Morbid Tales

by Quentin S Crisp

  He stroked Jackie’s upper arm with his forefinger and stared at the spot intently.

  ‘I’ll tell you what it is,’ he said. ‘Suddenly, here with you, I feel ageless. It’s not just that I don’t feel old or young personally, though that’s a big part of it. For the first time I’m just myself without any age tacked on. But as well as that, it’s like I can’t place the age we’re living in. It could be any time. It’s a definite time and place, just because it’s all so specific, but then again, it’s only here and now. When I look at your arm just below your sleeve, I realise there is no more nostalgia. There’s no need for it. I know your arm so well, it looks to me like Jackie now. It’s like this is the moment that all nostalgia reaches for.’

  They kissed. Jackie hitched herself back on the wall again and the man placed a hand on her leg.

  ‘Shall we?’

  ‘Sex?’ He grinned. ‘It’s tempting, but I don’t think we need to. In fact, it might even spoil it in a way. But . . . ’

  ‘No. That’s okay.’

  She smiled and he knew she had understood. He did not have to explain further.

  After a while they sat down again at the chessboard and resumed play. Although the man tried to rally his pieces, his attempts to gain the offensive were all too desperate and reckless, and before many moves Jackie had pushed him into checkmate.

  ‘Well, that’s that then,’ he said. ‘I’m beaten. It’s over.’

  He seemed sad for a moment. ‘But we both win, really. We can’t lose.’

  He toppled his king with his forefinger so that it lay as if slain upon the chequered board.

  His eyes lifted from the board to Jackie.

  ‘No one will ever know,’ he began, ‘They’ll see the board, of course, but they’ll never know what we saw or what we talked about or what we felt before we jumped. Only we’ll know, and we’ll be gone forever.’

  Suddenly it seemed that the blazing sky, streaked with early red as if with trumpet blasts, was theirs alone—the sky and the teeming city spread below. The empty air was a vast, tiered, invisible audience to the game now finished. The board lay open to the sky like a model in miniature of the city itself. The heat was almost unbearable, and there was an orange tinge to everything, like a TV picture with the contrast up too high.

  Autumn Colours

  ‘Life is but a memory. It happened long ago.’

  Nick Drake

  The smell of bonfire smoke had been in the air that day, an elusive yet recurring theme. Andy had smelt it just outside the house when they had left that morning, and he was sure at least once before they got to The Valley of Rocks. At the valley they had seen the profile of The White Lady amidst the stones and stood on a flat-topped rock overlooking a choppy sea. It was so windy that they were too scared to stand upright there, and an instinct so strong it was stern had told them to crawl on all fours if they wanted to look over the edge.

  On the bus, with the pale blue of twilight outside and a few beads of the recent rain on the window, Andy had turned and looked silently at his reflection. He wasn’t thinking about Adrienne next to him. Instead, an old, old thought came back to him. Who did this face belong to? If it changed would he be a different person? Were he and his face inextricable? Was he, in fact, his face? It expressed something, and it expressed nothing.

  When they got off the bus into the damp early evening, Andy became aware of Adrienne again. There were spots of rain making him shiver blissfully and once more he smelt smoke. It seemed to him a shaggy smell. Strange how words can describe things unrelated to their definition. Were bonfires a sign of the turning season, or was he simply noticing it more than he usually would because summer was thawing backwards into the sad winds of autumn? The smell reminded him of his reflection. It seemed to him that the reflection was still floating over the moving background of the day, as it had on the bus, a face and suggestion of figure, made of bonfire smoke.

  Andy—if not in the face then perhaps in the name he could find who he was once more. Always Andy, never Andrew, as if he only had the one name. It was certainly like him, alone, free—if a name can be said to possess such traits—and having a certain bouncy, elastic quality. Andy—it was his looseness and his humour all wrapped up in one. He had his best times just staying up late talking bullshit with friends—his name like a running joke. Andy. Andy Pandy. Our randy grannies shag you bandy. His body was his only home and he was Andy from the faded knees of his skin-tight jeans to the nicotine stains around his bitten fingernails and cuticles. And here he was, crossing a road diagonally amidst the jellyfish glistening of street lights on the wet tarmac, on his way to his sister’s to say goodbyes before making the long, lonely, nervous journey on a shagged out train back up to university, so far north he could almost feel the altitude. Crossing the road. With Adrienne.

