by Ray Connolly
I’m risking a strained hernia with this Champagne cork. Wire freed, forcing base of bottle into right kidney, easing cork with thumbs. Face it at wall. Remember Nelly Ormesher lost an eye when a celebratory cork took an unplanned and unfortunate trajectory at their Cissy’s wedding. Bang. Gusher all over pants and into two glasses.
‘Now that I know you’re all right I’ll just have my champagne and go.’ Composure is the face of an affront.
‘Yes, you’ll go. Go where? Go to Biba’s? Go back to your young-ladies’ hostel in Cromwell Road? Or go to lunch with me? Yes, please?’
‘No thank you. Really you don’t have to bother.’ Ah, she’s playing hard to get, as I watch her Adam’s apple rise and fall. Is that a mole? That neat brown beauty spot right in the middle of her neck, positioned so delicately that it visibly leaps whenever she swallows.
‘Please. I would like it very much. Anyway I want to talk to you, and I’m very hungry: they wouldn’t let me eat yesterday. And you’ve been very nice to me, bringing me home, and coming to see that the worms haven’t carried me off during the night. Yes. Yes, drink up, and I’ll phone for a table, and mind you don’t get a nose full of bubbles—you get the bends if they get into your bloodstream, and the decompression unit’s out of order.’
Some day perhaps we’ll decompress together, but first let’s have some lunch, and maybe when the time is right I’ll ask you your name.
We went to the Trattoo in Abingdon Road for lunch, mainly because it was close by, but also because they know me there and always give me that beaming Italian welcome which works wonders for the state of my ego. They really do serve the best smiles in London, and I suppose I must admit that I rather hoped that all that bowing and scraping might impress my lady just a bit.
‘Soave Bolla,’ I ordered, not even bothering to look at the wine list. No amount of good living had made any impression upon my choice of wines, and I was still happily ignorant of any sophisticated rituals, of which wines for which dishes and of any of that decanted, bouqueted nonsense. If I were served a bad wine, I’d only know if I didn’t like its taste, and even then I’d never have the nerve to complain. I just wouldn’t drink it. Anyway it had never happened. I could, I liked to think, drink anything that came out of a vineyard.
‘When are you going to ask me my name?’ she said.
‘I was saving it as a treat for Sunday.’
‘Don’t you want to know?’
Picking up her asparagus tips like rats’ tails, and trailing them in chopped egg and vinaigrette. Trickle of vinaigrette running down her chin. Greasy lemon-coloured trail. Be careful, or it’ll form a lake in your dimple. Quick, I’ll wipe it off for you with my napkin. Stretching across the table … there, that’s better. They should have sat us side by side. I’d better tell them that, the next time I come here. Either that, or they could have put us in that table under the open stairs so that a man might see which ladies wear which coloured panties, and which brazen things wear none at all. Seated here as we are, like two soldiers on guard duty facing each other, is no way to get acquainted. With you, or anyone else…
‘Don’t do that.’ She’s embarrassed, and stroppily pushing away my napkin. ‘People will look.’
‘What’s your name?’
‘So you finally got round to asking. Well, I don’t think I’ll tell you now. Guess.’
Two can play at childish games. Indeed the best games are those in which two do play, though I have heard that three can be a good number for some sports. Personally I can’t say, never having been so fortunate as to find myself in such a situation. I don’t suppose the young lady has a sporting roommate: ‘Charlotte the harlot.’
A quick ridge dips between her eyes. So demure. Too decent a girl for you, Kelly. Pick on someone your own size.
‘It’s Clare.’
‘Now there’s a nice name for a nurse. I mean it. Tell me, Clare, will you spend the day with me and come out with me tonight? I think I need some special nursing. I mean you said it yourself, I was very poorly last night. Will you spend the day with me, and I’ll let you drag me round Biba’s or wherever you want to go, and tonight we can go to the pictures or something? And we’ll be good friends. Will you be a good friend, Clare, or will you be off chasing after some young doctor tonight, leaving me to go to the pictures alone? Again.’
