by Martin Amis
Richard said nothing.
Gwyn's dove-gray house in the innocent morning; Demi's house at dawn. And our vigil, and an even more extraordinary one, in its way. That of Steve Cousins: Barnardo boy.
Scozz seeing it not from the van but through the treated glass of his Cosworth (tinted windows, whitewalls, low racing skirt). Seeing it not as an architectural or even a real-estate phenomenon but as a patchwork of weaknesses. Bits of it seemed to flash and beep at him in outline-to flash and beep in his robot vision. Security-wise the first-floor terrace was a fucking joke. But given his choice Scozzy would probably gain entry by the front door. Using the Sli-Mo. Not that he'd be wanting to bring anything out of there except the information.
Take the opposite vantage. There are the windows to the master bedroom. The glass trembles lightly. Who can go in there-the intruder, the informer, the private dick? Richard Tull wants to go in there. Not corporeally, not in person. He wants to do to Gwyn what Gwyn has done to him. He wants to assassinate his sleep. He wants to inform the sleeping man; an I for an I.
But I'm not going in there. I'm not going in there, not yet. I'm just not going.
It was quite clear to everyone that Gwyn and Demeter Barry had the perfect marriage. You only had to look at them to see that this was a match made in heaven.
They held hands all the time (they were "inseparable"). He called her love all the time. She gave him kisses on the cheek all the time. They were the fond, they were the ideal-they were the dream. Even Richard had to admit it: it was absolutely nauseating. Social diarists like Rory Plantagenet noted their practice, at parties and functions, of releasing each other "lingeringly" as the dynamics of the convivium urged them apart. Gwyn was known to fall into a reverie when his wife was several partygoers from his side: "Just gazing," he would say, when roused, "at my lady." (Richard, if he happened to be present and nearby, would similarly drift into a brown study: the sledgehammer in the alleyway, the poked chisel on the dark basement steps …) Literary interviewers and profilists marked how Gwyn's face would "light up" when Demeter parted the double doors of the drawing room, bearing a tea tray on which Gwyn's favorite Chocolate Olivers were infallibly arrayed. (Reading this, Richard would light up too. Through the sigh of his cigarette smoke he would see the sidling berk with his tire tool, the jagged neck of the smashed beer bottle.) In "The Seven Vital Virtues, 4: Uxoriousness" the Barrys were lensed as they strolled past the squirrels and mazelets and mantled pools of Holland Park, with arms interlocked and fingers interwoven; then, too, you saw the author's wife frowning interestedly over the author's shoulder as the author smiled and murmured at his desktop display screen; next you copped them at their "local" French restaurant, during the dessert course, feeding each other dripping spoonfuls of goopy ice cream. Gwyn spoke to camera about the need for a constant exchange of presents-"little things, but always a little bit too expensive." (Richard, gagging weakly at the TV, would also be pushing the boat out on this one: the hired fist, the chartered army boot.) She was rich. But so was he now. He was intelligent. And now she was too. Her father, with his stick, in the coach-torn grounds of the stately; his father, the trunked Taff on the sluiced duckboards. Love melds. Blood meets brains, in High Bohemia. Just look at the clippings file. "I think the world of her"-Gwyn. "I simply feel incredibly lucky"-Demi.
Gwyn: "She's the best thing that ever happened to me." Demi: "People ask me what it's like being married to a genius, and I say it's completely brilliant."
And there was Richard, jackknifed over his sickbag, searching for assassins in the Yellow Pages …
He rang the London offices of The New York Times. They did keep a copy of the Sunday paper, and Richard was free to come in there to consult or admire it; but he couldn't take it away. They told him, rather, to go to International Dispatches in North Islington. With his mack and his hangover and his book (a biography of William Davenant, Shakespeare's bastard: six hundred words by early next week), he embarked at Ladbroke Grove, changed at Paddington and Oxford Circus, and rode in the slatted light to Islington, whose streets he paced for fifty-five minutes, wringing his hands, until he stumbled upon a lone old man, walled in with information, a crofter in a cottage thatched with Frankfurter Zeitungs and El Paises and India Todays and many other journals daubed in exclamatory Farsi or Sanskrit. The old man told him that he no longer stocked the Sunday New York Times; only the daily. Pressure of space. Richard came home again. Haifa week later, when he had calmed down, he rang the London offices of the The New York Times: they told him to ring the distributors in Cheapside. He did so. They told him that such copies of the Sunday New York Times as came their way were subscription copies, though occasionally-true-there was a spare . . . Richard used all his charm on the young woman at the other end of the line. But the trouble was that he didn't have any charm, not any longer, and she told him he would just have to turn up on Monday morning on the off chance, like anybody else.
