Op.
09
CROSS-PURPOSES
OR
THE
ADULTERY
CLUB
OR
ROLLING
AT
THE BALL
Long
Prose
Copyright
© 2011 John O'Loughlin
______________
CONTENTS
1.
Chapters
1-10
2.
Epilogue
______________
CHAPTER
ONE
With
a
look
of pained scepticism on an otherwise quite straightforward face,
Stephen
Jacobs, friend and only guest that evening of fellow-writer James
Kelly, said:
"I can hardly agree with you that Plato was a realist.
After all, he considered the Ideas to be of
primary importance and the objects, insofar as they had any reality at
all, to
be merely secondary. Unlike his great
pupil Aristotle, he didn't put the Ideas in
the
objects but kept them separate, thereby emphasizing their superior
nature. So how can a man who considers the
Ideas
superior to the diverse components of the material world, which are
deemed to
be merely imperfect copies of the originals, possibly be a realist?" He leant back in Kelly's armchair with a less
sceptical expression on his clean-shaven face and fumbled in the left
pocket of
his dark-green jacket for some cigarettes.
Without giving Kelly a chance to respond, he proceeded to ram
home his
point with the aid of a cigarette, the idea of which, he ventured to
suggest,
would have been more real to Plato than the damn cigarette itself. "Fortunately, cigarettes hadn't been
invented in the fourth-century B.C.," he went on, "so no-one would
have been granted an opportunity to question the superiority of the
Idea on
their account."
"Yes, but the point is that,
for
Plato, the Idea was external to himself, it was something which had a
kind of
life of its own," countered Kelly with an air bordering on supercilious
defiance. "The Idea wasn't something
that he extrapolated from reality but, rather, something he believed he
had
discovered in the external world, where it had a prior existence to
him."
"Really?" exclaimed Jacobs
as he
lit the cigarette in his hand with the aid of a glossy lighter and
returned the
no-less glossy packet of Gauloise Longues to its customary pocket. "That's almost too funny for words, old
chap. I mean, what's an idea if not
something related to one's mind, to the faculty of thought? Can you imagine the idea of a wheel floating
about in space with more reality to it than the wheel of a car or a
motorbike?" He deeply inhaled some
tobacco from his cigarette, as though intending to throw up a dense
smoke-screen between himself and the idea of a wheel hovering somewhere
in the
immediate vicinity. "But even if
the Idea was external to himself," he continued, having exhaled the
incipient smoke-screen in the general direction of Kelly's armchair,
"even
if that was the case, he'd still be an idealist for attributing more
reality to
the Idea than to the material object derived from it; for attributing
more
reality to the idea of a wheel than to the wheel itself!"
"Perhaps he would," conceded
Kelly, who was almost choking in the detestable smoke his guest had
unconcernedly bombarded him with, "but he'd still be less of an
Idealist than,
say, William of Occam, the fifteenth-century philosopher who placed the
Ideas
firmly in the mind instead of in the external world, like Plato, or in
the mind
of God, like Plotinus. You might call
him an idealistic realist, if you like."
"Or a realistic idealist,"
suggested Jacobs, before flicking some ash which had fallen on his lap
onto the
carpet and then proceeding to rub it in with the heel of his right shoe
without
the slightest show of embarrassment or remorse.
"But he was quite mistaken to consider the Ideas external to
himself, and, in my opinion, equally mistaken to consider them superior
in
reality to the objects around him. If
Aristotle wasn't entirely right to put the Ideas into the objects
themselves,
he at least showed more common sense than his early mentor where the
claims of
Idealism were concerned. His was a more
realistic touch."
"Yes, I suppose you're
right,"
murmured Kelly, who looked as though he had just been defeated by
Alexander the
Great and was about to be executed for political treachery.
For a while, however,
silence supervened between them, since
neither man knew what to say
next, nor had they any real desire to continue the conversation along
the same
paradoxically intellectual lines, each of them at cross-purposes with
the
other. Although they both professed to
being philosophers in preference to anything else, they were obliged to
admit
to themselves that there were times when the subject of philosophy was
virtually anathema to them, times when they would rather have discussed
the
weather or the results of the latest football matches, tired as they
were of
dragging their professional lives into their social relationship. It was as though they had to keep reminding
themselves of the professional basis of their friendship from fear that
it
would automatically crumble for want of solid support, since it was
philosophy
which had brought them together in the first place.
Now
that they had come to a pause in their philosophical discussion,
however, they
suddenly found themselves in the uncomfortable position of having to
stare the
basis of this friendship in the face, which didn't seem as solid a
thing as
when they had first entered upon it, some four years ago.
But it was the thirty-nine-year-old Stephen
Jacobs who, with his talkative nature, re-opened the conversation on a
note of
sympathy for Plato for having had enough sense to think an actual rose
superior
to a painting of one, even if he hadn't had enough sense to think an
actual
rose superior to the idea of one. "You
might be able to sell a painting of a rose at ten-thousand times the
price of
an actual rose," he continued, "but even so, the actual rose cannot
be improved upon - any more than you can improve upon the beauty of an
actual
woman with the aid of a canvas, a brush, and a set of oils. It's nature which has the better of art,
irrespective of what certain artists might think. Consequently
it
seems to me that a realistic
perspective relating to the value of art will always be found somewhere
in
between Plato and, say, Wilde, rather than at either extreme. Then one wouldn't have to consider a painting
inferior to the Idea it endeavours to portray through the object or,
conversely, superior to the object it endeavours to improve upon
through the
Idea." He flicked some ash from his
half-consumed cigarette into the small ashtray which stood conveniently
close
to-hand and bowed his head, as though to aid himself think about
something he
desired to keep private.
"Yes,
I
quite agree with your realistic
perspective," admitted Kelly smilingly.
"If one could always strike a balance somewhere in-between
idealism
and realism, one would certainly save oneself a lot of unnecessary
deceptions! It seems that we're only just
beginning to
shake off the idealism of Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Kant, etc., by
accepting the
external world as something which actually exists as it is in itself
rather
than wholly dependent upon the shape our minds choose to give it. We appear to have been labouring for too long
under the deception that our minds are really quite different from the
world
around us. Obviously, there has to be a
subject/object relationship, but not to the extent of making the object
entirely dependent upon the nature of the subject.
Even Plato wouldn't have approved of that,
insofar as he found the object to be a pale copy of the Idea, which was
external to the subject."
"Indeed, eighteenth-century
idealism
is quite a different proposition from Platonic Idealism," rejoined
Jacobs,
raising his head again. "One can hardly
expect the minds of Locke, Hume,
"As a matter of fact I've
been
re-reading it," replied Kelly enthusiastically. For
Koestler
was pretty much his favourite
philosopher these days, and the book in question unquestionably one of
the
master's finest. "As you may know,
Koestler developed a theory of 'holons' - a name he assigns to
phenomena which
are simultaneously both wholes and parts, the phenomena in question
being
complete in themselves, and thus wholes, but also dependent upon larger
wholes,
and thus parts. A phenomenon, be it a
material object, an organization of material objects, an event, a
psychological
process, or whatever, can be an autonomous whole one moment and a
dependent part
the next, depending on the context.
There's no clear-cut division between wholes and parts,
particles and
wavicles, because there's nothing which is entirely one or the other. For example, we are autonomous wholes to the
extent that we are individual human beings, but we're also dependent
parts in a
larger whole, which is human society. If
we try to live merely as autonomous wholes, divorced from the society
to which
we belong, we'll soon find ourselves starving to death.
And if we try to live merely as dependent
parts, as tools of society, we'll probably find ourselves starving to
death
just as quickly, since we won't be in a position to feed ourselves - not,
as
in the
first case, because we haven't earned the money, but simply because
we'll have
no desire or time to look after ourselves once we have
earned
it."
"Yes, that sounds reasonably
plausible," sighed Jacobs while flicking through the book in his
hands. "There's a parallel of sorts
with Whitehead here, the diverse kinds of phenomena you mention having
intimate
connections with Whitehead's 'actual entities', which cover more than
the
merely material aspects of life. He
thought the world an 'extensive continuum' of events having 'extensive
connections', or overlappings. That
doesn't appear too far removed from what you've just explained to me
regarding
the '
"Unfortunately I must
confess to a
rather scant knowledge of Whitehead's philosophy," said Kelly, blushing
slightly, "but I can tell you that Koestler's philosophy is closely
related
to the philosophies of Parmenides and, perhaps to an event greater
extent, of
Hegel."
"Oh, in what way?" asked
Jacobs
who, though no stranger to Koestler himself, had next-to-no-knowledge
of either
philosopher.
"Well, he contends that the
combination
of parts into a whole is greater than and different from the sum of the
parts
which form that whole, thereby concurring with both Parmenides and
Hegel to the
detriment of any behaviourist/reductionist credo," Kelly promptly
replied. "And he goes on, like Hegel, to
develop
a tripartite system of logic as opposed to a purely dualistic one,
which leads
him to emphasize the 'extensive continuum', if you like, of humour,
science,
and art. He defines humour as the 'ha-ha!'
reaction, science as the 'aha!' reaction, and art as the 'ah ...'
reaction,
returning to a dualistic framework to ascribe self-assertive tendencies
to
humour and, at the other end of the spectrum, self-transcending
tendencies to
art. Science is defined as signifying a
subtle combination of the two tendencies, a kind of hybrid coming
in-between
the two thoroughbreds, as it were. Now
anything which has a self-assertive tendency can be identified, in
returning to
the 'holonic' viewpoint, with the independent whole, whereas anything
with a self-transcending
tendency should be identified with the dependent part.
So you can see that humour pertains to
individualism, whereas the keynote to art is to be found, as earlier
affirmed
by Schopenhauer, in self-transcendence, in acknowledgement of something
greater
than oneself. But if one is to take this
triad of humour, science, and art seriously, then it should be fairly
obvious
that, contrary to popular belief, science and art are not opposites but
next-door neighbours, so to speak, in a tripartite spectrum beginning
with
humour, which is therefore the logical antithesis to art.
It seems that we've also deceived ourselves
for far too long on this matter, as on so many other matters, for that
matter."
"So it would appear,"
mumbled
Jacobs, whose face was partly hidden from Kelly by the book he was
busily
scanning, as though in search of some hidden revelation.
"And so Koestler has effectively
demonstrated that there's a place for both dualistic and
tripartite
reasoning
in
the world; that the one needn't necessarily exclude the other?"
"Precisely," confirmed Kelly
with
some considerable satisfaction.
"It's simply a question of knowing when to employ one or the
other
modes of reasoning, not of castigating that which you foolishly assume
to be
mistaken. In this respect, Koestler has
achieved a greater synthesis than most of his philosophical forebears,
who
either emphasized triads at the expense of duads, or duads at the
expense of
triads. Although one could also argue
that Koestler has put tripartite thinking on the philosophical map at
the
expense of dualism, which is no mean achievement, and one, I feel sure,
that
can only gain greater recognition and credibility as time goes by."
Stephen Jacobs sceptically
nodded his head
before saying: "Wasn't Huxley thinking along tripartite lines in The
Human
Situation?" He cast his gaze in
the general direction of the Aldous Huxley section of Kelly's meagre
bookcase,
then went on: "I seem to recall your telling me something about that
book
a few months ago, though I still haven't got round to reading it yet,
despite
the fact that it was published some time ago.
"Perhaps you'll let me borrow it sometime, James?"
"By all means, take it with
you this
evening. It's something you ought to
have borrowed when I first mentioned it to you, though you seem to have
a
marked talent for procrastination where books of that sort are
concerned."
"It's an old family
weakness, I'm
afraid," confessed Jacobs, smiling.
"Still, I do get round to reading them eventually, even if I'm
not
as keen as you on some of the more recent philosophical publications. I suppose I'm more old-fashioned really, and
tend, in consequence, to react against them."
"A statement which seems to
imply that
I'm also old-fashioned, only less so than yourself," deduced Kelly,
smiling in turn.
"Well, there may well be a
grain of
truth in that implication," conceded Jacobs
thoughtfully, "though I didn't exactly intend to convey such an
impression. I suppose a course in
Wittgenstein's linguistic philosophy would add more precision to my
utterances."
"Provided you could
understand his
linguistics!" joked Kelly.
There ensued another silence
while Jacobs
continued to flick through the pages of Janus
-
A Summing Up. However, when his eyes
alighted upon the name
of Konrad Lorenz, he halted in his flicking tracks and uttered an
exclamatory
'Aha!' sound, which was evidently in confirmation of something he had
been
assuming for some time. "I imagine
Koestler got some of the inspiration for his 'haha!' - 'aha!'
- 'ah ...' spectrum from Konrad Lorenz," he at length remarked, noting
the
positive reference to the latter on the page before him.
"What makes you say that?"
asked
Kelly, feeling slightly puzzled.
"Well, I've recently been
re-reading
Lorenz's Behind
the
Mirror, a work which does, incidentally, have some
bearing on what you were saying about Platonic idealism a little while
ago," Jacobs replied. "It
seems the compromise between idealism and realism you were advocating
is the
very thing that appeals to Lorenz who, in opposition to the idealistic
lopsidedness of late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century
philosophy, is
given to the view that the material world isn't really all that
different from
the world as we see it, but corresponds to reality as it actually is. Instead of making the world dependent on our
particular consciousness of it, as traditional idealism usually does,
Lorenz
contends that our consciousness corresponds to the world and was
evolved in
harmony with it, so that what we see isn't necessarily a distortion of
reality
but, rather, that reality reflected in our minds. The
fact,
however, that we're given to
assimilating only a fraction of total reality doesn't, of course,
invalidate
his contention, since what we do assimilate as Homo
sapiens
is real enough in itself. It merely
corresponds to a different reality than to, say, fish reality, which
has
nothing whatsoever to do with the assimilation of rain, snow, sunlight,
wind,
flowers, trees, etc."
"So I was right in thinking
that we've
finally got round to believing in the reality of the external world!"
exclaimed Kelly mockingly. "Though
I guess you could say it had to wait for an age of materialism, with
its
cameras and televisions, to give it due credit as a logical entity. I suppose Christianity was largely
responsible for the hold-up by insisting on the superiority of the
Otherworld
to the detriment of this one. Yet some
people would still argue that conceptual subjectivity is intrinsically
superior
to perceptual objectivity, and that the modern world has simply
regressed from
the civilized plane to the barbarous one.
But isn't Lorenz's contention more a
straightforward
appeal to materialism than a compromise between realism and idealism?"
"I don't think so," Jacobs
replied. "He's simply getting us
away from the stupid or, depending on your viewpoint, highly civilized
idea
that the world would cease to exist if we weren't there to witness it."
"Like, presumably, what
"Yes, though he was shrewd
enough to
point out that it would continue to exist as an idea in the mind of
God,"
confirmed Jacobs. "However, the
important thing to remember is that any objective comprehension of
things
presupposes a subject who comprehends; that there's a subtle
interaction
between subject and object which inevitably
implies a
compromise between them. Unlike the
earlier-mentioned idealists, however, Lorenz doesn't accept the
contention that
our minds distort
external reality. On the contrary, he
endorses the
correspondence they have to it. That's
the difference, and that,
believe
it or not, is an
important advance in the history of Western philosophy!"
"One would think it crawled
along at a
snail's pace," said Kelly, who was by this time almost ashamed of being
philosophical. "Either that or it
has been pursued almost exclusively by intellectual cranks hitherto!"
"I could hardly agree with that
remark,
James, which I'm sure you don't seriously mean!" exclaimed Jacobs with
a show
of surprise. "Still, we do have our
moments of amusement and exasperation at its expense, I'll grant you. But Konrad Lorenz is a scientist, not a
philosopher, and a scientist, moreover, who doesn't think too highly of
idealistic philosophers. We can at least
be grateful to science for continuing to support our faith in external
reality,
even though it is becoming progressively weirder with the passing of
time."
Having returned the Koestler
tome to its
resting place on top of the small bookcase, Stephen Jacobs glanced at
his
wristwatch and informed his friend that he would have to be leaving. He had an appointment with his agent the
following morning and consequently wanted to get an early night. Since it was already
"Good luck with your
appointment
tomorrow," said Kelly, opening the door of his Highgate flat.
"Thanks old chap," Jacobs
responded smilingly and, with a gentle wave of his free arm, he was off
down
the flight of stairs and out, via the communal entrance, into the wet
night.
'Oh well,' thought Kelly as
he returned to
the study and began to survey its heterogeneous contents with an air of
dejection, 'I suppose I won't be seeing him
for some
time. Which is probably just as well,
considering he resents not being able to show off his philosophical
knowledge
to me as much as he'd ideally like to, in view of the fact that I'm
usually
better informed and even more up-to-date than him.
I think he has the impression that he ought
to know more about philosophy than me, bearing in mind that he's three
years my
senior and has been studying it for a couple of years longer. But how hard and how often has he really
been studying it? And who has he been
studying anyway? He thinks he's a
philosopher, but he's really a philosophical artist, a man who leans in
the
direction of philosophy from a sort of literary base.
He doesn't have a Ph.D. and is consequently
without a chair of philosophy anywhere.
But how many genuine philosophers don't have that?
Almost every great philosopher on record was
a lecturer at one time or another - even Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. Though the former resigned
his chair and the latter taught philology even after he'd been awarded
an
honorary Ph.D. by his university.
But at least he ended-up with a doctorate, which is more than
either
Stephen or I have acquired. Still, why
should one be ashamed of being a man of letters instead of a bona
fide
philosopher with no literature to his name because he is sufficiently
preoccupied with his university post and the writings which pertain to
or
supplement it? What's wrong with being a
philosophical artist? That's what I'd
like to ask Stephen Jacobs, though if I did it would almost certainly
humiliate
him, even make him take umbrage. For he
thinks he's a philosopher. But
philosophers don't write literature; they confine themselves to
lecturing on
and writing about philosophy - assuming, of course, that they hadn't
been
sacked from their university, like Bertrand Russell, or induced to
resign their
post, like Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, for one reason or another. Admittedly, Stephen writes philosophy or, at
any rate, something approximating to it.
But he can't earn his living from that; he has to write
literature as
well. So, in a sense, he's probably
ashamed of having to compromise himself against his deepest
intellectual predilections....
If he was genuinely a philosophical artist, on the other hand, that
sort of
thing wouldn't particularly bother him.
He'd be nicely poised between literature and philosophy, glad to
take
refuge in the one whenever the other became either too oppressive or
too
restrictive. But because he secretly
yearns to be a philosopher, and has little taste for literature, he
finds the
idea of being a philosophical artist beneath him. Yet
he's
neither a genuine philosopher – much
less an artist-philosopher/philosopher-artist - nor a genuine artist. He's a total misfit. A
failed
philosopher and a bogus artist! That's
the way I see him anyway, and that's
the way I believe he is, even though he'd be the last person to admit
it. For if there's one thing he's a
genuine
master of, it's the art of self-deception!
Of that, there can be no doubt!'
By now James Kelly was
beginning to feel
slightly more pleased with himself than he
had done
all evening. He was taking revenge on
Jacobs for all the humiliations the latter had wittingly or unwittingly
inflicted upon him throughout the course of the evening by means of
this
barrage of analytical thought, which he aimed at his colleague's
professional
integrity with the express purpose of smashing it to bits, if only in
his
perverse imagination, and thereby firmly establishing his
unquestionable
intellectual superiority over the man.... Not that Jacobs was a
permanent thorn
in his side. On the contrary, he could
think of plenty of people who would have created a less favourable
impression
on him. But, all the same, he knew that
their friendship wasn't particularly sincere, that it didn't run very
deep. For one thing, their temperaments
weren't entirely congruous, Jacobs being no less critical and moody
than he was
easy-going and optimistic, while, for another, they wrote quite
different books
and lived in quite separate worlds.
Naturally, they did their best to pretend that these worlds
weren't all
that far apart whenever they were in each other's company.
Nevertheless, there were times - as had
occurred more than once this very evening - when the effort of
maintaining
mutual regard proved too much for them and an embarrassing silence
interposed
itself between their respective pretences.
Needless to say, such occurrences were by no means unheard of in
human
relationships; there were always contradictory or even antipathetic
elements
endeavouring to undermine the basis of even the most solid friendship. Even so, there was a limit to how many of
these elements one could be expected to tolerate before things became
too
burdensome and one was accordingly obliged to sever ties.
Fortunately, however, things weren't quite
that bad between them at present, though that wasn't to say they
couldn't have
been a lot better!
'As for me,' Kelly continued
to reflect, as
he sat down in the armchair recently occupied by his guest, 'I have the
advantage of being at one with my vocation of philosophical artist, of
being an
intellectual hybrid simply because, on the one hand, I don't want to be
exclusively an artist and, on the other hand, I've no desire to
establish
myself as an academic philosopher, a man with a Ph.D. and lecturing
post at
some university who is thereby enabled to write uncommercial treatises
in his
spare time. Admittedly, one could also
be a philosopher without
such qualifications if, by good fortune, one
had been endowed with a sufficiently large private income to enable one
to
exclusively dedicate oneself to the writing of aphorisms, monologues,
dialogues, etc. But the vast majority of
philosophers aren't so fortunate, with the inevitable consequence that
the
money they make from teaching philosophy enables them to continue
writing
it. Yet I have no desire to teach
philosophy and, even if I were wealthy, I doubt very much that I would
want to
confine myself exclusively to writing it either, since I value the
creative
potentials of literature too highly.
And, conversely, I value thought too highly to be content with
limiting
it to a literary guise and diluting it in the interests of plot,
characterization, description, etc.
Besides, you can never get to the ...'
His digital watch suddenly
bleeping
'June the nineteenth,' he
muttered to
himself a moment before the curtain of sleep drew across his waking
consciousness and plunged him from thoughts about his dinner invitation
with the
Searles into the dreamful depths of his unconscious.
It was now June 14th.
CHAPTER
TWO
It
was
a
warm dry afternoon as the bright-green Citroën drew to a halt not far
from the
village of Merstham, in Surrey, and the driver got out and pointed in
the general
direction of the hill which she and her two female companions, Carmel
Daly and
Sharon Taylor, were intending to climb.
Within a few seconds the remaining occupants of the modest
little car
had joined her and were smiling at each other over a large hamper of
provisions, which they agreed to carry between them.
When the owner of the Citroën had locked both
its doors and windows, the three of them set off in the general
direction of
their destination, where they intended to have a salad picnic.
"What a relief to be able to
stretch
one's legs again!" exclaimed Jennifer Crowe while glancing back at her
companions, who were struggling along with the copiously packed hamper
a few
yards behind her. "It was only an
hour's drive, but it seemed like an eternity."
At twenty-eight, she was not
only the
oldest of the group, but the only one who had been to this part of
"Not far now," Jennifer
announced
with a reassuring glance back at her companions, who seemed to be
rather
labouring under their burden.
"Here, let me take a hand in carrying that!" she offered,
moving towards the hamper. But her
generosity was emphatically rejected by both
"When did you last come
here?"
asked
"About two years ago,"
replied
Jennifer, with a thoughtful look on her face.
"My boyfriend drove me here then, though the weather was nowhere
near as fine as today. We thought it was
going to rain, so we returned to the van - he had an old Ford thing at
the time
- and, well, you can guess what happened next!"
A spontaneous response of
knowing laughter
erupted from her two companions, who also nodded approvingly.
"But we'd have preferred to
have
enjoyed ourselves on the crest of this hill," Jennifer went on,
"because it isn't every day that the return to nature can be so
complete,
if you see what I mean."
Again there were nods of
approval from both
"He must have been quite
upset by the
sudden change of plan,"
"Well, you know what men are
like," sighed Jennifer with a knowing look on her face.
"They don't care where they get it
really, provided that they do eventually get it somewhere.
It was my idea to lure him here, my dream to
be humped in full view of nature's gaze, to have such a beautiful and
romantic
setting. And so I was more disappointed
than him when the sky became overcast and it looked as though we'd
end-up doing
it in the rain. It was his idea to
return to the van, not mine."
The trio fell silent as,
arriving at their
destination, they looked about them for a suitable spot to decamp. There were a few trees and bushes in the
immediate vicinity, which gave a degree of privacy to the area and
would have
provided some protection, depending where one sat, from inquisitive
eyes, had
there been any such eyes to spy on people who were intent upon
harmlessly
enjoying themselves. Fortunately,
however, no-one else was around at present, and it was principally this
aspect
of things which brought a sigh of relief from Jennifer's ample lips.
"How nice to have the place
entirely
to ourselves!" exclaimed
"Yes, it's just as well we
chose a
weekday," remarked Jennifer while taking a large plastic groundsheet
from
the wicker hamper and spreading it on the grass. "I
doubt
very much that it would be this
quiet at the weekend. Let's keep our
fingers crossed that we don't get any unwanted visitors."
"A remark, I presume, which
excludes
everyone but handsome young men," opined
"Yes, I suppose you're
right,"
said Jennifer, "though, under the circumstances of this rare treat to
country life, I think we could even do without them, don't you?"
Her companions smiled
approvingly at what
sounded like a rhetorical question and duly busied themselves with the
preparation of their salads. They had
brought a decent-sized lettuce, an uncut loaf of brown bread, a
cucumber, half-a-dozen
tomatoes, a half-pound of cheese, a dozen or so small boiled potatoes,
a
beetroot, a few hard-boiled eggs, and some coleslaw.
They shared out the responsibility for
preparing their food in a thoroughly democratic manner, and were soon
tucking-in
to it. For liquid refreshment they had a
large flask of orange juice, which all agreed to be the most suitable
drink for
the occasion.
"Look!" exclaimed
"No more than
fifteen-year-olds, by
the look of it," said Jennifer, who was particularly good at
distinguishing people from a distance.
"I don't think they'd relish our company somehow."
"It looks as though they're
heading
towards that cluster of trees," observed
"Just as well," murmured
"Two
young guys
heading for the protection of those trees? It
makes
you smile rather, doesn't it?"
Jennifer commented, offering
"They might be going beyond
them,
seeing as there are so many trees and bushes over there,"
"Oh well, what does
it matter to us?" sighed Jennifer as she poured herself a beaker
of
orange juice. "Let's forget about
them."
After the main course, the
girls each ate
an apple and a couple of digestive biscuits, and when all the used
knives,
forks, beakers, and plates had been packed away in the hamper again,
they
decided it was high time for some sunbathing, the real raison
d'être of their excursion.
As usual, Jennifer led the
way by taking
off her denims and white cotton vest, followed, in quick succession, by
"Let's hope it continues to
shine like
this!" enthused Jennifer as the glare from
above
forced her to turn her head to one side and speak with her eyes closed. "We could certainly do with a little
colour on our bodies."
"Especially after last
winter,"
sighed Sharon, who was lying in-between the others with her back to the
sun. "It's a wonder we aren't all
blue now." The vehement buzzing of
a large bee suddenly interrupted her for a few seconds, but the busy
insect
didn't pay any of them much attention and the sound of its buzzing soon
faded
back into the distance from whence it had so unexpectedly come. "Are there any intruders in sight?"
she asked
"What kind of intruders?"
"Human
ones. Men in
particular."
There was a short pause
while
"Good," sighed Sharon, who
immediately began to unclip her bikini top and pull her bikini bottoms
down as
far as she could without giving everything about herself away.
"Would you like some more
lotion?" asked
"Thanks," she murmured, once
the
massage was completed. "Let me know
when you need any assistance."
"You'll
need
medical assistance if you get stung or bitten on the backside!" warned
Jennifer, who was laying on her back with the minimum of social
respectability
still covering her most private parts.
"I've got an ant crawling over my left tit at this very
moment."
"Oh, don't!" protested
"A hungry ant which finds
its way into
the valley between your mounds of bum will spoil it even more,"
Jennifer
remarked, to the audible amusement of Carmel, who was still dressed in
a more
orthodox fashion - top and bottoms of her green bikini clipped securely
in
place.
"She'll have to learn
modesty the hard
way,"
Silence mercifully descended
on them for a
couple of minutes, before Sharon ventured to inquire of Jennifer
whether, in
returning to the subject of her boyfriend, she had ever had sex in the
open.
"Quite a few times
actually," she
admitted. "Provided the weather's
not too extreme, it can be a most refreshing experience!
In fact, it was about this time last year that
David and I last had it off in the open.
We were on holiday for a few days near Burford, in Oxfordshire,
where a
friend of his happens to live, and, on one of those gorgeous days, we
got
together on the edge of a cornfield and followed the course of nature
for an
hour. An hour tends to suffice him, as a
rule, though I've known him to spend three hours playing around with
various
bits and pieces of my anatomy."
"What, in the country?"
gasped
"No,
unfortunately
not! I think the open makes him
feel insecure, afraid, perhaps, that some copper will suddenly turn up
and say:
''Ere, 'ere, 'ere, what's all this, then?' or something of the sort,
before
carting us away for indecent exposure.
That would be terribly humiliating."
"You're not kidding!"
"Still, it hasn't happened
yet, so, providing
David keeps his head and doesn't become too careless where he chooses
to take
or have me, as the case may be, it shouldn't ever happen."
Jennifer readjusted her sunbathing position
and requested
"No, it was becoming a shade
uncomfortable in any case, lying on my stomach for so long,"
"Any intruders in view?"
asked
Jennifer in imitation of
"No human ones that I can
see. What about you,
"Only a
scarecrow in
that field over there. It seems
too good to be true, that we should still have this hill to
ourselves." Having said which,
"Sounds like she wants to do
a
striptease act, too," declared Jennifer as she heard
"So it would appear,"
laughed
Sharon before turning from the bare back of the one to the equally bare
back of
the other, which she then proceeded to massage in a similarly steady
but
comprehensive manner. "I've never
seen so much of your respective bodies before," she commented, with a
faint tone of sexual arousal in her voice.
"Then make the most of it
while the
opportunity still prevails," Jennifer joked. "For
you
won't see us like this very
often, you know."
Carmel had tied up her long
black hair to
prevent it from being blown across her back by the stiff breeze which
occasionally raked the hill, to the detriment of a uniform tan. Of the three women, she was the only one with
straight hair, the only one who could tie it up with any degree of
success. The others had wavy hair of a
fairly coarse texture which, because of its considerable length, was
more
difficult to manage and therefore could not be disposed of in quite the
same
fashion. For her part, Jennifer had
contented herself with resting her head on as much of her long black
wavy hair
as could be gathered up into a sort of pillow, while Sharon had divided
her own
hair, with the aid of strong elastic bands, into two thick strands,
which were
now tickling Carmel's back as she bent over it to administer the suntan
lotion.
"Phew! Is it hot!" exclaimed
"That's precisely why we
can't afford
to waste any time today," responded
Lying on her back with an
arm across her
brow,
'I almost envy Jenny her
relationship with
David,' she mused, as she lay perfectly still between her
fellow-sunbathers. 'How beautiful it would
be, to be humped on this hill on such a fine day, with the birds and
insects to
witness one's delight. I dare say she
gets what she wants whenever and wherever she fucking-well wants it -
unlike
me! And yet I'm better-looking than she
is. I'm better-looking than both of them
are actually, though I doubt whether they'd admit it, the lying bitches! But, at twenty-four, I deserve more luck with
men than I've had this year!' She sighed
in instinctive dismay.
"Finding the heat too much
for
you?" asked Jennifer, incorrectly interpreting it.
"No, I was just thinking
actually,"
"Sorry to disturb you,"
murmured
Jennifer with a wry smile on her lips.
"You shouldn't torture yourself with thoughts on such a fine
day,
you know!"
"No, I guess not." The silence once more mercifully interposed
itself, before
"You'd better avoid the bush
I peed
behind shortly after we got here," said
"Psst!" hissed Jennifer,
raising
herself on one elbow. "Let's play a
practical joke on her."
