‘Chris—’
‘Mm?’
‘Don’t be sad. What about making love to one of the others?’
‘Oh . . . Well, I probably will, later. But . . . Oh, hell. I suppose I’m a bit jealous. I wouldn’t mind if it were anybody but him.’ He sat down beside me again. ‘Are you going to tell him about this when you get back?’
‘Some of it.’
‘This part? Me wanting to screw you?’
I winced. ‘Oh, don’t talk like that.’
‘Why not? That’s how we all talk.’
‘I thought you said making love is so important to you.’
‘Of course it is,’ he said in surprise.
‘Then why do you use such hideous expressions about it? How would you like it if I called your divine sea a piss-pot?’
He recoiled from me, and uttered a sound of disgust.
‘That’s what I mean,’ I said. ‘You shouldn’t degrade what you revere with cheap ugly terminology.’
He said nothing, but looked so crushed I put my hand into his and squeezed it.
‘Sorry. It’s not my business to tell you off.’
After a moment he muttered, ‘It is, I suppose, if I offend you.’ There was a silence and then he said, in a different tone, ‘But you know, the fact is, I don’t really revere sex. Any more than I revere hash. It’s great, I mean, I love it, I don’t think anyone could enjoy it more than I do, but I do it more or less like—well, eating and sleeping and breathing. It’s a pleasure, a joy, it’s part of the green salad of life, the sugar on the pill—of course you’re right, one shouldn’t be casual or crude when one speaks about any of those delights, it’s just a bad habit one gets into; but you can’t compare it with what I feel about—’ He gestured towards the sea, moving his hand slowly outward as if trying to stroke the horizon with his finger-tips. ‘That’s what I revere,’ he said. ‘The rest is just the froth around the edges.’
After another silence, more congenial that time, I squeezed his hand again and said, ‘Anyway, I won’t tell him.’
‘Good. It’d only make him hate me all the more.’
‘He doesn’t hate you!’
‘Despise me, then. Worse.’
‘I’m going to try and stop that,’ I said.
‘You’ll have your work cut out.’
We were both beginning to shiver, so we clambered back to the fireside. Several of the hippies had rolled themselves up in their sleeping bags or whatever they had; others were sitting close to John, who was still playing and crooning. Everyone seemed to be smoking . . . The fire had burned low but the embers were still glowing; Chris and I huddled over them, rubbing our hands, and for the first time I began to wonder how on earth John and I would get back to our hotel along that precipitous rock-track in darkness.
‘John—’
‘Hallo!’ he called to me across the fire. He was invisible except for eyes and teeth.
‘How shall we get back?’
‘We can’t now. I stayin’ here.’
I looked at Chris.
‘We could both get into my sleeping-bag,’ he said with a wicked grin.
‘Haven’t you a spare one?’
‘Probably. There’s nearly always someone who doesn’t get back at night because he’s shacking up with someone in the town—’ He caught my eye. ‘Sorry.’ He went over to a pile of something on a far rock and came back with a bag which looked, felt and smelt as if it hadn’t been washed for years. I took it gingerly in my hands and wondered if it were within my power to insert my body into it, but the alternatives were too unpleasant to contemplate. ‘Thanks,’ I said faintly. ‘What about John?’
‘Don’t worry about me,’ he said. ‘I find someone to share with me.’
I looked at him with astonishment. What sex of a someone, I wondered? If female, and the fawn-faced girl was now lying with her head on his knee looking very much in possession, she was in for a disappointment; if male . . . Well, perhaps it was time John lost his virginity one way or the other; I decided it was none of my business, but I must say I couldn’t help feeling concerned. Apart from anything else, for a man as big as John to try to divest himself of his innocence in a small sleeping-bag could lead to complications which hardly bore thinking about.
I looked at my sleeping-bag again, thanked God I did not suffer from over-fastidiousness, scratched myself systematically all over to rid myself of as much salt as possible, and cater-pillared my way in. It was warm and snug and, by pushing my face almost into a patch of wood-ash, I managed at least partially to defeat the smell of old hippie-sweat. My eyes were now on level with the fire and I stared into its pearl-grey and vermilion depths, trying to get to grips with the next day’s potential and able to think only of the past three hours.
