My tears fall on the words as I sit in a dark corner of the library. The desks are crowded with solitary readers like me, groping in the dark, struggling to find some meaning in the terrifying chaos of London. I can hardly believe that those other heads contain such muddle and isolation as mine, and yet, perhaps, every man and woman sitting here feels the same degree of pain and fear and unreality. We all come to the books like stampeding animals seeking to cool themselves after a forest fire.
I stay at the library until it closes, buy my usual deli supper and return to my flat. As I open my front door something in the quality of the silence tells me I’m not alone. The twilit shadows rustle and jangle and I feel my peace splinter.
‘Hello?’
A long, tense silence. I lay out my frugal supper of salad, ham and fruit, put it on a tray with a pot of tea and carry it into the living-room. As I come into the room it appears to be empty. Then there’s a hissing, rushing gust of wind over by the curtains and you stand there.
‘You don’t have to play these silly tricks, you know. There’s a perfectly good door. There’s no need to use the window.’
You sink to your knees, gasping.
‘Leo? What’s the matter? Hang on, let me put the light on –’
‘No! No light. I can’t stand it. Just let it get dark, let me get my strength back.’ You lie on the carpet, panting, your eyes closed. I put a cushion under your head and finish my supper. I want to show you how good I am at solitude and independence, but your vulnerability is so intriguing that I can’t take my eyes off you. As night falls you lie quite still and seem to get bigger as the shadows around you swell. You aren’t asleep, but I don’t feel you’re entirely in the room with me either. The hungers that drive your restless, destructive personality have left you for a few hours, but instead of serenity your face, in the yellow light from the street lamps, reflects suffering.
I can hardly believe you’re crying. After a long silence broken only by your sobs I go over to you, crouch beside you, touch your wet face and taste the salty water just to make sure.
‘We’ve mingled a lot of blood and tears, haven’t we, Jenny?’
‘Not yours, though.’
‘Did you think I was incapable of feeling?’
‘Well, yes, frankly. Aren’t you? I thought that was the whole point.’
To my astonishment you turn over on your stomach and howl, banging you head on the floor. ‘Stop it! You’ll hurt yourself. What is all this about?’
‘You won’t laugh at me?’ You reach out in the dark for my hand, and I feel again that sexual charge flow through me.
‘Why should I trust you when you’ve laughed at me so many times. Oh, all right. I won’t laugh.’
‘That’s why I want you always to be around, Jenny. Because you’re generous. Something terrible is happening to me. I think I’m becoming human. Tears, fears, I must be becoming one of them – one of you. I feel so sorry for Nat and Hari.’
‘What have you done to them?’
‘After you left a kind of frenzy set in. The three of us consumed so many drugs we were on a permanent high; we couldn’t sleep or eat. Nat wanted to go off to Colombia to get some cheap coke we’d heard about. She thought she could make a huge profit and buy herself a flat. I suppose I should have stopped her, but I was bored with her by then and I missed you, so I let her go. Meanwhile Hari was hooked on a cocktail he’d invented, heroin and coke and – I can’t even remember what else. He would mix it up like a barman at some famous hotel, proud of his recipe. Two days after Nat went off to Colombia Hari overdosed.’
‘You mean he’s dead?’
‘I know I should have stopped him, but it’s not as easy as you think. My powers are limited. I went to bed at about six one morning and when I woke up, at midday, I went into the living-room to find him sprawled on the couch as usual. Only this time he’d choked on his own vomit. He looked so horrible – oh, Jenny, I’ll never forget! His face, such a handsome face, was the colour of ash with green slime all around the mouth. I couldn’t believe he was really dead, I phoned for an ambulance, and while I was at the hospital with him the police bust the flat. Maybe they were tipped off. We weren’t exactly cautious, were we?’
It’s pitch black now in my living-room. I feel your fear and horror and hug you tightly. ‘What about Nat? What happened to her?’
‘I didn’t hear from her for weeks, and I was worried. I know you think I don’t care –’
‘All right, all right, stop justifying yourself. Where is she now?’
