by Ray Connolly
Kate turned her attention back to Neanderthal. He had been quiet for some time. She half-wondered if he were regretting being with her: and if he would not rather be up in his room making a long distance call back to his family in Connecticut.
‘You’re very quiet,’ she said, picking up her wine glass.
His face broke into a slow grin and he began to chuckle: ‘I’m just saving myself,’ he said. ‘We’ve got a long night ahead of us: a very long night.’
Kate swallowed her wine. Clearly he wasn’t thinking about the kids and dogs and water sprinklers on the lawns. No wonder he looked so Neanderthal. For a moment she almost wished she’d drawn the Grasshopper.
The games started immediately after dinner. The stiff formality of the evening brought about by Flanders’s desire for a degree of sophistication and elegance, even among the most unlikely people, had acted like a cork in a champagne bottle. Once released from the formalized chatter of a silver and china dinner there was a sudden scurrying towards the stairs as the guests made an undignified rush for their bedrooms, towing along behind them whatever piece of woman they had been fortunate enough to be allocated in Colonel Flanders’s draw.
Kate had expected that she and Neanderthal would leave Barbara and the Grasshopper at this point but the two men obviously had other plans.
‘I think I have the biggest place,’ said the Grasshopper as he led the way up the wide mahogany-railed staircase. ‘It’s the best room for a party.’
‘Party?’ Kate looked towards Barbara.
‘We did it all the time at Harvard,’ said the Grasshopper. ‘Would you believe that was over twenty years ago!’ He had had quite a lot to drink and had now lost his fear of Barbara. As they reached the top of the stairs and turned towards his suite he suddenly lifted his head upwards and kissed her on the chin: ‘You make me feel so young,’ he sang.
Barbara turned to Kate, who was calmly aware of a Neanderthal hand clamped firmly on her bottom. ‘That’s just what I was afraid of,’ she said.
The Grasshopper’s suite was probably the best in the hotel. There was a large sitting-room with a couple of settees, a thick patterned Indian carpet, and a desk which was serving as a bar. Scattered across a large table were wads of manuscript paper, all neatly typed, all seemingly half-read. Leading off from the sitting-room, and only partly hidden by heavy tapestry curtains pulled back to the wall by pieces of imitation golden rope, was the bedroom area, with its two three-quarter sized beds divided by a small dressing-table.
Barbara looked quizzically towards the bedroom as they entered the room. The Grasshopper noticed: ‘You don’t get beds that size in the Hyatt Regency. Right? Not two in a room, you don’t.’
Barbara sat down on one of the settees and stretched out her long legs. The Grasshopper turned to Kate: ‘Come on, make yourself at home. Now what’s it gonna be? We have Scotch … there’s gin … vodka … dry vermouth … there’s even champagne.’
Neanderthal was already at the impoverished bar, glass in hand, like a runner on his blocks. Kate and Barbara asked for vodka. They got them, then the two men poured large Scotches for themselves. For a few moments no one said anything. Kate looked around the room. On one wall an old Highland Angus bull was glowering down at them from the middle of about forty square feet of heather and mountain. She guessed that both men were waiting for someone else to start something.
‘Have you two known each other very long?’ Kate broke into the awkwardness, although she knew the answer very well.
‘We were room mates at college. That was the last time we did anything like this.’ Neanderthal was rolling the drink around in his glass so that the wave of whisky just missed the rim.
‘Anything like what?’ said Kate loftily. She enjoyed pretending innocence.
‘Like a foursome … you know …’ Neanderthal was hesitant now. He looked to the Grasshopper for support, but got none. ‘Like a party …’ he said weakly at last. ‘Two couples … together …’
‘Oh,’ said Kate, finally understanding. ‘You mean a two-up.’
Both men broke into a relief of laughter. Kate watched them, like a mother might regard two naughty boys who were telling a rude joke. Sometimes it was difficult not to show contempt for the clumsy way some men went about enjoying themselves.
