'Why', I wondered, 'did old shitface come round? What was he after?'
'Old shitface's tart', said Norman, 'has got a ten-year-old daughter with nowhere to go this weekend because her mother's going off with old shitface.'
'And he wants you to baby-sit?'
Norman nodded.
'Are you going to?'
'Of course,' said Jenny.
'What for?'
'The poor little thing's got nowhere else to stay.'
'So?'
The television crackled. Jenny let out a short, sharp scream.
'What's the matter with you?' asked Norman.
'Oh, nothing. I was just wondering what the dickens was going on.'
'Thass funny. I was wondering what the fuck was going on, myself.'
I sat at my desk for an hour, shaking my head, working on the Letter to My Father. At midnight I crossed out 'Letter' and put in, above, 'Speech'.
I alighted at Swiss Cottage and turned left up the hill into Arch Hampstead itself. In a nearby side-turning, two streets from Rachel's, I tried to lose in advance the evening's phlegm, expectorating two puddles of assorted greenery. I rested against a brick wall and watched a man clean his car.
Richardson Crescent - and the house Geoffrey and I had broken and entered eight weeks before. This time, I stalked up to the door and rapped, with an upper-crust rap, on the knocker.
A young princess disguised as a maid opens the door, stows my coat, leads me upstairs. I am shown, unannounced, into a room full of people. Rachel, in white, a monochrome blur, appears, takes my arm. I am urged to come and meet Mummy. Together we weave through elongated finery to reach hunched-up finery. Probably three women among all that jewellery and hair-do. Two dinner-jackets? A big silver lady receives my hand. 'Highway Mummy this.' Mummy, however, looks over my shoulder as I bow towards her. She replies: 'Minnie, you came. Whatever happened?' With a tomato-juice smile I relinquish her pud and back off to let Minnie close in. Make a run for it. Two minutes later, somehow alone in the middle of the room, hiding, there is a glass in my hand and a hand on my shoulder. 'Haaay there ... great to see you again, Charles,' said DeForest Hoeniger, through his nose.
Only at dinner did it first strike me that I might not be going to faint. By then I was drunk and very left-wing. DeForest couldn't have been nicer, or more welcome, in some ways. And since Americans can't help being good cinema, he wasn't even all that boring. Finally, every time I emptied my glass, he took it, put more whisky in it, and gave it back to me, saying 'No problem', again through his nose.
In the dining-room I was shown by another incognito princess to the 'dud-seat', or, alternatively, 'the inferior guest's seat'.
Thank you, thank you,' I said, sitting down between Rachel's aunt and Rachel's step-brother, Archie. There were fourteen people at the table. I was at the quiet end, Harry's end. Rachel was up the noisy end with her mother, and Deforest.
Harry, I now saw, was a very tall, Anglo-Jewish-looking man, with a forehead the size of a buttock and fat, glistening lips. He wore a trendily cut grey suit, and matching shirt and tie. To look at him, you'd think he was posh and stupid. In actuality, he was common and stupid, having obviously trained his loud, pompous voice to affect an upper-class accent while in his twenties (a fixture probably contemporaneous with 'Seth —'). Thirty years on, he had just as obviously forgotten it. Luckily he was too smug to notice his twanging 'cows' and 'ois'. Old Harry had a strange figure, but quite symmetrical really. From ankle to knee he was thin. From knee to thigh he was fat. From thigh to waist he was very fat. From waist to ribs he was very very fat. From ribs to shoulder he was very fat. He had a fat neck. His face, apart from his watermelon lips, was thin.
Harry sat down and began to swap reactionary pedantries with the handsome undertaker on his right. Between them quailed an equine young woman. The aunt, Rachel's aunt rather than Archie's I later gathered, sat to my right, Harry's left. She fingered her napkin and listened to Harry. Harry peered at me from time to time. He seemed to think I was a friend of Archie's.
The room was dark - thatched walls and a low ceiling - lit only by a few intimate candles. I looked up the other end of the table. Rachel was next to DeForest. DeForest was next to Rachel's mother, whom he was arousing with freckled whispers. Why hadn't she told me he'd be here? He was looking very places-to-go, people-to-see. Perhaps he'd fuck off after dinner.