"What, like hiding her
miniskirt
behind a bush?"
Jennifer shook her head. "No, let's pretend we're having sex, so
that she'll find it difficult to believe her eyes when she returns."
"You leave that to me!"
snapped
Jennifer and, before her companion could utter another word, she had
moved
closer to the other girl and thereupon applied her mouth to one of
Carmel's
nipples.
"Let's hope this looks
convincing," Jennifer whispered, as
"Good god! what are
you
doing?" she exclaimed, arriving back to her towel, only to find their
bodies entwined in a semblance of passionate sex. "Don't
tell
me you're ..." But the
rest of her remark was prevented from emerging into vocal clarity by
the
impulsive amusement which overcame Jennifer at the pathetic spectacle
of
"Don't worry, love," she
said,
while disengaging herself from
"Some joke!" protested
"In that case, we'll go for
your
tits," joked
"Oh, no you won't!" she
cried,
while making to defend herself by wrenching the other girl's fingers
away and
covering her breasts with her hands.
"That's only because she
wants to hold
them herself," chuckled Jennifer over her shoulder.
"Yes, what a provocative
picture she'd
make for someone with a camera!" averred
'It's true what they say
about women
behaving stupidly when they're not in men's company,' Sharon mused,
once the
context of sunbathing had enveloped them all again.
'And men act just as stupidly when left alone
with one another. Some kind of relief
from the usual sexual tensions, I shouldn't wonder!
Still, you can't altogether blame them. There
are
times when you positively need the
company of your own gender. Times when you're only too relieved to get away from the
opposite
sex.'
She shut her eyes and
listened to the
brazen sound of crickets in some nearby grass, which had the effect of
making
her conscious, once more, of the sun on her back and of the steady
breathing of
her friends, who had returned to their private lives again and were now
soaking-up the sun's rays and perhaps - who knows? - fantasizing about
men. And, just as consciously, she found
herself wondering what Jenny's boyfriend would be like in bed, and
whether
Carmel's boyfriend, Martin, whom she had met only once, would have
taken a
fancy to her, had he met her first.
Somehow she preferred not to think about her own relationships
with men
over the past few years because, with the possible exception of a brief
fling
with a young actor she felt genuinely fond of, they had all been
somewhat
disappointing.
Indeed, of the seven or
eight men who'd had
the audacity to barge into her life during that time, the last of them,
whom
she was obliged to break-up with after a mere three days, had been the
most
abominable. In fact, he hardly knew how
to make love at all, so preoccupied had he been with avoiding premature
ejaculation! But ever since she got rid
of him on the pretext of having to work in a theatre up north, she
hadn't
managed to find herself a successor, not even an incompetent one. And that was over four months ago! Really, she was beginning to feel sorry for
herself, being left on the shelf for so long, particularly as she was
so
good-looking and still relatively young.
Apart from one dreadful year, when she was nineteen and had
spent six
months without sex in consequence of a serious illness, this last year
had been
the worst of her adult life! She feared
that if things didn't improve soon she would have little option but to
give-up
acting and become a visiting masseuse, or maybe even something worse.
No, perhaps that was going a
bit too
far! All the same, she might have to
make herself more amenable to people whom she wouldn't ordinarily have
considered worthy of herself.... Like, for instance, some of the older
men at
the theatre, whose advances she would ideally have preferred to snub. But as for Jennifer and
For a moment, she had a
vision of
Jennifer's vagina above her nose and of her tongue methodically working
its way
backwards and forwards between its goose-pimpled labia.
She didn't know what Jenny's vagina exactly
looked like, but the impression she now formed of it in her imagination
was so
vivid ... that she felt a sort of revulsion in her stomach and was
obliged to
turn her head in the opposite direction, so that the others wouldn't
notice
anything amiss. Although
"What time is it?" asked
Jennifer, breaking the long silence which had fallen between them.
"Yes, I expect so," Jennifer
sighed. "It may not be as easy
driving back to
This allusion to the
Hampstead theatre
where they all worked as actresses caused Carmel to titter to herself,
and, on
being asked by Sharon what was so funny, she repeated a few of her
lines from
'Daybreak Tears', their current theatrical venture, in which she had to
confess
to being madly in love with a man who, in private life, she
wholeheartedly
loathed. "'But I shall never leave
you, come what may. For I am too madly
in love with you to allow anything like this to come between us ...' And I have my arms
round his neck - imagine it! Round the neck of a man I'd sooner
strangle."
"Well, at least it gives you
an
excellent opportunity to assess your progress as an actress," opined
Jennifer stoically. "It's to your
professional credit that you manage to conceal all but the faintest
traces of
disgust whilst in his arms. One would
think that you actually liked him."
"That's not good enough,
since I'm
really supposed to convey the impression that I'm madly in love with
him!"
Jennifer smiled
sympathetically. "Very few people would
spot the
difference, so you needn't worry yourself too much about that! The fact remains that you still manage to pull
off the act pretty well.... Frankly, you ought to be grateful to the
man for
testing your professionalism to the limit of its objective
endurance." She paused a moment to
reflect on her own position, then continued: "But I have a role which,
in
many respects, is the reverse of yours.
I have to shout at a man who, in private, I'm really quite fond
of. You remember Act Two, Scene Three,
when
Gerald has drunk a little more wine than is good for him and
subsequently makes
a drunkard's attempt to seduce me in front of my husband?"
She waited for
A titter of laughter
escaped, with this
remark, from Carmel's ample lips, for she remembered the look on
Gerald's face
when Jennifer had first fired those lines at him point-blank, so to
speak, and
the embarrassment which overcame him when his reactions were censored
by the
producer for being too subjective and thus insufficiently impersonal. Had he actually been drunk, the poor fellow,
he might have found it less difficult to live up or, rather, down to
the
part. But his acute sensitivity
regularly got the better of him in those early days of rehearsal and
became something
of a standing joke among the cast, who were of the express opinion that
he
needed toughening. Only Jennifer, to
"It would make the lines
easier to
play if I
had actually been drinking before reciting them," the latter
confessed while toying with her hair.
"He's such a nice guy really.
But on stage one's acting comes first, so I endeavour to
overcome my
personal misgivings and simply bellow them at him."
"And he endeavours not to
take them
too seriously,"
"Thank goodness for that!"
exclaimed Jennifer. "Anyway, my
conscience compels me to compensate him off-stage for all the abuses to
him on
it by being as sweet as possible. If it
wasn't for the fact that he's already happily married, he'd probably
have been
in my bed some time ago."
"Instead of which, he's only
recently
been in it,” chuckled
"Are his hands really
sweaty?"
asked
"No,
very dry
actually. And he's neither a
'raving lunatic' nor a 'lecherous half-wit', as you well know."
"The vicissitudes of the
acting
profession,"
"Try telling him that!" said
The sun was less intense now
as evening approached
and, following Jennifer's suggestion that they all get dressed again,
the three
young actresses reached out for and began to inspect their respective
items of
clothing, Carmel being especially careful to be on guard for the
possibility of
ants hiding in her cords, which were black and therefore an ideal
nesting place
for them, whether or not they might subsequently take to biting her
backside. Not surprisingly, she was the
last dressed, having also, along with Jennifer, relieved herself behind
a
nearby bush.
When the women had gathered
up their towels
and packed them away in the large wicker hamper, they gave their
surroundings a
farewell glance and, with a tinge of regret on their suntanned faces,
set off
down the hill in the general direction of Jennifer's car.
The task of carrying the hamper, now much the
lighter for the absence of provisions, was accepted by Jennifer and
Carmel, who
decided to lag a few yards behind Sharon on the down-hill route. However, when they had got to within a hundred
or so yards of the car they noticed two young males sitting on the
fence by the
side of the footpath. As the three women
drew nearer, the youths began to grin at them and whisper to each other. Finally, as though the close proximity of the
women were a cue for action, they unleashed a barrage of verbal abuse
to the
effect of: "Fucking Lesbians!
Bloody Lesbians! Lesbian
cunts!" and other such sharp phrases which had the effect of making the
two hamper-carriers lower their eyes in rapid shame and blush violently. A few sticks hurtled after the women once
they had passed their tormentors, one quite large stick hitting
Jennifer
squarely on the back.
"The little brats!" she
yelled
and, letting go of the hamper, she turned on her heels to confront them. But they were already off the fence and
scampering up the hill from whence the threesome had come.
"Are you alright, Jenny?"
asked
"Yes, I guess so," she
sighed. "Though I
suppose I shall have a bruise across my back for the next few days."
"They were evidently the two
young men
we saw crossing the field in the direction of that clump of trees a few
hours
ago,"
"The frigging little brats!"
reiterated Jennifer while rubbing the lower part of her back with her
free
hand. But, as she reached her car, she
couldn't help noticing what looked like a 'tough-luck!' smile on
CHAPTER
THREE
It
was
Douglas
Searle in person who opened the front door to admit James Kelly
to his
little gathering of choice guests. It
wasn't yet
"Delighted to see you
again!" he
declared, as Kelly stepped through the open doorway and met his host's
outstretched hand half-way. "What a
fine evening it is!"
After exchanging a few
trivial remarks,
James Kelly was escorted into the lounge and summarily introduced to
each the
other guests, all but one of whom he had met before.
That was Susan Healy, a short
twenty-six-year-old art teacher with blue eyes and fair hair who had
recently
become Keith Brady's latest girlfriend.
Kelly knew from experience that Brady, the chubby painter over
ten years
her senior who now stood proudly, and therefore protectively, beside
Susan, had
a special talent for finding himself new
women and
losing them just as quickly. But perhaps
this one, being familiar with art, was his bride-to-be?
Knowing Brady, James fancied he would
probably find himself being introduced to a different girlfriend the
next time
he was ushered into the lounge by Mr Searle.
"Still
hard at work
with your writings?" Brady asked him as soon as he had got over
the
shock of meeting a new face. But before
he could even nod his head a hand had grabbed one of his arms and
another
voice, more seductive than Brady's, was congratulating him for his
healthy
appearance. It belonged, he soon
realized, to Paloma Searle, Mr Searle's half-Spanish wife, who had been
in
animated conversation with one of her guests when he first entered the
room. Her dark eyes sparkled with joy at
the sight of his face, which had, in the meantime, become somewhat
flushed. At thirty, she was a woman of
considerable
charm and eloquence whose 5' 8" of shapely flesh, dark hair, and gently
aquiline nose were chief among the many qualities which especially
appealed to
Kelly's aesthetic sense at this moment.
He hadn't seen her for over three months and felt quite
flattered to
receive a glass of wine from her hand and to be offered a seat beside
her on a
comfortably padded couch. The smell of
her perfume tantalized his nostrils as he immersed himself in her
lively eyes,
listening, as closely as the general hubbub in the room would permit,
to the
melodious flow of words which cascaded, like confetti, from between her
moist
lips. She could only find time to
congratulate him on the publication of his latest novel, however, when
duty
beckoned her away to the kitchen, where the chicken salad apparently
required a
few final touches. She had already
prepared most of it, but seemingly still had some more work to do. His eyes followed her across the room, like a
hungry dog intent upon collaring a succulent bone, as she made for the
door, noting,
with especial pleasure, the seductively curvaceous shape of her
calf-muscles,
tastefully outlined beneath a pair of dark-green nylons to which her
purple
miniskirt formed quite a contrast.
"So you're back here, too!"
boomed out Trevor Jenkinson's bass voice above the softer voices
socially at
large on the airwaves. "It seems
they have a weak spot for writers."
The tall, greying man who
had just taken
Mrs Searle's place beside James Kelly happened to be a writer himself,
albeit
of a more conventional kind. His
twenty-something years in the profession had resulted in the
publication of
some fifteen crime novels, none of which Kelly had read, though he
vaguely knew
the titles of a few of them. Had it not
been for the man's affability and unpompous manner, Kelly would
probably have
felt intimidated by his professional seniority.
But his easy-going personality, so much in tune with James
Kelly's own,
precluded any such intimidation with an ease which the younger man
could only
admire. Here, anyway, was a writer who
had outgrown his professional egotism and virtually come around to
regarding
his reputation with indifference, if not downright repugnance. How different from Stephen Jacobs! There were times when his aura of
self-importance so overwhelmed and disgusted one that one would have
dared to
tell him that his work was by no means as good as, largely on the basis
of its
superficial success, he imagined it to be.
But that would simply have resulted in Jacobs regarding one as
insulting
and summarily taking his leave of one in order, presumably, to seek
better
understanding elsewhere! There was no
toppling him
from the pillar of professional self-esteem upon which he
had
elected to sit, compliments, in no small measure, of a public-school
and Oxbridge
background.
"Yes, I think his wife's
rather fond
of you," Jenkinson was saying in a more confidential tone-of-voice. "She likes to see younger men about the
place."
Not wishing to comment on
that, James Kelly
finished off the wine in his glass before asking: "Are you reading
anything particularly interesting at the moment?"
"I'm always reading
interesting
things!" replied Jenkinson in what seemed to the younger man like a
slightly ironic tone-of-voice.
"But don't you ever read
boring things
by mistake?" asked Kelly incredulously.
"Never!" averred Jenkinson. "If I did, I wouldn't be a writer now,
would I?" Which rhetorical
statement was duly followed up by: "Fact is, even the worst things tend
to
interest me for one reason or another, even if only to the extent that
I want
to find out how bad or wrong they are."
"Really?" gulped the younger
man
innocently.
"Yes, well, I guess you
could say that
I grew out of my youthful aestheticism some time ago," Jenkinson
confessed
in a tone of scarcely concealed pride.
"I used to plume myself on reading only the best, er, novels, I
suppose you could say - you know, the ones which are most, ahem,
classic." There was a short pause whilst
he knocked
back the rest of the wine in his glass, before continuing: "Well, I
must
have read just about everything there was to read in that category by
the time
I was thirty-five. But, since I couldn't
give-up reading altogether, I decided to try a less aesthetic line and
embrace
the sort of, er, novels which more discriminating writers would prefer
to
avoid. Still, I'm not bored by them - at
least not to the extent that I get bored by second-rate music, art, and
drama,
the last two of which I really can't abide at all on account of the
fact that I've
become too conceptual to tolerate anything so damned perceptual and
fundamentally autocratic!"
Kelly thought he could
empathize with that
statement, baffling though it was, as he chose to say: "But you can't
be
reading second-rate novels all the time.
Surely there must be some new first-rate ones?"
The older man paused to
reflect a
moment. "New classics, you
mean? Yes, I suppose I do read something
approximating to the classic every once in a while.
It’s hard to tell really."
Kelly
was about to say something about the book he was currently reading,
which
wasn't a novel at all, when Mrs Searle suddenly appeared in the doorway
and
informed everyone that dinner was ready.
The last guest had just arrived in the guise of Rachel Davis, a
relatively good-looking journalist who had apparently been held-up in
the
traffic. She was now talking to Douglas
Searle who, in response to his wife's prompting, immediately began to
usher
everyone in the general direction of the dining room.
"Oh well, I could use
something to
soak-up the bilge water a bit," confessed Jenkinson ironically, as they
came within sight of the food. "I
haven't eaten anything since lunch time."
There were eight of them in
all, Mrs Searle
appointing the six guests their places as they arrived at the elongated
rectangular table. The Searles elected
to sit at opposite ends of it, as presumably was their custom, with the
guests
facing one another three abreast along its length.
At a squeeze it could have sat ten people,
but, for purposes of convenience, eight was considerably more
satisfactory.
As the proceedings got under
way, Kelly
found himself seated near Mrs Searle at the end of his row, so to
speak, with
Keith Brady to his right and Gordon Hammer, a forty-eight-year-old
concert
pianist with balding head and drooping moustache, directly opposite. At the other end of the table, the host was
flanked by Susan Healy on his left and by Trevor Jenkinson on his
right, while
the remaining place, in between Jenkinson and Hammer, was taken by
Rachel
Davis. Surprisingly, they all found the
chicken commendable, despite its toughness, as the preliminary forays
on it
momentarily got the better of their conversations and imposed a modest
silence
upon everyone.
"Very nice," admitted Brady
by
way of congratulating Mrs Searle on her culinary handiwork. "There's nothing better than a chicken
salad on such a warm evening."
"Indeed not!" confirmed
Susan in
response to her boyfriend's lead.
"Please feel free to help
yourselves
to more wine when you're ready," Searle informed them all, generously
drawing their attention to the eight large bottles of quality German
wine which
stood at regular intervals along the table.
"There's no shortage of plonk here."
"Worse
luck!"
Jenkinson exclaimed in mock-ironic fashion.
"Very nice wine," said
Brady, who
had just taken his first sip and was belatedly making a show of
savouring the
bouquet.
"Hmm," agreed Susan over the
brim
of her untouched glass.
Gordon Hammer was staring
across at Kelly
with a look that had the latter wondering whether his presence was
being
resented. "Had any luck with your
writings lately, James?" he somewhat arcanely quizzed him, at length.
"Depends what you mean by
'luck'," Kelly blushingly replied.
"I haven't had a best seller yet, if that's what you mean."
"As long as you're making
some kind of
intellectual progress, that's the most important thing!" the pianist
declared, to Kelly's evident relief.
"What are you writing about at present?"
"Er, a
sort of
philosophy actually."
"Philosophy?" echoed Hammer,
while raising his bushy grey brows in a show of gratified surprise.
"At least that's a sort of
moral or
intellectual progress over fiction!" commented Jenkinson from his end
of
the table.
"Weren't you something of a
philosopher once, Douglas?" asked Hammer, turning his quizzical
attention
towards their benevolent host.
"It depends what you mean by
'philosopher'," the latter dutifully responded, albeit with a slightly
embarrassed look on his clean-shaven face.
"I seem to recall dabbling in maxims for a year or two in my
undergraduate days, but, other than that, I can't profess to having
written
anything overly philosophical, probably because I'm not abstract or
metaphysical enough and, alas, am more interested in making money than
in
advancing Truth."
"Were the maxims ever
published?"
Kelly asked.
"Of course not!" laughed Mr
Searle. "In fact, I don't think I
even bothered to submit them to an agent actually.
Quite apart from their lack of commercial
appeal in a country besotted with trashy fiction, I wasn't exactly what
you
might call a twentieth-century La Bruyère." He
scooped
up his glass and imbibed most of
its contents in one swift draught, as though to underline the fact. "How about you - is your philosophy
aphoristic?" he rejoined.
James Kelly felt obliged to
finish chewing
a large piece of cold chicken which he had already directed into his
mouth,
before replying: "Partly."
The terseness of this
response must have
slightly puzzled Mr Searle, for he quickly went on to ask: "Why only
'partly'?"
"Because I couldn't stand
writing
nothing but aphorisms or maxims," Kelly revealed. "Besides,
although
my maxims are
uncomfortably close to La Rochefoucauld at times, and thus of a
character which
should shock and provoke people, I don't have the good fortune to live
in an
age when philosophy of that nature is in vogue, as I'm sure you can
appreciate."
"A pity if you happen to
have a talent
for maxims," declared Hammer.
"Incidentally, I used to know a majority of that old bastard's
maxims by heart, you know." He
scratched his sparse pate with a finger of the hand holding his fork,
before
bursting out with: "Isn't there one that goes: 'Men would not live long
in
society were they not one-another's dupes'?"
Irreverent titters of
laughter erupted from
various quarters of the table, while Susan Healy felt obliged to blush
with
some embarrassment at what she imagined the maxim to imply.
"Yes, I believe so,"
confirmed
Kelly with a straight face. Though, in
reality, he felt quite embarrassed by Hammer's blunt choice of maxim,
which
seemed unduly cynical even by La Rochefoucauld's notorious standards!
"Do give us an example of
one of your
maxims, James," requested Mrs Searle with an encouraging smile.
"Yes, do!" Hammer seconded. "But since I'm in no mood to be bored,
make it scandalous!"
Kelly took a deep breath, as
though to
gather courage or inspiration from the air, and intoned as casually as
he could
manage, under the circumstances: "A woman will not thank you for having
a
wet dream while she is in the bed."
A burst of spontaneous
amusement greeted
Kelly's maxim from all corners of the table except Hammer's, since the
pianist
had failed to grasp it.
"What nonsense!" he
protested,
with an almost
"On the contrary, I've
specifically
chosen one which was, er, literary," retorted Kelly, before taking a
sip
of nerve-bolstering wine. "A purely
philosophical one might have given you all mental indigestion," he
quipped
after a sharp gulp.
"But isn't it unlikely that
a man
would have a wet dream while sleeping with a woman?" objected Brady
rhetorically, to the tune of renewed amusement from most sections of
the table
and his girlfriend in particular, who contrived to blush diplomatically
in the
process.
"I guess it depends on the
sort of
woman he happens to sleep with," Kelly pithily averred.
"I'm confident there are men who have
stained their woman's lingerie in that fashion."
"Presuming, of course, that
their
woman was actually wearing any at the time," Mrs Searle half-smilingly
contributed to the debate. "Some women ..."
"Pray, tell me," Hammer
impatiently interposed, while pushing his near-empty dinner plate to
one side,
so that it overlapped with Rachel's dinner space and caused her to
adjust the
position of her own plate accordingly, "has such an experience ever
happened to you?"
It wasn't a question James
felt competent
to answer, but he did his best with a denial which was duly
supplemented by
words to the effect that whenever he had had the relatively good
fortune to
experience a wet dream, there hadn't been anyone else in his bed.
"Then on what authority did
you write
such a maxim?" Hammer pressed him, with a triumphantly quizzical
expression on his sardonic face.
"Surely one must base these things on personal experience?"
"Ideally one should,"
admitted
Kelly, back-pedalling, "though literature can't always be based on
that,
particularly when one lacks the experience in the first place but is
nonetheless possessed of an imaginative urge, or daemon, which demands
to be
placated with a near-tyrannical insistence ..."
"The
poor
fellow!" Hammer guffawed.
"Be that as it may," Kelly
rejoined with impatience, "if one uses one's imagination, one can see
perfectly well that a woman would rather have a man's semen in her
vagina than
over her lingerie or back or wherever, so what's the matter with
writing
something to that effect without having personally experienced a wet
dream whilst
a woman was in the bed?"
"Nothing, if you don't mind
self-denigrating yourself in such a perverse fashion," Hammer guffawed
anew.
"Isn't it possible that a
man could
have a nocturnal emission without actually spurting semen all over his
bed
partner?" Mrs Searle suggested speculatively, only to precipitate a
hearty
laugh from her husband.
This time Kelly had need of
an
ego-bolstering gulp from his wine glass, before replying: "I dare say
it
is. Although there's
no reason to assume that his partner between the sheets or under the
quilt or
whatever would be particularly grateful to him for wasting his semen at
her
expense. You see, the maxim is
based on commonsensical probability, which is why it has a ring of
credibility
despite its purely imaginative origins."
"More a tinkle than a ring,"
averred Brady, as he turned towards his left-hand neighbour at table. "For I'm damned if I
can believe that a man would have a wet dream with his woman right next
to him. It wouldn't be particularly
flattering for her
to wake up in the morning only to discover that her husband or whoever
had come
all over the sheet in the night instead of all over her or, preferably,
inside
her."
Susan Healy managed a
perfunctory titter in
spite of a qualm about the propriety of such a notion in the company of
hosts
who, as yet, were a relatively unknown factor.
"James' maxim is rightly
based on
probability," Jenkinson waded-in with effect to rescuing his
fellow-writer
from the quicksands of ego-sucking vanity.
"One is simply asked to believe that if, by any chance, an
experience of that nature were to occur, the most likely reaction from
the
female - providing she wasn't a prudish old puritanical hag who
rejected sex
anyway - would be one of disapproval or, at the very least,
disappointment that
better use hadn't been made of the semen in the first place. That seems feasible enough to me, at any
rate." Having said which, he helped
himself to some more wine from the nearest bottle, and straightaway set
about
eagerly consuming it.
"One can see why," Hammer
commented in a lightly sarcastic vein, showing Rachel a wry smile in
the
process.
"Yes, I can't help but feel
that it's
a rather implausible probability," said Brady, who hadn't experienced a
wet
dream of any description for a number of years on account of the fact
that his
member rarely had any sperm to spare on such celibate luxuries.
Implausible or not, there
was a merciful
lull in the conversation while Mrs Searle, assisted by the rather
taciturn
journalist, cleared away the dinner plates and then served dessert in
the
somewhat nebulous forms of jelly and ice cream, the latter having
meanwhile
melted to a degree which titillated the imaginations of more people
than the
hapless James Kelly!
"So what have you been
painting
lately?" Mr Searle casually inquired of the painter, in an attempt to
get
the conversation moving again.
"I'm afraid it's a bit
difficult to
explain," replied Brady, whilst attacking the wobbly dollop of elusive
raspberry jelly in the dish before him with both spoon and fork. "It's a kind of abstract-surreal thing
in which there's a clock without hands standing on the top shelf of a
bookcase
without books, while the bookcase itself stands atop a coffin which is
floating
in a sort of pond of, er, blood."
"Charming!"
exclaimed
Rachel
Davis in ironic perplexity, making a most uncharming spectacle
of her pallid face. "Must
you continue?"
"Well, with due respect to
our
charming host, I was only replying to his question, my dear. Had he asked me how
I'd been
painting lately, I could have told you about airbrushes instead."
"Don't tell me we've got a
squeamish
journalist here!" Hammer guffawed.
"My goodness, girl, there are more revolting things than that in
your newspaper every frigging day!"
Brady blushingly took
umbrage at the
pianist's derogatory adjectives, which seemed to imply that his work
was also
revolting, only less so, but held his tongue while Rachel defended
herself from
her right-hand neighbour with a comment to the effect that one didn't
have to
read them whilst eating one's evening meal.
"In fact, one doesn't have
to read
them at all," declared Jenkinson, before taking a copious gulp of
alcoholic slurp from his half-empty glass.
"I can always manage with just the pictures."
"They're bad enough!" opined
Hammer with an expression of unmitigated disgust on his world-weary
face.
"Anyway, getting back to
what I was
describing for Douglas' benefit," resumed Brady impatiently, "there
are a number of mechanical ducks with large silver keys jutting out of
their
backs, who are paddling about on the unmentionable fluid ..."
"What colour are these
ducks?"
Mrs Searle wanted to know, for no apparent reason.
"Er, all different colours
actually," Brady replied. "One
is blue, another green, and a third, which I'm still in the process of
completing, is going to be a mixture of bright orange and turquoise."
"How clashingly exciting!"
cried
Mrs Searle with a screech which must have effected Hammer, for he
banged his
glass down on the tablecloth so forcefully that at least half its
contents
spilled over the rim onto his starched cuff.
"An orange and turquoise
duck!"
he protested, ignoring the physical inconvenience of this latest social
gaffe
as best he could. "Whatever
next?"
"Well, I did say they were
mechanical," stated Brady defensively.
"They're not real ducks."
"No ducks which are painted
on a
canvas could possibly be real!" objected Hammer, this time being
content
to merely slap the table with his other hand.
"No, not in any literal
sense,"
Brady conceded with an air of petulance.
"But they can still look
real. Anyway, what I've superficially
described is
only part of the overall ... composition."
His gaze reverted to Douglas Searle in search of the
understanding which
was manifestly not to be found on the opposite side of the table. Graciously, the host consented to a friendly
nod.
"How long will it take you
to complete
the work?" he inquired in the slipstream of a large spoonful of dessert.
"Oh, I should have it
finished by the
end of the month," Brady nervously confessed, fidgeting slightly in his
chair. "I've been working on it for
just over five months actually, so it's been a fairly long job. In fact, I'm quite looking forward to a
change of subject-matter."
Hammer muttered something
derogatory under
his breath, before adding: "I bet you bloody-well are!"
However, recalling what he
had once read in
an essay by Wyndham Lewis entitled 'Super-naturalism verses
Super-realism', the
'Super-real' being Lewis' term for surrealism, James Kelly thought he
could get
his own back on Brady by saying: "Isn't surrealism a little out-of-date
now?"
"More than a little," the
painter
responded, slightly to Kelly's surprise.
"But since I know some people who are interested in buying
surrealistic-looking paintings, I make a point of occasionally obliging
them,
even though what I do isn't strictly surrealist but
abstract-surrealist, as I
think I said, and therefore a sort of combination of abstract and
surreal
elements."
"I doubt if I'd be able to
spot the
difference," said Kelly, who, in any case, was privately of the opinion
that even abstraction was out-of-date and no more than a sort of
petty-bourgeois climax or decadence, depending on your point of view,
to a
painterly tradition which had long been on the non-figurative run, as
it were,
from photography.
Meanwhile, Gordon Hammer was
keeping up his
running battle with Brady by saying that some people would buy
anything,
particularly when they have plenty of money.
"I once knew a man who bought three surrealist paintings for the
sole purpose of destroying them," he went on, undeterred by the
painter's
objections. "The fellow was a
socialist revolutionary who wanted to express both his contempt for
money and
distaste of modern art. So he damn-well
set fire to them all!"
"How terrible!" cried Mrs
Searle
over a raised spoonful of raspberry jelly. "I sincerely hope a similar fate doesn't
befall any of your paintings, Keith."
Brady's face turned a sickly
pale, as though
he had just puked up his dinner.
"Fortunately, to the best of my knowledge, no-one has done
anything
of the kind to any of my paintings to-date," he gasped.
Following
dessert,
Mr
Searle offered cigars to those who wanted them, Kelly being the
only male abstainer.
"That was a wonderful
dinner,
Paloma!" enthused Rachel Davis, as she
helped Mrs
Searle with the empty dishes.
"I must say what a pleasure
it's been,
to be seated next to such a charming hostess," opined Hammer, who made
a
display of the fact by affectionately patting Mr Searle's wife on the
shoulder. "Her perfume simply
inspires one to strange and giddy heights of rapturous applause."
"Oh, do shut up!" Mrs Searle
affectionately scolded him, playfully slapping his hand.
Yet there was an element of genuine
appreciation in her tone as she graciously informed him, over a pile of
empty
desert dishes, that it wasn't every day she had the pleasure of having
such a
distinguished musician to dinner - a comment which brought a sly smile
to Kelly's
lips, as he reflected that the pleasure in question would soon turn
sour if she
had him there more often! And that
doubtless applied to the rest of them too, with the possible exception,
he
supposed, of himself.
"By the way," said Mr
Searle, who
had been too busy competing with the billowing smoke from Trevor
Jenkinson's
cigar to notice his wife's blush, "an old friend of ours, whom one or
two
of you may know, is holding a fancy-dress ball in a couple of weeks'
time, and
has invited my wife and I, together with those of you who may be
interested, to
attend. If any of you would like to
avail yourselves of this generous invitation, the official cards for
which I
shall hand out to the interested parties later-on this evening, you are
required to be at his
"Ah, so it's
Mark Benson's affair, is it?" Jenkinson deduced.
"Indeed it is!" Mr Searle
confirmed with a gracious nod.
"Mark's having a bit of a fling in commemoration of his tenth
wedding anniversary, and you are all
invited." He stubbed-out the paltry
remains of his cigar in a glass ashtray, before adding: "When you turn
up
at his address, don't give your real name or say you're one of Douglas
Searle's
friends. Just hand over your invitation
card and tell them your fancy-dress name, assuming it isn't manifestly
apparent."
"In that case, they're bound
to know
who I am," Jenkinson remarked.
"Even if I were to wear a costume which was too big for me and
several masks on my face, my voice and height would give me away
immediately."
"Well, they won't know who
the rest of
you are ... with the possible exception of Gordon," drawled Mr Searle
under duress of a creeping alcoholic somnolence.
