Daniel Martin (60 page)

Jenny, it just happens. You feel yes, you don’t, it’s as simple as that. If you don’t want to feel that way… you know. We understand. That’s truly all it’s about. Behind the crazy-people thing. Just a way of feeling close. Not only for Steve. For you and me as well.

Steve said, Right.

Kate said, But only if you feel the same.

Then she pressed my hand, as if to give me courage, and let go of it. I know, perhaps she was just being clever. I think if they’d tried to argue or coax any more… but they didn’t. There were so many places earlier where I ought to have drawn the line. She lay back, I felt them waiting there beside me and in spite of what she’d said I still suspected it was partly a set-up, but then also that I’d helped them do it. Enjoying the long gossip with Kate, not getting off the bed when Steve came in. Part of me was walking away, Dan. But another, perhaps it was the tequila, knew it wanted to wait and see. I felt I’d become someone else, what I’d been only a day before wasn’t me any more, or no longer had to be me.

I don’t know, but I let his hand escape. Again he was very gentle, undid the sash of my robe, I hadn’t got anything on underneath, my swim-things had been wet. It really was happening to someone else by then. A few moments later I was aware that Kate had slipped off the bed and gone away. She came back again almost at once. She’d taken off her robe, and lit up. It was too dark to see much by then. She knelt beside Steve, helped him get out of his own wrap. Then me out of mine. We lay, smoking for a minute or two. The best, of course.

Nothing more was said. I tried to feel shocked, that I was taking some awful step into the pit of iniquity. Then for God’s sake, it was hardly an orgy, even if Kate was a perverse little bitch who’d obviously played this game before. And if it gives pleasure and it doesn’t hurt anyone… all right, begging questions. But somehow her taking part made it less—you know. If she hadn’t. Just watched or something. And there was a togetherness of some kind. Not sexual, something in me was too nervous, I didn’t know where it would go… it was just masturbating, in fact. Being petted.

Naughty adolescents. It even became rather trite and tame, if you can understand that. It did have a sort of sexiness, finally. But it wasn’t adult.

When it was over, he’d had to break the silence I didn’t want broken, the usual moronic ‘great’ and ‘beautiful’, what a great pair of chicks we were, something strange happened. I knew she was like me, she didn’t want to talk. Perhaps it got through to him. Anyway he sat up, kissed us both, then went off to where he’d left his clothes. There were a few moments of silence, and I was wondering what next, what have I done. Then Kate moved in the darkness towards me, it was so peculiar, just like a small girl wanting to be held, she made me turn on my back, then lifted my right arm over her shoulders and sank beside me, her mouth against my shoulder, just one small kiss there. I was thinking, oh God. Ready to jump a mile. But she reached and found my free hand again and held it against my stomach, pressed it there, as if to tell me it wasn’t what I thought—what you must be thinking. She did put a leg a little over mine to get closer, but I can’t tell you how, I knew it was only a clinging. In the end I didn’t mind feeling her warm naked body at all. It seemed sexless, like a child’s. Her skin was very soft after a man’s. It was funny, knowing what it is to be you (a man). To have something like that against you. It was also some sort of declaration. As if Steve had just been the catalyst. Not sex. Something about the American heart. I don’t know. So many mechanical and nonhuman toys to play with and only a flip little vocabulary to cope. Only another female body to explain to. The loneliness. Having it all, and underneath not knowing, remaining insecure. In Kate’s case, not even able to escape her home, her family, her money. I’m trying to say it was mysterious, Dan. And innocent, you can’t imagine. For a moment or two, so much closer than my real sisters have ever felt. Somehow more moving, disturbing, than anything with him.

And she didn’t say a word. Nor did I.

Finally Steve came back dressed and stood in the doorway. Some light came through from the living-room and he could see how we lay and of course.

So that’s the way it is.

Idyll broken.

What is kooky about her is the way she slips out of one mood into another—as if the last has been an act. Suddenly she was out of that lonely clinging child into her other self. Steve was told to take himself off. We showered, dressed, and she went on talking all through it as we had before he came in, there was even a whole bit about how one’s (women’s) feelings changed over clothes colours. Just as if nothing at all had happened, it had all been a dream. I can’t tell you how odd it was. I think she is a little round the bend. At least two quite different people. I mean even Steve—she cooked us hamburgers afterwards down in the main palace kitchen—even he admitted something had happened, the way he looked at us (though he too said nothing, they’re so compartmented).

