by Paul Ableman
— Is she one of your—?
You know that girl. Her name is urn. She was expecting her family to tea but we got drunk at lunchtime. I drove her over the hump and we stopped where the red tubular trains hit daylight. Her room was bright and overlooked cabbages. Oh we were drunk. She asked me if I preferred that she retain her suspenders but I forget what I said. Then I poked her sideways and she refused to have orgasms because of her liking for you. You girls—your loyalties are subtle these days. The thin shrill of the doorbell aroused me and I exclaimed:
— Your family!
She exclaimed.
— My God!
We had slept for hours. It was a moment rich in comedy of a type suitable for a bawdy film director. There were mum and dad, come to visit their chaste girl and there we were clammy in her bed. Everything had to be done—dressing and tidying up and shifting me down to the bog on the floor below so that she could rush finally to the door, call them back from where they had started away forlornly up the street, convey them upstairs past the lavatory where I mused and have a nice family tea. Then I slipped silently out of the house and roared off through the bright suburb in my ponce’s convertible. All these houses—we call it London.
You came back to me from Southampton.
My darling, it wasn’t anywhere. We walked on the rim of the land in Guernsey. A yellow bird flared up out of the gorse of Dorset. We struggled through storm along the Cornish cliffs. And we had a cottage there, the sea clawing at our sleep and a red rogue next door to urge, whenever we set off:
— Go to bed. I’d go to bed if I were you.
But no durable home for our love.
— If things were different—
Still you came back to me from Southampton.
— We’ll have quiet evenings.
My sad and vulnerable wife. You were his then. I had half-feared you would embark with him for the Levant. But you came back to me from Southampton.
— I promised to go for a holiday—in six months.
You denied that you were keeping yourself for him but you refused me your body. How could I stay in the flat? But my departure this time was in a different key. You came to the dingy room in the Irish maisonette that I had found. You gave me plates and cutlery and hung fabric on the walls. Our relations were no longer brittle but in the solicitude with which you installed me in an alien room were the roots of harsher despair. Would we ever again lie curled as one being through long nights of drowsy love? Later, when I smoked hashish in that clammy room, the night sometimes congealed on my pillow and I nestled against it only to burst into helpless sobs when returning reason dispersed the hallucination and I found it wasn’t you at all.
The Irish landlady, a poor builder’s wife and a peasant soul, was kind with loans of groceries and when we became friendly asked me:
— What are you then, some kind of Jew?
— Yes.
— And is it true that all you think about is money?
— That’s right—only money.
20
Love
THIS SUBSTANCE HAS been analysed into a great many constituents. Some are light and fragrant and drift away on the wind. Others drip to the ground like blood.
21
WE SWERVED WITH the iron river round the new canyons of London. We came to the railway station. It was too early. We went to the slick pub across the street. It was full of lunch-time cheer. I bought us two dry sherries. We edged as far away from three boisterous inspectors as possible. We chatted calmly.
— You look great.
So you did. You were splendidly groomed and wearing—
— I canna onderstand ye. Ye’ve got a beau’ful wife.
Aye, so ah have. Aye—well, will ye no tek a wee pint with me? It isna’ a case of havin’ a beau’ful wife. Noo—er—ye see, ma wee problem is I get this tug towards liftin’ the wee skairts of ony lass ah spy. Ye ken whut ah mean? Ah dinna care for this notion of—ye’ll have to pairdon ma indifferent Scootch—bein’ no pairmitted to plunge ma virile organ into mair thon ain braw lassy for the hale of ma life. Ah can see that ye’re a censorious mon of traditional morality. They say ye’re an engineer and ye resemble the haid of a thustle. Ye’re doin’ naethin’ to assauge ma copious guilt feelins’, mon, and ah regrait ma cordial spirit in addressin’ ye at all. So I’ll just abandon this pathetic attempt at your vernacular and tell you in good old standard English that I loved and do love my wife and I never from the first day intended to be faithful to her.
