Girl, 20

by Kingsley Amis

  I nodded. Roy grinned at me and shook his head slowly.

  ‘A very neat job, Duggers. What did you use?’

  ‘Butter. Finest New Zealand. I didn’t mean it to happen as it did. I thought you’d find out as soon as you started tuning, or earlier. I’m sorry you had—’

  ‘Not at all, it was highly dramatic. A bit of a surprise, though. On reflection, I mean. I hadn’t realized you’d follow up your principles quite that far into practice.’

  ‘I felt I had to do something.’

  ‘Most laudable. Did you just sit there in the writing-room and smear away?’

  ‘The Gents.’

  ‘One likes to have the full picture. Well, it seems you were wasting your time.’

  ‘So I saw and heard.’

  ‘No, I mean the critical reception, so to call it. Have you seen the Orb this morning? Very quick off the mark.’

  I took the folded sheets. ‘Violinist-composer Roy Vandervane Blazes New Trail,’ announced Barry somebody, and went on to declare that, despite a technical hold-up and an unappreciative audience and never mind about the deplorable scene that followed (see page 3), he considered himself privileged to have been present at the birth of a new this, that and the other which would surely lead to further exciting what-have-you. Before he ended, Barry drew a staggeringly learned comparison with the hostile reception given leading nineteenth-century German composer Ludwig van Beethoven’s pioneering First Symphony.

  ‘Terrified of being caught out being square,’ I said. ‘Like all of them.’

  ‘Except you. Yes, there’s a slightly shorter piece in the Flyer. Care for a flip-through?’

  ‘No thanks.’

  ‘Your piece comes out on Friday, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So you’ll be able to give it mature consideration.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You thought it was piss, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes. Everything about it except your own performance.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Roy settled himself back against his pillows. ‘So you see it wasn’t quite such a flop as we all thought. Mind you, last night taught me quite a bit. The sort of chamber concerto approach was a mistake. The kids got too much of me and not enough of Pigs Out. I’ll give them a lot more to do next time. Quartet style, or quintet with a lead guitar added.’

  A weary incredulity possessed me. ‘Next time?’

  ‘Oh, Spiro Agnew! You don’t suppose I’m going to let myself be choked off by one adverse reaction like that, do you? Nobody would ever—’

  ‘I’ve given up supposing where you’re concerned,’ I said, advancing on him. ‘I can just see you next time, or after next time, when one of them’s broken all the bones in your left hand, explaining that the time after that it might be a good idea to introduce a vibraphone and a tenor sax. You learnt a lot last night, did you? You didn’t learn the most obvious lesson anybody could possibly have in his whole life. You’re just incapable of . . .’

  I stopped speaking because somebody else had come into the room. From the flash of white I caught at the corner of my eye, I momentarily took the newcomer for a nurse or other hospital person, but it was Sylvia, wearing a long coat that might once have belonged to an undersized cricket umpire or professional house-painter, though not undersized enough, in the sense that it was still too big for her, or would have been considered so by the vanishing minority of which I suddenly felt myself a member. Her hair had been sprayed with glue while she stood in a wind-tunnel – at that stage I could think of no other explanation for its appearance; her eyelids were dark green. She went straight across to Roy and started what gave every promise of being a long bout of embraces, interspersed with whispers. I moved to the window and saw a block of flats, red brick and stucco with little balconies, on one of which a large white dog hurried to and fro like a tiger in a cage.

  ‘Why’s he here?’ asked Sylvia behind me.

  ‘Now, Sylvia. Duggers came to see how I am.’

  ‘He’s seen, hasn’t he?’

  ‘Why’s she here?’ I asked, turning. ‘If you don’t mind my putting it like that. I mean I thought Harold had put a stop to things.’

  Roy gave a rich laugh and looked up at Sylvia with admiring affection. ‘We think we’ve rather put a stop to him putting a stop, don’t we, darling? That ole counter-measure we’ve been working on, Duggers, there’s a better than even chance it’s going to pay off, from what I’ve just heard. Fix everything.’

