by Amis, Martin
As for the USA…In Crippled America Trump says that he faced much discouragement along the way – until, that is, ‘the American people spoke’. By the American people he means, of course, registered Republicans. En masse the American people have their fluctuations, but they’re essentially practical, don’t you find? Americans respond to leaders who they think will get things done. And I can’t believe that a plurality of voters, come November 8, will solemnly reject the most qualified candidate of all time in favour of the least.
So we only have to blush our way through another four months of this before Trump gets booted and hooted out of town on November 9. And then we’ll be able to relax, and look forward to putting the memory (at least) of this tragicomic excruciation further and further behind us.
* * *
—————
After lights out…
After lights out Elena said, ‘I stole one of your Valium. In case I fret. About Spats.’
‘About Spats? Not Nigel Farage, not Trump. Spats. Elena, let me put your mind at rest. Spats is as happy as a pig in shit out there. Midnight prowls. Birdlings and baby rabbits to rip apart. We’ll see Spats soon enough.’
‘That’s true,’ she said. ‘Mart. I may be wrong, but you seem to have stopped agonising about your book. Is that true too?’
‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘I have to own up to something.’
‘Uh-oh.’
‘It’s nothing bad. It’s good…Very early on this year I had a kind of…I wasn’t at my desk. I was reading on the sofa. I closed my eyes and imagined a visitor had come to the house. Entirely benign. A gentle ghost – a gentle reader, in fact. And guess who it was. My much younger self, come to me with questions. Only I felt more like a girl this time round. It was like receiving a child of mine. Kind of Nat plus Bobbie.’
‘Jesus Christ. Were you having one of your episodes d’you think?’
‘Probably. Anyway, then I wrote ten pages – fast. Something became undammed. It was me at eighteen, when I used to say to myself, I don’t want to be a writer (or not yet). I want to be a reader. I just want to be a part of it. Humbly resolved, Elena. Devotional. I just wanted to be a part of it.’
‘…Okay. Bye now. D’you realise how early we’ve got to get up? In about half an hour!’ She yawned. ‘Well if you do go crazy, I’ll stand by you. Up to a point.’
‘I know you will, my dearest. Up to a point.’
Martin was eighteen, and he was walking just after dark through a distant and neglected suburb of North London when he saw a lit window on the second-lowest floor of a council medium-rise. All it showed were the dark-blue shoulders of an unoccupied armchair. And he thought (this is word for word),
That would be enough. Even if I never write, complete, publish anything at all, ever, that would be enough. A padded seat and a standard lamp (and of course an open book). That would be enough. Then I’d be a part of it.
*1 ‘Delight is the chief if not the only end of poesy. Instruction can be admitted but in the second place, for poetry only instructs as it delights’ (An Essay of Dramatick Poesy). So the pleasure principle had an eloquent champion even then, in 1668.
*2 America flexes its exceptionalism in neglecting to disarm its citizens; in Pinker’s words it has ‘never fully signed on to this clause of the modern social contract’.
*3 Literary history conclusively humbled Clarissa by following it, a year later, with Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones (and how thuddingly democratic that name must have sounded – cf. Charles Primrose, Tristram Shandy, Peregrine Pickle, Sir Launcelot Greaves)…Fielding was already a committed tormentor of Richardson, whose bestselling first novel, the bourgeois penny-dreadful Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1741), was instantly answered by Fielding’s Shamela (a contemptuous parody). But it is the example of Tom Jones, with its easy candour and humour and sexual straightforwardness, that provides the real refutation. In due course the Richardson-type novel (after a nervously extended stay in the genre mocked by Jane Austen and others, that of the Gothic) died out, while the Fielding-type novel, backed up by Don Quixote (thrillingly translated by Tobias Smollett in 1750), went on to constitute fiction in English.
Chapter 4
The Night of Shame
She’s scaring me, Hitch
‘Ah, you’re opening up at last. Go on, Little Keith. Sob it all out.’
