Seagulls in My Soup (15 page)

Steel stood up. He was a big man, bearish in his open Astrakhan coat. He raised his arms above his head and stretched them, almost touching the ceiling of the bar. Then, with a ponderous movement, he slowly pressed his way through the throng crowded at the bottom of the steps, staggering slightly and grinning at me. He winked again, turned his broad back, and slowly, steadily made his groggy way up the steps and out into the narrow, moonlit street. The bar was then, somehow, much emptier, as if London had been deprived of its tower.

Now Willie had the ground to himself. He rambled on. “I'm told that some American writers who have known each other for years have never met in daylight, or when they are sober?”

“What a dreadful,
tiresome
little man!” moaned Sissie, alluding, presumably, to the departed American. Every male she disliked was “little.”

I leaned over to her. “The
Thurber
you get from England.”

“Oh, Tristan! I didn't know that you knew Lewis Carroll!” She had misheard me. “Oh, I simply adore
Alice in Wonderland,
” she screamed at Miss Lulu. “Don't you?”

“No, I prefer Hemingway,” replied the ancient lady. “He's much more manly.”

I studied Miss Lulu with new-found respect—even a little fondness. She had tried to defend Steel in her own way, but it was no use. She might as well have tried to sink the Majorca ferry with her handbag.

But soon the scotches that Lulu was knocking back like a trouper, and Sissie's gin (“Booth's London Dry, please—I simply cawn't
stend
that dreary Dutch nonsense!”) did their work, and both ladies were chatting away at female small-talk, the eighth wonder of the world, while Willie beamed about him and broadcast to the motley audience in the George and Dragon more of “his” views on writers.

“When one says that a writer is fashionable, one practically always means that he is read by people under thirty?” I could almost see a half-starved, tubercular Orwell turning in his grave.

“Of course, most writers are depressives—they need perpetual reassurance?” I didn't know who he was quoting now, but I concluded it must have been some editor or other.

With Willie's organ-voice zooming at me across six barflies, I turned around to inspect the people behind. My eye was immediately struck by one of the most beautiful young women I have ever seen. She was tall and willowy. She gazed at her companion—a small, fat man with thinning hair and the wily face of a bookmaker—as if he were the captain of a lifeboat and she were waiting for him to rescue her from the foundering
Titanic.
She had dark blond hair and a face like a delicately sculpted dream, as if the artist had used a feather and a sycamore leaf instead of a mallet and chisel, and had worked away at the shape of that face for an eternity to perfect it. Set in the face were the eyes of a Siamese cat, gray and gold and green and deep. It's easy to say that her smile brought to mind the Mona Lisa, but it did—except that the perfectly shaped lips were closed because they were wise lips, and not merely to cover bad teeth.

The Vision noticed me looking at her. Her green-gray eyes gazed into mine. The slight smile remained, frozen. She looked into me as I would look into a grave. It was as if she were crying into a void. Desperate. She might have been twenty-four.

I turned my glance to her companion. I had overheard him talking in the cockney accent of the London suburbs. He was shorter than I, and when he turned his watery blue eyes on me he lifted one eyebrow. He was chubby and flaccid, and his skin, in the light of a green lamp above us, was somewhat the color of a melonskin—pale green, with liverish yellow patches. I guessed his age at around forty-five, but he later told me he was thirty-two.

“You English?” he asked.

“Well, Welsh.”

“Yeah, my old man was Welsh. Kept a dairy in 'ampstead, he did. Wotcha doin' 'ere, then?”

“Oh, knocking around. My boat's in the harbor.”

“Yeah? Used to be in the navy meself. Wanna drink? My name's Alf.” He turned and nodded casually at the Vision, who I now saw was dressed neatly in a gray jacket, a frilly blouse with its neckline high and demure, and silk pajama trousers. “And this bird is Louise.”

The young woman showed no sign that Alf had spoken. She gazed ahead of her as if she were sleepwalking with her eyes wide open.

“She don't drink,” said Alf. “She's just comin' off an acid trip.” He smirked at me. “She yaffles it like a bloomin' kid eatin' candy! Her old man's a bleedin' cabinet minister in 'olland, an' 'ere she is, screamin' 'er bloody 'ead orf 'alf the time, when she's not on her back dishin' out khifer to the locals. Them randy sods, they're at 'er like bloomin' kids at the jellybeans, ain't they?” He laughed again, his fat lips slobbering as he pushed between Sissie and me to get to the bar, where Willie was droning on and on at two well-dressed elderly gentlemen, both with soft, smooth faces, who had entered moments before, holding hands.

