Hold My Hand I'm Dying

by John Gordon Davis

  Herbert bent down under the bed again, and produced my sock. He dangled it up in front of him, wheezing. It looked a very undistinguished sock.

  ‘Does he want his stretch-nylon socks let out too, Isabel?’ He sniffed it angrily. ‘There’s nothing wrong with this except it needs washing’—Oh, the indignity of it all—’or do you take in laundry nowadays?’

  Isabel was staring paralysed at the sock. She had cracked up, she had no answer. I closed my eyes.

  Herbert turned and lumbered out of view. I heard him wheezing in the kitchen, into the bathroom. My heart was pounding, my mind was stuttering. He came lumbering back into view, heading straight for my cupboard, belly first. Then he was up against the cupboard and I could see nothing. The cupboard door shook as he wrenched at the handle.

  ‘The key, give me the key!’ he shrilled.

  ‘Get out of my flat, you brute, I’ll call the police!’ The sound of Isabel flying at Herbert, beating him with her fists on his barrel chest. Still the door shook. Then the thud of a swipe and a cry from Isabel and the sound of her reeling across on to the bed and I got the impression Herbert felt a brute for the first time in his life and loved it.

  ‘The key!’ he shrilled. ‘Give me the key, or I’ll tear it open with my bare hands!!!’

  I winced.

  Still the door shook. I stood among the dresses and smocks in the dark and watched it shake, quaking. I longed for my pants. I lowered myself to keyhole level.

  There he was, looking like the back of an elephant, scratching in the tool-box of the sewing machine. ‘All right, all right!’ he was shrilling. Isabel was climbing off the bed and flying at him, her smock burst open, Herbert turned and lumbered back towards the cupboard holding a screwdriver. Another swipe and Isabel was on the floor. I straightened up and closed my eyes. Then he was attacking the lock with the screwdriver.

  I admit I was shaking, but I was now calmer. I was resigned. All was lost, it was a fair cop. I had been caught. I had to take the consequences, I had to take my medicine. I would not even resist assault, he was entitled to assault me. I straightened myself amongst the smocks with as much dignity as I could muster without pants.

  I heard the screwdriver drop and the door crack as he kicked it. It sounded a very satisfying kick. He kicked again and it cracked through. His podgy fingers appeared and Herbert Weston pulled with his two hundred and fifty pounds and the door burst open. And there I was.

  Then Isabel switched the lights out.

  Not before Herbert spotted the location of the Mahoney genitalia, however. I hadn’t bargained for that. I don’t know why, because come to think of it it’s a fitting part of the anatomy upon which to wreak revenge, in the circumstances. Before I could muster any defence action, I was heaved out into the black room by same and following Herbert Weston very closely.

  ‘Lights!’ he was screaming. ‘Put the lights on, you bitch—’

  Isabel attacked Herbert again. I could make out her arms flailing. Then Herbert grabbed her hair and held her at arm’s length and towed us both very effectively out on to the verandah. Now, to submit to justifiable assault is one thing, but to have the family jewels mauled about is another. And to be dragged out on to a public verandah by same is rubbing it in. I did not want to hit the old man but I had to. I mean—the family jewels! Then as I drew back my hand to swipe, Herbert Weston slipped. He let go of me and dragged Isabel down with him. They rolled through the French door on to the verandah. I stood gasping. Herbert was rolling on his back still holding Isabel’s hair, and tugging, and Isabel’s smock was up over her stomach and her backside was struggling in the moonlight. Isabel was screaming and Herbert was bellowing, and windows were opening and people were watching and shouting.

  I turned and grabbed my trousers and pulled them on and I grabbed my clothes and I ran out of the flat into the night.

  Tuesday and Wednesday I lay low. Every time I came out of Court I expected to see Herbert Weston waiting, or the sheriff with a summons citing me as corespondent in the divorce action. Every time the telephone rang my chest tingled. I went back to my flat in Fort Street after work and had tea for the first time in six months, which astonished Samson, then supper, then bed. Samson asked me if I was sick. Actually I had been to a doctor because you don’t take chances with the family jewels. I had to be careful how I walked and how I sat down on Tuesday. The doctor had told me to lie low, and alone, and early, and to lay off the beer for a couple of days. But there was a genuine element of remorse as well, so real that on Thursday morning I telephoned Sylvia and cancelled our appointment again. I said I had to work on a big case. My reason was genuine remorse. I felt it was dishonourable to take other men’s women. Quite apart from the hazards. And during the last two nights I had been thinking of Suzie, the cleanness of Suzie, the goodness of Suzie, and I felt lonely and unhappy.