"Did you say July the
Fourth,
"I did indeed!" confirmed Mr
Searle, nodding.
"Sorry to disappoint you,
old stick,
but on the Saturday evening in question I shall be the leading
attraction in a
piano recital at the Festival Hall," Hammer revealed in a slightly
apologetic tone-of-voice.
Mr Searle sighed
disappointedly through the
receding haze of cigar smoke, while his wife, no less disappointed,
inquired of
the pianist what he would be performing.
"Oh, some newfangled
compositions by
composers whose names I can't even remember," he crossly replied. "A cross between the
atonal avant-garde and trad jazz, with a sprinkling of Tippett and
Rawsthorne
thrown in for good measure. Damnably difficult to play!"
"Have you ever played in
public while
drunk?" asked Kelly out of idle curiosity.
"Goodness me, no!" exclaimed
Hammer. "But I have played on a few
drinks though; just enough to warm me up and get me onto the ruddy
stage in the
first place.... However, don't let me distract you from the main issue
any
longer, Douglas, which has something to do with a fancy-dress ball, if
I
remember correctly."
Mr Searle made an effort to
clear his
throat, which was only partially successful in view of the state it was
in, and
then drawled: "Well, I would be delighted if ... all the rest of you
could
turn-up ... on the evening in question ... and contribute to the fun by
wearing
... suitable fancy dress. There are,
however, two conditions. Firstly, the
men must dress in infamous attire and ... give themselves an
appropriately
infamous name, while the women must dress in, er, famous attire and ..."
"In other words," Mrs Searle
interrupted with intent to clarify the matter, "the males are to dress
in
costumes associated with evil men or organizations, and the females, by
contrast, in costumes associated with good women or organizations."
Several gasps of disbelief
broke loose from
among the guests at this point, and Trevor Jenkinson, mindful of the
fact that
not all men were by nature evil or all women good, humorously objected
by
wondering why it was usually the men who had to play the evil roles? "After all," he went on, "it
seems to me that women are far more qualified than us to do that these
days, in
view of their liberated status and unequivocally objective assaults on
the
..."
"Oh, don't listen to that
male
chauvinist pig!" protested Rachel, fixing Jenkinson's drunken head with
what some might have taken to be a mock-critical stare.
"I quite like the idea, actually."
"I thought you would,"
smiled Mr
Searle diplomatically. "The women,
then, are to go along as so many
"Not literally, of course,"
said
Mrs Searle, who was still quite sober, "but certainly within the
opposing
contexts of good and evil. Thus there
are plenty of guises from which to choose."
"I suppose one has to wear
an eye
mask," Brady suggested, with an air of knowing resignation.
"Yes, a small black or white
Zorro-like thing, depending on your sex, is the second condition,"
confirmed Mr Searle with laboured solemnity.
"I was about to mention that when my wife rudely interrupted
me."
"Only
because you're
too sodding drunk to be properly intelligible!" Mrs Searle
protested.
"Nonsense!" her husband
retorted. "I can make myself
properly intelligible at the worst of ... frigging times."
He paused to recollect his thoughts, before
asking: "Will everyone apart from Gordon be able to go, then?"
With the exception of Trevor
Jenkinson, who
replied in the affirmative a few seconds after the others, there was a
unanimous "Yes!"
Douglas Searle seemed
distinctly
pleased. "That settles it,
then. My wife and I will see you there,
though you may not recognize us at first.
If you have any qualms about ... being seen in fancy dress on
route to
the Benson's house, I suggest you hire a
cab prior to
leaving home. The driver may find you
amusing, but not many other people ... will get a chance to have a
laugh at
your expense!"
"I've got a car of my own in
any
case," Brady informed them all in a tone of pride.
"Then don't hire a cab!" Mr
Searle solemnly advised him, to the accompaniment of titters from Susan.
Since James Kelly had never
been to a
fancy-dress ball before, the prospect of having to find a suitable
disguise to wear
caused him distinct misgivings; though he knew of a costumier in the
"Plenty thanks," he assured
her,
as she made to pour the remaining white wine from the nearest bottle
into his
empty glass. His gaze remained riveted
on her long hair and shapely arm as she withdrew the bottle and poured
its
contents into Hammer's glass instead. A
sudden uprush of sexual desire for her engulfed him at this moment, and
he was
hard put to restrain himself from reaching under the table for her
nearest leg
and caressing it. Perhaps she would have
appreciated such a gesture, even with her husband seated no more than a
few
yards away? After all, it might have
given her a perverse satisfaction to be surreptitiously admired in such
palpable fashion in the presence of her legal spouse.
Yet he knew he wouldn't commit himself to
that possibility but remain committed, instead, to the belief that it
would
disgrace him and scandalize her, irrespective of the evidently drunken
condition most of the male guests were in by now and the unquestionable
kindness and generosity of the hostess herself.
Thus when, after a few tense minutes had elapsed, they were all
staggering-up from the table, he realized that he had been sitting on
his
hands, since they were now somewhat sore.
The
participants
divided
into little groups of twos and threes as they ambled out of the
dining
room and back towards the lounge, where some of them were destined to
remain
for an hour or two or, at any rate, until such time as they felt in a
fit state
to return home, whether by car or taxi.
Douglas Searle and Trevor Jenkinson appeared to be leaning on
each
other's shoulders for mutual support, though it was virtually
impossible to
tell to what extent the one was physically supporting the other or
whether, in
fact, they were really supporting each other at all.
Brady had an arm round the bare shoulders of
Susan Healy, his latest caryatid, and Hammer, who had come to a sudden
standstill in the intervening hall, was boastfully displaying his long
powerful
fingers to Rachel Davis, demonstrating, it appeared, a piano technique
which he
hoped she would find time to write about in her paper.
As for James Kelly, he found
himself
listening once again, at the door of the dining room, to the entrancing
sound
of Mrs Searle's voice, which was saying some kind words in praise of
his latest
novel - a work of romantic import enigmatically entitled 'The Divided
Lover'. She confessed to being
especially impressed by chapter eight, a chapter, however, which, in
his
inebriated state of mind, Kelly could barely remember having written,
let alone
recollect. So he contented himself with
nodding his head in apparent approval while simultaneously smiling into
the
cavernous eyes of his beautiful hostess, whose graceful body stood no
more than
a few inches from his own.
"One would think you'd
written the
novel under the influence, if that's the right phrase, of Aldous
Huxley's Eyeless
in
"Really?" responded Kelly,
feeling somewhat alarmed by the prospect.
"I'm afraid I shall have to disappoint you where the presumed
influence of that novel is concerned, since I can't ever recall having
read
it."
Mrs Searle was affected more
from the
almost triumphantly arrogant way James Kelly had stated this than from
what was
said, and blushed accordingly. "Oh
well, I guess I was deceiving myself," she confessed.
"Still, I'm probably justified in
drawing analogies between the two novels all the same, even if Huxley's
happens
to be the greater."
From where he stood, Kelly
had no
difficulty noticing her seductively prominent medium-sized breasts, the
upper
halves of which were exposed to telling effect by the low-cut vest she
wore. He felt a momentary impulse to
congratulate
her on the effect they were having on him, but immediately quashed this
wild
notion by awkwardly inquiring if she still wrote poetry, since he
remembered
her having mentioned something about occasional poetic leanings a
number of
months ago.
"Yes, I write short lyric
poems
whenever I get the desired inspiration, which, alas, isn't all that
often these
days," replied Mrs Searle, who lowered her eyes in shame and began to
blush again, albeit ever so endearingly.
"I wouldn't mind taking a
look at them
sometime," Kelly murmured, while thinking to himself that her blush was
all the ignition a man would need to spark off his engine and put it in
top
gear, so to speak. "I'm sure they'd
prove most interesting," he weakly added.
Just at that moment,
however, there was an
almighty commotion from the lounge in consequence of the mutual
drunkenness of
Trevor Jenkinson and Douglas Searle, who had fallen over each other and
overturned a coffee table and a couple of wooden chairs in the process. As Mrs Searle and her admiring guest quickly
headed in their direction, Brady was vainly attempting to wrench Mr
Searle back
to his unsteady feet, though his effort to do so only resulted in his
being
dragged to the floor by the latter's outstretched hand, to the patent
amusement
of those already on it.
"Can't they stay on their
bloody
feet," sneered Hammer, as he leant against
the
lounge door and peered-in at the chaotic and vaguely obscene spectacle
before
him. "They won't get me down there,
anyway. Here, James, you're a
fit-looking young fellow! See what you
can do."
But when he got to the door,
Kelly was too
mesmerised by the sight of Susan Healy being pulled to the floor by her
plump
boyfriend, and having over two-thirds of her sexy legs exposed, to be
of any
immediate use to anyone in that regard.
"Anybody else to come down?"
chuckled Jenkinson sarcastically, as his attention veered towards
Rachel Davis
and Mrs Searle, who were standing closely together just inside the
door, and
whose embarrassment was plain for all to see.
In fact, Mr Searle was almost looking up his wife's miniskirt
from where
he lay helplessly spread-eagled on the carpet.
"You can try him, if you
like,"
giggled Rachel, while Kelly took hold of Jenkinson's outstretched hand
and, as
though bracing himself for a tug-of-war, methodically pulled the
drunken author
back to his feet, and this in spite of his own manifest lack of
sobriety.
"You damn spoilsport!"
growled
Brady as he, in turn, found himself being hauled back to the semblance
of
upright respectability and gently pushed in the direction of the
leather-backed
couch upon which Jenkinson was already sprawled in seemingly sybaritic
abandon,
like a Roman patrician. "Anyone
would think James preferred bloody standing to lying," he ironically
grumbled, taking hold of his girlfriend in passing and giving her a
playful
slap on the backside.
But the effort of pulling
the third man to
his feet proved too much for Kelly and, before he could let go of Mr
Searle's
hand, he found himself lying face-down on the floor, to the vengeful
amusement
of Jenkinson and Brady, who almost fell off the couch in their
sarcastic
approval of this unseemly spectacle.
However, he wasn't there long, because Rachel Davis and Mrs
Searle
combined to pull him to his feet, leaving Mr Searle to struggle for
himself. And it was Mrs Searle who used
this physical
assistance as an excuse for grasping Kelly at the waist with both hands
and
offering him temporary support against the unsteadiness of his legs. Her breasts heaved perceptibly as he leant
against her with one arm draped about her neck and the other one
wrapped gently
round her waist, as though they had just concluded an exhausting dance,
and,
despite her husband's close proximity, she couldn't prevent herself
from
smiling into Kelly's eyes and blushing anew in the process. It was a wonder to him, at this moment, that
he didn't proceed to fuck her there in front of her still spread-eagled
husband
and the other inebriated guests, but he simply thanked her instead and
modestly
helped himself to a comfortable seat.
Later that night, Kelly was
able to return
to his flat with the knowledge that Mrs Searle, or Paloma (as he now
preferred
to think of her), had not only bid him goodbye with the words "I
specially
look forward to seeing you again on July the Fourth" on her lovely
lips,
but had used them, moreover, to kiss him on the cheek as, leaving after
the
others, he parted company with her in the presence of no-one but
themselves.
CHAPTER
FOUR
The
Thursday
morning
of the following week brought James Kelly to the West End in
order to
discuss a new project with his agent, and later that day, with business
concluded more or less to their mutual satisfaction, he decided to
visit the
nearby National Gallery in Trafalgar Square - a thing he hadn't done
for
several years, largely because, as an Irish citizen, he considered it
irrelevant to his nationality.
Arriving at the gallery in
an optimistic
frame-of-mind, he headed straight for Room 45, where the Impressionists
were
exhibited. In consequence of
anti-Christian sentiments he always preferred to start his tour of the
rooms
back-to-front and to follow an anti-clockwise direction, thereby
guaranteeing
himself the maximum of patience and concentration for the secular
works, which
he feared might not get investigated at all were he to begin the other
way
around, as presumably most visitors to the National did, and thus wade
through
medieval Christendom first.... Not that he was entirely prejudiced
against the
religious paintings. For there were,
among their considerable number, some he still quite admired on account
of the
brilliance of their colours and the precision of their details. But, generally speaking, he was more drawn to
the secular than to the religious works, which was why he invariably
began at
the end.
On this occasion, however,
with the
exception of a brief glance en
passant at
Seurat's Bathers, Asnières, which he admired more for the
degree of
perseverance required in the execution of its pointillist technique
than for
its simple subject-matter, he ignored the Impressionists altogether and
proceeded straight to Room 35, in which a number of Canaletto's
Venetian scenes
were hung. It struck him as being
singularly
appropriate, as he stood respectfully in front of View of the
On the other side of the
room, the Regatta
on
the
Grand Canal, Venice presented a much more
intricate
spectacle to the eye as, with mounting humility in the presence of such
skill,
Kelly took especial note of the great crowds taking part in the regatta
where,
in the foreground, every figure had been given a carefully defined
costume and
a no-less carefully defined physiognomy.
There could be no question of any of the numerous participants
being
confounded with insignificant blobs of paint, as in the case of much
twentieth-century
art, where the conceptual took precedence over the perceptual and
emotional
subjectivity accordingly prevailed. This
was not decadent art, still less anti-art, but painterly art-proper
and, as
such, the depiction of everything had to be highly meticulous, in
accordance
with the more concretely objective criteria of that age.
Passing on through the
nearest rooms, it
soon became apparent to James Kelly that the National Gallery was
playing host,
as usual, to large numbers of foreign nationals of mostly Continental
origin
who wandered from painting to painting in small groups and talked
between
themselves in respectfully subdued tones, occasionally halting to
inquire of a
uniformed attendant, as best they could, where one could find a certain
painting or gallery. It was indeed
pleasing
to behold all these French, Italian, Spanish, and German tourists who
were only
really there, after all, because of the large amount of art which their
ancestors had produced and which, by some quirk of historical fate, now
reposed
in England's foremost gallery.
The Adoration
of
the Golden Calf
by Nicolas Poussin, one of those ancestors who happened to
be
French, brought Kelly's wanderings to a temporary halt in Room 32,
which
appeared to be the largest in the entire building.
Although the actual subject held no great
appeal for him, it served to remind him of the Poussins he had viewed
in the
Louvre, a few years previously. He
recalled that virtually the entire length of a ground-floor gallery had
been
devoted to the works of this singular genius, who obviously held a
special
position in the hierarchy of French classical art.
In addition to the 'Golden Calf' motif, which
could also be found in the Louvre, Kelly now unearthed some fragments
of memory
associated with classical ruins - a subject which seemed to figure
rather
prominently in Poussin's vast oeuvre.
But he had to admit that the colour schemes usually adopted by
this
master, with their ochreous mixtures of brown, red, pink, and pale
orange,
usually depressed him after a while, as did his rather down-to-earth
choice of
subject-matter, and this occasion was to prove no exception!
On the other hand, The
Preaching
of
St. John the Baptist by Van Haalem (1562-1638) providentially
provided him with the antidote he required to disperse the depressing
effects
of Poussin, whose matt tones were now eclipsed by the brilliant colours
of this
magnificent painting. There was nothing
of late-Christian austerity or melancholy about this colourful
outpouring of
religious fervour, as the great prophet confidently announced the glad
tidings
of Christ's Coming to a motley crowd standing in a forest glade which,
bathed
in luminous light from the open spaces beyond, was distinctly
suggestive of the
Supernatural, so ethereal was the overall impression.
For James Kelly, paintings of this nature
partly redeemed religious art in his eyes, made them appear precious to
an
otherwise irreligious or secular temperament.
Even if, from the vantage-point of late-twentieth-century
secularism,
one despised traditional religion, with its objective faith in miracles
and
superstitious clinging to outmoded beliefs, of which the concept of a
unitary
Creator was the most fundamental in Kelly's estimation, one was
constrained to
admit that it had inspired a wealth of extremely beautiful art, and
some of
that art, no matter how irrelevant from a contemporary standpoint, was
deserving of due recognition.
Abandoning the small central
area between
the two main parts of Room 28, Kelly immediately headed towards Room
22,
wherein he wanted to gaze at The
Toilet
of Venus, the divine
cynosure of which suggested a likeness, in his imagination, to the
supple body
of Paloma Searle, whom he had never seen nude but was inclined to
suppose, from
recent experience, the possessor of a similarly shaped body herself. However, he had only just set foot in this
particular room when he caught sight of a young woman with long
wavy-blonde
hair who was viewing the work in question.
Freezing in his tracks, he gazed with rapture upon the hair and
shapely
calf-muscles of this fair person, whose physical appearance, seen from
behind,
almost surrealistically connoted with the Adoration of the Golden
Calf
he had viewed only a few minutes before.
Dismissing the connotation as frivolous, he
discreetly approached the real-life woman, so that they were standing
side-by-side in front of the Velazquez, and endeavoured, with a slight
turn of
his neck, to peer into her face, which at that moment was presented in
profile. However, this slight movement
was insufficient to distract her attention from that part of the
painting in
which its subject's face is reflected in the small mirror held up to
her by a
cherub positioned at the foot of the luxuriously draped bed upon which
the
goddess of love reclines. But before he
could muster the courage to risk another glance at her, she had taken
leave of
the painting and was heading towards the exit.
Panic-stricken at the
prospect of losing
sight of her, Kelly automatically abandoned his intention of studying
the
Valazquez and, slightly self-consciously, followed her at a discreet
distance. Once more, he had time to note
the seductive contours of her pale-stockinged legs and the volatile
texture of
her hair, before she came to a gentle halt in front of Rubens' Rape
of
the
Sabines in Room 20. Not wishing to
follow her directly to that turbulent painting, which was hung in the
middle of
the nearest wall between two other works by the same artist, he brought
himself
to a halt beside The Triumph of Julius Caesar and gave its
vibrant colours,
painted in the manner of Mantegna, a cursory inspection.
But although this was one of the paintings he
had particularly intended to view, his gaze soon reverted to the
unknown
beauty, whose attention he so desperately wanted to attract.
This time, however, he was
more
successful. For she turned a pair of
inscrutable eyes upon him just long enough to enable him to discern the
extent
of her facial beauty. His heart leapt
excitedly,
as his mind registered its full impact.
But he was unable to prevent a feeling of acute
self-consciousness from
marring an otherwise objective appraisal, and quickly returned his
attention to
the Rubens again. He suddenly felt the
urge to swallow hard, but was afraid he would only make a noise which
would
compromise him and increase his embarrassment.
Ironically, the perfectly representational painting in front of
him had
been transformed into a jumble of nondescript shapes and blurred
colours, akin
to abstract expressionism, under pressure of his emotions, which
threatened to
break out of the prison of skull containing them and explode in all
directions
at once, bespattering both viewers and paintings alike with bits of his
brain. At that moment he needed to sit
down to recover his aplomb, but the few seats in the room were already
occupied. An elderly couple came from
nowhere and stood next to the woman who had ignited his emotions,
tantalizingly
blocking his view of her.
Turning away from them, he
strode across to
a painting directly opposite the one he had been trembling in front of
and,
with considerable difficulty, managed to decipher its title. Ordinarily he would have had no trouble
distinguishing the broad outlines of The
Judgement
of Paris. But since the
thunderbolt of love struck him,
he found it difficult to even recognize it as one of Rubens' paintings,
regardless of the fact that he had stood in front of it on at least
three
previous occasions and noted the turbulence and, to his mind, excessive
flabbiness so characteristic of this master's buxom females. Today, however, he was conscious of only one
thing - namely, the desire to make the blonde his girlfriend that very
day!
A second or two later he
became freshly
conscious of a slim figure in a white vest and matching miniskirt
passing
closely behind him - oh, so closely as to gently brush the arm of his
sleeve! A faint aroma of sweet perfume
lodged in his nostrils as she turned the corner and disappeared from
sight. Overcoming his timidity vis-à-vis
the room's
attendant, who stared directly at him as he broke away from the Rubens,
he
followed the young beauty, at a discreet distance, into Room 15, where
she
subsequently came to a respectful halt in front of Correggio's The
School
of
Love. Unable from shyness to
follow her directly to it, he took up a parallel position in front of
that same
master's Ecce Homo, the other side of one of the room's exits. He was conscious, as he came to a halt in
front of this painting, that the young woman was perfectly aware of the
fact he
had been following her. For
she
stared across the intervening space at him a moment, before
returning her attention to the canvas in front of her. As he in turn returned his attention to the
Correggio, he noticed, out of the corner of his right eye, something
bright
and, turning his head towards the wall which formed a right-angle with
the one
in front of him, he beheld a portrait entitled A Blonde Woman,
whose
long wavy-golden hair and impassive face, painted with what appeared to
be
consummate skill by Palma Vecchio, struck him as profoundly akin to the
woman
he had just followed into the room.
Admittedly, the eyes were brown instead of blue, but in so many
other
respects the face bore a remarkable resemblance to that of the real
woman who
stood no more than eight or nine yards to his left.
Perhaps this was a lucky omen, an indication
that he ought to make her acquaintance in this very room and thereby
achieve
the initial part of his romantic objectives?
He didn't really know what to think.
But, correspondences aside, he realized that he would have to
act pretty
soon if he didn't want to lose her and perhaps spend the rest of the
day
regretting his indecision!
Glancing back over his
shoulder, he noticed
that the young beauty in question had taken up a position in front of
Bronzino's alluring Venus,
Cupid,
Folly, and Time, the far side of the room.
This intriguing allegory, in which Venus is
being kissed and fondled by Cupid, while Time, in the guise of an old
winged
greybeard, holds up the pale-blue drapery upon which the goddess poses
and
Folly clasps his demented head in what appears to be jealous
disapproval, was
easily the most erotic of all the nude paintings in the National
Gallery,
forming, for most people, the undisputed cynosure of the room. It occurred to James Kelly that if he could
muster the courage or willpower to go across to the painting and make a
show of
admiring it, he would have an excellent opportunity to attract her
attention
with a smiling glance, and thus make it perfectly clear to her that he
was
interested in doing something similar.
From then on, everything should follow like clockwork.
Calling upon every shred of
willpower at
his disposal, he crossed the room and stationed himself beside the
blonde. With a brief inspection of Venus'
naked body
behind him, he stole a glance at her latter-day counterpart, whose lips
had
formed into a gentle smile.
Could it be that she was smiling from pride
at being admired by such a handsome young man as himself, or was there
something about the painting which amused her - say, its overly erotic
proceedings? Naturally, it wasn't a
question he cared to dwell on there and then.
What mattered was finding the courage to say something to her
and
somehow get a conversation under way.
Already the words were on
the tip of his
tongue and, just as he was about to open his mouth and allow them to
tumble
out, along came a middle-aged man in expensive-looking clothes who
stationed
himself immediately to her right! He
swallowed
hard to quell the incipient tumble of admiring words and simultaneously
stifle
the anger and frustration mounting inside him, as the incident brought
a fresh
rush of blood to his face. It was as
though he had been caught red-handed in the act of doing something
dishonourable. For even the painting,
ordinarily one which would have added some amusement to his aesthetic
appreciation of its graceful outlines, now
caused him
to feel uncomfortable in light of his seductive intent.
Confined for the nonce to
the cage of his
psychological discomfiture, he kept his attention focused on the dove
beneath
Cupid's right foot at the bottom left-hand corner of the painting, in
an
attempt to conceal his embarrassment from the other viewers. What he actually saw of it was little more
than a blur, but at least this stratagem provided him with something to
cling-on to in the face of his shameful predicament.
But why oh why did that idiot have to come
between him and his intentions at the vital moment!
How could he possibly be expected to commit
himself to making the young beauty's acquaintance in front of a
middle-aged
intruder whose respectful demeanour created the distinct impression
that such a
thing wasn't done in galleries, least of all in galleries of this
magnitude,
where classical and religious art ruled supreme? Admittedly,
he
had never attempted to pick
anyone up in a gallery of any description before, since a certain moral
misgiving about the whole idea of 'picking up' female strangers had
often
installed itself into his consciousness at critical times, making him
mindful
of the risks involved, and having more than a little to do with his
unwillingness, as a cultured person, to be seduced by appearances
alone, which
would somehow have struck him as somehow cheap and superficial. Ideally, one waited for the right female to
come along, and one only got to know her by degrees, as the regular
contacts
one had with her blossomed into an amorous relationship.
In the meantime, one just had to be patient
and play the waiting game.
But there were times - and
this was
evidently one of them - when one was literally overwhelmed by the
stunning
beauty of a delightful stranger who happened to cross one's path and,
no matter
where it was, felt literally compelled to 'pick her up'.
At such times, the power of beauty, the
promise of real sexual fulfilment, seemed to overrule any abstract
ethical
conceptions one might ordinarily have adhered to, in consequence of
which one
found oneself committed to securing her companionship on the grounds
that such
beauty precluded the likelihood of psychological incompatibility and
accordingly rendered preliminary associations irrelevant.
It seemed an eternity to
James Kelly as he
stood in front of the Bronzino and continued to stare at the white
dove, not
knowing what to do next. Although he had
only been there little over a minute he felt that if he didn't act
immediately,
either by wrenching himself away from the painting altogether or,
preferably,
turning towards the 'Venus' beside him to unburden his heart to her,
the situation
would become too conspicuously embarrassing and people would become
cynically
suspicious of his motives for standing where he was, in such close
proximity to
the young woman in question. Then they
would follow him through the room with disapproving eyes or whisper
between
themselves in sarcastic derision at his lack of cultural reverence.
Confined to the cage of his
personal
subjectivity, Kelly could only speculate along these rather paranoid
lines. For in this unbalanced
state-of-mind it simply didn't occur to him that other people might not
give a
damn whether he said anything to the female by his side or not; that
they might
even take them for lovers anyway, and be more interested in viewing
paintings
than listening-in to other people's conversations.
He was much too self-centred to think
anything of the kind, so preoccupied had he become with the struggle
going on
inside him between the desire to avoid making a fool of himself and the
much
more positive desire to obtain what he was after. And,
not
surprisingly, it was the latter
which was winning out, since he now resolved to speak to the woman
regardless
of the consequences. The smartly-dressed
bourgeois tourist had been reduced, as this resolve took shape in a
moment of
supreme defiance, to an insignificant foreigner whose opinions didn't
matter
and who, in any case, stood about as much chance of 'picking up' the
blonde at
his expense as he would stand if, as a balding English tourist with a
burgeoning paunch, he was attempting to 'pick up' some beautiful
Italian woman
at the expense of a handsome young Italian in some Florentine or Rome
gallery.
Clearing his throat for the
benefit of the
beautiful stranger, he turned his neck to the right and ... but no! How
could
it possibly be? For he encountered the
middle-aged tourist and another, younger man whom he hadn't noticed
before! His expression immediately
changed to horrified amazement at the sight of them and, tearing
himself away
from where he stood, he hurried across to the centre of the room to get
a
better view of his surroundings. Of the
twelve or thirteen other people there, not one of them was wearing a
white vest
or displaying a beautiful pair of firm legs beneath the rim of a
tight-fitting
miniskirt. He recalled that he had been
so embarrassed, on first sighting the middle-aged tourist,
that he had endeavoured to conceal it from the young woman by
riveting
his attention on the furthermost corner of the painting from her. And, during that time, she had evidently
taken her leave of it and exited the room!
But in which direction?
After all, there were three exits to choose
from here, which made it trebly difficult to come to the right decision. It was unlikely, anyway, that she had
returned through the one which had served them both as an entrance to
the room,
so that left two. Since a poker-faced
attendant was standing by the exit in front of him at that moment, he
decided
to try the one to his right.
Taking no interest in the
paintings exhibited
in the adjoining rooms, he kept his eyes peeled for the woman whose
beauty had
so captivated him earlier that afternoon.
He passed through at least four rooms in quick succession, but
without
visible success. She was nowhere to be
seen!
Too annoyed with himself for
having lost
track of her, yet too intent on finding her again to be particularly
disconcerted by his swift passage through successive rooms, he gave the
greater
part of his attention to scrutinizing the visitors encountered en
route,
ignoring, where possible, both attendants and paintings alike. Only in Rooms 9 and 10 did he allow his
preoccupation with the elusive beauty to be shelved awhile, as some of
the
paintings there captured his attention.
In Room 9, for instance, The Family of Darius before
Alexander
stopped him in his tracks for a moment as, with slightly less than his
customary attention to detail, he granted this huge masterpiece by
Paolo
Veronese a sort of reverential inspection.
Nearby, Tintoretto's St. George and the Dragon
managed to
arrest his attention in like fashion, whilst, on another wall, the same
master's Origin of the Milky Way returned him to something
approaching
his usual self, as, forgetting the cause of his recent tribulations, he
permitted his gaze to wander over the entire range of this highly
imaginative
canvas, noting, in particular, the golden stars which spurted from the
breasts
of the naked mother of the Milky Way who, raising herself on one hand
from the
luxuriously draped bed to the left of the painting, receives the
attentions of
a suckling child held up to her left breast by a father-figure,
presumably God,
whose nudity is wrapped in salmon-pink drapery.
In addition to four cherubim, one beheld two pheasants to the
lower
right-hand side of the canvas and an eagle, or other bird of prey,
carrying in
its talons what at first sight looked like a crab but which, on closer
inspection, transpired to being a sort of bushy-tailed monster with
pointed
limbs and a sharply protruding tongue - in short, the Devil. The entire scene, set in the heavens, with
clouds above and below the naked woman, was suggestive of some strange
surrealism peculiar to the sixteenth century.
The colour combinations used in its composition were still
extremely
impressive.
Stationed there with hands
in his jacket
pockets, Kelly found himself wondering why none of the nudes he had
seen on
canvas that day seemed to possess any pubic hair, but generally
presented an
appearance of innocent sexlessness. The
erotic content had been narrowed down, in the vast majority of cases,
to the
breasts and thighs, so that only a mild stimulus resulted.
Obviously, it was necessary for the gallery
not to create a public scandal or give offence to various people by
displaying
anything highly erotic. And it was
evidently just as necessary not to encourage the wrong sort of people
into the
gallery for the wrong reasons, including a desire to masturbate in
front of
something or someone. Somehow a golden
mean had to be established in the interests of both gallery and public
alike. But, even so, Kelly wasn't
completely satisfied by this conviction as to the real reason for the
absence
of pubic hair from such nudes as presented their lower abdomen to
public scrutiny. Heading towards Room 10,
he convinced himself
that it was simply not the done thing, in religious art of the
sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, to depict pubic hair on canvas.
However, the despondency
which had earlier
engulfed him at not being able to find the young woman he had lost
track of in
Room 15, temporarily palliated by the genius of Tintoretto, now
returned to him
in full measure, and it was as much as he could do to adopt anything
approaching a receptive frame-of-mind as he stood in front of
Mantegna's Agony
in
the
Garden - a work which, on previous occasions, had
never
failed to impress him. Of the two
paintings by this title hung to either side of the nearer of the two
exits from
the room, it was the Mantegna rather than the Bellini which he had a
special
fondness for, even though the latter was unquestionably a significant
work. However, much as he could still
appreciate its brilliant colour-scheme, his disturbed state-of-mind
made him
somewhat critical of the fact that the wonderful aesthetic effects
created by
its highly engaging colours, reminiscent of the Van Haalem noted
earlier, were
at distinct loggerheads with the theme the painting sought to convey. Instead of being made conscious of Christ's
agony, one's attention was arrested by the beauty and technical mastery
of the
composition itself. And the same
criticism could also be levelled at Giovanni Bellini's version, though
perhaps
to a lesser extent, in view of the sombre clouds which hovered
ominously above
the Saviour's head, like some dark bird of prey, and the less-vibrant
tones
employed in its execution. He felt quite
certain, at any rate, that had a modern artist like, say, Francis Bacon
or
Eduard Munch tackled this subject, the agony of Christ's suffering
would have been
conveyed to the viewer in no uncertain terms!
