The Revolt of Aphrodite (74 page)

“I’m not surprised” I said. “But then why?”

“Because. I do things backwards. Experiences don’t register with me while they are happening. But afterwards, suddenly in a flash I see their meaning, I relive them and experience them properly. That is what happened to me with you. One day by a Hollywood swimming pool the heavens opened and I suddenly realised that it had been a valid and fruitful experience—us two. We might even have christened the thing love. Ah, that word!”

“I took it as it came, with perfect male egoism.”

“I know; I suppose you thought we were just … what was your pet expression? Yes, ‘just rubbing narcissisms together and making use of each other’s bodies as mirrors’. Cruel Felix, it wasn’t like that; why you got quite ill when I left. Well then, I got quite ill too, but retrospectively, by that Hollywood pool, and within the space of a second; people wondered why I suddenly burst out crying. Really it is absurd. Then later I tried to build a film about us in Athens in order to cauterise the memory a bit; but that didn’t work. So I just had to let it dwindle away with the years. How absurd. Yes, the film got made, but it was rotten.”

She had spilt egg on her nightgown. It was so natural, so babyish.
I wiped her with my handkerchief, clicking my tongue reprovingly the while like a nanny. “Now Iolanthe, please be a good girl, won’t you, and obey Dr. Marchant to the letter? No originality, no tricks, no bright ideas. You have got to take it easily for some weeks at least.”

“But of course, my dear. But will you come and see me often, just to talk? Bring Benedicta if you wish.” She hesitated. “No, don’t bring Benedicta. I haven’t got rid of my dislike for her as yet. It would make me shy.”

“Come. Come.”

“I know. Sorry! But still….”

I stood up and removed the tray from the bed. “I’ll tell you more about Racky” she said, settling herself more comfortably in the bed. “I’ll tell you anything, everything. Now I feel at ease. Now my career is finished, the company bought out. I feel a new sort of relief. I have a little time in hand to do the things I want. See Bali properly, read Proust, learn to play the tarot….”

I didn’t want to ask her but I had to. “Tell me, do you feel the capacity for happiness inside you? Happiness!”

She considered. “Yes” she whispered as I stooped to kiss her forehead. “Yes, I do. But Felix everything will feel indeterminate until I meet Julian, the author of all my professional misfortunes.”

“How so?”

“I’m exaggerating of course, but he hangs over me like a cloud, always invisible. Have you ever seen him up close?”

“Yes, but only recently.”

“How is he? Describe.”

“He is coming to see you tomorrow.”

She sat bolt upright in bed, clasping her knees, and said “Good. At last.” Then she clapped her hands and laughed. Henniker came in to draw the curtains and remake the bed and I took the
opportunity
to take my leave. I was glad to. This first encounter make me feel weak; my knees felt as if they would buckle under me. I stumbled out into the garden with a feeling of suffocation and relief. On the way to the car I had a moment of faintness and was forced to lean against a tree for a moment and unloosen my collar.

On the way back home, at a deserted part of the road over the
moors, I came upon the black Rolls laid almost endways across the road in a fashion that suggested an ambush or a hold-up. As I hooted I recognised Julian’s car; his chauffeur replied with a warning ripple of horn like a wild goose sounding. What the hell? Julian was in the back of the car. I got out and opened his door; he was dressed as if he had come from some official reception. A black Homburg lay behind him on the rack, and in his hands he held a pair of gloves. The funny thing was that he was sitting with his head turned away from me, stiffly, hieratically. I had the impression that he may have been trying to avoid showing the tears in his eyes. Probably false—it was just a fleeting thought. But he swallowed and said: “Felix—for goodness’ sake—
how
is
she?
”
The intensity of the question was such as to bring on my shakes. I climbed in beside him and told him—I fear with growing incoherence—all about her awakening, her naturalness. “We’ve done the impossible, Julian. They talk of
portraits
taken from the life; but this is liver than any portrait. Liver than life. It’s bloody well
her
.”
I was shivering and my teeth began to chatter. “Have you any whisky Julian? I’m shaken to the
backbone
. I feel as if I am getting ’flu.” He pressed a button and the little bar slid out of the wall with its bottles and bowl of ice cubes. The telephone rang but he switched it off with an impatient gesture. I drank deeply, deeply. It was nectar. He watched me narrowly,
curiously
, as if I
myself
were a dummy, astonishing him by my
lifelikeness
. “Julian, you wanted this creature and we’ve produced her, it, for you. I wish you the
densest
happiness in the words of Benjamin Franklin. Her sex is more in the breach than the observance, though technically she could make love, Julian.” It was extremely tactless. He struck me across the mouth with his gloves. I didn’t react, feeling I had deserved it.

