Daniel Martin

by John Fowles

  I didn’t hear much of the concert, we got there late anyway, and they wouldn’t let us in till there was a break. I was thinking things out, I won’t pretend I wasn’t. I knew it was there. That he probably wouldn’t make a move, but expected me to. That I no longer flinched at the thought of it. That I felt rather like it. That I didn’t want to be involved, and wouldn’t have to be. That I felt frivolous and a little bit in heat. I’d known it beside the swimming-pool that morning with Kate. I’d like to have been there with a man, one of those any-man moods. Instead of dutifully admiring the Utrillos and the Kiecs. Of course for Steve I’d just be a score, something to boast about as soon as I turned my back. Just one more chick he’d been tailgating and could now overtake. But then the hypocrisy of it. We’d been to bed together in front of the camera, simulated it, he’d kissed me hard and it hadn’t always been just for the camera. I’d felt his body a hundred times, and he mine. It didn’t seem very much to see what it was like for real.

  That left you. You had begun to seem—but I said it all last time. Bar that final revelation of what a crook you are. You could have flown back here, Dan. If you really wanted me… instead of just my memory. I don’t want to sound too calculated, the thought of you was what kept me not making up my mind at once. If you’d walked into the concert-hall or Perino’s (no expense spared) afterwards, Steve wouldn’t have had a chance. You understand I’m trying to say how I felt that evening (or imagining how I might have felt if there ever had been such an evening, if you want it that way—but will you, she wonders). Let’s call it a test run for the final exorcism: to see if it matters, betraying someone you think you respect. To see if it helps.

  And yes, right. I’d been thinking about Steve in bed before that evening.

  You may not think it’s necessary to say any more now. But we’ve always been honest, in our fashion. No copyright. It’s a present, alter and add to it as you like. Or tie it in black ribbons and forget.

  It was quite funny, actually. I decided that at least he wasn’t going to do the seducing. The inevitable suggestion came that we go to his place and play a few records. Strictly just that, he said. So we get in, and he puts an Indian raga on and fetches me the iced-tea from his kitchen and says he’ll be with me in a moment I watch him go into his bathroom, then I take all my clothes off and lie on his fake leopard-skin couch. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen him caught really off-balance. I just watch him, and he nods and nods. For once he really can’t think what to say. He comes closer his hands in his suit-coat pockets, looking absolutely gauche, there’s no other word for it. I sit perched up like the Goya painting and toast him with the glass of iced tea.

  I say, As we’ve both got a free day tomorrow. (It was Sunday, we had.)

  He says, You’re beautiful.

  He looks at me for so long that I begin to think that perhaps he’s impotent or gay or something. It was so strange. I actually made him shy. Threatened his machismo or something.

  I say, Aren’t you going to join me?

  So I watch him undress. The little white band where he wears his swimming-slip. We kiss and it’s nice, sexy at once. There’s a light on in the far corner of the room, and the Indian music, and he smells nice and tastes nice. It’s so nice to feel a lean, hard young body. He begins kissing me all over, and playing with me, exciting me. He’s read all the books, very expert. A little too studied, but you can’t have everything. He keeps telling me I’m beautiful. Like some sort of mantra—almost as if it’s to himself, not me. I can’t believe he’s usually as gentle as this. I stroke his hair and let him do what he wants.

  Then we stood up and he put his hands behind me and I locked my arms round his neck and we rocked a little. It wasn’t really dancing. Just feeling. Naked flesh and his thing squashed between us. Then we fell back on the couch and I let go, played wild to please him. I thought it was rather decent of him—all the girls he must have had, yet still enjoying it so much. To have it without any sort of love. Just through the body. Knowing yesterday doesn’t matter, tomorrow doesn’t matter. Only not caring matters.

  We smoked, listened to more music, talked a little. Then he came inside me again and we lay for hours, what seemed like hours, I don’t think it was just the pot. He does it better than he acts. The, we had a shower together and went to bed. I slept at once, we didn’t wake up till after ten.

  I haven’t finished (if you’re still with me).

