A Personal History of Thirst

by John Burdett

  “Can you ask for fantasies?”

  “Of course. They already know most of them—all your fantasies are on their books. When you get to know the place, you just phone up and say, ‘Fantasy twelve, please,’ and the girl will be ready for you when you arrive, wearing whatever is part of the fantasy.”

  “Were there any punters when you were there?”

  “Dozens; eminent men, too. I saw three High Court judges.”

  “Hey! Really? What were they up to?”

  “One was wearing a nappy, another was being whipped. I forget what the third was doing.”

  “And you were able to see all this?”

  “They have spyholes in all the rooms. Thirst showed me.”

  “Wow! A High Court judge in a nappy. Which one was it?”

  “Um…Lord Justice Tomlin.”

  “Tomlin? The one you hate?”

  “Yes, him.”

  “That’s a coincidence.”

  “Yes, a terrific coincidence.”

  “And the other two wouldn’t happen to be Peabody and Crawthorne, would they?”

  “Yes, those exactly.”

  She hit me with her small fist, hard on the chest. “You jerk! Now tell me what it was like really.”

  I started to speak, but she hit me again.

  “No bullshit this time.”

  “Oh, just a big Victorian South London house with brand-new over-the-top furnishings, mirrors everywhere, two old tarts cleaning up, getting ready for tonight.”

  “No girls or punters anywhere, I s’pose?”

  “Of course not; it was five-thirty in the afternoon.”

  “And Oliver?”

  “The usual combination—intermittently charming, with frightening mood swings. He was terribly offended that I told you it was a brothel.”

  “Probably the way you said it made it sound like you were slumming it and having a bit of a giggle.”

  “That’s exactly what he said.”

  “It’s sort of fetching, his sensitivity, the way you describe it. Macho man one minute, hurt and emotional the next. Very human.”

  “Very uncontrolled; he’s like a horse without a rider.”

  “Same thing.”

  “Two nuns in a jungle, and one of them screws a gorilla…” I began.

  22

  In the dream that began recurring at about this time, the three of us—Daisy, Thirst, and I—are stuck in cement. It has encased our ankles, and we are about to fall. The thought of our ankles snapping, leaving us writhing on our backs in agony on the cement (jagged bones poking through flesh), makes me frantic. I see that the other two are also frantic.

  Overhead, a city such as does not exist on earth soars upward in thousand-story buildings under a lurid sky. We seem to be in a wasteland at the dead center of the city, a concrete area of disused cars, tangled pieces of metal, tires, half-constructed reinforced-concrete apartment blocks with the steel reinforcement sticking out like half-fleshed skeletons. Despite myself, I begin to lean toward Daisy. She is not far away. Were it not for the cement, I could take one step toward her and touch her.

  Immediately she begins to lean toward Thirst, who begins to lean toward me. In a matter of seconds we will all three topple over. Just as we do so, the city begins to spin as if seen through a spinning fish-eye lens.

  The scene changes. We’re in a squalid bedroom. Daisy has the cynical face of a whore, her teeth blackened, her body half naked; Thirst has amputated forearms. With one stump he points at me and laughs. “Look at you.”

  I wake up screaming.

  “What’s the matter?” Daisy is saying.

  “How embarrassing,” I said the first time it happened. “I just had a classic Freudian nightmare. I dreamed that I was castrated and Oliver was mutilated.” I left out the other details.

  It was not difficult to work out the origin of the dreams. Nothing traps us more effectively than the need to prove that we are reasonable, honest, and compassionate. Such a need forced me, in the end, to relent. After all, Thirst had fulfilled the condition I had set. He was straining every nerve to change his ways. How could I admit that in so doing he had ceased to be pathetic and become, instead, frightening?

  For Daisy the new friendship with Thirst was an anticlimax.

  “He doesn’t even fancy me,” she said after we had been to meet him together. “He’s a typical working-class male: women only exist for one thing. He hung on every word you said and didn’t even notice when I was talking.”

  “Is it a condition of helping him with his A levels that he fall in love with you?”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about.”