For twelve long years I all but made it in deference to her love and hurt. Just a few little lapses with girl friends she brought home from shop and office, I suspect subconsciously for just that purpose, and the odd paid girl from the streets. The first of these friends brought rude pictures with her, posted from Hong Kong by a sea-officer. We pushed the two single beds together and I got in in the middle over the crack. And Lucy got in on my right-hand side and then it was necessary to coax the visitor in and Lucy told her it was quite all right. But when she did get in, just in her pink slip, and I rolled on to and into her, my wife whimpered a little and the friend, who was a pleasant woman, whispered:
— Go to Lucy.
And so I abandoned my first chunk of illicit sexual congress since marriage in order not too much to hurt my wife.
Then, years later, when we lived in a bower of lilac and dipping, dazzling blue-jays (but a bit shimmy in our two square rooms) Lucy brought a hearty, Cockney mum home. This one loved to leave her kids to her husband any evening she could and go off and do it anywhere. She had done it on heaths and in alleys, behind bushes, in the backs of taxis and once on a barrow with an importunate barrow boy.
Lucy became ill and retired to the bedroom and I kissed Clare on the cheek, removed my jacket and then heaved out of my trousers an enormous taut thing. This Clare contemplated for a moment, then murmured resolutely:
— No, you can’t tempt me.
And draped it decorously in my discarded jacket. Later she explained that friendship with you precluded frolic with me. But her resolution proved frail and when I escorted her to the dark stairs, she murmured breathlessly:
— Could you—here?
And we stood, half-way down the carpeted flight, she with her bottom to the wall and I feverishly facing her. But it seemed I couldn’t. The narrow stairs, necessitating one foot up and one down, critically modified the vital geometry and congress, as they say, remained unachieved. So I gasped in furious frustration, aware that at any moment a button might be pressed and the dark stairwell become a dim theatre with a staid, astounded couple observing our indecorous antics, and tugged Clare down on to the stairs themselves. There curious, convulsive heavings, reminiscent of what a salmon must experience returning to its nursery waters, finally nudged me precariously into the celestial lodge. It was fucking against the current but good fucking still and exultancy rode with me down the still-shrouded stairs when I finally led Clare out into the night. She squeezed my cheeks between her palms, kissed me gently and marched away buoyantly enough while, sudden sorrow and foreboding tightening my chest, I set off to clamber up the obliging stairs again to acquaint you with what had passed.
— I think it’s intolerably cruel!
Do you, mother? But not what’s called infidelity. You accept that as inevitable. You think that admitting it is wrong. I disagree. We have confronted each other for so many millennia, swathed in convention, bridged only by the peremptory phallus, two alien races on the earth, isn’t it time we got to know each other a bit?
— I think it’s intolerably cruel!
Suppose I did what you recommend. Suppose I had a steady mistress somewhere and kept it secret from Lucy. There would instantly be a wall between us, an area of silence, a necessity for guarded speech, in short a negation of everything we have, which is total candour, total knowledge and acceptance of each other. And it is that which crackles like a field of energy about us and enlivens everyone who comes within its range.
— I think
it’s intolerably cruel!
But when the wound heals, there we still are—together! Whereas if I hadn’t told her, we would walk on different sides of a crevasse which would widen, under the stress of lies, until we no longer knew each other. So—I choose cruelty.
There will come a time when human beings will couple in the streets and parks, if they are so inclined, and cause no more stir than people walking. There will come a time when there is no more private life.
If the bomb doesn’t get us first.
Mother, the image of our species for millennia has been that of bones hunching painfully across a stony land. It is changing. We can already see that it will soon be that of minds darting through the galaxy. The old sanctions are no longer appropriate.
We swerved with the iron river round the new canyons of London.
— We’ll have nearly an hour.
We had planned it that way. A last drink together. The cigarette sign glowed silver and blue. You were leaving me. Mammoth buses trundled through the station forecourt. Comical chaps capered above the theatre marquee. I steered you between snorting cars towards the pub.
— Write to me.
— Of course.
You smiled sadly. I squeezed your arm. You were going an eighth of the way round the world. We had never been in different countries before and rarely in different cities. He had a claim on you. Indeed, I hoped you’d have a lovely holiday.
— You will come back, won’t you?
— Of course!
