by William Boyd
Marguerite was very quiet. Eric reached into his pocket and withdrew two ten-franc notes. “Here.” He held them out. “Merci,” he added, feeling foolish. But she just curled his fingers back round them and pushed his hand away. For a moment his hand with the notes seemed to hover disconnectedly between them. Suddenly Eric wished she had taken the money. It would have been better.
“Well, goodbye,” he said. “Au revoir.”
Outside, the air felt washed and fragrant. Eric took deep breaths and tried to lift the mood he sensed was descending on him as inevitably as night.…
The afternoon sun beat down on him. It was that curious pause in the year: high summer slipping into autumn. Things started to decay then: wars began; dogs went mad. The green of the trees and the grass looked tired, old and tramped-on.
“How was it?” Pierre-Etienne asked when Eric caught up with them.
“Fantastic,” Eric lied automatically.
“You were a long time,” Momo said.
“Was I? Oh, well, you know how it is.”
“Did you … really?” Pierre-Etienne asked.
Eric looked at him curiously. “Yes. It went just like you said.” He shivered. “She’s big. Huge … you know.” He weighed two mammoth breasts in front of him.
Pierre-Etienne and Momo looked on with ill-concealed amazement. Eric said, “Elle pue,” and they both laughed uneasily. He touched his back pocket and heard the crinkle of notes. He turned and walked away from the abattoir back towards the market-place. Pierre-Etienne and Momo followed behind, deep in conversation.
“Come on,” Eric shouted, “I’ll buy you a Diabolo-menthe.”
Marcel looked up in surprise when Marguerite said goodbye. Normally they parted without a word. She went to the café and ordered a drink. The late afternoon sun cast long shadows across the street; a slight breeze shifted a scrap of paper on the pavement; amber light flashed momentarily from a chrome bumper. Some of the butchers from the day shift came into the café but she paid them no attention. She was thinking about clean shiny hair, smoothness, a touch.
She called for another calva. She would go home late tonight, maybe see a film or just sit on here in the café for a while. It was a pleasant evening. There was something solid and achieved about the depth of the shadows, it seemed to her; the kindness of the yellowy sun patches on the table tops pleased her obscurely. She took the last sip of calva. The English boy had been gentle and she had made him happy.
The waiter brought her new drink over. As he put it down he whispered his request in her ear. She looked round. The man leant confidentially over the table. She saw his oily hair, his silver tooth, his shiny watch.
“Well?” he asked, smiling, his eyebrows raised.
“No,” said Marguerite abruptly, before she had really even thought about it. “No. Tomorrow perhaps, we’ll see. But not today. Not today.”
My Girl
in Skintight Jeans
I would like to make one thing clear before I tell my story. I don’t want you to think that because I have never married that there is any kind of … of a problem between me and the female sex. I could in fact have married any number of girls had I so chosen—but I didn’t choose to, so there it is. It was a question of my health, you see. I do not have a strong constitution and largely for that reason I decided, once my dear mother had died, to remain a bachelor.
My mother left me a small legacy along with the house. I live quietly and economically there. I have several projects with which I am currently occupied and they take up a fair amount of my time. I am a great reader, too, and one of the luxuries of not having to work for a living is that I can indulge to the full my passion for reading. Lately, however, I have grown rather tired of books and for the last year or so have read only magazines. I have subscriptions to thirty-eight and buy many others on a casual, sporadic basis. I read all kinds except the political ones; I like the bright, happy illustrations and I have been progressively coming around to the opinion that magazines are, indeed, more imaginative than many novels. The world of the glossy magazine holds more allure for me than the grimy realistic tragedies that pass for literature these days.
Every winter I leave the house, board it up and switch off the water and electricity. I spend the winter months in a small resort town a few miles up the coast from San Luis Obispo in northern California. I get all my magazine subscriptions forwarded there. It’s a quiet life, but cheap and necessary for my health. Over the years I’ve got to know most of the inhabitants, but they’re not very sociable folk and I find that few of them have much to say for themselves.
