'Don't worry,' I needn't have bothered to say.
'Uh, Rachel,' I said, putting the drinks down on the table (a tomato-juice for her, ergo a shandy for me). I paused worriedly, gearing her for a heavyweight interlude. 'I'm not trying to be sweaty or anything, but, um — just out of interest - how long have you known DeForest?'
'About a year. Are we going to talk about him now?' She was smiling, so I said:
'Yes. It's Deforest time. It's Deforest hour. Where'd you meet him?'
Rachel lit a cigarette. 'In New York, actually, the end of last summer.' We fell silent as two persons dressed up as milkmen complained about the meanness/crookedness of the saloon bar fruit-machine. 'I was on holiday, staying with a friend of Mummy's. She's a dress designer. On the West Side. Deforest was staying there too. He was her nephew.'
'Does he live in America?' I asked, pleased to hear her refer to Deforest in the imperfect tense.
'Well, yes. He's over here studying. He'll probably be over here for at least four years. He wants to go to Oxford. He's —'
'Which college?'
She said. It wasn't mine.
'What if he doesn't make Oxford ?'
'He will. Anyway London have offered him a place.'
Why did she have so much confidence in him, and why had she planned out everything with him, and why was she so unruffled discussing him with this strange, oddly compelling young man, this Charles Highway ?
I strove for intimacy. 'Was he coming to England in the first place,' I whispered, 'or did that sort of change -'
'No. He was coming anyway.' She puffed on her cigarette, giving nothing away.
This wasn't going well. Her reticence about Deforest could be connected with her refusal to lie to him, part of some insane principle completely unconnected with how she really felt. Or perhaps she loved him and hated me.
But I tried to step back from the situation, to look at it sensibly, structurally, and for once it didn't seem quite the hilarious, whirligig adventure that my self-consciousness would have me believe. This was the fifth occasion on which we had met. Did that mean anything, or did people do it all the time? I wondered what Rachel thought of me and could come up with no answer, not even an opinion. I shrugged.
'What will you do when he goes to Oxford ?'
'God, that's so far ahead. We haven't really —'
'I mean what do you think you'll do?'
'I don't know.'
'How do you feel about him ? Are you going to tell me ?'
Now, to growled obscenities, after much sparring and feinting, one of the milkmen began actually to fight the fruit-machine, rocking it on its base with flat-palmed jabs. Rachel glanced towards the bar, and back again.
We were sitting at right-angles. She was looking at me, I faced straight ahead. It was no accident that my spot was on her blind side. Rachel's eyes dropped to her lap, where she was fondling a ball of stained tissue. Big boy beating like a young man's heart, I hung my head, exhaled a chestful of air, and spoke.
'I feel vaguely ridiculous saying this, it may be quite out of line - I can't tell any more where I stand with people - but listen. I ... well, I just think about you all the time, that's all, and I thought I'd better find out how you feel so that we can see what's best to do.' I waited. 'And because I'd really like to know. I'm getting tired —'
The fruit-machine burped, gave a deep, guttural judder, and, while the milkmen whooped, started to cough out a string of clamorous tokens.
'It's difficult—' Rachel began.
'What ? I can't hear.'
She bit her lip, again, and shook her head.
The machine hawked. The milkmen shrieked.
I patted the hand on her lap. 'Well. Never mind,' I said, relaxing, sinking, drained and battered into my seat. I felt completely hollow, as if I were a child. She could have sneaked away then without me lifting a finger, without me noticing.
'Let's get out of here.'
Rachel said that.
Outside: in the middle of the pavement; my hands on Rachel's upper arms, her hands playing with my jacket button. I could see the line of her centre-parting, and she smelled agreeably of hairdressing salons. I cupped her chin, lifting her face to mine.
'Are you crying?'
She dropped her head again. 'Not for you.'
I held her reasonably tight and gazed across the road at a dimly lit antique-shop. There was some reflection. I looked better fun than she did.
'Listen,' I said. 'Are you listening?' She sniffed and nodded. 'I don't care what happens now. Honestly. I can wait as long as it takes. But remember I'm thinking about you non-stop. And don't worry.' I stroked her hair. 'How're you getting back?'
