England's Lane (34 page)

I should like to coolly recall our genesis, that initial and inevitable fusion prior to so heavenly a collision—but all is too tumultuous. It comes at me in a rush, a desperate tumble of hot and haphazard memory that yet can provoke in me a gasp—the very same gasp that always was expelled from me when stirred from my wallowing in the loving bouillon of just knowing that I had her—yes, at the rippling thought of a coming union. As to her touch … her touch would send me wild. The skin, her skin—just downy—was like none I have ever encountered: so shocking in its feathered softness, and then engulfing warmth. Her eyes, in bliss—so inkily black with a slash of whiteness, and yet they were the color of fire. Her hair, those great and heavy shimmering handfuls, I would inhale until my chest came close to bursting. I wrote her poems, though none I could present to her. My poems, they could not reach, could not come close to approaching all inside of me and about her that was
clamorous and pleading for expression. She was a greater woman than I an artist, that much was so very humblingly clear—but more than that … she was, in herself, the very highest art. For only a woman—the woman—can be the one true mark of the power of the work of God that screamingly surpasses, and with such unnerving and laughable ease, all and any merely earthly endeavor. A woman—the woman—abandons the insignificant artist to vaporous distance.

Fiona … I had all but forgotten. She was, however, by no means neglected: at this time I was a reasonably wealthy man, and so naturally I provided her with everything. Everything, yes … bar myself, of course. Oh I was there, to be sure—sharing a luncheon, idly listening to the wireless, the two of us taking a spin in my new and still very much missed Bentley … but all that I carried within me alas was no longer for her. Here was the only period in my life when knowingly I was wounding her, and I so very deeply regretted it—yet it remained quite utterly beyond me even to for a moment contemplate smothering, annihilating, the source of her pain: this, I am afraid, was just wholly unimaginable. And so she remained in silence, for which I was grateful, while all I could do then in parallel muteness was to witness the commensurate suffering which always and famously must accompany any such selfless restraint. In the past, Fiona had adored me unquestioningly, and always she chose to strike a forgiving and unusually modern and enlightened attitude toward my philandering—I sometimes even imagined, maybe somewhat fancifully, that rather to her own surprise, she might even quite approve of it … although here, she knew, was something other. The unspoken concern was whether Anna could ever have taken me from her. For the sake of Anna, would I have reneged upon my wedding vows—turned my back upon my beloved wife and little Amanda? Well … there now lies so very large and ponderous a question. A question, however, that never did come to any sort of
resolution … no, in the end, that looming dilemma, it never did have to be faced … because then came the moment when each of the characters in this ultimately and I suppose quite predictably very woeful tale—at turns malevolent, grasping, cruel and salacious—each of us, yes, was immediately confronted by so very rapid and violent an implosion.

For some long time past, John and Adam had accepted my modus operandi. For John, here was little more than a formality: a grunting nod of acquiescence. His interest lay solely in our constant acquisition of valuable objects, his task to place them for the optimum price: he had no role to play at the forefront of the theater. And should he one chill evening come to suffer from the sourness of guilt, fall under a gray and sweeping shadow of shame, or else experience no more than a bilious bout of queasiness as a result of the glancing and intrusive thought of all that now was occurring … well could he not simply elect to no longer dwell upon it? To place a long-playing record of some or other jolly waltz by Strauss on his mirror-polished gramophone, light up a Cuban cigar and pour a further cognac? Adam, however, was daily at my side. He had become, did he but know it, my right-hand man, though hardly so vital as that might suggest. Whereas before I had been content to be the simplest of foils, now I had become the sole and central figure—the pivot, as well as the aggressive lance—and he no more than an attentive acolyte. His artistic discernment, our need for obfuscation, these were so much less important than formerly, for now the tendency was simply to take whatever it was that we wanted. Quick, you see? Saves such a great deal of nonsense. Initially, the boy was stubborn. Here, though, was nothing to do with conscience: in Adam, demurral, open and ill-informed argument were simply built into his nature—he would have contended any given premise as a matter of utter principle: agreeability had no part to play in his
really extremely moronic existence. He had no friends—well perfectly obviously he had no friends—and he was loved by his parents as only parents can: each of them scaldingly aware of his base and intrinsic loathsomeness, though tugged by the tie that binds. His indulgences seemed to be confined solely to the sexual and the gastronomic, these obtained weekly in a suburban junkyard, and quite handsomely paid for with a dismal succession of dusty trinkets pried from the blue and gnarled arthritic fingers of tremulous and uncomprehending widows—from very old and badly shaven men, jowls rendered angry from whisky, and whose eyes were made milky by inoperable cataracts.

