Getting It Right (21 page)

Her face cleared. Marge believed in love quite as much as she believed in marriage . . . ‘I’ve told her she should cut down on her starches,’ she remarked with apparent
irrelevance . . . She gave him a quick little pat on the shoulder. ‘Anyway, I don’t know what Ken would do without you on these Sunday jamborees. He does find it difficult to associate
with people who are politically unaware; and it’s too early for him to show Dad his vegetables.’

He picked up the now heavily laden tray for her and carried it into the lounge; a scene packed with the familiar discomforts. Mr Lamb and Stephen were crouched before the television which
contained its usual quota of steaming men trotting about and periodically hugging one another; Mrs Lamb was sulking because the chocolates had taken precedence over the bear. ‘Poor Teddy,
then,’ she was saying. ‘Who doesn’t love you then? Oh, turn that thing down, Fred, for goodness’ sake!’ Marge began pouring tea and coffee on these troubled waters,
and her sheer good nature prevailed. Presently she sent Gavin in search of Ken whom he found in his workshop repairing a portable radio.

‘Hullo, mate.’

‘She told me to bring you some coffee. Are those your new speakers?’

‘Yup. Like to hear them?’

‘I would.’ They settled down to a delightful demonstration of Ken’s equipment.

Going home was not as usual because they had to give Muriel a lift. Mrs Lamb, who was wound up by the excitements of the day, seemed to have taken against Muriel, who was, or
seemed to be, quite unaware of this. Her jealousy took a masochistic form: she plied Mrs Lamb with questions about her aristocratic guest. Gavin, like his father, remained safely silent.

‘If she stayed the night suddenly without any warning I suppose she was still in her party clothes? She must have felt ever so funny at breakfast.’

‘She was not funny at breakfast. Naturally she brought a change of clothing with her. What an idea!’ she added.

‘Which Earl did you say she was the daughter of?’

‘I didn’t say.’

‘I expect Gavin knows, don’t you, Gavin?’

‘Naturally, Gavin wouldn’t go about asking her!’

‘On the skinny side – she seemed to me.’

Nobody had expected Mr Lamb to speak and at first nobody answered him. Then Muriel remarked: ‘Oh well, these very young girls think it’s fashionable to be skinny, don’t they?
For some reason they seem to think it makes them attractive.’

Gavin, who was driving, thanked God she wasn’t in front with him, and as an afterthought thanked Him even more fervently for not making him have to drive her home alone. If he’d been
driving her home
alone
. . .

At peace, at last, in his room, he cast himself on his bed and allowed depression – like a sea fog – to approach and envelop him. He was absolutely no good at life: either he was
scared stiff, or he was depressed. Or else he was just chugging along, doing what was expected of him – like at work. Other people were always urging him to change – to do something
different. Instinct and behaviour patterns were what people admired in other forms of life – in their own, it seemed, that instinct was minimal, and you were supposed to discover your own
behaviour patterns simply in order to change them. He remembered Evelyn Waugh in a television interview saying that he preferred people he knew well – they were totally predictable and
therefore boring, but it meant that he didn’t have to listen to them. Then he thought of Sartre saying, ‘Hell is other people.’ Amazing: he remembered that he had thought at the
time that Sartre should have said, ‘Hell
could
be other people.’ But of course, as a remark, that didn’t sound anything like so interesting: it hadn’t got that
sweeping, devastating neatness about it that would catch people who would then feel it must be true because they could remember it. It occurred to him that other people urged him to change in
their
direction whatever that might be: Marge’s was marriage and a family, Harry’s was queerdom and a steady alliance with another chap. ‘Be like me so that I can
understand you better’ stuff. Or perhaps it was in order that he should understand
them
better? He started thinking about Minnie – wondering about her, where on earth she had
driven off to. She had written his number on the bonnet of her car – it would have to rain an awful lot for that to be erased. Anyway, she knew where he lived; she could find him if she
wanted to, whether
he
wanted her to or not.

