I’d been up and down thirteen times by now. The fourteenth time, I went a little further, crossed the road and turned the corner to the public phone-box. Otto’s number rang out smug and shrill. I was half relieved when no one answered it. At least Leo wasn’t loitering in Otto’s fringed and fancy drawing-room with his feet up on the sofa and his tea in a Yung Cheng bowl. Leo had been spending more and more time with Otto in the last few weeks. When I complained, Leo said it was business pure and simple. Otto, he claimed, had a better eye for a bargain and a sharper nose for a fake than anyone else in London. He owned certain pieces of Chinese porcelain which Leo told me were rarer than any friendship. His father had left him his collection when he died. He’d been a trader in the Far East, who spent his last years in a bare and shabby flat in Finchley. After the funeral, they found no food in the larder, nor clothes in the wardrobe, but every nook and cranny stuffed with shoe-boxes full of cracked Ming and dusty Ch’ing. Now they were Otto’s shoe-boxes.
I tried to keep my mind on something safe and dreary like shoe-boxes rather than on Leo, as I trailed back to the house again and knocked. I suppose it was stupid to worry. People go out for a hundred reasons, and Leo wasn’t even expecting me till Saturday. He might have planned a visit to a gallery, or a meeting with a dealer out of town. Except he never went out on Wednesdays — it was the day he always reserved for his accountant chap. They sat in the basement all day, going over papers.
There were other tiny things which fretted me — Leo never normally made his bed or locked the fanlights or told the milkman not to leave him milk. There were probably explanations, simple ones. Or perhaps I was only nervous because I’d chucked out my religion and turned my back on Ray and Bernadette, and now I needed Leo to fill the hole. Notting Hill without a Leo was almost as bad as Lourdes without Our Lady. Great chunks kept breaking off from my life and I had nothing to stick them back with. Anyone else would have gone to the public library, or passed an hour or two dawdling round the shops. All I could do was sit on his doorstep and slaver like a spaniel.
After another hour, I made myself get up and trudge back to the tube. I was window-shopping for one thing only — Leo. I checked all his favourite haunts and then searched the shops and bars and restaurants in between. I asked at the delicatessen and the Pakistani grocer’s. Neither of them had seen him for at least four days, but they both lent me a pound. (I was down to my last 2p.) I plodded through Holland Park, covering every path and avenue five or six times over, but all the dogs were smaller and paler than Karma.
I was almost crawling when I reached the house again. I hadn’t slept a wink the night before. The channel ferry had been crowded and the crossing rough. Even my double gin I’d sicked up over the side. I stood in front of the inhospitable door and prayed for it to open. Leo might well have returned by now. I listened for the sudden crash of the piano booming out the way I never liked it, proving he was there. But there wasn’t so much as a pianissimo.
When I did knock, the echo seemed to mock me. I peered in through the letter-box, but all I could see were black and white squares of lino distorted into strange crippled shapes. I slumped down on the step again and tried to think of nothing till he came. After an hour or so, nothing got boring, and then frightening. There was a strange irrational panic gnawing at the edges of my mind, and so much space and silence in the centre of it that Bernadette’s voice kept sneaking through and scaring me. I knew I’d let her down. I wondered if I’d be punished for it — some grisly penance or racking spell in Purgatory.
The light was already fading, as if to remind me of the glooms of hell. I began to feel so small and miserable, I slunk round the back again and crawled into a sort of coal-cellar-cum-dungeon which was used for storing tools and smelt of fusty things like dead moths and old rope. I cleared a space on the floor and lay down on two sacks and my sheepskin. I’d have a siesta like God did, and when I woke, Leo would be back. It was difficult to sleep and even when I did doze off, I kept starting awake again, thinking I’d heard footsteps round the front. Finally, I took the sacks and spread them on the doorstep. People might stare or assume I was a squatter or a tramp, but at least I’d be there the second he walked in.