  We were still in bed. He was still asleep, I could see sunlight between the blind slats and hear the traffic outside and I was thinking my body was glad about the sex and my mind was glad about the humiliation and there was something to do about America. Something in me that had stayed foreign to it and wasn’t any more. An American body had entered mine, and I needed it. I thought about you too, Dan. How I would have to tell you and make sure you knew you were partly to blame.

  Anyway. Suddenly I heard a door in the apartment close. It gave me a shock, I looked up from Steve’s shoulder at the bedroom door, which was half-open. Then up at Steve’s face. He’d woken, but his eyes were closed, he was smiling. He patted my back.

  (I probably shan’t get his language quite right. But then you did once say it was almost an honour to get his way with it wrong.)

  Relax, nothing.

  The cleaning-woman?

  He grinned. Right.

  I said, The door’s open.

  Then there was a voice close outside it.

  Steve?

  I nearly jumped out of my skin. But he was very quick. He held me tight down against him with his arm and with the other felt for the sheet we’d thrown aside and yanked it back across us.

  In here, Katie.

  It all happened so fast. She was in the door. Steve said, We finally made it.

  She must have known, seen the dress and my tights and things over a chair in the other room. I looked from Steve to her and back to Steve again. He was still smiling. He turned and pecked my cheek.

  Relax. She doesn’t mind.

  I wanted to say, But I do mind, thank you very much. I wanted to bury my head under the sheet. But she was coming across the room, in a little indigo singlet and white shorts. A kind of knowing grin. She knelt on the bed and leaned over and kissed Steve quickly, the cheek, then me on top of my bowed head. He was still holding me so tight. I couldn’t have got away without a struggle and it takes two embarrassments to make a scene. Then she sat back on the bed on the other side of Steve. Two happy people? Steve said, Great. Just great. I knew it would be. She’s beautiful. He kissed the side of my head again, and I managed a rueful smile at Kate. I said, And embarrassed. But it’s so nice when you really make it. Nothing to be ashamed of. Steve said, You’re in California now, baby. He reached up his free arm and touched his forefinger on one of Kate’s nipples beneath the blue singlet. Hey, girls get raped for wearing things like that. That’s the idea. She got off the bed. I came to play tennis. Remember? Oh Jesus. Okay. Coffee, anyone? I said, I’ll come and help in a minute. But she held her hands out, stopping me. You go together. Don’t spoil it. She went out to make the coffee. He relaxed his grip, and I sat up. Does she always walk in like this? She’s kind of a kooky kid. You know. Like I’m her sister. You mean brother. That’s straight. She’s kooky. I said I must go to the bathroom. He didn’t stop me, there was a bathrobe behind the door and I went and put it on. But I wouldn’t look at him, I suppose he must have realized. He said, Jenny? She didn’t mean to make you uptight. She really likes you. And not you? Hey. Come on. I just wondered. He came out of bed then and across to where I was. Put his hands on the door behind me, so I had to look at him. Leant forward and kissed me, then spoke down at my feet.

  Listen. You’re very beautiful, you’re very sweet. You’re beautiful, I wouldn’t want you any other way. Except He did his nodding, his I’m-so-serious—I-can’t-find-the-words bit.

  I said, Stop thinking it’s a private thing?

  Give a little. Learn the way we are. (He looked up, playing
the director now.) Those first scenes we played. You knew I was shit scared. Right? So we acted like two other people. When all the time it could have been simple. Like last night. We never took the time. Find out who we really are.

  He must have seen the doubt in my eyes. He dabbed my nose.

  Like she’s my favourite sister. That’s all. We’re something different. We don’t get jealous. Okay?

  He parted the robe and put his hands on my breasts and kissed me again. I think he’d have made love, but I wouldn’t let him.

  When I came out of the loo I found them both in the kitchen. Steve had pulled on a pair of old jeans. We had breakfast, I did finally relax, though I felt out of my depth, I couldn’t rival their naturalness, get over the feeling that sex was something that ought to be hidden. I also felt it was stupid to feel shy at being ‘caught’. When I hadn’t been shy at all the night before, when it came to it. And Kate’s total lack of embarrassment was like her poise in her Bel-Air palace. Yes, all right, there was something unhealthy by home standards. But something else unhealthy was being rejected. And after that first exchange when she came in, our having made it wasn’t discussed. Just three friends, a jolly breakfast. Though I could tell by the way she moved round his kitchen that she knew it backwards.