This last winter had been a bad one for me. My budget, due to the failure of one of my projects, was lower than ever and my life-style was correspondingly reduced. I had been chronically depressed through most of January and February and if it hadn’t been for the regular arrival of my magazines with their laughing happy people in their primary-colored world, I’m sure I would have done something drastic. However, as spring approached, my spirits rallied and I began to feel a little better.
Then she arrived—a modern primavera—and the sleepy resort town seemed to respond to her exciting presence. I began to think of her possessively as “my girl.” She was definitely my kind of girl. My girl in skintight jeans, I called her. It was merely a fancy of mine; I never actually plucked up the courage to introduce myself. I saw her regularly every day from my room and soon grew to feel that somehow I had come to know her, got to grips with what I believe is a rare, remarkable personality.
She’s beautiful too. Shaggy, clean blond hair, a short, crisp white T-shirt leaving a gap of navel-dimpled caramel belly between its hem and her dark, tight navy jeans. Those long-legged, tapered blue jeans.
It makes me feel good to think of her as my girl. For some reason she always wears the same outfit every day—but it’s always fresh and well laundered. She’s the most truly at-ease person I’ve ever come across: there’s an astonishing serenity that beams out of her eyes. I have noticed, too, that she never wears a brassiere, and the thin material of her T-shirt is molded closely to her breasts.
My room is small but I keep it tidy. There’s an electric ring and a sink in the corner but I don’t do much cooking because I hate the smell it leaves. My room is on the top floor of an old building on the seafront. It has two windows and from one of them I can get a good view of the ocean and the coast. In this town only two cafés stay open through the winter season and I divide my meals more or less equally between them; I don’t wish to seem particular and have no desire to give offense. In fact I prefer the Del Mar, but I don’t want to alienate old Luke who runs Luke ‘n’ Loretta’s. He’s nearly blind, but we talk a lot and I kind of like the old guy. I’m unwilling to tell him but, as his sight’s got worse, so has his place. Nowadays he leaves nearly everything up to his sister, Loretta. She’s an overweight, red-rinsed whore who lives in a camping truck out in back. For five dollars she’ll give you a quick time out there. Believe me, it isn’t worth it For some reason though, she’s taken a shine to me—asked me around for a drink after closing a couple of times. But since the girl in skintight jeans arrived I’ve stayed away. Then Loretta cut me dead in the street yesterday so I thought I’d better go back, just to keep the peace.
There was the first spring-quickening in the air this morning as I walked to Luke’s for breakfast. A watery sun warmed the sea breeze; the day was mild with a light-blue sky up above. However, any elation I felt was dissipated when I got to Luke’s. There was no sign of the old man and the place was a real toilet. I sat at my usual table and waited for Loretta to come and clear it up. It was swimming with spilled coffee, the ashtray was full of butts and someone had ground out a cigar in a half-eaten plate of pancakes and syrup. Loretta wore a loose Hawaiian blouse and stretch slacks in honor of the clement weather. She sat down and chatted and offered me one of the menthol cigarettes she chain-smokes, so I guessed I must have been forgiven. Then she leaned right over in front of me while she
cleared the table so I could get a good look down her front at her heavy breasts. I ordered a hot tea, no milk, with a slice of lemon.
It may have been warmer outside but Loretta wasn’t taking any chances. All the windows were tight shut and their film of condensation and grease obscured any view of the beach.
I heard a car pull up. I wiped the window and peered out. It was a battered convertible and there were three guys inside. They got out and stretched, rubbing their buttocks and looking around. They were young, two whites and a Hispanic. There was a thin one with a pimp’s moustachio and a thick-lipped, black-haired guy with oddly white tattooed arms. They were wearing worn-out sharpie clothes.
This is a quite little town we live in and I hoped they’d just move on through. But just then the sun came out from behind some clouds, and in the corner of my eye, I caught its flash on the girl’s white T-shirt. It was the first time I’d seen her that day and I wiped the window some more to get a better look. But they saw her, too, and they glanced at one another and laughed in that shifty, teeth-baring way men in a group have. One of them bent his arm and did something with his fingers while the thick-lipped guy cupped his hands over his crotch and groaned. They all laughed again.