  He had his own key, but out of politeness he rang the doorbell. His sister answered the door with smiles and hellos and they made their way through the chill, coat cramped hall to the living room. They settled on the sofa and scorching hot tea was brought to them, a little too sweet for Andy’s taste.

  ‘Where can I smoke?’ asked Andy. He remembered having to smoke out in the yard before.

  ‘The living room is fine,’ his sister said with the amiability and composure of a perfect hostess.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes. That’s fine. I’ll just get an ashtray.’

  Andy felt a little self-conscious about smoking in his sister’s house, but he proceeded to roll himself a cigarette. As he did so he looked over at Adrienne seated in the opposite corner of the sofa. Both of them were sat a little stiffly, their recent arrival still wrapped around them like coats, as if they might leave again at any moment. Andy was beginning to feel the pressure of his duty as Adrienne’s host, but perhaps because of that pressure he couldn’t think of a thing to say. It was a vicious circle. The longer he was quiet, the more pressure he felt. This cigarette was his antidote. It gave him something to do and bought him time.

  As Andy licked the cigarette paper he considered Adrienne’s presence. What should he do with her? She was a novelty and a problem. They had met while doing voluntary work on the same project some years ago, exchanged addresses and fallen into correspondence. Andy did not consider himself good at writing letters, but they pleased him greatly. Letters are the epitome of all that’s best in life, he thought, and he would look at his scraps torn from their spiral-bound jotter, covered in his large, spiky handwriting, with the same satisfaction he felt for the occasional lyrics he’d drafted for songs he would never compose or sing.

  The wonderful preciousness of their friendship, as far as Andy saw it, came from what he considered its very unlikeliness. Quite apart from the fact that he had never had a close female friend before, somehow it seemed to him that they had very little in common apart from goodwill to each other, and so in choosing friendship he felt himself truly adrift in the trackless wilderness of adulthood. It was a feeling he relished.

  But perhaps it was an exaggeration, anyway, to say that they had nothing in common. Adrienne was a scruffy, slightly peculiar looking girl. Her hair was dyed ginger, and underneath her cardigan she sported a stripy sweater of many snazzy colours. On her lower half she wore a skirt and leggings, and her toes peeked out of the ends of sandals. There was a silver chain around her ankle. She was not unattractive. Her face was an odd shape, with prominent cheeks, and her figure was not of the classic type. But these characteristics would only have made her cute or cuddly or some such thing, if it weren’t for a certain awkwardness about her. Andy couldn’t quite pin this awkwardness down, but somehow, despite her quirky prettiness, Andy felt generally disinclined even to entertain thoughts of a physical relationship. Perhaps that was why they had become friends. The distaste he felt thinking about ‘anything like that’, might be likened to what he would feel if expected to finish someone else’s half eaten apple core already rusty brown from oxygenation. It was a private paradox. Of course
, it did not seem nice to have such thoughts about a friend, but, after all, weren’t these thoughts part of the reason they could be friends in the first place and, indirectly, a sign of respect? And then, in Adrienne’s very awkwardness was something that occasionally caught light in Andy’s imagination so that she appeared first homely, then cosy, then downright bewitching.

  Irony glowed about Andy’s lips as a stray memory came back to him. It was Adrienne’s mother who had told him. He was at their house, sitting in the kitchen, and Adrienne must have gone to the corner shop, or perhaps she was in the bath. Anyway, apropos of Andy’s depression—she had just been recommending him pills of some description—Adrienne’s mother had looked directly and emphatically into his eyes and uttered such quietly astonishing words that he thought they ought to be written in stone somewhere, if that weren’t against their very spirit.