  Steve still wanted to play tennis, but they’d missed their club reservation now. And I hadn’t any clothes. So Steve drove me home and I went up to the Cabin and changed. He waited in his car outside. Mildred and Abe weren’t around, I think they must have been out so you haven’t been publicly cuckolded yet. We went back to Kate’s, she’d rung some friends, there were nine or ten of us in the end. Once again her parents were away—down at Palm Springs this time. Some of the others played tennis on their private court, we swam, lay around. Kate was the best of the girls (at tennis), Steve a long way the best of the men. I suppose he was showing off. It was a new side of him. Apparently when he was in his last year at high school, he was nearly good enough to go pro. Very serious on court, he keeps hyping himself after a bad shot, like a Wimbledon star. That was the un-English thing—no one laughed at his muttering and thigh-slapping, the Jimmy Connors performance. I quite liked the other people, they were all our age, one or two married, there was a girl with a baby, a loose gang. A lot of joshing off court. References back to things I didn’t understand.

  I enjoyed it. Watching them and talking to them and liking them. Being conscious of Steve all the time, though he was mercifully discreet. Perhaps being cocky about his tennis was a substitute, but he didn’t broadcast anything. Americans: they’re so knowable so fast. The transparency seems so good sometimes. The lack of the old hide-and-seek at home. I can see you hating this, Dan, the sun and the swimming and the luxury and the mindless ball-hitting and the total failure to see that any other kind of world or feeling exists, what you once called the silly mental whore in women, and I know a sense of loss is also a sense of reality, both in the present and the past, but it’s the happiest private day I’ve had here. That part of it. Away from you.

  The others drifted away. Steve went off for a bit with one of the other men to try out some newer model Porsche than his own and Kate took me to her ‘suite’ to shower—fantastic, it’s really a whole separate flat, a living-room, a bedroom, a bathroom that would do for a rugby team (in size), even a little kitchen of her own. Actually we decided to have a drink first, we both felt tired, so we lay propped up on the soft cushions on her huge double bed, chatting about the others who’d left, she told me all sorts of things about them (mostly woes), and then I began to tell her what I felt about California. It was that nice thing, you know, when national differences begin to disappear, you start finding common feelings, understandings, beyond all the language and lifestyle problems. Female feelings, I don’t know if it happens like that with men. Well, yes, you and Abe perhaps—translate from there. We were still in robes, just sprawled out. Like two girls in a school dormitory, really. If it hadn’t been for the décor and the drinking.

  Then at last—it must have been nearly an hour later—Steve appeared in a white bath-wrap. He’d come back and had his shower in one of her absent brothers’ rooms. De trop so far as I was concerned. And I think for Kate a little, too. But he went and got a drink from the living-room, and us another, then came back and clambered between us on the bed. It was absurd, a replay of that morning. But it didn’t seem to matter very much any more. It was dusk by then, that lovely fast dusk here. I could see palm-trees, black plumes against a rose sky, through the window, the house very quiet. All good comrades together. Kate and I went on talking across him for a while.

  Then there was a break. Steve turned his ankles out and touched our bare feet with his own.

  I should be so lucky. Not only beautiful. But clever. Kate said, Lucky schmucky. Not you. You’re just a kook. She hit him with her elbow. And what’s Jenny? Like trying to make it with an icepack.

  She leant forward and pulled a face at me.

  This is what we call the American way of love. He put an arm round each of our shoulders.

  You mean there are other ways?

  We’re not in the mood for MCPs. Are we, Jenny? I said, Certainly not.

  He pretended to be surprised.

  You mean you’re really a normal pair of chicks? She said, Oh boy. Thanks for the Polish apology.

  Then we got on to Polish jokes. Wasp jokes. Black jokes. Kate said, They kill my father. He’s collected a whole book of them.

