Loving Mephistopeles

by Miller, Miranda;

  ‘Didn’t she – oh Lord – I’m not sure.’

  ‘Or are you?’

  ‘I don’t – this will seem very shocking to a young girl like you, but there were quite a few men who could have been Virginia’s father.’

  ‘I hope it was you. You’d make a nice grandfather.’

  ‘Perhaps you could adopt me anyway?’ We smile at each other; then I kiss him on the forehead and go upstairs to my chaste white bed in their spare room.

  I can’t sleep. My stomach churns with rich food, and the past seethes in the silent house. I’m sure George must feel it, too. At three he opens my door. I lie naked, the white sheet revealing my pale back and bony shoulders. I know he remembers every mole on my back, every curve of my body, the exact shape of my black hair spread over the pillow. I want him to come in so that he can see my face and breasts. The moonlight stabs through the white curtains, pouring silver over me, inviting him to look. But he turns and shuffles back down the corridor, and I don’t suppose he’ll ever know that my eyes were wide open. Click, my door shuts again. Creak, George returns to his awful bedded life and pretends nothing’s the matter. I am the matter, and I won’t go away.

  This afternoon I hear Molly on the phone to a friend. ‘Julia? It’s Molly, darling. I wanted to ask you a favour. We’ve got this girl staying with us. Her grandmother was an old flame of George’s, died and left her without a penny … O-levels? A-levels? I don’t think she knows what they are. She speaks Italian and French awfully well in a dated sort of way. That’s about the full extent of her education, as far as I can see … Touch type? I shouldn’t think so. She can’t even remember to take her keys out of the door. If she were my secretary I’d commit suicide … George? Adores her. Salivates whenever she comes into the room. Aren’t men disgusting … No! Dickie? Really? In her own bedroom? With the nanny? What did she do? … Did she? On the spot? Well, I wonder why she didn’t get rid of Dickie instead. Nannies are so hard to get nowadays … I suppose so. Striking, anyway. They’re all pretty at that age, aren’t they? … Frankly, absolutely useless, she behaves as if there are invisible servants hovering. I know it’s halfway through your term, but could you squeeze her in? I mean she’s got to do something, anything, really, as long as it keeps her out of the house and eventually qualifies her to work … Really? Are you sure? Oh, Julia, that’s so sweet of you.’

  Having disposed of me to Julia’s college at a bargain rate, Molly’s in a good mood. Being young again diminishes me; George and Molly talk about me as if I’m not here, as if I’m a child or a dog. Eternal youth doesn’t seem to qualify me for anything, and all that reading I did in Rapallo doesn’t seem to be a lot of use either.

  On my way to my first formal education for nearly sixty years I sit upstairs on the Number 31 bus and stare out of the window as London unfolds. The city I was born in is still largely nineteenth century despite the Blitz. Victorian, like me. I was four when the old Queen died. Now I don’t know which generation or class I belong to: not to my sister Lizzie and the Hoxton street urchins I grew up with; not to Molly and the other trumpeting Hampstead matriarchs; and not to the mind-blown wraiths who drift around the streets of Notting Hill, either. I find myself looking for you, Leo. You’re the only person I can be honest with.

  Julia is Molly’s age – my age – with permed grey hair, leathery skin, a navy-blue suit and unshakeable confidence. Her college is above an antique shop in Kensington Church Street; three shabby floors of classrooms full of typewriters and giggling girls. I have to suppress my annoyance as she bosses and patronizes me. ‘Now, Jenny, come up to my office, dear, and I’ll test you. You’re very quiet. Most of the girls we get now are terrible chatterboxes. As our Home Ec teacher said to me the other day, their skirts get shorter and their mouths bigger. You wouldn’t believe the problems I have to sort out. The convent girls are the worst. If it’s not drugs it’s an abortion or an overdose. And when you think the oldest are about nineteen. How old are you, dear?’

  ‘Twenty-one.’

  ‘Really? I thought you were much younger. How refreshing to meet a girl who’s shy. It must be your grandmother’s good influence. I just hope you’re not led astray by the others.’

