Satan Wants Me (21 page)

Space and time are acknowledged by scientists to constitute a continuum. One can move backwards in space and therefore also in time. It is simpler to think forward, but that does not mean that it is correct, for those who travel forward in time are sleepwalking through life, moving from summer to autumn to winter, heading towards their death. Death, it is death which causes old age, sickness, mutilation, car crashes, drownings, ritual sacrifices. Finally, he who works backwards through time, has to face certain moral implications and, in concluding, the Master invited us to reflect once more on the ceremony on the hilltop, in which he not only gave a young woman life, but, in repossessing his seed, he rendered that woman a virgin for the first time, sealing her hymen and making her the inestimable gift of her innocence.

Once the Master has finished speaking, he hands over to Felton, who dictates to us the ritual procedures and responses for the forthcoming Consecration of the Virgin for transcription in our red notebooks. The dictation is hard going for some of the procedures are in Latin and these Felton has to spell out letter by letter. Then we are dismissed.

I was about to hurry up to my room when I was stopped by Alice,

‘Why do you and your hippy girlfriend always have to spoil everything? We practically never get the privilege of hearing the Master speak, but now when we do, you and that dolly bird have to stage one of your lovers’ tiffs.’

‘Alice, please. She’s not my girlfriend. That was the point.’

‘She seems to think that she is. Anyway, you are two of a kind. All style and no substance. You only went out with her because you thought that prettiness is important. Why do you men find brainlessness so attractive? I have no hesitation in telling you that I’m worth a hundred of her sort.’

With that Alice turned and stomped off. (Poor Alice.)

That was the weirdest lecture I ever attended. I have some difficulty getting my head round it, but I think it is a bit like the words of that Dylan song, ‘I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now’. ‘Eh ma I.’ Are we going to be taught to write backwards, read backwards, walk backwards? I sit up late into the night to write my diary and, when I have finished, I reread it anxiously looking for jokes. I don’t think there are any. My visit to Cosmic seems to me, if anything, rather sinister. I must learn to live in a world which has been leached clean of humour.

Not long after I had finished writing the above Laura came to me in my bedroom. My strict new teacher. I put it to her that this time round we should reverse roles. So then she became a predatory and tarty schoolmistress, while I was a clueless schoolboy, unaware of what she was after when she placed her hand on my flies and began to tug at the zip. Just a school medical inspection apparently. She was assuring me that it would not hurt as her mouth closed round the knob of my penis.

Later that night I suddenly snapped awake. Laura was no longer with me in the bed. I had been woken by a thought. The bloody creature with horseshoes on his feet had had Ron’s face. It took me a long time to get back to sleep.

I sat up so late writing my diary that I am a bit short of sleep today. I have to force myself to write in it, but I know that I have to and then, once I start writing, I find that it is difficult to stop and that is what I am afraid of. Then I find myself writing things which I do not really think at all. They are things which brother diary is thinking. The diary is my ‘brother’, but he is a poor substitute for a girlfriend.

Felton passed me coming out of breakfast and told me that I had been assigned to help Granville in the afternoon. Then he passed on down the corridor. So I only had the morning to do research on playground activities.

I suppose that I ought to be infuriated by the way I am being ordered around, but I actually take pleasure in it, for I now realise that, since I have given my oath and kissed the hand of the Master, it is really me who is imposing discipline on myself and consequently I take pride in being my own fierce taskmaster. Therefore, as instructed, I met Granville for lunch at Wheelers. Granville was in one of his dark moods when I arrived and at first I had to make all the conversation.

‘Talk to me,’ was what he said. ‘I’m fed up with having to do all the talking. It is time that you learned how to make conversation like a normal civilised person. Come on, I’m bored.’

With that he sat back scowling and waited for me to make my first conversational pass. I have often seen Granville St John-Jones leaning against a wall or sitting with his head resting on his cupped hands, looking sullen. Looking as if only the End of the World could relieve his hopeless boredom. The sullenness goes with his looks – the deep-socketed eyes, the thick lips and the dark, curling, gipsyish hair. For Granville, who is invariably sharp-suited and who wears a foulard scarf, the sulks are also a kind of fashion-accessory – a part of his style.

