The Pregnant Widow (24 page)

“…
She’s right, you know,” said Rita, with a nod at Scheherazade. “I’ll be ogling yours all night. And Jesus, kid, when you move—seeing
you cross a room’s like watching a fucking thriller. Will they, won’t they? And you,” she told Gloria, “you look like you’ve got a fair pair swaddled away in that bloody hammock. You ought to whip it off, some nights, bint, and give us all a gawp. If you were in proportion, mind, you’d be even fuller than Schez! You don’t drink, do you, love. Me neither. Unlike some. Unlike some miserable little soaks I know … Right. Seconds, me. And thirds in a minute. I eat like a pig and I never gain. Girls hate me for that, Lil. And who can blame them? Anyone need feeding?”

Adriano, showing much white of eye, held up his plate.

“What are you on, Sebs darling—the beef? That’s the spirit. Anyone else?”

Kenrik sat slumped at the head of the table, with his arm curled protectively round a pitcher of wine. The other hand was conducting a series of very slow experiments with its fork. Keith said,

“Oh yeah, Rita. I was wondering. What happened to your wiggle? You’ve stopped wiggling. You’ve lost your signature wiggle. Show Lily. Wiggle your arse.”

Rita wiggled. And she did: she reminded you of a dog—she looked like a dog looks when you put on your overcoat and reach for the lead. “Again.”

Rita wiggled again and said,
“Ow
. Oof. No, Keith, I’ve got me reasons. Stay there and I’ll tell you for why. I’ll just ease meself …
Oof.”
She leant forward. “No more wiggling. See, the thing is, Keith, I’ve never been buggered so much
in me life.”

Kenrik’s dropped fork hit his plate with a crack.

“And it’s not just him either,” said Rita with a jerk of her chin. “And it’s not against me will or anything. Call me a pillow-biter, but all’s fair in love and war. Seb, is that sufficient, or could you fancy another chunk? No. It’s not just Rik. None of them can seem to stay out of there for long. And I know why. It’s because I’m a boy. I’m a boy, me. I’m a boy.”

Keith looked round the table. Lily, narrow-eyed and narrow-mouthed. Scheherazade, erectly concentrated. Gloria, emanating a potent coldness. Whittaker, frowning, smiling. Adriano, a child in shock. Rita said,

“I’m a boy. No tits. And no arse.”

“And no waist,” said Lily.

“Bless you, skirt, I almost forgot. And no waist. So they’re more or less duty-bound to turn me over, aren’t they. Especially if they’re that way inclined in the first place. Like Rik … It takes him back to his schooldays, see. He thinks about the captain of cricket. It’s the only thing that makes it stiffen. It’s the only thing that makes it stir. Isn’t it, love … Oh dear, everyone’s gone quiet. Have I put me foot in it again?”

Kenrik picked up a knife and lightly tapped its blade on his glass. The hum, the soft chime, took three or four seconds to fade.

“The first time it happens,” he began, “… the first time you and Rita make the beast with two backs … you think this is something you’ve dreamt of all your life. You think: So this is what a fuck is … All the others—they weren’t fucks …
This
is what a fuck is … But she’s not a boy … She’s a
bloke …
No, not even. Dirty as hell, I’ll give her that, and resourceful too—I’ll give her that. But no feeling for it … The first time it happens, you reach out a hand. Then the next thing you know, she’s got her thumb up your bum and one of your nuts down her throat. And the other one tucked behind her ear for later. And all four eyelashes are batting at your tip. Her
eyelashes
. Then you do everything else. That’s the first time, and it’s great. And then it’s … You know what she does? She shakes you awake in the middle of the night, and if you’re too tired then she seriously tells you you’re queer.
You hate women
. Whereas, in fact,
she
hates women. And she hates men too. Keith. Keith. Imagine shaking Lily awake, and if she doesn’t come across she’s a dyke. Or a snob. Or frigid. Or religious.
No mere guy
behaves like that. No guy who isn’t already locked up behaves like that. And she thinks she’s such a great fuck. And she is. But she’s not. No talent for it. No talent … Because no … No sympathy. There.”