  On Wednesday night, I pulled the big cardboard carton out from under my bed. I heaved the fat scrawled manuscript open at random and read with a cup of tea in my hand and nothing in my heart. I read a page and then I flicked ten pages and read some more. God, what corn! What crap. Nothing. The only pieces that glowed were the pieces I had written drunk, drugged from wine and the flesh of Suzie, the sweet, salty, sweaty oily sunshot flesh of Suzie on a Sunday, when I wrote about Suzie. It was hopeless. I was blunted, blunted by thoughtlessness, by feelinglessness, by a year of nothing. On Thursday I opened the manuscript and read over the last chapter, and I held my pen and I smoked cigarettes one after another, and stared at the blank new page and the page stared up at me, and in the end I called Samson to bring me a beer. I drank four beers while I stared at the page, and then I chucked down my pen and I went downstairs to my car and drove to the Sheridan.

  The Sheridan was a good cocktail bar. It was crowded, well fed, well dressed, well heeled people going home from the office to the Club or to their lawns and hedges. I sat down on a barstool in the corner. I wanted to drink alone, I wanted to try to start thinking and feeling again. I stared into my beer and let the noise of the bar wash over me. And slowly I began to feel again.

  A hand fell on my shoulder and I turned around. Max, grinning.

  ‘Joe-baby, where you bin these last couple of days?’

  ‘What’ll you have, Max?’

  ‘Lion,’ Max said. ‘Why so glum?’

  We had few beers. My mood was broken. I bound him to secrecy and told him about Herbert Weston catching me on the job with Isabel and Max laughed so the tears were running down his face, and when I came to the bit about Herbert grabbing the family jewels he screamed and his face was wet with laughing, and I was laughing too, now. I wasn’t remorseful any more.

  This guy Max. Swarthy, stocky Greek with a fat happy handsome face and the women loved him. Always happy, always thinking of somebody to screw and something to drink. Last year we went down to Cape Town together on holiday. We booked a suite in one of the best seafront hotels. When we checked in the manager handed me a bundle of letters. They were all from Cape Town girls, over two hundred of them, setting out their vital statistics, and saying how they would just love to work for our new airline as hostesses, and begging for interviews. Max had only preceded our arrival by advertising in the Cape Town papers that two young directors of a new international airline would be arriving in Cape Town to recruit air-hostesses and that all interested persons should apply, in own writing, care of our hotel. The advertisement stressed that the successful applicants would be mature, attractive, unattached women of specified vital statistics.

  We started off our holiday by solemnly interviewing the most promising fifty or so, and wining and dining them in rapid succession. They nearly bludgeoned each other to death over us, and for the whole month we never slept alone. We told them they would be advised of the result of their applications in due course.

  We had another beer. Max wanted to go on to the Club to pick up some birds but I didn’t. He tried to bully me but I was determined.

  ‘Remember Mona’s to
ga party Saturday night,’ he said irritably.

  ‘Okay.’

  I had another beer alone, but I did not start feeling again. I went home. There was a note under my door from Sylvia saying her panelbeater had the flu, so I could come round any time. I screwed the note up. I went to my table and sat down and stared at my manuscript. It didn’t look any better and I chain-smoked five cigarettes without writing a word. I felt dead, blunted, dull. I had forgotten how to feel and think and write. I had been blunting myself for nearly a year, since Suzie left.

  I had another beer while I sat at the table looking at the manuscript. It was hopeless. I thought of Sylvia, lying in bed all plump and luscious and dumb and pink in the glow of her pink lampshade, with her hatbox of contraceptives and her little wooden crucifix facing the wall for the occasion. No, I thought. I tried to think about the manuscript, but I was thinking about Suzie again. Oh, Suzie, where are you? Maybe there would be a letter tomorrow telling me she was coming back. Even telling me where she was, anything. Then I could—but I knew there would not be a letter. I thought hard about Sylvia, her plump thighs, and her legs wrapped round me, banging her hips up against me, and her nails clawing my back, and mouthing dirty words in my ear, to stop me thinking about Suzie. Then came the thought that made me so furious I wanted to shout and I felt strong enough to shake the whole flat apart, the thought that some other bastard might be doing just that to my Suzie.