Taking his leave of the
manneristic works
in question, he reluctantly allowed himself to be seduced into admiring
Mantegna's The
Introduction
of the Cult of Cybele at Rome. There
was something about the silver figures
before his eyes which mitigated the despondency he had been plunged
into anew,
in consequence of his unappeased desire.
Perhaps the fact of their being pertinent to an engraving rather
than to
a painting had some significance in this respect? He
couldn't
tell, but he was grateful, all
the same, that the work of this leading fifteenth-century artist had an
effect
on him akin to a mild soporific.
However, he hadn't entirely abandoned all hope of finding the
young
woman and introducing himself to her.
Admittedly, he wasn't as keen now as he had been, a few minutes
before,
to hunt through successive rooms in search of his sexual quarry with a
near-philistine disregard for their time-hallowed contents. He had virtually resigned himself to having
lost her. But there were still a number
of rooms to investigate and, for all he knew, she might well be in one
of them.
He had arrived at an area
between rooms
with a winding staircase leading to the downstairs galleries. Never having visited them in the past, he
thought it worth his while to check things out anyway, in the hope
that, even
if his quarry wasn't there, he would encounter something he hadn't seen
before. But despite his interest in a
few of the exhibits, he couldn't draw any real relief from this change
of
scenery. In gallery A, which was by far
the largest, he found himself walking between numerous rows of
paintings hung
on elongated wooden supports, thereby enabling the gallery in question
to
exhibit hundreds of works in the immense space between the walls,
which, in any
case, were almost entirely hidden behind paintings.
Conscious of the many attendants on duty
there, Kelly feigned interest, as best he could, in the exhibits,
turning his
gaze to left and right as he went up one row and down another, so to
speak, and
briefly stopping in front of one of them every so often.
On the end of a row to the left of the
gallery, a work entitled The
Worship
of the Egyptian Bull-God, Apis
genuinely intrigued him. But, although
he would have ideally preferred to give the gallery as a whole more
attention
than he actually was doing, this Fillippino Lippi notwithstanding, the
recollection of his real motive for being there spurred him on to
taking his
leave of it. Yet the golden-haired woman
was nowhere to be found in any of the adjoining galleries either, and,
of all
the colourful paintings being exhibited, he could only bring himself to
halt
briefly in front of two - the first, in gallery B, entitled Cognoscenti
in
a
Room hung with Pictures, which was attributed to the Flemish
School Ca.
1620, and the second, in gallery F, entitled The Toilet of Venus,
from
the
studio of Guido Reni (1575-1642), which, though manifestly inferior
to the
one upstairs, nevertheless intrigued him on account of the fact that he
hadn't
realized there existed another version of this theme, but had been
content, for
some curious reason, to regard the Velazquez as the only one of its
kind! And neither had he been aware that,
in
addition to Nicolas Poussin, there was also a Charles Poussin, an
engaging
example of whose work had been put on show in one of the downstairs
galleries. But he couldn't permit
himself to linger any longer in this particular department of the
National
Gallery since, at that moment, the sensual desire to set eyes on the
real-life
'Venus' again was much stronger than the aesthetic desire to
contemplate any
number of representational paintings, for which, in any case, he had
much less
enthusiasm, these days, than formerly.
Once upstairs, however, he
felt his heart
sink at the immensity of the task before him, of the vast number of
rooms he
would still have to traverse in his endeavour to find her!
He had already walked backwards and forwards
from room to room and gallery to gallery with no success and, not
altogether
surprisingly, his legs were less fresh now than at the beginning. By the time he got to Room 8, he had resigned
all hope of achieving his objective and, with a sigh of defeat,
he slumped resignedly onto one of its soft-leather seats.
In front of him, da Vinci's The
Virgin
of
the Rocks appeared more melancholy than on any
previous
occasion he could recall - in fact so melancholy, that he could hardly
bear to
look at it! He felt doubly cheated for
having lost the woman who had, wittingly or unwittingly, seduced him
into
following her in the first place and, through his obsession with her,
deprived
him of a studious appreciation of a number of paintings which, despite
their
manifest antiquity, weren't entirely without some contemporary
relevance. It seemed to him, as he sat
with bowed head,
that the afternoon had been thoroughly misspent; that he should never
have
elected to visit the National Gallery in the first place.
In consequence of which, the only sensible
thing to do now, in order not to prolong the agony, was to apply the coup
de
grâce to himself and leave the place
without
further ado!
Forcing himself up from the
seat with this
in mind, he ambled towards the exit, scarcely bothering to pay any
attention to
those around him. To the left and
several yards ahead of him, in one of the smaller rooms, a middle-aged
woman
was being informed by a stern-faced attendant that it was illegal to
step over
the rope to take a closer look at the paintings. Undaunted,
the
woman then blandly informed
the attendant that she had absolutely no intention of touching or
damaging
anything. But the attendant, trained to
do a specific job, still requested her to step back over the rope. Not taking any notice of him, the woman
continued to inspect the small painting before her eyes, and the
attendant,
growing sterner by the second, persisted in requesting her to step back
over
the rope and thus abide by the rules. As
Kelly passed by the room he heard the attendant call for the
supervisor, and
felt a bitter anger growing inside him at the stupidity and
unreasonableness of
the offending viewer. It didn't occur to
him that she might be short-sighted, but it certainly occurred to him,
as he
took a passing glance at her, that it was just the sort of futile scene
to mark
the climax of an altogether futile afternoon.
When he arrived in the
commercial area,
however, his glum state-of-mind suddenly took a turn for the better,
and he
decided to buy a postcard of The
Toilet
of Venus to
commemorate the occasion of his first setting eyes on the young woman
who
happened to be staring at that painting at the time.
In addition, he bought a few other postcards,
including Van Huijsum's Fruit and Flowers, which circumstances
had
prevented him from viewing in the flesh, as it were, of the actual work. Then he headed for the exit and, pushing his
way through its swing-doors, came to an abrupt standstill just outside. For the person who caught his attention at
that very moment was none other than the woman for whom he had been
frantically
searching all afternoon! And she was not
staring-out over
As though at a command from
her eyes he was
beside her and mumbling an invitation to a meal somewhere.
She smiled her acceptance and, within a
couple of minutes, they were walking down the steps together and
proceeding in
the general direction of
CHAPTER
FIVE
The
Fourth
of
July arrived so quickly that James Kelly could hardly believe he was
actually on his way to Mark Benson's house that Saturday evening, as
the taxi
ground its way through the busy streets of
Although there was little
about this
particular costume to suggest that he represented a necessarily
infamous
personage, its eighteenth-century design, in particular the black
tail-coat and
white breeches, suggested the likelihood of some fictional character -
the
character, in his case, being none other than Mephistopheles. With a wig of curly-red hair and two small
plastic cream-coloured horns protruding from it in the vicinity of his
temples,
Kelly felt confident that his choice of role would meet with general
approval
and secure him the confidence of his fellow 'rogues'.
In his tail-coat pocket he had secreted the
small black eye mask that he intended to wear only when the taxi
arrived at its
destination. In the meantime, he didn't
want to draw undue attention to himself from people in the street,
though, God
knows, he looked silly enough as it was!
As for
Arriving at Mr Benson's
address he hastily
put on his eye mask, paid the cabby, who seemed not to find anything
particularly amusing or eccentric about his appearance at this
juncture, and
hurried across the driveway to the front door of the large detached
house. There was a good deal of noise
coming from
behind it, which Kelly gratefully noted as he self-consciously rang the
bell. Almost immediately, the door was
answered and a figure wearing a white eye mask and dressed in what he
supposed
to be an angel's costume, with golden paper halo, large golden
cardboard wings
protruding from behind, and a long white gown, beamed a welcoming smile
at him
from the other side.
"May I have the pleasure of
knowing
who you are, sir?" the 'angel' requested.
Kelly held out his
invitation card to her
and, not without a degree of ironic amusement, announced his role-name.
"Welcome Mephistopheles!"
cried
the 'angel', taking his card and ushering him into the hall. Then turning to the guests already assembled
there, she in turn announced his adopted name and, grasping hold of his
hand,
led him in the direction of a lively living room which contained, in
addition
to numerous guests, a long table crammed with refreshments. There was sporadic applause as he made his
entry, and one or two people clapped him on the back.
The 'angel', having ascertained what he would
like to drink, duly poured him a glass of red wine and informed him
that all
but a few of the rooms in the house were open to his curiosity, since
it was
both impossible and undesirable to fit all the many guests solely into
the
downstairs ones.
"You wouldn't happen to be
Mrs Benson,
by any chance?" asked Kelly as he received his glass.
"I oughtn't really to tell
you
that," the 'angel' replied, taking him by the arm.
"But if you promise to keep it a
secret...." She smiled and faintly nodded her head.
"Sylvia actually," she added with a
playful wink. But before he could ask
anything else, she had excused herself on the pretext of door duty,
leaving him
to fend for himself.
Feeling a bit bashfully
self-conscious in
the living room, where at that moment he appeared to be the only one
with
anything approximating to a diabolical appearance, Kelly wandered out
into the spacious
entrance hall in Sylvia's wake and was just in time to see another
guest being
announced to those still assembled there as "Count Dracula!" The newcomer wore a long black cape over
matching trousers and had the temerity to acknowledge her announcement
with a
display of counterfeit fangs, which hugely impressed everyone. His face, coated in a white powdery
substance, assumed an expression of calculated repugnance when the
'angel'
boldly offered him her neck to kiss. To
everyone's surprise he kissed her hand instead, commenting that he only
nourished himself on other people's blood in private, when they were
least
expecting it. The voice wasn't one with
which Kelly was familiar.
Farther along, in a large
room the other
side of the hall, he encountered a number of masked people standing
round a
snooker table where, it appeared, a game of snooker had just come to a
conclusive end. The winner, dressed in
Nazi uniform, was being congratulated by several onlookers, among whom
was a
figure garbed in a cowboy outfit, with a black kerchief covering his
nose and
mouth, who patted him on the back. The
loser, standing dejectedly with cue in hand at the other end of the
table,
sported a high conical hat and long white beard, which gave him the
distinct
appearance of a necromancer. A woman
dressed in what looked like nineteenth-century nurse's uniform was
knowledgeably preparing the table for the next frame.
"And who-the-devil are you
supposed
to
be?"
a tall hooded figure demanded of Kelly as he turned to leave the
room.
"Er, Mephistopheles," the
young
man answered, feeling somewhat intimidated by the height of the figure
who was
now peering down at him from under a capacious hood.
Then, suddenly, he recognized the voice and
shouted "Trevor!" in delighted surprise.
"Shush!" exclaimed
Jenkinson,
while offering him his hand to clasp.
"We're not supposed to give one another away, you know."
Kelly duly apologized. "Well, my goodness, you're the last
person I'd have expected to see dressed-up like that," he added,
smiling. "Who exactly are
you?"
"A leading member of the
Spanish
Inquisition," Jenkinson evasively confessed, driving a current of boozy
breath up Kelly's nostrils. "One
has to aim high here." He turned towards the snooker table. "You see that chap in the Nazi
uniform? Well, he's none other than
Field Marshal Goering."
"Really?"
"Ja, though if you want to
meet still
higher-ranking members of the Nazi Party, you'll have to hunt around a
bit. I bumped into someone coming out of
the upstairs toilet who described himself as Adolf Hitler a few minutes
ago."
"You did!?"
Kelly had almost forgotten that this was only
a fancy-dress ball, so convincing were a number of the disguises. He glanced uneasily towards the rather plump
figure in pink uniform before returning to his senses, as it were, and
asking
his fellow-writer who the lady in the nurse's uniform considered
herself to be?
"Oh, that's
Kelly couldn't disagree with
him
there. "Surprises me she knows as
much about snooker as she appears to," he murmured, just as the woman
positioned the final ball for the next frame.
"Probably on account of the
fact that
her husband's a fanatic," averred Jenkinson, casting the person in
question a deferential glance. "She
knows where to put his balls alright!" he added, with an ironic
chuckle. "But let me tell you
something." He lowered his voice
and drew himself closer to Kelly's nearest ear.
"They play for each other's wives."
The younger man drew back,
as though from a
blow on the face. "I don't quite
understand," he confessed, with a puzzled frown.
"That chap in the conical
hat had just
lost his second successive frame to 'Goering' when you came in here,"
Jenkinson revealed in the same low tone.
"Now when a man loses twice in a row there's only one way that
he
can prevent his rival from taking his wife for the night.
He must win the third and fourth frames. If
he
loses again - and they always play at
least three frames each - then he has no option but to sacrifice his
wife to
the victor. If 'Goering' wins the next
frame he'll have another woman to sleep with tonight.
If he loses, however, the chap in the conical
hat will get another chance to retain his wife."
"I simply can't believe it!"
exclaimed Kelly, whose astonishment momentarily overrode his disgust
with
Jenkinson's boozy breath.
"Well, believe it or not,
it's a
fucking fact nonetheless," insisted Jenkinson, frowning.
"They form a kind of once-weekly
wife-swapping club."
But for the black eye mask
he was wearing,
the look of amazement which Kelly focused upon the participants
described to
him would have been highly conspicuous.
As things stood, it was only moderately so.
"And how m-many of them are there?"
he at length stammered.
"Just three," Jenkinson
revealed. "To gain membership of
their club one has to be a very competent snooker-player, someone
who'll offer
the others real competition. And,
needless to say, one has to have a wife who is both highly attractive and
genuinely
desirable to the other competitors.
Obviously, the circumstances are so special as to preclude all
but a few
couples from taking part, since the women must be willing to be, er,
sacrificed
in the event of their husbands losing the battle, and therefore they
must have
a liking for their husbands' competitors, who must also have a liking
for them,
so that mutual sex is desirable. Thus
active membership of the club has been confined to three couples at any
given
time, though I understand there is currently a waiting-list of
prospective
couples numbering eight."
"Eight couples?" cried
Kelly,
patently astonished.
"Shush! Keep your ruddy
voice
down," hissed Jenkinson. "Not
everyone in this room is familiar with the proceedings."
He glanced around them to reassure himself
that no-one had overheard or was listening-in, before continuing: "The
club's founder-member, who incidentally is the one disguised as Jessie
James,
started the ball rolling, as it were, just over three years ago. He's an excellent snooker player and, so far,
hasn't lost more than three matches in succession.
Now a match is usually comprised, as I've
already intimated, of three frames. If
you lose five matches in succession you automatically forfeit your
membership
of the club, since there must be a strong element of competition
involved if
the wife-swapping business isn't to become too predictable. Now since the time of the club's foundation,
seven competitors have been knocked out of it and seven fresh ones have
taken
their places. The chap dressed as
Goering, who incidentally is Mark Benson, has been a member of the club
for
little under six months, while the one in the conical hat has only been
a
member about four months. As things
stand, he had lost four matches in succession during the past month -
one match
a week. Now if he loses this one he'll
have to withdraw from the club and the remaining two members will be
obliged to
elect a suitable successor. You can
begin to see why he looked so despondent, after having lost the second
frame,
and why the victor was being so heartily congratulated.
For the prospect of a new
member is always something that particularly appeals to the club's
founder, who
relishes the chance of sleeping with a different woman for a change."
"Do they play only one match a week?" asked Kelly, with a puzzled
expression
on his masked face.
"The maximum is two
matches,"
replied Jenkinson before casting a glance in the direction of the
snooker
table, where the third frame had, in the meantime, just got under way. "But if you lose a match, then you only
get to play one. The victor plays a
second with the other chap, which gives him the opportunity of sleeping
with
two extra women if he wins. If he loses
the second match, however, he sacrifices his wife, though he still has
the
consolation of sleeping with the wife of the man he beat in the first
match. The advantage of winning both
matches is that it puts him in a position where he can also win two
matches the
following week, since he gets to play first.
The chap he then plays is determined by the toss of a coin. On the other hand, if he wins the first match
but loses the second one, he plays the fellow who beat him first the
following
week. That makes it possible for one of
the two winners of the previous week to win two matches, whereas the
first
loser only gets a chance to win one, since he plays second."
"I'm not sure I quite follow
all that,
but I think I've got the gist of it," admitted Kelly, feeling
thoroughly
perplexed. "What particularly puzzles
me about winning two matches, however, is the prize of one's sleeping
with two
extra women. Surely that would create a
lot of problems?"
"Not that I'm aware of,"
said
Jenkinson sotto
voce. "Though
it isn't absolutely necessary for the victor to sleep with three women
at once
- that's to say, with his wife and the other two on the same night. Sometimes he may choose to do so, but the
club rules are sufficiently flexible to permit him to sample his
prizes, as it were,
one at a time. In other words, he can
sleep with his wife on the Saturday and with one or both of the other
women on
a different night in the following week, or vice versa.
It's not imperative for him to sample both
prizes on the same night. He can choose
any night he pleases before the next round of competitive snooker is
due to
start, which is to say, before the following Saturday.
But he must inform his rivals when he wishes
to sleep with their wives on the evening of his snooker victory, so
that both
they and the women concerned know exactly where they stand with him and
can
arrange things accordingly. Otherwise
matters might become too complicated."
"I can well believe it!"
Kelly
hastened, with a gasp of surprise, to assure his senior literary
colleague. "Is a two-set win a regular thing, though?" he then asked
sceptically.
Jenkinson appeared to be
lost in thought a
moment. "I'm afraid I can't tell
you for sure," he admitted, smiling vaguely, "since my usual
informant doesn't make a point of telling me everything.
But I do know that it has happened on a
number of occasions, and that the victor has usually taken his rivals'
wives
the very same night, as though to enhance his victory and deprive them
of sex
at a time when, in all probability, they least wish to be deprived of
it."
"Who's your informant?"
Kelly
wanted to know.
"I'm sworn to secrecy,"
Jenkinson
confessed. "However, I can tell you
that he's in this room and has kept his mouth shut ever since you
entered
it."
"He has?" gasped Kelly,
looking
about the room for a clue. "It must
be one of the club members, then - possibly the one in the outlaw's
costume."
"Anyway, getting back to
what I was
saying," continued Jenkinson, with
a nervous laugh, "the competition between the rivals is usually so
intense
and evenly balanced that an outright double victory is relatively rare,
the
most common outcome being a single victory for one or two of the
competitors. It often happens, however,
that a set, or both matches, ends in stalemate, in which case no
wife-swapping
takes place."
"Presumably
if
a
player fails to win by two frames?" Kelly conjectured.
"Yes.
The situation here, in the match before us, is 2-0 in the
'Nazi’s'
favour. If the 'wizard' pulls it back to
2-1, they'll have to play a fourth frame.
If that ends 3-1, then the 'Nazi' will take the 'wizard's' wife,
the
'nurse', for the night. If it ends in a
draw, however, the 'wizard' will retain his wife and no further frame
will take
place between them. Now a 3-1 victory
will give the 'Nazi' a chance to pull two wives by battling with the
third
member of the club in the second match of the evening.
But if the other chap manages to sneak a
draw, the toss of a coin will decide who goes through, as it were, to
play it. Thus one of them could get to
play the founder
member without having won anything for his pains in the first match - a
thing
which does occasionally happen."
"I see," Kelly murmured
after a
moment's thoughtful reflection.
"One gets the impression that, with so much at stake, they make
it
an incredibly tough competition."
"Oh, absolutely!" conceded
Jenkinson noddingly, once again taking pains to hold his hood in place. "A player who isn't sufficiently
up-to-standard will be out of the club within five weeks, assuming he
loses
five successive matches. Now no-one who
is admitted to the club wants to be ejected from it in such a short
space of
time, and, as I intimated earlier, no-one is admitted to it who isn't a
very
competent snooker player or whose wife, even if he happens to be such,
is insufficiently
attractive or unwilling to take part, if you see what I mean. Unfortunately the chap who had already lost
four successive matches, and looks to be in the process of losing a
fifth,
isn't as good a player as he was once cracked-up to be.
He has merely postponed his exit from the
club since joining it by drawing two matches and winning one. He had lost four successive matches by the
end of his first month's membership, but was saved from immediate
disgrace by
drawing the fifth. Now whereas a win
erases any succession of defeats from 1-4, a draw only erases one
defeat, so he
was still in the danger zone, as it were, by having three successive
defeats to
his debit. However, the draw must have
given him some confidence in himself, for he won the next match and
thereby
erased the remaining defeats."
"But now he looks on the
verge of
being ousted from the club?" Kelly observed.
"That's right," Jenkinson
confirmed. "Unless, however, he can
pull off another miracle and draw this match.
You can see that his wife - despite the camouflage afforded her
by the
tiny mask she's wearing - doesn't look particularly happy at present. She has evidently found the system to her
sexual advantage!"
"She's quite an attractive
woman," opined Kelly, as he scrutinized the masked face of the woman in
nurse's uniform. She had taken up a
position the opposite side of the snooker table and was now occupied
with
adjusting the score on a specially designed scoreboard affixed to the
wall
there.
"Right enough," Jenkinson
smilingly
agreed. "But there are others just
as attractive where she came from!"
He drew Kelly's attention to a young woman with pale blonde hair
who was
wearing, besides the obligatory white eye mask for females, a white
blouse, a
white miniskirt, a pair of virgin socks, and white trainers, reminding
the
young writer of the girl he had met outside the National Gallery just
over a
week ago. "She's supposed to
signify a certain mythological virgin," he continued, turning back to
Kelly, "but she's really a married woman who could be next in line for
club membership if the 'wizard' loses this match and her husband gains
admittance in his place. As things
stand, he looks the most likely candidate, since his wife is so
attractive. Now sometimes they simply
admit the man with
the prettiest wife, but as a rule they strictly adhere to the principle
of
competitive entry, the first snooker player among the four or five
leading
candidates on the list for full membership ultimately being chosen. Naturally, they don't consider anyone who is
a really brilliant player, a world champion or professional, since he
would
quickly dispose of them. Only a very
select number of candidates are considered, and these are generally
well-known
to themselves."
"How extraordinary!"
exclaimed
Kelly in the teeth of a certain incredulity which was now pressing him
to doubt
the veracity of most of what he had just heard, particularly in view of
his
senior literary colleague's progressively more inebriated condition. "You're not kidding me by any chance,
Trevor?" he hastened to add.
For once, Jenkinson's face
seemed on the
point of losing its customary composure.
"My dear old mate, I may be a trifle tipsy, but I'd hardly put
myself to the sodding trouble of revealing so much complicated
information to
you if I were!" he exploded.
At that moment an almost
parallel explosion
of noise from the assembled spectators indicated that 'Goering' had won
the
match 3-0 and thereby vanquished the 'necromancer', whose countenance,
such as
one could see of it, now bore all the hallmarks of total defeat. Shaking his head from side-to-side, this
unfortunate individual seemed on the verge of tears, as the victor
received
hearty congratulations from those standing around him.
A man dressed as a pirate, with a long black
beard, a black tee-shirt bearing the skull-and-crossbones in
contrasting white,
a red kerchief tied round his head, and a pair of knee-high black
leather
boots, was also being congratulated by various people, and, after
offering a
few words of perfunctory condolence to the loser, who in the meantime
had
relinquished his cue and regretfully shaken hands with the victor as
though to
seal his fate, he proceeded to throw his arms around the neck of the
young
woman dressed in all-white, whose face immediately became radiant with
pleasure.
"Seems as though I was right
about the
'vestal virgin' and her husband being the next members of the club,"
declared Jenkinson, as he extracted a large cigar from the inside
pocket of his
flowing robes. "The husband's the
one dressed as Blackbeard, by the way.
You can't miss him. Had old
greybeard been a genuine wizard, instead of some chap in fancy dress
who goes
by the name of 'Saruman' or some such nonsense, he might have managed
to
prolong his stay in the club with the help of a little black magic. As it happens, he and his wife have lost
their permits."
"Can't they ever win them
back?"
asked Kelly, whose eyes sought out and found the woman
dressed as
"Only if the competition to
get into
the club eases-up a little in the near future, which, entre
nous,
it doesn't look like doing," replied Jenkinson, who commenced to light
his
cigar with the aid of a large red match.
"As a rule, once a couple lose their place they don't get it
back. Admittedly, there haven't been that
many
couples involved in the club to-date.
But the fact is that the members don't want pushovers in their
game, and
anyone who loses five matches in succession can hardly be described as
tough
competition. The chances now are that if
this 'Blackbeard' transpires to being a useful competitor, we won't see
a
change in the club's membership for some time."
Kelly proffered a politely
incredulous
smile. "It would be interesting if
the founder-member got knocked out of his club, wouldn't it?" he
speculated a touch roguishly.
"Yes, it would indeed," chuckled Jenkinson.
"But knowing the quality player he is, that seems rather
unlikely
to me. After all, one doesn't have to be
a world champion to avoid losing five straight matches.... Though it
hardly
needs emphasizing that there's no better incentive for improving one's
game
than to risk sacrificing one's wife to another man for the night. And that's the chief reason why the level of
play is generally so high." He took
a few philosophical puffs on his cigar and picked up his empty beer
glass from
the small table by his side. The
celebrations over the 'Nazi’s' victory were dying down now as another
woman,
dressed in nun's attire and wearing the obligatory white eye mask, laid
out the
variously coloured balls on the snooker table for the commencement of
the next
match, which was due to take place between 'Goering' and 'Jessie James'
as soon
as the former had been given a chance to refresh himself and thereby
restore
his mind to something approaching competitive fitness, following the
sapping
exigencies of the preceding duel. As she
bent over the table to arrange the brightly coloured balls in their
respective
positions, Kelly thought he recognized a familiar nose and mouth. But before he could suggest anything of the
kind to Trevor, the latter had mumbled something about more beer and
turned
towards the door.
Realizing that his wine
glass could also
use a refill, Kelly followed his senior colleague back in the direction
of the
living room, where at that moment a jazz-funk recording had prompted a
number
of people to dance. This being the case,
it was with some difficulty that both men made their way towards the
booze,
which, mercifully, was still in plentiful supply. Helping
himself
to more wine, Kelly noted
that some of the guests were wearing similar costumes to each other;
that women
garbed as nuns or angels could be seen dancing with men dressed as
Nazis or
pirates, and he remarked on this observation to Jenkinson, who,
oblivious of
the dancing, was thirstily downing some of the stout he had just poured
himself.
"Never any shortage of
duplications at
these fancy-dress charades," the latter belchingly responded, as soon
as
he could bring himself to observe the goings-on with a modicum of
equanimity. "Largely down to a lack
of imagination on the participants' part, I suspect.
Still, it can contribute, in a paradoxical
sort of way, to one's enjoyment of the thing."
He drew lustily on his cigar whilst intently
observing the aquiline profile of a nun who danced close-by in the
company of
the infamous vampire whom Kelly had seen proudly arriving at the ball
shortly
after his own rather more uncertain arrival.
No doubt, 'Count Dracula' would find somewhere juicy to bury his
fangs
later that evening!
Jenkinson having decided to
return to the
snooker room, James Kelly once more found himself abandoned and
therefore back
to square-one, so to speak. But this
time there was more going on than before, and consequently he contented
himself
with investigating the various costumes and endeavouring to ascertain
what
famous or infamous personage, real or fictitious, was being represented
in each
case. Given the stylized nature of most
of the costumes, he had little difficulty in figuring out the majority
of them,
although he was unable to attach any specific names to the various
'nuns',
'Nazis', 'angels', and 'pirates' who regularly commanded his attention. No doubt, they could have supplied him with
one had he bothered to ask each of them individually - a thing,
however, he had
no intention of doing! But among the
couples who particularly impressed him was a tall man disguised as a
werewolf,
who danced on the edge of the whirling throng with a slender nymph-like
creature of distinctly youthful appearance.
They formed quite an eye-arresting contrast!
Several minutes later,
vacating the rather
gaseous upstairs toilet, Kelly found himself confronted by a 'nun', the
very
same 'nun' whom he had earlier seen preparing the snooker table for the
next
match. The woman was ascending the
stairs as he was on the point of descending them and, from where he stood, he had no difficulty in discerning the
sharp nose of
Mrs Searle.
"Paloma!" he cried, as she
approached him with a gracious smile on her lips. "I
thought
I recognized you in the
snooker room a while ago."
She had got to the top step
and stood
gazing fixedly into his eyes a moment, as though to make sure of his
actual
identity. Then, evidently satisfied, she
motioned him to follow her and, without looking back, swiftly led him
up
another flight of stairs to a locked room on the second floor. Taking a small key from a pocket in the side
of her costume, she deftly unlocked the door and, with a brief glance
over her
shoulder to make sure that no-one had followed them or was lurking
nearby,
boldly led him into the room. Then
locking the door behind them, she returned the key to its allocated
pocket and
straightaway removed her eye mask.
Seeing that the room was
otherwise empty,
Kelly did likewise, and the two of them stood facing each other a
moment. Without giving him time to say
anything, she
threw her arms about his neck and glued her mouth to his.
A wave of sensuous excitement surged through
him as he felt the pressure of her energetic lips pressing
importunately
against his own. Lifting her off the
ground, he carried her to the small double-bed that stood, as if to
attention,
in the middle of the room, and threw her down upon it.
She reached up to him and drew his head
towards her.
"But Paloma!" he protested,
as
soon as he could disengage himself from the sensuous crush of her lips. "What about your husband?
Surely we can't ..."
"My husband's much too
preoccupied
with other matters to have either the time or the inclination to think
about
us," she almost caustically reassured him.
And again she pressed her mouth to his.
"Oh, James, I want this so much," she murmured.
"But isn't it a little ...?" However, the temptation was too much for him,
and already his hands were instinctively groping her costume for the
buttons
which would enable him to free her from it and get at the real woman
concealed
beneath.
"Don't waste this valuable
opportunity, James," Mrs Searle was mumbling, as his hands impatiently
divested
her of her outer garments and he beheld, to his utmost astonishment, a
pair of
black stockings topped with white suspenders and a matching G-string!
"My God, woman, I can't
believe
it!" he gasped, struck by the contrast between the primness of her
nun's
attire and the seductiveness of what she was wearing underneath. "Where one might expect to find a
chastity belt one finds a G-string!"
"I'm full of pleasant
surprises,"
averred Mrs Searle, drawing him down upon her lips again.
"And I think you will be, too," she
added, as she felt the last flimsy obstacle to her most private parts
being
peremptorily wrenched from her groin by an impatient 'Mephisto', whose
newly
awakened penis was already tickling the inner sides of her thighs in a
flagrantly
lascivious manner. All it now required,
to start the ball rolling in earnest, was an imperious thrust into the
submissive trough of sexual delights beyond, and Kelly wasn't long in
supplying
one as, freeing himself from the last impediment to his goal, he clawed
his way
inside her with a series of rapid thrusts which caused her to squirm in
a
confusion of pain and pleasure, tightening her grip on him all the more. Only when he was fully inside her, however,
did he hesitate an instant, as though to take stock of his position and
assess
the best way to proceed.
But spurred-on by the momentum of her vaginal
contractions, he took a firm grip on her buttocks and launched himself
anew
with a vigour which took even Paloma by surprise, so that she sighed in
delirious
abandon and thrashed about from side-to-side like some kind of demented
fish
which had just been hooked and was desperately flailing around for a
way to
escape its captor.