‘She died in a prison in Bogotá. The last I heard she had dysentery and she was desperately ill. The British Embassy isn’t very sympathetic to drug smugglers. I tried to get a lawyer or a doctor to her, but it was impossible.’
Remembering frail, wispy Nat, who looked like a debauched elf and could hardly organize herself for a shopping trip to Harrods, I ache with useless pity. ‘You always destroy your instruments.’
‘I didn’t mean to harm them.’
‘Couldn’t Nat’s family get her out? You said her father was a judge.’ ‘They’re ashamed of her. They disowned her years ago.’ ‘I used to think you could do anything.’
‘I know you did, but the truth is there are very few occasions when I can battle against the forces of nature. Death is absolute.’
‘But what about me?’
‘You broke the rules, Jenny.’ You’re whispering in the dark, hissing words I want to hear. ‘You were so beautiful and sweet and funny, I couldn’t bear to let you go. The only way I could keep you was to use all my force, and that night, that one night in Giulini’s, it worked.’
‘Did it really happen, that night? I’ve often wondered.’
‘Well, you’re here now, aren’t you? Just you and me, alone again.’
As I stop thinking of reasons to hate you, a seductive wave of hope and desire sweeps us both away from the beach where Hari’s and Nat’s corpses lie.
1983
All morning you’ve been reassuring me that I couldn’t have seen what I saw last night.
As the Metaphysical Bank expands, you and the other directors have become more operatic in your hospitality. You say the Conservatives will stay in power for the rest of the decade and will be helpful to the Fizz, so last night’s party was to celebrate the good times ahead. The old reception rooms at the bank are too small now; apparently the ranks of the eternally rich are growing faster than ever. Some choose a contract instead of a knighthood, and then there are all the politicians and industrialists who have to be invited: a guest list of thousands.
So for last night’s masked ball a marquee was put up over Trafalgar Square. Pigeons and their shit were banished for the night, and a parquet floor was laid for dancing, Landseer’s lions had champagne spouting out of their mouths and Nelson’s column soared through the roof, which was painted on the inside with astrological and alchemical symbols.
I’m wearing a crinoline made of gold silk, and you’re dressed as Harlequin. As our taxi arrives I see hundreds of photographers, gossip columnists, television cameras and a gasping crowd. I always expect people to hate me for being rich, but, to my surprise, our conspicuous extravagance is admired.
Inside the vast marquee it’s very like all the other parties I’ve been to lately, only bigger. I chat, flirt, dance to a famous rock band, eat and drink. All around me other masked figures in spectacular costumes romp and gambol.
Trafalgar Square was my first glimpse of the great imperial city to the west of the alleys and tenements where I grew up. I used to love it at night, its vast pale buildings illuminated by the old gas lamps, and as soon as I could afford to take a cab I used to drive around it again and again. Now it’s as if you’ve bought it and I’m ensconced at the heart of London. Yet, instead of triumph I feel disgust, with myself and all these other tediously beautiful people.
Suddenly detachment becomes vision. I see another world, as if it has always been here, hiding behind faces and walls. I’m sta
nding, eating a stuffed quail, watching a short, fat, extremely drunken MP make a lunge for a willowy blonde actress. As I watch he’s transformed into a yellow toad and she becomes a scraggy broomstick topped with a grotesque yellow wig.
Can’t eat any more. The sight and taste of flesh sicken me. All around me reptiles, spiders and wasps are dancing and feasting. Looking up, I see that the roof of the tent has become transparent and you are perched on Nelson’s Column, a monster Harlequin with three heads, all of them laughing. Then I look down and see my own ugliness. I’ve become Lizzie, my eighty-six years have revenged themselves on me. The hand holding my fork is gnarled and leathery and the arm emerging from my gold crinoline is hideous grey crape. Turning to the pyramid of glasses on the table, I see a dozen tiny reflections of my shrivelled walnut face.