  ‘Everything?’

  ‘Yes, everything,’ said Sylvia. ‘Like him and me going off together and there’s nothing you can do to stop it, or anybody else.’

  ‘I see.’

  With a show of great seriousness and strength of mind, Roy said, ‘Go on with what you were saying, Duggers. About last night.’

  ‘There’s no point. Not now.’

  ‘Yes there is. I want to hear.’

  ‘You want to be able to tell yourself you listened to every word and you had to admit in fairness I was right in a way but it’s just something you’ll have to live with, and then you’ll forget all about it.’

  ‘Get out,’ said Sylvia, who had evidently appreciated my tone, if nothing more. ‘Get out of here and out of our lives. You’re nothing but a big druhg. Nobody wants you around.’

  ‘Shut up,’ I said.

  She started to move round the bed towards me with something of the same demeanour as when she had been about to grapple with Kitty. I picked up the water-jug from the bedside table.

  ‘If you come near enough I’ll pour this all over your head.’

  ‘Ah now, be a good darling.’

  One appeal or the other took its effect: she sat down on the bed with her back to me. Roy reached out and held her hand.

  ‘Fire away, Duggers.’

  ‘All right. I cannot understand, I will never understand, how you can even consider going on with this youth thing of yours after what happened last night. They didn’t want you there; they felt you were out of place. And by God they showed it . . .’

  ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, that was just a gang of bloody hoods. A tiny minority. You get them everywhere. You’re not going to tell me they were representative of the whole—’

  ‘Yes I am. In a way. Nobody tried to intervene, did they? They just stood by, because they—’

  ‘People don’t intervene. That happens everywhere too.’

  ‘Oh yes they do intervene, at that kind of do. Punch-ups galore. Rival bands of youths, as they say.’

  ‘Duggers, you’ll really have to show me your birth certificate to prove you’re not sixty-five. Young people don’t consist exclusively of rival bands of youths. If there had been a rival band of youths there it had gone home. And Jesus, even if there had been one around it wouldn’t have had time to do anything. You’re talking complete ballocks.’

  ‘All right, perhaps I am, on that. But the fact remains that that bunch were putting into action what the others were feeling. Partly – I mean not all of them can have felt aggressive towards you, but I bet the vast majority were out of sympathy with you. Last night, I thought they got up and left because they were bored. That too, no doubt, but now I realize the chief thing was that they were embarrassed. At the sight of somebody quite old enough, easily and demonstrably old enough to know better, making an exhibition of himself. Like seeing your auntie doing a strip. It wasn’t your scene, dad, and it never will be.’

  Sylvia began to speak, but Roy silenced her, perhaps by twisting her wrist. He kept his eyes on me as he had for the last minute, with the artless, total concentration of a man who is thinking about something else. I saw that I had been talking, and was going to go on talking, so that I could tell myself afterwards I had said everything, just as he was going to tell himself he had heard everything, but I went on all the same.

  ‘You know what I honestly expected, after last night? After your piece had failed and you’d been beaten up and had your Strad smashed – which is like having y
our child maimed. Isn’t it, Roy? After that I honestly expected you to swear to have nothing more to do with any of it, no more pop, no more youth, no more new ways of this and that – and then to sneak back to it bit by bit after a month or two. But here you are, twelve hours later, full of horrible plans for more of the same. That’s frightening. You’re going downhill faster and faster. I only hope you hold up long enough not to disgrace yourself and humiliate the orchestra over the Mahler. After that’s over I advise you to retire to one of those places in California where nobody knows anything or notices anything. I’ll be off now. Oh . . .’

  Remembering, I brought out the half-bottle of Scotch I had been carrying in my coat pocket, and put it on the bedside table.

  ‘Christ, Duggers, that’s a handsome gesture, I must say. Thanks a lot.’

