London Fields (48 page)

'Hideous business. I'm sorry. We should have left straight after the match and let them get on with it.'

'You know, when Keith hit the madwoman, that was his idea of being gallant. To me. Like laying his jacket over a puddle.'

'You think?'

'Curious how madness and obscenity go together. Like madness and anti-Semitism. Shakespeare was right. Ophelia . . .'

'Oh yes. A rather sorry Ophelia, I'm afraid.' Guy was still awash with adrenalin and anger, and with confusion about his own response to the Talent enormity. He had felt no fear, only paralysis, as if everything he believed in had been wiped out of existence. Now Guy added to himself, 'Hard to see what to do . . .'

A little later she said, 'I love your tongue. All this kissing.'

'You're frightfully good at it.'

'Beginner's luck.'

They were parked in her dead-end street. She now gave him a series of literary kisses, Maud, and Geraldine, and Eve in the Garden, and (a happy creation) Ophelia Before and After the Death of Polonius. Then she threw in the Grand-a-Night Hooker. She did enough, in any case, she confidently imagined, to rebrim his sobbing boner. Then she reached for her handbag with the last of many sighs.

He said abruptly, 'Your stockings. The knees are both torn.'

'I know. I can't see the point of stockings when they're this sheer. Of course, a pair of good hardy tights is what one really wants. Watch me to the door. Don't get out.'

She climbed from the car and walked to the garden gate. But then she turned and walked back — walking as she would on another night, very soon, to another man in another car. She approached and bent before the driver's window, which Guy smartly lowered. Nicola put her head into the car and gave him the Jewish Princess.

When it was over, Guy involuntarily raised a hand to his mouth. That — that was . . .'

'Unforgivable?' said Nicola mysteriously. 'By the way. I'm going to stop teaching Keith.'

'Really?' said Guy lovingly.

'One tries to do what one can. But I've finally put my finger on what I can't bear about him.’

'Which is?' said Guy, even more lovingly.

'He's so working-class.'

Working-class or not, Ken-Chel's Keith Talent was still abroad. The night was young. Though of humble extraction — the son of a simple criminal — Keith Talent was still very much at large.

He had made, in the heavy Cavalier, a magisterial tour of Greater London: Plaistow for Petronella, Arnos Grove for Sutra, Slough for Analiese (Basil was behaving strangely), then to Ickenham, to get little Debbee home safe and sound. And for a while he sat in her semi, drinking instant coffee and passing the time with her perfectly fanciable mother, who had heard of Keith's victory on the TV (it came in the form of a newsflash, in the middle of a darts match she was already watching) and had stayed up to congratulate him and, of course, to ensure that her little Debbee didn't give Keith one on the house. In no way had Keith neglected his responsibilities to Trish Shirt, personally helping Mike Frame to shove her into the minicab and himself standing there with the cocked twenty, giving the driver full instructions. Nor had he forgotten Iqbala, whom he had left until last, her being a neighbour, and who was now fast asleep (he'd checked) in the boot of the car.

The instant coffee was drunk, the cigarettes smoked, the time passed. A new Keith Talent. The taste of victory is sweet. In the old days Keith and Debs would have slipped away at some point for their little cuddle, Keith later settling with Mrs K. Or he might have waited in the Cavalier, smoking more cigarettes and listening to darts tapes, until Debbee threw a key down from her window, and he'd pop back in for a freebie. But tonight? Well, it was a new Keith Talent they were looking at. And Debbee was special. She cost £85. And he found that he wasn't really bothered one way or the other, now that she was sixteen, a good deal of the magic having gone out of it. No. He gave Mrs Kensit a kiss and a squeeze, and Debbee an even chaster goodnight on the doorstep, and was on his way. In the car he smacked a darts tape into the stereo (the Obbs-Twemlow final: evergreen) and drove to Trish Shirt's.

Twenty minutes later he sat in his garage and smoked twenty cigarettes and drank a bottle
of porno.
Tsk, tsk: bloodstains on his collar. In long but regular intervals, tears of pride dropped on to his lap. Another bockle? Already bit tiggly. That bull finish: right in the miggle. No diggling, but give Debs a lickle cuggle. Quick piggle.
From time to time he would stare up at the swimming beauty of the dartboard: the kaleidoscope of every hope and dream. She did it. Nicky did it. Old Nick. Then home, to the chores of love. He walked the wife, burped the dog, and . . . Semiconscious, then, also semi-literate and not even semiskilled, Double-U Eleven's Keith Talent rested his head against the semipermanent cork wall, and thought of semiprecious Nicola, beneath the cold black sky of seminight.

