by Amis, Martin
*2 As we say goodbye to this shaming topic, let’s spare a thought for perhaps the most pathetic noun in the English language: ‘missive’ (and its plural). Having no life of its own, it dawdles on street corners, waiting for some dim bulb – in his or her riff about ‘letters’ – to exhaust the usual EVs (‘communications’, ‘dispatches’, ‘items of correspondence’, and of course ‘epistles’) and finally make a long arm for ‘missives’. Then for a little while the shivering wretch creeps in from the cold.
Chapter 5
London: Phoebe at Seventy-Five
On a midweek afternoon I took the tube from Marble Arch to Bayswater, walked down the little cosmopolis of Queensway, turned left into Kensington Gardens Square, and paused outside number 14…I was thinking back, thinking back to the times when (after a certain sort of phone call) I used to sprint – sprint – the half mile from here to Phoebe’s flat and to her waiting human shape. Now, in 2017, my senses could look forward to a rather different kind of feast – and how nice it would be, I thought, to turn around and sprint or at least scuttle in the opposite direction. But no, of course I shuddered on, north for a block, then left into Westbourne Grove, where Hereford Mansions soon loomed.
As I approached the building I saw two once-familiar figures stepping out from under the porch and into the September sunshine, Lars and Raoul, squinting and chuckling as they furled their off-white silk scarves round their throats…I was early, and had time to consider them. Lars and Raoul resembled their long-ago selves in the same kind of way that ‘Beijing’ resembles ‘Peking’, that ‘Mumbai’ resembles ‘Bombay’: cognately. The same went for Martin, of course: I only derived from the Martin I used to be.
‘Ah, Mr Amis! It’s all our yesterdays!’
‘Martin. So – a blast from the past!’
‘Raoul, Lars,’ I said, lighting the pre-ordeal cigarette and asking them how they were…Up close, I had to admit, they seemed scandalously unchanged, Lars still the wiry beachcomber, Raoul still the ample maître d’; unchanged too were the inexplicably clean whites of their idle eyes. After a while I said,
‘Well, gentlemen. Nice to see you. I’d better go in. How’s her mood?’
‘Up and down, obviously,’ said Lars. ‘Though really not that bad. Considering.’
‘Great blow to her pride of course,’ said Raoul. ‘Her father.’
I said, ‘What about him?’
‘She never got over his death, you see. Sir Graeme popped off – ooh, ten years ago. At a hundred and six, God bless him. And he was a baronet, Martin,’ Raoul went on with a priestly air. ‘The centuries-old connection to the nobility severed, with Lady Dallen long gone and no male line. And I happen to believe that kind of thing matters dreadfully. A huge blow to her social self-esteem. Her entrée.’
‘You really think so? Is that when she stopped going out?…Maud told me. When I last saw Phoebe I’d just turned thirty-two. And now I’m more than twice that.’
‘In which case,’ said Raoul, smiling at Lars, ‘you may find her slightly changed.’
Phoebe was in her old apartment block, but she wasn’t in her old apartment. She had moved, from A (2) to g (vii), from the second floor to the eighth: to ‘the attic of grannies and widows’, as she used to call it, ‘and old maids’. The name tag no longer promised ‘Kontakt’ – just ‘Miss P. Phelps’. I pressed the steel nub and within a couple of seconds the lock buzzed and weakly rattled.
In the lift I tried to arrange my face in accordance with the politesse of late-phase reunions: bland, all-forgiving. But the door to g (vii) was already open and the woman peering through the gap couldn’t possibly be Miss P. Phelps. This was ruled out not by her hair (tufts of caramel blonde with a neglected streak of mauve), nor, at least in theory, by her wipeable nylon jumpsuit and her chunky yellow gyms; it was ruled out by her age (she wasn’t even sixty). In a rustic singsong she said,
‘Hello there, Martin. I’m Meg. Now have a seat here whilst I fetch you a tea. I’m told you like it as it comes, no milk, no sugar? She won’t be long. Her helper, Jonjon – he’s with her at the minute. Why don’t you have a seat and read some of those books?’