But it was high time someone asked me what I thought I was doing here, and 'Search me' was the only possible answer. It clearly wasn't enough to go on sitting here eating bread and seeming nice. Archie sipped wine, elbows on table. I studied him with distaste. Prosperous cowboy's fringed suede jacket, chocolate velvet trousers swaying as he tapped a snakeskin boot. Archie had a car, a Mini-Moke.
This won't be difficult.
'Hi,' I said, with a stoned, heavy-eyed smile and a noble-hippie accent. 'Jesus, do you know all these curious people? How long will it go on for, would you say ?' I took an ironic slug of wine. 'At least there's plenty of lush.'
Archie regarded me with frank consternation, like an attentive but slow-minded schoolboy. He raised his eyebrows, then turned to speak to his other neighbour, who, I now saw, was a fabulously beautiful girl. Cooled. As I bowed my head to the floor, an elegant hand appeared high up on Archie's leg and trailed its fingertips between his thighs.
Arnold Seth-Smith was seventeen years of age.
Rachel's aunt, then, as the only comparably unattractive person in the room, became the object of my attentions. Once the food arrived Harry and his friend were too busy sweating and eating to talk much, so our conversation could be heard by anyone bored enough to listen. We covered a good range of topics, in this order: avocado pears, oil-tankers, Mauritius, tailoring terms, the size of the room, the price of London property, candles, tablecloths, forks, coffee-spoons. Surely we must have something in common. At one point I wanted to ask: 'How do you spell "homo sapiens" ?'
'What about the weekend, then ?' I asked my young hostess, downstairs in the kitchen, feet from the baby's-crap-coloured rubbish bin, where I had tried to kiss her the night we met. I was kissing her now. 'Did I do all right?'
This wasn't as preposterous a question as it might sound. Half the guests, including DeForest (after a minute of sweet-nuthins with Rachel), had wisely got the hell out as soon as dinner was over. I had then had a brief audience with Rachel's guardians. I merely sat there while they talked to each other about where they might or might not be going that winter. I didn't hawk or fart once.
'I think it'll be okay. Harry's worked for your father, and he thinks very highly of him.'
(Nothing would thrill me more, by the way, than to be able to say that my father was an ad-man or a PRO. But, among other things, he was the editor of a business-law fortnightly magazine. This sounds promising, I know, but the paper has an excellent arts section, with the best cinema critic, and the book page had recently won outspoken praise from a forum of distinguished academics.)
'... so there's not much she can say.'
'Incredible. Does Deforest know yet?' Rachel shook her head. 'Hang on,' I said, before she could get rueful, 'I've got a present for you.'
I went out to the passage and back again. 'Here. I should like you to have it. No, I insist.'
'But it must of—'
'Read it,' I said. 'It's rather good.'
Outside, I looked up at the drawing-room windows. Harry, drinking brandy from a glass like a coffee-percolator, was bearing down on the equine young woman. I felt I ought to shout out something defamatory, or lob a brick at them -make a gesture of conclusive disgust.
'Yes, you're left-wing, all right,' I said, hailing a taxi.
The next morning I ran down the square and gave twenty pence each to the legless buskers.
Thank you, sir, thank you. Gob less.'
'I'll try,' I said.
I was keyed up all day. The feeling was so unfamiliar, and made me so light-headed, that I got my head whomped in (almost) by one of
the boys at school.
My maths lesson with Dead Feet, or 'Mr Greenchurch' as some called him, had been postponed until the afternoon. (A major irritant because I had planned to get away straight after the morning session, to wash, perfume myself, etc.) What happened was this. The Feet, alighting from his Morris 1000 (what else?), flings his head against the top of the door-jamb. Happily, he is so old that he doesn't feel a thing, doesn't, in fact, notice. With blood trickling down the side of his face, forming a delta around his snaggled ear, and splattering his shirt and cardigan, he shuffles cheerfully into the school. Eventually alerted by the gasps of Mrs Tauber and the screams of the children, he puts a hand to his head, examines its contents, and keels over backwards on to a straight-backed chair, which keels over backwards under him. He is rushed to the casualty ward of the local hospital, there to receive three stitches on his lucent crown. I assumed that, if he didn't actually die, he'd at least be on his back for a few weeks. Not a bit of it. He made a greedy telephone call direct from the hospital, telling Mrs Tauber that he wasn't going to lose a day's tuition fees after all.