But there was no escaping
James Kelly as he
reeled her in with fresh resolve and mounting determination, his carnal
passion
inflamed by her frantic bucking, which had the effect of making him
even more
determined to remain in control of their passionate coupling, come what
may. He would not be defeated by this
wild creature, who would soon be tamed by him into accepting his every
move and
completely abandon herself to his will as, gripping hold of her ankles
from
behind, he pinned her legs back over her shoulders for a final assault
on the
cavernous depths of flesh which seemed to swallow him like some
all-devouring
mouth into which he feared he was about to be sucked - hook, line, and
sinker! He swooned in a flood of hot
semen which gushed out of him in a succession of spasmodic jerks so
rapid in
their intensity that it seemed as though they had been propelled by
some
inhuman force akin to a bolt of lightning, and which had the
cataclysmic effect
of triggering a like-response from her in the form of a clitoral
thunderclap
which shook their respective bodies from head to toe as, finally and
utterly,
she offered up every last drop of passion to him in one long rumble of
orgasmic
oblivion - the fiery nexus of a storm which had reached a peak and
could only
fade away in ever-decreasing cycles of rumbling. Exhausted,
its
perpetrators slumped into each
other's arms in the redemption of post-coital quietus, recipients of a
peace
which, though fundamentally worldly, was akin to heaven in its
complacent
beatitude. Indeed, which was nothing
less than heaven-on-earth!
Ten minutes later Kelly's
chest was serving
as a pillow for the beautiful woman's head, the body of whom had so
thoroughly
captivated him, only to free him from preoccupations with sex and
return him to
something approaching sexual innocence again.
It wasn't long, however, before his mind began to resurrect its
former
anxiety over the situation in which another man's wife had landed him. Remembering his glimpse of her in the snooker
room, he wanted to know whether the figure in cowboy gear who
had been playing snooker at the time was her husband, and pressed her
accordingly.
"Yes," she admitted with a
faint
sigh, which was unmistakably one of regret.
"That's
"Not all about it but quite
a bit, I'm
afraid," Kelly almost guiltily confessed.
"I learned, anyway, that your husband wasn't in the habit of
losing." He paused to reflect a
while, then continued: "Am I correct in assuming that the wife of the
defending player is always responsible for arranging the table before a
frame
takes place, and then of keeping the score whilst it's in progress, so
that the
prize for the attacking player is constantly before his eyes?"
"It depends what you mean by
'defending' and 'attacking' players," she replied, momentarily shifting
her head to a more comfortable position on his chest.
"But you appear to have grasped the
general principles of the arrangement.
As Mark Benson, the one in the Nazi uniform, had won the first
match, he
was given the privilege, as it's somewhat esoterically known, of having
the
second player's wife on points duty."
"Then how did you get away?"
Kelly asked.
"Simply by adhering to the
club's
rules," she explained. "In
normal circumstances, I'd have to take care of the score.
But in the relatively exceptional
circumstances afforded by someone's imminent departure from the club,
the wife
of the loser has to keep the score of the second match as well. She is merely spared the duty of arranging
the table before the first frame.
Thereafter she also arranges it."
Kelly was fairly nonplussed. "Why doesn't she arrange it for the
first frame as well?" he not unreasonably wanted to know.
"Because the competitor with
the
advantage, the 'attacking' player, likes to see the wife of his
opponent before
the commencement of the frame," Paloma revealed. "Ordinarily
he
would have her service
throughout the match, even if he was 2-0 down.
But in this case, with the loser expelled from the club, it's
only
necessary for her to appear at the very beginning.
The loser's wife is given double duty as a
kind of humiliation for her and punishment for him, since neither of
them has
any further duties to perform thereafter."
"What strange rules!" cried
Kelly, whose high-pitched tone indicated genuine bewilderment. "So the poor 'wizard's' wife is
presumably doing double duty at this very moment?"
"Yes, I expect so," replied
Paloma smilingly. "They began the
first frame a minute or two before I encountered you on the stairs, so
I'd
imagine they're now playing the second or third. After
which,
there may be a fourth."
"And that would presumably
leave the
score at either 3-1 or 2-2," conjectured Kelly, whose right hand was at
that very moment straying over Mrs Searle's nude back and on down to
the
curvaceous bulge of her right buttock, where it came to a temporary
halt at a
reasonably discreet distance from the more patently erogenous zone.
"Yes, theoretically it
would,"
she confirmed. "Although,
as
a
rule, frames between Douglas and Mark aren't easily won. There's very rarely a 3-0 victory for either
man."
"Yet I understand that your
husband is
generally the more successful player?" revealed Kelly, recalling what
Trevor Jenkinson had told him.
There was a short pause
while Mrs Searle
shifted the position of her head again and emitted a faint, albeit
meaningful,
sigh for Kelly's dubious benefit.
"So what's his record
against Mark
like?" he pressed
her, once he realized that she had no intention of replying to his
previous
comment.
"Of the last twenty matches
between them,
my husband has won eight, drawn nine, and lost only three," she
reluctantly obliged.
"I see," he said tactfully. "A statistic which leads one to surmise
that he has sexual access to Sylvia Benson's body more often than Mark
has
access to yours. And, on top of that, he
has the 'wizard's' wife quite a few times, too, I shouldn't wonder."
"Had the 'wizard's' wife,"
Paloma
corrected. "The last opportunity
fell to Mark this evening."
"Ah yes, so it did!"
admitted
Kelly, frowning slightly. "Hmm, things
begin to add up, you know."
"Do they?"
"Yes, so it would seem!" He gently kissed her head and, turning her
over onto her back, so that he was looking down at her on raised elbow,
began
to scrutinize her face, which at that moment assumed an enigmatic smile. "You're going to be rather tired of sex
if Mark beats your husband tonight and thereby gains physical access to
you," he concluded.
"Not too tired," she
declared. "But the chances are
fairly high that Mark won't beat him tonight; that, on the contrary,
the match
will either end in a draw or Douglas will beat Mark and thereby gain
physical
access to Sylvia instead."
"Won't he make love to you
as well, if
he wins her?" Kelly pressed her, determined to extract every last crumb
of
relevant information about this whole corrupt business from his
over-generous
hostess, who was about as far gone in extramarital infidelity as it was
possible to go, short of ceasing to be decadent and becoming
barbarously
promiscuous instead!
"No, I shall be obliged to
sleep alone
in my bed while he sleeps with her in an adjoining room," she almost
matter-of-factly confessed.
"That must make you feel
somewhat
jealous," Kelly deduced.
"At first it did," she
admitted,
blushing. "But I suppose I'm used
to it by now and, besides, it makes it easier for me to be here with
you." She drew him closer to her
and kissed his lips a sufficient number of times for him to feel his
earlier
lust rekindled to something approaching a flame as, desiring to repay
her still
more sensuously, he forced his tongue between her lips and began to
chase after
hers with a view to ensnaring and finally subduing it - a thing he
wasn't to do
without a struggle which lasted several minutes. For
she
turned her head this way and that in
a tantalizing display of female teasing, which culminated in one of the
most
passionate kissing bouts he had ever experienced. In
fact,
it turned him on so much that he
felt obliged to transfer his tongue to her nether lips and go in search
of her
clitoris with a probing rapacity which caused her to buck and pant anew
in
head-on confrontation with the most exquisitely tortuous oral pleasure
she'd
had the good fortune to experience in as long as she cared or dared to
remember. Yes, it was something of a
moral vindication for her to be there with him that night and, as this
latest
assault on pleasure ran its frenzied course, to be wrapped in a warm
embrace
such that put her husband firmly in the carnal shade.
For it was James Kelly who had really
defeated Douglas Searle this evening, and she had no compunction about
letting
him know it.
"But how did you get the key
to this
room?" he asked with a tongue which ached so much that he thought he
wouldn't be able to eat with it, never mind talk properly, for several
days to come.
"Through Sylvia," she
replied. "She has more sympathy for
me than anyone else, and quite understandably so, when one bears in
mind the
extent to which she is implicated in any inconvenience or embarrassment
which
may befall me in consequence of Douglas' snooker excesses!" At which point Paloma Searle felt obliged to
chuckle to herself, before continuing: "Anyway, she promised to keep it
a
secret, which is probably just as well.
Though my husband is hardly in a position to make a moral fuss,
is he?"
Such a patently rhetorical
question needed
no response from James Kelly, who merely contented himself by running
his
overworked tongue across the expanse of Mrs Searle's taut breasts a few
times,
her responsive nipples duly responding in a sexually responsible manner. In fact, the curve of her body fascinated
him, as did the various scents emanating from its light-brown skin. Ideally, he would have liked to make love to
her all over again, to screw himself into her throbbing trough as
deeply and
lastingly as possible, until such time as there was no more life left
in him
and, as a spent force, he hung limply
inside her, like a somnolent baby in its mother's all-encompassing arms. But, on second thoughts, that struck him as
unmanly and ultimately self-defeating; for in that flaccid state it
seemed to
him that he would be more like a weak male animal being squeezed to
death by a
ravenous pythoness than a conquering hero seeking sanctuary from the
conquered. Anyway, metaphysical qualms
aside, he knew that he had experienced more sexual pleasure in one
night with
Paloma Searle than in dozens of nights with anyone else, and that there
was a
limit to everything, pleasure included.
"I must say, I find this
whole
business of the snooker club somewhat crazy," he at length confessed.
"I suppose it is in a way,"
Paloma conceded. "But it's what my
husband wants and, frankly, I prefer him to have his way.
It would take too long to explain everything
now, and time is one thing there isn't much left off.
But, well, let's just say that our marriage
wasn't particularly successful before he began the snooker racket in
response
to a dare from Mark one day."
Kelly was distinctly puzzled
by this
comment. "Is it any more successful
now?" he asked.
"In some respects I'd say it
was," she hesitantly replied.
"You see,
"Outgrown?" suggested Kelly,
in
the teeth of his impatience with her hesitation.
"No, not outgrown, exactly,
so much as
learnt to modify or redirect into other channels," she corrected. "Strangely, our marriage is now on a
better footing than it has been for a number of years.
He has the possibility of actually winning
himself another man's wife every week and, believe it or not, the
excitement
which results from that has done a lot to stabilize our relationship
and make
it more tolerable. And the same is
generally true of the other couples' relationships as well - marriages
which
were all on the rocks before Mark came-up with the idea of the club,
and
Douglas and I made it a reality. The
men, apart from the one who is beaten at snooker more often than he
wins, are
generally happier, and the women ... aren't exactly opposed to a change
of
bed-partner once a week, providing they can actually get it."
"But you don't get that
change as
often as the other two women involved in the arrangement, and are
consequently
left on the wife-swapping shelf, so to speak, more often than suits
you,"
Kelly deduced from the wistful nature of the smile on her lips at that
moment.
"Quite true," Paloma
admitted. "But at least I know who
the other women are, which is a damn sight better than being in the
dark about who one's husband fucks behind
one's back when it suits him,
the double-crossing promiscuous bastard!
So the 'Adultery Club', as we tend to call it, does have certain
advantages which perhaps a less decadent society would fail to
appreciate. Besides, when a man is not
cut-out for a
strictly monogamous existence, it would be a sort of crime to force
strict
fidelity to one woman upon him."
"I suppose it would," said
Kelly
who, though he had never really thought too deeply about the matter
before, was
of the belief that monogamy was the centralized ideal of Western
civilization
and thus something relatively moral in relation to polygamy, whether
that
polygamy was official, and hence pertinent to an absolutely barbarous
age, or
effective, and hence symptomatic, like extramarital infidelities, of a
civilized decadence. Having thought
which, he glanced at his wristwatch and suggested to Mrs Searle that,
having
just turned
"Yes, I guess so," she
agreed. "I expect Douglas and Mark
are into the final frame by now."
"Doesn't that excite you?"
Kelly
teased her.
She smiled up at him again
and, draping an
arm around his neck, said: "Not as much as you do, sugar.
Besides, the chances are that my husband
won't lose. He takes it all so damned
seriously." They got up from the
bed and began to dress. "Oh well, I
guess I'm going to have to play at being a nun again, and you're going
to play
... who?" she asked, glancing at his wig, which had lost much of its
former Faustian elegance and was now barely covering his pate.
"Mephistopheles!" he
asseverated,
feeling genuinely amused by his role for the first time all evening. "A Mephisto who, as a token of his
esteem for the dear 'nun' who seduced him into committing a sinful act
with
her, would like to keep the G-string which he removed from the good
lady's body
during the tempestuous course of his lascivious temptations."
"I suppose I shall have to
accord you
that privilege," she declared, as her nun's attire fell into place over
her dark stockings, thus concealing any evidence of its absence. "But don't you dare show it to anyone
downstairs, otherwise that'll be the last time I'll grant you such a
favour!"
After they had dressed,
put-on their
respective eye masks again, and rearranged the bedcovers, Mrs Searle
unlocked the
door and, peering out to ensure that no-one was lurking in the shadows,
signalled Kelly to follow her. Once the
door was secured behind them, she gave him a quick peck on the lips and
instructed him to count to fifty before following her downstairs. Then, with a final adjustment to her nun's
habit, she turned on her heels and quickly descended the top flight of
stairs.
When, at a discreet
interval, Kelly
returned to life on the ground floor, he found the fancy-dress ball
even
livelier than before, thanks in large measure to the significant
quantities of
alcohol which had been imbibed by 'good' and 'bad' alike, though
especially the
latter, in the meantime. People were
still dancing in the living room, though he was at pains to recognize
any of
the dancers he had seen there earlier that evening.
Prominent among them, however, was a plump
figure dressed up, to judge by his blue tunic and three-cornered hat,
as
Napoleon Bonaparte, whom he fancied to be Keith Brady.
Yet despite his close proximity, the figure
in question paid him no attention but continued to dance with a young
woman
garbed in an expensive-looking early-nineteenth-century dress to which
Kelly
could attach no specific historical personage, though he conjectured
the
likelihood of Napoleon's consort, the Empress Josephine.
Not wishing to be dragged into the dance
himself, however, and finding very little wine left in any of the
decanters, he
opted to visit the snooker room in order to discover what, if anything,
had
happened since his last visit, nearly an hour ago.
Fortunately for him an even
larger
gathering of people than before was to be found there, and Kelly
trusted they
would serve to camouflage his probable embarrassment in the presence of
Douglas
Searle and immediate company. As it
happened, the final frame of the match had been decided a few minutes
earlier,
while he was in the living room, but he hadn't heard the congratulatory
outburst which had issued from the onlookers on account of the volume
of the
sound system, which was still spinning discs in the dancers' funky
service. The match had ended, he now
learnt, in a 3-1 victory for 'Jessie James', 'Goering' having pulled
himself
back from the brink of defeat at 2-0 only to succumb two frames later -
which
meant that the latter's wife would have to be loaned to the victor for
the
night. Though the
loser did have the consolation of sleeping with the 'wizard's' wife,
whom he
had of course acquired, compliments of the first match.
On hearing the score Kelly
could only emit
a barely-concealed sigh of relief; for he was only too pleased that, in
consequence of his victory over Mark Benson, Mr Searle wouldn't be
sleeping
with his own wife later that night.
There would be little possibility of his suspicions rather than
his
passions being aroused by Paloma, if he was destined to sleep with
another
woman instead.
"So you're back here again!"
the
'leading member of the Spanish Inquisition' bellowed in his ear. "I thought you'd gone home or
something."
The last part of that
sentence didn't
create a particularly favourable impression on James Kelly, but he
assured the
hooded figure, whose breath reeked more sharply of both booze and
tobacco than
it had ever done before, that he had absolutely no intentions of going
home.
"Don't tell me you've been
listening
to jazz-funk all this time?" rasped Jenkinson from behind an intensely
disapproving mien. "I thought you
didn't like it."
"On the contrary, I find it
most
stimulating," confessed Kelly who, though momentarily bewildered by the
potency of the taller man's breath, was doing his best to lend credence
to his
claim by launching into an impromptu display of bodily self-realization
for his
literary colleague's baffled benefit.
"Well, you've missed a damn
fine set
of snooker all the same," averred Jenkinson, who took hold of Kelly's
arm
as much to stop him from dancing as to prevent himself from losing his
balance
and tumbling to the floor in the proximity of such a bewildering
spectacle. He pointed in the general
direction of Douglas Searle with a finger which wavered on the end of
an
unsteady arm and said: "That chap's gone and done it again. Got himself the little
'angel' with cardboard wings for the night.
You can see how delighted he is, in spite of
the double disguise of eyes and mouth.
After all, how many guests take their host's wife back home with
them
once the party's over, eh? First-rate
hospitality, I call it!" His grip
tightened on Kelly's arm, as he made to steady himself and protect his
tenuous
incognito as best he could. "One of
these days you ought to get married and join the club, James. You might profit from it, mate."
"I don't think I'd want to
join
it," the latter confessed.
"Ah, that's what they all
say!"
growled Jenkinson in sceptical dismissal.
"The trouble with us writers is that we're all too
moral-minded. We reserve such immorality
as we may be capable of mustering from what's left of our imagination,
after
the media have taken their daily toll on us, for our wretched books,
and have
nothing much left over to spare on our private lives.
We put so much effort into saying and doing
deplorable things in print, that our actual lives are deplorably
conservative. The only time we're
genuinely
interesting is when we're being read, and that, as you ought to know,
isn't
every day!"
"One gets the impression
that you only
say such things under the influence," said Kelly, whose arm was
increasingly bearing the burden of Jenkinson's inebriated condition. "Perhaps you'll recant it all tomorrow
morning?"
"Provided I actually live to
see the
frigging morning," Jenkinson guffawed with uninhibited gusto. "But, first, I think I'll have to get
home. What d'you say
about hiring a taxi for the pair of us?"
Despite his disgust with
Jenkinson, whose
condition was no credit to his Torquemada disguise, James Kelly didn't
think
that a particularly bad idea in the circumstances, and before long -
the
formalities of phoning for a cab having been attended to with a modicum
of
competence - a cabby had arrived and they were able to take their
unsteady
leave of the place. With a farewell
smile from Mrs Searle to take back with him, Kelly was satisfied that
the
evening had been relatively successful, and not the complete and utter
waste of
time he had at first feared.
For his part, Jenkinson was
feeling too
drunk to have anything much to say in the taxi.
But he did manage to keep his beer down and to desist from
further
smoking all the way to his Crouch End house, which was of some relief
to his fellow-passenger. Once Jenkinson
had been virtually
shoulder-lifted to his front door, however, the cabby was free to deal
with
Kelly's address, and shortly after
Later that morning he dreamt
that Douglas
Searle, still garbed in his outlaw costume, had just beat him in a
snooker
match and thereby acquired access to
CHAPTER
SIX
"What
sort
of
a lover was he?" asked Jennifer Crowe, staring intently at
"Not a particularly
imaginative
one," the latter confessed after a moment's due deliberation, her left
hand stroking the corresponding arm of the green armchair in which she sat, compliments of Jennifer's hospitality. "He tended to be a bit too
self-conscious for my liking. Didn't
really let himself go enough.
It's as if he were afraid of making a poor
impression on me all the time."
"You mean he was always on
his
guard?" Jennifer conjectured.
"Yeah, but then most men
usually are,
especially when they haven't known you that long,"
"And were you?" Jennifer
asked.
"No more than he deserved!"
Sharon averred, while gazing through the window of her colleague's
lounge at
the two beech trees outside. "His
chief problem, the way I saw it, was premature ejaculation."
"No small problem!" declared
Jennifer, lighting herself a mild cigarette with the aid of a blue
plastic
lighter. It was a habit of hers to smoke
indoors rather than outdoors. "And
what did he do to compensate you for it?" she asked.
"Not enough, I'm afraid,"
Sharon
sighed. "In fact, I got the
distinct impression that, before he met me, he hadn't had a girlfriend
of any
description for quite some time.
Unfortunately, he couldn't be induced to tell me anything much
about his
previous sex life. But from what I was
able to gather, it can't have been particularly intensive."
"Poor bloke!" guffawed
Jennifer, exhaling tobacco smoke in
"Yes, but not very
enthusiastically,
I'm afraid. Never for
longer than five minutes at a time."
"Could be he preferred his
imagination
to your body, then," Jennifer conjectured.
"Writers are often like that - you know,
sort of imaginative bums who remain content to fantasize and don't even
have
the sense to buy an instamatic camera or a camcorder in order to put
their
fantasies into practice."
Sharon saw fit to giggle at
James Kelly's
expense. "I don't honestly
know," she said. "But one
thing I do know is that he had another woman besides me."
"Oh, how did you find out
about that,
then?" asked Jennifer, smiling.
It wasn't an easy question
to answer in one
breath, but Sharon made an indirect attempt at doing so by asking
Jennifer
whether she remembered her lending him that eighteenth-century costume
from the
theatre wardrobe the previous month, "You know, the one he imagined -
God
knows why - would grant him a Mephistophelean credibility?"
Jennifer nodded by way of a
positive
response.
"Well, you'll never believe
it but
..."
"Go on!" urged Jennifer
impatiently.
"... when
I
got the costume back from him the day after the ball, guess what I
found in one
of its pockets?"
Jennifer had no idea and
said so.
"A white G-string!"
exclaimed
Sharon almost hysterically.
"You're kidding!"
"No, seriously, that's
exactly what I
found there," said Sharon, calming down again. "He
must
have forgotten about it or
something."
"Oh, how
stupid!" It was evident that
Jennifer enjoyed hearing this as much as her friend and colleague
enjoyed
telling it.
"Yes, that's just what I
thought," Sharon rejoined.
"But he'd apparently had so much to drink, the previous night, that he overslept the next day. For he'd only just woken up when I called on
him at 2.00pm, and evidently hadn't got
around to remembering about the G-string, let alone removing it in good
time."
"How odd!" exclaimed
Jennifer,
who hesitated a moment before conjecturing:
"And
so you took the costume back home with you and presumably discovered
the item
in question later on?"
"Yes, that very evening in
fact. But he must have remembered it was
there
either then or during the following day.
For when I next called on him, a day or two later, his first
reaction
was one of acute embarrassment, and his subsequent behaviour certainly
suggested that something was bothering him.
He must have been secretly hoping that I hadn't investigated the
coat
pockets, since he made no confession or attempt at explanation. Still, he managed to act the innocent fairly
well in spite of his uneasiness. In fact, so well that I could almost have recommended
him for the
acting profession!"
"Don't say that!" protested
Jennifer ironically. Then, having
quickly inhaled and exhaled some more tobacco, she asked: "So what
became
of the ill-fated G-string?"
"First of all I mended it,
since it
was torn in two places, and then I tried it on for size."
"Really?"
Jennifer seemed quite surprised.
"And did it fit?"
"Yes,
perfectly. Besides, I wanted to see
how I'd look in
it."
"And how exactly did you
look?"
"Like someone I thought
would appeal
to James!"
Jennifer's body was
convulsed with sardonic
laughter. "I see," she said at
length. "And did it?"
"Unfortunately I didn't
really get a
chance to find out," Sharon confessed.
"For the next time we saw each other, which was the following
Thursday afternoon, he had a friend with him, a guy named Stephen
Jacobs, who
completely distracted his attention from my body by keeping us talking
for over
three hours. Finally, when I was on the
verge of a nervous breakdown, he offered to drive me to the theatre in
his
car."
"He what?"
"The guy evidently imagined
he'd be doing
James a favour by saving him the necessity of escorting me to the
nearest
bus-stop."
"And had James intended to
do any such
thing?"
"Of course not, but that's
really
quite beside-the-point," Sharon declared.
"Anyway, this friend, who also describes himself as a writer,
drove
me to the theatre by half-seven. Then,
realizing he had nothing else to do, he decided that he'd like to see
the
play. Well, not particularly being in a
position to refuse him, I managed to get him free admission. However, before we parted company, he decided
he wanted to see me again after the performance to discuss the
possibility of
having one of his own plays performed by our company at some future
date. Since it was half-eleven when he
next saw me,
he offered to drive me home and, being tired, I accepted.
On the way, he talked about this play he'd
mentioned, which he claimed would be a money-spinner, and also began
talking
about James, saying complimentary things about him both as a person and
as a
writer. Becoming interested in finding
out more about him in this way, I invited Stephen into my flat and
plied him
with questions concerning James' background, habits, work, and so on -
you
know, all the sorts of things I probably wouldn't have succeeded in
getting
from him personally. Well, we became so
involved in conversation that the next time I looked at the clock it
had gone
1.00am. A minute or two later Stephen
decided he wanted to use the loo, so I directed him to it.
Whilst he was having a pee, I found myself
wondering what he would be like as a lover, whether he'd be better than
James. For, in spite of some misgivings,
I couldn't help noticing how good-looking and well-built Stephen was. Then I heard him flush the loo, and when he
returned to the room again ... my goodness, he was completely nude!"
"Oh
really?" Jennifer's face assumed an
appearance of
delighted expectancy. "So what
happened next?"
"He advanced towards me with
a
lecherous smile on his lips and, before I could do or say anything,
dragged me
to the bed and began to vigorously kiss and fondle me."
"I see," said Jennifer with
a
slight show of relief, her expectations having been partially
vindicated. "And did he suffer from
premature
ejaculation, too?"
"On the contrary, the only
thing he
seemed to suffer from, after he'd had his lustful way with me, was a
surfeit of
sex,"
"Don't boast so, Sharon,
you're making
me quite envious!" exclaimed Jennifer, as she set about extinguishing
the
smouldering embers of her cigarette in the ash stand which stood
equidistantly
between the circle of armchairs in the middle of the lounge. "So what happened the following
day?"
"Stephen said he wanted to
see me
again at the earliest convenient opportunity, so I said to him: 'What
about James?', and he asked me whether he
was a better and more
knowledgeable lover than James.
Naturally, I said 'Yes, you are', and added that I'd be only too
glad to
see him again ... except for the fact that I didn't want to upset
James, who
professed to being in love with me. He
said he didn't want to upset him either, because they'd been fairly
close
friends for several years and had always trusted and confided in each
other,
but that he would have no alternative but to advance his relationship
with me
if it promised to bring us closer together, to our mutual benefit. In this he of course had my sympathy, though
I didn't stress the fact, since I had no idea how I could possibly
break with
James after he'd been so kind to me.
Besides, I hadn't known him more than a few weeks and hoped his
love-making would improve with time, bearing in mind how shy and
reserved he
generally is. But Stephen wasn't
satisfied with a compromise. He wanted
me for himself, with no secrets and no restrictions on when and where
we should
meet."
"Quite understandably,"
Jennifer
opined. "Few men can tolerate
sharing a woman with someone else for any length of time."
"Well, while Stephen was
making his
intentions clear to me," resumed Sharon, blushing slightly, "I
remembered about the G-string and mentioned it to him, telling him how
and
where I'd found it and why I was wearing it on the day he met me. All of a sudden his face lit-up with pleasure
at the prospect of exposing James' relationship to its original owner. For he felt certain that an affair was still
going on and that, by skilful manoeuvring on his part, he could bring
it to
light and lay a trap for James which would give me a credible excuse to
sever
ties with him on that account. The
problem was how to induce him to talk about this other woman without
arousing
his suspicions that a trap was being laid, and this was something
Stephen
thought he could solve with the aid of the G-string.
By producing it in James' presence and
stressing the fact that it had been found in the tail-coat pocket of
the
costume he wore to the fancy-dress ball, Stephen would have a pretext
for
inducing him to talk about its previous owner.
Of course, he'd have to pretend that I had given it to him at
the
theatre. But that needn't imply he was
going to tell me all about what he'd learnt afterwards.
On the contrary, the information gleaned in
this way would be strictly between friends - a joke at the lady's
expense which
Stephen was keen to share, having been entrusted by me with the
unenviable task
of returning the said item to James in consequence of feminine
delicacy, or
some such ruse, on my part.
"However, in addition to
finding out
as much as he could about James' clandestine affair," she went on,
after a
pause, "he intended to draw him into revealing when the woman was
likely
to next visit his flat, so that, with the requisite information, I'd be
able to
turn up while she was there and catch them red-handed, so to speak. Then I'd have a sufficiently cogent pretext
for breaking with him over his double-dealing, and thereby put my seal
to a
relationship with Stephen instead."
"How ingenious!" enthused
Jennifer, smiling.
"But you couldn't have know for sure
that
he actually did have another woman at the time?"
"No, how true!" admitted
"Anyway, to return to the
gist of my
story,"
"I see," sighed Jennifer. "So, presumably, you were able to turn
up when she was there?"
"Yeah, though he'd taken the
precaution, the crafty sod, of hiding her in his sitting room before
unlocking
the door to me!" chuckled
"What was she like?" asked
Jennifer, slightly shifting position in her armchair.
Sharon hesitated a moment in
order to
establish, in her mind's eye, the picture she had briefly acquired of
Paloma,
before replying: "Rather attractive actually, though I must confess to
not
having looked at her for very long.
Anyway, when James opened the door to me he was somewhat
flushed, not
merely embarrassed but breathless, too.
Since he was wearing a woollen dressing-gown and revealing a
pair of
hairy legs from the knees down, it occurred to him to pretend to having
just
had a bath. Knowing this to be a blatant
lie, however, I pushed past him and immediately discovered that the
sheet on
his bed was all damp and creased-up, the way sheets tend to be after
people
have been bouncing around on them for any length of time.
And when I went across to the far side of the
bed I discovered some items of woman's clothing sticking out from under
it,
where they'd evidently been hurriedly and rather incompetently hidden
when the
doorbell rang. Seeing me pick up a
pale-blue slip and matching panties, he advanced towards me with the
brightest
blush I'd even seen on any man's face and stammered something about
clothes
he'd bought for me the day before. Not
paying any notice to this bullshit, I quickly made for the door to his
sitting
room, the 'study' as he pompously calls it, and when I opened it ...
what did I
discover there but this Paloma bitch, who
blushed
violently and endeavoured to cover her naked breasts with her hands. She was wearing nothing but a pair of
dark-blue stockings and ... the white G-string!"
Jennifer was convulsed with
sardonic
laughter, which temporarily prevented her from inquiring of Sharon how
Paloma
came to take possession of her G-string again, though inquire she
eventually
did.
"Evidently by finding it
lying around
when she was pushed into the room by her panic-stricken lover, who must
have left
it there after Stephen had returned it to him the previous Monday,"
Sharon
conjectured.
"Well, at least she wasn't
entirely
naked," said Jennifer, who then lit herself another mild cigarette. "So what happened next?"
"I threw the slip and
panties in my
hand at the compromised bitch and slammed the door shut on her!"
revealed
"I see.
And then he followed you downstairs?"
"To no
avail. But I'd give anything to
know what he said to
this Paloma creature after he returned to her.
He hardly mentioned her in the pathetic letter he subsequently
sent me,
begging me to forgive him and telling me how much he was still in love
with me,
etc."
"And did you reply?"
"You bet I did!
I made it perfectly clear to him that I had
no desire to see him again so long as he retained sexual relations with
his
G-string woman. And ..."
A sharp buzz on the doorbell
interrupted
her at this point and, as Jennifer went to answer it,
"Well, hello!" cried
Jennifer,
admitting the tall figure in question to her flat.
"We've just been talking about you,
actually."
"Oh, really?" said Jacobs by
way
of a vaguely surprised response. Then,
catching sight of Sharon, who had advanced towards him, he embraced her
with a
tight hug and a loose kiss. "I hope you haven't been saying anything
nasty
about me," he joked as, pressing her body against himself, he stared
down
into
"Of course not!" she said,
returning him an innocent smile.
"We've only been saying nasty things about James Kelly. By the way, how is he?" She
led
Stephen to the armchair she had just
vacated and, when he was comfortably seated, unthinkingly sat herself
down on
his lap.
