On Beauty (12 page)

‘You shouldn't make fun of your husband, dear,' came the urgent reply; ‘you only make fun of yourself that way.'

‘Oh, we make fun of each other,' said Kiki, still laughing but with the same sorrow she had felt when a hitherto perfectly nice cabbie began to tell her that all the Jews in the first tower had been
warned beforehand or that you can't trust Mexicans not to steal the rug from under your feet or that more roads were built under Stalin . . .

Kiki moved to stand up.

‘Hold on to the arm of the chair, dear . . . Men move with their minds, and women must move with our bodies, whether we like it or not. That's how God intended it – I have always felt that so strongly. When you're a larger lady, though, I expect that becomes a little more hard.'

‘No, I'm cool, I'm fine –
there
,' said Kiki good-humouredly, upright now, and shimmying her hips a little. ‘Actually, I'm pretty flexible. Yoga. And, to be honest, I guess I feel men and women use their minds about equally.' She brushed the wood dust off her palms.

‘Oh, I don't. No, I
don't
. Everything I do I do with my body. Even my soul is made up of raw meat, flesh. Truth is in a face, as much as it is anywhere. We women know that faces are full of meaning, I think. Men have the gift of pretending that's not true. And this is where their power comes from. Monty hardly knows he has a body at all!' She laughed and put a hand to Kiki's face. ‘You have a marvellous face, for example. And the moment I saw you I knew I would like you.'

The silliness of this made Kiki laugh too. She shook her head at the compliment.

‘Well, it looks like we like each other,' she said. ‘What
will
the neighbours say?'

Carlene Kipps raised herself up from her chair. Kiki's protesting noises couldn't stop her neighbour walking her to the gate. If Kiki had been in any doubt earlier, she knew now that this woman was unwell. She asked to take Kiki's arm after only a couple of steps. Kiki felt almost the whole of Carlene's weight shift on to her, and this weight was nothing at all to bear. Something in Kiki's heart shifted too, towards this woman. She didn't seem to say anything that she didn't mean.

‘Those are my bougainvillea – I got Victoria to plant them today, but I don't know if they will survive. But right now they have the
appearance
of survival, which is almost the same thing. And they do it with such style. I grow them in Jamaica – we have a little house there. Yes, I think the garden will be my solution to this house. Don't you think that's true?'

‘I don't know how to answer that. They're both wonderful.'

Carlene nodded quickly, dismissing the charming nonsense.

She patted Kiki's hand soothingly. ‘You must go and organize your party.'

‘And you must come.'

With the same incredulous and yet mollifying look, as if Kiki had asked her to the moon, she nodded again, and turned back towards her house.

By the time Kiki returned to 83 Langham, her first guest had arrived. It is an unnatural law of such parties that the person whose position on the guest list was originally the least secure is always the first to arrive. Christian von Klepper's invitation had been added by Howard, removed by Kiki, reinstated by Howard, removed by Kiki and then, at some later point, apparently extended once more in secret by Howard, for here was Christian, leaning into an alcove in the living room, nodding devotedly at his host. From where she stood in the kitchen, Kiki could see only a sliver of both men, but you didn't need to see much to get the picture. She watched them, unnoticed, as she took off her cardigan and hung it over a chair. Howard was full of beans. Hands in his hair, leaning forward. He was listening – but
really
listening. It's amazing, thought Kiki, how attentive he can be when he puts his mind to it. In his efforts to make peace with her, Howard had spent months showering some of this attention on Kiki herself, and she knew all about the warmth it afforded, the flattering bliss of it. Christian, under its influence, looked properly young for once. You could see him permitting himself some partial release from the brittle persona that a visiting
lecturer of only twenty-eight must assume if he has ambitions of becoming an assistant professor. Well, good for him. Kiki took a lighter from a kitchen drawer and began to kindle her tealights wherever she found them. This should all have been done already. The quiches had not been heated. And where were the children? An appreciative rumble of Howard's laughter reached her. And now he and the boy swapped roles – now it was Howard doing the talking and Christian following every syllable like a pilgrim. The younger man looked modestly to the floor, in response, Kiki assumed, to some piece of flattery of her husband's. Howard was more than generous that way; if flattered he repaid the favour tenfold. When Christian's face resurfaced Kiki saw it was flushed with pleasure, and a second later this shaded into something more calculated: the recognition, maybe, that the compliment was nothing less than his due. Kiki went to the fridge and took out a very good bottle of champagne. She picked up a plate of bang-bang chicken canapés. She hoped these would serve as replacement for any opening bon mots she might be expected to come up with. Her encounter with Mrs Kipps had left her strangely empty of casual conversation. She couldn't remember when she'd felt less like having a party than at this moment.

