by Alan Isler
Victoria Kraven, Nicko’s mother, was Marko’s legal guardian. She needed advice. Opa, much enfeebled with age and accumulated traumata, had by now tuned out the mundane. And so she turned of necessity to her own father, Grandpa Blum, who told her whom to see and what to do. Marko suddenly had great expectations.
Meanwhile, he continued at grammar school, one year ahead of Nicko, who at age twelve was already in the second form. Marko, alas, was not a good student. Moreover, he was always in trouble. He was caught puncturing the tyres of his Latin master’s bicycle; he was caught stealing gooseberries from the school’s Victory Garden, a wartime holdover; he was frequently caught smoking; and, worst, he was caught peeking through a hole he had scratched in the black paint coating the window of the girls’ lavatory. For this last offence Victoria Kraven was summoned to the school. ‘He’s a refugee boy who has lost both parents and his sister in tragic circumstances. Surely he deserves another chance.’ Marko got it, and another, and another. Frequent canings served only to increase his cunning: he was caught less and less. In the fifth form he took up with one Monica Scrod, a plain, overgrown girl with a bovine face and irregular teeth, who nevertheless enjoyed a certain popularity among the boys for her willingness to pull down her knickers: ‘Thruppence for a look, a tanner for a feel.’ Marko, it was said, received one-third from every transaction.
At the end of that year Marko was to take the General Schools Certificate Examination, in his view a waste of time since he planned to leave school anyway.
‘But surely you’ll go on and complete sixth form, Marko,’ said Victoria. ‘If you matriculate, you can go on to university.’
Marko shrugged. ‘It’s no use, Aunt Victoria, my mind’s made up. No more bloody school. It’s the grown-up world for me.’
In fact, he was quite grown up, almost six feet tall, already shaving, his razor regularly bloodying a severe case of acne. For hours on end he would stand before the bathroom mirror squeezing pustules and spurting their contents on to the glass. The concentration involved in such close work eventually caused him to become slightly cross-eyed. This, curiously, was an attractive feature, for it gave him an aloof, quizzical expression. His square teeth, like his fingers, were already badly stained with nicotine.
But Victoria still had a card to play.
‘If you were to go to university, I should see to it that you began to receive your annuity then and there. You wouldn’t have to wait until you’re twenty-one. But, of course, it’s the GSC and the sixth form first.’
Victoria had found the sole chink in Marko’s armour of happy-go-lucky ignorance. Now, at the eleventh hour, he began to study, enlisting Nicko as his tutor.
‘It’s not fair, Mummy, I’ve got my own homework to do.’
‘Try to find time for both. We must help Marko if we can. He’s only got us and Uncle Ferri in the whole wide world.’
Marko passed his GSC – barely, to be sure, but he passed. His surprise was exceeded only by that of his masters. Yes, he was on his way to his annuity.
But the early enthusiasm that had carried him out of the fifth form was quite gone by the time he entered the sixth. He had discovered poker, at which he was soon adept, and this entertainment, along with pornography – he was already a familiar figure in the sleazier emporia of Soho – became a passion. Yet the school year continued with unperturbed pace along its course.
One day Marko came upon his cousin bent over his books at the kitchen table.
‘I’ll not matriculate, nipper.’
‘Not at this rate, you won’t.’
‘It’ll be such a disappointment for poor old Aunt Vic, that’s what bothers me. Hurting your mum, I mean.’ Marko looked woeful.
‘Start studying now, then. You pulled it off last time.’
Marko shook his head. ‘Never, not a chance.’ He sat down at the table and reached for Nicko’s ruler, with an end of which he began to scratch musingly at his pustules. Suddenly, he slammed the ruler on to the table. ‘Good lord, I’ve just had a super idea! What if you sat for me?’
‘You must be barmy, I’m not a cheat. Sit for you? It’d be no better than lying.’
‘Lying’s easy,’ said Marko. He spoke as one who, having reflected on the experiences of a long and varied life, was prepared upon request to formulate a philosophy, a guide for the perplexed. ‘You’ve got to say the first thing that comes into your head. Right out, I mean. It’s no use stopping to think. Grammar school was useful for something. I can make anyone believe whatever I want. ’Course, it takes practice.’
