The Pregnant Widow (39 page)

“And she did? … Why?”

“She was—I don’t know. Going along with the spirit of the times.”

Lily said, “And you went through with it?”

“Of course I went through with it.” To be perfectly frank with you, Lily, I’d had a very bad run. Which was set to resume, with Dilkash and then Doris. “Okay. Far from ideal. But of course I went through with it.”

“And what was it like?”

“Straightforward.” And then we lay there for about three hours, Lily. And listened to Rita putting Arn through it next door. “Straightforward.”

“What you did. That’s something like a breach of trust. In my legal opinion. You should have talked to her … I’m surprised you were
able.”

“Oh fuck off, Lily. Talked to her?” Trying to get girls to do the next thing—that’s taken up half my life. “I wasn’t going to tell Pansy to put her pants on.”

“It was sort of rape, in a way.”

“No.”
This accusation had of course already been levelled at him. By the superego: by the voice of conscience, and culture—by the voices of the fathers and the presences of the mothers. “No. I suppose I was just poncing off the spirit of the times. That’s all.”

“And you went on going round there.”

“Yeah. For months.” I was in a situation. And to be completely honest, Lily, I reckoned I could plate my way out of it. I thought, I’ll go down on Pansy a lot—and plate my way out of it. “I tried everything. I wrote her letters. I gave her presents.” I tried to plate my way out of it. “And I told her I loved her. Which was true.”

“Yeah. Slag for love … Maybe she liked you. She was just very shy and undemonstrative. Maybe she wanted to, really.”

“That’s kind, Lily. And I’d like to think it’s true.” But it wasn’t, and Pansy proved it. That addendum, for now, Keith shelved. He lit a cigarette and said, “In Montale in the nightclub I asked Rita what happened to Pansy. My great hope was that she’d turned out to be gay. But the Dog said—scathingly, mind. Scathingly. The Dog said she was back up north and going to get married to her first love.”

“So you and her … So it wasn’t really in her nature. That’s awful in a way, isn’t it.”

“Yes.”

“People doing it when it’s not in their nature. When they don’t want to. It’s worse, isn’t it, than people not doing it when they do. Want to. Somehow.”

“Yes.”

“Silly name, Pansy.”

“No it’s not. It’s just the name of a flower. Like your name.”

“… Hush now.”

… When he was a child—nine, ten, eleven, twelve—every night, every single night, he put himself to sleep with fantasies of rescue. In these vivid, eager thoughts, it wasn’t little girls he rescued but grown women: huge dancers and movie stars. And always two at a time. He waited in his rowing boat by the pier of the island fortress. Through the creaking and trickling he would make out the sound of their hurrying high heels on the lowered drawbridge, and then he would be helping them aboard—Bea in her ball gown, Lola in her leotard, and Keith in his school blazer and shorts. They fussed over him, and perhaps stroked his hair (no more), as he faithfully oared them to sanctuary.

Violet herself never appeared in these imaginings, but he always knew that she was the source of them—that she was the innocent captive, the wronged prisoner. The thoughts and feelings that had given him his aspirations of rescue he now cancelled. They were bitter to him.

He had been trying to enter it, for hours he had been trying to enter it, the world of dreams and death, from which all human energy comes. Around five he heard light-fingered rain as it dotted the thick glass.

T
immy, in a soiled silver dressing gown, sat unaccompanied at the kitchen table; he was doing the moron crossword in an old
Herald Tribune
. Gloria, in white T-shirt and her red cords, stood at the kitchen sink … As usual, Keith was amazed to see Timmy—Timmy going about his business on the ground floor. Why wasn’t he always upstairs with Scheherazade? The same applied to Jorquil. Why wasn’t he always upstairs with Gloria? But no. These two did other things. They even went out for long drives together, if you can credit it, in Jorquil’s Jaguar, prospecting for churches and cheeses …

Keith wanted to ask Timmy a question.
This may sound funny, Timmy
.
But can you think of
anything
religious about the pool hut?
Because Keith knew that this was the theme he needed. Now he came up behind Gloria and threw on both the taps. The weather, all by itself, was nearly noisy enough. He said,

“Look out there, Gloria. Brown sleet. And Jorq’ll be gone all afternoon.”

She glanced over her shoulder. Like Keith struggling with
Mornings in Mexico
or
Twilight in Italy
, Timmy was twisting around and scratching his hair.

