Inside Story (9780593318300)

by Amis, Martin

  ‘And it’s even worse than that. I used to have “affairs”, when I was young and innocent, but now I only do it with the same man once. That’s why I’m so thorough. Once.’

  ‘Once?’

  ‘Once. With a few rare exceptions. And it’s even worse than that.’ And she told him. ‘So then, Martin. I’ll see you around.’

  He was thinking. ‘Actually,’ he said, ‘the even worse thing isn’t as bad as the worse thing. I’m sorry, Phoebe, but I’m going to pursue this. Withdraw, retire? Where to? No, I’m not giving up. So. When do you get back from Germany?’

  * * *

  —————

  ‘Enfin, Little Keith. The business of the business suit.’

  It was nearly two by now, so we were in Luigi’s, the Italian caff on Red Lion Street, ordering our meat breakfasts and the first carafe of Valpolicella. I said,

  ‘For a start it’s not just the business suit, is it. It’s the whole ensemble. You know it’s not like she’s taking off a denim miniskirt and a fucking tank top.’

  ‘Or a pair of tracksuit bottoms and a fucking sloppy joe.’

  ‘Yeah. Or even the fragrant wisp of a summer frock. No…See, she spends a lot of time and money on it, gussying herself up like that. And it obliges you to meet the uh, the challenge of her investment.’

  ‘Her outgoings and her overheads and her running costs.’

  ‘Exactly. The removal of a business suit is somehow transactional. When I was finally allowed to come, and we were lying there, I had a sudden sense of danger. I suddenly expected Phoebe to say, All right, that’ll be five hundred quid.’

  ‘Mm. Remember the paranoid headlines in Portnoy? Asst Lit Ed Found Headless In Go-Go Girl’s Apt.’ Christopher looked around for the waiter. He murmured, ‘It’s time, or so it seems to this reviewer, for an alerting digestif. Grappa?’

  ‘Oh go on then…And afterwards, when I walked her home, she cooled me! She wasn’t having it.’ I explained. ‘She calls it quality control.’

  ‘Well, control anyway. She’s obviously mad about control.’

  ‘Mm.’ Just then I had a presentiment that on this subject I might cease to confide in Christopher. Either that, or my confidences would become inauspiciously terse. ‘But the gimmick of the self-imposed purdah. I’m hoping she’ll relax about that.’

  ‘Probably. You’ll wear her down. A bold and tender lover like yourself, Little Keith. Sensitive but strangely masterful. Caring and empathetic, and yet, withal, excitingly bold. Adventurous? Yes. Disrespectful? No. At once athletic and –’

  ‘Yes yes, Hitch.’

  He sat back. ‘Oh well. For the record she sounds like a – like an uneconomical use of your energy, Mart. But there’s no point in telling you that, now you’ve got the scent of her. So. When does she get back from Germany?’

  The bill came. We would be the last to leave.

  I said, ‘Whose turn is it?’

  ‘Oh yours without question.’ He passed me the tray. ‘This shouldn’t present any undue difficulties. Who paid last night?’

  ‘Me of course and happily. She said, You know, if I paid, or even if we went Dutch, I’d have to hate you for all eternity. Yup. Until the conversion of the very last Jew.’

  ‘…Is she religious by any chance?’

  ‘As she was sending me on my way she said, And on top of everything else I’m a believer. She’s Catholic. It’s very important to me, but utterly private. I don’t go on about it. But at dinner she went on about – or kept returning to – a certain Father Gabriel. My mentor, my second father. All this.’

  ‘Catholicism. The far right at prayer. And her politics?’

  ‘Her politics?’ And I thought (as usual), What’s that got to do with anything? ‘She doesn’t have any politics. What she has is current affairs.’ They were gathering their things. ‘Mao hasn’t got long, et cetera. And oh yeah. She loathes Mrs Thatcher.’

  ‘Does she now. Phoebe can’t be Labour. So it’s personal.’

  ‘Oh, from the gut. By no means everyone fancies Mrs Thatcher, Hitch. Like you do.’

  ‘Ah come on, she’s a minx.’

  ‘Miss Dairy Product 1950. No erotic content whatever.’

  ‘False, quite false! And I can prove it.’ He started leading the way to the door. ‘In this day and age I suppose it should really be Ms Dairy Product. And Ms Universe.’

