Dead Romantic

by Simon Brett

Julian spread out his hands. ‘Not a lot around for anyone at the moment. Graham’s got some Nips on the go downstairs. . . Madeleine’s got her usual A-level English casualties, one potential Oxford candidate. . . That’s about it. It’ll pick up.’

  ‘Oh yes. I wasn’t worried,’ Then, trying to sound casual, he asked, ‘Is Madeleine in today?’

  Julian didn’t seem to notice anything unusual about the question. ‘Think so.’ He glanced at a schedule on his desk. ‘Yes, she’s got one of her pimply youths at eleven. She’s good, you know, Madeleine. Gets results.’

  Bernard nodded, smiling, and moved towards the door. Then, with strange formality, he said, ‘Let’s hope I can do the same.’

  ‘Yes. Let’s hope so.’

  Julian flashed a grin at his departing tutor. When Bernard had gone, the grin spread. Seemed ideal, the new man. A bit naive, obviously, but in the past Julian had found that that was a good thing. The ones who had to go were those who were too assertive, who tried to tell him how to run the place. But someone like Bernard Hopkins, undemanding, biddable, he was the sort who could be a good long-term prospect. Like Madeleine.

  Julian reached for the phone. There was a young housewife in Hove who, with her children suddenly off her hands, had decided she wanted to improve herself and take a couple of A-levels. She had said she was stuck at home most of the day. He wondered if she might be free for a tutorial early that afternoon, before the children came back from school. He needed to sort something out. It was not only the business side of his life that would remain quiet until the summer influx of foreign students.

  He got through and immediately recognised her voice. Deepening his own, he murmured, ‘Darling. Hello. I find I’m thinking about you more than a married man should.’

  Julian Garrett was not married. But he had found in the past that, when he was bringing a little romance into the lives of married women, claiming a wife of his own could prove a useful alibi, explain broken assignations and protect his privacy.

  Madeleine Severn had met her pupil as she walked along the road towards the school. She recognised his tall, gangling outline ahead of her, and quickened her pace to catch up. ‘Paul!’ she called out.

  Paul Grigson was so deep in a dream compounded of his guilt, of his sense of failure and of Madeleine Severn, that he did not at first respond when one third of it called out to him, and she had to tap him on the shoulder before she could engage his attention. ‘Paul,’ she repeated, more intimately.

  He turned to face her, now so close to him, and his mouth dropped open at the sudden manifestation. He had, she noticed, a little crop of white spots on his inexpertly shaven chin. His nose seemed bigger than ever, and his black hair, which his mother insisted should be cut in conventional style, had been brushed up in an ineffectual attempt to achieve something more modern. He wore, as if he hated to be seen in it, a black school mackintosh, beneath which black jeans, which were tight (but not tight enough to satisfy current fashion) tapered down to white towelling socks and black slip-on shoes.

  ‘Now, you can’t pretend we’re not going the same way,’ said Madeleine. ‘So, if you don’t mind being seen in the street with your teacher . . .’

  Paul, for whom the idea was an approximation to one of his dearest fantasies, gulped that no, he didn’t mind.

  ‘Really autumnal today,’ said Madeleine, and drew in the air through her nostrils.

  Paul, too, took a gulp of air, but all he could smell was the sweet, flowerlike perfume of Madeleine. Adolescent despair swooped down on him, despair at the sheer impossibility of life, at the huge unbridgeable gap between his desires and their ever being fulfilled.

  ‘Did you get that essay on ‘The Eve of St Agnes’ done?’ asked Madeleine

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Paul. ‘Yes. Yes, I did. I shouldn’t think it’s any good, though.’

  Bernard was just coming down the stairs into the hall as the front door opened and Madeleine walked in, followed by her attendant. Bernard and Madeleine stopped. Spontaneous smiles came to both their faces. They moved towards each other and met in the middle of the black and white tiles.

  ‘Funny, I was just thinking about you.’ Bernard’s words were no more than a statement. He did not infuse them with romantic emphasis as Julian Garrett might have done.

  ‘That’s nice,’ said Madeleine. ‘Think of the devil . . .’

  ‘Hardly.’ He grinned awkwardly, suddenly ill-at-ease. It was as if he had been rushing headlong beyond his usual speed and had now stopped, swaying, almost overbalanced.