I tried to talk to Louise. “Which part of Holland are you from?” I asked as pleasantly as I could.

The gray-green eyes never flinched. The perfect mouth hardly opened. She spoke in a low, flat, clear voice. “Fuck Holland.”

“I spent the winter there a couple of years back—at Volendam. Do you know it?” I tried to smile.

“Fuck Volendam.”

“How long are you in Ibiza?” I continued bravely.

“Fuck Ibiza. And fuck you.” Still no sign of any emotion. No sign of any intent, any awareness, any presence, any love. The face, startling in its beauty, showed nothing. No petulance, no dislike, no distaste, no hatred—nothing. Only a cold, cold, beauty. It was like looking at the frozen, ice-shining rocks of Spitzbergen on a calm day. There was nothing sinister in that face. Nothing evil. The eyes did not threaten, or menace, or daunt, or warn, or intimidate. They did
nothing.
They were blank, as if she were blind, as indeed, for a flash, I thought she might be—until I caught a flicker from them as she stabbed a stare at Willie. That was the only reaction that wonderful face showed in the whole hour I watched her eyes, on and off, in brief glances, while I observed the assembly and listened to Alf.

Alf came back from the bar, bearing our drinks. He nodded his head toward Sissie, with whom he had just had a short, joking exchange. “She your old woman?”

“Passenger,” I replied.

“Cor, blimey, ain't 'alf a life, innit?” He gulped at his beer, looking at me the while. “Only come down 'ere twice a year,” he said.

“What do you do? I mean, do you work?” I asked, as I took in his loud checked jacket, blue shirt, and silver tie done in a wide Windsor knot.

Alf spluttered as he gulped his pint again. “Wot, me work? You must be jokin'! Nah, I backs the gee-gees. I makes enough to come down 'ere every four months, and stay 'ere fer about two or three months, then orf I go, back again, see?”

“What do you do here, then, Alf?”

“Oh, I drinks an' . . .” He craftily threw a leer at the still-staring Dutch lass, “ . . . an' I gets me end away, don't I?” He said this last bit almost defensively. “Only it's buggered up now. She caught a dose o' siff, an' the local docs won't treat 'er, so she's got to go orf to bloomin' Majorca, ain't she?” He raised his pint again, gulped deep and long, smacked his lips as he put down his glass, and went on. “Still, I don't mind. Plenty more where she came from, eh?”

“You meet her down here?”

“Yeah, she was down on the beach dishin' it out, along with about twenty other birds. They had a midnight party over at Figueretas—Ronnie the Pouf's place. Bloke called Legros stood all the booze and brought about five dollie-birds and three young blokes. He fancies
them,
see?”

“What do all these people do, Alf? I mean how do they live?”

Alf grinned at me after he set his beer down again. “Oh, a bit 'ere, a bit there. You know how it is. Ronnie the Pouf, well, 'e's a sort of barman, but Legros, blimey, 'e's got money growin' out of 'is ears, 'e 'as; 'e's an art dealer—you know, flogs paintings. Travels all over the world. I think 'e's a poufter too, but 'e knows I'm on the other team, so 'e never bothers me. We get on all right. 'E even invites me up to 'is mate's 'ouse for drinks now an' again. They got a swimmin' pool an' all up there . . . up in the Old Town it is.”

My ears pricked up. I looked at Alf closely. “Oh? What's his mate do, then?”

“Oh, 'e's a real turn, that one. Another poufter . . . 'E's a . . . what do you call 'em—you know, people what buy paintin's?”

“An art collector?”

“Yeah, 'e's an art collector. 'E's a big noise from Paris. Name's Elmyr.”

I looked quickly at Sissie, but she was busy conversing with Lulu and had not overheard Alf. Over all, like the voice of Jehovah, the bishop droned on. I said nothing as I listened to Alf gossip about life on the island which I had heard described as “the Saint Germain des Prés of the Mediterranean,” but which others spoke of as “Garbageville sur la Merde.”

“See that little bloke at the end of the bar?” Alf did not move his head. “Don't look now, but that's Old Bill. Secret Police, but it's all right—'e don't know one bleedin' word of English.”

