Success

by Martin Amis

  Thursday the 30th. Staying bored, staying it, staying it. Last night attended an unavoidable — and virtually inedible — dinner with the Styleses at their repellent home. I don’t know, perhaps I’ll chuck up my job for something else, walk out on the gallery, ignore their promises and their pleas (they’ve already offered me more money. But I don’t need money). Fresh careers fan out at me like a conjuror’s playing-cards … Diplomacy: rather fun, house abroad, a troupe of servants (absolute walkover for someone with my connections, social talent and flair for languages). Publishing? Quite amusing despite the derisory pay, and you might get halfway tolerable colleagues (also relish the prospect of, say, knocking an arts list into shape — would need a free hand, of course). Politics … the charisma — and some — is already mine, salary good, secretaries, perks (but then all the fools, the fools). The City! No — not the City, definitely not the City. Writing holds some appeal; a few dashed-off prose-poems of mine have already won a small but resonant succès … I don’t know, perhaps I’ll travel. The patchwork quilt of Europe, the rusty triangle of India, the green baize of Russia and the Urals, the lacquered prawn of Japan. See the world while the world is still there. Today I got home at twenty-to-seven drenched with the filth of the city and the filth of my boredom, and as I came out of the jaws of the underground and walked down the yapping hell of Queensway, the beercans, the youths eating muck in the street, I thought of my sister and my bath and my tea and my book and the congenial evening ahead (with maybe a little extra something after lights-out, courtesy of Ursula). I took off my gloves and walked straight into Terence’s room. No one there. The flat silent and dead. I moved into the smoky light of the dressing-room. Through the mist of my disappointment I saw the signs of a hasty and excited exit. The day’s dress, left in a puddle on the floor, made me gulp. It hurt my heart to see the rejected shoes, placed together, saying twenty-past-six with their heels.

  8: August

  (i) But tell me a bit about the

  bit about having no clothes on — TERRY

  August is the month when we both have our birthdays, his on the 18th, mine on the 19th. (This was one of the things that so appealed to my foster-father’s quirky, musing nature; he loves all coincidences, flukes, windfalls, anything arbitrary.) Everyone seemed to think that the contiguity would cause me much abject distress, but in fact it was among the very few things that didn’t bother me, at least not in itself; I didn’t mind him having a better time than me (then. How would I dare?). They used to try and try and fuss and fuss, though, and of course I hated that. More than likely I would’ve preferred not to have birthdays at all; boys like the boy I was, I think, hate attention more than they hate anything. I enjoyed Gregory’s celebrations, for instance, infinitely more than I enjoyed mine. No effort was needed to render it good — there was little of the sense of strain which marked the gatherings gathered round me. And my foster-brother made tremendous viewing, of course. It is hard to transmit the sheer lustre of the growing Gregory, when you can see the uncertain and compromised figure he has since become.

  Especially recently. Especially since Ursula has come here. She diminishes him in some important way that I cannot yet detect. Do you know what it is? Or does he still tell you lies?

  Why doesn’t he take her out more, give her more of his time, claim her as his own, which is what she is? At first, through craven habit, I inferred that he left Ursula and me together in an unthinking, disdainful way, as if to suggest that we were compatibly small-time and fucked up, the below-stairs losers who should not be allowed to impinge on the sparkling citadel of his own life. But that can’t be right, somehow. He doesn’t seem to be having a good time any more.

  Did he actually fuck her ever, is what I want to establish. This must be important. I know she used to go to his room a lot at night (I thought she did it simply because she was better friends with him than she was with me, but I once surprised her in the bathroom afterwards, and she looked startled and ashamed for a second, and her nightdress was bunched and creased, and there was a salty odour about her that I had never smelled before), I know they had sexy jaunts together (there was one incident, for which they both had their ears soundly boxed, when they got marooned in the nude on a tiny island in the D-Pond), and I know they embraced every opportunity to touch each other up (I myself once wandered into the barn on a bright-shadowed spring afternoon and heard the cornily filmic noises of love among the hayricks, and crept towards the sounds of playful struggle and giggling reproach, and saw Ursula stretched backwards over an enormous saddle on the floor, her dress pulled up, the lower half of her body concealed by Gregory’s busy shoulders and back, and he certainly did seem to be caressing her very thoroughly, I thought, as I ran silently away), but did he actually fuck her, is what I want to establish. Because then things would be clearer, wouldn’t they, not just for them but for me.