  ‘I should hide it if I were you. Well, goodbye. You bloody fool. And good luck. To both of you.’

  ‘Be in touch, old lad.’

  Outside, I came to an unfrequented stretch of corridor, stopped, and kicked the wall several times, also hitting it once or twice with my fists. ‘Fuck,’ I said. ‘Shit. Oh, God.’ Then I saw and heard a trolley being pushed round a nearby corner, so I made for the stairs, and was soon outside the building in the same hot haze.

  I still had nearly three-quarters of an hour in hand before meeting Vivienne, but there was nothing I wanted to do except in the world of theory, like getting drunk or rushing off to a brothel. I walked up through Hyde Park thinking of things I wished I had said to Roy, to do with Kitty and Penny and Ashley and such, and deciding that none of it would have done any good. At Marble Arch I got on a bus, then got off it again on finding there was nothing to distract me from the same cycle of thoughts. Making my way on foot along densely crowded pavements was better from that point of view, if from no other. I reached the airline office at eighteen minutes past twelve, collected Vivienne and took her across the road to a chain eatery of the sort that serves wine by the glass and beer to those devil-may-care few of its customers who want them.

  We ate scampi and spinach and I told Vivienne my story, to the later sections of which she responded with what I took to be sullenness-cum-preoccupation, low intensity, preoccupation the more marked of the two. I told myself she had never approved of Roy. Then, over apple pie and cream, she said,

  ‘Doug, I’ve got something to tell you. I might be going to marry Gilbert.’

  A piece of apple fell out of my mouth. I said, ‘Who?’

  ‘Gilbert Alexander. That West Indian chap. You know him.’

  ‘Yes, I know him, but I don’t know you know him. I mean I didn’t know you knew him. How do you know him?’

  ‘I met him on your doorstep.’

  ‘But that was only for a minute.’

  ‘Just long enough for him to say good evening, and would I like to have a drink with him some time, and I said I couldn’t then, and he said of course not, but would I write my name and telephone number on a blank page of a book he had with him, and he had his ballpoint out all ready and he just didn’t give me time to think why to say no.’

  ‘But this was only last week, last—’

  ‘We’re not getting married anything like yet. We’re getting engaged.’

  ‘But nobody gets engaged these days.’

  ‘He says where he comes from they do. When they get married at all, that is. And they used to where I came from. I don’t suppose they’ve stopped, either.’

  ‘Does your father know?’

  ‘Yes, I took Gilbert up for a drink yesterday evening. And the opposite to what you might think, he doesn’t mind him being black at all.’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking anything about that.’

  ‘Oh, Doug, don’t be silly, of course you were. If you want to know what I think, the trouble with most black people isn’t that they’re black. Who could possibly mind that? – unless they were all prejudiced and horrible. It’s a lovely colour. Anyway, it’s never really black, not jet black. Even if it was, it would probably still be nice. No, what’s wrong with a lot of black people is that they’re Negroid, with great big lips and spread-out noses and the rest of it. But Gilbert’s different: he looks like a dark-brown Englishman. Great.’

  ‘I shouldn’t have thought that was enough to get married on the score of.’

  ‘Of course it isn’t. What it is, he’s my type. The sort of thing I mean, he interferes with my life. He makes me do some things and stops me doing others.’

  ‘The masterful male.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  ‘I thought we’d all managed to get beyond that stage.’

  ‘Well, we all haven’t.’

  Coffee arrived at that point, and I extracted the bill at the same time. A memory from last night returned, bringing with it an explanation: I had thought about Penny with new resolve because I had unknowingly sensed a basic and (to me) adverse change in Vivienne’s life. But I still hardly believed in it.

  ‘It isn’t just me wanting to be dominated the whole time,’ resumed Vivienne. ‘But when you care about someone, you’ve got to interfere with their life now and then. It’s all part of it. I interfere with his over some things. For instance, he’s a bit silly about being black, and I don’t let him get away with any of that.’

