The Pregnant Widow (30 page)

Keith listened philosophically. This was just the sort of thing Nicholas liked best.

Aching. Yearning. Eating its little heart out. Poor Dilkash. Boffed and betrayed by her Keith. Dorked and disdained by her Keith
.

… Oh sure. Come on. I told you
.

All right. Frenched and forsaken by her Keith. Snogged and set at nought by her Keith
.

Come on. Not even
.

All right. Pecked and repudiated by her Keith. Now you’ll have to answer to Pervez and all his cousins and uncles
.

… I loved her, but what was the point? Dilkash—so
sweet …

Keith stopped calling Dilkash, without explanation. He couldn’t find them—words both true and kind. Or not untrue and not unkind. So he stopped calling Dilkash. As they exchanged goodbyes, on the night of the kiss, she said,
Well I’m glad it happened with someone nice
. And that he wouldn’t ever forget. But even then he thought—Dilkash, oh no, no, you’ll have to find someone much,
much
nicer than me. To take you all the way to the modern. Imagine. Holding hands—with your heart climbing into your throat. The touch of lips on lips—and the cosmos wheeling on its axle-tree. Is it time, Dilkash, to move on to the next stage?

No, I can’t be doing with these religious chicks
, he told Nicholas on the phone.
And before Dilkash I had that weird time with Pansy. Christ, I haven’t got it wet since the summer. You’ve seen how pale I am. Listen. This new chick has just moved into the flat, and I’m taking her out to dinner tonight. A single glance at her and you think, Yeah. She knows what the hell it’s all about. Little Doris
.

…
Keith stood on the battlements, stiffly nodding his head yes, and then loosely shaking his head no. Yes, he stopped calling Dilkash, and no, he didn’t write. He left her staring at the phone, and wondering what was wrong with it—her first kiss. And that wasn’t very nice.

Someone nice. Keith was nicer then than he was now, unquestionably. How nice would he be in September?

S
o with all that out of the way (it was now a quarter to four), he went down to the pool and immersed himself unreservedly in the near-naked
beauty of the wanted one—the every-inch beauty of the wanted one … Keith had long ago, oh, long, long ago worked out the best place to sit: behind Lily, and in some neglected and rundown corner of Scheherazade’s vision (and unmonitored, incidentally, by Gloria, who, with a spry yet censorious flourish, always turned and faced the other way).

The feminine body seemed to be made of pairs. The hair with its parting, even the forehead and its two hemispheres; then eyes, nostrils, septum, lips, the chin with its dividing indentation, the doubled cords and hollows of the throat; then matching shoulders, breasts, arms, hips, labia, buttocks, thighs, knees, calves. Only the navel, then, was mono-form. And men were the same, except for the central anomaly. Men had all the same dittoes, but also this central question mark. A question mark that sometimes became an exclamation point; and then went back to being a question mark.

Which reminded him. There was a good case for half an hour of vigorous incest: it might make Lily sleep so much the sounder. On the other hand, the business of detaching her from the group brought with it the danger of indelicacy—and he couldn’t have that. So he thought, Ah, fuck, I’ll just have a handjob. And he laconically took his leave.

At six o’clock he climbed out of a hot bath, did ten press-ups, and stepped into a cold shower. He shaved, and brushed his teeth and tongue. He clipped and filed his nails, upper and nether. Maintaining a stern expression, he blow-dried and—with formidably steady fingers—tonged his pubic hair. He dressed in jeans still warm from the tumble drier, and a fresh white shirt. He was ready.

T
here is an evening coming in, One never seen before
… By six forty-five Keith was bent over the salon drinks table, where he smoothly sprinkled the pre-atomised Azium into Lily’s
prosecco …
Of course, he had lectured himself about not staring or even glancing at Scheherazade until later on, so he avoided her face (with a puzzling sense that there was something wrong with it—some evanescent blemish) and merely scanned the outward mould and form, the presentation: black velvet slippers, white dress (mid-thigh) with a loose cloth belt, no brassiere of
course, and he could see the hip-high outline of what would almost certainly turn out to be her coolest … But it was different now. This was the birthday present (farcically undeserved) which he would soon unwrap, and these clothes were just packaging: it would all be coming off. Yes, the reptilian condition was upon him. There was only one possible future.

And he acceded to it. Tonight, he said to himself, I will relieve, I will soothe and salve the desperation of Scheherazade—I will give Scheherazade hope! I am the Rain God, and this is now to be.