And now under the low sun I go to Kim Talent with a lover's impatience, with a lover's tearing impatience, fearful that the world will die before I meet the searching blaze of her eyes. On the way in the quiet riot of Golborne Road I see three young women walking along together, licking and sucking their fingers. Why? What profane novelty . . . But yes of course. They've been eating french fries, eating chips from the open bag covered in vinegar and salt. And now licking their fingers. Long may they do so. Long may they have the freedom, the fingers, and the lips. With a lover's impatience I shall unbutton her Babygro. With a lover's impatience I shall tear at the sticky tabs of her diaper.

Kim was sleeping. So was Keith, at three in the afternoon. He'd tried getting up; he'd tried the bracing stroll to the Black Cross. And he'd come right back again. His tortured snoring filled the flat. And Kim's sleep too was restless, pain-jabbed, caught up in the baby's passionate, eternal and largely obscure struggle not just to get through being a baby, an infant, a child, a young one, but to deal rawly with the knots and tricks of being. Even a baby knows that death isn't one idea: it is the complex symbol. Baby, what is your problem? Daddy, it's this: the mind-body problem. I asked Kath why she didn't take the chance to go to the shops. I said it forcefully or frantically. The resolute colourlessness of her face told me no, no; but then her eyes closed, and something was decided, something important was decided. And she left us.

Got to stop hurting K.
With a lover's impatience I woke her. No
good just taking it out on the Baby.
She cried in confusion and sadness as I unbuttoned her on the living-room floor. With a single wrench I pulled off her diaper . . .What kind of planet is it where you feel relief, where you feel surprise, that a nought-year-old girl is still a virgin? Then I turned her over.

On the right buttock, a bruise, perfectly round and shockingly dark, and grainy, like an X-ray, shining black light on the internal world of cells. On the left buttock, three cigarette burns, in a triangle.

I got up so suddenly that I banged into the standard lamp and if the room had been any bigger I would have fallen over backward right on to the deck. The wall held me up with a blow to the cranium. Showing effort and eagerness, Kim turned herself over, a new skill of hers, and looked up at me from the floor.

'He's been hurting you, hasn't he?'

'. . . Mm. Urs,' she said.

'It's daddy, isn't it.'

'. . . Earse.'

I went down on my knees and said through the sound of his window-rattling snore, 'I'll — I don't know what I'll do. But I'll protect you. Please don't worry. Please. My darling.'

'Please,' I said. 'Do this one big last thing for me. Please.'

Nicola pushed her face forward. 'Christ, I said
okay
.'

'But what good is your guarantee? You're alone. On what can you swear? You don't love anything or anybody.'

'Well you'll just have to take my word for it, won't you. I was going to do something like this anyway. What's the big deal?'

'Just bear with me,' I said. I had toothache in my knee and legache in my mouth and earache in my ass. I nodded. 'Good. So. You'll have Keith move in. Or spend a lot of time here. And make him happy. Until the big night.'

'I won't wake up with him. That's out of the question and is never going to happen. And you realize it'll mean sending Guy away for a while.'

'There go my unities.'

'I rather thought America.'

'America?' I sighed heavily. But we all have to make sacrifices. I took a breath and said, 'Outstanding work, by the way, at the Marquis of Edenderry. You got us out of a tricky situation.' I was there, of course, at the Marquis of Edenderry. I was there. But am I anywhere ? I look at my outstretched hand and expect it to disappear, to begin its slow wipe from the screen. I move in and out of things. I am an onlooker in my own dream. I am my own ghost, kissing its fingertips.

Indulgently she said, 'Have you finished your letter to Mark?'

'No. And it's about eight thousand words long.'

'Don't finish it. Or don't post it. Here's a better idea. Post it to yourself. Do you know the Borges story, "The Aleph"? It's very funny about literary envy.' She finished her drink and dashed the empty glass into the fireplace. Typical.

'Is it now?'

Here they come again, the pains. Gather about me, my little ones.

Exquisite
tristesse
on finishing
Crossbone Waters.
I can't think why. It's an awful little piece of shit.

Marius returns from a crepuscular soul-ramble to find Kwango packing his meagre possessions. Ridiculous conversation. Kwango says he will be gone for three moons. Why, O Kwango? The woman is ready. She waits. How, O Kwango, do you know this? How do you know this, O great Kwango? The birds whisper it. I smell it in the waters.

Nor does Kwango speak with forked tongue. Marius hastens to Cornelia's cabin, and gets the lot . . .

