by Terry Taylor
Her face went very serious. “I think you’re mad,” she said quietly,
“Mad? What do you mean?” I said.
“You should have better sense than to start selling. It’s an entirely different thing to smoking, you know. The law aren’t all that concerned about smokers because they’ve got to put all their efforts into finding the dealers, and they find them, don’t you worry. It’s the most dangerous crooked profession to enter. I can tell you that and I’m no criminal. The trouble with selling Charge is that too many people have to know about it and no matter how careful you are the wrong person will find out sooner or later and turn you into Uncle Charlie of the narcotics squad for protection against their own little fiddle or for a few quid. No one lasts very long at it without Old Mother Luck is on his side strong.”
“But Dusty’s in it with me. He knows what he’s doing, Dusty does.”
“I think you have too much faith in that friend of yours. If he’s so sharp why couldn’t he raise the fifty pounds himself? And anyway, I don’t completely trust him either. He’s a laugh and all that but there’s something that’s sly. I don’t like the way he looks at people sometimes behind those glasses of his.”
I was getting a bit annoyed at her running my friend down. “Dusty’s all right. Don’t you worry about that. Anyway, I’ve made up my mind. I’m going through with it whatever happens.”
She took the glass in her hand again. “If you’ve made up your mind there’s nothing I can do about it. I wish you luck anyway.”
“Thanks,” I said, taking a drink. I then made a lovely four-skinned joint that knocked you out just by looking at it.
Oh man, don’t some chicks get you down? Here I was, in Miss Roach’s bedroom (which was also her living-room and kitchen as well) alone with her at one o’clock in the morning, with sexy sounds on the box, a supersonic spliff in my hand, and she goes and nauses things up by telling me I’m a naughty little boy for wanting to become a drug pedlar. The trouble with her is that she always sounds so sensible when she talks about serious things and you can’t argue with her because everything she says seems so right somehow. I was never any good at arguing, anyway. I suppose it’s because I’m so easily led. I mean, I start off fine with my ideas clear in my mind and determined that nothing my opponent says or does will alter my point of view, but then when you’re against someone like Miss R who sort of sounds wise in a casual sort of way, you know what I mean, sensible without trying to be — then I’m lost. I say to them, “I see what you mean — but...” Then I discover I haven’t a leg to stand on. It makes me so mad. It’s like when I used to argue about Spiritualism with an atheist or a Catholic. I’d start off fine, then get complicated by bringing something like the Bible into it and before I knew where I was I was well and truly beaten. Not that I wanted to go to Mass or join the Secular Society or anything like that, you see, I was still a Spiritualist, but I just couldn’t get my ideas across, and just for a minute the Catholic convinced me that I was wrong. I don’t suppose I’ll ever get over it. I hope so though. It’ll be a drag if I don’t.
“I don’t know why I tried to lecture you,” Miss Roach said, waiting patiently for her turn on the spliff. “Life is to be lived. Mine is mine and yours is yours. It’s a far too short a thing. We’ve all got to do what we think is best or we aren’t even living properly. It’s not right to tell someone what to do — it’s sort of stealing some of their life away from them.”
The spliff started to do its duty. To hell with Miss Roach not being the same sexual type as myself — she didn’t look so bad now. I mean when you’re close to her it’s a different thing altogether; she’s warm and soft and all those feminine things and she can get you at it there’s no doubt about that. I put my arm around her and she half-turned and faced me and pressed her breasts against me and they felt bigger and firmer than I had imagined them. When I was kissing her I opened my eyes and saw her eyes tightly closed and sort of quivering and I could tell that she meant it.
There’s no point in telling you what happened in bed because I couldn’t report to you anything original, but in the morning when I awoke and felt her laying beside me, I wasn’t sorry for what had happened. My staying with her hadn’t spoilt anything between us, in fact we were closer now than I ever dreamed we would or could be.
“So all is forgiven, Liz?” I said to her. She didn’t say anything but at least she looked up and smiled. She carried on eating her roast beef and said, “Where were you last night? I was very worried this morning when I found you weren’t here. I thought something had happened to you.”
“You sound more like mum every day,” I said, smiling at the same time in case she took offence.
“And what’s wrong with mum?” she asked seriously.
“Nothing. Relax, Liz, you’re too damn serious.” I took a mouthful of the stuff that looked like Yorkshire pudding. “I was at a party. I had a few too many drinks and couldn’t get home.”
She really did start to sound like our mother and look like her too. “You’re always telling me I’m much too serious but it’s a good thing someone is. If we were all like you I don’t know what would happen. We’d all end up in the workhouse.”