  Molly bangs on my door each morning to get me up at seven, and I have to schlep over to Kensington to get to my first class at nine: Shorthand, French, Art Appreciation. I was speaking French when these girls’ grandmothers were teenagers, and I first appreciated art during a brief fling with Augustus John. The teachers are taken in by me but not their pupils, who sense I’m not really one of them. Without being exactly spiteful they contrive to leave me alone. I make no friends.

  I overhear another conversation between Molly and George. ‘Shouldn’t we buy her some clothes? She always seems to be wearing that green dress and that black coat that’s almost green with age.’

  ‘I don’t see why. She’s got a trunk full of clothes upstairs.’

  ‘Why doesn’t she wear them then?’

  ‘They’re all about thirty years old. There’s a green Schiaparelli evening dress, an ermine coat, bundles of old love letters. I dare say yours are in there somewhere.’

  ‘Molly! You’ve no right to spy on her like that.’

  ‘Nonsense. She won’t answer questions – or not properly. Why shouldn’t I know what’s in my own spare room? For all I know she’s got her grandma’s body up there in that ancient trunk. No sign of any money. She can’t sponge off us for ever. She’ll have to find a job.’

  Christmas rescues me from this awful truth. My first Christmas for half a century in the bosom of a family, and very strange it is, too. Family life will always be a mystery to me. My mother hated it, my father drank to get away from it, Lizzie and I used to dread the Christmas period, because it always ended with quarrels. In Italy my friends and lovers used to disappear inside their families for days, inviting me to gatherings I didn’t want to attend. At Christmas outsiders like me are even more displaced than usual. I am my own ancestor.

  The house is decorated with lurid red and green, like a tartan bordello, I comment as Molly and I wait for the bell to ring. She looks shocked. I’m not supposed to know what a bordello is. ‘Oh, don’t mention tartan. Those Dumphrys go on and on about their Scottish blood although they’ve been in London about a hundred years. There’s some silly romantic story about a bastard Stuart connection, and when she’s had a few drinks Aunt Laura always produces her shortbread recipe. Oh God, here she comes.’ Molly resolutely torments her face into her hostess smile as her guests flood in.

  I see at once that Molly adores her grandson David, the last man she still flirts with. ‘Darling, this is Jenny who’s staying with us. Her grandmother was an old flame of George’s. Died and left her without a penny,’ she adds in a deafening whisper as David shakes my hand, his calm blue eyes sparking as he stares at me. David really does look like George did at the same age. But that’s a statement of fact. It doesn’t convey the charm of his smooth pink skin, clear bagless eyes and slender body. I long to touch this George who has bathed in the river of life. After we shake hands I have to clasp mine primly to keep them off him.

  David’s sister, Annette, is dark like her mother. Her curly brown hair is dragged back in an unflattering greasy pony-tail, and her blunt features are pug-like and truculent. Her hazel eyes are quick, watchful and full of contempt as she glares at my miniskirt and makeup. She’s wearing jeans and a lumpy beige cardigan, and her nose is so shiny I think she must have actually polished it. Under her seeming newness I recognize an older, more familiar archetype: the puritan killjoy, offended by my frivolity.

  Muriel, Molly and George’s niece, gives David a beefy kiss and drags him off to the kitchen. I follow them, resenting this girl before I even meet her. Muriel wears a miniskirt as if it’s a twin-set. I know at once that she’s in love with David, has been for years; she probably taped his photograph to the inside of her desk at school. She reeks of the hockey pitch, of flat shoes and flatter conversation.
Her sporty contralto is like a Sousa march, and her face matches her voice, an insensitive blast of straggly orange hair, freckles, snub nose and anxious blue eyes. She’s nineteen, obscenely young.

  In the kitchen Molly tries to bring the three girls, as she calls us, together. Muriel and I stare at each other with mutual dislike. As she bustles around organizing lunch Molly talks to Annette, who is as unenthusiastic as me about cooking. ‘Do you remember when you were little and came to stay here? “Come on, Grandma,” you used to say, “let’s go to bed and talk.”’

  ‘What on earth did we talk about?’

  ‘Oh, about your cat and my dolls when I was a little girl and how awful brothers were. You don’t remember, do you?’

  ‘I remember coming here. You always preferred my brother.’

  ‘I’m sure I didn’t, darling. Oh well. I wonder what happens to all the experiences we forget. Most of life, really. Are you enjoying studying – whatever it is?’

