Exquisite Corpse

by Robert Irwin

  We left the dance floor to sit out the next few dances in one of the many sitting-out rooms. When I was sure that she had recovered from her annoyance, I began,

  ‘Caroline, there is something you should know.’

  ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘Caroline darling, I’ve been thinking about what you were saying about my weirdness and how my strange paintings didn’t seem to have any point, and my not really living in reality and things like that and I have decided to give up Surrealism. I am going to get a job. I am certain I can get commercial work from the Post Office or the Underground or something like that. So then I would be doing a regular job for steady money. What do you think?’

  ‘You are doing this for me?’

  ‘Yes, for you.’

  ‘Oh Caspar! Can’t you see how ridiculous you are being? I don’t want you to give up anything for me. I only want you to be your real self.’

  ‘The myself that I am just wants to be whatever you want me to be,’ I replied.

  But Caroline did not seem interested. Her eyes slid away as if she were thinking of something else – or someone else. With sick-making suddenness I was seized by the conviction that I knew what the matter was. When I next spoke to ask her to confirm my sudden insight I heard the tremor in my voice and I hated my voice as I heard myself speaking,

  ‘Caroline, there’s someone else isn’t there?’

  She nodded and kept her head low, ashamed to look at me any more.

  ‘Who? Why? You must tell me.’

  She sighed. Then,

  ‘Clive.’

  ‘Come again. Who?’

  ‘Clive Jerkin. You must remember him. When we were walking round Trafalgar Square with Sheila Legge and the others, he came up to me and asked me to explain what it was all about and invited me for a drink, but I refused. Well anyway, I thought no more about him, but then a few weeks later I met him on the train into Waterloo from Putney and we got to talking about Surrealism and about my work and about us both living in Putney and what there was to do there in the evenings, and I mentioned the Putney and Barnes Thespians. Well, again I didn’t think any more about it, but that was the next place I met him – at a meeting of the Thesps. You know that I got the part of Bunty Mainwaring in the play? Well Clive got to play opposite me as my fiancé, Nicky Lancaster. He’s a good actor. He’s bought a car – it’s an expensive one I think – and sometimes he drives me into work now, and once he’s taken me boating in Henley.

  ‘Clive Jerkin is a silly name.’

  ‘Oh yes, Caspar?’

  ‘What’s he like – apart from being a good actor?’

  This was hardly idle curiosity on my part, for I was madly thinking that if she loved Clive, then I would discover as precisely as possible what Clive was like and make myself exactly like him in all details, only better.’

  Now that she was free to talk about this man, the man she loved, she felt able to look me full in the face again.

  ‘He’s very nice. You’d like him, I think.’

  The Hell I would I thought. The only way I would like him is dead. But I kept my voice quite ordinary sounding,

  ‘What does he do?’

  ‘He’s a business broker. I suppose he breaks up businesses or something,’ she continued vaguely. ‘Anyway he makes lots of money and he says he’s going to be a millionaire before he’s thirty. He’s not just interested in making money though. Besides acting, he’s a good musician. He plays the piano and the bassoon. He’s good at sports too. He played county cricket for a while. His mother and his sisters practically worship him.’

  She smiled. She was happy just thinking about him, I thought bitterly.

  ‘The thing about Clive is that he really makes a woman feel appreciated when he talks to her.’

  I sat with my head in my hands. It struck me as a little bizarre that I should be listening to all this while dressed as Count Cagliostro. I could see that my case was hopeless. I had done some remarkable things in my life, but I could not see how I could master business-broking, the bassoon, the piano, play-acting and county cricket – not quickly at least. And anyway how could I possibly manufacture an adoring family for myself?

  She put a consoling arm around my shoulders.

  ‘Oh darling, I can’t bear to see you so sad. Listen. Clive and I aren’t having an affaire or anything. I don’t think he’s in love with me particularly. He has lots of girlfriends. I’m just very fond of him. I am very fond of you both. Come on. Don’t let’s spoil a perfect evening. I am ready to dance again now.’