‘Well,’ I said. ‘Whatever else I might like about her, and there’s plenty I like about her, I haven’t got to the end of her physically. There’s still a long way to go.’
‘How’s she managed that? After – after two years…Is it all the purdahs?’
‘They help, I suppose.’ I had never confessed to Christopher about the true extent – and the true durations – of all the purdahs. ‘Have you ever dated a religious chick?’
‘No. Or not knowingly. Of course,’ he said, ‘you’ve dated whole nunneries and priories of religious chicks.’
‘Yeah – there wasn’t any way round it till I was sixteen or seventeen. All my ones were working class or lower middle, and that lot were all religious. Gaw, what you had to go through, to get a kiss on the cheek.’
‘Mm, I’d like God to know before he dies just what a huge geohistorical turn-off he’s been. Think, Little Keith. Not just the prohibitions but the guilt. Think of all the fiascos, all the no-shows, and all the hairtrigger ejaculations. And don’t forget all the consoling handjobs – tearfully aborted for fear of blindness and insanity…’
‘All true, O Hitch. When Dad was a kid the school vicar took them round the chronic ward of a madhouse saying one wank and you’ll be just like them. But every now and then – and you may not know this – every now and then old Nobodaddy bestirs himself and cooks you up…one hell of a fuck.’
‘Really?’ Christopher’s intent look: not so much a frown as a bulging stare. ‘This is a real gap in my religious knowledge. In my RK. Please continue.’
It was seven-fifteen on a Wednesday morning, so we were on the train bound for Southend and the printers’ plant (it was our turn to help check the final page proofs and put the Statesman to bed). We never uttered a word of complaint about the six o’clock start, the artistic misery of Liverpool Street Station, the sopping scud of the eastern shore, the reeking hot metal: all this felt to us like honest toil…On our laps we now nursed trembling Styrofoam cupfuls of weak milky coffee. Reduced for now to the blandest of beverages, we were, on the other hand, exercising our civil right as travellers in a smoking car. I said,
‘With ninety-nine per cent of religious chicks, sex comes at them like a horror film. Saturated in dread. Then time passes, and they slowly ease into it, getting less religious along the way. But this little minority, Hitch, this one per cent, they find out very early on that they’ve got a real appetite for it, and a real talent for it too. So of course they start putting themselves about. And guess what. Along the way they get more religious.’
‘As a means of…extenuation? And what’s the result? I mean in the bedroom?’
‘Well. It’s not like the usual Home Counties fuck, I can tell you that. You know, when they, where you…’
‘Where you both bounce around for a bit, then it’s over, and she makes a joke.’
‘Yeah. It’s not like that. It’s no joke for a start. It’s…’
I turned and looked out – through the diagonal rivulets slowly jolting their way down the glass. Beyond, the east of the city crept past (always in my memory under a wet blanket of ashen grey, whatever the season); and then the stops would glide towards us in their turn, Manor Park, London Fields, Seven Kings…
‘It’s like this. As well as being tremendously carnal and dirty and everything, it’s suddenly got all hushed and eye to eye, and glazed, and hypnotic. With an edge of doom to it.’
Christopher said, ‘That sounds…absorbing.’
‘Oh it is. But see, Hitch, and this is
the difficult thing to imagine. She doesn’t just think it, she knows it – she knows for a fact she’s going to Hell. Father Gabriel said so. And it’s like the Fall, every time she does it. Full of woe. All our woe.’
‘Mm. Correct me if I’m wrong, Mart, but this must involve her in some strain.’
‘Oh a great deal of strain. It’s all right for me. I don’t think I’m going to Hell.’
‘You don’t think you’ll be scorched and peed on for eternity.’
‘…Eternity’s weird, don’t you find, as an idea? It’s not that it never ends – it never even begins.’
‘No. A trillion years into it and it’s not a heartbeat nearer to being over.’ We lit fresh cigarettes and he went on, ‘When faced with eternal torture, it’s very hard to look on the bright side. And if she really believes it, as billions do…Maybe that’s why she needs her rests. All her poor little purdahs. If it scours her out like that.’