  But Madeleine still smiled, and her smile injected another surge of that confidence which the timing of her arrival had given him. Emboldened far beyond his normal range, he found himself saying, ‘Look, I have to stay in town late tonight. Got to go to the Metropole at nine, give a Turk some conversational English. I wonder if there’s any chance of a drink early evening . . . ?’

  The words were out, all in a rush, too quickly. He flinched in anticipation of the rebuff.

  To his amazement, he saw a broader smile on Madeleine’s face and heard her voice saying, ‘Yes. That would be very nice.’

  ‘What time do you finish today? Have you got an afternoon class?’

  ‘Yes. I’m through at six.’

  ‘Shall I meet you here?’

  Madeleine shook her head gravely. The loose roll of red-gold hair quivered. ‘By the entrance to West Pier. Half-past six.’

  With that, not looking at him, secure in her mystery, she moved forward to one of the dark grey doors, reaching for a bunch of keys in her handbag.

  Bernard was so uplifted that he was unaware of leaving the building.

  Unaware, too, of the fierce hatred with which Paul Grigson’s eyes burned into him as he passed.

  Chapter 4

  ‘Beyond a mortal man impassion’d far

  At these voluptuous accents, he arose,

  Ethereal, flush’d, and like a throbbing star

  Seen mid the sapphire heaven’s deep repose;

  Into her dream he melted, as the rose

  Blendeth her odour with the violet, –

  Solution sweet: meantime the frost-wind blows

  Like Love’s alarum pattering the sharp sleet

  Against the window-panes; St Agnes’ moon hath set.’

  Madeleine lowered the book. In her teens she had taken elocution lessons. She knew she had a good reading voice, and she had just used it. ‘There now, wouldn’t you agree that that’s sexy?’

  Paul blushed. ‘I suppose it could be,’ he offered cautiously.

  ‘No “could” about it – it is. Keats was the supreme poet of the senses.’

  ‘You mean . . . sensual?’ It was a word he had read in many books that had been passed around at school.

  ‘If you like. He felt, he was open to sensation, and he could express it. He once wrote “let us open our leaves like a flower and be passive and receptive – budding patiently under the eye of Apollo”.’

  ‘Passive’ was another word that Paul had come across in the same books, but he did not raise it as a point for discussion.

  ‘So, you see, in ‘The Eve of St Agnes’, we feel the sheer power of Keats’ sensuality. In that stanza he is expressing the “solution”, the mingling if you like, of these two people, the ultimate togetherness in which the two of them become one. Do you understand?’

  Paul thought he did. Thought even that he could contribute now to the discussion. Gulping and assuming what he hoped was a man-of-the-world air, he said, ‘You mean in that stanza they, like, have it off?’

  Madeleine gave a slightly petulant toss of the head, fluttering her red-gold hair. ‘Whether they actually make love or not is not important. One doesn’t have to be too literal about poetry – particularly Keats. What I’m trying to show is how the sequence of images builds up the sensuality to a climax . . .’

  Paul nodded. Another word he’d come across.

  ‘. . . expressing the ultimate fusion, the communion of the two lov
ers.’

  ‘Mmm.’ Paul tried to look grave and mature and receptive, but he was finding it difficult. He always found being alone with Madeleine difficult. He was achingly numb in her presence. Her eyes seemed to see more deeply into him than any other eyes could. He was aware of her every movement, almost as if she moved at the twitching of his own nerves. He loved to be with her, spent much of the time when he was not with her thinking about being with her, and yet in her presence he hurt.

  He recognised that what he was feeling was love, or a form of love, but he had never before realised the ache, the attendant hopelessness that love could bring. She was so far above him that even to think of her in that way seemed an impertinence.

  There was also the physical embarrassment of being with her. Puberty, or at least an awareness of it, had hit Paul Grigson late and, even as he approached his nineteenth birthday, he still felt his adult body to be an imposition, unfamiliar and dangerously booby-trapped. Thoughts of sex, ranging at lightning speed from hopelessly chaste worship of Madeleine to the crude animal displays of pornography, filled his waking mind, excluding, it seemed in moments of abject guilt, absolutely everything else. And these thoughts could move with the same lightning speed to the hair-trigger of his penis, furnishing what at times seemed a permanent erection, for which the moment was never appropriate. Indeed, for an eighteen-year-old hypersensitive virgin, there are few appropriate moments. The relief of masturbation, seized greedily in bed night or morning, or, more alarmingly, in lavatories (or anywhere else he believed to be private) at any time of the day, brought only brief respite and stirred such a foul brew of guilt and self-abasement that it could not be considered a satisfactory solution.