‘That’s right,’ said the Grasshopper. ‘It’s just like the old days.’ As though to prove it he marched off into the bedroom and returned with a small cassette player.
He pressed a button and suddenly it was 1957: ‘Why do birds sing so gay, lovers await the break of day, why do they fall in love,’ sang Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers.
‘They’re playing our song, Eddie …’ said the Grasshopper.
‘Your song, you mean. I was a Charlie Mingus man.’
‘You always were headed the wrong way.’
‘But not tonight.’
Again the two men laughed. Kate and Barbara exchanged glances. It almost seemed as though they had been forgotten while these two old room mates relived a piece of their shared memories. Neither man had come near either of the girls since they had entered the room.
As though suddenly realizing this Neanderthal turned apologetically towards Kate: ‘This may seem pretty hard to believe to people … girls like you … I mean younger women … but Mark and I weren’t exactly quick at getting off the mark … you know what I mean?’
‘You were late developers,’ said Kate, holding out her glass for another drink.
‘Right,’ said the Grasshopper, adding lots more vodka and a trickling of tonic. ‘So on Eddie’s twenty-first birthday … we went out, and got a couple of hook …’ He stopped, realizing too late what he was saying.
Neither woman betrayed any emotion by their expressions: Kate even helped him: ‘Yes, a couple of hookers … then what?’
‘Well, that was it. You know Boston hookers. Pretty ordinary really. We went back to our room, and we sort of celebrated.’
‘With a two-up?’ said Barbara.
Both men laughed again. ‘Right,’ said the Grasshopper: ‘two-up, then all change round and start again.’
‘So how did you start?’ asked Kate. ‘Or did they have to start for you?’ She looked teasingly. This was what she was being paid for.
‘We played strip poker.’ Neanderthal answered this time.
‘You strip ‘em, I’ll poke ‘em,’ burst in the Grasshopper. Again the two men belly-laughed. It must have been one of their earliest jokes.
‘So where are the cards?’ said Kate. Someone had to get things moving. The cassette player was now into The Great Pretender by The Platters. She preferred Smoke Gets in Your Eyes. She liked delusions of romance. ‘Let’s get the game in progress, shall we?’
That was all the two errant husbands needed. Suddenly Neanderthal was dealing out four hands on to the floor, and the Grasshopper was giggling and wriggling up and down the carpet towards Barbara with expectant relish.
Barbara smiled at him fondly, and put her hand out to run her fingers through the hair at the back of his stout little neck, turning to Kate at the same time and whispering wickedly: ‘Sarah certainly knows how to give her girls a good time.’
Kate shrugged. She was feeling light-headed. She was not a great drinker and, if the large vodkas had not had the desired effect of turning her into a raging ferment of eroticism, they had made her an amused spectator at the games in which she was also a participant. A spectator: that was how she so frequently saw herself. Tonight was unexceptional, other than for the fact that she was enjoying the show: the haughtiness of Barbara, the teasing of their two men, it all made it that bit more fun. As executives, husbands and fathers Neanderthal and the Grasshopper no doubt played their roles as strong, conscientious, possibly affectionate and even caring men. But to Kate and Barbara they were just two more clients reliving the fantasy of a second adolescence.
She did not know what work they had done in conference today, but she could hardly imagine that their minds had not s
pent more time working on the prospects in store for them after the talking was over. Neither was particularly dislikeable. In fact, both were extremely ordinary. Hard work had probably taken them to their positions within their companies, and now tonight they were going to let down their hair, or what was left of it in the Grasshopper’s case. No one could blame them for that particularly. Tomorrow they would get back to the business of worrying about how many barrels flowed a day, but tonight they were college boys again.
And so the cards flipped backwards and forwards, and almost before Kate knew it Barbara was down to her panties and boots, Neanderthal had one sock off and one sock on, and the Grasshopper was chirruping with excitement as she dropped her dress with mock sensuality on to a nearby chair, and aggravation because the way the cards kept falling he just couldn’t get started.