‘That’s exactly what I used to whimper to myself – during purdahs. Anyway. It’s suddenly getting critical. And crises can’t go on being crises. They’re finite.’
‘And this one’s whisking itself to the boil.’
‘Yeah, and bubbling over. You should see her at the parties she drags me to. Flirting’s a fucking useless word for it.*1 Any old arbitrageur, any old ski bum, and her gaze fills with – as if she’s never even imagined there could ever be anyone quite so heavenly.’
‘…Aw, terrible she’ve been.’
‘Yes, terrible she’ve been. Terrible. You know, she’s always had a grievance. Before I came along. And now it’s all directed at me, because I’m nearest. So what do I get? Torture. What kind of torture? The sexual kind. I’ve had my cock teased in the past, but I’ve –’
‘You’ve had it teased clean off. That Melinda.’
‘Compared to Phoebe, Melinda was a wallflower. Melinda teased it – she never taunted it. Let me try and give you some idea.’
The cold sea mist – the brume, the haar – of Southend was drooling all over the train by the time Christopher said, ‘…It pains me, Mart, but I have to ask whether you think she’s trying to make you – lose heart. Lose heart and retreat.’
‘Mm, well that’s always been her style. More or less from the first date. Why are you still here? And now suddenly it’s a good question.’
‘And what would be your answer?’
‘…I suppose I’m just hanging on for the odd religious fuck, but part of it’s plain vulgar curiosity. No – plain human interest. She’s like a character in a novel where you want to skip ahead and see how they turned out. Anyway. I can’t give up now.’
‘Having come this far, and so near the end?’
‘There’s that. But I can’t give up when she’s all raw like this. Jesus, it’s like having the care of a toddler. What if she hurts herself on my watch? Who can I entrust her to?’ We started gathering our things. ‘On the way back I want you to tell me all you’ve ever learnt about mad chicks.’
‘Oh. I’m supposed to know a thing or two about mad chicks am I?’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Yeah, mad chicks flock to the Hitch. I don’t mean the ones you end up with, I mean the ones you spurn. The crazed beauties who lash your grim rock. Tell me about mad chicks.’
‘All right. What about them?’
The train was now slaked of motion. We stood and I said, ‘Christ, I hate crazy people. They make me crazy. They do. I’m nuts too now. I am.’ And I reached up and scratched my scalp with both hands. ‘She’s scaring me, Hitch.’
Solzhenitskin
Some dates might be useful (this was a dislocating time).
The night of shame, with all its unwelcome wonders, would unfold on July 15/16, 1978 (a Saturday, a Sunday). That particular ride to Southend with Christopher was back in late March. And in early June Phoebe’s postal address changed – from The Hereford, Apartment One, Hereford Road, to Flat 3, 14 Kensington Gardens Square. She moved in.
It was temporary, she said – ‘Just part of the new economy drive.’ The new economy drive was made necessary by Phoebe’s wager of mid-May.*2 Hereford Road was immediately, and illegally, sublet to three immigrant families – with Phoebe retaining a back bedroom wedged solid with her worldly goods.
It was now May 4, a Friday, and on the phone she was saying,
‘Still at Merry’s. Who’s very sweetly going to drive me over. When she’s ready, that is. We’ve got a minute, so go on. And no, it’s not too painful for me to talk about.’
‘Okay. Just curious, but why d’you keep betting against Mrs Thatcher?’
‘I told you. Because I don’t want to be ruled by a woman, okay?’
‘Yeah, but betting against her doesn’t make that less likely.’
‘It’s the principle, Martin. You wouldn’t understand. It’s a matter of being true to your convictions and your…Ah, Merry’s emerging at last. Right. I’ll be on your doorstep in five minutes.’
There was only the one suitcase – unliftably heavy, but only the one. She stood there on the porch, in her oldest black business suit (with the worn patches and missing buttons).