So began his weekly journeys to the warehouse in Cheapside, where they would typically pass him round from portakabin to van mouth to storage room and back again, before sending him on his way-to The Little Magazine, in fact, where in the dawn he would start subbing the book reviews over a papercupful of tomato soup. As well as a very bad reality, that papercupful of tomato soup was always a very bad sign . . . It was on his fifth visit that Richard revealed, to the assistant manager's intense sneer of puzzlement, that he didn't necessarily want a copy of that week's Sunday New York Times. Any Sunday New York Times would do. In full contrition Richard followed the assistant manager to another storage room, one never seen before, where any number of Sunday New York Timeses were lavishly and promiscuously heaped, along with countless Sunday Boston Globes, Sunday San Francisco Chronicles, and so on. Richard listed faintly on his feet. In the fever and vertigo he felt there was now an element of everyday incomprehension-at the sadness and grayness and dampness and deadness of disregarded newsprint; and at human profligacy and clamor. Christ, can't everyone shut up. Anyway, he cracked, and went for size. That day he came home with the outrageous bulk of the Sunday Los Angeles Times carefully cradled in his arms. It wasn't just bigger than the Sunday New York Times. It was much bigger.
Brown paper and a ball of string took about a week each to purchase and assemble. Then Richard was ready to move. That day he picked through the corpses of his old typewriters until he found one that was capable of saying, "Dear Gwyn, Something to interest you here. The price of fame! Yours ever, John."
On his desk lay another letter, smudged, crumpled: second-class. Nothing much gets affected by the second-class mail. You don't expect your life to be changed by the second-class mail. This letter said:
Dear Richard,
So then? No reply from the man. Well you said it, Dreams don't mean Anything. Gwyn Barry loves Belladonna, and Darko love's Belladonna but who does Belladonna love. She is deadley.
What about that "jar."
Yours, DARKO
How would you find out about a marriage? How would you find out? Because all marriages are inscrutable. I can tell you everything there is to know about the marriage of the Tulls (I can even tell you what their sheets smell of: they smell of marriage); but I don't know anything, yet, about the marriage of the Barrys. A close scrutiny of "The Seven Vital Virtues, 4: Uxoriousness" would disclose, perhaps, that Demeter was less happy about everything than Gwyn-or less happy about being happy on TV But how would you find out? Richard, at his desk, fondling Darko's letter, fondling Demi in his thoughts, had a couple of ideas. Steve Cousins, in his Cosworth, had a couple of ideas too. But he was far more practical. Scozz was going to find out-he was going to find out something or other. And he was going to do it today: right now. First he had to fetch 13.
When he at last emerged, coming out between the pillars and walking solemnly down the steps of Marylebone Magistrates' Court, 13 had the proud, moistened, middle-distance stare of a man who believes himself to have been gravely and perhaps insupportably traduced. He alway
slooked like this on his way out of court, unless, for one reason or another, he'd got off. As Steve proceeded in the Cosworth down Edg-ware Road, in a series of short bursts and long waits, he glanced at 13's profiled face: too youthful, too rounded, for the stunned and bitter glaze it wore.
"What you get?" "Six months suspended." "And?"
13 sighed and belatedly fastened his seatbelt. "Fines." Steve nodded. 13 drew in breath: he was about to give voice-and in the high style. His intention, plainly, was to speak not just for himself but for all men and women, in all places, in all times-to remind the human heart of what it had once known and had now long forgotten.
"The titheads," 13 began, "is like a gang. The Old Bill," he went on, "is like a gang. Hired by the government. When did it happen? It happened when they upped they pay-1980 or whatever. They saying: it's gonna get rough. Unemployment is it. Riots or whatever. You keep a lid on it and we pay you extra. Where's the money come from? No worries. We'll fine the fuckers."
"Who've you been talking to?" "No one. Common sense."
Although he sounded amused or at least indulgent, Steve was in fact displeased. He kept trying to harden his voice and make his face go all blocked and reptilian-but it wasn't quite happening. Why? Coz Scozz was losing it? Or the old forms, the old rhythms, were just giving out . . . The reason for Steve's displeasure was as follows: 13 had kept him waiting. For ten minutes. They'd had words. "Where you been?" "Looking for the Coke machine. Fancied a Coke." "You spend half your fucking life in there. You know there's no Coke machine." 13 just shrugged and said, "Fancied a Coke." Yeah: leaving his mentor and patron on a double yellow and on a block much frequented by people in uniform, under the shadow of a municipal construct which was really just a massive doorway. The stuff in Latin on the portals, it said: This Is the Way to Other Places …
"Know how much it costs to keep a bloke in nick for a week?" "Go on then."