‘God, what an unutterable swine you are! Besides, I’d get caught.’
‘No you wouldn’t. There’s hundreds sitting for the exam, maybe thousands. All you’d have to do is fill in my name. That’s not even lying. I’m Marcus Nicholas, you’re Nicholas Marcus. It’s the same thing, really, only you’re back to front. Besides, we’d be doing it for your mum, remember. It’d be our secret.’
Nicko shook him off. ‘Well, I’m not going to. If you fail, it’s your own bloody lookout.’
Marko sighed sorrowfully. ‘And you call yourself a son. Don’t blame me if it kills her.’ He sat down again. ‘How’d you like to go to university?’
‘Fat chance. We’re not all stinking rich.’
‘Ah, well, you see, that’s why you’re lucky you’ve got me. If I could get into university, I’d come into my annuity. Then all I’d have to do would be to push some of it your way – and Aunt Victoria’s, too, of course. But if you’re not interested … well, I think it’s a bloody shame.’
Nicko stared at him in amazement. ‘You’d never do that, not really.’
‘’Course I would. Good lord, we’re cousins, aren’t we?’
Nicko felt a wild elation. He sprang to his feet and thrust out his hand. ‘I’ll do it!’
The cousins shook hands gravely.
So Nicko prepared for both examinations. He went with little sleep, was reluctant to leave his books even for meals, developed headaches, grew pale, his eyes dark ringed. He had a perpetual cold. Marko played poker, palpated breasts and squeezed pustules. In the event, Marcus Nicholas Kraven was matriculated with distinction; Nicholas Marcus Kraven passed his GSC with a score sufficiently high to exempt him from next year’s matriculation examination.
Victoria was jubilant. ‘How marvellous! How wonderful! Two such brilliant boys!’
Next morning the cousins were playing cricket at the bottom of the garden. The wicket was chalked on the door of the potting shed. Marko was batting and Nicko bowling. After a while Marko called a halt and paced with a heavy step towards his cousin, his pitted face lugubrious in the extreme. Nicko dropped the ball and put out his hand for the bat. But Marko’s expression had nothing to do with giving up his favoured place at the potting-shed door. The older boy placed a comforting hand on the shoulder of the younger.
‘I’ve got bad news for you, chum.’ Marko retained the cricket bat and used the knob at the top of the handle to scratch at a pustule on his chin. ‘The fact is, cobber, I’m not going to be able to send you to university after all.’
Nicko recoiled from his cousin’s grasp. ‘You absolute rotter! You beastly liar! You never intended to help me, not ever!’
‘Steady on, old chap, I most certainly did. But the case is altered, you see. Last night your mum told me the details of the bequest. The annuity’s not as much as I’d supposed, and I can’t lay my hands on the capital before I’m twenty-one. There’s only enough for me.’
‘But you promised, you took a solemn oath, we shook hands on it! You stinking bastard!’
‘I’d watch who I was calling a bastard if I were you.’
‘You … you … bugger! You sod!’ Nicko bit hard on his lower lip, but he would not cry in front of Marko. He turned abruptly on his heel and ran into the house. Upstairs, slamming the door of his attic room behind him, he threw himself upon the bed.
* * *
THE DOOR TO DONOVAN’S OPENED. Startled, Kraven tu
rned round. In the doorway he saw the shapely silhouette of a woman, her head surmounted by an Afro that the street’s backlight presented as a halo of massed blonde curls. She closed the door behind her and took a few paces into the room, where she stood in the dimness for a moment as if dazzled by popping flashbulbs, smiling, looking about in response to the silent applause of an invisible multitude. To Donovan she blew a kiss. Then she shrugged, smoothed her dress about her hips, tossed her curls, and bumped and ground her way to Donovan’s end of the bar.
‘Hey, Dolly!’ Donovan actually smiled. He folded his copy of Midstream and placed it beneath the bar. Leaning towards her, he closed his eyes and puckered his lips.
‘Hey, yourself!’ Taller than Donovan, she bent forward and kissed him on his forehead, leaving there a mark in vivid carmine.