'Taxi, I suppose.'
'Taxi!'
I wasn't shouting it back at her, but hailing a cab that had pulled up at the lights. I opened the door and Rachel gave instructions 'to the driver. She turned, and would doubtless have said goodbye had I not silenced her with a potent, valedictory stare. Rachel might have looked out of the tinted window to catch a last glimpse of me so I stood on the pavement and waved, with sinister beckoning motions, until the taxi was out of sight.
I regained the saloon bar, finished my shandy, killed a further two barley wines, and (tousling my hair and accent) managed to get a game of darts with three very serious car mechanics. Then I walked down the Fulham Road to South Kensington Underground, pausing several times to look at myself in shop windows, or just to think.
Nine: the bathroom
Flipping through my Odds and Sods file just now I came across two rather curious items, stapled together, which is in itself unusual because I'm always trying to keep things fluid.
The first is dated the eve of my eighteenth birthday. It says :
As regards toilet training. Remember when I was 8 (?) asked mother how turds should behave. She said that, ideally, turds should be brown and should float. Looked next time - black as night and sank like a stone - never looked since. Hence, possibly, my anal sense of humour?
... I don't see why. I've always thought that an anal sense of humour was very common among my age group, though I may be mistaken. Surely, nice things are dull, and nasty things are funny. The nastier a thing is, the funnier it gets.
Anyway, here's the second item. It's dated August 1st, no year given, so it must have been penned during my summer holiday in London.
Told Geof how much I wanted to fuck an Older Woman. He said it beat him why, since I was always going on about how horrible they looked. He asked how the fuck I knew, anyway, having never poked one or seen one naked. I had no reply.
... I wonder. Transferred disgust of my own body? No; too boring. Dislike of women ? Hardly, because I think male oldsters look just as dreadful, if less divertingly so. Sound distrust of personal vanity plus literary relish of physical grotesqueries. Could be ... Sheer rhetoric ? Yes.
I go over to the chair and sit down carefully, my legs on one arm and my head against the other, as if it were cradling me: teenagewise. I free the staple with my fingernails and marry the two items with a paperclip, instead. I don't think they can be that closely connected.
Telephone pips.
'Hello, is Charles Highway there please?'
'It's me. Hello Gloria,' I said, my voice adapting to Cockney cadences. 'How're you?'
'Charles.'
'What?'
'I know you're going to murder me if I tell you.'
'What?'
'If I tell you.'
Tell me what?'
'I can't.'
'Go on. I won't mind, I promise.'
'It's so awful... I got this pink slip this morning.'
Oh. Was that all. 'What do you look like in it?' I asked sexily.
'No, in the post, Charles. It says I've got an infection, and that I've got to tell everybody, you know, I've-'
I steadied myself against the banisters. 'What sort of infection?'
Try chum..."
'What? Spell it.'
'Pardon
?'
'Spell it out.'
T,r,i,c,h,o,m,o,n,a,s. - But it's not serious. I went to the clinic and the doctor gave me these pills you take for five days and that's all. Then you're all right. Charles?'
'I'm still here.'
'Are you really furious with me?'
There was no one in so I spoke quite loudly.
'I see, I see. Trichomonas. So what do I do? what do I do? what do I do? Just go to the doc's, slam it on the table, tell him I've got a tricky dicky and he gives me the pills and I take them and that's that?'
'You are furious with me, aren't you.'
I sighed. 'No. Not with you. Wasn't your fault.'
'Oh, Charles.'
'Who was it, by the way? Any leads? Any ideas?'
'Yeah. Terry. Haven't been with anyone else, and the man said it couldn't be you, because of the...'
'Incubation period. Oh well. How long before you can start going to bed with people again ?'
'I didn't ask. Not long.'
'Why haven't I got any symptoms ?'
'Men don't with this. Only girls do.'
'What sort of thing?'
'You know. Itching, hurts when I go to the toilet.'
'Mm, I know.'
'I'm sorry, Charles.'
'Oh, don't worry. Perhaps I'll see you, when it's all over.'
This be Nature's way of recommending monogamy.