  ‘I remember one of the most liberating things for me was the realisation that we’re all perfectly free anyway . . . up here.’ She tapped the side of her head. ‘People can’t see your thoughts. You can think whatever you like. Whatever. You. Like.’ There seemed nothing to say to that, so final was it. And now her daughter was precious to Andy precisely because of the strange and ambiguous thoughts, more secret than diaries, that he nurtured in connection with her. And the irony was part of the freedom and multiplied it like mirrors aligned. ‘As long as I trust myself, and I know I mean no harm in the end . . . I only hope it’s true that no one can know my thoughts. It has to be true. The alternative doesn’t bear thinking about.’

  ‘I have to say something,’ he thought. He was getting pricklings of conscience. Looking at Adrienne’s face, smiling, he searched for something that might provide the spark for conversation. His eyes rested on her nose-ring. There was something rather special about it. Andy experienced a sense of gratification just knowing he had a female friend who wore a nose-ring. That was typical of him, to be so infatuated with pure concepts! And with that thought once again he had returned to himself. It was no good! If other people, usually very irritating people, suffered from verbal diarrhoea, then he often suffered from the opposite—verbal constipation. Right now he could only think about himself. Autumn was in the air and he was a particle of loose matter floating about in the world, a young body with its own unique shape, belonging nowhere in particular. He resigned himself to being a lazy host and finished off his cigarette in self-indulgent silence. After all, silence was one of his greatest pleasures in life.

  What was it? The bonfire smoke, the autumn chill, the nose ring, his cigarette, silence. It was all pointing to something. It was to do with who he was and what he wanted. Nothing of true value in his life could be grasped, either physically or in words. He could see broken glass and frost on a pavement and feel flooded with shivering beauty. But he could not put it into words. In fact, half the pleasure lay in leaving it unexpressed. It wasn’t the pavement itself that was beautiful. It was something between himself and the pavement. A reaction. An abstract entity. The thing itself could never be so thrilling and wonderful. That is why he must always keep himself loose, bouncing from one thing to another. He must keep having these reactions. He must keep himself from identifying with and becoming the thing itself. What he was seeking was nothing in ‘reality’; it was something out there, like the scent of the bonfire. And what he was escaping? Answer: The world. Here he was on the eve of his return to university, between things again, nervous. That was why he felt these things so strongly now.

  His sister had by now left off preparing the meal for a while and settled in the living room. Some favourite programme was on TV and the whole room was now locked helplessly in the noise and the glow of the screen. Andy finished his rolly and continued sipping his tea and allowed the television to buckle him up tightly and comfortably in his silence.

  He had forgotten how late it was, and so he was surprised and relieved when his sister left the room again called through from the kitchen that dinner was ready. The wings of the dining table were pulled out and propped into place. The table was loaded, with one empty space left for his sister’s husband who was working and would be back later. There was the scrape of knives and forks on plates. The conversation seemed as stark and staccato as this noise. Perhaps it was the strip-light that produced this brittle effect. Andy’s sister kept up the choppy banter almost single-handedly, as if doing her best for the tradition of English table conversation.

  The table stood in the bay of a large, curtainless window. Outside could be seen the narrow concrete yard where there hung the now empty washing line, the dripping gutters of neighbouring houses, and where there glistened tiles beneath shadowy chimney pots. It was darker now, as if the windows themselves had turned a deep blue, the perfect colour for these plain sheets of glass to conduct the chill darkness from outside. No wonder these scrappy words failed to become a self-sufficient conversation when there was such a chill on them.

  It was only after dinner, when his sister had withdrawn to do the washing up and Andy and Adrienne were ensconced once more upon the sofa, that any real conversation was breached. It was quiet and they were alone and Andy finally felt like being deliberate about his friendship and asking questions of a mildly personal nature.

  ‘What are you thinking?’

  It was the quickest shortcut he knew to personal territory.