  —

  We lay in bed on the evening before Daisy’s mother’s fifty-second birthday. Daisy lit up a joint. She rolled and smoked them with the pride of an old hand, as if it were a job at which she excelled after long practice. Sometimes the look on her face made me think of a cynical baby such as one sees in certain joke birthday cards: child in pram surreptitiously smoking a cigarette, with a balloon from its mouth saying something obscene and adult. There were times, I admit, when I wondered why I loved her.

  “Bet I know what it is,” she mused as the acrid smoke filled the room.

  “What what is?”

  I had my arm around her shoulder. With a finger I traced the dimple where her breastbone connected. I turned and with the other hand began to caress her breasts. It was curious how, occasionally, she could retract all sensation from them, as when she rode off on some inner speculative adventure fueled by dope.

  “This castration complex about Oliver.”

  “Oh, that.”

  “I once did an interesting course with one of my classes about male sexuality in the English novel—you know, how with people like Hardy and Lawrence, even Dickens, it’s working-class, possibly criminal, man who has true phallic power. The middle classes and the aristocracy are practically castrated—like in Lady Chatterley. There’s not really any correlation in the States. Sometimes I think you people are more screwed up than we are.”

  I slipped my hand between her thighs, but there, too, all responses had been frozen. She was fascinated by the workings inside her skull. Which, by the look on her face, had given her a superior insight into the human condition.

  “So?”

  She took a deep drag and coughed as she spoke. “Well, it’s the working-class boy in you—the hot street kid—who does the screwing. Not the middle-class barrister. You wouldn’t be threatened sexually by any of your colleagues, because to you they’re not sexual beings at all. On the other hand, you must be afraid that the more cerebral and middle class you become, the less potent you’ll be. So when someone like Oliver comes on the scene—a real wild man from the streets—you’re afraid he’ll take over from you….Stop it, I’m not in the mood.”

  I turned over. I must have dozed off. I’d had a difficult day in court, defending a girl on a manslaughter charge. In a postnatal depression, she had thrown her baby against a wall and killed it. A plain girl, not very bright, she hadn’t understood much of the case against her. Everyone hoped she would never have another child, but we all knew that she would. Sex was all she had.

  I awoke to a hand gently caressing my face. “Jimmy, are you in a mood because of what I was saying?”

  “No.”

  “What do you think of it?”

  “I think it’s a load of rubbish. But then I’d have to say that, wouldn’t I, or condemn myself to a life of increasing impotence?”

  “Do you want to make love now?”

  “No. The street urchin in me is fast asleep, and as you pointed out, the barrister doesn’t know how.”

  She giggled. “Do you think I’m crazy?”

  “Yes, it’s part of your charm. Go to sleep. Your phallic hero is coming at twelve, remember?”

  “Do you think he’ll turn up?”

  “Oh yes, he wouldn’t miss it for the world. But don’t throw a tantrum if he takes no notice of you. You
know what wild men from the street think about spoilt little girls.”

  23

  When the doorbell rang the next day I was as curious as Daisy. After the interlude in the brothel, I had a sadistic interest in how Thirst would handle simple social events. As usual, I was underestimating his resources.

  He arrived in a battered Ford Cortina that, like Eleanor, must have been young in the sixties, to judge from the fading floral patterns in orange and mauve that crawled over most of its paintwork. I was standing at the front door, while Daisy remained upstairs, packing presents. My smile broadened as I did a double take of him and the Cortina. His grin was infectious. I shook my head, started to laugh.

  “Fuck!” I said.

  “What d’you reckon?”

  “To you or the car?”

  “We’re together.”

  He was wearing a double-breasted tuxedo with black bow tie, frilly dress shirt, jeans, cowboy boots. It was exactly the costume that David Bowie had worn in a recent television appearance.

  “Wonderful.”

  “Me or the car?”

  “Both.”

  I shouted for Daisy.

  “Fuck!” Daisy said when she came down.

  Thirst rubbed his jaw. “Look, no offense, but you two masters of the English language are kind of monosyllabic before lunch. I mean, the main reason I’m here is to improve myself. Right?”

  “You’re terrific,” Daisy said, kissing him on the cheek. “So’s the car.”

  “Think the old lady’ll like us?”