  ‘Mm. Why’s Miss Universe always from Earth?’

  ‘Why not Miss Neptune.’

  ‘She sounds nice. You can almost visualise her. Long eyelashes. Miss Neptune…’

  ‘But how about Miss Pluto? D’you like the sound of her? No, you’re wrong, quite wrong, about Maggie. The Leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition? She stinks of sex.’*6

  We swung ourselves out on to the street.

  * * *

  —————

  Now how in fact did the first date end? On what terms?

  Let me think, let me consult memory, let me consult – the truth…

  And the truth was he kissed and praised her and stroked her hair and weighed its runnels in his hand for six or seven minutes. And made it clear how ready he was to learn more – to learn more, at the feet of Phoebe Phelps. He stood back as she entered the little conservatory of the vestibule. Behind glass once again. The way she was when he first saw her, safely encaged in glass.

  He lingered under the arch for a valedictory cigarette. Meanwhile his male intuition was telling him that even if he won the privilege of a second date, and a third, it was unlikely to last long – this thing with Phoebe. ‘Time’, says Auden, ‘that is intolerant / Of the brave and innocent / And indifferent in a week / To a beautiful physique…’ Her physique, it seemed to him, was an embarrassing, even an accusatory godsend (put together, inch by inch, with all his susceptibilities in mind). That body, in combination with that face: an image of middle-class probity, till slit by her lawless smile.

  But the trouble was, or the trouble would soon be…Time, long-term time, what does it hold dear? It ‘worships language and forgives / Everyone by whom it lives’. What this would come down to, in the here and now, was everyday discourse; and when they talked there were few shared registers and associations, and so the words seemed to hang in the middle air somehow, keeping themselves to themselves. Clearly, the thing with Phoebe was bound up with the life expectancy of his carnal awe. It was a trite question, of course, but how long does lust last – all on its own?

  …Was she watching him now, from the shadows of her balcony, as he enjoyed his husky smoke under the lamplight? There were moments, during the kissing and praising, when it seemed possible she might relent. Would she now call down for him – in aching languor?…He waited. Then as he buttoned his overcoat he raised an arm to her in tribute and farewell. Farewell – until May Day.

  Then I turned with a flourish and walked back to Bayswater. I was not yet twenty-seven. It was 1976.

  Mind over matter

  ‘Oh, Phoebe, is it always going to be like this?’ he asked in the dark – in 1977.

  ‘Ew, Phoebe, eez eet ohlways going to be like theece?…You’ve been saying that, in your poncy accent, every night for eleven and a half months. Did you go to Eton or somewhere?’

  ‘No, I told you, grammars and crammers. And no I haven’t been saying it every night. And how d’you mean, poncy?’

  ‘You know…’ She shrugged. ‘Poncy. And yes you have. Every night since that time I got back from Germany.’

  ‘Okay, yes, I said it then. Because I thought you’d be pleased to see me.’

  ‘And I was pleased to see you.’

  ‘But not pleased enough.’

  And this was what he was going on about. On average (he had recently paged through two pocket diaries), just under 85 per cent of their dates were anticlimactic in at least two senses.

  She sa
id, ‘But it works, doesn’t it. Come on, concede. It works.’

  He gave no answer. Tonight, on this special occasion, there’d been an exchange of gifts and an unprecedented dinner for two, by candlelight, at Hereford Mansions (a cold collation from the corner deli – but those candles were mounted and torched by Phoebe alone…). And tonight, too, had been chaste. She said,

  ‘The ingratitude. It’s extraordinary, it’s absolutely extraordinary. Here you are, still snivelling with lechery after how long? When was the last time you felt like that after a whole year? And do I get any credit?…Own up, Martin. It works.’

  With a silent sigh he said, ‘It works.’

  ‘There. Finally…And as you know, it isn’t that I’m not tempted. Give me your hand.’ He obeyed. Then she whispered, ‘See? No – listen. You can hear it…I suppose you think’, she said (slowly unsticking his fingers), ‘that this is just an extra tease, but I’m trying to instruct you, Martin. Mind over matter.’

  ‘Mm. Is that what it says on your Buddhist symbol?’

