Dead Babies (5 page)

"What?"

"Don't ever speak in that voice again. Okay?"

"Okay."

"Christ, Keith. I really got the horrors for a moment. Thought you were going mad
again."

"But I've used that voice before?"

"I know that," said Andy, "but don't ever use it again. Or any other of your funny voices. Okay? Now." He took a handful of pills from his pocket and sprinkled them onto the coffee table. "We'd really like you to take two, but they're semi-barbits so you won't be able to lush much, so one's okay,
:
though I'd prefer it if you could handle two. I'll give you some for a present, but you—"

"Hey!" cried Quentin, muffling the telephone. One blue-jeaned leg emerged from the folds of Quentin's satin housecoat to rest on the arm of a nearby chair. "It's Lucy herself. Hello Lucy! And whose bed might you be in?" he asked, and started chuckling grandly at her reply.

Keith looked wildly around.

"Well, Lucy, if you
will
bathchair-snatch . . . Yes, once— for a dare. One moment, Andy should like a word. And when
are
you coming?" he added in an aggrieved voice. "Very well, see you then. No, I'm a one-girl guy now. The same to you."

As Quentin whisperingly handed the telephone to Andy, Keith took a pill from the small mound and rolled it thoughtfully in his palm.

"Luce? Andy! Incredible. How many? Yeah? Mythical. And"—he turned and winked at Keith—"we've got a little surprise for
you,
too. Someone very anxious to make your acquaintance. You wait and see. Keith Whitehead. Well, he's tall, dark—ooh, about six-one, six-two?—chiseled features—"

Whitehead gave a groan of protest.

"-—thick black hair, absolute dynamite in the cot, I hear, rich as Croesus—"

"Andy, please."

"—thin as a blade, but, what with his height, you know, really
built
—'

"Andy."

"
—take him in yourself tonight. Okay, kid. Bye!"

The telephone chirruped faintly as Andy replaced the receiver and turned grinning to Quentin. "That's what they call a soft sell," Quentin remarked.

"You appreciate," said Keith hoarsely, "you appreciate what you've just done, don't you?" The shape of Keith's mouth was such that his upper front teeth were always partly exposed; now the semicircular stripe of chapped red rubber virtually obscured his nostrils.

Andy hurried across the room and crouched blinking in front of him. "What?"

"You've just, you've..."

"What? Now you take your pills like a good little boy. What have I done?”

Keith waved a hand impotently.

"C'mon, Mac, fill
me in."

Keith rested his head against the back of the sofa and swallowed something deep in his throat. His voice was speedy and distant. "If you hadn't said those things to Lucy I might have had a slim chance—"

"Slim chance? Slim chance? Fat chance, boy, fat chance."

"I might have had a ... Oh,
Christ,
I might have had a chance to make . . . Ah, how could
you
conceive—"

"To make a good impression?" interjected Quentin, who had been watching the squat pair with twinkly disinterest. "What Keith is trying to say, Andrew, is that he harbors doubts about living up to the rather stylized picture of himself with which you have just furnished Miss Littlejohn. That lady now expects to be welcomed by a tall, slender, dark, handsome stranger and—"

"—And all she'll get is fat, fair, rough, little Keith. Yeah, of course, but I was only fucking about—she knows that. Christ, where's your sense of humor?"

"Well, Keith. Satisfied?"

Whitehead wasn't. "I was hoping you'd sort of talk to her, Andy, use your influence." He gestured at the pills. "I do you all these favors, couldn't you ask her to do me one?"

Andy seemed genuinely puzzled. "Why not just try her, like anyone else?"

"Look at me." Keith spread out his arms. He appeared to be about to cry. "I'm not like anyone else."

"I can't . . ." Andy clicked his tongue and stood up.
"Okay.
I'll, you know, I'll—
Christ I
hate all this pervert talk. Now fuckin' take those pills, Keith, and let's have no more of this shit."

When Andy had left the room Quentin walked over to the sofa and sat down on its arm. "Try not to be hurt by what Andy says," he murmured. "I dote on him, as you know, but I'm afraid that—if he has a fault—it might be a certain parsimony of imagination."

"Pardon?"

"I mean he tends to assume that everyone is very much like himself. Keith, are you all right?"

Whitehead sniffed and ran a finger along the isthmus that separated his nose and his mouth, collecting a bubble of snot which he wondered vaguely where to deposit. Quentin
:
held out his fringed silk sudary and Keith blew into it with grateful enthusiasm. It had occurred to him, working on the assumption that insensitivity must have its limits, that Andy had seen no important connection between Keith's ill looks and his ability to attract Lucy, that it might be all one to her, that she was as undiscriminating as people regularly suggested she was; but Quentin's compassionate words had burst even this tiny pimple of expectation. Keith sniffed again. "I don't care any more, anyway," he said.

"Keith, you must never talk like that," said Quentin.

The room paled as a cloud passed between it and the sun, then brightened again. Quentin leaned forward and gently tousled Keith's hair: the artfully posed strands scattered beneath his palm to divulge a broad area of unoccupied scalp. Quentin's fingers retreated.

"Don't worry," he said softly. "I'll make sure something unusual happens to you this weekend. Something or other, if not with Lucy."