  ‘Sociology, Grandma. How society works. Yes, very much. I want to change the world.’

  ‘Do you really, dear? My goodness me. I rather like it the way it is. It’s so marvellous the way you all go to university now. For us, you know, for girls of my generation, that wasn’t really an option. I dare say we were very stupid.’

  ‘I don’t think you’re stupid, Grandma,’ Annette says too politely and turns away. She tells me off for not going on marches against Vietnam.

  ‘I don’t even know where Vietnam is. Why should I get all worked up about a war there?’

  Annette glares at me. ‘I can see you’re a solipsist, just like David. Talking to my brother about politics is like talking to a blind man about rainbows. Of course, solicitors are a bunch of Fascists, so I suppose he’ll fit in quite well.’

  ‘Annette, stop hectoring everybody.’ David has followed us into the kitchen, where he responds to Muriel’s homage with tolerant amusement.

  ‘Isn’t David wonderful? The only man to come in here and do something useful.’ Molly glances up from her labours to smile archly at Muriel, who looks as if she might swoon with rapture as she talks to David. The ridiculous vulnerability of first love: the cruellest of the jokes that the gods play upon their dolls.

  ‘Super to see you! I hear you’ve got a fabulous job and your own flat.’

  ‘It’s not much of a job, really, just a very long apprenticeship.’

  ‘I bet you’ll earn pots of money! I wish I could, I’m having awful trouble living on my grant, and at the end of my course I suppose I’ll just have to teach. There’s nothing else one can do with a geography degree.’

  ‘But you’re studying in a hotbed of trendiness and radical politics. That must be fun.’

  ‘Oh, David! I don’t have anything to do with those people.’

  ‘Well, it’s revolutionized your hemlines, anyway.’

  ‘You noticed! I told Mummy this morning, I bet he doesn’t even look at my legs.’ The poor girl is like a jelly, but his eyes aren’t on her legs or face but on mine, and I want them to stay there.

  Molly’s kitchen is full of helpers now. Food is her dominion, and she loves to see us all obeying her orders. She carries the goose, which looks too heavy ever to have flown, from the oven to the table where it crouches, golden, on a dish. George stands over it, wielding a carving knife and fork, the king of domesticity. The succulent roast bird, bronze gravy and generous heaps of rosemary potatoes and sprouts make a marvellous picture, nature mort. No, not dead. Molly and George have created life, although it’s not one that I’ve ever wanted.

  At lunch Muriel, Annette and I all sit near George. ‘Let him look at some pretty faces,’ Molly says indulgently. It’s only when married men are old or gaga or impotent that such demonstrations of affection are allowed.

  The long table is decorated as if for a children’s party, with a scarlet table-cloth, gold candles, holly and crackers, although there aren’t any children. Muriel is the youngest person here. Great-grandchildren are coyly anticipated while David stares glumly at his plate. I wonder if he feels doomed to copulate with Muriel. Not if I have anything to do with it. As Molly’s favourite grandchild David sits on her right, and I’m beside George, playing Little Nell and feeling libidinous after four glasses of wine. Since my poor old George has no more libido I turn my attentions to David.

  After lunch he sits on a couch with Annette and their ancient Great-Aunt Laura, who must be about my age. She initiates Annette into the family shortbread recipe in a hushed voice. Laura opens her handbag, and David withdraws sharply into a corner of the couch as the disgusting contents spill out: used tissues, a hairbrush full of coagulated dandruffy white hairs, a lipstick that looks as if Boudicca might have used it. A cloud of dirty powder and stale perfume rises as Laura fumbles through stained and dog-eared papers to find the recipe. On her other side Annette exchanges fastidious glances with her brother.

  David and I stare at each other with frank desire. This tribal gathering, the wine and Great-Aunt Laura’s handbag drive me to obsessive thoughts of youth and beauty and sex. I lure him upstairs, whispering that I’ll show him the letters George wrote to my grandmother. The really touching thing about David is that he has just that same honesty and awkwardness I remember in George nearly half a century ago.