I let it go at that. I was determined not to say one word that might cause an argument let alone a row, as it had cost me all my powers of persuasion to make it up to her as it was. I even had to ask her forgiveness, which is a pretty humiliating thing when it’s your sister at the receiving end. She didn’t come round easily either. I got the impression that she enjoyed it all. That she got her kicks seeing me humble and even a bit weak before her, telling her I was sorry and that I was the biggest bastard God ever gave life to. And when I realised I was past her annoyance and temper and pride, she wouldn’t come out of it and tell me she’d forgotten all about it. No, she kept it going and told me that I purposely waited until there was someone else on the scene before I showed her up, so I had to keep rubbing my nose in the dirt telling her she had every right in the world to be mad, and that it would never happen again and I ought to be ashamed of myself; and in the end she told me that although she’d forgiven me she could never forget it, as I was her brother and blood flows thicker than water, but I was only a boy, not the man I kidded myself I was, and once or twice I felt like asking her who the hell did she think she was, the Queen or something? And I’d take everything back because I wasn’t really sorry at all, but I managed to restrain myself. You’ve got to give way sometimes, I suppose. Especially when you’re dealing with someone like Liz. She’s the last person who’d admit she was wrong, even if she was the wrongest person that ever lived. You’d never get a confession out of her; not Liz. But don’t let me try to kid you, I knew it was my fault really. When I thought about it I realised what I’d said to her was a bit much, especially when she was on the baby-making one as well.
To prove she had no more hard feelings she cooked Sunday lunch for me. Of course, it had to be roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. When I told her I was against eating roast beef on a Sunday she couldn’t understand me at all. I love roast beef but I told her it would be a good idea if we ate anything today and kept the roast dinner for tomorrow as it made me sick to think that everyone was eating the same thing at the same time as me because it was the thing to do. Then she went and made things worse by telling me Sunday wouldn’t be Sunday if she didn’t have her Sunday lunch, and what the hell was I talking about? I let it go at that.
She cooked it lousy anyway. The meat all shrivelled up. It was the driest roast beef that I’d ever tasted and the Yorkshire pudding was undescribable. I forced myself to eat it and I even smiled at the same time. I didn’t dare complain in case she started it all off again.
“Mum phoned last night,” she told me, struggling to cut her meat at the same time.
“Really? How are they getting on?”
“Not so good. Their roof leaks or something, and it poured with rain last night there as well. So they had to put a bucket under the drip
ping water and that meant they couldn’t get much sleep. Young George fixed it for them in the end. He’s a very clever fellow, don’t you think?”
“Too clever, if you ask me.”
She scooped up the hard, dry peas on to her fork. “That’s what makes me so annoyed with you. Everyone in the whole wide world is completely useless — except you. What’s wrong with Young George, anyway?”
“He’s a future zombie,” I answered.
“A what?”
“A future zombie. A slave to tradition. A part of the great ugly machine of life. A bowler-hatted man. A civilian soldier. A person in a queue. Do you know what’s going to happen to him? He’ll be made a chief clerk at his office in about twenty-five years’ time. He’ll get married and have about four kids, and when his wife has had them she’ll grow fat and ugly. They’ll go to the pictures and the local once a week, he’ll go to a football match every Saturday afternoon, he’ll follow up the TV serial religiously, he’ll get drunk as a lord and smoke a cigar at Christmas, but only at Christmas, mind you, he’ll have sex every Sunday morning when he and the Mrs have a lay in, and when he reaches forty he’ll realise that what he’s doing is exactly the same things as he was when he was thirty, except he’ll have a few more stomach ulcers.”
“But what’s wrong with all that? He’ll be happy.”
“You might as well say that a peasant in China is happy with his one bowl of rice a day, just because he’s used to it.”
“It’s the same thing.”
“It’s not the same thing. Young George won’t be living his own life. He’ll be living a life that’s been handed down to him — that’s been left him in a will. He won’t think or act for himself, in fact he won’t even think at all. He’ll be driving a car that has dual-control, but he won’t be able to fight against the other steering wheel.”
She stopped eating her tribal dish, put her knife and fork down, and sat there staring at me.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“I’m beginning to realise the reason why you carry on like you do. It’s your birth sign. Aquarius, isn’t it? Let me see. You’re a dreamer and a revolutionist. You’d probably make a faithful socialist because you have to fight for some dream or cause. Charles Dickens was an Aquarian. You’re probably a bit of a mystic as well.”
“Remind me to cross your palm with silver sometime. But also remember that I’m a student of the occult myself.”
I was just about to set forth on a long and complicated spiel to explain to my sister that I was on the border of Capricorn as well which would make all the difference to my personality and make up, when the telephone rang.
It was Bunty. She asked me why I’d been neglecting her and that I should be ashamed of myself as it was nearly three weeks since I’d turned her on to the pleasure of my company.
“I’ve been very busy, I really have,” I told her.
“Selling hats?” she asked sarcastically.
“No,” I said, sounding very important. “I’ve finished with men’s greasy headwear once and for all.”
“Congratulations. Why not tell me all about it?”
So I arranged to meet her in the U Club, just off Knightsbridge, that night.
I’d been there a few times before with her, and although I promised myself that I’d never be seen there again, I’d always broken it as Bunty liked it so much. It just wasn’t me.