I felt so far from both of them down there, suddenly. Yet so close, I can’t explain. And released, I think even amused. Steve rooting about in the icebox for some special beer he wanted, Kate talking about the art of the hamburger to me, just two girls in a kitchen. I’m sure it didn’t mean very much to them. I suppose I felt let off lightly, too. There must be worse things three young people can do than just lie in the dark and play with each other’s bodies. Perhaps next time there would be another man—lots of other men and girls. I didn’t know, I was suddenly glad I had done it and that I was coming home soon. Even though you won’t be there to meet me now.

Dan, writing this down has exhausted me almost as much as taking part in it would have done. I know it’s a mass of contradictions. You’ll probably know what it really means better than I do. It’s taken two long evenings and a whole day and I’m sorry about all the crossings-out and alterations. And bad taste. But not sorry you may not know whether I’m pretending it hasn’t happened or pretending that it has.

I know this isn’t what you want. But it’s what you asked for. I just won’t be only something in your script. In any of your scripts. Ever again.

That little document from a different world had come by the Saturday-morning post. We had spoken twice more during the week. It was not altogether a shock, since by then I had dragged out of her, in the intervals between her interrogations concerning Jane, that it was ‘about imagining being unfaithful to you’. The nonsense about burning the thing without opening it had been dropped. She called during her lunch-break at the studio; about nine that Saturday evening, for me. There was no beating about the bush.

‘Has it come?’

‘Yes, Jenny.’

‘Do you hate me?’

‘Only for being able to put yourself down so well.’

There was a silence. Then another question like an accusation.

‘Did you believe it?’

‘Not that it happened.’

‘But what?’

‘Whether you wanted it to happen?’

A quieter voice. ‘Why didn’t you believe it?’

‘Because you wouldn’t have written about it. And you haven’t answered my question.’

‘Kate exists. We have got quite chummy.’

‘Good.’

She didn’t like that, but swallowed it. ‘It was based on an evening the three of us had together. Just a feeling in the air.’

‘Dangerous liaisons?’

‘Something like that. Kate’s been in that scene. Though she claims it’s all over.’

‘I see.’

‘You are angry.’

‘You still haven’t answered my question.’

‘Because if you don’t know the answer—’ but she broke off and changed tack. ‘All right. A tiny, tiny part of me. Which I despise.’

‘And it had to be him?’

‘I don’t know anyone else his age here.’

‘He’s made another bid?’

‘He lets me know it still holds.’

‘And you’re tempted.’

‘I’m tempted to pay you back. Among other things for the reason I wrote. Which I notice you’re carefully avoiding.’

‘All that was to help, Jenny.’

‘It hardly flatters your opinion of me as a human being. Or an actress. And don’t for Christ’s sake start quoting Falconetti at me.’

I had once told her the old story about Dreyer’s cruel practical joke during the making of The Passion of Joan of Arc; how he had coaxed Falconetti into a real oubliette in some castle, to see what it was like to sit crouched in eternal darkness, and then locked her in until she was hysterical enough to give him the martyred Joan no other actress has ever come within a mile of. I had told Jenny the tale was almost certainly apocryphal, but it had registered.

‘We were overprotective. But the rushes were arguing for it.’

‘And of course the silly vain cow couldn’t conceivably have lived with the knowledge.’

‘I am sorry, Jenny.’

She was silent for a moment, then changed from bitterness to reproach.

‘You don’t know how difficult it is. I can’t slap his face. And I still quite like this girl Kate, even though I know she’s… I suppose a little bent. Cracked. They’re so innocent underneath. You know what they’re like.’

‘Is it she who’s put you back on pot?’

‘I haven’t smoked since that evening. If it’s your business any more.’

‘I’m just concerned that you know what you’re doing.’

‘I haven’t much choice. A lousy old two-timer like you or a lump of bronzed nothing. Neon lights or welly-boots.’