‘Ask me in then,’ she said. And he obliged with a twirl of his hand. ‘It’s like with vampires, Mart,’ she went on with a stare of sudden clarity. ‘And it’s a good vampire rule, this – like them being invisible in mirrors. You see, vampires can’t cross your threshold unless you ask them to.’
* * *
∗
Which he definitely had done – asked her to. She did the prompting and the hinting, but he did the asking. This should be noted. Martin certainly noted it: it astonished him. The Next Thing was in its early days, but he was already wondering if in all his life he had ever suffered so…
‘Martin, I’m ruined,’ she’d said in the Fat Maggot on May 2. ‘Penniless, and homeless. I’m on the street! I don’t even know where I’ll lay my –’
‘That’s all right,’ he said. He gave an emphatic nod. ‘Move in. Move in with me.’
Unsummoned, and very much against the run of his conscious mind, the invitation just formed on his lips: the words said themselves. And as he sat there, eating bread and cheese in the burbly pub, he wondered why he felt proud, why he felt he had done the right thing – the bold thing, the manly thing, the interesting thing.
Move in with me, he said. And now she was here.
‘You know, Mart,’ she called as she unpacked in the other room (the only other room), ‘we must have our housewarming. One of our Blue Moons.’
Cautiously he stirred. That was the current name for their interludes of passion, Blue Moons (in triple reference to their impurity, their melancholy, and above all their rarity). She said,
‘But first I’ve got to recover from all this insane rushing about. I’m shattered. And how’ll we fit it in? It’s the party season and my diary’s about to burst.’ The disembodied voice resumed; and she sounded (he thought) like a hearty aunt in a radio play. ‘I was thinking perhaps Sunday. But no! Cohabitation, my friend, isn’t all beer and skittles, not by any manner of means. On Sunday, Martin, you’ll have to squire me to Morley Hollow – there to seek the paternal blessing. Oh yes. Sir Graeme’ll have to forgive us for living in mortal sin. Now – now what have we here?’
…If he leant forward, which he did, he could see her, watch her: her reflection in the long mirror on the face of the wardrobe (so no, she was not invisible). And framed in that way, she moved with the temporary innocence of the unknowingly observed…Phoebe had in front of her the wrenched-open suitcase; its contents lay at her mercy. With quick fingers she was sorting and grading her smalls and separates, flicking some items away towards the pillows yet seeming to cherish others, at one point raising to her cheek a purple scarf and briefly communing with it…Still in the remains of her officewear, Phoebe: the loose blouse, the dark skirt cinched but half unzipped with a white bloom
of slip or camisole sprouting out from the haunch. She stopped dead. Staring into nothing, her eyes hardened. Then she steadied, and went on in a private murmur,
‘One pair, two pairs, three pairs, four…Oh, my clothes, my clothes, my loathsome clothes.’
Over the next few days, while the realignment settled (and while her musky, smiley, gauzy, rumpy, nipply presence thickened round about him), he continued to feel he had something to celebrate. And he continued to wonder why.
Perhaps there were grounds, at least, for some primordial Mesozoic satisfaction, in that it was to him, Martin, mandrill number one, that she gravitated (and not to Lars or Raoul, or to any old arbitrageur or ski bum). No great triumph, clearly, but why disdain a silent grunt of simian support?
Perhaps he was still fantasising that as her champion, guardian, and regent (and as her ruthless slum landlord) certain seigneurial privileges would inevitably begin to come his way. And they did, too, in a sort of sense. In Kensington Gardens Square she was almost constantly naked, or more often practically naked, or at the very least (to use a word she liked) thoroughly déshabillé. He very soon found out that this was not meant as any kind of invitation.
The nudism was new. He remembered Phoebe saying that the Next Thing ‘would be a package of measures’; and display was clearly one of them, joining applied flirtation and stingey foreplay (as well as the ever-lengthening purdahs)…Now it got complicated for him. At first he liked the idea of her being broke and homeless and above all vulnerable, but now she was actually present, with her toothbrush and her pillowslip of laundry, he soon saw that her vulnerability made her – that her very vulnerability made her invulnerable to unworthy designs…