At first she had thought this was because he wanted to keep her to himself, but later she decided that he was in some way ashamed of her or, if not ashamed, then embarrassed to be seen in her company. She wondered, without minding much, whether it was because she was Jewish or American or small; or whether he was conducting a parallel affair with some tall English rose who belonged to the group of his regular friends.
The idea did not upset her because she herself felt detached from Henry. She found him interesting and attractive but entirely alien in a way that Andrew, for example, was not. She was fascinated by him, and flattered to be taken up by someone so rich, successful and decidedly grown up. She also appreciated the skill and the style with which he made love to her. Yet, once he had done so, she never felt close to him, or wanted to remain around. Once he had put on his cotton boxer shorts, his silk shirt and grey, pin-striped suit; once he had opened his mouth to speak in that sneering British drawl; once he had begun to move around in the stage-set of his grandiose apartment – she felt estranged, and as inappropriate and out of place as the jeans, tee-shirt, socks and sneakers which she picked up off the carpeted floor.
It was the same that evening at Covent Garden. She had taken trouble to dress as smartly as she could, but when she caught sight of herself in a mirror she saw just how preppy and teen-aged she looked, how out of place in the long gallery where the bankers and businessmen with their elegant wives walked up and down while waiting for the next act.
He had bought her a glass of champagne which she drank, even though she disliked champagne, while Henry, with a glass of whisky, asked her what she thought of the opera.
‘Well, it isn’t quite what you expect from Mozart, is it?’
‘It is apparently one of his last.’
‘You never saw it before?’
‘No.’
‘It’s certainly interesting …’
‘Why? To see that even a genius can be a bore?’
She laughed. ‘My father wouldn’t like it.’
‘Why not?’
‘Titus destroyed Jerusalem. He wasn’t very clement to the Jews.’
‘Yet Bernice was Jewish and she loved him.’
‘Sure. Titus and one or two others.’
‘Who else?’
‘His father, Vespasian. Three husbands. And her brother, Agrippa.’
The bell rang for the second act.
‘She also met St Paul,’ said Anna, ‘but he was in chains so I guess he was safe.’
‘How did she arrange that?’ asked Henry, taking her empty glass.
‘She and Agrippa were visiting Festus, the Roman procurator, in Caesarea. St Paul was waiting to be sent off to Rome. Agrippa asked to hear him preach.’
They went back into the auditorium.
‘How do you know all this?’ asked Henry.
‘From Father Lambert’s lectures,’ said Anna. ‘It came into his course on Biblical Archaeology.’
After the opera they drove back to Belgravia and had supper in Henry’s flat. This, too, was far from a simple bite to eat. Instead of the glass of milk and peanut-butter sandwich which Anna, on her own, would have eaten in her Aunt Miriam’s kitchen, Henry always arranged a three-course dinner, beginning with soup and ending with a sorbet, with smoked salmon, gravadlax or game pie in between. He did not prepare it himself; someone else came in during the day; but he served it methodically by candlelight at the polished antique table in the corner of his living-room.
There was always, too, a half bottle of Meursault or Montrachet and a full bottle of some fancy claret, then a choice of liqueurs to drink with their coffee; and, while Anna at first found the formality of such suppers a little absurd, particularly after going to a film, they had the effect of arousing a pleasant anticipation of what was to follow in bed.
Before they reached that point, Henry always behaved as if it might not happen; or, at any rate, he never referred to it with languorous looks or gestures. She sensed that for her to do so would offend Henry’s sense of decorum – like ogling the sorbet while sipping one’s soup. She therefore made conversation and, on that evening, returned to the history behind the story of La Clemenza di Tito.
‘I shall miss that course of Father Lambert’s,’ she said.
‘What was so special about it?’
‘He made the whole ancient world come alive and make sense. I hadn’t realized, for example, how tight things were …’
‘Tight?’
‘Well, I’d always kind of thought of Caesar and Cleopatra in one compartment, like History or Drama, and Herod the Great in another, like Scripture Studies. In fact Herod was a friend of Cleopatra’s, and of both Julius and Octavius Caesar. He named the Antonia fortress after Mark Antony. His son Antipas was deeply involved with John the Baptist, Salome and all that; and his great-grandchildren, Agrippa and Bernice, turn up listening to St Paul.’
‘And what did they make of him?’
‘Of St Paul?’
‘Yes.’
‘The procurator, Festus, thought he was crazy, but Agrippa was quite impressed. Father Lambert used to say that if you read between the lines, it looks as if Bernice dragged her brother away before he could be converted.’
‘I would have reacted in the same way as Festus.’
‘You’ve never been tempted to believe?’
‘If I was, I would resist it.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it degrades the mind to fall back on superstition.’
‘I don’t believe either, but I don’t think it’s degrading. You could look on it as a kind of poetry, a way of letting something ancient and beautiful suffuse your being so that you are not in fact degraded but ennobled by it.’
‘Like marinating a fish?’ He smiled sourly.