It was turning colder now and darker. My earlier elation had subsided into flat and sour champagne. The summer skies, the smiling cherry blossom were only a half-forgotten picture on an empty chocolate box. Now the sky was overcast and cloudy, the street lights coming on, cats and children scuttling safe indoors. My hands and feet were almost numb, but I still had feeling in my middle parts. In fact, I was trying to remember how many days or weeks or months it was since I’d last had proper sex. (Ray didn’t count and nor did Leo’s limpings.) I’d worked it out as the night before the night before the hospital which made it ninety-nine and a half days — more than a quarter of a year, and the longest time I’d ever gone without it. I’d probably develop nervous tics or eczema or ulcers. The Victorian books said over-indulging wore the brain and body out, but now the medicos had changed their minds and claimed abstinence led to stress-induced diseases. (No wonder Ray looked haggard.) I didn’t want to think of Ray. It was Leo who was shouting through my body, squeezing through all its crevices. I longed to hug him close to me, cling to him for comfort. If I concentrated on him hard enough, he might actually turn up. Things often worked like that.
I went through all our mutual history, starting with the first time he’d fucked me, which was the second time we met (our introductory meeting being taken up with tetanus injections). He’d stayed stiff and thrusting for two and three quarter hours. When I purred, he told me it was something they practised in the East. If I hadn’t been so sore, I’d have knelt down there and then and worshipped him. Women talk crap about men’s looks or jobs or bank accounts, but there’s only one thing really — the time between in and come. The longer the interval, the more precious the man. It doesn’t matter really how many noughts on his payslip or letters after his name, or whether his hair is thinning or his waist thickening (although Leo has both hair and waist as well as staying-power). When you see gorgeous girls slavering over four-foot-nothing little creeps, you can tell they’re three-hour men. Napoleon was one, almost certainly, and Charles II probably, and Jesus might have been, if He hadn’t been so busy with other sorts of miracle. Leo was my first. He was not only a stayer, but he had those amazing comes which confuse the so-called sex experts who go around measuring penises and arousal levels and reduce everything to chest flushes and dilated pupils and carpopedal spasms. Their scientific orgasms are charted only in terms of seconds and centimetres, whereas Leo’s lasted centuries.
I spread my legs on the step, emptied my mind of everything but Leo. I could see him coming round the corner now; running down the street as he caught sight of me, unbuttoning his coat. His hands were already on my breasts, his mouth ravenous. I pressed towards him. I could feel every bone, every tiny identation in his body. He was kissing every inch of me — fingers, spaces between fingers, the little knob at the bottom of my spine, the insides of my knees. His mouth moved swiftly, almost angrily, as if he were punishing me for all the hours and minutes that I’d been away. Then he pulled me to my feet again, seized my hair and yanked it away from my face so that he could kiss and comfort all the bits which had been hidden underneath it — ears, nape, the hollows in my neck, the dip between the shoulder-blades.
He’s pushing me against the wall, still with my hair twisted up behind me. He bends me back, and goes down on my face as if he were attacking it, mouth, lips, teeth, tongue. The woman next door is peering through her curtains, muttering “filthy slut”, and the man upstairs spying through the opera glasses he bought to study wildlife. Leo hardly notices. He’s dragged me to the ground now, the sacks spread underneath us, my feet hammering on his shoulders, nails clawing down his back. People are walking home from tubes and buses, passing us, peering at us, complaining, criticising. I don’t see them. I’m so wild, I can bite through bone. Leo is tearing me
to pieces, stabbing me, scaring me, pain and fever and radiance all mixed up, the boundaries between them dashed and broken and singing. Even the light has crept away. Leo is so dark and violent, the day shudders and gives up. We’re alone now. Only Karma sniffing at us, howling out his jealousy, his rough tongue rasping down my thighs, his teeth tearing deep inside me, his wild, black, terrifying bark crying Leo Leo Leo Leo Leo Leo.…
No one. Only a shadow spilling from a bush, a flicker from a street light, Karma just a black branch on the ground. Even the woman next door had slammed her window shut. The day had disappeared. It was neither afternoon, nor evening; just a sick, lonely twilight. A whole working day had passed away. From nine to five, governments had debated, secretaries typed vital memoranda, shopgirls given change. All I had done was waited, waited, waited, yet it had worn me out. I was panting, weak, and sore.