…Like its predecessor six floors down, Phoebe’s living room made you think of a doctor’s vestibule; in here, though, you would be waiting to see a different kind of doctor, an older doctor, not a Harley Street specialist but an enfeebled GP with a surgery on, say, Cold Blow Lane (one plugging along with his little backlist of patented remedies). Dormer windows, grey carpet, low ceiling…By books Meg meant the waiting-room magazines: a few tousled glossies that had long lost their shine, House and Garden, Country Life…
The day seemed to darken. It was ten past four. Meg entered stage left, placed the mug on a tablemat, and continued across the room; she dipped into an alcove or passageway in the far right corner, and I could hear the squeak of her soles getting softer, then pausing, then getting louder again; she re-entered stage right, and announced with a chastened look,
‘Whew, she’ll be a fair while yet I fancy! Are you all right there, Martin?’ She turned and gazed towards the shadowy chute of the window. ‘Thank heavens for that Jonjon is all I can say. It beats me how he does it.’
I drank the tea, endorsing it with near-continuous infusions of nicotine and water vapour from my e-pen (brandname: Logic).*1 Out on the street Lars had gone on to say, Getting on for forty years? And he looked pained and protective when I told him the year. Oh, Mart, he murmured, that’s half a lifetime away…
Yes, Lars. The summer of 1981. We’d already broken up, and I was more or less engaged to someone else. But then she called me from the airport and she…
The occasion of sin – 2
She called him from the airport and she said,
‘Ah, there you are. It’s me. Listen. Merry and I’ve just got off a plane and we find ourselves in a bit of a predicament. We’re at Gatwick, and we –’
He listened on. The phone was busily telling him some story about door keys, or mortise locks, and how Merry (you know Merry), as forgetful as ever, had left the spare set in the beachbag that they…
‘Meaning’, she summarised, ‘can I come over for an hour? Till this gets sorted out?’
‘Let me think,’ he said. ‘Uh, where did you fly in from?’
‘Corsica. So I’m lovely and brown…Go on, Mart. I won’t disturb you, honest. You can go on working. I’ll take a quick tour of your new place and then I’ll curl up with my Daily Mail and won’t make a sound.’
As he drew in breath to answer he felt again the burden of the advice passed on to him just the night before by that earnest fiancé, C. E. Hitchens: advice about ‘error-likely situations’…But Martin felt he needn’t worry: he was fine, he was safe. Solemnly and gratefully committed to Julia, settled and steadied by the promise of marriage and fatherhood, he had moved beyond the old compulsiveness (no more man-pleasers and man-teasers, no more walking-talking aphrodisiacs, no more illuminati of boudoir and garter belt)…Also to be considered was the fact that Phoebe, a very old friend, was in a bit of a fix (and she was lovely and brown, and there was the – quite harmless – peepshow element, and a temptation was better than nothing at all). So he shrugged and said,
‘An hour? Yeah sure.’ It was all right. He was safe.
Then what you might ask was that strained protuberance doing on his lap? What was that sullen pulse? What was that transmission from his lower heart?
Just an echo, a reverberation. Or so he told himself ninety minutes later as he sauntered down the single flight to let her in.
Martin slid the bolt and pulled the door open – and immediately had to deal with another reflex. He gagged.*2
Copper-coloured Phoebe was wearing white – a sheer summer dress. With her white handbag slung over her shoulder. And kitten-heeled white sandals with thin white bands that curled up around her copper-coloured calves…
‘No suitcase?’ he asked as he kissed her cheek.
‘I parked it at Merry’s. Where I also had a quick bath first.’ She stepped past him. ‘Is it up here?’
‘Let me lead the way,’ he said, suddenly reluctant to follow in her wake. Phoebe, seen from the rear, always reminded him that even the slenderest girls held untold power in their back saddles, patiently ticking over; nor did he want to see all that western light come flooding through her inner thighs, forming a candleflame in her core, as he knew it would, like a wavering question mark…Phoebe said,
‘It’s freestanding and a nice shape.’ She meant the house. ‘What was it before?’
‘A rectory. There’s still some kind of tabernacle across the backyard.’
‘How many flats?’
