Kitty & Virgil

by Paul Bailey

  ‘Yes, it’s me,’ she responded. ‘Whoever you suppose I am.’

  ‘You are the beautiful woman in the bed. I watched you sleeping.’

  ‘I’m not, and you didn’t. You’ve been watching in someone else’s bedroom, not mine.’

  ‘It was a bed in the hospital. I was working there as a porter. I stopped doing my work to look at you. I thought you were beautiful. I still think you are beautiful.’

  She remembered him now – as the stranger who had taken his glinting smile out of the ward.

  ‘It pleases me to see you again. I call myself Virgil Florescu.’

  He pronounced his first name in a way she hadn’t heard before, and she knew at once that she would be using his way of saying it in the weeks, months and, perhaps, years to come. ‘Virgil,’ she said. ‘I’m Kitty. I’m Kitty Crozier.’

  ‘Now I must tell you, Kitty Crozier, what I have to tell you. I wish to be with you. I am sincere. I wish to be with you, if you will allow me, if you will please grant me the honour.’

  His words came in a rush. When she was sure they had ceased, she said she couldn’t stay and talk to him as she had an appointment to keep. ‘Let me give you my address and number. I have a pen, Virgil, but no paper to write on.’

  ‘I have plenty of paper, Kitty Crozier.’ He lifted up the spike and picked off the wrapping for a bar of Swiss chocolate. ‘Take this. It is large enough.’

  (She would see the Lindt wrapper again, after he was gone from her life. It would fall out of his copy of Miorita, the little book of songs and ballads that once belonged to his mother. She would resist the urge to tear it into pieces.)

  ‘Please, Kitty Crozier, make my back your desk.’

  A moment passed before she did so; before she pressed the scrap of paper against his bumpy spine and wrote on it. In that moment, she wondered if she ought to be cautious, sensible, reserved. She decided, instead, on recklessness.

  ‘I will telephone you, Kitty Crozier.’

  ‘Yes,’ she replied and added, ‘You really must. I’ll be at home tomorrow evening, Virgil.’

  She imagined her sister admonishing her as she headed towards the gate near the Ritz. She made Daisy remind her that she had been foolish, worse than foolish, all those years ago with that kaftanned creature, Freddy, and now here she was, losing her senses over a stranger from a foreign country, from Romania by the sound of it; a man with no prospects, no future, who was working in the lowliest of jobs. He’s a labourer, Kitty, she could hear Daisy insist; a picker-up of other people’s rubbish: whatever is possessing you?

  ‘I hope I’ll discover,’ she answered aloud.

  Virgil Florescu phoned Kitty Crozier shortly after six that Tuesday evening and arrived at her house less than an hour later. ‘I have seen a man with rings in his ears and rings through his nostrils and a ring on his lip,’ he told her excitedly, as she opened the front door. ‘On his lip, Kitty Crozier. On his upper lip, on his top one, he wears a ring. Think of him eating, think of him drinking, think of him kissing –’ He paused. ‘I think, and I am confused. I am in total darkness thinking of a ring in such a spot. I invited him to enlighten me. I asked him why he has the ring on his lip, and he shrugged his shoulders and said “Because”. Then he stopped. I repeated my question and got the same response: “Because, because, because.” I shall never know his reason, Kitty Crozier – the because he is hiding behind his “because”. It was a delightful encounter, though – especially delightful.’

  ‘Come in, Virgil.’

  ‘You could have given me a false address and a false number. But you didn’t.’

  ‘No, I didn’t. Of course I didn’t.’

  ‘I am glad. I was happy to hear it was you when I telephoned. I almost expected to hear the voice of someone else. I almost expected to hear no one at all.’

  (He had wholly expected that the numerals would end for him in nothing. Why should he have expected otherwise? He had embarrassed her, and from that embarrassment had come the mythical house in a mythical street with a phantom telephone and, probably, a made-up name for its owner as well. He had doubted that the beautiful woman he had first seen sleeping in the hospital was even called Kitty Crozier. The ‘Kitty’ and the ‘Crozier’ had rushed into her head while the madman with the spike was staring at her – of that he had convinced himself as he watched her walk briskly away. It was too much to expect that she had been completely honest with him.)

  ‘You are Kitty?’ he asked when he was in the hallway.

