St. Urbain's Horseman (36 page)

Typically, this Christmas as last, he put the offending tree out of mind to lose himself in the pleasures of shopping with Nancy. After all, looked at objectively the holiday was no more than an excuse for
gift-giving and overeating with loved ones. They plunged into Harrod's, demanding Norfolk-bred turkey and a Yorkshire ham; and in Fortnum's, they splurged on caviar and vintage wines. The smoked salmon, an ecumenical concession, came from Cohen's; and once more, Jake insisted on chopped liver as well, preparing it himself, lustily singing
Adon Olam
in the kitchen as he wielded his chopper. His gesture to Jehovah.

It was after just such a shopping expedition, only two days before Christmas, that Jake answered the door in his slippers to discover the long stooping cop with the correct face standing there.

“I'm sorry to trouble you, sir. But were you robbed last night?”

“No. Certainly not,” Jake protested, and peering over the bobby's shoulder Jake noticed a plainclothesman sitting in the rear of the car. Beside him, his smile small under his battered and discolored fedora, was old and leathery Tom. “Hey, that's my old gardener.”

“Ah, well, that explains it.” He would not have bothered Jake, the bobby went on to say, had the man not been able to accurately describe the interior of his house. “This is the season for them,” he allowed, grinning, “isn't it?”

“What do you mean, it's the season for them?”

“Suddenly, it's winter. The weather turns nasty. There's no work. Their minds turn to the problem of bread and board for the coming months. So they come to the station in droves, claiming to have robbed somebody's house, hoping the state will tide them over until the spring.”

“Wait, officer. Maybe I'm mistaken. He could have stolen something, you know. Something small maybe,” Jake ventured.

The sergeant was impassive.

“Come in, won't you? I'll just run upstairs to check things out.”

But Nancy said there was nothing Jake could do for Tom now. Unconvinced, he raced down the stairs to confront the sergeant again. “Well now, officer,” he asked, beaming, “I wonder if you could enlighten me on a point of law?”

“Possibly, sir.”

“How much would the old man have to take to get three months?”

“If you are missing anything, you must swear out a complaint against him,” he replied, taking out his pad.

“Oh,” Jake said, retreating.

“It would be your duty.”

“Duty? The old bastard's got nowhere to sleep. Do you want him to die of exposure?”

“That, sir, is hardly my affair.”

“What is your affair, then,” Jake suddenly charged, exploding. “Breaking up demonstrations? Beating up West Indians?”

“Steady on.”

Nancy appeared at the top of the stairs, aghast.

“British justice,” Jake scoffed.

“You an American, then?” the sergeant inquired, bemused.

“No. I'm a Canadian. What's your name?” Jake demanded hotly.

He told him.

“Oh ho,” Jake chortled. “Ah ha,” he said, rubbing his hands and looking up at a horrified Nancy. “Well then, that fits, doesn't it, mate?”

“Why?” he asked, baffled.

“How do you spell it?”

“H-O-A-R-E.”

Hours passed before a rueful Jake emerged from his aerie.

“We're all becoming our fathers, you know,” he said to Nancy. “Luke's joined the Garrick Club and I'm turning out a fool. How could I behave like that?”

G
ATHERING HIS PHOTOGRAPHIC EQUIPMENT TOGETHER
, Harry decided, what the hell, he would treat himself to a taxi tonight, and hailing one, he gave the driver the address of the Graphic Arts Society in Fulham.

Bloody ridiculous, he thought, descending into the basement, more than usually standoffish with the others waiting about. Bowler hat bunch tonight, mostly. Commuters. Laden down with cameras, light meters, tripods, and, in some cases, props for the girls.

Eventually, the professor's assistant, a massive but good-natured capon, made his appearance. “Hello, hello, hello. The model we've selected for you tonight, at no regard for expense, is Miss Angela, star of more than one Harrison Marks flick. 39-23-38. Yes, my darlings, 39. So stand back. Make room. We'll be expecting more than one bright idea from you tonight. Angela will submit to active type poses, but – but – with this proviso. Nothing on the kinky side, duckies, that's what her boy friend says, and you wouldn't want to mess with him. Would you now, you naughty things?”

