by William Boyd
‘Okay then,’ she says. ‘If that’s what you want. If that’s all.’
She stands up, pulls off her T-shirt and slips down the straps of her bra so that the cups fall free. Her breasts cast no shadow in the unreal glare of the strip-light. The nipples are very small, her breasts are pale and conical and seem almost to point upward. She exposes them for five seconds or so, not looking at me, looking down at her breasts as if she’s seeing them for the first time. Then she resnuggles them in her bra and puts her T-shirt back on. She makes no comment at all. It’s as if she’s been showing me her appendix scar.
‘Look,’ she says unconcernedly at the door, ‘I’ll give you a ring before I leave. Perhaps we could get together.’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Do. That would be nice.’
Outside it is light. I check my watch. It’s half past five. It’s cold and the sky is packed with grey clouds. I walk slowly back to Mme D’Amico’s through a sharp-focused, scathing dawn light. Some of the cafés are open already. Drowsy patrons sweep the pavements. I feel grimy and hungover. I plod up the stairs to Mme D’Amico’s. My room, it seems to me, has a distinct fusty, purulent odour; the atmosphere has a stale recycled quality, all the more acute after the uncompromising air of the morning. I strip off my clothes. I add my unnaturally soft shirt to the pile on the back of the chair. I knot my socks and ball my underpants – as if to trap their smells within their folds – and flip them into the corner of the wardrobe. I lie naked between the sheets. Itches start up all over my body. I finger myself experimentally but I’m too tired and too sad to be bothered.
I wake up to a tremulous knocking on my door. I feel dreadful. I squint at my watch. It’s seven o’clock. I can’t have been asleep for more than an hour.
’Monsieur Edward? C’est moi, Madame D’Amico.’
I say come in, but no sound issues from my mouth. I cough and run my tongue over my teeth, swallowing energetically.
‘Entrez, Madame,’ I whisper.
Mme D’Amico comes in. Her hair is pinned up carelessly and her old face is shiny with tears. She sits down on the bed and immediately begins to sob quietly, her thin shoulders shaking beneath her black cardigan.
‘Oh Madame,’ I say, alarmed. ‘What is it?’ I find it distressing to see Mme D’Amico, normally so correct and so formal, displaying such unabashed human weakness. I am also – inappropriately – very aware of my nakedness beneath the sheets.
‘C’est mon mari,’ she cries. ‘Il est mort.’
Gradually the story comes out. Apparently Monsieur D’Amico, sufferer from Parkinson’s disease, was having a final cigarette in his room in the sanatorium before the nurse came to put him to bed. He lit his cigarette and then tried to shake the match out. But his affliction instead made the match spin from his trembling fingers and fall down the side of the plastic armchair upon which he was sitting. The chair was blazing within seconds, Monsieur D’Amico’s pyjamas and dressing gown caught fire and although he managed to wriggle himself onto the floor his screams were not sufficiently loud to attract the attention of the nurses immediately. He was severely burned. The shock was too much for his frail body and he died in the early hours of the morning.
I try to arrange my sleepy unresponsive senses into some sort of order, try to summon the full extent of my French vocabulary.
Mme D’Amico looks at me pitifully. ‘Oh Monsieur Edward,’ she whimpers, her lips quivering.
‘Madame,’ I reply helplessly. ’C’est une vraie tragédie.’ It seems grossly inept, under the circumstances, almost flippant, my thick early-morning tongue removing any vestige of sincerity from the words. But it seems to mean something to Mme D’Amico, who bows her head and starts to cry with light high-pitched sobs. I reach out an arm from beneath the sheets and gently pat her shoulder.
‘There, there, Madame,’ I say. ‘It will be all right.’
As I lean forward I notice that in her hands there is a crumpled letter. Peering closer I still can’t make out the name but I do see that the stamp is British. It is surely for me. The postal strike, I realize with a start, must now be over. Suddenly I know that I can stay. I think at once about Jackie and our bizarre and unsatisfactory evening. But I don’t really care any more. My spirits begin to stir and lift. I get a brief mental flash of Monsieur D’Amico in his blazing armchair and I hear the quiet sobs of his wife beside me. But it doesn’t really impede the revelation that slowly overtakes me. People, it seems, want to give me things – for some reason known only to them. No matter what I do or how I behave, unprompted and unsought the gifts come. And they will keep on coming. Naked photos, cold pizza, their girls, their wives, their breasts to see, even their grief. I feel a growing confidence about my stay in Nice. It will be all right now, I feel sure. It will work out. I think about all the gifts that lie waiting for me. I think about the Swedish girls at the Centre. I think about spring and the days when the sun will be out . . .
The bed continues to shudder gently from Mme D’Amico’s sobbing. I smile benignly at her bowed head.
‘There, there, Madame,’ I say again. ‘Don’t worry. Everything will be okay. You’ll see. Everything will be fine, I promise you.’
My Girl in Skin-Tight 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 round 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-coloured 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 skin-tight 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 blonde 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 longlegged,
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 which beams out of her eyes. I have noticed too, that she never wears a brassière, and the thin material of her T-shirt is moulded 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 sea front. 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 offence. 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 the 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 round for a drink after closing a couple of times. But since the girl in skin-tight 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 spilt 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 honour 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 leant 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 quiet 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 each other 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 tin 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 towards 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 round 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 round 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 round 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 levelled the gun at his denimmed 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.
&
nbsp; Thick-lips was crawling painfully down the sand towards 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 milk shake.
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 skin-tight 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 . . .
Histoire Vache
’So you are still a virgin,’ Pierre-Etienne said triumphantly, stubbing out his cigarette.