I’d soon discovered that Bunty liked to show off. She had a ball in places like the U, where she could talk a little louder than the rest, and keep saying that dreadful word darling, and it was usually to me because she was on a really weird one as far as I was concerned. Dig this. She was in her glory when she could be seen in a restaurant or club with yours truly, who looked so very young compared with her, so that she could make a fuss of me and hold my hand for all to see, and introduce me as a very good friend of hers that has lots of talent — (for what I’ve never found out) and end up telling the club that we were going home.
I didn’t mind. I let her have a ball. After all I owed a lot to her as far as my education was concerned. Apart from the charver stakes she’d shown me the so-called smart set, which was far from smart in my opinion. Bloody untidy, I’d call most of them. A load of con men and prostitutes, if you ask me. Most of them didn’t know what they wanted and when they got it they didn’t know what to do with it. They all seemed frustrated somehow, including Bunty herself. All the women seemed as if they hadn’t had a bit for a year and all the men couldn’t make up their mind if they were queer or not They were suburbanites with money. The so-called intellectuals were the worst. When meeting them for the first time they’d ask you a couple of test questions, quite casually, about the latest and longest psychological novel, which was in their world considered very hip, but I used to get them really at it and tell them, quite truthfully, that I hadn’t even heard of it. They’d look very awkward for a moment, I suppose they were a bit embarrassed for me, but when they dug that I wasn’t ashamed of it in the least, then they’d relax. For being so truthful I think they even liked me. When I told them I couldn’t dig the Shakespeare scene either it knocked them right out. I told them I was always a bit suspicious of anyone that had too many murders in their plot. They got me down. It seems to me that if the happenings were beginning to drag a little, they’d liven things up with a nice juicy murder. People don’t go around murdering everyone they dislike, like these writer chaps expect you to believe. It’s not natural.
“Who was on the phone?” Liz asked me, putting my apple tart and custard on the table.
“A friend.”
“You seem to have lots of social engagements lately What’s happening all of a sudden?”
“A million things, Liz. I wish I could tell you. I’ve nearly managed it and I’m so excited,” I said, getting carried away.
“Nearly managed what?” she asked, giving me one of her motherly looks.
“To escape from all this.”
“All what? This house, you mean?”
“Not particularly. Just everything that holds a person back from living.”
“I’ll never understand you,” Liz said.
She understood me, all right. I’m sure of it. She knew how I felt — I even think she felt the same way herself. I felt like grabbing her and shaking some sense into her. To tell her she still had time to be saved, and then I felt like a preacher pleading with his congregation to give up their present life so that they could make the heaven scene.
Heaven! A cosy pad of your own where you could be alone sometimes or have as many visitors as you damn well pleased. Of eating when you’re hungry, instead of having to lunch each day at one o’clock and dinner at six-thirty. Working Sunday and having Tuesday or Thursday off. Getting up from bed at three in the morning and going for a walk if you wanted to. Days of drugs and dreams and sex and Jazz. To hell with pensions and a comfortable old age. I’d prefer a comfortable young age.
I came right out with it, without any warning, straight to the point.
“What’s your boyfriend like, Liz?” I said quickly.
She was suddenly still, like a lion ready to pounce, then she looked wonderfully relaxed and happy.
“I love him very much,” was her reply.
“You must do. He’s a very lucky fellow. Wouldn’t you like to tell me about him? You know you can trust me, Liz,” I said very softly.
“There’s nothing very much to talk about really. I owe him a lot — he’s — well — he’s brought me a lot of happiness. But it’s all so very strange — like a dream. But then I suppose I’m used to living in a dream world. You see I had it all figured out. Even when I was a little girl. I knew exactly when and where it would happen. He’d be rich and handsome and sweep me off my feet. It was all so clear. But it never happened that way at all. I suppose it never does.”
She looked so young and helpless sitting there. Like a little girl that had failed an exam.
“We’ve got to make things happen,
Liz. It’s the only way.”
“There you go again with your nonsense. It’s all right for you telling me what to do and not what to do, but you’ve never been through an experience like this. I’d like to be around when you do and see how you face up to it.”
She stopped for a moment and I thought she was going to cry.
“You’ll have a big shock when life catches up with you,” she went on. “It’s fine for you on this obsession that you have at the moment. But when you’re a few years older things won’t seem the same as they did. You’ll have to face up to life one day, and when you do you’ll be able to call yourself a man.”
“But you’ve got it all wrong, Liz, you have, honest. It’s not a matter of age. I’ll never change, I know it. If I thought for one minute that I’d end up like Young George, I’d do myself in without a second thought. We’ve got to make life what we want it to be — we can as well.”
She looked annoyed. “It’s all right for you to talk like that. If you’re so very clever you can tell me how to change someone’s nationality.”
“What do you mean?” I asked her.
It came out like a shell exploding. “He’s a Jew!”
“What difference does that make?”
“He’s Jewish, I tell you. He can’t never marry me. His parents wouldn’t allow it — they’d disown him. Can’t you see it’s no use...”
Then she let herself go. Out came those terrible sobs that only women can make. Oh man, how my poor sister cried. She meant it, she really did. And I stood there, over her, all stupid and helpless. I wasn’t going to tell you — but I don’t mind admitting it now — I nearly cried myself.