Dead Babies (35 page)

In the larger of the Appleseed Rectory sitting rooms, unaware of Quentin's presence behind the half-closed partition doors, Celia and Marvell were together on the sofa.

"Yeah, that," Marvell was saying, "that'd be the time I was over here before. When I stayed at a, at Quentin's people's home?"

"Oh. So you visited Tallbury."

"Nah, not 'Tallbury.' What was it ... fuckin' great country place. It was . . .”

2OO

"Tallbury," said Celia. "So you met them before they got killed?"

"They did?
All
of them?"

"In an aeroplane crash," said Celia neutrally.

"What, some sorta charter flight?"

"Probably. They are more dangerous. The brother survived."

"The brother? Oh, right—the 'brother,' yeah. Ah, that's too bad. I liked them really a lot. Quentin never said."

Next door, the book slid from Quentin's thighs. He made no attempt to retrieve it.

"You liked them?" said Celia. "They and Quentin never got on."

"Nah, well—but they liked
him,
huh, Cele?"

"He only put up with them because of the trust money."

"Yeah," said Marvell. "That was the gimmick."

"Hardly a gimmick. The money is rightfully his."

"Guess you could put it that way."

Next door, Quentin's eyes closed. A bleached light played on the corners of his eyes.

"When was this?" asked Celia.

"Uh, early last year."

"Last
year?
But Quentin's parents died four years ago."

"Parents? Parents? No, no, Celia. This was a 'people's home'? It was a gimmick Quent had an interest in then. You know, one of the de-luxe old-fag joints? Quent financed it. Get the queers along, screw their cash, and maybe they leave you something when they pop off?"

"Quentin's 'people'?"

"Yeah. Inna home. He never had any parents far as I knew. It was a good gimmick. It was a very good gimmick. We were, I was pulling down four hundred, maybe five hundred—"

"Quentin?"

Quentin's eyes opened. He sighed, and a great weight seemed to slide upward from his body. Then it hit him, like newly fallen snow, all the blank wrong yesterdays.

"Quentin?" Celia called. "Quentin."

"Yes?" said Johnny.

part three

sunday
LXX:
johnny

did all kinds of jobs
—
Mondays he was bucket boy at Greek Charlie's downriver abortion factory, sold OK piss samples Tuesdays for the semilegal immigrants to smuggle into the Health Board Centre, evicted widows and cripples from South London tenements Wednesdays, Thursdays it was petnapping for the paravivisectionists, removed antisyndicate fingernails Fridays, the weekends his own
—so
then it was drugs, four acid plants run by him, as many trips to Tangier a month, dealt direct with Chinese heroin agents, cornered the coke concessions in three continents
—
into the sex market full time, so incredibly good looking that when he hit the street courting couples snarled with lust and reached out to steady each other, lorries and girl-driven minis alike mounted the pavement and cannonaded shop windows, people of all ages dropped to their knees in his wake, championed the fuck farms and pioneered the boyhire networks, two hundred a trick by the time he was through
—
until all these dreams began to slow down on him, all these pornographic, hallucinatory, and mercantile dreams
—
and suddenly it is not he who sits in a darkened room but flashing this way and that far to go through the night looking for a name, and so
—

"Quentin?"

"Yes," said Johnny.

Celia came through the door and with a hideous, inhuman leap Johnny was on her back, a lithe-limbed insect accelerating her fall to the ground. Holding his wife by the hair Johnny smashed her face into the stone floor, smashed until it went all runny and sweet in his hands. Without looking round he jumped and swiveled his right arm backward and upward and shattered the approaching Marvell's jaw with the side of his fist. Johnny kicked. He kicked, and stopped when the twitching stopped.

Diana had felt the disturbance from below and was already in her dressing gown when she heard the gentle footfalls on the stairs and the soft knock.

"Who is it?" she said.

"It's Quentin," said Johnny.

Diana opened the door:
"You,"
she said as he closed it behind him.

"Oh no. Johnny, don't kill me," said Diana. "Please don't kill me, Johnny."

71: THE COMING LIGHTS

Skip tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. He trained the Chevrolet's rearview mirror on the hospital exit. He swore. Then Skip remembered the envelope Quentin had given him. He took it from his jacket. It was, he now saw, addressed to himself, to Skip Marshall, Reg: 87695438, c/o Buzhardt, 20120 South Richmond Avenue, LA, Calif. 90065. The seal had already been broken and the paper was crinkled. Skip took the letter out; he recognized the strained, precipitous hand.

San. I am out of Honkville and I reckon as how we could take another try at it, your Ma's last words to me as I cradled her in my arms was we shuould, she for-gived you and I both. I have your bus money home, she said for you to get back be my baby boy when first you colud. You're loving pa, Philboyd Marshall Junior.