I scream and run, knocking over the neatly stacked glasses, charging across the crowded dance floor and out into the cool night, beneath Admiralty Arch and down the Mall. I may look eighty, but I run like a child, blundering, half blind with tears. The vision has energized me, electrocuted me with terror so that my feet don’t touch the pavement. From Hyde Park Corner I bolt down Knightsbridge, skirt Kensington Gardens and don’t pause until I reach this house.
I go straight upstairs to the bathroom mirror and stare at myself. I see a pale young face, streaky with makeup and tears, black curly hair falling out of a chignon dressed with pearls.
When you come back half an hour later I’m still shaking and sobbing. You hug me.
‘What is it? Why did you run off like that?’ I tell you, but as soon as the words describing my vision are exposed to the air they crumble, sounding hollow and foolish. ‘You had too much champagne. Perhaps someone spiked one of your drinks.’
‘No, really, it did happen,’ I insist. But already I’m not sure. How can I bear to believe that the happiness of all these years has been a dream, from which I awoke in that terrible hour? I want to go back to sleep.
Leo in Love
Last night at the party she must have slipped through the carefully woven veil of illusion. Naturally she’s frightened, angry, distrustful. I’ve spent the whole morning reassuring her, and now she has cried herself to sleep. I can’t let her go again.
I’ve been trying to remember the last time I was as happy as this. Certainly not when I lived in what the Victorians piously called a better place. Eternal spiritual joy is all very well, of course, but it does rather go on and on. I suppose that’s why we rebelled. Then I dwelt, now I live – English is so much more expressive than Aramaic. That first love affair with what’s her name, on that Greek island where I dropped to earth, that was wonderful – and my stolen night with Helen. Both women must have been dead for over two thousand years now, and necrophilia has never appealed to me. Being half immortal wasn’t enough to keep poor Helen alive. I really don’t miss all that sensationalism; one Witches’ Sabbath or Walpurgisnacht is pretty much like another, and, frankly, I’d rather drink a good burgundy than a chalice of menstrual blood.
As I’m always trying to explain to Jenny, I don’t understand my own powers. I really don’t know how I was able to preserve the youth she was so desperate to keep or why I can, sometimes, share my baroque universe with her. After all these centuries of flying alone it’s far more fun to travel through time and space with Jenny beside me. I long to confide in her. A dangerous impulse.
How she does cry. She’s so – human. Jenny hasn’t the dignity and self-control of a born immortal, but perhaps I’ve got enough for both of us. Sitting beside her as she sleeps, I gloat over my creation. She is still beautiful, not a trace of a bag or wrinkle or a double chin. Her black ocean of hair is still undyed, and she has finally agreed to dress more elegantly.
I’ve changed, too, of course. I’ve cut my long hair and have a wardrobe of extremely smart suits and shirts I have made for me in Jermyn Street. It took years to persuade Jenny to get rid of her shabby cheesecloth skirts and jeans. She loves good clothes and expensive shops, but she also likes to play the Poor Clare to my Venal Mogul, so she puts forward objections that I flatter her out of. I remember the first time she appeared dressed in a cream Chanel suit soon after the 1979 General Election, which, as I keep explaining to her, has helped us so much.
‘You look marvellous! You can’t go on being a hippie for ever, you know. You’ve got to move with the times.’
‘Why? And how do you always know they’re moving?’
‘My dear, I’m one of the movers. The Zeitgeist, c’est moi.’
‘Well, I wish you’d stop them. Moving, I mean. I was perfectly happy with my comfortable clothes and my philosophy course. I don’t like the parties we go to now. They’re flashy and stuffy and nobody really talks.’
‘Go on, admit it, you love upstaging women half a century younger than you.’
Last night she looked quite lovely, a suitable consort. It was a great occasion, the triumph of capitalism, and like all events that combine politics and money it was extremely sexy. The second term of a sensible prime minister – not one of us, but a friend of the Metaphysical Bank. In a few years the Big Bang – more sex – will turn me into a very rich man.