‘Sure. We Jews, after all, are a people moulded by our myths, and I don’t have to believe that Moses heard God speak from a burning bush to be glad all the same that I’m part of that tradition. And Andrew, whatever may be the reasons for his believing, gets something very beautiful from his faith. He really is gentler and kinder than anyone else I know.’
‘That’s not thanks to Christ.’
‘Thanks to what, then?’
‘His fear of life. He’s like a monkey, threatened by a stronger monkey, who lies down and proffers his genitals to deflect the other’s aggression.’
‘That’s a horrible thing to say.’
‘It doesn’t help Andrew to shy away from an impartial analysis of his condition. Clearly his commitment to poverty, chastity and obedience is a way of saying: “I won’t compete for your money or your women, and I’ll do anything you say.”’
‘That’s what makes him nice.’
‘It makes him a victim.’
‘Of whom?’
‘Of all those repressed pederasts and menopausal spinsters who run the Roman Catholic Church.’
‘He’s nice to me too.’
‘But you don’t sleep with him.’
She blushed. ‘Liking and … loving are different.’
‘They are indeed. Different and probably incompatible.’
‘Why?’
‘Because love is just a gloss on the crude instincts which ensure the survival of the species.’
Anna looked down at her plate, wondering if this cynicism was meant to soften her up for the ending of their affair. ‘Can’t you love and like people at the same time?’ she asked.
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Perhaps. But even liking, in my experience, has some ulterior motive behind it.’
‘Like what?’
‘We choose our friends like our possessions, to enhance the image we want to present to others.’
‘You have a very low opinion of human beings.’
‘Vanity, vanity, all is vanity, as one of your prophets put it.’
‘Then why aren’t you pleased that Andrew has climbed out of this cesspit?’
‘Because you can’t climb out. We are what we are – isolated individuals i
n relentless pursuit of gratification and power. The only way to be content is to own up to it, and enjoy the chase.’
‘And do you enjoy the chase?’
He looked at her briefly as if assessing the prey. ‘Do I? Yes, I do. The fittest are always happy to survive.’
‘Whereas your unfit brother is unhappy?’
‘Yes, because of Lambert.’
‘But in general?’
‘The general and the particular are linked. That’s the point I am trying to make. He imagined that he had escaped the struggle by joining the Simonite order. Sooner or later he was bound to discover that you can neither change human nature nor deny it; you can simply pervert it. Most dangerous of all is the celibacy of priests, because all that energy which should be dissipated in sex is obliged to find other outlets like pride, ambition and the sinister pleasure which priests take in exploiting and manipulating the weakness and uncertainty of others.’
‘Do you say this to Andrew?’
‘No. It would upset him. But you – well, I should have thought that you would sympathize with my point of view.’
‘Because I’m a Jew?’
‘Yes.’ He answered at once but she could tell, from his slight confusion, that he would rather not have been caught labelling her in that way.
‘My brother would,’ she said, ‘but the only Catholic I have ever known besides Andrew was Father Lambert, and he always seemed to me to be kind, cheerful and completely unselfish.’
‘But now you know you were wrong.’
‘How?’
‘Because suicide is at the apex of egoism.’
‘Perhaps he didn’t kill himself,’ she said. ‘Perhaps he was killed.’
‘Even if he was killed, he went to bed with that woman before he died.’
‘That, well, in a way it’s kind of romantic. And it proves your theory wrong.’
‘How?’
‘Well, you can hardly say that he did it to improve the species.’
‘No. He was probably just curious to know what he’d been missing all those years.’
‘And had he been missing much?’ she asked, attempting the kind of ironic smile that she saw so often on Henry’s face.
‘By definition,’ he said.
‘Why by definition?’
‘Because if our genes are programmed for survival, not just as an individual but as a species too, then those things which ensure our survival must be pleasurable.’
‘Like eating?’
‘Yes.’
‘And screwing?’
‘Yes, except that it is complicated by psychological factors.’
‘Like love?’
‘Love, yes. Or the lack of it.’ He looked at her sadly.
‘It’s a pity,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘Well, that I don’t inspire love.’
‘And do I?’
‘No.’ She lowered her head and shook it at the same time so that strands of hair fell over her face and hid the tears which had come into her eyes.
‘It’s better, don’t you think?’ he asked.
‘What?’ She understood what he meant but wanted him to say it.
‘That we stop.’
‘Don’t you like it any more?’
‘It’s not as simple as that.’
‘It seemed perfectly simple up to now.’
‘For the body, perhaps, but not for the mind.’
‘You shouldn’t take it so seriously.’
‘Perhaps not.’
‘It’s just sex, for God’s sake.’
He looked at her from across the table with no particular expression. ‘I’m sorry if you feel let down.’
‘No.’ She turned away. ‘I always knew, well, that there were no strings.’
He stood up and went to the kitchen to fetch the coffee.
When he returned, she asked: ‘Is it true that you always end things after three months?’
He frowned. ‘Who told you that?’
‘Is it true?’
‘In my experience, it’s always wise to quit while one’s ahead.’
‘Why?’
‘Because familiarity breeds contempt.’
‘Always?’
