M/F

by Anthony Burgess

  – But we’re packed and ready. Oh, how silly they all are.

  – Fetch in the tray, Kitty Kee. In a way, of course, it’s Providence. Dear dear Miles has been sent to us by Providence and it’s only right we should have some time together. Fetch the tea in, girl. I made a few sandwiches.

  She looked at me lovingly. Her reaction on first seeing me had been surprise, and this had led straight on to a resumption of her governess approach. In the kitchen alone, slicing hardboiled eggs for sandwiches, chewing sugar, she had been hit by a realization that I, Miles, her dear boy, was back with her again after all those long years.

  – You’re so thin, poppet. You need feeding up. Who do you stay with now during your vacations? Poor boy, with no home of his own. Let me turn that horrid telly off.

  – My generation doesn’t believe in home any more. In the vacations I just get around, seeing America, picking up the odd job. Or used to. No more vacations after this.

  – Poor poor lad. Well, we shall have a little time together here. They have lovely meringues at the supermarket on Craig Road.

  – No. Sorry. Tomorrow morning I start working my passage back to Florida.

  – Tomorrow morning you what?

  That was Catherine, just come in with the tray. I saw what I’d expected: the gleam of set albumen between thickish slices of bread and butter; sugary cakes. Catherine said:

  – If we can’t leave, neither can you. If they won’t let planes out they won’t let boats out either.

  – Oh.

  – Weren’t listening, were you?

  She had become bossy already, really sisterly. I looked at her in distaste, a fat girl who had already poured herself a cup of tea and was slurping it in with unnecessary noise. She put a whole small chocolate pastry in her mouth at once and showed me her teeth, which were yellowish and glinted with fillings, grinding it into sludge. A chocolate crumb fell on to her big sloppy bosom and she rubbed it into her dress with her fingers. Then she scratched her bosom since her fingers were already there.

  – That’s awkward, very awkward, I said.

  – You must stay, my dear boy, Miss Emmett said, until this business is over. The Americans are clever people. They gave us very good warning, but then this storm came, you know. And this airline they have here –

  – Arija Castita, Catherine said through the blown crumbs of a salmoncoloured macaroon, showing off her bit of knowledge.

  – They only have two trips a week to Kingston.

  – Flights, they’re called.

  – I know that, girl. Pour me a cup of tea. I’m dying for a cigarette.

  – Cleverer at spying than at Caribbean meteorology, I said. The Americans, that is. I think, really, I’d better go back to that hotel. If you could possibly lend me –

  – What’s the matter? Catherine said. Do I smell or something?

  It was not really a fair question. Miss Emmett said:

  – There’s a nice little bed up in the attic. You’ll be comfy there. And I can feed you up and we can talk. Oh dear, she added. There’s hardly anything to eat in the house. Emptied the larder, you see, because we’re going. I used the last of the eggs just now. Have an egg sandwich, dear boy.

  – No, thanks, I’ve already eaten.

  – Don’t seem able to give you anything, do we? Catherine said, before working into a cream horn.

  – Well, then, if you’re sure it’s no trouble.

  – I’ll go round to the supermarket, smoking Miss Emmett said, when I’ve finished this.

  – No, no, I’ll go, I said too eagerly. I didn’t want to be alone with Catherine. I didn’t want her to go on, in her cured cold way, about my father. I wanted to chew all that over alone.

  – Perhaps I could find out about this museum at the same time. It’s on this street somewhere.

  – No museums here, Miss Emmett said, nor art galleries nor anything of that sort. Just residential except for those two drinking places. Horribly noisy late at night that one opposite. But Manuel is nice. They order these cigarettes for me specially.

  – I like to see them coming out drunk, Catherine said. It’s quite a little entertainment. Stupid drunks shouting stupid things at each other.

  – Funny about that, I said. This is the street I was told. The man seemed in no doubt about it.

  – Which man, my dear boy?

  – This man I met in the – the jelyf man. Sorry, of course that wouldn’t mean anything to you. This man I –

  – Oh, yes, Catherine said. We’re not all that cut off from civilization, you know. We have Jellif here. Jellif’s nice. Specially with canned peaches and whipped cream on top. If you’re going shopping get some Jellif.