‘They asked me how I knew, your true love was true …’ sang Buck Ram of The Platters, and wearing a vest and shorts, Neanderthal began to dance slowly and romantically with Barbara, naked now and as proud of her body as any woman would ever be. While Kate took pity on the plight of the little man from Standard Oil, and allowing him to bend the rules of the game, she helped him off with his shirt, while his grateful hands set to work admiring the insides of her thighs.
And so, first with one and then the other of the two oil men, Kate and Barbara passed away a long, long night.
At six in the morning, when no one seemed to know very well whom they were lying beside any more, the dawn came up the valley. And while the two men slept Kate and Barbara dressed silently and made an exhausted way back to their own rooms, where they showered and washed away the smells and sweats and tastes of the night, and finally slipped into the neat and crisply clean sheets of single beds.
Chapter Seventeen
Charlie told Florence about Kate on the Sunday afternoon; he never really knew why. Sunday was his day off from the Mystery Train: a day of rest and a time to reassesss his new-found popularity. It was weird. He was far too canny to become as excited as Marty, but he could not deny that the nightly attention and applause he had been getting was not pleasing him. But he knew also that there was many a slip between cup and lip, and no slips bigger than in the music industry, so he refused to allow himself the silliness of great expectations or the optimism of extreme youth.
As good as his word Marty immediately ordered a couple of hundred postcards, mug shots of Charlie, ‘managed by Marty Z. Finch, 24 Darblay Street, London Wi’. The whole thing thought Charlie, was one big embarrassment, but Marty had already been on to half the record companies in London pestering them to go and see his client perform. Since most of the record world knew Charlie as a competent session man their enthusiasm didn’t exactly match up to Marty’s expectations, but he had managed some half-promises, and had already arranged to get Charlie into a studio the next day to make some new demo tapes of the songs Charlie and Colin had written. Charlie had never seen Marty so excited, and he was pleased for him, glad in a way that somehow didn’t seem to include his own feelings about the situation.
It all seemed so unimportant now. He was going out every night, playing and singing and smiling at the applause, but his mind was always far away, wondering about Kate and puzzling over his attitude towards her. After the initial shock when she had told him of her life he had spent the days lost inside conflicting emotions of love, hate, jealousy, disgust, under standing and curiosity: and although the hurt, like all wounds, was easing with time, he still did not know how he felt towards her.
Since the weather was fine he decided to spend the afternoon in a deck chair in the garden. If he was going to be the star that Marty wanted he ought at least to keep his Coppertan coating.
‘Hello then, how are things?’ The scything voice of Florence cut through the quiet garden. Charlie visibly jumped in his deck chair, his reflections burst open by the intrusion. ‘I saw you loafing your life away again. Thought I’d give it a try,’ said Florence, and began to pull a deck chair across the lawn so that she could find a spot in the sun.
Inwardly Charlie groaned. The last person in the world he wanted to sunbathe alongside was Florence, bur she had been very kind to him when he had need kindness and he couldn’t be less than welcoming in return. ‘These are going quite well, actually,’ he said, after a moment, when he realized that she expected an answer to her enquiry.
‘No woman trouble then, now?’
Charlie smiled to himself. Florence had a way of getting right to the nub of the matter.
‘No. Not really,’ he said, which was as honest an answer as he knew how to give.
‘Not like before … in Italy or wherever it was … carne home at death’s door, didn’t you? Men only get into that sort of trouble when a girl’s involved.’
Charlie closed his eyes. He didn’t know what to say.
Florence was watching him closely: ‘Sorry. Touch a nerve?’
How strange that she should be interested in his private life, he thought. He had no interest whatsoever in hers. He looked at her. She must be near to sixty, but she was still a good-looking woman. She had probably been very pretty in her day. Then he remembered all the stories with which she had entertained him during his convalescence, tales about her experiences during the war. It had so obviously been the best time of her life. He wondered why she had never married. Suddenly he felt a great empathy towards her. All right, so she could be bullying and boring, and now even prying, but when things had been difficult she had been there to help. Strangely he felt a compulsion to tell her, as though he were in some way thanking her for being nice to him.