I felt my face flush and a pulse beat at my temples. When I put my cup down in its saucer there was a rattle of china. They disgust me, this kind of filth. City scum degenerates, just drifting up the coast in a hot car looking for cheap kicks.
I spent the rest of the day in my room reading my magazines. Later I tried to sleep but I had developed a bad headache. In the afternoon I had a long shower. That made me feel a little better.
At dusk I went to a small supermarket that I sometimes buy provisions at when I don’t feel like going out to eat. I was reaching for a can of clam chowder when I saw the girl through the window. I was a little surprised. Usually I never managed to see her this late and I always wondered where she went. But tonight it was obvious. Her eyes were gazing out to sea; her easy stride would carry her determinedly down to the beach.
The clam chowder tasted like earth. I couldn’t clear my mouth of it, so I drank a glass or two of rye. I opened the window that gives me a sea view and sat on the sill looking out at the darkening waters. Quite a way along the beach I could see the glimmer of a campfire burning and I knew at once that was where the girl would be—out there alone. Maybe she had cooked something and was enjoying the peace and absolute solitude. Then I could imagine her stripping off her clothes, her tan body with white bikini patches maybe, paler in the gloom, the breeze tensing her nut-brown nipples, the cool of the water as the waves broke against her golden thighs.…
But then I was distracted by the noise of raucous laughter in the street below. The three youths, half bombed, spilling out of the liquor store clutching six-packs and a bottle of wine. With a bizarre sense of mounting premonition I watched them laughing and joshing for a while in the street. Then one of them said, “Hey, look. A fire.” And with whistles and whoops they went running down the boardwalk, all heroic with beer, jumping gleefully onto the sand and heading up the beach toward my girl.
For an instant I heard my heart booming in my skull and my eyeballs seemed to bulge rhythmically to its beat. With a forefinger I wiped beads of perspiration from my upper lip. Bastards! SCUM TRASH BASTARDS! I saw stubby stained fingers fondling corn-yellow hair, spectral tattooed arms circling her slim brown body, probing tongue between thick dabbing lips, young beards on soft skin. She’d come dripping from the surf, wading quietly out of the green sea, her body dim and mysterious, to find a leering drunken horror waiting around her fire.
I felt the sharp taste of vomit in my throat, for I was almost sick with a desperate fear and anxiety as I rummaged in my bureau for my gun, an old police special. I was sick with insane visions of the fabulous lusts of nightmare hooligans, terrible images of deviant sex-dreams being foully realized out there on the lonely coast.
I came up behind them through the dunes, my feet silent on the sand. The three of them sat around the fire, drunk. One of them was singing quietly to himself. Discarded beer cans lay like shell cases around a gun emplacement. There was no sign of the girl.
They heard the sound of my feet as I crossed the strip of pebbles that lay above the high-tide mark.
“Hey, man,” the thick-lipped one said. “Whatcha doin’? Have a drink. Luis, give …”
Then he saw the gun. His jaw slackened as his beer-numbed brain tried to cope with what was happening.
“C’mon, what gives?” There was a smile of disbelief on his face. The other two began to edge away from me.
“Where is she?” I said, my voice shaking with rage and disgust. I raised my eyes, looking for signs of a shallow grave, half expecting to see her violated body cast up on the beach by the waves. “What have you filth done with her? Where is she? Where have you put her?”
He stood up shakily, an uncertain smile on his face. He looked around at his friends for support. “Who, man?” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “For chrissake, who?”
“My girl!” I screamed at him, maddened by his feeble attempts to protest his innocence. “My sweet girl, you bastard!”
“We ain’t seen no friggin’ girl, man,” he shouted back, arcs of spittle flying from his lips.
The waves seemed to be crashing and breaking in my head as I leveled the gun at his denimed groin and pulled the trigger. I missed, but the bullet tore off a chunk of his thigh, which splashed a bright red in the firelight. He screamed with the pain and went down.
When the sound of the waves and the echoes of the shot had diminished, I heard the rattle of pebbles as his two friends ran off.