“You are babbling” he said contemptuously.

“I know. It’s pure hysteria. But I tell you Julian that on the present showing the damned thing is as real as you or I.”

“That is what I’d hoped.” Now his little white fingers were drumming, drumming upon the leather arm-rest. “How much does she recall?” he said. “Did she mention me at all?” I laughed. “You still don’t realise, Julian; she remembers all that Iolanthe did and more perhaps; we won’t know for a while until she has a chance to
develop her thoughts. So far though….” His eyes looked queer, vitreous; he hooded them with his heavy lids as he turned them on me, sitting there with his brooding vulpine air. He sighed. “When shall we meet, then?” he asked in a low resigned voice, as if he might be asking the date of an execution. I finished my drink. “Tomorrow, at tea-time. I told her you would be there.” I got out and banged the door on him. He put down the window to say: “Felix, please be there; remember we have never met. This is the first time.”

My nerves reformed by the whisky, I got back into the car, and felt a sudden wave of elation mingle with my exhaustion. I don’t know when I have driven quite so fast or taken so many risks. I was in a hurry to get back to Benedicta, for better or for worse, in
slickness
or in stealth….

It was so natural—Benedicta before the fire reading, with a sleeping kitten beside her, it was so familiar and so
reliably
real
that I was suddenly afflicted by almost the same sense of unreality I had had in talking to Iolanthe. The comparison of two juxtaposed realities like these gave me the queer feeling that might overwhelm a man who looks in the mirror and sees that he has two heads, two reflections. But she didn’t ask, she didn’t question; I simply slumped down beside her, put my head on my arms and went straight to sleep. It was dinner time when she woke me. Baynes had
unobtrusively
set out a tray in the corner of the room on a table which we moved into the firelight. By now of course I was as ravenous as a pregnant horse and bursting with euphoria. She looked at me
quizzically
from time to time. “I can see it’s gone well” she said at last.

“It’s not quite believable yet.” That was all I could say. We
embraced
. I exploded the champagne, laughing softly to myself like a privileged madman. “Eternity is in love with the productions of Time” says Will Blake. “You have nothing to fear Benedicta; drink my dear, let us toast reality awhile.”

* * * * *

I
t could have had its funny side, too, the meeting between Julian and Io—I suppose—to an objective observer. I mean that he for his part had dressed most carefully, his hair was neat, his nails newly manicured; moreover he had developed a new and stealthy walk for the occasion, a sort of soliloquy glide out of
Hamlet
. He was at pains perhaps to disguise his fear? Whereas now I had more or less got on top of my own anxiety—the primitive terror that all human beings feel when faced by dummies of whatever kind, representations of hallowed reality: an Aurignacian-complex, as Nash might have called it. I was indeed swaggering a little in my new-found relief. Like a young man introducing a particularly pretty fiancée. I smiled upon my
patron
indulgently as I led him across the green lawns and down the long gravel paths, Julian snaking slowly behind me,
rippling
along. He had brought a small bunch of Parma violets with him as an offering. But suddenly he threw them away and swore. I think he was saying to himself, “My God! Here I am thinking of her as if she were
real
, instead of just an expensive contemporary
construct
.” I chuckled. “You will get used to her, to it, very quickly Julian. You’ll see.”

Henniker was in the room when we arrived. She pointed;
apparently
Iolanthe was in the lavatory. Julian seated himself with the air of someone taking up a strategic position, choosing a chair in the far corner of the room. At that moment Iolanthe entered and
catching
sight of him stood stock still smiling her soft hesitant smile with all its shyness welling up through the superficial assurance. “Julian at last” she said. “Well!” And walking across to him took both his hands in hers and stood staring down into his eyes with a candour and puzzlement which made him turn quite white. “At last we meet” she said. “At last, Julian!” He cleared his throat as if to make some response, but no words came. She turned triumphantly aside
and got back into bed with the help of Henniker. “Henny, let us have tea, shall we?” she said in rather grandiose tones, and the older woman nodded and moved towards the door. Then Julian from the depths of a recovered composure said: “I don’t know where to begin, Iolanthe; or even if there is a place to begin, for I think you know everything by now. At any rate every bit as much as I know. Isn’t it so?” She frowned and licked her lips. “Not entirely,” she said “though I have made some provisional guesses. But now you own me don’t you? I wonder what you plan to do with me? I am quite defenceless, Julian. I am just one of your properties now.” His nostrils dilated.