I waited for him in the (temporarily bratless) main hall, with the three others. There was Brenda, the uglier girl; Elvin, fat, cow-eyed, generally hopeless but affable enough; and Derek. Derek was true borstal-bait. At seventeen, he had already faced a variety of charges - including, it was said, GBH and petty larceny. The guile of expensive lawyers had secured his acquittal. As I sat at the table, brooding, trying not to think about the weekend, it occurred to me that there was something uniquely unpleasant about his face. Cherubic features moulded into a satanic complexion - a desert of flaked, crumbling skin relieved only by oases of dermatitic pimplery : like the scummy death-mask of Troy Donahue, Peter McEnery, or some other noted pretty-boy. Just the eyes, glinting perfect blue, emerged intact.
Anyway, there we were. It took place about two o'clock. I happened to be retching - fairly quietly, I thought - into a handkerchief, Derek looked up from an O-Level text.
'Someone shut him up, will you.' He made hawking noises. 'It's enough to make you sick. Go somewhere else, do.'
I blew my nose unhurriedly. 'What did you say?'
'U-word. You, fucking, heard. I said it's enough to make you puke.'
'Oh really?' I said. 'And what do you think people feel when they look at your face? What, would you say, was running through their minds?'
Brenda laughed, so I continued. 'Look at that huge ... archipelago of blackheads on your conk. Christ, why don't you try washing every now and then?'
'Shut up,' said Derek, with a robotic smile.
I could tell this was excellent advice. But I looked at Elvin, who grinned, and, besides, it made me feel so young. 'Yes. Why don't you give washing a whirl one of these days? It can't be much fun walking around with all that crap, all that greaze, all over your face. But - got to keep the spots fed, I suppose. Tell me, Mr Sebum, tell me. Monsieur Têtes-noires, how does it go down with the girls ? I bet they —'
I was wearing a double-breasted jacket with modishly wide lapels. Derek grabbed these, hoisted me to my feet, and drew his right fist back at shoulder height.
'No, please,' I shrieked, 'for Christ's sake!'
At that moment the double-doors at the end of the hall swung open and Mr Greenchurch strolled grandly in.
'Churls!'
He wasn't reproaching us, merely calling out my name in his senile yodel.
Derek instinctively relaxed his grip.
'Coming,' I said. I stood up, slapped Derek's hand away with my own, and followed the Feet to his pungent little room.
What extraordinary behaviour. Patently, I was in a state about something. Not so much about Rachel - for I was cock-free until the end of next week, so nothing dramatic could happen. Perhaps it was the idea of having some sort of showdown with my father. During the lesson, under the pretence of making notes, I planned the weekend - anecdotes about the village, nature speeches - and outlined a brief coda to the (by now) 2,000-word Speech to My Father.
Ten five: the spinney
Less than two hours to go and more than two months to come. But things get simpler as I get older.
Now I open the window that looks on to the woods. It's December, and very cold, so I close it again soon.
On the train to Oxford, Rachel took up the subject of her father - apparently, he had written her a 'stinking' letter that morning. She developed the real-bastard theme and filled in some early history. Her last brush with 'Jean-Paul d'Erlanger' (Rachel used her mother's maiden name; don't ask me why) had been earlier that summer, when DeForest himself had taken her to Paris for a couple of weeks. Apart from some unpleasant incidents, a 'marvellous time' was had by all. I bucked up slightly when Rachel made it clear that these unpleasant incidents had consisted of M. d'Erlanger hinting at and then articulating his immense hatred and contempt for DeForest, who had in fact got one of his ears further cauli-flowered by the passionate Frenchman. Rachel invited me to see this as a testament to her father's boorishness. DeForest, I learned, was most understanding about it all and had never mentioned the matter since.