Just as I was dropping off I felt someone kiss me on the cheek, and some soft salty hair fell onto my face.
‘It’s only me,’ whispered Chris. ‘I’m putting my bag right next to yours. It’s the nearest I’ll ever come to sleeping with you . . .’ I felt him pressing close to me from behind through the two thick layers of padded cloth. ‘Give a bit,’ he said. ‘Make spoons.’ He put one arm over me and after a while he stroked my head. ‘Your ears stick out,’ he discovered. ‘Under your hair.’
‘You don’t say,’ I mumbled.
‘Has my father ever noticed?’
‘If so he’d be far too polite to mention it.’
‘Is he polite in bed?’
‘Shut up and go to sleep, will you?’
‘Do you love me?’
‘Yes. Now Sleep!’
‘Okay, m’dear.’
What a funny expression for him to use, I thought, as I fell asleep.
At dawn I woke up. He was still cuddled up behind me, one stone-cold arm slung over me. I tucked it into his own bag. I was stiff all over from lying on the rocks, but I had slept wonderfully. I sat up and looked all round, but I couldn’t detect which cloth bundle contained John. The sea was certainly beautiful enough to worship; it looked like an endless floor of faintly mottled pink alabaster, lit from below. By God, I thought as I gazed at it, maybe he’s right. Maybe it is better than sex!
Today I would say goodbye to Chris and we would go back to the mainland, take a train to Athens and get on a piane to Israel. If what awaited me there should prove as strange and unexpected as what I had found on Hydra, there was no knowing if I would ever return to England. Oh, but what nonsense, of course I had to, because of David. Dear me, I hadn’t given David more than a passing thought for fully sixteen hours.
I looked down at my other, old-new son. He looked, like all children, incredibly different in sleep, absolutely innocent and without a trace in his features of what he had called ‘the free-booting Adam’ with which he was so full when awake. I couldn’t resist pushing a strand of hair away from his face; the end had stuck to the corner of his mouth and he frowned as I pulled it free. I felt the urge to kiss him as I loved to kiss David, in his sleep. I bent over him and bussed him very gently on the bridge of his nose.
What had he said, last night? ‘Okay, m’dear’? Suddenly I laughed. But of course it wasn’t ‘m’dear’! It was ‘Medea.’
PART TWO
TOBY
Chapter 1
THE interlude was over. But it had left its ‘queer’ taste, strong and tangible, which stayed with me throughout the day, most of which we spent travelling.
On the ferry, on the train from Piraeus, on the bus across Athens and the airport bus, right through the crowded concourse and onto the El A1 plane that was to take us on the final stage of our odd journey, I could savour that taste. Its effect was to make me feel light—light-hearted, light-headed, light-bodied. Every time we had a chance to walk, mainly from one form of transport to another, I felt frisky, as if I might break into a caper. I jumped on and off things, threw my suitcase around, and laughed over nothing. I’m deeply inhibited about singing in public, having no proper voice, but once or twice I caught myself humm
ing. I was amazed at myself.
It was love, of course. There are so many different kinds. And it was relief—at much more than just not loathing Chris. Poor Andy was so wrong about these kids. I could hardly wait to get back and put him right. As we drove across Athens, I could see the Colonel’s men everywhere, even glaring down at us from rooftops, and I remembered the angry, baffled, bovine snicker-snack gestures of the policemen on Hydra. It was awful that so many people didn’t understand, saw the hippies as a threat because they refused to conform to the accepted patterns of militant manhood. How could men like these soldiers grasp something as simple as the water-cult, the pleasure-principle, the gentle, unaggressive, float-with-the-tide ethic of Chris and his followers? In my sublime mood of this morning my only cause for dismay was that I might be going to marry a man who could apparently only see in it a lack of drive and ambition. Did Andy really consider these so essential that he’d cut himself off from his son because he believed more strongly in them than in him?
