Dead Babies (26 page)

"Please, God," he said to himself, "don't let
all
of this happen to me. It won't do to let it all happen to one person— to anyone, not just me. I still can't believe that it all has, really. I suppose it's that that keeps me going. Oh, great— fabulous. Look, why doesn't someone just come off it, is what I want to know." Keith looked around him. "I can't cope with this." Keith looked at his feet; even he was shocked. "I'm falling apart here. I can't cope with this. And who's doing it all to me, eh?
Who?"

Well, we're sorry about it, Keith, of course, but we're afraid

that you simply
had
to be that way. Nothing personal, please understand—merely in order to serve the designs of this par-
: ticular fiction. In fact, things get much, much worse for you later on, so appallingly bad that you'll yearn to be back at the Institute, or even in Parky Street, Wimbledon, with that family you so loathe. It's all too far advanced for us to intercede on your behalf. Tolerate it. You'll turn out all right in the end. Now go and lie on your bunk.

Keith lay spread on his bunk—spread like soft butter on warm toast, his body trickling gratefully into the folds of blankets and counterpane. He oozed nearer the wall as he heard female voices from outside. Next to the tobacco tin on his bedside table was a creased manila envelope. It contained an agitated reminder from the Advanced Dietary Research Commission. Whitehead replaced this with the
billet-doux.
"Ah, fuck it," he said, crossing out
Kenneth Whitehead
and putting, instead,
Lucy (Littlejohn).

46: wan windows

Gazing about himself, Giles found that he was in his bedroom. This appeared to please him in a mild way. He strolled to the refrigerator. He started to hum. He removed from the frosted compartment a tall glass of gin and Southern Comfort, a drink he had not experimented with, nor indeed heard of, before. He even started to whistle. Shadows wandered in from the corners of the room.

He sipped, and held up the glass to examine it against the light. "Hey. This stuff . . ." He sipped, and held up the glass. "This stuff . . . isn't bad." He sipped.

Halfway across the room Giles remembered his daily letter to Mrs. Coldstream. He came to a halt and his knees wobbled. An expression of delirious puzzlement overtook his features.

What did she want him to write, what could have happened today, how could things change still, how could you make it new any more, what was there left to tell her now?

"Dear Mother," said Giles. "I nearly tripped down the stairs on the way out. Good job I didn't! Dear Mother, Luigi wasn't sure of the way back and we had to ask a man in the street. A bit of luck
he
did! Dear Mother, Everyone was up
by the time I got back. High time, too! Dear Mother, I got drunk all day. Why? Dear Mother, I'm dying here fast. Dear Teeth, I'm gum the crown drill."

Giles sat down at his desk. Languidly he synchronized the jar of 15B pencils, the deck of A4 writing paper, the eager glass. Fifteen minutes later he had completed a letter full of such typically filial charms as sullenness, torpor, complete want of understanding or sympathy, plainly sarcastic affection, explosive false amusement, and clueless self-pity— spread like giant's graph readings over eleven airy sides. Giles forced the scroll into an envelope, well pleased with his work. Outside, the afternoon backed off across the hills, causing light to glow on the wan windows of some underwater warehouse or distant farm.

Gazing about himself, Giles found that he was in his bathroom. This appeared to displease him in a mild way. He felt intimidated by the white porcelain and hard steel. He stared sleepily into the mirror. He didn't notice that something had been written in shaving cream across the glass. "Heal me, heal me," he whispered. Then he noticed. It read
Johnny.
And then he saw the thing on his basin sidetable, the smashed mockup of his mouth, wet with someone's snot, saliva, and blood. Giles fainted half sideways into the deep carpet.

47: a
BIT
permanent

"You can get used to anything in time, I suppose," said Lucy, descending like collapsed taffeta onto the lawn. "But I'd better start feeling better soon."

"Me too," said Diana. "I feel like a fiend."

"That's an awfully nice blouse, Lucy," said Celia. "Is it Thai silk?"

"Mm. Got it from La Soeur."

"Christ," said Diana. "How'd you manage that?"

"Whoring."

"Whoring," echoed Roxeanne. "I used to whore out on the Strip. Throat jobs. The guys used to get really phased because I wouldn't take any cash."

"Why wouldn't you?" asked Lucy.

"Had plenty cash of my own.”

: "What sort of men?" asked Celia.

"You know, just men. It was part of some project of Marvell's, I think."

"That's smart," said Diana. "Why did you?"

"Fun."

Celia frowned. "I think I'd find it terribly difficult to do anything with someone I didn't fancy a
bit."
She stopped frowning. "Do you know, I don't think I've ever been to bed with someone I didn't quite like," she lied.

"Me neither," lied Diana.

"Well, you're required to do that in my line of work," said Lucy. "The men you don't like require it.
Fun?
It's a nightmare. Sometimes I'm lying on my back counting wallpaper patterns and thinking about . . . pork pies or something, and there's some little Chink wriggling around like a maggot on top of me—and I know, I know: this is hell. This is hell. Think you wouldn't mind so long as his hair was different, his eyes were another color, his toes weren't like that. You would, though. It's a bloody good job I've got a heart of gold. Still, it beats typing."

"Right. And I don't think it makes that much difference," said Diana. "Say some man takes you out to a forty-pound dinner and everything. I mean, you'd feel a real slag if you didn't. It makes sense. Most people hate what they do. They spend all their lives hating it. It makes sense to finance what you like doing even if you get a bad fuck at the end of it. And with this protobiotic stuff . . . nothing too bad can happen."