Miss Angela, adorned in a diaphanous blue negligée, a frilly suspender belt, and black stockings, drifted into the studio, sat herself on a stool, and contemplated the men with indifference. Refusing cigarettes, scorning chitchat. Allowing only Harry a small wave of recognition.

“Enjoy the flick?” Harry asked.

“Smashing. Ta.”

The professor, wearing a blue beret, a foulard knotted around his neck, black velvet shirt, levis, and sandals, skipped onstage to initiate the proceedings with a lecture illustrated with slides from his classical studies. As his assistant doused the lights and projected the first slide, he began. “You will note here that it is the forward surge of the human figure that tautens the model's locomotor muscles and gives such a sense of irresistible movement. Next, please … Ah, Stella. Here again you will observe that it is the extension of the figure, giving suspension to full breasts, that so enhances the suggestion of pride and dignity. But in this case you can also plainly see that it is the confluence of the most effective lines into a central void, a visual balance carefully maintained between centrifugal and centripetal forces, supplemented by the dispersion of irregular and interlocking triangular shapes, that renders such opportunity for an appreciation of the angular qualities of the figure.”

Finally, the professor did his bit for those who were, perhaps, visiting the academy for the first time, relating his troubles past and present, with the censors, and warning them that the price of artistic freedom was eternal vigilance. He speculated on what a foolish and hypocritical world they lived in, a world wherein anybody might walk into a British post office, purchase a money order, and send off to liberated Denmark for absolutely anything, whereas prize-winning British photographers, such as himself, were unable to compete by supplying a domestic market, not to mention contributing to export trade that would, incidentally, bolster the Back Britain campaign. Allowing that signed copies of his own book were available for five guineas, he concluded, “Just as graphic artists, from time immemorial, have found the unadorned nude an ideal subject for stereographic, that is to say, solid, drawing, so does today's photographic artist discover in the nude his only possible medium for the proper understanding of the play of light on irregular morphic masses.”

Then the men surged forward, lugging their cameras and tripods and props, jostling for position in the queue, and Miss Angela descended from her high stool to stand under the lights.

“Would you be a dear and hold this cane? Ta. Now threaten me with it.”

Click.

“And again.”

Click.

“And once more. Bless you.”

Then the next man edged forward, crouching behind his camera. “Stick your tongue out. Jiggling it.”

Click.

“Yes. Bless you.”

Click.

“And could you drop your nightie now? Leaning forward a bit more. Super.”

Click.

“Yes. Hold it.”

And the next man.

“Give me a filthy look. Stronger. As if I've suggested something absolutely unspeakable. Lovely, dear. Lovely.”

Harry's turn at last.

“Last two chaps didn't have any film in their cameras.”

Which earned a knowing giggle from Angela, who then extended her hands for Harry to slip on the cuffs, and shook her blue negligée off her shoulders, letting it float to the floor. “Shall I look scared, luv?”

“Absolutely terrified, because,” and Harry leaned forward to whisper in her ear, demonstrating just one of his special privileges, “it's bleeding Neville Heath coming after you. It's Ian Brady come calling.”

“Oooo,” she sang out, shuddering.

J
AKE HAD WAITED FOREVER, IT SEEMED, FOR THE
opportunity to make a film, and so long as he had actually been immersed in its production, agonizing over the script with the writer, casting, shooting, and, most enjoyable, editing, he had been able to believe his labors had point, but once the film was finished and it had opened, he could see all too clearly that what he had brought forth was neither splendid nor odious, but merely good. Another interesting film for the circuit. The energy he and others had expended, the one million two hundred thousand dollars they had consumed, could have been used much more beneficially providing shelter for the homeless, food for the hungry. So much for honor, so much for grace.

Beginning work on his second film, a thriller, in 1966, Jake grasped that he was thirty-six and being young was something past and done with. He was thirty-six and a professional; no more. For the first time in his life, it seemed, susceptible to germs. His teeth had begun to loosen and slide. His bowels burned, cherry-size hemorrhoids blocking the passage.

It was winter, a season Jake abhorred, especially in London, where there was neither sun nor snow, only lowering gray skies. Once winter had been something to endure and spring could not come quickly enough for him. Now he yearned for time to pass at a less febrile pace. Spring was no longer a celebration so much as another season to be counted. Something to be consumed and not to be had again. Something to be filed with a year number and entered in a ledger. “In spring 1967, as my father lay dying, I …” Proust put off for so many seasons would now have to be read or discarded. If he did not see Athens this year, next he might be too busy. Or ill.