13 told him. Jesus: like fucking Claridge's. And for that world, with its slops and slop-outs, its stalled testosterone. Labor-intensive: all those retarded parkies in their reeking serge. Security was expensive, and got more expensive quicker than other things. Super-inflationary, like weaponry and medical equipment. Though you'd think, with security,that some counterforce would bring prices down eventually, what with the incredible demand.
13 turned to him and said, "Know what they should do with all that rucking money?"
"Go on then."
"Buy you a mortgage. Buy you a mortgage. All that money locking you up where all you do is learn more of the same. Watching TV about antiques is it. Buy you a mortgage. You got your own house you stay indoors out of trouble."
Until now 13's social analysis had found, in Steve Cousins, a reasonably sympathetic listener. There were lags of ninety who saw crime that way too: as guerrilla work in the class war. But 13 was leaving him here.
"Not much of a deterrent though, is it, Thirt?" said Scozzy. "What kind of message is that sending? Don't break into a house. Or else we'll buy you a house."
13 brooded for a traffic light or two. Then he said: "What they don't get is rich people like being robbed."
"Yeah? Why's that then?"
"Insurance! They in it together is it. Can't see what all the fucking fuss's about. They get it all back plus more and the insurance ups the premiums on the poor people. Simple as."
Passing Speakers' Corner and entering Park Lane, Steve had the rare and transient pleasure of engaging third gear. He glanced sideways. He changed down. In the days when he'd played squash regularly, and tried tennis out for a while, Steve had given a lot of thought to the question of where the power came from, on the shot: wrist or arm? Take a cloth serviette. You can throw that into somebody's face as hard as you like and it's nothing: just a powderpuff. But with a good flick of the wrist you can bloody their nose or blacken their eye. As he pulled away from the lights by the Dorchester, Scozzy changed from first to second and with a flick of the wrist gave his passenger four knuckles right across the cheekbone. 13 's head smacked into the side window and then bounced back again.
"Jesus. What was that for?"
"Never keep me waiting. Never do it, mate. Never."
13 sat there blinking and feeling his cheek. This was all he fucking needed. He was going to get beaten up tonight by Crash and Rooster-Booster anyway, as it was. To mark his appearance in court. 13 said, "That really hurt, man."
Of course you'd never get a meter. So 13 could just drive round Berkeley Square as fast as he dared for as long as it took while Steve went to pay his call on Mrs. V.
"See? All in the wrist, that," said Steve. "All in the wrist."
Anita Verulam's basement office was, as usual, a two-room altar of middle class and Middle Eastern gratitude and praise. Cellophaned bouquets, professionally gift-wrapped boxes of chocolates and bottles of champagne, various hampers and caskets: all these were offerings from the opulent households which Mrs. Verulam supplied with maids, cooks, chars, nannies, nurses, drivers, gardeners, hewers of wood and drawers of water, batmen, bondmen, gentlemen's gentlemen-and anyone else who came under the heading of help. In the saunas and restaurants and department-store coffee shops of West London the name of Mrs. Verulam was mouthed in sacred whispers by wealthy housewives, all of them, by now, crack delegators, their homes thrumming empires of monosyllabic vassalage. Had these ladies been a little bit crazier, and a lot richer, they might have built "shrines" to Mrs. Verulam, in attics, in disused guest rooms. The help she dealt in was exclusively foreign. Foreign help was actually helpful, foreign cleaning ladies could actually clean: they knew how you did it. Whereas the cleaning gene had long absented itself from the indigenous DNA. This was unfortunate, if you took the long view at the big picture. Cleaning, in planetary terms, and unlike other sectors, held wonderful promise. Cleaning was obviously going to be huge. Lady Demeter Barry had never set eyes on Mrs. Verulam, but on the telephone she poured her heart out to her three times a week.
Steve said, "Did you take a look in the file for us?" Us came naturally: it was less culpable somehow.
The cigarette in her mouth wagged up and down as she said, "When were they married exactly?"
He gave the month and the year.
"It seems to have got steadily choppier. A whole stream of walkouts." Mrs. Verulam was a fifty-year-old widow in a pink two-piece suit; when Mr. Verulam was alive she had walked with address into a certain kind of drawing room-Paris, Barcelona, Frankfurt, Milan. "It's not Lady Demeter. No complaints there." Her voice was warmly emphysemic, but her eyes were hooded and cold. Often during their encounters here Mrs. Verulam talked on, holding the telephone at arm's length while a baffled female larynx, a marooned existence, wailed or pleaded into the air, as if seized at the throat by her painted fingers. "It's him they don't like. No children," she added pitilessly.