“It’s my last day. Please. Meet me in the pool hut. Please.”

Gloria said politely, “What, to suck you off, I suppose.” With high efficiency she went on sloshing out glasses, Edinburgh-style perhaps (palm cupped over rim). “I know. There’ll be a brief smooch, and then I’ll feel these two hands on my shoulders.
I
know.”

Keith listened, but no inner voice counselled him. Where was it, that inner voice? Where did it come from? Was it the id (the
that:
the part of the mind that dealt with instinctive impulses and primary processes)? “I just want to kiss you
here,”
he said, and touched her midriff with his fingertips. “Once. You can come dressed up as Eve.”

“… Now that’s an interesting question. How do you dress up as Eve?”

“Eve after the Fall, Gloria. In your fig leaf.”

“Well. Terrifying weather, I admit. And it’s not even white any more, is it. Dirty snow. Now let’s think … I’ll fly down there in my swimsuit and you can fuck me on the bench—get some towels laid out. Then I’ll plunge in and fly back up. And Keith?”

“Yeah?”

“Speed will be of the essence. Ten thrusts, and that’s all. Ten? Am I insane? No. Five. No, four. And for God’s sake—be down there early and
get ready
. And hope the weather doesn’t clear. Half past two. Let’s synchronise our watches … Oh and Keith?”

“Yeah?”

“Which fig leaf?”

He told her the gold, and looked on as she walked away; then, weak with unreality, he poured himself a mug of coffee and stood over Timmy for a moment—the moron crossword, the virgin squares.

“Heinz,” said Keith.

“I beg your pardon?”

“One across.
Big name in baked beans.”

“What?”

“Heinz,” said Keith, who, in his time, had eaten a great many baked beans. “Beanz Means Heinz.”

“Spelt? … Good. Aha! Five down.
Alphabet’s twenty-sixth
. Three letters beginning with zed … No, but that’s a trick question, Keith. You see, this is an American newspaper. And that’s a trick question. It looks simple, but it’s not.”

Keith’s watch was quite normally going about its business. The hands said five to ten. Reasonably soon, then, it would be time to start getting ready in the pool hut.

“It’s fiendish,” said Timmy. “Here. One down.
Pluto’s realm
. What
are
they on about? Four letters. Beginning with aitch.”

He drew up a chair and said gently, “Let me help you with that.”

Adriano was alone in one of the stiff, still anterooms.

And Keith, pacing past, might have hurried straight on; but he was caught and held by it—the vision of deliquescence. Adriano quietly weeping, like a child, with his face in his soaked hands; behind him, the window, and the wet hailstones splatting the leaded glass, and then the shivering diagonals of their tails; and beyond that, the third echelon, the bamboo curtain of soiled snow. The tears were creeping out through Adriano’s bunched knuckles and even dripping on to his thighs. Who would have thought that the count had so many tears in him? Keith said his name and sat at his side on the low settee. Fairly soon it would be time to start getting ready in the pool hut.

After a moment Adriano looked up vaguely. There were his eyes, the lashes matted and dotted with droplets. “I—I laid it all before her,” he said.

“No good?”

Hesitantly Adriano reached out a moist hand for Keith’s cigarette; he puffed, he drew in, he coughed. And Keith wanted to put his arms around him—and even felt the urge to gather him on to his lap. Only the day before Keith had seen Adriano up on the high bar. Putting aside, for now, the frozen severities of his yoga, Adriano climbed the steel scaffold, where he folded himself tight, and whirled. And Keith thought of the large fly he had recently dispatched, and how it seemed to disappear into the maelstrom of its own death.

“I am not an innocent,” said Adriano, and gave a long rippling sniff. “It may surprise you to hear, Quiche, that I have known well over a thousand women. Oh yes. A handicap, in such matters, may turn out to be no handicap at all. And great wealth helps, of course. I do try very hard, you know.”

Keith was sceptical, but he wondered whether Adriano had had
time
to keep a list. “I’m sure you do, Adriano.”

“Oh, I am not an innocent … At first, with Scheherazade, my concern was purely carnal. ‘Love’ was merely the trusted stratagem. Our visit to Luchino and Tybalt in Rome seemed to have its usual effect. Oh, I make no apologies. A very stubborn case, Scheherazade. Then Rita, and the necessary change of tactic. A slender hope—but worth trying, I thought. Oh, I make no apologies.”

