The Beast (15 page)

He stayed in Rome. He couldn’t really leave, because he always had guests—publishers, writers, artists, historians, curators, industrialists, actors, actresses, gangsters and politicians.

He had to employ a cook, because he, unlike Edward, was helpless in the kitchen.

He didn’t have time to do any painting, and the materials he had bought were put away in a cupboard.

Edward’s friends became his friends, and he spent his
time entertaining them, and being charming and civilized; talking, eating, drinking, travelling—going here and there, seeing this and that.

He missed Edward very much at the beginning, but nine months after his death he met a Canadian boy called Chris—a painter—and asked him to come and live with him. The boy moved in, and Billy’s friends liked him, so Billy guessed that the arrangement would continue.

*

Occasionally he thought of those ten days in July, those last ten days of life; he remembered the heat, and he remembered Edward dying, and he remembered Giovanna’s kindness, and he remembered the stupid, hysterical
sentimental
plans he had made for going back to America, for becoming a painter. He remembered his absurd, paranoid fears about being deserted by all of Edward’s friends—both the living and the dead—and he remembered Kate.

Sometimes, when he woke in the middle of the night, with Chris lying sleeping beside him, he wanted to wake the boy and tell him about Kate, and about the plans and fears he had had in those last ten days of life. But he didn’t, because there was nothing, really, to say. He could never, ever, bring Kate back to life—and if his friends didn’t notice or care that he was only an imitation, that he didn’t really exist, why should he care? Perhaps Edward himself had only been an imitation. Perhaps they were all—all those charming, civilized friends—mere imitations. And even if he did care, it was too late now to do anything about it. He couldn’t go back on his choice. Only the living could do that. And he, quite comfortably and easily, was dead.

‘Meg,’ he said, his thick soft lips trembling, and his soft already watery brown eyes filling with tears, ‘how could you?’

On the other side of the Atlantic his sister said ‘Oh Benjie, I’m sorry.’

‘But we always spend the whole summer together,’ he whined. ‘And if you suddenly have to go away, what am I going to do?’

‘I probably won’t,’ Meg pleaded. ‘And if I do it’ll only be for a few days. And you can always come up to Rome with me.’

‘But I wanted to go to Greece.’

‘I know. So did I. But Donald’s been so good to me, and I’ve had so much time off recently, that I couldn’t refuse. And Gaeta’s really very nice.’

‘That’s all very well,’ Benjamin said firmly, suddenly remembering who—aside from Meg’s beloved older brother—he was, ‘but I’ve re-arranged all my plans, given up all sorts of invitations to go places, and I
need
to go to Greece. I mean I really do. And I’m sure Gaeta’s very nice, but I don’t want to stay there by myself while you’re off dog-sitting for some old English actor, and I’m not
about to go to Rome. You know I don’t like Rome.’

‘Oh Benjie, please. I’m sorry.’

Benjamin wrapped his purple towelling robe more tightly round him, and spread his feet more widely on the thick purple carpet. He looked as if he were preparing to take a stand, to resist all Meg’s entreaties. But in fact, having made his point, he was about to give in. After all, he told himself, to be honest he didn’t care where he spent his summer, as long as he spent it with Meg.

‘Yes, so am I. Who is this Donald, anyway?’

‘You know perfectly well. And in fact he said if we do go to Gaeta, if you fly to Rome he’d really like to meet you. He said you could stay the night if you like, and then we can go on down the next day. He knows all about you.’

‘Yes,’ Benjamin said grandly, allowing his purple robe to fall open now, and his large, white, hairy stomach to flop forward, ‘since I was on the cover of
Time
magazine I suppose he would.’

But that was going too far, even for Meg—even as a joke—and quickly, contritely, and with a whine in his voice once again, he continued, ‘But all right. You know I can’t refuse you anything. And I don’t really give a damn where we go just as long as we’re together.’

‘Oh Benjie, thank you,’ Meg said. ‘And we’ll have a wonderful time, I know. And if you send me a telegram to let me know when you’re arriving, I’ll come to the
airport
and pick you up.’

‘All right,’ Benjamin said. And then, lowering his voice to a whisper, he murmured ‘You know I love you, don’t you Meg?’

‘Of course I do,’ Meg laughed. ‘And I love you. And I’ll see you soon.’

‘Yes,’ Benjamin almost sobbed, as if unable to bear the
idea of the month that would pass before he did see her. ‘Take care.’

‘I will,’ Meg said. ‘And you. Goodbye.’

‘Goodbye,’ Benjamin breathed; and went on holding the phone and gazing at it mournfully long after he heard that Meg had hung up. ‘Goodbye.’

Down in the purple curtained darkness at the end of Benjamin’s long gloomy living room, Annie, his cleaning woman, murmured ‘shit.’