Rita had listened to him with her head rhythmically idling on her neck. She said,

“Ah, he’s after sympathy, is he. He’s after pity. Because he’s terrified. He wants his mummy. You’re just old-fashioned, love. You’re like second-hand furniture. See, for Rik, what he likes is a nice little simperer—a simperer with a sopping hanky. Ooh, you mustn’t. That’s rude, that’s
bad
. Oh go on then, you animal, do your worst. I promise I won’t enjoy it. God, were we ever as dull as that, us birds? Were we ever as
bloody dull
as that? … Now who’s coming dancing. I want to wag a hip. Time for me limbo.”

I
talians are intriguers. Italy is a nation of intrigue
. This axiom was coined, or passed on, by Adriano—who, in the mid-evening lull (the lull that follows every trespass, every trampling, as the contestants run their damage checks)—lingered in the dining hall: just the two of them, and Rita gazing into Adriano’s eyes as if he was the only man who had ever really understood her … Italy and intrigue: this was the land of Cesare and Lucrezia Borgia, of Niccolò Machiavelli, of Alessandro Cagliostro, of Benito Mussolini. Keith Nearing, all clogged up with the English novel, had recently entered into that obscure specialism known as nonfiction—specifically, modern Italian history; and he found there a world of make-believe.

Not until this summer had Keith tried his hand at manipulation, and his first finding was that it kept you occupied. Keith was busy. He was not as busy as Benito Mussolini, who claimed to have transacted 1,887,112 items of business in seven years (or a major decision every thirty-five seconds, with no days off), and logged 17,000 hours of cockpit aviation (as many as a full-time pilot over a whole career), while also reading 350 newspapers every morning, and always finding time, every afternoon, for a pentathlon of violent exercise, and, every evening, for an extended interlude alone with his violin. Keith didn’t have as much on his plate as Mussolini (and Mussolini, incidentally, was always wrong); but he had to make his rounds.

And the sensation persisted. He seemed to be floating, drifting in and out of himself …

Seated with a glass of
prosecco
on the swing sofa at the edge of the west terrace, Lily was uncharacteristically engaged. She was stargazing—with her face at an angle, and with a frown of mistrust. It was a mistrust he momentarily shared: the constellations looked as though they belonged to another hemisphere. He said,

“Strange to think that they’re there in the day. You just can’t see them.”

“They’re not there in the day. They come out at night. Are you going along?”

He said he thought he would.

“Well I’m not. Rita’s appalling. Still. At least we know why. Why you mustn’t.”

“Yes, I suppose we do know why you mustn’t.”

“You’d better apologise to Scheherazade. Since you had to sick her on us.”

“I wonder if you know this, Lily.
Sick
, in that sense, comes from an old dialect version of
seek
. It meant
set a dog on.”

“You’re sick. And what are you looking so—so stoned about?”

“You’ll look after Kenrik, will you, Lily? You’ll take care of him.”

“Don’t go. Go on then. Did he mean
sympathy?
Or
empathy?”

“Uh, it’s the same thing. Etymologically. Sympathy.
With
plus
feeling.”

“Etymologically. Go on then. I’ll take care of him.”

“You looked wonderful at dinner, Lily. Your beauty is coming in. It’s here.”

Then of course he had to make it right with his hostess.

She was sitting at the backgammon board in the salon, and steadying with her hands a textbook (its subject was statistics) on the steep bluffs of her thighs.

“Phew,” she said. “That was … It was like one of those TV plays that carry a warning. So of course you’ve got to watch. Whittaker adored it too. What’s that language she speaks? Is it vernacular?”

Keith said, “It’s a sort of code. She talks to her friends in it, and they think you can’t understand. They just put an
a
and a
g
in the middle of everything. Day-ghed pay-gosh. Dead posh. Naygo. No. It’s easy. Except when they do whole sentences in it.”

“… God, the things people get up to. I had no idea. She makes me feel about three. It’s all working out perfectly, isn’t it. Rita and Adriano. Tonight I’ll sleep the sleep of the just.”

“You’re not coming?”

“I’m tempted, but I’d be in the way. Won’t you be?”

Well, the thing is, Scheherazade, I have to be out of the house. He said, “Maybe nothing’ll happen. Maybe Adriano’ll have the power to resist.”

“Naygo chan-cegg,” said Scheherazade.

And finally Kenrik. Who sat at the kitchen table, with a huge pot of coffee and a look of vacant equanimity on his face. He said,

“Sorry about all that. Now here’s an interesting theory. I just had a
nice chat with uh, the one with the arse, and
she
said—Gloria—
she
said that I never had a hope once Rita started paying for everything. She said women hate men who don’t pay for everything. They even hate you if you go Dutch. Girls can’t help it. Bred in the bone. Guess what. Adriano just came in and shook me by the hand. They’re down in the car.”