  ‘Hey, Ursula,’ I asked her the other evening, ‘that time out on the D-Pond, when you and Greg got stranded without any clothes on — what actually happened?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Ursula, not looking up from some knit-by-numbers pattern she was working on, her thin, sensitive hair almost intermeshing on her lap with the cotton and her own nervous fingers, ‘it was silly really.’

  ‘I dare say it was silly, but what actually happened?’

  ‘Oh, well, we went out on this raft Gregory had made and we didn’t notice it slipping away from the island and grumpy old Mr Firble had to row us back.’

  ‘But tell me a bit about the bit about having no clothes on.’

  ‘Yes, we took them off.’

  ‘Clearly. What for though?’

  Her hands paused, and she glanced sideways towards her room. ‘We just took them off.’

  ‘Yes, I’m with you so far. I’ve mastered that bit of it. But sort of why did you take them off?’

  ‘Because it was so hot. I’m no good at knitting and I’m going to stop it and never do it again.’

  ‘Tonto, Ursula. Ursula — tonto,’ I whispered warningly, and she looked up at last. She made what’s known as a funny face, compressing her lips and bulging her eyes.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said.

  ‘I bet,’ I said, as she looked down again, ‘I bet it was quite embarrassing, being rowed back by that old turd Firble with no clothes on.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ursula, ‘it jolly well was.’

  Mad bitch … Perhaps, then, the whole thing is altogether simpler. Perhaps it is really simple. If I’m right, the way to my revenge is now clear.

  Has she fucked anyone since, I wonder idly, if indeed she ever fucked him in the first place? Has she fucked anyone ever? I haven’t fucked anyone since I last fucked anyone. I haven’t fucked anyone ever either, or at least it feels that way by now. It just disappears from your life. I don’t even go on about it as much as I used to, do I (though I still say fuck a lot)? That’s in character too. You’d think it would get worse, wouldn’t you? It doesn’t, thank God. The loss just looms lunar and abstract, like a dog on a distant moon baying at the Earth.

  I’m earning so much money these days that I hardly know what to do with it all. I’m earning so much money that I’m thinking of going to a whore, and a good one too. Good ones, they say, cost a lot of money but are good at giving you hard-ons. The more money you give them, the better at giving you hard-ons they get. She’d have to be a very good one, my one. Perhaps there aren’t any that good. Perhaps, no matter how much money I earned, I’d never be able to afford one good enough to give me hard-ons. Who could give me hard-ons? Someone who liked me — I think that’s all it would take. Perhaps there’s a whore somewhere who is so good at giving you hard-ons that she likes you if you give her enough money. I’d better save up for her.

  I’m earning so much money these days because Veale gimmicked it (why is Veale giving me all this money? Perhaps he likes me. Perhaps he could give me hard-ons too, if he wanted). Veale has already gimmicked it that I get tax relief and supplementary benefits for doing t
hings about being Clerk (i.e., for doing things for him. I did them when he told me to. They only took a minute, and now I get all this money. I’ve got to do even more things for him later, but then I get even more money).

  The rationalization proper hasn’t taken place yet. Everyone at the office is in a state of inordinate apprehension — quite rightly. They all think they are going to get aimed. Most of them will get aimed. Whereas, six months ago, it seemed that only one or two of us would be, it now seems that only one or two of us won’t be. I listen all day to Wark’s mushy-mouthed forebodings, watch Herbert sit in quiet desperation at his desk, notice that Burns has got too paranoid to eat his fish in the office (Lloyd-Jackson has already resigned — there’s true bottle for you). Only the Controller is calm, though Veale says he oughtn’t to be. I am nervous, though Veale says I oughtn’t to be. I am as nervous as anyone here.