  – And some of those lovely meringues, dear. They come in packets of six. Get two packets, we must build you up. There’s some money under that little china owl by the door.

  – Meat. Meat is what I’m going to get. Meat.

  They both looked at me as if meat were something obscene or explosive. Miss Emmett recovered and said:

  – A little kiss, dear boy, before you go out.

  That went right back to my childhood. She’d forgotten my self-conscious teens when I wouldn’t kiss anybody. I indulged the old darling and put my lips to her grey well-washed hair. She laughed and said:

  – And one for Kitty Kee. Do you realize you haven’t kissed your little sister yet?

  I swallowed the bolus of distaste that at once arose. Catherine looked at me with no warmth. I said:

  – Do you particularly want to be –?

  – Of course not.

  – Right, then.

  I took the dollars from under the china owl and, going out, heard Miss Emmett complain:

  – A very unaffectionate generation you all are, I’d say.

  Wittig Street, Buckley Avenue. I kept repeating to myself, as I looked for Sib Legeru: Had to be his own flesh, his own flesh. A kind of cannibalism. I’d said I was going to buy meat, and the phrase put me off meat. And I had a sort of image of a sort of postman dressed in white going down some long avenue or other, shuffling his letters and parrotcocking his crest to read the addresses. At length he would deliver to me an official envelope and I would open it trembling, knowing all the time what was inside, what was inside being an official notification of my insanity in a single brief sentence, very large typeface, upper case only. Insanity as the crown of the other inheritances. She, Catherine, had had a brief spasm of it only with, so to speak, a historical cause. Now she was sane; did I want to be sane like that? If I were insane, being sane would probably be like having to be like Llew. I needed Sib Legeru. Desperately. I asked people I passed if they knew where Sib Legeru’s works were, but they did not know, nor did they wish to know. They looked at me as if they knew I was mad. Why was I not full, as they were, of the bogus miracle and the hunt for the murderers of the true miracle? They were all alert, in holiday mood. Had to be his own flesh. The double horror had sparked in them a desire to live and be cheerful, since life was so full of blessed surprises.

  Own flesh. I shuddered at the conformist order of Craig Road, where a supermarket was the sole provisioner of an endless double row of overcleanlooking semidetacheds, a long flat treeless ribbon where the sun was dismally naked. Also earth in the form of grit, unheld down by vegetation, swirled in the wind and got into my eyes. Full of tears, they were ready to accept the mechanical irritant as a priming of wretched abandon, the release of all my tensions. But there were too many gay shoppers around. Meat. I would not buy meat here. I turned into Pocock Street and then left on to Ross Crescent. Nin Street, Ventura Street, Redvers Lane. Nobody knew of Sib Legeru. I came to a little huddle of shops – stationer’s, knitting materials, butcher’s. In the butcher’s window there was a frozen sirloin, Argentinian doubtless, about six pounds weight. I would buy that. His own flesh. I had a yearning for a big burnt roast.

  – Sib Legeru?

  – Who? What?

  The butcher shook his head sadly as he weig
hed the joint. He was thin, like so many butchers, and probably ulcerated: a packet of Stums lay among the knives and cleavers. And then, an accession of memory suddenly acidly stabbing him:

  – Key in a tobacconist’s? That what you said? Five dollars thirty.

  – Yes. Yes yes.

  – Lee’s. Try Lee’s. Shadwell Park Road. Off Indovinella Street. Know where that is?

  – Yes. Yes yes yes.

  I walked out with the joint wrapped in three newspapers. At last I was getting somewhere. I found Indovinella Street, again with some difficulty. First to deposit this glacial beef and let it bleed out its water. And then. I carried it with speed and gingerly like a timebomb whose hour was soon due. And then the musical retching hooter of a car sounded behind me. I turned: it was police patrolmen. They too, sensitized by today’s urgent duty, seemed to think in terms of an explosive ticker. I stopped and so did the patrol-car. It was a handsome scarlet vehicle, very well polished. The driver, in mandatory dark glasses, did not get out, but that sergeant of the previous night did, followed by a skeletal dark glassed constable. Oh God, I thought. The holsters of both gleamed fatly in the sun. The sergeant, who seemed to have grown more elephantine folds under his eyes, said:

  – So. Still not learning your lesson yet, eh?