His upper lip had gone bluish—like someone in danger of a heart attack. Iolanthe continued in a dreamy voice, almost as if she were talking to herself, recapitulating a private history to fix it more clearly in her own mind. “Yes, you were always there behind us, sapping us, sniping at us from behind the high walls of the company. How cleverly you disposed of Graphos too when you found he was my lover; I mean of course his career. He was very ill of course, that wasn’t your fault. And I kept expecting you to appear so that I could perhaps do a deal with you, plead with you, trade my body, even to save my little company, save my career. Nothing. You never did. Sometimes I thought I knew why really; I worked out reasons from what people told me about you—feminine reasons. Were they wrong I wonder Julian?”

The artless blue eyes, inquisitive and chiding, rested fixed on his face. He stirred uncomfortably and said:

“No. You know all the reasons. I don’t need to explain at this stage Iolanthe, do I? You haunted me just as much.”

He spoke gently enough, but at the same time I felt a sort of fury rising in him; after all, here he was being ticked off by a
dummy
for defections of behaviour towards an all too real (though now dead) Iolanthe! It was very confusing this double image. Moreover he could not lean forward and tapping her wrist say: “That’s enough now; do you realise that you are just a clever and valuable little dummy, fabricated by the experts of the firm? You are simply steel and gutta-percha and plastic and nylon, that’s all. So kindly hold your tongue.” He couldn’t do that, so he just sat still looking
stubborn
,
while she went on in the voice of reminiscence. “Yes, when the production company failed, when Graphos died and when my career collapsed and I got ill, I expected some word from you—after all so much of this had been your deliberate design against me. I was puzzled, thought I might find some sympathy, some understanding of my plight. But no, you were out to smash me and take me prisoner. And now you have, Julian. But for a long time I dreamed about you: about how you would appear one day, all of a sudden, without
warning
. Yes, sitting just where you are now, dressed as you are, and a little tonguetied for the first time in your life by a woman’s
love.
You see, part of my fantasy was to imagine that you loved me. Now I know I was right. You do. Poor Julian! I do understand, but when Graphos went out the mechanism rusted, broke, and now I have an empty space where the thing used to live.” She gave a short and sad little laugh. “I grew tonguetied.”

“Tonguetied” he repeated ruefully, seeming somehow put out of countenance. They looked at each other steadily, but with an
extraordinary
air of mutual understanding. Then she said: “But not any more somehow” and a renewed cheerfulness flowed into her. “I have half recovered from that period and perhaps so have you. Now there seems to be something else before us—I don’t know how to put it, perhaps a friendship? At any rate something unlike anything I have ever known before. Julian, do you feel it too?”

He nodded coldly, critically. His face betrayed no emotion
whatsoever
at this somewhat extraordinary speech. Then she added calmly, with an air of simplicity, a Q.E.D. air, which was
completely
disarming, “I don’t think I can do without you any more, Julian. It’s more than flesh and blood can stand.” It was terribly moving, the way she said this.

“Of course,” he said softly, greedily. “It’s the loneliness. No, you won’t have any more of that, I promise you.”

She extended her long languid waxen hands and he got up to take them and carry them to his lips with swift precision, yet without any trace of deep feeling. I could see however that the strain of his first interview with Iolanthe was beginning to tell on him as it had on me; he was being slowly flooded by the same unreasonable sensation of gradual suffocation. Just like me. We of course were both conscious
that we were talking to an experimental dummy; but she,
unconscious
as yet of her own unreality, was at ease and as perfectly
sincere
(if I can use the word) as … well, as only a dummy could be. What am I saying? It was an extraordinary paradox, for we were literally worn out by having to act a part while she was fresh as a daisy. One wanted to laugh and cry at the same time—how well I understood Julian’s desire to be gone! “Now there will be time,” said Iolanthe coolly “all the time in the world, to take a leisurely look at everything I have missed in my rush through life. Later maybe you may help me to rebuild my career once more; unless you think I am too old to act any more.”