  Now the dancing was hideous. She was in my arms but her eyes were closed for much of the time and I supposed that she was imagining herself dancing with Clive. I moved through the garish revelry sick with misery. Almost literally so, for at any moment I thought that I might have to leave Caroline and throw up the entire contents of my stomach in some private place and every time I thought of Clive pawing her I felt my gorge rise. However, I did manage to keep on dancing. Midnight approached, the massed pipe band marched in, balloons descended from the dome, the heaving throng on the floor started singing ‘Auld Lang Syne’.

  Later that night, while the student floats of the Sun King and his Court, the Assizes of Judge Jeffries and the Marriage of Venice to the Sea were being rolled across the dance floor, we found ourselves once again in one of the sitting-out rooms. We had been bickering on and off through much of the night. Caroline was talking about how she was not going to marry anyone for quite a while yet. She said that she treasured my love, but that she wanted our love to be Platonic. I wondered what exactly Platonic love was but said nothing. I just kept passing my hand backwards and forwards across her satin bodice, murmuring as I did so,

  ‘Caroline, Caroline, Caroline, Caroline …

  But suddenly she pulled away and shrieked,

  ‘The eyes! Your eyes! Stop looking at me like that! Caspar, what’s wrong with your eyes?’

  And she covered her own eyes with her hands. She was shaking and crying. Quite hysterical. A Chelsea Arts Club steward, passing by the door, stuck his head in and asked if she was all right. (I think that he suspected that I had been trying to rape her.) But she waved him away and commanded me to see her out to a taxi. I lowered my gaze and obeyed. The evening, in which I had invested so much hope in advance, was over.

  All that winter and spring I was miserable, but I treasured the misery (and still do), for at least I continued to be allowed to see Caroline – on certain conditions. We met only in public places – cafes, restaurants and cinemas – and she persuaded me to wear dark glasses most of the time. I felt a bit ridiculous, but she insisted that seeing my eyes boring into her made her nervous. Sometimes she had only a little time for me and much of that time I had to spend listening to her talk about Clive, about how Clive didn’t really love her, and about how I was the only person she could talk to about Clive, and stuff like that. The Vortex came and went, but she would not allow me to come to any of its performances in case I did something silly or was rude to Clive.

  Only once during these meetings did I lose my temper and allow my feelings to show. Then I started shouting. Why should the Clives of this world get everything they wanted? Public school and Oxford was he not? In their blazers and flannels, spouting their special slang, the Clives rubbed each other up in private dining clubs and then with oily assurance the Clives took what they wanted as their right – jobs, money and women, above all the women. I hated the smart-suited, smooth-talking, easy-mannered, cherubic-faced creeps. If Caroline had any sense she would hate them and him as I did.

  Caroline did not trouble to argue. She hinted that she did not think that I was feeling well that day. I did not know Clive and I did not know what I was talking about. And if I seriously thought that money had anything to do with it, then she was going home right now. Not only did she force me to apologise, she also made me promise that I would always speak of Clive with respect in future.

  As I have already remarked, I usually brought ros
es to these meetings. On one occasion when she was in a hurry to leave, she left the roses I had brought for her lying on the table. I picked them up and ran after her. I turned one corner and then another, before I glimpsed her running cheerfully into the arms of Clive. They both looked so cheerful. I slunk away with the roses in my hands before they could have noticed me.

  While all this was going on I was losing my friends. In February we saw Oliver off to the war in Spain. Everyone was flabbergasted. No one in the Serapion Brotherhood was very political and of all the members of the group Oliver had surely been the least political.