‘I never know whether you’re having me on or not. What do you want me to say? One minute you’re so hostile and cynical.…’
‘Clare what?’
‘Clare Rigby.’
‘I once had a teacher called Miss Rigby. I remember she rapped my knuckles with a ruler when I was eight … it was just a few days before my mother died, and then the next time I went to school she kissed me and cried all over me telling me what a good boy I was. I remember I didn’t know what to do, so I just stood there saying ‘Yes, Miss Rigby.’ Really she was very nice to me in her way after that. She used to come round and give me a love while she was looking at my sums, and ask me how her little orphan boy was getting on today—my father was killed in the war before I was born. She meant well, poor woman, but I used to wish to God she’d not call me an orphan. It made me feel as though everyone was feeling sorry for me— and I couldn’t be doing with any of that.’
‘Yes … nobody wants to be submerged beneath sympathy.’
‘Anyway, it’s you I want to know about. Tell me, am I right, Clare? Are you the nicely-brought-up young lady from the South of England that I’ve been telling myself? Or have you a murky past? Come on, I want the truth. What on earth was a nice girl like you doing in a place like that?’
‘Like what?’
‘Like that place where they do unmentionable things to young men’s lower intestines which I unfortunately had occasion to visit yesterday. Wouldn’t you be better off playing tennis in Esher or croquet in Tunbridge Wells than spending your afternoons getting off with naked men with hosepipes plugged into their bottoms? I don’t think the vicar would like it.’
‘You know you’re mad. What was supposed to be wrong with you yesterday?’
‘Now, Clare, I’m asking the questions, if you please. I have ways of making people talk, so come on, let’s have it. Where are you from?’
‘Guildford.’
‘Of course.’
‘And your father. What does he do?’
‘He’s a solicitor.’
‘Do you mean he solicits in and around public lavatories, or is he one of these clever clogs who gets rich by charging extortionate rates for his services when people sell their houses?’
‘That’s not funny. You’re just childish. Why are you so nasty?’ Penetrating grey eyes. Look into them and catch sight of myself, a silly convex image. What a child’s face she has. Both of us leaning across the table. Wine all gone, mostly into me. Ice cream time. With chocolate sauce. Clare, you’re my vanilla cornet today. I’m sorry I said that.
‘I think I’m nervous. I know I’m nervous. You make me shy, Clare.’
A long smile. A daisy-chain smile: ‘I would have thought that someone like you was never nervous. All those women you’re always writing about in the paper. Do they make you shy?’
‘Ah. So you know that about me. How?’
I recognised your name on your yellow card. I’ve read some of your articles. Well … a couple. The spicy ones. So I hung around until I saw you going home yesterday.’
‘So you picked me up. You’re a hussy, Clare. That’s what you are. And here’s me thinking I’ve found myself a lovely sweet and innocent little virgin, to lead me out of my life of debauchery and sin, and onto the road of righteousness. Clare, you disappoint me.’
Clare, you thrill me to bits. Now there you are regretting you were so outspoken, and wondering what I must be thinking of you, and thinking I’ll only be after one thing, anyway, and sipping your coffee because you’d rather not look at me at this moment. And there’s a slight rosiness to you now that I didn’t notice before. A strawberry Saturday afternoon for
Benedict Kelly. Don’t be a silly girl, no reason to be embarrassed. Yes, up the steps and to the first floor. I’ll wait here and get the bill, and then perhaps we’ll go riding in my car and you’ll forget that you let your discretion slip. Because really you couldn’t have told me anything nicer, and never mind what your soliciting father might think. It’s a strawberry afternoon even if it is a damp and chilly day.
Chapter Three
Little boys throwing sticks up into the branches for the last of the conkers still hiding in their prickly nests, and a wet mist hanging over the open slopes of the park. A late-afternoon autumn light on our faces, softening Clare’s profile, the shadows of raindrops speckled on the windscreen of the Citroën reflecting off her dappled porcelain face. Up the hill the deer wander away from us, annoyed by our intrusion into their royal park.
‘Are you sure you didn’t want to go shopping?’