  ‘Yes, I am Kitty. I was definitely Kitty when I last looked in the mirror.’

  ‘Kitty Crozier?’

  ‘Yes, yes, yes. Yes, and yes, and yes. A thousand times yes, Virgil – if it really is Virgil Florescu I’m trying to convince.’

  ‘I am he.’

  ‘I don’t think it actually worries me what your name is. But I do like the sound of Virgil.’

  He took her hands and kissed them, and then they embraced. ‘I assume we have sorted out our identities,’ she said, leading him upstairs. ‘Some sad people never seem to.’

  She wiped the tears from his face with the edge of a sheet when they had finished making love. He assured her, again and again, that they were tears of gratitude. He was not unhappy. He was thankful.

  ‘Are you hungry, Virgil? Have you eaten today?’

  ‘Some fruit. Some biscuits.’

  ‘That’s not enough. I shall cook us supper. Do you like steak? Beef steak?’

  There was a silence before he answered. ‘I cannot.’ He shook his head slowly. ‘Not beef. Not lamb. Not pork. I cannot eat such meat. I have a reason, Kitty. Perhaps, one day, I will tell it to you. Please do not ask me to do so now, not now that I am happy.’

  ‘I can make you an omelette, Virgil. I can make you a delicious Spanish omelette.’

  ‘That I should prefer. Fish I can eat, and any bird that has flown free. But not those others.’

  In the kitchen, she gave him a bottle of Saint Amour to open. She drew his attention to the label and laughed. ‘I bought it this afternoon. In anticipation, I suppose.’

  He watched her prepare the meal. ‘You are serious with food, as my mother was.’

  ‘Was? Is she dead?’

  ‘She is.’

  (If he had stated, as he nearly stated, that she had died in life, Kitty would have stopped doing her delicate work with onions, peppers and potatoes, and asked him what he meant. It was best, at present, to say, simply, that yes, she is dead.)

  ‘Will it upset you, Virgil, if I have steak? I’m eating it once a week, on my doctor’s instructions.’

  ‘You must do as your doctor commands. You must understand, beautiful Kitty Crozier, it is my problem only.’

  ‘An allergy, is it? An aversion?’

  ‘An aversion. Precisely.’

  ‘When you come here again there won’t be any meat. I promise.’

  ‘You wish me to come here again?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘You are kind to me.’

  ‘I’m being kind to myself, I hope, Virgil. I haven’t been so kind to myself in ages.’

  (Not, she might have said, since the days with Freddy – the days that came to an abrupt end when he decided, against everything she thought she knew of his character, to become a responsible person. He’d left her a note with the message that he’d seen the light and for the good of his soul he had to follow it to north-east Africa.)

  ‘Where are you living in London?’

  ‘In rooms. In lots of rooms. At the moment I am in a room in Hammersmith. The property is owned by Mr Nicos Razelos, an Athenian Greek with a magnificent belly. He calls it his promontory, Kitty, and he laughs when the buttons on his silk shirts give up the struggle of containing it. Last Saturday morning he lost three all at once – pop, pop, pop, they went, like three tiny bullets being fired. He has this vast stomach, this promontory which he strokes and caresses, and yet he moves on his dainty feet with the grace of a ballet dancer. He is a diverting i
ndividual.’

  ‘Why rooms, Virgil? Why lots of them?’

  ‘I do not care to grow attached to a place. I fear becoming, as you say, settled. I fear most the sadness of leaving. That is why I leave each room without anguish, without melancholy. I go on to the next one in a spirit of discovery, though what I discover is not always – which English word shall I use? – inspiring. Inspiring, yes. I am not always inspired when I open the door on the latest room. I am often greeted with nothing to inspire inspiration.’ He smiled his full, glinting smile. ‘I shall be gone from Hotel Aphrodite very soon.’

  ‘Is it made of silver, Virgil?’

  ‘Silver? Is what made of silver? The hotel?’

  ‘Your tooth. The one that glints when you smile.’

  ‘Silver,’ he shouted. ‘Silver! Silver, Kitty? You think the dentist worked with silver? You think I have precious silver in my mouth?’

  ‘I wondered if –’

  ‘If it was silver. I’m sorry, Kitty, but I must laugh.’