‘Always. But I wish …’
‘What?’
‘That it didn’t.’
She sniffed and stood up. ‘I guess it’s good for me to get dumped, once in a while, since it’s usually me who does the dumping.’ She moved towards the door.
‘Don’t you want any coffee?’
‘I’d rather get home.’
‘Are you sure?’
She nodded, and sniffed again.
‘I’ll call a cab.’
‘I can find one in the street.’
‘No, wait.’ He went to the telephone. ‘If I book it from here, you can charge it to my company account.’
Eight
After he had seen Anna into a cab and had given the driver her aunt’s address in Belsize Park, Henry returned to his flat, where he refilled his glass with whisky and water and sat down on the sofa facing the blank screen of his television. He remained like this for some time – a man in a suit, now crumpled, with tired features and bloodshot eyes. Occasionally his head would turn, and he would look at the fabrics and artefacts which furnished and decorated his flat – at the beige walls with olive-green borders to match the sombre pattern of the heavy curtains and the piping on the sofa.
To Anna it had seemed grand. To Henry it was meant to seem grand – even aristocratic. He had paid a designer, after all, to create such an effect. In the four years since he had moved in, there had been, he knew, many who had been convinced – and not all of them as impressionable as Anna. However, he had never been convinced himself, any more than an actor who plays Hamlet on a stage set of Elsinore believes that he is a prince of Denmark.
He intended, now, to replay the tape of Newsnight which had been recorded automatically earlier in the evening; but he did not reach for the controls which, with the press of a couple of buttons, would have brought sound to the speakers and an image to the screen. Instead, he sat in quiet obeisance before the dead set as if praying before his household god. It was a fine god – a Bang and Olufsen: when it was switched on, its colours outshone the flames of the gas log fire. So, too, the video recorder was the best of its kind, slim and grey like a revolver, with twinkling numbers and symbols waiting to obey those invisible rays which emanated from the small box which Henry held in his hand.
That box was not the only magic wand in his possession. There was another for the television, and a third for the music centre which, again at the touch of a button, would instantly bring into his living-room the finest choirs and orchestras playing the loveliest sounds contrived by the human mind. So too in his car, the gleaming silver-grey BMW 635 CSi, he would listen to the same tapes and, like the fine lady riding to Banbury Cross, could have music wherever he went. And from his car, or in a restaurant, he could speak through his portable telephone to anyone anywhere in the world. There was no invention of modern man which Henry did not exploit – to wash his clothes or his dishes; to clean his flat or his car; to transpose his thoughts into words, his words onto disks, then back onto paper, and from paper, by telephone, to another sheet of paper at the other end of the line.
His clothes, too, were the best – cashmere sweaters, cotton or silk shirts, hand-made shoes. Nothing he touched was cheap: even the women, before Anna, had worn exquisite dresses from the fashion houses of France; and beneath them, silken, lace-edged lingerie, smelling sweetly of heady scents which mingled luxuriously with the musks of nature.
Now, when he thought of Anna’s childish underclothes, and how touching her little brown body had looked on the white sheets of his large bed, he felt a sense of regret which joined, but did not supplant, the relief he had felt at seeing her go. Indeed, the question he asked himself – or waited to have answered by his household god – was not why he had dropped her, but why he had taken up with h
er in the first place.
He remembered how, when he had met her with Andrew, he had, as he always did when meeting a woman, appraised her for her sexual potential; and how he had disqualified her, as indeed he disqualified most of them, not because she was ugly – her face was unquestionably pretty – but because she was socially irrelevant and physically out of scale.
It was not snobbery which led him to consider her irrelevant, but rather the sage which spoke through the flickering, multicoloured 24-inch screen, and valued only long-legged, well-dressed, upper-class girls. Her size, too, put him off, not because she was squat or built in inelegant proportions, but because, dressed as she was at the time in a duffel-coat, trainers and jeans, and glancing at him furtively with impish eyes, she seemed too fragile and childlike to be eligible for a grown man’s bed.
He had been amused, certainly, by the way she had tormented his pious brother with her sharp answers and the kind of casual obscenities with which young Americans spice their speech; but the only reason why he asked where she lived, and had later invited her to lunch, was because he had learned from Andrew that her brother Jake worked for Military Counter-intelligence in Israel’s army, the IDF.
Henry owned and edited a series of newsletters providing inside information on business and trade. At the time he had been preparing an issue on the arms industry, and Israel, he knew, had one of the largest arms budgets in the world. He already had contacts in Tel Aviv, but another would be useful. It had certainly seemed worthwhile to try and find out from the sister what her brother might or might not know.
It turned out that she knew nothing, but she had amused him sufficiently – or so he told himself – to ask her out again, once to the theatre, then to the opera, and finally to the kind of restaurant where the expense was a compliment and the atmosphere enticing. When, a month after meeting her, he had asked her back to his flat, he still did not fancy her in the usual way, but was partly curious to know what she would be like in bed, and partly conscious that it would be almost insulting if their candlelit dinners did not end in this way.
On the Third Day Page 8