“Ah Adam, hello. Glad to have caught you. Won't you come in and take a glass of wine with me? There's something I'd quite like to discuss with you, if you've got a moment. I was having a word with John, with your father, earlier this morning—I don't know whether he mentioned it to you at all …?”

He scowled at me: here was his habitual manner. It was as if I had suggested that possibly he might care to lick clean the soles of my boots.

“Haven't spoken to him today. I'm busy.”

“But maybe time for just a glass …? Few minutes …?”

“Two. I'll give you two minutes. No more. Right?”

“Perfect—very gracious of you, Adam. Two minutes. Excellent. Do sit down, won't you? A glass of Chablis …? It's perfectly chilled.”

“No.”

“No? I see. Something else then, conceivably? I have a reasonably decent Beaujolais Villages? Glass of sherry, perhaps? There might be a bottle of beer in the refrigerator …”

“No. Don't drink. Well not all your rubbish, anyway. I'm quite particular what I drink. Who I drink with.”

“Well I must say it is exceedingly good of you to indulge me, Adam. I shall be brief.”

“Do. One minute up already …”

“Quite … Well here are the bones of what I have been thinking. When we go to all of these houses, Adam—why do we actually bother any more with my doing all of this chitchat, when often these people can barely even hear me, let alone understand what it is I'm trying to say to them?”

His two dull eyes were bulging, as might those of an infuriated bloater.

“Why?
Why
? Well that's pretty stupid, even for you! You know why. What's wrong with you? So I can go upstairs and—”

“Yes I do understand that, Adam. But wouldn't it be more convenient, more—you know—easy for all concerned were we simply to march right into the house and tell them what it is we want, and then just take it …?”

“God! You're even dopier than you look, aren't you? Wouldn't have thought it possible. Haven't you learned anything, all the time you've been with us? Because, dimwit—that's telling them, isn't it? What's valuable and what's not. That's the whole point, stupid! And what do we do if they say no, I'm not selling? Messes up everything. God, I can't believe how stupid you are …”

“Well I rather fancy a good many of them may well say that. In which case, well—as I say: we just take what we want.”

“What do you mean …? And you've had your two minutes, by the way.”

“Please do indulge me just a moment longer. And I apologize if still I am behaving so perfectly stupidly. I shall endeavor to phrase this more comprehensibly for you. We. Just. Take. It. Yes …?”

“What—
steal
it, do you mean …? Joking, aren't you?”

“We virtually steal it anyway. Don't we? What about last week. The house in Goring. Yes? Gainsborough, wasn't it?”

“Reynolds. You know nothing …”

“Reynolds—forgive my ignorance. And we gave for it …?”

“Can't remember. Couple of pounds …”

“Precisely, couple of pounds—which you told the old dear was really for the frame. And John, your father, and do please correct me if again I err, is, I believe, hoping for something in the region of eighteen hundred …? Stealing, isn't it?”

“It's business. She was happy. Stupid old woman. You saw her—she was happy with her two pounds, wasn't she?”

“Yes but look, Adam—it's not really the two pounds I am talking about. Think about this—what if we had had the run of that house for the whole of the day? Uninterrupted. No longer the need to be fast and furtive?”

“There was a lot of good stuff in that house, I think …”

“Well exactly—my feeling too. You are beginning, I believe, to see what I am meaning. And another thing—why must we wait for them to respond to our advertisements? I mean to say—flyers … really rather primitive, no?”