He thought he wanted to sleep, but as soon as he had drawn some curtains, pulled his pillow out from under the Persian coverlet and shut his eyes he realized that he hadn’t taken out his
lenses; then, having removed them, he had the nasty feeling that his mind’s eye was simply lying in wait with a whole lot of pictures to unnerve him. He’d have to go through the awful
scene in the bathroom, and then the row with Spiro in Joan’s flat – then Joan finding her bed in disarray . . . In view of how her party had ended, he decided that he wanted to write to
Joan. He sat up, put his lenses back and started hunting through his pack of picture postcards for the ingeniously appropriate one. He realized that, away from her, her physical appearance
predominated. The cards kept being cruelly wrong. The Duke of Urbino, Soutine at his most freakishly grotesque, Lautrec, and somehow worse – Renoir, Ramsay, Gainsborough, all depicting their
fashionable norm . . . He selected a Vuillard interior – a pot of primula poised or posed by Vuillard in what looked like his studio. It was one of those pictures where the composition was so
pleasing that you didn’t bother to dissect it. ‘Dear Joan,’ he wrote: then he paused for a long time – selecting and discarding things he wanted to say to her. In the end he
wrote: ‘Thank you for the party. Meeting you was far the best bit.’ Then he had to think about whether he had ever told her his name – decided that she knew it anyway, and, if she
did not, she would still know that it was him writing to her, and signed the postcard, Gavin. His writing was small and very neat and clear but the lines always sloped downwards however hard he
tried to keep them level. While he was writing the card, he knew that he would like to see her again, but he didn’t feel he could possibly put his address or telephone number on it as that
would look as though he wanted to see her again. He would have to get the address from Harry, but he didn’t feel like ringing Harry up, in case Winthrop had walked out and Harry would want
him to go round to hear about it. Because then, of course, he’d have to go. If you spent most of your life on other people’s terms, naturally you had to cut down on the life, or too
many things would happen to you that you didn’t want. He decided to play the Somervell ‘Maud’ cycle; then, after one side, he decided to read Tennyson at the same time; then he
couldn’t find his Tennyson. This led him to the beginning of a vast new rearrangement of his books, and then it was time for cold tongue and salad and ‘Mastermind’. By eleven
o’clock, the books looked as though they were in a worse muddle than ever – partly because it was impossible to move them around as much as he’d decided to do without reading any
of them. He popped down to the kitchen and made himself a cup of verbena and peppermint tea (somebody had told him that it helped clear the blood).

He had a bath; all through it he was looking forward to being in bed: in a bout of delicious fantasy where everything happened as he chose, before he lapsed into unconsciousness. But when he
finally settled himself between the sheets and put out his lamp things simply wouldn’t go right, as they usually did. It was as though he was trapped in some awful maze: he could hear her
voice, a little, unknown way ahead of him – sometimes even catch a glimpse of her bare ankle, some gossamer shreds of her Pre-Raphaelite dress vanishing round a corner ahead of him, but round
the corner turned into a dead end, and behind him scuttled Minnie or pounded Muriel – he was always having to double back faster to new turnings in order to lose them. Then, in a silence that
several times he thought was perhaps the beginning of the real dream he sought, he would hear her distant laugh and in the (more magic) silence afterwards would imagine her chiselled mouth curving
in secret, benign amusement – would hear birds calling in the high dark hedges, but he could not tell her name. If only he could see over the hedges, he would find her, and so with each step
he took he began to leave the ground – with each leaping movement he began to fly a little and, in the middle of each flight, he could see over the hedge – once, look down upon her gold
red hair streaming out behind her as she ran, and then to see the centre of the maze – a fountain with a marble seat round it. She was there, tall and quite still and holding out her small,
white hand – as smooth and as cool as marble to his lips. ‘I am not seventeen,’ she said sedately.

He took her hand again and she glided a little ahead of him in the dissolving dusk until, together with her, he was no more.

Monday was usually a quiet day in the salon: a quick glance at the appointments book showed him that Daphne had arranged his clients so that he had a really decent lunch hour
for once. He decided to buy sandwiches and eat them in St James’s Park as it was a mild and sunny day . . . Mr Adrian did not always come in on Mondays and Sharon had returned. The atmosphere
in the salon was friendly and light-hearted. They asked one another if they had had a nice weekend; this had become a habit from asking clients – a kind of courteous, acceptable curiosity
(like the clients asking them if they had had their holiday yet), and everybody said that they had, because nobody expected a serious answer. Peter’s general plea to him to come to supper
– to see the flat and persuade Hazel not to get pregnant – had narrowed, or hardened, to something like a command: ‘Hazel says you’re to come on Friday. Right?’ And
before Gavin could answer he said: ‘That’s fine. She also said, do bring someone with you – we’ve got four of everything.’ Then he dashed away to a client and Gavin
felt he was committed. Iris, who had been standing by, said: ‘He’s a nice boy. He asked me and Alfred, but it’s a top floor and Alfred couldn’t manage.’

She sounded almost wistful, and this made Gavin feel that he ought to want to go far more than he did (which was hardly at all). Why didn’t he want to do things more? Well – not
exactly that – he
did
want to do some things: why didn’t he want to do
more
things more? As he queued at the Italian sandwich shop that gave you the most
inside
the ready sliced bread, he started making a list of what he did want to do. There was work. Well, he wanted to do that; enjoyed it really; at least, he couldn’t imagine what
he would do without some such huge, regular commitment; also it was probably the only thing he was any good at, but after that . . . Oh well, no shortage of
things
– music –
especially going to the opera when he could afford it, but also especially playing his records in the comfortable, secret familiarity of his room; going off on his bike on Sundays and looking at
some great house (sometimes he and Harry had taken a weekend to do that), going to exhibitions; browsing through all kinds of travel brochures choosing holidays that he usually never went on;
swimming, reading – especially re-reading, but also finding a new, riveting writer; reading poetry aloud to himself, going to films but not as much as he used to. Here he had to choose his
sandwiches – cream cheese and cucumber on brown bread.