  All this money I get. I feel most nervous when, every Friday morning at half-past ten, I go to get it. I feel nervous when I take my place in the slouching queue at the pay-bay downstairs, among all the stooped clerks, foul-mouthed van-drivers, and prismatic secretaries, when I announce my horrible name (Service, T. — ‘Here’s old tea service again’, ‘Two lumps with milk, please’, ‘Don’t like his pot, do you?’, etc. etc.) and the fat woman or the thin man flick through the ranked packets, when, to my weekly consternation, my envelope is not only there but actually gets handed over to me, and when I walk back along the line of alternately exuberant and catatonic employees, holding in my fist a heavy brown wallet containing seventy-three quid! Even before all these bonuses started pouring in, I had calculated that I would always be able to afford my daily three packets of fags and my daily litre-and-a-half of Spanish wine — which was all I seemed to need to live and not go mad on. Now there’s all this extra stuff: I have a drawer at home, my tramp drawer, silting up with fivers I can’t spend; I keep coming across forgotten notes in odd pockets; I weed out the coppers from my change and stack them contemptuously on the window-sill; I took a taxi somewhere the other day, just for the hell of it; la, sir, I might even buy some new clothes. (It would be hard to go broke now, though broke still scares me. Broke always will, I think.)

  I’ve fallen into the habit of leaving my pay-slips in prominent places round my room. The hieroglyphed ribbons are to be found on desk and bed, on bookcase and table. I think he must have seen one by now, because the other Saturday he asked me, in rather appalled tones, whether I could lend him £15; I did so, with negligent panache, and left him staring at the notes as if they’d just materialized in his hand. And naturally I take Ursula out a lot now, in the most ostentatious manner possible, similarly arraying the many restaurant book-matches and expensive cinema-ticket stubs. I like taking Ursula out because it fools the world that I have a girlfriend. It’s beginning to fool him. It’s beginning to fool me. It’s beginning to fool her.

  Listen.

  Yesterday a sinister and wonderful thing started to happen to me. Suddenly (I got home at six-thirty. Ursula and I had one of our quiet evenings together, me drinking and reading and going bald in my room, her knitting and muttering and going mad in hers, but the door between us ever-open) I knew what I had to do. Ursula had used the bathroom and was contentedly sitting up in bed by 9.45. About an hour later, Gregory wandered vaguely through to use the bathroom himself, pausing for a rare chat with his sister before wandering vaguely back upstairs. I went through soon afterwards for my own discreet trickles and swabs. On the way back I stood over Ursula’s bed, as usual, and leaned forward to kiss her chastely good night.

  ‘Come to my room,’ I then said.

  ‘Mm?’

  ‘I said come to my room. Come to my room,’ I said.

  I switched off my bedside lamp and lay there in tingling naked incredulity, the colourful darkness thudding against my eyes, my heartbeat filling the room, my nose sniffing at the aromatic vacuum, my eardrums peeled for the answering ruffle of blankets and the creak of the adjoining hinges. Before any sound could impose itself on the silent thunder — there she was beside me, a warm downy presence of skin and light cotton. Christ. I made no move but then she furled her arms about me in a confident, childish, deeply unsexual embrace and for a time we lay there like sleepers, hardly daring to breathe, her jawline snug in my pit, the caps of her knees oddly cold against my thigh. (Is this it, I thought, or is there more?) I made an almost imperceptible gesture, as if to kiss her, turning on my axis hardly a tenth of an inch, and sensed her stiffen — likewise when I brought a hand up and placed it fraternally on her forearm. Momentarily I felt a sticky uncertainty at the centre of my being — like the panic-second of readjustment after frightening dreams, or like a trivial, charmless memory that says hello every day — but then the little secret clicked and suddenly I knew again what I had to do. I let the secret out.