‘At least you’ll agree the last two aren’t compatible.’

‘I spend most of my time thinking of ways they could be.’

‘At the cost of a fortune in long-distance calls.’

‘Which we can both afford.’

‘I’m not talking just about money.’

She left a silence again. ‘Every time we speak you seem further away. That’s also why I wrote it.’ She added, ‘What might happen to me.’

‘It’s precisely because you can imagine it that it won’t.’

‘Optimist.’

That was the first sign of her more normal side, and I used it to move us to less emotional matters.

‘How’s it gone this morning?’

‘Okay. We’re doing the second visit.’ That was a scene early in the story when the nanny Jenny was playing had a surreptitious evening visit from the boy, her bosses being out to dinner… a difficult one for her partner, but fairly straightforward for her.

‘Bill’s happy?’

‘I think so. We cut a couple of lines. He did ask if I thought you’d mind. I’m sort of treated as your agent these days.’

She told me which lines, and why.

‘All right. But tell him it’s a bad principle.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Have you had your lunch?’

‘Now you’ve forgotten I don’t eat on the job.’

‘That’s another bad principle.’

‘I’ll have a yog. Just for you. Have you got your T. E. Lawrence gear packed?’

‘It’s all in town. I’m going up tomorrow.’

She was silent a moment.

‘I get so lonely, Dan. Abe and Mildred are sweet, they do try, but it’s not the same. I seem to have forgotten how to talk to anyone except you.’

‘And this girl?’

‘She’s only a substitute. Anyway. She does most of the talking.’ She added, ‘It wasn’t true.’

‘I know.’

‘I’m writing one last thing. You’ll be gone before it comes. About New Mexico.’

‘You are an extraordinary child.’

‘I should have written it first. And nothing else.’

‘I wish I could read it now.’

She waited, then said, ‘I must go.’ There was the suggestion of a sniff down the line. ‘Be someone else you imagined once.’

‘Soon over now.’

‘You do forgive me?’

‘Of course.’

‘And you will miss me?’

‘Every minute.’

‘Hold me a moment.’

Then, as before, in the last of the silences, defeats, film without vision, she put the receiver down. Dan did the same with his, but remained staring at the stone flags he stood on. It was true that he did not believe it had happened; but he had suspected that something more than she was alleging had happened. He had realized too that it was half written to bring him back, a princess’s message to her errant, and erring, knight; before, of course, she knew he was otherwise engaged. He would not know the truth until he possessed her again; and the side of him he has rather suppressed here, the animal, never happy when too long deprived of a naked female body, though now it was less the act than the adjuncts, the mere diffuse sexualities of another close body—warmth’s in the night, dressings and undressings, domesticities (the illusions if not the realities of what she had called, or been taught to call, togetherness)—that he missed… this animal side of him stood there imagining the repossession; remembered how Jenny was sometimes, since her writing had not, as she perhaps intended, in any way displeased the erotic side of the same animal. At such times she was much more as she had made Kate at the end, in her adventure, than herself… clinging, young, not independent at all.

In the night of the future he kisses tears from invisible, surrendered eyes; and in the electric light of the present tells Phoebe the apple-pie was superb, but he can’t eat a mouthful more.

Dan arrived at the somehow doubly empty—Caro being in Paris, and having in any case moved out—flat, the next day, feeling vaguely depressed. It was not so much Jenny, since on a third reading he had decided to see what she had written, and whether it was true or imagined, as a sign of health, that is, of independence, weaning; but considerably more a belated wondering why he was once again forsaking Thorncombe. There had been a reproach in Phoebe’s eyes when he had told her he was off so soon after arriving; and he had sensed that she did not really believe his assurance that he meant to be ‘home’ through most of the rest of the year ahead. By an irony he had left the farm on the first truly clear and spring-like day since he had returned, and with a distinct sense of foreboding, of a potential grim smile from destiny. There would be a plane-crash, he would never see it again… when it was so near, need never have been left. Egypt seemed like an unnecessary last gamble—he even cold-shouldered a quite normal pleasure he found in the prospect of revisiting the place, of watching its effect on Jane. He knew better: he was at the old game of trimming, of shuffling off decision.