7: penthouse cloudscape

Lucy Littlejohn lived in a top-floor Knightsbridge maisonette with three other girls. It was not by any means an atypical household and we would do well to look at it closely. On a normal day they rise between one and two in the afternoon either for long Badedas ablutions in the luxury bathroom or scathing showers in the downstairs closet. Then, while the color television flashes and rumbles in the background, they sprawl about the sitting room in nighties and dressing gowns, angelically aglow in the penthouse cloudscape, sipping coffee from French-style bowls and talking about their respective nights out. At four they wander off to shop in Sloane Street and Beauchamp Place, returning at six for glasses of Tio Pepe and further chat before drifting upstairs to change. Between telephone calls they flit in and out of each other's rooms to borrow scent, swap tights, crave advice. Their voices glide out from brightly lit bedrooms to congregate in the

dusky landing; the conversation might lead one to believe

that they are restaurant critics, nightlife pundits, gossip columnists, incognito bailiffs; they are not. At nine, the taxis and limousines start to arrive.

All the girls have what they call "daytime lovers," but only Lucy habitually sacrifices her financial affairs to her amatory ones, a tendency apotheosized and, ironically, terminated by the handsome, insolvent Adorno. They met the summer before. Andy had run up to her in Pont Street and said, brushing the hair out of his eyes and not smiling, "Hey—why don't you let me come home with you now?" "Yes, all right," Lucy had said at once. They walked to her flat in silence, with tight chests and almost equal shares of surprise. "I wouldn't have asked," Andy said diffidently as he entered Lucy's room, "but you looked so nice."

And she was nice. Short brown-and-blond hair, big violet eyes, her innumerable saris, veils, beads, jewels, belts, garters, scarves not entirely obscuring her friendly figure, a forty-tooth smile and a deafening laugh, areas of mild grease showing through her elaborate though hastily applied makeup, worn-thin shiny patched jeans, lucent orange skin visible beneath her stained and holey blouse, immaculate white underwear. For fifty-five consecutive evenings Andy appeared, smudged and steaming from his holiday job in a Westminster timber yard, bearing a bottle of wine, some hash perhaps, and a toothbrush. For eight weeks Andy talked to Lucy about politics and the American novel, played her the derelict guitar he had restrung and unwarped (Lucy found this embarrassing at first but soon got not to mind it), told her about his life, and made high-powered love to her two or three times a night. And for two months Lucy paid no rent.

On the fifty-sixth evening Mitzi and Serena were waiting by the intercom when Andy let himself in. "Who're you seeing tonight—Louis Quinze?" he said, sweeping past them into the sitting room, where he was hushedly informed by Lucy that her flatmates' plans for the evening might well have fallen through and that he wasn't to vex them further, particularly in view of the fact that she was a little bit behind with the rent. But Adorno, biting the screwtop from a double liter of wine as he flicked off the television and picked up the guitar, wasn't listening; he had seen "the plastic trio" (his sobriquet for Lucy's friends) only once or twice and had betrayed no interest in them whatever. Ten minutes later the intercom whined, there was renewed activity in the hall, and Andy peered round to see a tiny Burmese gentleman dressed in gray military uniform. "Fucking with
:
soldiers now, are they?" he said. The midget relayed to Mitzi and Serena someone's compliments and apologies and held up a huge floral wreath over which the two girls fluttered apathetically.

Swearing and grumbling, the girls staggered in from the hall. Mitzi made for the telephone as Serena flopped down splay-legged in an armchair. "What's with the midge?" Andy asked. "Here, try this wine." Serena shook her head. "Euch," said Mitzi. Andy looked curiously at Lucy before dipping his head in fierce accompaniment to his guitar.

"Look," Mitzi told the telephone, "if you don't want to fuck just say so. It'll be a good fuck. It'll be a very good fuck." The telephone replied but Mitzi, who was in the process of accepting a cigarette and a light from Serena, could respond only with an angry hum of negation. "No—no—no cash! Two good fucks just for something to
do.
Yeah, Serena's here, so are there any, you know, is that . . . Heimito, or whatever the hell his name is . . . ?
Oh
no,
oh
no—you
send
a cab. . . ." Mitzi appeared to be on the point of authentic fury when something the telephone said calmed her. "Okay, okay, hon. Come get us. Ciaow." She hung up, spreading her palms at Serena, who shrugged.

"Everything together?" asked Lucy.

Mitzi must have caught irony in Lucy's tone. "Yeah," she said, "and you better get
yourself
together pretty soon. This place doesn't run on buttons."

A faraway murmur quite suddenly became a roar as the sound of a low-flying helicopter battered against the windows before receding again into the distance.

"Who was that?" snapped Mitzi. "Bob?"

Parting the curtains, Serena consulted her watch. "Uh-uh. Too early. Must be Gary."

"Right. He said he'd be going late this weekend. Christ, that Jap."

"No, he was from Burma, wasn't he?"

"Yeah, well what the fuck difference does it make?" asked Mitzi.

"Not a hell of a lot."

Simultaneously the girls became aware that Andy's strumming had ceased, that Andy was staring at Lucy, that Lucy had curled up on her chair and was swaying from side to side with her arms wrapped tightly round herself. Mitzi and
Serena stirred, but Andy directed his gaze at them with such venomous contempt that they were both silenced by a rush of physical fear.

Andy shuddered. Then, with a relaxed, almost negligent wave of his arm, he splintered the guitar on the steel coffee table in front of him. "Lucy," he said, when the silence had quietened, "is this the way you are? Are you like this?" He sighed. "Lucy, go upstairs and pack a bag and come home with me. If you owe these dogs money, I'll pay it. If you're in trouble, I'll take care of it. Pack a bag and let's get the fuck out of here."

Lucy crumpled a bit into her chair, of course, saddened perceptibly and grew smaller and shook her head in token distraction; but she knew she wasn't going anywhere. She shook her head.