The Pregnant Widow (21 page)

“To be really popular in Italy,” she said with slow emphasis, “this is what you’d need.
Your
tits. And
your
arse.”

“You know,” said Keith wildly, “you know my tutor Garth, Lily—the poet? He says the female body has a design flaw. He says the tits and the arse should be on the same side.”

“…
Which
side?”

Keith thought for a moment. “I don’t think he’s fussy,” he said. “Though I suppose you’ll tell me he was fussy in the first place. The front. To get the face. It would have to be the front.”

“No, the back, surely,” said Scheherazade (as Gloria turned and went inside). “If it was the front, her legs would be pointing the wrong way.”

Lily said, “She’d walk backward. And the boys in the street—I’m trying to work it out. Which way would they walk?”

T
hat night, dinner was dead, killed by the reeking fungi of Ofanto: no one attempted it. Lily and Scheherazade were closeted in the apartment, so Keith went stumbling down the slope to use up time with Whittaker—and with Amen, who silently produced a large sliver of the blackest and greasiest hashish.

“Jesus, it’s a bit strong, isn’t it?”

“C’est bien de tousser,”
said Amen.
“Et puis le courage. L’indifférence.”

“Whittaker, what’s all this?”

He meant the images in the paintings that were fanned out on the floor. Whittaker said,

“Cataloguing. My Picasso period.”

The figures in the canvases were all bassackward or inside out, and after a while Keith was asking whether it would be any good if
men
were sexually rearranged, with the cock and the arse on the same side, and maybe the head wrenched round, too, like Adriano’s in the Rolls …

“You know Tom Thumb called me
Keef
today?” he said, some time later. “He called me
Kif
. And it’s true. I just smoked a whole death-pipe of kif with Amen.”

Lily said, “You fool. You know you can’t cope with drugs.”

“I know. You look amazing.” And she did, too, in the candlelight. She looked like Boris Karloff.
“Assassin
comes from hashish. Or the other way round.”

“What are you going on about?”

“It’s just … It’s just impossible to believe that they smoked this stuff to make them
brave
. I was shitting myself on the way back. I still am. And guess who I bumped into in the dark. Literally. The Blob!”

“Come on, it’s one o’clock.”

“Christ, I thought it was about half past nine.”

“Because you’re a drugged fool,” said Lily. “That’s why.”

He did as he was told. Ruaa, like the feathery night made solid.
Oof …
And then as he drank a quart of water in the kitchen he heard a footfall—and felt a rush of fresh fear at the thought of Scheherazade. Fear? Scheherazade?

“Okay, I’m calmer now. I’m cool. So tell.”

“It was an absolute catastrophe for Tom Thumb.”

“Yeah, I could see that,” he said contentedly as he drew a sheet over the hive of his chest.

“When he took her hand.”

Because that’s what he did, Adriano. As soon as they got out of the car, and the riot, the revolution began, Adriano strode to Scheherazade’s side and took her hand. And looked out and up at the young men with that scowl Keith had glimpsed once or twice before. The scowl of practised defiance you always saw in the very small male, and the readiness to transact with cruelty, to absorb it, to transfer it. Adriano, Mr. Punch. Punchinello.

“She said it was like walking along,” said Lily, “with her own disturbed child.”

“Mm, like a young mum. That’s what she looked like from behind.”

“It was much worse from in front. She saw herself in a shop window and had a heart attack. Not a nice child. A disturbed child.”

“Jesus. And that crowd …”

“Jumping up and down in front of her with their tongues hanging out. All through lunch her pulse was raging. About whether he’d do it on the way back.”

Overseen, with severe connoisseurship, by Adriano, the meal went on for three hours. And as they gathered in the lobby he again reached towards Scheherazade with an opened palm. She turned away and gave a shivering laugh and said,
Oh don’t worry about me. I’m a big girl now
.

“It just popped out. Poor her, she’s so confused. Weeping in her room.”

“So that’s off now, is it? No more doing it for the troops.”

“Oh out of the question. It was primal. I mean, you can’t get involved with someone who makes you think of your own mad child.”

Keith agreed that it was hardly a promising sign.

“And then she went and said that thing about Junglebum’s arse.”

“Yeah, well, it was worse than that, wasn’t it,” he said. “The champagne.”

