Dead Babies (3 page)

Whether through regret or impatience, Quentin concealed a sigh in an emission of cigarette smoke. "Of course not," he said.

"Will the others?"

"An excellent question." He arranged the pillows behind his head to still greater advantage. "Andy most assuredly would, if given the ghost of a chance. Diana, I'm undecided about. I don't think Giles could really be bothered to. Little Keith would probably be prepared to be unseamed by Marvell and Skip if he thought that might win him an opportunity to make Roxeanne his own, which, again, I'd have thought it wouldn't. Roxeanne is fairly 'catholic' in her tastes, but in Keith's rather unsavory case . . . ?" Quentin flapped a limp wrist.

"What about that character Lucy Littlejohn?"

"Character. My sweet, you talk as if she were forty-five. She's a colorful personality but she's hardly a character."

"She's an old flame of yours, isn't she."

"A spark, a mere cinder," protested Quentin.

Celia relaxed and the moment passed. "It sounds funny, doesn't it, darling," she said, "two men and one girl? Two
girls and one man seems more on the cards . . . but. What do the three of them do?"

"They do most of it on a chair, I rather gather. Marvell, the little one, sits on Skip's, the big one's, lap, thereby impaling himself, and then Roxeanne impales herself frontways on Marvell's lap, so that she may kiss them both in turn. Frightfully eventful for Marvell, one imagines."

"Mm."

"There are some rather baroque variations, what they call
soixante-neuf et six,
but that's the main theme." Quentin gave one of his rare yawns. "They're terribly straightforward about it all. You can ask them for details when they come."

"Mm. It does sound funny, though, doesn't it?"

"Yes," said Quentin, "I suppose it does."

Next door, Andy Adorno peeled back his adhesive eyelids and focused with some degree of reluctance on Diana, who was lying on her side, facing him, the cerise caftan resting here and there on her perennially olive skin. She turned a page of her magazine and glanced at him. Andy closed his eyes again. The taste of dusty stone steps which lay coiled round his senses was augmented by a noisome wave of eau de cologne.

"Jesus fuckin' Christ," he murmured.

Diana turned a page. She said, "There's some coffee and toast I've brought you."

Andy correctly guessed that these nutriments were intended to moisten his mouth and sweeten his breath. Out of the corner of one of his narrow red eyes he looked at Diana again, noting the tactful makeup and the vigorously brushed black hair, through which Diana now ran a hand as she turned another page.

"What's with the glamour?" he asked.

"Just had a wash."

Andy sat up a few inches, his dark face creased with remorse. He said, "Jesus . . . coffee." He sighed. "And I suppose you want me to fuck you now, don't you?"

She passed him the cup, shaking her head.

"That's good. Cos
I,"
said Andy putting his mug on the bedside table and sitting up, "feel like
shit!"
He juggled his face between stiff-fingered hands. Then he turned to her and added in a softer voice, "And anyway, I never do what I don't want to do. Okay?”

:
"Okay."

"Aw, my fuckin'
head!"
roared Andy, as he sprang from the bed and stumbled from the room. Diana heard him battering violently on the bathroom door.
"Christ!
Who's
in
there?"

Keith tensed on the lavatory seat. He had been on it for fifteen minutes, soggy with constipation. "It's Keith."

"Keith! Don't you
dare
use this bathroom again." Andy wriggled with impatience. "Now move your arse!"

Keith's buttocks, by way of response, gave a loud yell as a pint of air rushed out between them. Both he and Andy gasped with fright.

Why, this dreadful shout from Whitehead's rear was heard by everyone in the house, by Giles as he squeezed lime juice into a frosted glass, by Celia as she marshaled her cosmetics, by Quentin Villiers as he zipped up his faded denim shirt, and by Diana as she lay on her bed, staring at the wall with cold, unblinking eyes.

4: nice arrows

Let us, then, illustrate our difficulties.

Within half an hour, three conversations were in progress.

one

En route to the kitchen for another lime, Giles Coldstream saw little Keith in the smaller of the two partitioned sitting rooms, flicking tiredly through the copy of
Television Weekly
which had been delivered that morning. Giles popped his head round the door.

"Hey, Keith, anything good on today? I can't remember."

"Yes, lots," said Keith.

Giles and Keith would often sit together, silently, like old men, in front of the television during the late mornings and afternoons—Giles because time and time again he found himself not thinking about his teeth, Whitehead on the broader principle that it must make useful contributions to his sanity.

"There's
Imbroglio
at eleven, of course," said Keith. "You

didn't see it yesterday, did you?"

"Yes I did. No I didn't," said Giles. "I missed that one, actually. What happened in it?”

"Well, the guy the photographer's wife didn't fuck went back to his son's mistress."

"Ah, I see. But . . ." Giles frowned gradually, "what about Jimmy?"

"What about him?"

"Jimmy. The mistress's daughter's boyfriend."

"I know who he is. He ran away from home again on Wednesday."