*

Exactly four weeks later Benjamin Thomas, the
twenty-nine
year old artist of ‘Protean Talent’ (
Time
magazine)—he who had written one of the few best-selling volumes of poetry this century, as well as having had fifteen one-man shows of his paintings, written the libretto of an ‘opera without music,’ and published an autobiography that had been hailed as Dostoyevskyan in insight, Wildean in humour, Rousseau-esque in honesty, and (by a small mid-western journal) as American as apple-pie—stepped out of the first class cabin of the jet that had brought him to Rome, and paused at the top of the ramp as if expecting to be met by an army of photographers. But there weren’t any photographers, and he wasn’t really expecting any. It was just that the bright sun hurt his eyes—eyes that were used to working for the most part in the theatrical shade of his Manhattan apartment—and he suddenly felt, as he always did when out of the perpetual spotlight of publicity and attention that was trained on him in New York, rather young and helpless, and something of a fraud.

He wasn’t a fraud of course, he told himself defensively as he started, looking almost slim in his white suit, to walk down the steps at last, and then to cross the tarmac towards the customs building. He
did
have talent. It was just that
through some fluke, some lucky accident, he had had an incredible success at an incredibly young age. And this success, this being taken up so totally by the newspapers and by television, and by women’s clubs and universities, had obliged him to play a part; to play the part that all those newspapers and television people had wanted him to play. Yet whereas in America he could do it—indeed had to do it—and get away with it, in Europe he felt strangely lost, and could only see himself as a pallid, overweight young man who had talent and fame in some distant land, and here had just—a sister.

Which was, in fact, part of the reason why he came every year, and felt it so important that he should spend his summers with Meg; with his bright, cheerful, beautiful sister. Because she made him keep himself in perspective somehow; made him see himself objectively, and prevented him from getting completely carried away by his role as one of the hopes of the young generation; the sensitive, suffering, but
accessible
bard of modern America.

Meg, he liked to think, was his innocence.

However, he reminded himself as he walked into the hot, oppressive, but at least sunless arrivals hall, this wasn’t by any means the whole reason why he spent his summers with Meg; indeed it had only become a part of the reason for the last four years, and they had been spending their summers alone together for the last twelve years now; ever since he had been seventeen, and Meg twelve. No—the main reason was that he loved Meg and felt, and was, responsible for her. And since their parents were, and always had been, not only uncaring but actively hostile to both of them, it was the least he could do, spend a month with her every year.

Yes, Meg was his innocence. But she was also his duty,
his happiness, and—this he truly believed—his supreme work of art. For whatever she was he, and he alone, had made her.

She was waiting for him now, beyond the customs; and as he saw her, with her long brown hair and her turned-up nose and her smiling mouth, slim and cool in a white dress—and as he ran, struggling with his bags (he couldn’t wait to find a porter)—he felt quite overcome with her beauty, with this creation of his. He not only felt overcome, but also slightly contemptuous of himself. To think, even for a moment, that he was a fraud, when faced with such evidence of his mastery! God, he was stupid at times!

‘Hi baby, how are you?’, he said, as he kissed her and his eyes, as they so often did, filled with tears.

‘I’m very well,’ Meg laughed as she hugged him, and then stood back and gazed at him. ‘But you’re getting so fat, Benjie. Look at you.’

The jacket of his suit had come unbuttoned as he had run towards her—he should have found a porter—and a roll of flab had spilled over the top of his trousers. For a second he was hurt that this should be the first thing she noticed about him; then he smiled a doleful, sad little-boy smile at her and said ‘Yes, I know.’

‘You look like a walrus!’

Meg wanted to take the airport bus into town; but having learned his lesson with his bags, Benjamin insisted on a taxi. Self-help and public transport were all very well up to a point; but since he did have the money …

‘Did you book me a room at a hotel?’, he asked, when they were safely sitting in the back of the cab; and when Meg said no, Donald was going to put him up for the night, he felt, for the second time since he’d arrived, slightly hurt.

‘Oh why, Meg?’ he said. ‘You know if I can’t stay with
you—and I know you haven’t got room—I’d much rather stay in a hotel. I don’t know this Donald, and I don’t particularly want to, and I’d be much happier in a hotel. I mean—who
is
he?’

He expected Meg to say ‘Why are you always asking that question?’ or ‘I’ve told you a million times he’s an English character actor who employs me as his secretary’; what she did say, with the trace of an edge to her voice, was ‘Oh Benjie, stop being so pompous.’

Benjamin collapsed in the taxi seat and pouted. He felt miserable. He was tired, jet-lagged, his eyes hurt, he was sweating like a pig—or a walrus?—and now Meg was criticizing him. He couldn’t bear it. He hadn’t meant to be pompous—he hadn’t been, he was sure—and he had only said ‘Who is he?’ as a sort of nervous reaction to the news that he had to stay with this unknown Donald. Who was, probably, perfectly nice. Only he didn’t feel like meeting a stranger and having to make polite conversation with him—having to answer questions about his work, about his new poems, about the play he was reputed to be writing—any more than he felt like meeting anyone except for Meg. That wasn’t why he had come here.