"Nothing too bad," said Lucy. "You get to want a little bit more than nothing too bad."

"It's not that difficult," said Celia mildly. "I've done it— at a time I thought I never could again. It can be done still."

"No one I know can still do it," said Lucy. "And I'm fucked if I can."

Those conversations.

"Me too," said Diana. "If only women got sexual boredom too. But they just don't seem to get it the way men do. And you can't stay with someone who doesn't want you."

"Doesn't what?" asked a preoccupied Roxeanne, lifting her hands palm upward in a supplicant gesture in order to flex her breast muscles. "Give you a minute and you'll be saying women are basically monogamous."

"Well I am," said Celia. "Now.”

"Pardon me, Celia," Roxeanne said, "but I think you're the one who's in real trouble. This marriage gimmick— I mean, just think of the children, think of—"

"That's not really what I mean. I think I mean just having something serious and, well, and a bit permanent."

"That's what I think I mean too," said Lucy.

Diana looked away down the lawn. A vague regret edged at her, but she shrugged it off. When she looked back, Lucy was smiling at her. Diana smiled too.

"I've fucked them big," sang Lucy Littlejohn, closing the lavatory door behind her, "I've fucked them small. I've fucked them fat, I've fucked them all! I've fucked them—"

Shrewdly Whitehead had positioned himself on the first rung of the hall stairs; one hand clutched the banister rail, while the other held up a creased manila envelope.

"Hi there, Keith. Wotcher doing?"

"Lucy. I've written you a letter," said Keith.

"Fancy," said Lucy.

"Will you read it, please."

"Okay."

Little Keith watched as Lucy did so. She ran her eyes over it quickly, releasing a snort of incompetently suppressed laughter. Then her expression sobered and she perused it with some care.

"Well?" said Keith.

Lucy moved closer to him. She took one of his fingerless hands in hers.

"No? You won't?" he asked evenly.

She shook her head.

"Fair enough. Why not, by the way, just out of interest? Not enough money, or is it just me?"

Lucy leaned forward. "No one else knows this," she whispered. "Heroin. A year. I'm dying now."

"But your ... It isn't . . ." Keith stared at her bare forearm.

"No, but my bum's like the far side of the moon."

Keith experienced intense gratification. "Why? Can you stop it now?"

"Nope. So you see, you sort of go off sex. You lose sex. That's one of the good things.”

"Ah, fuck it," said Keith. "My cock doesn't work any more anyway."

They laughed together.

"That's what I mean," said Lucy. "All this . . ." she gestured vaguely, "it's too many for me. Look at us now. Can you imagine us
old?"

Keith seemed to consider this for a few seconds. "No way," he said.

"No way at all," said Lucy.

48: THESE DAYS

When she reached the end of the drive Diana turned to make sure Andy was following her. She heard the front door being yanked shut and Andy trotted into view. Diana looked beyond him at Appleseed Rectory. The dead texture of its bleached walls was even more pronounced in the summer-thunder afternoon. "All right, all right," he said.

Andy and Diana had spent so little time simultaneously alone and conscious in the past few weeks that they felt slightly adrift strolling together along the warm macadam of the village street. Her head bowed, Diana walked with arms folded across her chest. Andy's mind felt oppressively clear. The badminton had evaporated the champagne cocktails and the hash he smoked continuously did about as much for his jaded system these days as oxygen. Minutes passed. To forestall, or at least delay, boring things from Diana, Andy said, "Those Americans are getting me down. I'm going to beat one up if I get half a chance. And I mean really beat them up."

"Like you really fucked Roxeanne?"

This took Andy by surprise. He had forgotten Diana knew about that. He chose to ignore the remark. "Especially that tall fucker—the one with the crappy name. Rap. Yeah. Hey, I bet they sent you that note—the one on the bed. What you reckon? If I could just prove that I could really go to town. What you think?"

Andy shadowboxed unenthusiastically. Diana walked on.

"Fuck, Diana,
you
said you wanted to talk."

"I'm sorry. Andy, wait here a minute. Won't be long."

Andy stood grumbling to himself outside the mini-market.

He had been banned from its premises following an occasion two months earlier on which he had collapsed drunkenly into a six-foot display pyramid of BeanMeal tins and then slapped the elderly assistant manager round the shop for . . . for . . . Andy couldn't remember what for. He scanned the street for village down-and-outs—in particular Godfrey de Taunton, the legless hobo who had recently won Appleseed obloquy (and a skillful walloping from Adorno) for being found asleep in their coalshed. "De Taunton," Andy muttered, "you'd better not show yourself this afternoon." He looked the other way, shielding his eyes with his hand. "Is all."

Diana emerged from the mini-market. Andy noted with fresh boredom that she was still looking hunched and preoccupied. They began to walk back. To walk back in that foot-dragging, tense, dilatory, pregnant style that comes when something is nearly being said. Andy wanted to run, do cartwheels, leap in the air, go to the pub, scream.

"Baby, can we sit here for a bit?" said Diana, turning her head to a wooden bench recessed a few yards from the road and partly canopied by the leaves of the dying elm on the loose-soiled verge. The bench, they now noticed, was patterned with the amorous graffiti of the local young . . .
Billy fks Jane, Susan Fs Emily, Tom fucks Cynthia, Chris F Peter.
Andy sighed with disgust as he made out a much more scored and faded etching,
Peter L Anne.