As he walked down St James’s Street to the Park, thinking as he always did how sad it was that the Palace no longer had its own piece of sky round its roofs and clock tower, he realized
that, except for Harry, he didn’t really much like doing any of the things he liked
with
anybody. Often, when he was doing them alone, he had fleeting dreams of doing them with the
ideal person, someone so beautiful that she invariably took his breath away and he had to dismiss her because what would he be doing with somebody like that? Anyway – people
weren’t
ideal. Look at the girl at the cash desk where he had bought his sandwiches: dark with a greasy skin and an expression of passive hostility – it would be no good
embarking upon anything with her. One couldn’t go through all the agonies of approach, discovery, exposure, the trying to keep things perfect with a perfect stranger – not even knowing
whether they would join in the conspiracy for perfection if they did not at least
appear
to have those attributes that could inspire
him
to believe in it. But then, if there was
such a person, what would they think of him? They would have, he reflected hopelessly, to see below the surface – past his acne, and froggy eyes, somehow through all that, into what he was
– or could be. He started counting up the things he didn’t like doing. There were two categories here: things he didn’t much care for, and things he hated. (There were, of course,
things like family lunch with Marge; that was a bit more like work, in that he didn’t especially choose it, it wasn’t frightening, and he was so used to it that it had become
structural. If he lived at home, it was part of that.) Well – things he didn’t much care for . . . Going to supper with Peter and Hazel was a perfect example. Going to a disco with
Harry and Winthrop; he wasn’t at all sure that this didn’t come into the hate category. The noise level, the psychedelic lights, the sweating, jammed couples of men dancing, everybody
hunting, dressing younger, coming out with who they wanted to be with in the erratic and strident, dark half-light – it all seemed to make being a homosexual have only to do with sex.

He turned left when he reached the Park, as the two things he liked best were the Palace of Whitehall and the pelicans. It was sunny, with little warm breezes, and hardy couples were lying on
the fresh green grass with their faces turned to the sky. He walked slowly past the Palace: it was the stone and its bleached bone colour that pleased him most – that and the fact that
because of its open forecourt it could be seen entire – from skyline to Charles I’s execution ground. He thought about that for a bit: how bitterly cold it had been, and the King asking
for a second shirt to stop him shivering from the cold which his subjects might mistake for fear. When he tried to imagine the sort of courage required for walking up to the block, kneeling down
and allowing them to cut off his head – he couldn’t – at all. At least that sort of thing didn’t happen any more – at least not here, where he was . . . He turned away
from the Palace towards the lake. A girl in a white mac was feeding ducks from a paper bag. She was some distance away, but he realized that if he kept his course he would come up with her.
Supposing he was the bold, adventurous type, he could keep on walking, reach the girl, and if she was beautiful (most unlikely) he could get into conversation with her – pick her up. The
chances of her being
that
beautiful were very small indeed, and there was no
need
for him to say a word; the Park was a public place and he could walk anywhere – same as
anybody else. If the world
were
full of beautiful girls, he would have had more practice – as it wasn’t, he hadn’t. So, naturally, the whole thing made him nervous. By
now his path had reached a point where there were no more turn-offs: he had either to keep on till he reached her, or he could turn round and walk back the way he had come, but he didn’t want
anyone to think he was that frightened of them thank you very much. So he had no choice but to keep on. It was just the way that people met each other in books, he reflected, as his heart began to
thud out of sync with his footsteps. In novels they could plunge into God-knew-what intimacies in a matter of pages. If she wasn’t pretty he needn’t do anything at all – plod on
without a word. If she was pretty – he didn’t
have
to talk to her – after all, think how awful it must be to be one of the few really beautiful girls in the world:
everybody
must be stopping to talk to them whatever they were doing, they must have to put up with being accosted from morning till night. She’d probably like him far better if he
didn’t
talk to her (if she was really pretty): he’d probably get off to a much better start with her if he just walked on without saying a word, hardly even seeming to look . .
. She’d be tremendously grateful to him and realize how nice he was. Would she? He had slowed down considerably to give the appearance of being plunged in thought – not a random
collection of panic-stricken ruminations – but
thought
– take politics – sometimes he really wondered whether the present Government knew what they were doing; or even if
their knowing – given the power of the unions – could any longer make much difference. Democracy atomized power to the point where the individual had none at all in fact. Take this poor
girl – supposing she was beautiful – she had no power at all to stop him talking to her – it would be entirely up to his sense of decency. And if, which was most likely, she was
ordinarily plain, well, she couldn’t
make
him talk to her however much she might want him to. Could she? He had been studiously looking at the path and his own feet; now he glanced
up for a second. She had her back to him: she had thin, girlish-looking legs and was wearing cork-wedged shoes or sandals, he didn’t have time to notice which – he didn’t want to
embarrass her . . . He was about ten yards off now, and decided to have a good sweeping, casual but intent look at the ducks she was feeding, ending up by having a (perfectly natural, surely?) look
at whoever might be feeding them. He took a deeper breath, raised his head with such a sudden jerk that for a moment he saw nothing but bits of cloudy sky and the tops of trees – down to the
greenish water spattered with waterfowl and then up a bit and straight into the girl’s eyes. The girl was Jenny. Relief/disappointment surged – all that fuss about nothing. Of course if
she had been beautiful he would have spoken to her – had geared himself up to do just that, and here was his junior, looking as much like a young owl as ever – hair en brosse and large
gold-rimmed spectacles.