  While David reads the letters I sit beside him on my bed and put my arm around him. ‘They had a most passionate affair, you know.’ David blushes. ‘My grandmother had dozens of lovers and admirers, but she always said George was the nicest man she ever knew. They used to sneak off together back to her room in Gower Street, and she said she had to teach him not to be such a gentleman.’ My hand drops from his shoulder to his thigh and the letters drop to the floor. ‘You know, you look so like George did as a young man, and everyone says I look like my grandmother, too.’

  My hand strokes the welcoming bulge of his penis. I Haven’t Had a Cuddle for a Long Time Now. As I ease his trousers off I carry on talking, aware that there’s no lock on my door. ‘You’re so attractive, David. You look tired. Lie down. I think I’ve had too much to drink. I feel quite dizzy. Do you mind if I lie beside you?’ Trying desperately to look inexperienced, I join him on my narrow bed. David lies beside me, trouserless but chaste.

  ‘It feels so funny to be here with you. I haven’t been upstairs in this house since I was a little boy. Me and Annette used to hunt for Easter eggs up here. We used to stay here sometimes, in this room. I remember watching Grandma in the bath. When she stood up the water level went down as if a dam had been emptied. I used to watch, mesmerized, as she swathed her vast white bulk with towels and squeezed herself into some sort of rubber envelope. Aren’t grown-up bodies weird when you’re a child?’

  I’m tempted to retort that he still is. I try to help him relax, rolling on top of him to kiss away his childhood reminiscences. His skin tastes and smells of essence of youth, a wonderful smell despite his unwashed socks and acne. How wonderful to be young enough still to have acne.

  Just as we’re approaching oblivion I hear footsteps galumphing upstairs, a shrill, barbarous yelling and thumping on my door, ‘David! David! We’re going to do the tree!’

  I recognize the voices of his dreadful sister and cousin, come to sabotage our pleasure. I roll off him and help him put his trousers on while the two girls giggle and whisper in the corridor.

  Furious, but determined not to show it, I follow them downstairs, where they all tear the wrapping paper off the mountain of presents under the Christmas tree in a frenzy of acquisitiveness. Then they start eating and drinking again. How they do eat, these people, eat and gush. I have only one appetite, and it can’t be assuaged by woolly hats or cake or cups of tea.

  I don’t manage to talk to David again before he’s carried off by his appalling relatives.

  George

  Term starts again at Julia’s college, and I’m back with the silly, affected girls and the refined voices of the teachers who are preparing us for a life of little jobs and dinner parties:
always use clean carbon paper, because it saves money in the long run; Staffordshire is always collectable; snowdrops make a lovely centrepiece; never force open a mussel; the art of the soufflé.

  I long to tell George and Molly they’re wasting their money on my fees, but I’m afraid they’ll throw me out. So I truant. I leave their house every morning at eight and go for long walks all over London, going into public libraries, museums and galleries when I’m cold. I stand on Hungerford Bridge, looking at the City wreathed in dust. The skyline, the shining river, the bustling people are so beautiful. When I was genuinely young I only loved you, reluctantly. But now in youthful old age my love seeps out to buildings, trees, strangers’ faces and seagulls’ cries. Perhaps I’m looking for you, Leo, as I wander all over London. My seduction of David isn’t making any progress, and I’m bored with the passive girl I have to pretend to be. An eternity without an income isn’t an enticing prospect.

  One afternoon in February I come home, exhausted after tramping across Hampstead Heath, and throw myself on to my bed. The house felt empty when I arrived, but now I can hear voices in the garden. I stare down at Molly and George, strolling together arm in arm, supporting each other, pausing to stare at flowers and trees. They don’t seem to realize that they are themselves the plant they’ve been nurturing all these years, two-headed and multi-limbed, not a sexual beast but a domestic growth, deeply rooted and intertwined. I want to laugh because they’re so absurd, doddering around the garden together on their varicose veins. Instead I find myself crying, glad when the image of their unbreakable closeness blurs and dissolves in the globular mirrors of my tears.

  The three of us have supper together most nights, sitting at the enormous mahogany table in the gloomy dining-room. We eat well, rich food washed down by heavy wines – and sometimes the booze lowers my guard. One night I get a bit giggly over the cheese and biscuits, while Molly’s doing her hausfrau bit in the kitchen.

  ‘You even have your grandmother’s laugh,’ George says uneasily.