"He wasn't in a very happy
frame-of-mind when I saw him this morning," revealed Jacobs, putting
his
arm round her waist. "Which
isn't
altogether surprising really." He
paused to stare into
"Only insofar as it concerns
you," replied
"No, I could hardly do that! But he was suspicious all the same."
"Oh, in
what
way?"
"He thought it rather odd
that you
should have appeared at his flat when you did, a couple of days after
I'd
returned that damn G-string to him and inquired about its original
owner,"
Jacobs felt obliged to confess. "He
said he couldn't help linking my visit to yours, the latter tying-up
with
information he'd divulged to me regarding Paloma. Naturally,
I
didn't wish to admit anything,
so I simply told him that he was imagining things.
But his suspicions persisted nonetheless, and
by the time I left, little under an hour later, I got the distinct
impression
that our friendship was over. He didn't
even offer to loan me one of his books - a thing he almost invariably
did in
the past. And when I returned the Huxley
book he'd lent me the previous month, he didn't even bother to discuss
it with
me; merely asked whether I'd enjoyed it and straightaway returned it to
the
shelf. Naturally, I made some eulogistic
comments about it, in spite of not having liked any of its contents
very much,
but that didn't appear to interest him, either.
For he quickly changed the subject to you again, telling me how
much he
loved you and how he couldn't bear the thought of losing you."
Sharon's face turned pale
with these words,
but she made an effort to conceal her anxiety by asking Stephen whether
James
Kelly's suspicions might not have been aroused by his second visit,
which had
come a mere week after the first? After
all, Stephen had already made it perfectly clear to her that he didn't
visit
James more than once a month, and, since the latter didn't call on him
more
regularly either, the two friends only saw each other bi-monthly, as a
rule.
"No, I can't see why that
should be
the case," answered Jacobs thoughtfully.
"For when I returned the G-string, last Monday, I informed him
that
I'd forgotten to bring the Huxley book but would make a point of
returning it
the following week. So he was expecting
me today. Still, it's quite possible
this more recent visit didn't have anything like the effect I'd hoped
it
would. For I felt fairly certain that,
providing I kept a fairly straight face and didn't look particularly
guilty, it
would establish my ignorance of the affair in his eyes.
But the way things turned out, I can only
conclude my face wasn't as innocent-looking as I'd hoped."
"Never mind," whispered
"I'm not so sure," said
Jacobs
doubtfully. "You see, if I break
with him altogether, he'll know for certain that I'm involved with you
and
simply haven't got the guts to visit him.
But if I don't break with him, I'll have to go through the
torture of
continually deceiving him, which, considering we were close friends,
doesn't
exactly appeal to me. Admittedly, we
wouldn't have to see each other more often than in the past. But, even so, it would bother me.... Had he
actually accused me of taking you away from him, it might have been
better for
both of us. But since I didn't confess
to anything, we're still supposed to be friends. So
I'm
in a rather unenviable position!"
"You could always break with
him on
the grounds that his attitude towards you wasn't exactly what one would
call
friendly," suggested Jennifer, entering the debate at length. "After all, what's the point of having
an unfriendly friend?"
"No, there's no reason for
me to
expect a man who has just lost a woman of
Stephen Jacobs reached
inside his jacket
pocket for his customary French cigarettes, for which Jennifer, though
declining the invitation to smoke any herself, quickly procured a
lighter. Sharon found the fumes somewhat
disagreeable
and coughed a number of times, in spite of having made every effort to
avoid
showing signs of being inconvenienced.
Privately she loathed the smell of these cigarettes which
Stephen was in
the habit of puffing, as though to puff himself up to some
sophisticated international
stature, even though he rationed himself to no more than ten a day. Their relationship would have been more
agreeable to her had he not smoked at all!
But considering he was such an accomplished lover, it seemed to
her that
she was in some measure compensated for this inconvenience by his
physical
prowess. Now James, on the other hand,
didn't smoke at all, there had never been any risk of tobacco
contamination
from him. But, for all his abstemious
virtue, born as much from a fear of provoking facial boils, so he had
told her,
as from moral conviction, he wasn't exactly the best of lovers. He was really somewhat perfunctory, and his
premature ejaculation certainly hadn't been the answer to her coital
prayers! Somehow the dream partner she
secretly craved, the man who was able to combine good habits with good
loving,
always remained a dream, an elusive ideal which was unlikely to
materialize in
reality, since reality was usually a combination of contradictory and
often
antipathetic elements, whereas her dream almost invariably focused on
the
pleasant aspects of life at the expense of its unpleasant or negative
ones. There would always be some
drawbacks with the men in her life, and, in all probability, they would
sooner
or later discover certain drawbacks with her.
Thus she had no real option, she felt, but to brave the dreadful
fumes
without complaint. Later, when their
relationship had deepened, she thought there just might be a chance of
getting
Stephen to smoke a milder brand or even to give up smoking altogether. Yes, if he cared enough for her and perhaps
for a child he might subsequently wish them to have, there would be a
chance of
inducing him to break the habit and come clean, as it were, for both
their
sakes. Meanwhile, she would have to be
patient and resign herself to dating a smoker, to please him as much as
possible, to make him feel wanted.
Otherwise she might quickly find herself back to square-one
again, with
or without James.
"I don't know about you two,
but I
could use a coffee," admitted Jennifer, getting up from her chair.
"Yeah, I could use a drink
too,"
seconded Jacobs, as he peered up at her through the smoke-screen of
several
vigorous exhalations. "Two sugars,
please."
"Ditto for me,"
Seizing the opportunity of
the latter's
temporary departure into the kitchen to say a few personal things to
Sharon,
Stephen Jacobs confessed to finding the combination of her low-cut vest
and prominent
brassiere highly seductive.
"I trust you're going to
behave
yourself while my friend is getting our coffees," commented
"I'm afraid not," he smiled
in
turn. "You really oughtn't to sit
on my lap in such seductive clothing in another person's flat. You're a constant spur to my baser
urges." He slid his left hand
two-thirds of the way up her right thigh and gently squeezed its flesh. "Would Jenny object to me squeezing your
leg?" he asked, his gaze focusing on the newly exposed part of the
thigh
in question.
"She might do," replied
Sharon,
who was prepared to treat this question lightly.
"And would she object if she
caught me
caressing your backside?" he ventured, becoming bolder.
"Most probably," she smiled. "But you mustn't allow yourself to get
caught doing anything which would cause her to become really jealous,
otherwise
she might pour our coffees over our heads when she returns."
"So you're going to restrain
me, I
take it?" chuckled Jacobs.
"If I
have to."
"I must confess to finding
you highly
tantalizing," he admitted, as he withdrew his wandering hand from the
edge
of her quivering backside and returned the rim of her pale-green
miniskirt to
its former, less immodest position.
"You've left your cigarette
smouldering in the ash stand,"
"That's because I had more
pressing
concerns on my mind,' he ironically rejoined.
"However, you won't have any excuses when you're alone with me
later-on
this evening."
"Won't I?"
"No." He
stubbed
out the remains of his cigarette,
before adding: "I won't permit you any!"
"Two coffees coming up,"
declared
Jennifer, returning to the room with a large blue mug in each hand. "I hope they're not too strong."
"I could drink it at any
strength," said
"Me, too," confessed Jacobs,
who
immediately put the rim of the remaining mugful of coffee to his
nostrils to
savour its aroma. "When I'm thirsty
I can drink virtually anything, even a glass of stout," he added.
There was a short silence
while Jennifer
Crowe briefly went back to the kitchen for her own mug.
When she reappeared,
"Actually I'd rather just
drop you off
at the theatre and then pick you up afterwards, if you don't mind,
considering
that I'm somewhat behind with my literary commitments at present, and
would be
glad of a little extra time to myself for once."
"Suit yourself,"
said
"Slender chance of my
forgetting to do
that!" he averred.
CHAPTER
SEVEN
As
the
train
bore him closer to Paris, James Kelly's thoughts became less concerned
with his
recent amorous misadventures at the hands of Sharon and more concerned,
by
contrast, with the prospect of what lay in store for him in that vast
city. He had not been to Paris in several
years
but, despite the passage of time, many of his previous experiences
still
remained fairly vividly etched in his memory and seemed to be growing
progressively more so, the nearer the train drew to it.
He hoped, anyway, that a month or two in a
different environment would prove efficacious in easing the burden of
his
current melancholy state-of-mind, and perhaps even cheer him up a bit. For he couldn't bear to stay any longer in
London and face-up to Paloma Searle under pressure of Sharon's absence. Neither could he tolerate the sight of
Stephen Jacobs, whom he had begun to regard with hostile suspicion. But
On arriving at the Gare
St.
Lazare he straightaway headed for his hotel, conveniently situated
nearby,
where he had reserved a small attic-room for a modest sum.
He didn't know whether he would spend all his
time in
As soon as he was safely
ensconced in his
modest room Kelly began to unpack his zipper bag, in which he had
secreted, in
addition to the bare necessities and a change of clothes, three novels
- these
being Sartre's Nausea and Roussel's Locus
Solus, as well as Henry
Miller's Tropic of Cancer. Of the
three, he particularly admired the Roussel, a work of outstanding
originality
for its time, which he considered to be one of the great masterpieces
of modern
French literature. Taking the slender
volume in his hands, Kelly raised it to his lips and planted a
reverential kiss
on its cover. He was genuinely grateful
that such works existed, that true creative ingenuity and individuality
had not
ceased to be possible in the twentieth century, despite the barbarous
march of
commercial history which had dragged the bulk of literary productions
along in
its cinematic wake, transforming an essentially conceptual genre into a
quasi-perceptual one which reeked of literary decadence when, in more
representatively contemporary fashion, it didn't reek of something
worse!
He felt in his pocket for
the letter
After he had written and
posted the letter,
he went in search of a place to eat. The
Wimpy Bar on the Rue
de
Clichy corner of the Boulevard de Clichy, not too
far from his hotel, caught his eye and he decided to eat there in
preference to
any of the more indigenous establishments, where the food would be
French and
therefore less than appealing to him on his first day in
The next few days he mostly
preoccupied
himself by wandering round the sun-bleached streets, drinking bocks
at
fairly regular though discreet intervals to quench his rapacious
thirst,
dragging out his meals as long as possible, respectfully and almost
penitentially visiting museums or art galleries, milling around book
shops,
making fresh philosophical notes in his latest notebook, and sitting in
either
the Bois de Boulogne or the adjacent Jardin d'Acclimatation,
where
a
variety of animals could be seen in the small zoo, along with the
many
attractive flowerbeds and the playground facilities for children which,
when coupled
to the better-than-average lavatory facilities, made it one of the more
attractive places in Paris. In the
evenings he gravitated, like a moth to flame, towards the Boulevard
de
Clichy, where he had discovered a relatively inexpensive
Self-Service
decorated with paintings of the Moulin Rouge variety. Here he allowed himself to be seduced into
sampling some French food, which he painstakingly selected from among
the many
colourful dishes on display beneath their protective transparent covers. But out on the boulevard itself he didn't
allow himself to be seduced into sampling the favours of the various
prostitutes who patrolled their respective beats with a view to
soliciting the
many single tourists whose slow and often bemused procession
up-and-down the
busy boulevard gave them ample time to assess the potential clientele
and to
casually proposition the more promising ones.
Au contraire, he ignored them on three accounts: firstly,
because
he had no desire to have sex with a stranger at present; secondly,
because he
had a rather irrational fear, bordering on paranoia, of being fleeced
behind
the scenes by latter-day coquillards, or robbers; and thirdly,
and most
significantly, because his love for Sharon, still gnawing remorselessly
at his
heart, acted as a kind of deterrent which precluded him from taking all
that
much interest in other women. Under
normal circumstances he might have been capable of having sex with a
prostitute, though he had never done any such thing before and
privately felt a
kind of moral and even physical repugnance towards the idea, bearing in
mind
the possibility of one's succumbing to a variety of sexually
transmitted
diseases. The only time that he imagined
he would be most likely to succumb to one would be during a lengthy
period of
celibacy, when his resistance was possibly somewhat weaker and the
temptation
to have illicit sex presented itself to him with greater insistence. But, otherwise, he couldn't see himself as
another Henry Miller, hell bent on having his desires fulfilled as
often as
possible irrespective of the quality of woman involved!
To him, quality was everything, or very
nearly so, and one's choice of woman depended not on a momentary
impulse, but
on the nature of the feelings she engendered in one over a period of
time. Where there was no genuine love,
there could
be little but sexual aridity, if not sterility, and a purely physical
relationship, here today and gone tomorrow, wasn't something that
particularly
appealed to James Kelly, however divorced from Catholicism he might
otherwise
consider himself to be! Indeed, it
wasn't something that had particularly appealed to Henry Miller either,
if his
thoughts in Tropic of Cancer while watching his associate, Van
Norden,
tackling a whore from the foot of the bed were anything by which to
judge! However that may be, Kelly had not
come to
One evening, however, he
encountered an
American while sitting in a small public garden not far from the Place
Pigalle. The guy, a young man with
evenly cropped hair, beard and sideburns, who wore a pair of
round-lensed
metallic spectacles on a slightly aquiline nose, was seated on a nearby
bench,
spreading cottage cheese on a large french roll with the aid of a
jack-knife. When he had finished
spreading the cheese in a slow methodical fashion he returned the jack-knife, duly folded, to his rucksack and
began
munching on the roll. In the meantime
Kelly had taken out a map of Paris from his zipper-jacket and was
busily
scanning some of the streets in the vicinity of the Boulevard St.
Germain,
when the American suddenly asked him, point-blank, whether he had been
in Paris
long.
"No, just a week," he
replied,
momentarily startled by this verbal intrusion into his mental processes.
"Ah, so you're English!" the
American exclaimed. "I figured you
might be ... something about you that's decidedly not French. Nor American, for that
matter." He took a lusty
bite on his roll and, while munching, continued: "I've just been here a
couple of days myself. Came
up
from
"Really?"
Kelly weakly responded, half-turning towards him with a view to
correcting the
American's assumption of English nationality from an English accent,
but then
thinking better of it and, swallowing his long-undermined Irish pride,
simply
asking: "Were you on vacation in Rome, then?"
"No, I live there actually. Been there a couple of
years in fact, working for a newspaper.
But I'm thinkin' of checking out soon, before I get stuck in a
rut."
"What made you decide to
live there in
the first place?"
"Looking for a change, I
guess. Had a friend who lived there and he
got me
the job.
Hardest thing was learning the language, takin' a crash-course
in
Italian. But I like to keep moving, sort
of working round different countries.
I've worked in
"What part of the, er,
States do you
come from?" asked Kelly, becoming more interested.
"
"It sounds strange to hear
that coming
from an American," remarked Kelly, who had put away his street map so
as
to give the guy his undivided attention.
"Most Europeans seem to think that, earthquakes aside,
The American chuckled
through his roll. "It depends where you
live, I guess, and
how. Anyhow, I'd had enough of it."
"Did you get to see many
rock bands
while studying at
"I reckon I must have spent
as much
time listening to rock music as studying literature," the American
smilingly averred. "But that's all
past. I don't listen to all that much
rock these days. Je
préfére
le jazz moderne actuellement."
"Really?"
Kelly responded, as a couple of heavy-looking Frenchmen in black
leather
jackets and matching shades passed closely in front of them.
The American glanced down at
his watch and
confessed that he had a rendezvous with an Italian friend in a minute,
but that
his new acquaintance was welcome to come along if he thought he could
use some
company for the evening - an invitation which Kelly gratefully
accepted, in
view of the fact that he hadn't had much company since arriving in
Paris and
didn't particularly relish the prospect of returning to his small room
on the cinquième
étage too early, from which the noise of tinny motorbikes and
explosive cars
was all too audible through the slanting attic-window above.
Thus, before long, he found
himself sitting
at a small circular table outside a café on the Boulevard
de
Clichy in the company of the American, who had meanwhile introduced
himself as Paul Steiner, and his Italian friend - an attractive young
woman
with short brown hair and matching eyes whom he called Maria.
"Trois
bières
ici, mon
ami," Steiner requested of the waiter, who seemed
familiar with him. "So what d'ya do for a living?" he asked, turning back to the
table.
"I'm a writer actually,"
revealed
Kelly, who then went on, in response to further curiosity, to inform
Steiner
that he kind of alternated between literature and philosophy in the
manner of
what Roland Barthes would have described as an artist/writer, and that
he was
currently working on a sort of dualistic philosophy which had evolved
from a
variety of sources, including Nietzsche, Hesse, and D.H. Lawrence.
"Sounds kinda interesting,"
was
Steiner's response to a rough outline of the philosophy in question. "I like the idea that things are
interrelated, so that goodness sorta depends on the existence of evil
and vice
versa. What you're effectively sayin' is
that if we make life too painless we reduce our capacity to experience
pleasure; that too great a dependence on all the modern conveniences
and
time-saving devices of the late twentieth century may only serve, in
the long-run,
to turn one into a sort of fancy vegetable, contrary to what Socrates
was when
he felt the keen pleasure that resulted from the removal of his
frigging
manacles. But, even so, without the 'mod
cons' we'd have less time to spare on the good things in life and would
simply
be back where our ancestors were, struggling to survive.
I mean, that's the chief flaw, the way I see
it, of Henry Miller's The
Air-Conditioned
Nightmare, which
endeavours to cast doubt over the need for such 'mod cons' and
time-saving
devices. But if you don't have them,
you're simply a naturalistic bum who lags behind the times, since
acquiescence
in the artificial achievements or appliances of modern technology is
what makes
you truly modern. You can't be hip
without 'em."
"No, I guess not," conceded
Kelly, glad to hear what sounded like sense from someone at last. "However, the alleged interdependence of
pleasure and pain is only one aspect of my philosophy, and not the most
important
aspect, either. For it seems that as one
ascends, as it were, from the body to the psyche, the interdependence
of
antitheses becomes harder to sustain, since we're then dealing rather
more with
absolutes than relativities, in accordance with the more extreme nature
of the
psyche in its relation to the planes of time and space and, for all we
know,
both anterior and posterior universal phenomena, such as would accord
with the
theory of multiple universes."
"Phew! That’s getting pretty
deep," exclaimed Steiner, as the waiter returned with their beers and
humbly diverted attention away from the universal psyche towards more
mundane
matters. "By the way, Maria doesn't
speak any English, so she won't have a fucking clue what we're talkin'
about. In fact, she's a stupid bitch who
both bores
and depresses me! Anyone would think she
was dumb!"
James Kelly felt distinctly
uncomfortable
as Steiner proceeded to passionately disparage his girlfriend, telling
him how
frigid and critically minded she was. He
didn't like the idea of the guy putting her down like that in front of
a
complete stranger, and was afraid of compromising himself by appearing
to agree
or sympathize with him at her expense, even though he was of the
understanding
that she couldn't speak a word of English.
He avoided looking at her while the American continued to pour
out his
grievances, which had presumably been bottled-up for several months, in
increasingly bitter torrents. Taking a
sip of his bière
d'Alsace, he attempted to distract Steiner from his
diatribe by commenting on what he elected to regard as its pleasant
taste.
"A bit watery in comparison
with
English and German beers," opined Steiner, evidently in no position to
be
seduced from his critical frame-of-mind.
However, there now ensued a merciful lull in his conversation
while he
downed most of the 'watery' beer in one lusty draught and appeared to
sink into
the surrounding ambience with less than cynical intent.
For her part, Maria just sat in front of her
beer with a vacant look on her pretty face, as though completely
unaware of
what had been going on in her companion's devious mind.
After Kelly had reflected that Steiner's
demeanour connoted, in some respects, with Henry Miller, whom he
obviously had
more than a passing knowledge of, he heard the American ask: "What d'ya
say about visitin' a brothel with me in a minute? I'll
ditch
this bitch and take you to a safe
little place near the Rue
Lepic."
Frankly, Kelly didn't know
what to say,
since he hadn't considered any such eventuality before, and Steiner's
invitation, coming straight out-of-the-blue, drove a mixture of fear
and
excitement into his soul. On the one
hand, he was possessed by a vague desire to visit such an establishment
for the
opportunity of experiencing something which, although new to him, was
in reality
as old as the hills and thus a dying-breed, and, on the other hand, he
had a
marked fear of, coupled to a certain physical revulsion for, what he
would
probably encounter there. "I really
d-don't know w-what to say," he bashfully stammered, after a few
seconds'
anxious deliberation. He felt doubly
humiliated in front of the Italian woman, who seemed to be showing
signs of
impatience with his perplexity.
"Come on, it ain't an
expensive
joint!" coaxed Steiner, already on his feet and rearing to go. "I've been there before and found it
pretty reasonable."
"Well, provided ...” But his
qualms
weren't easy to express to a man who was obviously so
uninhibited as Steiner, and so he tactfully abandoned the idea of
elaborating
on them and meekly got to his feet.
"Good for you!" responded
the
American, reaching down for his rucksack.
Then, turning to Maria, he informed her in Italian that he was
about to
head towards the
By the time they reached the
establishment,
about twenty minutes later, James Kelly was so obsessed with the
frantic
condition of his pulse that he could barely hear, let alone understand,
what
was being said to him by the increasingly voluble American. He almost lost his nerve at the door, where a
group of shady-looking Frenchmen were loitering ... presumably in
consequence
of having been refused entry into the building for reasons best known
to
themselves. As he followed Steiner
through the half-open door, Kelly found himself thinking of Baudelaire,
whose
youthful brothel-visiting habits were almost as legendary as those of
the
author of Tropic
of
Cancer, and whose memory was now serving to throw a
little bohemian dignity, it seemed, on his own visit.
"Nous
voudrions
regarder vos
femmes, madame," Steiner was saying in simple French
to a
burly-looking middle-aged woman with garishly bright lipstick who was
standing
just inside the door at that moment, evidently from having repulsed an
invasion
of undesirables from without.
She cast a pair of sharply
appraising eyes
over the two foreigners and, satisfied that they were suitable prey,
admitted
them with a perfunctory jerk of her predatory head, the sharp nose of
which
protruded menacingly in Kelly's direction a moment.
As he meekly trailed behind the American,
some of the loiterers outside, evidently disappointed or envious,
hooted
sarcastically, and one of them bawled out "American jerks!" in their
wake, which hardly bolstered Kelly's ego.
At the end of a short corridor they turned left into a brightly
lit room
where several women of various colours and builds were milling around
in
various states of undress or scanty dress, depending on one's point of
view,
ostensibly there to serve drinks to the few men who sat at small tables
scattered about the room and were either playing cards or just smoking
and
talking to those girls nearest to-hand. "Les
voilà,
messieures!"
the madam declared in a cautiously ambivalent tone,
once the two newcomers were safely across the threshold.
At the sight of them all,
Kelly couldn't
prevent himself blushing with shame. For he had never been confronted by such a
spectacle before and felt painfully self-conscious now that they were
all
standing proudly in front of him, like an army regiment waiting to be
reviewed
by a passing officer. With his previous
experience of the place Steiner quickly came to a passable decision and
pointed
out a medium-built brunette with dark eyes, whom the madam called
Louise. For his part, Kelly was still
struggling with
shame and could barely look into their eyes, let alone come to a
selective
decision. However, not wishing to be
left behind with them while Steiner headed for the stairs to the
upstairs
rooms, he managed to point out a brown-skinned young woman of slender
build,
whom he considered the best of a bad job.
'Oh, why in god's name did I
ever allow
myself to get dragged into this mess!' he mused as, having paid the
madam his
fee in advance, he followed the girl, by name of Mireille, up a dimly
lit
flight of creaking stairs and around the corner into a small scantily
furnished
room with a grubby-looking bed smack bang in the middle of it, like an
oasis in
a desert. 'How-on-earth am I going to
enter into carnal relations with this sexual sewer through whom
probably
thousands of men have already flowed in a steady stream of spermatic
effluence?' he mused on, becoming ever more petulant.
Nervously he began to undress, while Mireille
removed what little she had been wearing and thereupon spread herself
across
the bed like some transfixed martyr awaiting the stigmata.
He couldn't think of anything much to say to
her by way of relieving the psychic tensions which had accumulated
inside him
downstairs, and the few words she said hardly made any conceptual
impression on
him, so obsessed was he with keeping his nerve while he
self-consciously
removed the last items of clothing and bashfully surveyed his exposed
member. He was almost praying, as he
stoically mounted her, that she wouldn't give him the pox or the clap
for his
pains, but he didn't have the gumption to ask whether she was clean or
to make a
preliminary inspection of her vagina.
His vanity or cowardice interposed itself between his public
actions and
his private misgivings and, endeavouring as best he could not to show
any
disgust, he abandoned himself, after preliminary fumblings, to the
mechanics of
copulation, edging himself into a trough of man-devouring flesh which
seemed,
in its cloying dampness, to betray the presence of several previous
ejaculations. At first its cold
stickiness revolted him, but it wasn't long before things began to warm
up a
bit and he was able to perform with something approaching pleasure, as
he rode
her backwards and forwards along the canal of carnal terrain and
simultaneously
nibbled at her taut teats, which became correspondingly harder the
softer she
became elsewhere.
'How revoltingly sticky she
was!' he
reflected, after the experience had petered-out in a futile orgasm and
he was
released from any further commitments on that score.
'If there's one thing I must do tonight,
it'll be to scrub my cock free of all the cunt grease she has
unwittingly
inflicted upon it! She's probably been
in steady demand all evening, the little slut!'
Once dressed again, he
followed Mireille
downstairs and headed straight for the front door.
He had no desire to inquire after the
American, who was probably still being served upstairs and in no hurry
to come
to a swift conclusion. He simply pushed
his way past the remaining loiterers outside, who seemed to have lost
interest
in him in the meantime or not to recognize him, and set off back down
the
street with a view to returning to his hotel toute
de
suite. He felt he had been cheated
in more senses
than one, that it would have been better had he not encountered the
goddamned
Yank in the first place, and thus been spared the degrading ordeal of
having to
mechanically copulate with a complete stranger.
But time could not be reversed, and what had happened had to
happen,
irrespective of his personal preferences.
Back at the hotel, however,
his mood slowly
began to change for the better, as he took a bath and washed the
remaining
impurities from his skin. He even felt
vaguely proud of the way he had handled Mireille, the first coloured
girl he
had ever been to bed with, and retrospectively respectful of her for
the way
she had put him at ease and used such seductive skills as she possessed
to
bring him to a state of sexual readiness and confident penetration. All in all, the experience hadn't been as bad
as he thought it would be, in the circumstances, and he was less
pessimistic
now about the long-term fate of his penis.
Despite his private misgivings, the American had opened a door
for him
which he wouldn't have opened himself, and, now that Steiner was safely
out-of-the-way, he would be able to carry on without that gnawing
curiosity
concerning prostitutes and houses of ill-repute about which Paris
traditionally
had a reputation second to none, even if, these days, that reputation
was
mercifully less justified than previously.
Now his life would revert to its former mode, free of sexual
entanglements!
During the next few days he
avoided the
Clichy area altogether, from fear of bumping into Steiner again,
choosing for
the site of his evening meal a little restaurant in the Rue
d'Amsterdam, not far from his hotel.
Since he was becoming more familiar with Paris, and growing
tired,
moreover, of the long walks he had initially set himself, he worked
longer in
his room, confining himself to his philosophical notes in the morning
and
sometimes staying-in during the afternoon to re-read one or another of
the
three novels he had brought with him - old favourites which he had
never read
in France before. In addition to these,
he had acquired himself, largely in response to an essay by Cyril
Connolly he
had read some time before, a volume of Max Ernst's Une Semaine de
Bonté,
the mostly grotesque surreal collages of which both repelled and
fascinated
him. But his own work gave him more
pleasure than anything else, especially his notes on Nietzsche, whose
belief
that man was something that had to be overcome ... in favour of the
Superman,
the 'meaning of the earth', etc., held a peculiarly challenging
fascination for
him which he was determined to interpret and develop in his own
uniquely
transcendental way, borrowing from a variety of more contemporary
sources,
including the French thinker Teilhard de Chardin, such theories as
seemed to
confirm the Nietzschean belief that man was a bridge to the 'great
noontide' of
perfect transcendence, and blending and eclipsing them through a
synthesis which
would place him in the forefront of contemporary thought - a luminous
beacon of
apocalyptic insight lighting the way towards a world which put the
contemporary
one decidedly in the moral shade.
Democratic humanism may have been a good, depending on your point of view,
but the sort of theocratic super- or, rather, supra-humanism which he
had in
mind, compliments in part of Nietzsche, would be infinitely better - of
that
there could be little doubt!
One morning, about a month
after his
arrival in
Dear
James
Sorry to disturb your stay
in
As she was known to you, and
was
believed to have been in touch with you during and after the
anniversary
celebrations at Mark Benson's house, you have been invited to attend
the
funeral. It is to take place at
We don't as yet know the
real
motive behind Paloma's suicide, though
Let me know by immediate
reply if you can't make it. If, however,
you intend to come, be at Douglas Searle's house not later than
Yours
sincerely
Trevor
Jenkinson
P.S. I received your hotel
address from Sean, who apologizes for not having acknowledged your
letter of
July 25th. He was apparently under the
impression that you would be back from
'My God!' thought Kelly, as
he read and
re-read the phrase "she committed suicide" over and over in
unbelieving horror. For a second he felt
like vomiting, so cataclysmic was the shock to his nervous system. He slumped to the floor, as though struck by
a thunderbolt. His heart seemed to be on
the point of exploding. Her, Paloma,
dead ... and dead because...? The
thought that she may actually have killed herself over him seemed too
preposterous to entertain. In fact, it
was positively grotesque! But what else
could he assume? After all, she had made
it perfectly clear to him that her husband's club was of benefit to
their
marriage, an organized form of extramarital infidelity which worked to
their
mutual advantage, despite its intrinsic moral culpability - arguably
more a
legacy of and response to the age than an arbitrary debauch imposed
upon it by
morally irresponsible people. How,
therefore, could she have committed suicide over that?
No, it wasn't the club, or the admittance of
a fresh couple in the wake of the 'wizard's' departure.
It was he, James Kelly, the man to whom she
had confessed to having fallen madly in love, the man to whom she had
written
tender and flattering letters, begging for a chance to see him again at
the
first convenient opportunity! And it was
his prolonged absence from
'Oh God!' thought Kelly
again, as he stared
at the sloping ceiling above him, which seemed, at this moment, to
reflect the
warped state of his mind. 'Why didn't I
write to her?' But, of course, he knew
perfectly well why he hadn't written.
And he knew, too, that if he didn't return to
Stuffing Jenkinson's letter
into a pocket
of his jeans, he hurried across to the Gare
St.
Lazare to find out the
times of the next trains to
With belongings packed and
the hotel
manager duly informed of his imminent departure, he dashed off a brief
letter
of commiseration to Douglas Searle. Then
he rushed out to post it and, realizing that he still had a few hours
to kill
before his train was due out, spent an hour or two walking restlessly
about the
streets. Following a light meal in his
usual restaurant he returned to the hotel, settled-up with the manager,
and
collected his zipper bag. By the time he
got to the station it was
Dear James
I was very upset when I arrived at your
flat on Wednesday afternoon and found you with another woman. I couldn't believe you were seeing someone
else behind my back. You always gave me
the impression that your love was genuine.
Perhaps I was mistaken? Whatever
the
case, I have no wish to see you so long as
you
continue to amorously befriend this other woman. I'm
sorry
to have to tell you this, but I
really don't see how I can be expected to share you with anyone else
after what
we've been through together. I trust
you'll understand.
Yours
Sharon Taylor.
Yes, Kelly understood all
right! For it was only just beginning to
dawn on him
that, now Paloma was dead, Sharon would have no reason to assume he was
still
'amorously befriending' her. If he could
make the news of Paloma's death clear to her in a letter, there was a
very real
possibility that she would bury the hatchet and come back to him again.