‘Come on, talk to me,’ he said again, but nothing could have been better calculated to make my mind go blank. There was nothing in my head that I wanted to talk about and I sat there, silent, flummoxed. Granville was impatient,

‘Oh tell me about that dippy girl who gatecrashed the Master’s lecture last night … I forget her name … Sally. What does she do? Where does she live? How did you meet?’

(Now I am a bit behind with my diary-writing and I am writing this after having talked to Cosmic on Sunday and after having attended to my bleeding foreskin. When Granville asked all these questions, I did not know what was behind the interrogation. I thought that it was just a product of his general obsession with sex and women. I know better now.)

Anyway, I told him the story of how I first met Sally, how I was drinking coffee in the Indica Bookshop, when I saw this golden-haired girl floating like an elf from customer to customer and whispering something to each of them. At last she came to me,

‘Do you think I’m pretty?’ (It was her question-of-the-week.)

I nodded emphatically.

‘That’s good,’ she said. ‘That makes 87 per cent so far,’ and she moved on, but I grabbed her arm.

‘Do you think that I am handsome?’

She sat down opposite me and set about studying my face. An hour and a half later, she was in my bed and examining the rest of my body.

I thought that Granville wanted to know about Sally because he knew that she did not like him. But more than that, he was genuinely curious about how my generation manages to get laid and plated so easily. Granville is eight years older than me. It is a crucial chronological gap. It means that, when he was my age, he was having to go through old-fashioned rituals of courting and seduction and sex was wrapped up in circumlocution.
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
was still banned and the mini-skirt not thought of. He arrived at the party too early and he knows it.

Granville, having found my tale of an easy lay unenticing, was discoursing (in his usual oblique way) on the excitement of gazing in a certain way at women who do not like him, in order to force them to go to bed with him. Almost the best blast there is for Granville is to feel a woman shudder underneath him and to know that in those shudders the pleasure of orgasm mingles with a self-reproaching revulsion. Only bedding a virgin is a better blast, for there is a kind of occult charge acquired from sleeping with virgins. Although I did not actually believe that Granville does have this occult power over women, I saw my opportunity,

‘Alice is a virgin. What is more, she does not like you. She told me that you were too frivolous and too sex-obsessed. I should think that it would be pretty rewarding to get her to go to bed with you.’ (I had in my mind’s eye the gleeful image of Alice’s myopic scowl melting under the Luciferan gaze of Granville.)

He was silent. I thought that he was offended because I had described him as frivolous.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It would be a challenge.’

‘Why not then?’

He looked patronisingly at me,

‘Who do you think is the virgin in Sunday’s ritual Consecration of the Virgin?’

‘Alice?!’

‘Yes, Alice is reserved for the Master.’

‘She will never do it.’

Granville smiled.

‘First the Master (and, here, have some more wine) then she will offer herself to you … ’

I did not hear what he said next, I was so stunned. It seems I am to be blooded. That was the real purpose of this lunch. To break it to me. I am to assist the Master and then, watched by every member of the Lodge, I am to have sex with Alice.

But she hates me. And I don’t fancy her. This is some weird kind of magical ordeal. Alice is a sort of Loathly Lady, like the one in a story Sally was telling me. In the story (which I cannot remember properly), foolish King Arthur has been trapped into promising to marry the Loathly Lady. She is all fat and warty and generally disgusting. Then Sir Gawain nobly steps forward and offers to take the King’s place. Since Gawain is young and good-looking, this is OK with her. So then, the hitching ceremony having taken place and they are about to go to bed together and presumably Gawain can feel his scrotum curdling between his legs, but he gives her a quick kiss and, lo and behold, she turns into a beautiful damsel. While he is still gawping at her, she explains that she is a magical kind of chick and she can be beautiful half of the time. Either she can be beautiful in the daytime, in which case everyone will admire him for the glamour of his consort, or she can be beautiful at night, in which case his sex-life will be greatly enhanced. But Gawain after pondering a bit, said that no, she should be the one making the choice. Then she said, ‘Knight, since of your perfect gentleness, you have given me the choice, the curse is lifted from me and I am able to remain beautiful both by day and by night’.