  ‘Nothing much. Why? What are you thinking?’

  A sly answer, thought Andy, or at least coy. It was certain she was thinking something; you could almost hear it in the silence. He decided to take up the challenge and embark upon an actual topic.

  ‘Well, I was actually thinking that you seemed preoccupied, and I wondered about some of the letters you sent me a few months back. You said you’d hit a bad patch and might have to drop out of university, but you never went into detail.’

  ‘Yes. Well, things aren’t so bad now. I’m managing to cope with life on a day-to-day basis.’

  ‘What happened?’

  There followed a pause.

  ‘Have you ever been betrayed by someone close to you?’

  ‘Do you mean a friend or a lover?’

  ‘Either.’

  ‘Well, I have been by a girlfriend. I don’t know about friends. Maybe. I can’t think of anything.’

  ‘How did you react?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know. I was surprised, but . . . Well, actually it depends which occasion. But you have something in particular in mind.’

  ‘Yes. I don’t think it would be good to mention names, but something happened to me at the beginning of last year. It’s hard to explain. You trust people naturally, maybe without thinking, and when they do something without any excuse or explanation, something that hurts you, it’s hard to believe. You want to treat them the same as you always did, as if they were still the same person you thought you knew, but you can’t deny what they’ve done.’

  ‘Is it anyone I know?’

  ‘Well, I don’t think I should say too much. There’s more than one person involved.’

  Andy’s first reaction was a sort of jealousy at not being let in on the secret. He wanted to find out the details, but politeness came first, and he simply resigned himself to ignorance. He did not know what could have happened. Perhaps it was not anything he could imagine. But even at this remove from the event itself he tasted the bitter and irresistible tang of sex.

  ‘For a long time after it happened I felt like I was living in blackness. I didn’t trust anyone. I didn’t want to go out and mix with people. I just kept to myself, hardly speaking to anyone, trying not to think how I’d cope with the future.’

  ‘But you are feeling better now, aren’t you?’

  ‘Well, I am better, but I still find it very difficult to trust people. Sometimes, it only has to be a small thing. Someone does something that I didn’t expect of them, or they betray my confidence in some small way, and I just feel as if I’ve been hit. I think, how can they do that? It’s terrifying.’

  ‘Really
?’

  ‘It reminds me of something. I always used to hate Jack-in-the-boxes when I was young. It’s as if, when someone betrays me, the Jack leaps out of the box, and instead of the person’s face, there’s nothing, no face at all. It’s a sort of demon. I can never see what its real face is, and that’s why it’s so frightening.’

  The image of this faceless Jack-in-the-box seized Andy’s imagination with a terrific vividness. It was communicated so powerfully to him, like a jolt, that he could not doubt it was a very powerful reality in Adrienne’s heart. At first he felt a twinge of solicitude that Adrienne might have to live with such a thing coiled up inside her, that demon invoked by the first trial she was so careful not to name. Then a sly fascination began to steal over him. The demon seemed a glittering, beautiful thing. He imagined it with sickly white skin, a creature of pure seduction. Betrayal and Seduction—they were one and the same thing, and the element that fused them, a blindingly brilliant heart-jabbing thrill. To let yourself be seduced by that terrible white face—you know that you are bruising your soul, but the pain is sweet . . .

  Adrienne was talking again and Andy dragged himself back from the undertow of his thoughts.

  ‘ . . . You meet people, and some of them you might only know for a year, or less, then they’re gone forever. Even if you have their address you can’t keep in touch with everyone. There are so many people you just never see again, and that’s it. You’re the only one who can stay with you all the time, and sometimes that’s hard to bear. Sometimes you just wish there was someone . . .’

  ‘Like a lover? But lovers leave you too. I think friendship, true friendship, lasts a lifetime.’

  ‘Do you have any true friends?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘And what about me?’

  ‘Well, I think we still don’t know each other that well. But I’m not drawing any lines, like, you can come this close and no closer. I think that there is a lot of potential.’