From the gyppo in Belsize Park, of the grimy stomach: crabs - ant-hill groin. The cure: five nights running with nova balls. You apply milky ointment, and wait, biting a penny, cigarette up either nostril. Five nights running I was back in the bathroom, trying, with no effect, to wash it off again. The unearthly anguish goes on taking you by surprise. Then, once more, ten days later, for luck.
From Pepita Manehian: clap. That was nine months ago. Pepita was an inmate of one of Oxford's many A-Level/secretarial colleges, establishments which supply the town with a large proportion of its eligible womenfolk. She wasn't very good-looking, of course; if she had been she could have taken her pick of the undergraduates and wouldn't need blackheaded sixth-formers. Made the girl mine in a lavatory at some weekend party. (All the bedrooms were occupied; but it was quite a spacious closet, with a rug, some towels, and tissues a-plenty.) We did well, even though, in the dying moments, Pepi smashed her head three times against the lavatory bowl, this giving the cramped cleaning-up operations a still more incongruous air.
However, on the following Friday or thereabouts I woke up to find that someone had squeezed a family-size tube of pus all over my pyjama bottoms. A toxic wet dream ? On visiting the bathroom I found also that I was peeing lava. Palpably, something was up. To deal with the first symptom I fixed up a sort of nozzle over my helmet with a wad of Kleenex and an elastic band. To ameliorate the second, I took care always to use the narrow downstairs lavatory, where, with palms pressed flat against the walls, like Samson between the pillars of the Philistine temple, I would part company with angry half-pints of piss, pus, blood - you name it.
Then I wondered what to do.
Obviously, I could never sleep with anybody again, but (God knew) that would be no deprivation. I thought I might as well get cured. Yet Pepita was of foreign extraction and this meant that I would have to go to Madagascar or somewhere to get it treated. 'Ah. Congo Clap,' the doctor would say through his teeth. 'Witch Doctor Umbutu Kabuki's your man - the only man, as a matter of fact. You turn left off the Zambesi, second tributary, third hut on your right. Offer him these brightly coloured beads..."
All weekend I cried, beat my head against the bathroom door, thought of ways of committing suicide, ran off into the woods and screamed as loud as I could, considered lopping off my rig with a razor-blade, slept in a nettle-bed of nerves. I half wanted to tell my father; I knew he wouldn't mind, but it would have disgusted me to have his efficient sympathy.
On the Monday, after six hours of incognito leprosy at school, I had a coffee in George's with Geoffrey. Via girls, Durex, promiscuity, I brought the subject up - quite hypothetically, of course. Geoffrey thinks he knows all about this sort of thing because his father's a doctor. When I asked about the cure his reply was therefore vehement:
'It's hell, apparently. They stuff stuff up your arse to sort of ... bring it on. Then they bung this needle-thin umbrella down your cock and press a button that fans it out. Then, then, they yank it out, really hard.' He made a tugging gesture with his spoon.
'What, they give you an anaesthetic first?'
'No. No point. It's too sensitive. Don't be silly, man. Anyway, you've got to be able to get a rise first before they can get it in. Obviously. Then they wrench it out, and all the scabs and crap come out with it.' He sipped his coffee. 'You usually faint.'
'Jesus Christ. How long before you can screw again?'
'Not sure. Six months, a year. At least six months. With regular treatment.'
Nothing of the kind, needless to say: just two jabs of penicillin up the bum and much humiliation at the local clinic.
Then I wrote to Pepita. Did I write to Pepita. I still have the reply somewhere. My letter was savaged by the caretaker's corgi; the addressee's name was unintelligible so the headmistress opened it and was most put out by the contents. (The letter was one of my polemical best, strong on imagery.) Pepita was chucked out on her ear, a letter sent to the parents, etc.; this all struck me as perfectly right and proper at the time. Pepi told the story in her answer - a forgivable attempt to square the moral blame - ending with the claim that she 'had never mean't so as to give it to' me. (Love that 'mean't'.) I later discovered that she had given it to half Oxford, too; her personal hygiene was evidently so flexible that the symptoms had slipped by unnoticed for an entire term.
What now, though? What now? I went down to my room, locking the door for some reason, and lay on the bed in the dark.