  I shoved back the chair and walked out of the flat. I drove my car hard round to Sylvia’s.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  I woke up late on Saturday with a wine headache which made everything a little mad and very hard to grip, and I was determined about only one thing: I was not going to Mona’s toga party tonight. All I wanted to do was steady up, I felt too bad to feel anything else. Then, when I got to the office at noon there was a telegram from Dar-es-Salaam: ‘Arriving today flight EAA 742 for Monas shindig can you put me up if not go to hades I’m staying anyway luv Lola.’ I put my hand to my head. Lola. I telephoned EAA and checked the flight arrival time. Then I drove out to the airport.

  It was brown and bare but the sun shone brightly. I waited on the small balcony feeling very shaky and thought about Lola. Some Lola. A Yank. A goddam Eyetalian Yank. ‘And they’re the worst kind!’ Lola said. Spent half her life in Chicago and the other half in East Africa miming hairbrain businesses and doing good deeds. Lola once wrote to our newspaper editor:

  ‘An advertisement appears daily in your paper:

  “If it’s safe in water

  it’s safe in Lux.”

  Now, sir, about my goldfish …’

  The plane came in and the gangway was put up and out steps Lola on to the tarmac all bounce and smiles and waves, ravishing as ever, in the lowest-necked bare-back thigh-split evening gown.

  She thew her arms around me and jumped up and down and demanded breakfast and where’s her luggage and stop ogling my titties haven’t you seen a girl in a v-neck before and how’s Honeytalk and how the hell do you propose entertaining me and God what a sour bunch they were on the plane and where’s the bar – the passengers and the officials and the native porters were ogling her. Seems she was having this all-night bender on a high-powered Italian tycoon’s yacht in the Indian Ocean when she suddenly remembered Mona’s party and didn’t have time to change or couldn’t give a hell about changing. Some Lola. I bundled her into the car as quickly as I could and we drove back to town. She never stopped talking except to laugh and to dig into the biggest handbag and pull out one of the magnums of champagne she had hijacked from the tycoon’s floating cellar and she opened it with her teeth. Champagne fizzed all over the car. I drove her straight to my flat and made her put on my jacket and I hustled her upstairs before some cop ran her in for indecent exposure. I never saw a sexier outfit. Then she starts unpacking her suitcases all over my bedroom.

  Three wigs, four pairs of false eyelashes, a hatbox of cosmetic gear, seven model linen suits, four pairs of Charles Jourdan shoes – at twenty guineas a pair – ‘Met this old geezer at the Casino in Reno, gave me five hundred bucks to gamble, it wasn’t stealing was it, Honeytalk, I just decided I didn’t like him’ – a Christian Dior nightgown, a toothbrush, and no bras, no girdles and no pants. The whole time she is talking and taking swigs out of the magnum – ‘I’ve started this Secretarial School in Dar for lady wogs, fantastic success, they love trying to eat with knives and forks, trouble is all this generation of blacks have got flat feet, I throw in a course on birth control as well, so I am doingthe country some good, aren’t I, Honeytalk?’

  She festooned my bedroom with her gear, then she threw herself down at Suzie’s dressing-table and began to take off her face. She tugged at her glorious black beehive and tore out the artificial wiglet, she plucked off her thick false eyelashes, out with a bottle of blue methylated spirits – ‘same stuff as you use in stoves and I need to buy it in bulk’ – and starts wiping the colour off her lovely face. She wiped off ten years in ten minutes and she looked fifteen years old.

  ‘Run my bath, Honeytalk, while I book a call to Jo’burg. I wanna screw a new dining-room suite for my Secretarial School out of Monty.’

  Monty was Lola’s sugar daddy, a frightfully English old bwana with oodles of boodle who lived in South Africa – ‘He’s my sleeping partner which don’t mean what you think, it means he puts up the dough and I put up the know-how, people think I screw for him but he’s just my dear old sugar daddy and I love him to its—’ I ran her bath while she booked the call, reversing the charges. Then she bounced into the bathroom clutching the magnum and a bottle of bathsalts.