PS: Do it boy—
JOHNNY

The piece of blue paper fluttered from Skip's fingers as Andy and Roxeanne appeared through the automatic doors and raced down the steps.

Roxeanne got in beside Skip while Andy dived onto the back seat.

"Luce's staying with the deadies but we ain't!" shouted Andy, cupping his hands over his mouth and letting out a high-pitched whoop. "Rox— crack out some of that
Adren!"

When the Chevrolet pulled out onto the motorway Skip pressed the accelerator pedal to the floor.

"Pull over at the next access, honey," said Roxeanne. "Andy and I want to fuck. Don't we, Andy?"

". . . Yeah," said Andy from the back seat.

Skip did not respond. The car passed the 80 mph speed limit.

"Ah, baby, come on," said Roxeanne. "You can watch. Can't he, Andy?"

"I
don't give a shit," said Andy.

:
Skip did not respond. The speedometer dial jerked up to 90 mph.

"Hey, take it easy," said Roxeanne. "Hey, Skip—slow down!"

Skip did not respond. His dead, spectacled eyes were steady on the unraveling highway.

"Casual," murmured Andy. "It's ton street. Cajjj."

Abruptly Roxeanne's jaw plummeted. She held up the blue paper. "Andy, you crazy fuck! You give him this?"

The car was moving at no mph.

"What?" Andy leaned forward. "Nah— Quent did. It's just—"

Roxeanne had begun to pound with her fists on Skip's metallic arms. "Oh,
fuck fuck fuck!"
she screamed.
"Baby, baby, don't kill us! Andy
—stop
him, stop him!"

"Quentin," said Andy. "He's Johnny?"

"Andy Andy Andy!"

"Diana . . ." said Andy, and exhaled.

"Andy . . . Andy . . ."

Andy sank back. "Ah, I don't give a shit," he said.

The Chevrolet was traveling at 135 mph when it climbed the flyover exit route ramp. Skip made no attempt to negotiate the thirty-degree turn. The car tore through the roadside trestles and flew up into the coming lights.

72: THAT SAD WELCOME

Keith asked the mini-cabbie if he wouldn't mind pulling over. It was seven o'clock and a bright dawn had begun to show over the luminous hills. Dusky and tumescent though he was with bruises, Whitehead had an obscure desire to walk the remaining five hundred yards to the house. He offered the driver three of the four ten-pound notes Lucy had given him. The driver seemed gratified. "Thank you, sir," he said.

Little Keith tasted the air between swollen lips, smarting again to the tranquil anonymity of the village. Half-tears gathered in his puffed-over eyes. He moved on gradually, in a way relishing the stealth forced on him by his damaged legs, enjoying the sweet and painful integrity of his body. The intern had asked him, with every show of urgency, to stay
on for treatment at the Institute, but—no—Keith had wanted to return as soon as possible to his anxious friends. He was, even now, embarrassingly moved that they had—with all that determination and concern—rescued him from the death he had so childishly invited. In his mind he praised also the skills of Marvell, whom he assumed to be responsible for the "unidentified drug" which, the doctors said, had providentially compressed his fat tissues and halted the fatal permeation of the barbiturates. He looked around at the oblongs of graying brick, the unresting trees (what was it they were saying . . .
fresh, fresh, fresh),
the darting birds, the different sky. How, he thought, could he ever have wished to be elsewhere? He felt as if he had undertaken a long journey and had survived to be born again—born again, through the midwifery of this sudden weekend.

Keith felt, moreover, in the know, one of the
cognoscenti,
the possessor of exclusive information, tall with news. Giles was dead. He was dead. Before the stomach pumps could even be made operational his breathing had ceased, and on the application of the respirators his heart had instantly collapsed. Giles's mother had been brought down from the wards above; Mrs. Coldstream had embraced little Keith, bathing his cheeks in her tears. The intern, again, had offered to telephone Appleseed Rectory, but Keith had forestalled him. He wanted all of that sad welcome, the faltering sympathy of his friends. Keith rehearsed phrases, wondering how best to present the melancholy story. He had himself seen Giles laid out on the white stretcher, Lucy weeping over his poor shoulders, his quiet face sullen and babyish in death.

Keith limped steadily over the bridge. He paused at the opening of the drive. Appleseed Rectory stole out from under the morning shadows. Keith blinked. Was it really there? Perversely he thought of turning back, of running away. But then he smiled at his own foreboding. It's all over, he thought, stepping onto the damp gravel.

The Appleseed kitchen: the suitcase, the car keys, the bag of drugs, the roll of notes, the burnished ax. On the wall, the (decoy) excremental
G
of the Conceptualist Gesture. Johnny was there. He leaned forward eagerly by the window. As he watched Keith move up the drive, his green eyes flashed into the dawn like wild, dying suns.

Table of Contents

part one FriDAY 1: LET'S GO

part two

part three