  ‘You sound as if you and he have spent about six months together.’

  ‘It feels rather like that. We did spend the whole of yesterday together.’

  ‘You took the day off? You’ve never done that before.’

  ‘Not to be with you, no. You never asked me to. And here’s more of what I mean. I’ve got bad taste in clothes and everything, haven’t I? Give me an honest answer, Doug. You can now.’

  ‘Yes, you have.’

  ‘But you never told me, because you were being the unmasterful male. Not interfering. Gilbert told me straight away. He went through the whole of my wardrobe and picked out about five things and said I could keep them, but I was never to wear any of the others again. Same with my jewellery and stuff.’

  After a moment, I said, ‘What does you being engaged mean exactly?’

  ‘Well, I got rid of that chap with the beard right off.’

  ‘And now you’re getting rid of me.’

  ‘I hope so. No, Doug, the point is, you know about me liking being shared, because I like a lot of, you know, because I’m a bit . . .’

  ‘Highly sexed.’

  ‘I suppose so. Anyway, Gilbert doesn’t approve of that, me being shared, I mean. Decadent, he calls it. He says he’d think the same whether I was having anything to do with him or not, and I believe him. And I agree with him, really. So, we’re going to be engaged for three months and if I haven’t had to be shared or missed being shared too much in that time, then we’ll get married.’

  ‘I see.’ I paused again, then said as genially as possible, ‘Of course, these blokes are supposed to be greatly gifted, aren’t they? That would make up to some extent for . . .’

  During our association, Vivienne had done her fair share of laughing, but mostly, I realized, out of high spirits or in response to a full-grown external joke, at the cinema and so on, not as now. ‘Fancy someone like you thinking there’s something in that. Oh, I know a lot of people do. Girls. Gilbert says quite a lot of stuff’s come his way because they think – you know. If you’re interested,’ – she blushed and looked down at her coffee-cup, but with a silent snigger – ‘it’s just like yours, only black.’

  I counted out money. ‘So as far as that’s concerned, you could have got engaged to me instead.’

  ‘Yes, I could, except you never asked me, and I always knew really you were never going to. I suppose I took you along to see my father just in case it might make you think of it. Anyway, there’s Penny, isn’t there? Gilbert told me all about that. Now he’s gone, you can move in. Or she can with you.’

  I considered in silence. Actual moving-in either way round was surely out of the question; the general prospect of some sort of affair with
Penny struck me as attractive but irrelevant, like the free offer of a new and prodigious set of hi-fi equipment.

  ‘Gilbert thinks it would be a good idea. He doesn’t want her to be left on her own. He’s quite worried about her.’

  ‘But not worried enough to stay with her.’

  ‘Not now, no, but he thinks you might be able to tide her over for a bit. I must go, Doug.’

  In the street, her manner, which had cooled rather in the last minute, warmed up again. She took my arm.

  ‘Dad’s having a few friends and neighbours in for drinks tomorrow about six, sort of a very informal unofficial engagement-party. I mean the engagement’s unofficial as well as the party. Can you come?’

  ‘Oh, you won’t want me there, will you, you and Gilbert?’

  ‘Yes we will. I will, because of you and me, and he will, because he thinks he owes you an apology, he says.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Well, he has taken your girl-friend off you, hasn’t he?’

  I looked into her clear brown eyes and at her firm mouth. ‘Yes, he has, hasn’t he? But tell him there are no hard feelings.’

  We halted on the kerb opposite her office, between pedestrians and hurrying traffic.

  ‘Can you come tomorrow?’

  ‘I’ll have to see,’ I said. (What I would have to see was whether Penny would be at home and available later the following evening, when attendance at the informal-etc. party would have brought me nearly three-quarters of the way to her on the good old North-Western Line.) ‘I’ll make it if I possibly can.’

  ‘Mind you do. Don’t bother to come across the road with me: let’s say goodbye here. I don’t mean completely, of course, but – you know.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’