A thrill of excitement
surged through him
as he re-read her letter in order to ascertain the exact reason for her
not
wishing to see him. It was simply
because of Paloma! And now that the
unfortunate
creature was out-of-the-way, and in the most definitive terms ... he
might just
be forgiven. Yes, indeed he might!
Obsessed by the prospect of
reconciliation
with
As for Stephen Jacobs, he
would make no
mention of him since, despite strong suspicions to the contrary, he had
no
concrete proof, as yet, that Jacobs was seeing
Yes, he dashed off the
letter with great
enthusiasm and even literary ingenuity as the train bore him farther
from Paris
and closer to Rouen, closer to Dieppe, and, via the sea-crossing,
Newhaven, and
London. He had no time to stare at the
lush green countryside through the carriage window, so obsessed was he
by the
gravity of the thoughts which flooded his mind, like some unholy
visitation. Only when he had finished
the letter did he feel a degree of shame for his preoccupation with
CHAPTER
EIGHT
James
Kelly
was
still somewhat flushed from his embarrassing encounter with Douglas
Searle
and the subsequent handshakes he had been obliged to offer several of
Mr
Searle's relatives, when news of the arrival of their cars prompted him
to peer
through the front windows of the lounge and optically verify the fact. Altogether, there were five black saloons
parked outside in addition to the hearse, which was to convey the
remains of
Paloma Searle to the
Having been under the
impression there was
going to be a burial Kelly had asked the widower to which cemetery Mrs
Searle's
corpse was about to be conveyed, only to learn that it wasn't going to
be
buried at all but cremated instead.
Although he had initially considered burial, Mr Searle realized
that
Paloma's suicide would undoubtedly complicate matters, especially as,
née Gomez, she had been born a Catholic. He had accordingly taken the undertaker's
advice and opted for cremation. The
coroner, witnessed by the local GP, had subsequently verified the cause
of her
death as arsenic poisoning and, satisfied with his findings, had duly
furnished
a medical certificate. The fact that the
Searles had not been regular church-goers was another factor in
determining the
choice of cremation, thus enabling the deceased to be disposed of
without
drawing undue attention to their atheistic past and perhaps even
bringing his
name into public disrepute. Consequently
if the idea of burial had initially presented itself to Mr Searle's
grief-stricken imagination as a more dignified and even romantic means
of
disposing of his late wife, the realities of modern life, the sinful
nature of
her death, and the almost total disregard for Christianity to which he
had
hitherto professed in his obsession with money, quickly combined to
quash the
idea and open the way for the Enfield crematorium.
The executor had thereupon obtained a copy of
the cremation regulations from the local undertakers and, following the
coroner's inquest, arranged to have his late-wife's corpse resolved
into lime
dust on Friday, August 28th.
Of the assembled relatives
and friends only
the executor's father, Edward Searle, had expressed overt disapproval
at the
fiery prospect in store for his deceased daughter-in-law.
But, sympathizing with his son's bereavement,
he had cut short his criticism of cremation with a gesture of
resignation
intended to convey the impression that what must be must be. And as though to apologize to his son for
having thus expressed himself, the old man endeavoured to console him
with
words to the effect that 5lbs of Paloma's ashes were better than no
ashes at
all!
"It looks like we're going
to be under
way soon," a voice to the right of James Kelly murmured, betraying a
slight relief.
"It does rather appear so,"
agreed Kelly, as he recognized the chubby face of Keith Brady, who was
standing
next to him. "I imagine it will
take us about half-an-hour to get to the crematorium - assuming we'll
be
travelling at funeral speed."
"The hearse is bound to
ensure
that!" rejoined Brady, allowing a vague smile to play around the edges
of
his fleshy lips. "Strangely, this
is the first time I've ever taken part in a funeral actually."
"Me too," confessed Kelly. "And I hope it'll be my last."
But, almost immediately, he regretted having
said this, since it seemed to betray his personal guilt concerning
Paloma's
death, and reminded him moreover of the three additional letters she
had sent
to his home address whilst he was away in Paris, thereby making a grand
total
of six! "Do you know why we're
going to the
"Simply because that's the
nearest
one, I believe," the painter replied.
"The
Although there were some
other voices at
large in the room, the predominating atmosphere of mournful silence
sufficed to
restrain Kelly from asking or saying anything else, and it was with a
feeling
of relief - relief, above all, from the oppressive proximity of Douglas
Searle
- that he followed the other mourners out to the waiting cars, where
the
widower proceeded to allocate them all their respective places - the
relatives
naturally taking the front two cars behind the hearse, and their
friends the
rest. Thus it happened that Kelly
subsequently found himself being allocated a place in the fifth car, in
the
company of Trevor Jenkinson, Gordon Hammer, and Rachel Davis, who, as
soon as
they were under way, began to relax a little and to open-up on the
subject of
Paloma's suicide.
"By the way," said
Jenkinson,
turning his attention upon Kelly, who was seated next to him, "both
Gordon
and Rachel are acquainted with the existence of
"
"Yes, didn't I tell you in
that letter
I sent to your
Kelly almost heaved a sigh
of relief, as
the truth of this statement dawned on him.
Yes, Trevor had
alluded to Douglas Searle's
connection with the club as a possible motive for Paloma's suicide - a
connection he had kept silent about at the ball in order, presumably,
not to
betray the latter's disguise. So there
was no reason for Kelly to suspect that Trevor and Paloma had been
secretly in
league with each other over his private affair.
"Ah, yes, of course!" he at length admitted, his face betraying
a degree of embarrassment. "In
fact, I had concluded the 'outlaw' to be
"Well, now there's little
you don't
know about the damn club you needn't be surprised that things have
turned out
the ill-fated way they have," Jenkinson remarked.
"No wonder
"Yes, I did indeed,"
admitted
Jenkinson. "And I couldn't help
noticing the looks on Peter and Catherine Wilson's faces, either."
"Who are they?" asked Kelly,
feeling somewhat out-of-his-depth.
Instead of replying,
Jenkinson waded-in
with: "Do you recall that chap dressed as Blackbeard at the ball?"
"Yes,
perfectly."
"Well, he and his wife, the
'vestal
virgin', were celebrating their admittance to the club, following the
expulsion
of the 'wizard' and wife," Jenkinson reminded him.
"They foresaw a rosy future of organized
adultery for themselves ..."
"And now that future no
longer
exists," interposed Hammer, "seeing as the founder and leader of the
club is without a wife and cannot therefore continue to participate in
it. And without him, the club's finished."
A brief silence supervened
as their car
drew-up behind the one in front at a traffic light turning red. Then, once they were under way again and the
fourth car had duly pulled farther away from them, Hammer drew Kelly's
attention to the fact that it contained Peter and Catherine Wilson. "We wouldn't want them to overhear our
conversation," he chuckled dryly, drawing notice to their own two open
windows, which had been lowered on account of the sweltering August
heat. "But I shouldn't think that Matthew
and
Susanna Boyle would be greatly distressed by it."
"Matthew Boyle was the
defeated
'wizard' at the ball," Jenkinson almost academically informed Kelly,
whose
ignorance of the fact had been total, "and Susanna was the one in that
old-fashioned and slightly ridiculous nurse's costume.
So, as might be expected, the news of Paloma
Searle's suicide probably didn't have anything like the same negative
impact on
them as on the existing and new members of the club.
Naturally, they did their best to appear
upset, to offer sincere condolences, etc.
All the same, I bet you anything they were privately revelling
in
malicious pleasure from contemplating the disappointment on the faces
of
Douglas Searle's accomplices, particularly in light of the fact that
they
hadn't received a very congenial farewell at the Bensons' anniversary
affair!"
"But couldn't someone else
take over
the club's leadership?" Rachel Davis asked with an almost rhetorical
intonation.
"Yes, there's always that
possibility,"
Jenkinson reluctantly conceded.
"But it strikes me as rather unlikely. After
all,
"Here, here!" cried Hammer,
slapping his right hand down on the thigh parallel to it.
"I thought I'd made that point perfectly
clear to you a few moments ago," he added, casting Rachel Davis a
faintly
reproachful glance. "Anyone would
think you bloody-well wanted the damn thing to continue!"
A wry smile played across
Rachel's heavily
rouged lips, in spite of the obvious effort she was making to suppress
it. "Well, none of us
could
profit from the damn thing," she averred, taking out a large white
handkerchief from her bag to divert attention from her emotional
excitement.
"Three bachelors and one
spinster," Jenkinson observed.
"Let's hope we shall never have need
of
such a club ourselves."
"Poor Paloma," murmured
Rachel,
after she had blown her nose. "To
think she did away with herself over that."
"We're not absolutely sure
why she
killed herself," Jenkinson rejoined.
"But the pressures of living with the club seem to be the most
likely explanation."
Kelly sharply turned his
face towards the
nearest window, in an effort to hide the guilty feeling which overcame
him on
hearing this conjecture. He was almost
expecting Trevor Jenkinson to say something sarcastically ironic to
him, but
his literary rival merely continued by saying: "When you bear in mind
the
number of snooker victories that
James Kelly had stopped
listening to
Jenkinson's conjectures, since the memory of what Paloma herself had
confessed
to him, when they were alone together in the second-floor room of Mark
Benson's
house, coupled to the recollection of the letters she had subsequently
written
him, left the young man under no illusions concerning the real motive
for her
suicide. If he had still been in some
doubt when he arrived back from
"... a terrible death,"
Jenkinson
was saying, as Kelly returned from the distant planet of his morose
reflections
to the mundane reality before him, "and one which reminds me of Madame
Bovary, whose heroine spent tortuous hours writhing on her bed while
the
arsenic cut deeper and deeper into the wellsprings of her tormented
life. Now Douglas, who discovered the
catastrophe
too late to be able to do anything about it, admitted that many of the
symptoms
described by Flaubert were also to be found in his wife.
To tell you the truth, I'm rather glad it was
all over by the time I arrived. I expect
Paloma purposely chose such a suicide on account of the fact that she'd
been
re-reading that novel shortly before deciding to take her own life."
The phrase 'a terrible
death' cut into
Kelly's consciousness like a knife going through butter, and the vague
emotion
of negative pride that he had been on the verge of discovering, the
moment
before, was duly eclipsed by the remorse which now descended on him
like a ton
weight for the unspeakable pain he had unwittingly caused Paloma to
suffer. For an instant he felt like
confessing everything, confessing to the guilt which had once more
welled-up,
like molten lava, inside him - and just at a time when he was on the
point of
establishing his innocence in his own eyes!
But his courage failed him, or maybe his common sense came to
the rescue
(he had no idea which), for he merely glued his face to the car window
and
tried to focus on the buildings across the other side of the street. Guilty and innocent,
innocent and guilty by turns on an incessant roundabout. Was it ever any different?
No, life was always a combination of
vicissitudes, a dualistic balance, a
dichotomous
relativity.
"It looks as though we've
arrived," Rachel observed, as their car came to a gentle standstill
behind
the one in front.
"Indeed it does!" confirmed
Hammer, peering out towards the stern façade of the crematorium. "Oh well, I suppose we'd better prepare
ourselves for the worst."
They alighted with due
decorum on the
pavement side of the car and slowly ambled towards the hearse, where
the
pallbearers had already lifted the coffin onto their shoulders and were
now
advancing at a measured pace towards the crematorium's main entrance.
"A job for the young,"
Jenkinson
remarked sotto
voce, as they trailed mournfully behind the others at the
tail-end of the cortège.
"All we need now is the Heroide
Funèbre," Hammer opined in a reverential whisper.
But this allusion by the concert pianist to
Liszt's Symphonic Poem No. 8 was largely wasted on the three
people by
his side, who weren't in the least familiar
with it.
Once everyone was safely
inside the
building, the formalities proceeded more or
less
according to plan, with no delay and scarcely any sentiment. In fact, they were disposed of so
efficiently, by the officiating officials, that more than a few of the
assembled mourners now experienced a sense of anti-climax, so great
were the
tensions and expectations which had accumulated in their breasts over
the
preceding hours! No sooner had they
resigned themselves to being where they were and to participating in
the
disposal, through incineration, of a female corpse, than the coffin had
been
consigned to the furnace and its contents assisted towards total
dissolution by
a process which seemed akin to a factory production-line, the only
difference
being that the end-product would be an urn of ashes rather than a car
or a
motorbike. Rather than being consigned
to an eternity of earthly or watery dissolution through burial on land
or sea,
Mrs Searle's corpse had been conveyed to a frenzy of fiery destruction
which,
though incontrovertibly hellish, would be over and done with in the
twinkling
of an eye, comparatively speaking. They
need only wait for the urn of sanctified ashes on the far side of the
conveyor-belt process, as it were, for them to have no further business
there
and to take their dignified leave of the place - as was soon to
transpire, with
relief that it was someone else's corpse and not their own which had
tasted the
flames' diabolical wrath, so to speak, and been reduced, in judgmental
fashion,
to a few pounds of common ash.
However, since the return
journey was
conducted at a slightly quicker pace than the outgoing one, it wasn't
long
before they arrived at the classy little restaurant in Hampstead which
Mr
Searle had booked in advance, for the benefit of both relatives and
friends
alike. Even old Edward Searle, who seemed
the one most aversely affected by the cremation on account of his moral
preference for burial, appeared to have acquired a new lease-of-life
from the
more familiar surroundings in which he now found himself, as the
prospect of
tucking-in to some dead animal's cooked-up flesh presented itself to
his
cadaverous imagination as something greatly to be relished.
"I don't suppose the sombre
experiences of this mournful day will prevent us from eating our fill,"
remarked Hammer, as he took his place at table and proceeded to
scrutinize the
menu. "The living are always under
obligation to
eat."
As in the cars, so in the
restaurant, the
participants were divided into relatives and friends, similar
arrangements
applying as before. Thus James Kelly
still found himself in the company of Gordon Hammer, Trevor Jenkinson,
and
Rachel Davis, albeit with the addition, now, of Keith Brady and Susan
Healy. At the next table, the Bensons
were seated in the company of the Wilsons and the Boyles, whilst at the
third
and farthest table from the door Douglas and Edward Searle sat facing
each
other in the company of their four relatives - Mr and Mrs Gomez
(Paloma's
mother and father), and Mr and Mrs MacNamara (her brother-in-law and
sister). Their dinners, ranging from
beef and chicken curry to roast lamb and pork, were duly ordered, and a
few
large decanters of red wine, to boot.
"Well, I suppose one ought
to be
grateful that one is still alive," Brady murmured to no-one in
particular. "Poor Paloma won't be
eating roast dinner again."
"Poor Paloma's a figment of
your
imagination," contended Hammer, the fingers of each hand spread out
before
him on the white tablecloth, as though he were seated at a piano in
some vast
concert hall and about to launch both himself and everybody else into a
musical
rendition of autocratic power.
"Yes, I suppose you're
right,"
conceded Brady, smiling wryly. "I
wonder how many people have been cremated in this damned country since
1885,
the year it all began."
"Devil knows!" Jenkinson
exclaimed. "But I'd rather we
didn't discuss such matters over lunch, if you don't mind!
Let's change the subject."
There was an embarrassing
silence at their
table while they racked their respective brains for an alternative and
possibly
more fitting subject to discuss, but, curiously, it was Jenkinson
himself who
first profited from his suggestion by inquiring of Keith Brady whether
he had
now finished work on the painting he'd been attempting to describe to
them,
back at Douglas Searle's house, in June.
"Yes, quite some time ago
actually," admitted Brady, suddenly looking relatively pleased with himself. "In
point of fact, I began work on another abstract-surreal one shortly
afterwards,
which I think will turn out even better than the one in question."
A brief titter erupted from
Rachel Davis,
who did her best to feign respectful curiosity, in the teeth of her
habitual
disrespect for Brady's art, by asking him to describe the new work to
them.
"Do you know Roussel's novel
Locus
Solus?"
he asked, by way of an indirect response.
"Never heard of it," Rachel
blandly confessed.
"It's the most famous of the
novels
inspired by surrealism," Kelly informed her, before going on to tell
Brady
that he had been re-reading it recently.
The painter raised his bushy
brows in a
show of delighted surprise for this unanticipated admission. "Well, I'm endeavouring to paint the
exhibit of Chapter Three," he explained, primarily addressing himself
to
Kelly. "You'll doubtless recall
that Chapter Three has to do with the large diamond-shaped transparent
vessel
containing the aqua
micans liquid in which are immersed the
dancing girl with the long golden hair, the remains of Danton's face,
the
hairless Siamese cat, the metal horn, the seven bottle imps, the
vertical
starting-post for the hippocampi's race, the hippocampi themselves, the
golden
ball compounded of, er, Sauterne wine, and ..."
"You're actually painting
all that!?"
exclaimed
an
astonished James Kelly.
"Well, I'm endeavouring to,"
admitted Brady. "What d'you think of the idea?"
"Why, it's one of your most
enterprising ideas to-date!" averred Kelly enthusiastically. "If you can succeed in that, you ought
to try painting scenes from other parts of the book as well. I'd certainly like to see it when it's
finished." He stared at Keith Brady
with something approaching genuine admiration, a thing he had never
felt
towards the man before. Did this plump
fellow, whom he was apt to regard as a superficial womanizer and simple
hedonist, actually possess literary tastes similar to his own? It seemed unlikely and yet, despite his
preference for non-representational art, he was nonetheless quite
impressed by
Brady's choice of subject-matter.
"Aqua
micans!" snapped
Hammer, whose right-hand fingers were now performing a kind of demonic
tango on
the tablecloth. "This conversation
is becoming a wee bit too esoteric for a simple musician like me!"
Kelly had no desire to
commit himself to an
elucidation of Roussel's literary masterpiece, especially now that
their food
had arrived and he was all for tucking-in to his beef curry. The prospect of being drawn into an
exposition of the chapter treating of artificially resuscitated corpses
was the
last thing that appealed to him under the circumstances of his healthy
appetite
at this moment, as he mixed everything, peas and rice included, into a
kind of
abstract medley for which his fork alone would suffice.
Besides, what with Paloma's own corpse having
been cremated little over an hour ago, it was wiser to drop the subject
altogether.
"Were you the bloke dressed
as Napoleon
Bonaparte at the fancy-dress ball?" he asked Brady, whose long aquiline
nose more than suggested the possibility.
"Yes, I'm afraid so,"
confirmed
the latter blushingly.
Muffled laughter escaped
from Susan Healy,
who confessed to having been the Empress Josephine.
"I'm rather relieved that I
wasn't
there," Hammer declared. "It
appears to have been a veritable madhouse!
Trevor told me, a couple of days later, what you were all
disguised
as. I could scarcely believe my
ears!" Having said which, he directed
a slice of well-forked roast pork into his large open mouth.
"Well, I don't suppose we'll
ever have
to dress-up like that again," conjectured Kelly, as soon as his mouth
was
free of a large chunk of curried beef and in a position to be used for
speech
again. "By the way, I didn't see
you there, Rachel."
The journalist looked as
though she had
just been accused of a public indecency as, blushing,
she explained that circumstances had prevented her from going.
"I invited her along to
review the recital
I was giving at the Festival Hall," intervened Hammer, "and she
enjoyed every damn moment of it, or so she told me afterwards, in spite
of the
fact that the works I'd been commissioned to perform were about as
atonal and
avant-garde as it's possible to get, short of not being music at all
but some
sort of diabolic noise! Few recitals can
have been more intensely discordant than the one I was obliged to
deliver that
Saturday evening, I can tell you! And I
loathed every damn moment of it!"
"Whom would you have gone to
the ball
as, had circumstances permitted you?" Kelly asked Rachel out of idle
curiosity. But since she shrugged her
shoulders in a show of bewilderment, he put the same question to Gordon
Hammer.
"Probably
Franz
Liszt. Either him or the Phantom
of the Opera!" Subdued
titters
duly emerged from various quarters of the table. The
idea
of Hammer dressed-up as the Phantom
of the Opera seemed too preposterous for Kelly to swallow, and by a
curious
paradox he almost choked on the large chunk of beef he had just forked
into his
mouth. Even Jenkinson managed to find
the idea vaguely amusing. For despite
the determined effort he was making to remember the nature of the
occasion
which had brought them all together in the first place, he couldn't
prevent his
natural ebullience from bubbling to the surface when prompted, as at
present,
by sufficiently stimulating implications.
Besides, the general hubbub throughout the rest of the
restaurant,
particularly that section of it which had not been reserved for the
funeral
party, indicated, quite clearly, that the cremation was effectively a
thing of
the past, with little or no applicability to how things now stood. Even Mr Searle's relatives had given-up any
pretence of trying to appear mournfully solemn, as they grappled with
the
self-indulgent mechanics of eating their respective dinners.
"What, exactly, would the
Phantom have
looked like?" asked Kelly, once he had recovered something of his
former
poise.
"More formidable than
Mephistopheles!" jeered Hammer, drawing his bushy brows together in a
show
of strength. "But too many people
wouldn't have known who or what he was, so it probably wouldn't have
been in my
best interests to expose myself to their cultural ignorance."
"I quite agree," Kelly
sympathized. "I got rather tired of people
asking me
who I was supposed to be." An
involuntary shudder ran through him, as he recalled his demonic
appearance of
July 4th. There, in his mind's eye, lay
Paloma Searle, stretched out on the bed in
the upstairs
room with her nun's attire up round her neck and a white G-string
dangling from
between her thighs. And
now? Her flesh had been reduced
to a few pounds of common ash, nothing more.
Good God! at the thought of this he suddenly wanted to vomit, so
distasteful
was the juxtaposition of ideas which assailed him, separating him from
his
companions at table and causing his hands to tremble uncontrollably.
Following a desperate
impulse fuelled by an
overwrought imagination, he staggered-up from the table and rushed out
into the
street. A panic overcame him as his
mouth filled with vomit. He had no time
to look around him for a suitable place to spew. It
came
gushing out of him, all over the
pavement in front of the restaurant - bits of chewed-over beef mixed
with the
pulp of vegetables and rice and, for all he knew, his fried breakfast. It gushed out of him in a series of violent
eruptions, causing him acute physical distress.
Never before had any such deplorable thing happened to him! With vertiginous head he leant against the
wall next to the restaurant's entrance, gripping his badly strained
stomach in
a posture of unmitigated agony. People
in the street stopped and stared aghast at him, their faces riddled
with a
mixture of pity and disgust. His
embarrassment
and humiliation pinned him to the wall as he gasped for breath and
tried not to
notice what had happened, from fear of provoking more of the same. If only he could hide somewhere, run away
from this ghastly scene, recover a shred of his customary aplomb. His right hand accidentally encountered some
sick which had fallen onto his jacket and, immediately, a spasm of
disgust
swept through him, almost causing him to vomit afresh.
He fumbled in his breast pocket for a paper
tissue but merely succeeded in transferring some of the spew on his
hand to the
interior of the pocket in question. No,
he never kept tissues there ... how could he forget?
He pulled one from the right-hand front
pocket of his black cords and began to wipe his hand clean and to dab
the
contaminated part of his matching jacket with it. People
were
still staring at him, now
seemingly more in anger than in pity, and one woman with a pram had to
cross
over to the opposite pavement to avoid pushing its wheels through the
puke.
A familiar voice crying:
"Goodness me,
James, are you alright?" sprang out of the confusion of jumbled sounds
all
around him. He had some difficulty
recognizing Trevor Jenkinson through his tear-drenched eyes. "Here, let me fetch you a glass of water
..."
"No, I'm alright," he
insisted,
his voice hoarse and catching in his throat from the vomiting. But Jenkinson had already disappeared back
into the restaurant for the water, duly reappearing with it in no time
at all.
"Here, sip this slowly and
steadily," he advised, lifting the cold glass to Kelly's slime-smeared
lips. "It'll soon make you feel
better."
The younger man obeyed like
a frightened
child, gripping the glass in his free hand.
An icy coldness flowed through him when the first drops of water
slid
down his gullet and entered his hard-pressed stomach.
But his breathing had
become calmer and a slight feeling of relief was already insinuating
itself
within him, as he leaned against the wall of a nearby shop towards
which he had
been gently led.
"There, you'll soon be back
to normal
again," Jenkinson was saying, as he held his fellow-writer by the arm.
"I d-don't know what the
fuck c-came
over me," stammered Kelly, his face ghostly pale and his lips trembling
from shock. "One moment I was
f-fine, the next m-moment ..."
"Don't worry," said
Jenkinson,
who produced a clean white handkerchief from his breast pocket and,
taking the
half-empty glass of water from Kelly's trembling hand, motioned him to
use it
on that part of his jacket which had suffered most from the
volcano-like
upheaval of the moment before.
"I can't p-possibly return
to the
r-restaurant now," mumbled Kelly, before applying the handkerchief to
his
tear-soaked eyes.
"Would you like me to hail
you a taxi
- assuming you feel well enough to brave the ride,
that
is?" suggested Jenkinson.
"Yes, I haven't all that
f-far to
go," admitted Kelly. "In fact,
I'm f-feeling a lot b-better already."
Jenkinson soon managed to
draw the
attention of a passing taxi and then helped his still-trembling and
pallid-faced fellow writer to climb aboard.
Finally he gave the driver Kelly's address and generously
slipped a
tenner into the man's hand to cover expenses.
"You're sure you can manage
on your
own?" he asked, leaning on the open door a moment.
"Yes, I won't die," Kelly
managed
to smile. "Thanks for your
c-concern, Trevor. I really appreciate
it."
"Don't mention it, me old
mate,"
responded Jenkinson, with a little dismissive wave.
"I'm only sorry you couldn't stay for
the rest of the meal, even though the presence of all those vicious
jerks is a
good enough reason to throw up, if you ask me."
Kelly was wondering whether
to return him
the handkerchief, but, considering the soiled state it was in, he
thought
better of that and just smiled back at Jenkinson in comradely fashion
while the
latter closed the door.
'Damn it!' he thought, as
the taxi drew
away from the curb and from the one person who meant anything to him at
that
moment. 'Of all the
things to happen! Why on earth
did I have to think of Paloma the way I did!'
He lay back on the warm seat
and gently
closed his eyes, but his head was swimming too much.
Moreover, his mouth tasted horrible and his
breath reeked of vomit. He opened the
nearest
window to let in some fresh air, and took a few deep gulps. He felt incredibly weak, like all the energy
had been sucked out of him with the vomit.
The 12-15 minutes it took the taxi to reach his flat seemed like
an hour,
so afraid was he that he might throw up again.
But he arrived home without further loss of self-esteem and,
hurling
himself down upon his single bed, proceeded to weep like a child. All the humiliation he had been obliged to
bottle-up in the taxi came pouring out of him in a flood of bitter
tears. What were they to think of him for
having
made such a public exhibition of himself in
full-view
of them all right outside the restaurant?
At that moment, while he lay convulsively with face buried in
his
tear-drenched pillow, all he could think of was death, suicide, the
need to follow
Paloma's example and put an end to it all once and for all! For in spite of his own self-pity he couldn't
help seeing, in his mind's eye, the haunting spectre of the coffin on a
raised
platform in front of a pair of velvet curtains, then the curtains
drawing apart
as it slowly slid towards the furnace, and, finally and most
poignantly, the
gaunt figure of Douglas Searle turning towards him with an expression
of severe
reproof on his haggard face - an expression which cut to the very
depths of his
soul. No wonder his guilt had taken a
physical turn for the worse later that day!
CHAPTER
NINE
Stephen
Jacobs
scooped
up a handful of hot sand and, lifting the waistband of Sharon
Taylor's bikini bottoms with his free hand, threw it between her
buttocks.
"Stephen!" she exclaimed, as
she
felt its sharp impact on her soft skin.
"Do you have to?" She
turned over onto her back and stared up at him with a look of
contemptuous
reproof on her well-tanned face, which for several hours had been
playing host
to a pair of large plastic sunglasses.
"You really are a monster!" she averred as, grabbing a handful
of sand in turn, she made to throw it at him.
Before she could, however, he had caught her arm and was pinning
it down
above her head. Then he pinned her other
arm down in like fashion and, climbing astride her body, proceeded to
leer down
at her with a vaguely sardonic smile on his lips. She
tried
to wriggle free beneath him, but
his strength and weight were too much for her and, after a vain
struggle, she
relaxed into a posture of meek submission.
He continued to leer down at her as before.
"Doesn't the little lady
like having
warm sand up her arse?" he teased, relaxing his grip on her wrists a
little, now that his physical triumph had been consolidated.
"No, she bloody well doesn't! It damn well hurts!"
"Poor little girl," he
laughed,
planting a couple of consolatory kisses on her lips.
"She doesn't like sand up her pussy,
eh?" He scrutinized her facial features,
as though expecting to find something he hadn't seen there before. At times her face reminded him of a map, but
one that could indicate any number of different places depending on the
mood it
was in. "Does she prefer the other
business, then?" he at length asked, after he had grown tired of his
visual exploration.
"What other business?" she
sternly queried, pretending not to have the foggiest idea what he was
talking
about.
"You know, last night's
business," he answered.
"Oh, yes you do! That's why you've lowered your telltale eyes
again. They always give your secret
thoughts away."
"Do they indeed?"
"Unfailingly." He paused to casually survey her large
breasts,
the upper halves of which were partly hidden by her dark-green bikini
top. "But you must have had the idea on
your
mind for quite some time, secretly wondering what it would be like to
experience for real."
"You're a horrible pervert!"
"What about all the
conventional
things I do to you?" protested Jacobs, with a vague air of outraged innocence.
"Don't I give you more pleasure than James Kelly ever
did?" His face had suddenly become
less bemused, almost triumphalist.
"You don't really love me,"
said
"What makes you say that?"
"I know it!"
Jacobs pressed his lips down
on hers in an
attempt to contradict her accusation, but she quickly turned her head
to one
side to prevent him from properly kissing them.
"Frigging bitch!" he
snapped,
releasing his grip on her wrists and returning to his former position
by her
side, from which he sullenly stared up at the clear blue sky, where a
few noisy
gulls were frantically circling overhead in search of refuse.
"If you really loved me, you
wouldn't
do such nasty things,"
"Weren't you in need of some
manipulation when I first met you?" countered Jacobs, his gaze still
fixed
on the azure dome above, as though to draw inspiration from its vast
expanse of
translucency. "Didn't you find
James somewhat - pedestrian?"
"I hadn't known him all that
long when
you came along,"
"That's scarcely
surprising," Jacobs
remarked. "After all, he's not
exactly the sort of person one gets to know very much about."
"Really?" said
A few young people passed
nearby, casting
them a respectful glance.
"Let's not spoil the fun of
being here
together on such serious conversation!" objected Jacobs as soon as the
coast was clear again, so to speak.
"You take yourself much too seriously."
"That's only because you
leave me no
real choice," declared
Jacobs laughed sarcastically. "You're the one who's deluded, my
dear," he added, before reaching out a hand for his latest packet of
Gauloise Longues and extracting a cigarette from it, for which he then
went in
search of his customary metallic lighter, which had almost got buried
in the
sand. "You don't mind if I smoke,
do you?" he asked, his mocking facial expression and pessimistic
tone-of-voice
betraying a degree of sarcastic irony which he had been determined to
inflict
upon her for some time.
"Suit yourself," retorted
"Would you like some
assistance?"
asked Jacobs ironically.
"No thanks, I can manage
perfectly
well," said
"Funny
woman!" A cloud of tobacco smoke
rose from his mouth
as he spoke, lingered awhile in the air, and was gently wafted away on
the
breeze. "You have one of the most
seductive-looking arses I've ever seen," he opined, staring up at the
curvaceous outlines of her quivering buttocks no more than a few feet
from
where he lay. "In fact, it's so
fucking seductive that I almost find it painful to watch."