  ‘Stop whining.’ She settled herself. Contented grunts punctuated the silence. A silence that lasted till she said, pensively, sleepily, half yawning as she turned over on her side, ‘An entire year. This is madness.’ Her voice again became a whisper. ‘One of the things is, sex terrifies me. Haven’t you noticed? It’d be fine if I didn’t enjoy it.’ She turned away again and her tone renormalised. ‘This comes under the heading of religion, Mart, so I’m not going to labour the point. I just keep feeling there must be repercussions. For me enjoying it. There.’ Yawning now without restraint she said, ‘Anyway. It might a good idea to move on to a different regime. Sexually. And you’ll have to meet my parents at last.’

  ‘…Different in what way?’

  ‘Less permissive. That’s right, Martin – less permissive. But not yet. Well it’s a logical step. Just think of it as the next thing.’

  The eleven developments

  So what else surfaced, in the course of that first year? The main developments are listed below – in no particular order, and certainly not in order of importance. He didn’t know what was important, at that stage, and he didn’t discover the core truth about Phoebe till July 15/16, 1978 – thereafter iconically known as the Night of Shame…

  (1.) ‘Marry me!’ he cried out one night, at a very dire moment. And this was pitifully early on – just two weeks after he sped to the airport to meet her Lufthansa flight. ‘Please. Marry me.’ ‘Nope,’ she said distinctly in the dark. ‘I don’t want a husband. Let alone a child. Ever…This subject is now closed.’

  (2.) Her age. Phoebe had always dismissed with a flip of her hand his occasional enquiries (as if finding them simply very dull); but in the spring of 1977 she accompanied him to the south of France,*7 and at the little hotel she looked on with apparent unconcern as he paged through her passport. Phoebe was born (in Dublin) in 1942. Which made her seven years the elder – thirty-five. He approved. The older the better, he thought, within sane limits. Older women impressed him and moved him with their greater share of lived life, of time and experience.

  (3.) She wasn’t metropolitan middle class, as he’d assumed, but something more exotic. Phoebe spent her childhood in South Africa, and her youth in the London dormitory belt (where her parents remained). Twice Phoebe had got him in the car to go to Sunday lunch at the Phelpses’, and twice the mission was aborted (‘I suddenly don’t feel like it, okay?’). On the other hand, Phoebe was often made welcome at the huge freestanding house in London NW3, shared by Martin’s father and his second wife – the award-winning novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard…

  Phoebe had two much older sisters, Siobhan (pron. Shuvawn), and Aisling (pron. Ashlin). Her dad, Graeme, was Scottish-English, and her mum, Dallen, was Irish. Phoebe idealised Graeme and demonised Dallen; she gave the impression, too, that the family had known better days, much better days – and that it was all Dallen’s fault.

  (4.) Oh yeah. He had glimpsed it regularly enough, but four months passed before Phoebe let him take a proper look at it (under a reading lamp): the tattoo on the taut slope of her left buttock. Jungle Book and Kama Sutra colours (bluey-green with dots of garnet), roughly rectangular, and about the size of a folded butterfly. A mandala, she said, a cosmic Buddhist symbol – the lone vestige of her brief spiritual period (c.1960). Tattoos, to him, only looked nice on non-white flesh; and Phoebe’s looked nice, louchely nice on her Amerindian glaze; it had a tiny rubric in an unfamiliar alphabet; she had forgotten what the words were supposed to mean.

  (5.) Lightfooted Phoebe had the gift of silence, of equable silence. She occupied herself for hours and hours while he read or wrote. She banged about in the kitchen and squirted out fizzy drinks at the bar, but she was otherwise silent. After a while she repaired to the phone in her bedroom and got on with her vendettas. She hounded office-furniture suppliers, accountants, utilities bureaucrats, and the owners or managers of betting shops (this last point will be clarified)…He couldn’t hear the words but he sometimes attended to her tone: either sarcastic, incensed, haughty, or quietly spiteful. She had an ever-shifting roster of vendettas.

  (6.) There was a strange disconnection – strangely hard to describe – in her response to humour. When amused by others, she laughed throatily and often. But when others were amused by her, when she made others laugh (his friends, her friends), she never joined in, she never laughed along; her mouth, her eyes, maintained neutrality, as if she was only funny by accident…

  (7.) Every now and then her combative buoyancy ebbed away from her: these episodes were called her slumps. She would ring him and postpone the next visit, her voice somnolent and weirdly hollow. This happened patchily. Nothing for months and then once a week. After a day or two her combative buoyancy returned. They were seeing each other about every other night plus most weekends. She went on business trips, and he too had occasional assignments (mainly in America).