I could already buy and sell both Murdoch and Maxwell if I wanted to but must be careful not to draw attention to myself. I don’t want the grovelling publicity a great fortune attracts. Making money is so entertaining and has become so easy that I almost have to restrain myself. On Monday, for example, I flew to Milan. (By jet – frustratingly slow but I really do try to be discreet.) I made half a million on a property deal, bought a pair of Gucci shoes and a handbag for Jenny and flew home in time to place a bet on the outcome of the Battle of Bosworth. At the time Henry Tudor was an outsider, so I got good odds and pocketed another two hundred thousand. Then, last night at the party, while Jenny was being such a drama queen, I lent half a million, at extremely favourable rates in my favour, to an impoverished duke. I’ve stashed money in Switzerland and Jersey – all over the world and even in the future. I just put a million into researching a retirement planet. Some scientist associated with the Fizz thinks it’s possible. You never know.
I wish Jenny would be more appreciative of my talents. Last week when I was directing the alterations we have to make to this house in order to entertain more stylishly, she came running in, tears all over her face, wearing old jeans. I saw the way my architect and workmen stared and wished I’d let her develop to thirty or so, beyond her eternal adolescent mawkishness.
I always know when she’s been to see Molly. I follow her up to the shabby room at the top of the house where she studies. I’ve had to soundproof it because she insists on playing religious music, which I find excruciatingly painful.
‘Surely you’re not snivelling over that ugly old woman?’
She throws herself down on the sofa. More of those visceral tears and the blotchy redness that coarsens her face. ‘Molly’s incontinent now, and she’s starting to lose her memory. I still miss George, too, and Lizzie. Not that I wanted to see them very often, I just felt more solid when they were alive.’
‘You’re far too sentimental about one-lifers.’
‘You’re just jealous because you can’t love anybody.’
‘Neither can you. Only me.’
‘I wish you’d stop saying that. You’re making me hate you.’
‘You can’t. I never insist on my eternal rights, as you know, but nevertheless our position is quite clear. In black and white and red. You can, of course, leave me again if you wish, but you’ll have to renounce your privileges. And you’ll have to come back.’
‘Stop reducing me to a legal clause! I’m not talking about rights, I’m talking about feelings! Anyway I’ve already cheated you out of your rights. I did love George. And David.’
‘No you didn’t. You made them love you. That’s quite a different matter.’
‘How do you know what I felt about them?’
‘I always know. Just remember, won’t you, that human emotions
are the most ephemeral, transient, banal, weak and unclassifiable entity in the cosmos. I’ve felt most unwell since I started to suffer from them.’
‘I’m not impressed by those feelings of yours; I don’t think they’re real. You don’t understand the first thing about love. I could walk out tomorrow and find myself a nice, sincere, straightforward man. Perhaps I will …’
‘You’re deluding yourself, Jenny. I do wish you’d read your contract so that you can understand our arrangement. I’ve tried to explain so many times, last year I even left a copy on your desk for you to read and you couldn’t be bothered. Tonight we’re going to that reception at the Fizz – I do hope you’re not going dressed like that, by the way. Why don’t you look at your contract. Please. Just once?’
Jenny isn’t as clever as Elizabeth Tudor or as good-looking as Cleopatra or as original as Colette. I often wonder what I see in her. Yet whenever I have to go away, to attend a Mafia conference in Las Vegas or Chairman Mao’s birthday party, I do miss her. I could have any woman in the global village I’m helping to create, yet somehow I always want to return to her. I could live anywhere and everywhere yet I’ve bought this house in Phillimore Gardens. Jenny chose it. It’s the kind of big house she used to gaze at longingly, an East End girl’s fantasy of how the rich live. She’s too busy spending my money to ask questions about where it comes from.
Through the long centuries I’ve always been travelling, always alone. I had everything except peace. Now, for the first time, I return to the same house and woman. I’m part of a couple, that bizarre entity I’ve so often watched from the outside. Jenny and I do the things other people do: hold hands in the street and bicker over what to have for supper and what colour to paint the spare bedrooms. Dull? It ought to be, but there’s a piercing sweetness in this routine. Domesticity was the one experience I never had. How exotic, to sit together in front of a television.
Loving Mephistopeles Page 14