I zipped up my jeans, flung the sacks on the flower-bed, and drudged back to Notting Hill. I sat in a sandwich bar between the cinema and the tube station where I could see everybody passing. Leo had been out now for over eight hours. He never did that with Karma. The dog needed meals and pees and runs, and very few of his acquaintances would allow Karma in their houses. He tore things (and people) up. I’d already phoned Otto again, let it ring for seven minutes by my watch, but there was still no answer. I tried the picture dealer’s, but they’d shut up shop.
I spun my coffee out till seven o’clock. Everyone else was in couples. A man and a girl were even wearing identical duffel coats, and another two sharing a raspberry milkshake and a straw.
At 7.02 I paid the bill and left. I’d decided to ring Adrian from the tube station. As soon as I heard his voice, I felt a little comforted. He sounded like a duffel coat himself — warm and strong and practical.
“But you weren’t coming back till Saturday,” he said, after the first greetings and surprise.
“Patricia Jane got ill,” I lied. “She’s OK now, but they thought she ought to travel home, just in case it developed into something. Look, Adrian, I’ve been at Leo’s place all day, but I can’t get in. He … doesn’t seem to be there.”
“No,” he faltered. The duffel coat seemed thinner now, as if someone had shrunk and spoilt it at the cleaner’s.
“What d’you mean ‘no’?”
“He’s … er … gone away.”
“Gone away? But he didn’t tell me. I mean before I went, he hadn’t planned to …”
“No.”
“What d’you keep saying ‘no’ for?” I jabbed my foot against the wall. “How the hell d’ you know Leo’s plans?”
“He’s … er … been in touch with me.” The duffel coat had completely vanished now. There was only a frayed and holey sweater unravelling at the seams.
“You?”
At that point, the pips went and I hadn’t got another coin. I begged for change at the kiosk, but they said only if I bought a paper which I didn’t want. I didn’t want anything except that stupid lying phone-box to shatter into pieces and Leo to come sauntering through the ticket barrier and rush into my arms. I stood a moment while the whole dizzy tube station slowly somersaulted through my head, then I marched up to the window and bought a single to Waterloo. Even a frayed unravelling sweater was better than sitting naked on a doorstep.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Gone away, gone away, gone away, goneaway goneaway goneawaygoneawaygoneawaygoneawaygoneaway gone a …
Leo never went away. He hated holidays. And he never confided in Adrian. People with semi-detacheds in suburbia and Mortgage-Protection Policies don’t induce his confidence. All the way on the slow, shabby train from Waterloo to Twickenham, I tried to picture him and Adrian talking. I couldn’t. I couldn’t even imagine where they’d meet. Adrian would suggest half of Black Label in the saloon bar of a small hotel with racing prints on the mock-walnut walls and the barman in a maroon bow tie, wise-cracking across the rubber plants. Leo would lurk in the basement of the Ganymede Club where the bum-boys wore dark glasses and an ex-Norwegian seaman played the accordion and showed off his tattoos.
I went through all the reasons why people have to go away. Dying relatives, perhaps — but all of Leo’s had conveniently died already, or if they hadn’t, he didn’t want to know. Business trips. Leo’s work was confined to London, more or less, and when it wasn’t, he persuaded someone else to do the travelling. Personal injury or accident. I saw Leo howling in a hospital, black head bleeding into glaring white bed-linen. Why assume the worst? He might simply have gone to the coast for a day or two, or abroad to visit a new superior hypnotist. The better ones probably all had addresses in Vienna, like the early Freudian analysts. All the same, why should he tell Adrian? Why should Adrian be involved at all? Why had … ?
I ran all the way from the station to Adrian’s semi. My suitcase was still on Leo’s doorstep, so it was easy to go fast. I was glad I’d left it there — something of mine to nestle against his house, to bring him back like a magic talisman, welcome him when he blazed in through the gate.