  Almost the entire group assembled at Charing Cross Station to see him leave. Even Caroline pretended to her boss that she was ill so that she could get the day off. Oliver would be taking a boat from Dover to Calais and from there trains through France and down into Catalonia. Our leave-taking at the station was a somewhat furtive affair, for Chamberlain’s government had banned people from volunteering to go off and fight in Spain. Indeed, when Oliver returned he might well find himself facing a two-year prison sentence. In Spain, Malaga had fallen to the Fascists and it did not look as though Madrid could hold out much longer. Most of the British volunteers were going off to join the International Brigade, but Oliver told us that he could not stomach the attacks on Surrealism that had been made by the Russian and French Communist parties, so he was going to enlist in the Trotskyist P.O.U.M. or the Anarchist F.A.I. – whichever one would have him.

  ‘This is par excellence the intellectual’s war,’ said Oliver. ‘All the people who matter are going to be in Spain this summer; Malraux, Hemmingway, Péret, Orwell … It’s an opportunity I felt one just could not miss. And, of course, I shall be taking some packs of cards with me so that I can entertain the troops …’

  I could make nothing of all this. Oliver had been my oldest and closest friend in the group. Only now it was as if our friendship had never been, for it was obvious that I had never really known this man at all. Oliver, seeing my distress, took me to one side and then walked arm in arm with me to the end of the platform and back.

  ‘This is a bit of a farce, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘I don’t even know what the fuck the Popular Front is. Still, you can guess why I’m doing this, can’t you?’

  I shook my head and he looked surprised.

  ‘Well, I’ll tell you as much as I dare and maybe one day you will understand it all. It’s Stella. Things have reached danger point between us. It’s all too passionate and she’s feeding on me. There have been mornings when I have been unable to get up, because she’s drained so much from me. I need to escape. I doubt very much that she can follow me to Spain. Anyway, I’m sure they don’t take women in the P.O.U.M.’

  He laughed nervously and continued,

  ‘I need to get away and breathe a different air. I don’t know what it will be like out there, or if there will be any time to do any writing. Probably not. But my plan is to write this novel about Stella, The Vampire of Surrealism.’

  And it was at this point that Oliver explained how Stella’s appearance in the novel would be a sort of exquisite corpse, a composite thing, which made use of Felix’s face, Monica’s bum and the breasts of a woman whom Oliver had once glimpsed walking down the King’s Road.

  ‘Why don’t you simply describe Stella as she actually is?’ I asked.

  Oliver shuddered,

  ‘Stella would not let me use her that way in a novel. You don’t know what you are asking. I simply dare not.’

  After this curious little tête-à-tête, we rejoined the others and they each individually made their farewells.

  ‘Look after yourself, Olly dear,’ said Caroline and she kissed him full on the lips.

  Oliver looked faintly horrified. A minute or two later the train began to pull away and his face vanished in its smoke. Those who were left adjourned to the newsreel cinema in the station and watched a dismal report of the fighting in Spain.

  The next person to disappear was Manasseh. Jorge drove him down to Southampton and Ned and I came too. The boat was sailing to New York. While porters took his luggage up, Manasseh talked to us on the quayside. He was furious at what he considered to be our frivolous insouciance.

  ‘There’s a war coming,’ he said. ‘And the Nazis are going to win it and, when they do overrun this country of yours, they will come looking for people like me’.

  Here he made a throat-slitting gesture with the blade of his hand, before continuing,

  ‘England today is a fool’s paradise. Well, I may be a fool, but I have had enough of living in a phoney paradise. It’s all coming to an end – and not just for us Jews either. You are smiling as I talk, but what do you think will happen to you when the Nazis enter London? I’ll tell you. It’s no big secret. The Reichs Minister of Culture, Dr Josef Goebbels, has spelt it out. Surrealist artists have been deemed to be degenerates, and as degenerates you too will go to join the Jews, the gipsies, the homosexuals and the mental defectives in the camps. So you are honorary Jews already! But I don’t want to learn of your deaths in the camps. Look, please, do what I am doing and take the next boat out to New York. Gentlemen, I beg you, wake up from the Surrealist dream!’

