by Amis, Martin
Chapter 2
Phoebe: The Business
Although we won’t even consider doing this point by point and blow by blow, we may as well start with the first date. Everything was decided on the first date.
It was 1976.*1
Kontakt
Martin met Phoebe – no, he picked her up, he pulled her – one April afternoon on a side street near Notting Hill Gate. The hub of the operation was a phone booth.
There was the quiet road half full of writhing shadows (bristly elms all asway in the weather), and there was the phone booth, slobberingly coated in thick red paint, and massively seized into the paving stones. Within, behind the glass, giving silent instructions to the black club of the mouthpiece, was a slender young woman with henna-coloured hair. She wore a tailored business suit – pale yellow.
Taking this in, he walked on for a few seconds, then hesitantly turned back, and stood there, a one-man queue (patting his pockets as if for loose change). She looked out and their eyes met and he made a gesture of reassurance, dismissing the very notion of hurry. From then on he gazed at the trees and the shadows, but he was continuously aware of her shape and mass, continuously aware of the exact space she filled…
He wondered at the strength of the attraction, because slenderness was not in itself compelling to him (the girls he liked usually had a few extra pounds on them – and now and then a few extra stone). She wasn’t beautiful. Was she pretty? He couldn’t quite tell. If good looks had to do with symmetry, as was being widely claimed at the time, then it was a test she failed. She wasn’t ugly-beautiful either. Was she perhaps ugly-pretty? Or something else, something other…
Anyway he realised, with near despair, what he was going to have to do. He was going to have to try…At that moment his confidence fell away, as he readied himself for an interlude of stark vulnerability – but girls, women, very seldom actually laughed in your face, and besides when you feel like this, he told himself, there’s no choice: you’ve got to try, you can’t not try, you’ve got to at least try.
You do it nice, mind – and then you throw yourself on their mercy…
He waited. The breeze had died, disclosing a settled humidity that now crept up into his armpits. Martin seldom seemed to go out with girls from his own niche or echelon (bookish bohemia), but now he felt, with a rush of real glandular daring, that the woman in the booth was very much not like him, was from an alien moral sphere…
She shouldered the door open.
‘Oof.’
Then she paused (to make a note in what looked like a pocket diary). All right: she was lightly bronzed, the auburn hair had been recently and professionally primped (it now lay in moist coils and runnels), and there was the business suit and the business shirt (and the business shoes). But the face itself was not businesslike: not cunning, not even particularly shrewd, just sensible and amused. She took four or five steps in his direction, and her walk, with its looseness and ease, told him something new about her body: she liked it (which was a very good start).
‘Oh I’m so sorry that took as long as it did.’
‘Well,’ he said in a thickened voice (and this wasn’t a line of his – it was helplessly untried), ‘I’ll forgive you if you’ll have dinner with me.’
‘What? Repeat that please?…Yes, I thought that’s what you said. Now why would I mind whether or not you forgive me? What do I get out of it?’
He said, ‘Oh come on, it’s nice to be forgiven. Then you won’t be tortured by your conscience.’
‘Mm, well, that’s an incentive.’
This human engagement was already pleasant, meaning also humorous, and there was a cautious levity in the air between them. For a moment he thought that her eyes were perhaps fractionally misaligned. But it wasn’t that. Her eyes were just unforthcoming, and colluded not at all (it seemed) in the candy-like glow of her smile. The mouth was wide but the lips were economically lean. He said,
‘And it’s your own fault. You’re very compelling.’ Was it her figure? ‘You forced me to find the courage to ask. I mean that. You did. Go on, have dinner with me. I so want you to.’
‘…D’you do a lot of this? Trolling round street corners on the off-chance?’
‘Christ no. It’s much too nerve-racking.’ Her flesh, he decided, was bronzed from the inside, and faintly red-tinged (Cheyenne, Choctaw, Mohawk). ‘That’s all you’ve got to do. Have dinner with me. Then you’ll regain your peace of mind.’
‘…I’m considering it. You’re a bit young. Can you even afford dinner? I’m thinking of the donkey jacket.’
‘It’s not a donkey jacket!…It’s an overcoat.’
‘And the girl-length tresses. And you’re also on the short side, aren’t you.’
‘Yes. And I’ve got a crap name too. Martin. But I can afford dinner. Don’t forget that short men try harder.’
The asymmetry – it wasn’t in the eyes. It was in the mouth. Buck teeth? No. A slight awkwardness in the palate? When she grinned she looked frankly loutish, even feral – which, we’re afraid, awoke some unworthy atavism in him. She said,
‘Martin. Well it could’ve been worse I suppose…Now first and foremost, Martin, what is it you do?’
He felt no vulnerability here. About how he looked, certainly, and about how he dressed, certainly (like all the boys he dressed very hideously in 1976, and the less said on this shaming subject the better), but not about what he did.
‘I’m the assistant literary editor of the New Statesman.’ There was also the question of his two published novels – but he wasn’t going to bother a businesswoman with fiction (not yet). ‘And I write for the papers.’
‘Where were you before the New Statesman? Or is it your first job?’
‘Second job. My first job was at the TLS. The Times Literary Supplement.’