  – What do you mean? What lesson? Is there some law against walking the streets?

  – Yes, said the sergeant. For immoral purposes as the whole world knows. But we’ll keep off insolence and stupid little jokes, won’t we? Your mother was very upset and rang up to apologize. And she asked us special to make sure you’re where you should be, which is where she can keep an eye on you.

  Llew, then, as was to be expected, had told her nothing about what he thought stupidly was his image, though he was really parodic mine. Llew had not given up. I would be seeing Llew again if I wasn’t careful. I said:

  – Look. I’m not the one you think. I’m just like him, that’s all. I’ve got my passport here. Just wait a –

  I transferred the insule of iced meat to my right arm so I could dip my left hand into my inner pocket. Both the sergeant and the constable jumped. Ineptly, the constable put his hand to his holster. The sergeant said:

  – Never mind about passports. Hand that thing over.

  – It’s a joint of beef, I said. I bought it for my sister and my er former governess. They live along here.

  – Governess, eh? the constable said, making a governess sound like a wardress.

  The sergeant grabbed the parcel and unfolded the three copies of the Timpu d’Grencijta. He could not deny that he was looking at meat. He prodded it with a long forefinger but a wall of wine-coloured ice pressed back. He took a gloomy look at one of the front pages but there was nothing subversive there.

  – There’s too much insolence going on. What’s your sister doing here if your mother’s up there?

  – It’s not my mother.

  – We could run you in on suspicion, especially after what happened in the Dwumu. But we’re on to bigger game than what you are. Rod, he said to the constable, get on the carphone to Mr Whoeveritis, the manager at the circus –

  – Dunkel, I said stupidly.

  – Yes yes, let on not to know but you know all right. Tell Mr Dunkel, Rod, that we don’t want this Lou boy running round the streets. We’ve enough on our plates without him. Go on boy, do what you’ve got to do and then get back where you belong.

  I didn’t want Dunkel knocking on the door, though Miss Emmett would certainly have the scissors ready. I didn’t want the police to have too exact a knowledge of where I was. I walked towards the Yo Ho Me Lads.

  – There, is she – your sister and the other one?

  – I want to buy a bottle of wine.

  – What does a lad of your age want with wine? Going to get drunk again and make dirty gestures?

  – I’m going to cook bœuf à la bourguignonne.

  – Foreign muck.

  The constable, I noticed, had not done what he’d been ordered. Probably there was no carphone, only the usual radio link with headquarters. Headquarters would not be happy, this day of the failed assassins, with a request to put through a message to a circus. In any case, surely a circus, being a travelling entity, could not have a telephone? But perhaps Mr Dunkel had his office in a rented permanent fixture. Still, it was clear that the sergeant was only trying to scare me. Nobody could possibly really believe, despite the superficial evidence, that I was that foulspeaking leerer. I had got the sergeant worried, and worry was, with men like him, the father of bluff.

  There was only one customer still in the Yo Ho Me Lads – Aspinwall, snoring through the dark. Manuel came at length and sold me a bottle of something local that looked black with iron. It cost only twenty-five cents: one could not go far wrong at that price.

  12

  I could have cried with frustration, but there was no priming grit. The roast spat away in the oven; Catherine chewed her nails at an old movie on television; Miss Emmett sat upright in her chair (some distance from where I was sitting) smiling gently to herself while her inner private projectionist ran some clumsily edited film about her own past, probably with me in it (Miles Faber played by an unknown prodigy). I smoked one Sinjantin after another, drinking it in to the very diaphragm, grudgingly thanking God for one small mercy. The Lee who ran the tobacconist’s shop was an undefined Oriental and stocked some of the brands of the East (Dji Sam Soe, for instance), very dear blame import duty sir. He handed over the key, which he said he had not been asked for for years. He recognized it, bunched up as it was with others, because of the three knife nicks on the handle. He believed the place was on Indovinella Street, but which number he did not know. He had never been there; he had a shop to look after.