“The champagne. So now Junglebum knows we know about her pants getting sucked off by the jacuzzi.”

“Mm. I’ve never seen anyone cry like that. Like a popgun. Both barrels.”

“Mm. Poor Gloria. Poor Adriano. Poor Scheherazade.”

Well
, said the shrill Scheherazade on the terrace—and Keith wanted to shout,
Cut!
But no: keep rolling. It occurred to him, now, that
he
was the director of the film in which she starred; and it was time for a change of genre. No more platonic pastoral. Time for the slatternly shepherdess, the venal wood-nymph, the doped contessa.

“I suppose you’re happy now.”

“Why would I be happy?”

“Why? Adriano gone. No sign of Timmy. And her getting more and more desperate.”

“… Crappy meal, didn’t you think? I thought truffles were meat.” Heroines were definitely allowed to do that. “Like pâté or something.” Heroines were definitely allowed to get more and more desperate. “Not a five-quid toadstool … I was proud of you today.”

Keith, and not Hansel, now performed the sexual act with Lily, and
not Gretel. Its components, as he saw them: on the terrace, the way she pushed down with her hands on the armrests and rose up into it, and brought peace; and earlier, in Ofanto, the rinsed look in her pale blue eyes, the closed smile of disappointment, even disbelief … She must have felt as sore and roused as Adriano, when the young men rose from the stone benches (as if gathering for violence), when the young men came hurrying from under the shade of the palm trees.

“Any sign of Gloria yet?” said Scheherazade with a guarded look. “No, I suppose she’s still in her room.”

Keith settled himself near by, himself and
Vanity Fair
.

“I can’t think—I can’t believe I was such an absolute
witch
last night.”

She lay there wearing her belted monokini, her olive oil, and the fleshy V of her frown. She leant back and said,

“I took her breakfast in bed, but of course she still hates me … I suppose everyone hates me. Especially a moralist like you. And this is just a question of common decency. So come on, let’s hear it.”

Keith produced a fresh packet of Cavallos (a local brand) … In
Emma
, it was as Mr. Knightley reproached her for publicly ridiculing a defenceless woman that Emma Woodhouse realised, in the novel’s key scene, that she was in love with him.
Realised
—for in the world of
Emma
you could be subconsciously in love. At the picnic on Box Hill, Emma was cruel to Miss Bates (the kindly old virgin), and Mr. Knightley told her so … Keith, then, might have paraphrased Mr. Knightley, and said,
Were she your equal in situation—but, Scheherazade, consider how far this is from being the case. She is poor; she has sunk from the comforts she was born to; and, if she lives to old age, must probably sink more. Her situation should secure your compassion. It was badly done, indeed!
But Keith didn’t say that. He said,

“Hates you? Not at all.”

“Everyone hates me. And I deserve it.”

If Keith paraphrased Mr. Knightley, would Scheherazade realise, at last, that she was in love with him? No, because things were different now. And what had changed? Well, Emma’s colloquy with Miss Bates,
on Box Hill, was not about busts and backsides and (by implication) a day of shame at a sex tycoon’s; and as she girded herself for censure, Emma did not face Mr. Knightley topless; and Gloria was not, or not yet, a spinster. All that, and this. In 1970, you could no longer love subliminally: the conscious mind worked full-time on love or what used to be love. Anyway, why would he censure Scheherazade? On the west terrace she had shown a vulgarity and a sexual vanity, and an ordinariness, that at this point he could only commend. He said,

“It was unlike you. But relax. We’ve all got to toughen up a bit. You’re too soft-hearted. You were upset. You had that business with Adriano. I—we felt for you.”

“Did you? Thanks. But that’s just the other side of it, you see. Sentimental-brutal. Poor character.”

She lay back and closed her eyes. There was a five-minute silence, and Keith silently observed it, with increasing strain. He inspected his Italian cigarette, his Cavallo. There was the tube of paper, there was the filter; all it seemed to lack was tobacco. He lit it, and the flare scorched his nose for an instant, and then it was gone.

“That looks like a habit well worth sticking to,” said Scheherazade, with her smile, the smile in which her whole face participated. And she went on more lethargically, “Still, there’s no excuse for that … You see, she couldn’t retaliate, could she. Mm, I suppose she’ll retaliate when Jorq gets here … You know, I think she’s slightly on the make, Gloria. A bit of a gold-digger. In my opinion … You’ve met Jorq, haven’t you. It can’t be his looks that attracted her, can it.”