  When he was with Madeleine, the erection seemed perpetual. In spite of the nobility and chastity of his feelings towards her, it stood fixed in mockery of him, causing constant embarrassment. He was aware of the maturity of the tutorial situation, teacher and pupil facing each other in chairs, but he longed desperately to regress to the safety of school, where a desk would shield his decency. He made much of positioning books and notes on his lap, but they did little to alleviate the discomfort.

  Madeleine was blithely unaware of her charge’s problem, but Paul didn’t know that and assumed that every look she cast in his direction pierced through to the root of his shame. This compounded and added a physical dimension to the pain he felt in her presence.

  Madeleine looked at her watch. ‘Oh dear. Gone over again. Look, I don’t want to leave Keats yet. I’d like you to have a look at. . .’

  She gave him his next task, and Paul scribbled distracted notes on the pad held firmly against his lap. Then Madeleine rose and crossed to the door.

  Gingerly Paul got to his feet. With some discomfort, and an adjusting hand in his pocket, he followed his idol out of the room.

  As he walked disconsolately home, Paul suddenly realised that Keats was sexy.

  Sexy, yes, but pure sexy. That was it. Madeleine had been right. The lovers hadn’t had it off in that stanza she quoted. Their . . . what was the word she’d used? . . . communion, yes . . . their communion had been too total, too spiritual to sink to mere orgasm. Their love didn’t need any shabby carnal encounter. It was above all that.

  It was like his love for Madeleine, something pure and sanctified. He felt a surge of confidence. He saw the way ahead for their relationship. It would be inspired by pure devotion, not sullied with lust. And that would make it stronger. They would reach heights of love unknown to those who merely indulged their bodies.

  He felt purged by the thought. A new dedication, a new meaning, a (had he known the word) new asceticism had come into his life. His erection, he noted with satisfaction, had respectfully withdrawn. No more masturbation, no more lust, just pure devotion from now on.

  He almost bounced up the garden path, as he took his front-door key out of his pocket.

  As soon as he was inside, the noise from the sitting-room reminded him that Bob was there. Bob had been a friend from the comprehensive, who had gone off to work in a warehouse when Paul had moved on (with limited success, as it proved) to Sixth Form College to take his A-levels. They had stayed in touch, maintaining a loose friendship based more on habit than on any surviving common interest. Bob had appeared at about ten that morning, after Paul’s mother had gone off to work, saying that he had the day off and he’d got a video he wanted to watch, and Paul wouldn’t mind, would he, if Bob used the VCR. Paul said he wouldn’t mind, but he thought his mother might. Bob said no problem, he’d be away long before she got back, go on, it’d be all right, and Paul had said, not without misgiving but without a valid reason for refusal, well, OK.

  Being with Madeleine had put all of this from his mind.

  As he pushed open the sitting-room door, he saw that it wasn’t just Bob who was watching the video. Three pairs of eyes turned guiltily towards him. The other two belonged to Tony Ashton and Sam Clegg, who had both also been at the comprehensive, friends of Bob’s rather than Paul’s, and who were now on the dole with, presumably, plenty of mornings to idle away watching videos. All three faces relaxed when they saw that the arrival was Paul and not his mother.

  But it wasn’t the party of spectators that caught Paul’s attention as he walked in. On the television screen which faced the door was a close-up of a woman’s mouth doing things to a man which he had only read about in books. A blurred sound-track of sighs and slaverings accompanied her movements.

  ‘Like what you see, Grigson?’ Tony’s voice demanded coarsely. ‘Blimey, look at him – goggling like a bleeding frog.’

  With a sick feeling of shame, Paul realised that his erection, so recently banished for ever, had sprung back to attention. He dragged his eyes away from the screen to the three sprawled with their backs against his mother’s sofa. There were beer-cans and empty crisp packets on the floor. ‘Look, you shouldn’t be here. I said Bob could come and watch a video, I didn’t say you two could.’