  I had knocked all along Indovinella Street, my heart knocking almost to knock me over, but people thought I was selling something or was mad. In nearly every instance it was a man who came to the door chewing crossly, sometimes with a napkin in his fist. A good class residential district, with napkins. No place for Sib Legeru.

  – My dear boy, Miss Emmett said after I had exclaimed on my frustration for the third time, a young boy with his life in front of him shouldn’t want to go round looking at old museums. My brother-in-law in Christchurch was a museum kind of man, and it did him no good. You forgot to bring the meringues, you see, thinking of your old museums.

  – And the Jellif, Catherine poutsneered.

  – Bugger the Jellif.

  – Miles, that’s not a very nice thing to say to your sister, nor in front of me either. I don’t know where you pick up such language.

  And then we had the television news, with a plentifully haired young man reading it against the same blowup of shocked Castitan faces. Four youths known for previous attempts at acts of disaffection were being interrogated and the police were hot on the trail of the ringleader. A private twoseater Troll had been prevented from taking off at Grencijta International Airport and its pilot and passenger arrested for contravention of the emergency regulation, about which they alleged total ignorance. The guards posted at the dockgates and all along the yacht marina had been augmented following certain warnings whose nature could not at present be divulged. The meteorological report that followed the news promised fine weather. This was a sort of compensation for everybody having to stay in Castita whether they liked it or not. Then the M.G.M. lion snarled welcome to an old movie.

  – Quiet now for this, Catherine said.

  – Is this all you do in the evenings? I mean, don’t you read or drink or play the guitar or have boyfriends or anything?

  – Poor Kitty Kee never got much education.

  – What’s education got to do with drinking or boyfriends?

  – Reading, I meant. She’s much too young for those other things. She had to go about with her father, you see, and she couldn’t have regular schooling.

  – Quiet, can’t you see I’m watching?

  The movie began with longbreast
ed women with metal hair in bathing costumes of the thirties, drinking Chichis on the beach at Waikiki, Diamond Head in the background.

  – Honolulu, Catherine said.

  – Yes, Kitty Kee dear. And you flew straight to Auckland from there and then to Christchurch and that’s where we met. Such a coincidence.

  – What is, was? I asked.

  – Oh, do be quiet.

  Soon the film settled to New York smartness and wit, with the eggfaced women in paddedshouldered suits, wisecracking at sleek moustached men in doublebreasteds who had cocktail cabinets in huge society lawyers’ offices with a vista of Manhattan. The accompanying music was quick on the ball to underline comic discomfiture with waw-waw trumpets, and if anybody went comically to bed the strings did two dissonant bars of Rockabye Baby. You could, I supposed, call it a sort of social history lesson for unschooled Kitty Kee. There were references to Tammany Hall and Roosevelt’s New Deal and the Forgotten Men. I said:

  – Look, dinner’s nearly ready. Are you going to watch that horrible thing through to the end?

  – It’s not horrible, it’s sophisticated. I’ll eat my dinner here on my knee.

  – Aaaargh.

  This thin house had four storeys but no diningroom. I set the formica kitchen table, not forgetting the wine, and got the beef out of the bottled-gas oven. I dumped the sizzling carnage with its smoking blood and fat on to a willow pattern dish, sharpened the blunt carver with its matching steel and called that food was on the table. Miss Emmett came in. She insisted on cutting some slices for Catherine and making a couple of doorstep sandwiches. She said:

  – A bit tough, isn’t it? Poor Kitty Kee had to have some teeth out, poor girl. She has what’s called a bridge. She can only really eat soft things really.

  She delivered the telesnack and came back to sit to her plate and complain about toughness on her own behalf.

  – Thank your stars you have your own teeth, dear boy, if you have, that is. I had the last of mine out in Christchurch. Not a good fit these dentures. Sometimes the top ones drop. There’s a kind of glue you can get at the chemist’s called Dentisiment, but I keep on swallowing it all the time. Very tough, isn’t it?