Lighting a Disque Bleu, he wordlessly but emphatically agreed. And it heartened him that Scheherazade’s
spots of commonness
(as George Eliot would very soon be identifying the weaknesses in an otherwise impressive young man) were still visible. She said,

“Her dad used to be a gentleman diplomat. And ended up earning a crust on the Census Board in Edinburgh. She used to be rich, and now she isn’t. She can’t help that. Any more than she can help her backside … The champagne, though. Horrible of me. I just showed I’m a worthless bitch. That’s all.”

And this too filled him with faith. But he said, “No. No. Come on, make allowances. It must’ve been very confusing, Adriano taking your hand. Like a child. It churned you up. You weren’t yourself.”

“… That’s nice of you to say, but it’s a bit elaborate, isn’t it? It was
just vanity. Slut vanity. Those boys in Ofanto. I astonished myself. I
minded
. Because I’m supposed to be the centre of attention. Of undivided attention. It’s pathetic.”

He waited.

“I’ve never felt like this before and I don’t like it. This—catty agitation. Does everyone feel like that? Is that what all this is? A contest?”

What all this is
. So it’s not just me, he thought. We all sense it: the reality of that frightening thing, social change. What all this is? A contest?
Yes
, he would have said if he’d known.
Yes, my dear Emma, this is a contest that is coming, intersexual and intrasexual: a beauty contest, a popularity contest, and a talent contest. There is more display, comparison, staring, noting, assessing—and therefore more
invidia. Invidia: that which is unfair, and likely to arouse resentment and anger in others.
It is a contest, and therefore some will fail, some will lose. And we will find many new ways of failing and losing
. He said,

“It’s a sea change.”

“And then,” she said with a roll of the eyes that took her whole head with it, “there’s
still
Adriano. Equally ridiculous. You can’t do that, can you. Sleep with someone because of an idea.”

People do, he thought. Pansy did. “Frieda Lawrence did. What will you tell him?”

“I’ll just say that I tried, but found that my heart lies elsewhere. Et cetera.”

Keith was finding all this very uplifting:
absolute witch, worthless bitch
, plus
slut vanity
—and how good it was to hear Timmy reduced to an
et cetera
. She said,

“Well with Adriano, at least, it never really started.”

“Didn’t it?”

“No. Just holding hands. Just holding hands—which is ironic, I suppose. He kissed my neck, but it was always then that I told him to stop.”

Now Keith reassessed the dependability, and the satiric gifts, of his girlfriend, whom he could see, coming forward in slip and flip-flops on the east terrace. Scheherazade said,

“I thought I’d suddenly relax one night and we’d see how we went. I thought I’d suddenly relax. But I never did. I felt I could’ve managed it physically, but I never really trusted him. Can’t think why … If only he’d get someone else. Then I’d feel easier.”

Lily moved through the grotto.

“Time to take Gloria her lunch, I suppose. And she’ll still hate me. Did you see it? Did you see the way she cried?”

Scheherazade went. Lily came. Keith hoped for instruction from
Vanity Fair
—at the feet of its effortlessly dishonest heroine, Becky Sharp, who lies, cheats, and whores around automatically and by instinct: another of nature’s infidels. So Becky helped. But the novel that would guide him into the next phase of his story was one he read six years earlier, when he was fifteen. Bram Stoker’s
Dracula
.

The muscular little charcoal birds, thirteen of them, were working, climbing, far above the mountaintops. Nearer the ground, the yellow
canarini
(they were actually much bigger than canaries) gave a sudden unanimous cackle. They weren’t laughing at him, he realised, or not at him in particular. They were laughing at human beings. What was it about us that they found so funny?

We’re
birds
!
they were saying.
And we fly! All day we do what you do in your dreams. We fly!

Lily was reading a book called
Equity
. She turned the page. They were all of them very young, they were all of them neither one thing nor the other, they were all of them trying to work out who they were. Scheherazade was beautiful, but she was just like everybody else. Tomorrow, thought Keith: the historic opportunity.
Carpe noctem
. Seize the night.