‘So how’d it go?’
‘Looking good, Donovan, looking good.’
‘You mean the old guy came through, you got your angel?’
‘Could just be.’
‘No kidding!’
‘Europe, here I come. Whee-ee!’
Donovan glanced at Kraven and frowned. He and Dolly put their heads together and continued their conversation in whispers.
Kraven took another sip of his drink. He glanced again at the poster, and then as recognition dawned, at the woman talking to Donovan. Of course, Dolly Divine! She was heavily and carefully made up, a most attractive eyeful. Her pert bottom merely kissed the barstool as she leaned forward in conversation. If only… But present problems overwhelmed libidinous fantasies. Kraven sank once more into his thoughts.
* * *
AND SO MARKO HAD GONE TO LONDON UNIVERSITY, specifically to Clerihew College, just off St Giles Circus. From the day of his admission until the day of his doctorate almost fourteen years would elapse. But then, Marko was in no hurry. To his surprise he discovered that university life agreed with him, he rather liked it – not the academic side, of course, but most assuredly the social. The university provided him with a seemingly endless stream of girls, all submitting sooner or later, usually sooner, to his blandishments. Although lacking his late father’s good looks and elegance, he had managed somehow to master the paternal technique.
From time to time a girl would persuade him to move into digs with her, but Marko usually tried to avoid even limited cohabitation. He found it poisonous to an affair. It was a nuisance to be asked about his comings and goings; it was disgusting to find evidence of female necessities and feminine weaknesses all over the place. Bickering led to full-scale arguments, arguments to tears, and tears to Marko’s departure. He would drift back to the house in Hampstead and reoccupy his old room. Another girl, he knew, was waiting in the wings, eager for him to beckon her on to centre stage.
But Marko also enjoyed, after his fashion, the intellectual ambience of the university, the knowing talk of politics and the arts, the all-night drinking sessions with his fellows. Over the years he picked up a smattering of quotations, of quips, of positions and issues, of ideational attitudes, all that his father Koko had mocked as ‘boonk’. Kultur came to him as a scattering of petals on a vast expanse of rough gravel. Sometimes, alas, a petal would blow away before he had noted its beauty. Here a petal might be ground underfoot, there another might wither and die. But by and large he was able to maintain among the roaring boys the reputation of a wit. He knew better than to allow himself to be drawn into a sustained debate.
Then, too, the university gave him leisure. There was seldom any need actually to do anything. He was attending university, and that, in his and the world’s view, was doing quite enough. The very fact of his attendance was in itself elevating, or at any rate distinguishing, tending to dissolve the rigid class and ethnic barriers that in those years would otherwise have limited his social mobility. He moved with ease among all manner of men and women. He developed an indefinable ton. He belonged.
Nicko, meanwhile, had left school at the end of his fifth-form year. He began work as a stockboy in Dindan Frères, a French firm of cloth wholesalers with offices just off Regent Street. When his employers discovered that he possessed an excellent command of German and an adequate ability in French, he was promoted to a very junior clerkship in what the firm called its Foreign Office. Victoria had been proud of his rapid preferment.
During the years in which Marko with halting steps pursued his several degrees, Nicko advanced through various clerkships to the exalted post of Foreign Office Chief. He despised his work, but he knew no other. Indeed, he had become almost a recluse, spending most of his leisure hours alone, either in the Library at the British Museum, in the balcony at Covent Garden, or at home with his books and his gramophone. He had few friends, none close. His relationships with women were sporadic and unsatisfactory. He was awkward and shy with them. An anachronistic, romantic gallantry masked his wretched sense of inadequacy.
‘It’s no use, Marko. I never seem to meet anyone I can really talk to, there’s the rub. Where could I find her? The women I meet know nothing of anything that interests me. There’s no hope of a halfway decent conversation.’
‘Decent conversation, you silly sod? Good lord, what’s that got to do with fucking?’