“I’d better go. You know, maybe she’s just too old for you. It was good, your after-dinner speech. But it won’t put anyone off.”

“The challenge, you mean? Mm. So. Boys are doomed to fuck the Dog. And they
should
fuck the Dog. But only if she’s going to Hawaii the next morning. For ever. Watch the way she dances.”

“You relax with Lily,” he said. “She’s nice and sensitive and demure.”

“Demure. Now
that’s
a turn-on.”

Keith made a further suggestion. And Kenrik said,

“Are you really serious? Why?”

N
ow he hurried down the stone steps, through the pale smell of sweat.
You see, Scheherazade, I have to be out of the house. So that Kenrik can sleep with Lily. And then, with that out of the way, I can sleep with
you … There were the stars, with their points looking cold and sharp: the visible tips of the pins God used to tack down the dark backing of the universe. And what of his own system, his personal galaxy, his Virgo, and the seven suns that remained to him? Before the summer is done, how many more will I extinguish?

The Rolls Royce gnashed and bristled. A clear view of the future would have sent Keith up the steps to Lily’s side, or into Montale, where he could start to thumb his way back to England. Keith reached for his packet of Disque Bleu. He thought, It’s a test of character. He paused. It’s my sentimental education. He lit a cigarette. He breathed in.

And breathed out, a third of a century later.

He cleared his throat, not with a growl (his usual method), but with a bark (like a rifle shot). Ten minutes earlier he had returned from an exceptional sortie to a place called the Smokeshack in Camden Town, and now, with a discoloured tongue boyishly extruded from the corner of his mouth, he was trying to attach various printed labels to the various packets, tins, cartons, and wallets that lay strewn all over his desk.
Smoking Makes You Look Sexy
, said one.
If You Give Up Smoking, You Will Probably Go Insane
, said another. Keith had broken up with nicotine in 1994, but now they were back together again, and very much in love.

Coughing and hoicking and retching and slightly out of breath, and again with much play of the smeared tongue and the trembling, haddocky fingers, he pasted a third label (in fact his own adaptation of a common health warning) to his current pouch of Golden Virginia. It said:
Non-Smokers Outlive Smokers by Seven Years. And Guess
Which
Seven
.

He stared at it with smarting, red-rinded eyes.

• • •

Recently, when he was out in the street, he used to think: Beauty is gone. He soon moved forward from this position, and thought: Beauty never was—there never was any. Both premises were resoundingly untrue. The draining of it, the draining of beauty, was taking place inside his own flesh and breast.

Beauty, present beauty, sat before him across the kitchen table.

“Well I’m bound to feel a bit of a prick, aren’t I,” he said to wife number three (they were discussing that encounter, in the Book and
Bible, with wife number one). “Twenty-five years of cross purpose. A whole lifetime. If you hadn’t rescued me, my darling.” He sipped his coffee. “I could’ve been a poet.”

“You’re a respected critic. And a teacher.”

“Yeah, but I could’ve been a poet. And all for what? All for a—all for a
session.”

“Look on the bright side,” she said. “It wasn’t just any old session, was it.”

“That’s an extremely positive way of thinking about it. Still.”

“It made your eyes come out on stalks for a whole year.”

“Two years. Longer. Three. That was part of the trouble.”

“Think of it as what you had to go through to get me.”

“I will. I do.”

“You’ve got your boys, your girls, and your womie.”

“I have my womie. You know, all this started weeks ago. There’s something else. There’s this other thing. I don’t know what it is. It can’t be to do with Violet, can it? How can it be?”

And he went back across the garden through the April shower. But now it was May.

• • •

Encrypted in mirror writing, and placed at the foot of the page, point three in the revolutionary manifesto was a kind of sleeper clause, implicit but unintended and still imperfectly understood. It was this:
Surface will start tending to supersede essence
. As the self becomes postmodern, how things look will become at least as important as how things are. Essences are hearts, surfaces are sensations …

As he opened his eyes that morning, Keith thought, When I was young, old people looked like old people, slowly growing into their masks of bark and walnut. People aged differently now. They looked like young people who had been around far too long. Time moved past them but they dreamt they stayed the same.