All this was fine as a story. However, in real life, I was pretty sure that Alice was going to stay as she was – lo and behold, hideous day and night! There is no way I will be able to get it up. I said as much to Granville.

‘Oh yes, you will,’ he said. ‘And I envy you.’

‘Oh fine! Well, you are welcome to take my place. You must be having me on.’

‘I don’t mean screwing Alice.’ He shuddered briefly. ‘Of course not. Alice is just the start for you of something much more serious. No, I mean that you have a destiny, whereas I have none.’ Then he recited a couple of lines by Yeats,

‘Those who have chosen second best,

Seek to forget it all on a young girl’s chest.’

I think that I had envisaged Sunday’s ritual as some kind of love-feast and I certainly had not anticipated that I would be anything more than one of the chorus who stood around chanting and watching. Now I was sitting in Wheelers, speechless and trying to think of some way of getting out of all this. A dentist’s appointment, for example … but dentists weren’t open on Sundays … a session with the exorcist, booked weeks ago, too late to cancel now … I could wait till Sunday morning and then feign death …

Then the pudding came and Granville and I talked of indifferent things, like his plan to take me over to Le Mans for the 24-Hour Race later in the month. He patronisingly takes it for granted that I want to accompany him on this annual ritual trip – literally patronising, for I think he does actually see himself as my patron.

‘I should not have talked so much. It will all go down in that bloody diary of yours, plus, of course, I’ll have to put it all in mine. It’s all such a bloody bore.’

We have a series of missions, all of them in the St James area. There are the crates of wine to be ordered for delivery in time for Sunday’s ritual. Some shirts that the Master has had made have to be collected. It is boring, but it did not take as long as Granville had been expecting.

‘We have time in hand,’ he said. ‘I propose to devote it to your further education. We are on the edge of Soho. I can take you to a prostitute or to a casino. Which shall it be?’

‘A casino then. I have never been inside a casino.’ (Not that I have ever been with a prostitute either. Perhaps I was saving myself for Alice?)

We left the brilliant sunshine for a place of shadows. The Four-Leaf Clover Club occupied a not particularly large Soho basement. Drinks were on the house and I was drinking madly to forget Alice. Will demons make themselves manifest at Sunday’s ritual? What need for demons when we are behaving so badly anyway? When the chips are down, they are so pretty – big pink squares, yellow ovals, ivory oblongs and small circular green counters – all spread out on the green baize in pools of low light. Granville elected to play chemin-de-fer. As he took over the bank, he shot his cuffs. (I wonder if I dare ask him if he would teach me how to shoot my cuffs?)

Slept badly, thinking of Sunday’s ordeal. I would drop off briefly, then come to, shuddering at the thought of being in the arms of Alice and her toad-like face rubbing against mine. Now, things have been made worse by not having a record-player any more. Felton told me at breakfast that people had been complaining about the noise of my record-player in the evenings. (Agatha, I’ll bet.)

‘Your handing over of the machine will of course be appreciated as a gesture of good faith.’

Another of their little tests. But every sacrifice I make makes me stronger. What does not kill me makes me stronger. After surrendering the record-player, I spent most of the morning in the Lodge’s library drawing up index-cards. A bit before midday Granville entered and seated himself on the table, dislodging a pile of file cards as he did so.

‘It’s the weekend and I’m bored. I knew I would be. What are you going to do to entertain me?’

I thought for a bit. Part of the thinking was why was he spending so much of the time with me? Partly I was thinking about how to entertain him. Should I make him a reciprocal offer to treat him to a prostitute? Finally, I came up with,

‘I’m going to take you to the Arts Lab.’

He looked suspicious, but shrugged his shoulders.

Over the door of the Arts Lab, was a freshly-painted notice in bright, blobby colours: MAGIC THEATRE. ENTRANCE NOT FOR EVERYBODY. FOR MADMEN ONLY! Granville was sneering as he stalked inside. In the Arts Lab’s restaurant, I introduced him to macrobiotic food – macrobiotic brown rice sprinkled with sesame seeds, Tibetan barley bread, soya-bean salad and peach tea. After a couple of mouthfuls, Granville leant back in his chair and balefully contemplated his plate,