‘Oh I’m sorry baby,’ he pleaded. ‘I didn’t mean it to sound like that. I’m just tired.’

Meg smiled at him anxiously, and said ‘If you’d
really
rather not I can always make some excuse.’

‘Oh no. I don’t want to hurt him. And if you like him, I’m sure I will.’

*

He did in fact, quite. He had been expecting a slightly self-conscious theatrical type with a mane of white hair and a plummy accent. The man he met instead—and who showed him to a pleasant guest room with a spectacular
view and its own bathroom—was a fat, bald, jolly little man with long yellow fingernails and a great many
photographs
on his walls of his children and grandchildren; along with a number of quite attractive water-colours of English landscapes. What qualified his liking of this unlikely employer of his beloved sister was the fact that the little man—who according to Meg always played the part of villains in films—far from asking him polite questions about his work and what he was doing, asked him not a single question. In fact, he didn’t even seem to be aware of Benjamin Thomas’s fame and reputation, and spent the entire afternoon and evening talking about his dogs—two old, fat spaniels—and about Meg. ‘Oh I don’t know what I’d do without her,’ he said. And ‘Meg says that you’ve virtually been a mother and father to her, as well as a brother. Well, if that’s so I must say you should be proud of yourself, because she is a really wonderful girl.’ He told him about Meg’s kindness—illustrating his point with long and involved stories, which Meg, who was present the whole time, corrected with laughs and blushes—and he told him about Meg’s intelligence, and good nature, and her talent for bringing happiness to people—illustrating these points with even longer stories.

All of which was very gratifying to Benjamin, and should—and did, to a certain extent—have thoroughly warmed him to his host. But by ten-thirty that evening, when Donald said he was going to bed, but he was sure Benjamin and Meg would want to stay up and talk, he was feeling more than a little put out. All right, Donald did see him exclusively as Meg’s brother, and had
probably
purposely not asked him any questions about
himself
on the theory that he must have to talk about himself quite enough during the rest of the year. But to be so
totally incurious; to be, apparently, so totally unaware that Benjamin Thomas was a name and a talent to be reckoned with; no, that was going too far. And it wasn’t as if Donald was an eccentric who never read newspapers or magazines and hadn’t heard of him. Because according to Meg not only had he been delighted with the
Time
magazine story, but he was always asking
her
questions about him. So—oh, it was all mystifying, and a bit rude; and made Benjamin wish that he had insisted on staying in a hotel.

It also made him ask Meg, after Donald had gone to bed, and after she had said that she must be getting back to her tiny apartment down the street, what he hadn’t been meaning to ask her for a week or so—when there would have been no danger of his question introducing a sour note into the blissful period of their being together. But just because he had been so ignored, and made to feel that he had no other function in life apart from acting as a surrogate parent to Meg—and because this had already introduced a sour note into what should have been a wonderful, happy evening—he couldn’t help himself.

Standing up to pour himself another drink, he said to Meg, ‘Have you heard from them recently?’

For a second Meg looked startled; which was natural. She was presumably surprised herself that Benjamin should risk such a dangerous subject on their first evening together. What wasn’t so natural was that, after that first surprise had worn off, she started to look embarrassed, and apprehensive.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I got a letter from them a month ago.’

‘What did they say? The usual stuff about how
ungrateful
we were, and how I’d corrupted you?’

‘No.’ Meg smiled nervously. ‘No, not at all. It was quite a nice letter. They said how pleased they’ve been by
your success, and were very proud of the
Time
cover.’

Benjamin gazed at Meg soulfully, and then sat down again.

‘They asked me to come and see them.’

His eyes would fill with water in a moment …

‘And?’ he said.

‘I wrote back and said I might. They sounded unhappy. They said to give you their love if I saw you, and said if you ever felt like going to Miami—’ Meg let her voice trail away.

Benjamin didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know whether to cry, or get mad, or plead, or lecture. Also—he wished the lights in the room were dimmer; he didn’t like having heart-to-heart talks with anyone under bright lights.

Eventually he got up and turned out the two lamps nearest him, and then stood with his back to Meg.

‘Meg,’ he said, his lips trembling as they had on the phone a month ago, when his sister had told him that she might have to interrupt their holiday for a few days, ‘those are evil people, and the fact that they’re our parents doesn’t change a thing. They hated us when we were small, they hated us when we were growing up, and they hate us now. They did everything in their power to make
us
hate each other. Their only aim in life is to cause unhappiness, and their only satisfaction is when they succeed. They’ve been like that all their lives, and they couldn’t have changed now. And if they are coming over all pathetic now it’s only another tactic they’re trying—it shows they haven’t given up hope yet of hurting us. And if you do go and see them—they’ll do it, you see. Somehow.’