  He sniggered to start with, then he began to splutter, then he said ‘Silver’ to himself and this released the promised laughter. It started deep in his throat, but in an extraordinary moment became almost falsetto. It was the noise of a boy soprano, his voice not yet broken, his laughter high-pitched and pure. Then the noise was a man’s noise once more, followed by a man’s loud, satisfied sigh.

  ‘I assume that the tooth is not made of silver,’ she remarked when he was finally silent.

  ‘You are correct in your assumption, Kitty Crozier. My shining tooth, my Communist tooth, my tooth that is the gift of the kind and merciful state, which is now led by the kind and merciful Conducãtor, is made of a more lasting metal than silver.’

  (The Conducãtor, whose name Virgil Florescu refused to speak, was to become a presence in her life for two whole years – a familiar, absent presence. He would be the subject of stories, of cautionary tales, of fantasies Virgil insisted were true in every detail. ‘I am a truth-teller, Kitty,’ her lover would remind her, ‘even when I am allowing myself the luxury of a little invention.’ The Conducãtor’s lady, the renowned scientist, would be there at her husband’s side, offering him on all occasions, public or private, the approving look, the encouraging gesture. The Conducãtor’s consort had also sacrificed her right to a merely human name – a name such as Virgil Florescu, or Kitty Crozier, or that of any person who wasn’t the Conducãtor or the Conducãtor’s wife.)

  ‘A much, much humbler metal than silver. My tooth is composed of steel, Kitty, of stainless steel. Silver stains, but not stainless steel. My other teeth will decay in time, but not this one. It is impregnable. It is stronger than nature. It is resilient, as the dentist told my parents. I shall take it to my grave, and if that grave is opened in a thousand years nothing of me will be visible except my eternal Communist tooth. Let me predict that it will shine forth from the earth.’

  ‘Drink your wine, Virgil.’

  ‘Yes, yes. I have been talking, haven’t I? I have been rhapsodising about my tooth.’

  ‘You have. What kind of artist are you?’

  ‘I am an artist at whatever I do. I am an artist when I sweep floors, when I push trolleys in hospitals, when I pick up litter on a spike. I try to be artistic in each of my endeavours, Kitty.’

  ‘Say.’

  ‘I have written poems. I am writing poems. Now I am hungry.’

  She awoke in the night to find herself alone. Virgil’s clothes were no longer where he had left them, slung across the chair. His socks and shoes weren’t on the bedroom floor. There was no sound of him anywhere in the house.

  He had written her a note. It was propped up against the empty Saint Amour bottle on the kitchen table.

  Beautiful Kitty Crozier [she read]. I have to return to the Aphrodite. I rise early most days in order to begin my artistic activities in the park as promptly as I can.

  Kitty Crozier, you have far too many books.

  I will be in touch with you.

  Your Virgil.

  It was already that terrible hour, she noticed as she slid back into bed, when certain discontented people find themselves denied of sleep; when their minds are alert to nothing but the inadequacies, the failings, of the past. She was one of those people as a rule, but not on this Wednesday morning. The usual crop of nagging memories was in abeyance, was out of mind, and she felt radiant.

  She ought to have felt irresponsible, but was unconcerned about it. She had twice made love – and it seemed like love, not just that other matter, sex – with a man whose looks, whose awkward bearing, had immediately attracted her and whose genuineness she had as immediately taken on trust. She felt she knew she was right to have faith in him.

  She slept contentedly.

  An aversion? Let us keep it an aversion, Kitty, for the sake of politeness. For simplicity’s sake, let my private horror – my most particular horror – of slaughtered flesh remain an aversion. An aversion will do. ‘Aversion’ is a paler word for ‘horror’. Let us use the paler word, if we have to.

  Virgil Florescu walked slowly down deserted streets. He was in no hurry to reach the Aphrodite. ‘You may wonder, Mr Florescu, why I call this place a hotel,’ Nicos Razelos had said as he puffed his way up the stairs in front of him. ‘I mean to say, the Savoy it isn’t. And never will be. No, I call it Hotel Aphrodite because Aphrodite Guest-House and Aphrodite Boarding-House don’t sound right. They sound all wrong. You look like a scholar to me, Mr Florescu, and I’m sure I don’t have to remind you that Aphrodite was one real classy lady. She was a goddess and ladies don’t come classier than that. That’s why hotel. Enjoy your stay at the Hotel Aphrodite.’