At seven twenty, after a soundless approach, a man strolled in through the door with his knapsack on his back.

Keith had the coronary anyway. But it was only Whittaker, with the heavy mail.

“I am here,” he said, “and I bring the world.”

T
hey were in the dining room, now, and Keith’s watch already said seven thirty. This was surprising. In fact, something entirely new seemed to be the matter with time. He glanced again at his wrist. It was twenty to eight. The barbed second hand scurried across the dial like a fleeing insect; even the minute hand looked to be making resolute headway; and, yes, the hour hand itself was perceptibly towing itself northward, heading for night.

“I’m like Atlas,” said Whittaker, in his fawn scarf, his horn-rims. “Or maybe I’ll settle for Frankie Avalon. I have the whole world in my hands.”

The world. And there it was, the mailbag, the convict-woven burlap of the mailbag. And all the
Lifes
and
Times
, the
Spectators
, the
Listeners
, the
Encounters …

Keith eyed it, the world. The world was all very well, the world was all very fine and large, but what did it want with the castle in Campania, with Keith and Scheherazade? On top of this, Lily now handed him a thick brown packet, saying,

“For you.”

And while he attended to his local concerns (the staples, the cardboard zipper), they all started reading about it—about the planet earth … In retrospect, so long as you weren’t Charles de Gaulle or
Gypsy Rose Lee or Jimi Hendrix or Paul Celan or Janis Joplin or E. M. Forster or Vera Brittain or Bertrand Russell, 1970 was a fairly mild year—so long as you weren’t Cambodian, or Peruvian, or Rhodesian, or Biafran, or Ugandan …

“Mm,” said Gloria, who sat with her spiked crown inclined over a
Herald Tribune
. “They’ve passed the Equal Pay Act. But it won’t come in for years. girls’ pay.”

Whittaker said, “Nixon’s telling us it’s now or never with the environment. America must—I quote—
pay its debt to the past by reclaiming the purity of its air, its waters
. And then he goes and dumps sixty tons of nerve gas off the coast of Florida.”

“And the pitiful helpless giant is expanding the war,” said Scheherazade quietly. “Why?”

“And the PLO are claiming they killed the seven Jews in the old folks’ home in Munich.”

“There. They’ve banned cigarette ads,” said Lily. “What d’you say to that?”

She meant Keith, who was of course smoking. But he wasn’t talking. He had so far said nothing at all, not a syllable, not a phoneme. He was surer than ever about the sanctity of his vow of silence. But he had some shop to get through, now, and he said, with a parched rasp that turned every head,

“The date might be awkward.” And he explained.

Although he was yet to start his third year at university, Keith (rather unattractively, some may feel) had written to the
Literary Supplement
earlier in the summer and asked to be given a book to review—on trial. As a consequence, he had before him a heap of grey fluff and a loaf-sized monograph called
Antinomianism in D. H. Lawrence
by Marvin M. Meadowbrook (Rhode Island University Press). The stipulated length was a thousand words and the deadline was four days away. Lily said,

“Ring them up and tell them it’s impossible.”

“I can’t do that. You’ve got to try. You’ve got to at least
try.”

“A mere student,” said Gloria, “and already you’re trolling for work. Oh,
very
ambitious.”

“That’s what we’re all meant to be, isn’t it?” said Scheherazade, as she stood and then entered the long corridor.

Keith looked up. Scheherazade entered the long corridor, which was aflame with sunset. The heavens themselves colluded with him, and he
saw the last wake of light, cruciform, and burning through the cusp and join of her thighs and arse. And you could see the outward pressure of her tits, too, even from behind. Lily said,

“Do you know what uh, antinomianism means?”

“What? No. But I will when I’ve … when I’ve read eight hundred pages on it.”

Lily’s nostrils encouragingly broadened, and her gripped jaw gave a shudder. She said, as if leadenly working her way through a list, “You’ve read all the Italy stuff. And the poems. What else’ve you read?”

“Lawrence? Let me think … I read a third of
Sons and Lovers
. And the bit that says
cunt
in
Lady Chatterley.”

“Tsuh,” said Gloria.

“… Say
tsuh
again, Gloria. Go on. It’s like the tick of a watch. And I’m not swearing. That was just a quote from a pioneering writer.”

“Stop,” groaned Lily. “You’re making that wheedling sound.”