‘There was this girl,’ he began, hesitantly at first, and then more confidently. ‘She was a tart, I suppose. A prostitute. And her ponce, or whoever it was, had me beaten up. Silly really, isn’t it?’
‘Is it?’ said Florence. ‘I don’t think it’s silly at all.’
‘Well, no, I suppose not.’
‘Was she nice?’
‘I thought so at the time. I didn’t know about her, you see.’
‘Ah.’ Florence nodded her head. ‘Would it have made any difference if you had known?’
‘Yes … well, no … I don’t know. I really don’t know. I can’t decide. I don’t know how I feel any more. It should make a difference, shouldn’t it?’
Florence shrugged. ‘Did she ask you to pay?’ she said with a boldness which demanded honesty.
‘Oh, no … no. We didn’t go to bed together. It wasn’t like that at all. I mean she wouldn’t. She didn’t think it would be right for us.’
‘But she liked you all right?’
‘She said she loved me.’ His voice trailed away. He still felt embarrassed using that word.
Florence pretended not to notice: ‘Oh, I see,’ she said. ‘So you got all bashed up for nothing. Poor you!’
‘Served me right for …’ Charlie didn’t know how to complete the sentence.
‘For what?’
‘For getting involved with someone like that,’ he finished lamely.
‘She doesn’t sound such a bad sort to me. She didn’t want to get you into trouble, did she?’
Charlie shook his head. ‘No. She seemed very upset.’
‘There! But you’ve gone off her because she’s a tart?’
‘I don’t know. It doesn’t really matter, anyway.’
‘It only matters because you found out. If we could all keep our little secrets … perhaps our big ones, as well… to ourselves then we wouldn’t go around hurting each other quite so much. Does it matter if she was a tart with other men if she wasn’t with you? Perhaps it does. But why should it? We had lots of tarts in the WRAF. Especially when the Americans came over. We didn’t call them tarts, of course. We called them officers … those who had the stripes. But it was quite extraordinary what a girl would do after a couple of gins for a good night out, a pair of thirty denier nylons and the outside chance of marrying a GI. I suppose things are different in wartime. I was a bit gay myself from ti
me to time, you know. A bit naughty, now and then … Oh, but we had such fun, I can’t tell you.’
‘I can believe it. But it’s hardly the same. You were just having a good time. This girl … the one I was with … she was a professional… full time … a proper whore …’
‘But not with you! Can’t you see it? That’s the difference! Does it matter if she was a whore with other men? That should have been her secret. You weren’t supposed to know about that. I sometimes think we all know just too much about each other. I dare say there are one or two things that you’ve been up to that you don’t go bragging about.’
Charlie shook his head: ‘It still isn’t the same.’
‘No, perhaps not. But if I were you, I’d remember her for how she was to you, and not because you found out that she behaved in different ways with different men. You should thank your lucky stars.’ Florence paused, and then getting up she said: ‘Anyway, I’d better be getting on. I can’t afford to stand here talking to you about some foreign tart you’ll never see again. All the same she does sound worth getting bashed for.’ And with that she strode off back down the lawn and into the house.
Charlie watched her go with surprise. Clearly Florence had assumed that the girl he had been talking about had been a local girl. But then why should she have thought differently? Did it make any difference that Kate was here in London, not two miles from where he lived? How could it? Somewhere inside he was beginning to feel the sense of flattery of which Florence had spoken. The memory of Kate the expensive hooker in the penthouse flat was already being replaced in his mind by a picture of the girl he had met in Sicily.
Suddenly his interest in sunbathing was gone. Putting away the deck chairs he went back into the house. For the first time since he had walked out of Kate’s flat he knew for certain that he wanted to see her again.
He went to the fridge and, taking out a can of beer, tore open the lid and put it to his mouth without benefit of a glass. He wanted to see Kate again, but would she want to see him? He couldn’t risk the possibility of her considering him a nuisance. Yet he had to let her know that it was okay: that he understood, and that he didn’t disapprove or hate her.