But Nicko derived some pleasure from Marko’s years at the university. From first to last Nicko did all Marko’s written work for him. This was a mutually satisfying arrangement. For Nicko it meant direction and purpose in his reading and the challenge of professional criticism for his work; for Marko it meant increased leisure time and a halfway decent academic record. Because Nicko’s interests lay in English literature, Marko had elected to read in that discipline; as Nicko narrowed his focus to the Elizabethans and Jacobeans, Marko perforce did likewise; and when, towards the end of his cousin’s career, Nicko became interested in the parent-child relationship in Shakespearian drama, The Parent-Child Relationship in Shakespearian Drama became Marko’s doctoral dissertation.
One evening in late January 1964, Marko dropped in on his cousin at the Hampstead house. Opa was long since dead; Victoria Kraven had died in 1955, her last years, thanks to Nicko’s advancement, what she herself had called ‘comfortable’. For the past several months Marko had been living with Sybil Bowen, a graduate student in nutrition, in rather squalid rooms in Praed Street. Nicko had seen little of him. His arrival was announced by the slamming of the front door and a cry of ‘What ho, me old cock!’ Nicko, sitting reading by the living-room fire, shivered.
‘There you are! Good-o!’ Marko stood for a moment in the doorway and tugged at his forelock in mock servility. He was brimming with good cheer and excitement. The grinning vigour of his irruption had caused the gramophone needle to skip from its groove. ‘Not scratched, I trust.’
Nicko sighed. ‘Shut the door, can’t you. There’s a hell of a bloody draught.’
Marko made straight for the cabinet and poured a large whisky for himself. ‘Arses up! Ah, yes, that’s better.’
Nicko got up and closed the door. He turned off the gramophone. So much for the ‘Porgi amor’.
‘Thank God that screeching’s off.’ Marko went over to the fire and stood with his back to it, screening Nicko from the warmth.
‘Take off your coat if you’re staying.’
‘In a minute. I’m bloody frozen.’ Marko spread his coat tails around his buttocks. ‘That’s the ticket.’ He raised and lowered himself on his toes for a moment. ‘Notice anything about my face?’
‘You’re a bit yellowish.’
‘No, you twit, it’s the acne, it’s clearing up.’
‘Ah.’ This was an old story, and Nicko knew better than to protest. In fact, but for the occasional eruption of a tiny pustule or two, Marko’s acne had long since cleared up, leaving his face unscarred. But he was obsessed with what he regarded as his disfigurement. In the mirror he still saw the pitted and pimpled face of his adolescent self, and tried whatever remedies came his way, from vinegar baths and anchovy paste to hypnosis and faith healing.
‘It’s
all thanks to Sybil. Took one look and told me my trouble was lack of vitamin A. The old body’s starving for it, simple as that. I’ve been pumping the stuff into the system ever since, carrots, pills, the lot. Rather like it, as a matter of fact. Made an enormous difference, as you can see.’
‘Good for Sybil.’
‘Mock on, old chap. But she’s the first one to be of any earthly use, apart from fucking, in all these years. Not that I’ve anything to complain of there.’
‘And so you dashed over here to tell me all about it?’
‘Er, no, not exactly.’ Marko looked momentarily crestfallen, but he swallowed a mouthful of whisky and rallied. ‘How’s our dissertation coming along, old son?’
‘Our dissertation is virtually complete.’
‘No need to twist the knife.’
‘I’m polishing up the last of the footnotes.’
‘Bang on!’ Marko was clearly on the verge of some great announcement. He took a steadying swallow of whisky, his yellow eyeballs gleaming, the hand around the tumbler trembling in his excitement. But he contrived a casual tone. ‘You remember, of course, I applied last November for a lectureship in America? I told you about that, didn’t I? No? Yes, there was an advert in the TLS. You never know, I thought. Nothing venture, nothing gain, that sort of rot. Posted off my credentials, had the Quim put in a good word for me. The thing is, old boy, I’ve got the job!’ Marko no longer strove to mask his elation. He pulled from his overcoat pocket a thin envelope edged in red, white and blue and waved it triumphantly aloft. ‘It arrived this morning. Trouble is, the appointment’s contingent upon the completion of the degree. I’ve got to arrive “degree in hand”. You’d think it was a bloody wanking contest. Anyway, it’s a relief to hear the dissertation’s done. No need to say how grateful I am, I suppose.’