My mind was so full that it was some time before I became aware that John’s and my silences were incompatible. He had followed me about from early morning with a dog-like air; the only contact between us was physical. In some curious way, the events of the night (whatever they may have been in his case) seemed to have made him feel very vulnerable, because wherever we went I had to lead the way, and whenever we were stationary, either sitting or standing, he would surreptitiously press himself close to me. I had a strange feeling that he wanted to crawl into my arms and hide his face on my lap as he once had in the L-shaped room. On that occasion, I recalled uneasily, he had been feeling desperately ashamed . . .
On the airport bus I was finally overcome by the silent pressure of his feelings and asked what was wrong.
‘Boat, train, bus, plane,’ muttered John faintly. ‘I’m fed up.’
‘Is that all it is?’
‘Tired of go, go, go all the time,’ he said. He sounded peevish and his hands made pointless, nervous movements. He didn’t look at me. He hadn’t looked at me all day.
‘John?’
‘What.’
‘Want to talk?’
‘No.’
‘Is anything wrong, really?’
‘You can’t tell that without askin’?’
‘Tell me. Maybe it’s not so bad.’
‘What do you know about bad? You’re all right. Nothin’ bad for you.’
‘That’s not true.’ I was thinking how I would be feeling this morning if I had let Chris make love to me the night before. It would not, as a matter of fact, have been entirely impossible. But there would have been no feelings of lightness and love this morning, had I done anything so grotesque.
We lapsed into uneasy silence again until suddenly, in the middle of the airport concourse, he asked, ‘You did somethin’ with that kid that you supposed to be in love with his daddy?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘I seen you down there with no clothes on, both of you,’ he said, with a faint note of accusation.
‘We went swimming, that’s all.’
‘That what you say.’
I turned and stared at him. ‘Don’t you believe me?’
He met my eyes at last, but very briefly.
‘I dunno. If you had done something, how could you tellme? You’d have to lie about it. The mornin’ ain’t like the night. You can do things in the night that you just have to lie about in the daytime.’
He looked quite desperate, and I felt suddenly guilty. How could I have been so self-absorbed as not to notice that something was dreadfully wrong for him?
‘John, what happened? Was it that boy, the one you held under the water?’
He shook his head. ‘He never come back. The others say he was ashamed ’cause of callin’ me a black bastard. They supposed to like black people, not be prejudice’, but it slip out when he was mad and show that he was, underneath. That was his bag you slept in,’ he added drearily.
‘So who was it?’
At that moment they announced our flight. We picked up our cases and began hurrying along, two drops in a river of people. It was strange how private we felt among them.
‘Come on,’ I said, as we were swept along in that half-running gait peculiar to people hurrying in a terminus. ‘Tell me.’
John stared ahead. ‘Look at that woman.’ He indicated, with a tilt of his head, a girl who was hurrying along near us. She was about twenty-five; she wore a white trench-coat and had long red hair tied off her face with a white band. ‘You think she’s pretty?’
‘Yes, quite. Why?’
‘Could you do it with her?’
‘Do what?’ I asked stupidly.
‘You know. What we’re talkin’ about.’
I blinked and almost stopped walking. ‘Well, but John—’
‘I know. You see, you lucky. Other women don’t turn you on. But can you imagine—maybe if you were real high . . . Did you smoke last night?’
‘Pot, you mean? No. Did you?’
‘Sure. We all did. They got good grass, strong. They got great stuff around here.’ He sounded bitter and furious, and his words carried a totally reversed meaning from his enthusings of yesterday. ‘I was way out, last night. Way, way out.’
We were interrupted by the business of getting aboard the aircraft and settling down in our seats. The third place in our row was taken by the red-haired girl. She had some very pleasant perfume on, and when she took off her trench-coat I could see that she had a nice figure. Every woman has an eye for other women’s looks, but I had never looked at a woman in the way that I looked now at that girl. I tried to be entirely objective, for I’d guessed by now, with a quailing sensation of anxiety and pity, what John had been getting at. He wanted me to put myself in his place, as far as possible—the place of a man, by nature homosexual, who has had the misfortune to gain his first sexual experience with a woman.