Lying in bed with Nancy, their bodies entwined, his hands clasping her breasts, had once filled him with such content that he had taken it for a fuller expression of their love than the passion of other nights, so quickly spent. Now death muzzled him here as everywhere else. Lying together, he could think only of the obtruding bones beneath the wasting flesh. When she turned to kiss him, heavy with sleep, he sometimes caught a whiff of sour breath. The rot eating into the walls of her stomach and, most assuredly, his.
DEATH, SIGNS OF
.
Hippocratic countenance
, discoloration of the skin, failure of ligature,
Hypostasis
, loss of heat, rigidity. “Putrefaction is a certain sign, and begins in two or three days, as a greenish tint over the abdomen.”

For Nancy. For Sammy, for Molly. The baby to come. For me too.

What compounded Jake's sense of oppression was an inner conviction that it was all so unspeakably banal; after all, fear of aging and death was something he shared with all men approaching middle age inexorably. Even so, there was at least one extraordinary circumstance. He was happily married. Oh, he sometimes thought, if only
his union with Nancy was oppressive, stale, charged with resentments and acrimony, he could then, like most of his film acquaintances, seek solace with vacuous girls, indulging in sex without love, punishing himself, as it were. Like Myer Gross.

“Listen here, Jake, you think I enjoy deceiving Sylvia? I like her. I'm genuinely fond of her. Every time I have it off with a new secretary it's anguish for me. I'm so guilt-ridden, I suffer palpitations, and that's not good for me, you know.”

“And so, Myer, why do you …?”

“Well, once it was every night, even twice a night, but now we make it, let's say, once a week, going at it like dray horses, it's an effort for me to keep it up and I don't even think she comes any more. It's only the sound effects now. But if you could see me in the sack with an enthusiastic new puppy. Young. Firm. I'm a youngster again. A bull … Maybe I'm doing the wrong thing. But if that's the case, Jake, I'm the one who will pay for it in the end.”

Dr. O'Brien pumped Myer Gross's rump full of hormones, Bob Cohen swore by an evil-smelling concoction he mashed into a glass each morning, and C. Bernard Farber mainlined a Hungarian recipe, made of crushed bumblebees. Ziggy Alter was irrigated regularly at Forest Mere. With me, Monty Talman confessed to Jake, it isn't a question of sex. “To tell you the truth, I'm a bigger talker than a doer. If I'm unfaithful, it's fundamentally because I know I bore her. Shit, we've been together eighteen years, there isn't a story of mine she doesn't know and couldn't tell better than me. Picture this. We've got new people coming to dinner, I start to tell a story and right off I can see her eyes glaze over. Or, if she's really in a rotten mood, out she comes with the punch line. Jake, I never drove women crazy with my sexual prowess, but I like to make them laugh. It gives me a real charge to make their eyes light up, and when I walk into the White Elephant I like to be seen with a chick that makes the others burn with envy. My God, you don't know what a pleasure it is to take a girl out now, a stranger, and to have her hang on my stories, exploding
when I reach the climax. The truth is there's a flaw in my makeup. I like to impress people. It's my Achilles' Heel. But how could I impress Zelda any more. I fart in bed. I start into an anecdote and buzz, buzz, I hear her thoughts cutting me down like a saw. Liar, she's thinking, exaggerator, bullshit artist. O.K., it's true, all of it, but I'm making good money, the years are flying, did I need someone in the house to remind me of it day in and day out?”

Jake's trouble was that more than any other woman, he wanted Nancy. After ten years, she still excited him in bed. Worse news. He enjoyed talking to her. Fortunately, the others were tolerant. They grasped that if Jake didn't philander it wasn't because he was a miser, like the legendary Otto Gelber, a producer who had married a tiny woman only because it meant fewer skins for the mink coat and, hiring a secretary, didn't demand sexiness above all but sought a girl who cut her nails short and could actually type. Rather than trade his wife in after her menopause, Gelber wasn't ashamed to drive the same model year in and year out. Instead of keeping a mistress, he jerked off in his office every afternoon. “Using a paperback,” C. Bernard Farber swore.