‘Certain. I can go another day. Besides, when you’re a nurse you don’t have much money to spend, so it’s usually a case of looking and deciding what I can’t afford. I wasn’t cut out for nursing. I’ll never stick it out.’
‘Why did you go in for it then?’
‘Oh. I wanted to be a doctor—don’t ask me why—but my A-levels were pretty awful, so I thought this was the next best thing. But I loathe it. I suppose I really wanted to get away from home, and as I didn’t have any particular talent for anything, I thought I’d try this. I knew I’d made a mistake as soon as I walked into St Jude’s the first day. The hours are terrible. And the money’s worse. I’m young. I want to have a good time. But I never get the remotest chance.’
‘Was that why you latched on to me?’
‘Why else? … No, seriously, I feel so inadequate in there. They know I’m not interested, and I can’t get interested, so I get all the awful jobs to do. I sometimes think I’ll die if I see another bedpan. I want to be good. And I admire those girls who are. But I’ll never make it.’
‘Why’ve you stayed then? Is it for your family’s sake? Do they want you to be a nurse, or something like that?…’
‘No. No. My family? There’s only my father, and I don’t think he really cares what happens to me. Well, he does … I mean, he’s nice and all that. He’d understand, or he’d say he understood, whatever I did. My parents are divorced, and my mother’s remarried. That was when I was about thirteen. She’d been carrying on with this bloke for ages. I used to pretend I didn’t know what was going on. Once when I came home from school early because I’d been hit in the eye by a hockey stick, I caught them at it. Well, I could hear them talking upstairs. At first I thought it was my father, and I didn’t understand because he was always out all day. He’s obsessed with work. And just as I was about to go into their bedroom I realised that it wasn’t my father’s voice. I just crept away, and walked round the neighbourhood until it was my normal time to come home from school. I wasn’t upset. I don’t know why. I think I was disgusted. Well, I’m still disgusted. Broken homes are supposed to have very bad effects upon children, aren’t they?, but it didn’t change me. I don’t think so, anyway. I don’t think we can have ever been a close family. Not really. At school, when I was little, I used to envy some of the other girls because they had fathers who used to take them out a lot, but I can’t remember ever being taken out much.
‘Anyway, when the divorce thing began they sent me off to a boarding school hoping, I suppose, that I wouldn’t learn all the sordid details. I did, of course. The whole school read all about it one Sunday after service. It was all in the News of the World. It was one gloriously hot Sunday and everyone sat behind the changing pavilion with their skirts up to their knickers and their blouses undone, hoping to get a tan, and read about it. I wanted to die that day.
‘But anyway school was infinitely better than being at home, watching Daddy work and my mother make excuses for never being there when she was needed. I hardly ever see her now. Every now and then she seems to feel some kind of guilt for neglecting me during what she calls my “formative years”, and she gets me to go and spend a weekend with her and Jack—that’s his name. He’s a dentist. It said in the paper that they used to have it on the floor in his surgery. Christ! I think I’d rather spend a weekend in Hollo-way than go to see them again. Nursing was just a whim that I followed for want of any better advice. All my father said was, “If that’s what you want, then you do it, dear.” I was stupid.’
‘I always thought nurses came from the underprivileged north or the underemployed Irish Republic. Never thought of Surrey as a breeding ground for the bedpan brigade.’
‘Well, I was at school till last year and I loved it, and when I had to leave because I obviously wasn’t going to get anywhere academically, I just dreaded the idea of living at home again, and watching my father work his way into another heart attack, so I thought I might find that nursing was what I needed. I think really I just wanted to come to London, and was frightened to try and take it on by myself. The hospital does sort of shelter you a bit, and I was very sheltered at school. Perhaps if I’d been artistic or something like that, I could have gone to art school. But I’m not. I’m not anything much, really.’
‘You’re quite a talker … when you get going. What brought all that on?’
Back comes the shyness. Head on one side, leaning forward, and a forefinger making patterns in the condensation gathering on the windows of the car.
‘When you relax you’re easy to talk to, Benedict.’