  (8.) Phoebe’s workplace was in a freshly gilded medium-rise just off Berkeley Square. Quite often he left the New Statesman around midday and rode the Underground westward a couple of stops to Green Park, and collected her in the infinite atrium, and took her to the Fat Maggot, an early gastropub, for an elaborate Ploughman’s Lunch (and three bags of crisps); and then he returned her – to Transworld Financial Services (or TFS), whose HQ was in Threadneedle Street, EC1.

  (9.) Once, at the Fat Maggot, the young couple were hurriedly and alarmingly joined by Phoebe’s parents. ‘They’re shopping in town and I asked them along. And by the way,’ said Phoebe, looking at her watch, ‘he likes to be called Sir Graeme.’ ‘Why? For fun?’ ‘No, it’s inherited. So it’s Lady Phelps too, but you can just call Dallen Dallen. Ah here they come.’ Martin went on full alert…Sir Graeme was slim, almost scrawny, with flowing caramel hair and shapely bones – an artistic face, but one ruined by a disgracefully small nose. Bibulous, flat-topped, and tubular, it looked like a scarlet thimble. His voice was ultra-refined (far posher than the Queen’s) and as flowery as he could make it with his lazily pretentious vocabulary (‘And how was it received, Martin – your latest oeuvre?’)…Dallen, being Irish, talked with real fluency, and Martin quickly decided he liked her; she was darkly neurasthenic, but a fairly comfortable valetudinarian by now, despite her hot flushes and her migraines…Phoebe paid, in cash. ‘You must come to Sunday luncheon, dear boy,’ stressed Sir Graeme in parting. ‘Nearly a year, eh? Chapeau!’

  (10.) Phoebe was, she said, ‘appalled’ by her own handwriting. When she told him this, one weekend, as they wandered along the Serpentine, he gradually realised that he had never seen any examples of it – her calligraphy, her penwomanship. If she left him a note (get milk, back in an hour) she resorted to her antique typewriter or to toiling block capitals.

  (11.) In bed…Time had only deepened and simplified his respect for her body: to him it was something like the hard proof of his own heterosexuality (it was the smoking
gun); everything he needed was there. And in bed – on those occasions when she didn’t just get into it and go to sleep and then get out of it – she was both busy and businesslike, energetic, unsqueamish, shockingly inventive, and at the same time curiously detached, conscientious, even painstaking (she left nothing undone)…Never entirely naked, she wore stockings, a sash, a boa, a shirt, a skirt, and once or twice her whole office ensemble, not excluding her shoes – her high-heeled shoes, sliding in over the bottom sheet. But her defining peculiarity, or so it seemed to him, had to do with her hands.

  Her peccadilloes, her weaknesses, her friends

  As for Phoebe’s little vices (this bulletin is technically datelined April 1977): she was not a serious drinker, not a drinker at all by national standards, and she was an utterly frivolous smoker (she didn’t even inhale; like his mother, Hilly, with her menthol Consulates, Phoebe instantly expelled the smoke over her shoulder or straight up in the air). What she was was a gambler…*8

  A gambler, and not a reader. After a year, the only literary development at Hereford Mansions was this: her pile of unread Economists now included two unread New Statesmans and, further down, an unread TLS. In February she paid her maiden visit to his flat off Queensway (14c, Kensington Gardens Square: very small and very cheap but just about presentable in its studently way, sitting room, bedroom, kitchen, bathroom, all clumped together with no passages in between); she came through the door and stood still. ‘Too many books, man,’ she sorrowfully decided.

  A couple of weeks later Phoebe primly spent the night, and when he brought her tea in the morning she was propped up in bed with a thin paperback – The Whitsun Weddings (1964). This wasn’t entirely unexpected.*9 As he positioned the cup in her grip he saw she was reading the title poem, but he made no comment and just settled himself beside her. Minutes passed. Every now and then he ventured a peripheral glance: she was moving her lips to the words (which she did not do with newspapers or menus or betting slips), and he clearly saw her mime the phrase: we slowed again. Soon she put the book aside with a lift of her eyebrows.