She straightened up. ‘Well I suppose you must be one of those people who’re very much cleverer than they look. Uh, listen. It would have to be tonight.’
‘Tonight is perfect.’
‘You see, tomorrow I’m off to Munich. D’you mind if we make an early start?’
‘The earlier the better.’
‘Okay,’ she decided. ‘I’ll book the place on the corner…So! Come to my apartment for drinks around five-fifteen?’ She gave him her card. ‘What it says on the bell’s Contact, with kays. Kontakt.’
So I went round there
‘So I went round there,’ I told Christopher the next morning (we were in his office on the political floor of the New Statesman; it was not much bigger than a sentry box and known as the Hutch of the Hitch).*2 I continued, ‘Mansion flat in Hereford Road. Sort of traditional but quite flash. In a grown-up way. Like a Harley Street waiting room. Very much not a bedsit.’
‘Or a hippie hell.’
‘Very much not a hippie hell. No. And she answered the door in another business suit. Tea coloured.’
‘Ah. A whole new episode of Peyton Place is opening up before me. What have you gone and done now, Little Keith?’
‘Hang on. Her parlour. No books. Well, a few financial thrillers – oh yeah, including one called The Usurers. She’s not a reader, which is odd, because she sure talks like one. Fluent…A couple of old Economists and a Financial Times on the ottoman. And Phoebe. I began to think that her business suit looked like a uniform. Issued by someone else. I liked it. Uniforms are good.’
‘Erotically good, so they say. Why?’
‘I’m not sure, but they are…The apartment didn’t make you think of the future but Phoebe did, somehow. I kept imagining a kind of air hostess on a spaceship.’
‘A space hostess.’
‘Something weird like that. And the set-up…I really didn’t know what to expect. For a while I thought we were just going to sit there and have a pep talk about careers. Motivation. Office methods. Then she led me to this bar. Yo
u’d’ve very much approved of this bar, Hitch. In its own closet – a full bar and a wet bar too. With a sink and a little fridge.’
‘That bar’, he said, ‘fetches my respect. And what did you have, Little Keith?’
‘She advised me to join her in a Campari and soda.’ I shrugged.
‘A business drink.’
‘And a weak one too. Then we went and sat on the balcony and talked about nothing much till she said…all casual and conversational, This flat used to be on indefinite loan. Such a generous old friend. Alas he died rather suddenly just after Christmas. And it’s rented. I’m loth to move out, but as you can imagine it’s a sudden drain on my disposable. Whatever that is. It’s far too big. I won’t force the full tour on you, but you might like to see…And I still thought we’d shortly be having a chat about property values in W2. But then she gave me a different kind of smile.’
Yes, a different kind of smile. It featured the same touch of off-centredness, the mouth mis-angled as if by an overbite. It was not a smile so much as a very interested sneer. And unmistakably vandalous, too: there was a defiant, willed ignorance in it, and a kind of asociality; there was outlawry in it. And again my swamp-dwelling brain was transmitting a sick static, like a Geiger counter.
‘And she said, But perhaps you’d like to have a look at the master suite…Come on then. Bring your drink.’
‘…My dear Little Keith.’*3
* * *
—————
And within a matter of seconds Martin heard himself murmur, ‘Phoebe. What a very unexpected figure you have.’
‘I know. That’s what all the men are forever saying. Tits on a stick.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Tits on a wand.’
‘…Thank you, Martin, that’s a clear improvement. Tits on a wand. Plus the decent-sized arse of course.’ She went on dreamily, ‘That’s the second reason why women all hate me.’
‘Well it is a bit much.’
‘Yes it is a bit much.’
‘What’s the first reason? Or are the tits the first reason and the arse the second?’
‘No. The tits plus the arse are the first reason. The second reason’s this. I eat like a pig and never gain an ounce…Okay.’ At this point she had nothing on but her skirt and her shoes, which she now kicked off. As she raised the top sheet she consulted the (digital) bedside clock, and said, ‘No more talking. It’s five forty-five and the table’s booked for nine…Oh yes. Here’s another uh, surprising protuberance. Give me your hand.’
A moment passed. ‘Gawd,’ he said (it was originally gaw, with the d added to seem less juvenile). ‘It’s like a – a fist in a mink mitten.’
‘…Thanks again, Martin. Another improvement. Most men just notice how it sticks out and then say something impossibly vulgar about how gooey it soon gets.’
He said, ‘…It’s your boner.’
‘How extraordinary. That’s what I think of it as. My boner…Right. No more talking, but let me just give you a bit of advice, my young friend. A bit of advice that will stand you in good stead for the rest of your active life.’
* * *
—————
‘That’s nice. Your active life. And a timely reminder, Little Keith, of your inevitable…So what was it?’
‘What was what? Oh. Well the advice didn’t sound all that marvellous when she spelled it out…Hitch, have you ever watched a girl climb out of a business suit?’
‘Of course not.’
By now it was late morning, so we were in the Bunghole, the wine bar across the street, drinking hard liquor (screwdrivers for me, double whiskies for him). I said,
‘Or better, much better, have you ever helped a girl climb out of a business suit?’