When I asked what the letter had said Rachel stared out of the window at the Reading suburbs for a full half-minute before telling me that it was too awful to repeat. I decided to let it go at that, giving her the scene with good grace. To fill in time, and to offer her some indirect comfort, I told a few rather vague lies about parental atrocities I had suffered, featuring my father in the role of Bacchic hooligan, moody night-owl, au pair-buggerer, and so on.
We were the first to arrive.
Mother appeared to have contracted hydrophobia at some point in the afternoon. She was in such a blind frenzy that, before hellos or introductions, Rachel and I asked immediately if there was anything we could possibly do - while there was still time, still hope. It seemed that what Rachel could do was help the (quite fetching) au pair peel potatoes. What I could do, indeed what I simply had to do, was drive into Oxford and fetch Valentine.
'But I can't drive,' I said.
'But you had lessons ?'
'I know.' (Driving-lessons were the statutory seventeenth-birthday present in the mobile Highway family.)
'And you took the test?'
'I know. But I failed it.'
'But you took it again ?'
'I know. And I failed it again.'
'Well, it's too late now. Where did I put the keys?'
I went in mother's Mini, and nearly got old woman all over the bonnet, too.
After going through an affected little toll-bridge - the toll was the twee sum of three and a half pence -I got up to forty miles per hour as the road straightened out. At this kind of speed it was advisable to place the stiletto-heeled shoe, kept in a side-pocket for this purpose, over the gear-stick to prevent it jiggering like a pump-drill. As I did so. I noticed a scrawny figure two hundred yards ahead, motionless in the right-hand half of the road. To break her reverie I parped the horn. Instantly, she flew into a spastic life-or-death dash across my path, abandoning her hat, her shopping and a single brown slipper in a galvanized frog-march to the opposite curb. I changed down, slowed, and drifted to a lazy halt beside her.
'It was all right,' I said, returning her accoutrements, 'you could have just stepped back on to the pavement. Are you okay?'
She stared unseeingly before her, thinking: I'm fucked if I'm going out again.
I parked the car in front of Valentine's school, one of the better Oxford primaries, which nevertheless resembled a cluster of Monopoly hotels greatly enlarged, dirtier red, and with windows. Valentine, or his silly name, had been 'put down' for a second-rate public school but my father had decided not to send him to a prep school also. I searched for damaging significance in this policy as I walked up the lane dividing the school from the playing-field in which Valentine was supposed to be having his game of football. I warmly looked forward to interrupting it. My pace slowed.
Had I got over my obsessions about Valentine ? More or less
. Those days were gone. Watching him marshal his hosts of friends, being asked to tick off the Harrods toy catalogue on December ist, dressed up by his mother like a spruce three-foot adult (he and I had switched from short to long trousers the same year: I was thirteen, he was four); on that spring day, eighteen months before - I was there, when Val rode his drop-handle racing bike down a schoolgirl-packed street, no hands, singing 'Hey Jude'. And that mad, wonderful summer: I sabotaged his bicycle, spiked his Lucozade with steaming urine, spat in his stew - I went as far as contemplating one ruse involving, well, a portion of vanilla junket, actually, but felt that I had already made my point. (As a rule, I too would deplore such behaviour. But this was - how shall I put it? -this was family.)
In the right-hand corner of the playing-field, about twenty yards away, four boys, one of them my brother, stood in a semicircle round a fifth. The fifth was a Fatty. He cringed against a shed-like pavilion. I crept up behind the goal-posts, and watched.
The Fatty wore a crochet jersey, odd socks in Clark's sandals, and patched short trousers (everyone else, especially my brother, was in longs). Home-cut hair capped a face well used to - seemingly almost bored with - fear: non-existent bush burned off every day at school, head kneed in every night by his over-glanded father.
Having looked round for encouragement or approval, one of the boys leaned over and slapped the piggy in the middle quite hard on the face. The other three took a step forward and joined in. I watched a bit longer, on the off-chance that Valentine would do something exceptionally odious, then signalled my presence with a yell.
I walked towards them. 'Piss off,' I told the Fatty, hoping that my intervention would be taken as a breaking-up of unruly horse-play rather than a bulliable rescue. The Fatty collected satchel and cap, and wandered off, breaking into a run as he approached the gate.