He had not spoken to Jane again except once, and then only about practical matters… the visas, how many travellers’ cheques she should take; and Roz insisted he should come to supper at her flat and bring Caro, the evening before they left. In reality he knew he was beginning to lose the impulse of his good deed, perhaps because he had during that intervening week been reduced to so much prevarication over Jane with Jenny, and had come half to credit what he said to her. His professional excuses had not been totally invented; the script did lack atmosphere, and would benefit—but he knew he would not have been conscientious enough to have bothered to go on his own. In any case he was too old a hand not to know that specific location recommendations in a script rarely survived to the final product.

At least he was going with general approval inside the family. He had spoken to Caro later the previous Tuesday, after he had told Jenny. She seemed more surprised than he had expected; almost as if she needed to know, before she approved, that her mother sanctioned such anomalous goings-on; but when Dan told her she had been consulted by proxy, and given her imprimatur, Caro warmed rapidly to the idea. They were to meet this day, the Sunday, after her weekend in Paris—she would come straight to the flat from Heathrow. That had left one other voice to face. He had not given himself time to hesitate: but no sooner said goodbye to his daughter than he dialled her mother’s number.

‘Hallo, Nell. It’s Dan.’

‘How extraordinary. I was just going to ring you.’

‘Have I done the right thing?’

‘Now I’ve got over the initial shock.’

‘She said something about feeling she needed a holiday. That’s how it came up. Since I’ve got to go…’

‘I think it’s a marvellous idea. Actually I’m green with envy.’

‘It’s only ten days.’

‘It’ll be so good for her. Seriously. I’m just amazed it did anything more than precipitate another fit of the Marxist vapours.’

‘It did a little. And more conventional ones. About how you’d react. Which is rather why I’m ringing.’

‘I’m equally amazed she remembers I have reactions. After Caro.’

‘She does feel bad about that, Nell.’

‘So she should. But never mind.’

‘As long as you don’t think I’m outraging propriety.’

‘My dear man, I’m not that stuffy. Yet.’ As always, fatally, they were slipping into the language of the double edge; but she must have heard it as soon as he. ‘I’m all for it. Honestly. Andrew and I think you were terribly clever to suggest it.’ She added, ‘It’s left us a bit breathless, but not because we’re not grateful.’

‘I suspect the culture shock may do her good.’

‘Perhaps you can get her off with some lovely oil-sheik.’

‘I don’t think I quite promise that.’

‘Did you find her any more forthcoming?’

‘A little. I think she knows she’s trying to solve the world’s problems as a substitute for facing one or two of her own.’

‘I’ve been trying to suggest that for years.’ She hesitated, then said, ‘I am worried for her, Dan. I know she’s holding so much in. In spite of the way I talk about her.’

‘I know.’

‘You have my blessing. For what it’s worth. And sincere thanks. At long last.’ She said, ‘Also for bearing the current brunt of our wicked child.’

They had talked about Caro and her problems then.

She continued a minor problem that Sunday night. Dan waited, drinking too much, for her to appear. She hadn’t been sure which flight they would catch, so it was not really her fault; but it irritated him obscurely. In the end, after nine, he left a note and took himself off to an Italian restaurant round the corner from the fiat. She appeared there just as he was finishing his meal, a little breathless and contrite. She wasn’t hungry, they had had an early dinner in Paris, but he ordered coffee for her. She looked tired, as always, but seemed cheerful enough, full of chatter about her weekend. Barney had gone for some interview with one of the French Common Market high-ups. It hadn’t gone too well, but otherwise she did not mention him. Then she broke off about Paris. There was a certain amusement in her eyes, as if he had been belatedly converted to a cause, when she asked him if Aunt Jane was excited.

‘I hope. She was taken aback at first.’

‘I should think so. Whatever next. A man with a reputation like yours.’

‘I find some of you young people very behind the times.’

She slipped out her tongue. ‘And how’s the other bit of young people in your life taken it?’

‘With a becoming common sense.’

‘There was a photo of her in an old Paris Match at the hotel. I meant to tear it out.’ She sniffed. ‘Not bad. At least she was dressed.’

‘Don’t be catty. I want you to like her.’