Dead Babies (6 page)

Awed as much by his offer as the fact that Lucy had refused it, Andy stood up, toyed momentarily with the idea of kicking Mitzi or raping Serena, looked round for more things to smash, saw nothing, and so contented himself with upending the table, spitting on the carpet, and breaking the lock of the front door as he left.

All this—or very nearly all this—Diana knew. And as she moved about the bedroom methodically assembling and pairing off Andy's drumsticks, stooping to pick up plectrums and harmonicas from the floor, righting the stack of guitars in the corner, restoring flutes and penny whistles to their boxes and records to their sleeves, bundling together his boyishly stained underpants and pleasingly aromatic T-shirts, blinking at moments of surprised emotion when she noticed his gym shoes placed side by side in the wardrobe or his beloved horse-brass saxophone strap laid out on the desk, Diana attempted to organize her responses to the history. Although she had screwed the above information out of Andy in a playful, bantering spirit, and with due reverence for his potent outrage and sexy disgust, it was with genuine and lasting pain that she thought about these early days with Lucy: equally, although she had screwed the following information out of him

in a reproachful, judicious spirit, with due condemnation of

his vengefulness and cruelty, it was with genuine heart-quickening glee that she thought about these later episodes.

:
Diana swayed to a halt, turned, and met her eye in the wardrobe glass.

A week later, the following Friday, Andy went round to the flat, apologized to Serena and Mitzi (and also to the tanned Isabella, who had just flown in from Morocco), led the tearful, bewildered Lucy upstairs, made sarcastic love to her ("I think I Mailered her, actually—up her bum"), slapped her about a bit, and stalked off, leaving his unopened pay packet on the dressing table. The next night he appeared with Quentin, very drunk; he led Lucy up to her room again, made her strip at fistpoint, summoned Quentin and urged him to copulate with her while he watched from the corner, drinking wine and chuckling malevolently; Quentin said a lot of things like "Andy, really," and "Isn't this all rather . . ." and "Honestly, I
do
think . . . ," but a combination of lust, alcohol and an anxiety not to seem a killjoy persuaded him to go ahead, and he did so with style and virtuosity. Lucy was then required to perform fellatio on Andy, who from time to time offered to knock her fucking head off whether she swallowed it or not, while Quentin dressed.

"No, man, it's creative," Andy told Quentin as they stumbled together down the stairs, "—radical rape, for her own fuckin' good. Anyway, I paid her yesterday."

Before leaving, the pair looked in on the sitting room. Andy exposed himself to each of the girls in turn, asked a television producer if he would like his face beaten to pulp, burst into tears, exhorted the entire company to go eat shit, and blacked out.

Andy's pranking continued just as engagingly when term started at London that September, though his visits became rarer and much less virulent. Once a fortnight or so, he and his friends would club together for the necessary £20 (it was Andy who insisted on this token, not Lucy) and roll round to Pont Street for some laughs. Customarily Lucy would do an elaborate strip for them, masturbate some of them, go to bed with one or two perhaps, and ask for a few minutes with Andy. Lucy seemed to have entered into the spirit of things by this time; she cried every now and then when Andy made love to her personally, alone, but on the whole she was resigned to the status Andy kept insisting was her true one.

She didn't know why she had refused Andy's offer yet neither could she claim that she regretted her refusal. The exuberance of her character insulated Lucy for the role; as soon as Andy's vindictive hostility appeared to have dissipated, after his first few raids on her person, there was nothing abject in her displays and nothing cringing in her submissions, merely a kind of inevitability.

But next it was Giles's turn, and here Andy's scheme suffered its first major reverse.

The sickly waif was shoved into the flat one navy-blue November night and beamingly introduced by Andy: "Here she is—do anything for fifty quid." They sat smalltalking in the kitchen.
GILES:
How long, in actual fact, have you lived here?
LUCY:
Ooh, nearly a year.
GILES:
Oh, really? Because it's really . . . very nice, actually.
LUCY:
It ain't a lot, but it's home.
GILES:
In fact, how long did you say you'd lived here for?
ANDY:
Look, man, you don't have to do all that. They're all whores here.

Giles and Lucy were duly cheered up the stairs. Once in her room, Lucy went confidently over to the bed, smiled, and began to undo her shirt. "Actually," said Giles, producing an enormous flask from his hip pocket, "do you mind if we don't do anything, actually? I'll still give as much money as you like. I've got money, but I'm a bit . . . nervous. I mean, please don't think I'm a pervert or anything." "How old are you, Giles?" "Twenty and a half." "Have you had girlfriends?" "Oh yes. Only I just don't feel like it these . . . Though I think you're jolly attractive: you've got awfully nice . . ." (Giles was going to say "teeth"; but this merely reminded him of why he didn't feel like it.) "Okay, love, you can just lie here for a bit—don't worry, I won't sneak on you—and then go." "Gosh, thanks." Which he did, writing her out a blank check as he left.

What Andy had so tragically forgotten was that in many respects Giles was the dream man for Lucy: kind, pleasant if rather vacuous in appearance, amusing in his way, gentle, affectionate, and quite extraordinarily rich. Having instructed his solicitors to pay off all her debts, Giles entrusted Lucy

with his billfold and gave her a free hand, happy to go to any restaurants, cinemas, or clubs she suggested, to take a pullman to Brighton or a Daimler to the Lakes, and vetoing only overtly teeth-imperiling enterprises. After their eleventh
night together Giles awoke with (i) not too much of a hangover and (ii) an erection, with which he shyly confronted Lucy and subsided trembling in her arms. They were inseparable all that winter.