Sometimes you get a flash of what you look like to other people. This one was unpleasant: a black woman in a headwrap, approaching with a bottle in one hand and a plate of food in the other, like a maid in an old movie. The real staff – Monique, and an unnamed friend of hers who was meant to be handing out drinks – were nowhere to be seen. The living room revealed only one other person, Meredith, a fat and pretty Japanese-American girl, constant – you assumed platonic – companion of Christian. She had an extraordinary outfit on and her back to the room, engrossed in reading the spines of Howard's art books on the opposite wall. Kiki was reminded that, although Howard's fan club within the university was extremely small, it had an intensity in inverse proportion to its size. Because of the stringency of his theories and his dislike of his colleagues, Howard was nowhere near as successful or as popular or as well paid as his peers in Wellington. He
had, instead, a miniature campus cult: Christian was the preacher; Meredith was the congregation. If there were others, Kiki had never met them. There was Smith J. Miller, Howard's teaching assistant, a sweet-tempered white boy from the Deep South – but Smith was paid for his services by Wellington. Kiki opened the living-room door wide with her heel, wondering again where Monique, who might have thought to wedge the thing open, was hiding. Christian did not yet turn to acknowledge her, but he was already pretending to like Murdoch playing around his ankles. He leaned forward with the clumsy loom of the natural pet-hater and child-fearer, all the time clearly hoping for an intervention before he reached the dog. His elongated, lean body struck Kiki as a comic, human version of Murdoch's own.

‘He bothering you?'

‘Oh, no. Mrs Belsey, hello. No, not at all, not really. If anything, I was concerned that he might choke on my laces.'

‘Really?' said Kiki, looking down dubiously.

‘No, I mean it's fine . . . it's fine.' Christian's features abruptly morphed into his pinched attempt at a ‘party-face'. ‘And anyway: happy anniversary! It's so amazing.'

‘Well, thank
you
so much for coming –'

‘My God,' said Christian, with that clipped, puzzlingly European inflection he had. He had been raised in Iowa. ‘I'm simply privileged to be invited. It must be a very special occasion for you. What a milestone.'

Kiki sensed that he hadn't said any of this to Howard, and indeed Howard's eyebrows now raised a little, as if he had not heard Christian speak like this before. The banalities, obviously, were saved for Kiki.

‘Yeah, I guess . . . and it's just a nice thing – beginning of the semester and everything . . . shall I get the dog away from you?'

Christian had been stepping from side to side, trying to lose Murdoch but instead offering him the kind of challenge he adored.

‘Oh, well . . . I don't want to –'

‘No trouble, Christian, don't sweat it.'

Kiki nudged Murdoch off with her toe, and then gave him
another nudge to direct him out of the room. God forbid Christian should get any dog hairs on those fine Italian shoes. No, that was unfair. Christian slicked down his hair with his palm along that severe parting on the left side of his head, a line so straight it seemed marked out with a ruler. And that too was unfair.

‘I got me cham
pagne
in one hand and chicken in the other,' said Kiki, excessively jolly as penance for her thoughts. ‘What can I do you for?'

‘Oh, God,' said Christian. He seemed to know a joke should go here but he was constitutionally unable to provide one. ‘Choices, choices.'

‘Give them here, darling,' said Howard, taking only the champagne from his wife. ‘Proper hellos first might be nice – you know Meredith, don't you?'

Meredith – if one were to remember two facts about each of one's guests in order to introduce them to other guests – was interested in Foucault and costume-wear. At various parties Kiki had listened carefully and yet not understood what Meredith was saying while Meredith was dressed as an English punk, a
fin de sie `cle
dame in a drop-waisted Edwardian gown, a French movie star and, most memorably, a forties war bride, her hair set and curled like Bacall's, complete with stockings and stays and that compelling black line curving up the back of both her mighty calves. This evening Meredith's dress was a concoction of pink chiffon, with a wide circle skirt you had to make space for, and a little black mohair cardigan slung over her shoulders. This last was set off by a gigantic diamanté brooch. Her shoes were peep-toe red heels that put at least a three-inch distance between Meredith and her real height as she strode across the room. Meredith stretched out a white kid glove for her hostess to shake. Meredith was twenty-seven years old.

‘Of course! Wow, Meredith!' said Kiki, blinking theatrically. ‘Honey, I don't even know what to say. I should have some kind of award for best party outfit – I don't know what I was thinking. You look
fine
, girl!'

Kiki whistled, and Meredith, who was still holding one of Kiki's
hands, took the opportunity to do a twirl, holding Kiki's hand high and describing a small circle beneath it.

‘You like? I would so very much like to tell you I just threw it together,' said Meredith loudly and quickly in her nervous, Californian scream, ‘but it takes me a long,
looong
time to look this good. Bridges have been built quicker. Whole hermeneutic systems have coalesced with more speed. Just from here to here,' said Meredith, signalling the space between her eyebrows and her upper lip, ‘that's like three hours.'

The bell rang. Howard groaned, as if the present company was more than enough, but went practically skipping off to answer it. Abandoned by their only real connection, the little triangle fell quiet, resorting to smiles. Kiki wondered precisely how far she was from Meredith and Christian's ideal of a leader's appropriate consort.

‘We made you a thing,' said Meredith abruptly. ‘Did he tell you? We made you this thing. Maybe it's
crap
, I don't know.'

‘No . . . no, I hadn't yet –' said Christian, blushing.