‘Of course not. Why would I? I have no truck with business suits.’
Christopher was very attractive to women but remained, in my view (considering that this was London, in the mid-1970s), inexplicably unpromiscuous. He was an internationalist and a universalist, but his standard girlfriend was a Marxist and preferably a Trotskyist (and these affairs were durable, dutiful, and, it seemed, grimly dialectical). At first I used to think, Yeah, that’s all fine for now – the girls will win you round…But Christopher was strafed by propositions from various pampered beauties, all in vain. My lovelife he called Peyton Place, intending to evoke a series of coarsely repetitive encounters between members of the petty bourgeoisie. His lovelife I regarded as something drawn up not by Grace Metalious but by Rosa Luxemburg.*4 There would be one famous exception (but not yet, not yet): Anna Wintour.
‘You’re interested in the wrong revolution, mate. Free love, Hitch.’
‘Mm. Listen. Before you expatiate on the business suit, tell me what her advice was…Mart, you’re tranced. The advice that will serve me all my active life.’
‘Oh yeah. Sorry. Well. She said, and she said it in the tone of a patient agony aunt, she said, When you’ve got a real session in front of you, Martin, then this is the key. Don’t come. Those were her words.’
‘…Don’t come?’
‘Don’t come. Not till the very end. It’s the answer. I swear you’ll have a much better time.’
We both ordered fresh drinks.
‘And not coming till the end, Hitch–it transforms the whole experience. Three hours. A few rests and cigarette breaks, but no fucking around with recovery times or anything like that. And it improves your concentration. You steady yourself and you pace yourself. You settle down to it.’
‘I think I see…Is she older than you, d’you think?’
‘She’s taller than me. By a couple of inches. And yeah, she might have a couple of years on me too. Maybe thirtyish. She definitely had uh, seniority.’
‘Let me impress that on my memory. Just in case. Don’t…come.’
‘Don’t come. And I wasn’t going to come after dinner either. Not till the end. And I was thinking about the next morning, too, and worrying whether the not-coming rule would still apply. But then…She was surprising enough before dinner. And during. But after dinner she…’
Quality control
After dinner – Phoebe had soup with plenty of bread, potted shrimps with plenty of toast, a gurgling, farting beef stew, a crème brûlée with brandy snaps, and a double helping from the cheeseboard with plenty of oatcake – Martin proudly walked her back to Hereford Road, and looked on with some complacence as she marshalled her keys…The moral atmosphere Phoebe imposed was partly familiar to him; and that atmosphere was one of normlessness, of obscure improvisations and compromises, and rippled by counter-currents and different ways of going about things. Who cared, though, at this stage?*5 Awaiting ingress to Phoebe’s mansion flat, he was vibrantly intrigued. Now he moved closer and smoothed his hands over her hips, then her waist, then her midriff, cherishing great schemes and projects, huge exertions and initiatives, epic undertakings…
‘Is that your middle name?’ he mouthed into her brown nape. ‘Kontakt?’
‘That’s there for business reasons.’ She turned. ‘I’m plain old Phoebe Phelps. Well. Goodnight!’
It was something more piercing than disappointment (it felt like a thrust, it felt like a spear through his very soul). But he at once regrouped and said lightly, ‘Oh, that’s a shame – but I understand. Munich tomorrow.’
‘Yes, tomorrow night…Come here a second.’
She stepped back out through the arch and into the firmly replenished breeze and the amber lamp. With an unlit cigarette poised between her fingers she slowly stretched her arms at shoulder height.
‘I’ll just have a lazy day and won’t even get out of bed before three. So it’s nothing to do with Munich…Even now I’ll be staying up for a while. And I won’t be washing my hair.’ She kissed his neck. ‘And it isn’t that I’m not…But no!’
He said, ‘In that case I don’t understand.�
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She considered him. ‘Ah, you’re looking all brave…Not what you had in mind. What you had in mind isn’t hard to guess. Mm, and then you’d round it all off with a sweaty one in the morning where you come as fast as you can. Then off to work on the tube with your bacon sandwich. Or am I completely wrong?’
He could have said she was wrong about the bacon sandwich; but he just waited.
Sadly, slowly, she shook her head. ‘The idea of that’, she said, ‘makes me think, God, what a waste, what a tragic waste. To me that seems truly feckless, just frittering it away like that.’
‘Frittering what away?’
‘The element of – of surprise. Why d’you put perishables in the fridge? So they don’t go off, they don’t “turn”. As you see I’ve got very firm views on how to keep things good and fresh. Based on principles I picked up, Mr Amis, from what I do.’
‘From the entrepreneurial sphere.’
‘Really obvious stuff like don’t live off your capital. And quality control.’ She was looking at him with general benevolence, diluted by amusement and some pity. ‘Why doesn’t everyone do it my way?…Well! Have you enjoyed our date?’
‘Oh yes. Very much.’
‘You may want to retire while you’re winning, Mart. You should – if it’s a quiet life you want. There are loads of girls who can give you a quick smelly one in the morning. Withdraw, retire. If you choose not to I’ll tell you what lies ahead.’
And she told him…To proceed with this, he already felt sure, would be to invite many varied hardships. Then she added,