Or you infer that he does. Marius goes all posh and manly at this juncture ('Towards morning, I took her again'), with much Kwangoan rambling about water, femininity, ebbings, fluxes. I expected
her
to be manly. I expected her to really strap Marius on. But no: she's a simpering sonnet in the sack.

At any rate the seventy-two-hour debauch concludes with Kwango's return and a brisk voyage back to Samarinda, where Cornelia's seaplane is already bobbing in the harbour. No promises. No regrets. Just one last kiss . . .

I'm devastated. I really
am
falling apart. Why the sighs, why the tears, why the rich and wistful frowns? It's an
awful
little piece of shit.

My last act of love took place ninety days ago.

I ambushed and ravished her. I was frictionless and inexorable. How could she possibly resist me? Burton Else couldn't have handled it better. Kwango himself would have wept with pride.

It was a precision raid. Everything was sweet. On the appointed day I unsmilingly flew from La Guardia to Logan. Then the six-seater to the Cape: how aerodynamically carefree it was, how the baby plane was whisked up on the thermals, out over the boatless water. I looked back with a shrewd glance: Boston at dusk with the sun behind it — heaven's red-light district. We landed with extreme delicacy, as did the old open-prop stratocruiser that was coming down alongside, like a corpulent but thin-shanked lady, skirts raised to toe the moist tarmac. Onward.

Sand spills had closed the thruway. In my hired jeep I ruggedly drove through battened Provincetown, then on past the sign that says Cape Cod Light, and into the woods. Many times I climbed out to untangle the drag of queer growths, the grasp of nameless vines made bitter by their own ugliness, taloned briars, sharp-knuckled twigs, all under a storm of blackfly. Then at last the camp, the unlocked screen door, and Missy Harter on the piano stool, clasping her coffee cup in both hands.

She had come for remembrance, as she did every year: her father, whom she loved, whom I loved, Dan Harter, with his old-guy jeans, his Jim Beam and his Tom Paine. She was perfect for me.

I cried. I laced her coffee with bourbon. I told her I was dying too. I went down on my knees.

How could she possibly resist me?

Last night, as I entered, Nicola gave me her most exalted and veridical smile and said,

Tve reached a decision. God, it's all so clear now. I'm calling the whole thing off.'

'You're what?'

'I'll go away somewhere. Perhaps with Mark. It's simple. Plan B. I'll live.'

'You'll what?'

She laughed musically. 'The look on your face. Oh don't worry. I'm all talk. I'm just a big tease. It's still Plan A. Don't worry. I was just kidding. I was just playing nervous.'

Last night was our last night, in a sense. We both felt it. The world was coming into everything. The room where we now talked, Nicola's habitat, would soon be altered, compromised, as would Keith's, as would Guy's. These places would never be the same again. I said,

'I'm going to miss our talks.'

'There's another thing I've been teasing you about. Of all my recent deceptions, this was the hardest. Technically. I mean keeping a straight face. Pretending to be a virgin is a breeze ¡n comparison. Mark Asprey.’

'Oh yes?'

'His work. His writing.'

'It's . . ?'

'It's
shit
,'
she said.

'. . . My heart soars like a hawk.'

What was she wearing? I can't remember. No outfit or disguise of innocence or depravity. Just
clothes.
And she wasn't made-up either; and she wasn't drunk, and she wasn't mad. Very much herself, whatever that was, herself, fraying but shiny like worn velvet, extreme, aromatic, nervous, subtle.

She said, 'How do you feel about me? The truth.'

'The truth?' I got to my feet saying, 'You're a bad dream, baby. I keep thinking I'm going to wake up' — here I snapped my fingers weakly — 'and you'll disappear. You're a nightmare.'

She stood and came toward me. The way her head was inclined made me say at once:

'I can't.'

'You must know that it has to happen.'

'You've come across this. When men can't.'

'Only by design. It's easy: you make yourself leaden. Don't worry. I'll fix it. I'll do it all. Don't even try and think about love. Think about — think about the other thing.'

Later, she said, 'I'm sorry if you're angry with me. Or with yourself.' 'I'm not angry.' 'I suppose you've never done that before.' 'Yes, I did think I might get through life without it.' 'You may surprise yourself further. As Keith says, it's never over until —' 'Until the last dart strikes home.' 'Anyway,' she said, 'this will only happen once.' 'Anyway,' I said, 'I'm mostly grateful. It's made me ready to die.' 'That was my hope.' 'With Mark, what was the —?' 'Hush now . . .'