  ‘Do it,’ I said.

  ‘Mm?’

  ‘I said do it,’ I said.

  ‘Oh.’ At once her thin hand appeared on my chest. Briskly it trailed downwards. With an unthinking grunt she propped up her head on an elbow and slid a few inches down the bed to improve her purchase. I heard her yawn complaisantly, and parted my trembling lids to see the angled, downward-pointing face, the mouth set in featureless concentration.

  And she likes me. At first I half-expected a schoolgirl tsk tsk from my no-nonsense bedmate, but after a few patient caresses I found that I was able to offer myself up to those small fingers. Although her movements were strictly mechanical (and never more so than in the trills and graces she executed with her knuckles and nails), it didn’t seem at all like distaste — more like affectionate conscientiousness. I lost myself until I felt my muscles tighten and Ursula came closer in response to give me the full action of her arm. Confusedly I made as if to take her hand away (you needn’t, you needn’t) but her hand was resolute and unsqueamish and I voided with a whoosh of hilarious remorse.

  ‘There,’ said Ursula firmly, like a nurse, and whispered, ‘I think I’d better go back to my room now.’

  I turned awkwardly to kiss her and her mouth was nowhere to be found.

  ‘No kisses. Never on the lips.’

  ‘Oh, love, love.’

  ‘You’ll never leave me, will you,’ she stated.

  ‘No, never, never.’

  ‘You won’t tell Gregory, will you.’

  ‘No, I won’t, I won’t.’

  ‘Good night, Ginger. Whoops. I can’t call you that, can I?’

  ‘Yes, you can, you can.’

  Happy birthday, Terry. It doesn’t take much to make you better.

  That morning I brought Ursula tea in bed (‘Happy birthday, Terry’), kissed her on her lineless forehead and gave her a note saying that I loved her and would always protect her (one thing about incest — there’s no point in playing it cool. They cannot get away. They cannot hide out. They just cannot hide out), and strolled like a mawkish schoolboy up a freshly discovered mews to the Underground. I paused for two whole minutes to watch a high-flying, string-trailing jet, no more than a glinting crucifix in the deep blue above the thin salty clouds. Even the bang and shudder of the Underground kept saying a new thing to me: purpose (there are reasons why people go to work). As soon as I was in the office I rang her, frantic for assent that my life had changed. How are you? Are you all right? I’m fine, fine. How are you? Are you sure you’re all right? It wasn’t enough: I rang back ten minutes later. Did you read my note? It’s true what I said. It is. Don’t worry about anything ever again. And it was the same that afternoon: I couldn’t keep away. Me again. Sorry. Can I buy you a nice dinner tonight? I love you. Why? I always have. Don’t ask why. I love you.

  Why? Because she gave me my cock back, is why. I felt so changed, so brazenly transformed, that I kept expecting mad Wark, or whoever, to come up and say, ‘Hey, what’s happened to you? Did somebody give you your cock back or something?’ Yes, somebody sure did. In several respects, I grant you, it’s far from ideal. Ursula is more or less my si
ster, for instance, and she often seems to be unclear about what exactly is going on. This introduces an arbitrary element — I feel like the Jacobean trickster who impersonates an absent husband in the dark bedroom, or like the lucky sailor who gets to go first in the gang-bang queue: if they knew what I knew (I feel), they wouldn’t be quite so keen. But, Christ, Gregory did it too (didn’t he?), and he really is her brother. And it’s a start. And who am I to be critical?

  I wanted to sprint home that night, but even in the routine delays and prevarications of the afternoon there was something cool and erotic. I loved the man who sold me my evening paper, and I returned the hello of the tobacconist with courtly particularity. The yellow lights of the tube-entrance machines, with their embossed patterns of fares and destinations, made a dusk of the indoors, and as I rode the descending staircase into the grey vault I felt as if a large and watchful creature were welcoming me to its deep preserve. My train raced beneath the city, bursting out of tunnels, creeping back in and bursting out again.