On Saturday night they went to the party together through the same doors, across the same corridor, in the same steps. And Persia did not care who was there or not there, because she was central, and to be admired and fussed, like daughters whose mothers arrange their frilly hems.
So Smithey opened the door to them. She was dressed in stiff check which bound and sashed her, so that her movement, which was her most special grace, was suppressed, and her shoulders and neck were more than ever bulging from the confines of the embroidered collar. Her hair had been set in stiff pillars through which insects could have made procession, and was not fluid, and was as fixed as her muscles. Thus starched and strapped, she gave a contained gesture reminiscent of backhand returns, and Persia and Adrian were admitted.
Then all the heads which had been delving into their own individual exploits, forgot their own concentrations, and levelled themselves towards the couple who stood in the doorway. For Adrian was dark and grand and straight, and his eyes were rich with pride for his capture, who hung, soft and fragile, radiant with her own particular triumph. So that Persia knew together they were of beauty, and central, and demanded attention, because of the light from them which ran from their eyes and over their faces and skin so that in all areas to the last corner of skin, they shone with the pride of people who had met and matched each other, and united by common consent.
Cecil, in one corner of the room was frozen like movies stopped, his glass halfway between his extended mouth and his hand’s ordinary gesture. His eyes were so blue they were almost white but they did not have shining. Pushed into his own state without any mirror to reflect his reality, he was both forlorn and lonely, with no attachment to anchor him to any other person, apart from his exploits, which he could not claim as a virtue. And his face, although it did not show jealousy, was none the less bereft at the mouth, as though a friend had sailed with fanfare and streamers, on a long voyage of discovery.
‘You look fabulous,’ Smithey said to Persia, and stared at her like younger, poorer sisters who had been forgotten in kitchens. And Persia understood the power of being young and handsome and holding a secret list of years like wallets stuffed with paper money that brought porters in foyers to obedience. So that because of the way her flesh held her bones, and her hair gleamed with rich commands, and because of the way there was the man to whom she clung, she was the centre of all people who gathered about her their eyes, and said that she held for a moment fame in herself, for the room.
‘It’s good of you to organize all this,’ Adrian said.
The people opened up, and fell back, and Adrian and Persia moved down among them, and were greeted and acknowledged, as royal weddings with nodding audience, each asking only a few words in deference to other’s demands. And Adrian showed Persia to his friends as if she was a rich band on his arm from far away, not quite understood apart from the surface glitter. And they said words to her, downwards, because they were older, and more consolidated, and had discovered themselves, into mounds of character. And all the words they said were directed to Persia, or to Persia through Adrian, so that she was the aimed direction.
After the walking around and acknowledgement, and the handshakes and almost curtsies, and after they had been presented with drinks almost with bows, and savouries had been poured into their palms, they went over to Cecil, who had been observing alone the progression. He was sipping at the red punch distastefully, as if, on nights like this, the over-indulgence with sugar was important.
‘You are at quite your most glorious tonight, Persia,’ he said, and might have pouted. ‘But then of course one is always at one’s best when one is the centre of attention.’ He laughed in a dingo way, but like dogs, smiled only with his lips, which were hollow.
‘You are always being looked at yourself,’ Persia said, and might have stamped, had she not, like queens, been aware of cameras and recordings.
‘Ah, but that is how we are, we vivid people. We must either possess the limelight, or be possessed by it.’
Persia did not answer. At such a time she could afford to ignore his insults.
‘How is your business?’ she asked.
‘Excuse me,’ Adrian said, and went to talk to a man.
‘I’m a bit short on coaches at the moment. They just don’t seem to have the sense of timing these days. Of course, theatrical people are always marvellous.’
‘Do you employ women as well as men?’
‘I find the men have a more vigorous approach.’
‘How do you train them?’
‘I don’t. I merely assess with my eye.’
‘I suppose if they apply for the job they must have had some experience?’
‘I believe that is so.’ He was not turning himself into jokes tonight, but like people with sticks across their paths.
‘Perhaps I could be of use,’ Persia said as calmly as great oceans.
Cecil was for a moment like frightened fish in seaweed. He scrabbled round for Adrian who was however engrossed with beer and a fellow accountant, sailing through his established routine of words so that Cecil, gathering his professionalism about him, laughed like open A’s on violins, and said that it was a good joke.
‘No, I would like to be a tutor,’ Persia said. ‘By now I have had a little experience. Adrian has taught me some things.’
‘But I thought you were shocked and disgusted.’
‘Adrian would have liked me to have been so.’
‘He did not even want you to know of my folly.’
‘I would like to learn. Are you afraid I wouldn’t be any good?’
Cecil laughed again. ‘I have no fears about that,’ he said.
‘Then what?’
‘I’m concerned about my friend.’
‘You are horrified at me.’
‘I’m surprised.’
‘Yes. I am surprised too. I never know what I shall do next.’
‘My answer is no.’
‘You are denying me because of Adrian.’
‘All you’d get out of it would be an over-developed conscience.’