Adrian’s door was an inch or two ajar, so I walked straight in and shouted “Piggy!” which was what I called him when we were first married and he’d always wanted more. Unfortunately, it wasn’t Piggy, but Janet wearing a sort of maternity smock, which I thought was taking things too far, considering it was three months since she’d lost the baby. Her skin was a smug complacent healthy pink all over, as if she had a hot water-bottle snuggling just inside her body where other people have hearts and lungs and things. Her cheeks looked like an advertisement for those glowing Barbara Cartland sort of people who stuff themselves full of Sanatogen or Horlicks or multi-vitamins. Her plump pink upper arms could barely squeeze themselves through the prim puffed sleeves. She made me feel sallow and sleazy and faded in comparison. It was as if she had never eaten anything but hothouse peaches and orange-blossom honey — wholesome, sun-kissed delicacies which shone through her skin and sang along her bloodstream, while my drab body groaned and heaved with husks and scraps and greasy rancid leftovers. Her hair had been newly permed and every tight little yellow sausage curled its lip and sneered at me. Her legs were bad (thank God) and she was wearing those dark brown crepey support tights they sell for varicose veins. They were so thick, I couldn’t see whether she had the veins as well. She smelt of lavender bags and halibut and self-congratulation all mixed up together. She stood in the hall blocking my way to Adrian, glowing and frowning at the same time in a manner which said, “This is my house and my husband and you haven’t a chance against the three of us.”
“Hi!” I said, trying to see what size her breasts were now, under her baggy smock. Mine had collapsed only days after they’d pickled Lucian, but hers still looked megalithic.
She pressed her lips together in what might have been a smile, had her eyes not frozen over. Janet is unfailingly polite. Even if the Nazis had forced their way into her bedroom for rape and arson, she’d have offered them a Durex or a box of matches and said, “Let me take your coat.”
That’s exactly what she did say, though when I handed over Leo’s sheepskin, she shrank away from it as if it were infectious. I could see her making a mental note to wash her hands before she touched her food. They’d been sitting over supper when I barged in. It was late for Adrian. When I lived with him, he’d liked to eat at six o’ clock and was starving again by ten. I suppose late dinner was part of Janet’s rationing process, like no eating between meals and instant confiscation of his Creamline toffees.
“I’d have made more if I’d known you were coming,” she peeved, scraping out the remnants of a fishy (halibut?) thing in wine sauce. There was almost nothing left of it except the garnish and the fancy French name. “People usually phone if they plan to come for dinner.”
“It’s OK,” I said. “I’ll finish up the veg. I don’t like fish much, anyway.”
Adrian still looked ravenous and watched in admiration as I polished off the potatoes and shovelled in the last of the petits pois à la fr
ancaise (Birds-Eye brand with a sprinkle of herbs and a bit of soggy lettuce leaf clinging to the bottom). I felt I had to stuff and stuff, to shore me up before I heard where Leo was. Gone away goneaway. It was also a sort of thumbs-down to religion. Bernadette was far less likely to approach me while my mouth was crammed with Camembert and my plate piled high with Crawford’s mixed cheese biscuits.
“No pudding?” I inquired. I wanted to drown everything in food — Lourdes and Ray and Leo and cold abandoned doorsteps, and proud possessing Janets.
“Adrian’s slimming, Thea.” She made the word “slimming” sound like some holy and high-principled form of torture, like crucifixion or the rack.
I didn’t dare catch Adrian’s eye. He was fiddling with his napkin, a heavy damask one with ‘A’ embroidered on the corner. Janet loved things with initials on. I suppose it gave her a surer sense of who other people were and who she was herself. If I’d had ‘T’ embroidered on my knickers, I might have had fewer problems with my lovers. Somehow I always thought of things like knickers when I was with Adrian. The only time I had any dregs of ownership left over him was when I managed to seduce him. Apart from that, he now belonged exclusively to Janet. She’d probably embroider an ‘A’ or a ‘J’ on his prick next, to ensure it didn’t stray. It still seemed strange I hadn’t had it for so long — with him or anyone. Janet must have abstained even longer — what with losing the baby and then the D and C and convalescence and being stitched and sore and bleeding and probably disapproving of it anyway.
She was making coffee now in a prissy jug with roses on, dribbling it into mean little cups which were so small, it was hardly worth dirtying them. The sugar was that coarse brown flinty stuff which breaks your teeth and isn’t even sweet. I put so much in, the coffee overflowed like Archimedes’ bath. Janet mopped it up with frowns and tuts and dishcloths, and then slipped a plastic mat beneath my cup as if I were a baby or a dog.
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