‘Three. I’m the middle one – here.’
Once inside, she twirled to the doorway of the sitting room, then to the doorway of the study (where the balcony windows were open to the breeze), then to the doorway of the underused kitchen, which had another room off it, with its signs of everyday kitchen life – a kitchen table and a couple of kitchen chairs…
She said, ‘And the bathroom. Which is quite a decent size, I see. Ooh and with a chaise longue no less. And that’s the way to the bedroom? I’ll just take a quick scan of it.’ Which she did, without comment. ‘Mm, if we’d lived here, maybe we wouldn’t’ve broken up. So airy…Right. Back to your desk! I’ll curl up with my paper in there. Oh, are you still single by the way?’
‘Uh, yes, officially. For a little while longer.’
‘So you haven’t uh, tendered your vows? You haven’t yet foresworn all others?’
Sinking back on the sofa, she gave a quiet laugh of settled condescension, as if enjoying a private joke, as if saying, Really, the notions some people get about themselves, and rounding it all off with a decidedly asocial grimace. Yes, the brutish off-centredness had had time to reappear (and we regret to say that he was additionally stirred to see it). ‘Look at that mosquito bite on my thigh. It itched, so I scratched it. Go on, back to the grindstone with you. Don’t shut the doors the whole way, Mart. That’d be unfriendly. But I promise, you won’t know I’m here…’
* * *
—————
Oh, he knew she was there – even in the silence barely a heartbeat passed when he didn’t know she was there. Then came sounds. The kitchen tap. The fizz of the TV (quickly extinguished). The fumble with the telephone, then her voice. Then her voice, closer, saying, ‘Forty-five minutes…Can I have a bath before I go?’
‘I thought you’d had a bath.’
‘I did, but it was only a whore’s bath. On Merry’s bidet.’ The study door opened. ‘I’m rather achey from the flight.’ Her arms were wing-shaped and her hands were occupied behind her back. ‘What I need is a good soak.’ A shoulder was bared, and a section of intricate clavicle. ‘A good soak. Don’t you agree?’
‘…Well go on then.’
‘Thanks.’ As she moved off he heard a sigh and a soft whoosh as she vacated her dress. ‘…Mart,’ she called, ‘the plug. Does the thingy go up or down?’
He waited a moment; he gripped the desk and levered himself to his feet.
‘…You needn’t look so shocked,’ she said with an affronted frown, ‘just because I’m wearing a bra. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten already that planes make my breasts swell up. Well they do. They keep their shape but they go all heavy and feel as though they’re about to burst. See for yourself. See?’ She stepped back and looked down. ‘…Ah, and there we have it. Tycoon Tanya. She has curves in places where other girls don’t even have places. Shall I get it out?…Here. Give me your hand.’
He opened his eyes and sat up straight. And there before him was a male strongman in a fishnet singlet who was wiping his armpits with a pink J-cloth.
‘How do,’ he said. ‘All right?’
‘Not so bad. And yourself, Jonjon?’
He yawned, and a transient rainbow of saliva wafted from his mouth. ‘Miss Phelps is ready for you now. She’s good for half an hour, I’d calculate. Through there.’
…The etiquette of reunions – how did it go? No words, just a fond flat smile that said, I’ve changed, and you’ve changed, that is our world and our condition, that is the nature of time, but don’t concern yourself, my dear, in your case it’s nothing, it’s absolutely nothing at all…
He entered the alcove and walked the length of the passage to a waiting door, past a low window (treetops and rooftops and the unbounded city), past a wheelchair with a green shawl athwart the back of it. He knocked.