Giles seemed relieved. "That's right, of course he did. So all that was all right then."

"Why didn't you come down yesterday?"

"Um, sleeping or something, I think. Yesterday . . . was that
Round the House, Chuckadoodledoo, Brumber and Al-phonse,
and
Tammy?"

"No, that's Tuesday."

Giles cocked his head. "Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"Well, what was on yesterday. Apart, of course, from
Imbroglio?"

"Young Scientist, Vespa Newtown, Cooking Without Tears,
and
Elephant Boy."

"Oh, of course. When does it start today, actually?"

"Know Your Pony's
on at ten-thirty," said Keith.

Giles smiled without opening his mouth. "Well, see you down here for that, then?"

"Right you are."

TWO

"How big's his cock, for instance?" inquired Diana, settling herself on the windowseat and placing the tea tray on Celia's crowded dressing table.

Celia winced as she strained to unscrew a jar of face cream. "Pretty big. Well above average. Ah, thank you, Diana. How big's Andy's?"

Diana sighed. "Enormous. When he's not on anything, of course." She sipped her tea, and asked, peering over her cup, "How often does Quentin fuck you?"

With white-plumed fingertips Celia dabbed at her variegated, spot-sprinkled face. The clear fact that Celia's complexion was so much worse than her own slightly mitigated Diana's disgust when Celia said, "Once a night, at least. And usually in the morning.”

:
"Even when he's on something?"

"Especially then. That doesn't seem to affect Quentin. Sometimes when he's speeding he can go on for hours."

"Really?"

"Oh yes, hours." Celia stopped kneading her face in order to glance alertly at Diana. Then she resumed. "Once literally all night . . . How often does Andy?"

"Oh, every night—or in the morning. And sometimes at odd times during the day. How good is Quentin?"

Celia went vacant. Then she said: "Fantastic. And Andy?"

Diana couldn't go vacant so she went knowing. Then she said: "Fantastic."

There was a pause.

"One of the most beautiful things Quentin does," said his wife, "is talk."

"Big deal."

"No, I mean when we're making love."

"Oh," said Diana briskly, "Andy does that too. Tm going to fuck your fucking cunt till—' "

"Oh no. Not like that." Celia shook her head. "Quentin, Quentin says poetry."

"Oh. No." Diana shook her head. "Andy doesn't do that."

three

Quentin and Andy were in fact playing darts in the garage. Between shots, they sipped Irish coffee from pint-sized mugs and passed thin, one-paper joints back and forth. Their tall bodies swayed indolently to the music from Andy's portable tape recorder. Whenever they were alone together there was always a pleasant tang in the air; it was not sexual tension so much as a mutual, agreed narcissism.

"Christ, what's that smell?" said Andy.

"It's the fungus on the boilers," said Quentin, "though no doubt deriving further piquancy from the aroma of little Keith's 'room.'"

"It's like bad chick." Andy accepted the darts Quentin offered him and walked to behind the chalk mark ten feet from the board. "Or like stale come—which figures."

"Why? What could little Keith possibly have to masturbate about?"

"Nothing," said Andy. "Nothing at all. But he's got plenty of visual aids.”

"Oh, really? What's he got in there?"

Andy took his three throws before replying. "Just a great load of cunt magazines."

"What genre?"

"Yeah, he page-fucks the models. Banana shots. Guys with bent rigs being gobbled. Open beavers. One's with the cameraman halfway up the girls' bums."

"Oh. Just straight stuff then?"

"Beat me, beat me," said Andy warmly as one of his favorite LPs wound onto the tape. He strolled to the wall and plucked his darts from the board. "Nice arrows. Yeah, mostly. Diana took a look in there the other night. Says he's got one or two of dogs buggering some old woman."

"That sounds
very
sexy," said Quentin. "Oh, dear, poor little Keith."

"Yeah, he's a mess, isn't he?"

"Sort of baby's face on a dwarf's body."

"Like a sort of wrecky little doll."

"Breath like a laser beam," mused Quentin.

"Or an oxyacetylene burner."

"Fat as a pig."

"Smells like a compost heap."

"Or a dotard's mattress."

"Be bald as an egg by the time he's twenty-five."

"Or twenty-four."

"Or twenty-three."

"Or twenty-two."

"He's that now."

"At least."

"Yes," said Andy. "It's amazing, when you come to think of it, that he's so cheerful."

"Especially with us handsome bastards about the place."

"Check." Andy nodded, his eyes closed. "Check."

5: appleseed rectorv

Are we presenting characters and scenes that are somehow fanciful, tendentious, supererogatory? Not at all. Quite the contrary. The reverse is the case. By the standards that here obtain Giles and Keith could be dismissed as pathetically introverted, Quentin and Andy as complacent and somewhat
:
fastidious, and Celia and Diana as sadly, even quaintly, inhibited. The household, indeed, considers itself a fortress for the old pieties, a stout anachronism, a bastion of the values it seems to us so notably to lack.