  “She’ll love both of you.”

  Daisy went upstairs again. Thirst beckoned me to follow him to the boot of the Cortina. After the initial impact, the car made me nervous.

  “It’s all right,” Thirst said. “Honest.”

  “Are you totally sure?”

  “Look, I know how you feel. I’m making an effort here. If it was hot, I wouldn’t bring it within a mile of you. I swear. I borrowed it from a friend. A straight friend.”

  “I didn’t know you had any except me.”

  “That was last month. I’ve got more upward thrust than a Boeing. Trust me.” He opened the boot. “It’s up to you, James. I mean, I thought it might be a bit of a laugh, add some color, but if you say no, then it’s no. I’ll just leave it in the boot. At least no one’ll think I pinched that.”

  I peered into the boot to ascertain what he was talking about, stared, stepped back. I turned to sit on the bumper, my face in my hands.

  “No, eh?” Thirst said. “Well, you know, they’re all the rage with the punks, and you did say Daisy’s mum likes a bit of a giggle. What’s up? You laughing or crying?”

  I wiped the tears from my face, put a hand on his shoulder to pull myself up, pointed at the boot, and had to sit on the bumper again. I tried to stop shaking.

  “What’s its name?”

  “Lord Denning. After the judge.”

  “You don’t say. Look, personally I think it’s hilarious, but you’d better play it by ear.”

  Thirst nodded, closed the boot, grinned. “Tell Daisy not to bother bringing champagne. I’ve got enough to sink a battleship.”

  “I don’t think she was intending to bring any. And thanks.” I tried not to think about how he had come by the champagne.

  Thirst drove, I sat in the front passenger seat, Daisy sat in the back. I saw her eyes studying us in the rearview mirror.

  “Something going on with you boys?”

  I bit my lip.

  “Know what ‘fulguration’ means?” Thirst said.

  I checked Daisy’s eyes in the mirror. “No.”

  “What about ‘fuliginous’?”

  Daisy shook her head. “No.”

  “You should know that one, ‘fuliginous.’ ”

  “You’re on F?” I said.

  “Yeah. Concise Oxford Dictionary.”

  “Everything up to F?” Daisy was incredulous.

  “Most of it. Try me.”

  “What does ‘fulminate’ mean?”

  “Easy. Express violently. Same root as the other two. From the Latin word for lightning, see?” Thirst explained.

  —

  We drove up through Hampstead Village, then down past Golders Hill Park to Hampstead Garden Suburb. Daisy had not warned her mother, so Thirst and I waited downstairs. I heard Daisy say, “Come on, Mom, I just wanted to show you something in the street,” then Mrs. Hawkley appeared and we all burst out with “Happy birthday to you.” My tone-deaf droning served as a foil to Thirst’s fairly convincing baritone.

  I kissed Mrs. Hawkley on the cheek.

  “This is the man I’ve been talking about all the time,” Daisy said. “Oliver, meet Doris.”

  “Ooh, such a handsome man,” Mrs. Hawkley said, offering Thirst a cheek to kiss. “Are you my escort? Such a wonderful surprise. So big and strong. Ooh, and what a lovely tuxedo. A handsome man is the best therapy for a girl like me. Can I get you on the National Health?”

  “Don’t flirt, Mom,” Daisy said.

  “Why not? It’s my birthday.” She smiled at me, turned to Thirst. “You don’t mind, do you, love?”

  Thirst gave a broad grin. “Love? You South London?”

  Mrs. Hawkley touched her hair. “Well, Essex, actually. But you mean I’m not stuck up. No, I’m not. I gave up pretending when I left America.”

  Thirst hugged her as he led her to the Cortina. He made her sit next to him, while Daisy and I sat in the back. He drove slowly, with seamless gear shifts, down Kingsley Way, turned right, then right again, until we were passing the stupendously wealthy mansions of Bishop’s Avenue.

  “This is the only part of London that reminds me of California,” Daisy said. “People with so much money they get stranded in their own fantasies.”

  Thirst nodded. “Yeah. Look at that.”

  We stared at an Islamic ten-bedroom citadel in blue and white, adorned with domes and crescent moons.