‘Ah, come and sit here, Martin, if you would. The visitor’s chair. Sit here and get your bearings…Did you happen to read about that unbelievable berk in – Hounslow? Peckham? One of those. He managed to wedge himself in his own bedsit. He outgrew it while he was still inside it. They had to demolish two walls and half a roof before they could winch him out. Dozens of people were involved, doctors, firemen, sappers, navvies. The whole operation came to six figures. He was seventeen and he weighed fifty-eight stone…’
Lying at a shallow angle with just her head propped up (framed by a thick headboard of deep-green velvet, and further braced by a pair of bunched duvets, and garnished with wispy shawls and neckerchiefs), she looked like a prodigious equatorial bloom, perhaps centuries old…She went on, in her bodiless falsetto,
‘I suppose I could claim I’ve got Cushing’s Syndrome or hypercortisolism or something like that. But my thing’s much simpler. Weight gain, Martin, occurs when energy consumed – in the form of food – exceeds energy expended. And the only time I expend any energy at all is when I eat. A slowing metabolism doesn’t help. And depression, depression doesn’t help.
‘You know, I don’t fear death any more…The other highlight of my exercise regime is going to the bathroom. That’s where the irresistible Jonjon comes in. Jonjon’s an orderly at the bariatric unit in St Swithin’s, where they have to weigh people in a kind of lift. As you know, I’ve always had a soft spot for the loo, and it’s even more fun with Jonjon there. And after a session with him, and another one to look forward to the next day, who gives a, who gives a shit about death…
‘So how about it, Mart? Shall I slip into a pair of cool pants? Or a pair of scanties I picked up cheap in the sales? Then I’ll book a table somewhere for what, nine-thirty? And then we’ll have all the time in the world.’
* * *
—————
Holy father
‘These helpers of yours, Phoebe. Jonjon, and Meg, who told me about the night nurse – Beth, is it? And you can afford them?…Mm, Maud told me you were flush. What was it you sold off exactly? Did you have a kind of fief at TFS?…You know, Transworld Financial Services. The skyscraper in Berkeley Square.’
‘Oh that. I only set foot in TFS when I was meeting you in the lobby. Or Siobhan or Mum. I didn’t bother when it was just Daddy, because he…’ She yawned without opening her mouth. ‘Bit of a chore, all this, but it has to be done.
‘Right. What I sold off was Ess Es. I sold off Essential Escorts, plus the Mayfair maisonette I ran it from, plus all the files. It was a huge business by the time I left, thousands of girls and not just young ones either. Merry was sixty-two when she finally hung up her trunks. Lars and Raoul were my top panders, Lars for the actual escorts, Raoul for the clients, mostly Saudis and Chechnyans. Now they deal in trafficked labour – you know, with ganghouses of Latvians licking out cellars in Notting Hill. Scum of the earth, the pair of them, but quite loyal in their way. Okay. I expect you’ll want to ask me a question or two. Beginning with your father.’
Her face was still there, and still pretty, too (same lean lips and strong teeth, the eyes rather more domelike and unblinking), but you had to seek all this out within the face that had subsumed and imprisoned it (the original chin seemed no bigger than a thimble). And now as he
neared the foot of the bed, both faces disappeared, blotted out by the hard fact of her mass (and it was hard, her mass. There was no give in it). He sat, and they smiled. Yes, Phoebe was a novelistic kind of character; and she knew that such people had their allotted tasks…She wouldn’t give him closure – because that comes only with death (and nobody ever gets over anything). Still, she would do what she could with what she had and with what she was.
He said, ‘Well, my dear old friend. There’s my father.’ And there’s yours, he thought.
‘Okay. You went off to Durham to betray me with that Lily. Consider my situation. I was trapped in Kingsley’s house and I obviously had to sleep with someone. And who else was there? So what could I do except get flopsy on Parfait Amour and squirm around till he made a pass. In the end he did give a rather flowery speech – that bit was true. And I immediately complied. There.’ She stared at him with growing accusation. ‘Don’t you mind?’
He said, ‘Nah, I really don’t. When it’s safely in the past, who cares about infidelity?’
‘Women do.’
‘So I’m told. You can smell them.’
‘Yes, we can smell them. And we remember that smell for the rest of our lives.’
‘Mm. With men, or with me anyway, now, I just think – the more the merrier. A contribution to the gaiety of nations. La ronde, Phoebe. Here’s another example. I wish to Christ I’d slept with you and your suntan when you got back from Corsica. That time. It would’ve made a nice memory. To add to all the others.’
She acknowledged his words with dissimulated pleasure, though she said, ‘Oh, I hated you for that.’