I kept watching the girl out of the corner of my eye. I had never been high on pot, but I had been drunk. Had I not been drunk one night eight years ago, I would never have started with Toby. In a flash of total recall, I visualised that night in all its bizarre detail—emotions heightened by more than the rum-punches, a misery so deep and raw that nothing but the most drastic therapy could affect it.
Could what happened with Toby by any wild effort of the imagination have happened with another woman?
I set my teeth and forced myself to imagine kissing that pretty girl on the lips, embracing her, stroking her hair . . . I found my face twisted into a grimace. To imagine further took a furious effort of will. To press your breasts against other breasts, to engage in the act of love without the proper means, with some pathetic substitute . . . The thought of it made me shudder. Disgust, and a sense of desecration and disgrace, took hold of me.
I turned to John, who was wriggling about in his small seat like a Great Dane in a Peke’s basket.
‘No,’ I said to him. ‘No matter how high I was. It isn’t in me.’
‘But if you had,’ he persisted. ‘How would you feel?’
‘God knows! Unspeakable.’
John threw me one meaning look, and then his head slumped between his shoulders.
I put my hand on him. ‘But John,’ I said, very quietly so as not possibly to be overheard, ‘if that’s how it is with you, how—I mean, how were you able to?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said miserably. ‘We was so close together. It was dark, and she’d been stroking me, and she smelled good, like the sea . . . Her hair was like a boy’s. I just pretended . . . And she did most of it, you know what I mean . . . I didn’t hardly know what was happening till it was over, and I even thought I’d enjoyed it, I went to sleep thinking, maybe I am just like anybody, maybe I’ll be able to find me a girl of my own now and be ordinary and happy. It was only when I woke up in the morning and looked at her, I began to feel so damn dirty . . .’
He turned his head away and stared out of the little window over the wing of the
plane. ‘Sod that pot,’ he mumbled. ‘Sod everything I ever done.’
The engines were starting to roar and the plane to vibrate, but I could see his shoulders were shaking. I slipped my arm round him to fish for his safety-belt, fastened it, and kept my arm there. He pressed his own forearm against it, squeezing it against his stomach. I felt I loved him more than ever, but what help or comfort could I give him? Useless to tell him he’d done nothing wrong. There’s no balm to be looked for from outside when you’ve betrayed yourself.
In the end he ran away into sleep, and I furtively dried his eyes while the red-haired girl was standing up to get a pillow from the rack.
As soon as we touched down at Lydda Airport, my lightness and calm abandoned me.
It was almost as if I could see a huge, rolling, black wave of panic coming towards me, towering over my head, about to engulf and paralyse me. I could scarcely collect my wits sufficiently to get us both off the plane, across the burning hot tarmac through a seering wind that blew dust and dry heat into our faces, and through the blessedly cool, but temporary, oasis of the airport formalities. John seemed helpless, all the strength gone out of him; I had to put things into his hands if I wanted him to carry them, take them out again when it was time to put them down. I suddenly realised that what had happened to John had had an effect on him like a serious accident; instead of my companion and helper of yesterday, I had with me a wounded fellow-creature for whom I had to take responsibility. I had an abrupt change of heart about the hippies, and I’m ashamed to say there was a great deal of self-concern in the vehemence with which I cursed them, their pot and their damned promiscuous love-spreading. It had all seemed so free, happy and innocent last night, in that island world-apart. Even this morning I had been full of foolish admiration. Now I saw the menace in it for any outsider too weak and insecure to hold his integrity against it. I quailed inwardly when I thought how easily I might have fallen victim to it myself. Perhaps there was something to be said for my puritanical conditioning after all, I thought grimly as I led John, shuffling his feet like a cripple, outside again into the blinding, head-rocking downpour of sunlight.