You shrugged off the question as idiotic. And yet—if he begged you to stay—if he said:
— Not this—for although I am a simple and youthful fellow and not an intellectual man like your husband, my friend, yet I know you a little now and would laugh at the idea that you could be woo with comfortable things. But here in my sunny land I do have wealth. Here is my speed-boat to play with. But I say not this but my need for your gentleness and value. I may be a youth but will he ever return to you? Stay and wed me in a mosque.
— I say—you will come back, won’t you?
— Of course I will. Good heavens! What do you all think?
— I know I’m a shit.
My sentimental eye glistened. Three boisterous inspectors eyed us amidst talk of men who kicked balls. You leaned towards me and planted the sweetness of your kiss on my cheek. We had another dry sherry. I know I’m a shit. I couldn’t bear to lose you for ever. I said.
— I won’t—see you to the train.
Your family would be on the platform, squat, saintly plebeians. They thought you were merely visiting friends abroad. The notion that you were hastening to a lover in the Levant would have been beyond their moral grasp. And yet, such their adoration of you, the fact that the deed was yours would ultimately have reconciled them to it. I couldn’t face them.
— I won’t—see you to the train.
— Don’t forget me—while we’re on different planets.
And then I saw, wondrously, that you were crying. It was still all right! I hugged you and praised you. You said:
— Go.
And as I threaded my way out through anonymous Londoners I felt sure that you would come back—and I could go on being a shit for a while longer.
22
YOU WERE BORN in the West of England. You are a peasant girl. In the first world war your father, a lay saint, wired torpedoes and wept. In the second, a tall young Italian with a guitar and a premonition of death came for you. He wore the uniform of the British Army and married you. He was gentle and patient and impregnated you shortly before he went to convert the premonition into the reality and settle for ever in Normandy. He left a pregnant child, you, behind. By seventeen you were a mother, a widow and a private soldier. That’s when they took that dreadful photograph.
I haven’t got that photograph. I couldn’t live with that photograph.
Under the forage cap your eager, lovely, childish face radiates joy. Your prominent tooth adds an irresistible touch of charm. I used to devour it, raging silently at the loss of the seven years between when it was taken and when I met you.
I couldn’t live with the reproach of that lovely photograph.
23
A HALO OF SWIFTS ringed the block of flats. Flowering woodbine matted the waste ground opposite. The sky was ridged with pink and orange. The bullets of the last murderess to be hanged in Great Britain had chipped, some years before, the brickwork above my head. She had shot her faithless boy-friend where I now stood. Girls with faithless boy-friends trailed past me up the street. I sipped coarse Beaujolais.
Negro in an Aston Martin. You used to meet me here. Come down the hill after dressing—lovely and vital. Now there’s a band of green in the sky. Transparent green pool in Wales. You danced on the cliff. (That pink dress almost diaphanous. Outline of her pants. God, their bodies!)
Hello, friend. Come out and share the air. There is an atmosphere of subtle reproach. People are coming home from work. Another day of grim folly? I don’t know what you mean, friend. I think you intend the salutation to be humorous for there’s a faint smile or smirk on your face. You have the advantage of me, friend. You know my name and I can’t summon yours. Actually, friend, I don’t think we’ve ever exchanged a remark before, have we? If your face didn’t have those pustules, friend, you’d be a handsome lad. Not being handsome myself, I have perhaps an exaggerated regard for male looks. Another day of grim folly? It’s very obscure, friend. What exactly do you mean by edging up beside me on this summer eve when my wife is in the Levant and remarking: another day of grim folly? Kindly explain the import of that remark. I see. I see. Yesterday a member of the shadow cabinet referred to the government’s economic policy as grim folly. I’m nodding thoughtfully, friend. I’m not sure what response you anticipate. You find the remark funny? Or tragic? You approve of the government’s economic policy? You deprecate it? You’re an economist yourself? You regard economics as a sick joke? I’ll tell you candidly, friend, I don’t know, in the sharpest possible definition, just what the government’s economic policy is! I believe in an informed electorate, friend, but sometimes wonder if it’s possible. No one can be an expert in every subject—and even experts differ.