‘I would learn. It is most important.’
‘I think you’re mistaken. It is easier not to learn.’
Cecil finished the rest of his glass with a polish of movement. Then, bowing formally, he sidled away in a series of jerks and twitches, like brooms propped against walls and sliding sideways, gradually gaining momentum before they clattered to the floor.
Persia stood looking after him. She was angry they did not allow her to pursue her own individual whims, which did not belong to them, but which they invaded anyway. It was like laws which said you could not kill your own body, as though it belonged to others more than yourself. Cecil had, in fact, accused her of sensationalism.
She went to join Adrian and the other accountant. Smithey was passing round the supper, salad on paper plates. As Persia drew up to the men, and moored with ripples and current, they interrupted their talking to turn their attention upon her.
‘This is my fiancée,’ Adrian said, and his lips curled as princes with new gifts.
‘Everyone has been saying how lovely she is,’ the accountant said. He was like possums, with glasses, all soft and quivering. His skin was quite smooth with only one black hair from a mole to mar its creaminess. You could confront him and not care whether he loved you or not, although with most people you could be terrified of their disapproval while at the same time believing you fascinated them.
‘Are you enjoying yourself?’ Adrian asked.
‘They are all making such a fuss of us. I’ve never had such a lovely time.’
‘Excuse me,’ the possum man said, and went.
‘We were talking about inflation,’ Adrian said to Persia, staring at her accusingly as the other accountant bubbled off.
‘Then it is just as well I interrupted.’
Adrian began to back away. There were some men behind who looked promising to him.
‘I asked Cecil if I could
be a tutor,’ Persia said, to make him stay.
Adrian stopped his eyes in their trail of wandering and brought them down onto Persia.
‘You? What on earth do you mean?’
‘I would like to earn some extra money.’
‘That’s out of the question. Haven’t you any scruples? Do you understand what it would mean? Sleeping with strange men?’
‘But before, you didn’t condemn Cecil.’ She was smiling now, to have put his outrage in a box, and be holding it, and Adrian, to escape the way she was putting him under a lid, grabbed her by the elbow, guiding her swiftly into the midst of new groups, who raised themselves from their own absorption up to the levels of the intruders, so that Adrian’s captured parts dropped and were lost among the feet.
Later in the evening when sentences had settled into a railway line of words and screams, Paint made his entrance. It was executed with a perfect sense of timing and finesse. His inaudible knock in no way detracted from his presentation of himself. As the door was opened by Smithey, he stood completely still in the space where it had been, and put his eyes sideways and in all directions, observing down to the last hole of perspective every intimate detail of the room. He did not say anything but the room was immediately stilled, and after a few rebellious shuffles, compelled to silence. His own entrance was, if anything, more glorious than Persia’s.
All faces turned to him. Then when he had gathered every observation up in bundles and bound them and set them aside while the room waited breathless, he ran through his inside for a joke to unhook him from the pressure of expectation.
‘What would you like me to talk about?’ he asked the room. ‘I can speak on anything, even nothing.’
The room erupted into approval. People went forwards to greet him, and the party began again from the space of inactivity.
Soon after Paint came over to Adrian.
‘Congratulations,’ he said, and his eyes made cuts and abrasions so that Persia would have needed bandages all over to escape, and could only come together again after he left her alone. To be beside him was exhausting. He had control of all actions within his immediate air. As soon as he was among you, he made happenings begin. Each word he said or witheld was dangerous.
‘Are you still playing squash?’ he asked Adrian. ‘With the poet?’
‘Yes. And at least he arrives on time.’
‘Does he deal with balls as well as words?’
‘He concentrates well.’
Of all the people at the party Paint was the only one who would not acknowledge her, and therefore she required his attention all the more urgently.
‘I shouldn’t imagine Adrian hit it off with poets,’ Persia said.
But Paint ignored this. ‘Where did you meet him?’ he asked, not leaving his notes on Adrian.
‘He was playing at the courts, and approached me.’
‘Because Adrian does not believe in approaching himself,’ Persia said to Paint. But Paint did not like the interruption for he wanted to maintain his own line of questioning, either being the instigator of all the queries or all the answers, but refusing in any way to remain passive or unnoticed. Persia was impressed. It was a great relief to let some other person talk, and not have to labour with fillings of conversation.
‘Did you buy a new racquet?’ Paint asked.
Adrian explained the virtues of the replacement in some detail, and Paint listened, his mouth slightly open, his eyes savage with scrutiny, as much in the limelight when he was listening as when he was talking. And after he had quite finished exploring the last detail of racquets and returns, he left Adrian, so that you had to watch him going and notice where he went, and so that everybody he passed lifted their heads as he journeyed by, and did not let them fall again until he was beyond their vision.
And so the night went on, and was a filling, and a particular time, and a means of getting from one day to the next, used to its utmost potential.