  “Lovely,” Mrs. Hawkley murmured. “I love a bit of color. Don’t you, Oliver?”

  He looked at her, grinned. “Like the car, you mean?”

  “Oh yes, I love it. Don’t take any notice of Daisy; she’s a socialist. They want everything small and gray so that no one stands out from the crowd.”

  “Mom, please,” Daisy said.

  “Well, it’s true. One thing I did like about America was the way everything was so big. Big houses, big meals, big dominant men.”

  Daisy groaned.

  Bishop’s Avenue emerged into Hampstead Lane. We turned left, then crossed into the parking area of Kenwood. I took Daisy’s bag of presents and food, while Thirst brought the champagne from the boot. It was a bright day but cool, with fast clouds and unsettling slants of dazzling light. As I remember it, my three companions spent the day emerging out of shadow into spotlight and back again. When we sat down under a huge oak tree, Daisy took off her down jacket to put over her mother’s shoulders, leaving herself with a thick sweater that was not enough insulation. She was sensitive to cold, and this may have contributed to her poor humor. I was chilly, too, in my own sweater. I couldn’t understand how Thirst was managing in nothing but a dinner jacket and shirt, but he seemed impervious to the cold, as to many other things. The fact was that none of us had a home fit to hold even a tiny birthday party. Only Mrs. Hawkley, in Daisy’s thick jacket, was snug.

  I watched Thirst carefully take four champagne glasses out of an old nylon shopping bag, give one to each of us, then start to open the champagne. I wondered if he’d studied a sommelier on television, the way he meticulously unwound the cage, then gently screwed off the cork so that it made only a faint pop. He looked at me to say that he knew I’d expected him to let the cork shoot out like a bullet.

  The temptation to gulp the champagne and forget the cold was irresistible. Daisy and I finished our first glasses in a few minutes, but we couldn’t compete with Mrs. Hawkley, who was on her third while we were still on our first. Her rising mood reached a plateau, and she lay back
against the tree, smiling at each of us in turn.

  “What a wonderful, wonderful birthday. Thank you all so much. Especially my darling Daisy, who arranged it all, I’m sure.” Daisy beamed, went over to kiss her. “And very special thanks to Oliver, my gorgeous escort, who provided the car and the champagne.”

  We all drank to that. I passed around smoked salmon sandwiches, while Daisy gave her mother the presents we’d bought for her. We watched her open them: a pair of leather gloves, a Seiko watch, a particularly stylish corkscrew that we laughed about, a ceramic vase that we’d bought at Camden Lock.

  “Time for some music,” Thirst said. He delved into the bag again, to take out a small cassette player.

  “Strauss!” Mrs Hawkley said as “The Blue Danube” started to leak out of the tiny speakers. “Oliver, how did you know? Did Daisy tell you?”

  “I never said a thing,” Daisy said.

  “I guessed,” Thirst said. “May I have the pleasure?”

  I admired his guts. It wasn’t quite a waltz, and it was obvious that Mrs. Hawkley had known more practiced partners, but he had a natural rhythm, and she adapted easily to his steps.

  “Where the hell did you learn to dance?” I asked. I hadn’t intended the tone, bordering on outrage, which seemed to imply that convicts shouldn’t know how to waltz.

  He gave me a triumphant glance as he glided past with Daisy’s mother on his arm. “School. Music, dance, art, and math were my subjects. I was a natural. Picked them up like a sponge. Not so good on the English, though. No one in my house ever talked, that was the thing.”

  “You have wings on your feet, Oliver,” Mrs. Hawkley said. “You could have won championships if you’d pursued it. Still could—you’re young and vigorous.”

  As she spoke she pressed her hand against his iron biceps and sighed. Daisy noticed and gave me a look. I checked the bottles. We’d finished three. Mrs. Hawkley had consumed nearly a bottle on her own. She gave no sign of drunkenness, except that her appreciation of Thirst’s body wasn’t the same joke it had been an hour before.

  “Such wonderful presents, and you’re the best of all,” she told Thirst as they spun together under the oak. The expression on his face was taut, almost professional. It was as if he’d determined to produce a flawless performance, just to prove to himself that he could.