  He would be sharing the second-floor bathroom, Nicos Razelos revealed, with three other gentlemen: Mr O’Brien, Mr Taylor and Mr Khan. They had a system, a rota – first in, first out, second in, second out, and so on and so forth – which prevented unpleasant skirmishes, bangings on the door, any lowering of the tone of the establishment. He would have to fit in with the rota. ‘Otherwise pandemonium.’

  ‘Miss Eunice, who occupies the ground-floor suite, is the only tenant with a personal bathroom. Miss Eunice is a very special lady, very special indeed, if you grab my meaning. You look like you’re red-blooded to me, Mr Florescu, but I’m sure you won’t take offence if I give you a friendly warning. Miss Eunice is a hands-off zone.’

  Lucky Mr Razelos, Virgil Florescu thought, to have the world reduced so; to live with the single fear that someone might steal away Miss Eunice, the frightened pet he fed with baklava. Fortunate man, to be so simply and dedicatedly jealous.

  A woman with a ruined face – a face, he could see in the half-light, a surgeon had somehow reassembled – slithered out of a shop doorway and asked him for the price of a cup of tea.

  ‘I have only this,’ said Virgil Florescu, giving her a fifty-pence coin. ‘I am not rich in money.’

  The woman grunted in reply and retreated into what he assumed must be her nightly resting place: there was a canvas chair, of the kind film directors are photographed sitting in, and a sleeping bag, and beside it a tall vase of dried flowers. Her home, such as it is; her portable home.

  ‘You do not have a carpet.’

  ‘I did have,’ the woman answered. It wore away. ‘It wore itself to a frazzle.’

  ‘Explain for me, please, “frazzle”.’

  ‘You must be foreign if you haven’t come across “frazzle”. When we say a thing is frazzled, we mean it’s worn-out, it’s threadbare, it’s frayed. You follow? Kaput, it’s kaput.’

  ‘Thank you, madam.’

  ‘My poor little welcome mat had known too many feet.’

  He said good night to the woman, who was now seated in her chair, and moved on. He commanded himself not to let the words ‘home’ and ‘carpet’ do their hurtful work. He spoke the name Kitty Crozier under his breath, and shouted it once and heard what he recognised as joy in his voice.

  Kitty Crozier had only ever received postc
ards from her father. At intervals of months, or years, he sent her the briefest of loving messages, assuring her that he was alive and well, and as happy as a king with his newest wife or latest partner. He had never been alone or anything but perfectly contented, the cards implied, untruthfully, in all his time abroad.

  She looked incredulously at the backward-sloping writing on the envelope. He had written her a letter. He had picked up his expensive pen and written her a letter. ‘How is my Baby Cordelia?’ it began. ‘How is my one loving daughter?’

  (She had been his Pretty Kitty for all her childhood. She’d become his Baby Cordelia when she and Daisy were twenty, after he’d seen a performance of King Lear in New York. He hadn’t cared for the play; had endured it, he told her later, merely to keep the third Mrs Crozier – the ‘culture-crazy’ Linda – sweetly disposed towards him. The rantings and ravings of that tiresome old cove had made him squirm in his seat, while the Fool’s jokes, if such they were, had brought everything except a smile to his face. He was more amused, he admitted, by the antics of Regan and Goneril, because they reminded him, the girls, of his own malevolent four-hours’ first-born: ‘Slightly, Kitty, slightly.’ Daisy had applied herself to the business of hating him with a stamina that inspired her father’s envy, and as he watched Shakespeare’s prize pair of bitches turning nastier and nastier a bell of recognition started ringing wickedly in his head. ‘They might be Daisy’ was the thought that came to him. He’d tried to banish the thought, but it wouldn’t go away. Then, late in the endless evening, with the corpses piling up on-stage, including Cordelia’s, he’d realised that Lear’s youngest had been as loyal and as true to her terrible dad as Pretty Kitty was, he hoped, to hers. ‘You’re my Baby Cordelia now, my dearest darling. You’re your terrible daddy’s one loving daughter.’)

  I hope Life is treating you kindly. I long to hear what you have been up to. Any Love Interest, perchance? You must be over forty now, my dearest darling, but I will bet a million you have not lost your looks! I hate to think of your Beauty going unappreciated. I hope you are not wasting your Sweetness on the Desert Air.