We stand here, friend, you with bitter beer in your hand and I with Beaujolais. We watch the darling girls trail up the hill. The night before last, friend, I stood here as I stand now. Those same swifts were canonizing that same block of flats. There was a similar sunfall, flighty and thin, with bands of weird colour. My wife is in Turkey, friend. I stood here and thought: in the last ten days, since my wife went to the Levant, I have taken out five girls, two of them twice. I have taken them to restaurants and spooned expensive meals into them. I have taken them to public houses and poured precious spirits down them. I have escorted several back to my dingy quarters and infused poetic wisdom into them. For these efforts and this shameful expenditure—I barely contribute to my son’s upkeep, friend—I have indeed received token rewards. My lips have not been parched for want of female saliva. My fingers have not remained unmoistened by denser female secretions. And yet not a single one of these pampered girls, friend, not a single ungrateful one of them, has invited me in, friend. My questing part has remained exiled, friend. My homing organ has been barred from its natural goal. So I stood here and thought: pox on these local wenches!
(Observe that one, friend, with her black brassiere glistening through her lawn blouse. See the slim swell of her calves and the roundness of her bottom!)
Pox on these local wenches, I thought, who gulp a man’s grub and part not their legs unto him. I will go to Soho. Don’t misunderstand me, friend. I have paid girls before but my intention, the night before last, was other. I was in a mood of quiescence, of almost philosophic resignation. The girls of this parish, I mused, have stopped screwing. I will go to Soho, not to see if I fare better in those notorious precincts, not in the hope that one or other of the places of resort will supply either a new or an old female friend who will do it wit
h me—no, I will go to Soho both as a gesture of protest against the women of this leafy district—my wife’s gone to Turkey, friend—and as a simple pilgrimage to a beloved spot. Many a long week is it since I trod the stub-littered floor of The Heights of Quebec, since the seedy clamour of the Vesuvius Club engulfed me. I will go to Soho as a Moslem to Mecca. Perchance there I may encounter congenial company—male—to dine or carouse with.
Well, friend, that’s what I did. All the prizes which fortune can bestow on a London motorist were mine that evening. Through set after set of beckoning green lights sailed my rotting convertible and I. Neither the Camden Town bypass nor the approaches to Cambridge Circus were clogged with traffic. No sooner had I veered sharp left into Soho than the true Yukon of a driver, a parking place, yawned on my right. Nor was this the limit of my good luck. When, a few minutes later, I shouldered my way into The Heights of Quebec, a single glance told me that my journey had not been in vain. The bar-room was mellow with familiar faces. There in the far corner loomed big Ralph Petrie. His recent motor accident had left him with an ivory complexion and I observed that he looked a shade like one of Dr. Frankenstein’s early failures. Mike Wynn, actor and thief, was piping away to a sulky group on the opposite side of the room. I spied others: acid, honest May, the Black Mountain, once an idolized pugilist, Ralph Greenberg, inventor of neo-Rococo prose, and many more. Inevitably my heart swelled and I edged through the throng to Ralph Petrie’s side.
Then I talked with Ralph Petrie. I confronted this amiable, well-bred man and we exchanged remarks on different topics. When he inquired about my wife, whom I knew he admired, I told him that she was in the Levant. I explained the situation dispassionately as a development in human affairs and Ralph accepted it soberly. There was no hint, friend, of breast-beating. Civilized discourse between old friends, who understand the difficulty of things, is a tonic, friend. What happens at sea? Iron islands have been loose on the oceans for a century. Veering out of harbour through brown vapour they may collide. The iron blade of a bow may gash the hull of another ship. Vessels grind on to shoals, friend, and panic meets salt water. All this costs money, friend, and big Ralph Petrie’s reputable company had long insured those from whom disaster takes no more than property. But there is more to the globe than land and sea, friend. Have we not colonized the air? It was Ralph’s bold plan to extend the protective mantle of his company to the shells of aluminium that pierce the clouds. Special problems there. A physical encounter between two whistling jets, possibly showering a city with destruction, might liquidate lives and property worth millions. No reasonable premium could bear the whole potential strain. So, Ralph’s plan was—