"Do you think he uh…?"
"My little Spanish ladies and Portuguese ladies are sometimes very religious. They'll walk out on a couple if they think the rhythm method is being used. And of course Demeter's Catholic, isn't she? The otherthing about these little ladies is that they're astonishingly discreet. Even to me. What we need," she said, re-consulting the folder, "is a Filipino. Or a Colombian."
Steve nodded approvingly. He understood. Filipinos, Colombians: you could lean on them with threats of deportation. You know: Been here long, have we, Charito?
"Mm, lots. Ah, Ancilla. Good. I'll talk to Ancilla and let you know."
"Appreciate it, Mrs. V. How's our friend Nigel?"
"Yes, thank you for that, Steve."
"I had a word with him."
"Good as gold now. Quiet as a mouse after ten o'clock."
"Yeah, well. I had a quiet word with him."
They looked at each other. Mrs. Verulam was a modern person, and routinely traded in information; and if it had ever struck her as odd or unprofessional it struck her that way no longer. She too was childless. There was an affinity between the Barnardo boy and Anita Verulam. Because the family
was one thing and they were the other.
On the way out Steve wondered if Mrs. V had any idea just how loud it had been-his quiet word with Nigel. Nigel was a rich hippy who lived in the flat above Mrs. Verulam's best friend, another widow, called Aramintha. It was once Nigel's habit to play classical music, mostly Mahler, at full volume, well into the small hours. Aramintha tried everything. She asked Nigel nicely; she asked him not so nicely; she got the landlord to ask him; she got the police to ask him; she asked Nigel nicely again. All of Aramintha's entreaties were to no avail. Until Steve smashed his door down at three in the morning and went in there with Clasford and T, and kicked fucking Nigel out of bed and dragged him across the fucking floor by his fucking hair and put his fucking head on the . . . What did they do? Oh yeah. Jammed his head between the amp and the CD player while they shattered them with baseball bats. And Steve cracked his fucking elbow into Nigel's fucking mouth and told him, at full volume-no noise after ten. Good as gold now, and very polite on the stairs. It wasn't the first time Scozzy had helped out Mrs. V. She had a few bob and liked the sort of young man who gave trouble.
He climbed into the Cosworth, next to 13, and said, "Warlock."
At four-fifteen Lizzete showed up with Marius, who wore a green sash athwart his burgundy blazer to commemorate some extraordinary achievement in art or football, and Richard was relieved of Marco and all further duties. He went upstairs. Upstairs consisted of his and Gina's cramped bedroom, plus a little stall in the corner with a shower and a canin it. He undressed and redressed quickly, although there was plenty of time, and as if he felt cold suddenly, although the room was warm. Richard had had a more than averagely bad afternoon. After three he realized that his book-review roster was all out of synch. He was obliged to free his mind of The Soul's Dark Cottage: A Life of Edmund Waller and The Unfortunate Lover: William Davenant, Shakespeare's Bastard and hastily reacquaint it with Robert Southey: Gentleman Poet, on which he was meant to write seven hundred words in the next seventy minutes. He achieved this while also smoking fifteen cigarettes with his head more or less out of the window and while also conducting some kind of conversation with Marco, who, that day, was being especially clinging and garrulous and ill. The last sentence took him a quarter of an hour and caused him to draw blood on his bitten fingertips . . . Richard had to do the room over before he found a pair of white shorts; he had to upend the laundry basket and shake it out onto the bathroom tiles before he found a pair of white socks, which cracked and creaked to his touch. It didn't strike him then, even though Gina was in his thoughts, as she would be, in their bedroom: it didn't quite strike him then that everything was getting less clear, less bright-even the universe of his laundry, over which Gina presided with decreasing gravity, like a divinity insufficiently prayed to, who no longer felt gripped by the force of the covenant, who no longer felt gripped by belief. If Gina was cheating on him, then she would be cheating on him on Fridays. Friday was consecrated as Gina's day to herself: no one was allowed in the flat, without warning, until teatime, when the boys came home from school. This was their agreement-of a year's standing. Richard went to the Tantalus Press or The Little Magazine or the Adam and Eve. But for a while he didn't go anywhere, and lurked outside, watching. Gina would regularly glance out of the window and see cigarette smoke wafting from the off-white Prelude, as it then was, before that car collapsed and they bought the tomato-red Maestro.