“Wait,” he said, with care, as Scheherazade returned. “Whittaker’s going to London on Tuesday. Aren’t you, Whittaker? Would you mind dropping an envelope in a letterbox?” He turned to Lily for a sentence. “I’ll speed-read it tomorrow and write the piece on Monday. I’m sorry, everyone, but it just means that I won’t be able to come to the ruins.”

“On your birthday,” said Lily. “On your twenty-first birthday.”

“I’m sorry, Lily. I’m sorry, everyone.”

Keith regrouped. All seemed calm and clear. It was already eight twenty. Now Whittaker sloped off to join Amen in the studio. More lights came on. One by one they went to the kitchen and filled their plates and returned. The world was all before them, and they ate like students in a JCR, but it was normal, it was social realism, it was kitchen-sink.
Lifes, Times. Good salad
, said a voice.
Could you pass the pepper?
said another …

Very suddenly indeed they were eating their fruit: it was ten to ten. Lily’s head dropped another inch, and her mouth was forming its tragic mask. Gloria got to her feet and started stacking plates and magazines. With some nonchalance, Keith put aside
Antinomianism in D. H. Lawrence
(it didn’t look that difficult and there was quite a lot about Frieda fucking everyone), and said,

“I was just thinking about sex in the afterlife.”

What made him break the second rule? He had broken the first
(don’t do anything); now he was breaking the second (and don’t say anything). What made him? Power, partly. The eastern side of every instant was aglitter with it, with class power and beauty power, infinitesimally added to (let’s not leave this out) by the power of inaugurating a vocation, of expressing himself in chosen words (while at the same time settling the immediate career prospects of Marvin M. Meadowbrook). But he couldn’t help it anyway. Because every breath he drew was now pure helium, and far, far lighter than air. It is over, and this is the climax of my youth, he thought, saying,

“With reincarnation I suppose it depends what you’re reborn as, a tiger, or a hyena, and in Israel they just sit tight, don’t they, till Judgement Day, and in Amen and Ruaa’s paradise they have girls but no boys, plus a nice kind of
prosecco
, Lily, Whittaker said, and as for us it’s not all over, because Gabriel told Adam that even in heaven the angels interpenetrate, and they …”

He stopped, he subsided, softly whinnying to himself, and looked round the company from under his brow. No one had listened. No one had noticed. Coolly Keith picked up an
Encounter
and opened it and frowned at it.

“I’ll leave you,” said Lily slowly, “to your cards. Oh, look. Oh no …
Let It Be.”

“Yes, isn’t that sad. The Beatles’ last LP,” said Scheherazade.
“Let It Be.”

With her hand resting flat on the side of her jaw, Gloria was saying, “The New English Bible. Bad idea, that … Tsuh, is that the time? Oh well. Jorquil has reached Monaco. And Beautyman must get her beautysleep. Lily, come on, we’ll go arm in arm … Trying to make it all chatty and modern. It’s sure to be a mistake, that. The New English Bible.”

“Gloria, I agree,” said Keith. “Bibles, bibles. I’m reading about bibles.”

“Oh? And?”

“Listen to this. It’s really quite funny. Listen to this. Some busybody, prick, and creep called the Reverend John Johnson got caught smuggling five thousand bibles into Russia through Czechoslovakia. And he’d already smuggled a quarter of a
million
bibles into Bulgaria and the Ukraine. What for? … Anyway, the stupid sod’s in a prison in Moscow. The very worst prison in Moscow.”

Keith felt the fumbling dig of Lily’s shoe on his shin. He looked up. And Gloria warmly began,

“Oh, that’s priceless, that is. Truly priceless. A little squirt like you saying that about an ordained missionary. And I’ll thank you to keep a decent tongue in your head when you talk about such things. To risk prison for your convictions. Excuse me, but I’m a Roman Catholic. And I’m in the country of my faith. Yes that’s right, I happen to believe in God. And I think that man’s incredibly brave.”

Keith said, “Tell me, Gloria, do you happen to believe in Father Christmas? No. Of course you don’t. You grew out of it. Of course you did. You know, it’s a pity Father Christmas isn’t featured in your holy book. Because you could’ve grown out of scripture too. Yes, a great shame Santa wasn’t at least
foretold
in the New Testament.” He went on reedily, “You know—There will come a man, at every Nativity, he will wear a red suit, fringed in white, he will ride through the air on a sleigh drawn by flying reindeers … It might have helped all you stupid sods to put these things in their true—”