  Then she asked me about my father, and I told them about him. About real home. Boarding-school, working in rep. The light outside faded, everything in the room lost colour, became shadowy. We’d all slumped down a bit, he still had his arms loosely round us. I wasn’t sure he hadn’t dozed off, his eyes were closed. For ten minutes or more it was all between Kate and myself. Then I suddenly noticed. His wrap had fallen nearly open, and he wasn’t asleep at all. He murmured, Hey, look what’s happened.

  Kate said, Why are you such a show-off, Steve? But yes?

  No.

  Jenny baby? No thanks.

  There was an odd little silence. I couldn’t look at Kate, but I waited to see what she’d do. Then Steve spoke.

  Let’s reshoot this whole scene. I dig you both like crazy. You dig each other. We all dig each other like crazy. Friendship is loving people, right? Touching people, kissing people, balling people. How does that sound to you two young cats?

  I said, Over-simplified.

  He took his arms away then, turned towards me. Ran his finger over my mouth.

  So what are we scared of?

  Nothing. Just the way I am.

  Which is sweet and kind and beautiful.

  And old-fashioned. About some things.

  He moved down from my mouth and tried to tease the robe loose. I caught his hand, but he’d already found his way through. He whispered in my ear.

  Like school. Soft and sweet. All together.

  Steve, please, no.

  He whispered again. Katie’s kidding. She wants it.

  I couldn’t understand why she said nothing. No, began to understand why. Now he spoke to her without turning his face.

  Katie baby?

  Not if Jenny doesn’t.

  I don’t know what it was, Dan. I was actually a little drunk, we’d been having some tequila concoction Kate had made up. It didn’t taste strong—anyway, I’m not making excuses. It all happened so fast. I did feel tricked, outraged. More at Kate than at him. That change of sides without warning. Then frightened at seeming what I’d just said I was. Knowing I was a long way from home, but perhaps I needed it. Being hung for a sheep. All sorts of strange things.

  Steve said, One happy brave, two happy squaws.

  And then Kate again.

  We think of it like togetherness therapy. You know?

  I said, Who’s we?

  Anyone you… if the vibrations feel good. And you want.

  I was holding his hand against my breast, not letting him move. Kate had been leaning
on an elbow, but now she sat up and reached and took my other hand. It was so strange, but I knew she was being honest, in her fashion.

  Jenny, it just happens. You feel yes, you don’t, it’s as simple as that. If you don’t want to feel that way… you know. We understand. That’s truly all it’s about. Behind the crazy-people thing. Just a way of feeling close. Not only for Steve. For you and me as well.

  Steve said, Right.

  Kate said, But only if you feel the same.

  Then she pressed my hand, as if to give me courage, and let go of it. I know, perhaps she was just being clever. I think if they’d tried to argue or coax any more… but they didn’t. There were so many places earlier where I ought to have drawn the line. She lay back, I felt them waiting there beside me and in spite of what she’d said I still suspected it was partly a set-up, but then also that I’d helped them do it. Enjoying the long gossip with Kate, not getting off the bed when Steve came in. Part of me was walking away, Dan. But another, perhaps it was the tequila, knew it wanted to wait and see. I felt I’d become someone else, what I’d been only a day before wasn’t me any more, or no longer had to be me.

  I don’t know, but I let his hand escape. Again he was very gentle, undid the sash of my robe, I hadn’t got anything on underneath, my swim-things had been wet. It really was happening to someone else by then. A few moments later I was aware that Kate had slipped off the bed and gone away. She came back again almost at once. She’d taken off her robe, and lit up. It was too dark to see much by then. She knelt beside Steve, helped him get out of his own wrap. Then me out of mine. We lay, smoking for a minute or two. The best, of course.

  Nothing more was said. I tried to feel shocked, that I was taking some awful step into the pit of iniquity. Then for God’s sake, it was hardly an orgy, even if Kate was a perverse little bitch who’d obviously played this game before. And if it gives pleasure and it doesn’t hurt anyone… all right, begging questions. But somehow her taking part made it less—you know. If she hadn’t. Just watched or something. And there was a togetherness of some kind. Not sexual, something in me was too nervous, I didn’t know where it would go… it was just masturbating, in fact. Being petted.