Chapter 5
On Monday they went to work together out of the same door, still wet from the shower and fresh with clean clothes, Adrian with his briefcase and tie, and collar and shirt, bound in his suit behind padding and wool. And when they came to a certain part of the city they had to go in different directions, and dispersed, but not before he had put a small but possessive kiss upon Persia’s forehead, even though there were people hurrying by.
Some months went by and in those months they took on parts of each other. Sometimes they were close and further and further went together inside each other, and discarded layers until they were all known to each other all over again. Their bodies did not end precisely with their definition of flesh but were shared.
It seemed important to Persia that she should know each part of Adrian most thoroughly and enter it and emerge with him all over her. So that she began to put aside some of her own traits and assume some of his because it was most easy to avoid disapproval if she imitated him.
Once he asked her family to dinner so that they could know him, and he could explain his occupation of their daughter, and be accepted.
The mother swept in, billowing and breezing in draughts and currents of herself. There was an immediate reunion in which the mother by some subtle feat managed to accuse Persia of desertion while at the same time greeting her in much the same manner as great singers are presented with flowers.
‘My dreadful daughter,’ she said, and held her back as though this was the only chance she would have to examine her, and must therefore be exploited to its limits. Then she laughed gaily, then set Persia and the laugh aside, in one motion. Thus having disposed of her daughter for the time being she could turn her attention to the rest of the room which she found far more exciting.
The mother from the start was determined to conquer the room. There was not one crack she would leave undevastated. She would invade and explore the possibilities of each hominid summing and noting them immediately through her brilliant sharp eyes which were capable of interpreting the slightest flicker of movement in whichever way they chose. If you won her as a friend you were eternally safe behind her fighting barriers, but if by chance you bruised or disrupted her, you were forever damned to be harassed and condemned, the subject of long and exaggerated stories which would reduce the most sober person to laughter.
Adrian stood stiffly to attention above his chair. He was wound so tightly he could at any moment have ruptured. He was extremely tall and dark and unapproachable. He looked directly at the mother without smiling or coming forwards to meet her.
Cecil however effused, and precipitated forwards, and extended arms and mouths, and greetings, lavishly like too much icing on cakes.
‘My dear woman. How charming. And are you really Persia’s mother? You seem so young.’
He was all bounce and innocence and clear china. And it did appear that he was consumed and demolished by the matron the way he appraised her from head to foot.
‘Allow me to introduce myself,’ Adrian said, still remaining at attention in front of his chair.
‘Oh you don’t need to,’ the mother effused. ‘I’ve heard all about you. You must be Adrian, Persia’s fiancé.’
‘And this is Cecil,’ Adrian said. ‘He lives downstairs.’
‘On not quite such a high and mighty strata,’ Cecil said.
‘How lovely,’ the mother said. She screwed up her shoulders and nose so that it was the most genuine statement, and so full of honesty that no-one could have taken it otherwise.
‘I’m sorry my husband couldn’t come,’ the mother said. ‘But he has a board meeting in Perth.’
This was directed at Adrian, who nodded not unlike captured generals in battle tents.
‘Well Persia darling,’ the mother said, and swept herself into a seat, smiling and nodding at everybody as she did so, for she had immediately taken every eye in the room upon herself. ‘You certainly moved into a lovely building,’ she said. ‘You have found such nice friends.’ She squinted and beamed at Cecil, who put
his eyebrows up like flags on masts.
‘Isn’t she gorgeous!’ he breathed.
‘I’m not with Smithey anymore,’ Persia said.
‘Oh?’
‘I am living with Adrian.’
There was the slightest pause as the mother assessed the facts, but conscious of every person in the room watching her, she was determined not to relinquish to any morality. Scruples were after all very unfashionable these days, and if one was to be modern, and swinging, one had to move with the times.
She laughed therefore, with her head slightly back. ‘The young do it so differently nowadays,’ she remarked, and folded her knee across her other knee under swathes of dressing.
Adrian, still standing stiffly, with his arms by his sides coughed once, ‘It is not my wish,’ he said. ‘Your daughter appears to be against marriage for the time being.’
‘She’ll change,’ the mother said, and tried not to look concerned. ‘I think you’re doing the right thing Adrian, if I may call you that. I’m so glad she’s found someone who will be firm with her. She’s very difficult you know.’
Adrian remained unconvinced, and coughed once more. Cecil rubbed his hands together and said, ‘Shall I get the drinks?’ and flounced out to the kitchen.
‘Isn’t he a nice boy?’ the mother said to Persia in a loud hiss. ‘Such an honest face.’
‘Yes,’ Persia answered.
‘I have been longing to meet you Adrian,’ the mother said, and smiled.
Adrian nodded slightly. He was so buttressed he did not need to speak to remind anyone he was there. The mother who had intimidated lords and ladies, had not a hope of intimidating him for as long as she remained a woman, and feminine.
‘Have you lived alone in this flat all your life?’
‘Only for a while.’
‘And do you like it here?’
‘I shall buy a house soon.’
‘How lovely Persia. Where will you look for one, Adrian?’
The Beginning of Everything and the End of Everything Else Page 6