And Keith saw it all. Adriano’s girls were hired actresses. Luchino and Tybalt were hired actors: in reality, in kitchen-sink, Adriano came from a long and unbroken line of midgets—rich and noble midgets, no doubt, but necessarily non-combatant. Keith shrugged and said, “And then, Adriano?”

“Then suddenly love surprised me. It was as the proverbial lightning strike. Gusts of feeling such as I have never known. Scheherazade. Scheherazade is a work of art.”

“And now, Adriano?”

“What will I do? … I know that I cannot rest. Well then. I will go on a journey. In the wind I hear the word
Africa …”

And Keith, steadying, thought, Oh yeah, you’re a “character,” aren’t you. Go on then: join the Foreign Legion, the Legion of the Lost … Who were these
characters
, with their applied eccentricity? Jorquil was a character, and Timmy was turning into a character. Was high birth a prerequisite of being a character—giving you the latitude? No. Rita was a character. Rita was rich. Did you, then, need money to be a character? No. Because Gloria was a character; and Gloria, as she herself put it, was as poor as a church mouse.

“Goodbye, my friend. And please convey my respects to Kenrik. We may never meet again. I thank you for your kind words.”

“Fare thee well, Adriano.”

Already self-dosed on Azium (she would take another on the way to the airport), Lily was in their room on the dungeon floor, reading and resting and polishing her packing (which, tomorrow morning, she
would duly sub-edit). The clock said twenty to twelve: very soon, then, it would be time to start getting ready in the pool hut. In the thrumming, pumping heat of the pool hut. It was no longer snowing and was now only raining. But raining with diligence and drive.

I
n fact the day cleared at the very end of the afternoon, giving way, after a final curtsey of drizzle, to a rose-and-yellow dusk. Keith took more notice of the sky that evening, conscious, perhaps, of having recently neglected it. Its pouting pinks, its brothelly oranges. The sun put in a guest appearance, with a beaming smile, then exited stage left. Just before curtain-fall, a ripe, hot, fully limbed Venus climbed up into the darkening blue. And he was thinking that there should be a sky for every one of us. Every one of us should have our own peculiar sky. What would mine look like? What would yours?

Gloria was out there sketching the graph lines of the mountains, on the west terrace, and Keith went and joined her with his beer. He said,

“Good evening, Gloria.”

“Good evening, Keith.”

“…I was down there for four hours.”

She didn’t actually laugh, but she closed her eyes and tightened her lips and repeatedly cuffed her thigh with her hand. “Four hours. For four thrusts. No, that’s good.” She worked on with her head down.

“It’s warm again,” he said, and registered her low-cut emerald dress, the almost frivolous intricacy of her clavicles, and the warm hollows on either side of her throat.

“Now I wonder how it went,” she said musingly. “Let’s think. Down there nice and early, of course. Half past one? Making it all comfy with the towels. And quite hopeful until about half past three. Then less hopeful. Till you finally finished your wank,” she said, using the eraser and brushing the flecks away with her little finger, “and came back up and told Lily how much you loved swimming in the rain.”

In a voice of quiet concentration she went on,

“You’re lucky. You’re lucky she didn’t come down and give you a nasty surprise. You’d have had a bit of explaining to do. Sitting there with your cock out in the middle of the afternoon. But that’s your style, isn’t it.”

“My style?”

“Yes. Getting caught without even doing anything. Like with Scheherazade. And you didn’t even have the nous to see she’d changed her mind. Then a great smelly drug in a glass of
prosecco
. Pathetic.”

It was true: Lily’s witch radar was by now an obsolescent contraption—compared to the great array, the transcontinental NORAD deployed by Gloria Beautyman. And Keith himself? The radio ham with his lone aerial, his ginger beard, his weight problem, his diabetes … And he parenthetically wondered: In the whole post-Marconi period, worldwide, has a radio ham
ever
had a girlfriend? Gloria, still drawing, rubbing, shading, said quietly,

“Sometimes, at breakfast, Lily looks at you, and then looks at me, and then looks at you again. And not fondly. What are you doing to her at night?”

“Oh you know. Livening things up a bit.”

“Mm. On your birthday, I happened to bring off a perfect little crime. And now you’re trying to get caught
after
the event. Trying to get caught … what’s the word? Retroactively. Keith, you’re a proven incompetent … Getting the
drinks
mixed up. You should be grateful I went quiet about your beer.”