A Disturbing Influence

by Julian Mitchell

  I hadn’t really expected him to be any good, but he wasn’t bad at all, actually, very steady, though he had no style at all, and he got the ball back over the net and ran about and returned quite difficult ones and had quite a decent serve, in fact he did pretty well. He wasn’t really good, but he would have done jolly well in club tournaments and things till he met someone who was good, and he would have made a very decent partner in a mixed doubles, because he was so reliable and steady. So I forgot all about him and his look and concentrated on beating him, getting him into the wrong position and then passing him with my backhand drive, which is easily my best shot, and very strong, but he caught on to that quite quickly and tried to feed only my forehand, so it was good practice for me, and I was really rather enjoying it, though not extending myself, of course. I won the first set pretty easily, and I was winning the second five-three when we changed ends and met at the net and he said: ‘You’re not bad, are you?’

  ‘Of course I’m not bad. If you practised a little more and took some lessons you might be quite good yourself. But your swing is all wrong, you don’t have any style.’

  ‘I get the ball back where I want to most of the time,’ he said, and smiled with that funny smile of his which made him look cynical, which was right in a way, because he was pretty cynical. And even while he was smiling he was looking at me like that, not touching me, but letting his hand swing free across his thighs in a sexy way, and he made me feel his hands were all over me which I didn’t like much, because I was thinking about tennis, so I said: ‘Come on, and I’ll really beat you up.’

  But somehow he made me lose my concentration, making me feel that, and he won the next game, which was my service, and then his own service, and eventually he took the set nine-seven.

  ‘Whew,’ I said, ‘would you like to rest a little now? Or shall we go straight on?’ I was sweating a little, which I don’t often do unless it’s a tough game, and I’d had to fight myself as much as him the last few games. I was getting a little wild and not getting the shots in.

  ‘You ought to wipe the sweat off your face,’ he said, ‘or it’ll get in your eyes.’

  Well, that made me furious, no man should ever say a thing like that to a girl, it’s insulting, and what made it worse was that he wasn’t sweating at all, and you expect a man to sweat when he’s playing games. And then he began to unbutton his shirt without asking me, and he had it half off before he said, in the most casual way: ‘Mind if I take this off?’, and I had to say: ‘Not at all,’ though I did mind, really, not his taking it off but the way he didn’t bother to ask until he’d already started. Actually, though, he had a nice body, and he wasn’t thin at all, really, he was sort of spare, lots of muscle and no fat, though his skin was pale and like an American’s—they don’t have the same kind of complexion, somehow, more of a sheen and less colour than us, and not darker exactly but—well, different. And he didn’t have any hair on his chest, though there was some on his legs, and I liked that, because I don’t like hairy men, it’s disgusting somehow, some of them have it all over their shoulders and everywhere, but he just had a little on his legs, and that’s all right, I don’t mind legs so much. Well, I suddenly realized that I’d been looking at him more than I should. I mean girls aren’t supposed to look at boys the way boys look at girls, so I pulled myself together and said: ‘Would you like to go on?’

  ‘Just as you like,’ he said, and obviously he meant just that, that he could take tennis or leave it (he was always saying he could take something or leave it, and I picked up the habit), and that he wasn’t there just to play tennis but to give me that look all the time, too, and that made me cross. He seemed to want to have everything his own way, so I said: ‘All right, let’s keep going, then,’ so we did, and after the next set, which I won, after nearly losing it by forcing instead of taking my time, we went and sat in deck-chairs and relaxed, by the little pavilion thing where we put towels and chairs and things while we’re playing. He had very bony hands, I thought, long and looking as though you could snap the fingers like twigs, so I said: ‘What funny fingers you have,’ and then he looked at them slowly back and front. ‘What’s funny about them?’ he said at last, looking at me with that look again.

  ‘They’re sort of like bunches of twigs.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ And then he lost interest in them, and let them fall on his hairy thighs, because he wore terribly short shorts and almost all of his thigh was visible—not all, of course, but an awful lot—and he kept on looking at me, so I said: ‘Don’t look at me like that.’

  ‘My God, you do nothing but criticize.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that, I meant——’

  ‘—that I shouldn’t look at you like that. Don’t you like to be looked at?’

  ‘Yes, but not like that.’

  ‘Why not like that? How was I looking at you? How do you want me to look at you? Do you want me to look at you?’

  ‘Really,’ I said, because all this was very bewildering, and I didn’t begin to know what to say. I just didn’t want him to look at me like that then, when there was no one around, and he made me feel nervous.

  ‘I can’t even remember how I was looking at you. Like this?’ and of course it was just exactly like that, so I said: ‘Yes, and stop it,’ and he said: ‘But I always look at people like that.’

  ‘I bet you don’t look at my mother like that.’

  ‘But you aren’t your mother, thank God,’ he said, and while I was trying to think of some way of saying that he was the rudest man I’d ever met and that if he couldn’t be polite he’d better go home, he closed his eyes and completely vanished, not literally, I mean, but just seemed to withdraw from the scene, and when I said what I thought I should say he ignored me completely, so we sat in silence for a bit, and then I said: ‘Your shorts are awfully short, where did you get them?’