‘Like a thing – a
present
. Is that corny? Thirty years and all that? Have we just been corny?'

‘I'll just . . .' said Christian, crouching down awkwardly to get to his old-fashioned satchel, which rested against the ottoman.

‘So we did some half-assed research and it turns out that thirty years is
pearl
, but, as you know, the average grad income doesn't really stretch that far, so we weren't really in the pearl way of things . . .' Meredith laughed maniacally. ‘And then Chris thought of this poem and then I like did my arts and craft thing and anyway here it is: see it's like a framed, fabricy, type poem thing – I don't know.'

Kiki felt the warm teak frame delivered into her hands and admired the crushed rose petals and broken shells under the glass. The text was sewn in, like a tapestry. It was the most unusual present she could have expected from these two. It was lovely.

‘
Full fathom five thy father lies; Of his bones are coral made, Those are pearls that were his eyes
–' read Kiki circumspectly, aware that she should know it.

‘So, that's the
pearl
thing,' said Meredith. ‘It's probably stupid.'

‘Oh – it's so gorgeous,' said Kiki, skim-reading the rest to herself in a quick whisper. ‘Is it Plath? That's wrong, isn't it.'

‘It's Shakespeare,' said Christian, wincing slightly. ‘
The Tempest. Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change, Into something rich and strange
. Plath stripped it for parts.'

‘
Shit
,' Kiki laughed. ‘When in doubt, say Shakespeare. And when it's sport, say Michael Jordan.'

‘That is
totally
my policy,' agreed Meredith.

‘This is really gorgeous. Howard will love it. I don't think it comes under his representational art ban.'

‘No, it's textual,' said Christian testily. ‘That's the point. It's a textual artifact.'

Kiki looked at him inquiringly. She wondered sometimes whether Christian was in love with her husband.

‘Where
is
Howard?' said Kiki, revolving her head absurdly round the empty room. ‘He'll just love this. He loves to hear that nothing on him doth fade.'

Meredith laughed again. Howard re-entered the room with a clap of his hands, but then the bell rang once more.

‘Bloody
hell
. Could you excuse us? Like Piccadilly Circus in here. Jerome! Zora?'

Howard cupped a hand to his ear like a man waiting for a response to his fake bird call.

‘Howard,' tried Kiki, holding up the frame, ‘Howard, look at this.'

‘Levi? No? Have to be us, then. Just excuse us one minute.'

Kiki followed Howard into the hall, where together they opened the door to the Wilcoxes, one of the rare, genuinely moneyed Wellingtonian couples of their acquaintance. The Wilcoxes owned a preppy clothes chain store, gave generously to the college, and looked like the shells of two Atlantic shrimp in evening wear. Right behind them came Howard's assistant, Smith J. Miller, bearing a home-made apple-pie and dressed like the neat Kentucky gentleman he was. They were all ushered into the kitchen to do their best with the completely unsuitable social pairing of old-school Marxist
English professor Joe Rainier and the young woman he was presently dating. There was a
New Yorker
cartoon on the fridge that Kiki now wished she had taken down. An upscale couple in the back of a limo. Woman saying:
Of course they're clever. They have to be clever. They haven't got any money
.

‘Just go through, go through,' brayed Howard, making the signal for directing sheep across a country road. ‘People in the living room, or the garden's lovely . . .'

A few minutes later they were alone once more in the hall.

‘I mean, where's
Zora
– she's been going on about the bloody party for weeks and now neither hide nor hair –'

‘She's probably gone to get some smokes or something.'

‘I think at least
one
of them should be present. So people don't think we keep them in some kind of child sex prison camp in the attic.'

‘I'll go and deal with it, Howie, OK? You just get everybody what they need. Where the
hell
is Monique? Wasn't she meant to be bringing somebody?'

‘In the garden jumping up and down on
bags of ice
,' said Howard impatiently, as if she might have figured this out for herself. ‘Bloody ice-maker fucked up half an hour ago.'

‘Fuck.'

‘Yes, darling,
fuck
.'

Howard pulled his wife towards him and put his nose in between her breasts. ‘Can't we just have a party here? You and me and the girls?' he asked, tentatively squeezing the girls. Kiki drew back from him. Although peace had broken out in the Belsey household, sex had not yet returned. In the past month Howard had stepped up his flirtatious campaign. Touching, holding and now squeezing. Howard seemed to think the next step inevitable, but Kiki had not yet decided whether tonight was to be the beginning of the rest of her marriage.

‘Uh-uh . . .' she said softly. ‘Sorry. Turns out they're not coming.'

‘Why not?'

He pulled her close to him again and rested his head on her shoulder. Kiki let him. Anniversaries will do that. She gripped a
clump of her husband's thick, silky hair in her free hand. The other hand held Christian and Meredith's present, still waiting to be appreciated. And just like this, with her eyes closed, and with his hair escaping her fingers, they could have been standing in any happy day of any of these thirty years. Kiki was not a fool and recognized the feeling for what it was: a dumb wish to go backwards. Things could not be exactly the same as they had been.