Thick-lips was crawling painfully down the sand toward the sea. One leg of his jeans was damp and left a trail like a slug. He was making little whimpering noises.
“I’ll give you one last chance,” I shouted after him. “Tell me where she is.”
He said nothing.
I pocketed the gun and picked up a piece of driftwood about the size of a baseball bat. I weighed it in my hand, swishing it gently through the air to get my grip right. Then I walked down the beach to thick-lips and with five or six firm strokes battered his head into the wet sand at the surf edge. The foam went pink like a milkshake.
When it was over I pushed him well out into the breakers. The tide was ebbing and it would be a couple of days before he washed up again.
Then I stood on the beach and shouted out into the waves just in case she was out there. “It’s okay,” I shouted. “You can come out. They’ve gone.”
But she never appeared.
When I woke up the next morning I knew instinctively she had gone forever and for a moment I felt the sadness of her passing intensely.
I went to the window and opened it and took a few deep breaths. Across the street a man was working on the billboard. Distracted, I began to admire the way he handled the huge, cumbersome folds of paper, his dexterity in spreading the sheets so accurately and with such little fuss, the precision with which he manipulated the long sopping brush. And, as the new advertisement took shape, I found I was forgetting about the girl as she disappeared, with her impossibly white T-shirt and her ludicrously skintight jeans.
I stood there at the window a while, just looking.
Yes, I thought to myself. Yes. Definitely my kind of drink. Mellow, with the real tawny glow …
Extracts from the Journal
of Flying Officer J
Duke Senior: Stay, Jaques, stay.
Jaques: To see no pastime I: what you would have
I’ll stay to know at your abandoned cave.
As You Like It, v. 4
ASCENSION
“The hills ’round here are like a young girl’s breasts.” Thus Squadron Leader “Duke” Verschoyle. Verbatim. 4:30 P.M., on the lawn, loudly.
ROGATION SUNDAY
Last night ladies were invited into the mess. I went alone. “Duke” Verschoyle took a Miss Bald, a friend of Neves’. At supper
Verschoyle, who was sufficiently intoxicated, flipped a piece of bread at Miss Bald. She replied with a fid of ham which caught Verschoyle smack in his grinning face. A leg of chicken was then aimed at the lady by our Squadron Leader, but it hit me, leaving a large grease stain on my dress jacket. I promptly asked if the mess fund covered the cost of cleaning. I was sconced for talking shop.
Verschoyle liverish in morning.
JUNE 4
Sortie at dawn. I took the monoplane. Flew south to the Chilterns. At 7,000 feet I felt I could see every trembling blade of grass. Monoplane solid as a hill. Low-level all the way home. No sign of activity anywhere.
Talked to Stone. Says he knew Phoebe at Melton in 1923. Swears she was a brunette then.
FRIDAY, LUNCH-TIME
Verschoyle saunters up, wearing a raffish polka-dot cravat, a pipe clamped between his large teeth. Speaks without removing it. I transcribe exactly: “Msay Jks, cd yizzim psibly siyerway tklah thnewmn, nyah?” What? He removes his loathsome teat, a loop of saliva stretching and gleaming momentarily between stem and lip. There’s a new man, it appears. Randall something or something Randall. Verschoyle wants me to run a routine security clearance.
“Very well, sir,” I say.
“Call me ‘Duke,’ ” he suggests. Fatal influence of the cinema on the service. Must convey my thoughts on the matter to Reggie.
Stone is driving me mad. His shambling, loutish walk. His constant whistling of “My Little Grey Home in the West.” The way he breathes through his mouth. As far as I can see he might as well not have a nose—he never uses it
SUNDAY A.M.
French cricket by runway B. I slope off early down to The Sow & Farrow. The pub is dark and cool. Baking-hot day outside. Slice of joint on a pewter plate. Household bread and butter. A pint of turbid beer. All served up by the new barmaid, Rose. Lanky, athletic girl, strong-looking. Blonde. We chatted amiably until the rest of the squadron—in their shouting blazers and tennis shoes—romped noisily in. I left a 4d. tip. Strangely attractive girl.