  ‘I can’t remember,’ he said, after I’d given up hope of getting an answer out of him. ‘It could have been almost anywhere.’

  ‘You certainly couldn’t have got them in England.’

  ‘No, you can’t get anything in England that you really want at the time, place and price you want it.’

  ‘Don’t you like England?’

  ‘It’s O.K. It makes very little difference to me where I am.’

  Well, I thought that was pretty rude, after the way he’d been looking at me, so I pouted a bit, hoping his eyes were open by now, and eventually I said: ‘I suppose you’re an angry young man or something silly like that.’

  He sat right up at that and looked terribly surprised, so I felt pleased, and he said: ‘A what?’

  ‘An angry young man. You know—one of those people who say the queen has an awful voice, and so on—they’re always complaining.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said, and sank back irritatingly, ‘then I’m not. I don’t stay anywhere if there are things to complain about.’

  ‘Then you do like England, because you’re here.’

  ‘I’m here because I have to be here,’ he said, and when I asked him what he meant he didn’t answer, he just laughed and said: ‘Didn’t you know I was a convalescent?’

  And then we just lay there for a bit, me thinking about how awful he was, but how exciting, too, and how irritating that made him, and how he needed taking down a peg or two, and he thinking about whatever he did think about, pretty odd things, I should say, when he suddenly sat up and said: ‘Well, shall we go?’, so I said: ‘Where?’ and he looked at me again, so I looked away, and then he said: ‘I’d better be getting back, then. Raymond may want the car.’

  That was what was so utterly maddening about him, he never even made a pass the way you expected him to, he simply looked and expected you to come when he called, and if you didn’t he didn’t waste time trying to persuade you, he just went away, as he did that time, leaving me furious, though he had given me quite a decent game.

  Anyway, he came again a couple of days later, and we were changing ends in the middle
of the third set when he looked at me like that very strongly and I was just paralysed, and he came up very close to me and put his hand straight there, where no man is supposed to put his hand on a woman in the open, and not often in private, either, and I was so flabbergasted, I mean I simply couldn’t think of anything to say, and by the time I’d thought it was too late, we were half-way to the house, and that was the first time, with me terrified that Mummy would suddenly want to know where we were, but she was out in the garden, luckily, weeding, and so we lay there, ears cocked for any sound, at least mine were, while he looked at me crossly and said: ‘But you didn’t sweat,’ and I was so astonished by everything, I just said: ‘I don’t sweat much.’

  ‘You do playing tennis.’

  He was funny, too, because as soon as we’d finished he’d cover himself up, or put on his shorts, so that I couldn’t look, not that I wanted to, particularly, but it was odd, I thought, and he looked at me all right, in a sort of measuring way which made me want to hit him, but I didn’t. Of course, he was much better than Ralph, who was terribly clumsy and often rather drunk, too, by the time we got that far, and awfully sentimental, which I quite liked, though it was sickening sometimes, too. And then he—David, I mean—would lie there absolutely still, so I lay very still, too, beside him, and after a bit he’d say: ‘You didn’t sweat,’ crossly, and I would say: ‘What do you want me to sweat for?’ and he’d say nothing, he’d just get up abruptly and get dressed and say: ‘I’d better be getting back. Raymond may want the car.’

  And the really funny thing was that I didn’t care whether he stayed or went, because I didn’t like him very much. I enjoyed doing it with him very much, but I didn’t like him, and it never occurred to me that I might be in love with him, though Daddy would say: ‘You’re seeing a lot of that young man, aren’t you, Jane?’ and wink a lot, which was stupid, because I simply didn’t care if I never saw him again, though I hoped I would, because—well, it was fun, though he wasn’t much fun, never saying anything, if that makes sense. And, anyway, I knew he’d come back, because he seemed to enjoy it, too, and, besides, he had this thing about wanting me to sweat, which I never did, and sure enough he came, nearly every day, and he’d arrive in his ordinary clothes so he’d have an excuse to come upstairs to change, and he’d use Teddy’s room, which was next to mine, with a bathroom in between with connecting doors, and he’d undress down to his pants and come through the bathroom into my room without even knocking and put his hand straight there and hardly say anything till we’d finished, and then he’d cover himself as though he had some inkling of delicacy, which he didn’t, not a notion, and say: ‘You didn’t sweat,’ and then we’d go and play tennis, and I always beat him, but he gave me a jolly good game, and sometimes took a set off me, and afterwards the same thing would happen again, so I had to admire his virility if nothing else.

  But I still didn’t like him, in fact I felt terribly detached about him, though not about his body, of course. I had no idea what was going on inside him at all, and I really didn’t care very much. Why, I don’t know, because I’m always falling in love with people just for their looks, but not him. In fact I behaved rather peculiarly, but if I didn’t like him I was certainly intrigued, though he never said anything about us that wasn’t exclusively about going to bed, and when I complained he just said: ‘What do you want me to say? I love you?’ and I didn’t want him to say that, I just wanted him to say something that showed he knew I was a person, not an animal, but he never did, and complaining was like talking to a concrete wall. He never even invited me to a dance or a cocktail party, though I invited him once or twice, but he always refused on some obviously invented excuse which he would defend even when I’d proved to him that it was all lies. But somehow I didn’t care, there was no one to care about, no one to take offence at, behind the lover and the tennis-player, at least not that I could discover, though his body was marvellous and he was the only person within miles who could give me a reasonable game of tennis, so we just went on like that for about a fortnight.