  ‘What difference does it make?’ asked Tony.

  ‘Well. . .’ The words were out before he could stop them. ‘My mother wouldn’t like it.’

  ‘Oh dear, oh lor’,’ said Tony in a mocking voice. ‘What a blooming disaster. Mummy wouldn’t like it. Mustn’t do anything Mummy wouldn’t like, must we? You great wally. I bet your bloody Mum still bleeding tucks you in at night.’ Paul just managed to stop himself from denying this charge. ‘It’s not just her. I don’t want you making a mess of this place either. I didn’t invite you.’

  ‘Oh, shut it. What harm are we doing?’ Tony reached with his left hand for a beer-can.

  ‘Well, I don’t like the idea of you swilling beer and indulging your fantasies all over my sitting-room.’

  ‘Indulging my fantasies, eh?’ Tony echoed, imitating Paul’s slightly prissy tone. ‘Listen, Grigson, I don’t need fantasies, because I’m seeing Tracey Ruskin tonight. I’m just watching this to get some ideas of what she can do for me, that’s all.’

  This reference brought Paul’s eyes back to the screen. Another naked man had appeared from somewhere and the woman’s mouth was now sharing its attentions between the two of them.

  ‘If Tracey’s going to do that for you,’ said Sam, who was a bit of a humorist, ‘can I be the other feller?’

  This was greeted by appropriately raucous laughter. The close-up on the screen opened out to reveal the three bodies and show what the two men were doing to the woman. Paul edged forward, mesmerised, to sit on the arm of the sofa.

  He had never seen anything like it before. The books had shown stills of everything that was being done, but to see it in motion, to hear the sighs and grunts. . . The pressure on his trousers was intolerable, threatening disgrace. He felt a kind of uncleanness, a nausea, but he could not shift his eyes from the screen.

  ‘Good bit coming,’ commented Tony, who had clearly seen the video a few times before.

  ‘Coming? Who?’ asked Sam, who had his comic reputation to maintain.

 
This was unpleasantly apposite for Paul, who was having great difficulty in keeping his hand away from his crutch.

  ‘Never guess who’s about to push his way in through the door,’ continued Tony, the expert. ‘Only the bleeding Alsatian.’ His guffaw was echoed by the others.

  The Alsatian arrived, and more plotless permutations ensued. Paul’s shock and arousal became tempered by boredom, but he knew that all these scenes would be locked in his memory and be summoned up to enrich his future fantasies. Keats and Madeleine were figures from another world.

  Abruptly, with no conclusion either artistic or logical, the tape ended. ‘Not bad, eh?’ said Tony with proprietorial satisfaction.

  ‘Woman was a bit of a boot,’ observed Sam.

  ‘Yeah, but who cares what she looks like when she does all that,’ said Bob.

  ‘Probably a whore,’ announced Tony with authority. ‘Looks like she done it a few times before, doesn’t she?’

  ‘You ever been to a whore, Tony?’

  ‘ ’Course I have. Only lost my bleeding virginity to one, didn’t I? When I was fourteen,’ he lied, and then added, with bravado, ‘She taught me a few things I haven’t forgotten.’

  ‘That’s the sort of woman you want, eh? Like that one in the video.’ Bob leered. ‘Doesn’t say a bleeding word and just keeps doing it to you.’

  ‘Tracey Ruskin’s pretty much like that,’ said Tony.

  ‘Yeah. Not much of a one for the conversation. I remember from school.’

  ‘Got better things to do with her mouth, eh?’ Sam came in bang on cue and was rewarded by his tribute of laughter.

  Tony turned to look at Paul, an insolent smile at the corner of his mouth. ‘How’s your sex-life, eh, Grigson?’

  ‘Mustn’t grumble,’ he said, with an attempt at insouciant bravado.

  ‘No? Good. Still seeing that Sharon Wilkinson?’

  ‘From time to time.’

  ‘Always looked a tight-arsed little virgin to me.’

  ‘Appearances can be deceptive.’ Paul added what he hoped was a light laugh.

  ‘Oh yeah. She put out for you then, does she?’