  Caroline and I continued to see each other, even though our meetings were, at best, politely tense. Then, one ill-fated day – it was Sunday, April 27, 1937, quite unexpectedly she came to see me in Cuba Street. She stepped into the studio diffidently, as if she had never been there before. If I had been expecting her, I would not already have had so much to drink. I was delighted to see her and I poured her out a large tumbler of whisky. I had been planning to present her with the miniature locket-portrait, but now I could give it to her that evening. She had come round, she said, because she wanted to tell me something and to ask something of me. I knew that I did not want to hear what she had to say, but she pressed on anyway.

  ‘Caspar, I think that it is better that we do not see one another for a while. It’s not good for us, these meetings, with you looking at me like a hungry hyena. I’m sorry, but it is like that. I just need space to breathe. I’m only talking about a couple of months or so, then, after two or three months, we could see how things were and how we felt about one another. I don’t want to lose you as a friend, Caspar dear. With things the way they are, I need all the friends I can find.’

  I went on my knees before her and rested my head on her lap.

  ‘I don’t want to be your friend. If I am not your lover, then I am nothing,’ I said.

  Stroking my head absently, she replied,

  ‘Can’t you see that what you call your “love” is just making you intensely miserable?’

  ‘I’d a thousand times rather be miserable with you than happy with anyone else. I don’t want happiness. It doesn’t interest me. I want you.’

  ‘Well, what about me? Think about me for once. Do I have to share in your misery?’

  ‘It is not me who is making you miserable. It is Clive. Don’t deny it. You cry all the time. You didn’t used to be like this.’

  She sighed. She was full of sighs.

  ‘You just don’t understand. And you don’t know me.’

  ‘Sleep with me. If we slept together properly, then we might begin to feel that we were getting to know one another.’

  She could not keep the irritation out of her voice.

  ‘You really are obsessed with this … with this idea of … poking me. What possible difference could it make if I did let you sleep with me?’

  I had no good answer to this, but I said stupidly,

  ‘I think that it’s just that you may be making too big a thing of going to bed with me. You could sleep with me and then we could still be Platonic friends or whatever. I just think that you may be obsessed about losing your virginity.’

  ‘And who said that I was still a virgin?’

  Her voice was suddenly hard and she pushed my head off her lap and stood up.

  ‘For your information, I’m not a virgin. And I’m not sure, but I
think that I may be pregnant. That’s what I was coming round to ask for your help about, but I can see that you are beyond helping or hope. And now I’m not going to be interrogated by you any more. I’m going. Maybe in a few months – three or four say – we can talk about things, when you are calmer.’

  She made to move to the door. I blocked her way out and held her pressed against the table, setting the pendulums of the perpetual motion machine erratically in movement.

  ‘Kiss me at least before you go.’

  She pecked me swiftly on the cheek.

  ‘You used to kiss me on the mouth,’ I protested and I held her by the shoulders. She shook her head vigorously so that most of her hair fell across her face.

  ‘Don’t go. I swear I’ll commit suicide if you go,’ I cried.

  She shrugged herself out of my embrace and took a few more steps towards the door. I rushed round the other side of the table and threw myself on the floor across the doorway.

  ‘Let me kiss your feet. Where is the harm in that? Let me kiss your feet at least!’ And I made a lunge for one of her legs.

  Looking up I saw her face stiff with hatred and contempt, before, eluding my grasp, she stepped over me and vanished into the darkness. I do not know what happened after that. I drank an awful lot, that’s for sure, and at some point I left the house and wandered about. I think that I had some more drinks somewhere else. I awoke at dawn, cold and filthy, in an East London park.

  Chapter Ten

  After a thorough wash, I walked over to the post office to make some telephone calls and on to the bank to draw out money. Then I proceeded by train and taxi to Croydon Airport. My fellow passengers on the aeroplane were mostly men in fur coats. I thought that they might be arms dealers. Below me, England, with its tidy packets of fields and its ribbons of suburban development, fell away. I paid it and the arms dealers little attention. I sat swigging whisky from a hip-flask and thinking hard.