  One week-end Teddy suddenly appeared from Oxford, the way he so often did, without telling anyone he was coming, and then pretending it was us who had failed to remember. I’m mad about Teddy, he’s the sweetest brother you could want when he isn’t being silly, though he usually is, and he’s terribly good-looking with auburn hair and green eyes, except they’re really grey, though they ought to be green, and if he wears a green shirt or even a green tie they look green, so I always give him something green for his birthday and Christmas, though he says I’m just trying to turn him into a vegetable. Teddy’s always excited about something, and when we were children he was always inventing games and then he would make me play them with him without even telling me the rules, so naturally I did things wrong and then he’d get furious, or else he wouldn’t let me play with him at all. I was never allowed to choose a game of my own, so we were always fighting, but we always made it up again quickly, and he’s only two years older than me and now we get on terribly well, and I love him very much indeed, though he can be infuriating at times. I don’t know what they do at Oxford, but to judge by Teddy they sit around talking about Life and Sex and Art and Religion all the time, because he was always coming home with some crazy new idea which he’d try and explain to me, and of course I never understood a word, and he used very difficult words, too, like ‘empiricism’ and ‘syndrome’, which I had to ask him to spell and then went and looked up, and he was just the same as when we were young, because either he was making you listen to some terrible nonsense full of difficult words, or he’d sit alone in his room and lock the door and complain bitterly at being made to attend regular meals. He gave me the most obscure books to read, which I would hide under the mattress and pretend I’d lost, and then he’d accuse me of being irresponsible and not caring about really fundamental things like the one he was on to at the moment, whatever that might be, but he was awfully lovable in spite of all the silliness, and we got on very well, in fact we always had. I only ever won one battle with Teddy, and that was about calling him Teddy, because he suddenly decided that Teddy was too nursery, and would we please call him Edward, or if we had to shorten it, Ed, only Mummy said she certainly wasn’t going to allow anyone called Ed around the house, Ed was a butcher’s boy sort of name, and Daddy agreed that he ought to be called Edward now, but I could never remember, and though he’d get very angry, eventually he gave up, and let me call him Teddy as I always had.

  On Saturday night he came into my room about midnight and woke me up, of all things, though we’d always come in and out of each other’s rooms without bothering about knocking or anything because we would often have long talks together at night, even when we were quite small, and if it was cold we would get into the other’s bed, just to keep warm, but we were too old for that sort of thing now, we thought, so we usually just sat on the bed. So there wasn’t anything unusual about his coming in, though it was a bit mean to wake me up, I’d been playing tennis all afternoon with David and some other people, and afterwards there’d been the other business, so I was really pretty tired, and it’s awful to wake up just after you’ve got off to sleep. You feel dizzy and horrid for a few minutes, and often you can’t get back to sleep again, which is awful, and, besides, for a moment I thought he was David and I couldn’t think what he was doing there at that time of night, but it was Teddy. And he wanted to talk, obviously, and he was started even before I’d woken up properly, and he looked as though he’d be going on for hours, and I couldn’t understand a word of what he was saying, though it seemed to be about honour and things, only then it turned out to be about David and me, and how had he found out? I wondered, so I listened, though I would have told him anyway, in fact we always told each other everything, he even told me about what he did at school, and about his first girl who was a tart somewhere, and his eyes were very green, because he was wearing the pyjamas I’d given him for his twenty-first birthday, and he walked up and down ma
king huge gestures as though he was addressing a crowd, not just me, his sister, curled up in her nightgown and just watching him and thinking how handsome he was and not really listening at all.

  Teddy said David was evil, so I said that was nonsense, and what did he think he was talking about, he’d only met him that afternoon, and anyway what does evil mean? But once Teddy gets an idea it’s very difficult to get him off it, and he paced up and down with eyes flashing green, saying: ‘I know he’s evil, I can sense it, I feel it with every pore, with every minute hair on every inch of skin. I feel the evil as something absolutely repugnant, the way you smell a rotten egg and suddenly you know there’s a whole range, a whole spectrum, of smells and sights and sounds, too, probably, which aren’t merely rotten, whose rottenness is only a disguise for their utter corruption, which are against, actively against, the smells and sights and sounds we like, which are only symptoms of a whole principle of corruption and evil, a whole anti-morality, and you can’t rationalize, you can’t explain how you recognize it, you can only apprehend without being able to comprehend, and I tell you, Jane, he is evil, he is against.’

  Well, naturally I didn’t understand what Teddy was talking about, so I just said: ‘If you knew him as well as I know him, you wouldn’t talk such rubbish.’

  ‘I know him better than you do, Jane, because I can see, I can watch, I’m not tangled in him the way you are. I could see from the way you looked at him that you weren’t seeing him as he was but as some dream of your own, you probably think you’re in love with him——’