like a small town in wartime: beleaguered, shuttered-up, people on the streets, camaraderie after a blackout. I went into a ramshackle Victorian pub, and came out of it, very quickly. Chock-a-block with teds, micks, skinnies, and other violent minority groups. Any other day, to consolidate Bellamy's gins, I would have chanced it. But I was wearing a three-piece charcoal suit - from school, admittedly, yet quite flash all the same. A lemonade, instead, then, with the students and au pair girls in a shadowy coffee-bar next to the cinema. There, and on the bus twenty minutes later, I leafed through my present from Bellamy, and thought about the weekend.
What, for a start, was my father's game ? When I got back from the cinema on Wednesday, Jenny and Norman were watching television in the breakfast-room. Simultaneously, Jenny asked me if I'd like some coffee and Norman asked me if I'd like some whisky, so I had had to say that I didn't want anything.