  She thew the salts into the water and the bubbles climbed up to the rim. She whipped off her dress, leaped in and began scrubbing herself vigorously. She was a lot of girl, Lola. It was exhausting just to watch her. The champagne was not doing my hangover any harm. I suppose I could have loved Lola, if I let myself. ‘Well then if you don’t want to marry a hard-arsed little bitch like me you must marry my sister, I refuse to let a gorgeous beast like you out of my family. She’s the pretty one and she’s saving up the pie bit for the nuptials, when’re you coming to Chicago? Are you still in love with Suzie?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She took a swig of champagne and passed the bottle back to me and got to her feet and began soaping her crotch energetically.

  ‘Forget her, Honeytalk, you two didn’t get on intellectually, otherwise you’d have married her. You know what you want?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A soulmate. Somebody who moons around in a daze like you and ponders the imagery in Macbeth over the ham and eggs.’

  The telephone rang in the passage.

  ‘That’s my Jo’burg call, answer it, Honeytalk. If a woman answers it’s his wife, the old bitch is ganging up on me to get Monty to disinherit me. Say you’re Harold Macmillan or somebody, and you want to speak to his nibs. If Monty answers, gimme the receiver.’

  I went out into the passage, a woman answered.

  ‘May I speak to Sir Monty, please?’

  ‘Who’s speaking?’

  ‘Mr. Macmillan.’

  ‘I’m afraid Sir Monteray is at the museum this afternoon.’

  I put my hand over the mouthpiece, and leaned into the bathroom. Lola was still soaping her fanny happily. ‘He’s at the museum,’ I said.

  ‘That’s where he belongs, antiquated old basket.’

  ‘Any message?’ the old dear said.

  ‘Ask him to call me at No. 10,’ I said. ‘It’s about a new dining-room suite for my new black Commonwealth Finishing School.’

  Lola was reeling in the bubble bath with delight.

  I had to scrub her back while she told me a long story about an Englishman an Irishman and a Jew, then she rubbed herself dry with a towel till she glowed. She insisted that I give her a piggyback to the bedroom then she flung herself down in front of Suzie’s dressing-table again, drew a pencil line down her nose and a pencil line across her cheeks, put
in two dimples, two high cheek bones, put on her blue eyelashes, put on ten years in ten minutes, stuck on a wig, stepped into a Susan Small model at fifty guineas a throw, put on a pair of Charles Jourdan shoes. And no pants. She swallowed her birth control pill with a swig of champagne. And off we went to case the town before Mona’s party.

  The cars were parked deep outside Mona’s flat. The grass was brown and the gutters were full of dust. Mona had the penthouse on top of the twelve-storey block, but we could hear the music and gabble of voices down in the street. I had to stop Lola from trying to direct the traffic at the intersection. Some Lola. Max was sitting in the gutter, egging her on. I pulled them both inside and shoved them into the elevator, and we where whisked up to the penthouse. Mona appeared at the door, music and guffaws and voices flooded out. She was swathed in blue muslin, gathered at the waist, and draped over one shoulder, and her hair was piled on top of her head and she wore green laced sandals and she held a long glass in her hand. You could see her breasts were swinging free under the muslin.

  ‘Lola! You Made It!’ Mona’s words always began in capitals.

  Lola flung her arms round Mona. The two were great chums. They kissed and gabbled and Lola was gone through the mob with squeals and oohs and ahs and hullo-theres and kisses all round and much laughter.

  ‘Max and Honeytalk, you can’t go in until you’re togged up, no underpants allowed.’ She led us through to the main bedroom to change into our sheets.

  The big living-room opened on to the roof garden. There were cushions and mattresses sprinkled along the walls and the only lights were from candles stuck into bottles and from the portable charcoal barbecue burners flickering outside on the roof garden. There must have been eighty people in the flat, the men draped in sheets like Roman togas and the women swathed in muslin and nightgowns. I knew most of the people, they were at most of the parties most of the time talking vivaciously about nothing mostly. They were standing around with drinks in their hands and laughing and making jokes. There were half chickens and mutton chops and boerewors roasting on the barbecues and there were bowls of punch doing the rounds and there were seventy-seven kinds of savouries, and enough booze to float a Queen. And beyond the roof garden lay the red roof-tops of Bulawayo, among dusty avenues, wide enough to turn a wagon drawn by sixteen oxen. And beyond the avenues the flat bare lights of Mzilikazi and Tshabalaba and Mpopoma and Iminyela, and beyond the flat black dry silence of Matabeleland, all the way to the horizon.