The affair ended, as did so much else for Giles, when he wobbled down the staircase of the Old Compton Street Wheeler's, lost—co-instantaneously—his footing and Lucy's hand, tripped, fell, and smacked out his front two caps on the Soho pavement.

During Giles's three-month convalescence in various rural sanatoria, Andy cautiously remade Lucy's acquaintance. They agreed to contact each other whenever they felt sad or lonely, to confide in each other, to help each other in times of need, to be friends.

Diana's face was beginning to darken when Andy came into the room.

"Amazing," he said. "You've cleaned up all my stuff. My harps, too." He went over to his desk. "That's a bad horse-brass," he said approvingly, nodding his head.

Diana did not look up. "When is she coming?"

"Yeah, she rang. This afternoon sometime, early this evening."

Andy knelt, stroked back a handful of Diana's expensive black hair and planted a kiss on her temple. "Thanks, man," he said.

Although Diana was aware that this was Andy's "way" of apologizing for his earlier shortness, and also that by his standards it was an act of almost obsequious gallantry, she still felt the need not to respond, and turned away.

"Well," suggested Andy, "fuck
you."

8: from the pain

Quentin pursued little Keith into the kitchen. Behind them came Andy, in some distress.

"C'mon, Keith," he said, "any
action?"

Keith woggled out a chair from under the table and sat

down, the better to face the huge beauties who prowled round in front of him. He glanced at his watch. "How long—?”

"I know how long, you little spaz." Andy clapped his hands together. "An
hour.
If there's—"

A loud crash from the slammed back door was followed by the familiar fat-thighed shuffle of Mrs. Fry, the woman who charred three mornings a week for Appleseed Rectory, as she made her grunting way down the passage toward the kitchen.

Asway with frustration, Andy gripped the back of a chair and began to plead, "Look, if they're not fuckin' working now, they're—"

"Hey hey hey," interrupted Quentin, making compassionate, pacific nods with his head. "Not in front of the servants, Andrew."

Andy leaned back against the dresser. "Okay," he said in a strained voice.
"Okay."

"Morning all!" A face that resembled that of a cruel pig wearing an onion-shaped blond toupee flashed with unsettling speed around the door.

"Good morning to you, Mrs. Fry," said Quentin. "How may we assist you?"

"Just want the mops, Mr. Villiers, thank you." There was a silence. Mrs. Fry stared at Quentin for a moment with what might have been appalled desire then barged past Keith's "outstretched" legs toward the broom closet. A smell of Domestos, baby powder, and aged sweat flew up into the air.

Whitehead looked at Mrs. Fry askance, largely due to the fact that he had made a highly unsuccessful pass at her the month before. Keith had been lying on his bunk, wondering what use to put to the early morning erection which he so painfully nursed, considering whether to reach down for a handful of the magazines that glistened beneath his bunk. Mrs. Fry had called from the garage that she wanted access to the brushes stored in his room. Whitehead bade her enter and, when she knelt down with her back to him, leaned forward in hot pajamas to cup the gauzy pink bosom of her apron. Mrs. Fry turned around and hit little Keith so hard on his right ear that he immediately burst out crying—not out of shock or frustration, merely from the pain.

"Got everything, Mrs. Fry?"

"Yes, thank you, Mr. Villiers." She smiled to reveal false teeth of perfect whiteness. " 'Scuse!" she hooted at Keith, who smartly wedged his legs under the chair.

:
"Fuck," said Andy absentmindedly to himself, adjusting his heavy groin with both hands, "these jeans don't half get to your snake."

"Allow me," said Quentin, holding open the door past which Mrs. Fry disappeared. Quentin turned to Andy. "Well, I think you showed admirable restraint, Andy." There was perhaps the tiniest hint of real disapproval in his voice?

"Mm? Oh, that," said Andy. "The fuck, she just licks the floors around here." Anger returned to him like a jolt of electricity. He swooped down once again on little Keith, "Nothing? Not even dazed, hazy, not with it, vague, loose—"

Keith, who had protruded his lower lip ominously from the word "hazy" on, said, "Not a thing, Andy."

Andy shook his head as if to clear it. He started back, spun round full circle, and returned his gaze imploringly to Keith. "Take two more. Take four more. Take—"

"Slow down, Andy," said Quentin. "You've just been burnt, that's all."

"You'd better not be fucking with me," Andy told Keith hopefully.

"They just don't work, Andy."

"That
fuck
in'
boog
ie!" Andy began to windmill his arms in incredulous rage. "Jesus! 'Yey, man, is forking good, be my fren, forking con your ass.' Forty pounds!" Andy took the flat, one-ounce tobacco tin out of his pocket and crashed it on the table, over which it slid to belly-rattle on the kitchen floor. Andy straightened, and said with abrupt calm, "I'm going to go beat him up. Coming?"

"Yes, I'll just get my coat," said Quentin. "Keith, if Celia asks tell her I shan't be more than twenty minutes."

"What are you intending to do to him, Andy," asked Keith when Quentin had left the room.

Andy held up a large-knuckled, many-ringed fist. "Either he's going to give me my money back
and
all the drugs I can carry or I'm going to kick the absolute shit out of him. I tell you, he's going to be one sorry boogie when I ...
Quentin!"

Andy's motorbike snarled into life. Keith heard the door shut again, the motorbike letting go with a whirl of gravel,

and the gears changing eagerly as it raced down the village

street. With slightly agitated movements Keith leaned to retrieve the tin of pills, which he snapped open. He stared at its contents for several seconds.

9: Gin and tears