Benedict? Ah, the first sign of intimacy. Always been a good listener. That’s half the battle with women, they used to tell me. Well, someone told me. Yet how bitter you are, Clare. And lonely. As lonely as I am?
‘So what are you going to do?’
‘Well, I suppose having found out that I’m not a Florence Nightingale, which I knew all along really, and not wanting to be a secretary, and not wanting to go through any further-educational course, I don’t really know. I thought you might have some ideas. Couldn’t you discover a nice trendy job for me, with little work and lots of money?’
‘You could peddle your pussy up and down Dean Street. There’s a good living to be made for pretty young things like you.’
And now a coldness. Youth can be so puritanical. It was only a joke, for Christ’s sake. Strange that you should be keeping that distance so carefully with me. So reserved. Let me peep my way behind your face and learn what you’re thinking of me. Can’t you see I want you to like me, but I’ve screwed so many easy ladies that I’ve forgotten how to behave with nice young girls? Yet I’ve known some girls younger than you, Clare, who were older than me.
It’ll be dark soon. Shall we get back?’ She is grave and calm. The rust of the park grows dimmer. My car turns towards town, back over Putney Bridge, through an evening of burning leaves, the smell of half-term, and an electric ceiling of coral-coloured glare.
‘I’m sorry, Clare. I think you must goad me, or something. I didn’t mean that. Will you forget that I said it?’
A perfectly neat little face, hair falling loosely from a crooked parting down the centre of her head, two forefingers stuck into her mouth, turns gently towards me: ‘No,’ she says. And smiles.
Chapter Four
To end our first day together I struck on the idea of going down to the National Film Theatre where Ballad of a Soldier and The Cranes Are Flying were being revived. I imagine that in a way I was looking for a little second-hand emotion, because these must be two of the biggest weepies ever made, and I think I must have seen it as a way of getting close to Clare without making it look like the usual vaginal assault-course. I mean, I wanted to share some emotion with her, even if it was only as a reaction to a sad film. I suppose I wanted to be able to feel I was some kind of comfort, maybe to offer her my handkerchief … all that sort of thing. And maybe to feel her close, and warm, the way I’d done with other girls years ago at home.
Why had I been at the hospital yesterday? she’d asked eventually on the way into town, as an a
venue out of our moments of embarrassment. No reason, I said, I was perfectly healthy. Just wait until she saw my X-ray plates. Sound as a bell I was, if lower intestines could be so compared. Then what was I doing having barium pumped into my colon? she’d demanded. Did I get some kick out of it or something? It seemed a strange fetish to her.
‘I’m no fetishist. I’m a hypochondriac, if you must know,’ I said at last, mortified that she’d chosen to bring up the circumstances of our meeting. ‘Last year I had a sort of minor breakdown in which I became completely dizzy and found that I wasn’t able to stand up. Well, for weeks I was convinced that I had a tumour on the brain, when actually it was just a matter of being completely overworked. Anyway they did all these tests on me and found out that I was perfectly healthy, which was what they’d been saying all the time, but they suggested that I ought to take it a bit more easily. In the meantime they gave me a bottle of tranquillisers and eventually I forgot about it. Then earlier this year the symptoms changed to tummy-ache. And naturally enough, being a man of no little imagination, I decided that I must have cancer of the stomach. All the doctors I saw and all the consultants were again convinced that I hadn’t got cancer but I moithered them so much that eventually they agreed to send me to your place yesterday so that they could prove themselves right.
‘Those bastards knew what they were doing all right. As soon as they shoved their hosepipe up me I vowed that I’d never imagine anything else. If my stomach burst open I wouldn’t complain after what your lot did to me.’
‘Now, it can’t have been that bad. You do exaggerate.’
‘Couldn’t be worse, Clare. Nothing could be worse. And me a virgin, too. Twenty-nine years’ celibacy gone with the act of rape by a barium tube. Do you think it might be a mortal sin to surrender one’s maidenhood to a rampant hosepipe? Will you have a mass said for the repose of my soul?’