"Then turn your stupid face
away,"
"You make it difficult for
one to
avoid watching it," he confessed.
"One can hardly blame men for acting the way they do, when one
sees
exactly what it is they're up against!"
"That's a rather strange
generalization to make, isn't it?"
"Why 'fortunately'?" he
wanted to
know.
"Because, otherwise, the
world would
be an impossible place to live in, that's why!"
"I find it quite impossible
anyway," said Jacobs matter-of-factly.
"Then why-the-fuck are
you living in it?"
"You tell me!"
A broad smile suddenly
illuminated
"How am I going to smoke the
rest of
my cigarette with your hair up my nostrils?" Jacobs not unreasonably
complained.
"I'd rather you didn't smoke
at all,
since it can't be doing you any good,"
"Now,
now! I
don't need any preaching, thank you!"
'Perhaps I ought to have
said "either
of us any good",' she thought, reluctantly abandoning the comfort of
his
chest for the comparative safety of her towel.
'But I don't suppose that would have dissuaded him, considering
he's
such a selfish pig anyway!' Suddenly she
felt a persistent itching in her anus, a discomfort doubtless owing
something
to the previous evening when, evidently desiring to extend his carnal
power
over her, Jacobs had decided to bury his inhibitions, along with his
penis, and
bugger her like some demented sodomite.
Never before had anyone done that to her, never before had any
man
rubbed petroleum jelly into her rectum and then, taking her from
behind, sunk
his well-lubricated prick into its tiny opening. And
it
had hurt - so much so that she had
been on the verge of crying-out in pain.
Now the niggling discomfiture brought about by the occasion was
troubling her peace-of-mind, making her feel both ashamed and degraded. Had James Kelly ever done any such repugnant
thing to her? No, he certainly
hadn't! The only thing he could be
accused of - apart from an almost fetishistic obsession with G-strings
and
suspenders - was a tendency to voyeurism, which was in a sense both
strange and
regrettable for a man who was so intellectually conceptual and
generally
sensible. True, he had indulged in a
fair amount of oral sex with her; he obviously liked to scrutinize her
vagina
close-up, as though such optical intimacy, linked to his voyeuristic
shortcomings, confirmed his influence over her, or perhaps even taught
him
something new about the female anatomy which fantasy or study had
signally
failed to do. But was that
perversion? Not when compared to what
Stephen Jacobs had done, the filthy sod! Oral sex was perfectly natural, if, at times,
a little lacking in good taste or elevated judgement.
But the anal violation of a
woman...? One would have thought
he was sort of gay or something.
'I remember James telling
me, one evening,
that he found the concept of homosexuality a contradiction in terms,'
Sharon
continued to ponder, as she lay perfectly still with her face turned
towards
the sun and away from Jacobs, 'the main reason being that, strictly
speaking,
the rectum isn't a reproductive organ but an excretory one and
therefore can't
be anything but violated in a sexual context, since he insisted that
sex was
between one reproductive organ and another for purposes,
conventionally, of
reproduction. Now when a rectum is
substituted for a vagina, the ensuing phallic penetration is a
violation of its
rightful function, and hence a form, according to James, of anti-sexual
perversion. Also he considered
homosexuality revolting on account of what he called the excremental
odours and
stains which were likely to result from outright sodomy, with or
without a
plastic sheath. But if, unlike herself,
he regarded homosexuality as a sort of anti-sexual barbarity peculiar
to a
materialistic age and society, then his view of the anal violation of
women was
as a kind of perverse heterosexuality - a sort of anti-sexual civility
more
applicable to a decadent age or society which approached materialism
from its
own necessarily more naturalistic
liberal base rather than in the unequivocally materialistic
terms of the
outright homosexuality of those societies which were effectively less
civilized
than barbarous.'
As
But was it likely to end
there? She feared that, despite his
promise not to
sodomize her again, he would probably do so, and next time without even
bothering to adequately lubricate himself in advance!
Hadn't he joked with her about the 'business'
that very morning? A shudder of disgust
and revulsion swept through her at the thought of what he might
subsequently
get-up to at her expense! There could be
no doubt that he took a perverse pleasure in degrading her, in
extending his
sexual power over her. After all, she
was an extremely beautiful and highly intelligent young woman, one of
the most
promising stage actresses of her generation, a university graduate, the
daughter of a professor - in short, a lady.
And he...?
Well, he was superficially a gentleman as regards looks,
speech, education, and social position were concerned.
But as for being 'gentle', as for the literal
interpretation
of the term, there was, as yet, little proof of that!
Even the first time they had made love
together, that night he drove her home from the theatre, his mode of
introducing her to his sexuality had been anything but conventional. And since then, he had become increasingly
fond of removing her clothes in an impetuous manner whenever he desired
to
appease his sexual demon. So much so
that, on a number of occasions, he had actually torn garments in his
impatience
to get at her! And sometimes he hadn't
even bothered to remove her clothes first; he had simply thrown himself
upon
her and proceeded to wrench things out of his way!
Yes, the true nature of his
relationship to
her was becoming increasingly clear. He
was indeed flattering himself over the liberties he could take with
her, the
things he could force her to do or impose upon her, whether she liked
it or
not. And she was half-playing along with
him, she wasn't altogether averse to granting him certain liberties,
considering that she had never known such a man before and, if truth be
told,
was really quite fond of him in spite of the obvious disadvantages -
disadvantages which were partly her own fault for having allowed
herself to be
imposed upon in the first place. But
there had to be a limit, and she was beginning to wonder whether it
hadn't
already been reached. If he
continued
to flatter himself at her expense, what would become of her? Might he not get it into his devious head to
do more daring things next time, to compromise her, say, in front of
one or
more of her colleagues at the theatre - for instance, Jennifer - as he
had
intimated doing that very afternoon he first visited the latter's flat. Then he had merely squeezed her thigh and
caressed her rump while Jennifer was getting them coffee.
Might he not do something similar while she
was in the room next time? And would it
simply be to make her jealous? No,
probably not! Most likely his real
motive for behaving in such a fashion would be to degrade
'The beast!' she groaned to
herself, still
deeply sunk in the tortuous subjectivity of her thoughts.
'If only I had realized all this sooner! If
only
I hadn't been misled by his
friendship with Kelly into taking him for someone similar; into
assuming that
he was kind, considerate, thoughtful, tasteful, patient - all the
things he
first appeared to be! How wrong I was to
leave James for the sake of this proud brute, this sexual autocrat who
imposes
his will on me like a beast-of-prey, irrespective of how I'm likely to
feel
about it. Even if James did have a few
sexual problems, even if he was a bit unadventurous with me, at least
he didn't
go out of his way to damn-well humiliate me!
On the contrary, he virtually worshipped me.'
For the first time in weeks
she felt
ashamed of the way she had behaved towards James Kelly on the Wednesday
afternoon of her unexpected and unwelcome visit to his flat. She saw, in her mind's eye, his face go
through
the spectrum of apprehensive feelings which she had engendered in him
from the
moment she set foot in his flat to the moment she left him standing
helplessly
in his dressing gown at the foot of the stairs leading to the communal
entrance. And how he had begged her to
listen, implored her to understand, beseeched her to have pity on him,
as he
desperately followed her downstairs. To
no avail! She had an act to pull off
and, talented young actress that she was, she had pulled it off
admirably; so
admirably, in fact, that her real emotions, her real feelings of
jealousy and
anger at having caught him in such a compromising position, only came
to the
surface afterwards - a long time afterwards, as she lay in Jacobs' bed,
the
following day, shortly after he had left for the West End ostensibly on
some
literary engagement. And now, in all
probability, James would be having his suspicions on the matter, he
would be
thinking it odd that she should have turned-up when she did, on a day
she was
usually otherwise engaged. Yes, he would
almost certainly have linked her visit with that of Jacobs' a couple of
days
before, and, without too great a stretch of his
not-inconsiderable-imagination,
come to the conclusion that he had been purposely set-up for her to
knock down
with the minimum of inconvenience to herself.
Well, there would be no alternative for him but to pick himself up and find someone else.
She felt the pressure of a
hand on her
stomach, a hand that swiftly crawled up to her right breast and gently
squeezed
it, like it was some kind of putty or dough to which the hand in
question had
an inalienable right. She opened her
eyes to confirm its source and discovered Stephen Jacobs leaning over
her, his
eyes lustily focused on the breast in question.
"So you're not dead, after
all,"
he observed, once her reaction became sufficiently apparent to him. "You've been very self-contained
recently, haven't you?" He squeezed
her breast a little harder, lightly thumbing its ample nipple, then continued: "I suppose you've been thinking
nasty
things about me."
She smiled up at him in an
attempt to
disguise her true feelings. "Why
should I do that?"
"Perhaps you're disappointed
in me for
not having taken you to a less-deserted part of the beach?" Jacobs
conjectured solemnly. "Maybe you
wanted the company of other people - men who would admire your sexual
anatomy
in broad daylight and thus give you the satisfaction of imagining
yourself
being fancied? Or maybe you're annoyed,
on second thoughts, that I haven't inserted my big hard doggy into your
small
soft pussy while we've been lying here, amid these sand dunes, and were
therefore wondering whether your ambition to be humped on a beach would
ever be
realized?"
"Don't be such a vain fool!"
protested
"How
curious!" He had abandoned her
breast and was simply
staring down at her with a mildly quizzical expression on his
sun-inflamed
face, which seemed to be rising like dough.
"Anyone would think you represented the triumph of mind over
matter. But, then again, you are a B.A.,
aren't you?"
"Well, what's so bad about
that?"
she retorted.
"Nothing's bad about being a
Bachelor
of Arts when one is in fact a bachelor," declared Jacobs.
"But when one's a spinster ... well, I'd
have thought an
"Certain things do tend to
be rather
male-biased," remarked Sharon, who had begun to find the subject
slightly
amusing in spite of its underlying seriousness.
"Oh, I'm perfectly well
aware of the
fact," rejoined Jacobs, showing vague signs of amusement himself. "All the same, you'd think that someone
would have the intelligence to advocate S.A.s for single women. Anyone would think that only men took
degrees."
"I suppose if, according to
that
logic, I had an M.A., I ought to be a Mistress of Arts instead of a
Master,
right?" deduced
"Perfectly," agreed Jacobs. "But, as things stand, you'd have to
rest content with being a Master. So you
must belie your gender, my dear, otherwise ... the status quo will
condemn you
for sexist subversion!"
"Fight for the right to
sexual
autonomy!" cried
Jacobs smiled in tacit
acknowledgement of
his companion's gesture of defiance, though he wasn't altogether
convinced
there was really any justification for setting-up a dualistic
alternative based
on gender, bearing in mind the apparently unisexual trend of society
these
days. Nevertheless, just for the hell of
it, he went on to claim: "The status quo needs to be constantly stirred
up, if it isn't to stagnate into a malodorous swamp."
"It's alright for you
though,
considering that a Ph.D. isn't really such a bad thing to have,"
concluded
Jacobs was overcome by a
momentary sense of
guilt and blushed accordingly. For he
recalled
having boasted of such an accomplishment to
It did really, since it
wasn't necessary to
distinguish female doctors from their male colleagues the way a female
actor,
or actress, often needed to be distinguished from her male counterpart
in
either theatre or film. Nonetheless,
"Quite
so! And yet there are still fools
in this world
who consider man to be a rational creature." Having
said
which, Jacobs betook himself to
her side again with a gruff humph.
Released from his
threatening proximity,
Sharon Taylor once more closed her eyes upon the world.
She wanted to feel the sun's rays caressing
her body, to forget about Jacobs, sadism, gender, etc., and become
merely a
receptacle of pleasant sensations. For,
at that moment, thoughts seemed to her like a stain on the mind, a
mental
disease, a prison from which she longed to escape.
If she could banish them from her
consciousness, she would be free. But for how long?
Already she found herself relapsing into speculations about the
chances
of her holding thought at bay for more than a couple of minutes. Already her mind was generating fresh thoughts
which would quickly turn sour and poison her, dragging her back from
the pure
sensations for which she yearned with one part of her mind to the
all-too-familiar conceptual terrain of her intellect.
Alas! it seemed the
only way for her to get away from them was to dream, to conjure-up
visual
images from the depths of her psyche in order, temporarily, to rescue
herself
from the torrent of verbal concepts which were now threatening to
engulf her
afresh. And there suddenly, as though on
a role of film, James Kelly flickered into view the night he had first
made
love to her, the very same man who had earlier introduced himself
outside the
National Gallery (of all places!), invited her for a meal, taken her
back to
his flat afterwards and ... why was she daydreaming about him in
particular? She searched for another
image, one that was
less troublesome, but soon found herself reverting to James again by a
roundabout route, to his casual manner of dressing, the greeny-blue
colour of
his large myopic eyes, the modest size of his circumcised penis
(evidence of an
Irish-Catholic origin), the nobly circular shape of his dark-haired
head....
Was there no-one else? Suddenly she felt
a weight on her body and, opening her eyes in excited surprise, saw
Stephen
Jacobs' face descending towards her, felt his lips pressing against
hers, felt
his arms encircling her waist and grip her tightly around the back. She clutched him to herself, as though afraid
he might just as suddenly release his hold on her and plunge her back
into the
vicious circle of thoughts and dreams from which his actions were now
providentially rescuing her. For the
first time since the beginning of their relationship, she whispered
little
endearments to encourage his desire. She
wanted him to have her there on the beach, between the sand dunes,
under the
brilliant sky, beside the foaming sea.
Yet, to her utter amazement, he pulled away from her as soon as
it
became apparent to him that she was becoming sexually aroused. She couldn't believe it! Had
he
done it on purpose? Was he simply
torturing and humiliating her
again, arousing her desire only to abandon it no sooner than he had
worked it
up to a fairly promising pitch? She was
on the verge of tears and, in a desperate impulse to hide her
frustration, she
wrenched herself completely free of him and turned over onto her
stomach,
preparatory to burying her face in her hands.
How could he do this to her? What
kind of a monster was he? She had never
felt so humiliated before, not even the previous night!
A flood of tears fell from her eyes and
trickled down the sunglasses onto the towel beneath her hands. Her body became convulsed with sobbing.
Then she heard Jacobs
asking, as though
from afar, "What's the matter,
She made no attempt to
answer, for she was
sobbing bitterly. Her voice could not
have articulated an explanation at that moment, even had her mind been
prepared
to formulate one.
Taking hold of her by the
shoulders, Jacobs
turned her onto her back and repeated his question.
Then, anticipating an answer, he made it
perfectly clear to her that under no circumstances could he have
responded to
her arousal the way she had apparently wanted him to, since they were
still on
a public beach and, although there were few people in the immediate
vicinity,
he couldn't risk causing a public scandal by giving way to her
lascivious
objectives there and then. He said this
with such an air of sincerity that, in spite of herself, she almost
believed
him. Yet, deep down, she didn't think
much of his excuse and found it difficult not to say so.
True, the part of the beach they were on
wasn't entirely deserted, but the few people
whose
voices or radios could still be heard, from time to time, were hidden
from
sight by the numerous sand dunes which characterized the spot they had
specifically
chosen. Provided she kept her voice
down, what was there to stop him from making love to her, then? Surely he wasn't afraid of lowering his
swimming trunks because of the vociferous seagulls which were still
circling
overhead, evidently in search of scraps of food? What
did
they care about him or his privates?
"Believe me, Sharon, I had
no
intention of tantalizing you," Jacobs was saying, as though for his own
benefit. "I just didn't have the
courage of my desire." He hesitated
a second, in an attempt to gauge what kind of effect his words were
having on
her. "I've never humped anyone out
in the open before, least of all in a place as open as this, and I just
didn't
have the courage or conviction to do it now."
"I'll make it up to you this
evening,
I promise you that," Jacobs was going on, through partly clenched
teeth. "Come now, show me a
smile! Prove to me we're still
friends."
Sharon made an effort to
comply with his
request, but she was feeling so much emotional pain that her mouth
barely
moved. Then turning to face him, she
spat out: "Haven't you hurt me enough already?"
"Hurt you?" echoed Jacobs,
momentarily stunned by the anger of her retort.
"I don't honestly know what you mean."
"No, I didn't think you
bloody-well
would!"
Jacobs felt genuinely
puzzled and his lips
trembled a little. But he soon came to
grips with the situation by informing her that he hadn't intended to
hurt her,
neither then nor at any previous time.
And, as though to confirm the fact, he ran his hand through her
long
hair, so much in harmony with the sand, and planted a tender kiss on
her
brow. "I'm not as bad as all
that," he murmured, when she had recovered from her self-pity to an
extent
which made it possible for her to tolerate his attentions.
"There are plenty of people worse than
me."
"Like James Kelly, for
instance?"
she suggested.
"I shouldn't be at all
surprised," Jacobs opined, nodding.
"After all, he was deceitful enough to have another woman when
you
were ostensibly his only girlfriend, wasn't
he? Now you can't level any such
deceitfulness at
me! There's only one woman in my life,
and that's you."
'Unfortunately for me!'
thought
"I think I'll plunge-in for
another
swim," announced Jacobs, as soon as he was done with surveying the
sea's
human contents, some of the nearer of which were attractively female. "Fancy another dip?"
"No thanks," responded
"Keep an eye on my things,
then,"
Jacobs requested.
She watched his tall figure,
now
light-brown, recede into the near distance.
Then, after applying some fresh suntan-lotion to her arms and
stomach
(the very same lotion she had used that day in the Surrey countryside
with
Jennifer and Carmel), she lay back to face the sky, whose azure dome,
in the
expanse of ethereal translucency, was still untarnished by any cloud;
though a
small high-flying plane was leaving a trail of cloud-like smoke behind
as it
relentlessly powered its way through the air.
'How typical!' she thought. 'One gets a flawless sky, and then some
lunatic has to come along and mess it up with his trail of artificial
cloud! One would think they get a perverse
pleasure out of it. Just as Stephen
Jacobs seems to get a like-pleasure out of messing-up my life, the
dirty little
pervert!' She
didn't want to think any more about that subject, however, since she
had
frankly had her fill of it for one day, and desired only to forget
about Jacobs
as much as circumstances would allow.
But, in forgetting about him, she soon found her thoughts
reverting to
James Kelly instead.
CHAPTER
TEN
The
past
two
weeks had been more oppressive to Kelly than any he could remember,
and for
no small reason he was amazed that he had actually lived through them
and not
followed Paloma's example by doing away with himself in the meantime. To begin with, there had been the letter from
Trevor Jenkinson on August 26th concerning Paloma Searle's suicide. Then the humiliating experiences of the 28th,
when he had actually thrown-up his dinner outside the restaurant and
been
obliged to take a taxi home. Following
which, his hopes of a rendezvous with Sharon Taylor outside Kenwood
House at
Bitterly disappointed, and
thoroughly
humiliated by her failure to turn up, Kelly had decided to visit her in
person
that very same day and force her to listen to him.
Perhaps his letter hadn't reached her, after
all? The thought that it might have been
delayed in the post or even gone astray sufficed to give a fresh boost
to his
intentions, and so, shortly before
As soon as he was within
striking distance
of the high street, he hailed a taxi and gave the cabby Jacobs'
Finchley
address. But no sooner had he got to the
latter's front door and rung its bell a couple of times than he was
beset by
the fear that Stephen might also be out - a fear which turned out to be
fully
justified as, several futile ringings later, he turned away from the
bright
yellow door and slowly walked away from the building, his head bowed
under
pressure of the bitter disappointment which had once more descended
upon him,
like some famished vulture, and ravaged his hopes.
Having optimistically dismissed the taxi on
arriving at his ex-friend's address, he was obliged to walk to the
nearest high
street and hail another, this time with the express objective of
returning
home. Crushed and defeated, he arrived
back at his flat in a condition of nervous prostration and went
straight to
bed.
During the next few days the
disappointments of that last Sunday in August weighed so heavily upon
him that
they prevented him from continuing with his work. He
stayed
late in bed, only getting up to eat
and fetch provisions from the local shops.
He had no desire to write to
By the beginning of the
second week in
September, however, he had sufficiently recovered from his depression
to be
able to recommence work and, starting with a few maxims of the sort
which
spring rather more from imagination than experience, he gradually
worked-up an
appetite for his philosophical notes again - a number of which he hoped
to
develop into short essays. In addition
to the notes on Nietzsche compiled during his weeks in
Clearly, in Huxley's view,
the mind
couldn't be separated from the body and treated as a kind of
'thing-in-itself',
completely independent of the nature of the body to which it was linked. There were physiological influences to bear
in mind, and these influences also had 'minds' of their own, so to
speak. They weren't wholly dependent on
the function
of the brain but, to paraphrase Koestler, functioned as subautonomous
wholes in
an 'holarchic', or open-ended structure which endowed each member with
a life
of its own, a theory to some extent resembling the one put forward by
the
sixteenth-century alchemist Paracelsus, who attempted to extract
curative
juices from different parts of the body through an appropriate
application of
his special powders, called 'placets', to the 'lives' within a life.
Be that as it may, let us
now proceed to
the evening of September 10th, a day which had provided James Kelly
with his
most productive results since returning from
He got up from his favourite
armchair and
returned De
l'Amour to its customary shelf on the bookcase.
Then he went over to his writing desk where
there were still some twelve letters in the tray - the backlog from his
stay in
Gathering his writing
materials together,
he opened the bottom right-hand drawer of his desk when, suddenly, his
attention was arrested by the spectacle of Paloma's handwriting on the
front of
an envelope resting on top of a small pile of letters held together by
a broad
elastic band. He realized, with a certain dismay, that he still hadn't destroyed
her letters
to him, contrary to his intentions on the way back from
Placing the letters on top
of his desk, he
picked up the G-string and automatically put it to his nose. But he was unable to detect any traces of her
scent on it. In fact, it seemed to smell
rather more of elastic bands and paper than of anything else. Then, as he returned it to its current abode,
he recalled that she had made temporary use of it on the afternoon
Sharon had
paid them an unexpected visit, only to return it to him before leaving. How she had managed to find it so quickly
after having been pushed, nude and trembling, into the study, he
couldn't quite
understand. But he was thankful she had
at least been wearing something when
Yes, she had learnt quite a
lot about his
true feelings for the actress that day, more than he ought, perhaps, to
have
told her. He realized, now, that events
might not have taken such a drastic turn, had he lied to her about his
true
feelings for
Oh, if only he could have
foreseen the
terrible consequences of his honesty that day!
If only he could have detected in Paloma's futile struggle to
wrench his
love away from
Yes, James Kelly would
certainly have to
resign himself to living without Mr Searle's hospitality in future. And as for Jenkinson, Hammer, Brady, etc., it
seemed doubtful that he would ever see any of them again, either. For he hadn't seen them since August 28th,
the day of Paloma's cremation, and, in view of the unsavoury fact that
guilt
had conspired to upset his stomach and compelled him to take his leave
of them
all in such an abruptly undignified manner, he didn't particularly
relish the
prospect of seeing any of them again, Jenkinson not excepted. There was accordingly little likelihood that
his past friendships would be resurrected, not even the one with
Stephen
Jacobs, which had died for quite different reasons.
In fact, he had neither seen nor heard
anything of Jacobs since that Monday in July, when the latter had paid
him a
brief and rather disquieting visit ostensibly to return the volume of
Huxley
lectures borrowed the previous month. On
that ill-fated day the suspicions which Kelly entertained concerning
his
friend's relationship with Sharon had prevented anything like a
spontaneous or
friendly conversation from taking place, and Stephen, having quickly
sized-up
the situation and done his best to brave it out as best he could, had
quietly
withdrawn in an aura of guilt. And so,
without his past friends and girlfriends to visit or be visited by,
life was
becoming a rather solitary affair for the writer of philosophical notes!
Having locked Paloma's
letters and G-string
away in the bottom right-hand draw of his desk again, he ambled across
to his
bedroom on the opposite side of the corridor.
It was barely
When he opened the door,
however, he had
the shock of his life. "
"Your
letter,
James."
"My l-letter?" he repeated,
scarcely
able to believe his ears, never mind eyes.
"I understand Paloma Searle
died,"
"But didn't I w-write to you
about
that f-fact over two weeks ago?" stammered Kelly in bewilderment.
Sharon Taylor was unable to
prevent herself
blushing. "I'm afraid I only got
round to reading your letter yesterday, as soon as I'd returned from
holiday," she confessed. "You
see ..."
"
"Yes, I spent a couple of
weeks down
in
"Oh, I see!" sighed
Kelly, who had literally slumped into the sitting-room's one remaining
armchair, his legs having virtually lost their ability to support him
any
longer. "I had imagined ...” But he
couldn't force the rest of what he wanted to say out of his mouth, so
resigned himself to asking her whether she
had enjoyed herself.
"Yes, most of the time,"
replied
"I take it you went with
Stephen
Jacobs," said Kelly bluntly.
"Actually, I had figured
Stephen was
involved with you quite some time ago," revealed Kelly, his voice
trembling with suppressed emotion.
"However, I suppose I deserved what I got for having allowed
myself
to get caught-up with Paloma Searle for all the wrong reasons. I think I told you all about how that
happened in my letter, didn't I?"
"Yes, more or less,"
admitted
"Oh?"
"Really?" gasped Kelly, who
didn't quite know what to say. "How
d'you mean?"
"It would take too long to
explain
and, besides, I don't think I'd want to go into all the sordid
details,"
was all
"You're not still seeing
him, by any
chance?"
"I haven't completely broken
with him
yet, though ... if you really meant what you said in your letter, then I'd be more than happy to carry on from
where we left
off, before anyone else came between us."
Kelly could hardly contain
his delight, so
excited had he become all of a sudden.
"You mean it?" he exclaimed.
"Of course I do!" responded
He had risen to his feet and
drawn her
closer to himself in a gesture of physical reconciliation.
They stood, for a moment, staring into each
other's eyes, their arms entwined. Then
their lips met in one long passionate kiss which completely dissipated
the
remaining distrust and reserve between them.
"I really can't believe my luck," he at length gasped, coming
up for air. "I had completely
given-up all hope of ever seeing you again."
"That was very silly of you,
Jim," remarked
"Passionately," he
confessed,
squeezing her more tightly against himself.
"You're the only woman I have ever loved." Then,
releasing
her from his embrace, he
stood back to admire her appearance.
"Weren't you dressed like this the first day I set eyes on
you?" he observed, recalling the all-white attire she had worn to the
National Gallery that fateful day in June.
"I thought it would make a
favourable
impression on you," she smiled.
"Hmm, it does indeed," he
admitted, "insofar as it induces me to believe that our relationship
has
started right back at the beginning again." He
drew
closer to her and put his arms round
her waist. "But what you told me
about Stephen doesn't make such a favourable impression, I'm afraid. In fact, it leads me to the conclusion that
the only sensible thing for you to do now, to ensure he doesn't
continue
molesting you, is to move into my apartment until such time as the air
clears a
bit and he loses further interest in you.
What do you say?"
"Do you really think you'll
have room
for me here?" asked Sharon doubtfully, casting her gaze around the tiny
room which, though amply filled with books, furniture, and other
cultural
artefacts, was as tidy as any room she had ever beheld.
"Under the circumstances of
my love
for you, I'd have room for you anywhere, even in a place the size of a
telephone booth."
"I hope you won't live to
regret your
words!" said
Once more they met in a
passionate embrace,
as Kelly proceeded to smother her face with kisses.
"There's nothing that would make me
happier than to have you living here every day," he enthused and,
getting
down on his knees before her, he began to kiss her feet, which were
bare except
for a pair of lightweight shoes. Then,
just as he was about to lift the hem of her tight-fitting miniskirt to
kiss her
on the thighs, the sound of the doorbell intervened, causing him to
start back
in surprise. "Now who-on-earth can
that be?" he irritably exclaimed, scrambling to his feet again.
"I hope it isn't Stephen,"
she
groaned, as he went to open the door.
"If it is him, he'll get
what's
bloody-well coming to him!" Kelly shouted back to her from the
hallway. There was a pause while he
turned the lock, then an exclamation of unequivocal surprise as he
recognized
the caller and involuntarily stood back, as though in dread.
The tall figure of Douglas
Searle, dressed
in a black suit and matching tie, lost no time in availing himself of
Kelly's
impulsive and quite unexpected hospitality, nor in buffeting him along
the
hallway to the sitting-room-cum-study where, at sight of Sharon, he
halted and
smiled. "I take it I have the
pleasure of meeting Miss Sharon Taylor, the actress," he observed.
Sharon nodded and cautiously
smiled back at
him, though neither of them approached the other close enough to shake
hands.
"Our mutual friend, Stephen
Jacobs,
told me you would probably be here this evening," Mr Searle remarked,
principally to
"But, Mr Searle, I had no
idea
..." Kelly was prevented from finishing his apologetic excuse by the
impact of a bullet in the chest, which caused him to slump to the floor.
"James!" screamed
"Oh, my God!" she groaned
and,
overcome by shock, collapsed to the floor, where she lay in an
hysterical heap
until a third bullet from Searle's gun cut short her mental agony by
piercing
her heart.
Satisfied that both of them
were dead,
Douglas Searle returned the revolver to his jacket pocket and began to
ransack
the room with intent to finding his late-wife's letters.
He had unlocked virtually every drawer by the
time he got to the one containing them.
Taking them out of their envelopes, he quickly read each one
through from
first to last before setting fire to them with the aid of a cigarette
lighter. The envelopes were also destroyed
in such
fashion. Then noticing the white
G-string in the same drawer, and recognizing it as the one Paloma had
worn to
the fancy-dress ball, he set fire to it in turn and contemptuously
dropped it
into the metallic wastepaper bin, watching intently until the flames
had
completely engulfed and consumed its smouldering remains - much the way
that
his wife's corpse had been engulfed and consumed by raging fire at the
crematorium. Finally, satisfied that no
further evidence of the affair between his wife and James Kelly was
still at
large, he took out the gun again and, pressing its barrel against the
roof of
his mouth, pulled the trigger to devastating effect.
EPILOGUE
Arriving
back,
the
following week, from a literary engagement in the South of France,
Stephen Jacobs' attention was arrested by a large caption on the front
page of
his local newspaper which read: TWO MURDERS AND ONE SUICIDE - WIDOWER'S
REVENGE. Reading on,
he discovered that the three victims of the affair were none other than
James
Kelly, Sharon Taylor, and Douglas Searle. "Oh
my
God!" he exclaimed, as he
read the stark details of the crime and the presumed circumstances
surrounding
its perpetration.
He remembered the telephone
call Douglas
Searle had made to his Finchley address, shortly after his return from
holiday
with Sharon, when the caller had introduced himself as a friend of
James Kelly
who, in consequence of various personal circumstances in the recent
past, was
keen to play a practical joke on the writer.
For he had unwittingly collaborated in the crime by taking the
older man
into his confidence and duly furnishing him with the information he
required to
track Sharon down on the night she went to visit James.
He had been under the impression that Mr
Searle was merely intending to embarrass and frustrate
Fortunately for Stephen
Jacobs, however,
his latest little sadistic gamble, played at a discreet distance, had
the
potential of working out to his advantage.
For he had been at cross-purposes with himself for too long and
would
now have an opportunity to straighten things out, at last, with
Jennifer Crowe,
the girl he had been really interested in all along, whose loss of
Sharon's
friendship, following her tragic death, would be more than adequately
compensated, he felt confident, by the gain of his, especially as he
would play
her as he had played no other woman before!