There was nothing to worry about. Geoffrey knew a queer doctor in Chelsea who was always keen to deal with such maladies. He had fixed Geoffrey up only last month. Geoffrey had caught some rather complicated NSU off that Swede. The Swede - significantly, it seemed to me - had had a scar like a giant's fly-zip right down the middle of her stomach. Geoffrey said that he had gone through with it out of pure altruism, and I believe him. (Erections, as we all know, come to the teenager on a plate.) He had done it because he did not wish to hurt her feelings. There was a moral there. The doc had charged him five guineas; I could borrow that from Norm. It might postpone Rachel, it might mean a couple of weeks off the booze, it certainly would mean a hellish afternoon, but otherwise there was absolutely nothing to worry about.
Try telling me that. It was curious. All Saturday I had been strung up about Rachel: would she stand me up ? what would I do when she cooled me? All Sunday - too busy being with Rachel to worry much in a general way -1 had been strung up about my spot: would it turn cancerous ? would it permanently alter the shape of my face? would it erupt over Rachel's white shirt? All Monday, yesterday, after a bad night and, this morning, an unusually productive bronchorrhoea session, I had spent the day with the growing conviction that my lungs were on the way out, that soon I would be coughing up not just gilbert but stomach-lining, key sections of my vitals, that surely I could not live beyond a Keatsian twenty-six.
Now all these problems seemed laughable. I couldn't imagine why I had given them even a passing thought.
And there was something that frightened me much more. If I went to the doctor's tomorrow, and was cured by, say, the weekend, there'd be no relief from anxiety, just different anxiety. Even as the antibiotics hosed down my genitals, the mind's bacteria would be forming new armies. I'd come up with something to get me down.
I went over to my desk, put on the lamp, and got out the note-pad entitled Certainties and Absurdities. I wrote :
ANXIETY TOP TEN.
Week ending September 26th (Last week's positions in brackets)
(-) 1 Clap
(1) 2 Rachel
(2) 3 Big Boy
(7) 4 Loose
Molar
(10) 5 Owing Norm Money
(3) 6 Bronco
(6) 7 Being Friendless
(9) 8 Insanity
(-) 9 Rotting Feet
(4) 10 Pimple in Left Nostril
Ones to watch: Having a smaller cock than DeForest; incipient boil on shoulder-blade.
Clap has taken the charts by storm, ousting Rachel after her confident two-week run. Spot in Nose is definitely following Disintegrating Toenails on its way out of the Ten - but watch out for Boil on Back!
So see you next week. Right ? Right! Goodnight.
Was this the case with everyone - everyone, that is, who wasn't already a thalidomide baked-bean, or a gangrenous imbecile, or degradingly poor, or irretrievably ugly, and would therefore have pretty obvious targets for their worries ? If so, the notion of 'having problems' - or 'having a harder life than most people', or 'having a harder life than you usually had' -was spurious. You don't have problems, only a capacity for feeling anxious about them, which shifts and jostles but doesn't change.
It struck me, not for the first time, that I owed it to the world to write some kind of dissertation before my untimely death. The trouble was that I never got further than the title and dedication before I started thinking how it would be received, its reviews and my trenchant answers to them. The long-awaited open letter to The Times:
From Professor Sir Charles Highway
Sir, I should like to point out, for the last time, to Messrs Waugh, Connolly, Steiner, Leavis, Empson, Trilling, et al, that the argument of my The Meaning of Life was intended to be anti-comic in shape. The recent television publicity has done a good deal to becloud the issue...
And so on.
Beneath my bed was an unopened quarter of whisky, my liquid sleeping-pill. Were you allowed to booze before you started on the antibiotics? I wondered, as I drank it all anyway.
When drunkenness arrived I made for the bathroom. I spent a lot of time, especially at night, moving from bedroom to bathroom, from underground bathroom to underground bedroom, the hidden worlds of sleep, dreams, weariness, shame. Now where had I got all that from? Ah yes, I remembered some essay which claimed that the bedroom and the bathroom, the secret, private area of human life, was the world of 'death ... from which all human imagination comes'. (Geoffrey, by the way, didn't have one. He said he had once crapped while a girl of his had a wash. There you go.)