“You really are a stupid bastard—do you know that? I get them done at the best printer around. Quality work, that is. Not cheap. Not—
primitive
 …!”

“I do not refer to the artwork, Adam—but the technique. The approach. It's rather old-fashioned, don't you see? It's … slow. Why don't we simply select the most promising-looking houses and knock on the door? Are you really sure you won't take a glass of Chablis …? It is rather fine …”

“No. Horse piss. And what if they won't let us in? Thought about that? What then? God, you really are just so thick I can't believe it …”

“Well in that case, Adam—we do what we're best at. We persuade them, yes? We practice the art of persuasion. And if they remain reluctant … well then we find ourselves in a position where we are rather compelled to insist, I'm afraid. Well now look—I really do think we ought at least to give it a try. Don't you? Nothing to lose, I should have said …”

“What did my father have to say about this? You talked to him, you said? Well what was his reaction, I'd very much like to know, to all of this dung that you're giving me …!”

“He was cautiously approving, is how I should interpret his words. Said I should speak to you, of course. Perfectly properly. Which, Adam, is currently my labored endeavor …”

The very afternoon of this conversation, if so very stilted, onesided and barely to be borne exchange should warrant even remotely so fulsome a term, I asked Fiona—she had been at the time enjoying what she was pleased to call a “bubble bath”—whether she might and rather quickly care to knit for me a thick black balaclava. She expressed surprise, as well she might. Said, I remember, that it would crush the natural waves of my beautiful shiny hair, and that that would be a shame. Said too that she herself did not personally consider the climate to be sufficiently inclement to merit such a thing. But still she made no inquiry—she never ever did, she never does, concerning any of my whims and sudden enthusiasms, and in return for such rare and admirable continence on her part, she has always been the recipient of my sincere and undying appreciation.

There used to be in the old part of Henley at the time a rather pretty bow-fronted and quaintly old-fashioned little toyshop—for all I know, it well might still be there—and under cover of acquiring for Amanda the sweetest miniature china-faced doll, the chubby limbs suffused by lace (Amanda, she christened her Emily, and still she is very much cherished), I purchased also this rather garish large
and colored card alive with depictions of Wild West saloons, stagecoaches, covered wagons and desert cactuses, attached to which by means of a series of twists of wire were variously a pair of silvered cap pistols in their fringed and leatherette holsters, a sheriff's star, a pair of plastic spurs, a thin tin Bowie knife, and a bank robber's mask in the form of a black conceivably vinyl and elongated oval, and bearing a loop of elastic. This last item being all that I required. I detached it, and during the course of my amble back to the house I incidentally became the instrument of bringing considerable unanticipated happiness to a little schoolboy in blazer and cap, who highly optimistically was dangling over the parapet of the bridge and into the Thames a long length of knotted parcel string crudely tied on to a bamboo garden pole. At first he hesitated—almost palpably grappling with the echo of a long ago dinned-in parental warning concerning the necessity for rejection of any sort of gift when proffered by a stranger—and then with a whoop of joy, he seized with eagerness all of his cowboy loot.

Fiona being Fiona, the balaclava was ready and done in really next to no time at all, and rather a splendid thing it turned out to be: triple-ply cashmere, and so very gentle to the touch. And when, in my study, I placed it adjacent to the bank robber's mask … well of course I was quite perfectly aware of the apparent absurdity: for should I next be pressing into service a pillowslip and daubing on to it the word “swag,” that I might sling this across the shoulder of my black-and-white and horizontally striped jersey …? Yes but more than this, I was very aware also that soon—though maybe not immediately—such disguise would become absolutely necessary. Not, of course, that I harbored even the slightest intention of conveying any such insight to the unspeakable excrescence that was Adam, my putative partner in crime. And I was quite intent too upon somehow ensuring that during each of our future escapades,
I would maneuver myself with considerable delicacy and care so as never to be seen by him to be wearing these things, while also making similarly certain that no invaded householder should ever even so much as be able to glimpse me without them.