Later,
deah
Willie, having lost his audience of hand-holding gentlemen, both of whom had nervously sipped mineral water as he fired his maxim gun at them, edged his way over toward Alf and me. His voice drowned Alf's intriguing account of life and personalities ashore in Ibiza, and for another fifteen minutes, as I tried to block off my ear passages, Sissie gazed in wonderment and Alf gulped his beer, in between staring, his mouth open in astonishment, as Willie, seemingly oblivious to everything about him except the presence of an audience, held forth.

“There is nothing we like to see more than the gleam of pleasure in a person's eye when he knows we have sympathized with him and understand him? When he realizes that we are genuinely interested in his welfare? At these times something rare and spiritual passes between two dear friends? These are the moments that make life really worth living?”

As Willie's voice jiggled the horse brasses and shook the bottles at the bar, Alf leaned close to me. “'Oo's that?” he asked in a whisper.

“The bishop of Southchester—a right toff,” I replied in a low voice.

“'E's a real card, ain't he?”

“Ah, he's all right. Got a touch of verbal diarrhea, that's all.”

“'E's with you?”

“Yeah, he's that lady's brother. We went out sailing today, but there was no wind.”

Alf eyed the bishop. “Makin' up for it, ain't 'e?” he said. “'Ere, let's take 'im round to the Tierra bar. I know a bloke 'round there, supposed to be a painter. French bloke . . . But 'e's really an acid dealer. Brings it down from Switzerland. If I pays 'im a thousand pesetas 'e'll slip some into 'is booze.”

“Come off it, Alf,” I muttered, and saved the bishop for England.

“Well, it's only a suggestion, i'n it?” Alf slugged his pint.

Willie was still rambling on. “It takes a lot of patience, of course, to appreciate domestic happiness? Some volatile souls actually prefer unhappiness?

“Although I love a holiday, of course, I do actually prefer my own surroundings; they mean so much to me, especially when I'm feeling miserable? Alas, this holiday seems to me to be so short, but I am getting the holiday feeling a little more each day? I have almost rid myself of the ever-imminent sense that I am neglecting some spiritual duty to others when I am away from my diocese?”

And so on, all the while with Sissie staring at him in holy wonder and Miss Lulu nodding her ancient head wisely, in between taking great draughts of Scotch and soda. Eduardo, by this time, had leaned his head on the counter and appeared to be fast asleep. Everyone else except the Dutch statue, Alf, the anxious young bartender, and me, had departed. The bishop had a congregation of only six people, with a seventh probably asleep—until three newcomers descended the steps.

A young man and woman, both about twenty, both blue-eyed blonds, both expensively dressed, both good-looking, bounced in merrily, then stood aside to let a thin, ascetic-looking man, also well-dressed and handsome, pass by them toward the bar. There, as Willie's voice rolled around his ears, the ascetic man bought drinks. Quickly the three newcomers, very privately among themselves, saw off their drinks and left as fast as they had entered.

“They didn't stay long,” I observed to Alf in a quiet way.

“No wonder, is it?” Alf replied, eying Willie. Then he leaned toward me conspiratorially, and whispered, “That bloke 'of just left is a millionaire an' only thirty. 'E invented something to do with printing'. Nice bloke, only 'e's a bit bent, see?”

“Bent? You mean he's homosexual?”

“Nah, he's not
that
way,” replied Alf. “'E's a whatjacallit . . . one of them people what likes to see other people gettin' it away?”

“A voyeur?”

“Yeah. Well, an' them two others, they're German, an' they're always with 'im. He watches 'em an' plays with 'imself while they're on the job, see?”

“Well, that's one way of passing time, I suppose,” I said. “As long as they're not hurting anyone. And those two seem to be doing pretty well for themselves.”

“Yeah. They're bruvver and sister, and they reckon he pays 'em fifty quid every time.”

It was midnight when
deah
Willie and Sissie and I, shaking hands all around in good-fellowship, departed from the bar. The bishop was still ranting away. “But the release of holidays abroad cannot, of course, dear Cecilia, make up for frustrations at home? As a matter of fact, the reliance on holidays to accomplish that often destroys them? By expecting too much one gets less from the holiday than otherwise? Only an emotionally satisfying life, even within a hard-working existence, can be enriched by holidays which are then equally though differently satisfying, as, indeed, this holiday is to me?”